01x02 - The Covenant

[bunniefuu]

Previously on Crossbones...

This instrument would allow a ship to calculate its precise location, while at sea.

Your assignment is to eliminate the pirate, Blackbeard.

Blackbeard lives and he will come for this chronometer.

What are you doing?

And you are?

Thomas Lowe, physician.

Allow me to introduce myself.

I'm commodore of this island.

That's Thomas Lowe, the surgeon.

He and the commodore seem fast friends.

I get headaches.

And are these headaches accompanied by visions?

I have to k*ll Blackbeard tonight.

Edward!

What is it? What's happening?

Pirates conspiring with the Spanish.

Where are you going?

To save Blackbeard.

Stop. I can save him.

Either the fellow saved my life or he tried to end it.

Either way, he fought like a dog to save me.

Which makes him what?

I haven't decided yet.

[Ticking]

You have succeeded, James.

You rebuilt the chronometer.

Outstanding.

[Dramatic music]

Take the windward.

Hoist the port line!

You cannot trust Valentine.

You should think again.

If I can't trust him, then who can I trust?

Oh, you found it, then?

Not yet, but I shall.

So this is from memory?

It is.

You're very good.

I thank you kindly.

So what is it, the thing?

A vessel of some kind, except that it seems to travel underwater.

On purpose?

So it would seem.

What's the point of that?

Secrecy?

Surprise?

And who's this?

A spaniard.

What's a spaniard doing here?

Conspiring with pirates.

To what end, though?

To what end, indeed.

Go and be useful.

Hmm.

I'm pleased to see you found suitable accommodation.

Oh, I found a... a hovel.

As I say, suitable.

And what are the terms of your tenancy?

I'm to serve as this island's surgeon or... suffer impossible torments and degradations and so forth.

Indeed.

So you'll be needing a bed, medical instruments, a chamber pot, a wash basin, not to mention a roof, and, well, everything.

I have no money.

You can repay me with services rendered.

Oh, and what service could I possibly render to compensate such generosity?

I'd like you to help my husband.

He's in so much pain.

I can make no guarantees.

I thought this island was a secret known only to a few.

And so it is.

I have to go, but you'll see him...Today?

I have your word?

You do.

Mr. Fletch, spyglass.

♪ ♪

[Men shouting indistinctly]

Gentlemen, with the commodore's apologies for the hoods...

Welcome to Santa Campana.

Ladies, make ready.

Limber up.

Where's Maggie?

I-I just... I don't have any money, so...

Morning, Fletchy.

Miss.

How do you feel about earning yourself some easy coin?

What would I have to do?

This is a sponge.

Do you know where to find these?

Because the girls and I have a most urgent need of them.

Good boy.

[Men laughing and conversing]

I'll take you to see the commodore.

Sam.

Well...

It's a pleasure to finally be here.

Finally see the fabled unknown kingdom.

Of course, I've known him since he was just a man.

So why am I here, ed, so despised and so mistrusted?

You are far from that, Sam.

Then why was my crew hooded like saps at the gallows?

Because I don't give out maps to what I need hid.

[Chuckling]

The world's only so big, Ed. Hmm?

They'll find you eventually.

Which brings me to address the intent of this happy rendezvous.

It so transpires that an item of prodigious value has fallen into my possession, a chronometer which grants the ability to calculate longitude at sea.

I had been led to believe something like this was impossible.

Well, it seems otherwise.

How did you come by it?

By doing what nature dictates... theft and m*rder and the like.

What do you intend to do with it?

Well, there's the rub, Sam.

Possessing it puts me in a curious circumstance.

It's worth a king's ransom.

Empires will supplicate themselves for its secret.

And yet...

And yet?

Owning it leaves me disadvantaged.

Knowing it to be lost, William Jagger will intensify his efforts to seek me out, and I can't bear the cost of that, secrecy being my greatest defense.

So as I said, what do you intend?

It's yours.

Jagger will pay a fortune to recover it, enough for a fellow and his crew to live like Caesar until the good lord shepherds them home.

That's exceedingly generous, Ed.

How does it benefit you?

'Cause obviously it must, being who you are.

Jagger will be recalled to England a famous man, the man who retrieved the longitude chronometer from blood-handed pirates.

Hip hip, hooray.

So you thieved it in order to return it, in order to prove that you don't exist, huh?

If I don't exist, they'll stop looking.

[Chuckles]

It's very sharp, Ed.

So...

What are you asking for it?

A Hellburner or two.

[Wood creaking]

Some trifle to stick in the bank until we find use for it.

No.

I'm sorry?

If this were to fall into English hands, it frees them from the shipping lanes.

But having them in the shipping lanes is what makes our life possible, Ed.

Makes them easy prey. Fish in a barrel.

This thing means the death of everything that we are.

So, no, I'm not gonna sell it to the English, not even to make my fortune, Ed, not at any price.

I came here for the love of you, Ed.

And that love now compels me to say, don't be absurd.

Destroy this device.

Let the English mourn its loss.

And let us just go on as we were.

And if I choose otherwise?

Then may God help you, Ed.

So your legend may have eclipsed the mortal man of your memory, but you can rest assured, it hasn't eclipsed him in mine.

Ed.

Ma'am.

Oh!

[Gasps and shouts]

He's so good as declared himself my enemy.

I can't countenance that.

But I can't k*ll him neither.

It would confirm every word he spoke against me, make me an enemy of my own kind.

I'd have mutiny on my hands.

Yet, if I let him go, he'll betray us, and this island will be no more.

Then forgive him.

It's no easy thing for me to humble myself.

Do you wish to rise?

Mm.

Begin by descending.

You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds.

Lay first the foundation of humility.

I swear to God, if you'd only lay with me now, I'd give you... what?

Whatever there is to give.

The world.

The skies and the sea.

The moon.

But I'm only human.

And when your passion was spent, you'd see that and lament such reckless generosity.

[Indistinct conversations]

Mr. Eisengrim, good day.

Homicide.

I'm sorry?

I know you took him from me.

Alain.

And how did I work this miracle, since I was locked in a room all night, hmm?

He was mine, and I loved him.

So know, soon enough, I'll have to m*rder you for that.

I'm sorry for your misfortune, Sir.

But whoever took him from you, it wasn't I.

They'll hang Mr. Lowe for it.

Oh, clever lad.

Come in.

Come on, girls. Curtain up.

Uh, what are they for?

Bastard thwarting.

♪ Jacobites by name ♪
♪ lend an ear, lend an ear ♪
♪ ye Jacobites by name ♪
♪ your faults I will proclaim ♪
♪ your doctrines I maun blame, we will hear ♪

[All cheering]

So...

How long have you known the commodore?

The commodore?

Since he was a skinny little Bristol lad.

Eddie Finch... or Fitch or Teach.

A fellow never could be sure.

Names just seem to attach themselves to him.

[Chuckles]

It was a radiant mind that devised this.

So I am given to understand.

An intellect like that is a great loss to the world.

Think what he could have achieved, the good he could have done, if only he had lived.

You'd be Thomas Lowe, I presume, the surgeon?

I am.

I see the commodore is keeping you well-employed.

He is.

To what end, I wonder.

He collects timepieces.

To what do I owe this pleasure?

Your wife requested that I stop by and... what?

Work a miracle?

Wave your healing hands, call upon the love of God, and make me whole again?

Well, yes, that.

Or ease your suffering a little.

I'm afraid I'm a lost cause where that's concerned.

Having fought for a lost cause doesn't make you a lost cause.

Do you know me, then?

By reputation.

James Balfour, Earl of the House of Kinross, Jacobite and rebel.

You believed the wrong king had been placed on the throne.

Well, it's God who chooses the king, not parliament, even if the king is an ass.

You were betrayed and tortured but wouldn't yield.

You withstood all they could inflict and never gave a single name.

You're a hero among those who profess your cause.

And do you profess it?

I do not.

We're enemies, then.

Our masters were, but that was in another country far from here.

Do I know you?

No.

And it's Lowe, is it?

Thomas Lowe.

Indeed.

Do you have any sensation?

Pain.

Expressed on a ratio of one to ten.

Seven, on a well-met day.

And on a less fortunate day?

[Sighs]

Are you able to stand?

At times.

Without support?

No.

The muscle tissue is rather atrophied.

There may be ways to alleviate the distress.

My current regime consists of rum and opium.

How much opium?

Enough to make the pain of abstract interest.

How often?

As required.

Opium can have injurious consequences.

Taken in excess, it can rob a man of... vigor.

Indeed.

But what's a man to do?

Well, some find prayer to be of assistance.

When I was on the rack, I called upon God to deliver me.

I can only conclude that I prayed to an empty sky.

And yet, here you are, delivered.

Far from a home I'll never see again, alive, inside a shattered carcass with a wife to whom I can't be a husband.

Then perhaps when you prayed, the devil was listening.

[Chuckles]

Perhaps.

What can be done?

Nothing in my power.

But much that's in yours.

Oh, how so?

He venerates you.

And I him, more than you can know.

Well, it's not I who needs to know.

He doesn't need your compassion.

He doesn't need your pity.

He needs the love of his wife.

He was in Newgate prison.

Do you have the least idea what it's like in there?

I have a notion, yes.

Well, I wasn't going to let him decay in there, so I bribed.

I bribed, and I conspired.

I lied. I stole.

I paid men to break him free and sail us away, and in the process, I gave up everything... family, friends, country, an entire life.

So don't you talk to me of his wife's love.

You asked me what could be done to alleviate his suffering, and I've told you, to the best of my ability.

I therefore consider my debt to you repaid in full.

He puts down the woman, and he picks up the gold, and he takes off across the field like the devil himself were after him.

[All laughing]

Of course, there was poor old Izzy Hands... time to stop, Sam.

Stop what, Charlie?

I've heard this story told a hundred times or more in the commodore's presence.

Dear God, I've heard him tell it himself more times than was decent.

Ignore him for a grumpard.

What's the tale of Izzy Hands?

[All laughing]

Here's the tale.

Old Teach... he's about to sh**t a helmsman for some minor misdemeanor.

And just as he pulls the trigger, the ship veers beneath his feet and...

[Imitates g*nsh*t]

[Laughing]

He sh**t his first mate through the knee instead.

Dear old white-haired Izzy Hands, loyal as the day is long.

And when Izzy has the gall to complain about this... goes, "oh, it does hurt a man. Me knee's sh*t, captain."

Old Teach, he gets angry at this and... [Imitates g*nsh*t] sh**t him straight through the brain.

And when someone speaks up to bemoan the injustice of this... in fact, I think it might have been you, Charlie.

Was it you?

It was.

What did he say?

What did he say, Captain Teach, when you complained about him sh**ting poor old Izzy Hands through the brain, absent of all reason?

What he said doesn't matter.

Of course it matters, Charlie.

What's a tale without an end?

No, this is the way of it.

Old Teach, he rears up, and he snarls his mad dog snarl... [Spits] And he spits on the deck, and he says, "well, if I hadn't sh*t him dead, they'd have forgotten under whom they were serving."

[All laughing]

Well, that's the story as they tell it, Sam.

I'll give you that.

All right, you got a different account of it, Charlie?

Have you, hmm?

'Cause he always knew the power of a good tale, did Captain Teach.

Oh, I'm sorry... your commodore.

And he told such tales about himself until there were others to do the telling for him.

And they're telling the tales still, of Blackbeard's ghost and of a secret paradise where the pleasure is unbounded and virgins grow from the trees like catkins.

[All laughing]

You don't like it?

Well, I must confess, ed, I, um...

I did picture it bigger.

Would you insult me in my home, Sam?

Before my crew?

What is this home, Ed?

Hmm? What's its nature?

I mean, do these people have any idea what plans you have for them?

This will be a republic after the Athenian model where the power of the state...

The state?

Arises from the consent of the governed.

Who will be king in this republic?

There'll be no kings.

Of course, who needs them, huh?

Who needs a king when you've got Blackbeard?

We don't use that name here.

Commodore Teach, then.

But remind me, Ed, who was it exactly who elected you commodore, eh?

If I remember rightly, it was, um...

It was you, yourself.

He woke up one morning, and he thought, "oh, commodore."

That has a merry ring to it."

And so it does.

So what's to stop you waking up one morning in this new republic of yours and deciding that king has a merry ring to it?

Or emperor?

Was it too much to ask, Sam, that you have faith in me one last time?

Your ambition will k*ll us all, commodore.

Ladies, leave us now.

I must speak to Valentine's men.

[Eerie whispering]

[Murmuring quietly]

I won't see you.

I won't see you.

I won't see you.

[Distant crunching]

Never doubt me.

Never.

Boys, I'm unarmed.

Permit me a blade, at least.

Did Sam send you?

[Laughter and conversation]

[Dramatic music]

[Grunts]

[Grunts]

Clang!

[Bell dinging]

Hey!

[Grunts]

Hah!

[Bell dinging]

Shut it!

Eyes in the boat!

[Bell dinging]

[Indistinct shouting]

Yah!

[Grunts]

[Bell dinging]

Who sent you?

[Grunts]

Who sent you?

Give me the name.

[Grunts]

Ow!

[Grunts]

Who sent you?

Ugh!

Say the name.

The name.

I want the name.

Say it.

Give me a name.

Give me a name.

[Gagging]

I need a name.

Come on, before I let you go, two words, one name.

Say it. Say it.

Say it.

Where's Lowe?

Save this man.

Commodore, your own wounds... will wait!

Damn your eyes!

I'm not sure it can be done.

Then for God's sake, what worth are you?

Buy him a minute, one minute.

Say it.

Don't go to your God unconfessed.

Say the name. Say it.

Come on. That's a good boy.

Say the name. Say the name.

Say it.

Say...It.

Dog!

Where were you?

I could've been no faster.

Slow as a two-balled bitch!

Find who did this!

Find who sent these men!

You drove him to do this.

I did no such thing.

And furthermore, it wasn't Sam Valentine did this.

Come, now. Show some wit.

Sam's too wily to try something so transparent.

He's been plotted against.

By whom?

Finnegan, the first mate.

To what purpose?

His ship, the Covenant.

Finnegan's too loyal.

It's the loyal ones you must fear most.

Not cunning enough.

It's Lowe.

What is your preoccupation with that man's depravity?

He sought to k*ll you.

He saved my skin.

For reasons of his own.

What reasons?

I'm all at sea.

Please, spell it out to me as to an ass.

He's no motive to m*rder me.

He's every motive.

Such as?

Englishness.

Fine.

Do, please, take him, if it makes you merry.

But mind, keep the captain and Finnegan separate.

Sam has seen his final sunrise.

Where is he?

Who?

I'm not responsible for the as*ault on the commodore, but I'm compelled to accept that not everyone here will believe me.

I therefore surrender myself to the rule of law, as this nation chooses to exercise it.

[Grunts]

Come on.

Come on!

Forgive me, but I have to ask...

Did you pay some of my boys to m*rder the commodore?

I don't have the money.

Did you?

No.

I rather wish I had now.

They're going to k*ll you for it all the same.

Oh, do I seem afraid to you well, if you're not, you don't know the commodore half as well as you claim.

Oh, I know him very well.

I loved him.

Albeit he's the most evil man I ever met.

Evil's a strong word.

Oh, not where Eddie's concerned.

I've seen him burn boats full of men just for the fun of it.

He'd laugh as they d*ed.

I can help you.

Oh, how?

Slow hanging is a cruel death.

It could take days to die.

I can make it easier.

[Laughs]

That's what you have to bargain with, k*lling me nicely?

It's a damn sight more than anyone else can offer.

What do I give you in return?

Intelligence.

Such as?

What's a Hellburner, and why does the commodore want one?

Well, you do have keen ears, Sir.

I have a keen interest.

It's come to a pretty pass, hasn't it, when pirates and The Crown fears a man equally?

The Crown?

Your questions, your keen interest.

Don't fret about it.

A mutual enemy often makes for a common cause.

But whatever your motive is, I only ask one thing.

And what's that?

You do it clean, and you do it quick.

So you want to know what a Hellburner is, yeah?

Well, a Hellburner is an empty ship.

It's packed to the gunwales with gunpowder, rocks, iron shards, set to detonate with a timing mechanism.

It's, um, a w*apon of indiscriminate destruction.

What does the commodore want with such a thing?

What he always wants, I would imagine.

Slaughter for the sheer exhilaration of it.

And his objective?

Oh, I can't tell you that.

Maybe a bridge, town, port perhaps.

Whatever the target is, you can rest assured, innocents will die by the score.

Tom Lowe is innocent, when it comes to this charge anyway.

And what brings you to elect yourself his advocate?

The fact that he spent much of the day in my bed.

Well, we're indebted to your openness, as is he, no doubt.

Well, it's my obligation, however discommodious that obligation may be.

Your obligation to whom?

To you, commodore.

If you hang the wrong man, the guilty man goes unpunished, and you hold justice in too much esteem to permit that.

Hmm.

Your promise, Sir!

I hold you to it!

[Crowd shouting]

Traitor!

Traitor!

[Laughter]

[Whistles]

[Shouting fades]

Sam?

This is Sam Valentine.

He sought to have you m*rder*d, Sir.

The man who sought that was a white-livered coward, which this man most assuredly is not.

If Sam wanted me departed, he'd draw his sword to my face, and I'd be pleased to see another sunrise.

So cut him free, smartly.

Now, please!

Sir, a jury has found it.

In my absence?

It's the law.

Look at me!

Who am I?

Whose island is this?

Dogs?

b*tches?

Look at me.

Who is it can tell me who I am?

I can't stop them, Sam.

It's not in my gift.

I'm not their king.

[Crowd cheering]

He was with me.

Lucky old innocent you.

[g*nsh*t]

A sh*t!

From where?

Take cover!

Look about!

That'll be one of your loyal boys, John, putting Sam out of his misery.

Good lad. Good on him.

Sam nourished a certain envy for you, commodore, but never any ill will.

I never saw this in him. I swear.

And it wasn't you, then, sent those fellows to m*rder me?

Never, Sir.

Which leaves but one question outstanding.

Will you do as I asked Sam to do?

Sell this to William Jagger in Jamaica?

If it will make amends for what happened here today.

It will, and I thank you for it, Captain Finnegan.

All that to get what you wanted?

Oh, if I'd done him myself, I might have come across as disagreeable.

And those men, those assassins... you were unarmed?

It had to look compelling.

They could have k*lled you.

You imagine so?

Truthfully?

Don't get yourself into harm's way again.

What do you mean "again"?

I never did it once.

So how was it?

Well, I told them my girls and I were prisoners here, and if they could only set us free, well, we would be ever so grateful.

Commodore, if I may ask...

You may not.

There are legends, and then there are secrets, Rose.

Do you know the difference?

Yes, I believe so.

Good.

Because if you mistake this secret for a legend, I'll have to make you part of it.

Where's Fletch?

I sent him on his way.

Why?

I wanted to thank you for talking to James.

Oh.

It's just that...

It can be exhausting.

I know.

I'm glad you didn't hang.

Not half as glad as I.

[Laughs]