With a fair wind behind her, the trading brig Florence could show a surprisingly lively pair of heels. Captain Jack Sparrow, balancing with unthinking grace at her helm as her deck continued in its steady corkscrew roll, glanced over his shoulder out of old habit and saw the rose-leaf curl of their nearest neighbour’s sails drop further back against the long shores of Cuba. On the horizon the setting sun caught the shortened squares of other sails, conjuring them into fragile spun-glass curves of gold. Only a couple of sluggish merchantmen, and a Spanish lugger inshore... but the moment’s glory built towering castles from the clouds ahead, and touched the brig’s own stained canvas with a blush of warmth that lent her a stately beauty of her own.
Little Lily had led them a long chase, from the shores of Santo Domingo to the dubious delights of Havana itself, flitting from one protector to another with butterfly grace that promised much but forever melted away. She knew how to be discreet; her victims, for the most part elderly and full of self-importance, were as a rule only too eager to cover up the whole affair. But a man with silver to spend — not necessarily from his own pocket — and contacts in the right places, could always find those poor and willing enough to talk.
She’d spent two days as a lady’s-maid in La Paguana, and exchanged her employer’s sapphire bracelet for a hurried passage to Carameca, further up the coast. She’d passed a night at the inn of one M.Bouvier in the guise of a Guadeloupe merchant’s wife, and disappeared before morning with what little of value her host’s house contained. She’d been the guest for a whole week of a widow who owned a bakery in the little town of Léogane, from whom she had parted on the best of terms and who, despite Jack’s scepticism, had not subsequently missed any of her possessions at all; among her wealthier neighbours, however, matters had run true to form.
From there, five days before the Florence arrived — although Jack’s crew, grumbling, had begun to apply another name to their young employer’s purchase — Lilias, elusive as ever, had sailed for Havana. The boy who’d helped carry aboard her single small trunk had remembered the ring upon her finger perfectly, and described it: a narrow band of silver, set with small, irregular stones, and the word ‘Strong’ emblazoned upon it, Monsieur... Or in other words, as young Fortescue had pointed out rather bitterly, a half-glimpse of the FORTE of his own family name.
“Well, mate, seems she’s still got it,” Jack had concluded. “Headed west to pull the wool over the eyes of some Spanish grandee, by what I heard — and good luck and good riddance to her.”
He glared out towards the long island across the bay, checking automatically for the masts of his own ship amidst the nodding tangle moored close by the shore. It wasn’t difficult. The tubby little brig — ‘Florrie’, or the ‘Folly’ that the men were already calling her — was the only craft in sight with as many as two masts. Which more or less summed up — and wrote off — Léogane so far as Captain Jack Sparrow was concerned.
He returned his gaze, with surprising patience, to the boy. They were leaning against the rickety wooden awning that was all the town offered by way of an alehouse, and the younger man had pulled off his stiff gloves, in what Jack had long since come to recognise as a habitual unthinking gesture, and was tapping them in an endless rhythm against one of the bleached wooden uprights that supported the canopy.
“Seems to me you need to decide just how much this ring is worth to you,” Jack prompted again after a moment’s silence. “Tradition’s a fine thing... but I’ve known many a man end up a slave to his past. Savvy? And the Dons over in Cuba’ll scarce be sending tales back to Kent of the girl with your grandfer’s ring on her finger...”
“I’m not afraid of my father’s condemnation!”
But the instant’s flashing defiance was followed by a bitten lip, and then a sigh as he looked up again. “I suppose I am, yes... but it’s the principle of the thing.” An impatient turn of the shoulder. “You wouldn’t understand.”
o~o~o
Hot sun and humiliation. Barbossa’s men — his men — bundling him roughly on deck, the Black Pearl’s beloved planks lifting beneath his feet for the last time.
Words of dismissal and contempt from the man who — until that morning — had been his trusted subordinate, a canny, grizzled bear of a man with an air of casual violence that Jack had chosen to shrug aside. Barbossa. Who’d been — he’d thought — a friend.
o~o~o
Jack’s hand slid around the warm curve of the pistol at his waist. The single pistol, with its single charge of shot.
“You’re right, mate,” he agreed equably, still caressing the weight of Barbossa’s promised death. “Matters o’ principle, my sort wouldn’t understand.”
They’d sailed for Havana in ballast, five days behind, with the last of the little Florrie’s cargo sold for a pittance of profit on the coasts of French Hispaniola. With the weight out of her she’d shown a new and almost skittish side that had Jack, who’d thought himself inured to all her unlovely habits, learning her ways all over again. But back in St Kitts he’d shipped a larger crew than custom dictated for a trading vessel, with an eye to the future — both those who’d been with him in the plan to take her at first, and others who’d come in on the promise of an easy berth and fat prizes to come — and the work in consequence had been light, and changes of sail quick to carry out.
They’d made a fast passage of it, he judged now, bringing the little ship in to stand across the first of the land-breeze in the direction of the city through the gathering dusk. Shaved as much as a day off the time of that lumbering Spanish craft that had carried their quarry from Léogane. There was a little inlet to the west that had served him a time or two before; wicked memory creased the corners of his dancing eyes. Tonight Cuba — tomorrow, Havana.
They’d chased the lady far enough. Call it a hunch, call it instinct, but something was telling him that on Havana’s white streets events would take a wholly different turn.
The warm breath of the land reached out towards them from sun-baked hills, and high above the sails creaked, sagged anew, and began to fill. To starboard, the first specks of light had begun to kindle in the city beyond as dusk rolled in from the distant ocean, and the colour began to ebb from the sky beyond. Labour at sheets and braces slackened as the ship eased out onto her new course, yards braced round to keep her heading close, and men lined the rail, gazing out to speculate on approaching land, and trade questions and stories. A curse or two spat over the side marked those who had least reason to love Spain.
Smiling to himself unseen, Captain Jack Sparrow held his ship in towards her haven with a steady hand in the growing dark. His fingers stroked the smooth timbers of her helm without thinking, with the same reassuring touch a man would use for a sturdy but willing old mare.
The sound of boot-heels on the steps heralded trouble. Jack allowed himself one brief heavenward roll of the eyes and then schooled his face into complete, disarming innocence as the boy came on deck.
A puzzled squint. “Why aren’t the lanterns lit?”
Jack glanced around at the great stern lanterns with a faintly perplexed air, as if expecting to find them glowing, then up again to the loom of the coast ahead.
“Best not to advertise our course,” he pointed out evenly. “Being as the garda costa might care to know why we’re headed for that little inlet yonder, and not for Havana...”
“And why, pray, not for Havana?” Instant suspicion. Jack sighed.
“One, I’ve a rooted objection to paying extortionate harbour dues,” he suggested. “Two, if the Dons take one of their unaccountable dislikes to an English face, we’d never clear the forts on the harbour mouth again. Three—”
Memory conjured the vivid features of Inez, the harbour-master’s daughter, her cloud of black hair tossed back upon the pillow and her slender limbs languid in the afternoon heat. It conjured also the wild-cat fury that had all but clawed his eyes out in that last, inauspicious parting. Unconsciously, Jack’s hand had gone up in a protective gesture to long-healed scratches across his cheek.
She’d had her reasons, of course. And two pretty little dark-eyed reasons they’d been, generously endowed by nature and by art, and not averse to sharing, for the gift of a smile and a silver tongue...
It had been almost worth the showdown with Inez. Jack’s grin, remembering, was rueful. Almost.
“Three...” He cleared his throat somewhat hastily. “Three, two reasons is enough for any man — savvy?”
And then the sandbar that shielded the cove was upon them, white breakers gleaming through the dusk; and the question was mercifully lost, as the Florence creaked round, amid the bare-footed rush to man the braces.
If he were to be honest about it — which, for one reason and another, tended to be somewhat seldom — Captain Jack Sparrow had to admit that, in point of fact, he’d thoroughly enjoyed the following day in Havana. From the early-morning ride hitched on the tail of old Teresa’s mulecart, with the old woman grumbling away as ever about godless English who expected her to hide them without a word of warning and the promise of heat as yet still to come swirling in the fresh dawn mists, down to the blurred and cheerful cacophony of their return, with the bird-cage rattling at his side and its indignant occupant protesting at every jolt, through all the alarums, brawls and cheap Cuban liquor that had intervened, it had been a joyous abnegation of the creeping burden of respectability. An escape from the Folly, her callow owner, and her restless crew. A return, in short, to the swaggering, staggering streets of old, with past acquaintances to look up — or, of course, avoid — wine-shops to be milked of every last rumour, and a few high-flown Spanish noses to be tweaked on the principle of the thing. The fact that he’d left the city seething like a hornets’ nest behind him was a bonus rather than any sort of detriment.
“Here, you take him.” Teresa had reined the mule to an abrupt stop by the turning that led down to the inlet, gesticulating emphatically at the little knot of Englishmen jabbering there together in their own barbarous tongue. “And that devilish bird. I want it out of my cart — you hear me?”
Jack, who’d been tumbled by the unexpected halt into sudden and unwanted intimacy with the cage and the irate mynah-bird inside it, extracted himself from its spiky embrace and rolled over to lie pillowed against the old woman’s empty egg-basket, sprawling flat on his back in the cart-bed with eyes crossed in peaceful inebriated bliss. Staring upwards into the quivering brassy sky, he admired the ensuing tirade of peasant invective with the air of one witnessing a truly great artist at work.
His reverie was broken by an undignified descent onto the dusty track.
“—browse upon the armpits of your mother’s splay-legged maiden aunt!” Teresa’s voice diminished finally in volume as the mule’s hoof-beats plodded slowly away.
There was a somewhat stunned silence. A small island of flies orbiting a nodding tuft of grass at the edge of the downward path transferred their attentions in a desultory way to Jack’s face.
“Where, in the name of all that’s holy, was she raked up from?” Black Grindley sounded almost reverential. “Noah’s Ark?”
Someone else made a coarser suggestion. There was a general laugh.
With an effort, Jack redirected his gaze from the clump of red earth six inches in front of his nose and managed an aggrieved glare. “Very old friend,” he enunciated carefully. “Hid me once from the soldiers, looking for cimarrones...”
An indrawn breath at the sound of his voice. “Sweet Jesu, Sparrow, what did they do to you?”
Jack winced, trying to focus, as a blur of motion at the edge of his vision resolved itself into a fall of fair hair framing a worried young face. He repaid the concern with a scowl. “Captain—”
Laughter, from the men beyond. “Not much wrong there...”
Jack shook off the hands that had been trying to help him, smearing reddish dust across the boy’s fine coat, and swayed to his feet amid derisive cheers, peering around for the precious bird-cage.
Someone retrieved and crammed his hat on his head, with a touch this time that was far from gentle. Jack almost lost his balance, flung out an arm to steady himself on his assailant, and found himself caught and held. The boy’s mouth was distinctly grim.
“I thought you’d taken hurt, or maybe a touch of sun — but I gather a touch of rum might have been closer to the mark. You’re drunk as a lord, Captain Sparrow—” the title held a tinge of disgust — “and I should have known better than to let you go in to the city alone. Tomorrow I’ll stain my hair and skin and look for her myself, whether I pass as a plausible Spaniard or no. If needs be, I’ll pose as a mute sooner than gamble my fortunes again on your glib claims to the Spanish tongue—”
Jack, having located the mynah-bird by the simple expedient of waiting for the next volley of angry squawks, here sidestepped with unpredictable grace, evading the boy’s grasp, recovered his trophy from the ditch where it had fallen, and thrust the entire ungainly armful — cage, flapping wings, beak, claws and all — into his would-be employer’s arms. The backwards lurch that accompanied this gesture left the other with no alternative but to catch hold before the indignant bird could crash back to the ground.
“What the—”
“Now, there’s drunk, and then there’s drunk,” Jack informed him, regaining his balance with a complex sprawling manœuvre, the artistry of which would not have shamed a Javanese temple dancer. “An intoxicated man’s no manner of threat — see? When the glory of the grape comes babbling from his lips—”
He broke off, frowning at his own words, then raised an admonitory finger to impart to his hearers one of the more important facts of life. Grapes were a fine enough thing in their way. But to pour true fire down a man’s throat called for more than a few fermented raisins.
“When the glory of the cane comes babbling from his lips — for rum’s none of your thin French wines, mind — why then there’s not a man in a thousand will credit him with an ounce of guile, or trouble with guarded words in his hearing.”
“Aye, an’ small wonder,” Grindley muttered into his beard, raising a smothered chuckle or two. Jack, carried on the flood of his own eloquence, paid no attention.
He swept an elaborate Castilian courtesy that almost came to grief as his uncertain footing betrayed him, gyrated wildly for a moment with outflung arms, and bestowed a flashing grin upon his audience. “So... is it to be the good news or the bad news first, Johnny-me-lad?”
“Don’t call me that.” Young Fortescue spoke between gritted teeth, and Jack was instantly all contrition, beckoning him over into privacy away from the rest.
“Slip of the tongue, mate. Bad influence. You’ve not heard what they’re calling the ship, then?”
“Ship?” The boy glanced over his shoulder at the black tracery of the brig’s topmasts and frowned, unable to resist the question he clearly suspected he was about to regret. “Florence? What do you mean? What are they calling her?”
“Fortey’s Folly,” Jack told him, honestly — for once — enough, and watched the tide of humiliation dye the boy’s face, with interest and a certain twinge of sympathy he had by no means intended.
“So you take me for a fool.”
“Not at all, your Grace.” Jack cocked a blurry eye around one side of the bird-cage between them, then reappeared on the other. “If y’r honour would care to hear—”
He got a reluctant grin. “I’m not that much of a fool for flattery,” the boy said wryly. “Nor do I take you for fool enough to believe I am. We’ll stick to plain ‘Johnny’, Captain Sparrow, if ‘Jack’ sticks in your throat — but if you could refrain from embroidery on the theme, I’d take it kindly.”
After a moment’s final struggle with the cage in his arms, he let the whole ornate burden slide through his grasp to the ground with a muffled crash, and folded his arms across his breast, meeting Jack’s elusive gaze with a hard stare of his own. “And there had better be a good reason for this...”
Jack chirruped hopefully in the bird’s direction, and got back a raucous screech and a cascade of Spanish vernacular that brought a look of interested speculation to his eyes. “Wouldn’t work, mate,” he told the mynah regretfully, after a moment. “Not even if you could get the goat to take an interest...”
“Sparrow!”
The boy had gone pink again, which suggested either hitherto unsuspected depths to his non-existent Spanish or an imminent end to the leash of his patience. Jack blinked in his direction, innocently.
“Good news and bad news?” he offered.
He got a look in response. “If you would be so kind...”
“Ah well...” Jack rocked back on his heels and eyed the impatient huddle of men watching them openly. The little devil of drunken mischief in him took heed, for once, of a mutinous crew not so long ago. It was one thing to bait the gentry; another, as he’d learned, late enough, to hint at hidden knowledge in front of those of your own kind.
“For one, we’ve no need to brave Havana’s walls with your fair tow-head as a beacon to mark us out as heathen intruders,” he assured the boy, pitching his voice to carry to the listeners beyond. “Or no call to sample the sweet bounty of her grog-shops, depending on how you look at it. Me, I’m a cheerful man—”
“Happen those same grog-shops might have had a say in that,” Grindley jibed. Jack joined in the general laugh at his own expense, waiting for the right moment to drop the name.
“Ever hear tell of a Count Orgonez?”
The sudden hush, and a handful of grim faces among the uncertain looks, told him that some of them had. Black Grindley, for one.
“Seems our Lilias hadn’t.” Jack kept his voice purposely light for contrast; let one hand stray to his own bared brown throat, as if absently. The pulse lurched beneath his fingers in hectic life. “See, el Conde has an ill name thereabouts, and there’s talk of his doings when tongues are loosened. Talk of the pretty girl under his protection, and a turning of the tables on the tricks she tried to play. An adventure too many for our little adventuress, I’m thinking...”
“Where does she lie now?” The boy’s voice, a little hoarse, betrayed more in its urgency than he knew. “In the jail? In this Count’s house? What if—?”
“And thereby hangs a tale.” One calling for a fresh drink or two in the telling; the road had been long, and Jack’s throat was dry from the dust. “But I’ll tell you this, mate. You owe that bird a sight more respect than I’ve seen to date — savvy?”