Pilferer: POTC

Dinner in Captain's Cabin

Maryrose's POV

"Maid or not, it fits you" Barbossa says complimenting Elizabeth. "You also look lovely" he tells me.

"Dare we ask the fate of it previous owners?" I ask him as I pour myself a drink.

"Now, none of that. Please dig in" he tells us. Elizabeth sits, cuts a tiny piece of meat, eats it daintily. While I start to eat my vegetables. "No need to stand on ceremony, and no call to impress anyone. You both must be hungry" he tells Elizabeth.

Elizabeth drops the pretense: she's starving, and begins to eat like it. While I at the same pass. "You should try the wine Elizabeth, it's lovely" I tell her as I put my goblet down. Barbossa pours her a goblet and hands it to her. She takes a huge swig before devouring a bread roll.

"And the apples -- one of those next" Barbossa says holding an apple out to us.

"Not really a fan of green apples" I tell him. "Are you not hungry? You haven't touched the food" I state. Elizabeth drops her bread roll.

"It's poisoned" she states. She pushes her plate away as I put my cutlery down while Barbossa laughs.

"Oh, there would be no sense in killing you, Miss Turner. And your friend has many useful skills" Barbossa tells her.

"Then why aren't you eating?" Elizabeth asks him.

"Would that I could" Barbossa answers cryptically. He produces the medallion, lets it dangle from his fingers. "Do you not know what this is, then?" he asks us.

"It's a pirate medallion" Elizabeth states.

"An Aztec gold one, very rare and very valuable" I add.

"It's a piece of the treasure of Isla de Muerta" he tells us. Elizabeth gives an infinitesimal shrug, intrigued despite herself. Why does that name sound familiar? I wonder. "Ah, so you don't know as much as you pretend. Back when Cortes was cutting a great bloody swath through the New World, a high priest gave him all the gold they had, with one condition: that he spare the people's lives. Of course, Cortes being Cortes, he didn't" he explains.

"Cortes loved killing to much to ever spare one life, let alone that many" I state.

"True" Barbossa states. He stands, moves to a shelf. Puts a key to a medium-sized polished wooden box -- the Captain's chest. "So the priest, with his dying breath, called on the power of the blood of his people, and put on the gold a curse. If anyone took so much as a single piece, as he was compelled by greed, by greed he would be consumed" he explains.

Barbossa opens the chest, inside the chest are charts, some gold, a sextant -- and a few pages of a Mayan CODEX, pieces of tree bark inscribed with Mayan glyphs. Barbossa removes them carefully, sets them on the table. "Within a day of leaving port for Spain, the treasure ship carrying the gold ... something went wrong. The ship run aground, every man aboard dead, save one. He survived long enough to hide the gold ashore" he explains.

"I remember now, O'Malley told me about Isla De Muerta once" I state. Thomas O'Malley was the pilferer who taught me everything I know about stealing as a child. He'd also tell me pirate stories. "He said over time, the dark magic of the curse seeped into the place, making it a cursed island. An island of death. Isla de Muerta" I explain.

"That's all very interesting, but I hardly believe in ghost stories anymore" Elizabeth states.

"Neither do I, he only ever told me such stories to ensure I never strayed from the Pilferer code" I state.

"You idiot girls! It's no make- believe!" Barbossa tells us hotly. "My crew and I, we found the gold, and we did more than take one piece each, we took it all. Rich men we were and we spent it and traded it and gave it away in exchange for drink and food and pleasant company. But we found out: the drink could not sate us, and the food turned to ashes in our mouths, and no amount of pleasant company could ease our torment" he tells us.

"You really expect us to believe you're cursed?" I ask him.

"We are cursed men, misses, condemned, to be forever consumed by our own greed. Gold calls to US, always, and we are driven, always, to find more, and add it to the treasure" he explains. Barbossa picks up the priceless Codex. Crushes them in his fist. "There is but one way to remove the curse. All of the scattered pieces of the treasure must be restored in full, and the blood repaid. We've recovered every piece -- save for this" he states holding up Elizabeth's medallion.

"And the blood to be repaid?" I ask him.

As for the blood repaid ... that's what we have for you" he says looking at Elizabeth. "And that's why there's no sense killing you. Miss Turner, yet" he states. So they need Turner blood, sucks for them that she's actually a Swann. "Apple?" he says holding it out to her.

She knocks it out of his hand and tries to run. I eat grapes as I watch them. He corners her and she stabs him in the heart with a knife. But he doesn't drop dead, he doesn't appear to be in any pain. He pulls it out with little effort. There is blood on the blade, but none anywhere else.

"I'm curious -- after killing him, what is it you were planning to do next?" I ask her intrigued. Elizabeth backs away, whirls and barrels out the door. "So curses are real, and here I thought O'Malley was a superstitious nut" I mumble. "We should retrieve her before she gets herself killed" I tell Barbossa and head out the door.

I freeze at the sight before me under the light of the moon. The pirate crew works at their stations, coiling lines, navigating the ship, swabbing decks. But where the moonlight falls across their bodies, they are naught but skeletons. "LOOK! The moonlight shows us for what we really are! We are not among the living and so we cannot die" Barbossa tells us.

"But neither are we dead! We have all the desires of the living, but cannot satisfy them! Ten years I have parched of thirst, and able to quench it! Ten years, I have been starving to death -- and haven't died! And I have not felt anything for ten years ... Not the wind on my face, nor the spray of the sea" he explains as he reaches toward Elizabeth. "Nor the flesh of a woman" he adds.

Elizabeth flinches away from the skeletal hand. It drops away he takes a bottle of wine from the opened case beside the cabin door, uncorks it with his teeth. "You'd best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. Because now you both are in one" he tells her. He tilts the bottle and drinks it runs over his jaw, through his rib cage, drenching his clothes.

Elizabeth darts around him, back into the cabin. I follow her shutting the door behind us. She huddles in the far corner of the cabin, terrified. "Do not fear, it'll be over with soon" I assure her.

A/N

Picture above of Elizabeth with Captain Barbossa and on the external link of the cursed crew.