Port Royal, May 1736
The gaolkeeper's cane tapped rhythmically on the stone floor, a sharp counterpoint to the jangle of keys and susurrus of voices. Somewhere, someone was singing softly, though Captain Jack Crawford had never heard the language before. The tune was maddeningly familiar and seemed in time with the distant roll of surf. He wished he could smell salt air, but this place stank of filth and human decay.
"So," asked the gaolkeeper, "What do you want with my patient, hm?" He was a small man with a limp and a smile like the bottom of a bottle of rum. "Is he a relative, perhaps?" There was a razor hidden in the jibe, ready to bite the hand that grasped it. Crawford ignored it and the gaolkeeper chuckled like it had been a harmless joke. "Perhaps you think he can help you find something? Ah, yes, of course, I can see it in your face. Well, you wouldn't be the first to think that."
They stopped in front of a heavy door set with an iron shutter. The singing, Crawford realized, was coming from within. He still couldn't recognize the language. Something of the Baltic, perhaps, words for dark winters and remembering pagan swords. The gaolkeeper, Chilton, faced Crawford with a serious expression. "Captain, you are clearly experienced with the sea so I hope you can tell the difference between what is and what isn't. This man is dangerous, and whatever you think he can give you, I promise you he will extract a cost. Be careful. He sees through people." Crawford realized with some surprise that there was genuine concern in Chilton's voice.
"I'll be careful," Crawford said.
Chilton nodded slowly and banged once on the shutter before sliding it aside and saying, "Someone to see you, prisoner."
The interior of the cell was dark, lit only by a slit window that let in only enough sunlight to accentuate the dark rather than alleviate it. Sitting on the bed was a man, lean and gaunt-faced. His hair was a tangled mop, crudely hacked, and one eye was hidden behind a leather patch. "Hello, Jack," he said, his voice soft and erudite. "What a marvellous surprise."
"You've heard of me, then?"
"Of course I've heard of the great Jack Crawford, the finest pirate hunter from Veracruz to La Reunion. Have you come to see I'm safely locked away? Or have you swept the seas clean and now come into this place to look upon the damned? Or... oh, yes. You're looking for something. And you think I can help." The man stood up and walked towards the door. As he stepped into the light Crawford could see the mess of scarring around the covered eye. He was still handsome, despite the disfigurement, though it was a cruel beauty.
"Not something, someone."
The prisoner laughed again, without mirth. "It must be fascinating quarry indeed if Captain Jack Crawford needs help."
"Yes. I want you to help me catch Hannibal Lecter."
There was sound behind Jack like Chilton had lost his footing briefly and needed to clutch his cane.
"And what makes you think a common pirate like me, one who got caught let's not forget, can help you find a ghost story?"
"Hannibal Lecter is not a ghost story, neither is his ship nor the three villages he massacred last month."
The prisoner was just on the other side of the bars now, close enough to kiss. "The Chesapeake Ripper has been seen? This isn't just some rum-soaked tale you heard?"
"I saw it myself." Jack hesitated, just briefly, the lied, "For five minutes off the Carib coast before it vanished into a fog bank."
"You were fortunate, then."
"Maybe so."
"That still doesn't explain why you think I can help you."
"Because," Crawford said evenly, "before he became captain of the Ripper, Hannibal Lecter sailed with a man, so they say, who could see things no-one else could. A man named Will Graham."
"Ah, so my secret is revealed at last." Chilton made a strangled noise, and Will smiled faintly. Crawford realized with a hollow feeling that the entire conversation had been pretence. Graham had known Jack's purpose before he had spoken. It had been a way to make Jack expose himself, even a little, and to twist some knife in Chilton's belly. "How do you feel, Doctor Chilton," Graham continued with a mocking lilt, "think of all the dinner invitations you could have had if they'd only known you could chill their high society spines with tales of me. Think of the monographs. It might have even be enough to let you show your face in London again. If only you had known."
Crawford glanced back and saw the rigid rictus remains of a smirk on Chilton's face. The doctor swallowed thickly once, worked his jaw and then turned and walked away. The tapping of his cane was an ellipsis leading to a paragraph recapping the petty indignities in the life of Doctor Frederick Chilton. An unhappy read that unlike its narrator was not short.
Jack turned back to the cell and found himself looking directly in the single blue eye of Will Graham. He gave himself credit for not flinching. After a moment, Graham looked away and gave that little smile again. "You should be careful of eyes, Jack. They show too much."
"Even when they are lost?"
"Oh, you should always look to what is lost to see what can't be found, Jack, and you'll find it was never lost at all."
"That's very cute, but I didn't come here to play word games with you."
Graham stepped back, fading into the gloom until the light fell only across the ruined side of his face. "And why are you here, Jack? What brings you to this place that is farther from the sea than it really is?"
"I told you. I want to find Hannibal Lecter."
"Then maybe you should start by looking in places he might be instead of places he definitely isn't."
"Well, you see, I think he is here, in fact I think he's in there with you, all the time. You saw him more clearly than anyone, and I would like you to be my eyes."
A long silence. The eyepatch stared back at Crawford flatly, contemptuously. Will Graham's other eye lay in shadow, a sunless valley that peered out to the mountain peaks. "Maybe that's true. What's also true is the price of that seeing. I don't think you're blind to what a second look might cost."
"I can protect you."
Graham laughed harshly. "No you can't. There is no safety from the Chesapeake Ripper. There is only remaining out of sight."
"Are you out of sight, Will? I don't think you are. I think you are insightful as no other."
"That's your view, is it?"
"That's my view."
"Well, my view is six inches of sky and the top of the gallows. That would need to change before I could view your offer in a better light. But changing my accommodations won't be taken lightly by my gracious host."
"The demands of the crown somewhat overshadow Chilton's, I think."
"Self-interest casts a heavy shadow."
"I will enlighten him."
Will Graham's chuckle seemed to float out of his cell on the breeze, as though it had made sail and tide rather than be given velocity by Graham's cold mirth. "I guess we'll see then, won't we, Captain?"
"Seeing is believing."
"No. The other way around. You'll need to remember that, if you go chasing Hannibal Lecter. Belief grants sight." Graham turned away and lay back on his bunk, staring out the slit window to that six inches of sky and gallows. Crawford slid the shutter closed.
He turned to leave and stopped, suddenly aware of the sensation of being watched despite the empty corridor. There, across from Graham's cell was another door, as heavily barred and shuttered. Into the frame someone had scratched long strings of text. Not English. Gaelic, perhaps? It put Crawford in mind of wards and thresholds. Superstition adding its own locks. Crawford snorted and walked away.
Beverly Katz was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, booted feet up on the table, cleaning her nails with a knife. The very picture of the insouciant, irreverent privateer. "Was it him," she asked as Crawford walked up and began buckling his sword back on. "Did he give you a bearing?"
"It was him, Ms. Katz, it was him. But no bearing. Just a lot of talk. I think he sees this as a move in some game he plays with the warden of this place." Jack paused. "He knew I was coming. Maybe not me specifically, but someone."
Katz shrugged. "Someone was bound to eventually. He's trying to rattle you."
"No, this was something else. He knows something about why Lecter is sailing again now, after all these years." He adjusted his belt, checked his sword in its sheathe and turned to the stairs.
"Where are you going, sir?" Katz asked.
"To make Graham's move for him."
"Do we really need his information that badly?"
Crawford thought about greasy smoke over the corpse of a town, a sinking ship and the human ruins within. "We really do."