Born of the Sea

by Kate Castle

  For Tim, Lucy, Rory and Alice.

  My crewmates.

  Dear Reader,

  You can read more about me, or sign up for new releases, giveaways, and other news at www.kate-castle.com. Subscribe to my Readers’ Club today for a gift!

  Thanks for reading,

  Love,

  Kate x

  Though based on a true story and real characters, this is a work of fiction and of the author’s imagination.

  Text copyright © Kate Castle 2021.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express permission of the publisher.

  Published by Dark Horse Publishing LLP

  www.darkhorsepublishing.co.uk

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-9169031-0-4

  First Edition: May 2021

  Cover design by Mary O’Brien.

  * Cover quotes taken from ARC reader reviews.

  Front cover illustration copyright Yuliya Derbisheva © 123RF.com

  Back cover illustration copyright Tetiana Syrytsyna © 123RF.com

  ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’

  -

  Marcel Proust

  Table of Contents

  Dedication & Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Thank You for Reading!

  Are you Ready for More?

  About the Author

  Author’s Note & Acknowledgements

  Glossary & Fun Facts

  1

  My name, in those days, was Anne Bonny.

  I’m told I was born in Cork, Ireland, sometime before 1700, but my father never told me the year, nor the day nor month of my birth. I should think he never really cared enough to know. Later, I would imagine I was born at sea in a night tempest; mountainous waves throwing the ship around like a twig in a rolling barrel of grog, my mother spread-eagled on the deck, her hair splayed out, screaming like a wild banshee. The sea has always felt like my true birthplace. It is where I found myself. It is where I found Mary.

  I regret that neither my birth nor my early life was quite that romantic, however. I was an illegitimate child of my father – a lawyer – and his housemaid. To escape the scandal, and his wife’s wrath, my father dressed me as a boy and passed me off as a young clerk, opening legal letters and such. That was until my chest started to grow in, and my rosy cheeks and lips likened to those of a lady. Gentlemen and not-so-gentle-men began to pay me attention. Whether or not they knew I was a lass I do not know, but they nevertheless took a liking to me, be it a boy or girl they were after. More than once, I had to fight a fellow off, which was not a problem for me. My father used to tell me I inherited my rage from my mother – we both were crowned with the virago’s tell-tale tangle of fire-red hair – but I reckon he had more than a little to do with it. Eventually, when one particularly over-amorous lawyer made his advances, I stabbed him in the neck with a paperknife. He spent some time in the infirmary and it kicked up a fair old stink with my father. Before long, the truth of both my sex and my parentage was uncovered and my father left Ireland a disgraced man – with my birth mother and me in tow – to start a new life in Charles Town, Carolina.

  That first day of our voyage to the colonies sticks clear and sharp in my memory, like the pleasure-pain prick of a hatpin. It is a memory almost as sharp as the first time I saw Mary.

  Have you ever crawled up the bowsprit, at the very foremost point of a schooner? The ocean is all you can see. All you can smell and hear. A five-foot scooch backwards and the topsail and fore rigging will surround you. But sit up at the tip of the bowsprit and there is nothing but unsullied water all around.

  I remember straddling it on that day, my boots crossed tight underneath at the ankles, watching two dozen gulls dip and swoop above my head, my eyes squinting in the afternoon sun. Looking out over the vast ocean, the wind whipping at my curls, I felt like a bird myself. I felt free. I felt like home.

  2

  My father practised the law for a while without much success, before finding his fortune in merchandise and buying a plantation in Charles Town. After losing him to his trade and my mother to a fever, my unruly reputation only grew. Increasingly drawn to the sea, I frequented the taverns in Charles Town’s port: drinking, swiving and fighting with the seafaring men I found there. Eventually, I took a shine to a smart sailor by the name of James Bonny, who dragged me from a fight in an alehouse and allowed me to stow away on his voyages, upon my insistence of course.

  James was poor, and somewhat dull, but his livelihood fostered my passion for the ocean. Within a month he had proposed, much to my father’s fury. My father tried to straighten me out by matching me with a fine young man with a good reputation and a large inheritance, but I beat that fellow to within the last fingerbreadth of his life when he tried to lay with me against my wishes. I married James in secret soon after. When my father uncovered our marriage, he disowned me. In a blind rage, I set fire to his plantation, and James and I fled Charles Town on a schooner sailing to Nassau, New Providence.

  New Providence was a filthy, lawless island, full of ramshackle inns and brothel houses, bursting at its seams with pirates, prostitutes and privateers. All were out for themselves. I fell in love with it immediately. I soon began spending all my time in the alehouses and brothels that lined Nassau Port, much to the annoyance of my new husband who had secured respectable employment helping to clean up the island under the new royal governor, Captain Woodes Rogers. As a former privateer, Rogers was seen as a traitor and despised by all the pirates I knew, including one I became particularly friendly with, Captain Jack Rackham.

  ***

  I met Jack during a tornado that ripped through Nassau in June of 1719 when most ne’er-do-wells were taking shelter in Sal’s Tavern, a popular alehouse and brothel. A regular there, I was never short of a drink, nor of company.

  “Well, aren’t you a long drink on a hot day?” were Jack’s first words to me. He was dressed in a colourful calico patchwork dress coat and a tricorn hat. His handsome face was deep brown and furrowed from years on the open sea.

  “A hot day?” I said, looking out to the storm. “You must be liquored already mister…the devil’s pissing on Nassau, ain’t he?”

  He flashed a grin at me. At least two of his teeth were pure gold. “It’s always sunny in Sal’s, darlin’.”

  The large group of men assembled around him banged their tankards on the tables and chanted: “Sal’s! Sal’s! Sal’s!”.

  I leant against the bar and surveyed him, my interest piqued, owing to his charm and the clear loyalty of his companions.

  “Do people always agree with you, Mister…?”

  “Rackham, Captain Jack Rackham. Some call me Calico Jack,” he replied, his eyes glinting with pure amusement. “And everyone tends to agree but you, I reckon. What is your name, lass?”

  “Anne.”

  “Just Anne?”

  “Well, let’s see. I came out of my mother as Anne Elizabeth Mary Cormac, if you require all of my particulars, but nowadays I go by Anne Bonny, on account of my husband.”

  Jack looked around the tavern, bemused. “And where is this…husband?”

  “My husband is attached to me in law alone, Mister Rackham. He certainly has no say
over my whereabouts.” I looked him up and down. “And no man ever shall.”

  He let out a loud, hearty guffaw. “Well, well, you are a Bonny-Anne indeed. And ooh-ee, a lit barrel of gunpowder to boot.” He reached into his top pocket and pulled out a single gold doubloon. I had never seen one before. “Care for a drink, Bonny-Anne?”

  “Since you asked, Mister Rackham,” I said, taking a seat on the nearest chair and swinging both feet up on to a table, crossed at the ankles. “As it happens, I am feelin’ mighty parched.”

  I spent every day with Jack over the next fortnight, drinking and quarrelling our way around Nassau Port. Together we rode out the storm from both the tornado and my husband, from whom we had to hide during his almost daily hunts to find me – a futile effort to tow me back into line.

  Jack and I became fast friends, then convenient lovers. We fought like cat and dog, but I confess I liked him more than any man before, or since. When the sun came out, I boarded a stolen sixty-foot sloop named William with Jack and his crew and never looked back.

  3

  I had been at sea on the William for two months and five days when I first set eyes on Mary Read. At first, I looked on her as a man – she went by the name of Mark at the time – but still, her effect on me was immediate.

  We had just taken a sloop off Tortuga island, a small single-masted vessel. Our usual tactic on the open sea had prevailed: using my good self as a distraction. It was my idea of course. Women were rarely seen at sea – having a female aboard was widely considered to be bad luck – and I relished taking centre stage, inventing all sorts of shenanigans to confuse and mystify our enemy. With such an unusual spectacle surprising our opponents, we often found smaller ships easy to overcome.

  Over the weeks I had gone from standing completely naked with a skull in one hand and a cutlass in the other; to swinging from the rigging and hollering like I belonged in an madhouse; to dancing a merry jig around the foresail in a flowing, bloodstained white robe. These theatrical displays were the only times I wore women’s garments aboard the William. Dresses were ridiculous and completely impractical, and I did not need to remind the crew any more than necessary of my underlying femininity. Being a woman in a man’s world is always problematic.

  One of my most memorable and elaborate diversions was when I lashed a headless dressmaker’s dummy to the bow, its torso splashed liberally with pig’s blood. As we approached a merchant ship, I stood over the dummy – doused in blood myself, for good effect – wielding a huge beheading axe and screaming like a banshee. The other ship’s crew were so frightened they gave up without so much as an ahoy – some of them even jumped overboard, trying to make a swim for it before we had barely come close. Truth be told, most of the crew of the William had been spooked too. Some still kept their distance from me wherever possible. I suppose an unpredictable woman is a fearsome prospect for many a man.

  This time, however, I decided to keep things simple. I positioned myself in the crow’s nest as we came up alongside the sloop, dressed in a fine red velvet robe, with my bodice ripped wide open to reveal my bare breasts.

  On this occasion, all but one of the sloop’s crew surrendered without a fuss. One man, however, burst from a cabin with his sword and pistol drawn, ready to fight single-handed. He managed to cross the gangway onto the William, kill two of our men and wound three others before I swung down on the rigging line and landed soundly in front of him.

  “Now, you wouldn’t hurt a lady, would you, mister?” I said, with my hands cupping my breasts.

  “There’s nary a lady I know who dresses like that,” he replied, breathless from his endeavours. His clear blue eyes were assured, strong, with a hint of amusement. He had high cheekbones and lustrous, wavy auburn hair. I thought him to be a very unusual-looking man.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing me, now, have you?” I replied, with the sweetest face I could muster.

  “Sure enough, I don’t suppose I have,” he said, stowing his weapons in his belt.

  He walked to me, then, his eyes never leaving mine. He unfastened the red sash from his shoulder, and slowly wrapped it around my chest, covering me up. He was as close as many a man had been before, but I had never felt quite like this from someone’s nearness.

  He seemed to see me…gentle, understanding, challenging and strong, and all at once.

  My cockiness all but gone, I grew still and stared into his eyes, which seemed to darken to the colour of midnight under my gaze. I felt his fingers tie the sash behind my head and brush lightly against my neck. My heart thudded, matching a pulse I saw throbbing in his throat. Then he stepped back and graced me with a smile like sunshine after the fiercest of storms.

  Jack appeared alongside me, both pistols levelled at the man’s chest, a look of sheer amazement on his face.

  “Well, blow me down,” Jack said. “It ain’t the first time I’ve seen a fella conch-struck by my Bonny-Anne, but I do believe it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Bonny-Anne silenced. Can you tame the Kraken, too, son?”

  Loud laughter rang out around the deck from the rest of the crew, who had gathered to watch. The man pulled his gaze away from me and had the good sense to join in with the mirth. As any good seafarer knew, once their vessel’s crew was bettered, if they did not unite with the victors, they would soon be thrown overboard and used as target practice.

  “What’s your name, son?” said Jack, slipping his pistols into his belt.

  “Mark Read.”

  “You’re a fine fighter, Mark Read. Not too many a man who’d try taking on the William alone. Besides, anyone who can tame our Anne deserves recruitment.”

  Another ripple of laughter spread across the deck. I rolled my eyes and huffed out my displeasure, feeling the colour rise in my cheeks. Embarrassment was a new experience for me.

  “The name’s Captain Jack Rackham. Some call me Calico Jack,” he said, ignoring me and extending his hand. “Seems we’re in the market for a couple of new men, thanks to you. Our aim is simple: take small ships, avoid King’s ships, drink and be merry.” The crew erupted with their customary roar of approval. Jack smiled. “What do you say to joining our happy band, Mister Read?”

  Mark slid his eyes to me for a moment then nodded, shaking Jack’s hand. “I reckon I feel right at home already, Cap’n.”

  “Then welcome aboard.”

  Jack clapped Mark on the back and put an arm around his shoulders. The crew broke into cheers and rowdy calls went up for a rum punch welcome party that evening. It seemed this mysterious young man could indeed charm just about anyone.

  The crew searched the sloop for booty, booze and food before we loaded her with the dead, set her alight and, finally, adrift. Night was falling and I stood with Mark, aft of the mainsail, watching the blazing ship recede into the distance. Some of the crew moved around the deck, lighting the ship’s port, starboard, quarterdeck and forecastle lanterns in preparation for the evening’s merriment. Mark held a five-stringed guitar and a knapsack he had brought on board with him and stood perfectly still at the taffrail, a picture of calm.

  I took the time to study his profile. A warm offshore breeze whipped his hair around his face, more chestnut now in the dimming light. Candlelight from the lanterns flickered in his eyes. As he became aware of my gaze, a corner of his mouth lifted, revealing a tiny hollow in his smooth cheek.

  “Have we met somewhere before, Mister Read?” I asked.

  He shook his head, turning to me. “I’d remember.”

  4

  In the weeks that followed, we sailed to Jamaica and scoured the harbours and inlets of the east and south of the island, taking seven or eight small crafts with few men and not much booty, but we plundered just enough supplies to keep us satisfied. A military man, Mark’s fighting ability was a great advantage and he spent many hours teaching me to parry and lunge, vastly improving my swordsmanship. Our early lessons were a source of great amusement for the crew; Mark’s calmness and
physical grace pitted against my impatience and fiery temper proved hugely entertaining, especially for those who enjoyed seeing me bettered.

  Our very first lesson took place on a beach in Hispaniola, just after our first take with Mark as part of the team. He had almost single-handedly won the fight for us and the crew were clamouring to shake his hand and congratulate him. Even Jack could not hide his admiration.

  We had dropped anchor in a large sandy cove along the abandoned north-west coast of the island to take stock. It was late afternoon and the sun hung low and large over Cuba and the Windward Passage. Jack ordered six of the crew to row ashore in search of wood and water for the ship, including Mark and me. Once landed, we sent the other four lads off to collect firewood, while Mark and I trudged through the jungle to locate a water source. Mark seemed to be a born water diviner, too, and within an hour we had filled a dozen wineskins and hauled them back to the beach, to wait for the wood party to return. The tide was receding fast, revealing vast stretches of sea grass sprouting up from the sand, like whiskers on a smooth chin.

  Not one to sit about and do nothing, Mark lugged the wineskins to our rowboat and began hauling the vessel over the wet sand towards the waterline, which was now around half a furlong from where we had landed. I caught up with him, took hold of the bow rope, and together we dragged the boat out to meet the tide. A minute or so had passed when Mark stopped suddenly with a sharp intake of breath and bent over.