Isabelle slumped against the chains that bound her, slipping into blissful, pain induced unconsciousness. She only came round when a thorough dousing of cold water pulled her from it. She coughed and spluttered and tried to stand, a raging fire in her left knee preventing her from doing so.
"I told you it would be quick." Cutler said caressing her cheek. "If only you could have been the good sister…" Isabelle spat at him. Cutler wiped the spittle from his face with a kerchief pulled with a flourish from his pocket. "I see it takes no time at all to go back to your gutter mongering ways."
"Rot in hell." Isabelle whispered. Cutler's eyes were filled with barely concealed anger.
"You will remember to speak to me with the proper deference. I am your better. Not only because I am a man, but because I am a peer of the realm."
"I don't care if you were the bastard son of Bonny Prince Charlie! I hate you!"
"You insult me and the monarchy in one breath?" Cutler's eyes darkened.
"Blasphemous witch!" Mercer growled.
"Arrest her for slander, Mr. Mercer." Cutler said grinning. "You will go back to the Dutchman and await further sentencing."
"The Dutchman? Why send me there? Why not incarcerate me here where you can further enjoy abusing me?" Isabelle raged, struggling against the chains.
"I don't want the marines here feeling sorry for you, as surely they will. Jones' crew of miscreants won't give a damn about you."
"As you wish it. My lord…" Isabelle said half sinking in a mock curtsey even though her hands were still chained above her head. Mercer came over and unhooked the chain from above her head and she collapsed to the floor.
"Mr. Mercer, take her back to the Dutchman."
"Do you think, my lord, that she should be given a coat of some sort? The men might get the wrong idea seeing her in this state." Mercer muttered looking down at her wearing nothing but her torn petticoats, light undershift and corset.
"How compassionate, Mr. Mercer." Cutler turned from where Isabelle still sat on the floor of the cabin and went to the door. "Bring me a coat. Nothing fancy." The marine disappeared up the hallway and returned with a uniform coat. Cutler handed it to Mercer who draped it over Isabelle's shoulders.
"Ugh…it smells awful!" Isabelle said trying to get her nose far away from the wool of the coat.
"It must have had a dead man in it. Can't let good Company materials go to waste." Mercer hauled her to her feet, her hands still shackled before her and half dragged her to the door.
"You won't get away with this!" Isabelle shouted as she was hauled from the room. "I swear to you!"
"It appears I already have." The last sight she had of Cutler was his taking a satisfied sip of tea and smiling a catlike grin over the edge of the cup at her.
When she was brought above decks, several of the marines looked up from where they'd been lounging by the cannon. Some of the officers, the gold braid glittering in the lantern light looked up from the maps and charts and stared as Mercer escorted her across the deck. There was nothing she could do. Her knee pained her greatly and though she wanted to embarrass Cutler, she did not want to embarrass herself in the process. She thought briefly to the dark skinned woman on the Black Pearl and how she had been lead to her incarceration.
Head up, eyes strong. You are innocent, incorrectly accused by a madman and his help. Dare them to question you, prove that you are above all of this.
Isabelle tilted her head up and walked as if she were being escorted to an audience with the King and Queen and not to a dank cell aboard Captain Jones' hellish ship. She saw William Turner standing beside the helm, black compass in hand. He glanced her way, taking in her disheveled appearance.
To Turner, the woman who had been brought to the cabin had been vehemently against his use of the compass. She had since been divested of the vibrant calico dress she'd been wearing, her hair hung in her face, the tangled blonde locks hanging in limp waves over her shoulders and the blue coat that hung over her shoulders was more than likely the one that had just been stripped from one of the Marines that were laid in a pile on the deck. She was walking with a pronounced limp and Turner saw that there was blood slipping across the muscles of her left calf. She held her head high, with a certain amount of pride and cockiness. She was not defeated yet. He watched as Mercer helped her over the rail, if a little roughly. She paused on the ladder and locked eyes with his. Will shivered involuntarily. He felt as if he should know this woman. He wished there was some way to help her….
Isabelle sat in the boat and stared at the marines rowing back to the Flying Dutchman. She wondered what would become of her. She wondered if there was anything that could be done, but no answers were forth coming. The boat eased up to the side of the Dutchman and Isabelle did her best to climb the ladder and swing over onto the deck.
"Miss Beckett?" She shut her eyes and stifled a sigh as Adam Monroe came towards her.
"Take the lady below decks, marine." Mercer said following her. "She's to be locked in the brig."
"Sir?"
"Are you deaf?" Mercer growled into Adam's face. "Take her to the brig!" Adam silently led the way, another marine following behind.
"What happened, Miss Beckett?"
"Lord Beckett has disowned me." Isabelle said softly, lest they be overheard. "I told you I had crossed him."
"But he can't do that, can he?"
"He already has. It doesn't matter."
"Your leg miss…."
"Don't worry about me…please." She gently grasped the boy's arm as he stopped to open the cell. "I asked you once to forget about me. I ask you again….Being my friend at this point will do you no good and will harm your family."
"Hey! Hands off him!" She was wrenched back by the other marine as Adam Monroe swung the heavy metal door open.
"Leave off!" Adam shouted, stepping towards the other Marine.
"She's been charged with a laundry list of crimes, Adam. She's not to be trusted." The man's hand whipped down to her torn petticoats and pulled the material away from her knee. "She's a convicted felon, branded and beat."
Isabelle swatted the man's hand from her skirts and pushed him away. The force the shove knocked him back into the opposite side of the corridor.
"Miss Beckett!" Isabelle glanced to see Adam Monroe who had lowered his rifle at her. "Please don't do that, miss. I'd hate to have to….to…"
"I'm sorry…" Isabelle went into the cell slowly and quietly and sat upon the bench that ran the length of the back of the cell.
"Come on Adam, we can't stand here all day." The other marine said gruffly. The two of them walked away and left her in the dark bowels of the ship with her own thoughts.
The ship rocked and she latched onto the bars of her cell, having a hard time finding her balance in the rocking ship. Isabelle had been in the brig for a full day now. Her only way of knowing time had passed was the faint light that filtered down through the deck level cargo hatch. She had torn part of her petticoats away to bandage the blistering brand above her knee. It hurt, it had bled and now it was beginning to pus with a bilious yellow and green ooze. Isabelle felt tears well at the bottom of her eye but she would not let them fall. She had sworn to allow herself only thirty minutes to cry but she had not needed it. She had not shed a tear yet for her plight and if she hadn't done it in the first thirty minutes of her wretched incarceration, she would not succumb to it now. She sat with her back to the mast support, her hands still cuffed in front of her. She didn't know why they had left her hand cuffed, but assumed it had something to do with a decided lack of mobility and humiliation. She stared into the dark shadows that sat heavily outside the cell and let her mind wander.
She sat with Kapil in the gardens outside the house. She was perhaps ten years old and he was teaching her how to spread her mind like a bird taking wing and how to bring it back and shield herself from bombarding thoughts. They had been at it for days and she was finally growing proficient in the skill.
"It is up to you who you let in." Kapil had said. "Only you can allow a person complete access to your mind."
"But you can still get in…"
"That's because I am stronger than you. In time, you will learn to keep even me from you."
The lesson faded from her mind and was replaced with a dark room. She wandered around the room, her fingers trailing along the dark, smooth polished wood. There were books on the shelves that lined the room and they were blank; she had pulled one off the shelf and leafed through it. A fire burned in the large fireplace and she warmed her hands beside it. Heavy drapes in rich shades of purple, green and midnight blue hung from large, floor to ceiling windows. The furnishings in the room were the same dark wood as the walls and the same colors contained in the drapery. She brushed her fingertips across the fabric on the back of the chair and felt the raised stitches beneath her fingertips. A sound behind her made her jump, a gasp escaping her lips and in a blink of her eyes, she fled the room.
She was back in the dank hold of the Dutchman. It was beginning to grow dark, a lantern guttered on the wall in the corridor and a greasy black smoke added a pungent odor to the damp and rot of the brig. She tried to stretch her legs out in front of her, but hissed at the burning sensation that ripped through her leg. She saw a fresh bloom of blood appear on her make shift bandage.
"Here…." Isabelle flinched and looked to see a figure crouching behind her. "Ach no! Please…don't fear me."
She looked again and saw deep, rich brown eyes blink curiously at her. The eyes, undoubtedly human sat in a face that was decidedly not human. It was the face that resembled the knotted wood of the weathered ship. A deep whorl in the wood ringed both of the dark eyes and a deep v cut down the middle delineating a nose. Another whorl in the wood creaked sideways and Isabelle caught the glimpse of a smile. She felt nothing threatening coming from the creature, merely pity.
"I don't fear you." She breathed. "Who are you?"
"My name is….vas, Gisjbert." The face cracked again. "I'm surprised I remember…"
"From whence did you come?"
"I sailed once under Captain Jones. I have served him many a year."
"You became part of the ship?"
"Aye, as all who sail under the Captain must." Gisjbert folded his skeletal body upon itself and crouched beside her. She looked into one of the knotted whorls around his eyes. "He vas not always bad."
Isabelle flinched as Gisjbert reached a knobby appendage towards her.
"You are hurt?"
"Yes." Isabelle whispered.
"Ah, let Gisjbert see." The dark brown eyes blinked quickly, the wood creaked up into what Isabelle was fast realizing was a smile. "I vas doctor here vonce."
"You are German?"
"Dutch, ja." Gisjbert answered. Isabelle heard a clicking noise as he tilted his head side to side. "Mutch the same I suppose. I am from here now. I have not seen my home in ages. You do not trust me?"
"I don't trust anyone anymore." Isabelle said looking out into the shadows. "Everyone I've trusted has failed me….or I've failed them…"
"Ach, no. You merely put your faith in the wrong places. And then in the right places, you do not put enough. Faith can be a tricky thing sometimes I think."
"Are you the right place to be putting my faith in?" Isabelle asked softly.
"Was erzählt Ihr Herz Ihnen?" Isabelle was silent for a moment and then started to laugh. Gisjbert started to laugh too. "Sie sprechen Deutsch nicht?"
"Not a word!" Isabelle said shaking her head.
"Ach, then Gisjbert much teach the dame to sprechen icht!" Gisjbert's fingers clicked as he drummed them on a skinny dowel of a leg. "So, do you trust me?"
"I think I do. My heart says you are one to be trusted."
"Ach! Wunderbar!" Gisjbert said and he motioned for her to stand. "Come, come…." He pulled her to her feet and the two of them went to the ledge at the back of the cell. She sat heavily and stretched her leg out in front of her. She could hardly bend it. "Can you…." Gisjbert made a motion with his arm as if he intended her to bend it.
"Not at all." Isabelle watched as Gisjbert slowly unwrapped her make shift bandage.
"Das ist nicht gut." Gisjbert said flinging the old bandage over a knobby shoulder. He looked up at her. "That means 'this is not good.'"
"I gathered as much." She said looking down at her own leg. The once smooth expanse of white flesh was now an angry red color. The letter P stood out in relief against the skin and the skin immediately in the area of the brand was cracked and bleeding anew. She hissed when Gisjbert poked one gnarled finger against her knee.
"Does that schmerz—hurt?" He asked.
"Yes." She watched as Gisjbert went to an alcove in the wall and pulled something from it. He came back gnawing on the substance mumbling. He tugged gently at the hem of her petticoat. "What?"
"mmph I rrrriff dist?"
"I told you I don't understand German." Isabelle said her heart starting to race. Gisjbert laughed and then coughed, sputtering on whatever it was he had in his mouth. He reached up and pulled the wad of material from his mouth.
"No…I asked only if I could rip your skirt? I need something to bath your wound with."
"Oh….yes, of course…." Isabelle watched as Gisjbert tore a section of her petticoat and went to the bucket at the side of the cell that contained fresh water. He poured some into a dish shaped shell that he ripped from the wall and then came back to gently bathe the pus and dried blood from her leg.
"Why did this happen?" Gisjbert asked.
"I angered a man who I once trusted. He did this to punish me."
"You put your faith in him incorrectly I think."
"I think so too." Gisjbert went back to gnawing on the wad of substance he'd taken from the wall and then pulled it from his mouth again.
"This may sting, try not to move…" He pressed the gunk into her knee and it squished beneath the knobby fingertips across the enflamed area. She almost leapt away but forced her self to sit still. She dug her nails into the soft wood of the bench. Gisjbert hadn't warned her against doing that. "There, better!"
Isabelle opened her eyes and saw Gisjbert smiling up at her. She looked down at her leg and saw where he'd re-wrapped it and had bound the goo to her skin.
"What was that?"
"You're better off not knowing. But it will ease the burn from your leg." He said. "Better, isn't it?"
"Yes…much…." She answered. The initial burn had disappeared and there was now a cooling sensation spreading across the area.
"Gisjbert is tired now. You should rest too." He tapped her hand where it still rested on the bench and Isabelle watched as he receded into the woodwork of the cell. She hobbled to her feet and stood before him.
"Gisjbert?" But the whorls where she thought Gisjbert's eyes were did not open. She could barely make out his shape in the wood, his knobby fingers merely ridges in the wood of the ribs of the ship.
She sat again on the ledge and decided she would work more on her defenses. Her mind drifted to lessons she'd had with Kapil but soon again, the bright garden disappeared and she found herself back in the dark paneled room. She sat down in the wing backed chair that was close to the fire and she gazed into the flames. As usual, she felt quite comfortable in the room. She didn't know how long she sat in the room, basking in the comfort, warmth and safety of the place when suddenly she felt a presence. She stood and looked around the room, frantically trying to find the source of the feeling. The door to the room was locked and she quickly pulled the key from it and put it in her pocket. She swept the drapes aside, but there was nothing but more of the wood paneling on the other side. She went back to the seat she had occupied and closed her eyes and tried to count backwards in an effort to calm herself. The warm trace of fingertips against the skin along her jaw line and beneath her ear startled her so greatly that she jarred herself awake and glanced quickly around her cell.
"Gisjbert?" But he was still a part of the cell wall and didn't move. She scrambled to her feet and clung to the bars of the cell trying to see if someone had been in or near her cell.
The hall was empty. But it couldn't have been a dream….the skin beneath her jaw was still warm from the contact.
The hatch above was completely dark. It was night again and now she was beginning her second night in the brig.
She slept but dreamt of Jack and what was going on with the Brethren Court. Elizabeth was present, but Will was not. That was good. If Will Turner was not present, then Cutler was not there either.
She saw the pirates attack one another. The shouting in multiple languages made her head hurt and her ears ring. She saw Jack's dark eyes sweep the room and take in all the pirate lords. She closed her eyes against the noise.
"ENOUGH!!!!" When she opened her eyes she was standing in the hull of a ship near a cell not her own. She could hear the faint strains of music, the minor chords drawing her closer to the low glow of candles within the cell. The dark skinned woman, the one called Calypso sat beside the candles stroking the pewter plating of the music box. In the shadows, Jones' mountainous form materialized.
"My Sweet, you come for me!"
"You were expecting me." Jones drawled softly from the shadows.
"It has been torture---trapped in this single form; cut off from the sea. From all that I love--from you." The goddess said with tears brimming in her eyes.
"Ten years I devoted to the duty you charged me." Jones growled. "Ten years I looked after those who died at sea and finally when we could be together again you weren't there." Jones snapped the music box closed, his blue eyes glaring harshly at the woman in the cell. "Why weren't you there?"
"It is my nature…" Calypso said with a shrug of her shoulders. "Would you love me if I was anything but what I am?"
"I do not love you." Jones stalked away from her. Isabelle gasped. He was lying! Davy Jones still loved Calypso with his vary being. He could cut out his heart, but never his love for the goddess Calypso.
"Many things you were Davy Jones. But never cruel." Calypso's voice shook. Her heart broke to hear Jones say he did not love her. The woman still loved Jones, in spite of the pain he had caused over the years. "You have corrupted your purpose and so yourself. And you did hide away what should always have been mine." Calypso reached through the bars and placed her hand on Jones' chest. Isabelle was taken aback as the tentacles receded into his face, his claw disappeared and she stared in awe at a man, not a monster. He breathed heavily for a few moments, finding it difficult to become fully accustomed to the form that had once been his. He looked at the woman who reached for him through the bars and his eyes softened.
"Calypso…" His fingers reached to brush across her cheek, but she was faster.
"I will be free….and when I am, I would give you my heart and we would be together always, if only you had a heart to give." She pulled her arm back through the bars and Jones' human face was instantly replaced by that of the tentacled captain that Isabelle was familiar with. The great claw latched quickly onto Calypso's slender throat and held her fast. The woman's eyes went from sad to fear filled. "Why did you come?" Jones tried to pull his arm back but found the claw was lodged in the bars. Isabelle gasped as he shifted through the bars.
"And what fate have you planned for your captors?" He drawled with his back to her.
"The brethren court?" Calypso spat. "All of them--the last thing they will learn in this life is how cruel I can be." Isabelle felt the woman's eyes bore into her as she spoke and the vision of a horrific storm with hundreds of ships and thousands of men being crushed by the churning fury of the gray ocean waves passed before her eyes. Jones stomped across the cell towars the wall. "And what of your fate, davy jones?
"My heart will always belong to you." Jones whispered over his shoulder. Calypso's face creased into a satisfied smile and she pressed her cheek to the bars of her cell as Jones stepped through the hull and disappeared.
Isabelle retreated again to the darkened room and sat in the comfortable chair beside the fire. This room was her safe haven. She realized that now. Someone had gained access to it, but she didn't know how or who. She reclined into the plush softness of the chair and turned her cheek into the cool material. Once again she felt the slightest trace of fingertips across her jaw line, but she was not threatened. She left her eyes closed and felt the fingers ghost across her cheek, pushing wayward strands of hair from her face. The fingers continued to brush across her cheek and eventually curled along the underside of jaw, turning her head so that, if she were to open her eyes, she would have been looking at the intrusive stranger. The touch was warm, and gentle. It reminded her of a gentle ocean breeze. She was not even sure if it were real or if it were a part of her imagination. Warm breath ghosted against her ear and she was suddenly afraid to open her eyes.
"Please, don't hurt me…." She whispered. This was her inner sanctum, if someone chose to do her harm here, then the pain and damage would be severe.
"I would never hurt you…." The words were whispered against her ear and she felt no malice or deception in them. She was about to open her eyes to see who the stranger was, for surely it was no one she knew, when she felt their lips brush gently over hers; the barest whisper of a kiss.