Chapter V - Betcha Didn't See That One Coming
When dawn rose the next day on Port Royal, the crews
of the Revenge and the Black Pearl found orders being thrown
at them in very quick succession. Proclamations had to be given out to
the townsfolk considering hostages and the horrible things that would happen
to them if there was anything less than complete cooperation, supplies
had to be bought --the last word being one that both crew captains stressed
repeatedly, much to the puzzlement of their men--, the remains of the Revenge
and the Talon were gone over one last time for anything salvagable,
the few ships belonging to the royal navy were inspected and found unsuitable
for the long distance, so two were commandeered to take the excess crew
to New Providence instead. And that led to another thing: picking the crew
that would go. Sparrow and Roberts locked themselves in a spare room for
close to two hours, a time period that involved a great deal of indistinct
shouting and, by the sound of it, the tossing of furniture. But they eventually,
with a bit of reluctance and a lot of scornful glares at each other, emerged
with a list. Anamaria, Fezzik, Goethe and Stede all made the list. Will
Turner III did not.
"I want to come with you," he told Jack earnestly,
a statement which was only met with discomfort. Jack bit his lip and looked
upward, as if hoping for a bit of guidance. "Why not?" Will demanded.
"Look here, mate," Jack said bracingly, an expression
that took a bit of effort to maintain. He made sure to lock eyes with the
young man before going on to explain. "You got off on a miracle last time,
but I'm not looking to spend the rest of me days --which'll be very short
indeed, from the look of things-- minding children who don't know what
they're doin', savvy? This is real heavy business you oughtn't get yeself
involved in, young master."
"I can fight!" Will protested, showing him the sword.
Jack seemed about to contest this, but his attention
had been redirected. He took the sword from Will's grasp and examined it
with distaste, then shot an angry glance at Inigo.
"I thought I told you to get him a real sword,"
Jack said accusingly.
"It is a real sword," Inigo countered haughtily.
"A bloody fencing sword! Whole lot o' good that'll
do a man in these waters, wouldn't you say? Do us all a favor, Mister Roberts,
an' quit pretending you're still in Spain."
They were facing each other fully now, and their
voices were getting higher.
Inigo's eyes looked almost dangerous when he spoke.
"I am the only living swordfighting Wizard and you dare insult my
taste in weapons?"
"Oh, we're all very impressed by your credentials
here, mate," Jack shot back sarcastically. "But no real man in the
Caribbean carries around a damn fencing sword" he spat the words "unless
he 'as some kind of a death wish."
"Actually, I rather like the sword..." Will tried.
"Any man who comes to me mocking my weapon does
have a death wish," Inigo responded, vindicativeness edging his voice.
"And Will works with that sword splendidly, I might add." That was a lie.
A very obvious one. But the Spaniard persisted, "He is not possessing a
wealth of inborn talent like some people think is necessary in swordfighting,
but if he has me to teach, he will best you in combat in three months."
"If I taught him, he'd beat you in two!"
They were shouting now.
"Oh really! Well, if we sign him aboard,
he is under my charge and he will be training under me."
"I'm the captain and I'll bloody well take
on any bloody charge I want!"
"You can't pull rank on me!"
"Yes, I damn well can! You're just first
mate!"
"Hang your first mate! We agreed we'd be co-captains
until I got a new ship."
"Aye? Well, I've changed me mind!"
Onlookers, Will in particular, were beginning to
think leaving the room might be the best course of action. Some people
near the back commenced a quiet, if terrified, exit.
"You can't just waffle out of things as it suits
you, you hijo de puta--"
"Póg mo thóin, you fucking
self-righteous bastard--"
"You'd like that, wouldn't you, you disgusting maricon
de playa--"
"Oh-ho, you're really going to regret that
one..."
And then, silence.
Silence so loud that for a moment Will thought the
men were still yelling. He glanced from face to frozen face, that stared
at one another as if just as startled by their short stop as everyone else
in the room.
Jack glanced at his shoulder. Something dark and
wet seemed to have spattered onto it. He released one hand from Will's
rapier and touched it experimentally with two fingers. They came away bright
red.
Jack and Inigo looked up. So did the rest of the
room's occupants.
Holding herself between the rafters, long black
hair obscuring her startlingly pale face, with a poorly dressed wound on
one upper arm and enough daggers stuffed into her belt to satisfy even
the most weapons-happy barmaid in the world, Delphine looked down at Jack
with something approaching abject terror in her eyes.
Fifty swords and pistols were drawn, including Inigo's.
Jack, however, shook his head pleasantly, patting Inigo on the shoulder.
They kept watching. Delphine's eyes, which were
growing more frantic with each second, never left that of Jack Sparrow.
Every man and woman in the room waited, unbreathing, unblinking, until
they heard the small creak and the even smaller whimper from the girl above
them as her arms and legs began to lose their hold.
Jack and Inigo stepped two feet to the left, in
time for Delphine to pitfall to the ground where they had previously stood.
"Having fun?" Jack asked the heap lying on the floor.
The heap sprang to life with a dagger in its hand
in the space of a blink. She held it threateningly toward Jack's throat.
"Release the Turner family," she said hoarsely.
The smile on Jack's face froze. "I beg your pardon?"
he asked in disbelief.
"The Turner family. Let them go, all of them. I'll
kill you if you don't."
"You're not here to rescue the governor or any other
Port Royan dignitaries we have held hostage in this house?"
The young woman looked genuinely perplexed. "Why
should I care about them?"
Jack shrugged at this. "Fair enough. You've got
your priorities down set, I'll give you that. But why should I be so inclined
to give in to your demands, miss?"
"I'll kill you if you don't."
"Ah." He beamed at her. "So you've said. But therein
lies a bit of a problem, lass... Y'see, you've got only those little knives..."
He drew Will's rapier from its sheath, deliberately running it across the
edge to enhance the sound. "And I've got this."
"Aha!" they heard Inigo exclaim from somewhere behind
Jack. "You see which sword you go to when you're given the choice? You
see?"
Jack glanced at him in vexation and then turned
back to the matter at hand. He gave Delphine another gold-toothed smile.
"I will not ask again," the black-haired girl warned.
"Release the Turners or suffer death."
"You're confident."
"I have reason to be."
"Can't say I don't like that in a lady. The problem
is, miss, I've seen you fight. I know you have a spot of talent, but I
have a lot more under my belt than a lot of spare kitchen knives."
He swung. Before he got an inch, Delphine brought
up another dagger, and the two blocked the rapier's blade.
"I've trained."
"Is that so."
They broke apart, and Delphine ducked into a low
run. She failed to dodge the swing of Jack's sword so blocked it with the
daggers again, mere inches from her neck.
"My father used to teach me," she told him.
Jack was distracted by something else. "I've never
known a bird in all the Caribbean to have skin as bright as yours..." he
trailed off, voice somewhere between affectionate and suspicious. He reached
out with a hand to stroke her pale cheek.
She caught it and pushed it away, going on with
her explanation. "My father was the best swordsman in Port Royal before
he went soft."
"Yeah? Woss your name, love?"
Their blades clashed again, although this time it
was an inch from Jack's neck that they halted. Jack stared at the daggers'
edges as much as he could without actually moving his head. He arched his
eyebrows, and glanced up at his opponent.
The girl smiled wickedly. "Delphine Turner."
Will's voice rang up through the crowd as he dashed
forward. "No, no, no, no, no," he said quickly, rushing to Delphine's side.
"Her name's Delphine Kinsman," he told Jack Sparrow steadily as the two
fighters broke apart. "Her husband is--"
"My husband's dead, Will," she snapped at
the boy, pushing him away from her side. "He died last morning." When she
caught Jack's expression, she added, "He thought it'd be a swell idea to
take the clothes off one of the pirates he found dead and infiltrate the
attacking ship, as a way of helping out. One of your men took him to be
the enemy and killed him."
"My apologies."
"Oh, I don't blame you," she said quickly. "I rather
hated him really, so it's all right."
"Del!" Will cried.
"Stay out of this, Will!" she growled. "I'm
doing this for your sake."
"It's not like that, though--"
"He's right," Jack said, almost apologetically.
"Your family came here of their own volition. Your father's idea from the
start, in fact."
Delphine looked to her younger brother for confirmation.
He nodded. She dropped her hands to her sides, apparently struggling with
the restructuring of her internal thought processes that had previously
been composed of how many things she could kill and how quickly (this is,
in fact, the usual mindset for overworked barmaids everywhere). "They're
free once your work in this town is done?" she asked the pirate captain.
"Aye, love. Except for young Will here; he's to
be my valet."
"He's mine, Sparrow!"
"Some other time, Roberts," Jack shouted back at
Inigo.
"Will isn't old enough for something like that,"
said Delphine firmly.
"Don't see why not. He's eighteen..."
Delphine Turner smirked horribly. "He told you...
he was eighteen?" She glanced toward her brother and smacked him lightly
on the back of the head. "Fifteen," she informed Jack, still with a sardonic
grin.
Both pirate captains gaped. Jack all but dropped
his sword.
"Fifteen eez a long way from eighteen!" Fezzik said
from somewhere in the crowd. He sounded betrayed.
"I thought he looked a bit small of his age..."
Jack said slowly.
At that moment, while Delphine seemed to be relishing
the men's reactions to this new piece of information, a glass window pane
shattered down the hall. Fifty-some heads turned toward the sound, gripping
their weapons tighter. Inigo Montoya only sighed.
"More heroic townsfolk," he said, as if complaining
about pestersome insects or a particularly annoying neighbor always coming
over for a cup of sugar. "Someone go see to it, please?"
They ended up drawing straws.
The townsfolk of Port Royal liked to think of themselves
as very resourceful or, failing that, very resilient people. They'd had
their share of pirates and felt, not entirely unreasonably, that they knew
how they acted. The majority of pirates were disorganized, greedy, and
short-tempered. Bother a pirate enough and it was bound to bother you right
back.
They knew that most pirates were young, hot-headed
men with poor social skills. Most of their swords were just for show, and
who could keep gunpowder dry enough on a ship, anyway? Like even half of
them knew how to use pistols, was the collective thought of Port
Royans, followed by a collective smirk. Once you agitated a pirate enough,
and he had to resort to the sword he couldn't swing and his pistol he couldn't
shoot, and then the townspeople would have him. Overcome the weak, small
boy, break past his façade of competency, and the battle was yours.
Except most pirates didn't employ a giant.
But, as previously stated, Port Royans were resilient.
After the advance forces had been taken up by their shirts and hurled all
the way across the front courtyard, they had simply reformed the committee
and set about making a few changes to their plan of assault. They even
refused to believe the tide had turned against them when Fezzik, mostly
out of boredom, took to throwing pebbles at them. Five people were knocked
out and two had to be taken to the doctor for head trauma.
Still, they were determined. They had even begun
rallying hopes and were about to lay new seige to the governor's mansion
while Fezzik was preoccupied in the shed, even going so far as beginning
their advance, when the giant reappeared tugging along a siege crossbow
like a boy merrily tugging along a little red cart.
The siege crossbow was a relic of ancient warfare
that a previous governor had taken with him to the island from England.
It was intended for storming enemy castles, something it was probably very
good at, being the size of several men and so heavy that it was mounted
on a cart that took a whole team of soldiers to move.
It got even worse when the giant tore the crossbow
from its supports and started loading its fence post-sized bolts in by
hand.
And, the Port Royans would later say to their grandkids
on holidays, it was only by some miracle of God that they managed to run
in time after he accidentally fired it.
"Hey Captain Robertz!" Fezzik yelled up to the second-floor
windows. Inigo's head popped out a second later. "This ting's pretty handy.
Can I keep eet?"
Jack Sparrow appeared beside the dread pirate a
moment later. "No," he said. "It'd be too heavy for the ship."
"Aw..."
Plans started to come together that late afternoon,
so the Black Pearl's departure was bumped up to that same night.
Someone constructed various diversionary tactics for the surplus crew to
try on the townsfolk to keep them preoccupied, others drafted escape routes,
auxillery escape routes if those happened to fail, and last-ditch efforts
in case everything fell apart. Swords were sharpened, pistols were cleaned
and loaded, and some pirates even took advantage of the commodities of
an upper-class home and took a bath. Not many, though.
Dinner was not rowdy. Well, the one for the majority
of the crew was, taking place in the large ballroom downstairs, but Jack,
Inigo and a select few others excused themselves to the kitchen for their
own meal, which was solemn and only secondary to the strategy meeting taking
place at the same time. Most of the small table was taken up by a variety
of maps, the largest of which being a large, crackling, yellow one taken
from Governor Norrington's office. As they were loathe to actually draw
out their course on it, they took to other means to plot out the map.
"So what we're gonna do, after kickin' off from
Fortaleza," said Jack, with a mouthful of biscuit, "we make a short stop
down 'ere at Salvador --move the salt over a little, Ana-- and then, God
willing, we take a straight path over here to Sierra Leone" he swallowed
"--that's the kidney bean, see?-- an' from there on over to Pointe-Noire
--that'd be the lettuce--"
"Can your ship really make it all the way across
the Atlantic?" Mr. Turner asked, who was not half as much paying attention
to what Jack was saying so much as Jack himself.
"Can't see why not. We've done it before." Jack
bit into his biscuit again, but held it there in his mouth to free his
hands, as someone had just given him a bundle of papers. He flipped through
them and nearly spat out his biscuit. "No, no, this is no good," he told
the person who had handed him the papers. "It's too much weight; we'll
lose speed. Cut down on provisions by another fifteen percent."
Inigo Montoya seemed taken aback at overhearing
this, pausing in the act of writing on a small slip of paper held in his
lap. "If we take away any more from provisions, we'll be a step away from
starvation," he said, slowly, as if to make sure the words penetrated Jack's
skull.
"We'll pick up more along the way."
"We can't simply waltz into any port we so
choose and buy our provisions, Jack," Inigo said, very much tried for patience.
"Naturally. Wasn't about to suggest it."
"I'm sorry," Mr. Turner said, "do you mean to say
you'll just steal your food? From other ships?"
The combined stares of Inigo Montoya and Jack Sparrow,
which were akin to the sort of look you'd get challenging someone's motivation
for breathing, were enough for him to retract himself.
"Mister Turner," Jack said eventually, after shoving
the papers back upon their originator. "There is one additional matter
that I meant to bring up with you, in regards to the make-up of the crew."
"Will spoke to me about it," said the older man,
with a bit of resignation. "I can't say I'm not worried about him, but
then, if we can trust him in London, a pirate ship should hold no terror."
"It's good to have the consent of a concerned parent,"
Jack said cordially, "but your boy Will wasn't really the one I
was meaning to bring up with you. That daughter of yours--"
"Ginny? But she's only--"
"Your other one, the older 'un."
To Jack's amazement, Mr. Turner actually had to
pause a moment in thought. "Delphine? Oh, no. No, absolutely not. She has
a job, she's leading a good life, she's still mourning her husband--"
Jack cut him off quickly. "While I have no doubt
that the loss of Mister Kinsman is still a sharp dagger, as it were, in
her lovely little heart, and that waiting on slobbering drunks in a pub
is indeed a reputable lifestyle, I must impress upon you, Will, that true
talent is a rare commodity in this world, and it's a great shame to see
it wasted." He took a much-needed breath. "You gave up on her. Let me train
her instead."
"No," Turner said automatically.
The pirate's face twitched as if he'd been slapped.
"And may I ask why not?"
"I told you why not." When this didn't seem to have
the desired effect, Mr. Turner leaned closer and said, "Listen, Jack: I
know you think what you're asking is reasonable, but you have no concept
of everything Elizabeth and I went through with Delphine. She has had a
difficult enough time in life as it is without adding piracy to her name."
"And what of your boy? You let him go off to tarnish
his reputation without a thought. Seems a little, what you call, hypocritical
if you're asking me."
"There's no helping Will. He's like his mother,"
he sighed. "Besides, if questioned about it, we could always say you forced
him into it." Turner shrugged.
"And not Delphine?"
"Between you and me, Jack? No one can force Delphine
into anything."
"Oh," said Jack. He grinned suddenly. "Good!"
"Sorry?"
"Then I guess that means you can't force her to
stay. Seeing as she'd planned to come anyway--"
"What?"
They argued for a few more minutes, Inigo noting
--as he balled the small piece of paper into as small a form as he could--
that Mr. Turner had a way of nearly bullying Jack when he was so inclined.
Anamaria would later remark that she had known few people that could make
Jack cave in the way William Turner, Jr. could. It was a pity this was
one time when there was nothing Jack could really do about it.
It was nearly a relief when the committee started
hearing shouts outside. Inigo was the first to hear it, standing up from
his chair suddenly, and causing the others around them to stop in their
discussion (or mastication, or heated, pointless argument) enough to pause
and listen to the growing commotion.
"Heroes again?" Anamaria asked.
"Oh dear," said Mr. Turner, after listening to one
of the voices rising above the rest. "That's Norrington."
Jack shot a quick glance to Inigo, who nodded. Most
of the other pirates got up from their seats and made their way out the
door into the hall. Inigo Montoya was delayed for a moment, and had to
squeeze past the others to catch up with Jack and Turner in the crowd outside.
Before them was the governor of Port Royal, a retired
naval officer and someone who, in a more liberal time period, might've
been branded guilty of anti-piratism or some such crime. Norrington was
the thorn in a lot of pirates' sides, those who would much have preferred
Port Royal's location over Tortuga for a favorite haunt, and his menace
had only increased after he'd been granted control over the colony. He
looked about the same as Jack Sparrow remembered him, eagle-nosed and beady-eyed,
although now the effect was enhanced by the new lines engraved in his flesh.
He was presently wigless, still in his bedclothes and the remnants of the
ropes used to restrain him, struggling against the four or five pirates,
as well as Mrs. Turner, pinning him to the floor.
Jack turned his head almost imperceptively and murmured
to Inigo, "Is it ready?"
"Yes."
"Stuff it in the back. Discreet-like, savvy?"
"I knew it," Norrington was raving. "I knew it was
you, Sparrow! You're some kind of demon, aren't you? Some sort of undead
monster from the dark abyss of Hell, come to--"
"Haunt you?" Jack suggested.
"Why won't you just die?!"
"Well," Captain Sparrow said, breaking away from
his cluster of committee members and swaggering toward the governor while
the latter's restrainers scattered toward the walls ("s'all right, lads
--an' madam-- just let 'im go"), both hands deliberately visible, "it's
like y'said, mate. It's sort of a difficulty for me. S'not like I haven't
been trying."
"You--" Norrington stammered, climbing to his feet.
"I mean, seems to me," Jack went on, in a friendly,
conversational tone, "that a man such as yourself, so very dedicated to
your work, would've succeeded by now if it were at all possible for him
to do so. I really 'ppreciate the efforts to do me in, I do," he said meaningfully,
placing a hand over his heart, "which is why s'such a pity seeing all your
work's been for nothin'."
"You really are... a ghost?" the governor whispered
fearfully.
"Ooga-booga," the pirate answered, by way of confirmation.
They locked eyes.
"I don't believe you," said Norrington, the terror
ebbing away from his voice now.
Jack snapped his fingers theatrically, half-turning
away. "And to think I nearly thought I had you that time, Norrington. It's
difficult to put one past you, ain't it?"
"You're not Jack Sparrow," the governor said coolly,
"you're just some sort of imposter carrying his name."
"Got me in one. Very impressive, guv'na.
My hat is off to you," he added, doing just that, including a long bow.
Standing up, he began to walk away, shrugging. "It seems I'm no match for
your cunning after all, sir. I suppose I'll just have to go think up something
new."
"And now that you've seen you're no match for me,"
Norrington said, growing bold now, "I demand you take your men and leave
at once."
Still turned away toward the crowd containing Inigo
and Mr. Turner, Jack said, "Oh, of course, guv'na, first thing, but before
I do that..."
Three things happened in quick succession:
1) Jack Sparrow spun around, pulled the pistol from
the back of his belt, and fired.
2) Norrington jerked back and fell to the floor.
3) Elizabeth Turner screamed.
End Chapter V