erinya
in
erinya_fic
The Pirate's Progress (4/5?)
"And then," Jack finished triumphantly, "I grabbed hold of two macaws that just happened to be flying past, see, all unawares, and took a quick step off that wall; and they bore me right over the bay handsomely and sweetly as you please to where the Black Pearl waited, leaving the Commodore, poor git, and all his limeys gaping after me."
He had begun with the stories of his crew, styling them all heroes in their own right. Pip, the youngest and doughtiest member of the proud Pequod on her final voyage, courageous to the doomed ship's last throes. Smee, the only man in the seven seas whom the notorious Jas. Hook had feared. Sandy Miller, beloved of sweet Nancy Lee, had a history that fit well to the tune of an old song Jack remembered from his youth; and Jonah-but Jonah had cut off Jack's one-man dramatization of a freak storm and an unluckily-cast lot with a fierce glare; and the intrepid storyteller, more than relieved to let that sleeping Leviathan lie, had moved hastily on to the famously ever-growing Legend of Jack Sparrow.
"Macaws, you say," said Lord Hades now, politely; but the barest vestige of a smile seemed to hover on his lips.
"Aye," said Jack. "Prettiest pair of birds you ever saw, and as they dropped me on the deck and flew away, they called back to me, 'Fair winds to you and following seas, Captain Sparrow!'"
The Lady and Lord glanced at each other; and surely that had been a look of amusement exchanged between them. Jack grinned at them. This was going rather well, after all, he decided.
And then the Lady laughed.
The sound pierced the hearts of the watching shades with beauty, and filled their veins with ice. "You spin a fine tale, Jack Sparrow," she said. "Now let us hear the truth."
"I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you," Jack said, taken aback. "It's quite tedious, really. And 'tis not a story fit for the ears of a refined and high-born lady such as yourself--"
"You forget who you are speaking to," said the Queen, and her face had changed: beautiful still, but distant, implacable; and her eyes were the absence of all light. He could not hold her black gaze then, but had to look away, lest he fall into the abyss waiting there.
Instead, he stared down at the gleaming tiles of the floor-black and white stone, in alternating chessboard squares-and essayed to relate, flatly, the unembellished facts of his sorry life; or what he could remember of it.
For it seemed…well, it was a lifetime ago, now; but the details seemed curiously remote to him, as if it had been someone else's lifetime. A stranger's, who had little or naught at all to do with him; he found himself struggling to disentangle the truth from the layered strands of his own and others' hyperbole, invention, myth. Was it only that he had told so many versions over the years? He recalled, with sudden clarity, the words of the blind seer; and, his mouth gone inexplicably dry, began to speak urgently and in earnest.
He spoke of how he had spent his earliest years aboard his father's ship; how Teague Sparrow had sent him back to his mother's family to live a better life, in which polite society and breeding was beat into him when it didn't stick; of his apprenticeship to the mapmaker in Portsmouth; of the moment he decided to run away to sea again. Of the day he'd met his father as a grown man, face to face, and how the old reprobate didn't recognize him at first, was startled at Jack's blind fury for a long-ago abandonment. He'd joined the East Indian Trading Company soon afterwards, not least out of spite; had enjoyed that meteoric rise to captaincy, taken those first few steps along the deck of his Wicked Wench, and fallen completely, hopelessly, in love.
And received the sailing orders for the nightmare voyage that had changed everything.
Even so many years later, in a different world, it took some effort to tell of that cargo, to think of it: the wide, dull, hopeless eyes of the slaves, the welts on their backs from the whip and on their wrists and ankles from the shackles, the holds of his beloved ship grown putrid with the stench of death and of despair. If other images of his past were hazy here and distant, facts and legend blurring into one another, he could still, by some cruel trick of memory, see each and every one of their faces.
What could he have done, but set them all free? He couldn't let the Wench become that horror, the antithesis of all she was to him. He would have never been able to get the smell and the stains out of her boards, had he chosen otherwise.
Just a few words left now: profits lost. Beckett's rage. Black smoke billowing from the ports of the Wench, orange fire swallowing her sails, the sea swallowing all. A Devil's bargain; the blackened Wench raised, reborn as his Pearl of great price--yet one so easy to pay, then, thirteen years as good as a lifetime to foolish youth, and none so foolish as his own. The compass, bartered from one of the women he had freed, a sly-eyed witch called Dalma. Betrayal; marooning; ten years of bitterness; and then, unexpectedly, hope, in the form of a young man who carried the blood of a pirate in his veins. One shining year of freedom, before Fate caught up with him in the person of a young lady who had the heart of a pirate in her comely breast, and the cold fire of his destruction and salvation in her eyes.
"Not so very unlike you, my Lady," he added, with a wry smile. "A force against which no resistance can be mounted, she was."
"You are not angry?"
He shrugged. "Why should I be? The lass did what was right by her and hers, is all, and made sure I'd do the same. 'Twas my debt to pay, and I know that well enough." He dared to raise his eyes to the Queen's face and found he could bear her regard once more, impenetrable though it was as the marble of her throne. "She had all the courage I lacked, in the end. If the full truth be told, Majesty, it must be that I'm no hero; and I never was much known for being an honest man."
But the Lady laughed again; this time, it was like a spring morning.
"It is rare," she said, "that we should see before us a man who is so universally alleged to be far less honest than he truly is."
"I try to tell people that," Jack grumbled, "but none of 'em ever believe me."
The Lady inclined her head. "And it is even more rare for a man to honestly believe himself to be less honest than he truly is." With that, she rose-drawing a startled glance from her husband and a murmur of astonishment from the three Judges, who had kept their silence throughout the fabulous narrative as well as the true one-and descended the steps of the dais to stand before Jack, a tall, slender, stately figure.
"I'm afraid you've lost me there, milady," he said, wondering whether he should be more flattered or worried at this obviously unusual attention from Lady Death herself; but she caught hold of one uncertainly hovering hand, ignoring the look of alarm he shot her. Her grip was gentle and cool, and inexorable.
"It seems, Captain Sparrow," she said, "that you have lived something of a hero's life, though you are loath to claim it; and despite your best efforts to the contrary, have managed to die a hero's death as well."
"Does it?" he said, warily, and "Have I, then?" -though hope had sprung up in his heart, and it was all he could do to keep from grinning; for the final die had not yet been cast.
And it was at that moment-or so he swore when he told the tale, afterwards; and, after all, why would he not tell the truth?-it was at that moment that Jack saw the Queen of the Dead tilt her pretty dark head in a spill of shining ringlets, and wink saucily at him.
It almost struck him speechless; almost. He hesitated for just an instant, in which he could not determine if he had imagined that conspiratorial look, or not. There was no hint of mischief on her face now, only the impassive countenance of a patient sovereign. Still…
"Perhaps I have, at that," he agreed. "There're even those who've been known to suggest I am…was…have been a good man. From time to time," though privately he rather doubted their powers of judgment as well as their authority in such matters.
She nodded. "And indeed, the same cannot be said of all men who are called heroes." So saying, she turned smiling to the Judges, who had bent their grey heads together in whispered counsel. And suddenly she seemed no more awful to Jack than a girl delighted by the prospect of a new toy or a beguiling pet; although her voice was grave, it seemed to brim with suppressed laughter. "You have heard the testimony, my Lords," she said. "What is your verdict?"
"As you plead on his behalf, my Lady," said the first Judge, not without a glimmer of humor, "it hardly seems that we have any choice but one."
"It appears to me," said the second, dryly, "that such a man will only stir up trouble among the common spirits if left to his own devices in the Fields."
"He is no worse," grunted the last, "than any of the other scoundrels we have sent to Fiddler's Green."
"So that's settled, then," Jack said quickly. "You see, lads? Fiddler's Green it is. We'll just be on our way, if you'll excuse us, gentlemen, milady-"
"Not just yet, Sparrow." The Lord had not raised his voice, but somehow those four quiet words reached every corner of the hall, stilling the spiders in the webby dimness of the ceiling beams, and Jack in mid-turn; he saw the Lady, who had been looking toward him, make a little moue of dismay.
Oh.
"And you, my Lady," the Lord continued. "Does my judgment matter so little to you, that you do not even see fit to ask me for it?"
"I did not think," she answered, "that you would object to mine, just to spite me."
"Not to spite you," said Hades. "Consider, my dearest. This impudent shade has come here, and brought these others with him, in direct defiance to the Law. He should never have gotten this far-and Sparrow, it has not escaped my notice that you grievously wronged my loyal servant the Boatman by cheating him out of the fare he was owed. But perhaps you knew that once you reach this Hall, we are bound to hear your claims."
"I had no idea," Jack said. "Or was that a rhetorical question?"
The Lord's granite-grey eyes-which had been fixed on his unrepentant bride-shifted back to Jack, widening in mild surprise; he frowned slightly. "Then you must be a fool, or mad."
"Or very bold," said the Lady, smiling again.
"By rights," said the Lord, "he should be sent back to the other side of the river. And the rest with him."
"Perhaps," she said. "Still, it seems a pity, when they have come so far."
"You know," said her husband, wearily, "that I do not make the Law."
"And I also know that you are charged with its interpretation."
"Which does not mean that I am free to change its letter at my whim."
There followed a charged pause, during which the Lady and Lord of the Underworld exchanged a long glance, and the Lord appeared to wrestle with both a knotty decision and an expression which was not as awful nor habitual a glower as he had perhaps intended it to be. Jack began to suspect that it rather tended towards a smirk.
"On the other hand," said Hades, "it has been a very long time since I have heard my Lady laugh..."
He had begun with the stories of his crew, styling them all heroes in their own right. Pip, the youngest and doughtiest member of the proud Pequod on her final voyage, courageous to the doomed ship's last throes. Smee, the only man in the seven seas whom the notorious Jas. Hook had feared. Sandy Miller, beloved of sweet Nancy Lee, had a history that fit well to the tune of an old song Jack remembered from his youth; and Jonah-but Jonah had cut off Jack's one-man dramatization of a freak storm and an unluckily-cast lot with a fierce glare; and the intrepid storyteller, more than relieved to let that sleeping Leviathan lie, had moved hastily on to the famously ever-growing Legend of Jack Sparrow.
"Macaws, you say," said Lord Hades now, politely; but the barest vestige of a smile seemed to hover on his lips.
"Aye," said Jack. "Prettiest pair of birds you ever saw, and as they dropped me on the deck and flew away, they called back to me, 'Fair winds to you and following seas, Captain Sparrow!'"
The Lady and Lord glanced at each other; and surely that had been a look of amusement exchanged between them. Jack grinned at them. This was going rather well, after all, he decided.
And then the Lady laughed.
The sound pierced the hearts of the watching shades with beauty, and filled their veins with ice. "You spin a fine tale, Jack Sparrow," she said. "Now let us hear the truth."
"I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you," Jack said, taken aback. "It's quite tedious, really. And 'tis not a story fit for the ears of a refined and high-born lady such as yourself--"
"You forget who you are speaking to," said the Queen, and her face had changed: beautiful still, but distant, implacable; and her eyes were the absence of all light. He could not hold her black gaze then, but had to look away, lest he fall into the abyss waiting there.
Instead, he stared down at the gleaming tiles of the floor-black and white stone, in alternating chessboard squares-and essayed to relate, flatly, the unembellished facts of his sorry life; or what he could remember of it.
For it seemed…well, it was a lifetime ago, now; but the details seemed curiously remote to him, as if it had been someone else's lifetime. A stranger's, who had little or naught at all to do with him; he found himself struggling to disentangle the truth from the layered strands of his own and others' hyperbole, invention, myth. Was it only that he had told so many versions over the years? He recalled, with sudden clarity, the words of the blind seer; and, his mouth gone inexplicably dry, began to speak urgently and in earnest.
He spoke of how he had spent his earliest years aboard his father's ship; how Teague Sparrow had sent him back to his mother's family to live a better life, in which polite society and breeding was beat into him when it didn't stick; of his apprenticeship to the mapmaker in Portsmouth; of the moment he decided to run away to sea again. Of the day he'd met his father as a grown man, face to face, and how the old reprobate didn't recognize him at first, was startled at Jack's blind fury for a long-ago abandonment. He'd joined the East Indian Trading Company soon afterwards, not least out of spite; had enjoyed that meteoric rise to captaincy, taken those first few steps along the deck of his Wicked Wench, and fallen completely, hopelessly, in love.
And received the sailing orders for the nightmare voyage that had changed everything.
Even so many years later, in a different world, it took some effort to tell of that cargo, to think of it: the wide, dull, hopeless eyes of the slaves, the welts on their backs from the whip and on their wrists and ankles from the shackles, the holds of his beloved ship grown putrid with the stench of death and of despair. If other images of his past were hazy here and distant, facts and legend blurring into one another, he could still, by some cruel trick of memory, see each and every one of their faces.
What could he have done, but set them all free? He couldn't let the Wench become that horror, the antithesis of all she was to him. He would have never been able to get the smell and the stains out of her boards, had he chosen otherwise.
Just a few words left now: profits lost. Beckett's rage. Black smoke billowing from the ports of the Wench, orange fire swallowing her sails, the sea swallowing all. A Devil's bargain; the blackened Wench raised, reborn as his Pearl of great price--yet one so easy to pay, then, thirteen years as good as a lifetime to foolish youth, and none so foolish as his own. The compass, bartered from one of the women he had freed, a sly-eyed witch called Dalma. Betrayal; marooning; ten years of bitterness; and then, unexpectedly, hope, in the form of a young man who carried the blood of a pirate in his veins. One shining year of freedom, before Fate caught up with him in the person of a young lady who had the heart of a pirate in her comely breast, and the cold fire of his destruction and salvation in her eyes.
"Not so very unlike you, my Lady," he added, with a wry smile. "A force against which no resistance can be mounted, she was."
"You are not angry?"
He shrugged. "Why should I be? The lass did what was right by her and hers, is all, and made sure I'd do the same. 'Twas my debt to pay, and I know that well enough." He dared to raise his eyes to the Queen's face and found he could bear her regard once more, impenetrable though it was as the marble of her throne. "She had all the courage I lacked, in the end. If the full truth be told, Majesty, it must be that I'm no hero; and I never was much known for being an honest man."
But the Lady laughed again; this time, it was like a spring morning.
"It is rare," she said, "that we should see before us a man who is so universally alleged to be far less honest than he truly is."
"I try to tell people that," Jack grumbled, "but none of 'em ever believe me."
The Lady inclined her head. "And it is even more rare for a man to honestly believe himself to be less honest than he truly is." With that, she rose-drawing a startled glance from her husband and a murmur of astonishment from the three Judges, who had kept their silence throughout the fabulous narrative as well as the true one-and descended the steps of the dais to stand before Jack, a tall, slender, stately figure.
"I'm afraid you've lost me there, milady," he said, wondering whether he should be more flattered or worried at this obviously unusual attention from Lady Death herself; but she caught hold of one uncertainly hovering hand, ignoring the look of alarm he shot her. Her grip was gentle and cool, and inexorable.
"It seems, Captain Sparrow," she said, "that you have lived something of a hero's life, though you are loath to claim it; and despite your best efforts to the contrary, have managed to die a hero's death as well."
"Does it?" he said, warily, and "Have I, then?" -though hope had sprung up in his heart, and it was all he could do to keep from grinning; for the final die had not yet been cast.
And it was at that moment-or so he swore when he told the tale, afterwards; and, after all, why would he not tell the truth?-it was at that moment that Jack saw the Queen of the Dead tilt her pretty dark head in a spill of shining ringlets, and wink saucily at him.
It almost struck him speechless; almost. He hesitated for just an instant, in which he could not determine if he had imagined that conspiratorial look, or not. There was no hint of mischief on her face now, only the impassive countenance of a patient sovereign. Still…
"Perhaps I have, at that," he agreed. "There're even those who've been known to suggest I am…was…have been a good man. From time to time," though privately he rather doubted their powers of judgment as well as their authority in such matters.
She nodded. "And indeed, the same cannot be said of all men who are called heroes." So saying, she turned smiling to the Judges, who had bent their grey heads together in whispered counsel. And suddenly she seemed no more awful to Jack than a girl delighted by the prospect of a new toy or a beguiling pet; although her voice was grave, it seemed to brim with suppressed laughter. "You have heard the testimony, my Lords," she said. "What is your verdict?"
"As you plead on his behalf, my Lady," said the first Judge, not without a glimmer of humor, "it hardly seems that we have any choice but one."
"It appears to me," said the second, dryly, "that such a man will only stir up trouble among the common spirits if left to his own devices in the Fields."
"He is no worse," grunted the last, "than any of the other scoundrels we have sent to Fiddler's Green."
"So that's settled, then," Jack said quickly. "You see, lads? Fiddler's Green it is. We'll just be on our way, if you'll excuse us, gentlemen, milady-"
"Not just yet, Sparrow." The Lord had not raised his voice, but somehow those four quiet words reached every corner of the hall, stilling the spiders in the webby dimness of the ceiling beams, and Jack in mid-turn; he saw the Lady, who had been looking toward him, make a little moue of dismay.
Oh.
"And you, my Lady," the Lord continued. "Does my judgment matter so little to you, that you do not even see fit to ask me for it?"
"I did not think," she answered, "that you would object to mine, just to spite me."
"Not to spite you," said Hades. "Consider, my dearest. This impudent shade has come here, and brought these others with him, in direct defiance to the Law. He should never have gotten this far-and Sparrow, it has not escaped my notice that you grievously wronged my loyal servant the Boatman by cheating him out of the fare he was owed. But perhaps you knew that once you reach this Hall, we are bound to hear your claims."
"I had no idea," Jack said. "Or was that a rhetorical question?"
The Lord's granite-grey eyes-which had been fixed on his unrepentant bride-shifted back to Jack, widening in mild surprise; he frowned slightly. "Then you must be a fool, or mad."
"Or very bold," said the Lady, smiling again.
"By rights," said the Lord, "he should be sent back to the other side of the river. And the rest with him."
"Perhaps," she said. "Still, it seems a pity, when they have come so far."
"You know," said her husband, wearily, "that I do not make the Law."
"And I also know that you are charged with its interpretation."
"Which does not mean that I am free to change its letter at my whim."
There followed a charged pause, during which the Lady and Lord of the Underworld exchanged a long glance, and the Lord appeared to wrestle with both a knotty decision and an expression which was not as awful nor habitual a glower as he had perhaps intended it to be. Jack began to suspect that it rather tended towards a smirk.
"On the other hand," said Hades, "it has been a very long time since I have heard my Lady laugh..."