PotC fic: "The Old Man of the Sea" (2/2)

[bedlamsbard]

go back to part one


“Sir,” Groves says in a strangled voice. “Comm – Admiral.”

“Lieutenant,” Norrington says, twitching his horse’s reins. The animal picks its way through the thick salt flows and dead fish gingerly, snorting nervously and shaking its head in distaste. Norrington firmly agrees; the very least he can say is that this is disorienting.

The ground dips steeply down where Groves’ horse is standing at the edge. Norrington rides up beside him – not too close to the edge because of how slippery the salt is, and they don’t know exactly what’s hiding beneath it – mostly dead and dying fish, and one of the Marines’ horses has already slipped and broken its leg.

“My God,” Norrington says inadvertently, staring.

He’s heard tales of the kraken – seaman’s stories, legends, like mermaids – but he’s never seen it. He’s looking at it now – at its corpse, high and dry, starting to bloat as the sun rises over the remains of the ocean.

One of the Marines crosses himself, then jerks guiltily, glancing around as he remembers where he is. Neither Norrington nor Groves say anything.

“The Flying Dutchman –” Groves says finally.

“It can’t survive without the ocean,” Norrington says immediately. He can’t say why he knows – he just does. It’s true. Maybe Elizabeth mentioned it back on the Black Pearl; he can’t remember. Then what he’s just said catches up to him.

“My God,” he says again.

He’s worthless now. The price he paid for his pardon – the price he paid for his honor – is worthless, because the heart is nothing without what it controls. Davy Jones can’t set foot on land, and everything is land now.

“Sir?” Groves says.

They’ve been riding for near on an hour, judging from the position of the sun in the sky, and Norrington’s back and thighs are burning badly. He hasn’t ridden in far too long, and he’s well aware that the motion is pulling open the healing gashes on his back. With luck, the blood will stain Beckett’s gifts. He won’t be owned, not again.

“Tell the men to turn back,” Norrington orders, still staring out over the vast expanse of wasteland. They’d found one ship keeled over on its side, spars and mainmast broken, sides shattered and sails covering it like a shroud. The sailors inside were gone – only the dead remained, blood staining the decks. His men had muttered uneasily among themselves, whispering prayers for mercy from God. They’d looked at Norrington like he was a curse, some plague bearer coming down on Egypt with the vengeance of God in him.

He bows his head and turns his horse around, sparing one look over his shoulder for the dead monolith behind him. Whatever else the kraken may have been, whatever it did, it was of the sea, and the sea has always been a cruel mistress.



A week passes. Norrington sends out patrols every day to scour the ocean floor in all directions, roaming farther out as the horses become accustomed to walking on salt, but they come back with nothing, only reports of more foundered ships, dead men, missing sailors. No news of the Flying Dutchman; no news of the Black Pearl. Norrington thinks grimly of Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner, mind on the empty ship he’d seen that first day. Governor Swann asks him about his daughter every day after the patrols return; Norrington can never give him an answer. Not the one he wants, at least. They haven’t found the Pearl.

Lord Beckett hasn’t said anything, not yet, just sits in his office and lets Norrington run Port Royal. He puts the town under military command and sends townsfolk out to scrape the salt off the bottom of the ocean, store the fish that haven’t rotted yet – Port Royal is, after all, a sea town, and without the ocean they’ll die soon.

On the eighth day, when it becomes clear that the water will not return, the first riot occurs.



They are screaming for Beckett, for the Governor, for Norrington himself – anyone to blame for this tragedy. Beckett orders the gates closed and Norrington doesn’t disagree; he has a good idea of the damage that could be done if the angry townsfolk were to get inside the fort walls. Fortunately Swann is at the fort when the riot occurs; there aren’t enough men to cover both the Governor’s palace and the fort. Beckett takes tea while the townsfolk scream and batter at the walls, the gates, throwing stones and thick hunks of salt. He orders Swann and Norrington to join him, and Norrington puts up with it until he hears the sharp retort of a gun and a following scream. Then he dashes through the courtyard up to the walls, ignoring Beckett’s shout of protest and his veiled threats, and gets there in time to put his hand on a young naval officer’s head as the boy dies, moaning and crying around the bullet in his gut. He’s just brushing his hand over the boy’s eyes to close them when another bullet strikes the Marine standing next to him. It’s a shoulder wound, not fatal, but the startled shout the man lets out leads to cheers among the crowd beneath the walls. The volley continues with renewed fervor, more and less accurate gunshots flying around them now. There is a gunsmith down in the town; some few of the men keep pistols and rifles for hunting or protection. It seems like their mission has changed now.

The Marine beside Norrington is swearing in a thick Cockney accent, the words heavy in the air as he curses the townsfolk, and the gates shudder as the full might of Port Royal strikes them. Norrington is a soldier; he knows that there is no victory to be found in apathy, and the men on the wall are stirring unhappily, priming their guns, running their palms over the cannons. Not that, not yet – and then another naval man screams, the sound choked off as he falls backwards into the courtyard, a limp, broken figure on the dirt.

Norrington orders the Marines to fire on the crowd. Five men and a woman die before the townsfolk finally disperse, nursing wounds and screaming imprecations.



It takes two weeks, but the third riot destroys the Governor’s palace and almost breaks the walls on the fort. There’s no discipline anymore, soldiers firing wildly, some of them on the other side, deciding to take their chances with the landsfolk rather than with His Majesty’s Navy. Gillette takes a bullet to the shoulder and Norrington puts an arm around him and drags him back inside, empty pistol tossed aside and his sword in his free hand. Groves covers them both.

“Sir,” he says once the gates are closed, panting wildly and reloading his pistol. “Sir –”

“Hold the fort,” Norrington says, but there’s nothing left to hold it for. The rest of the Navy won’t be coming to help them.



In the end, order breaks down entirely. Norrington is no longer certain exactly who he’s fighting when he draws his sword and he’s long since lost sight of what he’s fighting for except to survive. He cuts down anyone who comes at him with an unfriendly look and a weapon, even bared fists, because he no longer has time to think and wonder if they want him dead or just want him out of the way. So he cuts and he shoots and he kills and he loses a little more of the honor he thought he’d come back to regain, until his admiral’s blue coat and gold trim are entirely spoiled and he takes some poor dead seaman’s clothes, borrowing a blue coat whose trim he remembers from what seems like a century ago. He was an officer of His Majesty’s Navy once; that time is a long time gone.

The salt that is all that remains of the sea becomes an ever-present reality, driving into the wind, into their skin as they strip to wash briefly in the courtyard. It covers their skin with a thin layer of white sediment Norrington never thought he’d see when landlocked, and it gathers in their wounds like sin.



The stripes on his back burn. So does the blood on his hands.



The truth is, even though the townspeople can run wherever they so choose, they still want the fort – the weapons stockpile, maybe, or the food – not that there’s as much as they think it is – or maybe they blame Beckett and the Governor. Beckett they string up, screaming as the rope goes around his neck. His screams cut off abruptly. Swann is already dead, his skull broken during one of the riots. The fifth one, Norrington thinks, although he can’t be entirely sure: they all blur together.

Norrington they drag out, arms bound behind his back, and throw him down in the center of the fort. There’s blood on his face, on his hands – his own, someone else’s, some of it Groves’ – it doesn’t matter whose anymore. He keeps his eyes open, breathing hard through broken teeth.

The man who approaches him is a shipwright, one of the best in Port Royal. He has a cudgel in his hand.

“You should have come back earlier, Commodore,” he says.

“My apologies for my tardiness,” Norrington says as politely as he can. He’d bow his head for the blow, but that’s a coward’s move; he’s better than that. He has nothing left; he can at least meet his death honorably. The townsfolk can see his eyes when the light goes out of them; this is cold-blooded murder, not the righteous execution that characterized Beckett’s death only hours earlier.

The shipwright thumps the cudgel into his palm, staring out over Norrington’s head. They have him facing the still-smoking ruin of the tower; his back is to the sea. He concentrates on breathing past the pain of broken ribs, steadying himself, so that he can say, although he died on his knees, he looked death clearly in the eye and didn’t blanch.

There’s a low, angry murmur from the crowd when the shipwright doesn’t move. Norrington meets the man’s eyes and says calmly, “What are you waiting for?”

“Her,” is all he says.

Norrington is tired of waiting, tired of seeing his friends and his men die, tired of killing uselessly to stave off the inevitable. He says, “Who?”

The shipwright leans forward. “Calypso,” he breathes.

“There’s no sea, you bleedin’ idjeet,” someone in the crowd says and the shipwright whips around toward him, snaps, “That doesn’t mean she’s not –”

“Ah, give off it, y’ auld fool. There ain’t no fockin’ sea and there ain’t no heathen goddesses.” The butcher starts forward, bloody cleavers in each hand. His apprentice follows. Norrington can see Turner’s old master the blacksmith in the crowd, a few men he recognizes from his command who have shed their uniforms, the candlestick maker waving a torch that shines dimly in the glare of sunlight.

“No!” the shipwright barks, waving his arms. “She’ll come, she’ll come for him, and we’ll have it back –”

“You fool!” the baker shouts. “Nothing can bring it back! That bastard Beckett saw to that.”

There’s a pulsing point just above his ribs where Norrington can feel the slow slide of hot blood against his skin, gathering in the folds of cloth there. He’s going to bleed out; he can already feel the blur in his skull, the clarity borne of battle fading into uncertain dizziness. He’ll keel over soon; he already knows he can’t get up from his knees.

There’s a shout of pain; Norrington jerks his head up. The shipwright is falling, hand clutched to the gash in his chest where the butcher’s cleaved him from neck to navel. Norrington stares at the man grimly as he approaches; he can’t spare a prayer for the shipwright, as good a man as he is.

“You’ll die now, Norrington,” the butcher says, raising his cleaver. “You brought this here; you’ll die for it.”

Norrington parts his lips to say, “Then so be it,” but the words crack and die on his tongue. There is a deep, dark flare of light that fills his vision until all he can see are vague outlines, then a woman’s callused hand touches the back of his head, curving over his skull.

“Be still, James Norrington,” she murmurs. “Dese t’ings don’t just happen, you know.”

He tries, desperately, to grab at consciousness, but it’s sliding away from him; the edges slip away and he falls, endlessly, against the background of a man screaming.



When he wakes he’s somewhere dark, with the thick heat of the tropics lying over him like a blanket. He can’t open his eyes.

“Shh,” a woman says, stroking a hand over his forehead. “Be quiet, James Norrington – I take care of my own.”

Her voice sounds like the deep roar of the ocean and Norrington slips under again, not bothering to catch at the shreds of consciousness that remain to him.



The woman is standing hip deep in dark water. Norrington steps out onto the porch and stops, because it’s water. He hasn’t seen water aside from the well in the fort for too long, and even though this is almost certainly fresh water rather than salt, it’s still enough to make his breath catch in his throat.

“James,” she says, turning around. She smiles, teeth black against the deep brown of her skin, and Norrington sweeps her his deepest and most elegant bow without even thinking about it. Once there, he stays down, lowering himself slowly to his knees, where he feels blood start to seep warmly from the wound bandaged tightly beneath the shirt he’s managed to do up one handed. But his head is clear for the first time since the fort, since Cutler Beckett fell to his death at the end of a rope. He stays on his knees, looking out at the water – upriver, he thinks; he does pay attention to the murmurs of black magic in the Caribbean, especially once he’s seen it.

The woman, dark as the water, steps out of the river and puts her palm against his cheek. “James,” she says again, low and warm, “I’ve been waiting for you.”



Her father has Elle in his lap now, and she wraps her arms around his neck as he gets up to carry her to bed. Her mother is holding an already sleeping John, smiling at James over their son’s head, a smile that shows no teeth and includes lowered lashes.

“Papa,” Elle says suddenly.

“Yes, baby?” James says.

“What happened to them?” she asks. “To –” she pronounces the syllables very carefully, “– Port Royal?”

James pauses, and Elle feels rather than sees him turn his head to look over his shoulder at Tia Dalma. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “I’ve never been back.”

end