Jack did mention the Zerzurans, but told Esmeralda the same tale he’d spun for his crew, about the three former slaves being highborn members of a previously unknown tribe in northern Africa. As an example of the tribe’s skill with weaving and sewing, he showed her his waistcoat.
Esmeralda was fascinated by his tale, and admired his waistcoat. “What is the princess like?”
Jack chose his words carefully. “Princess Ayisha appears to be middle-aged, maybe older. The first time I saw her, I thought that the kindest word you could use to describe her would be ‘homely.’”
“You said that she took a hand in the battle? How?”
Jack glanced over at Robby, who was staring at him, obviously wondering whether this was yet another fabrication on Jack’s part. Jack looked at her. “Esmeralda, you’ve been sailing around the Caribbean for a long time,” he said. “You know about curses, and magic, and hoodoo, and Obeah. You know that, in the Caribbean, they really exist. Right?”
“Jack, I’ve seen Davy Jones, remember?”
“That’s right, you did,” Jack said. “I was thinking about that day not long ago.”
“So, what’s this about magic?” she asked.
“Well, a lot of that magic and Obeah lore in the Caribbean comes from the Africans that have been transported here, savvy?” Jack said.
She nodded.
“Well, I didn’t really know it until a few weeks ago, but it seems that the princess I’m transporting for Mr. Beckett is pretty skilled in that kind of thing. Until yesterday, I thought her ability was limited to casting illusions. But it seems she can do a lot more than that.” He took a deep breath. “When Ayisha said, ‘Can I help?’ I told her ‘No, not unless you can blow up Borya’s powder magazine.’”
Now Robby, too, was sitting up straight in his seat, gazing intently at Jack.
Jack shrugged and shook his head, turning both palms upward. “So…she did it.”
“Ayisha blew it up?” Robby blurted. “She really did? She caused that?”
“According to Tarek, she did exactly that,” Jack said.
“What a fascinating tale! I have to meet this woman with her extraordinary abilities,” Esmeralda mused. “You know I get lonely for the company of other women, Jack. When she is feeling up to receiving visitors, you must introduce us, and I’ll invite her to have dinner, just the two of us, for some woman talk.”
“Uhhhhhh…” Jack hadn’t expected this. The conversation had taken a decidedly awkward turn. He glanced at Robby, who was smiling at him, obviously enjoying his discomfort.
Jack drummed his fingers on the tabletop for a moment, thinking, then cleared his throat. “Well, you see, remember I said she could create illusions?”
She raised an eyebrow inquiringly. “Yes. What are you trying to say, Jack?”
Jack groped for words. Anything he said at this point would come out wrong.
Robby took the bull by the horns. “He’s trying to say that Princess Ayisha turned out not to be old and ugly, Lady Esmeralda,” he said. “She’s young and very pretty. But until recently, we had no idea how she really looked, because she disguises herself using magic.”
The lady pirate burst out laughing. “Oho! Now I know why my darling Jack was at a most unusual loss for words.” She smiled at the captain fondly. “Only you, Jack, only you, could take an ugly old woman on a rescue mission, and be assured that she would, when all is said and done, turn out to be neither ugly nor old!”
Jack cleared his throat, feeling heat creep up his face. He shrugged.
Once Robby realized that Esmeralda wasn’t angry, he, too, began laughing. They laughed until they were breathless, while Jack sat there, trying to smile.
Finally, the two of them sputtered down into occasional giggles.
“I didn’t know about Ayisha blowing up Borya’s ship until just now, Lady Esmeralda,” Robby added. “So I’m partly laughing at myself. You see, I thought the powder magazine exploding was a genuine miracle, sent by Our Lord because I prayed for one.”
“Oh, muchacho,” she said. “I understand.”
The young first mate shook his head, ruefully. “Lady Esmeralda, you should have seen Jack’s expression last night, before he knew about Ayisha, when I told him that it was the power of prayer that had caused the explosion and saved us.”
Robby twirled his wineglass, but shook his head when she raised the bottle to offer a refill. Jack, however, took one. Robby shrugged. “Though I still prefer to believe that the Lord does work in mysterious ways, and that He sent Ayisha to us, and gave her the ability to work magic.” He finished the last of his wine. “So, really, there was only one miracle then, not two.”
“There’s such a thing as coincidence, mate,” Jack said.
“True,” Esmeralda said, fiddling with her wineglass.
“Please, Jack! Allow me just the one miracle! And it was a miracle that you happened to be near Great Abaco, and could see the smoke cloud from the explosion, and came to investigate, Lady Esmeralda,” Robby said.
Esmeralda hesitated. “Robby, muchacho …I, too, believe in miracles—and prayer. I went to a convent school, after all.” She smiled faintly. “But alas, it was neither a miracle nor a coincidence that I was on the eastern side of Great Abaco Island last night.”
Jack frowned. “What brought you there, then?”
“There is a bit of a story to it,” she said. “You know that I have been looking for de Rapièr ever since he killed my grandfather. Three years, I have searched, and still that perro eludes me.” Her hand clenched on the tabletop, but her voice was controlled.
Jack nodded, but didn’t meet her eyes, instead picking at an imaginary spot on his new waistcoat. “I know, Esmeralda.” He salved his guilt about not being honest with her about using Tia Dalma’s compass to find Christophe by recalling his vow to settle the score between himself and the rogue captain—as soon as he had the third bracelet.
Esmeralda sighed, relaxing her hand, then continued, “Every time I put in at a harbor to sell prizes I’ve taken, I make contact with the person in that port who knows things. You know the type I mean, I am sure. I offer to pay these informants for information about the whereabouts of rogue pirates. I do not distinguish between those two cucarachas. I figured if I captured Borya, I could convince him to tell me anything he knew about Christophe’s whereabouts fairly quickly. After all, he gave up his confederates five years ago without any physical persuasion. You remember, Jack.”
“I do,” he confirmed.
“This past spring, one of my informants told me that the rogue pirate who sailed a sloop—Borya, in other words—was doing a search of his own. Borya offered to pay anyone who could report the whereabouts of a certain Captain Jack Sparrow, a merchant captain who was sailing an East Indiaman for the East India Trading Company.”
Jack and Robby exchanged a glance. “In a way, it’s flattering,” Jack said, with a faint smile. “Captain Jack Sparrow. My fame is spreading.”
“Or your infamy,” Robby suggested.
“It’s actually reassuring, though,” Jack added, thinking aloud. “For years I’ve worried about Teague getting word that I was alive, and hunting me down so he could hang me from Troubadour’s yardarm. But if Borya could find out I’m still alive, so could Teague. So he either hasn’t bothered to inquire, or he knows and doesn’t care to pursue the matter. So I don’t need to worry about getting nabbed by his henchmen.”
“I don’t believe that Teague would order you hunted down so he could execute you,” Esmeralda said. “I’ve told you this before. As you English say, sangre is thicker than agua.”
“You don’t know him the way I do, love,” Jack said, “but all that is beside the point, which is that Borya was keeping tabs on me. It’s unlikely he did that because he missed my charming self. So why was he paying for information about me?”
“My guess is that Borya wanted revenge,” Esmeralda said. “You were the one that unmasked him as a rogue, after all. The Little Butcher was not
in the Northwest Providence Channel by coincidence, Jack. He knew you had returned. I spoke to an informant of mine, who was also an informant of Borya’s. From what he told me, Borya discovered you were back, then he sailed north to one of the most-used routes on the Triangle, and waited there to attack you.”
“How did you happen to discover all this, love?” Jack asked.
She poured herself another glass of wine, and took a sip. “Two weeks ago I had some business in Kemps Bay, on Andros. While I was there, Giles sought me out. He’s not a Frenchman. He’s part Mayan, from Yucatán, part African, and part…” She snapped her fingers as she hunted for the English word. “Stoat, is that what you call the animal in your country? A slinking, long little creature, one that robs nests and henhouses?”
“Weasel,” Robby supplied.
“Ah, yes. At any rate, he is sly and would sell his own grandmother for a peso, but at heart, he is a coward. He owns a boat, and he and his boat are available for hire to sail passengers between the islands. Giles is a man that knows many people, in many places.”
Jack held out his wineglass, and she refilled it, then continued, “A week ago, Giles told me that he had been paid twenty pesos by Borya for passing along the news that a certain Captain Jack Sparrow had recently brought a cargo to Antigua, then departed, heading north, most probably starting on the next leg of the Triangle.”
Jack and Robby exchanged glances.
Esmeralda smiled faintly. “Giles was very eager to tell me everything he told Borya, plus everything he had observed about Borya. He also made a point of telling me that he charged me only half as much as Borya paid him, for twice the information.”
“Why would he do that?” Jack wondered.
Esmeralda gave him a look. “Why do you think, Jack? Giles wants me.”
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry, I’m a bit slow, darlin’. Got hit on the head yesterday, if you recall.”
She smiled, then added, “I could tell that Giles was holding something back, so I leaked a few tears and confessed to him that you were actually my beloved cousin, by way of an ancestor who survived the wreck of the Armada and married an Englishwoman. Giles was very sympathetic. He then told me, for free, that he’d spotted Koldunya a few days later near the Northwest Providence Channel.”
“So you decided to go hunting for Borya yourself,” Robby said.
“Sí, muchacho. I headed northwest from Andros, to follow the channel, then left it and swung east past Grand Bahama, past Little Abaco, then east past the northern tip of Great Abaco. I posted a lookout constantly.” She smiled faintly. “It paid off, actually. I took a very nice schooner that was carrying fabric bound for Charleston, and then a flute loaded with tea and spices. So my crew had no complaint.”
“And then you headed south, down that deepwater channel that lies on the eastern side of Great Abaco,” Jack guessed.
“Precisely. I had given up my search. I was perhaps four miles past Hole in the Wall on Great Abaco when my lookout saw the smoke of the explosion to the northwest, the clouds still yellow that high up from the last rays of the sun. When I heard about big smoke clouds, I thought perhaps Borya had taken some unfortunate vessel, then fired her to hide the evidence. Lately, both rogue pirates have been burning the ships they take. So I took a sighting on the cloud, and set my course by it.”
She shrugged and sipped more wine. “So, as you can see, it was not a miracle that I was there. I actually had been out hunting for Borya.”
“Actually, I’d say it was as likely a candidate to be a miracle as I’ve ever encountered, love,” Jack said, surprising himself, as well as both of his listeners. “I mean, think about it. What are the chances that you would be close enough to sight the evidence of the explosion? If you’d been five miles farther along your course, or had gone five miles less.…” He shrugged.
Esmeralda and Robby looked at each other and smiled conspiratorially.
Before they left Venganza, Esmeralda conducted Jack and Robby on a tour of her ship. She was rightfully proud of her vessel. Her crew might be pirates, but the frigate was as well maintained as she had been back in her days as part of the Royal Navy.
“She’s the perfect pirate ship, love,” Jack said, as they stood on the bow. “A fit vessel for the Pirate Lord of the Caribbean.”
“If she were properly armed, your Wicked Wench could be every bit as good as Venganza, Jack.”
“Oh, we know that,” Robby said. “We both said that, first time we laid eyes on her.”
Jack shot his first mate a quelling glance.
Esmeralda’s eyes gleamed. “You should think about joining me, Jack,” she urged. “Oh, I realize you couldn’t do it immediately. You’re going to need to put in at a big shipyard to get the Wench seaworthy. But after she’s been professionally repaired, we could meet somewhere safe for both of us, say, Port Royal, then you and Robby can pay off your merchant crew. I’ll lend you the dinero. Then I can send enough of my men aboard so you can sail to Tortuga, and pick up a pirate crew. Think of it, Jack! The two of us. We’d be unbeatable!”
“But I’m still under sentence of death from the Brethren,” Jack pointed out.
“Ah, but you can redeem yourself by dispatching the rogues you freed,” Esmeralda said. “Borya is dead, so half that task is already accomplished. Our first venture together will be to hunt down Christophe. I want the satisfaction of killing him myself, but I’ll make sure you can take credit for doing it, Jack. That way you’d, um”—she snapped her fingers—“expiate your crime. With both rogues dead, and me to vouch for you, the Pirate Lords will cancel your sentence. You could go back on the account. We could sail together!”
Jack drew a deep breath. “It’s tempting, love,” he said. “But I don’t think I’m ready to go back to waking up in a cold sweat after dreaming about nooses.”
The spark in Esmeralda’s eyes vanished. She sighed, then nodded. “I understand.” She hesitated, glancing at Robby, who took the hint and wandered off to the other side of the bow, out of earshot. “At least we can be together for more than a day, this time. Shall I row over tonight, toward the end of the middle watch?”
Jack smiled. “I’d be miserable and lonely and wouldn’t get a wink of sleep if you didn’t, mi corazón.”
Ayisha met the Spanish pirate woman on the third day after Wicked Wench was attacked, when Jack introduced them. The princess knew immediately, from the way she stood next to Jack, her arm brushing his, that they were lovers.
She was not surprised to realize this. The Spanish woman was aristocratic and lovely. She had beautiful clothes. Ayisha had one dress, the one she had worn the night she left Calabar. Whenever they’d had enough rain, Ayisha had sat on her bunk, wrapped in her sheet, while Tarek washed it.
Whenever it ripped, she’d mended it, over and over, but despite their best efforts, the dress was now bleached from the sun, irretrievably stained, and rapidly becoming threadbare.
The Spanish woman was also a ship captain in her own right, and could obviously do many things that Jack liked to do, things like fencing with a sword, steering a vessel, or plotting a course on a chart, then sailing away to exotic, distant lands.
The Spanish woman also undoubtedly knew the ways of a man and a woman together, alone, as lovers.
Ayisha knew how such a union was managed; she was not, after all, a child. But she had never even been alone with a man, other than her father or her brothers. Tarek, as a eunuch, did not count.
When the princess recognized that the emotion she was experiencing toward Lady Esmeralda was jealousy, she was horrified at herself. But she couldn’t stop feeling that way, no matter how often she reminded herself that there had never been the slightest indication from Jack that he had any emotion for her except general liking. She knew he respected her magical abilities, and her craftsmanship with her needle; he’d made that clear. But that was all he felt, and the knowledge was a dagger in her heart.
Ayisha also knew he valued her because she was th
e wearer of one of the three magical talismans that would allow him to enter the labyrinth. Despite his good qualities, Jack was like all other white men in his obsession with gold. All one had to do was mention “treasure” and they were willing to risk anything and everything—including their lives, and the lives of people around them—on the chance that they could find it and make it their own.
Seeing Jack with Esmeralda for the first time, only Ayisha’s royal comportment saved her from a shameful betrayal. After one dreadful moment, when she’d felt as dizzy as a climber clinging to a cliff by her fingernails and nothing more, she had swiftly masked her emotions, and smiled. She’d been polite and chatted with aplomb.
But after Jack and the Spanish woman had departed, arms still brushing, Ayisha had pleaded exhaustion to Tarek and lain down on her bunk. She was still there the next morning. She’d refused food and drink, and had risen from the bunk only once, to use the chamber pot. Then she’d lain down again, her back to the little canvas “room.”
At first Tarek had attributed her actions to having overdone things and not rested enough after expending so much of her energy to save the Wicked Wench. But by the next morning, when she simply shook her head and lay there, not replying when he offered her tea, or food, she knew she’d worried her bodyguard. Ayisha was sorry about that; ordinarily she tried to be a kind and respectful mistress to her servants. But she simply could not cope with what had happened. Her whole life as she knew it seemed to have flown apart, just as Borya’s ship had.
Shabako, too, came in and tried to speak to her. All she could do was shake her head and reply in monosyllables. He, too, left after a while, leaving her in solitude. Her loneliness hurt, but not as much as being with people.
By midday, she actually had dozed off, lulled by the gentle rocking of the ship, and the lovely breeze coming through the gun port.
But Ayisha awakened instantly at the sound of a certain footstep, then a voice that made her heart race.
“Ayisha? Hey, love, it’s me, Jack. Tarek says you’re sick. What’s wrong?”
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom Page 54
