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Driftwood by Hereswith [Reviews - 0] [220
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by Hereswith
Chapter 3
“Leah?” Elizabeth called out, but there was no reply.
She glanced at Jack, who gave a slight shake of the head, as nonplussed as she was, and they both set about going through the cabin. It was quick work, Jack’s quarters, while fairly large, were not so large, or filled with secret niches, that a young girl, no matter how slim of build, could hide in them for long without being detected. It soon became clear that Leah was not within those walls.
“She couldn’t have slipped past us,” Elizabeth said. “We were right outside, Jack. Where would she go?”
“Where, indeed?” he remarked. “I’d say ‘twas impossible, love, but that’d make a liar, or a fool, of me.”
Leah’s shift, which had been draped over the back of a chair, was also missing, and Elizabeth frowned. “The locket,” she exclaimed, on a sudden thought, and darted towards the table. “I put it here. I’m sure I did.”
It was not, however, where she remembered it being. She rifled through the papers, maps and charts, shifted the books and other objects that cluttered the tabletop, and finally bent to peek under the table, but the locket had, like its owner, seemingly vanished.
“I’ll have the whole ship searched,” Jack stated. “Down to the last inch of her.”
“And if they don’t find the girl?” Elizabeth asked, shying from the implications, even as she said it.
“No use worrying ‘bout that now, eh?” Jack lightly answered, but she noted that his jaw was taut, and that betrayed his concern.
*
At Jack’s command, the Pearl was combed from bow to stern, from the lowest, most inaccessible levels of her to the highest. Every cabin and room was turned upside down, and even the narrowest of passageways examined. It was not yet midday, when they ran out of places to look that had not already been scoured twice over, and once more for good measure.
Elizabeth, at that point, returned to the captain’s cabin alone, prompted by a nagging notion that she could not ignore. The bed was rumpled, as it had been even before Leah had arrived. That was not solid proof, nor was it what she had come to investigate. She went to one of the chests, pausing for a moment with her fingers tentatively resting upon the lid, then opened it, and her legs nearly buckled beneath her. For her own shift, the shift she had loaned to Leah, was lying on top, neatly folded.
She took a staggered breath, and it was as if she had been transported back in time and was hearing Hector Barbossa’s voice, his gravely lilt ringing out, You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You’re in one!
“Unless she climbed over the rail,” Jack commented, stepping inside the cabin, “I’ve no idea to explain it.”
Elizabeth straightened, abruptly, and memory gave way as reality engulfed her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“She wore my shift, Jack,” she said. “Hers was wet, so I had her change. But it’s in the chest, as though I never removed it.”
Jack approached, to verify it for himself. “Bloody hell.”
“What if it cannot be explained?” Elizabeth continued, the words hollow in her mouth. “I’ve seen this ship crewed by the damned. I’ve seen you turn skeletal when moonlight touched you, and human, when it did not. No laws of God, or man, could explain those things.”
He snorted, with little humour. “True. Should’ve taught me rescuing a fair lady’s just inviting trouble.”
Her smile was crooked, and she could not sustain it. “It might be over, might it not? If it was Leah—if she, somehow, was the cause, and she’s gone?”
“Perhaps,” Jack said, but he sounded unconvinced. “’Tis two days to the nearest port, at the least, and that’s if the wind’s favourable,” he added, stroking his beard. “The Pearl’s fast, love. She flies swift and steady under me hands, aye, but she has no wings on her, only canvas. And there’s no outrunning the Devil, if he’s aboard. Or she, as the case may be.”
Elizabeth shivered. “Two days. That’s forever.”
“I know, Lizzie,” he said. “I know.”
“Capt’n!” One of the boys burst into the cabin, stumbling to a sharp halt beside them. “Ye’ve got t’come.”
Jack followed him without questioning, and Elizabeth went along with them. The boy, so anxious he almost, but not quite, tugged at Jack’s sleeve, led them outside, across the deck, and then below. On the sole, near the foot of the steps, two men were sprawled, the closest of whom was Jaime, and Elizabeth went cold. It had not ended, or abated. It was getting worse.
Jaime’s shirt was rent in front, there were livid welts on his arms and chest, and he was flailing and tossing, whining “no” again and again, like a litany. Marty and another crewmember, Dobbin, were striving to hold him, but Jamie was tall and he was strong; they were not managing very well.
Dobbin glanced up tiredly through tousled reddish bangs at their footsteps, and said, to Jack, “They fell down, both o’ them, an’ Caesar there—” He indicated the other man, who, unlike Jaime, barely moved, except to tremble. “He’s been quiet. Had to put me belt in his mouth, though, or he’d bit his tongue off. But Jaime’s cracked, clawed himself bloody, he did, ravin’ ‘bout ants.”
Jack dropped onto his knee beside Jaime. “Lad?”
Jaime’s eyes flew open, wide and bright and unfocussed. Red streaks marred the whites of them, like the marks of his nails marred his skin. “They’re inside o’ me,” he moaned. “Burrowin’ right into me. God!” His body arched upwards, muscles straining, and he wrenched his right arm loose, scratching viscously at his belly, just below the ribs, before Jack could grab his wrist. Jaime collapsed back against the sole, at that, drenched in sweat and panting. He swallowed, his throat bobbing up and down, and pleaded, “Capt’n. Make it stop. Please, make it stop!”
Jack’s expression was as overcast as if it portended a storm, and Elizabeth, horrified by Jaime’s plight, could only imagine how Jack must feel. These were his men, his responsibility, but he was as powerless as the rest of them, for all that he was Captain Jack Sparrow.
He brushed the disarrayed hair off Jaime’s forehead, and said, his tone clipped, “We’ll take them to Gibbs’s cabin. Carefully.”
The ailing men were carried to where Jack had directed, and made as comfortable as their respective conditions allowed. Caesar was not conscious, so he could easily be propped up and settled, but Jaime was beside himself and beyond consolation. His hands had to be tied, and he pulled frantically against the bonds, screaming, until they gave him enough rum, unmixed with water, that it doused some of his anguish.
Elizabeth, together with Dobbin, had attempted to clean Jaime’s self-inflicted wounds, and she was not done with the task when Jack made ready to leave. “Stay with them,” he instructed Dobbin, then slanted a gaze at Elizabeth. “Lizzie?”
“Go,” she replied. “I’ll finish this.”
Jack nodded, and walked out of the cabin. Elizabeth assumed he had gone up to the helm, and, on her way to the deck shortly after, was surprised to discover him in the passage outside, leaning heavily with his palm flat against the wall, his face averted.
He had not intended her, or anyone, to witness him in the midst of such rare, stolen solitude, Elizabeth was certain of that. She pursed her lips into a line, indecisive, but before she could retreat, his shoulders tensed, as if he had become aware of her, and he turned around, his eyes a brilliant black.
“Jack—” she began.
But he lifted his head with a start, growing pale beneath his tan, and she did not have to ask, she immediately realised what it was that had distracted him. Silence. The waves did not slap against the hull as they should, and the rolling, reassuring motion of the Pearl had ceased, between one heartbeat and the next.
Jack did not speak; he swirled on his heel and raced topside. She hastened after him, up and out into the air, which was deathly still. The sun, pitiless and scorching, bore down on the ship from a perfectly cloudless sky, and the sails hung slack and idle against the masts. There was no wind.
While Jack entered into an animated discussion with some of the crew, Elizabeth, for her part, was irresistibly drawn to the railing, and to the sea. Not a ripple or a swell danced across the azure surface, it stretched to the horizon, as smooth as polished glass. Ships were sometimes becalmed, she had heard and she had read stories about it, but this could not be a natural occurrence, a simple whim of the weather. Not after everything that had happened.
Leah, or whatever unholy force it was they were up against, had clung like a leech to the remains of a foundered ship. Had that vessel, destroyed by explosion, met with the same misfortune, the same haunting, as the Pearl? It was probable, more than probable, and, if so, might not the fire have been set on purpose, either because the crew had been driven to insanity, or because there had been no other means of escape?
A ship, Elizabeth reflected, could mean freedom, but when the keel and the hull could not offer shelter, what did it become, then, but a trap, closing around them. A cage of wood cast adrift on the ocean. A floating coffin.
Panic clamped down on her like a vice, and she gritted her teeth until they ached. “Who are you?” she breathed. “What do you want?”
And it might have been mere fancy, but she doubted it. It was an echo of an echo, next to her ear, like a woman’s whisper.
Two days to port. They would not reach it, now.
God help them.
Author's Note: