Disclaimer: Characters from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean are owned by Disney.
Plundered without permission.
No loot will be gained in the telling of this shaggy dog.

The Bones of the Matter
Jay Tryfanstone
2004

 

Summary: Jack arrives at night at William and Elizabeth's house with a treasure map. Wm agrees to accompany him. Jack leaves: Marciana arrives, and tells Wm and E Jack has stolen her ship. Wm says it's nothing to do with them.
He leaves in the evening and joins Jack on board. Next day, Jack reveals that they are being chased by a Chinese pirate also after the treasure. They elude the junk and sail to the island: on the way Wm finds out more about Jack's past. At the island they retrieve the treasure (after many adventures) and head back to the ship to find it in possession of the Chinese. They get the ship back, sail home.
In the meantime E and M are becoming good friends.

Please note, this is seriously unfinished. Intended gaps in the action are marked ~*~. Unfinished segments have action cues in parenthesis [...].
I am so crap at plot.
There are children in this story. Fair warning given.

 

There was a whisper in the Governor's kitchen that grew to a roar in the back rooms of the taverns on the wharf, a rumour that spread like rats in summer. A story, a canard, insouciant as the flip of the tip of a cat's tail, slipping easy through the candles of a silk merchant's dining table, lurking in the corners of half a hundred whispered conversations. With fear, with speculation, with a sideways smile and a flick of the hand and a jealous envy: the Pearl, the Pearl, the Black Pearl is back.

~*~

He dreamed of the sea. Which is odd in itself, for he was landsman born if not bred and in the two voyages he'd taken he'd been shipwrecked twice, once more than any one man should expect in his life and twice more than he should welcome. His were the elements of fire and earth, iron and steel, the arnaments of his trade and the tools of his living, but nonetheless when he dreamed he dreamed of the ocean and salt stung his eyes in the morning.

He woke, always, into the soft baby scented rises of Elizabeth's body and would roll over and hold her tight, making sweet and lazy love against the lonely chill of the night's rolling green billows.

Not tonight.

Tonight he woke to the smell of cordite and kohl and a weight thumped down on the bed that set the covers rolling and brought him up from his dreams like the drop of an anchor. Before he opened his eyes he reached with one hand for his wife and with the other for the sharpened cutlass he kept under the pillow.

"I don't think you want to do that."

"Don't I?" he said, and opened his eyes to the nightmarish vision of Captain Jack Sparrow sat cross legged and smiling on the end of his very own bed.

"Nice bed," Jack said. "Nice wife."

He grinned open mouthed with a gleam of gold as Elizabeth struggled up from the shore of the blankets, hair mussed and eyes owlish and beautiful. William looked at his wife, who blinked back with the bright ferocity that was his alone.

"Good morning, Jack," Elizabeth said. "You could have just knocked on the door."

"But wouldn't that be...boring?" said Captain Jack Sparrow, late of the purloined Dauntless, the stolen Interceptor, and currently of the free and anarchic Black Pearl.

"Just don't come any closer," Elizabeth said. "What do you want?"

"Sharp," Jack said, with his head on one side and his eyebrows pointed. "Very sharp. Are we talking financially? Educationally? Romantically? My dear, you appear to be already attached."

"So's he," said Elizabeth. She was a practical and clear sighted woman, his wife, and he loved her for it.

Jack's eyelashes flickered. "A hit, a hit, a palpable hit. You can set down the pistol. I mean you no harm." Indeed he was hatless and gunless and shorn of his steel: tricorn and pistol and cutlass lay by the fire like a tangle of very thin cats.

"Whose side are you on, pirate?" Elizabeth said, and the pistol she clasped in one hand did not waver.

"Didn't I save you from Barbossa?" said the man at the end of the bed. "Who was it who pulled you out of the sea? I'm Captain Jack Sparrow," he said, and he smiled. "You can trust me."

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow and cocked the pistol.

"It's a trap, partner," she said, from the corner of her mouth.

"I know," William answered, muttering, still dragging himself from the comforting tide of his sleep. "What does he want?'

"He wants you," Elizabeth said. "He wants you to do something for him. Something only you can do. He might want me as well, but someone needs to watch the business. Am I right?"

"It's a pleasure doing business with you,"Jack said. "Although I might not have phrased it quite so bluntly."

"Indeed. So, give."

"Come with me."

"Take him. What is it, Jack?"

And Jack settled himself on the bed as if he belonged there, turned his head to one side and raised a hand, fingers spread. He snapped them together like the folding bones of a fan, the strap on his palm an unlikely tassel.

"Did you ever hear tell," he said. "of the treasure of Santa Katrina? Sweet Kate, with her cargo of diamonds and pearls?"

"Santa Katrina?"

"Santa Katrina y Novidad y Cadiz, to be entirely exact, a gem, a pearl of a ship,"Jack said, and kissed the knuckle of one grimy beringed finger. His head turned, he grinned. "Too high waisted for me, and a little bit broad in the beam, but a sweet ship with a mint's worth of treasure inside her..."

"She was wrecked, the survivors buried the treasure.."

"You spoil the story."

"An I know you, it'll be fiction anyway. Cut to the point, Jack."

"You wound me."

"And so?' Elizabeth said. "No, don't tell...you've a map?"

"Of course I've a map. I'm a pirate. Map," said Captain Jack Sparrow, and pulled out from his sleeve the brassbound case of an antique telescope. "Ta-da!"

His fingers, unscrewing the cap, protruded at the odd angles of a sea anemone's fronds. "Messieurs, Mesdames...men died so I unroll this before you..."Something winked in the light, falling from uncurled parchment: a veritable waterfall of twinkling beads, tumbling across the bedspread and onto the floor. Jack, hands flattening, ignored them, but Elizabeth reached forward and picked one up.

It was a diamond.

She looked up, and the gleam in her eyes was distinctly piratical.

"More where that came from, pretty lady," Jack said. "Now, your attention please..."

Obediently William and Elizabeth leaned forward.

"Perceive," Jack said, leaning with them, so the swinging beads on his hair sent shadows dancing across the map. "Here we are...the island. The rest of it...is sea. Here be dragons," he said, trailing dirty and stuttering fingers around the edges of the map.

"Which way is north?" William asked.

Jack's eyelashes descended, deliberate exasperation, as he laid one finger on the compass rose.

"Landsman. Here."

"And the treasure?"

"Ahhh." It was a breath scented with pure and wicked desire. "In a cave, behind a waterfall, on a mountain marked by a lightening-struck pine, seen from a bay two leagues east of a rock like a sea-dog's chest..." His hands described sigils.

"Sounds easy enough," said Elizabeth. "Except...where is the island?"

:"Ah ha," Jack said, and laid one finger to the side of his nose. "That secret's not mine to tell, but I know it." He rubbed one hand against his wrist. "I have it. Are you with me?"

"Why me?" William said.

Jack leant his head further forward. Over the map, his forehead near touched William's: their breath intermingled, tobacco and morning. His eyes were extraordinary, close too, wide and brown and darkened with kohl and a slipstream of silver .

"There's dangers in treasure," Jack said, softly. "There's rumours of levers and traps, leathers and spoilers and dead men walking...Diamonds as big as an oyster and pearls the size of a clam..."

His voice was compelling. William leaned back, and pulled Elizabeth with him.

"You need an engineer."

He was haunted, in that moment, by questions unasked and long forgotten. He wanted, more than he could ever have guessed, to have Jack to himself in a dark room with no possibility of escape...To have the man owe him something. He squeezed Elizabeth's hand under the blankets, and felt her fingers tighten round his. She knew.

"Aie, I do." Jack said, leaning back himself between his paired, flared seaboots spread on the counterpane. "I need a man who understands....leverage. Balance. Serendipity of motion...I'll stand you a thirty-twoth," he said, peeping up under the sheaf of his eyelashes.

"Oh, will you," Elizabeth said. "Now, under the code..."

"It's just a guideline." Jack said, eyes flicked open and smiling.

"It's a ship's boys' share and it's not enough," Elizabeth said. "We'll take a whole share."

"She's right," William said. "We'll have a whole share."

"A half," Jack said. "My hand on it."

"Three quarters."

"A half. Word of honour."

"A pirate's?" Elizabeth said, more practical than William who'd been prepared to shake on it there and then.

"You can always trust...." Jack said, aggrieved.

"By the bones at your masthead. Swear it."

Jack's eyelashes flickered. "Done. I swear." He spat on his palm and held it out to Elizabeth, but it was William's hand that slapped down on his and sealed the deal.

"Done."

It was then, as William looked up into the triumphant glitter of the eyes staring into his, that the doorbell rung. Brassy and loud and far too early: all three of them drew in a breath of air that was laced with plots. Jack, map, boots: pistols and hat and cutlass: all caught themselves up and stood at the end of the bed, a spikey, twisted silhouette. "This evening. Frobisher Bay. Moonrise," he said, and was gone in a swirl of coatskirts and the gentle click of an unlatched window.

Even as William and Elizabeth turned to look at each other the voices downstairs rose to a thunderous roar and an ominous thud. There were boots on the stairs and hands on the door: it rattled, and then the kick of a boot sent it springing back. Intemperate, tumbling, two men and a woman with long hair and ribbons and the flash of an unshielded knife blade.

"Has he been here?"

"Who?" said William. "Who are you?" He was beginning, with secret glee, to find himself unholily amused for a man who was nominally a respectable and godfearing citizen.

"You're well awake for a trader who earns his gold in the daytime." said the woman "Have you seen him?"

"This is my house," William said. "This is my bedroom, and I'll thank you to leave me in peace." He had no more protection than the linen skin of his nightshirt, but Elizabeth's pistol held steady beside him, wide-mouthed and primed.

"Jack Sparrow. Remember the name? Remember me?"

"He stole your ship."

"Eight years, and the man still thwarts me. He's been here. I smell it." She was moving backwards and forwards over inches of floorboard like a leashed pointer. "What did he want?"

"The only person through that door tonight," Elizabeth said, grammatically correct. "Has been you. Leave us in peace."

"He sold my ship!" the woman cried, and then, cunning, "How would you feel, if he took one of your children...."

Elizabeth shuddered.

"A ship is not a child, and your troubles are not ours," William said.

"Sold it for paper...He's been here," she said. The white of her eyes gleamed. "I smell kohl. What did he want with you? Where is he? Tell me!" At her back one man drew the edge of his thumb along the blade of a cutlass.Smiled, revealing a mouthful of gold and black teeth.

"We have not seen him," Elizabeth said. She was always better at lying than him.

"You owe me," Marciana said. "Woman to woman, you owe me. Do you know what he did to me?"

He could feel Elizabeth's spark of interest. "You're a pirate. What could he do that you did not sign up for?"

"Took my baby, my beauty, my Serpent...Robbed me and left me homeless and dry in a port with no market. Six months. Six months! I'll ne'er maid again, I swear it. I'll kill him for this."

"In truth, a hard fate," William said. "But we have nothing for you."

"No? Then what's...this?" She bent, and plucked a single diamond from a crack in the floorboards. "Landsman, you lie."

"That's mine," Elizabeth said.

"I think it's mine," Marciana said, watching it glint in the light, one hand on the hilt of her cutless. "You tell him I'm watching you. You tell him I'll find him. I'll pin him up to the yardarm by the heels of his boots and the knots in his hair. You tell him."

In a muted gleam of dark skin she turned and left. Behind her, one man kissed the blade of his steel, looking at Elizabeth, but the pistol she held followed them both out the door.

In a space of silence measured by the echoing retreat of four pairs of sea boots, one vanished, one vanquished and all pirate-sworn, Elizabeth stared across sheets still rumpled and warm and said "This is madness."

William raised an eyebrow.

"Aie, and I would I came with you." Elizabeth said. "Come here."

They made love on a bedspread of diamonds.

~*~

That morning, morning proper in daylight, William packed his chest under the gaze of three pairs of bright eyes. He packed pistols and linen and shot: a hammer, pliers, silver wire, a set of logarithmic tables and a quadrant he'd won from a man in a tavern three years ago and never used.

"Daddy, why are you going?"

He packed three clean shirts and a purple-frogged waistcoat he'd never had time to wear.

"Daddy, when will you be back?"

He packed three throwing knives, then changed his mind and tucked two of them into his shirt. On top, he spread a sheet of oilskin against the salt of the sea and girded it up with a flax-spun rope still golden and new.

"Daddy..."

He spun round and plucked all three of them from the side of the bed: his wife, his daughter, his son, all clean and sweet smelling, held them close. "I'm going for treasure," he said, into the mass of curls and ribbons held tightly under his chin. "I'll bring you back bracelets and rings and glorious things.." He held the treasure in his arms closer yet.

"Pieces of eight!" George squealed. "Daddy, bring pieces of eight. Will there be pirates? Will there be monsters?"

"Aie." William said. "More than enough of both, shouldn't wonder." He let the armful go, through Betty clung to his trouser leg with tiny fingers and there were tears on the soft brown of her eyelashes. He knelt.

"I'll be back, sweeting," he promised. "I'll bring molasses and ribbons. I promise."

"You'd better," Elizabeth said to his bent queue, but he knew she was smiling.

~*~

He left the same way that Jack did, over the rooftops and down, hampered by the chest in his arms and the weight of a stiff pair of boots Elizabeth had sent for that very afternoon. For eight years he'd been leaving legitimately from his own front door, but tonight he was remembering things he'd forgotten: the weight of Aztec gold in his hand and the way it felt to kill a man and have him rise laughing before you, living yet. He was careful and silent, slipping between shadows, cloaked, and marked the watchers before they saw him. On the way he passed by his own closed workshop, neat and fresh-painted and barred against the night. Give him gold, and he could build the smelting forge he dreamed of, start making blades folded like Japanese steel...he shook himself, and trotted on in the darkness. These were dreams for daylight. It took him two hours to walk to the bay, but that was an hour yet until moon rise and he sat on the rocks, waiting, remembering. By the time the moon sent the first sliver of light dancing across the quiet sea he'd almost talked himself home, thinking of Jack's intricate mess of betrayals and plots. There was more to this than Jack told, he knew it.

Yet much as he loved the quiet respectability of his house and his work and his family, he'd never felt so alive as in those mad days before his marriage, Elizabeth bright and unwon, and Jack laughing, a madman in boots... He'd missed the gold gleam of that smile and never even realised.

He heard the creak of rowlocks before he saw the boat with its single figure slip from the rocks of the bay. Against the growing curve of the moon, full tonight, Jack's tricorn sat rakish and proud, his shoulders broad as he pulled on the oars. Twenty feet from shore and the man stopped, resting the oars, and William waded into the sea with his sea chest on his shoulder. Jack never even turned his head. He pulled himself over the counter, careful not to tip the boat, and sat down on the thin bench. Jack dipped a single oar and sculled, turning them. Even in moonlight, his coat gleamed in the worn patches where the moleskin had rubbed, and his hands on the oars were bound with cloth that was battered and stained. Where had he been, these eight years? What stories could he tell? Tall tales of dead men and rum and the sea...

They rounded the point and now William could see the Pearl, her sides looming in the deep-water anchorage. Her sails were furled, but looking up, he could see the figures at her yards ready to drop canvas, and she pulled at the line of her anchor sheet as if eager to leave. She was an elegant ship, the Pearl, French built, the fastest frigate this side of Mauritious with a rakish tilt to her bow and a spread of sail that rivaled the Governer's lady in lace. At her masthead, almost unseen, flew her badge, her honour: her skull and crossbones, the marque of her trade. Pirate. She was a pirate's lady, this ship, and he was a-pirating too: he felt the blood warm in his veins as they come up to the black-straked timbers and someone threw them a line. He couldn't match Jack's easy, swarming grace on the rope, but he was quick enough. Even as he set foot to deck he heard the rustle of canvas and the ship shuddered beneath him like a live beast, setting her bow to the sea. Around him feet thudded quiet to the deck, and Jack was saying softly:

"All well, Mr Gibbs? You take the watch. Set course for Guinea and all points east...we're on our way."

The ship looked cleaner and neater then when last he saw her, although the dark lamp at the wheel spread little light on the deck and he marveled again at the quiet crew's sure-footed speed.

"William?"

He turned.

Jack was already walking to the stern deck cabins. On land, his gait was eccentric: on a ship, he moved with the roll of the boat as if they calved from one mother. William, following, stumbled his way between coils and pulleys and felt once again a dislocation of place and purpose. He was shedding his skin, becoming something other, something brighter and more dangerous. He was pregnant with possibility. Anything could happen. Anything.

Jack's cabin was bright with gimbaled lanterns and gilt. There were chests spilling silk and a table spread with charts and a green Spanish flagon with wine: there were swords and a fishing rod and, unexpectedly, there were books scattered like birdseed, open and piled and drifted in corners. The man himself sat at the head of the table and reached for a glass: William put his chest down, carefully, and sat himself.

"To treasure!" Jack said, and tilted the glass: over it, his eyes were bright and expectant.

"To treasure," he echoed, and drank. Eight years passed, and it could have been minutes. He'd never needed explanations with this man.

"So," said the pirate at the head of the table. "To smithing? To ingots? That one suits both of us..." He swirled the wine in the glass, smiling.

"To promises." William grinned back. "And stories...Jack?"

"The one and only."

"I'm not just here for the gold."

"I know that."

Across the tumbled silk and charts, the gleaming mahogany of the table, grey eyes met brown and held. Stories untold. But not tonight: the peace was too fragile, the alliance too new.

"So," William said, setting the glass with its undoubtedly excellent vintage down on the table. "Tell me about the map."

Jack set his own glass down. He was smiling still, under the loquacious, lying line of his eyebrows.

"What's to tell? I'm a pirate. Pirates always have maps. It's a tool of the trade. This one even has an X. You know, X marks the spot..."

"I saw it. Jack, have I ever struck you as a stupid man?"

"Hmm," said the pirate. "Culpable, occasionally incapable of seizing the moment, willfully blind..." Jack's eyelashes dropped. "Stupidly loyal and trusting to a fault." His fingers beat a tattoo on the table, reminiscent of a more distant and fatal drumroll. "But stupid? No."

"Then." William said. "Where did you get it?"

Jack cocked his head to one side. "That's easy," he said. "In a bar on Tortuga. Ten a penny. I paid honestly for it."

"You paid a ship for it." William said with certainty.

"You're well informed," Jack answered, shifting in his chair and reaching for his glass. "For a map with no bearings. How did you know?"

[...]

Jack shrugged. His hands raised, fingers flicked open one by one, empty and appealing.

"Aie," Jack said. His face was still lowered. He turned away from the light. "And it's three quarters past the hour already, and I'm for my bunk. Here."

Thrown across the room, William caught, in succession, two silk-covered cushions, three blankets and an unrolling spread of Calcutta silk worth the cost of a pallett of steel.

"I'd offer you more but....you're no sailor," Jack said. "And I wouldn't commend the hold." He was sitting on the edge of his own bunk, set dark into the paneling: as William watched, he drew himself up, coat, boots, pistol and all, rolled himself round and slid into blanketed darkness. Gone.

Left, in essence, alone, William looked doubtfully at the cloth in his hand and the space of the floor. He ended up sleeping on silk, back braced against chests that seemed crowded with rivets, and every roll of the Pearl sent him bruising against them. Sleep was elusive. He turned Jack's words in his mind as he turned on the deck, for he'd missed something somewhere, he knew it...

~*~

Morning caught him sleepy and bruised and alone. He woke slowly, listening to the voices over his head in bemusement, sorting out cry from complaint ("Brace that mainsheet, you lubber! Set trim, or I'll tan you a hide out of catskin!") He could still hear seagulls, which meant they were not far from land. The ship's timbers were creaking, set to strain, and he suspected a full set of sails and some speed. Also breakfast. There was the scent of fresh-ground coffee in his nose, for which he was profoundly grateful, for the craze for tea had passed him by and he needed a gentleman's drink in the morning. He untucked himself, folding and neatening, and poured himself breakfast and drank it. The bunk was empty. He smiled, looking at it, for Jack had, God Bless, slept in his sea boots last night ...maybe it was something of piracy.

Fortified, dressed, he ducked through the door and onto the deck. In front of him the Pearl's masts carried acres of canvas, and he could see men moving among the lines, trimming and checking: the old mariner, Gibbs, was standing on the foredeck with telescope in hand, shouting, and there was ne'er a man on the deck he could see. Even as he watched, Gibbs shouted. "Now!" Above his head more canvas unfurled, sheets set to the side of each mainsail, and he could feel the timbers of the boat shudder and groan as the wind took them. He might be landsmen bred, but he lived by the sea: he recognised studding sails when he saw them. Dangerous to the ship to carry too long, the extra canvas was used only for speed in emergency. He looked forward: turned round, saw the steps to the wheelhouse and ran up them.

And stopped.

On land, Captain Jack Sparrow was a flighty beastie, all angles and spikes and sliding charm. At sea, on the quarterdeck of his own ship with the wheel in his hands, he was a different creature. His stance, open and easy, the speaking gentleness of his fingers: the tilt of his hat and the set of his shoulders.

Freedom.

It sung in the lines of Jack's coat and the faint smile on his face, the look in his eyes as he checked wind and sails and trimmed course, as the Pearl answered his hands like the lady she was. Indeed, Jack's hands on the wheel stroked and caressed as if it were flesh under his skin...

William shook himself. Of course the man loved the sea, and the ship that bore him: that was what made him the man he was, and it should come as no surprise. Staring like an elf-struck schoolboy, indeed. He took three steps forward and stood shoulder to shoulder behind the wheel.

"What is it?"

Jack jerked his head back over his shoulder. "See for yourself."

He turned, and over the carved rail of the stern deck saw for the first time a ship that he'd not seen the like of before. It was the sails: not canvas but..fabric?... folded and rung like the leaves of a fan, golden in sunlight: the hull long and low.

"What's that?"

"It's a junk." Jack said, behind him. "Chinese. She sails closer to windward than we do."

There was a sharp crack, and William saw a puff of smoke from the Chinese ship's bow: seconds later he ducked as he heard the all-to familiar whine of a shell. Wood splintered.

"Would it be stupid to ask," he said. "What's happening?"

Jack turned his head and grinned, even as the Pearl's own stern chasers spoke in response, a deep growl. They both watched as water plumed on either side of the junk's bow.

"It's a little matter..."

"Of a stolen map?"

They shared a grin. William could not even find blame in himself, for he'd known Jack was not telling him all.

"You can tell me about it later." he said.

Jack's eyelashes flickered.

"All of it," he said, and went down the steps to kick the smoldering shell off the deck and lend a hand with the ropes.

Jack was right. That was the closest the junk got, and as the sun set in a blaze of gold the last they saw was the tip of her masts above the horizon. The Pearl, however, shook still, stretched under a weight of canvas that drove her pitching into the sea: Jack was taking no chances.

 

[....]

 

Now the moment had come, although he had known it would when he'd opened his eyes to Jack's face in the night, he felt almost reluctant.

"I want.."

"You are William Turner," Jack said. "Of course you want. He wanted too, we all did. It's just that what you want is different from what I want or he wanted or even Barbossa wanted...Ask. I took it as part of the price."

"Will you tell me truth?"

Jack laughed. His face, when the laugh faded, was innocently blank. William felt a moment's unease. He knew that face: it was the face Jack wore when he had something to hide.

"Consider," the pirate said. "A man is what he makes himself, not the sum of his father's desire. In the dark...." Jack said. "We are all the same."

"I still want to know. He is my father."

Jack put the glass down on the table and stood, easy against the slow roll of the ship. His fingers stretched under there wrapping of cloth, almost unconscious, and his lashes were lowered against anything William might see in his eyes.

"He was a landsman born," Jack said, his voice low. He walked to the shelves at the side of the cabin and stood there, away from the lanterns hung over the table. "Devon, I think, of tin-mining stock. He'd a mind to travel, from what he said: he met your ma in Derbyshire when he was peddling. Never said a word against her."

William nodded, once, slowly, for that was a kindness he had not expected.

"He was pressed in Plymouth, visiting: shipped on the Ranger and then on the Brave George. Decided he'd had enough when the Captain striped his back off Jameston and ran two weeks later. That's the story he told, anyway, and he bore the scars on his back to prove it."

"And so?"

"There's nowhere to run to, when you run from the Navy. They always catch you in the end, unless you've relatives to hide with, and a white man in port in these parts stands out like a maid in a brothel. He went pirate 'cos that was the choice he had, same as us all, but he had a liking for it."

"He never came back." He hadn't meant to say that, and Jack's eyes had opened into his as if the man knew.

"He had no choice. He wrote, and that's more than.." Jack stopped.

"Aie," William said, reaching for the flagon. "He wrote, and that's a tale in itself."

Jack's eyebrows rose. "If he hadn't, you'd not be here, my sweet, my blacksmith, there'd be no sun and no workshop and no sweet lady to light you to bed...He did you a favour, methinks."

"No," William said. "The writing. I learned from Elizabeth, when we were children: but where did he learn?"

Jack's hand, fingers stretched, reached out to touch the leather bindings on a stack of books shelved.

"Methodist," he said succinctly. "Wesleyan. Carried his bible.." His voice broke off.

"What are you not telling me?" William said. He was fascinated by the way Jack's hand clenched, and then opened, a deliberate relaxation.

"He taught me to read," Jack said. His voice was clipped and harsh. "We bunked together, once. Not on this ship. He was a good man, in some ways."

"He taught you to read?" William asked. He was astonished. It had always seemed to him as if Captain Jack Sparrow had risen fully formed and self made from the waves like some modern Prometheus. Was it Prometheus? Primaflora, perhaps: he must ask Elizabeth.

 

[....]

 

"No. You don't understand," Jack's smile was dangerous, all teeth and gold and power. "You're no sailor. Landsman." He stared down for a moment, then flung himself away with an impatient flick of his coat, stalking over the deck.

"Why does he keep saying that?" William said, watching Jack's back retreating down the steps.

"Take a look around," Gibbs said, at his shoulder.

He looked down. Jack, crossing the main deck: Phipps and Petey and Blackie, sewing broadcloth, Tom in the corner with the ship's cat and a wad of cloth on a string, Shropshire Joe and Davy in the shadow of the foredeck...what?

"See any women?" Gibbs said.

He turned round. As he looked into the older man's sympathetic gaze realisation dawned in slow waves of shame. Hotbunking. Joe's hand on Davy's shoulder. The sound of a bitten off cry in the night, overhead on a trip to the heads.

"Oh," he said slowly. "Oh."

And Gibbs nodded once and left him alone.

 

[...]

 

"Didn't you know?" Jack said. "A lightning struck pine...that marks treasure...can only be seen by the light of the moon."

He was grinning into the darkness, moonlight catching the beads in his hair.

"Tell me," William said. "Do you have a constitutional objection to telling the truth, or is it just particular?"

Jack turned his head. His eyebrows rose: his eyes were wide and astonished.

"You have no sense of romance," he said. "Moonlight, treasure, a knightly quest.."

William snorted with laughter. "Romance? You?"

"You'd be surprised," Jack said dryly.

"Well, unless I'm mistaken," William said, "ain't no one here but you and me."

"Quite," Jack said. "Landsman." His hands tightened on the rail. "Look. Now. Open your eyes, William"

He was looking out over the sea. William followed the line of his eyes.

"On the ridge."

"Yes, I see it," Jack said. He reached into his pocket and drew out a battered compass: William was pleased to see that this one, at least, had a needle that appeared to work.

"Pencil? Paper?"

Obediently William reached into his jacket as Jack raised the compass to his eye, fingers extended as if he took tea with a Duchess. "273 degrees, 281....and 293 to the peak. Got that?"

"Yes?"

"And to check...70 to the tip of the rock...352 to the eastern cape of island. How are you with....bearings?"

"I'm fine." William said. "How are you?"

"It's been awhile," Jack said. He closed the compass case with a definite snap. "Let's go below and play, shall we?"

 

[...]

 

"Your bodice is ripped."

 

[...]

 

It is entirely possible to set out on an adventure without leaving your bedroom. Elizabeth, smiling, set herself to exploration.

 

[...]

 

"Jack? Is someone following us?"

Jack turned round. In the light of the torch his eyes gleamed, and the shadows he cast on the walls of the cave were fantastical.

"You think so too?" he said. His eyes slid sideways, wide and elusive.

For a moment, they stood like that, frozen, and listened to the patter of a falling stone disturbed by neither pirate nor armourer. Then Jack shrugged.

"Warned you."

He turned and walked on.

For a moment William considered the question of his own sanity. Then he walked forward.

 

[...]

 

They emerged, dirty and blinking, into the clear cool sunshine of a tropical morning. The light was almost painful, after the dark of the caves, but the air was fresh and intoxicatingly free of the scent of must. They stood on a ledge, above the waterfall . Beneath them, rocks laddered down to the clear blue of the pool, and the tumbling water sent spray plumeing through air to land soft on ledge and fern and skin alike.

"Whopee!" Jack said, gazing with unlikely benevolence at the spread greens of canopy and undergrowth.

"Gadzooks!" He stopped. "There are occasions, you know, when a pirate's vocabulary is irritatingly restrictive." He was taking off his coat, pearls spilling in chains from his loaded pockets. Hat too, down on the pile. He turned round, balancing on the balls of his feet in their wide boots: his eyes shut, slowly. "At this moment in time," he said. "I love the world and everything in it."

He let himself fall backwards, a black, winged cross against the far below blue of the pool.

"Jesus Christ!" William said, rushing forward in time to see the gargantuan splash as Jack hit the water. It was a long time before he surfaced, shaking his head: droplets rainbowed in the dappled light.

"Come on in!" he shouted. "The water's fine!"

William, more somberly (he'd never felt the same way about water since those desperate moments in the belly of the Dauntless) followed, clambering down over the rocks with chest and coat clasped firmly in his hands. He took off his boots, too, before wading into the pool, noticing Jack's set sopping on the rocks.

The water was cool and clean and stinging in his cuts, reminding him just how good it felt to be alive. He cleaned himself off in the shallows and then swan, long lazy strokes, across the pool to where Jack stood under the waterfall. He'd shed shirt and boots along the way, and stood bare chested and breeched with his hands spread in the white spray, face upturned. Water splashed off his shoulders, made of his hair a shining pelt. Gratitude hit William with a rush of surprised warmth. Had it not been for Jack, he would never have made it into this kindly sunshine alive.

"Jack?" he said, but the pirate did not move. He laid a hand on the man's back, moving forwards, and Jack turned into his clasp. He knew a moment's terrified excitement when the man's mouth., blind, came down on his: a furnace of sinful warmth against the chill of the water. Mobile, strong, the mouth against his teased and flattered, coaxing, then as he yielded, became heavier and stronger and more demanding than he would have thought possible. He could feel panic war with a rising curiousity, but all of his suddenly ravenous body was rising to Jack's mouth: skin, hands, cock, blood..

"Surprise," Jack said, brown eyes open wide and unnervingly close to his own. Then his fingers left William's skin, one by one, and he stepped away, into the waterfall, turning his back.

William, left high and dry, stared after the pirate. All the blood in his body had gathered at its core, his breath was short, his skin tight: he felt almost betrayed. Did the pirate think he was alone in this jousting, the constant to and fro of innuendo and half-veiled hints?

Disturbed, he turned his own back and swam slowly across the pool, thinking, and dragged himself out to lie drowsy and drying in the heat of the sun.

Eventually Jack came to join him, lying starfished in breeches and shirt with his head pillowed on his coat.

"What now?" William said, turning his head to watch Jack's unlikely profile cocked against the vivid green of the trees.

Jack shrugged. "Find the Pearl, lay course for Port Royal. Take your winnings to Elizabeth. What was it you wanted? A smelting forge?"

"Aye," William said. He rolled over. "I saw, once, a blade of Japan steel. It was folded and patterned, scarred, but beautiful: it could slice the breath from your mouth or the thoughts from your head.." His voice echoed with want.

There was a pause. Jack angled a look across the dappled grass between them.

"You sound like a man in love," he said.

William grinned. "Not love. Lust, perhaps."

He rolled over onto all fours and began stalking towards the man beside him. Stripped almost bare without hat and coat, Jack's was a slim figure, broad shouldered, pleasing to the eye. But it was Jack's face he watched, as the eyes watching him widened but did not drop. He was close enough to touch. It was the moment to stop, if he was going to, and the moment Jack could stop him, if he was going to. But Jack did nothing and William crawled up the long wet line of the pirate's body, the heat of him amazing where his own thighs and arms brushed against Jack's. The pirate's eyes followed his, but the rest of him did not move: William took it as a good sign. His own body was sending him triumphant signals of impending possession, his cock full and heavy against the tight wet cloth of his breeches and his skin awake to every sensation, breeze, sun, flesh.

He stopped with his hands either side of Jack's head, bodies ten inches apart.

"What do you want?" he said. He barely recognised the sound of his own voice, it came deep and heavy with lust.

Looking down, Jack's eyes were wide, dark, carefully blank, his body lax and unresisting.

 

[...]

 

He looked down at his own aroused sex with wide-eyed astonishment, as if it were nothing to do with him.

 

[...]

 

But he only groaned, deep and aching and cracked, as if the ocean's bed rock shifted.

 

[...]

 

"I am haunted by the thought of him, tied to that chest under the ocean. Forever immortal."

There was a long silence. Then Jack said from his side of the bunk - "So am I."

It was as near a neutral tone as he had ever heard from the pirate. He rolled over in surprise, but Jack was staring at the paneling above his head.

"Then help me find him."

"No," Jack said.

"What?'

"No. Never." He was still staring at the ceiling. William looked at him. Jack's lips were firmly compressed, the muscles along the line of his jaw taunt. He did not turn his head.

"Jack?"

"Some things," Jack said, low and quiet, "come full circle...in the most unexpected ways."

William said nothing at all. He fell asleep, watching Jack watch the wall above the bunk.

 

[...]

 

Watching the shore advance over Jack's shoulder, William narrowed his eyes.

"Jack?"

"What is it?"

"I wouldn't come any closer, if I were you."

There were two figures waiting for them on the jetty, standing close together. One of them was tall and wore a new hat with scarlet ribbons streaming out in the breeze, and one of them was smaller and bareheaded and had skin like the sheen of a good cup of chocolate. That was the one with a pistol in her hands.

Jack let the oars still and twisted round. His eyes opened, and his mouth, rounding.

"Ooops," he said.

"I think I'll get off now," William said. There was a sharp crack, and water splashed up by the bow.

Jack's eyes slid backwards. "It's been fun."

William caught up his coat and his chest: he'd have to swim the first bit. He kicked off his shoes and left them, slipped over the transom and rested his hands on the wood, looking at Jack. Water splashed again over his left shoulder.

"I'll see you."

Jack pursed his lips, nodding. "Don't miss your watch, now, sailor." He lowered the oars to the water, pulling strongly: the boat began to turn, pulling William with it.

"Pirate." He let go, paddling, chest clasped awkwardly in one hand, and watched Jack pull back to the Pearl for a long minute. Then he turned, and set out for the shore. The tall figure was still standing there, waiting, and there were two smaller figures waving by her side. But forty yards from shore and gaining was the woman who'd tumbled into his bedroom three months before, face set. She held the blade of a knife between her teeth, and in the long plaits of the hair tied up on her head he saw the glint of a pistol. Passing, sending bow waves of seawater in patterns between them, he nodded to her and winked, and was surprised by the gleam of conspiracy in the returning smile that gleamed round steel.

Then there was only the sand beneath his feet and the two small, warm bodies that flung themselves into his arms.

"Did you have fun, with your pirate?" Elizabeth asked, later, in the smoky scented warmth of their bed.

"Aie," William said. He gathered Elizabeth close, all the long lovely curves of her body and her hair, soft and scented. And her mind. He loved this woman, would love her to the end of his days and beyond. "And yours?"

He could feel Elizabeth's slow smile against the skin of his shoulder.

"Aie." she said.

Fin.
This really is the end.
Shame about all the bits in the middle. Sorry.