Parlait

The last two days had been busy ones, and her back still ached, but it was forgotten as The Reproach skipped along over the waves. Elizabeth looked to the Captain, who clearly was not giving up. They’d followed this trade vessel for three days, and chased her for near three hours now. Barbossa kept his masters in the rigging the whole time, tacking the ship at each of the turns the trader made, the man at her helm obviously an experienced captain in his own right. But The Reproach was gaining on her, the distance closing between them, Barbossa ordering The Reproach’s sails wet down so that they captured and held more of the wind, and the big ship suddenly heaved forward at an astonishing fifteen knots. Their prey, rightfully not expecting that a ship of The Reproach’s size, draft and with a double deck of guns, could move so fast, then made a fatal error, and tacked to port, right into Barbossa’s path. Elizabeth saw him smile, his overly pleased smile, and she was then impressed that the Captain knew so much of pursuits as to predict the outcome of this one.

The vessels sat broadside to broadside now, the trader’s few swivel guns firing away, some of the shot striking and splintering The Reproach’s sides, but barely felt. There were numerous uniformed crew on board, the screams of passengers below decks, and what appeared to be some hodge-podge of a defense force, a double row of men with muskets, taking aim. The trader looked to be more of a challenge all the way around than most of their quarry, but Barbossa was undaunted, his usual cool, smug, unnerving leer on his face. Elizabeth again looked to the Captain, drew her sword, and prepared to follow him, as she always did. They’d win this; she knew they would, because Barbossa knew they would.

Within twenty minutes the trader was quieted, Barbossa shouting orders to his crew even as he fought with the ship’s captain, steel meeting steel, Elizabeth there to guard Barbossa’s back, unable to resist taking a moment to watch him, the fluidity and the flash he exuded as a swordsman, the strength of each of his blows and slashes, the lightness of his footwork, despite how the deck creaked beneath his heavy boots. The Captain’s height made each of his thrusts and lunges the most elegantly deadly thing to behold, the strength behind his blade driving it deep through his adversary, until his sword peeked out through the back of the other captain’s coat. Elizabeth smiled in some grim delight; there was no match for the Captain.

Barbossa slid the deadman off of his sword, giving a quick, sideways, jerk to shake off the blood, and ordered one party of his crew to the hold, and another to the other compartments of the trader, knowing well that there were passengers aboard, no doubt carrying their own goods. He looked to Elizabeth, who still stood at the ready. “Go with them,” he told her. “Be bringin’ me any women and children, there be an island to the west, we’ll put them adrift.”

Elizabeth smiled. The only redeemable feat of any of their raids, and Barbossa always designated it to her. “Thank you, Captain.” Her tone was all business, as it always was when they raided a ship, and she gave him a nod of her head, something just short of a salute, and quickly disappeared below deck.

She’d been unusually tired that day, but thought nothing of it; the excitement of the chase and now the raid had blotted out her exhaustion. At least it had until she reached the bottom of the ladder like stairs of the trader vessel. There was still one more set of stairs to climb down to reach the passenger compartments, but her back ache suddenly exploded into a bursting, hollowing feeling from within, and she couldn’t move. Pain, it clouted suddenly and fiercely, like a giant hand grabbing her abdomen and twisting hard, trying to rip her apart, or rip something out of her. Oh no! No! She’d felt this once before, but not as soon as this.

Waves of agony fell over her and she drifted back to a humid night in Tortuga not quite a year ago. She and Jack had argued for nearly a month since he’d learned of her forth coming baby, Elizabeth refusing to do away with it as Jack suggested, and Jack so utterly afraid of having someone be utterly dependent upon him, sailed The Pearl to Tortuga, and escorted Elizabeth off. He’d promised he’d return, in a few months, said that she needed time to sort things out, told her he was confident she’d make the right decision. She knew he hoped that meant she’d have the child removed, like it were a splinter, or a cancer. But Elizabeth couldn’t do it in; the baby would come in less than three months according to the midwife she’d seen upon Tortuga’s shore. But Elizabeth was alone, abandoned, and she worked when she could in Tortuga’s taverns, begged on the streets when she needed to, slept in kitchens and swore that when Jack returned to Tortuga, she’d meet him at the dock with her child in her arms, whether it meant he’d take them back, or not.

She’d been on her hands and knees scrubbing the tavern floor when it happened; a painful contraction that spanned her bulging belly, causing her to cry out and clutch at her abdomen. Was the child coming so soon? But, it was too soon, over two months too soon! The midwife, she needed help desperately, staggered to her feet, the pain doubling her over as she stumbled down the narrow alleyway. It wasn’t very far normally, but that night, the midwife may as well have been in the whale fishing grounds of Greenland from where she was. The pain was so great it actually numbed her legs, as if all the feeling in her body were concentrated into a big, painful mass at her center. She tried to walk, stumbled, fell in the alleyway, no one but the moon to watch over her.

Blue feet, tiny blue feet, they beget many of her nightmares, she could still feel them wet, hot, soft against her inner thigh, and still, so still, deathly still. She’d never had a child before, but she knew what it meant when a baby came breech, and she knew there was nothing she could do. She’d started to scream then, wailing and crying in the night, fear, grief and anger all culminating into the woman she became that night, the woman she’d stayed, until Barbossa.

She remembered no other details than that. The next morning she woke on a cot, her body sore, dirty, and an emptiness like she’d never felt before permeating her being. The midwife sat beside her, dabbing a wet cloth to her forehead, her expression grim, no words were exchanged, Elizabeth’s eyes following the older woman’s glance across the room to a bundle of white muslin, a tiny form, wrapped head to toe. Elizabeth’s heart broke open in her chest, she actually felt it shatter. Her creation lay there upon that table, bound in torn strips of white; blue feet. She tried to sit up and run to that shrouded bundle, but she was pushed back into the cot, and was far too weak to fight.

“Yeh bled, Miss,” The midwife was sympathetic, but not stunned, not shaken, had likely been part of this scene several times, and though it was no fault of the woman’s Elizabeth too grave offense; wanted to strike her. “Bled all night, passed out in deh alley, looked dead. Surprised yeh still be livin’, but no more children shall come from you, all twisted inside now.”

Elizabeth’s concern had not been for the future, only the present. She reached out her hand towards the tiny bundle, tears in her eyes. She knew what had happened, but some part of her needed to see the child, needed to touch it, to welcome it, and then to say goodbye. Tears, she’d never cried that much, she’d never felt her soul contained within each tear that slipped from her eyes before, some part of her dying, most parts of her dead. She reached, she stretched, but the midwife only folded her arm over her chest.

“We give her to deh sea, now,” whispered the crone-like woman, and now tried to catch Elizabeth’s abundant tears with the rag, but there were far too many. “Put her in her tiny boat, set her adrift on deh waves.”

“Her?” Elizabeth gasped, she’d had a daughter? Her daughter was dead? A tiny, damned thing, unwanted by her father, with blue feet; and yet she’d been in the world, had taken up space. Something should mark her, give her status. “Her name is Pearl.”

Pearl. What would she have named this one that now slipped achingly from her body? She’d been able to walk this time, run in fact, and thus she did, abandoning the trader vessel and the duty she was charged with, running for the safety of The Reproach, for the safety of the place she’d loved and been loved, to the lair of the man who had always protected her, the Captain’s cabin. But now here, crouched on the floor, she knew not what to do; the hope she thought would come from being in this securest of places now on fire. The pains kept coming, an attack that could not be fended off, and she writhed against the hull, crying and panting, feeling blood between her legs, feeling her insides pulled and twisted as the life within her drained. Why again? What was not supposed to be would not be after all.

“Captain!” The word sprang from her trembling lips as she hugged her arms around her belly and fell to the floor, a wailing, thrashing, bloody mess. She didn’t cry Jack’s name like this that night in Tortuga, for Jack would never have answered no matter how close he may have been. But Barbossa, he’d be with her, she knew he would. She wanted him, she needed him, needed his strength around her, the comfort of his voice, some part of her believing that all would stop, all would be well, the moment his strong arms wrapped around her. But how did she hide this? How did she explain it? She was losing his child, and she’d never told the Captain one was to come.

* * * * *

Gunfire erupted beneath his feet; a single shot from the passengers compartments, and all at once something closed tight around Barbossa’s heart and wouldn’t let go. He’d sent Elizabeth there; she’d taken too bleeding long to reappear with women and children. She was armed both with a pistol and a sword, that he’d taught her to use, well and beyond that of the lessons the Turner boy and Jack had given her, and Barbossa knew she was quite able to dispatch anyone who may be foolish enough to give her trouble, but still he found himself hastily climbing down the stairs into the compartment Elizabeth had entered. Had the unthinkable, and most horrible, thing happened? Something was wrong; he could feel it.

“Dead man, sir,” Barbossa’s eyes were too embroiled searching for Elizabeth that he hadn’t noticed one of his own crew lay shot to death on the deck. The young, dark haired deckhand who had joined the crew only weeks ago was dead, the bosun already having the body moved above deck to be given burial at sea, but stopping long enough to inform Barbossa of the happenings. “Passenger ‘ad a pistol in ‘is belt, we dispatched ‘im, we did!”

A passenger with a pistol? Barbossa’s blood ran cold. “Elizabeth?”

The bosun shook his head. “Not seen a spec a ‘er, sir.”

But Barbossa saw something, a few feet to his right on the floor planks, drops of blood, three of them. Where was she? Without any proof, Barbossa knew, thought he felt the dread stop his own heart. No! He’d do anything to prevent losing Elizabeth! How dare anyone harm Elizabeth? “Find a doctor among they’re lot! Kill the rest!” He wrenched himself up the stairs again, the urge to hold her in his arms never as strong as it was now, clouded his thoughts, he knew not where to begin his search for her. She couldn’t be dead, she just couldn’t be! Blood, another drop, and another; Elizabeth, she’d left a trail; he only hoped she was alive at the end of it!

Elizabeth was near passing out when she heard a rush of heavy footsteps outside the cabin door. She managed to lift her head, smiled toward them tiredly, she knew the Captain’s steps when she heard them, and the sound of them alone was enough comfort to overshadow her fear of what to tell him when he found her. There was someone with him, being hurried along, who was it? This disappointed her, she wanted only the Captain, wanted to be held against him so tightly she knew she was his, wanted no one else around when she told him, told him she’d failed him, kept something a horrible secret from him, and as her punishment, lost it.

The door swung open so fast and powerfully it banged against the hull, Barbossa rushing in, spotting her in the dimness, his arms around her in no time, pulling her against him, a weak form melting into his. Another man, someone she didn’t know, crouched in front of her with a leather satchel, touching her about her legs, but Elizabeth soon noticed only the Captain, noticed everything about him, the feel of his hands as they swept her brow, the sensation of his heavy breath on her skin, the pounding of his heart against her back. He was here; she could let go now if she wanted to, die in his arms with their child, Elizabeth closed her eyes, but he shook her, shook her so hard.

“Girl,” his voice was rough with his fear, but level, his usual controlled cool tone was, however, gone. Her hands were covered in blood, her breeches, her legs. The wound could be anywhere, and she was so listless against him. Barbossa’s hands roamed her body, under her shirt about her belly, so much blood, the wound should have been obvious, but it wasn’t. “Where be it? Tell me?”

“Captain,” Elizabeth hadn’t the chance to even answer, the fear and worry hadn’t even completely begun to show on her features before the stranger touching her about the legs spoke. He ran one hand beneath the leg of her breeches, up as far as her thigh, pulled it back and examined the blood on his fingers, not just blood, but a grayish fluid as well. The man gave a nod. “I don’t think she’s been shot.”