In the Hollow of the Heart

Chapter 5 - The Heart Laid Bare

Same evening, continued...

Stars were strewn across a black velvet sky and the full moon beamed down upon them as Elizabeth and William made their way down the treacherous, rock-laden path towards the beach. Thank goodness, she thought, that she’d had the foresight to abandon her cumbersome skirts in favour of a pair of worn breeches and soft kid boots she’d kept from her days at sea. Even though they were both dressed for the terrain, the loose pebbles on the trail caused their footing to slip unexpectedly from time to time, prompting Elizabeth to keep a tight grip on the back of William’s coat so he’d not end up tumbling arse over teakettle down the hill.

“Just a little further,” she softly reassured her weary son as they scrambled ever closer to their destination. From their vantage point halfway down the rocky incline, Elizabeth could see the deck lamps of the Black Pearl from where it was anchored just off shore. The tiny lights glowed orange amber, beacons of hope in the darkness of the night.

When they finally stumbled from the path onto the shore, all was quiet save for the low tide breaking against the rocks. A gentle breeze blew across her face and the fragrance of the ocean brought with it a thousand glorious memories of times spent upon the waves. The irresistible call of the sea was something Elizabeth had tried to ignore once she began a life ashore for herself and William, but it had never really left her. It was true that the sea could be a hateful, dangerous, and frightening thing at times...but still, she’d never felt more at home than she had on a ship. It was yet one more part of her past that she’d missed more than she realized.

“Where is he, Mama?” William asked, his voice small and worried. He clutched the bundle of clothes he’d brought tightly against his chest and looked around fretfully.

Poor little dear, she thought as she brushed her fingers through the silky hair that stuck out from beneath William’s hat. His well-ordered world had been turned on its head and all because she lacked the backbone to share the truth from the very start.

For as long as he’d been able to ask questions about his father, Elizabeth told her son that Will was a ship’s captain whose grand adventures at sea kept him far from his family, though he missed them dreadfully and would return as soon as he possibly could. It was the same vague lie she’d told the villagers in Bridgetown and never had she doubted the wisdom of her elaborate illusion until Hector confronted her.

After Barbossa’s angry departure, she’d dashed up the stairs and rousted William from his warm, cozy bed, finally confessing to her son that the man he’d thought to be his father wasn’t…and the man whom he had grown to love and admire was. At first, his small face had crumpled in disbelief at the revelation, and Elizabeth hated herself with shocking intensity for ever deceiving him. It was patently cruel and unfair to burden her child with such startling news, never mind in the middle of the night, but she had failed him for too long already and it was time to right the wrongs. As she’d helped William quickly tug on his clothes, he grew less distressed and more intrigued that his father had, in fact, been part of his life all along. She knew then that she would subject herself to any humiliation…any agony…any hardship…to ensure that William had the opportunity to share what remained of his childhood with Hector.

“I don’t know, darling.” Elizabeth replied as she held aloft her small oil lantern and anxiously scanned the beach. The shortcut they’d chosen wasn’t one that most sane people would attempt in the darkness, even beneath the gleam of the moon. She had been certain that Hector had taken the road through town, but perhaps he’d been upset enough to navigate the same narrow trail they’d risked and was already on board the Pearl. Despair welled up within her as the prospect of having acted too late sank in.

Elizabeth was wondering if she could acquire a small boat back at the main dock and make her way out to the Pearl in time when she caught a flash of white out of the corner of her eye. As she turned to peer through the purple shadows cast by the coconut palms further down the shore, she saw it again…and recognized Hector by the bright new shirt she’d given him to wear. “Look!” she whispered excitedly, pointing him out to William. “There he is!”

Hopeful anticipation wiped away the fatigue on her son’s face and he would have gone running to Barbossa had she not lain a firm hand on his shoulder to stop him. He looked up in confusion at his mother, and Elizabeth shook her head and held a finger to her lips. “You must let me speak to him first, William,” she said, bending over to murmur quietly against his ear as she handed him the lantern. “Promise me that you’ll stay put until I either call for you or return.”

Her son was crestfallen but nodded reluctantly, turning from her to fix his teary gaze on the Black Pearl. She hoped he was retreating into his youthful imagination and replaying the hundreds of stories he’d heard about the infamous pirate ship throughout his life. Anything but dwelling on why his mother would have lied to him in the first place. That was an explanation that would take years for him to truly understand.

Elizabeth’s first impulse was the same as her son’s – to sprint down the beach – but she forced herself to walk instead, purposefully striding across the sodden sand. She had to speak not only for William’s sake, but for her own as well. It wasn’t just her son’s paternity that she’d tried to keep hidden from Barbossa, but her own deeply buried feelings too.

Hector was occupied digging his gig out from where he’d hidden it in the bushes and he didn’t notice her approach until she was almost beside him. “I’m glad I found you before you cast off,” she said hesitantly, hugging her arms around herself in an effort to stave off the chill from the water. He gave her a resentful glare but didn’t speak, silently tossing aside the palm fronds he’d used to camouflage his boat.

Elizabeth swallowed hard and rubbed at her cool skin. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to talk to me…after the way I misled both you and William, I deserve nothing less. But there’s something you need to know before you go.”

“Save yer breath,” Barbossa snarled, looping the line between his hand and elbow and tugging the boat across the sand towards the water. The fabric of his shirt rippled in the breeze and strands of loose hair blew across his face, hiding his expression. “There’s nothin’ ye could say as would sway me now.”

As well earned as his hostility was, the unkind words still cut her to the quick. But if she was to be condemned thereafter, it wouldn’t be for holding back the truth. “Will isn’t coming back!” she blurted, her voice breaking with the sudden release of pent-up emotion. “Not ever!”

Hector’s head snapped up and he gaped at her in astonishment. The length of rope hung slack in his hands, his retreat to the Pearl forgotten for the moment. “And how do ye figure that?”

Her heart thudded so hard that if felt as if it were working its way up her throat. It was one thing to know it…it was quite another to admit it out loud. “Before he left me, Will said that Calypso had struck a bargain with him. If he served for ten years aboard the Dutchman, she would release him from his duties…provided that, after all that time, I still loved him and had remained faithful in body and heart. But I broke the accord and in so doing, I… I doomed him to an eternity at sea, ferrying souls to the next world.”

“Ye didn’t break it on account of me!” he shouted indignantly, his initial surprise at her statement giving way to anger once more. “Ye weren’t yet married when I partook of yer charms.”

“Yes, it was on your account, you obstinate, pig-headed buffoon!” she yelled back, her temper rising to meet his. “Were you not listening? I said, ‘body and heart,’ didn’t I?”

“And what might ye mean by that?”

She exhaled sharply in exasperation. “When I first settled in Bridgetown, I used to take a walk every evening to the western cliffs and look out over the waves, hoping to catch sight of sails where the sky meets the sea. And I would pray that I’d see the tattered canvas of the Flying Dutchman coming into view, even though I knew that wasn’t possible.”

“A touchin’ sentiment, to be sure,” Hector sneered, pulling the line taut once again and dragging the boat a few more feet through the sea grass.

Elizabeth scrambled in front of him and blocked his path, crossing her arms over her chest. “Then one evening, shortly after William marked his second birthday, all of my waiting finally paid off. It wasn’t the Dutchman that appeared out of the west, though, but another vessel altogether...a ship so close to my heart that it was like seeing a part of home again.”

“Out of me way, girl,” he cautioned tetchily, seemingly untouched by what she was trying to tell him.

Stubbornly planting her feet even more firmly in the sand, she stood her ground. If he wanted to get past her, he’d either have to push her aside or wait until she finished talking. “Every time you arrived at my door, every hour you spent in our company, Will was forced a little further from my thoughts... and when I was alone, it was you that I missed, your company I longed to share. Not Will’s, yours! I still go to the western cliffs to gaze into the sunset and every time I do, I pray that I’ll spot black sails coming over the horizon. Don’t you see? I might not have taken you to my bed these many years, Hector, but in my heart I’ve sinned against my husband a thousand times!”

Sighing unsteadily, she turned from him before he could respond and walked to the water’s edge. The moonlight caught the crests of each wave and made it seem as though the sea was spilling forth with diamonds. Was Will looking out over the water, too, and counting the days until he believed they could be together again? Or had he known of her betrayal for years? Maybe the slowly beating heart that she kept so carefully hidden had shattered long ago.

Barbossa approached her and stood close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body through the thin material of her clothes. “If ye were so sure that Turner was lost, why did ye keep the truth from me?” he asked quietly.

“Because I thought if I pretended hard enough, then I could spare Will from having to endure such a fate,” Elizabeth replied, the stars above blurring as her eyes brimmed with tears. “If I tamped down my desires and kept silent, if I told myself that it was enough to have you share our life in some small way, then maybe...”

Powerful arms enfolded her into a strong embrace and she leaned back against Hector, closing her eyes as she savoured the feeling of being held. It had been so long...so very long...since a man had shown her such tenderness that it was all she could do to hold back a sob of relief. “Ye take on too great a burden,” he murmured, nuzzling against her temple. “The heart wants what it wants...’tis no sin to be true to yerself.”

“Yet the result is the same,” she answered miserably, bringing her hands up to rest over his, determined to prolong the closeness. “He belongs to Calypso now...forever part of her world.”

“Huh,” Hector said as though deep in contemplation. He stood silent for a while and she was content to do the same. The guilt would always be there but for just a few minutes, she wanted to leave reality behind and relish what comfort he could offer. “I wonder...” he said slowly, puzzling something out in his head. “’Lizabeth, what were the exact words the goddess spoke when she brokered the deal with Turner?”

She frowned. “I wasn’t there but as he told it, she said that if his wife remained constant in her love for him, body and heart, while he was aboard the Flying Dutchman, then he’d be set free after ten years had passed.”

“Wife? She used that word? ‘Tis important...” There was a cautious optimism in his voice that prompted her to turn in his arms and face him.

“Yes, that’s what he said...and I assume what she said too. Why?”

He smiled sadly and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face. “One must be careful of the wordin’ when strikin’ a bargain with eldritch creatures...tricksters, the lot of them. The goddess ne’er had any intention of releasin’ Turner from his bonds, and nothin’ ye did would ever have brought him back to ye.”

Elizabeth gasped, shaking her head in disbelief. “No! That’s not right! I told you what he agreed to...”

He held her by her shoulders and ducked down so he could look deeply into her eyes. “T’was after I married ye to him that Turner was struck down by Jones. The lad was dead, Elizabeth, no matter what happened afterward. Whether ye’d taken a lover or not...whether ye’d found love or remained ferever alone... t’would have made no difference. When yer husband died, the matrimonial bond was severed. Yer not a wife, yer a widow.”

“But why would she do that? Why promise to free him at all if it was always her plan to bind him to the Dutchman?” she sputtered.

“A compliant captive always be better than one ye must bend to yer will,” Hector said. “And perhaps she thought that if she had ten years in his good graces, she could win his heart away from ye and he’d stay of his own volition. ‘Course, he’ll know she deceived him if he still wishes to return once the decade passes, but like all deities, she be vain...thinkin’ it impossible that he’ll be able to resist her.”

Elizabeth trembled in rage. “Then Will and I...we never even stood a chance! It was all a lie! She’s...she’s monstrous!”

“Cruel though she likely seems, might be she did it out of a desire fer love,” he suggested calmly. “Remember...not so many years have passed since ye thought me the monster and yet here we be.”

Her anger drained away as he spoke. He looked so uncertain for a moment and with no good cause. “Before I knew better, perhaps,” she whispered, caressing the coarse hair of his beard. “Before you let me see the man you really are.”

“Ye’d do well to keep in mind, lass, that ‘tis a pirate as stands before ye,” Hector warned her, his broad hands spreading over the small of her back and pressing her against him. “There be a bit of the monster remainin’...one whose hungers have grown ravenous after so much time.”

She felt a faint twinge of guilt as her body eagerly responded, Hector’s simple touch instantly setting her blood afire and making her knees quake. Calypso meant to keep Will for herself, though, and that understanding freed Elizabeth from a terrible weight on her soul. “I would not love you so well if you were anything but,” she replied breathily, bestowing the gentlest of kisses on Hector’s parted lips. He moaned deep in his throat and drew her closer, ravishing her mouth in needful desperation and the tempered desires of too many years.

Through the haze of her arousal, it gradually surfaced in Elizabeth’s fevered consciousness that her son was waiting patiently down the beach, likely wondering what had happened to his mother. It took all the willpower she possessed, but she pushed hard on Hector’s chest until she was able to break the kiss that had very nearly left her faint. “Wait...stop,” she panted, cradling his face in her hands and resting her forehead against his while she caught her breath. “There is all the time in the world for this, but first I have something for you. You left your clothes behind and so I’ve brought them back, clean and folded...”

“Won’t have a need fer such soon,” he groaned, his hands gliding over her hips and tugging her roughly against him so she could feel for herself the hot urgency of his desire. “Ye have but one thin’ I be wantin’.”

Elizabeth moaned but didn’t give in. “No,” she said, tearing free from his grasp and stumbling away on shaky legs. “It’s Christmas Eve. Think of it as a gift, if you prefer. You can’t deny me that.”

“Fine...fine! Whate’er it takes. But ye’ll pay later fer further delayin’ me when I’ve gone so long already.” He leaned over, resting his hands on his knees and trying to bring himself under control. “I’ll have me own sort of gift fer ye then.”

She grinned and straightened her blouse before she turned back towards where she knew her son stood. “William!” Elizabeth hollered, looking over her shoulder at Hector and giving him an enigmatic smile. He gazed back at her, his brow knitting in confusion, and she laughed in jubilant expectation. “Come here, son...bring forth those clothes and return them to your father!”

-*-*-*-*-*

Reviews and ratings very much appreciated...more to come!