Apprentice To The Sorcerer

We caught a Portuguese ship two days later. I mended gashes with thread meant for our sails, set bones with shards of wood, and gave rum to those who needed relief. We lost none of our own crew. Jack set the enemy crew into longboats with rations and water. He scuttled the ship.

In the late afternoon, all patients tended to, I looked for my captain. He usually stood at the helm. Indeed, I found him there. He gave me the same smile he gave everyone else, but I saw a question in his bitter-coffee eyes. “I didn’t tear them loose,” he said by way of greeting, a bit too hastily.

I didn’t believe him and told him so. Behind him, Gibbs made a sound halfway between a cough and a whimper. Wordlessly, Jack handed over the wheel like a child surrendering his favorite toy. He preceded me to his cabin.

“I know what yer goin’ to say,” he pronounced, beginning to strip off his coat. “But what I have to say will belay what you have to say, unless you say something completely different, which would give me no say.”

I threaded my needle, not looking at him and trying not to make sense of his bewildering grasp of English. A bright spot of red in his direction made me turn quickly. He had a large wound on his leg, still bleeding. I must have been looking at him rather hard, for Jack’s body wound into a defensive stance. On any other man that would have been something like watching someone swell up like a puffer fish. On Jack it meant he began to angle his body backward while looking innocently up at the bulkhead.

“If you want fixed, stay here,” I said.

I marched to the galley and commandeered the biggest vat. The cook gave me a strange look but didn’t really protest. I nearly had to drag the thing all the way back to the lower hatch, but Gibbs came by. He hefted the other end of the vat and raised his eyebrows in question.

“Captain’s quarters,” I directed. “And I need enough water to fill this.”

“You ain’t doing something daft, like Jack’s laundry, are ye?” Gibbs grunted.

“Our captain has to bathe if I am to fix his leg,” I said grimly. “I can’t even see the injury.”

Gibbs shivered. “I’ll have Mokulu bring up a barrel of water. Anything else?”

“Two bottles of rum,” I said grimly.

“Two?”

“Two. One for the wounds and one for the captain.”

“Better make it three,” Gibbs said after a mere moment’s thought.

Jack sat patiently while I had his tub filled. The men formed a line when they heard what I was doing to their captain, making a human chain from the galley to the cabin. They handed Mokulu buckets of hot water. Gibbs brought in the cold water for us to adjust the temperature. As soon as everyone left, I started making suds in the water with my soap. I looked longingly at the steaming water. What I wouldn’t have given to take that bath.

Stripped down to his skin except for a drying cloth knotted at his waist, Jack still looked commanding. Yawning, he untied his bandana. “Ready for me yet?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “Don’t sit directly down in the water though. Rest on your right side if you can. We don’t want your other stitches getting wet.”

I turned my head away as Jack tugged the cloth off his hips.

“Modest?” Jack asked in a drawl. He settled into the tub exactly as I directed, but clutching a rum bottle.

“Yes,” I said, not pretending anything. “I probably should get over that, considering the vocation I seem to be leaning toward.”

“Mmm,” Jack agreed. “Damn but my arms are sore.”

“Just relax,” I heard my fool mouth say. “I’ll wash you off.”

“Civil of you.” Jack made an effort and got the bottle to his lips. “Wasn’t always this clumsy you know, but then I was cursed.”

“You were cursed?” I held my horror in check. What had happened to Jack in the three years I hadn’t seen him?

“By a woman,” he affirmed. “And she’ll never, ever take it back. Thought about going to see this woman I know for a cure, but she’s a bit spooky.”

“Would a woman undo another woman’s work upon a man?” I waxed philosophically.

“This woman might not,” Jack admitted. I knew then he must be thinking of Tia Dalma. “In fact, she might just make it worse for the fun of it.” He gave a loud belch and began contemplated the bulkhead much like Gibbs tended to do.

“So what would make you risk it?” I took a clean cloth and began tenderly wiping out his leg wound. The water already looked crimson. “Lift up your leg so I can see it,” I added.

Jack showed me his lean leg. I poured rum into it without warning. He stiffened so violently he sloshed water onto the floor. This wound went deep. I propped him in a good position and went to work with the needle.

“What would make me risk what?” Jack said in response to my stale question.

“What would make you risk seeking a dangerous woman to undo another woman’s curse?” I summed up, pulling a stitch tight. “Aside from getting cut up at every altercation, that is.”

“S’all that’s needed, really,” Jack said. “And tha’s exactly it. I don’t want carved like a turkey, you savvy?”

I shrugged. “Send some men to take care of her.”

“You don’ just send men to see Tia Dalma,” Jack snorted. “I would have to go if going is what must go down.”

“I will go,” I offered.

Jack fell silent. I bit my lip as I waited for him to say something. I should have kept my mouth shut, I chanted, I should have stayed quiet. “She’s a weird-woman, right?” I went on. “They usually have herbs of medicinal nature. I could go and talk to her.”

Jack rested his rum bottle in the bath with him. The quiet sound of glass touching metal seemed to echo in the room. “I’ll take you with me then,” he said softly. “When can I get out of this stew pot?”

I looked at him. His long hair, unimpeded by the bandana, spilled over his sculpted shoulders. His dark eyes stirred me inside. “Sit back,” I said. “I’ll wash your hair and then you can get out.”

Jack grimaced. “I washed it two months ago,” he complained.

“Swimming in the ocean doesn’t count,” I replied. “Dr. Blood said the best way to be healthy was to be clean, and I believe him.”

“I hate know-it-alls,” Jack answered. Still, he let me unbraid his hair and separate the sections he had formed into ropes. I set a bucket under him and poured hot water over his head, careful not to get a drop in his eyes. After soaping him, which took nearly twenty minutes, I rinsed him four times.

He washed other parts of his body while I worked, but carelessly, as if he did not really know how to do it.

We finished together. Jack stood while I averted my head yet again. I could not help it. Every instinct I possessed demanded I not violate his privacy. Still, I caught a glancing view of his backside, which made me blush.

Not asking, I went to his bureau and riffled through it for clothes. I found breeches and shirt, tossing them onto his chair. “Where are your spare bedclothes?” I asked. “You can’t sleep in old blood, sweat and dirt.”

“You were a right terror at ‘ome,” weren’t you lad?” Jack limped over to me, closed the drawer I searched through just as I jerked my hands back. He opened the one below it and took out some sheets. “You get things done and you don’ waste any time. I bet yer dear old mother even took orders from you.”

“Never you mind,” I retorted.

I changed his bed while he dressed, which gave me the perfect excuse not to look at him. It bothered me that I both enjoyed and feared touching his old sheets. They were nasty, foul things but they were purely Jack. No other body had touched his bed, I could smell it. I knew the way Jack smelled. He smelled like vital, hot man, like the sea and the rain sizzling on hot metal. He smelled like primal musk, like an animal. He smelled like blood and patchouli and gunpowder, melted wax and…lemons.

I glanced over at him, midway through tucking in the left upper corner. He stood in his breeches, cutting a lemon. I could see his ribs. Even the loss of two pounds on a man of his build would show, so I could only assume Jack wasn’t eating. Nothing except cursed lemons…

He looked every bit as comfortable standing there as if he were completely alone. He was the only man I knew that could achieve this sort of ease. Even standing at the noose in Port Royal he’d looked relaxed. I’d been so amazed at his demeanor I hadn’t been sure I really stood at an execution.

A slight breeze swept under the door. Bumps erupted over Jack’s body. His dark, flat nipples peaked. Shivering slightly, he rested all his weight on his good leg, and leaned sideways. He put the lemon in his mouth and bit down, tossed the knife point-first into a beam, then reached out and snatched another shirt from the bureau.

In a trance, I watched Jack thread his agile body through the muslin. I felt like I watched a dance. He balanced perfectly and didn’t strain a single stitch. I wanted to applaud when he had the shirt on. I didn’t do anything so foolish. I finished making the bed up and he sank onto the sheets with a grateful sigh.

He dripped water. I took the shirt he’d vetoed and wrung his hair out with it. He’d smeared the kohl around his eyes at some point, so I wiped carefully and straightened out the line. Not seeming to notice, Jack dragged the rum back up to his lips and eased a full three fingers down his throat.

I swallowed down my awe at his stamina and ordered Mokulu and Gibbs back inside. They emptied the water and dragged the makeshift tub away, casting dark looks at the crimson water. I leaned out the hatch and caught Ragetti lurking about, among others, hoping for a glimpse of Jack. “He will be fine,” I said firmly. “Tell the rest, eh?”

“This sort o’ thing ‘appens when you sail under a curse,” Ragetti said lowly. “Oi knows it same as I know me name.”

I frowned at his attempt to get information out of me. “And I know same as I know my name,” I began, then stopped at how ridiculous I sounded. Jack and his crew had the most redundant, baffling speech on the ocean, and now I had their disease or whatever it was. “Captain Sparrow bleeds when you cut him; it’s as simple as that.”

“It’s divine omen,” Ragetti argued. “The right side’ll be next. Hain’t it all what been on ‘is left so far?”

“Captain Sparrow is right handed,” I countered. “His left side is the weak side.”

Ragetti’s face grew thoughtful. “I see’s what ya mean, but the left side of the body is the spiritually corrupt side. All ‘is wounds on that side must mean a divine force is at work, like a djinn.”

Behind Ragetti, a Persian named Aziz spat to the side, muttering.

I came out and shut the hatch. Sailors and their superstitions used to make me feel scornful. Now, after meeting cursed pirates, Davy Jones, and the kraken, and after having seen two dead men come back to life, I could believe anything. “You want to know what I think?” I didn’t wait for them to answer. “I think he’s in a run of bad luck and needs a witch doctor.”

“Tia Dalma,” Gibbs said softly. “Bet we ain’t going without his leave.”

“Who said you had to?” I turned back to the hatch. “I’m doing his bandages now. I’ll ask him.”

“The answer is yes,” Jack shouted out in his gravelly voice as soon as I had the hatch open. “Curse you all for being nosy-parkers!”

I didn’t feel the least bit ashamed to face him. I sat beside him on the bed and commenced to winding him up in linen again. “If you weren’t so secretive they wouldn’t have to drag it out of you, sir,” I said.

“And what would be the fun in a smooth sail?” Jack replied, grinning. “We’re entertained this way. Nothing worse than bored pirates, lad, I promise you.”

I thought he should visit the men at night sometime and not just on his way to the rum storage. Bored pirates usually slept, in my limited experience.

“You don’ believe me,” Jack said lowly, still smiling. “You’ll see, my lad, you’ll see. We don’ go out to become really bad eggs just to stink by ourselves.”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Well, you don’t stink now,” I answered, starting to wrap his arm. His sleeves were so loose I had no trouble working around them. “And I think your older injuries will heal up quicker now. After we see this weird-woman of yours I can probably get you something to kill your pain.”

“S’all I need, right here,” Jack protested, holding up his rum. “Well, maybe that and a little poppy blood.”

Ignoring him, I knelt to look at his leg. At first I felt upset he’d have to take his pants off for me to bind his wound, but then I saw he’d put on a pair of side-lacing breeches. At my direction, no less. They flared a bit from the knee down. I made quick work of the job and carefully laced him into his trousers. I laced the other leg too, knowing his garment would be lopsided if I didn’t. No matter what I did, I couldn’t force my eyes not to examine his trim hips and muscular thighs.

“Anything before I go?” I asked, walking for the door.

“Not a thing mate,” he sighed. “I don’t want to be disturbed for at least twelve hours.”

I asked Gibbs if he would watch Jack’s cabin and went to collapse in my hammock.