The Count didn’t stint himself where his little island hideaway was concerned, that was for certain. It was the boast of Captain Jack Sparrow — more than that, it was true — that he’d taken his leave alike of an Emperor’s envoy and the greatest scum of the Caribbean without turning a hair, and without deigning to alter his mode of dress or his manner one jot for either. He was possessed of quite as much personal vanity as the next man, but he had no mind to lace himself into whaleboned coats or mince in scarlet heels for the sake of currying favour with those whom chance had given guns or gallows at their disposal.
He trod softly down the panelled passage in young Fortescue’s wake, absently noting the antique silver and china of the vases in each alcove as they passed, and ignored the trace of hauteur he’d seen in the eyes of the white-pated butler who’d admitted them, and the armada of crimson-liveried footmen who’d sailed in to form an oh-so-respectful escort to the presence chamber of el Conde... each one an ebony giant capable of wringing the shabby intruder’s neck single-handed. Assuming, of course, that he was daft enough to give them the chance.
At Johnny’s prompting, he’d grudgingly made a show of shining up the buckle on his belt, and — with rather more enthusiasm — scoured his hilt and sword-blade into glistening cleanliness in its borrowed sheath; a bare cutlass at the waist might do for boarding, but when it came to bringing weapons into the house of a Spanish grandee, there was rather more chance of gaining admittance if said weapons at least resembled the accoutrements of a gentleman. If the boy insisted on wasting his time (and any advantage of surprise) on bearding Orgonez in his lair, face to face, then Jack had every intention of making the most of the opportunity. And that did not include being left like a ruffian escort at the door.
Johnny, on the other hand, had done himself proud: if preening up like a Court fop was your yardstick, which in Jack’s case wasn’t by a long shot. After a heated argument which Jack — who hadn’t the slightest faith in Orgonez’ word — had allowed the boy to think he’d won, on the pragmatic grounds that whatever happened it couldn’t hurt to have a look at the lay of the land under the cover of a peaceful parley, the Florence had sailed openly into the bay where the Spanish ship lay idling at anchor. Judging by the liveried retainers encamped sweating on the beach to greet their arrival, Florrie’s approach had not in any case gone unnoticed.
In the hours that followed, while Jack’s crew eyed the island suspiciously from its barren sands to the stumps and scrub upon the low hills beyond, and the tub of slowmatch smoked innocuously between the Florrie’s two little pop-guns — “Nothing like a good light for a pipe o’ baccy to keep the men’s nerves from fretting,” Jack had observed, straight-faced, as he caught the direction of young Fortescue’s glance — in the hours that followed, the boy had done his level best to make a brave show with what resources remained to him on board. It was the first time, as Jack drily observed, that he had ever been privileged to witness the spectacle of a musket ramrod serving for curling-irons; but the boy had continued doggedly to make his toilette in the face of his companion’s ribaldry, fighting tangled lovelocks back into some semblance of order, brushing out the one good coat that remained unworn, and doing the utmost to press some crispness back into his linen.
He’d made a good job of it, Jack conceded privately, padding now behind the youngster in his own slouched boots and worn leather with a shrug of admiration for a task well-done. He’d liked the boy better in plain coat and breeches, but there was no denying that in Orgonez’ household, peacocking it gained a measure of respect. He couldn’t shift a suspicion, however, that the effort hadn’t been all for the houseboys’ benefit — or even for Count Orgonez....
One last door. Double doors, at the end of the passage. No expense spared, Jack concluded again, admiring the burnished handles with the part of his mind that reckoned up such things even as the butler ahead gestured the Englishmen to a halt, stooped with gloved hands to take hold, and flung the doors apart. A long room, cool and gloomy as a cathedral and seeming in that moment to yawn as vast, opened out.
From a high window in the opposite wall, a gleam of coloured panes laid a trail of ruddy light across the floor to their feet like a dim arrow; one aimed from the dais, the two doors to its either side, and the great chair in its centre. The occupant’s face, with its red-tinged halo, was silhouetted from behind.
Cleverly done. Jack’s mouth twitched sidelong in recognition. Must have cost el Conde a mint to ship in that painted glass, and have it set just so. He’d a mind to play up the name of devil, had he? The theatrics of it struck an answering chord from his own flamboyant nature.
He swaggered forward — thrusting Johnny aside and wrong-footing their escort, who’d clearly expected a moment’s awe-struck obedience on the threshold — and swept his largest bow, making certain the assorted jewellery on his person caught the light.
“Your Excellency. Your Serenity. Your Supreme Magnificence...” The tone could not have been more humble; or more insolent. Jack let the momentum of the gesture carry him a pace or so to the side, into the shadows, and looked up, all innocent guile. “A mite gloomy in here, isn’t it?”
Orgonez, in front of him, was still no more than a silhouette; but his own features were equally obscured. Behind him he heard an intake of breath and a sharp clatter of heels — which he diagnosed with unfailing accuracy as protest overcoming Johnny’s frozen reaction — and grinned.
In response, he glimpsed what might have been a momentary glint of teeth from the dais above. Their host gestured, sharply, with a click of the fingers. Shadows shifted as two footmen entered briskly, bearing lamps. A further gesture directed them forward and to either side of the chair, oiled skin gleaming in the lamplight as they stiffened into position like living pedestals.
Jack, eyeing them closely, caught only the slightest tremor of effort in the outstretched arms. The Count paid them not the slightest further attention, although either black giant stood close enough to relinquish his burden in an instant with a single blow to his master’s throat. It was a demonstration of supreme arrogance, and supreme confidence.
Captain Jack Sparrow and Felipe de Sacalde regarded one another with mutually concealed curiosity.
Jack was not sure, on reflection, quite what he had expected. The fleshy traits of indulgence, perhaps; piggy eyes set in swarthy folds of blubber. Or a lean, cruel blade of a face, slashed by a mocking line of black moustache. He had not expected Orgonez to display the ascetic features of a saint or scholar, with ice-calm reflective eyes that betrayed no trace of emotion at all.
Dimly, behind him, he was aware of the butler announcing them.
“Sparrow. Fortescue.” The Count’s voice held a trace of lisping accent, but he made a better try at their names than his underling had managed. His gaze narrowed, contemplative for an instant. “Sparrow...”
Had their paths crossed? Jack cast back in an instant’s panic; concluded that they had not. Or not, at least, in a manner sufficiently personal for the Count to be nursing revenge. He basked for a moment in the knowledge that his reputation had evidently preceded him, and swept a low acknowledgement. “The same, señor.”
Johnny bristled silently beside him, vanity clearly stung, and the Count transferred tranquil eyes to the younger man. His face held all the world-weariness of a prospective anchorite. “You have no Spanish, they tell me. No matter.”
His command of the King’s English was indeed excellent, and the boy flushed, the indignation that had carried him here baffled in the face of unexpected courtesy. Jack, who was of the cheerful opinion that the smoother a Don’s tongue the sooner he would stab you in the back, elbowed him. Ungently.
Johnny cleared his throat. “There was a girl—”
“Of a certainty,” the Count mumured, surveying the boy’s finery, and was rewarded by a tide of scarlet that brought a flash of very unsaintly enjoyment to his withdrawn eye.
Thought as much. Jack, vindicated, settled down to watch the sport.
“An Englishwoman, sir,” Johnny was retorting hotly, “and one who concerns my own fortunes closely. She had in her possession an heirloom of my house —”
“I do assure you”—the Count was regretful—“there is no girl of your quality in the shelter of this cay, nor have I knowledge of such a one. You must understand, señores, that your English ladies scorn the formality of our customs; but alas, I could not in all honour entertain fair guests in the absence of my womenfolk...”
“She’s no lady, I promise you that.” All too aware that he was being toyed with, the boy ignored burning cheeks. “This gentleman”—(Jack here cocked an eyebrow of mild astonishment)—“and I have both suffered by her depredations, and we have information that she was last seen aboard your ship, held in close confinement.”
“Lili.” Orgonez’ eyes didn’t even flicker. “Had I known it was a girl of that type that you wanted —”
He observed, with interest, the effect of this sally.
“I’m not interested in the girl!” Jack and Orgonez traded glances over the oblivious head. “All I want to know, my lord Count, is the whereabouts of the property she took from me: a ring set with small stones, with the name of my family engraved upon the circumference. And Sparrow here seeks a pendant brooch that has been in his family since two generations back—”
A liberal interpretation even of the story he’d told, Jack considered. Young Johnny was laying it on a bit thick.
“I regret that I know nothing of such a jewel.” The Count’s tone held patience, finality — and patent untruth. He knew, all right, and wasn’t even bothering to conceal it... the saintly spider. No doubt took pleasure in watching the heretic English unable even to give him the lie.
The Spaniard rose to his feet with a duellist’s grace. “But perhaps you would care to question the girl yourself?”
Something echoed quietly behind his words; the gambit of a chessman advanced, and set down with a click. The boy’s face lit up. Jack winced.
“Remind me sometime never to take you to market,” Jack observed under his breath as the door to the left of the dais began to open.
For a miracle, it actually got Johnny’s attention away from the promised approach. He gave Jack a look of complete distraction. “What..?”
Jack sighed. “If you could just make some play of indifference, see —give that stiff upper lip a good airing— you’d be liable to drive a better bargain. Prize the goods too highly, and ye’ll end up paying through the nose... savvy?”
Though he’d wager young Fortescue had never chaffered for coconuts in his life, nor yet had to dicker over the price of a banana. Especially dressed as he was now. The image was irresistible; and it was in the face of Jack Sparrow’s broadening grin and his companion’s scowl that the girl Lily came into the room.
To his surprise, Jack had to thrust down an unwelcome impulse of pity. He’d wanted the tables turned; wanted to see Miss-Paige-of-Marsh-Stanton with her pretty nose in the dust for a change. But when he’d pictured her going on board that ship in Havana it had been with a look of furious resentment on her face, and a swagger of defiant fury. Not like this. Not with numbed, swollen eyes, blistered hands, and the listless slump of a London skivvy. Whatever she’d been through, she’d simply given up. Jack told himself, indignantly, that she ought to have some professional pride.
Then her head came up, at the Count’s prompting, and she saw them for the first time; and in amongst the recognition, despair, and disbelief, there was a look of sheer flaming appeal that would have melted the hardest heart. Except Jack’s, of course. But then he had professional pride of his own to live up to.
Orgonez’ measured gaze observed all three of them. “Tell the gentleman, Lili, what he wants to know.”
She flinched so at his voice that Jack caught himself instinctively checking her fingernails to see if they were all present; they were. Not a mark on her that he could see — if you discounted the obvious back-hander across the face that was more likely the work of an over-driven cook than el Conde’s style. But he had her cringing to order like a whipped dog, all the same.
More than ever Jack found himself convinced that Johnny’s head-on approach was not only hopeless, but also extremely unwise... not to mention unprofitable. Now, if he’d only let Captain Jack Sparrow strike up a bargain in his own inimitable way...
But Johnny —stiff upper lip or no stiff upper lip— was looking both mesmerised and appalled, as if he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Remembering, perhaps, a canary-yellow dress and a tumble of dark curls in Basseterre.
Her fingers were bare of all rings, of course. The boy swallowed.
“Miss L— Lily. You recall the circumstances under which we parted.”
It sounded unbearably pompous, but no spark of laughter woke in her eyes. Hopelessly off-balance, Johnny abandoned all restraint and plunged on, ignoring Jack’s warning hiss.
“Listen. I’ll do my best to get you out of here — but I need that ring. My father —” He broke off. “You didn’t sell it anywhere along the way. So where is it now? Havana — Cuba — the ocean?”
A glimpse of understanding on the dulled face at last. Her lips parted; closed again, as her eyes met Orgonez’ soft smile, before taking on a blind, mulish set.
“I’m sure I can’t say, sir.”
Even her voice had changed since the days when she’d so blithely posed as a lady. Higher, sharper, with vowels far closer to Jack’s own.... an accent of home that tugged at Jack’s memory, echoing across a crowded tavern, and finally brought to mind exactly where it was he’d seen her before. He grinned, suspicions confirmed. That was interesting.
Not half so interesting under present circumstances, however, as the way in which her gaze had gone in those first moments towards the door on the right-hand side of the dais. The one with the heavy bar.
He nudged Johnny sharply, cutting the boy off in the middle of another stammered demand, and jerked his head towards the exit, playing it up for the Count’s benefit — if young Fortescue chose to lay every card he had on the table, far be it from Captain Jack Sparrow, as dubious associate, to refrain from being seen to turn some vestige of profit.
“Enough, mate. We’ll get no joy here.” And under his breath, pointedly: “I’ve a mind to trade a word or two with his lordship alone, savvy?”
But he followed the puzzled boy out along the dim-panelled passages, into the stifling shade of the porch with the glare of the stockade beyond, until Johnny turned at last with a frown. “But I thought—”
“Never you mind.” Jack threw a warning glance at the hovering slaves within the door, all ears, and saw with approval the other’s quick understanding and nod. “Have I ever held a knife to your throat?..”
An unspoken message passed between them.
“I’ve a notion,” the boy said slowly after a moment, raising fine brows, “that the talking mynah of ours would make a fine gift for his lordship; a return for his hospitality, and a token of the aid he furnished, though alas to no avail. And a conversationalist of such talent deserves a finer home than a mere trading brig... do you not agree, Captain Sparrow?”
An inspiration — and one after his own heart. Jack kept a straight face despite a flash of purely wicked glee. And young Fortescue could claim, with complete honesty, that he had not been able to understand a word of what the bird actually said...
Besides which, there was the practical side.
“Don’t you trouble yourself, mate. No need to ask. I’ll bring the bird back over— save you the trip —”
And get in, without the slightest appearance of collusion, for a private interview with the Count himself. For which purpose —if Felipe, Conde d’Orgonez, had one-half the degree of hearing he, Jack Sparrow, was ready to credit him with— he was currently most confidently expected.
Some thirty minutes later, he met the Count’s weary gaze and faintly enquiring eyebrow with a guileless look of his own.
“Ah, but my way, ye get the boy into the bargain — see?” He grinned, betraying a glint of gold. “Trust me.”