Chapter Text
Digging up a corpse from unconsecrated ground sounded like a disturbing and terrifying experience, but as they walked to the cemetery at noon on a sunny day, Stede thought it really didn’t look that bad.
On their way there, a seagull flew nearby and perched on the branch of a tree beside the road. Stede stopped to look at it, remembering the seagull that had helped them last night.
“Is that you, Mr Buttons?” he asked hesitantly. “Well… even if you’re not, thank you for your help, you, or one of your friends, really saved us last night.”
“Yep, that’s him,” Frenchie said stopping by his side. “He follows us sometimes, I’ve seen him around.”
“How can you tell?” Archie asked confused. “All the seagulls look the same!”
“It’s the eyes,” Frenchie explained convinced. “Those are totally Buttons’ eyes, I would recognize them anywhere.”
They kept going and found the old grave easily, just beside the wall on the side of the cemetery. There were a bunch of rocks piled up around a simple wooden cross and a rotten plank of wood where they could only imagine the name of the unfortunate woman and the date of her death had been written, but any trace of those had disappeared a long time ago.
“Are we sure this is it?” Stede didn’t want to unbury the wrong corpse, he had the feeling that would make their problems even worse.
“That’s what the priest said and I don’t think he would have dared lie to me,” Jim smirked, cracking their knuckles.
“Oh, my goodness! Did you beat a priest, Jim?” Stede said scandalized.
“No need, I just told him I’d help him meet his boss a bit early if he didn’t cooperate,” they replied with fake innocence. “It looks like he wasn’t in a hurry after all.”
Stede felt like he still should chastise Jim at least a bit for that, but when he looked at Izzy for support, he saw that the man was smiling proudly at them. Stede sighed and let it go.
“Ok, crew, listen!” Izzy yelled as he clapped his hands. “We dig her up, we bury her in the cemetery and we go. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, I don’t give a fuck because we’re leaving today and won’t be coming back to this shithole. Now start digging!”
As most of the crew simply stared around, suddenly interested in anything but the grave, Roach and Archie took a shovel each and started digging with enthusiasm as Stede fidgeted nervously nearby.
Surprisingly it didn’t take them long to find the coffin, but Stede realized with sadness that it made sense that nobody had bothered to dig a deep grave for the poor woman. He guessed they were lucky they at least had taken the time to put her inside a coffin and mark the place with a rustic cross.
Then it was time. Roach and Archie removed most of the soil from the lid of the coffin and they got ready to open it. Half of the crew leaned forward with interest, the others, Stede included, took a step backwards with a grimace as they pulled the lid up… and they found nothing there. It was empty, except for a bit of dirt and pieces of rotten wood that had probably come off the coffin.
“Well, that was quite anticlimactic,” Stede said.
“The priest lied to me! I’m going to shake that pendejo until his teeth fall out!” Jim said, ready to go to the church, but before they could take more than a few steps, a sudden voice stopped them.
“Oh, leave the priest alone, he didn’t lie to you.”
They all turned to see an old man holding a big sack and a rake beside the cemetery wall. He was smiling indulgently at them, apparently not upset about their activities at all.
“Oh, hello there,” Stede greeted him nervously. “We were just…”
Stede tried to come up with a good lie, but he was completely blank. What else could they be doing right beside an open grave with the shovels if not digging up a body?
“Oh, I know what you’re doing, it’s all right,” the old man said with a chuckle. “The priest told me about your visit this morning. He was terrified! You won’t find him easily now. I think he has decided to hide somewhere in the church until your ship sails away.”
“But don’t take it out on the poor man,” he added. “That was really her grave, but it’s empty now. Nothing to see there.”
The old man smiled politely and then turned to keep working, slowly but thoroughly raking up the leaves from the ground around the cemetery wall and putting them in the big sack he had been carrying.
That was quite disappointing, Stede thought. Their plan had completely failed right at the start. There was no body and no chance to give her a proper burial and help her rest in peace and hopefully stop dragging people to their deaths.
“You knew it was empty. How did you know that?” Izzy asked then. “What happened exactly?”
The old man turned to look at him warily.
“Her spirit has been haunting this town for many, many years. You aren’t the first ones to try to dig her remains to… What exactly? Burn them? Cover them in salt? Scatter them to the four winds?” he asked, accusingly. “Everybody wants to get rid of her remains instead of letting her rest in peace.”
“It looks to me like she isn’t resting in peace now, though,” Stede pointed out. “And who wouldn’t, if she wasn’t even buried in consecrated land? We came here not to destroy her remains but to give her a Christian burial.”
"You would do that?”
“I think the priest judged her too harshly because of the way she died. She was terrified, she was about to lose the love of her life. For all the priest knew she could have been simply trying to swim to her husband… Absurd idea, maybe, but love makes you do a lot of ridiculous things.”
“That’s what I‘ve always thought,” the old man nodded with sadness.
He left the rake leaning against the wall and limped slowly towards them. When he reached the grave, he stared at it with teary eyes and then sighed.
“Even my father, who was the cemetery’s groundkeeper before me, had to chase away drunks and nosy people now and then. They were trying to get rid of the evil ghost that haunted the town, they said. Idiots,” the old man explained with a sad smile. “I knew the story since I was little, of course. Everybody here knows it, people have to tell their children so they won’t open the door when they hear the knocking and her voice begging for help the nights of full moon.”
Stede felt a shiver run through his spine. It had to be horrible, holing up in your house, hearing those harrowing pleas at your door, knowing you can do nothing but cover your ears and wait for them to fade away.
“So when I took the job of groundkeeper here it was my turn to keep her resting place safe, but soon I realized that people would keep coming back and I was getting old to chase them away with a shovel so I considered the options carefully… and I did what my heart told me it was the right thing to do.”
“You moved the body,” Oluwande guessed.
The old man nodded. “She had already been punished for too long. I thought ‘God loves and forgives’ so I dug her remains up and buried her in a corner of the cemetery, the old part that nobody visits anymore. Who was going to notice?”
Stede smiled at the old man. What a gentle soul, he thought.
“I’ll show you the place if you want,” the groundkeeper offered.
“I’ll like to pay my respects if that’s fine,” Stede said sincerely.
The previous night’s experience had been terrifying, but the woman’s tragic story had touched him truly and he couldn’t blame a poor soul that was trapped in such a horrific memory, repeating it again and again.
Roach and Archie filled quickly the old grave again, leaving it more or less the way they had found it and then everybody followed the old man inside the cemetery.
As he had said, in the far end they found the oldest graves. The people buried there had probably long been forgotten by their descendants and the tombstones, although they were tidy, lacked the usual bouquets of flowers or ornamental elements most of the more recent ones showed.
“Here it is”, the groundkeeper said as they reached a grave with a very small tombstone.
Engraved on it there were only the words ‘Loving wife’ and the letters R.I.P. roughly carved.
“I didn’t know what name to write there. The original grave was damaged way before me or my father were around,” the old man explained. “Nobody remembers now her name because people back then tried very hard to forget. Maybe they were ashamed, maybe they thought that she might eventually fade away if they managed to completely erase her from their minds.”
“After I buried her here she didn’t disappear completely. I thought she might have for a while, but then she came back,” he added. “At least she doesn’t appear very often now. I guess that’s a small relief for the town, but she still hasn’t found peace.”
“So the consecrated ground wasn’t the problem then, not completely,” Stede mused out loud.
They stared at the grave for a while, deep in thought, and then Izzy broke the silence.
“She was trying to reunite with her husband when she died. Maybe-maybe she’s still trying,” Izzy suggested.
“And he isn’t buried here, isn’t he?” Stede remembered that part of the story.
“No other body got to the shore after the sinking, only hers,” the old man confirmed.
“So since her husband rests in the sea… Then she should rest there as well!” Stede concluded excitedly.
He was sure that had to be the problem and he knew how to fix it.
“Crew, it’s time for a burial at sea!”
----
When they finished digging up the second grave, they were surprised to find a wooden box buried there instead of a coffin.
“There wasn’t much left when I opened the original grave, everything fitted in a small box. For an old man like me it was easier to handle this way,” the groundkeeper shrugged apologetically.
When they opened it briefly, they saw a bunch of human bones and a skull wrapped in a piece of fabric that despite the dirt and the decay Stede immediately recognized.
“That’s the white shawl she was wearing!”
“That was her wedding shawl, if the stories are true,” the old man explained. “She wore it every day as she waited by the sea for her husband to return. At least they did one kind thing by burying her with it.”
They took the wooden box carefully and put it inside a sack to hide it. Then they carried the box and the small tombstone in a wheelbarrow the groundkeeper lent them to the Revenge and when they reached the ship Stede offered the old man, who had followed them (“I just want to stay with her until you leave, to pay my respects one last time.”), tea and some biscuits while Izzy and the crew got everything ready to leave.
“We’ll be respectful, I swear on my life. We’ll give her a proper burial at sea and she’ll finally rest with her husband,” Stede promised him.
After a while, when everything was ready for them to sail out to sea, the groundkeeper put his hand over the wooden box and whispered a prayer for her soul one last time. Then thanked them all for their kindness before leaving to go back to his home.
“I hope you’re right and that she finally finds some peace. Good luck in your travels, gentlemen,” he said as he got off the ship.
They sailed slowly away and as they got closer to the rocks under the cliff, or at least as close as they could get without being in danger, they got ready to bury her in the sea.
They opened the box one last time and they put inside a few things to accompany her on her last journey.
Frenchie left a few crystals that he said would help her find her way in the dark.
Jim left a cross that they had carried with them for a while.
Stede left a small bouquet of wild flowers he had picked up on his way back to the ship.
Roach left a sprig of rosemary to help her on her way to the Other Side.
Wee John found a lovely white fabric to wrap around the box, but before closing it and doing that, Izzy brought the small tombstone to leave it inside.
“It will add enough weight to sink it,” he explained, matter-of-factly.
But Stede had seen him working on the stone for quite a while and when Izzy put it inside, Stede saw that there were some words added to the stone. It was a different writing and the carving was a bit choppy, but they could be easily read.
“Fierce and Loving wife,” Stede read out loud, tearing up a bit.
They tied the box with a thick rope and wrapped the white fabric around it. Then Stede, as captain of the ship, said the last parting words and they let the box fall overboard.
It sank quickly, disappearing into the sea forever.
---
Stede took a look through the window of his cabin and sighed. He was wondering if what they had done would work, if the woman would finally find peace when Izzy’s voice startled him.
“We did the right thing, Stede. She’ll find her way now.”
Izzy had stayed in his bed for longer than usual that night and Stede had foolishly started to hope he might not leave, but as the words left his mouth Izzy started pushing himself up slowly to sit down on the side of the bed.
Stede knew this part well. Izzy would get dressed without saying a word, would strap on his unicorn leg carefully and then he would say ‘Good night, Stede’ and walk out the door.
“She was fierce, that was true,” Stede said, looking at him with a sad smile. “She wanted to get to her husband and not even death stopped her.”
“That’s damn right,” Izzy agreed. “She didn’t crumble and give up when those assholes refused to help her. She kept trying to get help for his husband and kept trying to reach him, no matter what.”
She was dead and she was still trying to reach him, Stede thought. She was stubborn and she was in love and that was a powerful combination.
Stede remembered then the image of Izzy that night, trying to reach him, falling and crawling on the sand and still standing up again. That moment had been engraved on his memory, but unlike other images from that terrible night that still made him shiver, that one memory made him feel safe and warm inside.
“You didn’t leave me when I was been obtuse and wanted to wander around on my own,” Stede said, softly. “You could have just turned around and gone back to the house…”
“You were drunk. I was worried you might end up falling asleep on the sand and get washed away by the tide,” Izzy huffed, looking at him. “I wasn’t expecting a ghost would try to drown you.”
“I know you would have come after me even if you knew that,” Stede said, firmly.
Izzy looked away, suddenly nervous, and then reached for his shirt.
Stede was tempted to do as he usually did when things got… softer, between them and Izzy seemed to be uncomfortable. Stede would simply stop talking, not wanting to make things awkward. He could simply wish the first mate a good night and watch him leave and let the usual pang of regret eventually disappear when he fell asleep.
“There’s no need for you to go now that the crew knows,” Stede said instead.
Izzy looked at him with an expression of surprise, but there was also something else there showing on his face. Stede thought it looked like hope, even a bit like love too, and it made him feel brave.
“I’ll like you to stay,” he said without hesitation. “I miss you when you’re not here in the morning. I’ve hoped you’d want to stay with me one day.”
Izzy’s face did something complicated, as if five different emotions were trying to show on his face at the same time and in the end, he simply stared at Stede with wide, shiny eyes and an open and vulnerable expression on his face that Stede had never seen before.
“Really?” Izzy asked hoarsely.
“Yes.” Just one word, but Stede tried to put all his conviction and feelings behind it. “Would you stay, love?”
Izzy’s breath hitched again and this time Stede understood why. He smiled as the first mate dropped the shirt and slowly lay down again to curl up against him. Stede put his arm around him and indulging himself, he leaned to kiss him lightly on forehead.
Stede fell asleep shortly after and had a night with no nightmares and when he opened his eyes in the morning, he saw Izzy still in his arms, sleeping soundly under the soft morning light.