Apprentice To The Sorcerer

I didn’t have the chance to approach Jack for intimate moments for the next week. Despite my precautions, influenza broke out on the isle. Peter, Sabado and I worked around the clock tending to the sick. We barely ate or slept. Out of more than five hundred people already on Jack’s island, two-thirds fell ill.

Jack himself did not fall ill. Neither did William. My mentor and I and even Sabado bossed them around at will. We had to get people well again. We were vulnerable like this. Jack and my former suitor took their orders with good nature and attentiveness, administering what herbs I could spare. I needed more but I could hardly acquire supplies.

Most of the people liberated from Figueroa were also hardy to influenza. I suspected they’d already had it at some point in their lives, being Londoners. No slight to my ancestors, but sickness seemed to follow large cities. I put these people to work boiling linens and making patients as comfortable as possible.

It wouldn’t have been so difficult with established dwellings. Had we completed any of our structures I would have been able to keep everyone together. I went from ship to ship, from tent to tent during my rounds. Peter and I divided up very often. He kept his wife isolated in the cave Jack and I used for our informal honeymoon after I told him where it was. He only too well understood how dangerous influenza could be to his wife and child.

The remainder of the healthy spent their time gathering and hunting food for those who could not feed themselves. In the middle of the week I realized more effort had to be made for this. Not everyone seemed to be getting a full belly, which I felt very important to recovery. I grabbed Pintel as he walked by with an armload of clean sheets, no doubt on his way to the Advocatus Diaboli. “Feel like a change of scenery?” I asked him.

“Do I ever,” he said lowly. “Blood is stirrin’ me nerves with ‘is dictatorship.”

I nodded. “Scorby,” I said, addressing her from where she sat beside Ragetti, who had fallen ill. Currently she was trying to wash his head. She looked up, tongue hanging out. Despite how tired I felt, I had to laugh. “Stick your tongue back in,” I chided. She complied. Pintel gaped at our exchange, then shook himself all over like a wet dog.

“I want you to go hunting with Telly,” I said.

Scorby yawned, stretched, and sauntered over to Pintel. She sat at his feet and looked up at him expectantly. Ever so cautious, Pintel patted her awkwardly on the head. Now that she weighed more than forty pounds and stretched out over four feet, she seemed quite fearsome. Most of the men who thought she made a cute kitten now gave her a wide berth.

“Take a really large sack with you,” I said to my crewmate. “Let her show you where the birds are. When she goes still, you know she’s looking at their hiding place. Lob a rock in there and just collect what she catches.” I looked around at the litters of men under the treeline. “When you fill up the bag, bring it back and go again. We have to make soup to feed all these people. Get cook to direct some people to collect vegetables of some sort, if he hasn’t fallen sick too.”

“Naw, ‘ees fine,” Pintel assured me.

“Good.” I waved him off. “Scoot. Leave the sheets with me.”

“With pleasure,” Pintel sighed.

I didn’t spare the time it would take to watch them leave.

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When so many people expose their underbellies, one loses an appreciation for decorum. Jack and I wordlessly sank right down on the sand together, bowls of soup in hand. We were exhausted. Feeling like I operated on a quarter of my capacity, I woodenly ladled soup to my mouth. It tasted quite good, if a little bland. We were running out of spices too.

“This ‘s bad,” Jack said. He too sounded tired.

“I know, but what else can we do?” I leaned on him a bit.

Jack sighed. “When more people are fit, we’ll sail,” he announced. “I want this island fully stocked and able to handle such emergencies. Also, if I have to conscript builders, I want our community finished. Decent housing would have made this much easier on you.”

My heart warmed at his concern, chasing away the fatigue of so many days of toil. I leaned in, kissing his cheek. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” I murmured. “We’ll get it done. I have faith.”

Jack smiled, seeming heartened by my words. His dark eyes flicked to me. “I have more faith in us than I do in me,” he said softly.

“I don’t hold faith with either of you.”

William stared down at us, his bowl of soup slowly leaking due to the dangerous tilt of his hand. His eyes sparked venom. He looked at Jack. “You’re an untrustworthy rogue.” He looked to me. “And you’re a faithless woman. You gave your body to him, didn’t you?”

Jack set his soup down. I put my arm out as he began to rise, holding him down. “Let him,” I said softly.

“You did,” Will said, sounding stunned at his correct assumption. “You slept with this…pirate.” He dropped his bowl. “You wouldn’t marry me, but you’ll roll around with him.” His lips curled up in a sneer of disdain. “How long? Were you sleeping with him before? Maybe you were letting him paw you long before I saw you kiss him?” He clenched his fists, breathed through his nostrils with the sound and force of smithy bellows. “What does he have that I do not, Elizabeth?”

I looked at him. “He has my heart,” I answered quietly. “Jack gives me his entire being. He never refuses me a gesture because of the way it might look to others.” I picked up Jack’s vodka bottle and drank from it, not dropping Will’s angry gaze. Swallowing, I mashed the end of it back into the sand. I felt compelled to aggravate him, spurred on by memories between us. He always gave me words of constancy and love, but he never gave me his body or his full attention. I’d floated adrift in a sea of longing, of unfulfilled passion.

“You don’t love me,” I told Will. “You love the idea of me. Jack and I share a star, Will, though I don’t expect you to know what that means.”

“You’re both fools.” Will fairly shook with anger. “You can play house together, screw, sail around and terrorize the ocean, but you don’t trick me. Neither one of you knows what a commitment entails. Neither one of you understands fidelity or honor.”

I bristled. How dare he say such a thing when he saw me toil day in and day out? “Fidelity and honor are pretty words for people who can’t look at their own ugliness,” I replied. “And thank you for giving me your approval. As soon as I’m finished with my faithless, foolish, dishonorable tending to the sick, I’ll sail around all I like.” I pretended to consider it, watching Will quiver with wrath. “And thank you for sanctioning the sex between Jack and I; I felt worried you wouldn’t understand about that.”

For a long minute I thought Will might surprise me and show some honest hate. He disappointed me. Spitting to the side, he strode off for the heavily wooded area behind us. I sighed. “He can’t even admit it,” I said sadly.

Jack returned to his meal, shaking his head. “I’m in awe,” he mumbled around a mouthful of broth. “When you put your mouth to the thoughts in your head, people bleed.”

“Bleeding people is useless,” I sighed again. “You can’t make people well by it. Leeches, now…”

Jack chuckled at my little joke. “I wouldn’t give you up for anything, I hope you know,” he vowed. “If I ever find myself in William’s position I’ll just kill your beau and drag you off.”

I ruffled his messy hair. “It won’t happen,” I said solemnly.

He met my eyes. “I know,” he agreed. “Our star is as strong as it ever was.”

We finished our tepid soup in silence. Scorby ambled over, taking her usual position beside Jack. He stroked her until she flopped down, exposing her belly. Playfully, he tapped her black nose. “I know a trap when I see one,” he admonished. “Tempt me all you like, but I see yer claws.”

Scorby chirruped her discontent. Jack smirked. “Why don’t you do somethin’ less evil and warm me side?” he invited, thumping his ribs. “Yer mistress has the other side. The least you can do is match her.”

Scorby seemed to grumble. Getting up, she plastered herself to Jack and looked up into his face. Her adoration of him couldn’t have been clearer. He scratched her behind the ears, smiling. “Good little kitty,” he soothed. “Yer a dear, sweet thing.”

This sent Scorby into convulsions of love. She bumped his hand, purring loudly. Her tail swished a fan into the sand.

“That’s what I do, too,” I commented. “And neither one of us has slapped you, imagine that.”

“Would hope the women I love wouldn’t slap me,” Jack said, smiling. He turned his head. “Are you still hungry?”

“No.” I set my bowl down. Someone would come along and collect it. “I’m just really, really tired.”

“I know you are, Lizzie-beth,” he murmured. “Come back to the Pearl with me and we’ll sleep in my bed.”

I barely registered Jack rowing me home. Like a clockwork, I climbed aboard ship. I heard Jack telling Gibbs to assign a guard to his cabin as I stood numbly. Soon, Jack guided me into his quarters. I stood unresisting as he stripped me. We fell naked into his bed.

His warm, hard frame leached the coldness from my body and soul. I forgot all about Will, all about the sick people on the island when I felt strong, pirate arms wrap around my waist. “Sleep,” Jack commanded softly. “Sleep, little Lizzie. Come the morrow you can be the warrior. For now you are only the most treasured woman on the entire ocean.”

I fell happily and safely asleep, the scent of patchouli, molasses and musk in my nose.