The Truth of the Matter
Merry Christmas jadeddiva!
I was originally going to do short pieces to give to people for Christmas. Somewhere under 1000 words. But as I only had two requests so I thought I would go for something a bit longer.
The Truth of the Matter
Author: Meddow
Pairing: Norrington/Elizabeth
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~3,900
Summary: With speculation rife in Tortuga as to what happened to Commodore Norrington, the Admiral ends his silence and weighs in with a version of what lead to Norrington’s downfall.
Author’s Notes: I wanted to write Scruffington and Norrington/Elizabeth and I wanted to have James discuss Elizabeth in his own words, which I discovered was difficult. I managed to do it but it involved dragging my OC, Shelly the whore, out of retirement and in the process it became a sequel to The Admiral. (For the benefit those that haven’t read it: The Admiral = Tortuga!Norrington)
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Being women of business, it was only natural for the Tortuga whores to take an active interest in the fortune of the local pirates. The big news that afternoon was that Tim McGarry and his first mate Bill Evans had returned from quite a successful trip picking off merchant vessels headed to and from Port Royal. This was a very strange occurrence since the pair of them were not known for their intelligence and tactics. It was revealed upon questioning that the key to their success had been that in all their weeks at sea, not a single Navy ship had been sighted. A year ago that never would have happened.
Of course, a limited Navy presence meant great things for the local economy since after a good haul pirates tended to spend all their money on pleasure. Though it was not that long ago, back in the days of Captain - and briefly Commodore - Norrington, that it was quite hard for a pirate to make a living, and so the conversation naturally turned to speculation over what had happened to the universally despised and now missing pirate hunter so they could determine whether or not he was gone for good.
While Shelly had always assumed the man had been disgraced, it seemed that there was quite a range of speculation on the matter. Kathy, Bill, Tim, Scarlet and Giselle all held different ideas over what had happened to him. However, by the time the Admiral wandered into the Jolly Cripple with a bottle of rum in hand and sat down over at the next table the conversation had degraded into Bill telling the tale of the last time it was thought that any of their kind had seen Norrington.
“..But cunning old Jack’s got a trick up his sleeve, hasn’t he. You see, he’s spent his time in jail practicin’ his bird calls and with just a few whistles he calls fer some parrots and hundreds of the bloody things come flying out of nowhere.”
Shelly heard the Admiral scoff and she signed and put rested her head on Bill’s shoulder hoping Bill would not notice. “These parrots then grab onto Jack’s clothing and when the hangman pulls the leaver they hold him there - dangling in the air - while they peck through the rope.”
Now there was a snort of laughter from the next table. Shelly looked to Kathy, Giselle and Scarlet, the other women involved in the conversation, who all seemed to be displaying expression of varying levels of concern.
“Has a thing for animals, doesn’t he,” Kathy commented, keeping things on track. “What with the sea turtles and all.”
“Some kind of gift I suppose,” Bill replied, ignoring the criticism from the next table. “And then he lets the birds go and fights of one hundred of Norrington’s men by his self, then jumps onto the wall and announces that he trusts this’ll be the day they will always remember as the day that Jack Sparrow got away. And the birds flocked down and grabbed his clothing again.”
Bill had become so animated by his story that Shelly was sure he would be failing his arms about if she were not sitting in his lap. “But! Before the bird could take him away, the Governor’s daughter runs up to him and announces that she has fallen deeply in love with Captain Jack.”
There was another snort and Bill stopped again. This time Shelly lifted her head to glare at the Admiral, but he had his back to her and the only thing she could attempt to glare into submission at was that mangy old wig of his.
Since he had dramatically scared the wits out of John Radley, Shelly and the other whores had held an interest in keeping the Admiral alive. Unfortunately the Admiral did not seem to share this interest. A lot of the time he kept to himself, quietly drinking in the pubs. Occasionally, when something had happened and one of the girls was in need that honourable streak of his would present itself. He had been doing the whores a great service, acting as a protector and raising hell on behalf the individual women In turn, as a collective, they offered some form of protection for him.
The rest of the time, however, he was a bitter man who did not seem to give a damn about what men he should anger and how many friends with blades and tempers that person happened to have. It was this sort of behaviour that was wearing on the Tortuga whores’ collective patience. Shelly has lost track of the men who had a grudge against him now. If it was not for the efforts of the whores Shelly suspected he would have been found with a knife in his chest a month ago.
“And then,” Bill continued loudly, drawing attention back to his story. “Then Jack gives her the old line about his first love being the sea. So the Governor’s daughter announces that now she has loved Jack Sparrow she could never love another man because they would surely never satisfy her as he had done.”
“Must have been a virgin,” Giselle interrupted, covering the Admiral’s laugh.
“…And then she says that her and her eunuch were going off to a nunnery.”
Nothing hid the laugher now. Bill grabbed Shelly by the waist, lifted her off his lap and unceremoniously placed her on the next chair before standing up. “What’s so funny?”
The Admiral turned around on his chair and faced Bill but did not rise. “Oh, I’m sorry. Please continue on with this masterful work of fiction.”
“Don’t mind him,” Shelly replied, grabbing Bill’s arm and urging him back down onto his chair. “He’s got an old score to settle with Captain Jack.”
Bill continued with the tale, his eyes not leaving the Admiral’s smirk. “And then the birds took Jack to the deck of the Black Pearl and he sailed off, safe and free.”
“Well, what Mr. Sparrow lacks in his ability to tell the truth, he certainly makes up for in creativity,” the Admiral remarked.
“And who would you be then?” Tim McGarry asked, getting up from his seat to join his friend.
Shelly sighed. The sun had not yet set and there was going to be a fight, and over something as trivial as one of Jack Sparrow’s tales.
“A man of little consequence in this world,” The Admiral replied.
“But a lot of consequence to the men of Tortuga should we whores find him murdered,” Giselle interrupted.
“If yeh catch our meaning,” added Scarlet as Shelly and the other three women crossed their legs in unison. With that threat, Bill and Tim sat down.
“Yeah, but what’s yeh name? Got one?” Tim asked.
“Don’t bother. I’ve been trying fer months,” Shelly replied. “That one doesn’t say much.” And she was hardly going to let Bill Evans be the man who would glean that scrap of information of out the Admiral. She had been the one doing all the asking, if anyone was going to find out it would be her.
The Admiral, who had apparently been ignoring the discussion as to his identity, turned to Bill. “You do realise that story is ridiculous,” the he announced.
“Really?” Bill issued the question as a challenge.
“Listen to yourself. For a start, if one makes it past the implausibility of the Governor’s daughter being attracted to such a man and Mr. Sparrow being able to call up hundreds of parrots, why then did they not carry Mr. Sparrow from the noose to the Black Pearl? Wouldn’t that make more sense then leaving him to fight off marines and then picking him up again?” The Admiral said.
Bill and Tim got out of their seats again. “And how would you know any different? I suppose yeh were there then?”
Shelly gave Bill a sharp kick on the leg for being an idiot. “Don’t yeh recognise a Navy uniform when yeh see one, Bill?”
“So you were there then?” Bill asked.
Shelly turned to the Admiral. He seemed to be taking a moment to think about his answer.
“No,” he replied. “But my sources are, on the whole, far more reliable than Mr. Sparrow.”
“What’s the version yer’ve heard then?” Giselle asked.
“Mr. Sparrow was rescued from the noose by the apprentice of the local blacksmith. The Governor’s daughter did not fall madly in love with Mr. Sparrow. In fact she fell in love with the blacksmith’s apprentice,” he replied with an irritated tone.
“There was no blacksmith in Captain Jack’s version,” Giselle commented.
“I believe that Mr. Sparrow calls him a eunuch.”
“Still doesn’t answer the mystery of what happened to old Norrington,” Kathy said, getting back to how Bill had gotten onto the story of Jack’s latest escape from the hang man’s noose.
“Captain Jack could killed him when he escaped,” Tim said.
“Jack didn’t kill him. If he did, he would’ve told me such,” Scarlet replied.
“And if not her, he would have told me,” Giselle said. Shelly watched as Scarlet glared at Giselle and Giselle glared back.
“Why is this port so obsessed with the fate of that man?” the Admiral asked with exasperation. “He will be replaced.”
Shelly, and everyone else, looked at him. The Admiral did not seem to notice what he had asked.
“You can’t just ignore the disappearance of a man who’s been making our lives difficult for the past eight years. No one’s going to be able to rejoice in the man’s passing until we know for sure he’s dead ‘n buried,” Bill answered. “I heard he died at sea. Stupid bastard sailed his ship through a hurricane.”
“Not a hurricane,” Kathy interrupted. “A broken heart. Hung himself.”
“He’s not dead, he’s disgraced,” Shelly retorted. “Gone back ter England with his tail ‘ween his knees.”
“Disgraced for what though?” Giselle asked.
“I heard he was publicly humiliated and had to leave. His pride couldn’t take it,” Scarlet added.
“And I’m telling you, I’ve met the man so I know him best. He’s still at Port Royal bidin’ his time, waiting ‘til we’re all comfortable. Then he’s going to raid Tortuga,” Tim interrupted.
The Admiral, who had been considering them all with a look of irritation, stopped and focused on Tim. “You’ve met him?”
Tim nodded enthusiastically. His escape from Norrington four years earlier was a story he liked to tell everyone that would listen. Not many believed it but no one had yet been able to refute it. “Aye. Ugliest git I’ve ever set eyes on.”
“Really?” The Admiral asked, smirking.
“Unholy, he looked. Had a noise like a pig and foamed at the mouth like a rabid dog. I swear; I’ll never forget that face. Plagues me nightmares.”
Then the Admiral did something Shelly had never seen him do in all the months he had been lurking around the bars of Tortuga - he smiled.
Tim did not seem to take it well. “Find something amusing in that?”
“I was just thinking about how accurate a description that was,” the Admiral commented.
“You’ve met him as well then?” Giselle asked.
“What do you think?” The Admiral replied.
Shelly glanced at Tim, who seemed to be concerned.
“He is the ugliest git on the face of the earth, isn’t he?” Tim responded. Shelly smiled. Finally they would find out that Tim had been lying.
“Oh, you’re quite right,” the Admiral replied, shocking Shelly. She was sure Tim had been exaggerating all these years.
“I heard that his mother could not bare the sight of him so she shipped him off to the Navy when he was two years old,” Scarlet said.
“It was six months,” the Admiral answered.
“That’s why he’s got it in for pirates. He’s angry ‘cause not even a whore will have him,” add Tim.
“Aye,” Shelly responded, happy that it no longer appeared that the conversation was going to end in yet another bar fight. “Even we have standards.”
“So do you know what happened to Norrington then?” Kathy asked the Admiral.
The Admiral stopped smiling and took a drink while every eye fell on him. He seemed to be considering his reply. Finally he spoke. “If I were to tell you what happened to him, will this speculation end and the matter finally rest?”
“Aye,” Shelly said, speaking for everyone.
“Only if he’s been buried,” Bill said at the same time.
“Well then,” the Admiral said carefully, “you’ll be glad to know he will not bother you anymore. He’s dead.”
Tim looked disappointed. Both he and Bill sat down once more.
“Aye, but what kind of dead?” Bill asked.
The Admiral gave him sharp look of disbelief for the question.
“Well, there’s on the Dutchman serving time dead, there’s stuck in Davy Jones’ locker dead and then there’s dead ‘n buried dead,” Bill replied. “Only one of them’s final.”
Everyone nodded at the Admiral. Shelly really did wonder how on earth the Navy managed to achieve anything - the Admiral did not seem to have a clue about how the world worked.
“There is superstition and then there is idiocy,’ the Admiral remarked with disgust. “There are no kinds of dead, there is just dead.”
“There ain’t,” Bill argued. “If there ain’t a body buried in the earth then it could be any one of the three. And you’re a fool if you think different.”
“How did he die?” Shelly asked quickly before another argument could start.
“Hurricane.” The Admiral said the word as if doing so brought with it physical pain.
Bill crossed his arms triumphantly and leaned back on his seat. “See. I told you. Fool sailed through a hurricane.”
“That makes no sense though,” Kathy replied. “If he was really that great an idiot then he shouldn’t have lasted five minutes as a Captain. Instead he managed to put nearly every pirate in the Caribbean out of business.”
Everyone turned to the Admiral again who himself had turned to his bottle of rum. Any sign that he had been enjoying the conversation moments ago had faded and he had sunk into his usual state of misery.
He sighed. “The man was a fool. A fool and a coward and every man who sailed on that ship will tell you such,” he said bitterly. He said it with such conviction that Shelly wondered then whether the Admiral had been on board. That might explain how he had ended up a drunkard in Tortuga, though not his grudge with Jack Sparrow.
“Still doesn’t answer Kathy’s question,” Giselle replied.
“I think yer a liar,” Tim said.
The Admiral glared at him. “You are all looking for a simple answer. Truth is, it was a hurricane, it was heartache and it was public humiliation and it was many many other things that you would not understand,” he replied impatiently.
“So me and Kathy were right as well,” Scarlet said. She smiled at Bill.
“How do yeh know?” Shelly asked. The Admiral seemed to know quite a lot about what had occurred. She was hoping to get some conformation from him about whether he had been through the hurricane.
The Admiral looked at her. “You are sitting here in Tortuga discussing the fate of a man you have never met and who disappeared months ago-”
“I’ve met him,” Tim interrupted.
The Admiral ignored him. “Do you not think the people who know him would do the same?”
Somehow Shelly had never expected Navy officers to sit around discussing things like she was doing. She supposed they did. Satisfied, Shelly nodded.
“Heartache?” Bill blurted out. “The man spent his life sending good honest pirates to the gallows. Bloodthirsty, he was. I don’t believe the man had a heart to break.”
“Aye,” Giselle added. “Who was it then?”
The Admiral groaned. Shelly thought he was regretting becoming part of the conversation. But it was too late now, he had information and they would not rest until they knew the tale. The Admiral seemed to realise that himself as he answered the question. “The Governor of Jamaica’s daughter.”
Everyone except the Admiral burst into laughter.
“Lost out to a eunuch blacksmith, now there’s some justice for yeh,” Scarlet roared.
“I’ll drink to that,” Bill replied and lifted his mug of rum.
“Aye,” they all replied. All except for the Admiral.
“What’s got into yeh, love,” Shelly asked. “Just a moment ago you were calling Norrington a coward and a fool.”
“I will call him a coward and a fool. I will also go as far to call him a liar and a drunk who deserves the hell he is currently in. But I will not toast to his loss.”
“The Admiral’s a romantic. Who would have though,” Kathy said. It made sense to Shelly, after all the man seemed to pride old codes of honour, the idea that he believed in love did not seem that surprising a prospect.
“There’s not such thing a love,” Shelly replied, deciding to confer on the sad drunkard something she had been told many years ago and something she herself passed on from time to time. “There’s lust and then there’s lies men tell their wives and lies that wives tell their husbands and there’s power to be had in with the marriage of certain people, but there is no such thing as love.”
“Aye,” Tim and Bill said in unison, raising their rum once more.
“There is,” the Admiral said quietly. “Love exists.”
“And I suppose you’ve been in love, then,” Tim replied.
“I was.”
“Just lust mate. It’s always lust.”
At Tim’s statement the Admiral seemed to become more downcast. “It was not a matter of lust or power. There were lies involved, but the truth was that I loved her.”
“Aye,” Bill said cynically. “And how could yeh tell then?”
The Admiral looked to Bill and as he did Shelly noticed something in his eyes, something different from the usual despair and anger. Something she could not quite place. “Because I was terrified of her.”
Tim roared into laughter. “And I suppose I’m in love with the Kraken then.”
The Admiral just ignored him. Shelly was starting to wish Tim and Bill would be quiet. This was the most information they had ever managed to get the Admiral to reveal about himself. There had never been a woman mentioned before. “Go on,” she muttered.
“That was how I knew I loved her; because she terrified me. I have fought more sea battles than I can count. I’ve seen things that would fill people’s nightmares. But that was nothing compared to the prospect of being alone in a room with her,” the Admiral said with a small fond smile, seeming to be remembering better times. They did not sound to be better times to Shelly.
“Why?” Kathy asked.
“Because she could say no...Because for months I lived on the hope that she would say yes and with one word she could take that away from me.”
Shelly was beginning to understand why the Admiral had ended up in Tortuga. This love of his, she had destroyed him.
“And what happened, love,” Shelly asked. Any annoyance she had with the man’s self-destructive behaviour had long since passed.
“I,-” the Admiral turned his head from Shelly and the crowd and looked at his bottle of rum. “I realised I could not live on hope forever. I picked a day and found a place where you could see the sea and the horizon.”
“Sounds lovely,” Scarlet said.
The Admiral laughed bitterly and shook his head.
“How did she break yer heart?” Shelly asked.
“She was in love with another man.”
The Admiral took to his bottle of rum, downing quite a portion of it while everyone else refrained from speaking. Few things were respected in Tortuga, but grief was.
“What did yeh do?” Tim asked, breaking the silence.
“I broke of the engagement so they could marry.”
“What, so yeh didn’t fight him?” Bill asked.
“What could I possibly gain? It was a battle he had already won,” the Admiral replied. It occurred to Shelly then that the Admiral had not always been a man who drew his sword without a thought.
“And so that was it? You just left them to be happy and yourself miserable?” Kathy asked.
“It was for the best,” the Admiral replied. “Look at me now, sitting here drinking in a bar in Tortuga conversing with pirates and prostitutes. What form of husband would I ever have made?”
The Admiral took another drink, and again everyone was silent.
“Well, a tale like that makes me glad for the whores of the world,” Tim finally announced. “Speaking of whores, I think I’m quite done with the story sharing part of the afternoon.”
Shelly could have hit Tim right then.
“Exactly what I was thinkin’,” Bill replied. He eyed Shelly and she gave him a sultry smile in return.
“Aye, Bill, I’ll be up with yer in a minute.” She leaned over from her seat and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Bill wandered off, followed by Tim who accompanied by Kathy.
Scarlet and Giselle headed for the bar and Shelly knew that word would soon spread that Norrington was dead. Pirates would begin spending large and she would be making far more money than normal. And while all the merriment would go on the Admiral would once again drink himself into oblivion, just another drunk with a story that would never be told. Except that Shelly wanted to know his story. He had saved her life once; she was not going to let him die unknown.
Shelly stood across the table from the Admiral. “Liar,” she said.
The Admiral looked up at her. “What makes you say that?”
“Yeh going ter fight him. It’s Jack Sparrow, isn’t it? He’s the other man.”
The Admiral shook his head. “That’s a different matter.”
“Aye, and I don’t suppose yer willing to share about that,” Shelly replied.
“When Mr. Sparrow shows his face in Tortuga, then you can know everything and find out how much of a liar I truly am.”
“That won’t do me much good. Haven’t yer ever heard the one about dead men and tales?”
The Admiral smiled to himself. “You know, Shelly, I think that every now and again dead men do tell tales.”
There he was, being cryptic again. Shelly knew him well enough to know she was not going to get anything more out of hi. “Why do I bother?” she muttered before getting up and leaving the Admiral to his rum.
As she walked up to the stairs to where Bill Evans would be waiting, Shelly sighed. Despite what she had been told and despite what she had been telling others about love, Shelly believed the Admiral. Deep down she knew the truth of the matter was that love did exist. But it was not something she would want to seek out nor was it something she would recommend for anyone else. As the Admiral was living proof, love could turn an officer into a drunkard, as it could an honest man into a pirate and a lady into a whore. The Admiral had crossed swords with a force he could not defeat. Shelly could not help but feel sympathy for him.
I was originally going to do short pieces to give to people for Christmas. Somewhere under 1000 words. But as I only had two requests so I thought I would go for something a bit longer.
The Truth of the Matter
Author: Meddow
Pairing: Norrington/Elizabeth
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~3,900
Summary: With speculation rife in Tortuga as to what happened to Commodore Norrington, the Admiral ends his silence and weighs in with a version of what lead to Norrington’s downfall.
Author’s Notes: I wanted to write Scruffington and Norrington/Elizabeth and I wanted to have James discuss Elizabeth in his own words, which I discovered was difficult. I managed to do it but it involved dragging my OC, Shelly the whore, out of retirement and in the process it became a sequel to The Admiral. (For the benefit those that haven’t read it: The Admiral = Tortuga!Norrington)
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Being women of business, it was only natural for the Tortuga whores to take an active interest in the fortune of the local pirates. The big news that afternoon was that Tim McGarry and his first mate Bill Evans had returned from quite a successful trip picking off merchant vessels headed to and from Port Royal. This was a very strange occurrence since the pair of them were not known for their intelligence and tactics. It was revealed upon questioning that the key to their success had been that in all their weeks at sea, not a single Navy ship had been sighted. A year ago that never would have happened.
Of course, a limited Navy presence meant great things for the local economy since after a good haul pirates tended to spend all their money on pleasure. Though it was not that long ago, back in the days of Captain - and briefly Commodore - Norrington, that it was quite hard for a pirate to make a living, and so the conversation naturally turned to speculation over what had happened to the universally despised and now missing pirate hunter so they could determine whether or not he was gone for good.
While Shelly had always assumed the man had been disgraced, it seemed that there was quite a range of speculation on the matter. Kathy, Bill, Tim, Scarlet and Giselle all held different ideas over what had happened to him. However, by the time the Admiral wandered into the Jolly Cripple with a bottle of rum in hand and sat down over at the next table the conversation had degraded into Bill telling the tale of the last time it was thought that any of their kind had seen Norrington.
“..But cunning old Jack’s got a trick up his sleeve, hasn’t he. You see, he’s spent his time in jail practicin’ his bird calls and with just a few whistles he calls fer some parrots and hundreds of the bloody things come flying out of nowhere.”
Shelly heard the Admiral scoff and she signed and put rested her head on Bill’s shoulder hoping Bill would not notice. “These parrots then grab onto Jack’s clothing and when the hangman pulls the leaver they hold him there - dangling in the air - while they peck through the rope.”
Now there was a snort of laughter from the next table. Shelly looked to Kathy, Giselle and Scarlet, the other women involved in the conversation, who all seemed to be displaying expression of varying levels of concern.
“Has a thing for animals, doesn’t he,” Kathy commented, keeping things on track. “What with the sea turtles and all.”
“Some kind of gift I suppose,” Bill replied, ignoring the criticism from the next table. “And then he lets the birds go and fights of one hundred of Norrington’s men by his self, then jumps onto the wall and announces that he trusts this’ll be the day they will always remember as the day that Jack Sparrow got away. And the birds flocked down and grabbed his clothing again.”
Bill had become so animated by his story that Shelly was sure he would be failing his arms about if she were not sitting in his lap. “But! Before the bird could take him away, the Governor’s daughter runs up to him and announces that she has fallen deeply in love with Captain Jack.”
There was another snort and Bill stopped again. This time Shelly lifted her head to glare at the Admiral, but he had his back to her and the only thing she could attempt to glare into submission at was that mangy old wig of his.
Since he had dramatically scared the wits out of John Radley, Shelly and the other whores had held an interest in keeping the Admiral alive. Unfortunately the Admiral did not seem to share this interest. A lot of the time he kept to himself, quietly drinking in the pubs. Occasionally, when something had happened and one of the girls was in need that honourable streak of his would present itself. He had been doing the whores a great service, acting as a protector and raising hell on behalf the individual women In turn, as a collective, they offered some form of protection for him.
The rest of the time, however, he was a bitter man who did not seem to give a damn about what men he should anger and how many friends with blades and tempers that person happened to have. It was this sort of behaviour that was wearing on the Tortuga whores’ collective patience. Shelly has lost track of the men who had a grudge against him now. If it was not for the efforts of the whores Shelly suspected he would have been found with a knife in his chest a month ago.
“And then,” Bill continued loudly, drawing attention back to his story. “Then Jack gives her the old line about his first love being the sea. So the Governor’s daughter announces that now she has loved Jack Sparrow she could never love another man because they would surely never satisfy her as he had done.”
“Must have been a virgin,” Giselle interrupted, covering the Admiral’s laugh.
“…And then she says that her and her eunuch were going off to a nunnery.”
Nothing hid the laugher now. Bill grabbed Shelly by the waist, lifted her off his lap and unceremoniously placed her on the next chair before standing up. “What’s so funny?”
The Admiral turned around on his chair and faced Bill but did not rise. “Oh, I’m sorry. Please continue on with this masterful work of fiction.”
“Don’t mind him,” Shelly replied, grabbing Bill’s arm and urging him back down onto his chair. “He’s got an old score to settle with Captain Jack.”
Bill continued with the tale, his eyes not leaving the Admiral’s smirk. “And then the birds took Jack to the deck of the Black Pearl and he sailed off, safe and free.”
“Well, what Mr. Sparrow lacks in his ability to tell the truth, he certainly makes up for in creativity,” the Admiral remarked.
“And who would you be then?” Tim McGarry asked, getting up from his seat to join his friend.
Shelly sighed. The sun had not yet set and there was going to be a fight, and over something as trivial as one of Jack Sparrow’s tales.
“A man of little consequence in this world,” The Admiral replied.
“But a lot of consequence to the men of Tortuga should we whores find him murdered,” Giselle interrupted.
“If yeh catch our meaning,” added Scarlet as Shelly and the other three women crossed their legs in unison. With that threat, Bill and Tim sat down.
“Yeah, but what’s yeh name? Got one?” Tim asked.
“Don’t bother. I’ve been trying fer months,” Shelly replied. “That one doesn’t say much.” And she was hardly going to let Bill Evans be the man who would glean that scrap of information of out the Admiral. She had been the one doing all the asking, if anyone was going to find out it would be her.
The Admiral, who had apparently been ignoring the discussion as to his identity, turned to Bill. “You do realise that story is ridiculous,” the he announced.
“Really?” Bill issued the question as a challenge.
“Listen to yourself. For a start, if one makes it past the implausibility of the Governor’s daughter being attracted to such a man and Mr. Sparrow being able to call up hundreds of parrots, why then did they not carry Mr. Sparrow from the noose to the Black Pearl? Wouldn’t that make more sense then leaving him to fight off marines and then picking him up again?” The Admiral said.
Bill and Tim got out of their seats again. “And how would you know any different? I suppose yeh were there then?”
Shelly gave Bill a sharp kick on the leg for being an idiot. “Don’t yeh recognise a Navy uniform when yeh see one, Bill?”
“So you were there then?” Bill asked.
Shelly turned to the Admiral. He seemed to be taking a moment to think about his answer.
“No,” he replied. “But my sources are, on the whole, far more reliable than Mr. Sparrow.”
“What’s the version yer’ve heard then?” Giselle asked.
“Mr. Sparrow was rescued from the noose by the apprentice of the local blacksmith. The Governor’s daughter did not fall madly in love with Mr. Sparrow. In fact she fell in love with the blacksmith’s apprentice,” he replied with an irritated tone.
“There was no blacksmith in Captain Jack’s version,” Giselle commented.
“I believe that Mr. Sparrow calls him a eunuch.”
“Still doesn’t answer the mystery of what happened to old Norrington,” Kathy said, getting back to how Bill had gotten onto the story of Jack’s latest escape from the hang man’s noose.
“Captain Jack could killed him when he escaped,” Tim said.
“Jack didn’t kill him. If he did, he would’ve told me such,” Scarlet replied.
“And if not her, he would have told me,” Giselle said. Shelly watched as Scarlet glared at Giselle and Giselle glared back.
“Why is this port so obsessed with the fate of that man?” the Admiral asked with exasperation. “He will be replaced.”
Shelly, and everyone else, looked at him. The Admiral did not seem to notice what he had asked.
“You can’t just ignore the disappearance of a man who’s been making our lives difficult for the past eight years. No one’s going to be able to rejoice in the man’s passing until we know for sure he’s dead ‘n buried,” Bill answered. “I heard he died at sea. Stupid bastard sailed his ship through a hurricane.”
“Not a hurricane,” Kathy interrupted. “A broken heart. Hung himself.”
“He’s not dead, he’s disgraced,” Shelly retorted. “Gone back ter England with his tail ‘ween his knees.”
“Disgraced for what though?” Giselle asked.
“I heard he was publicly humiliated and had to leave. His pride couldn’t take it,” Scarlet added.
“And I’m telling you, I’ve met the man so I know him best. He’s still at Port Royal bidin’ his time, waiting ‘til we’re all comfortable. Then he’s going to raid Tortuga,” Tim interrupted.
The Admiral, who had been considering them all with a look of irritation, stopped and focused on Tim. “You’ve met him?”
Tim nodded enthusiastically. His escape from Norrington four years earlier was a story he liked to tell everyone that would listen. Not many believed it but no one had yet been able to refute it. “Aye. Ugliest git I’ve ever set eyes on.”
“Really?” The Admiral asked, smirking.
“Unholy, he looked. Had a noise like a pig and foamed at the mouth like a rabid dog. I swear; I’ll never forget that face. Plagues me nightmares.”
Then the Admiral did something Shelly had never seen him do in all the months he had been lurking around the bars of Tortuga - he smiled.
Tim did not seem to take it well. “Find something amusing in that?”
“I was just thinking about how accurate a description that was,” the Admiral commented.
“You’ve met him as well then?” Giselle asked.
“What do you think?” The Admiral replied.
Shelly glanced at Tim, who seemed to be concerned.
“He is the ugliest git on the face of the earth, isn’t he?” Tim responded. Shelly smiled. Finally they would find out that Tim had been lying.
“Oh, you’re quite right,” the Admiral replied, shocking Shelly. She was sure Tim had been exaggerating all these years.
“I heard that his mother could not bare the sight of him so she shipped him off to the Navy when he was two years old,” Scarlet said.
“It was six months,” the Admiral answered.
“That’s why he’s got it in for pirates. He’s angry ‘cause not even a whore will have him,” add Tim.
“Aye,” Shelly responded, happy that it no longer appeared that the conversation was going to end in yet another bar fight. “Even we have standards.”
“So do you know what happened to Norrington then?” Kathy asked the Admiral.
The Admiral stopped smiling and took a drink while every eye fell on him. He seemed to be considering his reply. Finally he spoke. “If I were to tell you what happened to him, will this speculation end and the matter finally rest?”
“Aye,” Shelly said, speaking for everyone.
“Only if he’s been buried,” Bill said at the same time.
“Well then,” the Admiral said carefully, “you’ll be glad to know he will not bother you anymore. He’s dead.”
Tim looked disappointed. Both he and Bill sat down once more.
“Aye, but what kind of dead?” Bill asked.
The Admiral gave him sharp look of disbelief for the question.
“Well, there’s on the Dutchman serving time dead, there’s stuck in Davy Jones’ locker dead and then there’s dead ‘n buried dead,” Bill replied. “Only one of them’s final.”
Everyone nodded at the Admiral. Shelly really did wonder how on earth the Navy managed to achieve anything - the Admiral did not seem to have a clue about how the world worked.
“There is superstition and then there is idiocy,’ the Admiral remarked with disgust. “There are no kinds of dead, there is just dead.”
“There ain’t,” Bill argued. “If there ain’t a body buried in the earth then it could be any one of the three. And you’re a fool if you think different.”
“How did he die?” Shelly asked quickly before another argument could start.
“Hurricane.” The Admiral said the word as if doing so brought with it physical pain.
Bill crossed his arms triumphantly and leaned back on his seat. “See. I told you. Fool sailed through a hurricane.”
“That makes no sense though,” Kathy replied. “If he was really that great an idiot then he shouldn’t have lasted five minutes as a Captain. Instead he managed to put nearly every pirate in the Caribbean out of business.”
Everyone turned to the Admiral again who himself had turned to his bottle of rum. Any sign that he had been enjoying the conversation moments ago had faded and he had sunk into his usual state of misery.
He sighed. “The man was a fool. A fool and a coward and every man who sailed on that ship will tell you such,” he said bitterly. He said it with such conviction that Shelly wondered then whether the Admiral had been on board. That might explain how he had ended up a drunkard in Tortuga, though not his grudge with Jack Sparrow.
“Still doesn’t answer Kathy’s question,” Giselle replied.
“I think yer a liar,” Tim said.
The Admiral glared at him. “You are all looking for a simple answer. Truth is, it was a hurricane, it was heartache and it was public humiliation and it was many many other things that you would not understand,” he replied impatiently.
“So me and Kathy were right as well,” Scarlet said. She smiled at Bill.
“How do yeh know?” Shelly asked. The Admiral seemed to know quite a lot about what had occurred. She was hoping to get some conformation from him about whether he had been through the hurricane.
The Admiral looked at her. “You are sitting here in Tortuga discussing the fate of a man you have never met and who disappeared months ago-”
“I’ve met him,” Tim interrupted.
The Admiral ignored him. “Do you not think the people who know him would do the same?”
Somehow Shelly had never expected Navy officers to sit around discussing things like she was doing. She supposed they did. Satisfied, Shelly nodded.
“Heartache?” Bill blurted out. “The man spent his life sending good honest pirates to the gallows. Bloodthirsty, he was. I don’t believe the man had a heart to break.”
“Aye,” Giselle added. “Who was it then?”
The Admiral groaned. Shelly thought he was regretting becoming part of the conversation. But it was too late now, he had information and they would not rest until they knew the tale. The Admiral seemed to realise that himself as he answered the question. “The Governor of Jamaica’s daughter.”
Everyone except the Admiral burst into laughter.
“Lost out to a eunuch blacksmith, now there’s some justice for yeh,” Scarlet roared.
“I’ll drink to that,” Bill replied and lifted his mug of rum.
“Aye,” they all replied. All except for the Admiral.
“What’s got into yeh, love,” Shelly asked. “Just a moment ago you were calling Norrington a coward and a fool.”
“I will call him a coward and a fool. I will also go as far to call him a liar and a drunk who deserves the hell he is currently in. But I will not toast to his loss.”
“The Admiral’s a romantic. Who would have though,” Kathy said. It made sense to Shelly, after all the man seemed to pride old codes of honour, the idea that he believed in love did not seem that surprising a prospect.
“There’s not such thing a love,” Shelly replied, deciding to confer on the sad drunkard something she had been told many years ago and something she herself passed on from time to time. “There’s lust and then there’s lies men tell their wives and lies that wives tell their husbands and there’s power to be had in with the marriage of certain people, but there is no such thing as love.”
“Aye,” Tim and Bill said in unison, raising their rum once more.
“There is,” the Admiral said quietly. “Love exists.”
“And I suppose you’ve been in love, then,” Tim replied.
“I was.”
“Just lust mate. It’s always lust.”
At Tim’s statement the Admiral seemed to become more downcast. “It was not a matter of lust or power. There were lies involved, but the truth was that I loved her.”
“Aye,” Bill said cynically. “And how could yeh tell then?”
The Admiral looked to Bill and as he did Shelly noticed something in his eyes, something different from the usual despair and anger. Something she could not quite place. “Because I was terrified of her.”
Tim roared into laughter. “And I suppose I’m in love with the Kraken then.”
The Admiral just ignored him. Shelly was starting to wish Tim and Bill would be quiet. This was the most information they had ever managed to get the Admiral to reveal about himself. There had never been a woman mentioned before. “Go on,” she muttered.
“That was how I knew I loved her; because she terrified me. I have fought more sea battles than I can count. I’ve seen things that would fill people’s nightmares. But that was nothing compared to the prospect of being alone in a room with her,” the Admiral said with a small fond smile, seeming to be remembering better times. They did not sound to be better times to Shelly.
“Why?” Kathy asked.
“Because she could say no...Because for months I lived on the hope that she would say yes and with one word she could take that away from me.”
Shelly was beginning to understand why the Admiral had ended up in Tortuga. This love of his, she had destroyed him.
“And what happened, love,” Shelly asked. Any annoyance she had with the man’s self-destructive behaviour had long since passed.
“I,-” the Admiral turned his head from Shelly and the crowd and looked at his bottle of rum. “I realised I could not live on hope forever. I picked a day and found a place where you could see the sea and the horizon.”
“Sounds lovely,” Scarlet said.
The Admiral laughed bitterly and shook his head.
“How did she break yer heart?” Shelly asked.
“She was in love with another man.”
The Admiral took to his bottle of rum, downing quite a portion of it while everyone else refrained from speaking. Few things were respected in Tortuga, but grief was.
“What did yeh do?” Tim asked, breaking the silence.
“I broke of the engagement so they could marry.”
“What, so yeh didn’t fight him?” Bill asked.
“What could I possibly gain? It was a battle he had already won,” the Admiral replied. It occurred to Shelly then that the Admiral had not always been a man who drew his sword without a thought.
“And so that was it? You just left them to be happy and yourself miserable?” Kathy asked.
“It was for the best,” the Admiral replied. “Look at me now, sitting here drinking in a bar in Tortuga conversing with pirates and prostitutes. What form of husband would I ever have made?”
The Admiral took another drink, and again everyone was silent.
“Well, a tale like that makes me glad for the whores of the world,” Tim finally announced. “Speaking of whores, I think I’m quite done with the story sharing part of the afternoon.”
Shelly could have hit Tim right then.
“Exactly what I was thinkin’,” Bill replied. He eyed Shelly and she gave him a sultry smile in return.
“Aye, Bill, I’ll be up with yer in a minute.” She leaned over from her seat and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Bill wandered off, followed by Tim who accompanied by Kathy.
Scarlet and Giselle headed for the bar and Shelly knew that word would soon spread that Norrington was dead. Pirates would begin spending large and she would be making far more money than normal. And while all the merriment would go on the Admiral would once again drink himself into oblivion, just another drunk with a story that would never be told. Except that Shelly wanted to know his story. He had saved her life once; she was not going to let him die unknown.
Shelly stood across the table from the Admiral. “Liar,” she said.
The Admiral looked up at her. “What makes you say that?”
“Yeh going ter fight him. It’s Jack Sparrow, isn’t it? He’s the other man.”
The Admiral shook his head. “That’s a different matter.”
“Aye, and I don’t suppose yer willing to share about that,” Shelly replied.
“When Mr. Sparrow shows his face in Tortuga, then you can know everything and find out how much of a liar I truly am.”
“That won’t do me much good. Haven’t yer ever heard the one about dead men and tales?”
The Admiral smiled to himself. “You know, Shelly, I think that every now and again dead men do tell tales.”
There he was, being cryptic again. Shelly knew him well enough to know she was not going to get anything more out of hi. “Why do I bother?” she muttered before getting up and leaving the Admiral to his rum.
As she walked up to the stairs to where Bill Evans would be waiting, Shelly sighed. Despite what she had been told and despite what she had been telling others about love, Shelly believed the Admiral. Deep down she knew the truth of the matter was that love did exist. But it was not something she would want to seek out nor was it something she would recommend for anyone else. As the Admiral was living proof, love could turn an officer into a drunkard, as it could an honest man into a pirate and a lady into a whore. The Admiral had crossed swords with a force he could not defeat. Shelly could not help but feel sympathy for him.