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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Grégoire de Fronsac/James Norrington, Norrington/Sparrow, Grégoire/Jean-François.
Feedback: Good lines, bad ones, etc.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: PotC/Brotherhood of the Wolf crossover; post-movie for both. Am following the general history of 1766 in New Orléans, when the city was turned over to the Spanish amid protests by its mostly French citizenry, but am not sticking strictly to the timeline, so slight AU in respect to that. Supernatural aspects.
Summary: Grégoire gets closer to the answer to the mystery and farther from himself. James has a brief remission.
***
When Grégoire finally arrived, the soldiers were milling about the square, pointing their guns in every direction and rolling the whites of their eyes towards every shadow. He swung well clear of them and slipped off the roof into a small side-street to see what he could make of their conversation.
They were ringed in a loose semi-circle with the ends slightly flared, like a blooming flower. A less picturesque but more relevant description was that they looked as if they’d surrounded something and then had it burst through the line. Several soldiers were being carried away on stretchers, heads limply lolling over the edge of the poles. Their appearance didn’t bode well for their survival, but so much the better from Grégoire’s point-of-view. If any of their injuries were directly inflicted by the werewolf, then they’d survive to become their nemesis, and that would unnecessarily complicate matters.
He softly stepped towards the end of the alley, taking advantage of the thick coating of ivy on the building corner, and scanned the square. It was one of the few paved plazas in the city and its stone had a dull glimmer in the moonlight. Grégoire thought he might have spotted a handful of shinier, wetter spots, but it was difficult to see past the soldiers constantly tramping back and forth over it.
An officer finally called for a retreat and Grégoire blessed the man without thinking. He started to retract it, then shrugged and let it stand: Spain might not be his favorite country, but not even her men deserved to have werewolves stalking their nights.
After the square had emptied, Grégoire cautiously walked out to examine the stones. The Spanish had scuffled and blurred nearly all of the possible clues, spreading bloodstains and dusting over the plaza with the black-powder discharge of their muskets, but a very few traces had escaped their attention. He could reconstruct the direction of the initial charge and identify the place where the soldiers and the wolf had come to grips, and he could tell that the wolf had been badly wounded before it had escaped. But following its trail led him only to a dead-end alley a few blocks away.
The roof, Grégoire suddenly realized. Then he remembered the pirate, and so when he climbed up, he did so with pistol in one hand.
But the roofs were empty as far as he could see, and when he listened to the night, he heard nothing out of the ordinary. The roof tiles were mainly reddish-brown, so in the dark they would be about the same color as blood and therefore any splashes would be virtually undetectable unless Grégoire crawled about feeling for wetness. Perhaps if Mani had been around…but he wasn’t and Grégoire had never been as good as his friend at tracking.
From the looks of things, the wolf was already long gone. According to local legend, the loup-garou had incredible stamina and strength, and Grégoire saw no reason yet to disbelieve that.
He stood on the roof, thinking for a moment, and then he retraced his steps back to the square. Though he couldn’t trail the wolf itself, he might be able to discover from whence it had come.
* * *
“What—who—he only met me today!” Beaumont exclaimed, voice as shaky as James’ hands were. He turned huge, anxious eyes on James. “Who is that?”
“Here…” James began to point at the note scrawled in the corner, but he glimpsed the defensiveness and embarrassment in Beaumont’s eyes and hastily corrected himself. Fortunately for the both of them, it consisted of only a name and a date, so James’ French wasn’t unduly taxed. “It says Jean-François de Moran—Morangias. 1763.”
A thought occurred to James as he struggled with that name; he flipped back through the papers till he’d found one of Grégoire’s wife in a similar pose. Then he laid it side-by-side with the other sketch.
Small strangled sounds leaked out of Beaumont’s throat, and his fingers were gripping the ropes so hard his nails were white. He forgot to be embarrassed about his illiteracy. “What does that one say?”
“Marianne de Fronsac. 1764.” Frowning, James eased out the very first sketch of her and checked it. For a moment, he thought about not reading it aloud for Beaumont, who was beginning to sway as if he felt faint.
The other man looked at him, and James saw that it wasn’t necessary for him to state the obvious. “Brother and sister?”
“That would explain a good deal,” James muttered, shuffling the sketches into the case and resetting it on the table. A drop fell onto the back of his hand and he blinked at it, momentarily confused. Then he touched his forehead, found it dripping and swiped at it with his cuff. It came away very wet and oddly blurry.
No, that was his sight, which was beginning to swim with the crashing of the tide.
“Shooting. They’re shooting at something.” The fox beside the bed suddenly sat straight up and pricked its silvery-grey ears.
James swore and ripped at his collar, trying to release all the heat that had collected unnoticed within him and that now seemed intent on pressing the sanity out of his mind. He stared at the wavering world till it resolved into the bedroom and the man he remembered. Then he dragged himself over to the window and rested his arms against the window. His skin grazed the glass and he shuddered at how cold it felt, then surged up to the glass in an attempt to soak away some of the overwhelming mugginess.
“Is there anything?” Beaumont called.
With an effort, James forced his eyelids open and scanned the streets as far as he could see. His vision blurred in stripes and he nearly panicked before he realized it was not an oncoming attack, but instead was only the sweat from his brow trickling down the window. “No. It’s happening on the far side.”
The other man spat a few choice curses, some of which were English, and jerked at the bed. “Oh, sorry. But that man is an idiot. He goes out there and they’ll shoot him because they’re dagoes and they can’t see in the dark. And he won’t listen to me!”
The lassitude was back and it was accompanied by a strong sense of dizziness. James slowly let himself slide down the window till he was lying half-curled on the bed. He knew he should also pull up the sheets, but the joints in his hands were aching badly from the continual tremors running through them. In a moment he’d cover himself. Yes, in a moment.
“Norrington? Norrington?”
Beaumont simply wouldn’t stop making noise. Damnable man. And James’ ship was rotting in the bay and crying out for him, and sparrows were pecking at his mind, and Grégoire was somewhere James could not see. He wished he could have gone out with the other man. He wished he simply knew what was going on; it was difficult to fight off the delusions when he didn’t already know what was the reality.
“Norrington!” The bed leaped and shook and groaned like a ship cracking herself on a reef. Then there was a long, peculiar silence, with only Beaumont’s breathing audible. It was very loud and it overlapped, as if he were panting hard.
“I’m not dead,” James rasped, burrowing himself as deeply as he could into the rumpled sheets. His head was beginning to hurt and he thought he could feel his eyes expanding in their rigid sockets, but he was determined to not to throw up again. He would master his stomach, and he would keep his blood where it was supposed to be. He’d promised, he thought. A promise to a phantom, though that was about the least unusual aspect of the past two days. “You remind him of his brother-in-law. I think that’s what Morangias was.”
Clothes rustling. Boots scuffing the floor. “Oh?”
Beaumont sounded very odd. Like he was drunk, perhaps. Or like he was a pirate. They always seemed to phrase things oddly. “His dead brother-in-law. He killed him. Something about werewolves in France, and…I can’t remember,” James added.
“That’s all right. That’s enough to make even for the water.” Now the other man’s voice was more like itself. And it was quite close, but that was probably the fever. The bed was also rocking gently and there was a breeze flowing over the top of James, as if he were back on the deck of his ship.
Then the breeze was gone and a hand was there, lying against his forehead. “Clever boy,” said the distorted Beaumont. “Maybe he’ll make something of himself. Lift your head, commodore. The housekeeper’s a bit more alert than I figured on, and I’ve only a moment to give you this. Sloshed in a bit of rum to cut the taste, so drink up…just like any sailor beneath that uniform, aren’t you? Good.”
* * *
Unsurprisingly enough, the trail led Grégoire down to the waterfront. It went by ways so crooked and devious that he began to wonder whether he was, in fact, following a true trail. Animals rarely bothered with secrecy, and only for short periods of time, such as when approaching prey. Granted, it wasn’t a mere wolf he was tracking, but he found it difficult to believe that the beast could be wickedly intelligent at one moment and a mindless hunger on four paws the next.
The lion of Gévaudan had been allowed to roam free, but it had first been thoroughly beaten into slavery. Once it was free, it no longer had any conception of freedom and so it hadn’t realized it could run from its master. Perhaps the loup-garoux of New Orléans were not quite so tame; the inexplicable detours and wrecking of empty alleys could very well be due to a beast fighting against a leash. Grégoire started looking for human traces.
He finally found one in the freshly-battered doorframe of a shack so near the sea he could hear the waves. A beautifully clear imprint of a gigantic chainlink had been slammed into the wood, so deep its edges gleamed in the weak light.
That briefly puzzled Grégoire, but then he checked the sky and found to his shock that he’d been out nearly all night. A scarlet sun was melting upwards into the sullen clouds, bright in a way that did not dazzle the eyes, but instead slowly warmed them to prickling pain. He squinted, then rubbed at his right eye and stifled a yawn.
James hopefully was long asleep, as the man sorely needed it. The slight soreness dragging at the corners of Grégoire’s eyes said he needed it as well, but he could do without it for a little longer. If the werewolf had managed to whip one of its holding chains into the door, then it must have still been well-rested and capable of cunning, and its place of origin must be very near.
Grégoire took a moment to retie his tail of hair, which had been dangerously near to slipping into an unruly mass, before he headed out to the dockyards. He was on the very edge of the city here, right where it and the bay and the delta all met in a sensuous, fetid merging, as if New Orléans was nothing more than an overblown growth on the Louisiana shoreline. In the distance were the masts of several sloops, one wallowing Spanish hull, and the tall spikes of what Grégoire presumed had to be James’ ship. It still raised its masts with pride, but the sails were all furled and that lent a bare, incomplete air to the sight.
Shaking his head, Grégoire banished such sentimental nonsense from his mind. There was no point in dwelling on reminders of the voyage to Africa, when the wind had brushed healthy roses into Marianne’s cheeks and when he’d believed everything would at last be well. Neither was there a point in dwelling on the nonsense that perpetually surrounded his thoughts of James. If the man died, then all Grégoire would have gained was another candle to light in the church. If he lived, then he’d return to his ship and Grégoire would return to shipping specimens to his successor as the king’s taxidermist. Norrington would marry someone and either wax fat in paradise or die in battle, depending on how the political pendulums swung; Grégoire intended to follow the Gulf Coast and he fully expected to succumb to some unpredictable wilderness threat and die alone.
“Not that I would like to,” he snorted. But the possibility of any change in that fate seemed too unlikely to bear thinking on.
People were beginning to stir, either to tend to the morning’s chores or to drag themselves home from another desperate dive into alcohol. He did his best to look casual as he hurried his pace, wanting to reach the end of the trail before anyone accidentally obliterated part of it.
The few that were venturing out generally kept their heads down and their mouths shut except for the odd moan or curse, so when the sound of raised, vociferous voices reached Grégoire’s ears, he immediately snapped to attention. They seemed to be clustering in the next street over, so he searched about until he found a road running crosswise to it. Crates were bountiful around this area; he borrowed one in order to get onto the roof of the nearest building without making an undue amount of noise.
Here no one was rich enough to afford tiles, which meant that the roof was wood, saturated with the moist air and constant soft rot that pervaded the city. Its planks didn’t creak, but instead sighed and whispered their complaints as Grégoire’s feet pressured them. By the time he’d reached the side closest to the voices, he had decided he would rather have creaking. The noise reminded him too much of the way Sylvia had run her hands over a row of cards in order to softly turn them over.
“…lost him,” said a low, barnacled voice in regular Creole dialect. “He took a shot in the chest after taking the fifth down, and it hit a lung, I think.”
“Lost him? Lost him? He’s a goddamned loup-garou!” The second voice had a tang of Irish intermixed with its gutter-French.
There was a quick scuffle of boots on dirt, and then the meaningful snick of a hilt being clicked out of the scabbard. “Meanin’ that he’s dead,” drawled the first voice. “I know where the fucking body is.”
“What about the soldiers? Any bit? I don’t want fucking dago rougarou or loup lalou or whatever you call them running around here. Have enough trouble handling your local ones while they’re in town.” Although the first speaker had definitely moved back, he hadn’t reduced his truculence.
“Couple bitten, but they’re all dead. Nice thing about those Spanish; they don’t see any problem in making our women serve them. Think we breed soft girls that can barely think enough to mix up herbs and soup, let alone poison.” Venom suddenly crested in the man’s voice. “Arrogant bastards.”
The first speaker muttered something about pots and kettles and name-calling, which made Grégoire cover a grin. A foreigner drifted north, something like Norrington’s situation but without his quick realization that New Orléans acted as a world unto itself. “I’m sure you’re happy, but now we need another if we’re to get Ulloa. And fast. He’s a hard man to pry from his hole; practically had to tell him we’d netted an angel for his mistress so he’d promise to sneak out tomorrow night.”
“Rougarou I can get,” the second speaker placidly answered. “You worry about getting me the governor’s head and earning your pay.”
The real conversation ended there, though the two men continued to exchange thinly-veiled insults for a few more minutes. Grégoire wouldn’t have laid down much money on the first pirate—for they had to be that, even if the Irish one dressed finer than the usual run of them—ever touching his payment. From what he’d seen during his stay, the local rivermen alone were a savage, clever pack that could easily outmaneuver the buccaneer grown soft on easy merchant prey. And governors, like nearly all government officials, were merely businessmen with a rank.
Grégoire counted off an extra thirty seconds from the time he could no longer hear their footsteps. Then he leaned over the side of the roof and carefully memorized every inch of the alley that he could see. When he believed that he could recognize the place at night, he got up and climbed down the opposite side of the roof, only to meet Jean-François waiting for him.
The other man was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest so the raw red marks on his wrists stuck out from his sleeves. His calm flickered when a hilt dropped into Grégoire’s hand, but otherwise Jean-François echoed the menacing self-possession of his namesake.
“How did you get here?” Grégoire demanded, quickly stepping into the clear. If he had to draw his blade completely out of his sleeve, he wanted plenty of room. “What happened to Norrington and the housekeeper?”
“Last I saw, she was chasing birds out of the chimney. And he’s sleeping.” Jean-François raised both his hands to flash clean palms at Grégoire. “I didn’t lay a finger on him.”
“Good.” Still watching him, Grégoire circled around so he had a clear exit out of the alley. He listened for a moment, trying to determine if anyone was in earshot. It didn’t seem so, but nevertheless it wasn’t wise to linger here.
A wrist-flick sent his blade back into its sheath. He waited for the telltale slouch to seep into Jean-François’ posture—little more than a youth, truly, but any sign of maturity unnerved Grégoire—then seized the other man by the wrist and swiftly whirled him out into the street. Before Jean-François could do much more than yelp, Grégoire had locked their arms together and was hustling them down the road, keeping Jean-François’ hand trapped between them. “How did you get here?”
“Because I told you, I knew about them. The Irish one—Roberts—fancies one of the girls at the brothel where I bed down. He talks all the time when he’s drunk, and that’s—let go, damn it.” Twisting and jerking, Jean-François made enough of a commotion that some people began casting them odd looks. He didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he was too busy hissing at Grégoire to care. “I am not your dead brother-in-law, or whatever—”
It wasn’t till Jean-François was half-slumped over his knees, stunned from being flung into an alley and against a solid adobe wall, that Grégoire came back to himself. He stopped and stared at the other man, hands icy and itching to snap necks while his face was flushed and hot.
Very slowly, Jean-François stood up. But he kept himself close to the wall, edging back when Grégoire took a step forward. He was chewing on his lip and his gaze couldn’t stay in one place, darting around Grégoire for a way out. “So that’s it,” he muttered, not sounding certain at all.
One step brought Grégoire within an inch of the other man. He slammed his hands against Jean-François’ shoulders and forced them back against the wall, which in turn brought Jean-François’ head sharply up. Jean-François sucked in a breath, but Grégoire pushed his face in and spoke first. “Listen to me. You think you know a good deal, but in fact you know very little. Stick to that and leave the rest alone.”
“Why? So you can tie me to another bed?” Though Jean-François’ voice was sharp, his eyes said that he was terrified. But he didn’t stop talking. “Maybe I don’t know, but I think I should. You’re thinking I’m some evil from your past—I only met you yesterday! You don’t know anything when it comes to me.”
He was right. And Grégoire would admit it if he were a fair and righteous man, but he was not that and had never pretended to be that. All he had ever tried to do was to see the truth, and from there it went where it willed. In the case of Mani, it had gone to the grave. Same for Marianne, though her death had been delayed by two years.
“What do you think you are?” Jean-François railed, shoving at Grégoire’s chest. “A god? Ruler of this plague-city? The only damned man in this city that can do anything?”
“It would seem that I’m the only one who cares to do anything, since you had to talk to me.” Grégoire began to let go, intending to turn around and walk back to the house, but a fist came flying at his face. He intercepted it and bent that hand back to the wall, then deflected Jean-François’ knee just in time. That joint he slammed down before throwing his weight against the other man, who was slightly taller but far slighter in build.
Despite his physical disadvantage, Jean-François did not cease struggling. He snarled and snapped at Grégoire, managing a few telling blows even without actually freeing himself. “Really? What do I care about the dagoes? I told you, I want passage out of here. Maybe I liked your face and offered what you wanted. Maybe if someone else had come along I would’ve offered something different.” His next buck against Grégoire abruptly turned fluid, flat lean belly sliding down Grégoire’s front. The corners of his lips drew back in a razor sneer. “Maybe if I’d known about the commodore, Grégoire.” Voice became a low slithering sigh. “You know it’d be like making love to a corpse, trying something with someone who’s got the fever?”
They were too close for Grégoire to slap him or punch him. But the smile on Jean-François’ face was lewd and taunting and there were entirely too many levels of recognition here. Something had to be done.
“If you have any sense, you will stop talking,” Grégoire rasped, grinding both of Jean-François’ wrists against the wall.
“If you had any sense, you wouldn’t be nursing a goddamn Englishman just on the off-chance that you can get a fuck out of it.” Jean-François bucked again, and this time he undulated his groin against Grégoire’s prick in a practiced manner. Then he fell back against the wall, looking puzzled and angry. “What? You like the broken things? Am I too healthy for you?”
It wasn’t a kiss but a snarl, and accordingly it drew blood. Grégoire was not trying to pleasure the other man; his intent was very much in the opposite direction. He wanted to rip off Jean-François’ lips and so he sank his teeth into them, mangled them in between smashing back any sound the other man made.
When the other man gave, he instantly pushed forward. When he felt Jean-François bending, mouth opening and knees wrenching against and fingers fluttering uselessly against his grip, Grégoire wanted to feel the man break. He sucked the blood from Jean-François’ lips and then he let his mouth go gentle, so gentle that the other man started to believe and started to relax. Then he made his mouth hard and hungry again, needled his tongue-tip into the breaks he’d made in Jean-François’ lips. He ate the whimpers and the whines and the prayers while he pulled both of Jean-François’ hands into one of his, while he yanked down their trousers.
A small voice reminded him of the public moving about just a few yards away, of the ideals he’d used to hold, of the quiet scarred horror in Thomas’ eyes when he’d told Grégoire what had become of Marianne at her own brother’s hands. He didn’t want to listen to it, but it was insistent and so he spun them deeper into the alley, turned Jean-François sideways against him and wrapped his fingers around the man’s risen prick. It didn’t take long or much to coax a generous amount of white stickiness onto Grégoire’s hand.
He had had to lift his mouth when he’d moved them and so Jean-François could speak. And he did, not in the broken quiet tone of his moaning but in a harsh, jagged voice which fury matched Grégoire’s own. “Keeps you the gentleman—for Norrington. Did—did that other—did Morangias do that for you when you were—courting his sister?”
“You stupid little whore.” Grégoire rubbed together his fingers, barely coating them, and then shoved his hand between Jean-François’ legs. They reflexively came together, but a sharp pinch at a thigh and the man jerked them apart, gasping. “You whore, you think for once you can buy and not sell—I’ve seen your betters. I’ve fucked your betters, and you’re not the horseshit on their shoes.”
Then he had Jean-François up against the wall and his fingers were squeezing to get inside the man’s ass because it was tight, and no, Jean-François wasn’t that kind streetwalker, but he still had the reflexes common to all whores. He closed his eyes and he fought past the hurt to spread his knees, and very soon Grégoire fingers had plenty of room. So it was Grégoire’s prick instead and he wasn’t thinking at all about why it was lifting for this loudmouthed brat. He was chewing on Jean-François’ throat to cut his thoughts into pieces and he was pushing himself into the other man to put distance between himself and the pieces, and then he was hurling himself into the climax because he knew he would fall through and they would burn away.
For a moment, they had to slump together against the wall like lovers. But then Grégoire had the strength to push himself away and ignore Jean-François’ tottering near-fall to the ground. He cleaned himself off with a rag and pitched it into the far recesses of the alley. “You don’t even know enough to ask the right questions.”
His voice was oddly calm. In comparison, Jean-François’ temper had dissolved into badly trembling hands that rubbed a cloth up his thighs and almost shoved it into his balls before he flung it away. He took several moments longer than Grégoire to do up his clothing. But he was still able to make himself meet Grégoire’s eyes, even if he looked terrified by doing it.
Too young. And Mani had been too remote even in his friendliest moment, Marianne too wayward to pay attention to the doings of her own family, James Norrington too sick, and Jean-François de Morangias had been too bitter, so bitter it had disfigured him worse than any lion could have. Sylvia didn’t even need to be mentioned; as always, she was the one who truly knew when to come and to go. Grégoire almost hated her for that.
“I never came close to Jean-François de Morangias,” Grégoire said, voice absurdly light. “Not in that fashion. But he had my wife, his full sister, before I did, and he had my closest friend’s death.”
“I’m not him,” Jean-François replied. He ducked his head and awkwardly peered up through his lashes at Grégoire, almost as if he were worried but didn’t know how to say why. Considering his lack of reason for being worried for Grégoire, that couldn’t be the correct explanation. His hand lifted towards Grégoire, then fell. “I—didn’t mean to say—”
“I’ll take you out. You should do well in Martinique. Now tell me about those men.” Grégoire finished smoothing his clothing, then turned on his heel and walked out. After a short pause, he heard Jean-François follow him. After they’d walked a block, Jean-François began to speak.
* * *
James opened his eyes to the din of a woman furiously cursing through her sobbing. He found Annette kneeling on the floor, holding a few loops of ropes—no, wringing them as if they were chickens headed for the dinnerpot. Occasionally she would stop to bark an order at someone who was shuffling nervously about the hallway…probably the watchmen.
She suddenly noticed that he was awake and her shrilling reached new heights of pain inspiration. His nails were digging into the mattress and his teeth were mashing into each other before he had even fully awakened. “Quiet, please…ah…oh, damn. Ah, what was it…taisez-vous, s’il vous plait.”
Annette blinked very wide, very shallow hazel eyes at him and James felt his frustration winding tight the muscles in his shoulders. But then she smiled and chattered something in a whisper, and the relief he felt was literally overwhelming. He had to put his head back against the pillow and rest for a moment.
The good cheer soon vanished from Annette’s face and she held up the ropes, frowning at him and very slowly and carefully asking him an unintelligible question. When it was clear he didn’t understand, she added gestures pointing to the window, the door, and then she…lifted her hands like a child making a shadow-puppet duck would. Annette pointedly caught James’ eye and mimicked an odd swaying bob—
--Jack. James sat bolt upright in the bed and seized Annette’s hands. “Jack Sparrow? You’ve seen him—he’s here? He—” she looked confused and about to scream “—rum. Beaucoup de rum. What he smells like. Rum.”
From the gist of her pantomime, she’d seen someone that moved like Jack lurking around the house and had sent the watchmen to chase him off. But he’d…done something involving rum, and they’d been lost sight of him. Then they came back and—Annette grabbed fistfuls of the rope and shook them at James, babbling fearfully about Grégoire.
Oh—Beaumont. Beaumont…what was wrong with James’ head? He was having such difficulty remembering…
After a moment, he realized that in fact, he could remember perfectly, but that he was remembering hazy memories. Whereas his mind seemed to be strangely clear, though his throat was still parched and a quick feel at his forehead showed that his fever was steadily burning. His chest and back also hurt, and he certainly hadn’t regained enough strength to be particularly useful for anything. Yet…he felt decidedly better. And he hadn’t been imagining Sparrow.
“Norr-ington.” Annette seemed on the verge of tears.
“Yes? Oh, please don’t…” James racked his brain, trying to remember the last he’d seen or heard of Beaumont. It had been—no. He’d been hearing two voices. Sparrow had made him drink something, and Beaumont had gone—“Out the window. I mean, la…la fenêtre.”
In a matter of seconds, Annette went from sniffling to up and railing vociferously at the window. She came within a hair of peeling the paint off the sill; James clapped his hands over his ears and tried not to think about how painfully her voice was echoing through his head.
Jack Sparrow was here.
Jack Sparrow was here, and if James’ recollections were correct, Sparrow had been trying to help him.
Jack Sparrow was here, and James had licked Sparrow’s fingers at some point, and Sparrow had possibly been jealous of Grégoire. It could only be truth, because a novel or a play would be much more clear-cut about whether the plot was a farce or a drama. James pushed his head further into the bedding and attempted to be logical and commonsensical about the situation. Grégoire should be returning shortly, and somehow James had a hunch that he would be bringing Beaumont with him. Sparrow appeared to be acting benevolently, which was less relieving than if he’d been trying to behave like any other pirate. From what James had managed to gather of Will and Elizabeth’s tale, Sparrow preferred to avoid violence but he certainly wasn’t averse to manipulation and coercion as general concepts.
Therefore James first needed to get back to his ship. When Grégoire returned, he should ask the man about what had happened last night, and then he should ask to be taken back to the docks. He did not intend to give up on the werewolf mystery, but he also needed to ensure the safety of his mostly-incapacitated men. And between the werewolves and the pirate, James judged the greater threat to come from Sparrow as far as ships were concerned.
He wondered what Sparrow had fed him. He wondered what he’d said to Sparrow—he couldn’t quite remember all of it. And he wondered why he was so loathe to do what was needed.
Grégoire’s muffled voice rose from the floor below, and James turned around, still not certain as to how he should greet the man.
***