It was fitting perhaps that he first heard the tales from Jonathon (Jon usually, but never Jack) their second son and the one that didn’t seem to belong to them at all. If the truth were told he had made them both uneasy from well before his fifth birthday, for even then it had seemed that Jon belonged to the horizon, to the sea and the sky and to a world already lost.

When, on one of his rare trips home, he asked about the Black Pearl Will had been taken aback, for Jon had long passed the point of needing stories of the sea. But this time it seemed that he was the one with a story to tell, one that had stirred his memories of nursery days and prompted the question. A story he had heard in the ports around the east, of sailors stranded by a shipwreck and plucked from some God forsaken atoll by a ship of the night, a fast shadow of a ship with black timbers and black sails.

“You and mama used to tell me stories about a ship with black sails,” he had said, “a ship that you sailed aboard before your marriage. Do you remember it?”
Will had looked towards the fire, the years rolling back as he remembered that ship and with her the people and places of another life. He rarely thought of those days now, and if Elizabeth did then she never told him so. Those frantic weeks after their return from the locker had seen them at world’s end in more ways than one and they had both known that there was no going back there; not when they had waited a decade for their future. But, though they had found their way through destiny’s maelstrom and resumed the even tenor of normal living, their days of pirating had lived on in the stories that first Elizabeth, and then he, had told their children. Young Jon had heard the tales many times.
“The Black Pearl,” he had replied quietly.
“That was it.” Jon smiled and quirked an eyebrow at him, “The Black Pearl. Was it a real ship or just a children’s story?”

Will drew a deep breath, memories crowding in,
“Oh she was real enough, there was nothing of a child’s story about the Pearl.”
“She was pirate?” the question was hesitant as if his son was aware of the indelicacy of what he was implying.
Will had turned to look at him, so like his mother and yet so unlike, and his smile became rueful,
“Sometimes. But ships aren’t pirates, it’s their crews who are that.”
Jon had nodded, he loved his ship as much as any person, though he probably wouldn’t admit a difference, and would not take kindly to some one casting such a slur upon her. But there was also a frown between his eyes, as if he knew somehow that he had to step with care,
“Could it be the same ship? After all this time? Do you know what happened to her?”

Will had leant back in his chair, his mind wandering down long neglected tracks, away from the safety of his home and and the prosperous respectability his present, back to those far off battle days of his youth, hearing the clash of steel and the roar of canon again as if it had been just yesterday. But it had been more than thirty-five years since he last left the Black Pearl to board the Dutchman, a journey that had cost him ten years of separation from Elizabeth and his first-born child. Only once in those ten years as the Dutchman’s captain had he seen anyone from the black ship, and that Barbossa’s pet lost overboard in a skirmish somewhere off the coast of India. What she was doing there he hadn’t discovered, for though the monkey had known him and clung to his shoulder on the journey to the next world it could tell him nothing. The Pearl had sailed away from the battle, apparently undamaged, and so he hadn’t known where she was bound or who stood at her helm.

In the years since the sky had flashed green and he had been returned to the living he had seen or heard nothing of her, nor the men he had sailed with. ‘God forgive me’ he thought, ‘I fought with them, certainly owe my life to one of them, and yet I haven’t remembered them in nearly thirty years’ He wondered if Elizabeth had. Catching Jon's enquiring look he sighed,
“The Pearl was a good ship, and fast,” he said, “but in the nature of things it is unlikely that she’s still sailing. She’s almost certainly gone to the depths.” He had reached for the decanter, “probably taking her captain with her.”
‘Again. Whichever one it was who prevailed,’ he added silently.

Jon had nodded,
“But it’s strange all the same. How many black ships are there? Black canvas is not that easily come by and why would anyone take so much trouble?”
Will just shook his head, that there should be another black sailed ship seemed unlikely. The Pearl had been the creation of man as uncommon as he was unreliable and though Barbossa had captained her for ten years no one else had ever doubted that it was Jack she really belonged to, that it was in Jack’s sometimes’ wayward mind that she had found her birth. It was his reckless trade with Davy Jones that raised her when she had been lost. Who other than Jack would resurrect her again?

And Jack must be long gone.

That thought brought an unexpected pang of grief, but whether it was for the man or the youth he represented Will couldn’t say.
“I don’t know,” he sipped his drink, “but it’s unlikely that it is the Pearl.”
Will frowned as he thought of Elizabeth, long since reconciled to a more sedate life yet still haunted by the manner of her father’s death and the nightmare of the lives, at least one life, that she had taken, or cost, in her fury and desperation. He had hoped they had left that time behind them forever, but the shadows in her face these past months had stirred a fear in him that she was remembering them again, and more than was healthy for her. He was afraid that the pains and grief and guilt of that time had returned from the past to haunt her present. He shot his son a careful look,
“But best not to mention it to your mother, it was a long time ago and those memories are better not recalled. She has enough to concern her in your sister’s wedding.”

He had managed an easy enough tone but Jon’s eye had widened at the warning, realising that he was skimming reef strewn waters that his childhood self had never realised were waiting. But he had seen the brittle look in his mother’s face this visit and, though he looked uncertain, he had nodded his agreement.

Nothing more was said about the ship of the night.

***

Yet Will could not forget what Jon had told him and nor could he forget the Pearl. Her ghost had stirred and she wouldn't let him be. At night she sailed into his dreams, and always with Jack at the helm, his hat spotted with spray and his hair whipped by the wind. Jack Sparrow, no older than the day he had last seen him. That last fateful day when the pirate had grasped his hand and guided it towards the heart of Davy Jones, clasped his dying fingers around a broken sword and given him and Elizabeth a second chance. When he had given an unspoken promise that he would do nothing to come between them.

Nor had he, though Jack had shared it all and so might have been the one man to sway Elizabeth from her pledge to her husband during those long and lonely years; the man who might have condemned him to eternity aboard the Dutchman just as Jones had been condemned. But Jack had honoured that unmentioned promise and left them to their shared destiny. From the day he had left her waiting for her husband on a far off beach Elizabeth had neither seen nor heard from Jack, of that much Will was certain. Maybe it would have been better if she had.

Nor had Jack's father. Teague had died while Will had still served the Dutchman, and he had passed on knowing only that Jack had sailed away on the Pearl.

But they had all known that Jack Sparrow was not a man born to grow old. Whether it was at sea or in the back alleys of some far flung port Jack would meet death before age withered him. Teague had always known it and Will had come to know it too in the long years spent collecting souls, come to know that some men are not destined to outlive the vigour of youth. No, however much Jack feared the locker he was not born to follow his father into venerable and respected old age as his world emptied. Jack was gone, just as Teague was and Barbossa must be. There was no one left to be sailing the Pearl.

He had looked for other stories of the black ship anyway. In the taverns and chandlers and coffee shops he had sought them, from sailors returning from the furthest reaches of the shrinking globe, from merchants and mapmakers and officers of the Royal Navy. Never really sure if he was hoping to find other tales of Jon’s ship of the night, or to find that there were none.

Still she and her captains would not leave him alone. At night he would sit by the fire, Elizabeth silent at his side, and remember. Barbossa as first met, a monkey on his shoulder and an apple in his hand. Elizabeth on a plank over a deep blue ocean, an island disappearing into the distance, the pictures in his mind of her alone on a beach with a pirate with dark shadowed eyes and a charming, yet secret, smile. A pirate she had killed then searched for on the other side of death. A man whose memory was too uncomfortable for both of them, despite all the years that had passed, to be tolerated in large quantity.

Why it was that Jack should return to haunt him now he couldn’t know, only that he did. Yet there might have a purpose to it, Will had seen enough of destiny to know that nothing could be taken for granted in the fates of those who had sailed to Calypso’s bidding.

So the other stories came as little surprise, and he found them easily enough once he started to seek them. Stories from other lands told in other languages, but always the same description, always the ship of the night, the black ship with black sails. He listened and doubted and wondered but was never truly convinced.

Until he met the boy.

***

He heard of the boy though a childhood friend of Jon; Edward was the third son of a good, though not overly wealthy, family and trying to make a future for himself in the navy. Learning of Will’s interest in the black ship at a card evening in their soon to be son in law's honour, 'one of far too many such events' Will thought as he saw the strain around Elizabeth's eyes and the fatigue not quite hidden from him by her careful dressing, Edward had offered an introduction to someone who had seen it at close quarters. Will's concern for Elizabeth had pushed away any hesitation he might otherwise have felt in accepting the offer.

They met at the inn, the offer of dinner accepted with pleasure, though Edward had excused himself from the appointment with claims of family duty. Will wondered if he thought the tales this lad had to tell were nothing more than that, just tales. Some part of him hoped that they were, or that they were the product of a fertile imagination built on sailor's wild stories during a long and arduous voyage. But his first sight of his guest made him doubt that.

For some reason the boy reminded him of Norrington, another of those long forgotten pawns in a game whose rules they hadn’t known. It was there in the stiffness of his back, the squared shoulders and the deep water eyes. Yet he was truly little more than a boy, some years short of Jon’s age. For the first time Will realised how young Norrington must have been when they first met. But maybe it was that likeness that made him so careful of the boy’s dignity and so willing to hear what he had to say.

"So you saw the black sailed ship yourself?" he said as the first course was placed in on the table.
The boy nodded, his eyes wandering over the table with greedy joy, he was still of an age to be always hungry. But he had good manners and sat back with feigned patience while Will carved the bird, obviously willing to tell all manner of tales to please the provider of such largesse. Yet, as he took his first gulp of wine and began his story, any doubts that Will might have had about its veracity faded away; for, though the boy told his tale coherently enough, he could not hide the fear it could still stir in him.

"We had been escort to a small merchant fleet on its way to the Americas, when we sailed into strange weather," he said cramming another roasted potato into his mouth and swallowing it almost at a gulp, "The air was suddenly cold, and an odd mist came up from nowhere." He shot Will a haughty look before he could say anything, "I’ve seen sudden mists before but nothing like this one sir, ‘twas like it was alive the way it came curling round the masts and twining round your throat like it wanted to choke you."
He seemed to suppress a shudder, and swallowed another stuffed mouthful as if to deny the thought,
" We midshipman just did as we were told, and for the rest we tried to stay out of the way for we had little knowledge of what to do; even the Captain said he’d never seen the like before. Many of the crew were afraid, and those who seen such things in the past were more than afraid they seemed to be terrified. Everywhere there were men praying and crossing themselves, and not all of them praying to God either. There was more than one plea sent to Calypso that day."
He searched Will’s face fearfully as he spoke, as if seeking a sign of anger for such impious actions.

Will suppressed a smile, remembering some things he had seen when he was not so very much older,
"Understandable enough when at the mercy of the waves," was all he said.
The boy nodded in relieved agreement,
"Yet it was hard to tell why they were so afeared," he mused, "the seas were calm enough, and though the winds were light it was no doldrums. But afterwards the helmsman told me that the compass was spinning like north had been wiped from the world and now it didn’t know what to do. Then the mist got heavier, so heavy that we could not see the sky nor judge the position of the sun, all we could see was the water in front and behind us. It was like we were in the eye of a storm and the clouds were hunting us, only hanging back until we were too weak to fight before they pounced."

"For how long did you sail in that way?"
The boy shrugged and took another gulp of wine,
"We didn’t know, for the chronometers became as unreliable as the compass. It may have been a few hours it may have been more or less. But the longer we sailed the more eerie it became, it was as if we had left the world behind and were sailing in some long dark tunnel made of mists."
He frowned,
"The very air we breathed became strange, as if it had a life of its own. The hairs on your head seemed to writhe and your skin prickled as if in a freezing spray, yet the sea was flat calm. But the sails swelled as though the wind was full astern."
He stared unseeing at the fork half way to his mouth as if frozen by the memory.

"And the black ship?" Will prompted.
The boy jumped as his mind returned to the present day and his meal. He swallowed the forkful before looked across at Will, his eyes still darkened by memory,
"We heard the bell first, coming out the mists like the call of some strange bird. But we didn’t know if was a ship or some warning of rocks or reefs ahead. The captain was worried we would hit whatever it was and set look outs on both rails as well as prow and stern, and yet they swore that they didn’t see her until she was almost on us. One moment there was just dark and mists and then there she was there on our port bow."
"A ship of the night." Will breathed almost to himself.
The boy looked at him wide eyed,
"You’ve heard it from others then?" he said, his tone almost disappointed.
Will nodded, then smiled
"Yes, but go on anyway, so far they have only been vague stories. I’ve not spoken to anyone else who has seen her at first hand."
The boy brightened at that and straightened his back as if proud to be the one who had,
"A ship of the night," he agreed, " a shadow in the mists at first, then as she came closer we could see that it was a black ship, dark timbers, charred looking, and with black sails."
"Her figure head?" Will could hardly bear to ask the question.
The boy frowned as if wondering why that should matter,
"An angel with a dove. Nicely carved the first mate said."
Will let out his breath in a long sigh,
"I see."
He fell silent.

The boy sat quietly, eating and watching him as if aware that something more than the desire to hear a strange story was behind Will’s interest.
"Did you know her sir?" he asked eventually.
Will nodded, his eyes locked on the far wall, his mind in the past,
"Perhaps," he said eventually, "a long time ago. I didn’t think she could still be sailing."
Opposite him the boy stared wide eyed, a new respect creeping into his face as he realised that this prosperous looking man might once have been a sailor, a man who sought adventure on the seas, not just some careful and land bound merchant. Maybe it was that recognition that made him continue with quiet certainty,
"She wasn’t a new ship sir, not small but nor was she particularly large. But she was a pretty ship, and a sight for sore eyes at that moment."

Will smiled,
"I expect that she was."
He applied himself to his food for a moment or two, his thoughts lost in possibilities, The boy did the same with gusto, but his eyes kept flicking back to Will as if he was unsure whether to say more or not. Finally Will had laid his fork down and sat back a little,
"What happened then? Did you see any of her crew?"
His companion smiled and waved his glass at Will, the relief he had felt then showing in his face.
"Aye sir, she was no ghost ship. Though it’s true that more than one of the younger crew thought that she might be when she appeared." He took another gulp of his wine, "there were men aboard her, some on deck and some trimming the sheets as she came alongside of us."
"How close did she come?"
That earned a respectful look,
"We thought she meant to engage us too, for she had the look and feel of a pirate, or so it seemed to me, and we were all but helpless in the fogs. But she kept her distance and her gun ports closed, she just signalled us to follow her."
"And did you?"
The lad shrugged,
"Not at first. Though he wouldn’t admit it I think that the captain had her marked as a pirate too, though she hadn’t hoisted colours, for he hung back and sent the gunners to their stations."
The young eyes stared across the room for moment all thought of food and drink forgotten,
"It seemed like an eternity that we huddled there caught in those unearthly fogs while that black ship waited patiently. Then suddenly she moved, started to broadside, but she kept the ports closed and the ‘follow me’ flags flying. I thought our captain would give the order to open fire but he held off, it was clear that the black ships’ helmsman knew those waters and to many of us she seemed to be our only hope of making safety. Eventually, when she was just a grappling line’s distance off our port side, a man came down from the wheel to the rail and shouted to the captain, told him not to be a fool, that we had nothing he wanted and that we should follow him and he’d lead us out."

Will sat silently watching the young man on the other side of the table chewing at his lip, seeing the fear etched in a face that should have been too young to know it, but stiffened with a stubborn determination that no one should know the depth of his terror. He was reminded again of Norrington, that morning when Elizabeth was first gone from Port Royale, trying to be the navy man while every pore had oozed fear for her and a knowledge of his own impotence in the face of the Pearls’ disappearance. More than thirty years later Will could recognise it and feel sympathy for the long dead man, both for that day and the fact that it had been the despised Sparrow who had accomplished what James Norrington had not been able to do. A wound that had no doubt festered in his soul, a sore that had maybe taken him into a hurricane and set his feet on the path of destruction.

Will had ferried the late Admiral to the other side, but he had been one of many in those dark first days and Norrington had used the press of souls to avoid conversation. His only words to Will had been an imperious demand to know that Elizabeth was safe, then the half afraid questions about her father, the answers sending him to hours of solitary, stony faced grief at the Dutchman’s stern. Then, finally, an equally imperious to demand that Will return to her as soon as possible and see that the rest of her life was spent in a manner befitting a lady of her quality. Will, remembering her encounter with Jones on that same deck, and a day on a far off sandy shore, would have smiled at that sentiment, but the pain in the other man’s eyes had killed any amusement before it was born.

But that had been a long time ago. With a silent sigh he pulled himself back to the present and the lad’s story.

"And then?" he prompted.
The young sailor gave a small start and pulled himself out of his own reverie,
"Our captain asked why we should trust him. He seemed to find that amusing, just laughed and said no reason at all, then he looked around him at the mists and asked the captain which alternative it was that he preferred."
The thin, stiff shoulders rose and fell in a shrug,
"We all knew the situation we found ourselves in was not a happy one. The mists had come from nowhere and we didn’t know how far they stretched or what was hidden in their depths. We could sail on, risk the reefs and rocks that might lie in wait for us, and hope we found the other side with the keel intact, but without compass or sight of the sky to give us a bearing we might sail in circles forever. It was risk that or risk following this strange ship and put ourselves at the mercy of her stranger master."
He looked across a Will an uncertain expression on his face,
" For he was strange sir, the captain of that other ship, I’ve never seen anyone quite like him." He shrugged again and pushed away his now empty plate, "But we knew that he was right. We had no choice, either we followed him or we stayed where we were knowing that our chances of survival were small and getting smaller."

Will smiled and indicated that the waitress should bring the next course,
"So you followed?"
The boy's eyes took on a brighter sparkle as realised more food was to be forthcoming and leant back in his chair, now completely at ease,
"Aye sir. Though we struggled a little to keep up with her. The winds were light and she seemed to make better use of them than we did. Several of the officers muttered at the speed of her, that and the number of canon she seemed to carry, it made them all the more wary of her intentions."
"But she gave you no cause to fear her?"
He watched his companion closely as he shook his head,
"No sir, she kept well within sight and those flags flying."
His eyes were still locked on the maids’ hands as she loaded the table with the second course, picking up his spoon with obvious glee as a crisp fruit pie was placed in the centre of the table, and beside it a steaming plum duff and a jug of cream.
"It seemed for an age that we followed her sir. With the winds so light and the sea dark it was an eerie thing to be doing, and more than one of the crew protested that she was a devil ship and that she would lead us to our ruin. But it seemed that she knew where she was going, for she never hesitated nor broke from the line. Nor did she lead us onto rocks, or to the haunts of the mermaids and sirens as some of the sailors swore she would," He began loading his plate again. "And our captain's faith was repaid sir, in the end."

"She led you out safely then?"
The boy nodded his hands still busy with food
"Eventually we sailed into the daylight and warmer waters again. She was still in front of us, dancing across the waves like a child suddenly let out to play, and we continued to follow her putting space between us and those loathsome mists." He smiled and took a drink before starting on his pie, "She was a sight to see as we escaped the mists sir, enough to rouse the heart of any seaman if the truth be told, with her black sails stark in the sunlight. She was fast too, fast as the devil. Then as we came in sight of our merchants she turned, crossing alongside us so close that we could see her captain bow, a strange foreign looking gesture thought his words and voice had been English enough. The he swept his hat to us as if wishing us good luck and the black ship pulled past us and headed back from where we had come."
Will felt his chest and throat tighten, now it came to it he wasn’t sure that he wanted to ask the question, the one he had really come here to ask,
"This man, the one you called her captain, what was he like?"

The boy seemed to think about it for a moment, occupying the time with chewing and loading his spoon with pie; finally he smiled rather shyly,
"Like a pirate sir, a pirate from a book."
Will had looked down at his plate, reaching for the cream jug while he steadied his voice to careful unconcern,
"Any particular pirate?"
The smiled peeped out again, still shy and uncertain,
"Well sir, I saw a book once, when I was a child, with stories about a pirate and there was a sketch in that. But I’d never seen a pirate who actually looked like that, nor anyone else, not anywhere, not until I saw the man on the deck of the black ship."
"And what did he look like, this pirate?"
" Tanned sir, and dark haired, and he wore a full skirted coat, long topped sea boots and a tricorn hat. And a scarf, a red scarf that hung down his back."
"Anything else you remember?"
"I didn’t see his face sir, not close, but he had long hair. Very long sir, and thick, not powdered or a wig, not like a navy man. He had things bound in it, trinkets of some sort sir, they sparkled in the sun when he waved us farewell."

Will stared at the food on his plate the image in his mid flaring into life again as if he had seen it only yesterday,
"Beads" he muttered almost to himself, "and charms and a silver coin."
"Perhaps," the boy replied, "we weren’t close enough to see."
He squinted at Will,
"Do you think you know him sir?"
The polite but uncertain tone made Will smile,
"I shouldn’t think so. It’s been a long time since I was at sea. Was he young this pirate looking man?"
He saw the boy frown and hid a smile, what would seem young or old to this child? Did he know the difference between thirty and sixty? Or would anyone more than twenty seem ancient to him?"
"I’m not sure that I could say sir. We never came so close that I could judge. But from his manner and the way he moved I would have said he might be of an age with the captain and maybe a little younger,"

Will considered that. So what would that make him this strange captain of a dead ship? Late twenties or early thirties at most. Not Jack then, but maybe Jack’s son. A strange thought that one after all these years, that somewhere on the seas the Black Pearl still sailed, captained by the son of Jack Sparrow. Yet maybe it wasn’t so odd, given Jack's nature there was almost certainly going to be a son of his somewhere in the world, why not on the Black Pearl?

Anyways, son or not, he might be someone who would know where Jack was; and if, by some miracle, he still lived. Someone who might help put the matter finally to rest and allow Elizabeth to settle down into a harmless, comfortable, and more importantly, a peaceful, old age.

***

A cool and hesitant spring became a golden and hot blooded summer and the frantic preparations for their youngest daughter’s wedding absorbed most of Elizabeth’s time. In the long, slow, darkening of the days, almost reminiscent of Caribbean evenings, they would sit in the garden and talk lazily of guests, of food and wine and presents; as he watched her smile over some plan or other Will noticed, with both pleasure and sadness, that she was almost the girl he had first known again, all traces of the vengeful pirate gone.

Yet Will knew that appearances could be deceptive, just as he had long ago admitted that those days would always remain with them. While he had served the Dutchman there had been some time to resolve things and prepare himself, but Elizabeth had not been granted as much grace. Now, with her last child about to leave childhood behind, the ties to the motherhood that had grounded her in the present were weakening and the past seemed to making another move to claim her. Sometimes she would fall quiet and he would see the distance in her eyes and know that she was not here but there, back in the days when life held so much promise and she knew too little, either of life or of people, to be afraid. It had been such a small portion of their lives, those days on the Pearl, and yet it had marked them as irrevocably as the brand on Jack’s wrist.

Jack again. It seemed to Will that he was never far away now. While his days on Dutchman had faded to pale water coloured snatches of memory the man who he’d not thought about at all in those years, and since, had returned to his mind in oils. As he sat and watched Elizabeth’s gently silvered head bent over her book he wondered how he had ever forgotten.

Only the other morning, as he had inspected a cargo at the quay, he had heard a parrot squawk and immediately he had been back in the past, standing behind Jack as he studied a chart, with Cotton at the helm and Gibbs half asleep on a pile of canvas. It was as if the stories of the black ship had opened a door in time, and as he strode around the docks checking his purchases, a part of his mind was on constant alert, as if he was expecting to round a corner and see Jack walking ahead of him.

There were more stories of the black ship now, so many that it unnerved him. Since he had dined with the boy the news of his interest in the ship of the night had spread, and, much to his surprise, he found other people willing to talk of it. Most surprising of all was the length of the history he was slowly uncovering, for it was soon apparent that the black ship had been around for more years than Jon had understood when he first asked of it. What also became clear as his list of sightings grew was that it wasn’t only in the Caribbean that it was seen, but that wherever it appeared its’ presence was foreshadowed by strange weather and mists.

In some way that made Will uneasy, though he never spoke if it a shadow of his time beyond mortality still walked with him, and he knew himself to be more keenly aware than most of the closeness of other worlds to the one he lived in. Aware, too, of the fine web of strangeness that connected his world of the present to other things. Each time he heard the stories of the black ship he felt a small tug on that web as if something beyond the sweat and toil of the workaday world was being stirred. Maybe it was that feeling that persuaded him to start writing the stories down.

***

Emily’s wedding was a fine event, with friends and family clustered around, and the joy and satisfaction of seeing a beloved daughter glowing and proud with a man of her choice. Elizabeth seemed to push away her fatigue, her eyes brightening and the lines of weariness fading from her fine skin, the inner fire that once been so much a part of her returning in the light of her daughters joy. Will felt his throat tighten as he watched her exchange a reassuring smile with Emily as she made one last adjustment of the folds of her dress, the silk of it so like the dress she herself had worn that disastrous far away day.

Time seemed to roll backwards as they stood in the dusty light of the church, and Will could pretend that they were in Port Royale, waiting for the wedding they never had. He could imagine himself back to those moments when he thought he would stand in such a place waiting to hear the swish of silken skirts as her father led her up the aisle. When she reached out and took his hand as Emily and Robert exchanged their vows, so different to ones her parents had spoken, it was not a wife of thirty five years seeking comfort from her husband, but a girl grasping her lovers hand in joy as they prepared to start a new life.

Will swallowed on unexpected tears and closed his fingers around hers, then he looked across at her, seeing the shine in her eyes and knowing that she, like he, was repeating the vows that Beckett had stolen from them a lifetime ago. He knew then that she was pledging herself to him again in whatever life still held for them, and was taken aback by the depth of relief that brought. He had not realised that he feared he was losing her.

It proved to be a day of surprises too, first the whispered announcement of their eldest daughter in law that the next generation was started upon, then the unexpected arrival of their third son from London, and finally, as the day turned into evening, the letter.

Daniel had brought it with him having heard from Jon of their father’s interests in strange ships off the islands of the Caribbean,
“I mentioned it to someone I know, he is home on leave from the Caribbean having been ill with a fever this past two years. I hope you do not mind father, I broached the subject only thinking to distract him from his aches, but no sooner had I told him then he insisted that he must write to you.” He held out the letter, a thick packet that hinted at many sheets of paper.
Will had smiled at him and shook his head,
“I make no secret of my interest. Jon’s story piqued my curiosity. What I have heard since has intrigued me and I would be glad to know of an answer to the riddle.”
He looked into the candlelight and frowned,
“It sounds so much like the Pearl and yet I know that it can’t be.”
He looked back to his son,
“Any further information is welcome.” He gave a small smile, “I have decided to write the stories down, a legacy for future generations of Turner’s to amuse their children with.”

Daniel smiled,
“I think we all know them well enough father! As I recall we could none of us ever get enough of them. I remember being with you at the quay side, all of six years old, and slithering around between the crates pretending I was Jack Sparrow escaping from the East India company.”
His smile widened as he saw his sister approach,
“The girls always fought over who was going to be mamma, and Jon would never let anyone else be Jack, he said his name meant he had the right, so I could only be him when I was alone.”
“Jack Sparrow!” Emily’s voice was alive with laughter, “The stuff of all my girlish fantasy, and Caroline’s too if the true be told. I dreamt about him for years.”
Her husband smiled at her,
“Should I be jealous?”
She tightened her hand around his arm, and laughed as she shook her head,
“No Rob, I was just a girl then, and I doubt that any one ever like him really walked the earth. For all that my parents insist that he did. But it’s true that he was everything romantic that a young girl could imagine.”
“As I was not?” teased Will,
“How could you be when you were my father?” she teased in return.

Daniel smiled fondly at his sister and then winked at her husband,
“You’d not see Rob with his hair to his waist then? Or with beads and trinkets around his face and a braided beard?”
“Or a sash three feet long at my belt.” Robert looked towards Will, “Oh I’ve heard the stories too sir. Daniel and I scrapped more than once in our younger years over whether his parents had really known a famed pirate.”
He stepped a little closer and dropped his voice to a confiding tone,
“Now that I’m family maybe you will tell me the truth of it.” His voice became wistful, “for we have nothing half so exciting in my family, and it’s so long ago now that it cannot matter. Did you truly sail with Captain Sparrow sir? Aboard the Black Pearl?”

Will smiled slightly and looked at the floor,
‘It’s strange what time and distance will do,’ he thought, ‘when did Jack Sparrow the pirate become Captain Sparrow the legend? When had the man that Norrington would hang without further trial become the figure that put such awe into the voices of respectable young men?’
He looked across at Elizabeth deep in matronly conversations with Rob’s mother and remembered another young girl, ‘though it seems that he had always been the stuff of maidenly dreams’, he thought with a rueful mental smile, ‘ thank whatever gods look over us that he was the man he was and not the man he could have been.’

He turned his attention back to his son in law waiting patiently for an answer. The stories of Beckett had never made it home to England, at least not to places where Rob and his friends would ever see them, and, though Jack’s deeds had been reported widely enough in the days before they met, he had slipped out of sight after that one last legend building deed during which he took the Pearl back from Barbossa for the final time. Though the occasional newspaper still made comparisons to him whenever a privateer took a prize. ‘What;’ he wondered, 'would Jack have made of that.’

“Oh, Jack was real enough, “ he spoke aloud. “Though even when you knew him it was hard to separate the true from the fantasy. Now it’s impossible.”
He looked around at the bright young faces realising how little they suspected, and how little they could ever know.
“But it’s true that he saved Elizabeth from drowning, and later from an even grimmer fate. Without him I would never have found her, much less saved her. He was a thief and a pirate, and he claimed to be nothing else, but for all that he was a good man in many ways, and I’ve never heard of him harming an innocent, or anyone else who wasn’t trying to harm him first.”
Will remembered the shock he had felt when he realised that of all the souls sent to eternity in those last months he himself had despatched far more of them there than ever Jack had. It had taken him a long time to come to terms with that knowledge, and the fear of Elizabeth realising the same had added extra mental torment to his loss and grief in that first year on the Dutchman. He smiled at Emily and her husband,
“He could be all pirate when necessary, he was a fine shot and he knew how to handle a sword when needed, but he was a clever man too and if he could achieve what he wanted without a fight then he would do it.”

“And what did he want?” Rob asked obviously pleased to allowed to join in the family mythology.
Will’s eyes drifted away to an inward vision of the past,
“Not so much, and then again maybe everything. The Pearl, the seas and freedom,” his voice was quiet, and then he gave a short crack of laughter, “and enough gold for all the rum he wanted and to entertain some pleasurable company when the chance arose.”
He cast his daughter a saucy look,
“He might have been a young maiden's fancy, but they were as safe with him as with any honourable man. His tastes did not run to innocence and he knew the world well enough not to do casual harm to those who did not understand the price of what they might seem to offer.” He looked back towards Elizabeth, “for which I and others had good reason to be thankful.”

“He sounds more like a knight than a pirate.” Rob smiled.
Will shook his head,
“No, he was pirate true enough, though maybe not enough for other people's tastes. Jack was a conundrum, or then again maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was just a pirate with a good heart.”
He remembered his father leaving the Dutchman to rejoin the wife he had deserted all those years ago, and Norrington hanging back in silence rather than face those he felt he had shamed, “but maybe that wasn’t quite unique. After all the world doesn’t always treat people fairly, and those who find themselves where they never expected to be do not necessarily lose all that was good about them before.”
He saw the questions clustering on their tongues, it seemed that Jack’s spell was not yet spent. but he knew now was not the time,
“But those are stories for dark evenings round a good fire with my grandchildren at my knee.”
He indicated the letter that Daniel had laid upon the table and smiled widely,
“Maybe I’ll have another one to add to the list when I’ve read this.”
They all laughed and turned their thoughts to other topics, but Will felt the tugging of that unseen web again, as if something was being set in motion, and wondered at it.

Yet he could never have guessed the full truth of what his strange sense was telling him.

***

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