Marooned, 12
In Which Norrington Learns the Pearl's Fate
by
Gloria Mundi
See Chapter 1 for full headers
Originally Posted: 1/12/05
Norrington felt sick, and it wasn't from the rum; he took another drink, to settle the queasiness that had risen in his gut. He wanted to tell Anamaria about the Mission and the nuns and the awful fever-dreams; but he wanted to hear what had become of his old nemesis, the Black Pearl. Or was it Jack Sparrow whose fate he so urgently needed to know?
"I've heard nothing of her since ... since before the war," he said.
"We were cruising off Hispaniola," said Anamaria. "It was Jack Sparrow found the Maiden's Glory for me. He promised he'd give me another ship, and it weren't ever going to be the Pearl: he loved that ship too much to give her up again. We came on the Maiden with a crew of six, all of 'em Dutchmen, sailing her empty back to Curaçao after she'd been plundered by a Spanish privateer."
Norrington raised his eyebrows. Anamaria chuckled.
"Not a penny left, or anything but a couple of casks of water. They were half-dead from eatin' just what they could catch."
"What happened to them?" asked Norrington, aware that he was putting off the moment when the real story began.
"Jack Sparrow? Ha! He paid 'em—paid 'em!—for their ship, and gave 'em the chance of staying on under a woman." Anamaria thumped the V of bare skin at the base of her throat, drawing Norrington's eyes. "They could sail under me, or under Jack—for he let some of the Pearl's crew come along with me, seein' as how they'd shown they weren't afraid to take my orders—or he'd drop 'em at the nearest friendly port."
"And then?" prompted Norrington, leaning over with a grunt to help himself to more of the rum.
"Dropped off their captain and his mate in Willemstad," said Anamaria. "Took care of some business, and Jack, he heard some story about a Spanish treasure-ship coming up from south of the line. Last year, this'd be, or the one before: before any of them battles, before this war of yours started."
Norrington let that pass. "And not even Sparrow, surely, could have got through all the gold from the Black Pearl's hoard," he mused.
Anamaria snorted. What an unfeminine sound! Norrington was fascinated. "Not for want of trying," she said. "We must all have our share, and the Pearl must have new shrouds and canvas and paint and this'n'that ... You'd think she was his girl for real! But no, Jack set his mind on this treasure-ship, sailing north from Rio or some place. So we're down off Recife, out a ways, both of us—him in the Pearl, me in the Maiden's Glory—" She thumped the deck. "Cruising back and forth and back and forth to find this Santa Isabella."
"And ...?"
"We never found her," Anamaria said. "Never saw another ship all that month. Sailed far enough apart to cover half the map, but no sight of any Spanish galleon. Then one day there came a terrible fog. Rolled up out of nowhere like a huge wave comin' in off the sea."
Norrington made a sympathetic noise. He'd been fog-bound, mid-Atlantic: a terrible desolate place, full of strange noises and the risk of being carried astray by capricious currents, fetching up on uncharted reefs or becalmed for weeks.
"Fog lifted the next morning," said Anamaria flatly, "and we never saw the Black Pearl again."
"She might have been—"
"We never saw her again, Captain Norrington," said Anamaria, her voice hard and dull like an axe-blade after too much use. "But we saw the wreckage. We saw the bodies."
"Sparrow?" said Norrington, with a strange eagerness.
"We never found Jack," said Anamaria softly. "But there's sharks out in those waters. What we hauled out, more oft' than not, was scraps. Sometimes a bit with a tattoo, or a scar." She swallowed. "Even Jack couldn't talk his way—"
This time Norrington did her the courtesy of looking away while she mastered herself.
"Did you love him?" he asked, and cursed himself for a fool even while the words were coming out.
"Love Jack?" That made Anamaria laugh, a sound so unexpected that Norrington found himself smiling too.
She was shaking her head. "Love Jack Sparrow? That's a fool's business. Man betrayed me: stole my boat. Pretty smile, for sure, and oooh, those hands!" She cast a devilish sideways look at Norrington, who choked on the rum he was swallowing. "We were lovers, time to time. But love? Nah."
Again, the image of the two of them together—Jack's skin unexpectedly light against Anamaria's, the pirate flat on his back as Anamaria sank down onto him—wormed its way into Norrington's mind.
"Who're you thinking about, then?"
Damn the woman. She'd shifted closer to him, close enough that she had only to glance aside to see definite physical evidence of what he was thinking.
Not that it mattered. Reckless with rum, Norrington tilted his head back until he could look Anamaria in the eye. "Absent friends," he decided.
"You want to make friends wherever you are," said Anamaria, and with a slowness that Norrington thought was kindly meant—giving him a last chance to escape—she closed the last of the distance between them.
Her kiss tasted of warm rum, and slightly of salt from the tears she had tried not to let him see. Tears for Jack, thought Norrington, and then: it's not over.
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Chapter 13