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Just about every character appearing in this chapter was invented by me, but they are all related in one way or another to characters from POTC, and they do talk about them as well. The characters I didn’t invent are the property of the Disney corporation, much to my everlasting chagrin. I make no profit from them, or from the ones I made up myself.
Warning: OCs galore! Injuries, talk of violence and other bad things.
Resemblance
A tall woman, squeezed tightly into a flaming red dress, which was cut low enough in the front to show nearly all of her substantial bosom, picked her way across the filthy alley behind the brothel and kicked open the door of the privy. She flipped her head back to throw her long tail of curling black hair over her shoulder, dumped the reeking contents of the slop bucket down the hole, and slammed the door shut again.
This had not been such a bad night; this was the most unpleasant task she’d had to perform. In her business, if emptying the slop was the worst it got in a night, things were going very well indeed.
There had been a pair of merchant sailors, very polite and recently paid, therefore quite generous. Then there’d been the owner of the dry goods store near the bank. He was a portly gentleman who did not like to expend too much effort, but since it took so little to satisfy him, it was no hardship to do all the work and Helena preferred it that way, anyway. There had been an unsavoury sort near the end, but he was shipping out immediately and only wanted a quick fuck, nothing difficult or unusual.
She hummed a little song as her boots tapped on the uneven cobblestones, walking leisurely back to the house, enjoying the night air. She stopped when she noticed something move in the shadows beneath the back veranda. Damn, she thought, she knew she should have brought some sort of a weapon, a stick or a knife. She raised the wooden bucket, preparing to strike whatever rodent, pest or worse emerged from the shadows under the stair.
“Claire! Claire, come quickly!”
Claire was in the hallway, giving the floor a quick sweep. She didn’t mind doing a little housework. The madam kept an impeccably clean house, and it was a joy to work for someone who paid fairly and promptly. She’d had a very prosperous night, with a great big tip from that nice new Commodore, what was his name? Whitmore? Whitfield? It didn’t really matter. He was a clean, polite man, very decent. He even insisted on having the lamp out when he was with a harlot. Claire giggled. What a silly man.
Still, it was better than the old Commodore had been. He had been polite enough in the parlour, but in the bedroom, he insisted the girl get on her knees, which was rather awkward when strapped into a very tight corset, and he sometimes liked to spend outside the mouth, so the poor girl got drenched. He was more than a mouthful, too, and he could get a little enthusiastic at times. Hard on the jaw, and it sometimes took him a while to find his pleasure.
Claire was mulling this over when she heard Helena’s voice from the back alley. What now? Helena was always finding trouble. She rushed through the kitchen to the back door.
Helena was dragging a dark figure up the stairs by one arm. He sagged on the steps, not helping one bit.
“Oh Lord, what is it?”
“Dunno,” Helena grunted under the weight of the man. “Don’t smell o’ drink at all. ‘e’s bleeding something fierce, but ‘e’s still alive.”
Claire bent down as far as her corseted waist would allow. “I’ll take the shoulders, you grab the feet. He’s tall, but he’s not all that broad, we can manage.”
The two harlots half-carried, half-dragged the man up the steps and into the light of the kitchen. Claire was thankful she’d thrown an apron over her good frock, because the man’s scalp leaked blood all over her lap as she propped him up in a chair. Both harlots had a good deal of experience dealing with drunks, but they found that a body unconscious for another reason was little different. The two women looked down at the man.
“Best clean ‘im up, eh?”
Helena fetched warm water from the kettle and Claire pushed the man’s drooping head up. “Goodness, Helena, just look at him. He’d be a pretty one if it wasn’t for all this blood.” Claire used a rag to wipe the blood from his face. “He’s only been hit one or two places on his face, most of the blood’s coming from the scalp.”
She ran her hand over the bristly short hairs. The dark brown hair had been hacked off unevenly, as if with a knife or sword or something else not designed for cutting hair. There were savage slices in the scalp, some beginning to clot. “Cold water, luv. It’ll help stop the bleeding,” Claire called out.
Helena brought a basin and towels to the table. “Right mess, that one is. ‘oo would do such a thing?” She wiped at the blood with a cloth soaked in cold water. “Look at this.” She fingered a single lock of long, curly hair at the nape of his neck. “’e missed a spot, eh?”
The man moaned and turned his head, revealing a thin, shallow cut on the side of his throat.
“Lucky bugger. Any deeper and that would ‘ave been the end of ‘im.” Helena rinsed the towel, turning the contents of the basin bright red.
Claire dabbed at the wound on his neck. It wasn’t serious. In fact, it looked like more of a warning than an injury. She looked back up to the face. The man was young, perhaps a few years younger than Claire. He had fine features, beautifully shaped cheekbones and arched eyebrows. Judging by the length of the one curl, he must have had lovely long hair before this was done to him. She held a cold cloth against the worst lump, behind his ear.
The man moaned again and opened his eyes. He was beautiful indeed, even with his eyes a bit unfocussed. Lovely brown eyes he had, and the way his brow creased with concern was adorable.
“Where am I?” he muttered, and tried to rise.
Claire pushed him back down. “Hold on, now, mate. You’ll not be going anywhere just yet. But sit up and we’ll get this shirt off you.” She urged him forward and peeled the blood-soaked shirt off his torso. “Jesus,” Claire hissed. Bruises covered most of his lean torso, some old and turning shades of green and yellow, others fresh and still in the red to purple range.
“”oo did this, then?” Helena demanded. She got a fresh basin of water and more clean rags.
“Who are you?” the man asked, eyes darting around the room nervously.
“Relax, luv, you’re in very good ‘ands. This ‘ere may be an ‘ouse of ill repute, but we’re very nice, aren’t we Claire?”
Claire nodded and wiped at an old, unhealed wound on his shoulder. “You’re lucky Helena found you out back. If you spent all night out there, you’d have woken in the gaol. Or in the bay.”
He slumped in the chair. “That would be fine. There’s nothing to live for anyway. I’ve been cast aside.”
Helena tsk tsked. “Aw, yer girl leave you then?”
He shook his head. “My captain. I was never good enough from the start. Now I’ve nowhere to go. I’m a failure.” He bent his arms on the table and dropped his head down in defeat.
Claire petted a section of unharmed scalp. The hair was shorn almost to the skin, sharp and prickly under her fingers. “Is that who did this to you?”
He nodded without lifting his head. “Said I didn’t deserve such nice hair.”
Claire frowned. She was proud, some said inordinately, of her glossy, blond curls and would be more than upset if anyone ever hacked away at them like that. She studied his profile. He looked awfully familiar to her. Something about the shape of his cheek, the set of his jaw. It was a bit delicate, a bit pretty, but it looked like someone she’d seen before. She knew she’s seen him… but maybe not. The resemblance might be striking, if she could remember whom he resembled.
Before she could think of him, the door burst open.
“Madam DeMaurier,” Helena said, jumping to her feet.
“What have you dragged into my house? And what have I told you about bringing ruffians in? This is after hours! He probably doesn’t even have any money!”
“Ma’am, ‘e was out back and I couldn’t just leave ‘im there, ‘e was ‘urt, and ‘e moaned so pitious like, ma’am. We’ll just clean ‘im up a bit and make sure ‘e’s alright.” Helena pleaded in her best innocent tone, which Marina DeMaurier had heard dozens of times before, when the girl was caught sneaking her boyfriends in through the back door.
“I know what you’re thinking ma’am, but he’s not a boyfriend. We’ve never seen him before. Although he does look familiar…” Claire nudged the man’s head and he lifted it to look blearily at the madam.
Marina dropped the sherry glass she’d been carrying. “Saints alive! Jacob! Get in here!” She stared at the young man with undisguised alarm. The resemblance was uncanny.
Jacob DeMaurier was sitting in the parlour of the brothel with a battered farmer’s hat balanced on his knee. He rose immediately and followed the sound of his sister’s voice.
In the kitchen he found two of the harlots and Marina surrounding a chair, and in the chair sat a brutally shorn, badly bruised and still bleeding Will Turner.
“Will!” he rushed forward.
The man looked up at him uncomprehendingly.
No, it wasn’t Will. It was almost Will. Very close to Will. It was Will but even prettier. Except he didn’t have any hair. “My apologies. I could have sworn…” The resemblance…
“Our Will Turner?” Marina asked, as if there might be a dozen Will Turners, looking exactly like that, wandering about town on any given day.
The man sat up straighter. “Will Turner? You know him?” he asked, showing genuine interest for the first time since he’d woken.
“Aye, I do. And you?” Jacob replied warily.
“You’ve got to help him. A ship is sailing right now in pursuit of the Black Pearl!”
“Slow down,” Jacob said. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat beside the man. “Start from the beginning. Who are you?”
The man took a deep breath. “I’m a sailor from the Serpent Fire.”
“The Serpent Fire - you mean the pirate ship?”
“You know it?” The man was terribly confused by this farmer interrogating him. At least, he assumed the man was a farmer. His clothes were ragged and soil stained, and his boots were worn from work. He looked like a poor farm worker, perhaps one spending his whole year’s profit on a night on the town. He must have been a freed man, for a slave wouldn’t be allowed inside, and if he were a slave, he likely wouldn’t have been given any boots at all. Yet he spoke with the diction and accent of a British seaman, and he’d heard of the Serpent Fire, which was quite new in these parts.
“Aye, it’s known by every man in the navy, although last I heard it was in the Mediterranean Sea, giving the corsairs a run for their money.”
The man couldn’t help smiling, even though it made his jaw hurt. “That we did. But we came over months ago.”
“Well, I’ve been out of the navy for at least as long. What business would Captain Nagaraj have with the Black Pearl? Is he after Jack Sparrow?”
The man made an immense effort to tilt his head straight and look Jacob DeMaurier dead in the eye. “You know him as well?” His head lolled to one side and his eyes clouded. Obviously, upright was too much for him to manage at that moment.
“Get him a drink, girls. And for pity’s sake, get something to cover him up!”
Helena ran off to get a blanket and Claire poured out two fingers of rum in a glass. Then she poured four more glasses. She didn’t think the madam would object to them all having a drink when something so out of the ordinary was happening.
Jacob almost regretted his orders when Helena threw the blanket around that torso. Lovely torso, he thought to himself, in spite of all the bruises. Long and lean, well-developed, perfect rosy nipples. Jacob thought he might give a great deal indeed to see that torso once it was healed.
The resemblance was stunning. A bit paler than Will, and there was a delicacy in his bones, marred on one side of his jaw by a purple swelling but still apparent on the other side. The man was pretty, there was no doubt. Jacob couldn’t imagine why any sane person could have marred his beauty like that.
The man tossed back the rum and shuddered.
Jacob placed a friendly hand on his uninjured shoulder. “Relax, you’re among friends. We won’t harm you in any way.”
“Give him a minute, Jacob,” Marina said.
He nodded, then he squinted at Jacob in a funny way as if remembering something. “Jacob DeMaurier? The mutineer?”
Jacob grinned. “I’d be the one.”
There was a short, harsh laugh. “Oh, that’s rich. This is a small port, isn’t it?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The bit of rum or spit smeared across the back of it shone in the lamplight. Jacob had to lick his lips.
“And how would you know of me?” Jacob asked, then shook his head. “From the beginning, again. Who are you?”
“My name is Charles.”
Jacob looked at his stormy, dark eyes. So much pain. “Charles…?”
Charles grimaced. “It’s been so long, I’m not sure I remember correctly. I’m called by my first name, or ‘boy’. They’re not much for respect on the Serpent Fire.” He stopped and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them there was a harder look about them, as if he’d been preparing himself for more pain. “Dubois, I believe my name was. I was picked up in Acadia by Captain Nagaraj, after he’d acquired the Serpent Fire.”
Jacob understood the pain now. He’d heard a few stories about Nagaraj, how he’d escaped the Caliph’s prison and ended up in the Caribbean. He made his way up the coast and across to the Mediterranean after the incident in Boston Harbour. His cruelty was legend, although one can never know with pirates. Sometimes they cultivated an image for intimidation purposes only. Jacob knew at least one notorious pirate captain who was nothing like the tales told of him. The bruises on Charles certainly seemed to uphold the reputation of Nagaraj.
“I was, until a very short time ago, Captain Nagaraj’s… protégé. He was quite keen on me, trained me, told me what to do, to grow my hair a certain way, to speak softly with the right accent. I didn’t understand why. Then, in Tortuga a while back, we met up with Captain Sparrow and your Will Turner. Seems Captain Nagaraj knows them both from a long time ago…” He trailed off and stared at his empty glass on the table.
Jacob nodded. He understood. This young man didn’t just look like Will Turner. He sounded like him as well. There was a rumour that the fugitive Nagaraj had been in Port Royal, many years before. Norrington used to get very angry if anyone suggested it. He must have come in contact with Will.
It would be easy for a man to grow obsessed with Will. To seek out a replacement. To take in this other man, groom him… Jacob shuddered.
Claire jumped forward with the bottle and tipped another two fingers in. Charles lifted the glass and somehow, in spite of the bruises and the mess of his shorn scalp and the fact that he was half-naked and wrapped in a wool blanket, his smile and nod of thanks made her heart flutter. She bit her lip. How unprofessional of her.
Charles sipped the rum slower this time. “And it seems that I don’t quite measure up to young Mr. Turner, not in the eyes of my captain at any rate.” He ran his hand over his scalp. “He was in quite a fit of rage tonight. This was the least of it. But he’s been in a foul mood ever since Will Turner and Jack Sparrow beat us in a fight. I have Will Turner to thank for this,” he said, pointing to the knife wound on his shoulder. “Evidently, I’m not useful anymore, and Captain Nagaraj has had his fill of me.”
Claire caressed the bristles of hair again. “Poor thing,” she whispered. “Left behind.”
“We came into town this evening, and Captain Nagaraj met up with a navy captain. Well he said he was a captain, but he was wearing red. Maybe he used to be a captain. They were talking and drinking all evening, and then my Captain dragged me out and pulled his sword on me. He shouted about finally getting revenge. The navy man just stood and watched while he hacked off my hair and kicked me to the ground.”
“Why didn’t you fight back?” Helena asked.
Charles smiled ruefully. “Too well trained. I’m not to fight back against Captain Nagaraj. It’s part of the job.”
Jacob snorted. “Not any more it isn’t. You’ve been discharged, mate. Now it’s time to work for yourself. You can have a place on my ship, if you want it.”
Marina looked at her brother sharply. That was rash. He didn’t even know this man, and here he was offering to take him aboard. For all he knew, this boy was a spy. She saw the glint in Jacob’s eye. Naughty Jacob, she thought. She knew how taken Jacob was with Will, and the lad did look remarkably like their stepbrother, but would that mean he had the same good and honest nature? No likely, if he’d been trained by the likes of the notorious Captain Nagaraj. She’d have to keep a closer eye on him.
On second thought, there would be no reason for a spy to be treated quite that cruelly.
He’d been beaten repeatedly, and the hair - that was a bit much, even for a pirate spy. She had no doubt the boy had come within a hair’s breadth of losing much more than just his locks.
“And you know Will Turner?” Charles asked.
Jacob nodded. “He’s my stepbrother.”
Charles looked stunned for only a moment, then suddenly sat up straight. “Well, if you’re the same Jacob DeMaurier who commandeered the Dauntless, we have time to catch them. We’d better get going, because they’re setting sail tonight, and this navy captain seems to think he knows where they might be.”
“What captain was this, anyway?”
“I don’t know his name. Deep voice, very uptight, kept going on about getting his wife back. And getting his revenge on Jack Sparrow.”
“Norrington,” Jacob and Marina both said at once.
“But he’s not captain… not anymore,” Jacob added.
“That’s the man, though. And if it’s possible, he seems even more upset than Captain Nagaraj. He said as long as he was allowed to kill Sparrow, Nagaraj could do whatever he wanted to Will Turner!”
Next: Chapter 89 Guard Duty
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