Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  Inch by inch they fisted the sail, working together as best they could, ignoring bleeding hands and torn fingernails and the bitter, bitter cold. They did not think on how perilous their situation was because, if they did, they would not have been able to go on.

  And just as they felt they were gaining on the sail, just as they could feel a respectable pile of canvas under their arms, the wind would catch it from behind and billow it out again, and all their clawing and grabbing could not hold it back. And then they would start over again.

  For half an hour they fought canvas, but they were no further along than they had been when first they worked their way out on the yard, and Mary could feel the strength going from her arms. On either side of her she could see the movements of the others becoming more awkward, slower, as they, too, grew tired, and the numbing cold began to work on their fingers and hands.

  The sail blew out, and then collapsed in a fluke of wind, and Mary’s hand shot out and she got a fistful, pulled it toward her and on her right Hans did the same. She reached out, grabbed another, thought There now, we shall get this in . . .

  And then a gust hit them, more northerly, a burst of wind and the sail billowed out again. From the corner of her eye Mary saw Hans’s arms knocked aside by the wild canvas. She twisted, saw the young man falling back, arms flailing for something, anything, to grab, fingers clawing in air as he toppled back.

  Mary seized a line with her left hand, her right hand shot out. Her fingers scraped down Hans’s oilskin as he fell and then she hooked his belt as his feet came off the foot-ropes and for a horrible instant Mary thought he was going down and she was going with him.

  Then everything seemed to stop, the terrible moment frozen. Hans hung by the belt in Mary’s fingers and Mary hung from the line in her left hand, her feet still on the foot-rope, her body half twisted around. She felt the rough fibers of the line across her palm as the wet rope began to slip from her grasp. She wondered how long she could hold on, if Hans’s belt would break, if the line would break, if she and Hans would plunge into the sea or hit the deck.

  And then the men on either side turned as well, reached down and hauled Hans up to the yard, grabbed Mary before the line slipped from her hand, before they fell down, down into the sea below.

  It had been mere seconds that she had held Hans suspended in air, and that realization surprised her, because it had seemed so much longer. It seemed she had lived her whole life on that yard, like she could not remember a time when she was not out on that cursed yard.

  The others set Hans back on the foot-rope and with never a word they fell back to stowing the topsail, beating the canvas with numbed hands, grabbing up folds when they could, holding it under their arms against the yard.

  They were at it for another forty minutes before they finally had the cloth subdued, before the foot of the sail came to hand and they had it all against the yard. They passed their gaskets around and around the sail, hauling tight, binding it carefully to the topsail yard so that the wind’s prying fingers would not find a tiny loose bit and pluck away at it, pulling it from its lashings, until it had the sail free once again and had torn it to ribbons and negated all their work and suffering.

  At last they headed back to the deck and the going down was far worse than the going up, for now they were exhausted, their arms like rubber, their hands bleeding and numb with cold. They could barely feel the shrouds in their grips and had no faith in their ability to hang on, but one by one they made it down to the lowest ratline and swung inboard and dropped to the flooded deck.

  Not a word was said about Hans’s near fall, Mary’s heroic grab. No one ever spoke of such things. It was the way of sailors.

  And then the mate, Waalwijk, loomed up among them and shouted, “About bloody goddamned time you were done! Were you buggering each other up there, or what were you?”

  The wind had increased in strength, pulling at Mary’s oilskins and the hat which she had lashed firm to her head, but the Hoorn’s motion was easier now, with the ship lying to, riding out the storm like a gull sitting on top of the water.

  Mary was wet to her skin, numb, exhausted, battered, and bleeding. The fingernail on her right middle finger had been torn clean away but she could not recall when that had happened. She had wrenched her shoulder in holding Hans by his belt and knew from experience that it would hurt like hell in a few hours.

  They were bound away for the West Indies. They had taken their cargo to Stockholm, had carried another to Riga, and now had a hold full of sundry goods they were carrying to Port Royal, Jamaica.

  The West Indies. She had never been, but she had heard enough about it.

  She had heard about the yellow jack and the bloody flux and the pirates that would be found there, but those things did not concern her. She thought instead of the blue skies, the gentle Trade Winds, the clear, aquamarine water. Palm trees, long, white-sand beaches. Warmth. All year long, warmth. Just the thought of it was comforting.

  So, for a while at least, she would be in the West Indies and she would be warm. And then back to Europe, the Baltic, the North Sea. She felt herself sag, physically and emotionally. The thought of reaching paradise and then leaving it again made her spirits sink to a place even lower than they had been.

  Mary Read stared down at the black water, rolling and crashing below, the foaming crests reaching up to her, beckoning her, and she wished that she had the courage to just throw herself into that void.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ODDLY ENOUGH, and to Jack Rackam’s great amazement, James Bonny was not so quick to recognize the dissolution of his marriage.

  Jack would have thought that the extraordinary humiliation that Anne had served him out, there on their first night of wild copulation, would have been enough to dissuade him from further pursuing her. Most men, he imagined, who were not of a kidney to seek revenge, would have dismissed her as a whore and would have been done with her. Most men would not have exposed themselves to the further and thorough humiliation that she doled out at their every meeting.

  And those meetings were more frequent than Jack would have preferred. James Bonny clung to them like a shadow. When they strolled arm in arm down Bay Street, James Bonny was invariably a block behind. When they made their nightly appearance at the Ship Tavern, James Bonny was lurking in a dark corner. When they went up to what they now thought of as their room, Jack did not doubt that James Bonny was listening on the other side of the door.

  He could not imagine that James Bonny liked what he heard. Anne was no virgin, of course, but she was no whore either. Her knowledge of the art of love making was limited, and from what she told Jack of her husband, she had received no decent instruction.

  But she was an avid student, a quick and eager learner, and every night, for half the night, they exhausted themselves on the bed, on the floor, on the window-sill, trying everything in Jack’s extensive repertoire and then improvising beyond that. Jack had been with a lot of women, far more than he could recall, but he had never had one like Anne.

  Their conversations never flagged, their eyes never wandered from one another, their desire was not sated even by their nightly and energetic coupling.

  Six months on the account, and Jack had amassed a hoard of booty. That wealth he poured over Anne: jewelry, clothing, the finest of everything that Nassau had to offer, which admittedly was not much, but Anne seemed entirely pleased.

  When that dross ran short, Jack shipped aboard a privateer captained by a former pirate named Burgess who had accepted the King’s pardon and now hunted only Spaniards. After a short and successful cruise they returned to Nassau with several prizes, one laden with coconuts, the other with sugar, both of which sold quickly to the factors who came to that place specifically to buy prize cargoes at a bargain.

  Wealthy again, and reunited with Anne, they took up as if he had never sailed. James Bonny, Anne assured him, had been no more than a minor annoyance, like a mosquito in one’s bedroom at night.

>   Jack was as happy—happier, in fact—than he had ever been. He had the governor’s pardon, so he had no fear of hanging. He was ashore and so he was safe: free from the possibility of death from an enemy’s sword or drowning as some rotten ship sank from under him or being marooned by his men. He was still a local hero, beloved in Nassau, which left him free from fear of being murdered by some compatriot of Charles Vane’s, or by Vane himself.

  And he was in love. It was a novel sensation, as novel to him as Anne’s new-found heights of sexual ecstasy were novel to her.

  He considered that as he sat at their usual table in the Ship Tavern, the usual riot going on around him, waiting for Anne to return from the privy. He stared off across the room, toward the corner and the dim form of James Bonny, who was sitting there. Jack could not see his face, but he knew Bonny was staring back.

  That little puke is something of a splinter in my side, Jack thought. James Bonny was no threat, but he was an annoyance, the one flaw in Jack’s otherwise perfect contentment. Perhaps I shall do something about this.

  Jack pushed himself to his feet, not overly steady—he had been drinking for some time—and made his way through the crowd.

  He could hear the whispered conversations. There was no one in Nassau who was not aware of their particular triangle. Calico Jack Rackam and Anne Bonny were already famous in the pirate community, each in their own right. Their union was the talk of the island, and everyone in the Ship could see that Jack was setting a course to confront the third party in the issue.

  He stopped in front of Bonny’s table and Bonny looked up at him, sullen, angry, but still defiant. Jack stood there for a moment, considering the little man, as Bonny considered him.

  Jack Rackam knew he was damned lucky that Anne’s husband amounted to no more than this pathetic creature.

  Had James Bonny been made of the same stuff as most of the vicious killers that inhabited Nassau, Jack would never have had the nerve to cross him, to betray him and humiliate him the way he had. If James Bonny had been an Edward Teach or a Charles Vane, then he would still be firmly entrenched as Anne’s husband, with never a threat to his marital rights.

  But James Bonny was not Charles Vane or Edward Teach. He was a pathetic coward, more afraid than Jack on his worst day, and he would not try to win Anne back through force of arms. Apparently he was trying to wear her down.

  “See here, Bonny, you can’t be insensible to the fact that Anne don’t want you for her husband,” Jack said at last.

  Bonny glared at him. “Don’t matter, does it? I am her husband, it’s the main truth, and she gots to come back to me. There are laws against adultery, in case you don’t know.”

  “There are also laws which allow one to buy the divorce of another man’s wife. I’m willing to be most generous.”

  “You reckon me for the kind of man will be bought off?”

  “I reckon the only issue is the price.”

  James Bonny spat on the floor. “Sod off!”

  “Sod off?” With a great flourish of the tails of his calico coat Jack kicked the table over, reached across his stomach, pulled his sword.

  James Bonny, his eyes wide, leapt to his feet, stumbled backward.

  “Sod off!” Jack roared.

  Bonny pressed his back against the wall and slid sideways, his eyes flicking from Jack’s face to the wicked tip of his sword that tracked his movements, slowly, like a snake. “You kill me, it’s murder! And me unarmed, and the husband of the woman you fancy, Rogers’ll hang you, you son of a bitch!” James hissed.

  “Yes? And who here, you reckon, will say it weren’t self-defense, and you drawing on me?”

  James continued to move away and Jack took a step closer, kept the tip of the blade within striking distance. He alone knew that he would not strike. Bonny was not wrong—Woodes Rogers had been hanging men with abandon—and Jack was not willing to risk his precious pardon, or his neck, for killing the likes of that little weasel.

  “Get out of here. I’ll spare your life this time, but I don’t want to see you following us, I don’t want to see you in here, I don’t want to see your filthy face again, hear?”

  James paused for a moment, held Jack’s eyes. “Sod off,” he said again then bolted for the door, hit it running, flinging it open, and then disappeared down the dark street.

  Jack watched him go. He did not try to follow. He hoped that would be an end to it.

  And then he felt small hands on his shoulders. His nose caught the familiar perfume of Anne Bonny. “Jack, darling, what are you about?”

  “Trying to drive away vermin with a little vinegar and brimstone.”

  “Quite a bit of vinegar, it would seem.”

  “Too much perhaps.”

  They were quiet for a moment. Jack slipped his sword back in the scabbard, and put his arm around Anne.

  “I fear, my beloved Jack,” Anne said at last, “that you will just have to kill him.”

  The abruptness of that remark, the casual tone, took Jack somewhat aback. They were the first words that Anne had ever spoken to him that did not move over his ears like sweet music. “You would have me kill him? You would think nothing of it?”

  Anne shrugged. “You are the only man for me, Jack. No other life is of any importance to me, save yours.”

  Jack smiled and kissed her. Such a perfect love she had for him, he could not think why he found it somewhat disquieting.

  After that encounter, James Bonny was more circumspect, but he was not gone. He did not come to the Ship Tavern any longer, did not lurk in the hall outside their room, but he still followed behind them, though now a few blocks back at least. He maintained a safe distance, but he was there.

  Two weeks of that, and Jack Rackam was growing weary of it. He sat with legs splayed out in front of him at a table set just outside the front door of one of the ordinaries on Bay Street. Before him, a nearly uninterrupted view of the harbor, with its crowd of ships—some legitimate merchantmen, most not—and beyond that the low green hump of Hog Island. The sun was hot, but the table was in the shade of the building and so it was quite comfortable.

  Bloody damned near heaven, he thought.

  He glanced up and down the road, trying to catch a glimpse of the little vermin, but he could not and thought perhaps that they were shut of him for the moment.

  Across the table from him, lovely as ever, her skin turning golden brown in the sun, her hair bleached out to a shimmering yellow, sat Anne. Between them, the remains of their dinner on wooden plates, glasses with a rough red wine, half drained.

  “The sweet trade, Jack. Piracy. It must be damned exciting,” Anne said, lazily. Their days had a dreamy, languid quality.

  “The sweet trade? Oh, it has its moments. Not much in life can match the feel of leaping down on the deck of a prize, you know. Pistols and cutlasses, the smoke from a broadside. Makes a man feel alive, to be sure. Don’t reckon there’s anything got my heart pounding as well, until I met you, my dearest.”

  “Hmm,” Anne said, her contented coo that Jack loved so well. “It sounds such a thrill.”

  “But don’t get any wrong-headed notions of it. We call it ‘the sweet trade’ in jest. It’s a hard life. Filthy ships, food so rotten it would throw you down. Out at sea for months at a time, keeping a weather eye out for the Navy, with always the possibility of drowning or the noose. There’s few is in the sweet trade more than a year or two before they meet their end by one means or another. You’ve seen enough of them poor broken sods that lives on the beach yonder to know what it can be like.”

  “Hmm,” Anne said again, as if she had not heard any of Jack’s caveat. “Do you think of going back to it again at all?”

  The answer was no, emphatically no, not with the life he had now. But he could see Anne was developing some romantic ideas, and he did not want to disabuse her of them for fear she would think less of him, so he said, “Oh, to be sure, I think on it. But I think I shall wait for a privateering commission fro
m the governor, which is the main chance, you know. That way there is no bother about being hung, and that is one less concern, at least.”

  “The Spaniards would hang you, was you taken.”

  “No, love, they would burn me at the stake.”

  “There’s a comfort. But the people are saying that Rogers will not grant any more commissions. They say he reckons he has pirates enough in his employ.”

  “Ah, but he does not have Calico Jack!”

  Nor, it seemed, was Rogers interested in having Calico Jack. Jack had heard the same rumors that Anne had, and an additional word from Ben Hornigold, whom he had encountered one morning while Anne was still abed. There would be no commission for the likes of Calico Jack Rackam, former quartermaster to Charles Vane.

  But that was just as well. Jack didn’t really wish to go privateering any more than he cared to go pirating. As it was, he could continue to impress Anne with his bravado and still not have to risk his neck.

  “Calico Jack Rackam!” Anne said, as if trying the name out for the first time. “I fear you’re unhappy with your idleness, that you’ll resent me for keeping you from your wicked ways.”

  “Never, my dear, never in life. You are just the thing that my life was wanting for.”

  “If you were to go back on the account, Jack, however would you do it? Would you take the Ranger to sea?”

  “The Ranger is done for.” Jack leaned forward, tried to see that ship at the far end of the harbor, but she was hidden from his view. “You cannot see her from here, but did you see her yesterday, when we was walking along the shore? She is down three strakes already and I do believe she carries a bit of a larboard list. I give her no more than a fortnight before she rolls right over and sinks to the bottom.”

  “Then how would you get a ship?”