Fic: Metal and Words, 3/16
Title: Metal and Words, 3/16
Author: Aletheia Felinea
Beta: compassrose7577. Thank you so much!
Rating: PG-13 overall
Wordcount: about 3 750, this chapter
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Anamaria, OCs.
Genre: Gen fic supposed to be a crime story.
Time: Months before CotBP.
Summary: The sweet air of Tortuga can be dangerous sometimes, even for the certain Captain. And curiosity can kill a sparrow. Or... save?
Disclaimer: Not my hunting territory, The Big Black Mouse prowls here.
Previous parts: 1, 2
Note: The fic was translated from Polish. Jeśli wolisz czytać w oryginale, zapraszam.
Aubert Verlaine, more known as Tidy Bertie, absentmindedly rearranged four chipped mugs and wiped the counter. Then he moved the mugs back and wiped them too. Then he moved the mugs again and- A splinter from the countertop pierced the rag and then his hand. Bertie cursed, threw the rag down, and sucked his finger. Well? Hadn’t he always said that nothing good comes from too much of tidying? He grabbed the nearest mug, which had been wiped more in the last hour than in the course of its hard-working career at the Faithful Bride, and filled it generously from a bottle kept under the countertop. From over the mug, he cast a furtive glance toward the reason of his uneasiness.
Jack Sparrow, paying for a bottle without seeking to bargain? It was unheard-of, but well, maybe he’s ill. But Jack Sparrow sitting with that bottle, untouched, for an hour, and in silence, as if he had given his tongue together with his money? What’s the matter with him and could it be contagious? And the worst of all, what was that he saw in that wall?
The innkeeper turned from the figure cowered in the tavern’s darkest corner and looked suspiciously at the wall, almost expecting to see a hole drilled there by the pirate’s fixed gaze.
Jack had ceased to notice the sooty plaster in the first minute at the table. Actually, he had hardly noticed Bertie handing him the bottle, or even the bottle itself. One insistent thought haunted him, namely that now he would have willingly treated Rusty Hans to thirty mugs. What came over him, he wondered, to moor at Sally McDonnell’s Golden Cockerel? Ah, right, he and Joe Morgan ran across each other just next to Sally’s door…
A more sober thought jumped out of the emptiness in Jack’s head and boldly, in the face of the still uncorked bottle, waved to him.
Once you saw him, you’d flee even if there were no more taverns in the all Tortuga! it sneered maliciously.
And behind it, the third thought sneaked up, so bitter that he winced. You kept fleeing hardly listening to Gibbs, not asking what did Hans want.
Jack shuddered, reached for the bottle, and…came to a standstill. Rusty Hans Snoggerson, who never vexed no one, which amongst the good pirate brethren was truly an art itself, Rusty Hans Snoggerson, who associated paper mostly with pistol wadding, and letters with sides of ships, the same Rusty Hans Snoggerson had suddenly ran about Tortuga in an urgent reading need, and immediately after stuck himself on someone’s sharp iron? Jack tapped fingers on the tabletop by the bottle and again fixed his gaze on the wall.
Behind the counter, Bertie’s hands began to tremble. If someone told him that he would be on the verge of kicking out a client who pays...
Jack didn’t see the wall again, for thoughts swarmed now. A written paper being bad for health was not so rare of a thing. The Captain had seen in his life enough bills, testimonies and judicial sentences to not doubt it. But what a death comes from reading? From boredom perhaps, from some scholarly treatise, but what boredom puts a blade to one’s throat? He frowned. Reading, or more precisely, a wish to reading, or even more precisely, a wish to ask for reading.
He felt a sudden chill run down his spine. What had Hans carried, that gave him a scare, even though he didn’t know its content? And what content had made him worthy of a knife? And who, besides Gibbs, had heard to whom Hans wanted to show that content? Jack frozen in mid-breath and swept the tavern with a suspicious glance, feeling like a jellyfish on a beach: paralysed, noticeable and surrounded by plenty of sharp beaks.
He slid out from behind the table, trying to look everywhere at once. He stopped, turned back, grabbed the bottle, and thrust it under his coat. Then he walked to the door.
Bertie followed him with his eyes for a moment. Then he carefully looked around and edged towards the wall, so evidently trying to not draw attention that half of the tavern looked at him.
Meanwhile, at a table by the door, a discussion was carried on, concerning the preponderance of Captain Jeunét’s pinnace over Captain Van Houten’s old fluyt.
“So what of that Mélusine is smaller, eh?! But, she is swift like a dolphin!” Gervais, commonly called L’Épingle, was hot-tempered, and at the moment, almost hot-red. “What old Van Houten would get out of that he could load into that tub of his ‘til it spills out of the embrasures, if a fleeced merchant could manage to reach a port an’ come back wif Navies! An’ they’ll get hold of that rottin’ whale in the same place yet!”
“No Navies, if he’ll dispatch the lamb to the sea bed after fleecing it.” A supporter of Van Houten and ‘the good, old, Flemish craft’ chortled over his mug. “Seen what Poseidon carries, stickin’ out from these embrasures? An’ Mélusine? If Jeunét put two long nines on the bow, you bet it would outweigh her stern ‘til the rudder wouldn’ reach water. For kids, such a toy, to play in a puddle, not to set out for pirate lanes!”
“An’ for Van Houten, neither to chase, nor to shoot, cause if it won’ tear these rusted barrels open, they’ll fall through that rottin’ planking soon. On Poseidon, rats already wage wars against woodworms, for lodgings.” L’Épingle snaped back and, by his usual custom, emphasized his argument clanging his L’Épingle in its scabbard. The effect was quite impressive, or at least loud, for the old rapier was endowed with a truly bounteous guard, making it, according to mockers, an excellent crab trap.
Like the rustle of a snake’s scales startles a bird, the blade’s rasp startled Jack Sparrow walking nearby, with his head already full of thoughts about sharp metal. Acting on impulse, he dashed through the door into the dazzling sunshine, tripped over something about his legs and tumbled into the street’s dust. Something creaked nearby and spilled with a harsh rattle. An outraged scream broke with a choked gasp.
The landing was surprisingly soft. Jack realised why, when he spat out not only his own hair, shoved the hat off his eyes, and discovered himself in the position for which half of Tortuga’s good citizens would have given their right arm. Well, maybe left leg. Actually, the risk could be quite literal too, he reflected at the sight of Mandy Morrell’s face, gathering the resemblance of a stormy cloud. He jumped off in time for her knee, impeded by the tangled skirt, to miss its goal. Jack, not wasting time to rise, desperately tried to withdraw. He didn’t get far, the Bride’s wall stopping him.
A muffled snigger made him look up. Anamaria, a fishing net sliding off her shoulder, and hands to her mouth, tried to stifle a chuckle. No good for a fisher, to laugh over the spread-eagled and furious owner of the best fish stall on the island.
The passing lasses, heavily armed with their crusts of powder and heaps of lace, didn’t try to hide their loud giggle. Laughs came also from other stalls in the market-place in front of the tavern. All Tortuga was of opinion that on the day Mandy Morrell decided to switch to the most popular female profession on the island, the price of fish would drop to the sea floor, and the price of female charms would out-grow palm trees. However, the male half of Tortuga admitted sadly that one could sooner expect an ice-bound bay and snow on the beach. In the meantime, the female half would more gladly welcome that ice and snow, than the fiery-haired and fiery-tempered Irishwoman as a rival. Fortunately or not, such a turn of events was very improbable. Mandy Morrell took pride in her freshest fish and her most lavish beauty in town, claiming that salted meat and a painted wench are faked as well. It was no wonder that the cold war of skirts went on, to delight of anything breeched on the island, including, as Jack suspected, to the secret delight of Anamaria.
Mandy lifted up on her elbows, glanced at the strumpets, and shot daggers at Jack. “Hang y’all, scoundrels an’ pests, you’d begin to mind your way then,” she hissed.
Pointing out gaps in logic to an angry woman wasn’t a wise thing, in Jack’s opinion, especially to an angry woman with a cleaver at hand. He shielded himself with a shining grin.
“How to mind one’s way, when your beauty dazzles more than the sun, Mandy!” He laid his hand on his heart and discreetly slid it lower to the bottle. By Fortune’s whim, it was unharmed.
Mandy sent him the look usually reserved for those trying to palm off two-day old lobsters, rolled her eyes, and looked at the shambles that was once her stall. She was reluctant to admit, even to herself, that she had a soft spot for the owner of the brightest smile in Tortuga. She knew them all too well, the motley rabble, loafers and braggarts, to a man. Every one of these ragamuffins had boasted that he had once, or would someday, have his own ship that he would be the scare of sea lanes, that “you’ll be calling me Captain, you’ll see!” Only one of them, contrary to all evidence, had introduced himself as Captain Jack Sparrow, with a rakish gleam in his eye, challenging anyone who dared to breathe a word of his mythical ship being more of mist than solid wood. When others babbled about fat merchants, he told of golden palaces of Chinese sultans, turtles as big as isles, and isles where trees yielded jewels…
Mandy shook off her musings. Never mind the smile, she told herself, scattered oysters won’t gather back on their own. Still, he well deserves a good flatfish smack through this matted shag of his. Nah, a waste of a fish for such-
Her indecision was interrupted by movement under her apron. She looked down and sprang to her feet.
“Crabs! Why you’re sittin’, catch ‘em before they’ll scurry off! Now!”
Jack, who rather expected that flatfish, obediently rushed to cut off the retreat of a bunch of barnacles determined to take the advantage gained from a toppled bucket. Anamaria watched for a moment, then crouched, to set an upended basket upright, and began to gather the oysters. Mandy hastily looked around for the bucket.
“I wonder what that slob, Bertie, gives y’all to drink. You’re suddenly runnin’ about, as if scorpions instead of cockroaches crawled in this den of his,” she snarled. “An’ now my stall somehow stands in everyone’s way! Rusty Hans didn’ look where he’d been goin’ too, and what end he came to, eh? Good for nothin’, all of you!”
Jack reserved the suggestion that she might move the stall a bit farther from the tavern’s door. Knowing Mandy, the Bride would move sooner.
The bucket was at last found around the corner of the nearest alley. The crabs revealed in their escape more enthusiasm than orientation, running mostly back where they came from, instead down the alley. Jack threw a few of runaways into the bucket, reached for another and froze suddenly. He lifted his head.
“Hans…?”
Mandy paused in counting of her grudges against all of Tortuga’s scamps.
“Just what I told you! He jumps yesterday, just like you, from this plague-stricken hovel.” She shook her fist at the Bride. “He runs into my crates, tumbles over wif them… As soon as he picked himself up, he shouts somethin’ that he didn’ mean it, that he’s sorry, and he got lost before I managed to whack him wif anythin’, an’ it was due to him well…” She huffed angrily.
“An’ you won’ manage anymore,” a murmur came from aside.
Jack glanced at suddenly gloomy Anamaria.
“Really…?” He drew his hand across his throat.
She nodded briefly, without raising her eyes from the oysters.
“I’ve seen.”
Jack didn’t inquire further. Anamaria’s “I’ve seen” was worth more than “strike me dead if I cram!” of most of ‘well-informed’ in Tortuga. Contrary to them, she clearly had no inclination to go into more colorful details, judging by the mute concentration she paid to stowing oysters in the wide basket.
Jack blinked and frowned.
The flat bottom of the much-worn basket was laid with a cloth of a fair fabric with an odd, intricate pattern. What a peddler does so well as to put printed calico under living goods?
“Ow!” Jack shook an absentmindedly held crab from his fingers. The crab tried to scamper away, but Jack re-snatched it from the safer side, the one without pincers. He glanced from the corner of his eye into the basket once more, this time noticing the strangely regular margins of the lining. Not a cloth, a sheet. And not calico, paper.
Jack bit his lip, then reached for another crab.
“Count more for educated oysters, Mandy?” he asked casually.
Mandy dragged a desperately struggling fugitive from between the barrels, and looked back at the basket, which Anamaria had neatly filled.
“That? Hans must o’ dropped it, when he was wallowin’ all over my crates,” she said tartly. “Just fit in the basket, so it came in useful at least, to mend what he’d ruined. Surely he’d nicked it somewhere, mebbe to line that leaky thatch that had passed for a hat.”
Jack picked up the nearest oyster, ostentatiously examined it and threw it into the basket.
“Oh, so that’s why they’re so blue today,” he announced blithely.
Mandy looked at him, suddenly frozen.
“What?”
“Oysters. From ink. Ink’s black, and when dissolved in seawater it stains blue. An’ your oysters, Mandy, straight from the bay, they are! You couldn’ find more fresh ones on the all Tortuga, nay, all Caribbean! Everyone knows it! So it’s no wonder they’re leakin’ still…” The pirate blabbed merrily, all the while so busy with crab hunting, he didn’t notice Mandy, who began to look as if, for the first time, she considered moving away from the Bride. She had heard many things at that door, but this? What had Bertie been serving them? Whatever it was, she felt as if she had drank it, too. She eyed uncertainly the pile of oysters at her feet. Perhaps there was some bluish gleam on shells?
Meanwhile, Jack grew more and more fervent. “Yet no one ever got poisoned wif ink, or else they wouldn’ keep up wif hirin’ clerks, eh? If lookin’ suspicious, that’s nothin’ yet, not at all! Can be absolutely innocent, what’s not so innocently lookin’, I can testify to it wif my own humble person, that the unjust world uses to judge unfairly an’ precipitately, not lookin’ duly enough, not even waitin’ for the explanation…”
Anamaria glanced at Mandy, whose eyes were going bigger and bigger. Crabs were taking the opportunity to flee from her reach, the brighter ones avoiding the pirate.
“Take it away!”
“An’ they’re even quite pretty, though not everyone would be clever enough an’ appreciated… What…?” Jack presented the very image of bewilderment incarnate, staring at the somewhat crumpled paper sheet, which Mandy had snatched out of the basket and pushed into his hands.
“Take it away, the faster the better! An’ the farther the better!”
“But what I’m…” the pirate protested weakly, yet rising from his knees.
“Throw it away! Bury it! Burn! Now, get out!” Mandy waved her hands, as if her stall was endangered by a raid of hungry gulls.
“M’ not an errand-boy.” Captain Jack Sparrow straightened indignantly.
Mandy, her resemblance to a furious tigress going beyond hair colour, growled and looked around, in a quandary as to which was more in her reach, a rag, a broom, or a clever.
Jack hastily sprang back.
“Right, I am. I could be. Just once. Only for you, Mandy, by way of exception. Um, well, so I’ll just…” he broke off, turned back, and ran into the maze of alleys.
He stopped behind one of the port warehouses, in the quiet shelter of crates and barrels. He looked around warily, then he folded the paper and shoved it into the right- the left pocket of his coat, he reflected, at the last moment. He cautiously pulled the right open and peeped in.
“See?” he said. “Don’ mess wif me.” He snatched his fingers back. Then he set off for Tortuga’s northern skirts, where pots used to dry on fences.
***
Some time later, the sun hid behind the horizon, the last rays igniting sparks on the waves washing a beach. It was distant enough from town and the port that the only sounds heard were the sea’s low hum, rustle of palm leaves tousled by the wind, and quiet crackle of a small bonfire. The mutinous crab was poaching in the widow McCullough’s best brass kettle, while Jack Sparrow sat against a palm tree, staring gloomily at the sheet of paper. The twilight was falling fast. On the darkening sky, the crescent moon was as narrow as the smile of a shark lurking amongst reefs. The scarce glow of little flames barely reached the kettle’s brim, and Jack didn’t risk putting the paper near the fire. All he could see on the sheet was the vague pattern of writing. The Captain rose his eyes and let them run to the first emerging stars.
Everyone knew Hans Snoggerson, though no one knew what wind had brought him to the warm waters and tropical isles of the New World. What difference did it make? If someone’s skin proved him not native, then the skin’s owner evidently had found old Europe too stuffy. Those who felt oppressed in God-fearing, servile colonies, or had fled plantations, where one lived to work, instead of the other way around, Tortuga collected in a steady flow.
Hans was collected after a certain planter had found him in a haystack, happily sleeping off a rendez-vous with a bottle, when he was supposed to been tending the horses. That was the end of Hans’ career as a coachman. The infuriated employer fired him, with revilement and promises of numerous unpleasantnesses, if he was ever spot him in the vicinity of the estate again.
In the pirate brethren’s unanimous opinion, it was the worst decision in that planter’s life, cause Hans Snoggerson, who barely coped with the English tongue and having no Spanish nor French, compensated with an extraordinary command of Horse. At least, anyone who happened to see Hans whisper into hirsute ears that tamed the wildest stallions would swear so. Everything four-legged and neighing had obediently followed him. The hardest and most vicious of pack mules wandering Cuba, Hispaniola and Jamaica mountain tracks softened to Hans like Arcadian lambs, to their owners’ astonishment, providing, that is, if the owners had chanced to see it.
Most often, however, they hadn’t. Having discovered himself an ex-groom, Hans had found his way to the island of outcasts and tramps, by fate’s usual turn. Perhaps it could be said, against fate, for he hadn’t followed the usual path, which most often lead over pirate decks to a scaffold. Admittedly, this last prospect had remained open, at least until yesterday. Nevertheless, it seemed as if he had decided that, if the noose had been meant for him, then he would come by it in his own way. As it turned out, one could throw Hans out of stable, but no one could manage to throw the stable out of Hans. On the isles, where one lived on water, by water, and for water, where if one didn’t own boat, then one strived for a hammock and a bowl on someone else’s, Hans Snoggerson had become a rustler. And, contrary to the mocking of deckhands proudly calling themselves sea-dogs, he had been doing quite well. His method of selling French horses, mules and donkeys to Spaniards, and after moving the beasts to the other half of Hispaniola, selling Spanish ones to the French, had produced a profit sufficient for his daily bread. The mystery remained, however, as to how Hans could reach an agreement with said Spaniards on the one hand, and Frenchmen on the other. Apparently the language of the horse market was universal, especially when assisted by silver’s jangle.
Nevertheless, the gains of these horse ventures would have been richer and allowed for better garb than patched breeches, if Hans had been as indiscriminate with merchants, as he had his prey. Unfortunately, Hans had looked more closely into eyes of a prospect than his purse, looking to see if he was too eager with a whip. The result had been Snoggerson’s business, simple at the stage of plundering, and very complicated in the selling, had been cursed by ex-owners and would-be purchasers on all Hispaniola, and derided by pirates, robbers, and thieves in the all Caribbean. No one asked for horses’ opinion.
Still, even if grudges born in a stable or a horse market could chase Hans all the way to Tortuga, a scribbled paper in Hans’ hand concurred like a Navy boy in a pirate tavern.
Jack gloomily eyed the half-emptied bottle. The bonfire’s flames shone faintly through the dim glass. It was an accurate image of Jack’s present state of mind. Had Hans’ murderer wanted to shut his mouth? Sometimes a written paper can make more noise than a man. Had the killer known it? Having killed, had he ransacked Hans’ paltry belongings in search of the sheet? And the question most burning to Jack was had the killer gone for a drink with the feeling of a job well done, or did he consider the job not yet done at all? Jack would give great deal to know what the murderer was doing at that moment, especially whether he was cruising streets, asking about Hans’ recent doings and recent chats.
Knowledge is dangerous, they say. Captain Jack Sparrow agreed, absolutely. There was great risk in knowledge which one lacked. And the most trappy was knowledge which one lacked, but others thought he did had.
He drained the bottle and flung it far away, into dark waves. He doubted if Hans had known what he died for. But, damn it, if someone was to try to dispatch Jack Sparrow to Hell, they would discover that they were going there together. And they would give some explanations before.
-------------------------------------------
L’Épingle (French) - The Pin
The next part
Comments and remarks most welcomed, as always. :)
Author: Aletheia Felinea
Beta: compassrose7577. Thank you so much!
Rating: PG-13 overall
Wordcount: about 3 750, this chapter
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Anamaria, OCs.
Genre: Gen fic supposed to be a crime story.
Time: Months before CotBP.
Summary: The sweet air of Tortuga can be dangerous sometimes, even for the certain Captain. And curiosity can kill a sparrow. Or... save?
Disclaimer: Not my hunting territory, The Big Black Mouse prowls here.
Previous parts: 1, 2
Note: The fic was translated from Polish. Jeśli wolisz czytać w oryginale, zapraszam.
Aubert Verlaine, more known as Tidy Bertie, absentmindedly rearranged four chipped mugs and wiped the counter. Then he moved the mugs back and wiped them too. Then he moved the mugs again and- A splinter from the countertop pierced the rag and then his hand. Bertie cursed, threw the rag down, and sucked his finger. Well? Hadn’t he always said that nothing good comes from too much of tidying? He grabbed the nearest mug, which had been wiped more in the last hour than in the course of its hard-working career at the Faithful Bride, and filled it generously from a bottle kept under the countertop. From over the mug, he cast a furtive glance toward the reason of his uneasiness.
Jack Sparrow, paying for a bottle without seeking to bargain? It was unheard-of, but well, maybe he’s ill. But Jack Sparrow sitting with that bottle, untouched, for an hour, and in silence, as if he had given his tongue together with his money? What’s the matter with him and could it be contagious? And the worst of all, what was that he saw in that wall?
The innkeeper turned from the figure cowered in the tavern’s darkest corner and looked suspiciously at the wall, almost expecting to see a hole drilled there by the pirate’s fixed gaze.
Jack had ceased to notice the sooty plaster in the first minute at the table. Actually, he had hardly noticed Bertie handing him the bottle, or even the bottle itself. One insistent thought haunted him, namely that now he would have willingly treated Rusty Hans to thirty mugs. What came over him, he wondered, to moor at Sally McDonnell’s Golden Cockerel? Ah, right, he and Joe Morgan ran across each other just next to Sally’s door…
A more sober thought jumped out of the emptiness in Jack’s head and boldly, in the face of the still uncorked bottle, waved to him.
Once you saw him, you’d flee even if there were no more taverns in the all Tortuga! it sneered maliciously.
And behind it, the third thought sneaked up, so bitter that he winced. You kept fleeing hardly listening to Gibbs, not asking what did Hans want.
Jack shuddered, reached for the bottle, and…came to a standstill. Rusty Hans Snoggerson, who never vexed no one, which amongst the good pirate brethren was truly an art itself, Rusty Hans Snoggerson, who associated paper mostly with pistol wadding, and letters with sides of ships, the same Rusty Hans Snoggerson had suddenly ran about Tortuga in an urgent reading need, and immediately after stuck himself on someone’s sharp iron? Jack tapped fingers on the tabletop by the bottle and again fixed his gaze on the wall.
Behind the counter, Bertie’s hands began to tremble. If someone told him that he would be on the verge of kicking out a client who pays...
Jack didn’t see the wall again, for thoughts swarmed now. A written paper being bad for health was not so rare of a thing. The Captain had seen in his life enough bills, testimonies and judicial sentences to not doubt it. But what a death comes from reading? From boredom perhaps, from some scholarly treatise, but what boredom puts a blade to one’s throat? He frowned. Reading, or more precisely, a wish to reading, or even more precisely, a wish to ask for reading.
He felt a sudden chill run down his spine. What had Hans carried, that gave him a scare, even though he didn’t know its content? And what content had made him worthy of a knife? And who, besides Gibbs, had heard to whom Hans wanted to show that content? Jack frozen in mid-breath and swept the tavern with a suspicious glance, feeling like a jellyfish on a beach: paralysed, noticeable and surrounded by plenty of sharp beaks.
He slid out from behind the table, trying to look everywhere at once. He stopped, turned back, grabbed the bottle, and thrust it under his coat. Then he walked to the door.
Bertie followed him with his eyes for a moment. Then he carefully looked around and edged towards the wall, so evidently trying to not draw attention that half of the tavern looked at him.
Meanwhile, at a table by the door, a discussion was carried on, concerning the preponderance of Captain Jeunét’s pinnace over Captain Van Houten’s old fluyt.
“So what of that Mélusine is smaller, eh?! But, she is swift like a dolphin!” Gervais, commonly called L’Épingle, was hot-tempered, and at the moment, almost hot-red. “What old Van Houten would get out of that he could load into that tub of his ‘til it spills out of the embrasures, if a fleeced merchant could manage to reach a port an’ come back wif Navies! An’ they’ll get hold of that rottin’ whale in the same place yet!”
“No Navies, if he’ll dispatch the lamb to the sea bed after fleecing it.” A supporter of Van Houten and ‘the good, old, Flemish craft’ chortled over his mug. “Seen what Poseidon carries, stickin’ out from these embrasures? An’ Mélusine? If Jeunét put two long nines on the bow, you bet it would outweigh her stern ‘til the rudder wouldn’ reach water. For kids, such a toy, to play in a puddle, not to set out for pirate lanes!”
“An’ for Van Houten, neither to chase, nor to shoot, cause if it won’ tear these rusted barrels open, they’ll fall through that rottin’ planking soon. On Poseidon, rats already wage wars against woodworms, for lodgings.” L’Épingle snaped back and, by his usual custom, emphasized his argument clanging his L’Épingle in its scabbard. The effect was quite impressive, or at least loud, for the old rapier was endowed with a truly bounteous guard, making it, according to mockers, an excellent crab trap.
Like the rustle of a snake’s scales startles a bird, the blade’s rasp startled Jack Sparrow walking nearby, with his head already full of thoughts about sharp metal. Acting on impulse, he dashed through the door into the dazzling sunshine, tripped over something about his legs and tumbled into the street’s dust. Something creaked nearby and spilled with a harsh rattle. An outraged scream broke with a choked gasp.
The landing was surprisingly soft. Jack realised why, when he spat out not only his own hair, shoved the hat off his eyes, and discovered himself in the position for which half of Tortuga’s good citizens would have given their right arm. Well, maybe left leg. Actually, the risk could be quite literal too, he reflected at the sight of Mandy Morrell’s face, gathering the resemblance of a stormy cloud. He jumped off in time for her knee, impeded by the tangled skirt, to miss its goal. Jack, not wasting time to rise, desperately tried to withdraw. He didn’t get far, the Bride’s wall stopping him.
A muffled snigger made him look up. Anamaria, a fishing net sliding off her shoulder, and hands to her mouth, tried to stifle a chuckle. No good for a fisher, to laugh over the spread-eagled and furious owner of the best fish stall on the island.
The passing lasses, heavily armed with their crusts of powder and heaps of lace, didn’t try to hide their loud giggle. Laughs came also from other stalls in the market-place in front of the tavern. All Tortuga was of opinion that on the day Mandy Morrell decided to switch to the most popular female profession on the island, the price of fish would drop to the sea floor, and the price of female charms would out-grow palm trees. However, the male half of Tortuga admitted sadly that one could sooner expect an ice-bound bay and snow on the beach. In the meantime, the female half would more gladly welcome that ice and snow, than the fiery-haired and fiery-tempered Irishwoman as a rival. Fortunately or not, such a turn of events was very improbable. Mandy Morrell took pride in her freshest fish and her most lavish beauty in town, claiming that salted meat and a painted wench are faked as well. It was no wonder that the cold war of skirts went on, to delight of anything breeched on the island, including, as Jack suspected, to the secret delight of Anamaria.
Mandy lifted up on her elbows, glanced at the strumpets, and shot daggers at Jack. “Hang y’all, scoundrels an’ pests, you’d begin to mind your way then,” she hissed.
Pointing out gaps in logic to an angry woman wasn’t a wise thing, in Jack’s opinion, especially to an angry woman with a cleaver at hand. He shielded himself with a shining grin.
“How to mind one’s way, when your beauty dazzles more than the sun, Mandy!” He laid his hand on his heart and discreetly slid it lower to the bottle. By Fortune’s whim, it was unharmed.
Mandy sent him the look usually reserved for those trying to palm off two-day old lobsters, rolled her eyes, and looked at the shambles that was once her stall. She was reluctant to admit, even to herself, that she had a soft spot for the owner of the brightest smile in Tortuga. She knew them all too well, the motley rabble, loafers and braggarts, to a man. Every one of these ragamuffins had boasted that he had once, or would someday, have his own ship that he would be the scare of sea lanes, that “you’ll be calling me Captain, you’ll see!” Only one of them, contrary to all evidence, had introduced himself as Captain Jack Sparrow, with a rakish gleam in his eye, challenging anyone who dared to breathe a word of his mythical ship being more of mist than solid wood. When others babbled about fat merchants, he told of golden palaces of Chinese sultans, turtles as big as isles, and isles where trees yielded jewels…
Mandy shook off her musings. Never mind the smile, she told herself, scattered oysters won’t gather back on their own. Still, he well deserves a good flatfish smack through this matted shag of his. Nah, a waste of a fish for such-
Her indecision was interrupted by movement under her apron. She looked down and sprang to her feet.
“Crabs! Why you’re sittin’, catch ‘em before they’ll scurry off! Now!”
Jack, who rather expected that flatfish, obediently rushed to cut off the retreat of a bunch of barnacles determined to take the advantage gained from a toppled bucket. Anamaria watched for a moment, then crouched, to set an upended basket upright, and began to gather the oysters. Mandy hastily looked around for the bucket.
“I wonder what that slob, Bertie, gives y’all to drink. You’re suddenly runnin’ about, as if scorpions instead of cockroaches crawled in this den of his,” she snarled. “An’ now my stall somehow stands in everyone’s way! Rusty Hans didn’ look where he’d been goin’ too, and what end he came to, eh? Good for nothin’, all of you!”
Jack reserved the suggestion that she might move the stall a bit farther from the tavern’s door. Knowing Mandy, the Bride would move sooner.
The bucket was at last found around the corner of the nearest alley. The crabs revealed in their escape more enthusiasm than orientation, running mostly back where they came from, instead down the alley. Jack threw a few of runaways into the bucket, reached for another and froze suddenly. He lifted his head.
“Hans…?”
Mandy paused in counting of her grudges against all of Tortuga’s scamps.
“Just what I told you! He jumps yesterday, just like you, from this plague-stricken hovel.” She shook her fist at the Bride. “He runs into my crates, tumbles over wif them… As soon as he picked himself up, he shouts somethin’ that he didn’ mean it, that he’s sorry, and he got lost before I managed to whack him wif anythin’, an’ it was due to him well…” She huffed angrily.
“An’ you won’ manage anymore,” a murmur came from aside.
Jack glanced at suddenly gloomy Anamaria.
“Really…?” He drew his hand across his throat.
She nodded briefly, without raising her eyes from the oysters.
“I’ve seen.”
Jack didn’t inquire further. Anamaria’s “I’ve seen” was worth more than “strike me dead if I cram!” of most of ‘well-informed’ in Tortuga. Contrary to them, she clearly had no inclination to go into more colorful details, judging by the mute concentration she paid to stowing oysters in the wide basket.
Jack blinked and frowned.
The flat bottom of the much-worn basket was laid with a cloth of a fair fabric with an odd, intricate pattern. What a peddler does so well as to put printed calico under living goods?
“Ow!” Jack shook an absentmindedly held crab from his fingers. The crab tried to scamper away, but Jack re-snatched it from the safer side, the one without pincers. He glanced from the corner of his eye into the basket once more, this time noticing the strangely regular margins of the lining. Not a cloth, a sheet. And not calico, paper.
Jack bit his lip, then reached for another crab.
“Count more for educated oysters, Mandy?” he asked casually.
Mandy dragged a desperately struggling fugitive from between the barrels, and looked back at the basket, which Anamaria had neatly filled.
“That? Hans must o’ dropped it, when he was wallowin’ all over my crates,” she said tartly. “Just fit in the basket, so it came in useful at least, to mend what he’d ruined. Surely he’d nicked it somewhere, mebbe to line that leaky thatch that had passed for a hat.”
Jack picked up the nearest oyster, ostentatiously examined it and threw it into the basket.
“Oh, so that’s why they’re so blue today,” he announced blithely.
Mandy looked at him, suddenly frozen.
“What?”
“Oysters. From ink. Ink’s black, and when dissolved in seawater it stains blue. An’ your oysters, Mandy, straight from the bay, they are! You couldn’ find more fresh ones on the all Tortuga, nay, all Caribbean! Everyone knows it! So it’s no wonder they’re leakin’ still…” The pirate blabbed merrily, all the while so busy with crab hunting, he didn’t notice Mandy, who began to look as if, for the first time, she considered moving away from the Bride. She had heard many things at that door, but this? What had Bertie been serving them? Whatever it was, she felt as if she had drank it, too. She eyed uncertainly the pile of oysters at her feet. Perhaps there was some bluish gleam on shells?
Meanwhile, Jack grew more and more fervent. “Yet no one ever got poisoned wif ink, or else they wouldn’ keep up wif hirin’ clerks, eh? If lookin’ suspicious, that’s nothin’ yet, not at all! Can be absolutely innocent, what’s not so innocently lookin’, I can testify to it wif my own humble person, that the unjust world uses to judge unfairly an’ precipitately, not lookin’ duly enough, not even waitin’ for the explanation…”
Anamaria glanced at Mandy, whose eyes were going bigger and bigger. Crabs were taking the opportunity to flee from her reach, the brighter ones avoiding the pirate.
“Take it away!”
“An’ they’re even quite pretty, though not everyone would be clever enough an’ appreciated… What…?” Jack presented the very image of bewilderment incarnate, staring at the somewhat crumpled paper sheet, which Mandy had snatched out of the basket and pushed into his hands.
“Take it away, the faster the better! An’ the farther the better!”
“But what I’m…” the pirate protested weakly, yet rising from his knees.
“Throw it away! Bury it! Burn! Now, get out!” Mandy waved her hands, as if her stall was endangered by a raid of hungry gulls.
“M’ not an errand-boy.” Captain Jack Sparrow straightened indignantly.
Mandy, her resemblance to a furious tigress going beyond hair colour, growled and looked around, in a quandary as to which was more in her reach, a rag, a broom, or a clever.
Jack hastily sprang back.
“Right, I am. I could be. Just once. Only for you, Mandy, by way of exception. Um, well, so I’ll just…” he broke off, turned back, and ran into the maze of alleys.
He stopped behind one of the port warehouses, in the quiet shelter of crates and barrels. He looked around warily, then he folded the paper and shoved it into the right- the left pocket of his coat, he reflected, at the last moment. He cautiously pulled the right open and peeped in.
“See?” he said. “Don’ mess wif me.” He snatched his fingers back. Then he set off for Tortuga’s northern skirts, where pots used to dry on fences.
***
Some time later, the sun hid behind the horizon, the last rays igniting sparks on the waves washing a beach. It was distant enough from town and the port that the only sounds heard were the sea’s low hum, rustle of palm leaves tousled by the wind, and quiet crackle of a small bonfire. The mutinous crab was poaching in the widow McCullough’s best brass kettle, while Jack Sparrow sat against a palm tree, staring gloomily at the sheet of paper. The twilight was falling fast. On the darkening sky, the crescent moon was as narrow as the smile of a shark lurking amongst reefs. The scarce glow of little flames barely reached the kettle’s brim, and Jack didn’t risk putting the paper near the fire. All he could see on the sheet was the vague pattern of writing. The Captain rose his eyes and let them run to the first emerging stars.
Everyone knew Hans Snoggerson, though no one knew what wind had brought him to the warm waters and tropical isles of the New World. What difference did it make? If someone’s skin proved him not native, then the skin’s owner evidently had found old Europe too stuffy. Those who felt oppressed in God-fearing, servile colonies, or had fled plantations, where one lived to work, instead of the other way around, Tortuga collected in a steady flow.
Hans was collected after a certain planter had found him in a haystack, happily sleeping off a rendez-vous with a bottle, when he was supposed to been tending the horses. That was the end of Hans’ career as a coachman. The infuriated employer fired him, with revilement and promises of numerous unpleasantnesses, if he was ever spot him in the vicinity of the estate again.
In the pirate brethren’s unanimous opinion, it was the worst decision in that planter’s life, cause Hans Snoggerson, who barely coped with the English tongue and having no Spanish nor French, compensated with an extraordinary command of Horse. At least, anyone who happened to see Hans whisper into hirsute ears that tamed the wildest stallions would swear so. Everything four-legged and neighing had obediently followed him. The hardest and most vicious of pack mules wandering Cuba, Hispaniola and Jamaica mountain tracks softened to Hans like Arcadian lambs, to their owners’ astonishment, providing, that is, if the owners had chanced to see it.
Most often, however, they hadn’t. Having discovered himself an ex-groom, Hans had found his way to the island of outcasts and tramps, by fate’s usual turn. Perhaps it could be said, against fate, for he hadn’t followed the usual path, which most often lead over pirate decks to a scaffold. Admittedly, this last prospect had remained open, at least until yesterday. Nevertheless, it seemed as if he had decided that, if the noose had been meant for him, then he would come by it in his own way. As it turned out, one could throw Hans out of stable, but no one could manage to throw the stable out of Hans. On the isles, where one lived on water, by water, and for water, where if one didn’t own boat, then one strived for a hammock and a bowl on someone else’s, Hans Snoggerson had become a rustler. And, contrary to the mocking of deckhands proudly calling themselves sea-dogs, he had been doing quite well. His method of selling French horses, mules and donkeys to Spaniards, and after moving the beasts to the other half of Hispaniola, selling Spanish ones to the French, had produced a profit sufficient for his daily bread. The mystery remained, however, as to how Hans could reach an agreement with said Spaniards on the one hand, and Frenchmen on the other. Apparently the language of the horse market was universal, especially when assisted by silver’s jangle.
Nevertheless, the gains of these horse ventures would have been richer and allowed for better garb than patched breeches, if Hans had been as indiscriminate with merchants, as he had his prey. Unfortunately, Hans had looked more closely into eyes of a prospect than his purse, looking to see if he was too eager with a whip. The result had been Snoggerson’s business, simple at the stage of plundering, and very complicated in the selling, had been cursed by ex-owners and would-be purchasers on all Hispaniola, and derided by pirates, robbers, and thieves in the all Caribbean. No one asked for horses’ opinion.
Still, even if grudges born in a stable or a horse market could chase Hans all the way to Tortuga, a scribbled paper in Hans’ hand concurred like a Navy boy in a pirate tavern.
Jack gloomily eyed the half-emptied bottle. The bonfire’s flames shone faintly through the dim glass. It was an accurate image of Jack’s present state of mind. Had Hans’ murderer wanted to shut his mouth? Sometimes a written paper can make more noise than a man. Had the killer known it? Having killed, had he ransacked Hans’ paltry belongings in search of the sheet? And the question most burning to Jack was had the killer gone for a drink with the feeling of a job well done, or did he consider the job not yet done at all? Jack would give great deal to know what the murderer was doing at that moment, especially whether he was cruising streets, asking about Hans’ recent doings and recent chats.
Knowledge is dangerous, they say. Captain Jack Sparrow agreed, absolutely. There was great risk in knowledge which one lacked. And the most trappy was knowledge which one lacked, but others thought he did had.
He drained the bottle and flung it far away, into dark waves. He doubted if Hans had known what he died for. But, damn it, if someone was to try to dispatch Jack Sparrow to Hell, they would discover that they were going there together. And they would give some explanations before.
-------------------------------------------
L’Épingle (French) - The Pin
The next part
Comments and remarks most welcomed, as always. :)