The Hanged Man - A Pirates of the Caribbean Tale for Halloween

The Hanged Man

The fact that his coach could not be brought up close to the headquarters of the EITC was most inconvenient. It stood waiting, some forty yards from his office, and Lord Beckett could never dispel the feeling of tension in his shoulders as he strode towards its protective embrace. The disapproving town was always watching him. Very well; let Port Royal understand that he was their superior, holding the reins of government with confidence and style. It was unlikely any were close enough to see the uneasy way he flicked his eyes from side to side.

An elderly woman in shabby dress ran towards him, forcing him to halt abruptly as she knelt in his path. The expression on her upturned face was ingratiating, and accolades were all too rare for him these days. Something to do with all the executions, no doubt.

He waited to hear what she would say.

"A gift, yer lordship, from a poor woman." She held out what looked like a greasy playing card. "For luck, sir."

There was a nasty, peculiar smell about her. Her face and hands were marked with soot, and the hem of her skirt had a ragged look as if the edge had been torn or burnt in places. He controlled his urge to recoil from her.

A few townsfolk were watching, enough that he felt obliged to accept the repulsive gift if only to show an icy grace in dealing with the lower orders. The woman beamed her thanks, then departed with furtive haste.

In his coach, he glanced at the card and saw that it was from a tarot deck. The Hanged Man. Insulting old hag. He would find out where she lived and invent some pretext to have his men throw her out on the street.

It was not until the evening that he noticed the card once more. He had tossed it upon his desk before involving himself in a number of commercial discussions with Mercer, but the grotesquerie of the thing intrigued him. There was something else the Hanged Man symbolised, but he could not recall it. Filthy looking card.

He put it in the fire and watched it burn.

He strolled over to his spyglass, and adjusted it to bring the town of Port Royal into focus. Not much to see in the moonlight. A slight refinement to its lens brought a familiar sight into view - the three hanged pirates whose corpses graced the entrance to the harbour. He savoured the sight, and imagined other pirates - indeed, all the enemies of the East India Trading Company - displayed thus.

Behind him there was a cough and shuffling of feet. He turned. Mercer was there, pulling a document from his clerk's folder. "Sorry; need to have ye sign one more."

Becket took the document and prepared to sign it. "You might know this, Mercer. I've just been trying to recall what the Hanged Man's meant to symbolise in a tarot deck - beyond an execution, I mean."

He wrote his name with a flourish, followed by the date, thirty-first October, 1741.

Mercer frowned. "The crossroads, I think." Then he volunteered an odd bit of information. "Back home, the bolder folk went to the crossroads at midnight on Hallowe'en - it was said ye could hear the hanged men whisperin' the names of those who would die in the comin' year."

The bolder folk? Beckett pictured goggle-eyed villagers daring each other to stand closer to the gallows to hear the prophecies of the dead. Simpletons, mired in pathetic old customs from an ignorant past.

He hid his smile beneath a feigned yawn as he handed back the document. "Dreary, Mercer. Very dreary. All that way in the dead of night? If I wanted to speak to a dead man, I'd make him come to me." A sudden crisp rustle and shower of sparks came from the fireplace.

After Mercer departed, the house was still and empty. Governor Swann was snug in a cell, the daughter gone . . . the servants? He rang before he remembered; they were given the night off, since half of them would have pleaded deathly illness anyway. All Hallows' Eve.