Fic: Crossing the Bar (11/?)
May. 26th, 2006 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
honoratAuthor: Honorat
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence
Characters: Commodore Norrington, the crew of the Dauntless, Jack Sparrow, Anamaria, Gibbs, the crew of the Black Pearl,
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint.
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: Anamaria does something crazy and heroic, and Commodore Norrington gets a surprise. This chapter should be a relief after the last one. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does? The battle continues.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
* * * * *
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
Anamaria decided she really should have known better than to sail as first mate on the ship belonging to the most wanted man in the Caribbean. What could she possibly have been thinking? So he was also the prettiest man in the Caribbean, with the silverest, most forked tongue and an off-center tendency to be a good man when it was least convenient and a scoundrel when it was even more inconvenient. So he had eyes like a cobra’s that made you stand like a frozen rodent and hold when all sense, common and uncommon, said to run like hell. She still should have known better. People with battleships and big guns and empires behind them liked to shoot at him. And their aim wasn’t any too good.
And then he didn’t even have to ask her to do this. She’d volunteered. Because it was the mate’s job, of course. But what a nodcock thing to have done, anyway! Volunteered to crawl out on that sapling waving about at the stem of this temperamental ship in the midst of a gale with Jack’s enemies hotfooting it back to blow some more cannonballs his way. And to top off the evidence that she’d left her mind along with her life in Tortuga the day she’d signed on to Jack Sparrow’s stolen ship, she’d practically forced Jack to agree to put this ship to the wind while she still had two more stays to set. Surely she must have some sort of death wish. She really should see someone about that. Perhaps she could get a charm made against it. If she lived.
Or he’d already bewitched her. That made more sense. If there ever were a man who had witchery in his hands, it was Jack Sparrow. She was bespelled, and it made her stupid.
In the privacy of her head, Anamaria acknowledged to herself that her frantic thoughts were a whirling vortex around a pit of fear that had her hands sweating, in spite of the chill of the rain, and her heart beating as though it knew it had too little time left and was trying to get it all in before she set foot on that bowsprit.
She had as much courage as anyone could reasonably expect, but there was nothing about that task that gave her any hope of surviving it. On the other hand, the way things were going, if someone didn’t do this job, they wouldn’t be surviving anyway, so she just had to convince her stomach that it was more dangerous to remain on deck than to venture out on that spar.
The three men she’d selected to assist her stood solemnly around her as she carefully knotted the line around her body. Then they helped her attach the lighter lines that she would use to haul the stays out to her when she was ready for them. Finally Requin handed her a heavy, clanking sack that contained every thing from spare blocks, to extra rope, to needles and cord, to bolts, to marlinspikes—anything they could imagine she might need out there to make repairs. She secured that to her belt, heaved a deep breath, mentally smacked her brain upside the head and told it to shut the hell up, and stepped up between the knightheads.
Turning, she pointed to the lifeline. “Y’ might want t’ take a wrap of that around one of these,” she gestured to the knighthead. “Give you some leverage if I fall.” If? her frantic mind gibbered. Don’t you mean when? Anamaria ignored it.
Once she was out on the tossing bowsprit of the Black Pearl, Anamaria was grateful that most of the ship’s forward momentum had ceased. Even so she had to cling to the slippery spar with arms and legs wrapped around it as the high seas continued to drive against the bow. She didn’t want to know what condition she’d be in if she lost her grip and had to be hauled back by the rope around her waist.
In between being battered by treacherous seas, she continued to move forward. As she crept by above the Black Pearl’s figurehead, Anamaria saluted, a courtesy. From what she could glimpse, the carved figure didn’t seem too badly harmed, a fact that illogically cheered her.
Inching out over open space, she could scarcely see for the wind-whipped salt spray and the rain, so she used her hands to feel for any damage to the wood. It seemed as though that spar was growing longer as she moved, that she’d be crawling forever and never reach the cap. At any moment, she expected the return of the Dauntless and the resumption of close quarters cannon fire. And she’d really rather not end her days being shot off a bowsprit into the sea.
Finally her hands found the dip in the smooth surface of the spar where the shot had winged her. Anamaria let out a sigh of relief. It hadn’t sprung. No cracks or splits radiated from that indentation. While the bowsprit would be a little weaker, she’d hold a bit longer. That’s a brave lass! she praised the Pearl. You’ll be able to handle that little nick, won’t you, love?
At that moment the first concussion of the Dauntless’s returning fire rocked the ship. Anamaria swore and grabbed hard for the jib guy as she was nearly thrown off the spar. Her heart hammering an echo of the blast, she found herself with her legs clamped around the bowsprit and her body arched out over the water while her hands, supporting her weight on the rough line, acquired blisters where she hadn’t known she still could get blisters. She could hear her watchdogs yelling something, but she couldn’t tell what it was.
Painfully, slowly, feeling every muscle in her back and abdomen making dire threats of retribution, Anamaria dragged herself upright onto the bowsprit again. The shouting did not diminish, so she risked squinting back over her shoulder. Only two of her men were standing, and the knighthead to which her lifeline had been wrapped was a splintered ruin. Oh. She realized the rope around her waist was now trailing down into the sea, of no use whatsoever.
Requin and Quartetto were gesturing wildly for her to return, but she shook her head. No. They didn’t have the time. She had to get that stay rigged as fast a possible. The thought that she might lash herself to the bowsprit crossed her mind, but she would need too much slack in order to work. Her imagination supplied her with a picture of her hanging from the bowsprit being gradually sawn in half by the rope. She’d rather drown, thank you very much.
The two anxious men looked ready to come out on the bowsprit after her, but she signaled for them to remain where they were. No sense in them risking their lives, too. The habit of obeying Anamaria was ingrained enough that they did not persist. She imagined Jack would have trampled right over her orders, but he was too far away to see what she was up to.
Continuing to work her way towards the bowsprit cap, Anamaria noted that the tackle attaching the stays to the ship’s hull seemed to be intact. Good. That would mean she could reuse it, which would save an enormous amount of time and hard work.
Normally, a sailor was allowed one hand for the ship and one for himself, but she was going to need both her hands to manipulate the rigging. Praying that another shot would not dislodge her, Anamaria wrapped her legs hard around the spar and the end of the jib boom and wedged her feet around the dolphin striker. Carefully she un-reeved the snapped stay from the bee-blocks and tied it onto her belt. Then she worked the new foretopmast stay up to her by its line, looked up to see that it wasn’t fouled with any other lines, and with hands that were beginning to shake with cold began to reeve the end through the block.
An oncoming sea nearly took her by surprise before she could secure the line. As the weight of cold dark water smashed over her, Anamaria had only one thought. She must not let go of that stay. With her other hand she clung to the bowsprit cap until her fingers were crying for relief. The crush of water seemed to go on forever, until Anamaria was convinced she was going to drown, but finally the ship emerged and she found herself gasping for air, with bloodied fingers, but still on board and still grasping the precious stay.
Swiftly she finished the process of reeving it, then uncramped her legs, and amidst their protest, began shinnying back down the bowsprit to where the blocks and tackle were hanging, still attached to the snapped piece of rigging she’d removed. She froze, pressed to the wood, as she heard the ripping silk sound of shot sing by her head. That was too bloody close! Damn it! Rigging should be done in harbour, with sunny skies and lazy seas, not in the middle of a storm while some sonofabitch Navy guncrew tried to take potshots at her.
Removing her heart firmly from her throat and swallowing it back down into her stomach, where it insisted on flopping about wildly, she pulled in the foretopmast stay tackle and began trying to work the knot attaching the old stay to the deadeye loose. It was immediately obvious that that was not working, so she maneuvered her knife free and cut the knot off. Her fingers tried to object, but she ignored them, and with the speed of much practice, tied on the new stay.
It was done. The stay was bent on. The foremast was out of immediate danger. Anamaria signaled her foremast crew to haul the stay in hard and let the staysail run down its hanks. She’d have to get it set, but the Black Pearl was now able to get underway. Already the fire of the Dauntless was decreasing as the Navy ship began its tack around to come up on them again. She was running out of time. Anamaria began her painstaking return to the bowsprit cap to splice the fore staysail tack to the lanyard and pass it through the heart. Then all that would remain would be to put the bight of the pendent through the clew at the other end of the sail and seize the two parts and the sail would be good to go. It would be a relief to shed some of this tackle she was hauling around.
When she had that little task complete, assuming she stayed on the bowsprit long enough to do it, she would see whether Jack Sparrow would keep his word to her and let the Pearl run free. If he didn’t, she wouldn’t have to kill him. The Navy would oblige.
* * * * *
The Dauntless had finished her run down alongside the Pearl and Commodore Norrington was giving the orders to bring his ship about in preparation for coming up on the pirate ship again when a shout rang out above the roar of the storm. “There’s a live one in the water!”
A moment later, the startling and most inconvenient information, “’E’s naught but a bit of a lad!” was added.
Cursing the delay, Norrington ordered his ship hove to and joined his men by the Dauntless’s rail. There was indeed a small boy, clinging to a piece of the Black Pearl’s hull, being drawn out to sea by the tidal current, and likely to wash right up beside them as they came about in preparation for drawing abreast of the Black Pearl again.
While he might wish no one had noticed the boy, Norrington was not the kind of man who could live with himself if he made no attempt at a rescue.
“Lower the boat,” he instructed Lieutenant Gillette.
The lieutenant, knowing his commander well, did not bother to object that the seas were far too heavy to risk such an endeavor. He relayed the orders, cutting short the complaints with a crisp, “That is a child out there, men. You have your duty.”
In fact, the entire rescue operation went without a hitch, in spite of what appeared to be their rescuee’s attempt to avoid being saved, and soon their only actual captured pirate lay gasping and, Norrington noted, bleeding on the deck. Something had mangled one of his legs. One of their shots, perhaps, or a shard of blasted wood. It was a nasty break through which bone protruded. Nevertheless, the boy utilized the ship’s rail to drag himself nearly to his feet where he stood on one leg, shaking and pale and glaring defiance at them.
“You!” he hissed vehemently, eyes blazing with brilliant blue fire, “You bloody whoreson Navy bastards!”
Norrington supposed the sentiment was understandable under the circumstances, but it became rapidly apparent that the boy’s own injuries were not what had their captive so incensed.
“You hurt my captain!” His young voice blistered with an inferno of hatred. “You are shooting at my ship!”
So Sparrow was wounded. That was an important piece of intelligence. The commodore wondered how severe the injury had been and how that would be affecting the tactical situation. For instance, would that put Sparrow’s second in command in charge? And just what manner of man was he? Perhaps they could get more information out of this child. In fact, they might acquire a great deal of hitherto unknown data concerning the operations of the Black Pearl. Norrington was rapidly becoming reconciled to the small delay the capture had necessitated.
Then the tactical situation on board the Dauntless took a nosedive. The little firebrand they’d fished from the ocean pulled a knife. The child’s face was bone-white with suffering. He looked nearly ready to drop with exhaustion from loss of blood and the fight with those massive waves. He was shivering with exposure and shock, clinging with one white-knuckled hand to the pitching rail. But no one had any doubt that at least one or more of the men who took that knife from him would be adding his blood to that deck.
Norrington really would have to speak to his men. Pirates grew their teeth young. In the future, he didn’t want them picking up so much as a suckling infant pirate without searching it for weapons.
Things went rapidly downhill from there. Norrington found himself and his men being informed specifically, crudely, and in great detail, just exactly which body parts the boy proposed to remove with his knife and what creative uses he planned to find for them once they were removed.
Navy tars were not known for the sweetness and light of their speech, but Norrington could not recall quite this level of foul language. If ever the cliché about making a sailor blush could come true, he did not doubt this was the boy who could do it. He was as eloquent as he was ingenious, and the commodore noted more than one man was looking queasily protective about the aforesaid parts. He did not like to imagine the kind of life such a child must have led.
Lieutenant Groves, the commodore noted with exasperated resignation, was looking amused and appreciative.
Some of his young crew, the cabin boys and a few of the midshipmen, had never actually seen a pirate in person. Even though this was a pint-sized specimen, apparently younger than any of them, it was living up to its reputation for depravity in fine style. They stared with wide eyes—the commodore could practically see their ears extend and pivot. He imagined the vocabulary amongst the middies was going to take a dramatic plummet for the worse with all due speed.
Enough was certainly enough. “Put the knife down, son,” he suggested gently. “That way no one will get hurt.” Or at least hurt any worse. Norrington was aware that he did not have the moral high ground in this argument. He and his ship were certainly responsible for the fact that this boy was going to bleed to death on the decks of the Dauntless, unless he received help soon.
“I will not!” the child refused adamantly. “You shall not take me prisoner, nor will I die like a dog on your wretched gallows.”
The commodore’s own temper flared at this. “Did Sparrow actually tell you we would hang a boy like you?” Of all the unprincipled lies . . .
“Captain. It’s Captain Sparrow,” the boy insisted.
Oh God. Not another one of them. Norrington resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
Then, surprisingly, the child lowered his head. “No, he didn’t. He said that some of us, the ones that didn’t have a record, would likely go free, if we surrendered. That you’d be looking for crew on your ships.” He bit his lip, and when he raised his head there were tears in his eyes. “But we wouldn’t surrender. We voted. All of us voted. We would die before we’d surrender. And I was going to, before you made me come here. I just . . . I just hadn’t been able to make myself let go yet.”
And the pirate child reversed the knife.
“Belay that, Mister!” Norrington snapped in the voice that brooked no disobedience, that moved the 600 souls aboard the Dauntless as though they were merely his extended limbs.
Instinctively, the boy froze.
A swift-thinking and even swifter-moving marine took the opportunity to disarm the bloodthirsty pirate. The boy made a small cry of betrayal and despair.
“Listen to me.” Norrington spoke sharply, regaining the boy’s attention. “You have not surrendered. You have been captured in honourable combat and are now my prisoner. Now, we will discuss the terms of your parole. What is your name, boy?”
The narrow chin jutted up spiritedly. “What’s yours?”
Norrington’s own men winced. Nobody spoke to the commodore like that.
Norrington reminded himself that small as it was, this was a pirate. One who had certainly never been brought up to practice any form of courtesy. What’s more, one who had been under the tutelage of that master of annoyance, Jack Sparrow. It wasn’t the child’s fault.
“My name,” he responded gravely, “is Commodore Norrington.”
“Oh.” The boy seemed to deflate. “Then this is the Dauntless.”
“It is.”
“All right then.” The child heaved a sigh. “I’ll give you my parole.”
Norrington raised an eyebrow. That had gone better than he had expected. “You’ve heard of me before, I take it.”
“Yes. Captain Sparrow says you are a good man. So that’s all right then.” The boy seemed resigned.
“A good man?” Norrington could not have been more astonished if he’d learnt that Sparrow thought he was the archangel Gabriel.
The miniature pirate placed one finger on his chin and glanced introspectively skyward in a perfect imitation of Sparrow himself and quoted, “No sense of humour, but a good man.”
“Very well.” Norrington ignored the backhanded compliment. He did too have a sense of humour. How like Sparrow to manage to get on his nerves without even being present. But the reply settled that this interrogation would be his task. He indicated to Gillette that everyone should return to his duties. They were almost upon the Black Pearl again, and the gun crews needed to be ready to resume their work. The lieutenant took over smoothly and the decks around the commodore and his captive cleared.
* * * * *
Anamaria did not hear the jangle of hanks as the fore top staysail ran up its lines, but she felt the stay sing taut as the wind caught canvas. She breathed a sigh of relief. The captain was doing as they had agreed. The sails were being trimmed and she could feel the surge of the Pearl underneath her. You could never tell about Jack Sparrow. He had an incongruous heroic streak in him that led him into the most impossible situations at times. She hadn’t been sure until this moment that he wouldn’t risk himself and the ship to save her. But even Jack must know that more lives than hers were at stake, and that if he did not rip the Black Pearl from the Navy grasp soon, all their lives were forfeit.
The ship, on the other hand, seemed reluctant. Anamaria frowned, concentrating on the feeling of wrongness in the Black Pearl’s motion, a hanging back and quarrelling with the wind that was not usual with this ship who had always seemed condensed from the wind itself. Although Anamaria often talked to the Pearl she almost never received the impression that the ship was listening, but this time the sense that the Pearl surrounded her, even out on that tenuous slender spar, was overwhelming. Anamaria wrapped her arms and legs around the bowsprit and laid her cheek against the cold wet wood, ignoring the stinging dash of spray against her body, holding her breath as the ship, now underway, ploughed her bow into the face of an oncoming wave.
“You have to do it, lady,” she whispered against that black timber, when the darkness cleared and she could breathe again. “Don’t mind me. Just save him and save yourself. You have to fly as fast as you can. Let the sea do its worst. Just get him away from here alive.”
Those were the right words. Like an arrow shot from a bow, the Black Pearl unleashed herself. As she leapt ahead into the storm-torn seas, the sheer power of her caught at Anamaria’s throat. That’s my beauty, she thought wistfully. Nothing can catch you when you put your heart into it.
But Jack’s dark lady would need the remainder of her headsails to win this race with death. Cautiously, Anamaria crept over the bowsprit cap and began to worm her way out onto the sea-wracked jib boom.
* * * * *
As the Dauntless drew up alongside the Black Pearl, the commodore resumed questioning his captive. “Since you have your captain’s approval of myself, will you tell me your name?”
“It’s Jip,” the little pirate said sullenly. The ship rocked with the concussion of her cannon and the boy jerked and winced in startlement. His face twisted minutely and his eyes flew away from the commodore, across the ship, and out to where the Black Pearl was once more under Navy guns.
“Is that all? Do you have a surname?” Norrington persisted.
The boy wrenched his eyes back to his inquisitor. “Just Jip.” He raised his head higher, scowling.
“Who is your family?” Norrington prodded. He needed to get a pattern of question and answer going, before he got to the questions to which he really needed answers. His prisoner still gripped the railing with both hands, growing fainter by the minute. The commodore resisted the sensation that he was interrogating the boy by torture, but his conscience was uneasy. Were these the actions of the “good man” in whom the boy seemed to put such faith?
“Don’t have one, ’cept for Captain Sparrow and the Black Pearl.” The boy gulped back what might have been a sob.
“Is he related to you?” That seemed impossible. Certainly a man of Sparrow’s complexion could never have a blue-eyed by-blow such as this boy.
“Course not! I don’t have any relations,” Jip scoffed.
From what kind of a past had this child come? How could he have no memory of a family? He certainly wasn’t the typical pirate whelp. Remarkably well-spoken in fact, in spite of a talent for the worst sort of gutter language. There was some mystery here.
“Where are you from?” Norrington asked, keeping his voice as gentle as possible.
“Brazil.”
That this fair child hailed from Portuguese-held Brazil seemed unlikely in the extreme. “Where in Brazil?”
“Paraiba.”
The name did not convey anything to the commodore. “Port town?” he asked.
“No.”
That was odd. What had Sparrow been doing inland in Brazil? “How did you come to be on the Black Pearl?”
“Captain Sparrow rescued me and let me stay.”
“Rescued you from what?”
The boy remained silent. He bit his lip as the guns gave voice again. Apparently the commodore wasn’t going to get that story.
Norrington waited a minute longer, but no answers were forthcoming. “How long have you been with the Black Pearl?” he asked finally.
“Don’t know. Not quite a year.” The boy wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His voice trembled a little.
“Who is first mate on your ship?”
Jip opened his mouth and then shut it again, his eyes going crafty behind the fog of pain. “That answer doesn’t belong to me,” he said stubbornly.
“How badly was your captain injured?”
Accusing silence met that question.
Damnation! This child was too bright by half. Norrington’s hopes of finding a fountain of information began to dry up. Besides, the boy looked about to collapse. His arms, holding him up, were trembling. The commodore could not in good conscience drive him any further. Why couldn’t he have captured some hard-bitten old buccaneer with a string of human teeth around his neck? Someone to whom he wouldn’t mind applying thumbscrews?
He hailed a passing sailor.
“Mr. Maddocks!
“Aye, sir?”
“Take our guest to the surgeon, Mr. Maddocks. That leg needs some attention.”
“Aye, sir.” The burly Welshman bent over and unceremoniously scooped up the boy.
Jip’s sudden, harsh intake of breath was the only sign he gave that the move was agonizing.
“And I’ll tell him he’s gettin’ too lazy this time out, so we’re bringin’ him some work from the enemy side,” the sailor chuckled.
“I’m sure we are all grateful this is a slow day for the good doctor,” Norrington said repressively.
“Aye, sir,” the man muttered.
Then Norrington caught sight of Jip’s pinched, miserable little face. Damn. He had to warn his men not to be so callous around that child. Pirate ships did not usually have surgeons, and the Black Pearl would be in desperate need of one at present.
As the boy hung limply in the arms of the sailor, his small voice tugged at the commodore.
“Please, sir? Could you stop shooting at my ship?”
Norrington had a vision of the storm waters running red from the Pearl’s washports. The Dauntless shook again as her battery of guns barked their destruction at the pirate vessel. Jip flinched as he had each time they had gone off. A knot twisted the commodore’s stomach as he imagined what that child had seen on those decks before he’d been shot off them. He wished he could pretend he hadn’t heard that request—the first polite thing the boy had said. He wished he could give a different answer.
Sadly he gazed at the pirate child whose only family he was doing his best to annihilate. “I’m sorry, Jip.” He shook his head fractionally. “I cannot.”
“Oh,” the small voice got even smaller, wobbling slightly.
The commodore’s nod indicated that the sailor should continue transporting his burden to the surgeon. The last thing Norrington saw of Jip was a pair of fear-blackened, wide eyes disappearing into the wardroom door. The commodore had never felt more like a murderer.
On his way aft, he paused by the marine whose quick thinking in disarming their captive had prevented a very ugly situation. The commodore owed this man.
“Good work,” he commended, nodding.
“Thankee, sir.” The marine touched his hat brim. “I got young uns of m’own, sir.”
Norrington smiled his gratitude and continued back to the quarterdeck. He still had a battle to direct. And one new piece of intelligence he’d gained had changed everything. Death before surrender. Dear God. Sparrow had finally gone completely mad. And it appeared to be contagious.
* * * * *
TBC
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence
Characters: Commodore Norrington, the crew of the Dauntless, Jack Sparrow, Anamaria, Gibbs, the crew of the Black Pearl,
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint.
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: Anamaria does something crazy and heroic, and Commodore Norrington gets a surprise. This chapter should be a relief after the last one. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does? The battle continues.
Thanks to
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
* * * * *
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
Anamaria decided she really should have known better than to sail as first mate on the ship belonging to the most wanted man in the Caribbean. What could she possibly have been thinking? So he was also the prettiest man in the Caribbean, with the silverest, most forked tongue and an off-center tendency to be a good man when it was least convenient and a scoundrel when it was even more inconvenient. So he had eyes like a cobra’s that made you stand like a frozen rodent and hold when all sense, common and uncommon, said to run like hell. She still should have known better. People with battleships and big guns and empires behind them liked to shoot at him. And their aim wasn’t any too good.
And then he didn’t even have to ask her to do this. She’d volunteered. Because it was the mate’s job, of course. But what a nodcock thing to have done, anyway! Volunteered to crawl out on that sapling waving about at the stem of this temperamental ship in the midst of a gale with Jack’s enemies hotfooting it back to blow some more cannonballs his way. And to top off the evidence that she’d left her mind along with her life in Tortuga the day she’d signed on to Jack Sparrow’s stolen ship, she’d practically forced Jack to agree to put this ship to the wind while she still had two more stays to set. Surely she must have some sort of death wish. She really should see someone about that. Perhaps she could get a charm made against it. If she lived.
Or he’d already bewitched her. That made more sense. If there ever were a man who had witchery in his hands, it was Jack Sparrow. She was bespelled, and it made her stupid.
In the privacy of her head, Anamaria acknowledged to herself that her frantic thoughts were a whirling vortex around a pit of fear that had her hands sweating, in spite of the chill of the rain, and her heart beating as though it knew it had too little time left and was trying to get it all in before she set foot on that bowsprit.
She had as much courage as anyone could reasonably expect, but there was nothing about that task that gave her any hope of surviving it. On the other hand, the way things were going, if someone didn’t do this job, they wouldn’t be surviving anyway, so she just had to convince her stomach that it was more dangerous to remain on deck than to venture out on that spar.
The three men she’d selected to assist her stood solemnly around her as she carefully knotted the line around her body. Then they helped her attach the lighter lines that she would use to haul the stays out to her when she was ready for them. Finally Requin handed her a heavy, clanking sack that contained every thing from spare blocks, to extra rope, to needles and cord, to bolts, to marlinspikes—anything they could imagine she might need out there to make repairs. She secured that to her belt, heaved a deep breath, mentally smacked her brain upside the head and told it to shut the hell up, and stepped up between the knightheads.
Turning, she pointed to the lifeline. “Y’ might want t’ take a wrap of that around one of these,” she gestured to the knighthead. “Give you some leverage if I fall.” If? her frantic mind gibbered. Don’t you mean when? Anamaria ignored it.
Once she was out on the tossing bowsprit of the Black Pearl, Anamaria was grateful that most of the ship’s forward momentum had ceased. Even so she had to cling to the slippery spar with arms and legs wrapped around it as the high seas continued to drive against the bow. She didn’t want to know what condition she’d be in if she lost her grip and had to be hauled back by the rope around her waist.
In between being battered by treacherous seas, she continued to move forward. As she crept by above the Black Pearl’s figurehead, Anamaria saluted, a courtesy. From what she could glimpse, the carved figure didn’t seem too badly harmed, a fact that illogically cheered her.
Inching out over open space, she could scarcely see for the wind-whipped salt spray and the rain, so she used her hands to feel for any damage to the wood. It seemed as though that spar was growing longer as she moved, that she’d be crawling forever and never reach the cap. At any moment, she expected the return of the Dauntless and the resumption of close quarters cannon fire. And she’d really rather not end her days being shot off a bowsprit into the sea.
Finally her hands found the dip in the smooth surface of the spar where the shot had winged her. Anamaria let out a sigh of relief. It hadn’t sprung. No cracks or splits radiated from that indentation. While the bowsprit would be a little weaker, she’d hold a bit longer. That’s a brave lass! she praised the Pearl. You’ll be able to handle that little nick, won’t you, love?
At that moment the first concussion of the Dauntless’s returning fire rocked the ship. Anamaria swore and grabbed hard for the jib guy as she was nearly thrown off the spar. Her heart hammering an echo of the blast, she found herself with her legs clamped around the bowsprit and her body arched out over the water while her hands, supporting her weight on the rough line, acquired blisters where she hadn’t known she still could get blisters. She could hear her watchdogs yelling something, but she couldn’t tell what it was.
Painfully, slowly, feeling every muscle in her back and abdomen making dire threats of retribution, Anamaria dragged herself upright onto the bowsprit again. The shouting did not diminish, so she risked squinting back over her shoulder. Only two of her men were standing, and the knighthead to which her lifeline had been wrapped was a splintered ruin. Oh. She realized the rope around her waist was now trailing down into the sea, of no use whatsoever.
Requin and Quartetto were gesturing wildly for her to return, but she shook her head. No. They didn’t have the time. She had to get that stay rigged as fast a possible. The thought that she might lash herself to the bowsprit crossed her mind, but she would need too much slack in order to work. Her imagination supplied her with a picture of her hanging from the bowsprit being gradually sawn in half by the rope. She’d rather drown, thank you very much.
The two anxious men looked ready to come out on the bowsprit after her, but she signaled for them to remain where they were. No sense in them risking their lives, too. The habit of obeying Anamaria was ingrained enough that they did not persist. She imagined Jack would have trampled right over her orders, but he was too far away to see what she was up to.
Continuing to work her way towards the bowsprit cap, Anamaria noted that the tackle attaching the stays to the ship’s hull seemed to be intact. Good. That would mean she could reuse it, which would save an enormous amount of time and hard work.
Normally, a sailor was allowed one hand for the ship and one for himself, but she was going to need both her hands to manipulate the rigging. Praying that another shot would not dislodge her, Anamaria wrapped her legs hard around the spar and the end of the jib boom and wedged her feet around the dolphin striker. Carefully she un-reeved the snapped stay from the bee-blocks and tied it onto her belt. Then she worked the new foretopmast stay up to her by its line, looked up to see that it wasn’t fouled with any other lines, and with hands that were beginning to shake with cold began to reeve the end through the block.
An oncoming sea nearly took her by surprise before she could secure the line. As the weight of cold dark water smashed over her, Anamaria had only one thought. She must not let go of that stay. With her other hand she clung to the bowsprit cap until her fingers were crying for relief. The crush of water seemed to go on forever, until Anamaria was convinced she was going to drown, but finally the ship emerged and she found herself gasping for air, with bloodied fingers, but still on board and still grasping the precious stay.
Swiftly she finished the process of reeving it, then uncramped her legs, and amidst their protest, began shinnying back down the bowsprit to where the blocks and tackle were hanging, still attached to the snapped piece of rigging she’d removed. She froze, pressed to the wood, as she heard the ripping silk sound of shot sing by her head. That was too bloody close! Damn it! Rigging should be done in harbour, with sunny skies and lazy seas, not in the middle of a storm while some sonofabitch Navy guncrew tried to take potshots at her.
Removing her heart firmly from her throat and swallowing it back down into her stomach, where it insisted on flopping about wildly, she pulled in the foretopmast stay tackle and began trying to work the knot attaching the old stay to the deadeye loose. It was immediately obvious that that was not working, so she maneuvered her knife free and cut the knot off. Her fingers tried to object, but she ignored them, and with the speed of much practice, tied on the new stay.
It was done. The stay was bent on. The foremast was out of immediate danger. Anamaria signaled her foremast crew to haul the stay in hard and let the staysail run down its hanks. She’d have to get it set, but the Black Pearl was now able to get underway. Already the fire of the Dauntless was decreasing as the Navy ship began its tack around to come up on them again. She was running out of time. Anamaria began her painstaking return to the bowsprit cap to splice the fore staysail tack to the lanyard and pass it through the heart. Then all that would remain would be to put the bight of the pendent through the clew at the other end of the sail and seize the two parts and the sail would be good to go. It would be a relief to shed some of this tackle she was hauling around.
When she had that little task complete, assuming she stayed on the bowsprit long enough to do it, she would see whether Jack Sparrow would keep his word to her and let the Pearl run free. If he didn’t, she wouldn’t have to kill him. The Navy would oblige.
* * * * *
The Dauntless had finished her run down alongside the Pearl and Commodore Norrington was giving the orders to bring his ship about in preparation for coming up on the pirate ship again when a shout rang out above the roar of the storm. “There’s a live one in the water!”
A moment later, the startling and most inconvenient information, “’E’s naught but a bit of a lad!” was added.
Cursing the delay, Norrington ordered his ship hove to and joined his men by the Dauntless’s rail. There was indeed a small boy, clinging to a piece of the Black Pearl’s hull, being drawn out to sea by the tidal current, and likely to wash right up beside them as they came about in preparation for drawing abreast of the Black Pearl again.
While he might wish no one had noticed the boy, Norrington was not the kind of man who could live with himself if he made no attempt at a rescue.
“Lower the boat,” he instructed Lieutenant Gillette.
The lieutenant, knowing his commander well, did not bother to object that the seas were far too heavy to risk such an endeavor. He relayed the orders, cutting short the complaints with a crisp, “That is a child out there, men. You have your duty.”
In fact, the entire rescue operation went without a hitch, in spite of what appeared to be their rescuee’s attempt to avoid being saved, and soon their only actual captured pirate lay gasping and, Norrington noted, bleeding on the deck. Something had mangled one of his legs. One of their shots, perhaps, or a shard of blasted wood. It was a nasty break through which bone protruded. Nevertheless, the boy utilized the ship’s rail to drag himself nearly to his feet where he stood on one leg, shaking and pale and glaring defiance at them.
“You!” he hissed vehemently, eyes blazing with brilliant blue fire, “You bloody whoreson Navy bastards!”
Norrington supposed the sentiment was understandable under the circumstances, but it became rapidly apparent that the boy’s own injuries were not what had their captive so incensed.
“You hurt my captain!” His young voice blistered with an inferno of hatred. “You are shooting at my ship!”
So Sparrow was wounded. That was an important piece of intelligence. The commodore wondered how severe the injury had been and how that would be affecting the tactical situation. For instance, would that put Sparrow’s second in command in charge? And just what manner of man was he? Perhaps they could get more information out of this child. In fact, they might acquire a great deal of hitherto unknown data concerning the operations of the Black Pearl. Norrington was rapidly becoming reconciled to the small delay the capture had necessitated.
Then the tactical situation on board the Dauntless took a nosedive. The little firebrand they’d fished from the ocean pulled a knife. The child’s face was bone-white with suffering. He looked nearly ready to drop with exhaustion from loss of blood and the fight with those massive waves. He was shivering with exposure and shock, clinging with one white-knuckled hand to the pitching rail. But no one had any doubt that at least one or more of the men who took that knife from him would be adding his blood to that deck.
Norrington really would have to speak to his men. Pirates grew their teeth young. In the future, he didn’t want them picking up so much as a suckling infant pirate without searching it for weapons.
Things went rapidly downhill from there. Norrington found himself and his men being informed specifically, crudely, and in great detail, just exactly which body parts the boy proposed to remove with his knife and what creative uses he planned to find for them once they were removed.
Navy tars were not known for the sweetness and light of their speech, but Norrington could not recall quite this level of foul language. If ever the cliché about making a sailor blush could come true, he did not doubt this was the boy who could do it. He was as eloquent as he was ingenious, and the commodore noted more than one man was looking queasily protective about the aforesaid parts. He did not like to imagine the kind of life such a child must have led.
Lieutenant Groves, the commodore noted with exasperated resignation, was looking amused and appreciative.
Some of his young crew, the cabin boys and a few of the midshipmen, had never actually seen a pirate in person. Even though this was a pint-sized specimen, apparently younger than any of them, it was living up to its reputation for depravity in fine style. They stared with wide eyes—the commodore could practically see their ears extend and pivot. He imagined the vocabulary amongst the middies was going to take a dramatic plummet for the worse with all due speed.
Enough was certainly enough. “Put the knife down, son,” he suggested gently. “That way no one will get hurt.” Or at least hurt any worse. Norrington was aware that he did not have the moral high ground in this argument. He and his ship were certainly responsible for the fact that this boy was going to bleed to death on the decks of the Dauntless, unless he received help soon.
“I will not!” the child refused adamantly. “You shall not take me prisoner, nor will I die like a dog on your wretched gallows.”
The commodore’s own temper flared at this. “Did Sparrow actually tell you we would hang a boy like you?” Of all the unprincipled lies . . .
“Captain. It’s Captain Sparrow,” the boy insisted.
Oh God. Not another one of them. Norrington resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
Then, surprisingly, the child lowered his head. “No, he didn’t. He said that some of us, the ones that didn’t have a record, would likely go free, if we surrendered. That you’d be looking for crew on your ships.” He bit his lip, and when he raised his head there were tears in his eyes. “But we wouldn’t surrender. We voted. All of us voted. We would die before we’d surrender. And I was going to, before you made me come here. I just . . . I just hadn’t been able to make myself let go yet.”
And the pirate child reversed the knife.
“Belay that, Mister!” Norrington snapped in the voice that brooked no disobedience, that moved the 600 souls aboard the Dauntless as though they were merely his extended limbs.
Instinctively, the boy froze.
A swift-thinking and even swifter-moving marine took the opportunity to disarm the bloodthirsty pirate. The boy made a small cry of betrayal and despair.
“Listen to me.” Norrington spoke sharply, regaining the boy’s attention. “You have not surrendered. You have been captured in honourable combat and are now my prisoner. Now, we will discuss the terms of your parole. What is your name, boy?”
The narrow chin jutted up spiritedly. “What’s yours?”
Norrington’s own men winced. Nobody spoke to the commodore like that.
Norrington reminded himself that small as it was, this was a pirate. One who had certainly never been brought up to practice any form of courtesy. What’s more, one who had been under the tutelage of that master of annoyance, Jack Sparrow. It wasn’t the child’s fault.
“My name,” he responded gravely, “is Commodore Norrington.”
“Oh.” The boy seemed to deflate. “Then this is the Dauntless.”
“It is.”
“All right then.” The child heaved a sigh. “I’ll give you my parole.”
Norrington raised an eyebrow. That had gone better than he had expected. “You’ve heard of me before, I take it.”
“Yes. Captain Sparrow says you are a good man. So that’s all right then.” The boy seemed resigned.
“A good man?” Norrington could not have been more astonished if he’d learnt that Sparrow thought he was the archangel Gabriel.
The miniature pirate placed one finger on his chin and glanced introspectively skyward in a perfect imitation of Sparrow himself and quoted, “No sense of humour, but a good man.”
“Very well.” Norrington ignored the backhanded compliment. He did too have a sense of humour. How like Sparrow to manage to get on his nerves without even being present. But the reply settled that this interrogation would be his task. He indicated to Gillette that everyone should return to his duties. They were almost upon the Black Pearl again, and the gun crews needed to be ready to resume their work. The lieutenant took over smoothly and the decks around the commodore and his captive cleared.
* * * * *
Anamaria did not hear the jangle of hanks as the fore top staysail ran up its lines, but she felt the stay sing taut as the wind caught canvas. She breathed a sigh of relief. The captain was doing as they had agreed. The sails were being trimmed and she could feel the surge of the Pearl underneath her. You could never tell about Jack Sparrow. He had an incongruous heroic streak in him that led him into the most impossible situations at times. She hadn’t been sure until this moment that he wouldn’t risk himself and the ship to save her. But even Jack must know that more lives than hers were at stake, and that if he did not rip the Black Pearl from the Navy grasp soon, all their lives were forfeit.
The ship, on the other hand, seemed reluctant. Anamaria frowned, concentrating on the feeling of wrongness in the Black Pearl’s motion, a hanging back and quarrelling with the wind that was not usual with this ship who had always seemed condensed from the wind itself. Although Anamaria often talked to the Pearl she almost never received the impression that the ship was listening, but this time the sense that the Pearl surrounded her, even out on that tenuous slender spar, was overwhelming. Anamaria wrapped her arms and legs around the bowsprit and laid her cheek against the cold wet wood, ignoring the stinging dash of spray against her body, holding her breath as the ship, now underway, ploughed her bow into the face of an oncoming wave.
“You have to do it, lady,” she whispered against that black timber, when the darkness cleared and she could breathe again. “Don’t mind me. Just save him and save yourself. You have to fly as fast as you can. Let the sea do its worst. Just get him away from here alive.”
Those were the right words. Like an arrow shot from a bow, the Black Pearl unleashed herself. As she leapt ahead into the storm-torn seas, the sheer power of her caught at Anamaria’s throat. That’s my beauty, she thought wistfully. Nothing can catch you when you put your heart into it.
But Jack’s dark lady would need the remainder of her headsails to win this race with death. Cautiously, Anamaria crept over the bowsprit cap and began to worm her way out onto the sea-wracked jib boom.
* * * * *
As the Dauntless drew up alongside the Black Pearl, the commodore resumed questioning his captive. “Since you have your captain’s approval of myself, will you tell me your name?”
“It’s Jip,” the little pirate said sullenly. The ship rocked with the concussion of her cannon and the boy jerked and winced in startlement. His face twisted minutely and his eyes flew away from the commodore, across the ship, and out to where the Black Pearl was once more under Navy guns.
“Is that all? Do you have a surname?” Norrington persisted.
The boy wrenched his eyes back to his inquisitor. “Just Jip.” He raised his head higher, scowling.
“Who is your family?” Norrington prodded. He needed to get a pattern of question and answer going, before he got to the questions to which he really needed answers. His prisoner still gripped the railing with both hands, growing fainter by the minute. The commodore resisted the sensation that he was interrogating the boy by torture, but his conscience was uneasy. Were these the actions of the “good man” in whom the boy seemed to put such faith?
“Don’t have one, ’cept for Captain Sparrow and the Black Pearl.” The boy gulped back what might have been a sob.
“Is he related to you?” That seemed impossible. Certainly a man of Sparrow’s complexion could never have a blue-eyed by-blow such as this boy.
“Course not! I don’t have any relations,” Jip scoffed.
From what kind of a past had this child come? How could he have no memory of a family? He certainly wasn’t the typical pirate whelp. Remarkably well-spoken in fact, in spite of a talent for the worst sort of gutter language. There was some mystery here.
“Where are you from?” Norrington asked, keeping his voice as gentle as possible.
“Brazil.”
That this fair child hailed from Portuguese-held Brazil seemed unlikely in the extreme. “Where in Brazil?”
“Paraiba.”
The name did not convey anything to the commodore. “Port town?” he asked.
“No.”
That was odd. What had Sparrow been doing inland in Brazil? “How did you come to be on the Black Pearl?”
“Captain Sparrow rescued me and let me stay.”
“Rescued you from what?”
The boy remained silent. He bit his lip as the guns gave voice again. Apparently the commodore wasn’t going to get that story.
Norrington waited a minute longer, but no answers were forthcoming. “How long have you been with the Black Pearl?” he asked finally.
“Don’t know. Not quite a year.” The boy wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His voice trembled a little.
“Who is first mate on your ship?”
Jip opened his mouth and then shut it again, his eyes going crafty behind the fog of pain. “That answer doesn’t belong to me,” he said stubbornly.
“How badly was your captain injured?”
Accusing silence met that question.
Damnation! This child was too bright by half. Norrington’s hopes of finding a fountain of information began to dry up. Besides, the boy looked about to collapse. His arms, holding him up, were trembling. The commodore could not in good conscience drive him any further. Why couldn’t he have captured some hard-bitten old buccaneer with a string of human teeth around his neck? Someone to whom he wouldn’t mind applying thumbscrews?
He hailed a passing sailor.
“Mr. Maddocks!
“Aye, sir?”
“Take our guest to the surgeon, Mr. Maddocks. That leg needs some attention.”
“Aye, sir.” The burly Welshman bent over and unceremoniously scooped up the boy.
Jip’s sudden, harsh intake of breath was the only sign he gave that the move was agonizing.
“And I’ll tell him he’s gettin’ too lazy this time out, so we’re bringin’ him some work from the enemy side,” the sailor chuckled.
“I’m sure we are all grateful this is a slow day for the good doctor,” Norrington said repressively.
“Aye, sir,” the man muttered.
Then Norrington caught sight of Jip’s pinched, miserable little face. Damn. He had to warn his men not to be so callous around that child. Pirate ships did not usually have surgeons, and the Black Pearl would be in desperate need of one at present.
As the boy hung limply in the arms of the sailor, his small voice tugged at the commodore.
“Please, sir? Could you stop shooting at my ship?”
Norrington had a vision of the storm waters running red from the Pearl’s washports. The Dauntless shook again as her battery of guns barked their destruction at the pirate vessel. Jip flinched as he had each time they had gone off. A knot twisted the commodore’s stomach as he imagined what that child had seen on those decks before he’d been shot off them. He wished he could pretend he hadn’t heard that request—the first polite thing the boy had said. He wished he could give a different answer.
Sadly he gazed at the pirate child whose only family he was doing his best to annihilate. “I’m sorry, Jip.” He shook his head fractionally. “I cannot.”
“Oh,” the small voice got even smaller, wobbling slightly.
The commodore’s nod indicated that the sailor should continue transporting his burden to the surgeon. The last thing Norrington saw of Jip was a pair of fear-blackened, wide eyes disappearing into the wardroom door. The commodore had never felt more like a murderer.
On his way aft, he paused by the marine whose quick thinking in disarming their captive had prevented a very ugly situation. The commodore owed this man.
“Good work,” he commended, nodding.
“Thankee, sir.” The marine touched his hat brim. “I got young uns of m’own, sir.”
Norrington smiled his gratitude and continued back to the quarterdeck. He still had a battle to direct. And one new piece of intelligence he’d gained had changed everything. Death before surrender. Dear God. Sparrow had finally gone completely mad. And it appeared to be contagious.
* * * * *
TBC
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 01:18 am (UTC)Yes, there's something about that final stand that satisfies me, too. That "heroes of Thermopylae" moment. That "over my dead body" sense of determination. Yes, Jip is still a character we can enjoy, but Norrington is not going to hand him back to pirates, that is true. It has always struck me as ironic that we know Jack would never do this to Norrington if he had a choice. Jack would not simply try to kill Norrington; he'd avoid him. If Jack rescued a Navy cabin boy, he would likely let the kid go if he wanted to go.
There's still a lot of tension in this chapter, but it's nowhere near the intense horror of the last one. Ana is getting her moment in the next chapters. I like showing her as very good at what she does, willing to risk everything for her ship and her crew. Jack may be the Pearl's captain, but Anamaria is her first mate. Everyone I know who sails tall ships seems in love with them, and I can't imagine Anamaria as any exception. And the mystical Pearl would return that love.
You know, you're one of the few people I know who talks about that dog crap! Ha! I remember that about Paris. But the two areas where I've spent the most time, Normandy and Provence, were so lovely. And since I believe the word "shady" and the word "politician" should be hyphenated in any country, I can't really blame yours for having them any more than mine. I've never been to Oxford, but it does sound beautiful and Basque Country sounds quite sublime. I'm afraid I know no more of Bordeaux than "wine" :D, which I don't drink. I live on the prairies of Western Canada, which has it's own kind of beauty and the most amazing sky.
Yes, Jack's madness and his courage and his goodness are contagious. I'm so glad you're caring for that crew. It's easy to care for Jack, but sometimes hard to relate to the other people on the ship. Thank you for your reviews and your encouragement.
Much love to you, too,
Honorat
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 01:14 pm (UTC)Western Canada... For me it speaks of beautiful, huge landscapes with colours we can only dream of in the city. I would *love* to go there and admire them, but it feels a bit daunting to me - I also like living in France because no matter where I go, there's this cosy, smallish feeling about the place that says it's home :)
Again, can't wait for the next part. I don't know where I'll be when I read it, but I know I'll enjoy it :]
Much of love,
Belphegor :o]
no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 02:33 am (UTC)I think that writing of Navy centered fictions like Master and Commander tends towards that very real separation of forecastle men and officers. Historically that collection of anonymous men before the mast received very little more attention than the cannons they served. I've read Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, which was one of the first accounts of the lives of those unsung seamen. Without them, no ship could have sailed, no battle won. But they were mistreated, despised, ignored, and used up without consideration by many shipmasters and captains. Dana captured, from an ever-so-slightly insider perspective, the grueling lives these men endured--and that was just on a merchant vessel. In battle, they were cannon fodder.
I think much of the ignoring of the crew has to do with people needing pre-developed characters to work with. I just happen to have developed a taste for designing original characters. Since fanfic exists because people love the original characters, that can be a bit of a risk, so it's a relief to know people enjoy them.
There are big cities in Western Canada, but they are pretty sprawling and recent--none of those gorgeous, history-dripping buildings of Europe. But the landscape is huge. You can drive for hours in it. I actually live too far from the mountains to see them. As for colours, unless you like earth tones, you might want to avoid February through April here, and possibly November and December. But the snow is beautiful, the frost even more so, and spring and summer are short but lovely.
The next part of this story is in the works, but it won't be quite as swiftly posted as this bit. Thank you for your interest.
Much love to you, too,
Honorat