POTC fic: "Near-Death Becomes Her" (part 1/3)
Title: "Near-Death Becomes Her" (part 1 of 3)
Rating: R for "rowdy" (language and humor, that is)
Char: Prissy, Will, Jack, Bill, OFC, various OMCs; mentions of het and slash
Disclaimer: I only own a few of these characters, undoubtedly the less interesting ones. I'm not getting rich off of this.
Summary: A couple of years ago I wrote a story about Prissy from CotBP, a "missing scene" if you will, which you can find here (includes a visual aid so you'll know who Prissy is). This is the sequel, several years post-AWE - she crosses paths yet again with Will Turner and Jack Sparrow.
A/N: Thanks to the various and sundry people who I conned, hoodwinked, and otherwise shanghaied into reading and betaing this. I won't mention them, to protect the innocent (not to mention I wouldn't remember to list everybody).
“Land alive! I knew I shouldn’ta gone to sea.”
“Would you quit complaining? Did you see what happened to that ship? We could be dead now, Priscilla!”
Prissy shook her head and took up another extended fit of bailing water out of the rowboat. Griselde just didn’t understand - the woman was impossibly difficult to rattle out of her innate optimism, and for a few brief weeks, Prissy had allowed Griselde’s chirpy chatter to worm its way into her own brain. In fact, she thought, I’m surprised she hasn’t said she’s so-
Right on cue, Griselde added, “Oh, I’m sorry - I forgot! I shouldn’t have said that … like that.”
Prissy sighed, looking up. “Said what like who?”
The petite redhead chewed on a thumbnail. “About … dying on that boat. A boat.” When Prissy showed no inclination to lend a hand out of her verbal tomfoolery, Griselde blurted, “Well, you know - Cletus. I’m sorry, Priscilla!”
Even after two days of no food and very little water, Prissy felt her annoyance dissolve at the sincerity in the woman’s nasal voice. Griselde had a good heart - hell, she’d talked Prissy into leaving Tortuga for better pickings, long after she should’ve cared enough about herself to do it anyway. And, there were far more cheerful companions Griselde could’ve asked along on a sea voyage. “I’m not angry at you,” she reassured Griselde. “I am hot and tired, and I want water in the worst way.” She saw the lingering skepticism in Griselde’s eyes. “And my back hurts. Jesus, it’s hard to lean this little bit.”
“Here, I can do some bailing.” Griselde reached for the bucket, and Prissy felt guilty - her small hands, though cracking with sunpeel, weren’t as rough as Prissy’s, having been a whore and not a washerwoman. Prissy was used to the calluses on her pudgy fingers.
“Nah, you’ll get your nice dress filthy,” Prissy pointed out, noting the bottom foot of the blue material was already dingy with salt and grime crust, the hem ripped. “Er,” she added, shrugging. “And you don’t have any more since your trunk sank.”
Griselde huffed primly. “If you get tired, we’ll sink anyway,” she retorted. “You need to rest.”
“What I need is an oar.” They’d used the only one in the boat to whack the head and wedge in the jaw of an overcurious shark after the swollen cut on Griselde’s arm had broken open and bled over the side of the boat. “Or better, a ship.”
A huge tremble beneath their bottoms made Prissy drop the bucket as they both clamped onto the boat’s edges, clutching to hold still as the little boat pitched crazily. Not twenty feet away, a fearsome wall of pockmarked wood rose out of the sea, nearly white, water sluicing from its surface and spraying liberally all over the two stranded women. They shut their eyes, looking away, to keep the brine from burning. When they felt the boat’s movement calm and realized their drenching was over, they blinked, looking back over at what had undone all the bailing and left them sitting in six inches of new water.
Directly below the business end of a canon.
“Father Fucking Christmas!” Prissy yelled, nearly falling over the other side of the rowboat, while Griselde emitted a small yelp.
“‘Fraid not.” They tilted their heads sharply back at the voice, which belonged to a somewhat older man looking out over the ship’s rail. “But we might be able to offer you a gift, anyway.” With that, he unrolled a rope ladder that slapped lightly against the bleached wood.
Prissy felt her jaw go agog as she tried to decide whether to trust this mirage - after all, men going around with ships rising out of the depths of the ocean was no basis for getting one’s hopes up. When the man grabbed the top of the ladder and tossed it toward their boat for one of them to catch, Griselde snatched it out of midair and pulled, turning the boat into the great ship’s now-mild wake. “Priscilla?” she grunted, angling them closer so they could climb up. “Prissy?”
“Huh?” The rotund woman shook her wet hair out of her face and paid attention again.
“You think you could wish for a ham dinner, next?”
*****
She couldn’t believe it. “Land alive,” she breathed for the fifth time, shaking her head.
“Mmm hmm,” agreed Griselde beside her, humming happily. Her color had improved greatly since their rescue, from sallow to pinkish.
“I never thought I’d see that kid again, after Jack Sparrow dragged him ‘cross the length of Tortuga lookin’ to make off on that harebrained scheme.”
“That’s no kid,” the other woman sighed.
The man who’d helped them over the rail of the strange ship, Bill, had offered them a seat in the shade of a somewhat holey sail, on a couple of small coils of rope. Two other crewmen had brought them pewter tankards of clean, fresh water, while Bill promised to go turn up some dried beef and hardtack. The women had been left to gape about at their soaked surroundings, the still-dripping men and two male-clothed women hauling lines, rolling barrels, and patching sails. This was all before Prissy had caught sight of the apparition near the helm.
“Land alive,” she’d said plainly, the first time. “We’re on the ship of Davy Jones.”
Except, it wasn’t Davy Jones. Prissy had heard the tales like everyone else, that Jones had been bested and replaced by a mortal-turned-demigod by the name of William Turner. Stories had also circulated that Turner had visited Tortuga once or twice as a human, years ago, in connection with Jack Sparrow. She hadn’t paid much mind to the stories herself, but Cletus had told a few variations, one with each type of liquor he imbibed (and two when he was sober). He claimed to have seen this new immortal captain, and swore he was familiar even from a fair distance.
Of course, Prissy had thought Cletus was full of shit - he usually was Had been - but now she regretted not paying further attention to his ramblings.
“Land alive,” she muttered again, prompting Griselde to finally ask, “What are you- Oh!”
They both stared. The captain descended the steps, boots thudding soundly with each step, black greatcoat swirling around his knees. His dark blue linen shirt was open nearly to the waist, showing off a firm stomach and chest, bisected by a jagged scar almost too painful to imagine. A faded red scarf tied back long, unruly brown curls, sweeping them away from a strong jaw, slightly crooked nose, generous mouth, and probing dark eyes.
He cocked his head as he stopped a few feet from the women, still seated, and a small smile graced his lips. “I believe we’ve met before?” he asked Prissy.
Before she could make a sound, someone called, “Captain! Ship’s off this bearing!” and Turner had walked off. She and Griselde swiveled their heads to watch him leave, broad shoulders shifting beneath the well-fitted coat as he moved. “Land alive!”
“Can’t you say anything else?” Griselde hissed, pinching Prissy’s arm. “How do you know him?”
Prissy gave her the extremely short version, leaving out the part about getting soused, the blatant pawing and fawning, the sexual fantasy, and Cletus’s intervention. She did, however, relate the smacking of Sparrow in detail, just because it had been fun.
They were interrupted presently by Turner, who bid them get up and follow, leading them into a cavernous great cabin. The women goggled at the size of the place, each certain that not even the King himself enjoyed quarters so fine on the grandest ship in England’s fleet. They were not opulently furnished, but the cabin was clean, constructed of a slightly darker wood than comprised the ship’s hull, and Turner explained since he didn’t require sleep, they could avail themselves of his bed and some privacy until they reached the closest shore.
As he spoke, he shrugged off his coat and draped it on a hook near the table, then readjusted his baldric and sword, slung low on his left hip. He nodded at them both and promised that a washing tub and heated water would be brought for their use, as well as soap and fresh clothes (it didn’t do to dwell on where from the crew had taken such spoils, the women decided in a silent look betwixt them).
When Turner left, Prissy and Griselde both tilted their heads to study the shift of his backside beneath the fitted breeches. He paused, turning, and they straightened, eyes flying up to meet his. Studying them, he quirked his mouth, then said, “I’ll have someone send in supper in a couple of hours, once you’ve washed and rested a bit.”
As the door touched shut behind him, Prissy tugged at the neckline of her dingy blouse to fan herself. “Land-”
“-Alive,” Griselde finished with her, also pulling at the top of her dress.
*****
Prissy sighed gladly as she considered the half-plate of food (thankfully, no pomegranates!) still in front of her. After a pleasantly hot bath and hair-washing with fine French soap - in her own water, no less, and not having to dunk after Griselde! - dry, clean clothes, and still in the middle of a meal of roast potatoes, fowl, and mangoes, she was nearly as full and content as a tick. So was Griselde, by the looks of things, though Prissy marked that the woman spent a great deal of her meal staring at their host while intermittently shredding meat off her drumstick. Not that she blamed her or anything.
The captain had said nothing, politely sipping at a tankard of something and dissecting his own meal slowly enough as he examined each woman in turn. Prissy was self-conscious at first, but eventually she simply smiled through whatever she had a bite of and kept chewing. His face was serious, but each time he lifted his mug to drink and blocked out every feature but his eyes, they crinkled at the corners in what looked increasingly like amusement.
“So,” Griselde began after a lengthy silence following pleasantries about the calm of the ocean that afternoon. “Captain … are you all alone, here?”
“I have my crew,” he answered politely.
“I meant - in here. A woman, you know.” Dear God, she was trying to purr. Prissy raised her eyebrows and shot Griselde a look, while still chewing. The younger woman was leaning a bit forward, having left her bodice unlaced just far down enough to give a generous peek at the goods. Prissy glanced down at her own breasts, quite aware she’d cinched them as tight as she could - ladies who were “generously sized” couldn’t afford to be too loosey-goosey with the ties.
Turner rubbed at his lightly bearded chin and cleared his throat. “I don’t get too many living visitors, no,” he finally answered.
Griselde dropped her eyes demurely, then looked back up from under long, fluttery lashes. “I always heard the Ferryman charges passage for those who travel with him,” she fairly hummed. “And I don’t have any coins …”
He leaned back, crossing one ankle over the other knee. “Quite true,” he nodded. “What have you in mind, then?”
Prissy nearly choked on the thread of meat she was swallowing. She remembered Sparrow’s young tagalong holding himself rigid, inching away from all female interest at The Faithful Bride - not this man eyeing her travel companion speculatively. “Grizzy,” she muttered as a warning out of the side of her mouth, when it was empty. “Ze man is Deshh.”
“What?” Griselde tried to mutter, frowning in incomprehension.
“He Deshh,” she mumbled through a few teeth, keeping her lips together and her voice down. “Ferriah ub souls?”
“What?” she asked, louder.
Turner butted in quite clearly. “She’s saying I’m Death.”
“Oh?” A small, polite noise and nod; she glanced to Prissy, who glared at her. “Oh!” Then, she considered that, wrinkling her nose. “Um … eww?” She looked to Prissy to see if she’d gotten the response right; the larger woman rolled her eyes and went back to eating.
In response, he lifted each arm and sniffed beneath it. “I was sure I’d shaken off smelling like a stiff by now,” he frowned. He glanced between their expressions of mild horror - and then to Prissy’s surprise, laughed. Loudly. She’d never thought of the Grim Reaper as having a sense of humor.
Finally, he spoke again. “No, miss,” he managed between lingering chuckles, shaking his head. “I don’t require that kind of payment at all.”
His phrasing should have set off a warning in Prissy’s head, but she merely chewed, considering that, as Griselde looked puzzled. After she’d swallowed, Prissy asked, “Then, what kind?”
Turner laced his fingers over his stomach and tried to look as relaxed as anyone in his position could. “Stories,” he finally said. “Anecdotes. News. Happenings. Tell me of the world. Tortuga … wherever you’ve come from, where you’ve been.”
It was as though once asked to run their mouths, the two women lost their tongues. They looked down at their plates, at each other, and Griselde shrugged prettily. “What- What would you want to know, sir?”
He swung his attention to Prissy, who was taking her last bite and putting aside her utensils. She swallowed the small piece of fruit and unself-consciously licked her lips free of the juice. “Tell me how you knew Jack Sparrow,” he asked, when she was clear to speak.
Once one story started, another bled from it and took shape in a second tale. Few were completed before another was referenced between the two women, and they spent a good two hours catching their immortal host up on worldly affairs. Occasionally he looked distant, lapsing into silence with no questions - melancholy, Prissy would’ve called it, if she’d had the word. She just thought he looked sad, and it finally occurred to her to wonder if the stories were true that he was doomed to an eternity at sea, always away from land and its people. She conjured up memories of Old Cletus returning after being put to sea for a couple of months or more - much as he loved it, he’d always been happy to see her. Or land. They represented the same.
A few raps at the door interrupted one of Prissy’s more humorous stories, and Turner uncrossed his legs, sitting upright. “Come,” he called over his shoulder.
Bill pushed the heavy door open without so much as a creak and leaned in. “Watch change, Captain,” he reported in a slightly gravelly voice.
“Aye.” Will stood, offering his hand to Griselde. She halfway stood in her place, and he simply dropped his head and kissed the back of her hand. He did the same for Prissy, his lips briefly grazing her knuckles, and as her pulse quickened, she remembered her odd nightmare and thought I didn’t slap Sparrow nearly hard enough for showing me this one.
“Ladies.” He nodded and stepped backwards around his chair, then gestured toward the bed. “You’ve had a trying day. I’ll see you in the morning.” He turned, lifted his greatcoat from the hook near the door, and slipped into it as he passed the older man, exchanging a few quiet words. Bill nodded, winked at the two women, and pulled the door shut before following Turner.
*****
Part 2 ...
Rating: R for "rowdy" (language and humor, that is)
Char: Prissy, Will, Jack, Bill, OFC, various OMCs; mentions of het and slash
Disclaimer: I only own a few of these characters, undoubtedly the less interesting ones. I'm not getting rich off of this.
Summary: A couple of years ago I wrote a story about Prissy from CotBP, a "missing scene" if you will, which you can find here (includes a visual aid so you'll know who Prissy is). This is the sequel, several years post-AWE - she crosses paths yet again with Will Turner and Jack Sparrow.
A/N: Thanks to the various and sundry people who I conned, hoodwinked, and otherwise shanghaied into reading and betaing this. I won't mention them, to protect the innocent (not to mention I wouldn't remember to list everybody).
“Land alive! I knew I shouldn’ta gone to sea.”
“Would you quit complaining? Did you see what happened to that ship? We could be dead now, Priscilla!”
Prissy shook her head and took up another extended fit of bailing water out of the rowboat. Griselde just didn’t understand - the woman was impossibly difficult to rattle out of her innate optimism, and for a few brief weeks, Prissy had allowed Griselde’s chirpy chatter to worm its way into her own brain. In fact, she thought, I’m surprised she hasn’t said she’s so-
Right on cue, Griselde added, “Oh, I’m sorry - I forgot! I shouldn’t have said that … like that.”
Prissy sighed, looking up. “Said what like who?”
The petite redhead chewed on a thumbnail. “About … dying on that boat. A boat.” When Prissy showed no inclination to lend a hand out of her verbal tomfoolery, Griselde blurted, “Well, you know - Cletus. I’m sorry, Priscilla!”
Even after two days of no food and very little water, Prissy felt her annoyance dissolve at the sincerity in the woman’s nasal voice. Griselde had a good heart - hell, she’d talked Prissy into leaving Tortuga for better pickings, long after she should’ve cared enough about herself to do it anyway. And, there were far more cheerful companions Griselde could’ve asked along on a sea voyage. “I’m not angry at you,” she reassured Griselde. “I am hot and tired, and I want water in the worst way.” She saw the lingering skepticism in Griselde’s eyes. “And my back hurts. Jesus, it’s hard to lean this little bit.”
“Here, I can do some bailing.” Griselde reached for the bucket, and Prissy felt guilty - her small hands, though cracking with sunpeel, weren’t as rough as Prissy’s, having been a whore and not a washerwoman. Prissy was used to the calluses on her pudgy fingers.
“Nah, you’ll get your nice dress filthy,” Prissy pointed out, noting the bottom foot of the blue material was already dingy with salt and grime crust, the hem ripped. “Er,” she added, shrugging. “And you don’t have any more since your trunk sank.”
Griselde huffed primly. “If you get tired, we’ll sink anyway,” she retorted. “You need to rest.”
“What I need is an oar.” They’d used the only one in the boat to whack the head and wedge in the jaw of an overcurious shark after the swollen cut on Griselde’s arm had broken open and bled over the side of the boat. “Or better, a ship.”
A huge tremble beneath their bottoms made Prissy drop the bucket as they both clamped onto the boat’s edges, clutching to hold still as the little boat pitched crazily. Not twenty feet away, a fearsome wall of pockmarked wood rose out of the sea, nearly white, water sluicing from its surface and spraying liberally all over the two stranded women. They shut their eyes, looking away, to keep the brine from burning. When they felt the boat’s movement calm and realized their drenching was over, they blinked, looking back over at what had undone all the bailing and left them sitting in six inches of new water.
Directly below the business end of a canon.
“Father Fucking Christmas!” Prissy yelled, nearly falling over the other side of the rowboat, while Griselde emitted a small yelp.
“‘Fraid not.” They tilted their heads sharply back at the voice, which belonged to a somewhat older man looking out over the ship’s rail. “But we might be able to offer you a gift, anyway.” With that, he unrolled a rope ladder that slapped lightly against the bleached wood.
Prissy felt her jaw go agog as she tried to decide whether to trust this mirage - after all, men going around with ships rising out of the depths of the ocean was no basis for getting one’s hopes up. When the man grabbed the top of the ladder and tossed it toward their boat for one of them to catch, Griselde snatched it out of midair and pulled, turning the boat into the great ship’s now-mild wake. “Priscilla?” she grunted, angling them closer so they could climb up. “Prissy?”
“Huh?” The rotund woman shook her wet hair out of her face and paid attention again.
“You think you could wish for a ham dinner, next?”
*****
She couldn’t believe it. “Land alive,” she breathed for the fifth time, shaking her head.
“Mmm hmm,” agreed Griselde beside her, humming happily. Her color had improved greatly since their rescue, from sallow to pinkish.
“I never thought I’d see that kid again, after Jack Sparrow dragged him ‘cross the length of Tortuga lookin’ to make off on that harebrained scheme.”
“That’s no kid,” the other woman sighed.
The man who’d helped them over the rail of the strange ship, Bill, had offered them a seat in the shade of a somewhat holey sail, on a couple of small coils of rope. Two other crewmen had brought them pewter tankards of clean, fresh water, while Bill promised to go turn up some dried beef and hardtack. The women had been left to gape about at their soaked surroundings, the still-dripping men and two male-clothed women hauling lines, rolling barrels, and patching sails. This was all before Prissy had caught sight of the apparition near the helm.
“Land alive,” she’d said plainly, the first time. “We’re on the ship of Davy Jones.”
Except, it wasn’t Davy Jones. Prissy had heard the tales like everyone else, that Jones had been bested and replaced by a mortal-turned-demigod by the name of William Turner. Stories had also circulated that Turner had visited Tortuga once or twice as a human, years ago, in connection with Jack Sparrow. She hadn’t paid much mind to the stories herself, but Cletus had told a few variations, one with each type of liquor he imbibed (and two when he was sober). He claimed to have seen this new immortal captain, and swore he was familiar even from a fair distance.
Of course, Prissy had thought Cletus was full of shit - he usually was Had been - but now she regretted not paying further attention to his ramblings.
“Land alive,” she muttered again, prompting Griselde to finally ask, “What are you- Oh!”
They both stared. The captain descended the steps, boots thudding soundly with each step, black greatcoat swirling around his knees. His dark blue linen shirt was open nearly to the waist, showing off a firm stomach and chest, bisected by a jagged scar almost too painful to imagine. A faded red scarf tied back long, unruly brown curls, sweeping them away from a strong jaw, slightly crooked nose, generous mouth, and probing dark eyes.
He cocked his head as he stopped a few feet from the women, still seated, and a small smile graced his lips. “I believe we’ve met before?” he asked Prissy.
Before she could make a sound, someone called, “Captain! Ship’s off this bearing!” and Turner had walked off. She and Griselde swiveled their heads to watch him leave, broad shoulders shifting beneath the well-fitted coat as he moved. “Land alive!”
“Can’t you say anything else?” Griselde hissed, pinching Prissy’s arm. “How do you know him?”
Prissy gave her the extremely short version, leaving out the part about getting soused, the blatant pawing and fawning, the sexual fantasy, and Cletus’s intervention. She did, however, relate the smacking of Sparrow in detail, just because it had been fun.
They were interrupted presently by Turner, who bid them get up and follow, leading them into a cavernous great cabin. The women goggled at the size of the place, each certain that not even the King himself enjoyed quarters so fine on the grandest ship in England’s fleet. They were not opulently furnished, but the cabin was clean, constructed of a slightly darker wood than comprised the ship’s hull, and Turner explained since he didn’t require sleep, they could avail themselves of his bed and some privacy until they reached the closest shore.
As he spoke, he shrugged off his coat and draped it on a hook near the table, then readjusted his baldric and sword, slung low on his left hip. He nodded at them both and promised that a washing tub and heated water would be brought for their use, as well as soap and fresh clothes (it didn’t do to dwell on where from the crew had taken such spoils, the women decided in a silent look betwixt them).
When Turner left, Prissy and Griselde both tilted their heads to study the shift of his backside beneath the fitted breeches. He paused, turning, and they straightened, eyes flying up to meet his. Studying them, he quirked his mouth, then said, “I’ll have someone send in supper in a couple of hours, once you’ve washed and rested a bit.”
As the door touched shut behind him, Prissy tugged at the neckline of her dingy blouse to fan herself. “Land-”
“-Alive,” Griselde finished with her, also pulling at the top of her dress.
*****
Prissy sighed gladly as she considered the half-plate of food (thankfully, no pomegranates!) still in front of her. After a pleasantly hot bath and hair-washing with fine French soap - in her own water, no less, and not having to dunk after Griselde! - dry, clean clothes, and still in the middle of a meal of roast potatoes, fowl, and mangoes, she was nearly as full and content as a tick. So was Griselde, by the looks of things, though Prissy marked that the woman spent a great deal of her meal staring at their host while intermittently shredding meat off her drumstick. Not that she blamed her or anything.
The captain had said nothing, politely sipping at a tankard of something and dissecting his own meal slowly enough as he examined each woman in turn. Prissy was self-conscious at first, but eventually she simply smiled through whatever she had a bite of and kept chewing. His face was serious, but each time he lifted his mug to drink and blocked out every feature but his eyes, they crinkled at the corners in what looked increasingly like amusement.
“So,” Griselde began after a lengthy silence following pleasantries about the calm of the ocean that afternoon. “Captain … are you all alone, here?”
“I have my crew,” he answered politely.
“I meant - in here. A woman, you know.” Dear God, she was trying to purr. Prissy raised her eyebrows and shot Griselde a look, while still chewing. The younger woman was leaning a bit forward, having left her bodice unlaced just far down enough to give a generous peek at the goods. Prissy glanced down at her own breasts, quite aware she’d cinched them as tight as she could - ladies who were “generously sized” couldn’t afford to be too loosey-goosey with the ties.
Turner rubbed at his lightly bearded chin and cleared his throat. “I don’t get too many living visitors, no,” he finally answered.
Griselde dropped her eyes demurely, then looked back up from under long, fluttery lashes. “I always heard the Ferryman charges passage for those who travel with him,” she fairly hummed. “And I don’t have any coins …”
He leaned back, crossing one ankle over the other knee. “Quite true,” he nodded. “What have you in mind, then?”
Prissy nearly choked on the thread of meat she was swallowing. She remembered Sparrow’s young tagalong holding himself rigid, inching away from all female interest at The Faithful Bride - not this man eyeing her travel companion speculatively. “Grizzy,” she muttered as a warning out of the side of her mouth, when it was empty. “Ze man is Deshh.”
“What?” Griselde tried to mutter, frowning in incomprehension.
“He Deshh,” she mumbled through a few teeth, keeping her lips together and her voice down. “Ferriah ub souls?”
“What?” she asked, louder.
Turner butted in quite clearly. “She’s saying I’m Death.”
“Oh?” A small, polite noise and nod; she glanced to Prissy, who glared at her. “Oh!” Then, she considered that, wrinkling her nose. “Um … eww?” She looked to Prissy to see if she’d gotten the response right; the larger woman rolled her eyes and went back to eating.
In response, he lifted each arm and sniffed beneath it. “I was sure I’d shaken off smelling like a stiff by now,” he frowned. He glanced between their expressions of mild horror - and then to Prissy’s surprise, laughed. Loudly. She’d never thought of the Grim Reaper as having a sense of humor.
Finally, he spoke again. “No, miss,” he managed between lingering chuckles, shaking his head. “I don’t require that kind of payment at all.”
His phrasing should have set off a warning in Prissy’s head, but she merely chewed, considering that, as Griselde looked puzzled. After she’d swallowed, Prissy asked, “Then, what kind?”
Turner laced his fingers over his stomach and tried to look as relaxed as anyone in his position could. “Stories,” he finally said. “Anecdotes. News. Happenings. Tell me of the world. Tortuga … wherever you’ve come from, where you’ve been.”
It was as though once asked to run their mouths, the two women lost their tongues. They looked down at their plates, at each other, and Griselde shrugged prettily. “What- What would you want to know, sir?”
He swung his attention to Prissy, who was taking her last bite and putting aside her utensils. She swallowed the small piece of fruit and unself-consciously licked her lips free of the juice. “Tell me how you knew Jack Sparrow,” he asked, when she was clear to speak.
Once one story started, another bled from it and took shape in a second tale. Few were completed before another was referenced between the two women, and they spent a good two hours catching their immortal host up on worldly affairs. Occasionally he looked distant, lapsing into silence with no questions - melancholy, Prissy would’ve called it, if she’d had the word. She just thought he looked sad, and it finally occurred to her to wonder if the stories were true that he was doomed to an eternity at sea, always away from land and its people. She conjured up memories of Old Cletus returning after being put to sea for a couple of months or more - much as he loved it, he’d always been happy to see her. Or land. They represented the same.
A few raps at the door interrupted one of Prissy’s more humorous stories, and Turner uncrossed his legs, sitting upright. “Come,” he called over his shoulder.
Bill pushed the heavy door open without so much as a creak and leaned in. “Watch change, Captain,” he reported in a slightly gravelly voice.
“Aye.” Will stood, offering his hand to Griselde. She halfway stood in her place, and he simply dropped his head and kissed the back of her hand. He did the same for Prissy, his lips briefly grazing her knuckles, and as her pulse quickened, she remembered her odd nightmare and thought I didn’t slap Sparrow nearly hard enough for showing me this one.
“Ladies.” He nodded and stepped backwards around his chair, then gestured toward the bed. “You’ve had a trying day. I’ll see you in the morning.” He turned, lifted his greatcoat from the hook near the door, and slipped into it as he passed the older man, exchanging a few quiet words. Bill nodded, winked at the two women, and pulled the door shut before following Turner.
*****
Part 2 ...