Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  She watched him go, watched him push and stumble through the crowd and out the door. Filthy little worm.

  And then Jack’s voice, steady, consoling, apologetic. “I would not have wished to start a fight between a man and his wife.”

  “There was no man involved, I assure you.” She turned to him, her fury not yet abated. “And you, sir, what manner of rogue are you?”

  “The very worst kind, ma’am.” His voice was smooth, his look assured, a man who did not hope to get what he wanted, but expected to. “I am the kind of rogue who breaks poor women’s hearts.”

  “Are you indeed?” Anne felt the fury melt away like butter in a hot pan and with it went all thought of James Bonny. “But I think you are not so honest a rogue, for you introduced yourself as ‘Captain’ John Rackam, when I have heard tell that you are but ‘Quartermaster’ John Rackam, second to that wicked pirate Charles Vane.”

  “I was that, when I sailed this summer, ma’am. When I exploded the fire-ship under the nose of Woodes Rogers I was indeed quartermaster to Charles Vane. But I return as captain, and where Vane is now I do not know.”

  “You deposed him, sir? And how, pray, did you manage that?”

  Jack picked up his glass and sipped. “By being a greater rogue than he.”

  Anne sipped as well, holding Jack’s eyes over the rim of her glass. “But sure you are yourself a wicked pirate,” she teased, “to depose so great a villain as Charles Vane. Are you not afraid that Governor Rogers will hang you?”

  “Hang me? No, never in life, and me an honest merchant captain. But for any sins I might have committed, I believe the governor has extended a pardon, for them will take it. Besides, if there is to be war with the Spaniards, the worthy governor will need all the fighting men he can muster. I reckon on a privateering commission soon. Then any piracy becomes all legal, like.”

  They were silent, but it was not the awkward silence of two who have exhausted their conversation. Rather it was a charged silence, crackling, as if their communication had moved to a place beyond words.

  “Then you shall be a great hero,” Anne said at last, soft. “Another Drake, I’ll warrant.”

  They were speaking words, but the words had nothing to do with what they were conveying to one another. It was all sex play, it was something entirely new to Anne. Jack was arousing her with his eyes, the cadence of his meaningless banter. She felt herself flushing, felt hot, feverish, as if a big fire had suddenly been stoked up in the middle of the room.

  She put her glass down, leaned over the table, leaned close to Jack Rackam and Jack leaned close to her. “I think you will not break my heart, Calico Jack Rackam.”

  They stumbled up the narrow, rickety stairs, giggling, running hands over one another, bouncing off the thin walls. Anne was full up with rum, full of desire. She wanted only to peel her clothes off, to rip his off, to feel him all over her.

  Up onto the second floor and down the hall, filled with the sound of couples copulating behind thin walls. Anne felt her own need swell.

  She stopped in front of her door, let Jack run his hands behind her neck, kiss her deep as she fumbled for the latch. James Bonny might be in there, she realized, his scrawny form might be huddled under the sheets of their bed, but Anne did not care.

  She could not think straight, could not reckon on what she would do if her husband was indeed there, did not think about it at all. Her head was whirling and she could not think.

  She pushed the door open, stumbled back into the dark room. Jack’s breath smelled of rum and tobacco as he explored her mouth with his tongue. Moonlight streamed in through the unshaded window, casting the room in a blue light.

  James Bonny was not there.

  Jack’s hands ran along her waist, over her breasts, compacted as they were by her bodice. His fingers moved expertly over the laces, loosened them and peeled her clothes away as she shucked his coat off his broad shoulders and worked the buttons on his yellow waistcoat.

  She was breathing hard already. She reached behind her head, pulled off her mob cap and pulled the pin from her hair, letting all of her long yellow locks tumble free.

  Jack moved with authority, with assurance, as he gently pushed her bodice and her shift off her shoulders, let them fall, caressed her breasts with calloused hands, gently pinched taut nipples between strong fingers.

  Anne pulled at the buttons of his shirt, fumbled, her hand shaking. She could not get them loose so she grabbed either collar and pulled, ripping the buttons from the fabric, pushing the torn cloth aside. She ran her hands through the dark, curly hair on his chest and over his lean stomach.

  How long have I pictured this moment? she thought. In her most erotic fantasies it was just this: a shoddy room, a buccaneer, tall, wellformed, handsome, a man who would be rough and gentle all at once, a man who knew how to please a woman. A dangerous lover.

  In her more rational state she assured herself that such men did not exist, that the pirates were all a depraved and brutish lot.

  And yet here he was, her fantasy, made flesh. Calico Jack Rackam. There could not be another like him.

  Jack hooked her skirts with his thumbs and pushed down and suddenly she was naked, petticoats and shift and bodice piled around her feet. It was a wild and new sensation, something she had never experienced, standing naked before a man as he explored her body and she his. Her head swam with it.

  The cool air came in through the window and played over her flesh and she shuddered, just slightly. Jack wrapped his arms around her, attacked her neck with his lips, ran his hands down her back, over her buttocks, pulled her close.

  She could feel his cock through the fabric of his breeches and she fumbled with his sword belt but he pushed her hands aside and in a few swift moves dropped belt and breeches and stockings. He swept her up, carried her over to the bed, laid her down, and lay down beside her.

  Anne was on her back, arching, expecting Jack to mount her, wanting desperately to have him inside, but he did not. He ran his hands over the length of her body, covered her with little kisses, caressed her breasts, explored her with fingers and tongue. She squirmed under him, moaned loud, felt the pressure building, building, thought she could not endure it a moment more.

  It was all new, like losing her maidenhead again, but much, much better. Anne had not even suspected that such a degree of pleasure was possible, had never imagined that a man could understand so well how to please a woman.

  She wrapped her hand around the shaft of his cock, stroked him, listened with satisfaction as he breathed louder, moaning himself, his kisses growing in passion and strength, his hands groping her just rough enough to be exciting.

  “Oh, Jack, Jack, pray, make love to me,” she moaned, certain she could bear no more. She rolled on her back again, pulled him to her, but he guided her up from the bed, lay back himself, gently moved her over him.

  She understood at once what he wanted, though she had never conceived of making love in such a fashion.

  She straddled his hips with her strong thighs and guided him into her and slowly, slowly, began to move, up and down, and he began to move against her.

  Her head lolled around in a circle and she moaned, feeling her long hair tickling her skin.

  It was all so wicked: the tavern, the adultery, these new ways of fornicating, and with a pirate, the genuine article, fresh from the sea! The sensations and the rum and the sinfulness and the novelty of it filled her up, like a barrel packed tight, bursting at the seams, threatening to explode.

  Her legs were beginning to tire but she could not stop. Rather, she moved faster, relishing the burn of her muscles. She leaned forward, put her hands down flat on his broad chest and he reached up and caressed her breasts as she and Jack moved together, faster and faster.

  Anne felt her thick hair tumbling around her head. She swept it out of her face and her moaning became rhythmic, in time with their motion. She felt her whole body compressing in, tighter and tighter, as if she would col
lapse in on herself.

  And then, out in the hallway, footsteps, and Anne listened as her whole body jarred up and down, listened as the steps stopped outside the door, listened as the latch lifted and the door swung open, slow, careful.

  She stifled a scream of pleasure. The thought of James Bonny standing there, watching her, watching them, made her wild, drove her to a new plateau of excitement.

  She bounced hard on Jack’s hips and then threw her head back again and screamed, screamed with absolute abandon. She felt as if her body, compressed in on itself, was bursting out now with release, as if all the parts of her were flying out in a thousand different directions.

  Under her she heard Jack groaning loud, felt him explode inside her and she collapsed on his chest, heaving for breath, sweating, her sweat mingling with his, their slick bodies pressed together.

  She heard the door close, heard the footsteps retreat down the hall.

  For a long time they just lay there, Anne on top of Jack, warm with pleasure, letting their heaving breath subside. They were both coated in sweat, lathered up like race horses. Anne felt as if her skin was melding into Jack’s.

  Finally Jack moved, ran his fingers through Anne’s tangle of hair and down her back and gently over her bottom.

  “Anne, darling,” he whispered, soft, careful to preserve the mood, “was that your husband?”

  “Not anymore,” she sighed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE HOORN MERCHANTMAN was struggling in heavy weather, and Mary Read was trying to sleep.

  It was her time below, a well-earned rest after an exhausting day’s work, followed by another four hours on watch as she and her fellows were lashed by the building storm. The North Sea in winter. Mary was no stranger to it, but she had forgotten what an unmitigated misery it could be.

  She lay in her bunk, all the way forward, wedged between her seabag on the one side and the hull of the ship on the other, jammed in as tight as she could get to keep from being tossed from the bunk. She was still wearing all her clothes and her oilskins as well. No point in taking them off.

  The Hoorn heaved, pitched, and rolled in the mounting seas. The single lantern illuminating the forecastle swung in great irregular arcs, making fast-moving shadows and patches of dull light across the table and bunks.

  The small space was filled with sound—the smash of the seas against the hull, the creak and groan of the ship’s timbers, the scream of the wind in the masts as it was carried by the rigging to the vessel’s fabric, the slosh of the water running inches deep on the forecastle deck.

  Mary felt the ship rise on a wave, pause, and then go down, down, rolling as she went, rolling over on her beam ends, further and further. She gripped the edge of the bunk, thought, Dear Lord, come up, come up . . . And then just when it seemed the ship would roll clean over, she paused, lurched, and righted herself again, coming up with a shudder as she shed the tons of water that had crashed over her decks.

  It is a peculiar thing . . . she mused. Her spirit was weary of life, ready to be shed of it. And yet her flesh could only react as all living things did, with a desperate need to keep on living.

  She could hear the sound of the wind rising in pitch, could feel the increased laboring of the vessel. When she had come below, an hour before, they had been struggling on with just the barest amount of sail showing—fore and main topsails, deep reefed—but soon even that little bit of canvas would be too much. She did not think her rest, such as it was, would last long.

  The hatch opened overhead and Mary heard the roar of the wind, felt the blast of cold, clean air as it whirled through the close, fetid atmosphere of the forecastle. She tensed again, knew what was coming.

  “All hands! All hands!” Waalwijk, the mate, shouted down into the forecastle. The words were loud even over the howling storm, and Mary could hear the fear in his voice.

  Bloody coward . . . Mary rolled out of her bunk, sat for a second with her legs hanging over the edge. Waited while the ship rolled away and then stood as the ship rolled back and nearly tossed her across the forecastle with the momentum, as if to say, Up, up, and attend to me!

  She staggered along with her hands on the table for balance. She paused as Hans Franeker, the youngest on her watch, struggled from his bunk, wide-eyed, confused, and she wondered if he had actually been sleeping.

  She grabbed Hans by the collar, helped pull him to his feet. “Hans!” she said, yelling to be heard over the din of the storm, even below decks. “On deck!”

  Hans nodded and Mary nodded and she pushed past him. Fore and aft the rest of the men from her watch groped their way from their bunks, staggered aft, each as wet, as miserable, and as frightened as she.

  They moved as fast as they could along the heaving deck, struggled up the ladder.

  Mary stepped through the hatch into a foot of water that ran over the deck, cascading off combings and rails and shooting into the air like breaking surf. The night was black, the air filled with water from the spray that broke over the bow and the great surges of green water coming aboard and the rain that drove down in sheets. The scream of the wind in the rigging was inhuman.

  Mary moved out of the way, making room for her fellows to gain the deck. She grabbed hold of the foremast fife rail and a big sea surged over the bow and ran down the deck, nearly up to her waist. The water pulled at her legs, filled her boots, crashed against her chest. She sucked in breath as her clothes, which had warmed up somewhat during her time below, were soaked with the icy water once more.

  She held tight as the flood tried to pry her from the rail, tried to whirl her away along the deck and toss her over the bulwark and into the sea. They had lost a man already that way, two days before.

  Waalwijk loomed up, gripping the lifelines run fore and aft. In his right hand he clutched a knotted rope end, but he held it more like a talisman than a weapon.

  When the last of the watch was up from below he shouted, “The storm gets worse! We must lie to, reefed mainsail, backed foresail hung in the brails! Van een goed wind, een kwaden maken, make a bad wind out of a good one! You men, take in the main topsail!” His voice was hoarse from swallowing salt water when he shouted.

  Mary nodded. Lie to, that was what she expected. If they had been in the open ocean they could have run before the wind, just let the storm have its way until it blew itself out. But they were not in the open ocean, they were in the North Sea, with its ship-killing coasts on every hand. They did not have the luxury of a thousand miles of open water in which to run, they had at best a couple hundred miles under their lee before they piled up on some shore or other.

  To get the Hoorn to lie to they would have to haul up the foresail with the lines on deck, which was relatively easy. They would also have to climb aloft, fifty feet up in the violent night to stow the topsails, which was not easy at all.

  Mary worked her way toward the pinrail, joined the clutch of men there struggling with the lines, hauling away to pull the sail up. She reached through the crowd of men who were tugging and swaying on the clewline, got her hands on the rope, added her weight to the effort.

  Another big sea came over the bow and rushed waist deep along the deck, knocking the lot of them sideways, but they clung to the clewline like grapes on a vine, pulling, struggling on despite the frigid water that tried to sweep them away. Mary and her fellows hauled on clewlines and buntlines and pulled the topsail up to the yard, the once taut sail now a great flogging bag of canvas, threatening to beat itself to death against the mast.

  Mary stepped back, looked aloft, blinking away the spray and the rain. There was the easy part done. Now it needed only for them to climb up and stow the sail, lash it to the yard.

  In fair weather, even moderate weather, the seamen would race aloft, taking the ratlines at a running pace and swarming up over the top. But not that night. Now they went step by step, fighting for every foot.

  Mary took care with each fresh grip on the shrouds, tested her weight on every ratline as sh
e worked her way up. The ship heeled to leeward and the wind pressed her to the shrouds, and she was able to scramble up a few feet. Then the ship rolled back with a quick snap that tried to throw her from the rigging into the boiling sea below, and she could do no more than cling tight, arms wrapped around the shrouds, and hang on and wait.

  Up, up and over the futtock shrouds, up into the topmast shrouds and up again. Slowly, one after another, they moved like weary men at day’s end in a slow-moving paymaster’s line. Then Mary’s waist was level with the main topsail yard, and it was her turn to step onto it.

  The sail twisted and banged and whipped around, gleaming wet canvas. Mary could hear nothing beyond the crack of the sail as it filled, collapsed, and filled again. Her whole world, her whole madly tossing, banging, soaked world was reduced to that section of shroud: the yard, the foot-rope, the sail.

  She reached over and found a handhold, took a firm grip, and reached out with her foot and set it on the foot-rope. She paused, half on the yard, half on the shrouds, waited for the ship to roll the right way, then stepped across and onto the foot-ropes.

  A step out along the yard, then she stopped, turned back. Hans was there, clinging to the shrouds, eyes wide, and Mary was afraid that he had spent all of his courage just getting to that place.

  She reached out a hand for Hans and he reached out and took it, and then when the ship pitched forward he used the momentum to step on after her.

  Side by side they shuffled out along the yard, bellies pressed against that long wooden pole, feet on the foot-rope slung below it, and fifty feet below them, the ship, rolling and pitching, green water surging over the bows and burying the deck under a foaming blanket.

  The sail reared up in front of them—wet, half-frozen canvas, as stiff as a board. It smacked their hands and faces, slammed them in the chest as they clawed their way out, finding what handholds they could as they moved.

  At last Mary came shoulder to shoulder with the man just outboard of her and she was as far as she could go. She reached out and began to gather the sail up under her arms, pressing it against the yard in an effort to subdue it. Her wet fingers pulled at the thick canvas, trying to catch enough of a fold that she could grip the cloth and pull it in.