“We’ll take them on their flanks, attack around either side of yonder rise. Richmond’s regiment, form up under your captain to the left! Walpole’s regiment to the right!”
No more orders than that were needed. The troops, well trained, experienced in more of these sorts of attacks than any could count, moved swiftly from the file formation in which they rode to the long line abreast in which they would sweep down on the enemy.
Mary thrilled at the maneuver, despite her unwillingness to see the peace of the morning destroyed. There was something awesome and terrible about a cavalry attack. Unstoppable. Infantry in the field had no defense against the horsemen who came charging down on them, blades flashing. No defense other than to form a square and hold the horses off with lances and bayonets, but it was the rare infantry company that possessed the discipline and courage to do that. Usually they broke and ran, and when they did that, they died.
Only artillery could stop a cavalry charge dead, but a grand forage would not have artillery. That was for a real battle.
Mary wheeled her horse to the right, joined in with the other troopers from Walpole’s regiment. In the brief, confused shuffling as the riders formed into their line she managed to sidle up beside Frederick, held her horse at a stand beside his.
Frederick looked over at her. “Nice morning for a ride in the country,” he said.
“It is that. It needs only a few dead Frenchmen to make it perfect.”
They looked one another in the eye, held the gaze longer than mere comrades in arms might. Mary felt something pass between them and she thought of the way lightning looks when it jumps from one cloud to another. It was like that, every bit as powerful and frightening.
Then Frederick turned away, an embarrassed look on his face, and Mary looked away, too. This cannot go on, she thought. She could not endure this play-acting any longer. She had to make her confession to Frederick. But the thought of that was more terrifying even than the battle into which she was about to ride.
On the open ground before them the captain took his place in the front of the troops, and arrayed behind him the lieutenants, and behind the lieutenants, the sergeants. And behind the sergeants, a great unbroken wall of horses, and mounted on them the men of the light cavalry, their long red coats hanging down over their thighs, their tall black boots gleaming dull in the overcast.
The horses shifted, pawed the ground nervously, whinnied and snorted. Like the men, the animals had been there before, and they understood the great thundering action into which they were about to plunge.
And in front of all, Colonel Richmond, his sword drawn and held aloft, his gauntlet-clad hand gripping the hilt, the heavy hand-guard inlaid with gold. Mary felt her heart race, her hands sweating inside her own gauntlets. She dared a glance at Frederick, met his eyes, and smiled with the thrill of it all and Frederick, with a bit less enthusiasm, smiled back.
And then the colonel swept his sword down and his horse moved out, and behind him, the captains, the lieutenants, the sergeants, and then the great scarlet line rolled forward, gathering momentum as the riders let their speed build from walk to trot to canter.
They were an avalanche of horses and riders, rolling down on the enemy, unstoppable. Holding their straight line, controlled, disciplined, ready to charge or break right or left at their officers’ orders, relayed by the trumpeters who rode on their flanks. A disciplined tidal wave, lightning striking on command.
Down across the field, down the rise, the high ground still between the riders and the screen of French infantry. The canter built to a gallop as the light cavalry surged forward. Mary felt the wind rushing through her queue-bound hair, felt the tears streaming down her cheeks, felt the madness of the charge overtake her and she wanted to shout with the intensity of the moment.
But she was a disciplined soldier and she kept quiet. The line of cavalry reached the bottom of the hill and started up the next in their great thundering attack. Mary reached across her belly, grabbed her big cavalry saber and pulled it free, gripping the reins in her left hand, holding her sword cocked over her shoulder with her right.
She glanced over at Frederick. He was leaning forward in his saddle, driving his mount, so caught up in the drama of the thing that he had forgotten to draw his blade. She reached over with her sword, gave him a tap on his back. He looked over, his eyes moving from her face to her sword and he nodded and drew his own saber and held it like Mary held hers.
Up, up to the top of the low hill, over the crest, and then below them an open wheat field. Mary’s well-trained eye swept the ground below, took stock of the strategic position even as the two companies broke right and left, pounding down the grassy slope to strike the enemy on their flanks.
Spread over the field were the blue coats, the bright white breeches of French infantry. They were in a wide formation, like a skirmish line, perfectly situated for cavalry to cut them down.
At the far end of the field, tucked into a corner, a farm house, stone walls, thatched roof, and behind it a barn, built of boards and battens. The house was strong, could be used as a small fortification. A potential problem. The barn could be hiding more troops, even French cavalry.
At the far end of the field, a line of thick trees. Good cover for the fleeing infantry. The Light Horse could not penetrate there. Had to strike the Frenchmen down before they reached that tree line.
The scarlet line reached the edge of the plowed field and surged across it. In front of them, the gray puffs of musket fire as the French infantrymen took their one shot and then turned and fled for the tree line. There was no time to reload in the face of a cavalry charge.
Mary saw a trooper shot from his horse, saw another drop his sword and grab his shoulder, but Frederick was unharmed and the fight was already out of the French infantry. They were running now, as fast as they could, flinging muskets and knapsacks aside in their wild flight for the trees.
Right in front of her and fifty feet away Mary could see a man running, running, stumbling as he made for the tree line. She raised her sword, jammed the spurs in her horse’s flanks, closing fast with him. Frederick was still there and they charged on, side by side, carrying death to the French.
And then the tree line erupted in a cloud of smoke, spurting out over the field, and the air was filled with the roar of field artillery, the unearthly scream of flying grapeshot, and men and horses were knocked down like toys.
Colonel Richmond, sword raised high, was whipped from his saddle by a blast of grape and his crumpled body vanished in the tall stalks of wheat. The Light Horse stopped as if it had run into a brick wall, horses wheeling, officers bellowing orders that no one could hear.
“What the hell!” Mary shouted, pulled hard on her reins, tried to get her horse under control. She looked back. Frederick was still mounted, still unhurt.
Again the tree line belched smoke, and grapeshot ripped through the cavalry, tearing bloody holes in the perfect scarlet line. A single note from the trumpeter and then he was blown away, a blast of grape tearing him apart and flinging him from his wild horse.
A trap! A bloody damned trap! The infantry had been sent out ahead of artillery, hidden in the trees. Infantry, spread out across an open field, irresistible to attacking cavalry.
Mary wheeled her horse, looking for the lieutenant, the captain, any of the officers, but all she could see in front of the line were horses screaming and thrashing their lives away in the waist-high wheat, glimpses of scarlet where the officers lay dead on the ground.
Another volley, the flat report of field cannon, the scream of grapeshot, the screams of dying horses, dying men, frightened men. They were being cut down where they stood, with no one in command.
And then Mary saw Frederick’s horse surge forward, rear up, eyes mad with terror. Foam streaked from its mouth, blood pouring from a gash under the animal’s neck where the grapeshot had torn up its flesh.
Frederick shouted, yanked on the reins, but there was nothing he could
do. There was no rider on earth who could have controlled that panicked beast.
From the tree line the artillery blasted away.
CHAPTER THREE
JOHN RACKAM came into his ascendancy as pirate captain in the usual manner: through bluff and betrayal, treachery, opportunities recognized and exploited.
That final epoch of his career began in darkness and fire, July 24, 1718. It began with a show of spectacular defiance staged by Captain Charles Vane and ended with Calico Jack in command.
Jack’s day began as those ashore generally did—his head fogged, his arms around a young, pretty trollop lying in bed beside him. He opened his eyes, then closed them quickly under the assault of the morning light. He did not know what had disturbed his sleep. He was not even certain where he was.
He tried his eyes again, rubbed them, and looked around the room. Rough-cut beams held up the low ceiling, adz marks like fish scales deep in the wood. Plaster walls, troweled on quick and whitewashed. A wash basin with a broken leg that had been repaired with two pieces of wood lashed along either side. The work of a sailor, no doubt, but they were all sailors in Nassau, save for the small shore-bound population of merchants and publicans and prostitutes—the lamprey, there to feed off the pirates.
Jack began to remember. The room was above the Ship Tavern, one of several that lined Bay Street, and his personal favorite. Like most buildings on the island it was wood built, a shoddy structure that looked as if it might fall over in a brisk wind. But in the near-perfect climate of New Providence, with as undemanding a clientele as the pirates, there was little need for buildings of great substance. Just four walls and a roof under which to drink and carouse and fornicate.
A torn piece of canvas hung in front of the only window, and around the edges of the canvas the brilliant morning sun glowed bright, too bright for Jack to view directly. It had to be well past dawn. He closed his eyes and listened.
There was something happening in the streets, some commotion, but that was hardly unusual. Since an earthquake had swallowed up Port Royal, Jamaica, back in ’92, Nassau had become the home of the pirates, the safe haven from those who might try to end the bacchanalia that was life on the account. There were near two thousand pirates living in Nassau, drinking, fighting, shoring, spending their booty as fast as ever they could, then taking their ships to sea again and prowling the sea lanes for more. Disturbances were not uncommon.
But this was different. There was an urgency about the muted voices that Rackam could not place—not a fight or a murder, those things did not command much urgency at all—but something else.
He had no notion of what it might be, and he was too sleepy and hung over and randy to put more thought into it. He rolled on his side, ran his hand along the girl’s leg and up her belly and caressed her breasts. She began to wake, smiled, squirmed a bit, and Jack felt his ardor growing.
He could not recall her name.
“Come on then, Betty, let’s have a bit of that,” he murmured in her ear, running his calloused hand softly over her cool, smooth skin, just barely touching her, like she was the most fragile of objects.
“Mmm,” she sighed, opened her eyes, shuffled away from him. “Don’t you ‘Betty’ me, you bastard . . .”
Jack pushed closer to her. Something in the stuffing of the straw mattress pricked him and he shifted. His body ached in various places, his joints stiff, sore from sleeping on a thin mattress tossed over a rope-strung cot. He was thirty-six years old, not a young man any more, and his body was starting to feel the effects of its hard use.
The same could not be said of his libido, however. That had not dulled or weakened, not even after twenty years of giving it free rein.
The girl put her hands against his chest as if fending him off. “Sir, you take liberties . . .”
Jack smiled. This little bunter, who was at that moment naked and in bed with him, was coming it the coy maiden. She was even convincing in her act, and it excited him.
God, but he did love women! There was nothing, nothing that John Rackam loved more than women: teasing them, flirting with them, holding them, undressing them, humping them.
There was no aspect of piracy that he loved so much as he loved women. Not fighting, not drinking, not plundering a rich, fat merchantman. None of it could compare to the feeling of having some lusty young thing thrashing away under him.
And there was no one that the women loved more than him.
Calico Jack Rackam: handsome, square-jawed with an audacious mustache that turned up playfully at the ends. Hair long and curly, falling over his shoulders and his back. Any wig maker would have been rich if he could have created a head of hair as perfect as that which God had given to Calico Jack. His body was still lean and hard, not gone to fat, or scarred and battered, his teeth and hair had not fallen out from the scurvy like so many of the brethren.
When he wasn’t naked he was generally tricked out in coats and waistcoats and even breeches in bright printed calico, dandified clothes of which he was well proud. Quick-witted, dashing, generous, Calico Jack Rackam the pirate.
Jack pushed the girl gently on her back, lost in the feel of her, the smell of her, the soft, smooth skin of her shoulders and neck.
On the street below the window the commotion was growing louder, building like his own desire. And just as he was ready to enter her he heard the name “Rogers” float in through the window, shouted from the street below.
With that one word he understood what the uproar was about and all his desire was stamped out like an ember under a boot heel.
He leapt out of bed, tossing the sheets aside, ignoring the girl’s surprised and angry shout.
“What in hell has got into you?” she demanded.
Jack was bouncing on one foot, pulling his breeches on. “Bloody Rogers . . .” Jack said, getting the second leg in and grabbing up his shirt. “Bloody Woodes Rogers must be in the offing.”
Woodes Rogers. He was as much a pirate as any of them, or had been, at least, during the last war. Plundered the Spanish in the Pacific, came back to England a rich man, with money and reputation enough to win him respect.
Now he had been appointed Captain General and Governor-in-Chief of the Bahamas and he was rumored to be on his way with a force of ships of the Royal Navy. He was reportedly coming to sweep Nassau clean of pirates, make it safe for honest settlers.
The girl sat up in bed, watched his frenetic dressing. “Woodes Rogers, the new governor? Are you afraid of him?”
“Not afraid, darling, not afraid.” Rackam buckled his belt around his slim waist, adjusted the angle at which his sword hung. “But I don’t reckon Vane’ll be waiting for his pardon, and I don’t care to be left on the beach, is all.”
He pulled on his coat. Calico, a floral print, hundreds of tiny roses on a white background. Not many would have the flair and style to wear something like that, and none who tried could have pulled it off like Jack Rackam.
He dug in his purse, relieved to find one coin left there, a doubloon.
He tossed it to the girl and she squealed in delight. He blew her a kiss, lifted the wooden latch on the door, and stepped into the dim hallway. That doubloon was the last of his money, but he reckoned they would be underway by nightfall, and the generous payment would guarantee her affections when next he was in town.
If, indeed, there would be such a time. Perhaps he would not return. No one knew what Rogers was capable of doing, or what he even intended to try. Most thought that once the Navy was gone, Rogers would be like the others: corrupt, bribable, eager to make his fortune in partnership with the pirates.
But Rackam was not so certain. Rogers had a reputation, and the rumors that had swirled around Nassau had all indicated that the man meant business.
Deep, deep down, in a part of his mind that would never find voice, Calico Jack Rackam understood that he was, in fact, afraid. Afraid of this grand, heedless way of life coming to an end. Desperately afraid of the noose.
; He staggered down the narrow hall. Through thin walls he heard others dressing, talking, copulating. He stuffed his silk stockings in his pocket as he hurried down the rickety stairs and out the door that opened on to Bay Street.
Jack took the morning sun full in the face and he held up his hand and with his sleeve brushed the tears away. His head had felt surprisingly good, despite the wild night he had enjoyed, but now it throbbed in the brilliant glare. He pushed his cocked hat down on his head and stepped into the street, paused as a dray rumbled past, then crossed the dusty road to the waterfront beyond.
Nassau, lying along the northern edge of New Providence Island, was mostly waterfront. The sun beat down on the town and the shallow water, unrelenting, raising a pungent odor of brine and discarded conch shells and fish viscera and the rough cooking of the people who lived by the water.
Pirates did not congregate where it was cold. Cold was not conducive to their lifestyle.
All along Bay Street, wooden docks thrust out into Nassau Harbor, a strip of water sandwiched between Hog Island to the north and New Providence Island to the south. Beyond the docks, riding at their anchors, pirate sloops and pirate brigs and pirate ships and the rotting wooden corpses of prizes and old pirate vessels abandoned to the ravages of the tropics. Decay was everywhere: in the streets, in the air, on the water.
A crowd of people were jammed onto the longest of the docks and staring east toward that entrance to Nassau Harbor. Jack pushed his way through, snarling, “Give way there, you whoreson,” and “Bloody step aside!” In Nassau, Calico Jack held certain privileges, he felt, including the right to be at the head of any mob he chose. He was, after all, quartermaster to the famous Captain Charles Vane, and in his own right a well-known, well-loved figure.
At the edge of the dock he spotted Ben Hornigold, grand old man of the Nassau pirates.
Only Life That Mattered Page 4
