Hector's Bargain: Part 2 of 3
Second part of the Barbossa, Tia, Jack ‘n’ Bootstrap story. You need to read Part One first.
The three parts of Hector’s Bargain can be read as a standalone fic, but it’s more interesting if you also read some of the other Truths and Lies stories.
First posted 14 th May 2007.
Rating: NC-17
Author: p0wdermonkey
Beta: tessabeth
Other thanks: naotalba , teenybuffalo (for feedback on rough_magic ); justawench (for pics and early discussion); sparrbecuecook (for erotic cocoa)
Disclaimer: Taken without permission, but I don’t think anyone’ll be wanting it back. Not in this state.
In two weeks, it will become obvious I have no idea what’s going to happen in AWE.
Feedback: yes please!
Hector's Bargain: Part 2
The sun burns my eyes at first. The bright air burns my lungs, and my legs are weak. I lean on the witch, who strolls through the ankle-deep cinders, light as a lass in a spring meadow.
She pulls me onto a flat-topped rock over the bay, my body soaks up sunshine and fresh air while I scan the horizon, or watch hammerheads circling the spars of the ships’ graveyard. After a time however, my breath comes easier, and I remember she’ll be wanting the rest of the story.
“I were still something of a young fool meself, enough to fancy Jack truly mine at last. And so he were, for that night and the next.”
“All fierce an’ hot an’ hurtin’-jus’ how you like!” The witch grins and licks her inky teeth. I find I relish the sight of them, for I’ve learned their appearance means we be in the world of the living.
“But then Bill relented, and Jack went back to that old hammock they shared. His bunk stayed cold most nights, and mine scarce warmer. But pain’s a thing I understand, and I knew Jack’d be hurting again soon enough, so I bit my tongue and bided my time.”
“Waitin’ for the tide to ebb an’ flow.”
“’Twere Bill’s lust what ebbed and flowed, or his control over it. When he could master it-or sate it with sluts-Jack turned to me, and you may be sure I held him tight. When Bill’s lust burned brighter, I were forced to let go, but each time I fancied to’ve cut some ropes between them, and set a few grapples of my own.
“I could be cunning too. I’d talk to Bill of families, spin him tales of how my Da put to sea and ne’er came home, leaving Ma and us brats to grief and ruin. ’Twas purest bilge: the furthest he went from shore was when he took a rowboat to ships on the rocks.”
I’d help him load the cargo while Ma made a show of fussing over any sailors with fight still in ’em. Her gentle smile were the last thing those poor buggers saw.
“I taught Jack the pleasures of pain and power. He was a quick study, fearless and hungry, for he got no such games with Precious William. Or I’d talk of strumpet’s tricks, knowing he’d try ’em on Bill, seeing only the lust he waked, never the guilt what followed. Lust he understood, but guilt, to Jack, were like sums to Pintel.
“One time, he sought help from a w… from a wise woman. He traded her a mermaid’s comb-so he claimed-for spiced, enchanted cocoa beans to drive a man wild. We tested them together. Powerful magic, they were.”
“I should hope!” She sets her hands on her hips.
Too slowly, it falls into place. “It were ye! Ye be…”
“The witch?”
Her eyes hold unfathomable depths of mockery, worse than Jack at his cruellest. I hold down a shudder: I’m not out of this storm yet.
“Strong magic did not aid Jack,” she says, flashing from scorn to sorrow. “Him hurt cause me to forget what I shoulda known best: you can stir up a storm, but you cannot make the sea change her place.”
“When Bill figured out what Jack were up to, he cast the beans over the rail and wrapped himself in his hammock tighter than a grub in a cocoon: Jack went alone to his cabin that night, but he were in mine by morning.”
I remember more. “Jack said he and ye... Ye helped him before?”
She smiles light and easy. “Of course! What mother would not help her son?”
The rock drops from under me; my stomach lurches. God’s bollocks! Jack’s mother!
The horizon be blue and clear still, with no trace of the hurricane I’ve blundered into. I flirted with her, told of my lust for her son, acted it out with her… Did I not boast how I tricked Jack into frighting Bill from him?
Now she’ll be making me tell the rest! Perhaps, if I beg forgiveness, she’ll grant me a swift death. But I’ll not beg for the thing I tried so hard to escape. Nay, not even to avoid something worse. I put my head in my hands, overcome by confusion or despair.
She laughs, and strokes my hair almost… tenderly. I know she be toying with me, but I cannot smother a foolish spark. Hope accomplishes what despair could not: I will not shed tears, but my throat clenches absurdly.
“Hush now, Hector!” she croons. “’Tain’ so bad as it look. Maybe I have a use for you still-if you got what I need to aid Jack.”
I can’t leave off blinking and swallowing. My face burns.
“Let Tia take up the tale,” she says, “till you can speak.” Her voice is kind, but I fear her deeds will not be. “Jack’s father was but a pirate, an’ I was loved by another-a great sailor, but jealous. I tried to hide Jack from the sailor, but he would not bide on land.”
It cannot be! Jack told me he were raised in a brothel, which explained a great deal, or so I thought. Witch and whore might be well-matched trades, but I can’t picture this one scrubbing pots between customers, nor teaching young Jack the opportune moment to slip from under the bed and lift their valuables.
“I kep’ my eye on the boy an’ helped him when I could. But a day come when Jack lost him Captain, him ship, an’ more. That day, the sailor took him chance to hurt me back.”
Jack near killed the lot of us that time, him and his fancy sentiments. We’d made an accord with the East India Company-in the shape of a greedy little gent named Beckett-to ship a cargo of slaves. Can’t say I cared much for turning relatively honest merchant, nor for the stink of the goods, but ’twere easy money and, as I said, you takes as you finds in my line of work.
I never saw Jack so angry, but the Captain told him to shut it or quit the ship, so he shut. But he couldn’t let it be.
One sunrise we found ourselves closer than planned to a sand spit; my keys’d gone missing, a rope hung down from an open gun port, and the entire cargo-bar them as was half-dead in any case-melted into the jungle.
I doubt they enjoyed their freedom long, but the nub of it were they’d gone. Jack owned up to having mistook our position in the dark, but insisted the keys and rope were a mystery. None believed him, for we knew he steered perfectly, and picked pockets well nigh as good. We’d more pressing troubles, however: the East India Company was mightily displeased.
“A great sea battle!”
To hear her speak, you’d fancy it an epic clash of navies, not the poor Pearl trapped against a lee shore by a squadron of Indiamen out of Fort St. George.
“A good fight we made of it,” I say, “but the Captain and a third of the crew were killed. I saw Jack shot through the chest; but by then, the Pearl were holed below the waterline and burning above it. I struck out for shore on my own.”
“Jack wan’ that ship so bad,” says the witch, looking truly sorry for it. “Bad enough to trade him soul to Davy Jones.”
I might have known he’d be in the tale, for ‘tis becoming more like one of old Josiah's yarns by the moment.
“Are ye saying ’twas ye as made Davy Jones raise the Pearl?”
“Ships ain’ no concern of Tia’s! Jack done that all by himself. He made Davy wait thirteen year-Jack learned him bargainin’ from me-but he trade him soul none the less. My heart din’ wait thirteen year: it break right then. I could not bear to look on my boy, knowin’ Davy take him so soon. Tia’s no fool to lock her heart in a box: better lock away the hurt, an’ keep the heart where it can mend.
“Don’t go believin’ I gave no help, mind-why you think so many wash up alive, hm? You tell it yourself, now you found your tongue!”
I want to ask what Jack was, and what he knew, but my only salvation’s the tale, and I must mind to the telling of it.
“’Tis true many of us came to shore-and I thank ye, if ye’d a hand in that. I gathered all the men I could, and led ’em through the jungle till we found ourselves a dhow. ’Twas a hard journey, and I grieved for Jack and the Pearl, as did we all.”
Most for the Pearl, but ships be no concern to the witch.
“Did you not search for Jack?”
After his folly cost us so dear? If he traded his soul, he made a good bargain, for we’d soon’ve parted him from it had he come to shore alive!
But I adopt an expression of regret. “Even Bill could see ’twere a fool’s hope.”
I’d a suspicion Bill’d helped Jack lose us our cargo, but I saw no profit in calling him on it. Better to look to the future-then as now.
“Every man jack of the survivors voted for me: I were Captain Barbossa at last! I’d only the dhow-which weren’t worth a name-but soon I’d be showing the world a thing or two. First, we needed food, water, and safety: I found us all three in the Nicobar Islands.
“Then who should show up but bloody Jack Sparrow? And the ship he sailed on none other than the Black Pearl herself, blacker and swifter than ever. How he found us he never said, but from the moment them black sails topped the horizon, they headed straight for our little anchorage, clean and true as you could wish, for all he’d scarce men enough to reef the sails.”
(To think of the times I dismayed poor Bill Turner with talk of Jack’s uncanny powers, never once wondering why the tales came so easy. And I called Bill a fool!)
“Now, the Pearl’s safe return were a wonder to us all. My men from the dhow were so caught up in thanking Jack for the miracle, they quite forgot ’twere his folly as sank us in the first place. The man himself, arm still oozing from a fresh-branded P, would only put his finger to his beard and whisper ‘I’m Jack Sparrow, mate-don’t you forget it!’
“‘Captain Jack Sparrow!” cries one of the idiots I’d saved from the jungle, and nothing would do but to make him Captain indeed.”
I’d half a mind to curse them for the fools they were and go down fighting, but I figured I’d best paint on a smile, clap Jack on the back, and proclaim meself proud to be his First Mate.
“An’ William Turner?” The question takes me unawares, but I welcome a new topic.
“Bill got Second Mate and were glad.”
“William Turner an’ my Jack?” she asks again, shaking her head.
Meaning, I suppose, were Bill glad to see pretty Jack? Well there’s a question…
“Sat round the fire, we was; the fools I’d saved from the jungle a-crowding to touch Jack and the fools he’d saved from the fort, and all a-telling each other how happy they was to find the other set of fools still alive.
“Bill just stared into the flames, until Pintel jabbed him in the ribs and said, ‘We’re all glad to see Jack again, eh Bill?’ Bill, being Bill, said naught; then he glanced across the fire with barely a smile. ‘Glad to have you back, Jack, but I wonder what promises you made for it.’
“Jack’s face flickered from cheerful to sickly in the firelight. ‘No worries, love! Promises come cheap, eh? Anyway, I swear, by the time it matters, you’ll not notice either way.’ Then he came to sit by me, but only to drink himself stupid and sprawl on the sand, dead to the world.”
“Ah!” she says, all witchy and mysterious. (Which be the wrong tack if she means to fright Hector Barbossa.) “My Jack has a touch of the sight, for all he won’ believe.”
“I thought of killing him as he slept,” I say-truthfully, as it happens. “I marvel he knew I’d not.”
Less than truth, that. Perhaps we both knew the men had just wits enough to send me after him; perhaps he were a trusting fool…
“Perhaps he fancied I cared for him more than I let on.”
I try to believe this, in hopes that she will, but I’ve a hunch it won’t pass muster. Best return quick to such facts as are in my favour.
“I spread a blanket over him. In the morning, when he woke groaning and spewing his guts on the sand, ’twas I that held his hair back and brought seawater to sluice away the mess.”
I can only suppose ’twere done to impress the crew. Turns out lucky, for the witch is sizing me up with what looks to be favour.
“I’m thinkin’ you could do it again,” she says.
“That I could!” says I, seeing as it requires me alive and not writhing in torment.
Link to Part 3 in A Reader's Guide to Truths and Lies
The three parts of Hector’s Bargain can be read as a standalone fic, but it’s more interesting if you also read some of the other Truths and Lies stories.
First posted 14 th May 2007.
Rating: NC-17
Author: p0wdermonkey
Beta: tessabeth
Other thanks: naotalba , teenybuffalo (for feedback on rough_magic ); justawench (for pics and early discussion); sparrbecuecook (for erotic cocoa)
Disclaimer: Taken without permission, but I don’t think anyone’ll be wanting it back. Not in this state.
In two weeks, it will become obvious I have no idea what’s going to happen in AWE.
Feedback: yes please!
Hector's Bargain: Part 2
The sun burns my eyes at first. The bright air burns my lungs, and my legs are weak. I lean on the witch, who strolls through the ankle-deep cinders, light as a lass in a spring meadow.
She pulls me onto a flat-topped rock over the bay, my body soaks up sunshine and fresh air while I scan the horizon, or watch hammerheads circling the spars of the ships’ graveyard. After a time however, my breath comes easier, and I remember she’ll be wanting the rest of the story.
“I were still something of a young fool meself, enough to fancy Jack truly mine at last. And so he were, for that night and the next.”
“All fierce an’ hot an’ hurtin’-jus’ how you like!” The witch grins and licks her inky teeth. I find I relish the sight of them, for I’ve learned their appearance means we be in the world of the living.
“But then Bill relented, and Jack went back to that old hammock they shared. His bunk stayed cold most nights, and mine scarce warmer. But pain’s a thing I understand, and I knew Jack’d be hurting again soon enough, so I bit my tongue and bided my time.”
“Waitin’ for the tide to ebb an’ flow.”
“’Twere Bill’s lust what ebbed and flowed, or his control over it. When he could master it-or sate it with sluts-Jack turned to me, and you may be sure I held him tight. When Bill’s lust burned brighter, I were forced to let go, but each time I fancied to’ve cut some ropes between them, and set a few grapples of my own.
“I could be cunning too. I’d talk to Bill of families, spin him tales of how my Da put to sea and ne’er came home, leaving Ma and us brats to grief and ruin. ’Twas purest bilge: the furthest he went from shore was when he took a rowboat to ships on the rocks.”
I’d help him load the cargo while Ma made a show of fussing over any sailors with fight still in ’em. Her gentle smile were the last thing those poor buggers saw.
“I taught Jack the pleasures of pain and power. He was a quick study, fearless and hungry, for he got no such games with Precious William. Or I’d talk of strumpet’s tricks, knowing he’d try ’em on Bill, seeing only the lust he waked, never the guilt what followed. Lust he understood, but guilt, to Jack, were like sums to Pintel.
“One time, he sought help from a w… from a wise woman. He traded her a mermaid’s comb-so he claimed-for spiced, enchanted cocoa beans to drive a man wild. We tested them together. Powerful magic, they were.”
“I should hope!” She sets her hands on her hips.
Too slowly, it falls into place. “It were ye! Ye be…”
“The witch?”
Her eyes hold unfathomable depths of mockery, worse than Jack at his cruellest. I hold down a shudder: I’m not out of this storm yet.
“Strong magic did not aid Jack,” she says, flashing from scorn to sorrow. “Him hurt cause me to forget what I shoulda known best: you can stir up a storm, but you cannot make the sea change her place.”
“When Bill figured out what Jack were up to, he cast the beans over the rail and wrapped himself in his hammock tighter than a grub in a cocoon: Jack went alone to his cabin that night, but he were in mine by morning.”
I remember more. “Jack said he and ye... Ye helped him before?”
She smiles light and easy. “Of course! What mother would not help her son?”
The rock drops from under me; my stomach lurches. God’s bollocks! Jack’s mother!
The horizon be blue and clear still, with no trace of the hurricane I’ve blundered into. I flirted with her, told of my lust for her son, acted it out with her… Did I not boast how I tricked Jack into frighting Bill from him?
Now she’ll be making me tell the rest! Perhaps, if I beg forgiveness, she’ll grant me a swift death. But I’ll not beg for the thing I tried so hard to escape. Nay, not even to avoid something worse. I put my head in my hands, overcome by confusion or despair.
She laughs, and strokes my hair almost… tenderly. I know she be toying with me, but I cannot smother a foolish spark. Hope accomplishes what despair could not: I will not shed tears, but my throat clenches absurdly.
“Hush now, Hector!” she croons. “’Tain’ so bad as it look. Maybe I have a use for you still-if you got what I need to aid Jack.”
I can’t leave off blinking and swallowing. My face burns.
“Let Tia take up the tale,” she says, “till you can speak.” Her voice is kind, but I fear her deeds will not be. “Jack’s father was but a pirate, an’ I was loved by another-a great sailor, but jealous. I tried to hide Jack from the sailor, but he would not bide on land.”
It cannot be! Jack told me he were raised in a brothel, which explained a great deal, or so I thought. Witch and whore might be well-matched trades, but I can’t picture this one scrubbing pots between customers, nor teaching young Jack the opportune moment to slip from under the bed and lift their valuables.
“I kep’ my eye on the boy an’ helped him when I could. But a day come when Jack lost him Captain, him ship, an’ more. That day, the sailor took him chance to hurt me back.”
Jack near killed the lot of us that time, him and his fancy sentiments. We’d made an accord with the East India Company-in the shape of a greedy little gent named Beckett-to ship a cargo of slaves. Can’t say I cared much for turning relatively honest merchant, nor for the stink of the goods, but ’twere easy money and, as I said, you takes as you finds in my line of work.
I never saw Jack so angry, but the Captain told him to shut it or quit the ship, so he shut. But he couldn’t let it be.
One sunrise we found ourselves closer than planned to a sand spit; my keys’d gone missing, a rope hung down from an open gun port, and the entire cargo-bar them as was half-dead in any case-melted into the jungle.
I doubt they enjoyed their freedom long, but the nub of it were they’d gone. Jack owned up to having mistook our position in the dark, but insisted the keys and rope were a mystery. None believed him, for we knew he steered perfectly, and picked pockets well nigh as good. We’d more pressing troubles, however: the East India Company was mightily displeased.
“A great sea battle!”
To hear her speak, you’d fancy it an epic clash of navies, not the poor Pearl trapped against a lee shore by a squadron of Indiamen out of Fort St. George.
“A good fight we made of it,” I say, “but the Captain and a third of the crew were killed. I saw Jack shot through the chest; but by then, the Pearl were holed below the waterline and burning above it. I struck out for shore on my own.”
“Jack wan’ that ship so bad,” says the witch, looking truly sorry for it. “Bad enough to trade him soul to Davy Jones.”
I might have known he’d be in the tale, for ‘tis becoming more like one of old Josiah's yarns by the moment.
“Are ye saying ’twas ye as made Davy Jones raise the Pearl?”
“Ships ain’ no concern of Tia’s! Jack done that all by himself. He made Davy wait thirteen year-Jack learned him bargainin’ from me-but he trade him soul none the less. My heart din’ wait thirteen year: it break right then. I could not bear to look on my boy, knowin’ Davy take him so soon. Tia’s no fool to lock her heart in a box: better lock away the hurt, an’ keep the heart where it can mend.
“Don’t go believin’ I gave no help, mind-why you think so many wash up alive, hm? You tell it yourself, now you found your tongue!”
I want to ask what Jack was, and what he knew, but my only salvation’s the tale, and I must mind to the telling of it.
“’Tis true many of us came to shore-and I thank ye, if ye’d a hand in that. I gathered all the men I could, and led ’em through the jungle till we found ourselves a dhow. ’Twas a hard journey, and I grieved for Jack and the Pearl, as did we all.”
Most for the Pearl, but ships be no concern to the witch.
“Did you not search for Jack?”
After his folly cost us so dear? If he traded his soul, he made a good bargain, for we’d soon’ve parted him from it had he come to shore alive!
But I adopt an expression of regret. “Even Bill could see ’twere a fool’s hope.”
I’d a suspicion Bill’d helped Jack lose us our cargo, but I saw no profit in calling him on it. Better to look to the future-then as now.
“Every man jack of the survivors voted for me: I were Captain Barbossa at last! I’d only the dhow-which weren’t worth a name-but soon I’d be showing the world a thing or two. First, we needed food, water, and safety: I found us all three in the Nicobar Islands.
“Then who should show up but bloody Jack Sparrow? And the ship he sailed on none other than the Black Pearl herself, blacker and swifter than ever. How he found us he never said, but from the moment them black sails topped the horizon, they headed straight for our little anchorage, clean and true as you could wish, for all he’d scarce men enough to reef the sails.”
(To think of the times I dismayed poor Bill Turner with talk of Jack’s uncanny powers, never once wondering why the tales came so easy. And I called Bill a fool!)
“Now, the Pearl’s safe return were a wonder to us all. My men from the dhow were so caught up in thanking Jack for the miracle, they quite forgot ’twere his folly as sank us in the first place. The man himself, arm still oozing from a fresh-branded P, would only put his finger to his beard and whisper ‘I’m Jack Sparrow, mate-don’t you forget it!’
“‘Captain Jack Sparrow!” cries one of the idiots I’d saved from the jungle, and nothing would do but to make him Captain indeed.”
I’d half a mind to curse them for the fools they were and go down fighting, but I figured I’d best paint on a smile, clap Jack on the back, and proclaim meself proud to be his First Mate.
“An’ William Turner?” The question takes me unawares, but I welcome a new topic.
“Bill got Second Mate and were glad.”
“William Turner an’ my Jack?” she asks again, shaking her head.
Meaning, I suppose, were Bill glad to see pretty Jack? Well there’s a question…
“Sat round the fire, we was; the fools I’d saved from the jungle a-crowding to touch Jack and the fools he’d saved from the fort, and all a-telling each other how happy they was to find the other set of fools still alive.
“Bill just stared into the flames, until Pintel jabbed him in the ribs and said, ‘We’re all glad to see Jack again, eh Bill?’ Bill, being Bill, said naught; then he glanced across the fire with barely a smile. ‘Glad to have you back, Jack, but I wonder what promises you made for it.’
“Jack’s face flickered from cheerful to sickly in the firelight. ‘No worries, love! Promises come cheap, eh? Anyway, I swear, by the time it matters, you’ll not notice either way.’ Then he came to sit by me, but only to drink himself stupid and sprawl on the sand, dead to the world.”
“Ah!” she says, all witchy and mysterious. (Which be the wrong tack if she means to fright Hector Barbossa.) “My Jack has a touch of the sight, for all he won’ believe.”
“I thought of killing him as he slept,” I say-truthfully, as it happens. “I marvel he knew I’d not.”
Less than truth, that. Perhaps we both knew the men had just wits enough to send me after him; perhaps he were a trusting fool…
“Perhaps he fancied I cared for him more than I let on.”
I try to believe this, in hopes that she will, but I’ve a hunch it won’t pass muster. Best return quick to such facts as are in my favour.
“I spread a blanket over him. In the morning, when he woke groaning and spewing his guts on the sand, ’twas I that held his hair back and brought seawater to sluice away the mess.”
I can only suppose ’twere done to impress the crew. Turns out lucky, for the witch is sizing me up with what looks to be favour.
“I’m thinkin’ you could do it again,” she says.
“That I could!” says I, seeing as it requires me alive and not writhing in torment.
Link to Part 3 in A Reader's Guide to Truths and Lies