Exorcism

When she returned several minutes later with a candle and what looked like the remains of one possibly still applicable, Jack was already holding a piece of charred cloth the end of which was glimmering red in the semi-darkness of the moonlit night.She handed him the candles and watched him holding them to the cloth until the wax melted; then he carefully blew over the ensemble and by that miraculously set the wick on fire.

“Where did you learn that?” she asked, still looking at him in silent fascination while he lit the second candle.

“The cook showed me when I was a lad. He gave me flint and steel and I tried until I was able to do it on my own. It’s actually quite simple once you get the hang of it.”

He handed her the candles and put the charred cloth as well as flint and steel back into the little box before tucking it safely into his pocket.

“Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked while she watched him getting to his feet.

“I want to show you something.”

She handed him one of the candles, wondering how long this mysterious journey was going to last. The crewmembers that had stayed behind on the ship were probably already getting nervous because of their longer-than-expected absence and she reckoned Gibbs would turn up any second now, but Jack didn’t seem to care.

She wanted to ask him whether they should return to the hidden bay they’d anchored in, but when she looked at him, she saw that he was holding up the candle and muttering under his breath, obviously trying hard to retain a memory long forgotten.

“Come,” he finally said, heading for the rear part of the entrance hall the moonlight could not reach. He stopped in front of a passage that had once led to a corridor which … oh! So that was what he wanted to show her!

And while they climbed over the debris that blocked the doorway, she wondered why she hadn’t thought about the portrait in the parlour before. Probably because she had never wasted a conscious thought on it – and because the parlour hadn’t exactly been her favourite room in the house. It was a place to receive guests, have tea and play the cembalo, which perfectly explained why she hadn’t spent too much time there. Still, she should have remembered her, and if it was only because of the peacock feathers in the background the colour of which she had marvelled at as a child.

Amazingly, the corridor was almost intact, though the pictures had fallen off the wall and fragments of plaster were covering the floor. Jack didn’t say anything, but she could hear him muttering to himself, incomprehensible words that might have created an attempt to name the rooms they were passing. She got a glimpse at the staircase that led down to the cellar, almost entirely blocked now, and the vast oak door to the library seemed to be missing entirely, most likely lying on the floor and covered by dust and rubble. It was a scary place to be, only lit by the sparse light of the candles, and she sighed in relief when they finally reached the door to the parlour which was still partly held in place by the door hinges.

She remembered the room as vast and flooded with light and even now, with the extensive window-front missing, their candles were almost rendered useless by the moonlight coming in from outside. As far as she could see, the furniture was completely destroyed and what there might have been left of the silver candelabras and gilded clocks had probably been taken away by the horde of plunderers which undoubtedly had invaded the city only hours after the earthquake. Still, the atmosphere was oddly familiar and Jack seemed to feel the same, for he was holding his breath while his eyes took in the room in a silent expression of recognition.

He knelt down and brought up a piece of cloth which had once belonged to the cushioning of one of the armchairs.

“Your father didn’t have the furniture changed,” he stated quietly.

“No. My mother was already dead when we came here and he thought that it was up to a lady to arrange the parlour. So the room remained unchanged when we moved in, and he probably expected me to refurnish it one day. As you can see, it never happened.”

“What a pity,” he replied, pulling a face. “Don’t you think the yellow tapestry was madly annoying? Never quite fitted with the red carpeting …”

Elizabeth looked at him in complete amazement, then couldn’t help but burst out with laughter. “I wouldn’t have thought you the type to care too much about colours,” she replied, examining his worn blue coat, the torn shirt, almost grey from age and dirt, the pink scarf on his belt and the red one wrapped around his forehead. What an odd ensemble to wear for someone who took offence at the colouring of the tapestry in a parlour he probably hadn’t frequented at all!

Feeling her eyes upon him, he looked down at himself and stated with an over-exaggerated seriousness that almost made her laugh out loud again: “Pink is the perfect match for dark blue and the red adds very nicely to the overall picture. Only a completely ignorant person could fail to recognize that!”

“I never cared much about fashion. In fact, most of my dresses were bought by my father.”

“That’s pretty obvious, if you ask me.” Now it was his turn to let his eyes wander over her body, clad in breeches, a simple white shirt and a brown waistcoat. “But luckily, now you’ve met me and I can tell you that it should be a dress or nothing …”

“… and you happen to have no dress in your cabin,” she finished the sentence for him, grinning and surprised at their sudden intimacy. Back in the days when her world was still intact, she had always enjoyed their sparring, but it wasn’t until then that she realized how much she had actually missed it.

“Maybe I have.”

“So you’re unwilling to give it to me because you fancy wearing it yourself?”

“Only when I can’t avoid it …”

At that, she playfully slapped his side which made him jump backwards. He stumbled and almost fell, but got hold of the mantelpiece and managed to support himself.

“If we’re not going to be a little more careful, we’ll probably set on fire what’s left of this house in no time,” he gasped when hot wax tripped on his wrist, suspiciously eying the candle. “So let’s better get back to what we actually came here for. I think I may just have tripped over it.”

He handed her his candle and sank to his knees, rummaging in the rubbish below the mantelpiece, until he was able to pull out a rather large golden frame which held a torn canvas in place. Elizabeth knelt down next to him and though she already knew what he intended to show her, she was completely astonished when she finally looked into the face of the Indian princess. The canvas was damaged, but even the bad condition of the portrait couldn’t do any harm to her intoxicating beauty. She looked delicate, almost fragile, and the expression she wore on her elegant face was one of haunting sadness. Her resemblance with Jack was so striking that Elizabeth found it almost impossible to believe she’d never recognized it before. The big black eyes that dominated her features were Jack’s, as were the high cheekbones and if his hair hadn’t been braided, it would probably have been like hers, black, shimmering and soft.

She looked at the peacock feathers in the background, rendering the princess’s appearance even more exotic and mystical, and found that she didn’t know what to say.

“How did you know it was still there,” she finally asked. Maybe it was the wrong thing to say, but she felt she had to break the silence which had become almost menacing to her.

“Pintel and Ragetti,” he answered simply. “You’ll probably recall their visit. I overheard them talking about the house while on the Pearl and took up the opportunity to ask some innocuous questions.”

Oh yes, she remembered the day when Barbossa and his crew – cursed, back then – had invaded Port Royal to kidnap her because they thought her to be the daughter of Bootstrap Bill Turner. It was the day it had all begun, the day she’d never forget in all her life. The day he’d pulled her out of the sea … but no need to think about that now!

Forcing her mind back to the portrait, she asked: “Why does she look so sad?”

“My father had it painted after her death. He might have made a sketch from his memory and given it to the painter, or something like that. I have always wondered whether her face carries his sadness rather than her own.”

“She’s still beautiful. He must have loved her very much …”

“He did,” Jack said while he took one of the candles from her hands and got to his feet again, turning away from the picture as if he couldn’t bear to look at it any longer.

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was quivering again and Elizabeth immediately sensed that her question had struck a nerve. “Probably dead, and again, I can’t say I am not to blame for that as well. When Beckett thought me dead, he sent him a letter, informing him that his son had perished in a storm while on service for the East India Trading Company. My father, however, didn’t believe him, who knows for what inconceivable reason. He took some of the Royal Navy’s best men and sailed off to find me. As far as I know, he was last seen off the coast of Madagascar , then he disappeared along with the ship and everyone on board.”

“How strange …”

“Not at all. They were probably caught by a storm, or maybe they had an unfortunate run-in with a horde of pirates. I got to hear the story in some opium den in Singapore and the man who told me was beyond good and evil, so I cannot even say how much of the part I’ve just told you is true … .”

“My father died because he wanted to find me, so I guess we have something in common here.”

“Well, I guess we have.” And oddly enough, he smiled at her. It was a sad smile, but there was something incredibly comforting to it, almost a silent offer to share the burden they both had to carry, and she felt actually grateful for it, even though she knew she could never accept it. Neither from him nor from anyone, because she deserved no compassion and no forgiveness, not after all she’d done and all that had happened.

Suddenly, the darkness that had fled her heart during the past few minutes – minutes she’d spent with him – overtook her again and she found she couldn’t return his smile. Wordlessly, she turned her face away and looked indifferently at the sad remains of the cembalo her father had brought from Italy. It had been a birthday present and she’d actually tried to play, but never succeeded. In the end, the instrument had been completely out of tune and now the earthquake had silenced it forever.

“What about your mother?”

She startled at the sound of Jack’s voice, but continued to stare at the cembalo while she answered tonelessly:

“She died when I was five. One day, she started coughing and the next, she was dead. At least that’s how I remember it, but of course, she must have been ill for much longer than that. I don’t even recall her voice.”

“You don’t talk about her, I assume.”

“No … .” She unconsciously shook her head.

“You’ve neither talked about your father, nor about Will,” he stated as a matter of fact. “Not until today.”

Not until today …

The words echoed in her head until she came to realize that it was actually true. When she had learned that Will had stabbed the heart, she had been distraught enough to take some of the comfort Jack had offered her, but after that, she had neither cried, nor did she ever mention Will or his fate again. She’d mourned his death, she still did and it was hard to imagine the pain would ever stop, but what hurt the most, even more than the loss in itself, was the feeling of indescribable guilt.

She had betrayed Will, betrayed him to save him, but in the end, it didn’t really make a difference. After she had sent Jack to his death, she’d found that she could not trust herself, let alone anyone else trust her. She had loved Will, but it would never have been enough, never would have been what he longed for and, more importantly, what he deserved. He had tried to reach her, but she wouldn’t let him and in the end, he saw himself rejected and turned to what Tia Dalma had once called his touch of destiny. He might have kept his promise to his father, but there was no denying in the fact it had been her coldness and incapability to show she cared that had made him stab the heart in the end.

Sometimes she wondered whether she was emotionally dead, as dead as all the loved ones she felt unable to mourn openly. Yet, today, something had confronted her with it all. This place, of course, all the memories connected to it, all the memories of her father and Will, of another life – and Jack … yes, it was Jack’s share in it all that made her clutch her candle even tighter, shaking so hard the hot wax splattered all over her fist.

“Jack, what do you want from me?” she asked between clenched teeth, almost savouring the pain.

“I’ll tell you in a minute …now if you would be so kind as to give me your candle …”

Baffled, she spun around and found he’d discovered a silver candelabrum beneath the rubbish. He took the candle from her and put it into the candelabra, along with his own before he placed the heavy silver on the cembalo and directed his attention back to her.