Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  It was time to give it up. Jack waited for the right moment to make the suggestion, and when it came, he knew it.

  That moment was during a spell of bad weather, driving rain, howling gales that forced the men aloft to reef topsails and send top-gallant masts and yards down to the deck. The storm’s relentless wind found all of the Ranger’s chafed lines, old canvas, rotten spars, and tore and snapped and smashed all that it touched, springing masts, splitting sails, shredding rigging like it was spun-yarn.

  Two days of that, with all hands on deck nearly all the time, the winter rain cold, the big seas boarding the brig again and again, washing men and gear away, and the only relief from that, the leaking, wet, filthy, stinking lower deck. Two days, and Jack called all hands below into the relative shelter of the great cabin and said “Lads, I’ve been thinking. We’ve had a good cruise, damned good, and we’ve had the main fortune our way, I reckon.”

  Heads nodded at that. They had squandered quite a bit, but each man there was still far richer than he had been when first they sailed.

  “That whoreson Rogers, new governor in Nassau, he has been issuing pardons, as you know.” Jack was talking loud, nearly yelling over the terrible sound of wind in the rigging and the seas pounding the hull. “I’m thinking, time we sail for Nassau, take the King up on his offer. Don’t mean we leave the sweet trade, but it is a reprieve, like. Give us a good run ashore, and never the fear of being taken and hung. Dry taverns, all night in with some little bunter to warm your backs. What say you?”

  They said yes. They said it with enthusiasm, and Jack could see each of those exhausted, bedraggled, hungry, wet, vermin-ridden men thinking of how fine it would be, at that very second, to be sitting in the Ship Tavern, punch bowl in one hand, pipe in the other, whore in his lap.

  Once the weather had moderated enough that they could do something beyond running before the wind and seas, Jack set a course for Nassau. They stood into the crowded harbor in the late afternoon, dropped the hook as the sun was setting.

  The booty they had divided long before. There was nothing to be done around the ship. She was done for. To keep the sea any longer, the Ranger would need far more work than could be done in Nassau, more work than the pirates were willing to do anywhere.

  Jack knew, as the anchor plunged into the lovely, light blue water, that there the brig would stay. The Ranger, pirate vessel that had terrified so many, that had been the scourge of the Atlantic from Maine to Florida and throughout the Caribbean, would end her life rotting at the end of her anchor cable and then sink into Nassau harbor until she was just so much mud.

  We should all have so easy an end, Jack thought. He climbed down the brig’s side, took his place in the long boat, and they pulled for Nassau’s waterfront.

  Nassau! God, how he loved the place, mean and vile though it might be! All those familiar smells enveloped him, delicate and unique and refreshing to one whose nose had grown accustomed to the smell of filthy bilge and filthier men packed together aboard the brig.

  He walked slowly down the length of the dock and on to Bay Street. Nothing was changed in the half a year he had been gone. The same taverns and ordinaries, a few shops, a few houses, it was all as it had been and Jack was grateful for that. He savored the sounds of the night: laughter, music, gunfire, yelling, singing, it all mixed together like the disparate ingredients in a pirate burgoo, all melding to form a unified whole. He was home, and he was happy.

  He had no destination in mind, he was just walking, but still he was not surprised to find himself in front of the Ship Tavern. It was where he found himself almost every night he was in Nassau. His feet moved to the Ship as thoughtlessly as his hand might move to scratch an itch.

  He paused outside. Behind the heavy wood door he could hear the raucous sounds, like the door was a dam, holding it back, a dam that threatened to burst under the pressure of the sound, to blow out from the sheer weight of the noise behind.

  Jack reached for the latch and paused, felt the fox gnawing at him. How would his return be met? Had his old friends gone over to Woodes Rogers, would they arrest him, see him hung? Was Charles Vane waiting for him inside?

  He grabbed the latch, lifted it, threw the door open. One broadside, then board ’em in the smoke, he thought. He had to go in, find out. He had no place else to go.

  The door swung open, and Jack was hit with the cloud of tobacco smoke, the noise from the crowded tavern. He could see little of that dark interior, just crowds of people under the few lanterns, and shadowy forms off in the corners.

  He stood there, hands outstretched, thought I am here. Kill me or embrace me, as you will.

  Then the sound died, the laughter, the arguments faded from the people’s lips as they turned to this brazen newcomer and Jack felt a wave of panic building, building until he heard the familiar voice of Hosea Batchelor shouting out, “Damn me to hell, it is Calico Jack Rackam!”

  A form materialized out of the dark—it was Batchelor—and he grabbed Jack’s hand and pumped it and slapped him on the back, and then more and more familiar faces crowded around and they all were slapping him, taking his hand, leading him into the tavern.

  It was a triumphant return, it was Caesar riding into Rome, it was more than Calico Jack would have ever hoped for. There was the publican with a bottle of rum, outstretched, and Jack took it and gulped the hot liquor down. He could hear shouts, people calling out, his own name echoing around the tight space.

  He put the bottle down on the bar with a thump, turned to enquire after—what the hell was her name?—the little whore whose company he had so enjoyed.

  The question was half off his lips when suddenly the crowd around him parted and he saw a woman, the vision of a woman, sitting under one of the lanterns and just forward of it, the light filtering through her hair and making her seem to glow.

  He stopped, the sentence unfinished. This was a new face, not like any he had seen in the Ship Tavern or in Nassau or in all his ramblings, a sharply defined face, full red lips, eyes that flashed defiance. Thick blond hair tumbled down the front of her dress, her low-cut dress, the skin above her large breasts glistening with sweat in the hot tavern.

  She met his gaze and held it, brazen as any whore, but somehow Jack knew that this was no whore. This was a woman, beautiful, alluring, dangerous.

  He leaned back against the bar and his eyes did not move from hers as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. What was such a fine woman doing in that mean place?

  She looked like God’s new-made creation, and she looked like someone he had known for all eternity, all at once.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AMSTERDAM WAS COLD, windswept. Numb-fingered, wind-like-needlepricks-in-the-face cold, under leaden skies. A few flakes of gray snow whipped around, clung to frozen iron and wood and brick, but the air was too frigid and brittle for real snow.

  The ships along the waterfront were crowded against the docks, shoulders braced to the wind that whipped off the IJmeer and whistled through their bare, spindly masts and yards, like so many dead trees in a long dead forest. Small waves piled up against the mole, pushing the line of detritus and flotsam against the seawalls again and again. Everything was colored shades of brown and gray.

  Captain Dirk Bes, master of the 240-ton merchantman Hoorn, ran a handkerchief under his nose and then with the cuff of his coat wiped a tear from his cheek. The wind bit into his face and made his eyes water when he looked up. His cocked hat was tied to his head with a wool scarf that was knotted under his chin. He was miserably cold.

  He glanced down into the waist to assure himself that the sailors and stevedores were stowing the cargo down well enough that he could turn his attention elsewhere, for a second at least. “Voorzichtig met die vatten jullie uilskuikens!” he shouted, then turned to the young man who was waiting patiently for his attention.

  “Zo jij bent een zeeman?” Bes said. “So you are a sailor, then, not some miserable creature from the slums?”

&n
bsp; “Aye, sir. I was three years in a man-of-war.”

  The master nodded, looked the young man up and down. Faded red wool coat, wool shirt, wide-legged trousers, wool stockings, battered square-toed shoes. Quite unremarkable. But there was a tenseness, a rigidity about him, like he was close to standing at attention. Not the posture of a merchant seaman, the liberal dogs. Navy usage, perhaps, but the master did not think so.

  The boy’s Dutch was as flawless as that of any native speaker, but the accent was not native born.

  “Dutch Navy?”

  “No, sir. Royal Navy. Royal British Navy.”

  Ah, the master thought. “You are just off this Navy ship, then?”

  “No, sir. It has been a few years.”

  Bes nodded again. He noticed the darker patches on the coat over which insignia had once been sewn. Now he understood. “You were a soldier then, in the late war?”

  “Aye. Cadet in a Regiment of Foot, and then I rode with a light infantry unit, sir.”

  Of course. The Low Countries were full of them, young English soldiers who had been sent across the Channel to fight in Flanders, and France and Spain. They fought to stop the threat of a reunion between the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburg line or the Bourbons of France and Spain. It was a wildly convoluted political circus and the master had often wondered how many of those poor bastards slogging through the mire and filth understood or cared.

  The war was four years gone now, but still legions of them remained. They were wanted men in England, or married to women in Holland or Flanders or just too shattered from their experiences of war to return to their homes.

  The master looked back to the waist, shouted an unnecessary admonition to take care with the stay tackle, then turned back to the boy. He was young—early twenties, perhaps, his chin quite devoid of whiskers. A handsome lad with short, black hair and striking blue eyes. Far away eyes, a combat veteran’s eyes, eyes that were much older than the rest of him. There was, in his nearly blank expression, an undercurrent of danger, a quality that suggested he was beyond fear, having seen the things he had seen.

  Captain Bes was no newcomer to the ways of the wicked world, but he could only imagine what this youth had seen in his brief years that gave his eyes the look they had.

  “Very well. But see here, the docks are crawling with sailors, ablebodied men, with years more time at sea than you. I can’t pay you but a landsman’s wages.”

  The young man nodded. He did not seem to care.

  The master coughed. He had expected some protest. In fact, he was prepared to pay the boy an ordinary seaman’s rate if he had argued. There was something about the youth that he liked, a quiet competence, a stolid reliability that his stance, his tone and manner suggested.

  But the young man did not protest being rated landsman, he just accepted this offer with stoicism, and it put the master momentarily off balance. And it told him something more. The boy was not going to sea to seek his fortune. He was running away.

  “We’re taking this lot to Stockholm,” Captain Bes went on, nodding toward the stack of casks on the dock and those being swayed down into the hold. “Then I reckon we’ll be for the Med, or the West Indies. Been to the West Indies?”

  “No, sir.”

  “They got the yellow jack there, and pirates swarming like flies to horse shit. But at least you don’t freeze your damned balls off.”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right, then. Stow your dunnage forward then lend a hand in the waist.”

  “Aye, sir.” The boy lifted his seabag and tossed it over his shoulder in one smooth, practiced motion.

  Dirk Bes watched the boy as he headed forward, watched him drop his seabag down the forecastle companionway and start to clamber down after it.

  The young man had gone directly to the forecastle, had not had to ask what was meant by “stow your dunnage forward.” That, and the fact that he could so deftly handle the act of getting down a narrow companionway with a big seabag, an act that confounded the landlubber, proved he had not been lying about his experience aboard ships.

  “Oh, yes,” the master called after him. “What’s your name? For the books.”

  The boy paused, half way down the ladder, his chest level with the deck. “Read, sir. Michael Read.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  JAMES BONNY said something but Anne did not hear it. The tavern was louder now, even louder than it had been before this Calico Jack Rackam’s entrance, but Anne could make out no individual sounds, only a great swell of noise, like the surf, or a gale of wind in the trees.

  She straightened, cocked her head a bit, her eyes never leaving Jack, Jack’s never leaving hers. He was teasing her. She knew he would come over, make his introduction. There was no way he could not. But he was holding back, letting the tension build and it was irritating and intriguing all at once.

  And then Jack reached around and took up his rum bottle and called to the publican for three glasses, which he took in one hand, all the while his eyes never leaving Anne’s.

  With a nod and a soft apology to the company that stood with him at the bar, Jack pushed his way through the men, stepped slowly up to their table. He paused, looking down at them; a tall man, Anne thought, not awkwardly so, but just tall enough to be above average.

  “Good evening,” he said. His voice was deep and his tone light. “I had thought there was no one in this place I did not know, but I find you two are strangers to me.” He was ostensibly speaking to them both, even managed a glance at James, but there was little question as to whom he was addressing.

  “We ain’t been but two months here,” James Bonny said, sullen, the words coming grudgingly.

  “Ah! And I have been abroad for near six.”

  “And now we’re off for Barbados,” James added.

  “Perhaps,” Anne said, “or perhaps not.” She did not look at her husband as she corrected him.

  “Well, in any event, I pray you to allow me to make my introduction. I am Captain John Rackam. It pleases the people here to call me Calico Jack, for my preference in dress.”

  With that Jack Rackam bowed, an elegant move, arm across the waist, leg extended.

  Anne had seen many pirates bow, indeed it was a favorite means of greeting, but they did it to mock convention, not adhere to it. When the pirates bowed it was with a great flourish, a sweeping of their hats high in the air, bent nearly double at the waist. They bowed in jest, in the same way that they delighted in referring to one another as “Your Lordship” or “Your Ladyship.”

  But not Jack Rackam, not then. His bow was elegant, serious, as fine in form as anything one might see in court, and when he straightened his expression was not in the least mocking.

  “Good evening, Captain,” James muttered, making some attempt to match Jack’s elegance of tone. “I’m James Bonny, and may I present my wife . . . which is Anne Bonny?”

  “The pleasure is mine. It is always a delight to see a new face.”

  Jack’s eyes were once again locked on Anne’s. He had no visible reaction to James’s characterizing her as his wife, seemed to take no notice of the special emphasis he put on the words. It was as if he understood their relationship and knew that it had no bearing on him and Anne, as if there was no one else in the room, in the town, in the whole world, but them: Calico Jack and Anne Bonny. “Might I offer you a drink?”

  “Well, we . . .”

  “Yes, Captain,” Anne interrupted her husband’s excuses, “we should be delighted, would you sit and drink with us.”

  Jack nodded, smiled, and with his foot dragged a chair over to the table and sat, facing Anne, with James on his right hand. He set the glasses down, filled them with the dark, pungent-smelling rum, and the three of them picked them up.

  “To new acquaintances!” Jack said, and they drank to that.

  “Calico Jack Rackam?” Anne said, and her voice came out more husky than she had expected. “You are a well-known figure around this town. I have heard much.
”

  “I pray you will not believe idle gossip, madam.”

  “Been gone these six months?” James Bonny interrupted. “Have you been to sea, then?”

  Jack made to speak, but Anne interrupted him, looking at her husband for the first time since Jack’s entrance, staring her hatred at him, an expression she did not think Jack would miss. “Pray, sir, do not be too free in your speech around my . . . husband . . . he is sometimes too free with his own.”

  James looked at her and returned her scowl. Then he stood, so fast he toppled his chair behind him. “And I’ll thank you to keep your tongue still. The hour is late. Let us go now.”

  “No, sir. Go if you will, but I should like to tarry a bit.”

  “I said, let us go. I’ll brook no argument from you, woman!”

  At that Anne laughed, quite involuntarily and despite the fury that was raging inside her. James Bonny, playing the overbearing husband! It was a role that did not suit him, one he could not pull off with any conviction, but he was not done trying.

  “Damn it!” He slammed the flat of his hand down on the table. “You come with me, wife. I’ll not suffer your lip!”

  Jack made to stand. “I fear I am in the middle of something that is not my affair.”

  “No, sir, pray, sit,” Anne said, pointing to the chair, and Jack sat.

  She turned to James, turned her full-blown fury on him, like the height of a building storm. “If you would have me come, I suggest you make the attempt to remove me by main force.” Her hand crept down her long, smooth leg, her fingertips played over the handle of the dagger she had secreted there. “If you do not dare try, little man, then pray be gone.”

  James Bonny stood glaring at her, lacking the courage to do anything more.

  At last he pointed a threatening finger at Anne. “I’ll not embarrass myself by dragging you out of here, woman, but we ain’t done with this.” Then, with the precious little dignity he had remaining, he turned and stormed out of the tavern.