Welcome back, everyone! And thank you so much for your reviews, your favs, and your follows! I honestly didn't expect this story to have that much success so quickly. To my two Guest reviewers, I'm sorry I can't answer you with a PM, so let me tell you now that I'm really glad you're enjoying the story and Isabella. Yes, James is definitely in for a challenge ;)
So, will Izzy manage to elude the commodore and his men? I'll leave you to find out...
In the end, they had split up.
Neither of them liked the idea but, since getting caught together would serve absolutely no purpose, they might as well make their pursuers' task as difficult as they could. They had decided to meet at midnight under the stone bridge they'd crossed not two minutes before. With any luck, the threat sensed by Isabella would have reached Port Royal and caused enough chaos for them to steal a ship without being noticed; and if they were, the commodore would hopefully be too busy to give chase.
"And if one of us gets captured?" Isabella had asked tensely. "Because I'm not abandoning you to be hanged, Jack."
"Well, I'm not leaving you behind either. I can't sail a ship to Tortuga on me own, can I?"
Isabella had punched Jack in the shoulder in mock offence—they both knew that he would come for her even if he didn't need her. Now, Jack didn't usually care much about anyone's survival but his own. Only Isabella wasn't anyone. She had been his adventuring companion for the past five years; they had sailed together, raided ships together, laughed and sung and drunk, gotten into all kinds of troubles, and pulled each other out of the fire more times than they could count. After Barbossa's mutiny, Jack had thought that he wouldn't trust anyone ever again but she had proven him wrong. She had become the only person he considered a true friend—and also probably the only person who considered him a true friend. The only person he knew he could count on without reservation. The only person he trusted absolutely.
No, he couldn't and wouldn't leave her behind.
Watching her walk away down the narrow alley where they'd taken temporary refuge had tightened his guts in worry. He had pushed it to the back of his mind and set off in the opposite direction. Very soon, the whole town would be crawling with soldiers. He needed to focus on finding a place to hide and a way to remove his shackles.
The same thoughts occupied Isabella's mind as she strode away from Jack. She was vaguely planning to head towards the periphery of the town, and then escape into the jungle—vaguely because she knew she had very little chance of making it there, if any at all. Only luck could save her now, and a lot of it. Still, I'd better stack all the odds in my favour, she thought, stopping to put her coat on her shoulders. Satisfied that it mostly concealed her manacled hands if she held it closed, she proceeded to the mouth of the alley and glanced carefully around the corner, up and down the broad busy street, ready to jump back at the first glimpse of red uniforms.
The coast was clear.
Grazie a Dio. But that's going to change soon. She took a deep breath, turned left, and, her head down, strode purposefully up the street. Don't look as if you were trying to hide, she reminded herself as she dodged three boisterous sailors. That would only make you more conspicuous. Her pounding heart a counterpoint to the beats of her heels on the dirt road, her fingers clenching the edges of her coat, she cast about for a hiding place—any hiding place—from under the brim of her hat while watching for patrolling soldiers. To her mounting anxiety, she found only houses and shops and palm trees. And suddenly– Accidenti.
A redcoat troop up ahead. Coming straight towards her.
Her heart dropped like a stone.
The sour taste of fear in her mouth, she slowed down to a stroll, glancing around frantically. There, almost across from her, a side street. But she would have to put herself right in the soldiers' line of sight. At this moment, her ear was caught by the rumbling of wheels and the clatter of hoofs of a carriage coming up from behind her. Perfect. Her luck increased when a group of men exited a tavern just ahead of her, hiding her from the soldiers just as the carriage passed her. Immediately, she made her way across the street and ducked into the narrower, quieter street, forcing her gait into a perfect blend of haste and casualness when all her instincts were screaming at her to just run.
She hadn't walked thirty feet when another patrol turned the corner at the other end of the street. The sight punched her in the gut. Her good fortune had apparently abandoned her.
"Cazzo," she hissed as she stopped dead and spun on her heel... only to be met with a very familiar face. "... Meg?"
"Bella!" the young woman standing in front of the pirate gasped, her blue eyes wide with surprise.
But then, she picked up on the hunted look on Isabella's face and saw the soldiers marching in their direction. She pulled herself together in an instant and, with a quiet but resolute "Follow me," she hurried to the house that stood just on Isabella's right and unlocked the door with the key she had pulled from her pocket. The two women disappeared inside and Meg locked the door again. They were now standing inside a small white-plastered hallway lit up by the sunlight that came pouring from an opened door on the left. The faint smell of fish stew that lingered in the air forced a soft rumble from Isabella's stomach—she hadn't had anything since the night before.
"This way," Meg murmured, heading for the staircase at the far end of the room. "Quietly—we don't want the landlady to hear us."
Isabella followed her up the narrow winding stairs to the second floor, the last one before the attic. Meg unlocked one of the three doors there and ushered the pirate into a tiny bedroom, which Isabella took in at a single glance while her host locked the door behind them. A plain wood-frame bed was pushed against the back wall, in the corner it formed with the left-hand wall, which was pierced with a small lattice window. The door was flanked by a little chest of drawers and a simple washstand, which carried a brown ceramic washbasin and pitcher. A straw chair sat to the right of the bed and a shelf with a few books on it was fixed to the wall above the bed. Red hibiscus flowers spilling out of the blue vase that stood on the chest of drawers and a red-yellow-and-blue striped mat spread at the foot of the bed added a much-needed splash of colour—Isabella suspected that Meg had bought them herself. Everything was scrupulously clean, she noticed, from the floorboards to the sheets. She opened her mouth to ask where they were exactly but Meg startled her by pulling her into a tight embrace.
"I'm so happy to see you again!" the young woman chirped, apparently unconcerned by the manacle chain that dug into her stomach.
"So am I," Isabella replied with a wide smile. "I heard that that you'd finally managed to buy passage to Port Royal but nothing more."
"Well, as you can see, I'm safe and sound." Meg stepped back and eyed Isabella critically. "You look well."
"So do you. Better, even."
Meg, whose full name was Margaret Lawson, had always been beautiful. Her lovely face was framed by honey-blonde curls and lit up by a pair of eyes as blue as a cloudless summer sky, and her curves would make veteran sailors drop from the rigging. Better not be fooled by her charming looks, though. She had once blinded a man who had tried to rape her, and almost emasculated him—with her bare hands. She had still been working at the Salty Clam, Tortuga's brothel, at the time, as she had been since she was sixteen—she was now twenty-three, two years younger than Isabella.
Now that she had left the brothel for good, her eyes shone with a new radiance, as if a dull glaze had fallen off them, and there was a lightness to her step that Isabella hadn't seen before. Her skin, as white and smooth as the inside of a shell, no longer disappeared under a thick layer of white paint and rouge, and her modest ivory jacket and terracotta-red petticoat made a striking change from the garish blue gown she would squeeze herself into every day back in Tortuga.
She looked... free.
"I do feel better," she confirmed as she dropped on her bed the cloth bag she had been carrying. "But tell me," she went on, taking off her straw hat and her linen cap and plopping them on the chair, "what are you doing in Port Royal? We both know it's no place for pirates. And what about Jack? He's not with you?"
"Now that is a rather long story," Isabella said with a wry smile. "And I will tell it to you as soon as I get these things," she held up her shackled hands, "off me."
"What do you need?"
"Something tubular and not too thick that won't break in my hand. Any ideas?"
Meg remained pensively silent for a few moments, and then her face lit up.
"I think I know what you need! I'll be right back."
She whisked out of the room with a rustle of petticoats, closing the door behind her. When she returned a couple of minutes later, Isabella had draped her coat over the back of the chair, her pistol stowed in one of its pockets, and hung her hat and her baldric on a bedpost.
"Will this work?"
The young woman was holding out a brass clock winding key. Isabella plucked it from her fingers her heart swelling with hope, and inserted it into the keyhole of the left-hand cuff. Ti prego ti prego ti prego funziona– ah.
"The shank's not wide enough. I need something to wrap around it, like a strip of fabric."
"Dishcloth," Meg blurted out, and she dashed out again.
She came back with a piece of coarse cloth, which she handed out to Isabella. With a few feverish gestures, the pirate tore a short strip off it and wound it tightly around the key shank, which she jammed into the keyhole once more. She twisted, one, two, three times, pulled– click. Sì!
"It works!" Meg enthused.
"And thank God for that," Isabella sighed as she worked on the other cuff.
Moments later, she was free. Suddenly feeling a lot lighter, she dropped the irons on the bed and rubbed her wrists. The cuffs, a little too wide for her, had left only faint marks but she could still feel their pressure, through her skin to her bones. She gave the winding key back to Meg, who slipped it in her pocket along with the dishcloth.
"So? I'm fairly sure you didn't risk being hanged just to visit me," Meg said, pushing the manacles aside to take a seat on her bed.
Isabella snorted in amusement and sat down on the floor, her back against the door and her forearms balanced on her uplifted knees.
"I like you but not that much. Sorry. No, it's all Jack's fault, actually."
She told Meg the whole story, from Jack's tricking Scarlett and Giselle into believing he would marry them to their escape from Norrington and the nerve-racking game of hide-and-seek she'd played with the patrolling soldiers.
"Well, on the bright side," Meg commented with a lopsided smile when the pirate fell silent, "my debt to you is now paid in full."
Isabella pursed her lips. She didn't need to ask what the young woman was talking about—she remembered perfectly.
"There was no debt, Meg."
"Of course there was. You saved my life. And I don't like owing anyone, not even you."
The two women had met a little over fours years before; Isabella had found Meg in a street of Tortuga, bleeding out from a botched abortion. Her knowledge of the healing properties of plants, accumulated by and passed down through generations of Sforzas, had saved the young prostitute. Or, more precisely, an ointment of yarrow leaves and common St John's wort oil applied directly to the wounds had. From then on, Isabella had become something of an apothecary to the women of the Clam, supplying them with herbal remedies, contraceptives, and abortifacients with strict instructions on how to use them properly and safely. In exchange, she had asked for a clean room and a hot bath whenever she needed them, an arrangement that Émilie Moreau, the brothel's madam, had readily agreed to.
"So, where are we, exactly?" the pirate asked, choosing not to pursue the matter further.
"Mrs Flynn's boarding house. I live here with other young women like me—you know, unmarried, without families. The food's decent, the beds aren't too hard, and the price is fair. And I work as a barmaid now, in a tavern not far from here—the Prancing Prawn, it's called. I've also got a couple of small shopkeepers paying me to clean their houses once a week. So you see," Meg added with a little smirk, "I still serve men but now I'm doing it on my feet."
Isabella grinned and shook her head.
"I'm glad it makes you happy but I much prefer not to serve men at all."
"To each their own path, eh? Anyway," Meg went on as she stood up, "since we're speaking of service, I need to be running along. Mr. Barker's expecting me."
"One of your shopkeepers?" Isabella inquired, getting to her feet.
"A bookseller. He's very nice but not tidy at all. His house always looks as if a hurricane had swept through it."
While she talked, Meg picked up the cloth bag she had left on her bed and, under Isabella's perplexed gaze, she fished out a loaf of brown bread and a few quenepa fruits, star apples, and naseberries from it, setting them on the chest of drawers.
"Doesn't Mrs. Flynn feed her boarders?" the pirate asked, her voice laced with amusement.
"Of course she does, but we're not allowed to take anything from the kitchen outside of meal times. This is for my late-night cravings."
It was at this moment that Meg caught her guest staring longingly at her supplies. She sighed in resignation but a smile was playing around her lips.
"Oh, fine, you can have them."
A radiant smile lit up Isabella's face and she clasped her hands together in gratitude.
"Grazie mille! I promise I'll leave you money to buy some more."
"Oh, I'm counting on it." The young woman breezed past Isabella and busied herself putting her cap and her hat back on. "Now, I'm going directly to the tavern after I'm done with Mr. Barker's house, so I won't be back until well after midnight."
At these words, a shadow fell over Isabella's face, which earned her an inquisitive glance from her host.
"What is it?"
"Something bad's coming from the sea. Whatever it is, it'll be here tonight." The Brine-Tongue took Meg's hands in hers and fixed an earnest look on her. "Keep safe, yes? Find a room to barricade yourself into if necessary."
Meg had no knowledge of Isabella's powers but she did know that the Italian pirate wasn't one to cry wolf. If she was worried, then she had a good reason to be.
"I will," Meg promised, giving Isabella's hands a reassuring squeeze before moving away. "You be careful too, you hear?"
"I'll do my best."
After handing Isabella the key and recommending she lock the door, Meg was off. And suddenly, Isabella was alone, the silence only disturbed by the murmur of the street.
Safe.
Her nerves, until that moment as taut as forestays, relaxed all at once and she plopped down on the bed as the seething energy that had driven her during her escape drained from her body.
"I hope Jack's safe," she whispered to herself after a minute of indulging in the luxury of not thinking about anything.
She took a deep breath in an attempt to relieve the pressure of worry against her chest. There was nothing she could do to help her friend anyway. Right now, she needed to look after herself so she'd feel slightly more vigorous than a rheumatic sea slug when the time came to sail off into the sunset—well, the night, actually. First, she would eat, despite the exhaustion weighing her eyelids down; then, she would sleep. After that, she'd see. It would depend on the time of the day.
Since she was going to stay there at least until nightfall, Isabella decided that she might as well get comfortable and removed her boots, her belt, and her sash. Using her dagger to cut the bread and slice through the rinds, she ate most of the food, careful not to leave juice stains everywhere. When she was done, she washed her hands with the water left inside the pitcher and didn't fail to leave a few coins on the dresser before lying down on the bed, her back to the wall and her knees drawn up. Sleep wasn't long to come.
Night had fallen. With it, a thin grey fog had rolled in from the sea and spilled into the town, its damp veils blurring the streets and snagging on the riggings of the ships. The heavy clouds that had lingered in the sky all afternoon in great bruised swells were now hiding the waxing moon, pushed by an unseasonably chilly wind. Commodore Norrington and Governor Swann were strolling along the ramparts of Fort Charles, high above the courtyard and its gallows on their left and the fog-bound sea on their right.
"My guess is that she somehow managed to escape into the jungle," the commodore was saying in response to Swann's question about his efforts to capture Isabella Sforza. "Since she cannot survive in there for long, she will attempt to make her way back into town sooner or later, perhaps when she believes that we've relaxed our vigilance."
"We could let her think that we have," the governor suggested.
"My thoughts exactly," Norrington replied with a nod.
It frustrated him that she had given them the slip, of course, but he was confidant that Isabella Sforza wouldn't elude him for much longer. And he would make sure that the news of her capture spread far and wide. The last daughter of the great Sforza family, caught by the Royal Navy—what a blow it would be to all the pirate scum! Now, if he could only suppress the little thorn of unease that pricked his insides every time he pictured Isabella swinging from the gallows... He had never had a woman hanged before. Not a woman, his inner voice, which often sounded a lot like his father, reminded him. A pirate.
"Has my daughter given you an answer yet?" Governor Swann inquired, rousing him from his thoughts.
Ah, Elizabeth. The other object of his concern. The truth was that he had no idea whether she would accept his proposal. He had won her regard, that much he knew for certain, but she had never given him any indication that her feelings towards him went beyond simple fondness. Of course, love was hardly a requirement for marriage. They were both excellent matches, her father approved the union whole-heartedly, they respected each other—that would be more than enough for any other woman. However, Elizabeth had never been one to submit meekly to other people's wishes and expectations, which was precisely what he loved about her. To him, she had always stood out from all the other young women of Port Royal's high society, and not merely for her beauty, or even her quick wit. Her free spirit, shining through the smooth veneer of proprieties and social conventions—that was what had drawn him in. Ironically enough, it was also what made him uncertain of her answer... Because, unless he was completely wrong about her character, a marriage of convenience wouldn't satisfy her. To be honest, he wondered if it would satisfy him... Wouldn't it be unfair, for both of them, to bind to him for the rest of their lives a woman who didn't, and perhaps never would, love him? Would he be content knowing that his wife hadn't given him her heart as he had given his to her?
… Well. He could only hope that Elizabeth did love him.
"No, she hasn't," he told the governor.
"Well, she has had a very trying day." Swann paused and glanced around with a look of faint distaste, as if he was only now noticing the fog and the cold. "Ghastly weather, doon't you think?"
"Bleak," Norrington admitted. "Very bleak."
So much so, in fact, that he was starting to wonder if Isabella Sforza might have been telling the truth when she had warned them of an impending danger. Until that moment, he had dismissed her claims as extravagant lies intended to sow disquiet in his mind. But she must have known that you'd never believe such apparent absurdities, a very small part of him had pointed out. If that's the case, she had no reason to lie. She may have had good intentions. He held back a derisive snort. A pirate with good intentions? Pigs would sooner grow wings.
A distant boom, barely audible, shattered the commodore's musing like a fist through a window. He tensed up, holding his breath, his ears straining to catch what he already knew would come—a thin needle of sound puncturing the night, the whistle of an incoming cannonball.
"Cannon fire!" he yelled, tackling the governor a fraction of second before the parapet exploded.
And as he started shouting orders, he had the fleeting thought that, if he survived, he should perhaps have a look at a pig, just in case.
I know, I know, not much action in this chapter. Dont worry, the next one will more than make up for it. I hope you liked the part written from James' point of view! I tried to stay in character, so let me know if I succeeded... I thought that if he liked demure, compliant women, there was simply no way he'd fall for Isabella.
I'm sorry if Meg's backstory feels a bit... rushed. I had written something completely different, then I changed my mind at the last minute and had to come up with a whole new character, namely Meg. Isabella's relationship with Tortuga's ladies of the night, however, was planned from the beginning. You'll see later how useful it is to have a brothel's madam as a friend ;) Oh, and there actually are herbs that were said to have a contraceptive effect but, apparently, their effectiveness is far from guaranteed.
You should know that I have no idea whether a winding key would actually work to unlock that kind of manacles. Most likely not, but it's still more believable than having Meg use her feminine wiles to get a key from... someone (I don't know who).
So, you now know that Izzy is 25. For you information, in 1728 (which is apparently the year in which CotBP takes place), Will and Elizabeth are both 20. As for Jack and James, it's a little more uncertain since we only know that Jack was born around 1690 and that he's ten years older than James. That being said, the actors were 39 and 29 respectively when filming started in 2002, so that's what I'll be going with for their characters.
By the way, the story of Jack tricking Giselle and Scarlett into thinking he'd marry them is cannon. It's told in a short film called Tales of the Code: Wedlocked. I haven't seen it but there's a PotC Wiki article about it.
From the Antiquity, bivalves like clams have been a symbol of fertility because the inside is apparently reminiscent of a woman's vagina... Hence the Salty Clam. Also, the Prancing Prawn is totally a sea-themed nod to the Prancing Poney from The Lord of the Rings.
Oh, and the fruits I mentioned all originate from Jamaica. I figured they'd be cheaper than imported ones.
Wow, okay, that's long... I'm going to shut up now. Drop a review, yes? I'd like to hear your opinions.
Translation:
- grazie a Dio = thank God
- accidenti = damn it
- cazzo = fuck
- ti prego funziona = please work
- sì = yes
- grazie mille = thank you very much