Kingston by Starlight

by Christopher John Farley

  During this testimony, Read began to writhe and to moan slightly, and pulled at his chains as if meaning to escape, and yet I could see his actions had no logic or reflection behind them. He carried on as if there was a pain in his innards and so I rubbed his belly a little and, in doing so, I realized he was in possession of a secret. I reached down between my legs and, remembering Read’s words about Eve’s curse, it occurred to me that I shared the same secret as my fellow. I kissed him on the forehead and I smiled.

  The witnesses had now finished their testimony and His Excellency the Governor asked the prisoners, me and Read, if we, alone or separately, had any defense to make, or had any witnesses to swear in on our behalf, or desired to cross-examine any witnesses that had been so far heard.

  I answered for us both and replied that we had no witnesses that had not yet been heard and we had no questions to ask of those that had appeared and we had nothing to say other than the fact that all who had addressed the court were damn’d liars.

  Lawes asked that the last of my words be stricken from the record and Read and I were taken away from the bar and put into a small room for custody while the Governor considered the evidence. I held Read in my arms and I rocked him a bit, as if I was holding a babe; he closed his eyes and made small sounds in his throat.

  Then, after a time, we were brought back before the bar. Governor Lawes fixed me with a grim stare and said that the court had unanimously found “you guilty, both you, Mary Read, and you, Anne Bonny, of Pyracy, Robbery, and of acts of Terror. Do you have anything to say, or to offer, why a sentence of death should not pass upon you for your said offences?”

  I said nothing.

  Read, with his last strength, open’d his eyes and took his feet. He waved aside my support and met Lawes with his eyes.

  “If I have been silent, it is not because I am weak, but because I am temporarily afflicted,” he said. “As for the gallows, I do not fear it, nor do I think it cruel because, if not for that kind instrument, all cowards would become privateers and would, as a natural result, so infest the seas that men of courage would die of hunger.”

  After this proclamation, Read stumbled and fell back into my arms.

  Lawes paused for a moment after Read’s statement and issued his reply.

  “Then, having said nothing,” he said, “or nothing worthy of report, I declare this: you, Mary Read, alias Read, and you, Anne Bonny, alias Bonn, are to go from hence to the place whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution; where you shall be severally hang’d by the neck, ’til you are severally dead. And God of his infinite Mercy be merciful to both your souls.”

  After judgment was pronounced, I stepped forward and informed the court that the sentence must be stay’d.

  “Prithee why?” said the Governor. “This verdict is not for you, but for the future of the children of this island. On that principle have I staked my honor.”

  “If, indeed, you care for children,” I said, “verily, you must let us go free.”

  I informed the court that which I had only lately learned: that Read and I were each quick with child and so, having no other options, we were forced to plead our bellies.

  The Governor retired to his chambers for a short while. A murmur and several cries of shock arose from the gallery as the news of the reason for the delay spread. The Governor then emerged and rendered a new judgment. His Excellency the Governor, after considering the weight of public opinion and the scrutiny of newspaper scribes, decided to charge us with the punishment that we were never to sail again, under pain of death. We were to be fined the amount of twenty thousand crowns for our previous sea-transgressions, but, that fine having already been paid, we were, after processing, to be set free the next week.

  The gallery erupted, equal parts cheers and howls.

  “Who— who paid our fine?” I asked.

  The Governor returned my question with a sneer.

  “Why, your father, of course.”

  chapter 35.

  I am going to see my da.

  With Read at my side, I am leaving Port Royal. He is weak and leans against me for support. We walk down Thames Street. From here we can see the water. It is flat and gray and dead, with nary a wave or ripple. From this distance, the harbor is a clouded mirror, reflecting nothing, revealing naught of its own features. Ships brought into the wharf lay motionless in their moorings. I see a three-masted ship flying British colors, recently brought in to careen, laying nearly on its side in the shallows of the stale water. The great ship’s foremast, mainmast, and mizzenmast have been stripped of their sails and jut out naked from the tilted deck, held down by blocks and tackle. The vessel looks like the skeleton of some vast sea creature, washed up, rotting on the shore, or come from some other world to haunt the living. A half-dozen seamen moved about its hull, burning off barnacles and slimy sea growth, applying pitch and caulk to rotten planks, and swathing on a mix of oil, tallow, and brimstone to help ward off further incrustations.

  We climbed the hills that ringed the city and trekked out to the lands beyond. The landscape grew gentler as we passed through the rolling green fields of the sugar plantations. The stalks of sugarcane, twice as tall as Read, danced in the warm afternoon breeze. Read ripped out a stalk, peeled back the green leaves, and sucked on the stringy sweet innards. He coughed a little, but smiled at the taste. Following his lead, I pulled up a stalk and chewed on the tough, sugary core.

  Set at intervals between the vast green rhomboids of sugarcane crop were the great houses of the plantations. I had never seen homes of such grandeur, not in Cork, nor Dublin besides. They were like giants with many eyes and many mouths crouching in the slopes. They had tall, flat sides and wide, gently sloping roofs. The front lawns all boasted large, generous gardens bursting with red and yellow and blue flowers. Nearby, each of the homes had either a towering wooden windmill or a large stone waterwheel set in a stream. By custom, and necessity as well, Read said, the houses were located a musketball’s distance from the barracks of the slaves’ quarters.

  One of these great houses belonged to my da.

  As Read and I continued to walk, we noticed that some of the fields, and some of the great houses, were on fire. We could see black smoke swirling into the air. We saw, too, a brown-and-white windmill with its spinning vanes on fire. We could hear the beat of drums echoing across the fields.

  “Those are burru,” whispered Read, his voice cracking from the fever and from the exertion of travel. “Talking drums.”

  Read guessed that there must be some sort of slave insurrection ongoing in these parts. Slave masters would never allow their charges to beat their drums so openly, so loudly. I imagined slaves, shackles ’round their ankles, sprinting through the lush fields. The sweetness of the cane was still on my tongue.

  The dirt path away from Port Royal now faded out and became mere trample marks on the soft grass. The grass path we followed was lined on either side with flowers— the white blossoms of the ramgoat rose and the elaborate beauty of the crane flower, with its bright orange petals and stalks bent at right angles. Read was taking note of some of the vegetation. In particular, he seemed fascinated by the bladderwort, a squat, carnivorous plant with wide leaves like two hands pressed together at the wrist, palms open. The plant, with seeming innocuousness, lured insects between its leaves, which were joined at midrib, and then closed them tightly around its unsuspecting prey. The strange plant mesmerized Read, as if he had found a kindred spirit. Read stuck his finger between the leaves again and again, smiling each time the plant’s jaws closed tight.

  “The plant, I’ve heard, when eaten fresh, is good for fever,” Read said.

  He plucked off the bladderwort’s head to keep in his pouch, but its leaves went limp as soon as the plant was decapitated. So he plucked another one and ate it then and there, even as the plant’s jaws quivered.

  Read belched.

  And so we walked on.

  I also picked as I strode along, g
athering ingredients for the preparation of a midday meal. I picked peppers and chocho and other edible plants I found growing wild. As I continued along the path, crouching from time to time to uproot some new vegetable or spice, I grew wary. It seemed as if there were eyes on me, although there was no watcher to be seen. I thought I could feel a stare on the back of my bare arms, on my legs, running across my limbs like the light touch of fingertips. Footsteps, too, I heard; the crunch of stones beneath paws, the snap of twigs. I looked quickly around— nothing could be seen but grass and trees. But the air seemed warmer, unnaturally so.

  I looked at Read. He nodded. He could feel it, too.

  “Do you have any tinder?” he said.

  I pulled a small leather pouch out of my breeches. After searching through it, I handed him some strips of juniper tree bark.

  “I need four.”

  I raised an eyebrow and passed him a few additional strips.

  Read crouched down on the grass path.

  “In these parts, they believe we each have two spirits,” he said. “After we die, one goes on to judgment.”

  “And the other?”

  “It stays on this earth and haunts the trees. They call such spirits duppys.”

  He lay four strips of bark in a small pile in the center of the path.

  I gave him a quizzical look and pointed toward the tinder.

  “Duppys can’t count past three. If they see four strips of bark, they will count and count and recount them. If a duppy’s on our trail, this will stop him.”

  He stood up and we continued down the path.

  As we walked on, it seemed as if the air returned to a more normal temperature. Duppys, according to Read, throw heat when they approach, so he took the cooling temperature as a sign that perhaps the thing that had been following and watching us was falling behind or gone entirely. We allowed ourselves to feel some relief. But now the black smoke from the burning sugar fields was growing thicker. My da’s house was close. We were both weary from the long walk, so I thought it best to stop and eat a proper meal.

  We halted and I lay down my pack. I had been carrying some cooking supplies— tin pots, dried meat, and the like— and so I decided now to put them to use. We had paused near a Traveler’s Tree and I broke off a few of the leaves and drained the water into a pot. Setting the pot of water over a fire, I mixed in dried kale, salted pork, okra, callalloo, and some of the other wild vegetation I had found along the path. It was the recipe that Zed, my old African neighbor, had taught me. When I was done, I allowed Read to take the first taste. The aroma was pungent and inviting and he greedily slurped down nearly half the pot. Then, a few seconds later, the seasonings caught up with him and his eyes bulged and his face turned crimson.

  “It’s called pepperpot soup,” I said. “Its spices are strong for some.”

  Read got to his feet and ran toward the Traveler’s Tree and drank deep from more than a few of its hollow water-storing leaves.

  * * *

  When we resumed our journey, the heat returned. It felt like the warmth from a just-scratched rash. It faded every time Read looked ’round trying to uncover its source. When he stopped searching, it returned, hotter than the time before. The heat seeped beneath the skin and made the muscles throb and the bones ache. My eyes and tongue felt dry; my chest and arms were damp with sweat. Read kneeled down and lay a pile of bark strips on the path. He would have left even more but I felt it best to spare a few for less supernatural tasks, like lighting torches and sparking the cooking fire.

  We continued on, this time walking at an even quicker pace. The trees around us grew taller and more numerous. Tall Royal Palms, with sloping trunks and wide leaves, crowded the path. Small lizards— red, blue, and yellow— jumped from tree to tree or scampered before our feet. Read stopped me and cautioned me to let the lizards pass.

  “If a croaker bites you,” he said, “you must reach water before the croaker or the bite is death. At least that’s the belief around these parts.”

  I let the lizard pass and looked up.

  We had come to my da’s house.

  chapter 36.

  There were vast fields of sugarcane and beyond them a great green lawn and in the middle of that a large white house and further still, I could see the brown shacks of the slave quarters. The day was all but over and yet the night had not yet come. I could see shapes moving against the bloody sky, and hear shouts and some screams as well. Read unsheathed his sword and held it unsteadily as he was still shaking with fever; my blade had already leapt into my hands. Smoke rose from the fields, and I could smell the sweet stink of burning crop.

  I saw a shape move at one of the upper windows of the white house. The barrel of a musket emerged, tracking us as we moved up the walk. Then the musket was pulled out of the window and the front door was swung open.

  It was my da.

  He was as I remembered him. Shorter perhaps, than in my recollection, and thicker around the waist. His hair, too, was gray where once it had been black, and he was bald on the crown of his head.

  He considered me, and in his eyes I read his thought: has my daughter returned a son? He was dressed as I was, as if we were each standing before a mirror, unsure which was the reflection and which was the real— but knowing one of us had things backward. My privateer clothes had been seized during the trial, and though I was still clad in garb that aligned with my nature, it was of a sort that was less conspicuous to authorities: a gentleman’s three-cornered hat of a dark blue, a man’s waistcoat of the same coloring, and gray leggings. These same articles he also wore, and in the same colors. Only the shades, perhaps, set my wardrobe apart from his, and the fact that he wore his hat not on his head, but held it in one hand.

  Waving his musket, my da bade us to come into his house.

  Inside the house was all manner of finery— carved chairs and tables, paintings and sculptures, gold and silver baubles of various sorts, silverware and chandeliers. Yet the interior was in disarray, with benches and cabinets piled up against the doors and windows, as if to brace the portals against some siege. A hoard of weapons was collected in the center of the floor— swords, guns, spears, and the like.

  “Welcome to the war,” said my da.

  * * *

  I did not wait to ask him what I needed to ask him. I had not the time to hesitate, for the purposes of decorum, or to reestablish those familiar bonds, which, once connected, allow one party to ask another questions of an intimate nature. I was not that little girl who threw balls down the forest-shrouded trails of our village that had no name. I was not that daughter who wept bitter tears for as many weeks as I can remember when Da left home, without explanation, without indication of where he might be bound or when he might come back. No, I was a seaman, and I had seen many things, and done many things, and had put that old me behind me, like the landscape in the rear of a racing carriage.

  “Your face . . . your hair . . . your clothes,” my father said, gazing at me. “The stories I have read in the newspaper are true!”

  I could wait no longer.

  “Why did you pay to set us free?”

  My da smiled an awful smile.

  “I always wanted a son,” he began. “But my son is dead.”

  * * *

  So he told me why he left us. Or, rather, he gave no explanation, but described the path that took him from the Old World to the New, from one island to another, from Ireland to Jamaica. I will not trouble you with the details of his chronology. With the sounds of insurgency raging around his mansion, he told me of the events that followed the Game of Bowls in our village.

  All these long years Da had nursed resentment. He had sacrificed his first marriage to be with my ma. When his first wife had died, and his son by his first wife passed on as well, he had dressed me up in boys’ clothes to pass me off as his dead son to collect money from his first wife’s rich family. And so I began my life in deceit. Ma had been a maid when they met, and Da put his standing at risk
with their union. He had suffered much to establish his new family— he had gambled, he had lied, he had broken blood ties. Ma, he said, repaid him with a knife in his back. He did not want to believe that I could be another man’s child, not at first. But then the legacy of Baltimore became clear, if not to others, at least to him. He saw it in my skin, in my hair, in my love for adventure and action, even in my push to join the Game of Bowls. So Da planned his revenge. He bought land in the New World, prepared a new life, and left Ma with nothing but old debts. In the night he had fled, convincing Zed to join him under some ruse or another, or perhaps just appealing to that old corsair’s long subordinated love of the sea. As he boarded the ship, Da had claimed Zed as his slave, and, following various adventures, and having landed in Jamaica and established a farm, he had put him to work in the fields. It pleased him that the man who had cuckolded him was now his servant.