Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  She stepped down the stairs and one after another of those rough men noticed her, stopped, grinned at her approach. This was her grand entrance, like she had made at her coming-of-age party, three years before. But, oh, how different were her circumstances now!

  “Here, now, this is a proper buccaneer!” Jack shouted out, a lusty cry that was taken up by the huzzahs of the others, who crowded around her and slapped her on the back hard as if they had no notion that she was indeed a woman.

  “Well done, Annie, well done. I near pissed my pants in fright, just at the sight of you!” Jack said, putting his arm around her and kissing her, to renewed shouts from the crowd.

  And then the door opened, and one by one the men fell silent as James Bonny came pushing his way through. His hands were trembling. Anne reckoned he had used every last bit of his courage to come to that place, to confront her this one last time.

  He stopped in the middle of the room and swept the men with his eyes, pausing for a beat on Calico Jack, then looked right past Anne. He was half turned around when he stopped, whirled back, seeing Anne at last. His mouth hung wide.

  The silence in the room broke like a thunderclap, men roaring in laughter, shouting, “He looked right past her, damn my eyes!” and such. It was a marvelous joke to them.

  James took two steps toward Anne, stopped a foot away from her. “What the devil are you about?” he hissed.

  “Be gone. This is no place for you,” Anne replied.

  Bonny’s hand lashed out. He grabbed her arm and he began to pull her toward the stairs, away from the crowd, but before he had completed two steps Jack Rackam’s pistol was raised, cocked, pressed to his temple.

  “Stay, Jack,” Anne said. She wrenched her arm from her husband’s grip. “I will have a word with him. In private.”

  Jack’s eyes moved from James to Anne and back again, and then at last he lowered the pistol, and now it was Anne that led James to the end of the room, to the base of the stairs, out of whispered earshot from the rest.

  “Anne, this is too much!” James said in a harsh whisper. “Adultery’s crime enough, but now you dress against your sex, which to be sure is agin the law, and I won’t have it!”

  Anne closed her eyes, took a deep breath. When she felt she could speak, she opened her eyes again, and looked at James. “It’s not a matter of what you will have, James. Do you not see that?”

  “You are still my wife. By law.”

  “Yes, but there are things bigger than laws. I am not your wife any more, and all the threats and proclamations from that bastard Woodes Rogers will not change that. Now, James, I pray you just leave and forget me, forget we ever met. It will go easier on both of us.”

  James cocked his head, squinted at her. “What are you reckoning to do? Are you figuring on running off with these bastards? You ain’t . . . you ain’t turning pirate with these whoresons?” The truth began to dawn on him. “Good God, that is what you’re figuring to do, ain’t it!”

  “James, I beg you, ask no questions. Just be gone.”

  “I won’t stand for this!” James Bonny raised his voice. “No, damn you, I will not tolerate this!” Heads turned toward them.

  “James, shut your gob, damn it! Are you mad?” Anne hissed. “This could go hard on you!”

  James lowered his voice, but his tone did not change. “If you do not come with me this minute, then I am off to the governor’s, and won’t we see what he thinks of your dear Calico Jack breaking his pardon?”

  “James, please . . .”

  “I mean it, Anne,” he said in a harsh whisper, “I’ll not stand for this! I’ll see the governor turns the troops out this night, puts a stop to whatever you have a notion to do.”

  Anne closed her eyes again. As much as she despised James Bonny, she did not want to see him dead, there in that ugly place, not after he had come all that way for her. For the sake of what little pleasure they had once had in each other’s company, she did not want that to happen.

  But Jack and the others were her fellows now, and piracy the only life that mattered. They were off on a job of work, and their success was more important than anything, more important certainly than the life of one miserable toady of Woodes Rogers’s.

  If she did not stop him, then he would go to the governor, and no doubt Jack would hang.

  “James, do not make me do this. For your sake, I beg you, just go . . .”

  “We leave together, or so help me, it is the gallows for your beloved Jack!”

  “James, it is your life I fear for. I beg you, go.”

  “No. And that is an end to it.”

  Anne shook her head, slowly, sadly. It was such a waste, so unnecessary, but he had driven her to it.

  “Let it be on your head, then,” she said soft, and then pushed him hard in the chest, sent him reeling back and shouted, “Oh, you’ll go to the governor, will you? You’ll tell the governor tales of what we are about, just like all them others you betrayed? How many men have you sold out, eh, for your bloody pieces of silver? How many have hung because of you, you rat?”

  James Bonny had regained his balance, was shaking his head, moving toward the door, but there was a wall of men between him and safety, a wall of armed and angry men who were hearing every word of Anne’s accusations.

  “Jack, we must be off, before my . . . husband . . . runs to the governor with tales of our enterprise. He has done it to others—he told me as much—and he promises he will do it to us.” She turned to some of the others there, men who were not a part of their scheme, said, “Pray, will you detain this whoreson for an hour more, so that we might get safe away?”

  Big hands grabbed on to James Bonny, pulling him further into the tavern. His eyes were wide, his face white and waxy in the lantern light. He was shaking his head and looked as if he wished to speak, but nothing would come.

  The nine men and Anne Bonny hefted their weapons and their meager seabags, and filed out the door, into the early morning quiet of Nassau. Anne was the last to leave. She stopped, looked at James, and held his stare. “I begged you, James. Now, goodbye.”

  She turned and followed behind her fellow pirates.

  James Bonny watched her leave, her feminine walk all but masked by her men’s clothing, the cutlass on her hip. The room was spinning around. Huge, hairy faces loomed up in front, big arms reached out for him.

  He shoved the man in front of him, bolted for the door, but did not make three steps before he was taken up by a dozen hands. He screamed, struggled, but the hands held him tighter than any rope would do.

  Oh, Anne, I love you so, don’t you see that?

  A big knife flashed before his face, and he could not tell who of all those men was wielding it. He tried to flinch but the others were holding him tight. Panic struck him, like lightning on a black night, and then he felt the burn and dull pain of the knife as it was driven into his gut, pulled out and driven in again and again.

  He doubled over and the blood came like vomit and the dull pain of the stab wounds welled up into an unbearable agony, a burning, like red-hot irons had been thrust under his skin.

  The hands released him and he fell, saw the floor coming up and was unable to do anything about it. He hit with a jar that sent shudders through his body, and the pain that a second before he thought was more than he could bear doubled, tripled, engulfed him in a torment that was well beyond what seemed possible this side of hell.

  He realized that he was going to die. Not some time in the next hour or day, but now, there on that filthy tavern floor, his blood mixing with the rum and spittle that covered the bare pine boards, and he realized that death would be a welcome thing if it made the pain stop.

  His eyes were bulging. He opened his mouth and blood trickled out and when it had stopped he said, so soft he could barely hear himself, “Anne, oh, Anne . . . you done for me now . . .”

  They were the last words that James Bonny ever said in life. He closed his eyes and suddenly the pain was not so bad
.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ANNE FOLLOWED THE SMALL BAND across Bay Street, their shoes making scuffling sounds on the hard-packed sand. Nassau was cool and quiet at that hour. A light rain had begun to fall, which seemed to muffle all other sound. The night was black, well suited to their enterprise.

  The damp air was heavy with the scents of the harbor and the ocean and hints of the island vegetation. It was a Nassau that Anne had rarely seen: peaceful, sleepy, quiet. The silence only served to heighten her tension, her sense of intrigue and danger.

  Across Bay Street and down a block or so and then out along a battered old dock. The smell of conch shells and rotting fish was heavier now. Below them, the sound of small waves washing against the beach, and from out over the dark water, the slap of rigging and spars as the vessels at anchor rolled in the tiny swell, the occasional burst of laughter, bits of song.

  It seemed to Anne that it took an extra effort to engage in piracy on so tranquil a night, a struggle to fight the languid effects of wine and a big meal.

  At the far end of the dock, and floating five feet below, was a boat, and seated on the thwarts were Corner and Fetherston. It was a bigger one then they had used that afternoon to transport Anne out to the Nathaniel James for her spy work, and she wondered where all the boats were coming from. Figured that was part of it, this life on the account, taking what you need.

  Silent, the men began to clamber down the short ladder and step into the boat, settling on the thwarts, stowing their dunnage in the bottom. They were all experienced seamen, seasoned pirates, and they went about this business calmly, silently, despite the great quantities of rum they had consumed.

  Anne watched them, the way they moved, the look on their faces. She tried her best to imitate it, stood waiting her turn with one hand on her waist, the other on the hilt of her cutlass, scowling, glancing around, ignoring the rain that fell on her cocked hat and soaked through her jacket.

  Sweat stood out on her brow, despite the cool evening, her palm was slick on the steel of her cutlass. She felt as if tiny bolts of lightning were running along just under her skin. She wanted to shout, to run, to do something.

  It was not fear, but the thrill of the thing, the danger, the wickedness. She thought she might explode, like she felt that first time in bed with Jack. But she was a pirate now, and she stood unmoving, stoic, waiting her turn to go down into the boat.

  She turned to face the ladder, stepped down like she had seen the others do, placing her feet with care on the slippery rungs. Her foot found the bottom of the boat and she stepped in and worked her way aft, hands on the men’s shoulders for balance. She stumbled, nearly fell, said “Goddamn it!” through clenched teeth. She made her way all the way aft, took a seat on the sternsheets.

  A second later Jack was there, seated across from her. He took the tiller, nodded to the men, and with never a word spoken Corner shoved off and the men began their slow, rhythmic stroke with the long oars, the shafts muffled in the tholes with rags and oddly quiet, the careful dip of the blades all but inaudible.

  And then a sloop was looming up over them just off the boat’s starboard side, and it looked like the Nathaniel James, though Anne would not have bet on it.

  Jack nodded, a single nod, and the men at the oars took one last pull and then the oars came inboard and were laid along the thwarts and the boat’s momentum carried it along the sloop’s side.

  Corner in the bow grabbed the chains with the boat hook and stopped the forward motion as half a dozen hands kept the boat from thumping against the sloop. They paused, silent, waiting for some challenge from the deck above, but there was no indication that anyone aboard was awake.

  Corner went aboard, quick and silent, amazing for a brute such as himself, and Fetherston went next and then Anne. She gained the deck, stepped aside as more men came after her.

  Now she recognized the sloop, the deck she had stood upon that afternoon, the passageways of which she had taken careful note.

  Last of all, Jack Rackam stepped up on deck. “Where will the crew be at, Annie, dear?” he whispered.

  “Below and forward. I shall see to them.” She stepped off across the deck and Richard Corner followed behind. The short scuttle doors were shut. Anne set her fingers on the latch, gently, and gently lifted it and swung the doors wide. She turned and nodded to Corner, then for the second time that day ducked low through the entrance and stepped below.

  One, two, three, four . . . she counted out the steps as she descended and when she reached four she knew she was on the lower deck, though she could see little in the dark cavern of the ship. She reached out and felt the lockers that lined the side of the vessel, ran her hand along as she stepped softly forward. Behind her, Corner made the slightest of sounds as he followed.

  Ten feet, twenty feet, and in the dim light that filtered below Anne could see the door that McKeown had told her was the door to the forecastle in which they slept.

  Her hands were shaking. She balled her fingers into a fist, then opened them and wiped her palm on her jacket, and then silently pulled her sword from its sheath and held it in her right hand. With her left she took up one of her pistols. She felt as if she wanted to bite down hard on something, or scream out loud.

  She palmed the lock of the pistol back. The click was loud in the dead still air. She heard a rustle in the forecastle and took three bold steps forward, her heavy shoes loud on the deck.

  “Who’s there?” McKeown’s voice, edged with panic. Anne was in the cabin and she could see McKeown’s vague form, sitting up in his bunk. She brought the pistol up level, straight arm, the end of the muzzle not three inches from the mate’s forehead. “One move, one word, sir, and I shall blow your brains out, damn me if I will not!” she shouted. The words sounded to her ear as natural as any she had ever spoken.

  “Up, up, sir, and be quick!” Anne ordered, and McKeown threw off the sheets. Three minutes later she and Corner were back on deck, pushing the sleepy, confused, frightened crew members before them.

  Jack stood by the gangway, ran his eyes over the men as they were hustled along. He had a presence, a calm efficiency about him that Anne found impressive and alluring. He glanced around once and began to issue orders.

  “You men,” he pointed to five of the pirates, “bind the hands of these stupid bastards and set them in the bow. Corner, see to getting the cable in. Fetherston, take a gang and get the gaskets off them sails and see the halyards laid along. Annie, get you aft on the quarterdeck and see there’s no boats bound our way. Quiet, the lot of you.”

  The men nodded and fell to their appointed tasks. As Anne turned to go she noticed the mate, McKeown, staring at her, wide-eyed, like he was trying to understand but could not. She met his eyes, gave him a sweet, demure smile. She waved the barrel of her pistol at him, like a wagging finger at an overeager suitor, then stepped aft.

  She went back by the taffrail, peered out into the night, but there was no movement there, no indication that anyone knew what they were about. George Fetherston and his gang swarmed over the big boom, casting off the lines that held the sail in place. From forward came a steady clack clack clack as others heaved the handspikes in the windlass and pulled the anchor cable aboard.

  Jack stepped up onto the quarterdeck, grinning, and gave Anne an elaborate bow. Anne grinned as well and bowed back, a man’s bow.

  From forward came a muted cry, “First anchor’s aboard!”

  “Very well, Corner, let the other go!” Jack called back, as soft as he could and still be heard across sixty feet of deck.

  By way of reply came the low rumble and slight tremor underfoot as the cable to the sloop’s second anchor ran across the deck and snaked out of the hawse hole. And then it stopped and the Nathaniel James’s bow began to turn, the dim shapes of anchored ships sweeping past as the light breeze and the current got hold of the sloop.

  George Fetherston took up the big tiller, kicking off the beckets that held it in place and swinging
it slightly to starboard, but the tiller seemed to have no effect. With no sail set, the sloop drifted sideways down the harbor, slowly, inexorably, entirely in the grip of wind and tide.

  Jack came aft, climbed up on the quarterdeck rail, one hand on the main shrouds, and stared forward into the dark. The tails of his white calico coat flapped in the breeze and draped in folds over the cutlass that hung from his belt. His long, curly hair was wet and nearly straight as it fell back over his shoulders. He looked dashing, dramatic, the more so because for once he was not trying to look that way.

  The few lights still burning ashore seemed to drift by, hazy and unfocused in the rain. Anne tried to guess to which buildings they belonged, or to which camps on the beach, but she could not.

  “There’s the guard ship,” Jack said, nodding toward a distant light, and Fetherston grunted his concurrence, but how they knew that Anne had no idea.

  A certain tension settled over the deck, grim faces, little talk, and what talk there was in hushed tones. Men leaning over the rails, looking forward, astern, larboard, and starboard. Dark, anchored vessels seemed to sweep by, some barely discernable, some startlingly close.

  Then from the night came a voice, so close-sounding and so unexpected that Anne jumped and almost shouted in surprise.

  “What ship is that?” The speaker was using a speaking trumpet.

  “Nathaniel James!” Jack shouted back. He sounded composed, perfectly natural. Anne guessed that the challenge had not taken him by surprise, that he had expected it.

  “Why are you underway? Where are you going?” It was unsettling, this voice from the night. It had to be someone aboard the guard ship, the small man-of-war stationed in Nassau to protect that place from smugglers and pirates.

  “Our cable has parted. We’ve nothing but a grapple aboard, which will not hold!” Jack called back in exactly the tone of voice one might expect from a seaman in that circumstance.