(no subject)

[pirate_jack]

From here.

"Steady on, lad," Jack mutters, supporting Wellard as the two of them cross first the shore and then the floating pier to the Black Pearl.

They stop there, as Jack looks up the sea-ladder with a frown.

"Can you climb?"

Comments

[gramarye1971]

Merriman's expression borders on the exasperated, though it is difficult to tell whether the exasperation is directed at Mary's comment or at Jack's pistol.

'Oh, do put that away before it goes off,' he mutters, getting to his feet and brushing off his coat -- which at some point during the climb shifted from suit jacket to uniform coat.

[pirate_jack]

"Don't be telling me what to do on me own ship, Commodore," he lashes back, sharply.

After a moment, Jack lowers the pistol anyway, uncocking it as he does.

"Thought you might be someone else, savvy? You usually have better manners."

[gramarye1971]

'The situation, it seems, verges on the unorthodox,' Merriman says dourly, with a touch of emphasis on the last word, as he taps his fingertips together lightly. 'If what Miss Lennox has told me is anything to go by, that is. Has something happened to Mister Wellard?'

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"It has," Mary pipes up, straining to look her straightest and tallest.

"He could not walk or remember. He is hurt," she adds, looking daggers at Jack, "even if you say he is not."

[pirate_jack]

The look Jack gives to the little girl is distinctly flat, and his rough drawl somehow dryly amused.

"You remind me of someone, young missy. If I didn't know that Bill Turner had only the one child..."

He looks up at Merriman.

"The lad had a bit of an accident," Jack says casually. "He's in me cabin, resting."

[gramarye1971]

'An accident,' Merriman repeats. Not disbelieving, but ever-so-slightly concerned at Jack's choice of words. 'An accident that is not severe enough to require immediate medical attention, but serious enough for you to convey him out here and keep an eye on him indoors instead of letting him recuperate inside his rooms in the bar?'

The combination is, to say the least, enough to hold his interest entirely.

[pirate_jack]

"Now you're catching on," he drawls, then looks down at Mary.

"How's Norrington, youmg missy? Did you get the doctor to him like I told you to do?"

Jack glances back up at Merriman as he asks this, and black eyes are glittering with something almost fey in their wildness.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"I got him a Healer," Mary says, impatiently. "He is better. She got him in bed and he is asleep."

Then, with a hint of triumph: "And I told her where Wellard was. So she can look at him too."

[gramarye1971]

The ever-burning lantern is inside Jack's cabin, not visible from the deck. However, anyone who might have happened to see it at the moment that Jack mentioned Norrington would have noticed that the candle-flame within it burns a little bit brighter -- and a little bit sharper, with the edges of the flame glinting like the blade of a sword.

'An accident,' Merriman says again, more quietly this time, as he meets Jack's gaze with an equally bright intensity. 'What kind of accident did Mister Norrington meet with, then?'

[pirate_jack]

Jack blithely ignores Merriman's question, looking down at Mary instead.

"Of course you did." He sounds resigned. "Well, lass, since it's quite clear that you've no intention of ever trusting such a terrible scallywag of a pirate as I am, if you're wanting to look at Wellard your own self, carry on."

He makes a grand gesture toward the cabin, but then raises his finger in a cautionary motion.

"There's a ship's glass on me table. Don't go trying to wake him until the sand runs out, savvy? But when it does, then you can wake him up, and if you have any trouble with it come tell us."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary gives him a highly suspicious look, but treks off towards the cabin willingly enough - it's Wellard she's worried about, now, even more than what did or did not happen.

But the look she shoots back over her shoulder at Jack says very clearly that if Wellard doesn't wake up and display sufficient health for her satisfaction, she will be telling Jack lots. With her tiny ineffectual fists. Oh yes.

[gramarye1971]

Merriman watches her leave, keeping silent until the cabin door has closed behind her. Only then does he look over at Jack once more.

'Sensible, that,' he says, rather absently. 'It will make this discussion easier.'

For a given value of easier, that is.

[pirate_jack]

"Or at least quieter, aye?" Jack drawls. "Much more less likely to be spread everywhere by the yapping of a little girl what's too honest to keep her mouth shut."

Black eyes are still gleaming with that oddly feral look to them.

"Turns out the ex-commodore ran into a bit of a sharp problem."

[gramarye1971]

Merriman refrains from passing judgment on Mary Lennox in favour of tilting his head slightly at Jack's statement.

'Ran into?' A beat. 'Should I take that literally or figuratively?'

[pirate_jack]

"Take it however you want, mate."

He waves a hand in the air, sauntering past Merriman in order to lean on the railing. Jack looks out toward the bar as he says,

"Man didn't show up to work today. Figured it was that he'd spent the night again becoming more familiar with his drink than what's healthy for a man to do and still be walking the next morning, aye?"

"Young Wellard went to fetch him." Jack's hands tighten on the rail. "When he didn't come back, I went after them both."

[gramarye1971]

Merriman watches Jack stroll over to the railing, but does not move to follow him. 'And you found both of them?'

[pirate_jack]

"Aye. That I did."

Jack's still staring out over the water toward the shore.

"Found the lad crumpled in the hallway, with a lump on his head the size of me fist. He doesn't remember a thing."

He half-turns, looking at Merriman, and the movement causes the hidden bloodstained dirk to shift from where he'd hastily stuck it inside his vest.

"Norrington was lying on the floor of his room, in the middle of a bottle's worth or more of shattered glass. Cut up more than a bit, too."

This last is drawled, and more than a little ironic.

[gramarye1971]

Merriman stifles a sharp intake of breath at the sight of the bloodstained weapon. He recognises it well enough, of course -- the standard issue weapon given to every midshipman in His Majesty's Navy until well past Henry Wellard's time.

'Some sort of fight, do you think?' He is careful not to ascribe blame or even name names at this point in time. That can come later.

[pirate_jack]

Jack's cabin is perhaps surprisingly neat, all things considered. Oilcloth covers all the windows, blocking the chill and the view, both. It's bright enough inside, all the same, thanks to the coldly burning white flame of the lantern that hangs from a metal hook on one of the interior support posts.

A few solid chests are pushed against the walls here and there, and Jack's hat and coat are hanging at the moment on a hook that's been fastened to the cabin wall near a barrel of rum. A bottle of the same stands beside a jug of water in a box atop the barrel, and there are three metal cups in there also. A fourth cup, still partly filled with water, is sitting on the table in the center of the cabin beside a ship's glass, in which sand quietly falls in a steady stream from the upper bell to the lower one.

There's a small chest on the table as well, along with a sextant, ink-pot and pen, all helping to weigh down a series of maps and charts and notes on repairs, costs and ship's accounts. One chair is firmly settled under the side of the table, but Jack's chair is angled where he'd left it pushed out in his rush to exit the cabin. It's half-turned toward a corner to the starboard side of the cabin's door.

In that corner, a hammock is slung, and in that hammock at the moment lies one Henry Wellard.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary stands, hands clasped together behind her back, her eyes fixed on the hourglass.

This lasts for about five seconds, before she realizes that it's going to take more than a minute for the sand to run out. She might as well, she reasons, make use of the time. She could find a clue.

So the papers and maps come under Mary's careful examination. As do the hat and coat, and the tiny chest on the table -

- not to mention the rum.

[pirate_jack]

As she snoops, she'll find that the bottle of rum is half-full, and the barrel is entirely too heavy to move. Jack's hat is well-weathered, and smells strongly of leather and saltwater-- as does his coat. If she's examining closely, she'll find a couple of fresh bloodstains around the right cuff.

The pockets, now -- those are far more interesting. The left pocket contains a soft piece of leather, with a few odd symbols scratched on it, as well as a few brightly colored beads of wood and glass. The right pocket has a few tarnished coins, a golden ring with an amber stone, and an oddly twisted piece of black iron the size of her thumb.

The accounts on the table are just that-- reckoning of prices for sails and dye, tar and paper and paint, cotton and canvas, wood and plexiglas. The numbers are frighteningly high, but everything is meticulously detailed. Beneath the records is a map of the Black Pearl herself, as well as a chart of the Caribbean, and a few others showing different ocean regions -- as well as East India ports, not to mention Singapore.

(One island on one seemingly-unassuming worn chart, and only one, is marked with a tiny figure of a skull and the initials S.I.)

The chest, she'll find, is difficult to open-- there's a bit of a trick to it, but not that much of one for clever fingers, if she has enough time.

Inside, there's a small box made of a seashell that she'll have seen before, and inside that several multicolored pearls wrapped in an old piece of cloth. There are also a few other odds and ends, evidently of meaning to Jack Sparrow-- among other things, she'll find more beads, a lady's jeweled hair-comb, a leather thong tied in an oddly complicated knot, three small seashells, and a piece of colored glass.

At the very bottom is a small leather pouch with drawstring drawn tight, lying on top of a few sealed papers.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

The bloodstains around the cuff are noted.

(Just, Mary thinks, darkly, where one would get bloodstains, if one was going to bash someone over the head.)

Nothing in the pockets holds her interest for long - she's looking more for weapons than for jewelry; she can't read the odd symbols, and money isn't much good to her. As far as she knows, Wellard doesn't have any, so it doesn't make sense that he should have been robbed for that.

The chest gets examined next, with one wary eye constantly on the glass. Finding Clues is all very well, but making sure that Wellard is all right has to take precedence.

It doesn't take her long to open it - and if it's so easily opened, there's clearly no reason that she shouldn't open it. Yes? However, all she finds is more jewelry, and the seashells (each of which is held carefully up to her ear to listen) and the beads, none of which look particularly helpful -

- but sealed papers, on the other hand . . . .

She's just reaching for them when the sand runs out, and she draws her hand back as if it's burned, straightening in order to run over to Wellard's bedside.

(She doesn't bother closing the chest. She's not going to lie about what she did.)

[politestpirate.livejournal.com]

Or hammockside, rather. Soon after he had downed the willowbark, Wellard had drifted off to a fitful sleep, bits and pieces of dreams and images forming a confusing backdrop to his rest.

Usually he is a light sleeper- you learn to be, while on board ship. Concussion and painkillers aside, he is (thankfully) easy to wake with a touch to his arm and quiet mention of his name.

...This is Mary, however.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Wellard."

Mary's voice isn't particularly loud - well, not louder than usual, anyways, although worry gives it a certain piercing edge.

Her hands are clasped once again behind her back. But she's prepared to poke or shake if necessary.

"Are you awake?"

[politestpirate.livejournal.com]

He stirs, and a few long moments later, dark eyes open to look at Mary with sleepy puzzlement.

"Why are you-... wait."

Ever just wake up, and it takes you a bit to realize

remember

where you are? Wellard sits up a bit, glancing around Jack's cabin, before looking back to Mary, questioningly and confused.