Jack Sparrow is dead, by the hangman's rope. Elizabeth has to marry her Commodore. And Will Turner's life tastes of ashes. All that remains is a dull hatred for Norrington -- and the aching question of Jack's last, cryptic advice...
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'At rest', they called it; 'eternal sleep'. If those complacent matrons had looked down on Jack Sparrow's contorted features as he was doing, Will thought savagely, they might be less inclined to espouse that comfortable lie.
Even in snatched moments of slumber, on that short-handed voyage to Tortuga, Jack had never lain so slack and shrunken. Maddeningly, he'd never lain still at all, twitching and murmuring under his breath, with changes of vivid expression flashing across the mobile face like the sleeping whimpers of a hound dream-hunting beside the fire. Will could cheerfully have choked him for it, at the time. Now... now, staring down at the body on the makeshift plank, he'd have given anything to wipe those marks of strangulation away.
They said the dead looked surprised. That, too, was false. There was no surprise on that congested face; only the snarl of a snared creature at bay, flinging its last defiance against the unheeding constriction of the noose. He'd known what was coming. Gone down like all the rest with teeth bared in that last, useless struggle, for all his resolve.
Much good the elaborate apparatus of death had done for him. They might as well have swung him off the ladder in the old style, Will told himself bitterly now, his own throat thickening at the sight of the evidence before him. Jack Sparrow hadn't died easily, and he hadn't died quickly. It was a good thing —a very good thing— that Elizabeth was not here.
Not that they'd have let her in, anyway. Will glanced around the bare little guardroom with its pair of sentries —one, by the door, who'd admitted him at the sight of the Governor's written order, and the other standing stolidly at the foot of the body like some blank-faced mourner, eyes trained with regulation rigidity somewhere west of Will's right ear— and felt a laugh struggling to escape. As if they thought... as if they really thought that even now, the notorious Captain Jack Sparrow was going to give them the slip, was going to take up his plank and walk, in his last and greatest feat of legerdemain, to thumb his nose at them from the freedom of the wind outside.
For a moment the image was so vivid that Will was almost surprised to see the body still there. Still lifeless, drained of all its wicked merriment. If it could have been done, Jack would have done it. Danced on thin air and made fools of them all.
Will's eyes had unaccountably blurred. He lifted his head, his stare blind and fixed as that of the redcoat a few feet away, and schooled himself to think of something else. Of Elizabeth instead.
He hadn't seen her —to speak to— since that night on Isla de Muerta, though he could guess well enough to whom he surely owed the special pleading that had set him free on arrival in Port Royal. She was keeping her word to Norrington, no doubt. Norrington — who'd done... this.
Will felt the first hot drops fall; ignored them. He had nothing to be ashamed of. He had nothing to be ashamed of... if it hadn't been for him, Will Turner, the pirate would have been swinging by the neck long before this. Every day of life Jack had enjoyed —despite the tears, he couldn't help smiling at the thought; enjoyed had certainly been the word— every day of life, since the morning they'd struck their bargain, had been his, Will Turner's, gift. And if that brute Barbossa had offered to return Elizabeth Swann unharmed in exchange for the life of an old enemy and condemned felon, Will knew well enough that back then he himself would have thought it a trade cheaply won.
Only... in the course of those days lived with such zest, Jack had become more than just an incongruous face. More than the one man who happened to hold the only hope of tracking down those other pirates. More than the captain who'd been his —pirate; Will faced that truth now without a flicker— father's friend.
He'd become a living, aggravating, amusing, unpredictable individual in his own right, to Will and Elizabeth both. Annoying, yes. Unreliable, yes. A drunken, rascally, utterly charming reprobate — but not just a name, a face, a list of crimes. A man. Despite everything, a good man. A friend... Will bit his lip, feeling the coolness of salt drying on his cheeks as the lantern overhead swung in the draught... a friend worthy of weeping for.
He found himself thinking, again, of Elizabeth, who hadn't come. Would never have been permitted to come, for all that it seemed her father had thought it proper to submit her to the spectacle of the hanging itself. The talk of the town was that she had fainted; been carried off in her fiancé's strong arms. The old biddies in the marketplace had oohed and ahhed over the romance of it all, conflating Jack with Barbossa as her kidnapper and laying stress on the way she had melted into Norrington's grasp.
The memory of the gossip brought Will's teeth grinding together again as it had when he had first heard it. Taken to her bed at the memory of her ordeal — oh, really? More likely by far, he told himself brutally, to have taken to her room as a refuge from her coming marriage to the man who'd orchestrated the whole unnecessary scene. Shut herself away from the knowledge that she'd pledged to marry Norrington.
Norrington, who'd known the truth about Jack, who'd have been utterly helpless at the mercy of the cursed pirates without Jack... and had cold-bloodedly set out to hang him just like the rest of them. Had repaid Will's life, Elizabeth's life, the lives of every man Jack's action had saved, with —Will looked down again, at the distorted, discoloured face, at the livid marks on the neck some kindly hand had half-knotted a scarf to hide— with the ugliest death in his power to give.
Memory showed him an apple, floating quietly in the water. A coarse, clever face seamed with violence, smoothing to strangely innocent surprise. Barbossa, lying in state among the tumbled treasures of his trade in the darkness of the isle that had seen his greatest triumph and his fall, with the merciful mark of his old enemy's single shot blackened at his breast.
Barbossa had been the lucky one, Will thought now, the sudden understanding of it threatening to choke him. Barbossa, who'd meant nothing but evil by them all, had taken the death cheated by Captain Jack Sparrow; but Jack had been abandoned to take his foe's place in leading the hemp fandango, at the head of his faithless men.
Better the blade or the bullet than the rope. And Norrington —if he'd been a little less hide-bound, a little more humanly decent— could have arranged for that, at least.
Instead, they'd gone through the whole farrago of trial, condemnation, execution, so that the wheels of blind Justice could be seen to be grinding on without fear or favour. Jack had shrugged the sentence off, across the courtroom, with a quizzical look and a glint of gold from a sidelong grin: no more than we expected, eh Will mate? It had been the last time their eyes had met.
Will hadn't gone to the hanging. Kept telling himself there was nothing he could have done, that Jack would not have wanted him there to witness the long jerking struggle, humiliation before the eager crowd, the last useless fight —hands tied— against the tightening hold of the rope. Jack had said as much, the last time they'd spoken. Practically told him —though not in as many words— not to come.
Of course, that had been just after Will had hit him, blindly and less than scientifically, for what he'd said about Will's prospects on Elizabeth's forthcoming wedding night. To Norrington. Will's hand went up instinctively and ruefully to the half-healed cut below his lip.
There hadn't been much to do, locked up together in the dimness below-decks on the 'Dauntless', but talk. For a man facing almost certain death who had, correctly, predicted that his companion was unlikely to share his fate on arrival, Jack could be surprisingly sympathetic. He could also be quite spectacularly (and —Will suspected with the clarity of hindsight— deliberately) infuriating.
Goaded beyond endurance, Will had unleashed a wild punch in Jack's general direction. It had barely connected, as Jack swayed with the blow; then, after a momentary pause, as if weighing up his target in the gloom, landed an efficient and flooring blow to Will's jaw with a fistful of rings that bore all the weight of a knuckleduster. Even at that moment, he remembered, Will had been amazed, as ever, by the complete lack of malice with which Jack always seemed to hit people, with that odd, almost apologetic grace of his.
Only Will had fallen backwards over the stool and gone down harder —and certainly more noisily— than he thought Jack had intended. The next moment there had been the clumping of boots, and lantern-light in his fuddled eyes as he'd lain blinking upward, and angry voices dragging them apart.
Jack had shrugged and let them take him as Will tried to regain his senses enough to protest, his darkened eyes catching and holding the younger man's clouded hazel. "See, there's some fights a man can win, and some he's bound to lose — savvy?"
Will had struggled up on one elbow, dabbing at the trickle of blood where a signet had caught his chin. "Jack, I—"
Bars clanged between them.
"Now, a losing fight's no pleasure to watch, nor to be seen watching." Jack had pitched his voice a little higher to carry as the footsteps receded, but it held the same maddening reasonable lilt as ever. If there had been strain in it, Will hadn't heard — then.
"So when it comes, young Will, you remember the art of telling one from t'other and stay where you're welcome and warm." A flash of gold teeth over his shoulder in the dark. "Oh, and pass on that kiss to Big Peg like I said — you hear?"
His head still full of Elizabeth, he'd taken it for granted with a wince as further —unsolicited— all-too-practical advice.
But as it turned out (as Jack, he thought, had known), that had been barely a day before Port Royal... and unexpected freedom for Will. Freedom to go back to the cold ashes of his life at the smithy. To witness the bustle of preparation for Norrington's —for Elizabeth's— wedding. To watch Captain Jack Sparrow hang.
For the time had come indeed, but not for Will; for Jack. There would be a cold bed, and a parting — not from love, but from life itself. And —remembering everything Jack had said, of his own future, of Will's, of the gallows and the end, half-serious or mocking entirely— Will had thought he'd understood at last, with a sudden icy certainty, what that final exchange had been meant to convey.
He'd been so, so sure. Already half-sickened by the eager anticipation of the crowd, had convinced himself Jack wouldn't have wanted his presence. Now, when it was too late to make the choice, he'd never know. If, somehow, he'd been wrong. If he could have made a difference, glimpsed some banner of hope to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat... or merely been there, at the last. For whatever comfort that could give.
Outside a door slammed, somewhere across the courtyard, and another cold gust of wind slid around his feet. There had been clouds on the horizon at the hour of Jack's dying. There would be a storm tonight.
The light dipped and swayed as the lantern creaked above him, and caught the flat glitter of the dead man's half-closed eyes. The image conjured up was of the sunken stare of fish-heads on a slab, flies buzzing. Will bit his lip and reached out with a strange reluctance to press the eyelids closed, as should have been done long since.
They would not stay shut. He tried again, steadying his shrinking hand on Jack's cold brow. The black stare mocked him, intransigent in death as in life.
A hesitantly-cleared throat. "T'ain't no manner of use, sir."
The sentry at the foot of the plank, prodded into acknowledgment of merely human discomfort, shuffled as Will looked up sharply and caught his gaze. "Sometimes... the dead 'uns — it takes 'em that way, see? The Commodore, he tried same as you—"
"He was here?" Will, springing back, fought to keep his lips from drawing up into a bared snarl. So Norrington had come to sneer at Jack Sparrow silenced at last, had he? "And just when has the disposal of a common felon's corpse been of interest to any but his friends — and the executioner?"
They'd left Jack his boots, he noticed on that thought. And... wait, that was odd...
"Matter of the prisoner's effects, sir." The sentry's voice chimed in right on cue. "Seems he'd given his personal word to let him have 'em back as soon as— well, as soon as could be managed, see? Once— that is—"
But Will was no longer listening to the stumbling circumlocutions. He'd reached out to fold Jack's clenched hand around the curved shape of the long pistol at his side; to settle the blade more neatly at the other. The belt had been laid loosely at his waist. Will steeled himself to ease Jack's cold weight free of the plank, wincing at the resistance of once-supple limbs, and worked the buckle round into place.
The scarf around Jack's throat had slipped a little. Will moved automatically to gentle it back across the tell-tale scars of the rope, half-noting the monogram revealed as he did so. The letters were intertwined, worked with surprising grace: "J.N."
For a moment, Will's fingers halted in their task; then, moving deliberately as if in a daze, settled the silken ends neatly across Jack's breast.
So, Norrington had given his personal word; given more than that, it seemed. Given Captain Jack Sparrow back the honour of a defeated enemy, rather than of a common criminal. Given him all he honourably could. Will's mouth twisted. He'd spent the last few days blaming Norrington for everything. It hurt to let a little of that hatred slip.
Somewhere in the distance below, bells tanged sharply for the changing of the watch.
"It must be nearly time." Will's voice sounded strange to his own ears. "What will you do with him — bury him in quicklime?"
A felon's grave behind the fort. Quicklime left no traces; not even the bones.
"Er— no, sir. Not this time. Special circumstances. We're taking him up onto the cliff. Yonder—" at Will's look of bemusement — "beyond on Lookout Point, where the three rocks stand."
Will could feel a frown gathering between his own brows. "What, all round the harbour? That's a pretty mile or three if it's a yard!"
"Two an' a half, sir." A stolid look in reply; the acceptance of the man under orders, in whom thinking is neither required nor desirable. The sound of unshod hoofs and wheels on the stone outside brought a brief flash of relief. "An' here comes the cart."
Will swallowed and glanced outside, hearing the creaking of harness as the mule-cart was backed to the door. Lanterns were lifted up and hooked on, showing the grim litter of sexton's tools in the cart-bed; and emptiness besides.
For a moment, he didn't understand. Then it came home.
"No coffin? Not even a few shabby planks hammered together? Or do you plan to tar him and leave him up there to swing?" His reluctant rebirth of regard for Norrington abruptly returned to rock bottom. If that were the meaning of all this show—
But men were coming in now, pushing past him to sway up Jack's body with barely a by-your-leave, and he had to bite down the scalding words that threatened to choke him, conscious of the listening ears. The Governor's pass had given him written permission to stand here in the place of next-of-kin, that was all. It would not be enough to cover him for public vituperation of the most senior officer on the station; the Governor's own prospective son-in-law and right-hand man. He followed the rough plank and its burden on the journey to the door, teeth set in silence.
Someone plucked at his sleeve. The bovine sentry, no doubt. Will turned sharply on the man, half-snarling. "Yes?"
Accustomed to parade-ground barks, the redcoat held his ground without a blink. "Begging your pardon, sir, but we're to lay the prisoner in the ground as is. No box. The Commodore's orders."
Then he was to be decently buried, at least. The relief of that, for the moment, was enough to outweigh the indignity of the other. And, it occurred to Will presently, following across the courtyard in the wake of the patient mule with the first fine spatters of rain beginning to whip stray ends of hair about his face, perhaps Norrington's order had been the right one after all. Perhaps Jack would not have wanted to be shut up in a cheap deal box, let alone a heavy casket of brass and polished wood.
Will remembered the warm, sandy ground of Lookout Point, where the birds soared and the ocean stretched out of sight, with the harbour cradled below like a dark jewel. He thought Jack would have wanted the sea. But if he could not slip quietly down to rest beneath the constant waves — then perhaps he would have chosen to lie free in the soil on the high cliff, with wings above and white sails below, keeping watch out over the deceptive blue waters that had been his home.
Maybe, he found himself admitting reluctantly, Norrington had understood his counterpart better in some ways than Will Turner had ever thought to give him credit.
Jack's possessions made a soft clink every time the cart jolted across the stones, like the tolling of a muffled bell. Will fell into unthinking step, following the other men who had gathered their tools at the cart's tail as one more huddled shape in his cloak. He was barely conscious of the approaching gate in the gloom ahead. When the tall dapple-grey mare moved out from beneath the shadows of the arch, her rider had to lean down and touch him on the shoulder before Will became suddenly aware of his presence.
"N—" He caught himself just in time. "Commodore!"
Belatedly, "Sir."
For some reason, that brought a twitch of amusement to Norrington's set mouth. The mare side-stepped. He caught her, neatly, and pressed her back.
"Mr Turner. I was told I should find you here." A gesture indicated the shrouded cart.
"I didn't expect to find you here," Will said levelly, following his gaze.
Norrington sighed, his tone unexpectedly sharp. "Mr Turner, kindly do not delude yourself that this"—he nodded in the direction of the slowly-progressing funeral—"is any personal responsibility of mine. Or of yours. It may have escaped your notice that neither you nor Mr Sparrow were prosecuted for any of the intemperate offences committed during your hasty attempt to proceed to the aid of Miss Swann. These include the acquisition and subsequent loss of one of His Majesty's ships —for which I shall presently be called by my superiors to render account— the endangerment of your own and Elizabeth's lives in the name of Mr Sparrow's personal vendetta, and the deaths and mutilation of a considerable number of men under my command when expected —again, by Mr Sparrow— to defend themselves under impossible circumstances." He frowned. "The Governor is not an ungrateful man. No charges were ultimately brought against either of you."
"But—" It burst out of Will before he could help it, and Norrington's voice crashed over his, overriding it.
"But, Mr Turner, in your over-eager acquaintance with the engaging Mr Sparrow, you chose to overlook his past record. The which, I may say, proved on investigation to be every bit as black as it was painted. Your friend is by profession a self-proclaimed pirate; a notorious rogue. His trade is theft by violence, and profit on the fruits of other men's labour — with no thought, I make no doubt, for those who are brought to ruin and those who lose their lives in defence of what little they have!"
He controlled his tone with an apparent effort. "The charges that condemned Jack Sparrow were those that stood against him on the morning of his first apprehension here in Port Royal: nothing more, nothing less. Some ten or twelve of them carry the maximum penalty. Any one of those would have sufficed to hang him, Mr Turner — and all were proven beyond a doubt. Nor was there any prospect in future of his reform. What in the name of the law would you have had me do?"
"He was a good man," Will said stubbornly into the silence that followed, and to his surprise saw Norrington bow his head.
"Yes," the other man said softly, "I believe he was. That is why I gave him my word to do what I could — and to find you."
"Me?" Will echoed, sounding almost as bemused as he felt, and got a wintry smile in response.
"I was charged with a specific message to you upon this occasion. Mr Sparrow gave me to understand that you would almost undoubtedly attempt to follow, and were to be discouraged. He charged me to remind you"—the fastidious lips twitched—"of the establishment of an individual known as Big Peg, and the... proposal that you made."
"But then—"
No, Will told himself, sweating at the very thought, despite the ice of the half-voiced memory. No, one did not invoke in that context, if wise, the name of Norrington's own bride.
"I believe the term used was 'warm and welcome'," Norrington said drily when Will remained silent. "I cannot, obviously, answer for the welcome; but I can assure you that the road we take will be exceedingly cold and unpleasant to pass on foot tonight. I believe you would do better to follow your friend's wishes and celebrate his memory in whatever form of excess he himself would have chosen."
The lights of the mule-cart had receded some way up the track beyond. Norrington wheeled the dapple-grey round to peer after it, cursed softly under his breath, and pulled his own riding-cloak more closely about him, setting his hat aside under its cover. Then, with a sharp word to the mare, he set her to a swift trot and vanished in the wake of the little procession, out into the gathering rain. He did not even glance back in Will's direction.
The crude sign along the wall —for those with the letters to read it— read ANY PORT IN A STORM. But "Big Peg's" was the name by which Will had found the place, stumbling heartsick into its yellow warmth, and the name Jack had used with appreciation when speaking of its charms.
"You'll live, mate. You got friends in high places"—Will had flinched from that, but Jack had pressed on, remorseless—"you'll live. You'll walk free when we reach port."
He'd been adamant on that point when Will himself had been far from certain, until in the end there had been a kind of comfort in it. He'd extended no such assurance as to his own fate, shrugging it off with practised flippancy or jest, and the inevitable two-edged quip: "Son, what do you expect? I'm Captain Jack Sparrow—"
Jack Sparrow, whom Norrington could never afford to let free. Whose reputation would close steel doors around him like a trap. Who would be guarded day and night to the gallows-foot itself. Jack was no fool. He'd known it long before Will had.
But he'd turned all Will's concerns aside, rhapsodising instead in his own half-drunken brand of eloquence on the wonders of Big Peg's, the mysteries of the East, or simply on the ever-changing moods of the sea. Only Jack could have wrung poetry out of a cheerful, roaring dump like this, Will thought now ruefully, reaching unsteadily for the bottle in front of him. The liquor wasn't up to much, either. But if you poured enough down your throat, you started to forget.
Forget the intensity of Jack's unspoken grip in the darkness, the wordless fierce embrace that told Will more, now, than he'd wanted to know. Any port in a storm... and Jack had faced that coming storm alone, with open eyes and all his pride, and nothing but Will to cling to, two reeking cadavers in the black pit with no bridge between them but the basic human gift of touch. Will, who'd been alive, and Jack, who —he understood now— had already steeled all his strength to that last hard drop.
It had been the clutch of a drowning man. That much, at least, he'd sensed, uncomprehending; been relieved when Jack freed his hold and stepped back, seemingly steady as ever in the gloom.
"Now, when you hit the dockside at Port Royal—" His favourite topic. Familiar irritation washed over Will, dislodging the anchorless fear from that moment of desperation. Jack Sparrow was back on his hobby-horse again, and all was well with the world.
"Jack, I've told you, I'm not interested. I have to live there afterwards... remember? I can't just get roaring drunk, smash my way into a house or two, and leave on the tide—"
The old half-serious wrangle, both of them playing out their parts: Jack as tempter, himself as youthful moralist. The truth, as ever, lay somewhere in between.
At least, given Jack's aptitude for elaborate embroidery, not to mention outright fabrication, he had to assume it did... And he'd had to fetch old Master Brown home from the ale-houses often enough, of late. If the vivid palette of pleasures hymned by Jack's silver tongue truly existed, Will had thought, he'd surely have set eyes on them somewhere along the way.
Oh, but he had. He knew that now, with the warm glow of the second bottle inside him, and a rich honey-gold sheen riding high over the world all around. But he'd seen it with the eye of sober disapproval, and he'd missed the whole point—
Big Jeb, beside him at the table, swayed, and Will flung a muzzy, affectionate arm around him to keep him from pitching forward into his empty mug, linking hands with old Caley on the big man's other side. Jeb and Caley. He grinned enormously, loving them both. Best friends in the world. Never seen them before —never meet them again— but best friends in the world, all the same. Any man who bought your drink was the best. And when you bought his drink, that made you the best. All best together, win or lose.
The pile of copper and silver on the table was wavering in Will's direction again. Some native measure of caution amid the pleasurable fumes in his brain had helped him stick to games of foolery and pure chance: which fly would land first? which way would a penny fall? He'd won a little, all but lost everything he had, plunging deeper and deeper in the gambler's lustful abandon, then by some run of chance won it all back, and more. The money meant nothing. It was the gamble that counted... and he'd never have been a match for a card-sharp, even when sober. Best to keep clear of the cards and fleece himself by his own folly.
His pockets were empty, the money was on the table, the drink was in his belly with a fine plate of highly-flavoured stew to keep it company, and he was fine, fine, fine, adrift on a rose-coloured sea of song and laughter, where every man was his friend and every woman had welcoming eyes. Take Big Peg, now. A queenly creature with eyes like violets and a body generous beyond measure, the curves of her spilling at neck and hip like the ripening swell of an island rising at dawn...
Half-recognised, the rhythms of Jack's own eloquence rolled within him, painting everything anew in ardent life. He'd come to this place to keep a promise; a promise he'd barely even known he'd made.
"You're not listening."
Jack had been no more than a silhouette in the dark, tangled hair shrouding the outline of his bent head, but Will could picture precisely the caricatured look of exasperation that would be playing on his face; mimic the weary chirp of the next line. They'd been shut up too long down here. He wasn't sure how much more of Jack's company he could take. Port Royal — well, whatever happened in Port Royal, it would be a change.
"You're not listening," Jack had pointed out again, aggrieved at the other man's lack of response. "You really—"
"—need to get a life, mate," Will had snapped in unison, still off-balance from that earlier, unheralded drowning grasp, and achieved a moment's rare silence. He pushed his luck. "Tell me, Jack, has it ever occurred to you that there might be more to life ashore than tall tales, taverns, and dice? That some of us actually like it that way?"
Jack had rocked back on his heels, apparently giving this novel idea full consideration. For a few instants at least.
The familiar slurred drawl held absolute conviction. "No— I reckon some of you just don't know what you're missing."
Will had turned away again with audible impatience, hearing the faint rattle of movement behind him as Jack scratched at something on his neck; they were both verminous by now, and only the jail-bird reek of his own scent could have drowned out that of his companion. Maybe they'd get a wash, at least, before they went into court, to avoid offending the high-ups' noses...
"Be a pity for a man to go to Davy Jones with never another wild night to his credit," Jack said softly from out of the dark. "Pity for the both of us, it seems to me."
"Tell you what," Will had flung back, unaccountably needled, "the next time I'm strolling down the streets of home with a few free hours I'll make a point of finding Big Peg's for the two of us — how's that? I'll drink a toast on your behalf and one on mine, and one to old Davy himself, and we'll consider honour satisfied and the point taken — agreed?"
He hadn't, at that moment, envisioned any future for either of them save the waiting dock and the gallows beyond, for all Jack's airy assurances, and the words were bred out of pure annoyance. But Jack had merely chuckled. "Done. I'll hold you to that— and an embrace on my account to Big Peg besides—"
"What?" Will, who'd witnessed Jack's idea of an appealing woman in Tortuga —not to mention his likely reception— almost bit his tongue.
"On my account — see?" As ever, the voice was —on the face of it— maddeningly reasonable. "Now if so be as you were passing by, surely you wouldn't grudge a greeting from a shipmate to an old friend? There's only one Peg, and you'll not miss her. Just drop my name and she'll see you're treated right..."
He hadn't heard the pleading note in it... then. Hadn't understood what Jack was trying to ask. It had taken a cool phrase from Norrington, of all people, to do that.
Whatever form of excess he himself would have chosen... He'd stood under the gate-arch at the fort and watched the tail of the big grey fade into the blur that was the rain. Then he'd turned away, down the rutted street beside the wall, toward the dockside and the sailors' taverns that clustered there. Big Peg's —the old 'Port in a Storm'— had not been the first he'd come across, nor the largest. But it had undoubtedly been the loudest inside.
One wild night, Will had thought, pausing on the threshold. Welcome and warm... He'd touched the scar from the blow that had driven it home; understood why Jack had done as he had. One wild night: his first. Jack's last. He knew now what that plea had been. One night of his life — for them both.
Elizabeth was very far away now; and his own drab existence, with its workaday rules and loyalties. Shades of homespun, brown and grey, with never the gold and scarlet or snapping black that trailed their drunken glories of promise here under the rafters.
Any port in a storm, Will thought again, feeling a foolish grin begin to spread at what was suddenly the funniest joke he'd ever heard. He beamed across at old Caley over Jeb's shaggy, snoring head, surprised to find the bottle between them empty.
But Caley's attention had been snared by a passing girl and a glimpse of gartered stocking, and Will swayed to his feet, remembering at the last minute to gather up his winnings. Stray coppers spun down to the rushes at his feet, each the price of a quartern loaf or a measure of charcoal for the forge, and some far-back corner of sturdy sense sent him to fumble after them. But the movement sent a sudden intoxicating rush to his head and he was sprawled against the bench, laughing helplessly, as Big Peg swept across the room.
Now there was a woman who could deal a fine slap, Will thought, laughter still bubbling up as he struggled to his feet, prompted by a faintly-urging recollection. Slap you into next Tuesday, most likely. The prospect was enchanting. Look at her move... all the curves of her sails set and drawing, surging like the crest of an oncoming wave...
The memory of Elizabeth's lost, elusive sheen flashed briefly, minnow-like, across the shallows of his mind, leaving only the constant half-drowned ache. She was out of his class. She always had been... and she'd traded her hand away to another man. Will stepped out into queenly Peg's path with surprising grace, proffering the hopeful passport of Jack Sparrow's name, and slipped both arms about the abandon of her body, taking the wine-scented intimacy of the promised kiss.
You could lose yourself, in a woman like that. And a few minutes later, with the explanations sorted out and the ringing mark of her palm fading on his cheek, Will Turner found himself doing just that.
Rain spattered sharply against the single horn-pane of the window, like a tattoo rattling across a drum-head's tightly stretched skin, and he drifted back to faint, pleasantly-aching consciousness of the feather-bed's warmth and the muffled howl of the wind in the chimneys above. For a moment, half-expecting the hard straw ticking of his mattress in the forge, he was uncertain where he was.
Then the memory of Jack's dark face livid in death shot him bolt upright, shedding covers in the icy air of the little room. The bite of the cold on his body went unnoticed. Details of the evening's events were starting to come back, in mercifully-blurred clarity.
Will swung himself abruptly out of bed, ignoring the muffled protests at his side, and padded barefoot across the boards to the window, pulling the casement ajar to the accompaniment of a rain-laden gust. If the 'Port in a Storm' stood where he thought it must lie...
High across the sheltered waters of the anchorage, the shoulder of Lookout Point could just be made out against the lowering sky. Will stared out into the dark for a long moment, straining to see movement or even the faintest glimmer of dim, bobbing light. Between one instant and another he thought he caught a tiny lantern-speck. But fresh curtains of rain swept across the waterfront, and he could not be sure.
The waves would be wild at the cliff-foot, and it would be pitiless for the living up on the Point tonight. Imagination painted him Norrington's tall figure held rigid by the lash of etiquette as rain streamed from his shoulders, while the mule, head-down, endured patiently, and soaked and cursing men worked to cover the lonely grave. Jack would not be the only one out there wrapped cold and stiff in his cloak, Will thought wryly, his own eyes crinkling in amusement that unconsciously echoed a certain wicked grin.
Candlelight scraped behind him, and he turned back, struggling for a moment to get the window shut.
Her hair, beneath the white-frilled cap, was warm brown, he'd discovered, and as generous as the rest of her. The first, hesitant moments over, she'd found the way to all that needed to be said. The scent of her was sharp, of stale wine and warm flesh and —unexpectedly— of soap.
Maybe Captain Jack Sparrow had had the last laugh on them all, at that. Will shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the clinging fumes of all he had drunk. There would be a reckoning in the cold morning light soon enough; he'd fetched his master home from enough sodden bouts to know that. There would be life to face, and to go on.
But the night was young, and the candle cast a warm circle of welcome that walled away the storm. With a little laugh that shook him, Will cast off sobriety and responsibility for one last time and came back across the chamber to slip between the covers, into the unquestioning billows of Peg's soft clasp. Unspoken, Jack's memory burned brightly between them against the grey beyond.
Live twice as big, love twice as long,
Work twice as hard -- play all of your cards
Live for me...'Live for Me', Blue Öyster Cult 1998