Author: Jillybean

Elizabeth grunted in pain as the agents of East India Trading Company shoved her into the tiny cell. The step from the door to the floor was at least two feet and she fell, her hands reaching out to stall her progress. Grazing the heels of her palms on the rough straw and flagstones, she landed on the soaking floor, her body shaking with the cold that emanated up from the stones.

And she shook from fear too. Just a little bit.

“Get your hands off me!” James’ voice echoed into her cell as the guards slammed the iron door closed. The rest was muffled but she heard a scream of pain.

And then silence.

Her own rapid breathing matched her thudding heart, all she could hear. And she couldn’t see. The windowless cell was dark, cold and silent. She raised trembling hands up to hug herself before hissing with pain, the fresh brand on her forearm stretching tighter.

Tears stung her eyes and she cried, openly. Sitting on a damp, horrid patch of straw, she waited for something, anything.

She waited.

And nothing happened.

She realised, belatedly, that her tears had run their course and her face felt dry and scratchy from the evaporated moisture. Running the cuff of a frayed sleeve over her cheeks, she glanced around. However long she’d been sitting here, her eyes had not adjusted to the dark well.

“Jack?” she called tremulously, wincing at her voice. “Jack!”

Nothing. He couldn’t hear her, she realised. Maybe he’d been calling her.

“Weigh hey, and up she rises,” Elizabeth began, her voice still shaking but anything preferable to the silence. “Weigh hey, and up she rises. Weigh hey, and up she rises, early in the morning.” Her voice trailed off into nothing and she heard a peculiar tapping noise. One the periphery of her vision something black moved against something not so black and she whimpered. “What should we do with the drunken sailor? What should we do with the drunken sailor? What should we do with the drunken sailor? Early in the morning.”

And then, from down in the straw, an echoing voice replied, “stick him in the longboat till he’s sober.”

“Jack!” she gasped, staring around at her cell.

“On the ground love, there’s a grate somewhere. It lets the noise through.”

She followed his echoing voice, her hand moving along the damp flagstones until she found the small grate in question.

“Is everyone okay?” James Norrington asked, his voice sounding odd when bouncing off the pipes.

Two or three voices tried to reply at once and it was Jack who silenced them. “One at a time. I’m fine, if anyone cares.”

“Me too,” Elizabeth croaked, lying flat beside the grate. “I’m fine too.”

“As am I,” James said. “Though they branded me, if you can believe it.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Me too.”

“They did?” Jack said, at the same time Barbossa grunted “one at a time, remember.”

“They did,” Elizabeth confirmed. “They took me aside. I didn’t see Beckett, but I did see an old friend of my father’s.” She shivered, wishing she could lie down on something dry. “They asked me a few questions, where was the Pearl, did I know the location of the compass,” she trailed off. “And then they branded me.”

“Bastards,” James said coolly.

“Indeed,” Barbossa agreed. “Branding a woman.”

“Branding a pirate,” Jack corrected them and Elizabeth felt a light flutter in her stomach. A little warmth returned to her when she knew that Jack thought she was strong. She would not prove him wrong. “Elizabeth, are you still there?”

“Yes,” she said, running her fingers over the grate.

“How are you?” Jack asked quietly, his voice gentle in her ears.

She half closed her eyes and felt the sharp edge of the stone disappearing into the pipes. “I’m okay. Sore.”

“The brand?”

“Yes,” she said. Moving her arm, she could make out the shape of the slender limb, but not the aching wound.

“Don’t touch it,” Jack advised. “It may get infected in this damned cell.”

Elizabeth said nothing, her lip trembling as she heard the noises of her companions moving about. “Are we all in different cells?”

“I saw where you are. Jack’s two cells to your right, Elizabeth. James is directly opposite you.” Barbossa paused. “I am two cells to the left of him.”

“Keeping us well separated then,” Jack mused.

“We’d be best not to let them catch us talking like this. They probably don’t know we can,” James said. “These cells are meant to break us. Mine is a bare six paces wide and eight long. The only light is from the bars in the iron door, there’s a torch in the hallway.”

“I hate to interrupt,” Barbossa said, “but has anyone revealed the location of the Pearl?”

“No,” Elizabeth said quickly.

“If I had, would I be here?” James asked.

“No one has, or we’d all be dead,” Jack told them. “And I’ve burned the compass. They won’t find her.”

Elizabeth shuddered. She stared around at the cell, just able to make out the corners and the gold light coming in from the tiny gaps between the bars on the door. “It’s cold in England,” she murmured. “I’d forgotten that.”

“It’s always cold in England,” Jack agreed.

“Come, come now,” Barbossa scolded them. “That’s not so.”

“Hector,” Jack said reprovingly, earning a chuckle from James at the use of the Christian name. “It is always cold in England.”

Her sides were sore from lying on the stone so Elizabeth stood, shuffling around to find the damp straw. She dragged it over to the grate and laid it down, hoping that it was not piss, blood and other awful fluids that made the straw wet and limp. She lay on top of it, curling up to keep herself warm.

“When I was little,” Barbossa continued, “I must have been about seven, come to think on it. I will forever remember one summer. You would have liked it, Miss Swann, the sun never stopped shining and the ground was so parched that it cracked under the hooves of the master’s horses. I remember how their heavy treads would break the fine layer of dust on the surface of the road and send spirals of dirt into the air, covering my sisters’ smocks.”

“You had sisters?” Jack asked.

Elizabeth imagined him lazing on his back, staring up at a black ceiling, listening to the story Hector wove. Her hands found the stinging burn on her arm and she flinched away from her own touch.

“Three,” Barbossa said, his voice echoing through the pipes. “Why do you ask?”

“I always envisioned you as a lonely child,” Jack said. “Spawned from the devil himself and some two bit whore in Tortuga.”

“Not so. I was born here in England.”

“Really?” James’ voice sounded tired and slightly further away. “I must interject to say that I think one or another of yourselves has the rest of my straw. I appear to have a paltry amount here.” Jack’s laughter echoed up in return, a warm sound that Elizabeth likened to the waves crashing against sand on a warm little island.

“It was when my sister Lucille was afflicted by a fever that long, hot summer that I was sent to the docks. I walked along that road, far from my father’s farm, my bare feet kicking up dust in my wake and the sun cracking my shoulders with its ire. I was to fetch the physician, a man who had once been a surgeon upon a ship. He was known to my father’s master but not to me. I was told I would recognise him for being the only man drunk at such an hour.” Barbossa chuckled, the dry paper noise bringing Elizabeth back to a cabin on the Pearl, a cold knife in her hands and fear in her throat.

“I imagine there were plenty men drunk at the docks,” James said speculatively.

“Indeed there was, former Commodore. And I could not find the surgeon. I searched the taverns, me a spit of a boy, and I searched the alleys. For Lucille, the babe that I’d held in my arms bare minutes after her birth, I would have searched the world. I needed to find that man.”

“And did you?” James asked.

“No.” Barbossa sounded heavy. “I happened upon a man who had a small sloop. He said to me that he knew the surgeon and would send the surgeon to my family if I agreed to service upon his ship. He was in need of a cabin boy.”

“Oh, Barbossa,” Elizabeth said softly.

“Wait, lass, my tale is not finished,” Barbossa said, the wicked charm returning to his voice. “A passerby heard the offer and promptly drew a sword on this man. ‘For shame!’ he proclaimed. ‘For shame, lying to a boy like that. You’ll run to find the surgeon yourself and I’ll wait here to find out that you have’. And fair enough the man did as he was told by my new rescuer. I saw the surgeon take off with a horse, cutting a crooked path through the streets. But the price was the same.”

James laughed, a cutting noise that reminded Elizabeth most of nights on the Black Pearl, drinking rum and listening to Cotton’s fiddle and Gibb’s tin whistle. Nights where she’d dance arm in arm with Ragetti and Jack would demand a dance from James, on penalty of keelhauling should their newest crewmember refuse.

Elizabeth drew a shaky breath and stared up at ceiling, a ceiling she could not see. Something squeaked in the far corner of the cell. “I fear I shall go mad in here,” she whispered. “Haunted by memories and forgetting the living.”

“You won’t,” Jack said harshly, his words so pronounced that she closed her eyes. “Elizabeth you will not go mad.”

“Listen to him, lass,” Barbossa said, his dry words reassuring her somehow. “He knows what he’s saying. And you, former Commodore.”

A sigh travelled up the pipes. “I admit it’s not the nicest of accommodations,” James said. “Did you go on to be a pirate, Hector?”

“After a fashion,” Barbossa agreed. “But now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long, hard day. I have new scars to heal. Miss Swan, that is a fine singing voice you have. Would you care to sing me a lullaby?”

Still shaking, Elizabeth reached to the grate, her fingers brushing the grooves. “What would you have me sing?”

“What strikes your fancy?”

“Elizabeth,” Jack said quietly. “Sing that one of your mother’s.”

Drawing breath, Elizabeth closed her eyes and clasped her hands over her belly. “I will go, I will go

When the fighting is over

To the land of Macleod

That I left to be a soldier

I will go, I will go.

I’ve a buckle on my belt

A sword in my scabbard

A red coat on my back

And a shilling in my pocket

I will go, I will go.

When we came back to the glen

The winter was turning

Our boots lay in the snow

And our houses were burning

I will go, I will go.”

“Truly beautiful,” Barbossa said softly. “Now I recommend sleep for us all. They will ask more questions in the morning.”