The post I did want to make: TRAILER!
To prove to edoraslass that I really have been working...
I've been on this since last April. Unfortunately it's turned out rather more epic than I first realised. (I thought the dead body would help- it was always going to happen, honest. It didn't.) But I am still in a state of writing it- but it's so tangled I'm not going to risk posting until I've had chance to look at the whole thing and tidy up a bit. Um, a lot.
But it goes a little like this (paragraphs occasionally cut to keep the length down):
(Oh, and the hyperlinks? Yes, in defiance of elendiari22, I'm going multimedia. But I would only listen to them. You won't learn anything by watching them. What? I was just trying to be fun...)
Oh yeah and... to those of my friends who I've so shamelessly... er, borrowed from... is it enough to know that this was because I thought your ideas were so awesome that they deserved fanon status at least?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMaIHSVAvcs
“I’ve never actually met you, but from what I do know, if I’d asked you without being there, you might not have wanted to help me. You see, there’s something I feel I need a man like yourself to deal with, that I don’t really want to put in writing. Things can look so cold and incomprehensible written down.”
Norrington felt a stab of suspicion, a tweak of anger, and a kick in the arse of what might be called conscience, even if it were as much for the good name of both Norrington and Navy than it was for his own undoubtedly scared and battered soul.
“I don’t work as anybody’s hired knife.”
“Oh, good heavens, no! What must you think of me? I wouldn’t insult you like that. No, this is to do only good.”
“Forgive me… madam. Clandestine meetings of strangers in blacked-out carriages usually mean that somebody is to be put out of the way.”
“Do they really? What about making arrangements for the custody of large amounts of money? Or,” Madam’s teeth suddenly appeared in a large grin: “there’s adultery, of course.”
..."Where to start? Oh yes, this will interest you. Do you know why Elizabeth Swann came to London?”
“Londoners do so love a good murder, don’t they? They will be so disappointed when you go in and tell them she didn’t do you in, ‘orribly. I assume she didn’t do you in?”
“"She didn’t even try.”
>“So I assume that some time you’re going to go in and redeem her?”
..."“I am not delaying to get some ridiculous revenge on her, if that’s what you’re implying. There’s something going on that I don’t know about, and I want to get to grips with it before Elizabeth Swann is back on the streets. Which is what you’re going to tell me about- isn’t it? Why is Elizabeth Swann in London? I thought she came into a ship in the East?”
"“Oh yes, she did; but that’s rather the problem. She’d rather not be in the East. She wants to go home to the West Indies- it’s home to her and she never has really mastered Chinese or Chinese ways well enough to feel one of them. But the Empress has belonged to the Indian Ocean and the near corner of the Pacific for longer than she’s been alive, and the crew are loyal enough to her- being named their heir of their last Captain meant a lot- but not loyal enough that she can ask them to transfer from the East Indies to the West.”">“Very comprehensible. But why stop off in England, when she’s a wanted… pirate?”"
">“Well, according to England, she thought she wasn’t. She’s bothered the Dutch and the Chinese and many others a great deal, but I don’t think she’s actually lead a raid on a British ship yet.”
"“She’ll find that harder in the Caribbean.”
“That’s all in the future, hypothetically. However, there was one warrant still extent on her in the name of King George…”
“…the one for my death?”
...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFckdYoHPVU
Groves- the younger Groves, though the only one now- no wonder Alistair’s predicament had struck a nerve with him- approached, his face unreadable, until Norrington realised that it was blank with detached observation- a strange expression for one now sporting a black eye-patch. He had long known four identical dark eyes, now one, unique and singular.
Close too, Groves had angled his head, and Norrington realised he was not looking him in the eye, but at the half-moon shaped dent just under his eye.
"Here it is,” he said. “Where that brass button hit me in the face when a gun blew back in front of me. Do you remember Meadowes going at it forever with his forceps before calling for the smith’s pliars?”
“Whose button?” Groves said sharply, as if trying to catch out a Mid in his lessons.
“Kit Finchley. Poor little Kit.”
“Show me where you were shot in Charges.”
“Er- oh, very well. Her ladyship seems to have left us.”
“Good.” Alistair said with surprising bad grace. “I didn’t like the spirit in which she was behaving.”
“She seemed quite merry to me.”
“Yes, quite.”
James didn’t know how to answer that. But he undid his cravat and pulled his shirt open enough to show the round black scar of a musket short on his collar bone.
“Marks of Kalshai the Immortal’s cutlass?”
“Might as well while I’m here.” He pulled his shirt wider to show a red line down one side of his chest. “Wretch. I’m glad that giving me that, I got the opportunity to prove he was no such thing.”“Pistol shot from the fort at Portabello?”
“If you insist.” Norrington laid his ill-fitting coat aside, pulled out his shirt and rolled it up to show the mark on the side of his ribs. “There you are.”
“What about when the splinters from when the mast of the Redoubtable-“
“Groves! Scepticism is understandable. Seeking the truth is admirable. Trying to get senior officers to drop their breeches in company is surely insubordination.”
Groves smirked, and all was well.
“It was worth a try.”
***
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phHkJoVPxZI
This wasn’t rain. This was liquid ice falling in torrents. As soon as it hit any object, it turned solid.
The Flying Dutchman had thousands of such ledges. The booms of the topmast; the blackened standing lines, the greasy ratlines, became fringed like a crazy broken prism, bouncing the lightening at a million angles. The long, damaged jaws of the bowspirit grew new teeth that made the teeth it had before look like nursling-teeth- great shining tusks that burst out like a phosphorus flash when the blue light appeared through them.
The empty spars extended down long pointed claws down to the weather deck (rarely so well-named), reaching out to its knobbly, slippery surface, and the booms and attendant icicles started to hum in the wind, a deep bass to the violin-screech of the taught lines.
Manropes were almost useless- covered in ice and stinging the hands anyway; but Will Turner (who, before he even took to the sea, let alone died there, had long had palms thicker than boot leather) had managed to struggle along one anyway, up to the two wyverns huddled under the forc’sle. One was so far gone it was unlikely he’d noticed the storm, but the other… the other still twitched when a man spoke in his language- it had taken five years to meet someone who could, and Will still wasn’t sure what it was- and while pushing bread into his mouth had made no difference to him (as it had with some others), he would chew and eat rice if you fed him with a spoon (Will had forced himself not to think of where it went, seeing as the man was absorbed into the ship from the waist down.)
He found them already not so much covered in ice as having become a few lumps in a great curved waterfall of the stuff, appearing and vanishing with the flashes of light. The nearly-lost one, as far as he could tell, had its eyes closed and looked asleep, but the other…
…the other at least was aware enough to briefly close his eyes when Will poured rum over him
“Low freezing point,” he explained, feeling rather stupid, though any human voice probably helped. “It’ll keep it off you for a while at least.”
Another ice-blue flash revealed the man’s eyes to be wide-open with terror, and he was shivering.
It might work yet, Will realised. A man must be hardly human not to feel fear on a night like this. Or so I expect, anyway.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PegUTp9ydKk
This room was not one of the grander rooms in the house, but it was still a room for the ladies and gentlemen that came, not the servants. It was done out in blue and white and with sort of off-pink curtains behind the bed, the sort that Izzy said were a bitch to dust. It was not dark but not light either because there was a sort of muslin hung over the windows, cutting off the outside and making the light dull and second-hand.
The sheets of the bed were all screwed up around the person lying in them, and at first all William could see was a foot coming out from the blankets- grown-up size but only just, with pretty pink nails but the toes underneath all red and pinched-looking, and a big white hard patch underneath.
Then suddenly Young Will put his good on something sharp and oddly-shaped that fell over with a clatter. It was a pair of blue shoes that were built up with heels so high and soles so thick that they were at least as tall as they were long.
Then the lady in the bed raised her head, and he was satisfied to realise that, even though her eyes were only open a little, they were large eyes, and very dark.
“Che cos’è?” she said, in a thick, creaky voice. She took a deep breath and sat up on her elbows. “What’s it?”
William was caught- he didn’t know what to say, seeing as there was no good reason for him to be there. But the lady smiled.
“You, you little pagio ill also, yes? You your leg bad?”
“Yes.”
“Come. You sit with me? Here… here is… guat is in English?”
“Chair?”
“Chair. Here is chair. You sit.”
“Yes madam.”
“Good boy! You are good boy. You fall go to help, yes, you friend die?”
“A little bit friend. I know boy, I talk him, in big rain I no go, now him die.” This was easy, he’d spoken pigeon with other children in Shipwreck. “No can help now.”
The lady in the bed pouted and made a clucking noise, and lent over and rubbed William’s arm.
“Poor baby. Poor friend.”
“Yes. No more talk now. Husat name b’long you?”
The lady frowned at him.
“No understand.”
“No matter.”
She laughed, and then started coughing, and had to sit up- it was a huge cough, that seemed far too big for such a small person- she really wouldn’t be very big standing up, William realised- it seemed to come from deep inside, the chesty cough of someone who had a chest the size of a wardrobe.
When she was finished, she took a few deep breaths, that made her back heave like a whale breeching under her nightie.
“No problem. Still good with two.”
“You talk then. I study.”
“Me? Oh, alright. I… I’ve not been to London before, have you? I’ve seen some foul weather, of course, we did come up by the North Atlantic, and of course it all comes in from the Caribbean at that time of year. Of course, my Uncle Jack says once he was caught on the edge of a hurricane off Tripoli, but Tai-Hung, the mate on the Empress said that was ridiculous so I don’t know, these sort of things do happen with Jack…”
So he told her that one, and then he said the verses that he’d learned in Dakar about Jack in India, and she smiled in all the right places, and that was nice when she smiled- it was very nice. She also coughed quite a bit, and often closed her eyes for longer than a blink, but opened them and smiled again if he stopped.
“…so he escaped the Navy, and…”
“Navy?”
“Yes, you know… on the boat, and the aye-aye sir and aim one… Bang! and, you know.”
“Navy- guith the blue…” she fingered an imaginary lapel.
“Coats. Yes.”
William’s new friend was sitting up now, and for a moment she looked a bit distant; she put her hands in her hair and leaned down on her elbows, and sighed for some reason. Then after a moment or two she seemed to decide to not go on with it. She pushed her hair back, and he noticed that she had a cut on the side of her face, an inch or so long, between her eye and her ear; it had closed but still looked red and new, with two stitches in it, blacked with dry blood.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA0okR_-LH0
-and was carried in and put down on a sofa in the small drawing room downstairs. Round Mr. Knox’ legs he could see a lively fire in the grate and a tray on the low table with a coffee-pot and two cups and saucers.
Mr. Knox stepped aside, and there was Herr Schlegal, and… another man.
The other man… was not Uncle Jack.
True, Uncle Jack had disguised himself enough to go to London- there were lots of reasons why you couldn’t go around London in the middle of winter looking like Uncle Jack usually did- but he wasn’t going to have changed this much. He might have put on a wig, he might even have put on what looked like a Navy captain’s coat, but he was hardly have got that much taller and fairer, to have quite changed the shape of his nose and mouth and turned his eyes green.
“Here is good news, William,” Herr Schlegal said. “I was lucky enough to meet your Uncle Jim last night, and tell him of the sad loss of your mother and of your illness. Now you may spend Christmas with him. What good fortune, yes?”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuhHb2ElpCA
>“Yes, I would hope so. I learned much of my art in Italy, when I was a young man- and there I met Signora Picconetta when she came to Padua with her master then, a fine musician who was as proud of her as if she were his own daughter; and she was a funny little thing then, as now, were you not, Floria?” Either the Signora did not understand, or she was not interested, for she waved a hand dismissively. “She does not care much now, I see. I think she has decided she is in love with your fine uncle. Could you ever find a voice more beautiful, an appearance more noble, she says.” He put an arm around her waist. “You should look a little longer, mein Katzchen, for you have not told us of his fine eyes! I shall laugh at you, when you see he has bright green eyes, and you are telling me that sparks seem to fly out of them!”
“Sparks from the eyes?” Young Will looked askance at him.
“Him talk idiot. This man is very proper image of officer, and…”
“…and un’amante?”
“I don’t know… about all this. I think my uncle looks well enough, but I don’t think I would be fooling about with him. He’s an important man and I’m not sure he’d stand for it.” He raised his head and stood up straight. No, great men like that didn’t go along with this sort of silliness.
Signora Floria smiled.
“I very happy you have an important man for your family, William. Very happy. If I not all that is proper to your fine uncle, then may I be sorry.”
“I happy too. If I’m not all that is proper to my uncle then I should be very sorry.”
“And this day, you depart the house?”
“Later. First, he go help my mother.”
"Signora Floria tilted her head in curiosity.
“You have mother? She lives?”
“William,” Herr Schlegal said, “can you go up from here without me?”
“I can try, sir.”
“I will follow you.”
William had made it to the top of the stairs using one foot and his hands, before he heard them talking in Italian below him.
But he did hear: “Un’ assasina!?” and “…per l'uccisione di l’ammiraglio…” and “come si chiamava?”
It was after that that he heard crying.
He crawled out onto the landing again, and looked down the stairs. He saw the Signora sitting on the stairs at the bottom. She wasn’t crying like she had just had enough of feeling ill- not big, tired sobs like that- this was gaspy, panicky- he could see her trembling.
“Signora?” he said, and she started, like he’d crept up on her. “Signora, I help?”
“No!” she said sharply. Then again: “…no!”, buckling over and starting to cry even more, like she had realised that he really, really couldn’t help.
“Maybe… maybe Herr Schlegal, he-“
“No, no. No good. Go you your rome.” And she was in the guest bedroom and had shut the door before he could say another word.
Well, he couldn’t leave it like this. Maybe if Mrs Ruddle or Miss Daphne was there, he’d heard of people talking about ‘women’s problems’ and presumably this was how it went.
But he had only got a few steps down the stairs on his bottom when the Signora ran out again, with her skirt on and pinning her gown as she went, with the cloth over her shoulders all loose. He didn’t think it likely that a lady could get properly dressed in that so little time; in fact she hadn’t even put her hair up.
Well, this really couldn’t be anything proper at all.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSDN09bA76Y
“You’re up, Bess. Open your eyes, you’ll have to walk. Don’t fall down on us now, you’ve got to stand through your own trial or you’ll end up going back inside ‘til after Christmas.”
Inside, the courtroom seemed smoky and had almost as powerful a smell as the prison itself, the stink of densely-packed humanity being overlaid by barrow-fulls of none-too-fresh nosegays. She looked up, and, to her surprise, was dazzled by a warm, piecing light coming straight into her eyes. A few moment’s adjustment revealed that she was looking at a brass mirror, catching the low December sun, behind a silhouetted figure in a long wig.
“Mrs. Elizabeth Teague, also variously known as Elizabeth Swann, and Mrs. Elizabeth Turner, you stand accused of Petty Treason, to whit the murder of your first husband, Admiral James Norrington. How do you plead?”
I've been on this since last April. Unfortunately it's turned out rather more epic than I first realised. (I thought the dead body would help- it was always going to happen, honest. It didn't.) But I am still in a state of writing it- but it's so tangled I'm not going to risk posting until I've had chance to look at the whole thing and tidy up a bit. Um, a lot.
But it goes a little like this (paragraphs occasionally cut to keep the length down):
(Oh, and the hyperlinks? Yes, in defiance of elendiari22, I'm going multimedia. But I would only listen to them. You won't learn anything by watching them. What? I was just trying to be fun...)
Oh yeah and... to those of my friends who I've so shamelessly... er, borrowed from... is it enough to know that this was because I thought your ideas were so awesome that they deserved fanon status at least?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMaIHSVAvcs
“I’ve never actually met you, but from what I do know, if I’d asked you without being there, you might not have wanted to help me. You see, there’s something I feel I need a man like yourself to deal with, that I don’t really want to put in writing. Things can look so cold and incomprehensible written down.”
Norrington felt a stab of suspicion, a tweak of anger, and a kick in the arse of what might be called conscience, even if it were as much for the good name of both Norrington and Navy than it was for his own undoubtedly scared and battered soul.
“I don’t work as anybody’s hired knife.”
“Oh, good heavens, no! What must you think of me? I wouldn’t insult you like that. No, this is to do only good.”
“Forgive me… madam. Clandestine meetings of strangers in blacked-out carriages usually mean that somebody is to be put out of the way.”
“Do they really? What about making arrangements for the custody of large amounts of money? Or,” Madam’s teeth suddenly appeared in a large grin: “there’s adultery, of course.”
..."Where to start? Oh yes, this will interest you. Do you know why Elizabeth Swann came to London?”
“Londoners do so love a good murder, don’t they? They will be so disappointed when you go in and tell them she didn’t do you in, ‘orribly. I assume she didn’t do you in?”
“"She didn’t even try.”
>“So I assume that some time you’re going to go in and redeem her?”
..."“I am not delaying to get some ridiculous revenge on her, if that’s what you’re implying. There’s something going on that I don’t know about, and I want to get to grips with it before Elizabeth Swann is back on the streets. Which is what you’re going to tell me about- isn’t it? Why is Elizabeth Swann in London? I thought she came into a ship in the East?”
"“Oh yes, she did; but that’s rather the problem. She’d rather not be in the East. She wants to go home to the West Indies- it’s home to her and she never has really mastered Chinese or Chinese ways well enough to feel one of them. But the Empress has belonged to the Indian Ocean and the near corner of the Pacific for longer than she’s been alive, and the crew are loyal enough to her- being named their heir of their last Captain meant a lot- but not loyal enough that she can ask them to transfer from the East Indies to the West.”">“Very comprehensible. But why stop off in England, when she’s a wanted… pirate?”"
">“Well, according to England, she thought she wasn’t. She’s bothered the Dutch and the Chinese and many others a great deal, but I don’t think she’s actually lead a raid on a British ship yet.”
"“She’ll find that harder in the Caribbean.”
“That’s all in the future, hypothetically. However, there was one warrant still extent on her in the name of King George…”
“…the one for my death?”
...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFckdYoHPVU
Groves- the younger Groves, though the only one now- no wonder Alistair’s predicament had struck a nerve with him- approached, his face unreadable, until Norrington realised that it was blank with detached observation- a strange expression for one now sporting a black eye-patch. He had long known four identical dark eyes, now one, unique and singular.
Close too, Groves had angled his head, and Norrington realised he was not looking him in the eye, but at the half-moon shaped dent just under his eye.
"Here it is,” he said. “Where that brass button hit me in the face when a gun blew back in front of me. Do you remember Meadowes going at it forever with his forceps before calling for the smith’s pliars?”
“Whose button?” Groves said sharply, as if trying to catch out a Mid in his lessons.
“Kit Finchley. Poor little Kit.”
“Show me where you were shot in Charges.”
“Er- oh, very well. Her ladyship seems to have left us.”
“Good.” Alistair said with surprising bad grace. “I didn’t like the spirit in which she was behaving.”
“She seemed quite merry to me.”
“Yes, quite.”
James didn’t know how to answer that. But he undid his cravat and pulled his shirt open enough to show the round black scar of a musket short on his collar bone.
“Marks of Kalshai the Immortal’s cutlass?”
“Might as well while I’m here.” He pulled his shirt wider to show a red line down one side of his chest. “Wretch. I’m glad that giving me that, I got the opportunity to prove he was no such thing.”“Pistol shot from the fort at Portabello?”
“If you insist.” Norrington laid his ill-fitting coat aside, pulled out his shirt and rolled it up to show the mark on the side of his ribs. “There you are.”
“What about when the splinters from when the mast of the Redoubtable-“
“Groves! Scepticism is understandable. Seeking the truth is admirable. Trying to get senior officers to drop their breeches in company is surely insubordination.”
Groves smirked, and all was well.
“It was worth a try.”
***
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phHkJoVPxZI
This wasn’t rain. This was liquid ice falling in torrents. As soon as it hit any object, it turned solid.
The Flying Dutchman had thousands of such ledges. The booms of the topmast; the blackened standing lines, the greasy ratlines, became fringed like a crazy broken prism, bouncing the lightening at a million angles. The long, damaged jaws of the bowspirit grew new teeth that made the teeth it had before look like nursling-teeth- great shining tusks that burst out like a phosphorus flash when the blue light appeared through them.
The empty spars extended down long pointed claws down to the weather deck (rarely so well-named), reaching out to its knobbly, slippery surface, and the booms and attendant icicles started to hum in the wind, a deep bass to the violin-screech of the taught lines.
Manropes were almost useless- covered in ice and stinging the hands anyway; but Will Turner (who, before he even took to the sea, let alone died there, had long had palms thicker than boot leather) had managed to struggle along one anyway, up to the two wyverns huddled under the forc’sle. One was so far gone it was unlikely he’d noticed the storm, but the other… the other still twitched when a man spoke in his language- it had taken five years to meet someone who could, and Will still wasn’t sure what it was- and while pushing bread into his mouth had made no difference to him (as it had with some others), he would chew and eat rice if you fed him with a spoon (Will had forced himself not to think of where it went, seeing as the man was absorbed into the ship from the waist down.)
He found them already not so much covered in ice as having become a few lumps in a great curved waterfall of the stuff, appearing and vanishing with the flashes of light. The nearly-lost one, as far as he could tell, had its eyes closed and looked asleep, but the other…
…the other at least was aware enough to briefly close his eyes when Will poured rum over him
“Low freezing point,” he explained, feeling rather stupid, though any human voice probably helped. “It’ll keep it off you for a while at least.”
Another ice-blue flash revealed the man’s eyes to be wide-open with terror, and he was shivering.
It might work yet, Will realised. A man must be hardly human not to feel fear on a night like this. Or so I expect, anyway.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PegUTp9ydKk
This room was not one of the grander rooms in the house, but it was still a room for the ladies and gentlemen that came, not the servants. It was done out in blue and white and with sort of off-pink curtains behind the bed, the sort that Izzy said were a bitch to dust. It was not dark but not light either because there was a sort of muslin hung over the windows, cutting off the outside and making the light dull and second-hand.
The sheets of the bed were all screwed up around the person lying in them, and at first all William could see was a foot coming out from the blankets- grown-up size but only just, with pretty pink nails but the toes underneath all red and pinched-looking, and a big white hard patch underneath.
Then suddenly Young Will put his good on something sharp and oddly-shaped that fell over with a clatter. It was a pair of blue shoes that were built up with heels so high and soles so thick that they were at least as tall as they were long.
Then the lady in the bed raised her head, and he was satisfied to realise that, even though her eyes were only open a little, they were large eyes, and very dark.
“Che cos’è?” she said, in a thick, creaky voice. She took a deep breath and sat up on her elbows. “What’s it?”
William was caught- he didn’t know what to say, seeing as there was no good reason for him to be there. But the lady smiled.
“You, you little pagio ill also, yes? You your leg bad?”
“Yes.”
“Come. You sit with me? Here… here is… guat is in English?”
“Chair?”
“Chair. Here is chair. You sit.”
“Yes madam.”
“Good boy! You are good boy. You fall go to help, yes, you friend die?”
“A little bit friend. I know boy, I talk him, in big rain I no go, now him die.” This was easy, he’d spoken pigeon with other children in Shipwreck. “No can help now.”
The lady in the bed pouted and made a clucking noise, and lent over and rubbed William’s arm.
“Poor baby. Poor friend.”
“Yes. No more talk now. Husat name b’long you?”
The lady frowned at him.
“No understand.”
“No matter.”
She laughed, and then started coughing, and had to sit up- it was a huge cough, that seemed far too big for such a small person- she really wouldn’t be very big standing up, William realised- it seemed to come from deep inside, the chesty cough of someone who had a chest the size of a wardrobe.
When she was finished, she took a few deep breaths, that made her back heave like a whale breeching under her nightie.
“No problem. Still good with two.”
“You talk then. I study.”
“Me? Oh, alright. I… I’ve not been to London before, have you? I’ve seen some foul weather, of course, we did come up by the North Atlantic, and of course it all comes in from the Caribbean at that time of year. Of course, my Uncle Jack says once he was caught on the edge of a hurricane off Tripoli, but Tai-Hung, the mate on the Empress said that was ridiculous so I don’t know, these sort of things do happen with Jack…”
So he told her that one, and then he said the verses that he’d learned in Dakar about Jack in India, and she smiled in all the right places, and that was nice when she smiled- it was very nice. She also coughed quite a bit, and often closed her eyes for longer than a blink, but opened them and smiled again if he stopped.
“…so he escaped the Navy, and…”
“Navy?”
“Yes, you know… on the boat, and the aye-aye sir and aim one… Bang! and, you know.”
“Navy- guith the blue…” she fingered an imaginary lapel.
“Coats. Yes.”
William’s new friend was sitting up now, and for a moment she looked a bit distant; she put her hands in her hair and leaned down on her elbows, and sighed for some reason. Then after a moment or two she seemed to decide to not go on with it. She pushed her hair back, and he noticed that she had a cut on the side of her face, an inch or so long, between her eye and her ear; it had closed but still looked red and new, with two stitches in it, blacked with dry blood.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA0okR_-LH0
-and was carried in and put down on a sofa in the small drawing room downstairs. Round Mr. Knox’ legs he could see a lively fire in the grate and a tray on the low table with a coffee-pot and two cups and saucers.
Mr. Knox stepped aside, and there was Herr Schlegal, and… another man.
The other man… was not Uncle Jack.
True, Uncle Jack had disguised himself enough to go to London- there were lots of reasons why you couldn’t go around London in the middle of winter looking like Uncle Jack usually did- but he wasn’t going to have changed this much. He might have put on a wig, he might even have put on what looked like a Navy captain’s coat, but he was hardly have got that much taller and fairer, to have quite changed the shape of his nose and mouth and turned his eyes green.
“Here is good news, William,” Herr Schlegal said. “I was lucky enough to meet your Uncle Jim last night, and tell him of the sad loss of your mother and of your illness. Now you may spend Christmas with him. What good fortune, yes?”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuhHb2ElpCA
>“Yes, I would hope so. I learned much of my art in Italy, when I was a young man- and there I met Signora Picconetta when she came to Padua with her master then, a fine musician who was as proud of her as if she were his own daughter; and she was a funny little thing then, as now, were you not, Floria?” Either the Signora did not understand, or she was not interested, for she waved a hand dismissively. “She does not care much now, I see. I think she has decided she is in love with your fine uncle. Could you ever find a voice more beautiful, an appearance more noble, she says.” He put an arm around her waist. “You should look a little longer, mein Katzchen, for you have not told us of his fine eyes! I shall laugh at you, when you see he has bright green eyes, and you are telling me that sparks seem to fly out of them!”
“Sparks from the eyes?” Young Will looked askance at him.
“Him talk idiot. This man is very proper image of officer, and…”
“…and un’amante?”
“I don’t know… about all this. I think my uncle looks well enough, but I don’t think I would be fooling about with him. He’s an important man and I’m not sure he’d stand for it.” He raised his head and stood up straight. No, great men like that didn’t go along with this sort of silliness.
Signora Floria smiled.
“I very happy you have an important man for your family, William. Very happy. If I not all that is proper to your fine uncle, then may I be sorry.”
“I happy too. If I’m not all that is proper to my uncle then I should be very sorry.”
“And this day, you depart the house?”
“Later. First, he go help my mother.”
"Signora Floria tilted her head in curiosity.
“You have mother? She lives?”
“William,” Herr Schlegal said, “can you go up from here without me?”
“I can try, sir.”
“I will follow you.”
William had made it to the top of the stairs using one foot and his hands, before he heard them talking in Italian below him.
But he did hear: “Un’ assasina!?” and “…per l'uccisione di l’ammiraglio…” and “come si chiamava?”
It was after that that he heard crying.
He crawled out onto the landing again, and looked down the stairs. He saw the Signora sitting on the stairs at the bottom. She wasn’t crying like she had just had enough of feeling ill- not big, tired sobs like that- this was gaspy, panicky- he could see her trembling.
“Signora?” he said, and she started, like he’d crept up on her. “Signora, I help?”
“No!” she said sharply. Then again: “…no!”, buckling over and starting to cry even more, like she had realised that he really, really couldn’t help.
“Maybe… maybe Herr Schlegal, he-“
“No, no. No good. Go you your rome.” And she was in the guest bedroom and had shut the door before he could say another word.
Well, he couldn’t leave it like this. Maybe if Mrs Ruddle or Miss Daphne was there, he’d heard of people talking about ‘women’s problems’ and presumably this was how it went.
But he had only got a few steps down the stairs on his bottom when the Signora ran out again, with her skirt on and pinning her gown as she went, with the cloth over her shoulders all loose. He didn’t think it likely that a lady could get properly dressed in that so little time; in fact she hadn’t even put her hair up.
Well, this really couldn’t be anything proper at all.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSDN09bA76Y
“You’re up, Bess. Open your eyes, you’ll have to walk. Don’t fall down on us now, you’ve got to stand through your own trial or you’ll end up going back inside ‘til after Christmas.”
Inside, the courtroom seemed smoky and had almost as powerful a smell as the prison itself, the stink of densely-packed humanity being overlaid by barrow-fulls of none-too-fresh nosegays. She looked up, and, to her surprise, was dazzled by a warm, piecing light coming straight into her eyes. A few moment’s adjustment revealed that she was looking at a brass mirror, catching the low December sun, behind a silhouetted figure in a long wig.
“Mrs. Elizabeth Teague, also variously known as Elizabeth Swann, and Mrs. Elizabeth Turner, you stand accused of Petty Treason, to whit the murder of your first husband, Admiral James Norrington. How do you plead?”