Voyage 2 - The water of life

The players

Jack Sparrow – a pirate captain and a smart man, with a taste for rum, long hair, long words and even longer plans

Elanor – a ship’s captain and a smart woman, with similar tastes - except that she’d rather have brandy

Ariadne – a ship’s ghost – well maybe – very smart but with no tastes at all

Calypso – a sea goddess with a weakness for pirates, a wicked sense of humour and no sense of fair play

The Lady – herself

Barbossa – a pirate captain and a hard man with a liking for big hats, and a fear of inescapable curses and impending doom

Various crew – all of whom who had been loved by their mothers but possibly no one since

A monkey

A parrot

The Navy

Chapter 42 Maps and ghosts

"The lake. It must be being drawn up from the lake." Elanor said.
"Aye, seems like." Jack agreed,
"But why and where is it going to?"
The stone was still rising, slowly but faster than the water, if that was indeed what the sound indicated. The smoke within the inner tunnel was thicker now and the diamond drops hung more heavily upon its tendrils, and the hiss of something approaching was unmistakable.

Jack smiled and pulled out the compass, holding it up so that she could see it in the flickering light. Sure enough the needle turned towards the inner tunnel, though it seemed to be trying to point upwards at the same time. He looked at her sideways his grin darkly golden and satisfied in the half-light,
"What would you wager on whatever it is being the fountain? Eh?"
Elanor shrugged,
"Well, as we are heading in the same direction we may be about to find out."
He nodded squinting at the glittering smoke, the advancing water was still below them.
"Looks like we'll get there first."
"Seems likely."
"But how is it rising up?" Jack muttered frowning at the compass as if it should be able to tell him.
Elanor sighed, her limbs felt heavy for all that the heat of her own body seemed to be charring her bones,
"Why seems the more pressing question given this.."
She waved her arm in Jack's direction, the spiders of red were now giant octopuses covering most of her skin, the tentacles pulsing as Jack's had been some time ago. She felt her whole body shiver with each pulse, the surge echoing through every space and cell.
Jack gave a snort of bitter laughter,
"Can hardly do us much more damage now can it?"
She looked at him closely, seeing the fatigue around his eyes for the first time and noticing the slowness of his movements as he let the compass fall back to his belt. He shrugged as he saw her looking,
"If it is the fountain then let us hope that it can undo what has been done."
"Do you think that is likely?"
"Hope is all we have Elanor, in such circumstances 'tis all that we can do."
He looked up towards the shadows,
"That and hope it doesn't take too long to take effect."

That was the closest he had come to admitting that he, too, was nearly spent.

The sound of water was getting louder now and as Elanor looked down she saw the first edge of it appear in the tunnel below them, or funnel as she supposed she must think of it. It was still moving more slowly than the rising slab but it was certainly coming.
"It's not green." She heard herself say. "It must be coming from the lake but it's not green."
"The light." His voice was soft and weary, "Must change its colour. That or because there is less of it, I'd wager a barrel of rum that the lake was very deep."
"Yes." She found that she was too tired to think any more about it.
Though she wanted to believe that it might offer them another chance her rational mind kept saying no. It was too much effort to remind that rational part of how little was rational here so she took the only other course and stopped thinking. Like Jack, just waiting to see what might be the outcome.

Above them another roof had appeared, but this time the slab shaped hole was clearly visible and through it she thought she caught a glimpse of a starry sky. She was too tired to think about that either, instead she sank down and buried her head in her hands. Jack came and stood beside her, his leg hot and solid against her shoulder. They stayed that way until the stone came to a stop.

***

"So there was no sign of Sparrow?"
Governor Thynne made a steeple with his fingertips and stared at Hathaway over the top of them.
"No sir."
"But he has acquired an accomplice you say?"
"So it would seem."
"Not a human one?"
Hathaway could only guess at the trepidation the man opposite must feel in asking the question. The governor gave a wry smile,
"Not a question I ever expected to need to ask!"
"No sir, which of us would. The simple truth is that I don't know." He owed the man honesty, knowing that his failure made the governors tasks so much harder. "Unusual most certainly, but whether she is human or not is uncertain."

The governor's hands touched the book in front of him,
"My wife has found one of Weatherby's journals hidden in the attic. In it he speaks of Beckett having a secret that he shares with only a few, and of the man's ambition and resentment and joy in his actions. It seems that Weatherby had dealt Cutler Beckett a reverse or two in the past, and he was not a surprised as he might have been about the man's actions here. He speaks of James Norrington's return too. The Commodore was not overjoyed about his return to the bosom of the law,apparently, nor greatly gratified by his elevation to admiral of Beckett's fleet."
He sighed and leaned back in his chair,
"But there seems to be little doubt that it was Norrington who brought the heart here and handed it over to Beckett. I wonder why? Why did he think that the crown would have handed such a dangerous artefact to one such as Beckett?"
He sighed and stared towards the fire,
" However juging by what is here it is clear that Norrington was very closed mouthed about the heart, and that Weatherby had no knowledge of it when he sailed with Beckett."

"What of his daughter?" Hathaway asked.
Thynne shook his head,
"He was beside himself with grief and fear when he sailed. His daughter had disappeared and he did not know where she was gone."
He looked up at Hathaway with a frown,
"Did you learn anything of her in Tortuga?"
"No." there was a real regret in Hathaway's voice, the fate of Miss Swann was one of the most deplorable aspects of the whole business to his mind. "There were many rumours of the EITC fleet and its activities, and many more about the battle at Shipwreck, but nothing of Miss Swann or anyone who might be her. How she got onto the Black Pearl remains a mystery. Though one man I spoke to told me something that makes me think that James Norrington met Sparrow and joined his crew there. There were also some indications that Mercer was there at some point."
Hathaway looked over the governor's head and stared at the wall,
"It is possible that Mercer took Miss Swann there and that Sparrow took her from him."
Thynne shuddered,
"Not a pleasant thought, Ms Swann in Mercers hands I mean. I think I would far more readily trust my daughter to Sparrow's mercies than Mercer's."

Hathaway nodded,
"Does Governor Swann say anything more of Sparrow?"
"Little that he didn't say in his letter to me. He regrets that he didn't pardon the pirate when he had the chance, for then any blame would have fallen on his shoulders alone. He was of a mind to think that it might be a judgement of some kind, for his ingratitude, that he would have twice let his daughter's saviour hang and for that he lost her."
The governor's long fingers played thoughtfully over the cover of the small book,
"A harsh idea, but it is strange what a man thinks in such circumstances."
Thynne stared at the fire,
"Weatherby suspected that he would not survive the matter, and imminent death has a way of rendering all other loyalties somewhat superfluous. All he wanted was his daughter safe, for that he would have given anything, including the crown, and I cannot find it in my heart to blame him for that."
"No sir." Hathaway paused for a moment, "but what of the Black Pearl? Admiral Norrington says she has been sighted."
"We think so but the sighting is uncertain. But whoever is at the helm appears to have some problems for the report says she is sailing in circles. The merchant who spotted her was disinclined to go much closer for she was flying her colours and her name is well enough known now to keep all but the bravest away."
"Let us hope that it her. If we can take that ship, sir, we can use her to tempt Sparrow out."

Thynne got to his feet and crossed to the wine sitting on the side table,
"Tempt him from where?" there was a hint of despair in his voice. "For all we know the man is dead. Better perhaps it is best that he is, then whatever he learned of Jones will be lost and with luck the Dutchman will not be seen again."
"And the Spanish?"
"The Spanish, the French and the Dutch will have to believe it if the Dutchman does not reappear. Though heaven only knows how many ships and men will be lost before they do so!"
"And the EITC?"
Thynne's mouth thinned in disgust,
"They want whatever it was that Beckett had, they claim they do not know the details, or they want Sparrow." He took a gulp of the wine, "Oh, and they want the Black Pearl too! I have spent the last month rebuffing them and still they demand. One sees how Beckett became what he was when one is forced to deal with those who partnered him."
He took another drink,
"But the Admiral will capture Sparrow's ship and bring her back to harbour here. Then we can only hope that if Sparrow still lives he will come for her."

***

The slab rose steadily into the hole awaiting it, its speed never varying, not even when it drew close, sliding upwards and fitting into it so tightly that there was no sign that it wasn't a part of the floor it joined. 'Whoever had caused such a thing to be had some considerable skill' Jack thought as he watched the edges line up to perfection.

He looked around him, aware that what he saw might not be what was there, or might not be what he thought it was. An uncomfortable thought when the heat in his body was starting to seep into his head making thought as hard and tiring as movement.

Elanor rose slowly to her feet and he could see the same exhaustion that he felt written in the lines of strain around her eyes. The deep blue green of her eyes was bathed in red and the white islands on her inflamed skin were small and quickly vanishing. She was still beautiful as an angel but the tint of hell was on her and he wondered if it could ever be undone, fountain or no. Pushing the thought away with an impatient curse at himself he looked around.

This room was different to those they had passed through below, for a start it was not empty. The inner tunnel rose through the centre as it had below and the silver blue light, though dimmer here, showed a high roofed chamber with a circle of seven elegant pillars rising up from a smooth and featureless floor. Each pillar was cupped by two semicircular slabs, waist high and cut from some dark and glittering stone. The way the dim light sparked on the surface suggested the polished tops of these slabs were decorated with clusters of the same crystals they had seen on the walls below. He let his eyes drift upwards, the sliver blue light faded to darkness above them, leaving shadows that made shape and colour uncertain, but the pillars seemed to support a cradle of rock high above them, its shape indistinct and wavering. Whatever it was looked to reach out to mezzanine half floors around the upper walls. Tracks of glittering rock snaked up each pillar and the sparks of light in the shadows above them suggested that more of the crystal patters were worked on the sides of the crucible that hung between floor and rafters.

"What is this place?" Jack's voice was quiet and sombre.
"I don't know. Maybe you were right about it being a temple."
He shook his head,
"Doesn't have the right feel to it somehow. Weird enough I'll grant but for all its strangeness it has a very business like air about it. Though those slabs could well be altars I suppose." He looked around him, "but I see no fountain." A desperate edge crept into his voice, "yet it must be here, the compass says that it is."
Elanor wandered across the to the nearest of the maybe altars, the tension was clear to read in her hunched shoulders and she spoke without looking at him.
"The compass says that what you want most is here Jack. Isn't that what you told me, that it points to what you want most? Perhaps that is not the fountain after all."

Jack knew how to read the signs, knew that despite her calm she was both despairing and angry and yet still unwilling to voice either. Not for the first time he wondered at her forbearance and found himself wishing for one of Elizabeth's outbursts or William's open demands. She was as reasonable as ever but he was not of a mind to endure her restraint, not now. He knew that his actions had brought the death of men before; to be a captain meant that was inescapable, whether you were pirate or navy. But he had always had the comfort that if he had not been captain they would have died in much the same way, for he had always known that they would have done little different and not done what they did half as well. Her calm and competency made him wonder if that would be the case here, and stripped him of that consolation. Until this moment he had not realised how much he depended upon that belief for his own survival.

The unease that realisation brought stung him to anger, and he recognised it even as it happened, yet still he poured all his remaining energy into his reply,
"Then what is Elanor? How is it that you know my mind better than I do? Like Elizabeth and Will are you, able to read me like an open book?"
He heard the anger in his own voice but was too tired to rein it in. He crossed to her and caught hold of her arm pulling her around to face him,
"What is it that I want, then, if not the fountain?"

She was silent for a moment, staring at the hand that gripped her arm. His skin was lost in the red wheals now and his joints seemed swollen, the tapering fingers claw like beside them. The dark hair of his forearm showed stiff and raised against the pulsing flesh and the veins beneath this skin seemed to writhe with the force of his blood.
"Death," she said softly, "maybe its death that you want." She reached out a finger and stroked his wrist gently, "to have the worst happen and be rid of the fear. To have it over with. Perhaps that is what you want."
She heard him draw a deep breath
"No." his voice was soft, the anger gone, "no, you are wrong. I want to live, despite all that's happened I want to live."
"Do you? Are you sure?"
She looked into his face and saw the weariness and the pain there.
"After everything you've seen and done. Are you sure you don't feel guilt Jack? Are you sure that you don't feel the need to atone?"
He shook his head,
"How would my dying do that then? Anyways, guilt for what exactly? Your commodore and his ambition perhaps, or Beckett's greed and megalomania?"
Elanor smiled at him softly,
"For sending your friend aboard the Dutchman perhaps? Or for not killing Jones when you had the chance?"

Jack looked away, staring down at the slab besides them,
"Will chose to board the Dutchman, would have done so even if I had told him the score. Better that he went unknowing, Will did not lie well you see, and that way Jones would know he was no part of me. Bootstrap was a good man once, and he never was easy about abandoning his family. I knew that he would take care of his son until I had the heart and could free them both."
He turned away from her and crossed to the next stone altar,
"Would have been no problem at all if the pair of them had let me have my way, I would have had the heart, freed Bootstrap and sent Jones back where he belonged."
He looked up at her with a sad smile,
"Don't know how your ancestor thought he could do right by giving the heart to Beckett. He would have hung me for putting a chain to Miss Swann's neck to save my very life, yet he would hand control of the seas to one who would put a noose around her neck for nothing more than good business. Seemed he had no sense of proportion at all. Not when his own interest was involved."
"He wanted his life back."
Jack gave a harsh laugh,
"Well if he thought to get it from one who would lock the governors daughter in a cell, and murder than man who would have got her to safety, then he was more touched than I have ever been!"
He shook his head,
"No luv, I'm not seeking absolution. Nor death."
"Are you sure? Piracy is ending, most of what you love is lost of dead."
"Most of what I wanted or loved died long ago Elanor, it is the way of things, here at least. When one purpose is lost then a wise man finds another. No one knows what the future hold luv, but it is disrespectful to the almighty not to hang around and see if you can manage it."

That remark underlined the chasm between them more than any other, she realised, for this was still a world where hope and faith was allowed to be blind.

Jack was no longer looking at her and when she turned her head she saw that the spray heralding the rising water was now hissing at floor level, the waters were arriving. Then suddenly the blue light brightened, changing colour, and then the room flooded with light.

***
The Black Pearl was in trouble, as a ship is when its crew is beyond their knowledge.

For more than a week they had sailed in circles, at least as far as any of them could judge, both unable and unwilling to decide their next steps. They had not put into shore since Barbossa had fell into whatever trance it was that still held him silent and immobile on the rumpled sheets of the bed in the great cabin. Marty had managed to tip water down his throat once or twice a day but he had eaten nothing, and still as he was it was clear that his clothes were hanging upon him. Now with water running short there was an argument as to whether he should still be included in the sharing of rations.

The crew were on the point of mutiny, had there been anyone to mutiny against, and two were already dead at the hands of fellow crew in arguments over rum rations. Now the rum was gone too and desperation was truly taking hold. They had rowed many a hot and weary mile in the last few weeks, for without a navigator or captain no one was willing to take the risk of venturing close to shore. They had dropped anchor only where they knew themselves to be safe from rocks and rowed to find water. After a couple of disastrous attacks on shoreline villages, which lost then six more of their number, they scavenged only at night and lived on fish and such fruit and nuts as they could find. As Pintel constantly remarked it were a poor life for a pirate.

"Could try and sail back to Shipwreck." Raggetti had offered at the morning meeting of the little group that passed as a crew committee.
"Can remember the ways then can ye? Should have said so befores if that be the case." Pintel had growled.
"Not sayin' that I can, just that we might as well try that as anything else. Stay here and we starve or die o' thirst."
"Shipwrecks a long way." Murtogg put in.
"I knows! That's what I be sayin'. Lot of rocks between here and there."
"Not foundered so far." Raggetti went on carving whatever it was he was carving, he already had two spare eyes so no one was sure what it was he was about now.
"Ay, so I can see. But Shipwreck means crossing unfamiliar waters, lot of it. Not like that we'd make it there in one piece."
"Keeper might not be very pleased with us if we did." Mullroy added. "Captain Jack is son so you say, might not like that we left him behind."
"Again." Raggetti chipped in.
"Would see it as mutiny as like as not." Pintel agreed with a frown," and we all knows what the Keeper would think of that."
A shudder passed through each man at the thought of it. Barbossa was bad enough when he was roused, but Teague's anger didn't bear thinking of.
"But where else do we go?" Murtogg asked.
"Aye that's the question. Piracy as we have known it is dyin'" Raggtti said, "We needs to be thinking about our futures."
"What else be there?" Pintel glared at his friend, "ye of a mind to set yersel' up as a carpenter then?"

Marty exchanged a look with Mullroy and rolled his eyes. They were nowhere nearer deciding what top do than they had been yesterday. Truth was they were not used to thinking for themselves to this degree, always relying on their captain to do it for them. Marty didn't think he would ever consider Captain Jack strange again, for it was clear a man needed to be mad to take command of a pirate ship! Another day would pass and they would be closer to death but no closer to finding a way out of it. He looked towards the long boats and wondered if he could make it to shore from here on his own. Maybe he could take the daft pair with him to do the rowing. Three of them might make it.

But not before the night watch he decided.

In the seas around the Black Pearl Calypso watched them bicker. Had she been in human form she would have raised her eyebrows, maybe tutted a little, and perhaps reflected with some understanding on the actions of Jack Sparrow, but as it was she settled for shifting the wind a little. Though she had cursed the pirates roundly for her incarceration, and no desire to preserve them, she had also undertaken to keep the Pearl safe for the Lady, and for that it needed a crew. Time to take matters in hand.

***

"The map. It does look like the map!" Elanor said in surprise.
"Nothing like a fountain though," was Jack's comment.

High above them the rock has resolved itself into a structure, a curved urn of a vessel made of the same bluish resin as the walls of the water tube, glowing, and semi transparent in the bright light. It was supported on a slender plinth studded with more of the rock crystals and topped by a cap of what looked to be polished diamond that sprouted seven clear tubes. These led out towards the mezzanine, their ends lost from view.
"Someone saw it, and I'd guess they described it to someone else without knowing what it was they were describing, then maybe that person told the story to someone else and eventually it ended up as we saw it on the map. But its pretty clear that this is what that drawing refers to Its too like it to be a co-incidence, given that it doesn't look anything like a fountain."
Jack stared at it for a moment longer then turned a frown upon her,
"Do you know what it is then?"
"No. It's obviously a holding tank of some kind, almost certainly for water drawn from the lake. But why, or what for, I couldn't hazard a guess. Given what the lake water has done to us why would anyone want to go to the trouble?"
"Holy water perhaps?" Jack suggested.
Elanor looked at him, in the bright light he looked worse than he had in the shadows. His eyes were puffy slits and the red swellings on his skin were so raised that it looked shiny, tight and almost ready to burst. She knew what they felt like for the same was happening to her, and she wondered how it was that he, some time ahead of her in the effects, was still on his feet and walking.
"Looking at you I doubt that anyone would mistake it for holy water!"
That bought her a grin; though his lips looked dry enough to crack.
"Not looking so angelic yourself at the moment."
He looked back upwards,
"But if someone saw it and told some other person of it, then that means that that first person left here alive."
"Presumably."
"Then we are not dead yet!" Hope was back in his voice.

She decided not to remind him that the survivors might not have bathed in the lake.

He began circling the room slowly, hands fluttering over the stone altars as he passed them.
"But how do we get to it? We need to get up but there are no stairs that I can see." He spun to face her fingers snapping, "Another of those flyin' stone carpets then." He stared around him, eyes narrowed further in concentration, "but which one? How do we chose and how do we start it levitating?"
"I don't know."
She had joined him in his exploration of the room. The floor was solid looking enough and the air was fresh and dry, with no hint of sea salt or decay. Given the height they had arisen to they must be above the level of the jungle they first came into but there was sound here, nor any indication that there was a way out other than by that unthinkable drop. The seven pillars filled not half the space, beyond them were more of the altar like stone slabs, as smooth and unblemished as the ones around the pillars, but, like those, more of the crystal like outcrops were set within them. Elanor began to have an inkling of what they were, but decided to keep that to herself.

"Come here!" Jack demanded suddenly. He was at the far end, staring down at section of the floor. " What say you to these?"
As she came to stand beside him she saw that he was looking at three slabs, their separation from the floor nothing more than a faint line that was would have been invisible in a dimmer light.
"Possibly, but I don't see how it helps us."
"No more do I," he stared around him, "but there must be a way to shake them awake, the other ones moved, no reason at all that these should not." He thought for a moment then shrugged and muttered, "nothin' to lose," and stepped forward.
Almost immediately the slab began to move upwards. Elanor cast him a started glance then stepped up beside him.
"How does that work then?" he asked as she edged closer to him.
"I think it knows when we are on it, the same way that Ariadne knows where ships are."
He looked disturbed by the idea, then covered it by peering over the edge of the slab at the retreating floor,
"You mean this place has a ghost too? Like your ghost I mean?"
Elanor thought about that for a moment then smiled,
"Yes I think it does. It would explain a few things. But it remains to be seen if the ghost of this place is aware of us."
"If it is?"
"Then it won't harm us, if it were going to we would already be dead. But it might think that we understand what it expects of us and if we don't do what it expects then..." she shrugged, "Who knows what it will do."
"It is the ghost that raised the carpets then? But why,did it wait for us to standon them?"
"Maybe, or maybe it expected to move them then anyway and so did whether we were on them or not."

Without shudder or jolt the stone stopped moving. They stepped off onto the mezzanine looking around as they did so, the slab seemed unaware of their departure and remained where it was. It looked as if this was expected to be a one-way journey.

These floors were narrower but they extended part way over the one below, their furthest point some fifteen feet from the top of the crucible. From here they could see that the transparent tubes curved up and over them then disappeared into slabs set into the wall just above head height. Each one was yardarm thick. At the central point of the crucible, where each of the seven tubes joined the cap, there was looked to be a crown like structure decorated with deep green stones. Other than that the whole structure was smooth. Green stones trimmed the body of the crucible itself, lines of them sprawling like veins just beneath it surface.

Jack reached up, fascination in his face, to touch the tube.
"That's interesting. It's cold. Colder than the air. Like the water." He sounded unconcerned by this element of the weirdness. "but I can see no way to get to the water. Yet there must be a way. Why else would the map lead here?"
Elanor thought about that for the moment,
"The map didn't show a fountain as such did it? It showed the water in a bottle, we assumed that it was drawn from a fountain, but maybe it wasn't."
"The how do we get it out?" he complained, "No where to stick a bottle in, assuming that we had one that is." He stared at the hat of tubes and their connecting crown, "The water must be in there and there must be a way to get to it."
With a grunt he caught hold of the tube above their head and pulled himself up, straddling it like a boom and beginning to edge his way out towards the crucible.
"Jack! Don't so that. This place must be ancient we can't be sure it will hold your weight."
"Only one way to know and if I have to perish here I think I would rather do it this way rather than sitting around waiting to die if its all the same to you." With that he slithered out of her reach.

Elanor stood in confused uncertainty for a moment. Below her a wave of sound was growing and as she looked down to the floor below she saw the first wave of water arrive in the funnel. One part of her mind noticed that its colour had changed while another wondered what would happen now. She looked back to Jack but he seemed unaware of the changes below and was steadily working his way across the gap. As she watched him he made it to the edge of the crucible and crossing his ankles to hold himself stead he hung down and peered at the wall of the container for a moment,
"Empty," he said with disgust.
He tried to pull himself back up and failed, twice more he tried and failed again.
"Bugger," she heard him say as he hung head down from the tube.
She sighed knowing that he he had no strength left and that he had made her decision for her. Casting one more look down at the rising water she reached up and hauled herself onto the pipe,
"I don't think it's going to be for long." She hissed as she began to move towards him. She thought she heard a muffled 'good' as she edged slowly out, painfully aware of her failing strength, and both surprised and very glad when she reached his ankles. Lying full length on his legs she reached a hand down and caught his.

He was scrabbling his way up her arm and towards the sort of safety of the pipe when the noise below them changed. They both turned and looked down, exchanging a worried look as the light shifted colour again and the rate of the waters rise increased.
"Hurry" she hissed as a wave of vibration passed through the crucible.

Jack gripped her tighter and wriggled his way back to stability with a hiss of hot breath.

As he settled himself more securely the crystals at the base of the crucible beneath them flared into light.