The Weakness in Me

Chap. 5- Love Has Me Bound

The door to the smithy slammed roughly, and the small bird took flight from the sign. It disappeared quickly over the tops of the buildings, leaving no trace of ever having been there. Will watched the small thing go, gritting his teeth against the anger he felt welling up inside of him. Ever since Jack had swooped back into Port Royal and sent him that damned letter, nothing was going as it should. Will couldn’t focus at work, he couldn’t look his wife in the eye, he couldn’t sleep and food didn’t taste. All he could taste in his mouth was the flavor of stale rum and apples. Jack had left his mark on him all right, and it was doing him no good to linger on it. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and started down the street. Maybe he could convince Norrington to let the pirate go; maybe he could convince him that Jack hadn’t been threatening him at all.

Elizabeth had come into his shop, breathing heavily and crying. He took her into the back and loosened her lacings for her so that she could cry comfortably without worrying about passing out. As soon as the soft yellow corsette’s lacings hung slack along her back, her words rushed out. She had gone to James Norrington. She’d told him that Jack was back and had been threatening Will. Jack had been arrested, and Elizabeth went to see him in prison. Will didn’t let her say anything else before he was moving, clawing his way out of the back room, out of the smithy. His apprentice looked up as he hurried through the main workroom of the smithy, but quickly averted his eyes when Elizabeth followed after, clasping the front of her bodice close to her chest.

She had stopped at the door of the smithy, yelling after him ‘don’t do anything stupid!’ He seemed to disappear just as rapidly as the bird that had fled the shop before him. She couldn’t follow him into the street and risk her father’s name for her loose clothing. She would have to send the silly apprentice boy to fetch one of her ladies to help her fix the damned constraining garment. She made a note to herself that this was the final time she would wear one of those damn contraptions. Men’s clothing made so much more sense than women’s sometimes. At least it wasn’t trying to strangle them from the waist up.

Jacob, Will’s apprentice, had his head ducked, tinkering at a horseshoe that needed to be flattened out more. His neat, curly, blond hair was tucked behind his ears and tied off with a blue ribbon. Cautiously, he glanced at Elizabeth and caught her eye.

“Jacob? If you don’t mind, I have an errand for you. As you can see, my husband left me in a rather unfortunate position that renders it impossible for me to go after him, or to go and fetch one of my maids. Can you run to our home and get one of the girls for me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And can you not speak of this to anyone, not even to one of your friends?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

”Good. Thank you, Jacob,” Elizabeth nodded her head and made her way back to the back room of the smithy. She clucked her tongue against her teeth, trying to work out her frustration at Will. There was no reason for him to get as angry as he did. Surely, James wouldn’t really hang Jack. She knew James respected the old scoundrel, despite his intense dislike of him.

*~*

James Norrington regarded the pirate with distaste. He had requested that Jack Sparrow be brought up for interrogations; now he was regretting this decision because the man was as hard as a coconut to get information out of. The only thing you could discern for certain about either thing’s past was what appeared on their rough skins.

Jack’s body was riddled with scars. This was evident from looking at the pirate’s arms exposed by his sleeves being rolled up past his elbow. There was that ridiculous tattoo that spoke of Jack’s surname. There was the brand that the East India Trading Co. had given him. James couldn’t even begin to fathom why they hadn’t put the thing on Jack’s forehead. No doubt the pirate had smooth talked them into putting it in a more discreet place. The leather piece that Jack normally wore on his hand right hand appeared to be hiding some kind of scar or wound embedded in the palm that he was obviously very self conscious about. Without the covering, the hand fluttered and hid itself amongst the sash that hung from Jack’s waist. The forearms were covered with various scars that Norrington could only guess at, and soon tired of guessing about. He sighed and pursed his lips.

“Well, Sparrow… let’s review what charges I can have you hung on.”

“I can’t begin to imagine,” sighed Jack, crossing his legs and tenting his fingers, elbows propped on the opposite side of the desk from Norrington. He remained in this posture for a moment before his self-consciousness rose again and his right hand disappeared, “I do wonder, though, exactly what it is you’ll do once you’ve hung me.”

“No doubt I’ll hang your crew,” James replied, shuffling through his papers, “and be a much happier man for it. Believe me, I will save on man power with less pirates to worry about.”

“Even if the pirates you’re currently worrying about don’t attack Port Royal?”

”Good riddance to any pirate, Sparrow, no matter where they attack. Port Royal is not the only English colony on this coast, and though I am loyal to her I am also loyal to my country. You’re a pest that I’ll be all too glad to remove from England altogether.”

“Oh, well then. A noble cause.”

James frowned and looked over the sheet of paper at Jack. The sheet detailed numerous, quite pathetic and bizarre, crimes that were attributed to Jack Sparrow. What profit was there in impersonating a clergyman for as long as he did? What profit was there in impersonating a soldier? How did he get away with it with that ridiculous amount of mange that made up his hair? The pirate was staring back at him in silence, his gaze distant. No doubt he was coming up with some hair brained plan to escape. There was something odd about this slight man that Norrington couldn’t quite identify. It was something in the way that he held himself, or how his words fell out of his mouth in an inane dribble that dulled the senses but was somehow… intriguing. This man had somehow managed to escape him any number of times in the past through pure blundering luck and some kind of hidden cunning. There had to be some way to know what was going on in his head. There also had to be some way to stop him from fluttering that damned hand around so much. It was beginning to get on his nerves.

James stood up and walked around the desk, grabbing Jack’s wrists and hauling him to his feet. The man was slight and didn’t put up any kind of fight until James pulled at his hands, trying to get a clear look at that palm. The brief glance he got of it before the hand fluttered away from him revealed a rather ugly scar in the center that looked as if it was ready to molder at any moment. Before he could grab the hand back, Jack had twisted away from him entirely, plucking his hat and the strap of leather that usually hid the wound from Norrington’s desk.

“What happened there, Jack? That’s not something any of my men did.”

”You’d be surprised what your men do to their captives, commodore, but no… it isn’t something one of your men did,” Jack’s lips twitched, and he performed something that was half a genuflect and half a warding gesture, “it was an err, of my own.”

“Let me look at it, Sparrow.”

”I don’t accept charity from people who’d like to hang me, thank you,” Jack cringed and pressed his palms together, “save them the time.”

Norrington made another move towards him and Jack sidestepped, trying to circle around the room. The interview had suddenly moved from something stationary to something wild and more free range. Jack didn’t like the sudden shift in tone, and he didn’t like the way that Norrington kept trying to look at his damned hand. It was none of the man’s business, very frankly, and what did he care for Jack’s wounds if he was just going to deliver him into the arms of death? Norrington made a grab at him again and Jack twitched, flinging himself to the side and into a hidden corner-nook of the quarters he hadn’t expected. He didn’t have time to move himself away before Norrington pinned him against the statue that occupied the corner. Jack clawed at him blindly, but he was the stronger man, pushing Jack’s spine in an uncomfortable way against the marble limbs contrived by some sculptor Jack didn’t recognize. He soon found himself utterly entangled with the statue, his head laying against a cold inanimate thigh, a pale stone face looking down at him without regard. His hands were twisted cruelly behind his back and Norrington was handling the right one, poking and prodding at the scar tissue. The investigation continued up Jack’s body, poking, prodding, grasping and pulling, as if the military man meant to pull him apart piece by piece and see how he ticked.

Perhaps that was exactly what Norrington wanted as he found himself pinning the pirate down with his own body weight against a statue of a reclined Zeus that had been a gift to him from his father upon his promotion. It was a ghastly thing that he hid in the back corner study of his quarters, where it was out of sight unless you wanted access to the two bookcases that were back there as well. Jack’s hair was as black as pitch against the Greek god’s marbled flesh, fanning out along the thigh and hip. The pirate smelled horrible and good at the same time, making being this close to him a mix of sensations. Norrington wanted to throw him into a washtub to get rid of some of that horrid reek. At the same time he wanted to discover what some of those other scents were. Was that patchouli that he smelt? Was that lime?

He reached into one of Jack’s pockets and found a few shillings and a rosary. The little piece of religion baffled James. Surely this fiend didn’t think he was going to heaven any time soon? He dropped the rosary on the floor with the coins, continuing his search, trying to dissect this man piece by piece. When the pockets were at last empty, there was a small assortment of strange items laying on the floor. The rosary, the shillings, a few francs, three glass beads and a length of catgut. James frowned at the findings. There was nothing so profound about them, nothing that really let him into the pirate’s head. The rosary was the closest thing to personal, and he highly doubted that it meant anything to Jack. For all Norrington knew, Jack had swiped it from one of his soldiers. He hooked his hand under Jack’s hip, noticing how the pirate flinched at the touch, wondering at the flinch, turning him around to face him.

The expression on Jack’s face was hard to discern. Norrington cupped the face in his hands, staring into the dark eyes that had been so distant before. Now he could tell Jack was in the here and now, staring right back at him. There was nothing in those eyes that told James what Jack was thinking, nothing that told him anything about the pirate.

“Tell me, Jack,” he heard himself muttering, leaning his forehead against Jack’s, “tell me.”

“I’ve got nothing for you, mate.”

“You infuriate me. You’re entirely a mystery. A stupid, blundering mystery that I cannot even begin to fathom.”

“Tearing me apart isn’t going to help, savvy?” Jack managed to slip away from him, moving across the room in his quiet, wobbling way. Norrington looked after him, leaning his back against the statue where Jack had been moments before. The pirate reached the doorway, and the two redcoats who had been waiting outside clapped him back in irons. James scooped up the debris from Jack’s pockets and hurried after, handing it to one of the soldiers.

“Make sure he gets these things back, and all of his other affects. Captain Sparrow will be leaving us in the morning, boys. He has no current criminal charges in Port Royal. He can take his ship and leave our port.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jack looked over his shoulder as the men escorted him down the hall, confused by what had happened in Norrington’s quarters and now out in the hall. Norrington was watching them leave, looking as confused about the exchange as Jack felt. He hung his head and returned to his desk, sitting down and beginning to draft another document on Jack’s imprisonment. He had decided on freeing Jack because there always was the thrill of the chase. Jack was certainly his best adversary on the seas and was right in what he had said. When he was gone, what would Norrington do? He looked up at the stuffed head of some animal from Africa that had come with the rooms when he’d been promoted. It had long, spiraled horns that twisted far above it’s hoary, undusted head. Looking at that stuffed beast, with the eyes that he couldn’t read… he thought of Jack. Before the animal was killed, it had a much greater value to the hunters. The chase. Afterwards, it left them nothing but its body. The body couldn’t tell you anything about what was inside that horned head. Or what was inside a pirate’s head. If he were to kill Jack now, he would never know any more about him. His appetite for that knowledge would never be sated.

*~*

William was waiting for Jack beside his cell when the soldiers threw him back inside and locked the door. He grumbled to himself, shoving his belongings back into his pockets, rearranging himself, and tying the leather back onto his hand. Will was staring at him the whole time, but he ignored it. He was already having a strange enough day without having to deal with the lad and his emotions.

“Jack, what happened?”

“Your wife had me arrested and I just had a rather close encounter with the nether regions of a Greek.”

Will stared at him, jaw falling slightly slack. Jack sighed and sat down on the floor, looking up at him.

“You… Norrington? He’s Greek?”

”Your father was a lot smarter than you.”

“What happened?”

“They took the Pearl, and threw me in here, with the crew over there. Our friend the Commodore wanted to see me so he could figure out how to charge me and get me hung, but after acquainting my face with Zeus… he thankfully decided to spare my neck,” Jack grumbled, picking at some of the straw on his pants, “so, me an’ the crew are setting out as soon as we get out of here.”

“When is that, Captain?” a voice drifted to him from the other cell, and Jack smiled to himself. It was the first time the crew had bothered to speak to him since they had all been thrown down here. It was Anna-Maria who spoke, leaning against the bars of the cell she shared with the men.

“In the morning. I wasn’t given a time for all my troubles, but we do get the Pearl back.”

“You owe us, Will, or at least your tart does,” Anna-Maria growled, turning her face away from the man who stood free, looking at them in their cages.

“She’s not a tart and I understand why she did what she did. You are all free in the morning, so there’s no reason to bear a grudge,” Will replied, then turned back to look at Jack, “right?”

”Savvy.”

A moment of silence passed between them where Jack thought about the peculiar exchange with Norrington, and Will thought about what he was going to say to his wife about this morning. He’d left too quickly. He’d fled her in anger, and now that that anger had passed with knowing that Jack was safe… he regretted it. For all he knew, she might still be hulled up in his shop, waiting for him to come back so he could lace her back into her top.

Wrath descended upon his head in the form of a yellow, feathered hat he had given Elizabeth for her birthday. It swiped him upside the head, then came down on the other side, a wild creature from some unspoken neck of the woods.

“How dare you!” the hat became more of an inanimate object again when Elizabeth’s voice joined the attack, “How dare you leave me like that!”

Will put his hands up in defense as the hat struck again. He’d been so absorbed by his thoughts that he hadn’t heard the sharp sound of her wooden heeled shoes descending the stairs. Now she stood above him, angry and beautiful with her ruined hat crumpled in her hands. Will had to admit to himself, looking up into her face, that he had never met a stronger woman than Elizabeth.

“Elizabeth, I’m sorry, I got angry—“

“Angry? Do you think I was not angry when I saw you and him through our window? Do you think I was not angry when you left the dinner table, ignoring my words? I have never left you in my anger as you have left me when you desire to go off and brew and not tell me a word about it. It is rude, William Turner, and I will not stand for it any more! You do not treat me fair in this union, as a husband should rightly treat his wife. You don’t talk to me, you show affection to… to him,” she gestured at Jack, who was staring up at her with interest, “and you certainly don’t trust that I might have the slightest idea of what I am doing. You have no respect for my personal dignity. It makes me sick!”

Will’s mouth hung open with the words that he couldn’t find to say. Elizabeth stood over him, delicate nostrils flaring in her anger, bits and pieces of yellow feathers slowly drifting to the floor. Her maid was cowering behind her. It was this strength that made Will admire her as well as love her. He had seen it turned against many others, but never him. She was a smart, capable human being that could spin the world around her fingers.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” he stammered again, unable to bring anything else out of his throat. Beside him, Jack coughed.

“I don’t mean to interrupt the two lovers, but if I may have a word?”

“Oh, what is it, Jack?” Elizabeth snapped, looking as if she was about to turn the dreadful hat on the pirate.

“Wonderful. I think what we all need here is some fresh air and better scenery for this conversation than a dank prison cell. You never hear one mention romance in conjunction, association, affiliation with prison. Maybe a French prison, but certainly not an English one. A colonial one. Aye?”

Will turned his stupefied look on Jack, and Elizabeth glared down at him, crunching her hat further. She was the first of the two to speak, “I’m sure you’ve noticed this, Jack, but you’re behind the bars in the prison and we are not. Aside from that minor detail, I think that it was altogether a good suggestion. Yes, Will. Let’s go talk about this in a better place than this dank prison, where there are so many ears.”

“My ears included, I suppose,” Jack muttered, and leaned against the bars, looking at them forlornly, “being the epicenter of the lovely couple’s marital problems, or so I have been lead to believe… perhaps there are those that I don’t know about… shouldn’t I be a part of the negotiations?”


“Fine then. You want to do this here, Jack? Will? We will. We’ll all sit down and have ourselves a nice talk,” Elizabeth heaved a heavy sigh and glanced over her shoulder for the guard. She was the governor’s daughter. If she wanted to sit down in a prison cell with a stinking pirate, she very well could.

The only thing that greeted her eyes when she looked over her shoulder was a mangy dog of questionable age, holding the key ring in its old jaws. In three quick steps she was upon the dog, grabbing the saliva covered key ring and pulling. The unfortunate thing about the process was that the dog wouldn’t let go. Soon, Will found himself holding the growling dog in his arms, turning it this way and that as Elizabeth fought with the keys. The smell of the animal was horrible and Will was certain that its fleas were migrating onto his shirt. Elizabeth jammed one of the keys into the lock and turned it. The lock creaked and popped open and Will was glad to be rid of the bedraggled keeper of the keys. The animal walked away with the keys clamed in its jaws, growling to itself as it passed the other cells as if warning the prisoners not to get any ideas.

Jack looked at the open door with longing as Elizabeth and Will entered the cell. Elizabeth sat herself down amongst the straw, arranging her skirts around her legs and letting the much crumpled hat drop to the stone floor. Will wasn’t exactly certain where he should sit, so he leaned against the back wall where he could see both his wife and his… what was Jack to him, anyways? He couldn’t really call the pirate his “lover”, or his “friend” because it was something deeper than that. Elizabeth coughed and brought him out of his thoughts.

“Well, what I really need to know about this is how it all started. I have an idea that it didn’t begin with what Will has told me. I feel that there’s more to the story of… whatever it is you two have decided to venture upon without regard to what I may feel about the situation,” Elizabeth paused, chewing her lip, “just tell me how it started, please.”

Will opened his mouth to speak, but Jack cut in, “It started before either of ye were born, really. If you want to be specific.”

They both turned to Jack and waited.