PotC -- Den of Iniquity
Jack/Elizabeth/Will, Gibbs/OC PG-13 for some sexual content and girly bits
This goes in the series with At the Sign of the Green Dragon and Teach's Hole though you don't need to have read either of them first.
How the Black Pearl came to Teach's Hole, and what three pirates do with a baby. Three years after DMC.
It’s not that I actually have anything against pirates. How should I? My own father was one of Blackbeard’s men. I was five years old when he was hanged by the Governor of Virginia, and my sister Dorrie was three. There’s not two years between us, and alike as twins they said when we were small, Sarah and Dorothy, Sadie and Dorrie, daughters of a pirate who sailed on the Adventure.
Well, that all came to a bad end, didn’t it? Dorrie don’t remember how it was after, the bodies all floating in the Sound. Some of them we only found by watching the birds. Us islanders, we buried them, cause they was mostly our kin or we knew them somehow, and anyhow we’d less than sympathy for the law seeing as how the men who was captured were hanged in Virginia, including my Da. So it’s nothing I’ve got against pirates, not in themselves.
They turn up from time to time here, looking for Blackbeard’s treasure. We ain’t got it. Never had. He took it all to that fine house he built himself away on the mainland. Nothing buried in our dunes. But sometimes they come looking.
This run of pirates didn’t. I’d seen that Sparrow before, a while back, and now he had his own ship again, so trim and dark and pretty. (And the ship was pretty too!) Anyhow, he was generous with coin and they gave my sister Dorrie’s common house good custom without tearing the place apart, which is always a near thing. Dorrie married Midgett who had the common house, a solid man with a head for business, and he left her right well off when he died a few years back. Three boys and two girls, Dorrie has, so she’s got good help in the house and those boys are pretty serious about pirates not tearing up the place.
But like I said, Sparrow’s men were well behaved, for pirates. They knew the difference between a trollop and an honest woman, sure enough. We haven’t any trollops here, not in Teach’s Hole, though I won’t say there’s not a woman or two who’s no better than she should be. If anybody made arrangements I don’t know about it myself, not that I think Dorrie wasn’t throwing herself hard at Sparrow and her a respectable widow and a good ten years his senior! That would be Dorrie. She always had a fine opinion of her looks, though I’m thinking at 48 she ought to get a level head about it. Maybe not ten years his senior. Maybe more like five. But she was old enough to know better on any account.
Not that he was catching, mind. No more than a wink and a tweak, anyway. He had a woman with him, and her in men’s clothes like a proper pirate for all that anybody could see she was expecting. Girl that thin with the pouch of her belly out in front, she shows soon. I did too, when I was expecting my Emmanuel. Course that was thirty years ago, when I was a lot thinner.
Anyhow, Sparrow and his girl spent all their time talking with Dorrie and anybody else, and another young man with them, William Turner. They were asking all about the place and the kind of custom there is, and how often naval ships call which got a laugh. There ain’t a naval ship on the whole Carolina coast that can get in Teach’s Hole, on account of the shallow inlet. Why when Maynard sunk Adventure that day, he had to have a pair of sloops chartered out in the Chesapeake for the job, cause there weren’t no naval ships that could even get close!
Well, Sparrow liked that, let me tell you. He stroked his beard and looked thoughtful. Pretty hands like a girl, but tougher than he looks, I thought. Not that I was watching or that I spend my time hanging about a common house, but Dorrie’s my sister and all so if there was trouble I felt it my bounden duty to be there.
I shouldn’t have, because one gent took it too personal, me refilling his ale. He took the tankard and he said to me, “It’s not often I have such a fine woman to give me a drop.”
And I said, “That’s because you lead a dissolute life, I expect. An honest man could expect an honest pint.” But I thought he was a bold, solid man, and he was, that Joshamee Gibbs. I had him marked for the first officer because I’ve always had more sense than Dorrie and I could see she weren’t going anywhere with Sparrow. I’m a respectable widow these twenty years, but I know a good solid man when I see one, and Joshamee Gibbs was ten years my senior and had the look of a man who wants a bit of experience and seasoning in a woman.
“It’s never an honest pint for me,” he said, shaking his head. “A sad thing, to be rolling in gold and treasure and never have an honest pint or a good woman waiting for me.” He looked up at me, and I thought he had nice blue eyes. “Would you have a seat with me and listen to my boring stories? It’d be a pleasure just to look on a fine looking woman like you.”
He was certainly looking already. Any more looking and his nose would have been in my bodice, with me laced tight enough to explode as it was.
So I sat down with him and thought to myself that he was well spoken and had a bit of humor about it, which is an underrated thing in a man. Life is God’s grand jest, is what I say, and it takes a certain kind of man to see the humor in it all.
It turned out they were looking about for a bolt hole, a home port. They’d been in Jamaica and the islands, but it was all getting too hot there. There was a long story about the British East India Company and how Sparrow had accidentally castrated some high muckety-muck, and then somebody had run off with the Governor’s daughter though I wasn’t clear if it was Turner or not. He seemed to be third in command, or maybe it was the girl. Anyhow, somebody had run off with the Governor’s daughter or maybe it was Sparrow who compromised her, and there was a Captain of a 74 who had vowed dire vengeance, and I didn’t get it all because I kept up with Joshamee drink for drink and when he got to the Chinamen I was all confused.
It was Dorrie’s fault really. I know she puts something in her ale that ought not be there. Somehow I took Joshamee Gibbs out to see the old anchorage, and the stars were all bright and all and next thing you know we laid down in the dunes just like a boy and girl and I could a sworn I was fourteen and blushing in his eyes, cause he said I was the sweetest thing he’d seen in ten years, that I had skin just like a girl’s and breasts like a goddess. I don’t know if it’s all that being around silver-tongued Sparrow, but Joshamee can say things like that when the inspiration strikes him. He’s a deep man. Deeper than you’d think.
Anyhow in the morning I felt the proper fool, but he was chagrined and didn’t do anything awful like offer me gold, cause I’d have had to ram it down his throat. Instead he was all saying he was sorry to have offered me offense and that he knew I was a respectable woman and he should never have been led astray by strong drink, and to have brought a respectable woman with him into trouble was not what he intended, only he got carried away because I was so beautiful and him so long without a woman. Well, what can you say to that? I thought he was a fine man himself, and I like having a man make up to me abject. I told him I couldn’t stay mad at him, but that he better court me proper if he wanted any more of that.
At that the sun came out and he smiled and said he would and he hoped to stay on terms since they were serious about Teach’s Hole being a place to be often. It was on account of the girl, the one Sparrow called Bess. Joshamee said she was with child, which I told him I could see plain as daylight, and that they needed somewhere safe for her lying-in, somewhere the Navy wouldn’t be. There ain’t no place safer for a pirate babe than Teach’s Hole, I said, and I oughter know, being one myself.
Joshamee thought that was fine, and he said he knew I was a proper lass. Well, that’s calling mutton lamb, since I haven’t been a lass in something like thirty-five years, but nice just the same.
That William Turner went round, and he hired Caleb Jones to build them a fine house, paid him half ahead in pirate gold, for a big fine house between the sea and the town, up on the dunes by the yaupon thicket. Took a few months to put up, but the pirates were back by then, just in time for the lying-in, and Turner done a good job to everything was ready. He knew his stuff, Turner did. Impressed a lot of people as a good, sensible man.
Which is why when Turner showed up at my door the night after the babe was born, all shaking and pale, I was surprised and opened it right up.
Course I already knew the babe was born and it was a boy. Dorrie’s delivered every babe born dead or alive on Ocracoke in the last twenty years, and of course she’d done this one too. She stopped by my house on her way home and told me.
“Sister,” she said, wiping her brow with her apron, “there’s funny goings on there.”
“Did she have a hard time of it?” I asked. I had the Devil’s own time with my Emmanuel, and while the girl didn’t look too young she was real thin.
“Not so much so.” Dorrie helped herself to my tea talking all the while. “She did all right. It took a long time, but you expect that with the first.”
I nodded. “How long did it go, Dorrie?” I’ve a sympathy. It comes out of having it hard myself, I guess.
“Eighteen or nineteen hours, not so bad.” Dorrie sat down by my fire and sighed, stretching her feet out. “She did all right. Her name’s Elizabeth, and she’s gentle bred, or I’ll eat my hat. Somebody’s got her into trouble, Sister.”
“Somebody?” I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you know? I mean the way Sparrow watches her and looks out for her in company, ain’t he the one?”
“That’s what I thought,” Dorrie said. “But then there’s Will Turner, and he’s pacing around and jumping every time she says she wants a drink of water, I mean in the first hours before she was brought to bed, acting like every young husband I’ve ever seen. And Sparrow just watching it with not a flinch. You’d think he’d be a jealous man, the way he looks like a Spaniard and all. But here’s Turner doing Elizabeth this and Elizabeth that. When I finally threw them both out because they were more harm than good, and it was getting on time, damned if they both didn’t carry on like the father!”
“Do tell!” I said, sitting down myself.
“Sparrow, he settles down to drink. Now I’ve nothing against a spot of rum, but he was just steady on, neat rum, drink after drink, not saying anything or stopping except to go out to the necessary. I swear most men would’ve been under the table, and he’s just putting it away getting quieter and quieter. And Turner’s jumping at every noise. Every time Elizabeth lets out a moan, he’s there banging on the door wanting to know if it’s all right. How’m I to deliver a child, Sister, with all that carrying on?”
“How did it go then?” I said.
Dorrie kicked her shoes off. “When it gets time, I tell her ‘child, don’t worry about making noise. You just go ahead and scream your head off if you want to.’ And she says ‘Mistress Midgett, I can’t do that. It will upset the boys too much.’”
“The boys?”
“The boys.” Dorrie nodded for emphasis. “Not Will or Jack, but the pair of them, same as if she had two husbands and she’s looking out for both of them.”
“I never heard tell of any such,” I said.
“And when the babe’s born and it’s a fine boy, I got her settled and went out to let them in. I open the door and there’s Turner right in my face and he says all calm and whitefaced ‘I know she’s dead. I want to see her. I got to see her. Elizabeth was my whole life.’ I looked him in the eye and I said, ‘She ain’t dead. Don’t you go carrying on. She’s all right and it’s a fine boy.’ I stopped myself short of sayin’ what I usually do, about you have a fine son, cause how do I know that? And Sparrow, he jump up and he’s so drunk I’m surprised he’s on his feet and he put his arm around Turner and said ‘I told you me sweet Bess would be right as rain.’ And then he staggered right into the door and fell over on the floor in her room.”
“God have mercy!” I said. It was a fine bunch of goings on, no mistake.
“And she looked up from the bed and she said, ‘Jack I don’t know why I put up with you,’ and Turner came over like he was looking at an angel and looked at that baby like it was his hope of salvation, he did.”
“Acting like the father, sure enough,” I agreed.
Which is why when the next night he showed up pale and shaking on my doorstep I opened right up.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Turner?” I said.
“Mrs. Midgett said you could help us,” he said, grabbing at my hand. “He won’t eat. He’s not eating a thing, and Elizabeth….” A furious blush ran up his face. “She’s all swollen up and she’s got a fever and I…. We….”
“And Dorrie said to get me?” I asked.
“That’s right. You’ve got to come. Please.”
I went to take the kettle off the hob so it wouldn’t scorch. If Dorrie told him to ask me then she didn’t think it was anything strange. More like her milk coming in hard and all three of them without a clue between them.
“I’m coming,” I said. “Let me get some things.”
Well, I was right about that. I had a good look at her, and it wasn’t childbed fever or anything wrong with her parts. Dorrie done a good job there, like always. No, it was just the milk fever coming in, and her breasts swollen up like melons. Women with little breasts always hurt the worst with engorgement. It hurt her for me to touch them. She winced, just a little hiss between her teeth.
“Where’s the baby?” I said.
“There in the cradle.”
I went and fetched him, unwrapping him a bit to let the cool air wake him. There’s one best thing for engorgement, and that’s to get the milk into the child. He was a medium sized baby, with wisps of brown hair and the squashed red face newborns have, just an ordinary sort of child. If I’d thought I could see which one was his father, I couldn’t. He might have been anybody’s baby, to look at him. He made little mewing noises.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“James,” she said, and I thought she smiled the first time. I’d not seen her smile before.
“Well, James,” I said, “It’s time for your supper. Time to learn how to eat, little man.”
He rooted around her breast when I put him to her, but he didn’t know what to do. And it was clear she didn’t either. I took his head cupped in my hand, ran the first finger of my other hand around his mouth until he tracked to it and opened his lips, then popped his jaw all the way open. She gasped, like she thought it would hurt him, but fast as anything I had that mouth on her nipple. He clamped down good and hard, and she squeaked.
“Nice and wide,” I said. “Not a little poochy mouth. A baby’s got to have a wide latch to get anything out.” I showed her his lips, well spread, and he started chomping.
“He’s doing it,” she said, with a kind of startled surprise. “He’s moving his jaw.”
“Course he is,” I said. “Now mind you keep his mouth nice and wide. A bad latch’ll hurt you, and it won’t get the milk into him. Best thing is for him to drink a bit on both sides. Have him a while on this one and then we’ll switch him, so he uses you even.”
Her eyes were very bright. “They hurt,” she said quietly.
“That’s because they’re full.” I could see the skin stretched pale across her breasts, the veins dark and standing out horrible looking. “Just like a cow when it’s past milking time,” I joked.
She looked completely blank.
“You’ve never milked a cow?” I asked.
“No,” Elizabeth said, still looking down at his little face moving.
I sighed. “Nor cooked a meal or cleaned a house, I’ll warrant. You’re the governor’s daughter.”
Her eyes were suddenly wary. “So what if I am?”
“It’s nothing to me,” I said. “But child, what brought you to this?” I didn’t think a man like Sparrow would marry her, but that Turner had a sense of decency.
“I’ve never wanted anything but to be a pirate,” she said, and her beautiful face was sad. “I suppose that’s over now. I’ll never have anything again. I’ll never be free again.” She looked away, not toward the stairs to the rooms below where both men were, but to the windows, to the sea.
"It's been three years," she said. "And all but the last six months have been so happy. We've been to India. And Africa too. It's amazing, watching Accra disappearing behind you, seeing the coast steaming after the rain. And Spain. We were in Spain last spring. When you have a ship you can go anywhere."
I just sat on the edge of the bed and listened. That's what they need you to do sometimes, just listen.
Elizabeth had a dreaming look to her face, as though she were remembering something far away. "That's what a ship is. She's freedom." She looked at me. "I didn't want this. I didn't want this to happen. But Jack says you can't get lucky all the time, not all the time for three years, even if you're careful."
"Is Captain Sparrow his father then?" I asked carefully.
She smiled, and that dreaming look was gone. It was a mocking smile, a pirate kind of smile. "I don't know. Does that shock you? I made sure I could never know. None of us could ever know."
I was working out what that might entail when her face went perfectly blank, the stricken look of someone who's seen a death. "But I suppose all that's over now. They'll leave me here with the baby and sail away. Or Will will start about getting married and being a blacksmith again, and I'll lose everything. All because of this." She never said James' name.
I shivered, and not because it was cold. That’s the kind of look of someone who has lost hope. When a mother looks at her babe that way, you start to get afraid. Because it’s not anger. Anger happens regular enough. But the absence of love is a harder thing. James was a thing she did not want. A thing that stood between her and life. That’s when tragedies happen, and people wonder how they did.
I said some pleasant thing or another, switched him over after a bit, let him nurse and checked his napkin. Then I tucked him in his cradle all safe and warm, him going right to sleep in my hands, limp and trusting. A fine babe, young James.
I settled her down in what had to be the biggest bed I’d ever seen, changed the linens under her where the blood had soaked through, brought her water to wash her face and arms. Her breasts weren’t paining her anymore, and I gave her a tot of rum to relax her and get her some rest. She settled down with a little sigh and closed her eyes.
Then I went out to tell those men what for.
Turner was sound asleep in the armchair downstairs, a shawl of good patterned wool over him, his mouth wide open in sleep. Someone had tucked him in as comfortable as the babe upstairs. I frowned at him.
“Shhh,” Sparrow said. “He’s not slept in two nights.” He was sitting in the hard chair opposite, a long pipe in his hand, shadows dark around eyes rimmed outrageously in kohl.
“I want a word with you,” I said. Charming and silver tongued he might be, but I had my head up.
He raised an eyebrow and went with me into the kitchen so as not to wake Turner. I didn't think he'd slept either, but he posed like a player against the table, one tendril of smoke wreathing upward from the pipe bowl. "Trouble, dearie?"
"Don't you dearie me," I said. "I want to know if you're going to do right by that girl."
He tilted his head back, biting on the pipe stem with gold teeth. "Girl doesn't want to marry me. I've asked. So's Will, for what it's worth. Over and over at tiresome length."
"I'm not talking about marrying her," I said, "I'm talking about taking her with you. If you leave her and the babe here, it's not going to be pretty, Captain. Something bad will happen, mark my words."
His pose was utterly nonchalant, but something happened in his eyes, all dark and serious. "Been worrying about that six months," he said. "I thought it would be better when the babe was born. I don't need to tell you, Mistress Owens, that a pirate ship's no place for a baby. Safer here."
"Not really," I said.
He opened his mouth and closed it again on the stem of the pipe. I had no idea what awful thing he saw in his mind's eye, what he thought her capable of in extremity. I just saw the reflection of it in his face.
"She needs her freedom," I said, "In a few weeks when he's bigger, take him with you. With a tiny babe it doesn't matter where they are. Ship, shore, it's all one. As long as they've people to love them. But don't you leave her here. Not if you care for her and the boy at all."
"I'm not the kind who would, am I?" he said, turning his head to blow the smoke away from me. It was a pretty pose, and covered up anything he thought well enough.
"I've given a husband and a son to the sea," I said, and I was proud that my voice didn't shake at all. "And my father to the gallows. He was a pirate and a good man. You be half as good, and that boy will remember you fondly when you hang."
Sparrow didn't look at me, just leaned there against the table, puffing on his long pipe.
I started picking up dishes and putting them in an empty washtub. Truly the three of them had no more housekeeping that you'd expect of a pile of pirates. After a bit, Sparrow dumped out the pipe on the fender, knocking the ash into the hearth, and wove his way out of the room.
I waited a minute until I heard his footsteps going upstairs and then I followed. Sure it was none of my business, but like I said I had my head up and if that fool man made a cake of it I would kick him till his head spun. I lurked on the stairs when he went in, stopping and swaying in the lamplight, looking at her sleeping there or at the babe in the cradle, I couldn't see which.
"Jack?" she said sleepily, half turning over. "Are you sober?"
"Cold stone and pitifully, me darlin'," he said.
"Come here."
He came and sat beside her, three quarters turned from me, gold beads winking in the dimness. "Right here, Bess. Any better?"
"It doesn't hurt so," she said. "Better."
His hand twitched against the linens, as though he longed to touch her but feared to.
She saw, and put her hand over his. "Come sit the other way," she said, "and put your arm around me."
He turned about, sitting gingerly with his back against the headboard and his sandy boots on my nice clean linens, and she eased back against him, her head against his shoulder. I watched the taunt lines in her face relax a bit, like a nervous horse gentled by a touch as he ran his fingers over the back of her hand.
"I've been thinking, me darlin'." Sparrow addressed himself to the top of her head. "That I should get the Pearl careened and caulked. It's time the bottom was retarred."
"I suppose it is," she said.
"It's been near two year," he said. "Time for it." He dropped his cheek against her hair, eyes half closed. "Plenty of time to do it while we're waiting for Jamie lad and you to be ready to come to sea."
The color rushed back in her face like she’d been reprieved from the gallows herself. “What?” She turned her head, craning to look at him.
“It’ll take a couple of months to do the job proper,” he said, his beard against her forehead. "By the end of May or beginning of June he ought to be big enough to come with us, and you’ll be fit again. It’s as good a time as any to see to her bottom. Probably a couple of boards that should be replaced too. There’s that slow leak astern in the bilge where I think there’s a gap making.”
“Jack, why are you talking about the Pearl’s bottom? Did you just say that you were going to wait here for me?” She pushed back from him a little, trying to see his face, which he was trying to duck into her hair. It made a pretty dance, and I couldn’t hear what he said. Whatever it was, it was right, because she kissed him like she meant it, hard and sweet at once, ran her hand up the side of his face playing with those absurd beads in his hair. “You’re not going to leave me?”
“I’d not be happy without you,” he said, his head inclined to hers, and for a moment I could see what she saw in him, trouble though he was. He lifted his chin, and I couldn’t tell from his voice if he jested or not. “I’d not be happy without you at sea, and Will’d not be happy without the baby, and the baby’d not be happy without you, and you’d not be happy on land, so there’s nothing for it except to all go.”
“And this fine house?” She looked about, as though what she had seen before as the walls of a prison were nothing but a house again, painted up for her pleasure by a man who loved her, pale green bedroom walls and an enormous bed heaped with linen and brocade and patterned cottons from India.
“Could be useful,” he said. “Good to have a bolt hole.”
“A lair,” she said, and put her head back against his shoulder.
“A den of iniquity,” Sparrow agreed.
She closed her eyes. “How are we going to manage a baby on a pirate ship?”
“We’ll manage,” he said. “Darlin’, we’ll figure it out. We always do. Complicated. Maybe just a short run this summer, down to Curacao and so. And come back here in the fall, when it looks scoppy. Don’t fancy a baby in a hurricane, and don’t much like them myself.”
“That’s not bad,” she said. Her voice was getting sleepy, and it ought to be. Strong girl as she was, she was worn out. And I could tell her that the baby would be howling his head off in three hours wanting some more of her. I planned to stick around down in the kitchen and make sure the feeding went as it ought.
“You just sleep now,” he said. “I’ll fetch Jamie for you when he wakes up.”
“Not leaving?” Her fingers were entwined with his.
“No,” he said, running that ringed hand over hers, like stroking the feathers of a bird.
“What are you thinking?” she asked drowsily.
He smiled, and I could see his gold teeth as he bent his head to hers. “I’m thinking it will take a bloody miracle for me to ever get it in you again.”
She laughed. “It will,” she said, and slid down in the bed a bit, her cheek against his chest, her eyes closed. It didn’t look terribly comfortable, but he didn’t seem to mind.
I slipped on back down the stairs to see if there was any coffee to make. All this coming and going from Jamaica ought to result in some coffee. I was going to need it, and I expected Turner would too. Not to mention Sparrow when James waked up.
No sense, the lot of them. Pirates. What can you expect?
Well, I had a word with Joshamee the next day about the whole tangle, and he agreed with me. So I came and did for them the rest of the spring, and they paid me fine, let me tell you. Many a young mother could use someone to do for her even if she had some idea about housekeeping and cooking, and with that pair of men tripping over things and making twice as much mess as one man, well, they needed me certain. And then Joshamee was all over there too, so it was three men actually.
Will Turner could fry eggs and make coffee and all, but real cooking was beyond him, and Joshamee could be bullied into helping with washing up. Sparrow, well, he was the captain and ought not cook but it turned out he knew more about it than the rest and was a reasonable hand with a goose on the spit though he made more mess than the rest of them put together.
And Joshamee kept his word to court me proper, so I relented a bit and gave him what he wanted, or what I wanted too but that’s not for saying.
By the time they sailed I was attached to the lot of them, pirates and all. I half thought we’d seen the last of them, and I won’t say I didn’t shed a tear when Joshamee wasn’t looking. I’m not for any man who goes to sea, not anymore. I’m widowed once, and never again. I’m done with wondering six months if he’ll come back, or if I should take off the ring and know he’s gone.
But there they were, end of November. On a foggy morning I saw them black sails looming out of the mist, heard them yelling and swearing in the channel trying not to go aground, cause she’s about as big as you can get in Teach’s Hole without trouble. There was Joshamee bright as always, and Turner with the lead singing out the depth, and Sparrow at the wheel with that battered hat on his head.
I ran up to light the hearth in the kitchen and the bedroom and get the house warmed up, and started chopping up potatoes to get a soup on. Less than an hour they all came in, stomping and tramping and Joshamee picking me up and calling me his beautiful girl. Jamie looked like a different baby, all fat and scooting about on his clouted bottom trying to get into things, and Elizabeth wearing a long gold chain on her belt that must have been worth a fortune, and everybody all talking at once. Will scooped up the baby and tried to feed him potato soup.
“Ah,” Sparrow said, leaning back his chair on two legs, his feet on the table until I hit him and made him move them. “Piratical domesticity.”
This goes in the series with At the Sign of the Green Dragon and Teach's Hole though you don't need to have read either of them first.
How the Black Pearl came to Teach's Hole, and what three pirates do with a baby. Three years after DMC.
It’s not that I actually have anything against pirates. How should I? My own father was one of Blackbeard’s men. I was five years old when he was hanged by the Governor of Virginia, and my sister Dorrie was three. There’s not two years between us, and alike as twins they said when we were small, Sarah and Dorothy, Sadie and Dorrie, daughters of a pirate who sailed on the Adventure.
Well, that all came to a bad end, didn’t it? Dorrie don’t remember how it was after, the bodies all floating in the Sound. Some of them we only found by watching the birds. Us islanders, we buried them, cause they was mostly our kin or we knew them somehow, and anyhow we’d less than sympathy for the law seeing as how the men who was captured were hanged in Virginia, including my Da. So it’s nothing I’ve got against pirates, not in themselves.
They turn up from time to time here, looking for Blackbeard’s treasure. We ain’t got it. Never had. He took it all to that fine house he built himself away on the mainland. Nothing buried in our dunes. But sometimes they come looking.
This run of pirates didn’t. I’d seen that Sparrow before, a while back, and now he had his own ship again, so trim and dark and pretty. (And the ship was pretty too!) Anyhow, he was generous with coin and they gave my sister Dorrie’s common house good custom without tearing the place apart, which is always a near thing. Dorrie married Midgett who had the common house, a solid man with a head for business, and he left her right well off when he died a few years back. Three boys and two girls, Dorrie has, so she’s got good help in the house and those boys are pretty serious about pirates not tearing up the place.
But like I said, Sparrow’s men were well behaved, for pirates. They knew the difference between a trollop and an honest woman, sure enough. We haven’t any trollops here, not in Teach’s Hole, though I won’t say there’s not a woman or two who’s no better than she should be. If anybody made arrangements I don’t know about it myself, not that I think Dorrie wasn’t throwing herself hard at Sparrow and her a respectable widow and a good ten years his senior! That would be Dorrie. She always had a fine opinion of her looks, though I’m thinking at 48 she ought to get a level head about it. Maybe not ten years his senior. Maybe more like five. But she was old enough to know better on any account.
Not that he was catching, mind. No more than a wink and a tweak, anyway. He had a woman with him, and her in men’s clothes like a proper pirate for all that anybody could see she was expecting. Girl that thin with the pouch of her belly out in front, she shows soon. I did too, when I was expecting my Emmanuel. Course that was thirty years ago, when I was a lot thinner.
Anyhow, Sparrow and his girl spent all their time talking with Dorrie and anybody else, and another young man with them, William Turner. They were asking all about the place and the kind of custom there is, and how often naval ships call which got a laugh. There ain’t a naval ship on the whole Carolina coast that can get in Teach’s Hole, on account of the shallow inlet. Why when Maynard sunk Adventure that day, he had to have a pair of sloops chartered out in the Chesapeake for the job, cause there weren’t no naval ships that could even get close!
Well, Sparrow liked that, let me tell you. He stroked his beard and looked thoughtful. Pretty hands like a girl, but tougher than he looks, I thought. Not that I was watching or that I spend my time hanging about a common house, but Dorrie’s my sister and all so if there was trouble I felt it my bounden duty to be there.
I shouldn’t have, because one gent took it too personal, me refilling his ale. He took the tankard and he said to me, “It’s not often I have such a fine woman to give me a drop.”
And I said, “That’s because you lead a dissolute life, I expect. An honest man could expect an honest pint.” But I thought he was a bold, solid man, and he was, that Joshamee Gibbs. I had him marked for the first officer because I’ve always had more sense than Dorrie and I could see she weren’t going anywhere with Sparrow. I’m a respectable widow these twenty years, but I know a good solid man when I see one, and Joshamee Gibbs was ten years my senior and had the look of a man who wants a bit of experience and seasoning in a woman.
“It’s never an honest pint for me,” he said, shaking his head. “A sad thing, to be rolling in gold and treasure and never have an honest pint or a good woman waiting for me.” He looked up at me, and I thought he had nice blue eyes. “Would you have a seat with me and listen to my boring stories? It’d be a pleasure just to look on a fine looking woman like you.”
He was certainly looking already. Any more looking and his nose would have been in my bodice, with me laced tight enough to explode as it was.
So I sat down with him and thought to myself that he was well spoken and had a bit of humor about it, which is an underrated thing in a man. Life is God’s grand jest, is what I say, and it takes a certain kind of man to see the humor in it all.
It turned out they were looking about for a bolt hole, a home port. They’d been in Jamaica and the islands, but it was all getting too hot there. There was a long story about the British East India Company and how Sparrow had accidentally castrated some high muckety-muck, and then somebody had run off with the Governor’s daughter though I wasn’t clear if it was Turner or not. He seemed to be third in command, or maybe it was the girl. Anyhow, somebody had run off with the Governor’s daughter or maybe it was Sparrow who compromised her, and there was a Captain of a 74 who had vowed dire vengeance, and I didn’t get it all because I kept up with Joshamee drink for drink and when he got to the Chinamen I was all confused.
It was Dorrie’s fault really. I know she puts something in her ale that ought not be there. Somehow I took Joshamee Gibbs out to see the old anchorage, and the stars were all bright and all and next thing you know we laid down in the dunes just like a boy and girl and I could a sworn I was fourteen and blushing in his eyes, cause he said I was the sweetest thing he’d seen in ten years, that I had skin just like a girl’s and breasts like a goddess. I don’t know if it’s all that being around silver-tongued Sparrow, but Joshamee can say things like that when the inspiration strikes him. He’s a deep man. Deeper than you’d think.
Anyhow in the morning I felt the proper fool, but he was chagrined and didn’t do anything awful like offer me gold, cause I’d have had to ram it down his throat. Instead he was all saying he was sorry to have offered me offense and that he knew I was a respectable woman and he should never have been led astray by strong drink, and to have brought a respectable woman with him into trouble was not what he intended, only he got carried away because I was so beautiful and him so long without a woman. Well, what can you say to that? I thought he was a fine man himself, and I like having a man make up to me abject. I told him I couldn’t stay mad at him, but that he better court me proper if he wanted any more of that.
At that the sun came out and he smiled and said he would and he hoped to stay on terms since they were serious about Teach’s Hole being a place to be often. It was on account of the girl, the one Sparrow called Bess. Joshamee said she was with child, which I told him I could see plain as daylight, and that they needed somewhere safe for her lying-in, somewhere the Navy wouldn’t be. There ain’t no place safer for a pirate babe than Teach’s Hole, I said, and I oughter know, being one myself.
Joshamee thought that was fine, and he said he knew I was a proper lass. Well, that’s calling mutton lamb, since I haven’t been a lass in something like thirty-five years, but nice just the same.
That William Turner went round, and he hired Caleb Jones to build them a fine house, paid him half ahead in pirate gold, for a big fine house between the sea and the town, up on the dunes by the yaupon thicket. Took a few months to put up, but the pirates were back by then, just in time for the lying-in, and Turner done a good job to everything was ready. He knew his stuff, Turner did. Impressed a lot of people as a good, sensible man.
Which is why when Turner showed up at my door the night after the babe was born, all shaking and pale, I was surprised and opened it right up.
Course I already knew the babe was born and it was a boy. Dorrie’s delivered every babe born dead or alive on Ocracoke in the last twenty years, and of course she’d done this one too. She stopped by my house on her way home and told me.
“Sister,” she said, wiping her brow with her apron, “there’s funny goings on there.”
“Did she have a hard time of it?” I asked. I had the Devil’s own time with my Emmanuel, and while the girl didn’t look too young she was real thin.
“Not so much so.” Dorrie helped herself to my tea talking all the while. “She did all right. It took a long time, but you expect that with the first.”
I nodded. “How long did it go, Dorrie?” I’ve a sympathy. It comes out of having it hard myself, I guess.
“Eighteen or nineteen hours, not so bad.” Dorrie sat down by my fire and sighed, stretching her feet out. “She did all right. Her name’s Elizabeth, and she’s gentle bred, or I’ll eat my hat. Somebody’s got her into trouble, Sister.”
“Somebody?” I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you know? I mean the way Sparrow watches her and looks out for her in company, ain’t he the one?”
“That’s what I thought,” Dorrie said. “But then there’s Will Turner, and he’s pacing around and jumping every time she says she wants a drink of water, I mean in the first hours before she was brought to bed, acting like every young husband I’ve ever seen. And Sparrow just watching it with not a flinch. You’d think he’d be a jealous man, the way he looks like a Spaniard and all. But here’s Turner doing Elizabeth this and Elizabeth that. When I finally threw them both out because they were more harm than good, and it was getting on time, damned if they both didn’t carry on like the father!”
“Do tell!” I said, sitting down myself.
“Sparrow, he settles down to drink. Now I’ve nothing against a spot of rum, but he was just steady on, neat rum, drink after drink, not saying anything or stopping except to go out to the necessary. I swear most men would’ve been under the table, and he’s just putting it away getting quieter and quieter. And Turner’s jumping at every noise. Every time Elizabeth lets out a moan, he’s there banging on the door wanting to know if it’s all right. How’m I to deliver a child, Sister, with all that carrying on?”
“How did it go then?” I said.
Dorrie kicked her shoes off. “When it gets time, I tell her ‘child, don’t worry about making noise. You just go ahead and scream your head off if you want to.’ And she says ‘Mistress Midgett, I can’t do that. It will upset the boys too much.’”
“The boys?”
“The boys.” Dorrie nodded for emphasis. “Not Will or Jack, but the pair of them, same as if she had two husbands and she’s looking out for both of them.”
“I never heard tell of any such,” I said.
“And when the babe’s born and it’s a fine boy, I got her settled and went out to let them in. I open the door and there’s Turner right in my face and he says all calm and whitefaced ‘I know she’s dead. I want to see her. I got to see her. Elizabeth was my whole life.’ I looked him in the eye and I said, ‘She ain’t dead. Don’t you go carrying on. She’s all right and it’s a fine boy.’ I stopped myself short of sayin’ what I usually do, about you have a fine son, cause how do I know that? And Sparrow, he jump up and he’s so drunk I’m surprised he’s on his feet and he put his arm around Turner and said ‘I told you me sweet Bess would be right as rain.’ And then he staggered right into the door and fell over on the floor in her room.”
“God have mercy!” I said. It was a fine bunch of goings on, no mistake.
“And she looked up from the bed and she said, ‘Jack I don’t know why I put up with you,’ and Turner came over like he was looking at an angel and looked at that baby like it was his hope of salvation, he did.”
“Acting like the father, sure enough,” I agreed.
Which is why when the next night he showed up pale and shaking on my doorstep I opened right up.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Turner?” I said.
“Mrs. Midgett said you could help us,” he said, grabbing at my hand. “He won’t eat. He’s not eating a thing, and Elizabeth….” A furious blush ran up his face. “She’s all swollen up and she’s got a fever and I…. We….”
“And Dorrie said to get me?” I asked.
“That’s right. You’ve got to come. Please.”
I went to take the kettle off the hob so it wouldn’t scorch. If Dorrie told him to ask me then she didn’t think it was anything strange. More like her milk coming in hard and all three of them without a clue between them.
“I’m coming,” I said. “Let me get some things.”
Well, I was right about that. I had a good look at her, and it wasn’t childbed fever or anything wrong with her parts. Dorrie done a good job there, like always. No, it was just the milk fever coming in, and her breasts swollen up like melons. Women with little breasts always hurt the worst with engorgement. It hurt her for me to touch them. She winced, just a little hiss between her teeth.
“Where’s the baby?” I said.
“There in the cradle.”
I went and fetched him, unwrapping him a bit to let the cool air wake him. There’s one best thing for engorgement, and that’s to get the milk into the child. He was a medium sized baby, with wisps of brown hair and the squashed red face newborns have, just an ordinary sort of child. If I’d thought I could see which one was his father, I couldn’t. He might have been anybody’s baby, to look at him. He made little mewing noises.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“James,” she said, and I thought she smiled the first time. I’d not seen her smile before.
“Well, James,” I said, “It’s time for your supper. Time to learn how to eat, little man.”
He rooted around her breast when I put him to her, but he didn’t know what to do. And it was clear she didn’t either. I took his head cupped in my hand, ran the first finger of my other hand around his mouth until he tracked to it and opened his lips, then popped his jaw all the way open. She gasped, like she thought it would hurt him, but fast as anything I had that mouth on her nipple. He clamped down good and hard, and she squeaked.
“Nice and wide,” I said. “Not a little poochy mouth. A baby’s got to have a wide latch to get anything out.” I showed her his lips, well spread, and he started chomping.
“He’s doing it,” she said, with a kind of startled surprise. “He’s moving his jaw.”
“Course he is,” I said. “Now mind you keep his mouth nice and wide. A bad latch’ll hurt you, and it won’t get the milk into him. Best thing is for him to drink a bit on both sides. Have him a while on this one and then we’ll switch him, so he uses you even.”
Her eyes were very bright. “They hurt,” she said quietly.
“That’s because they’re full.” I could see the skin stretched pale across her breasts, the veins dark and standing out horrible looking. “Just like a cow when it’s past milking time,” I joked.
She looked completely blank.
“You’ve never milked a cow?” I asked.
“No,” Elizabeth said, still looking down at his little face moving.
I sighed. “Nor cooked a meal or cleaned a house, I’ll warrant. You’re the governor’s daughter.”
Her eyes were suddenly wary. “So what if I am?”
“It’s nothing to me,” I said. “But child, what brought you to this?” I didn’t think a man like Sparrow would marry her, but that Turner had a sense of decency.
“I’ve never wanted anything but to be a pirate,” she said, and her beautiful face was sad. “I suppose that’s over now. I’ll never have anything again. I’ll never be free again.” She looked away, not toward the stairs to the rooms below where both men were, but to the windows, to the sea.
"It's been three years," she said. "And all but the last six months have been so happy. We've been to India. And Africa too. It's amazing, watching Accra disappearing behind you, seeing the coast steaming after the rain. And Spain. We were in Spain last spring. When you have a ship you can go anywhere."
I just sat on the edge of the bed and listened. That's what they need you to do sometimes, just listen.
Elizabeth had a dreaming look to her face, as though she were remembering something far away. "That's what a ship is. She's freedom." She looked at me. "I didn't want this. I didn't want this to happen. But Jack says you can't get lucky all the time, not all the time for three years, even if you're careful."
"Is Captain Sparrow his father then?" I asked carefully.
She smiled, and that dreaming look was gone. It was a mocking smile, a pirate kind of smile. "I don't know. Does that shock you? I made sure I could never know. None of us could ever know."
I was working out what that might entail when her face went perfectly blank, the stricken look of someone who's seen a death. "But I suppose all that's over now. They'll leave me here with the baby and sail away. Or Will will start about getting married and being a blacksmith again, and I'll lose everything. All because of this." She never said James' name.
I shivered, and not because it was cold. That’s the kind of look of someone who has lost hope. When a mother looks at her babe that way, you start to get afraid. Because it’s not anger. Anger happens regular enough. But the absence of love is a harder thing. James was a thing she did not want. A thing that stood between her and life. That’s when tragedies happen, and people wonder how they did.
I said some pleasant thing or another, switched him over after a bit, let him nurse and checked his napkin. Then I tucked him in his cradle all safe and warm, him going right to sleep in my hands, limp and trusting. A fine babe, young James.
I settled her down in what had to be the biggest bed I’d ever seen, changed the linens under her where the blood had soaked through, brought her water to wash her face and arms. Her breasts weren’t paining her anymore, and I gave her a tot of rum to relax her and get her some rest. She settled down with a little sigh and closed her eyes.
Then I went out to tell those men what for.
Turner was sound asleep in the armchair downstairs, a shawl of good patterned wool over him, his mouth wide open in sleep. Someone had tucked him in as comfortable as the babe upstairs. I frowned at him.
“Shhh,” Sparrow said. “He’s not slept in two nights.” He was sitting in the hard chair opposite, a long pipe in his hand, shadows dark around eyes rimmed outrageously in kohl.
“I want a word with you,” I said. Charming and silver tongued he might be, but I had my head up.
He raised an eyebrow and went with me into the kitchen so as not to wake Turner. I didn't think he'd slept either, but he posed like a player against the table, one tendril of smoke wreathing upward from the pipe bowl. "Trouble, dearie?"
"Don't you dearie me," I said. "I want to know if you're going to do right by that girl."
He tilted his head back, biting on the pipe stem with gold teeth. "Girl doesn't want to marry me. I've asked. So's Will, for what it's worth. Over and over at tiresome length."
"I'm not talking about marrying her," I said, "I'm talking about taking her with you. If you leave her and the babe here, it's not going to be pretty, Captain. Something bad will happen, mark my words."
His pose was utterly nonchalant, but something happened in his eyes, all dark and serious. "Been worrying about that six months," he said. "I thought it would be better when the babe was born. I don't need to tell you, Mistress Owens, that a pirate ship's no place for a baby. Safer here."
"Not really," I said.
He opened his mouth and closed it again on the stem of the pipe. I had no idea what awful thing he saw in his mind's eye, what he thought her capable of in extremity. I just saw the reflection of it in his face.
"She needs her freedom," I said, "In a few weeks when he's bigger, take him with you. With a tiny babe it doesn't matter where they are. Ship, shore, it's all one. As long as they've people to love them. But don't you leave her here. Not if you care for her and the boy at all."
"I'm not the kind who would, am I?" he said, turning his head to blow the smoke away from me. It was a pretty pose, and covered up anything he thought well enough.
"I've given a husband and a son to the sea," I said, and I was proud that my voice didn't shake at all. "And my father to the gallows. He was a pirate and a good man. You be half as good, and that boy will remember you fondly when you hang."
Sparrow didn't look at me, just leaned there against the table, puffing on his long pipe.
I started picking up dishes and putting them in an empty washtub. Truly the three of them had no more housekeeping that you'd expect of a pile of pirates. After a bit, Sparrow dumped out the pipe on the fender, knocking the ash into the hearth, and wove his way out of the room.
I waited a minute until I heard his footsteps going upstairs and then I followed. Sure it was none of my business, but like I said I had my head up and if that fool man made a cake of it I would kick him till his head spun. I lurked on the stairs when he went in, stopping and swaying in the lamplight, looking at her sleeping there or at the babe in the cradle, I couldn't see which.
"Jack?" she said sleepily, half turning over. "Are you sober?"
"Cold stone and pitifully, me darlin'," he said.
"Come here."
He came and sat beside her, three quarters turned from me, gold beads winking in the dimness. "Right here, Bess. Any better?"
"It doesn't hurt so," she said. "Better."
His hand twitched against the linens, as though he longed to touch her but feared to.
She saw, and put her hand over his. "Come sit the other way," she said, "and put your arm around me."
He turned about, sitting gingerly with his back against the headboard and his sandy boots on my nice clean linens, and she eased back against him, her head against his shoulder. I watched the taunt lines in her face relax a bit, like a nervous horse gentled by a touch as he ran his fingers over the back of her hand.
"I've been thinking, me darlin'." Sparrow addressed himself to the top of her head. "That I should get the Pearl careened and caulked. It's time the bottom was retarred."
"I suppose it is," she said.
"It's been near two year," he said. "Time for it." He dropped his cheek against her hair, eyes half closed. "Plenty of time to do it while we're waiting for Jamie lad and you to be ready to come to sea."
The color rushed back in her face like she’d been reprieved from the gallows herself. “What?” She turned her head, craning to look at him.
“It’ll take a couple of months to do the job proper,” he said, his beard against her forehead. "By the end of May or beginning of June he ought to be big enough to come with us, and you’ll be fit again. It’s as good a time as any to see to her bottom. Probably a couple of boards that should be replaced too. There’s that slow leak astern in the bilge where I think there’s a gap making.”
“Jack, why are you talking about the Pearl’s bottom? Did you just say that you were going to wait here for me?” She pushed back from him a little, trying to see his face, which he was trying to duck into her hair. It made a pretty dance, and I couldn’t hear what he said. Whatever it was, it was right, because she kissed him like she meant it, hard and sweet at once, ran her hand up the side of his face playing with those absurd beads in his hair. “You’re not going to leave me?”
“I’d not be happy without you,” he said, his head inclined to hers, and for a moment I could see what she saw in him, trouble though he was. He lifted his chin, and I couldn’t tell from his voice if he jested or not. “I’d not be happy without you at sea, and Will’d not be happy without the baby, and the baby’d not be happy without you, and you’d not be happy on land, so there’s nothing for it except to all go.”
“And this fine house?” She looked about, as though what she had seen before as the walls of a prison were nothing but a house again, painted up for her pleasure by a man who loved her, pale green bedroom walls and an enormous bed heaped with linen and brocade and patterned cottons from India.
“Could be useful,” he said. “Good to have a bolt hole.”
“A lair,” she said, and put her head back against his shoulder.
“A den of iniquity,” Sparrow agreed.
She closed her eyes. “How are we going to manage a baby on a pirate ship?”
“We’ll manage,” he said. “Darlin’, we’ll figure it out. We always do. Complicated. Maybe just a short run this summer, down to Curacao and so. And come back here in the fall, when it looks scoppy. Don’t fancy a baby in a hurricane, and don’t much like them myself.”
“That’s not bad,” she said. Her voice was getting sleepy, and it ought to be. Strong girl as she was, she was worn out. And I could tell her that the baby would be howling his head off in three hours wanting some more of her. I planned to stick around down in the kitchen and make sure the feeding went as it ought.
“You just sleep now,” he said. “I’ll fetch Jamie for you when he wakes up.”
“Not leaving?” Her fingers were entwined with his.
“No,” he said, running that ringed hand over hers, like stroking the feathers of a bird.
“What are you thinking?” she asked drowsily.
He smiled, and I could see his gold teeth as he bent his head to hers. “I’m thinking it will take a bloody miracle for me to ever get it in you again.”
She laughed. “It will,” she said, and slid down in the bed a bit, her cheek against his chest, her eyes closed. It didn’t look terribly comfortable, but he didn’t seem to mind.
I slipped on back down the stairs to see if there was any coffee to make. All this coming and going from Jamaica ought to result in some coffee. I was going to need it, and I expected Turner would too. Not to mention Sparrow when James waked up.
No sense, the lot of them. Pirates. What can you expect?
Well, I had a word with Joshamee the next day about the whole tangle, and he agreed with me. So I came and did for them the rest of the spring, and they paid me fine, let me tell you. Many a young mother could use someone to do for her even if she had some idea about housekeeping and cooking, and with that pair of men tripping over things and making twice as much mess as one man, well, they needed me certain. And then Joshamee was all over there too, so it was three men actually.
Will Turner could fry eggs and make coffee and all, but real cooking was beyond him, and Joshamee could be bullied into helping with washing up. Sparrow, well, he was the captain and ought not cook but it turned out he knew more about it than the rest and was a reasonable hand with a goose on the spit though he made more mess than the rest of them put together.
And Joshamee kept his word to court me proper, so I relented a bit and gave him what he wanted, or what I wanted too but that’s not for saying.
By the time they sailed I was attached to the lot of them, pirates and all. I half thought we’d seen the last of them, and I won’t say I didn’t shed a tear when Joshamee wasn’t looking. I’m not for any man who goes to sea, not anymore. I’m widowed once, and never again. I’m done with wondering six months if he’ll come back, or if I should take off the ring and know he’s gone.
But there they were, end of November. On a foggy morning I saw them black sails looming out of the mist, heard them yelling and swearing in the channel trying not to go aground, cause she’s about as big as you can get in Teach’s Hole without trouble. There was Joshamee bright as always, and Turner with the lead singing out the depth, and Sparrow at the wheel with that battered hat on his head.
I ran up to light the hearth in the kitchen and the bedroom and get the house warmed up, and started chopping up potatoes to get a soup on. Less than an hour they all came in, stomping and tramping and Joshamee picking me up and calling me his beautiful girl. Jamie looked like a different baby, all fat and scooting about on his clouted bottom trying to get into things, and Elizabeth wearing a long gold chain on her belt that must have been worth a fortune, and everybody all talking at once. Will scooped up the baby and tried to feed him potato soup.
“Ah,” Sparrow said, leaning back his chair on two legs, his feet on the table until I hit him and made him move them. “Piratical domesticity.”