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The Sacking of Port Royal
by TortugaBlack

CHAPTER 1: Prologue - The Nightmares

"---You can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can't. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you'll have to square with that someday."
-Jack Sparrow, Captain of the Black Pearl

The coals in the forge cooled as the late night breeze wafted in from the sea, slowly easing the stifling atmosphere of the blacksmith shop. Standing with his back to the lingering heat of the forge, a tall figure bent over a polished steel blade on the rough worktable, his strong calloused hands repeatedly caressing the newly forged sword with a soft deerskin bag no larger than a Spanish doubloon. With each finely skilled stroke the sheen of the weapon grew.

It was a beautiful blade, hand forged and lovingly crafted without fancy filigree or inlay to distract from its perfection. This was no ceremonial sword to be given with pomp and circumstance, but the weapon of a warrior. The full extent of the smithy’s skill had seen to its intended function and not to its aesthetic qualities, giving the sword a cold deadly beauty of its own. And now, as his hand firmly pressed the deerskin bag one final time down the length of the blade, the honed steel gleamed its promise of perfection and worthiness in battle.

Will Turner, blacksmith’s apprentice and master craftsman of fine swords, looked up from his work to a sudden awareness of the late hour and the stifling heat of the forge. He straightened, forcing his shoulders back in an attempt to stretch the ache from muscles too long bent to his labors and, with a sigh, rubbed at dark red-rimmed eyes. For a moment he stared at the fine object of his creation as if seeing it for the first time. Satisfied with the finished product, he turned away and stumbled wearily to the double doors of the forge, throwing them open to the coming dawn.

Standing in the open doorway he drew a forearm across his brow, welcoming the caress of the early morning breeze across a face accented by high cheekbones and a strong jaw. He sighed with pleasure, drinking in the morning’s stillness and allowing the fresh air to revive his flagging energies. Absently he raked stiffened fingers through damp ringlets of dark hair before securing the wayward tresses with the thong at the nape of his neck. As if suddenly aware of his presence, the breeze shifted, bringing with it the smell of the sea and he felt the small hairs along the back of his neck stiffen. Something in that air called to him and he shivered. Grabbing the latch he pulled the doors firmly closed and hurried back to the familiarity of his workbench.

Forcing the momentary unease from a weary mind and refreshed from his brief moments outside, Turner allowed his experienced gaze to travel the full length of the newly finished weapon, searching again for any signs of imperfection; there were none. The deeply beveled blood groove was smoothly etched and without flaw; the gentle flat curve of the blade sloped until it met the hairline thinness of the weapon’s cutting edge. He picked it up. To his skilled hands it was surprisingly light, well balanced, the hilt cast to fit but one hand…his own. The guard he had shaped in the same steel as the blade, heating it until it could be molded into overlapping crescent moons and hammered until the beautiful design was shaped slightly larger than his closed fist. Last of all he had taken a Spanish doubloon, pilfered treasure from the Isla de Muerta, and set the gold coin into the pommel. There was nothing more to be done. It was finished.

Will Turner drew a deep cleansing breath and, for the first time in hours, allowed his shoulders to slump in weariness; he was tired. No, he thought, not tired, but exhausted from a full day at the forge and the additional hours that had taken him long into the night to finish the sword. He could go to bed knowing the obsession of his labors was finished, but he would not sleep. Instead he feared the nightmares would return as they had almost every night since he had started the sword. He looked again at the weapon in his hand. Maybe tonight would be different. Maybe tonight he would be able to fall asleep and his mind would share his exhaustion, giving him a night…or what was left of it…of peaceful oblivion; but not yet.

Returning the sword to its resting place on the rough wooden surface of the workbench, Will Turner picked up a crumpled and stained sheet of parchment that had lain open on the table all the while he worked. It was this seemingly unimportant missive that had driven him to the forging of the sword – his sword – and one other…

The parchment had come…along with a request and two raw steel flats from Toledo, Spain. Will Turner gazed at the strange symbols on the parchment, symbols that had been carefully translated into the King’s English by a labored but manly hand with the sure strokes of a coarse pen. Over all a heavy rust-colored stain had soaked deeply into the parchment and dried, but the bold strokes forming the words had survived. A small but finely drawn bird…a sparrow…adorned a spot of unstained parchment below the words.

The Will Turner of a few months past might have taken the knowledge of the parchment without question but wondered at the stains. A far different Will Turner now held it, a man who knew unerringly what the stains were and suspected strongly that the bold hand had written its last and that owner had taken the knowledge it had inscribed to a watery grave. This Will Turner was a man who also knew that the knowledge contained in those words would not come without a price. For the knowledge was worth a king’s ransom to the right man and Will Turner was that man. He also would have been a simpleton if he didn’t suspect the parchment and its wealth of knowledge could prove to be as dangerous as the weapons he had crafted from it.

Carefully folding the parchment he slipped it into his breast pocket. The request had been reasonable, the knowledge priceless. For what price could be put on one’s freedom? If it was used as intended, the knowledge would free him of the apprentice agreement he still labored under and make him a true craftsman of the weapons he lovingly forged. The giver of both parchment and steel understood well the value of freedom and the price of it. But once he had studied the contents of the parchment and marveled at the superior quality of the Spanish steel, Will Turner knew he would willingly pay the price. The sword he had crafted from the knowledge in the parchment and the extraordinary combination of strength and flexibility of the Spanish steel would be an invincible force in the hands of an expert swordsman. He, Will Turner, was an expert swordsman as was the man who had requested the other. The knowledge was now locked forever in his mind and in the skill of his calling; he had accepted both and the two-edged bargain they were sure to cost him.

In the faint glow of the single lantern above him Will Turner gently wrapped the new blade and carefully placed it beside its brother in the hidden compartment he had fashioned for the weapons. As he trimmed the wick the dark shadows of the lingering night closed in around him. With one final glance over his work area Will Turner climbed the stairs to his small quarters above the forge.

v v v v v

“Never set well with Bootstrap what we did to Jack Sparrow, the mutiny and all.
He said it wasn’t right with the Code. That’s why he sent off a piece of the treasure to you as it were.”

The soft balmy breezes ran silky fingers through the bound man’s bloodied strands of hair. Held upright by men on either side he struggled helplessly as they wrestled him to the deck and held him while two others bound his legs together at ankle and knee in chains. From the quarterdeck Hector Barbossa, captain of the Black Pearl, watched, the feather in his fancy hat fluttered in rhythm with his satisfied nods at the prisoner’s struggles. “One last chance I be givin’ you, Bill,” Barbossa called down to the man. “Give up the shine and ye go free. You be havin’ my word.”

“The word of a mutineer…” the bound man spat, “is not a word to be trustin’, Barbossa.” Realizing further attempt to struggle futile the man addressed as Bill relaxed in the grip of those holding him. His dark-eyed gaze remained locked to that of the tall man on the quarterdeck. “You…and this crew of misfits deserve to be cursed…and to remain cursed…”

“Well, as you can imagine, that didn’t set well with the captain.”

Barbossa motioned toward the cast-iron minion lying strangely out of place on the deck below him. “That be a good British made seven-hundredweight cannon what I’m givin’ up to keep ye company, Bill. See that ye do right by it.” He motioned to the crew struggling to move the cannon into place. “You know what to do, men. Davy Jones awaits another in his locker. Let’s not keep him waitin’!”

“What the captain did, he strapped a cannon to Bootstraps’ bootstraps…”

Bootstrap Bill Turner peered longingly at the sky overhead. Not a cloud marred its perfection. Hungrily he drank in the intoxicating warmth of the breezes, the blue sky and the noisy call of the seabirds drawn to the ship in search of handouts. Closing his eyes Bootstrap Bill divorced his mind from what was happening around him already resigned to his death and, for just a moment, allowed his thoughts to dwell on a small child and his mother who would be left behind, and he mourned.

Then he was raised up and balanced on the railing of the ship he had served while his former shipmates struggled to lift the cannon. Again he focused on the sky, ignoring those around him. They were the walking dead as he would be if allowed to stay with them. Silently he gave thanks for his impending death in the peaceful oblivion of Dave Jones’ locker. A sudden jerk, a rattle of chain and he followed the cannon into the turquoise blue waters of his beloved Caribbean. How he would have loved to show his son the wonder of the islands. The waters closed over him, yet he watched the blue of the sky, the blue of the waters and experienced the sudden painful ache of his lungs as he held his breath in an attempt to hold onto what little of his life remained. But he, too, was cursed…and with the reality of his situation, Bill Turner closed his eyes and accepted his fate.

“The last we saw of ol’ Bill Turner, he was sinking to the crushing black oblivion of Davy Jones’ locker.”

The shadows of the nightmare deepened, dissolved, then settled in a familiar cave and a figure standing over an ancient stone chest, a knife in one hand, a piece of Aztec gold in the other. In the horror of his dream Will Turner, the only child of Bootstrap Bill, could hear again the words he had spoken. “He didn’t waste it.” A swift stroke of the knife across an open palm and drops of blood spilled across the face of the coin. Grasping the coin in his bloodied hand along with a second coin smeared with the blood of another, he dropped both into the chest.

v v v v v

The growing fear of drowning, the ache of depleted lungs still frightfully real were not the true horror that finally released the young blacksmith from the nightmare and brought him suddenly awake and fully conscious of the darkened room around him, but his own words – spoken over ten years after his father was sent to the ocean’s depths – that echoed and re-echoed in the shadows of his mind. Shaken by the intensity of his dreams and the sudden realization of their meaning, Will Turner swung his legs over the side of the bed and struggled to his feet. Still wrapped in the aftermath of the nightmare he blinked, surprised at finding himself standing on the floor of his quarters and not before the stone chest on the Isla de Muerta.

Stumbling across the room Turner reached the one small window in his quarters and threw it open to the pre-dawn. The sea air fresh from the bay played across his body, drying the sweat of his dreams along with the wetness of his tears. With trembling hands he brushed the dark hair away from his face and welcomed the kiss of the sea air and begged it to heal his pain. Tonight the nightmare that had plagued him almost nightly since his return from his adventures with Jack Sparrow and his band of renegades, had played itself out.

At first it had been something Jack had said that kept him awake through sleepless nights. “…You can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can’t…” He had worried over that for several nights and than had convinced himself that, yes, he could accept the fact that a good man could also be a pirate. But he had also accepted the fact that ‘good men’ among the Brethren were few and the good ones could not always be trusted. Thus for a couple of nights he was allowed the peace of dreamless oblivion.

Moonlight played across the still waters of the bay but the beauty was lost on the son of Bootstrap Bill Turner, who was submerged in the darkness of his thoughts. In the weeks following Jack’s escape, gossip had run rampant in Port Royal fueled by the last words of the surviving members of Barbossa’s crew before they were hanged, words that had linked his father’s past to any hopes he might have had for a peaceful life in Port Royal. Will Turner had accepted that a pirate’s blood ran in his veins…others had not. The more forward of them asked him outright about his pirate heritage, most spoke of it behind his back. Long time customers were pulling their ironwork or requesting that Mr. Brown do the work himself or keep a wary eye on his young apprentice. Some of the requests he had found both amusing and ridiculous, others he had found hurtful and degrading. A few who still called him friend said give it time and assured him it would blow over. He was not so sure.

The nightmares had begun the night he received Sparrow’s request and the payment in Toledo steel. Having thought he had seen the last of the Pearl and her crew, Will had worried over what the renewed contact would mean to his already complicated life. What did he owe Captain Jack Sparrow that hadn’t already been paid by the death of his father and his own blood?

That night for the first time he had relived the death of his father at Barbossa’s hands and every night thereafter it had replayed itself over and over, each time becoming more detailed and more vivid then the last. Tonight with the swords finished Will Turner had hoped for a respite from the dreams. Instead following the death of his father, he had been shown the cave, the return of the coin to the chest and a shocking truth….Will Turner closed his eyes and wept.