For Want Of A Nail

Chapter 18

by

The Dala

Groves glanced up at Gillette, who was shedding his coat with a smile. Less concerned with what put it there than with the way it made his eyes crinkle, it took Groves a moment to register his words. "Did I?"

Gillette nodded as the wig, cravat, and shoes went the way of the coat, tossed onto a chair in the corner. He lowered himself over his fellow lieutenant, kissing him at the V of his open shirt. "We caught Barnes in the middle of his operation, and would you guess who was sitting at his very table?"

"The pope?" Groves latched onto the hips wriggling against him and bit at Gillette's ear.

A pleased shudder went through the other man. "None other than Captain Jack Sparrow." He sat up to pull his shirt over his head, so he didn't notice right away that Groves had gone still.

"What?" he asked, eyes wide.

"Didn't even put up a fight," said Gillette smugly. "I threw him into the cell myself." He paused with the shirt clenched in his hands, staring at a pale-faced Groves. "Tom?"

Groves ran a hand through his dark hair, exhaling slowly. "Poor Gabriel," he murmured.

Blinking quizzically, Gillette replied, "What on earth are you talking about? He's been after Sparrow since his last escape!"

"Andrew..." Groves hesitated, wrinkling his nose at the headache this was likely going to bring on. "I have something to tell you." Gillette opened his mouth to speak and it was immediately covered by a broad palm. "But first I want you to remember that you love me, and promise you aren't going to shout..."

~~~

"He wouldn't listen to you?"

She rubbed a hand across her brow, mouth twisting bitterly. "Oh, he listened. He listened until I started to lose my voice and we were both in tears. But he won't do a thing."

Will brought her into his arms, dropping his chin down on her head. "Don't be angry with him. We didn't expect him to be able to help."

Elizabeth squared her shoulders and smiled slightly. "I did, however, pick up a couple of strays we might find useful."

Behind her, a plain-clothed Lieutenant Groves came in, biting his lips nervously. He was closely followed by Lieutenant Gillette, who was an alarming shade of pink. The first thing Will did was blink in surprise. He'd never spoken with Groves, but it was a well-known fact that Gillette and Elizabeth despised each other. Something about mermaids was all he'd ever been able to deduce from the dark muttering she hid behind her fan whenever they passed him in the street.

Then he remembered that they were Norrington's men and the muscles of his jaw clenched. "What are they doing here?"

"We're here to help," said Groves quietly.

Will took up his pacing again. "Help with what? There's nothing to help with. We're not planning anything. Why would we be planning?"

Elizabeth shut her eyes. "Please calm down, Will."

"I will not calm down!" Will paused to stab a finger in the direction of the lieutenants. "They're his and they're in our house—"

Before she got the chance to argue, they were interrupted by a tremulous call of "Hello?"

~~~

Beside her, Will started forward and she grabbed him by the arm, aware of the righteous fury coursing through him. "Don't, Will!"

"What have you done?" Will hissed at Norrington, glaring at Groves and Gillette too as they hesitantly stepped forward. Their urge to protect their commodore was obvious, but the way he seemed to look through everything must have unnerved them as badly as it did her. Instead they started shouting at Will, who was only too happy to respond in kind.

"Look at him, can't you see he's got nothing to—"

"How dare you speak to the commodore so!"

"I have the right to close my own door to—"

Elizabeth sidled out between them as they closed in, making a soft sound of alarm. Norrington had quite suddenly sat down on the ground, his elbows propped on his knees and the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. As she knelt down beside him, she saw that he wasn't weeping, but he was taking shallow, sharp breaths as though his chest would implode.

"Oh, Gabriel," she murmured, putting her arms around his rigid torso and drawing his head onto her shoulder. Two weeks ago she would have been uneasy attempting to comfort him, but a squalling infant had greatly improved her ability to rock anyone quiet. "Hush, it will be all right..."

Gradually the raised voices at her back faded away until the only sound was Norrington's ragged breathing and the uncomfortable foot-shifting of the other men. Ignoring them, she took him by the arm and started to rise slowly to her feet. Norrington followed her seemingly without thinking, still hiding his face.

"We'll go upstairs for a moment, how does that sound?" she said soothingly, holding tight to him for fear that he would stumble into the wall if she turned him loose. She caught a bare glimpse of the faces of the others as she led Norrington past. Groves was solemn, while Gillette and Will, though still shooting suspicious glares at one another, looked grudgingly contrite. Will met her eyes as she looked at him, an earnest question in the way he bit his lip. She smiled faintly to reassure him and waited patiently as Norrington paused to negotiate the stairs.

She took him to the nursery, where Estrella was tidying around Morgan's cradle. A quick word sent her scurrying out, casting wide, curious eyes at Norrington.

Will could barely fit in the oak rocking chair and Norrington in his uniform was an even tighter squeeze, but they managed. He bent where she nudged him and dropped down into the chair, looking mildly startled when it moved to and fro beneath him.

He was an absolute wreck and she wasn't sure how to begin putting him back together, if she could do so at all. When it came right down to it, they didn't know each other very well. Their courtship had been short and the tenuous friendship following it strained. She'd trusted him with Jack's life but she did not trust herself to say the things that would put a stop to his trembling.

She would try, though—for his sake and for Jack's, she would try her damnedest.

"Please look at me, Gabriel." Kneeling before him, she took his hands in her own, rubbing warmth into them. The shame and anguish in his green eyes tore her heart when he lifted his gaze from his lap. "I know it wasn't your fault."

"How? How do you know?" His voice was a hollow shell.

"Because of the way you look at him," she said simply. "Because you love him."

He shuddered at that. She lifted a hand to his face, running her thumb along his cheekbone and straightening his wig ever so slightly. The baby began to whimper and Norrington jumped, looking over at the crib. Elizabeth stood, wincing at the creak in her knees, and picked up a fussing Morgan. Norrington's eyes followed her as she made a slow circuit of the room until the cries softened and faded out. When she got back to the chair, he seemed calmer, his face clearer.

"Jack said he knew you were going to have a daughter," he said.

Remembering that he'd been frightened of the baby before and having a sudden, inexplicable hunch, she asked, "Would you hold her for a moment?"

Norrington's brow creased, but he allowed her to settle Morgan gently in his arms. Morgan squinched her mouth up in a frown but stayed quiet, her brown eyes intent on his face. He let out a long, slow breath and relaxed further.

Elizabeth suddenly remembered why she'd thought to hand him the baby. Will had told her a story about how Jack had gotten supremely drunk the night before their wedding. He'd been sent outside to feed Diego and it had seemed to sober him up. She was momentarily disturbed that she had just compared her offspring to a donkey, but if it worked, she wasn't going to complain.

He looked up at her suddenly, his eyes bright with what looked like worry. "Why are you doing this?" he asked hoarsely. "Why are you being kind to me?"

She smiled at him, reaching out to stroke her daughter's soft cheek. Morgan was trying gallantly to stay awake in order to stare at her new companion, but her eyes were beginning to close. "You're family now, as much as Jack is. And I ought to still be repentant for breaking your heart—although I have to say, you've recovered quite nicely."

The look on his face said that he was not going to forget those words, even as the mention of Jack caused something to flare and burn in his eyes.

"Stay up here for as long as you like. Will you put the baby back to bed before you come down?"

Norrington nodded, catching her hand as she turned away. "Thank you." Sincerity made his voice quaver. She leaned down to swiftly kiss his cheek.

To her relief, the men had become civil enough to sit in the den, though Will's left leg was jiggling nervously.

"Is he all right?" Gillette asked anxiously. His concern for Norrington raised his esteem in her eyes, though she would never have admitted it to his face.

"He's watching the baby," she answered, leaning against Will and pressing his restless knee down with the palm of her hand. "Has everything been worked out between the three of you?"

"You could have told me," Will muttered. Elizabeth caught Gillette shooting Groves a similarly sulky look and she had to bite down on a sudden giggle. No wonder Norrington had felt comfortable confiding in them—or at least in the less neurotic one.

"We can have this argument later," she said firmly. "Right now, we have a rescue to plan."

"It's not going to be easy," Groves broke in.

Will shook his head. "Apparently Norrington received an extremely virulent letter from a prominent admiral last time Jack was scheduled to hang."

"It was ill-mannered," said Gillette, crossing his arms over his chest. "A threat, more or less, stemming from a personal grudge. Releasing Sparrow would be grounds for a court martial."

Elizabeth chewed on her lower lip. "My father must have been aware of it."

"And there are the new rules to remember: no public executions of notorious criminals," Groves added with a polite nod at Will, who grimaced. "The gallows will be heavily guarded. There's little chance of you or his crew getting close, even if we were to help you."

"It will have to be an inside job."

All four of them looked up at once as Norrington came into the room, still pallid but with a new gleam of purpose in his eye.

"Yes, but that would only confound our problems," Groves argued. "We'd be stuck with a conspirator and a condemned pirate—"

"You mean to get him out yourself," said Will, looking at Norrington sharply. The other man nodded, sitting down in the last remaining empty chair. He looked weary and resolute.

"I would not ask it of any of you," he said slowly, avoiding their eyes.

Gillette was staring at him, his mouth open in shock. "But sir—even if you can get him safely away—"

"When I do," Norrington corrected gently, "I shall—how did you once put it, Mr. Turner?—accept the consequences of my actions."

Elizabeth looked at Will beside her. His eyes were fixed on Norrington. They understood each other better than she would ever understand either of them. Her hand crept over her husband's and tightened.

Groves was shaking his head. "There has to be another way—" he insisted.

"I've allowed you both to second-guess my choices in the past," said Norrington with a raised eyebrow. "I would not suggest trying it now."

The two lieutenants exchanged unreadable glances before they both looked down in compliance. The chill she felt rattled her bones.

"Gabriel—"

"It's as good as done," he said, staring at the wall.

"Actually," she snapped, angered at his fatalism, "we'd have to have an legitimate plan for that to be true."

"We need help," Will clarified. His eyes narrowed for a moment. "Didn't you say that the other men you took today denied Jack's involvement in the gambling scam?"

"Yes," said Gillette, cracking the knuckles on his left hand. "They all swore he'd never been in before today, and that he was just looking for a drink and an honest hand."

Elizabeth's eyes went to Groves, who was looking like he was on the same wavelength that had made Will sit up very straight. "Isn't that interesting?" he said slowly.

"Well, Jack's never robbed anybody in this town, they've no reason to..." She trailed off as the solution hit her as well.

"They like him," said Gillette, sounding mystified. "The townspeople like him, is that what you're saying?"

"Precisely," said Norrington, a new fierceness in his tightly-drawn expression. "In fact, it is my suspicion that they like him well enough to carry this through."

Fifteen minutes of planning, including some scribbling on a map of the town and a brief, strange argument between Elizabeth and Gillette about where the most suitable horses could be found, and the brainstorm had borne what they all hoped would be effective fruit. Each with a task, they set out from the Turner household, leaving a slumbering Morgan completely oblivious to the risk her parents were about to take to save the life of her godfather.

~~~

Jack sat in the dank cellar room which had been expressly commissioned after his last stay in the Port Royal jail. He supposed he ought to feel flattered. He supposed he ought to feel something about his own imminent demise. He'd always thought his life was supposed to be doing that famed flashing thing people were always going on about.

But when he closed his eyes, all he could see was the look on Norrington's face when he'd come into that bar. The thought that he'd be robbed of the memory of that stricken expression in just a few hours was almost a comforting one. Of course there was the chance that he'd see it in an endless cycle for the rest of eternity, but Jack preferred not to think of that possibility now any more than he had for the first forty years of his life. If he was damned, he was damned, and it would be the one situation Jack Sparrow couldn't charm and wriggle his way out of.

No, not just the one—Norrington was another. He had the freedom to admit that now, ironically when any hope of physical freedom was gone from him.

He wished he could have taken Norrington sailing on the Pearl, introduced one to the other. But that thought, too, led down a useless path. What was the conversation they'd had this morning about wishes? He'd been half-asleep and Norrington had been dismissive. If wishes were horses—no, if wishes were ships. Well, the Black Pearl was a wish made real if ever he'd seen one, even if her captain had not proved the same to a certain commodore.

The clank of heavy shoes coming down the stairs interrupted his chain of thought.

"I've said all I have to say," he called out, guessing it was a guard with a priest come to save his immortal soul. Bugger that; they could have it, if they could find it. Asking Norrington might be a good start.

But the man stepping down with a lantern in his hand was not one of the slack-jawed prison guards.

"Fancy a rescue, Captain Sparrow?"

It took Jack a moment and a squint in the dim light, but he managed to recognize the young lieutenant standing with a hip cocked against the wall—the one who'd brought him bread and water in the hold of the Dauntless months ago.

A slow grin twitched across his face. "Drink up, me hearties, yo ho..."

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