Chapter 5 “What do you mean it’s GONE?? Give me that glass you idiot!”
The night was turning out to be worse than the day for Captain Standish, who, now with the witness of two lower-ranking captains on vessels primed ready to take the Chamada, the Black Pearl, and any other pirate ship they might encounter, stared at the serene bay bathed in moonlight. Not a single listing, sunk, nor beached ship in sight. No pirates to clap in the irons that were gaping in the hold, and no bodies of female buccaneers. He felt his skin prickle at the thought. His mind went fancifully back to the tabby cat that arrived in the scullery many a dewy English morning of his childhood with a field mouse, a bird, or a rat clenched in its teeth. And how, as a chubby-faced boy with warm butter slipping down his chin courtesy of the cook’s indulgence, he would watch the cat grinning and rising to the hands that ran the length of his back. Give them what they want, that’s the key, that’s what gets you the cream. Only now as he feverishly scoured the island for those whores Bonny and Read, it was becoming clear that he had no rat to present to the King
“IMPOSSIBLE! What are you waiting for Peawick? Man the boats! They are hiding in those trees, I tell you. I will not be denied!” A flurry of activity that was at odds with the quiet blue expanse of the Caribbean night saw long boats full of white, red, and iron row towards the beach past the bobbing remnants of wood floating peacefully on the tide’s swell. Tired backs and arms pulled the boats ashore and, with bayonets fixed, the first line of the pride of the British Navy advanced towards where the trees held a darker foreboding.
“Holy shit!” a thick cockney accent escaped from the mouth of a man dragged prematurely from his family into service and now served as the only possible comment on the sight in front of them. Anne had of course never entertained the thought of taking the bodies of those who invaded her ship with her, but in truth neither was she a woman who failed to see the threat or the significance of fear in battle. A long line of casualties of the skirmish earlier in the day formed a trooping of the colour in front of Standish’s men, only they weren’t standing to attention as was customary. From the tree above dangled a hastily written sign, “Redcoats Ye Be Warned,” that swayed in what passed for a breeze.
A scarlet-faced Standish marched through the bloody parade and, with something akin to abandon, stomped into the bush, his men glaring eyes at each other before their reluctant feet carried them behind the captain who was barking orders and crashing through the undergrowth like a boar.
Peawick felt his stomach turn. This could be an ambush or just a plain old massacre. Either way, his feet were hardly even under the captain’s table, and a poor obituary it would make in the Times. “Captain Standish, I beg you! Let us form an orderly troop at least…take some time to plan our offensive…Captain, for the love of God…!”
Some leagues away a celebration of sorts much as they could muster sounded out in the fiddles and the drums on deck of the Black Pearl. Having satisfied himself that at least for the right now they were not being followed Jack took leave of the helm to be greeted by quite a scene as he opened the cabin door—water puddles darkening the wood under the old copper tub, fiddle music swirling through the windows, and Kate humming along with her long wet hair falling down her back and a sheet knotted around her. He watched her sway to the music while she combed her hair and grinned when she spun around to see him standing there.
“Now here is the stuff of legends. Are you sure there is no tail hidden under there?” He lifted the hem of the sheet a little. “No that would be awkward for dancing. Any sisters about ready to join your song and lure us onto the rocks?” Kate smiled back, humming louder now, and took his hands. She turned them both in circles until she went a bit dizzy from it and his arms wrapped tightly around her to steady her.
“It goes against all my best pirate instincts to encourage you to dress and leave the cabin now,” he protested, breathing in the flowers and honey of her clean hair, “but if you must, wait just a moment…as it is dancing clothes that are wanted.” He tugged her along behind him as he opened four different trunks until he found what he was looking for. “French, if I recall,” and he piled a linen dress of the brightest turquoise with a field of poppies, larkspur, stock, and sweet peas embroidered across the bodice.
The shadows of the quarterdeck weren’t quite enough to hide her, but Rosie was doing her best to sink into the wood just to watch the increasingly fevered fiddle playing and the drunken lurching of men, who thought they remembered how to dance, contend with rum and the swells of the tide. Her fingers touched the now-dried blood on her arm and she let out a sigh. That sword fight had left her breathless in more ways then one, and she snorted a bit at the thought. Men! What would she want with one of those besides the obvious? Every minute that passed she was further from Mary and with only the confidence of Anne to suggest she wouldn’t be left behind to meet her fate in Tortuga.
She took a big swig from the pot in her hand, holding down the retch as the rough grog hit her throat—if you can’t beat them, join them or at least get as drunk—and pushed her spine further into the wood. There was at least entertainment laid on apparently. Apart from the increasing leaning of pirates that threatened to find them horizontal very soon, there was Kate in a dress Rosie could only have imagined dancing with Captain Sparrow as if it was the last day of her life and she wanted to cram every inch of herself into this one—aye and maybe every inch of him too. Rosie chuckled at her own joke and let her eyes wander over this curious captain, a man the type of which she had not seen before. He moved like the water itself and talked like it too, his words running over rocks and through gulleys, deep rhythms below and a sparkle of sun on the ripples on the surface, sometimes you didn’t hear what he actually said just the sound of the words. Anyway, he had managed to douse the fire of Anne’s temper and there wasn’t another man Rosie had ever seen do that, not unless they were intent on surrendering, that was, and then it was more like pity or contempt that quieted her.
“Are you hiding, lass?” a voice made her leap out of her skin.
“Jesus Christ! You think it wise to creep up on me, William Turner?”
“Did you want me to form a band and march up here instead?” he smiled at her as he sat down, without any invitation she noted. “Only it looked like you were intent on having as little company as possible.”
Rosie screwed her eyes up and turned to look at him. “Evidently you assumed you were the exception, huh?” A smile met the mouth of the bottle he tipped up, and Rosie watched the muscles of his throat take gulps worthy of Bacchus himself before she grinned back. “Well maybe you are that, IF you have come to share that prize with me…seems only fair since I let yer off lightly, only I heard Captain Sparrow isn’t so fond of eunuchs.”
She liked making him laugh, he had one of those mouths that wasn’t hard to imagine pressed someplace. Almost without thinking she shifted on the hard wood.
“You let me off?!...You would not have lasted the first minute,” his eyes pinned you down just as well as his blade, now she thought of it, “if I had a mind to press my advantage of course.”
Rosie lifted her chin and held him back. “Ah! Self-restraint and control—truly uncommon qualities in a pirate.”
“Well maybe I am nothing like a common pirate. I still have all me teeth as you see, evidence enough I would think…”
She could hardly help but see a wide boyish grin in an older face and Rosie sighed and reached for the bottle, a dare of a brush over his leg that now that they were both unarmed seemed a good deal more dangerous. His large hand wiped over the top of the brown glass, an unconscious gesture, and he stretched to pass her the port. He was close now, the heat of the day and the exertions of their fight leaving the sluggish air full with salt and sweat. She breathed him into her, a trickle of a tingle running down her belly at the scent of Will Turner that seconds later mixed with the sun-baked ruby scent from vineyards across the ocean.
“Taste it…it’s yours too.”
A little chuckle and a shake of her head denied it but she did what he asked. The first few dribbles made it impossible not to lick her lips, as if spoonfuls of that sweet delicious honey she had tasted once as a child were enticing her mouth. Only this had red fire in it, the first gulp warming her throat and easing the passage of more.
Will smiled, “Best not develop a taste for it. We had quite a fight with a Portuguese merchant ship and a frigate to acquire what amounted to no more than 10 bottles.” He watched her take another long gulp, an instant when her eyes closed with sheer bliss, and try as he might he couldn’t stop himself leaning a bit further forward. Ruby port from those lips—perhaps there was something better still than a case of Portugal’s finest to be had.
“How did you end up such a long way from home, Rosie?” his voice as dark and thick as the liquor still lingering in her mouth, and she swallowed hard. Concentrate Rosie.
“You want to know what the hell I am doing here? I could ask you the same question. Gibbs tells me you are a fine blacksmith.”
He said nothing for a while. “Gibbs just came out with it then, did he? Out of the blue as it were?”
She could see him smile even without looking and closed her eyes. Ok, so she had asked about Will Turner, how long he had sailed with Jack Sparrow, and what the men thought of him, and Gibbs, well he had looked at her and rolled his eyes. “I can’t give no guarantees, mind, about his way with the ladies, that being private business, although my hammock being next to his cabin...but no, I swore I wouldn’t tell a soul, it being bad luck to have women on board in the first place, and I had advised the boy against it…though bad luck for who in that instance I couldn’t rightly say since they all sounded to be having quite the opposite. But I will say that there’s plenty to wave him off at shore and no mistake, fights and tears have broken out. On one occasion…”
Gibbs’s voice had drifted through her head while she was busy kicking herself for taking a fancy to another First Mate, and now with a belly full of port she let her mind go back there. Really she had no desire to be seen as another of his doting women, she had a job to do, and more to the point she was only one night away from the Chamada and Mary. What would Mary say? Rosie almost laughed out loud. Most likely, “Move over, Rosie, this one is mine,” rank not being something Mary usually used to her advantage, but she might just be tested here.
Rosie turned round to face him, although she wasn’t so sure that was such a good idea once she did, with Will sitting back against the wood and his shirt falling open. It was impossible not to look and Rosie didn’t even try, her eyes following the lines of muscle and tan and thin whisper of hair that disappeared into his breeches. The rise and fall of his chest had her sway in tandem. He was watching her looking at him.
Yes, Will Turner, I am thinking about how you would feel.
“Liberty, that’s what I am doing here—to be who I am and be with who I want and have no one tell me otherwise. Leastways that’s what I thought when I sailed out of Portsmouth on a navy ship bound for someplace I never heard of. Of course there were plenty of orders to be obeyed, still are, and some that aren’t to yer liking neither,” a wry smile confirmed that both of them had Anne firmly in the front of their mind’s eye, “but orders that are about getting you from A to B or to save you from being killed, or where the booty is to be stored.”
His brown eyes were all over her face, “So what happened to Rosie the redcoat?”
Rosie took a breath, “Well she got discovered, never could piss standing up,” she looked right back at him to finish her sentence, “and made the decision that if she was to be taken by a man it was better just the captain than the whole crew. So she made it to port in his bed and then jumped ship into a hell that is called Tangiers...”
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