Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  It seemed to satisfy the guard ship, for no more word was heard from that quarter.

  The Nathaniel James was moving well, drifting toward the western entrance of Nassau harbor. Right under the guns of Woodes Rogers’s fort, but when the fort hailed them, as the guard ship had, and Jack gave them the same story, they too seemed to accept it.

  Five minutes, ten minutes—an hour perhaps—they drifted silently down harbor. Anne could not tell how long it had been; in that tense atmosphere the minutes seemed to crawl by. It seemed they would never fetch the end of the confined water. She had no urge to laugh now. She was swept up in the universal tension aboard the sloop. It felt like they were all holding their breath.

  Then suddenly she felt the deck drop away, as if it was falling out from under her. She stumbled and the bow rose up and up, hung there for a second, and then came down and the quarterdeck seemed to rise and the tension on board broke like a fragile skim of ice.

  “Yeah! Kiss my arse, Rogers, you bloody sodomite!” someone shouted from the waist and a chorus of jeers and shouts and obscenities followed, hurled back at the town of Nassau passing astern.

  Orders flew along the deck, spoken in loud voices, commands that Anne did not understand but the others apparently did because gangs of men fell to the halyards and the sheets and began to haul away. The big mainsail rose up, unfolding itself off the boom and spreading out, gray against the dark night’s sky. Forward, the jib began to jerk up the forestay.

  Anne leapt aside as Fetherston hauled away on the main sheets, nearly trampling her as he pulled the boom amidships.

  The sloop seemed to pause in mid-swing, as if uncertain of where to go. And then, making up her mind, she began to gather headway, the big mainsail full and curved in an elegant sweep of canvas, the water making a musical gurgling sound down her side.

  “Jack!” Anne staggered forward and grabbed on to the rail for support. In an instant the calm, stately motion of the sloop had changed to a wild, corkscrew ride. “Whatever is happening? Why is the boat moving thus?”

  Jack was grinning wide. “Why, my beloved, that is the feel of the deep water rollers. We are free of the harbor, don’t you see? We are in open water now, with never an alarm raised, and Rogers and all his toy soldiers can kiss our sweet arses!” He laughed, an infectious laugh, and Anne joined in, let it all out, all the tension, all the thrill and fear and regret and anticipation she had felt raging within her for the past twelve hours.

  Jack pointed toward the bow. “Bring those fellows aft!” he called, and the sloop Nathaniel James’s two unhappy crew members were brought back to the quarterdeck and stood in front of Calico Jack.

  “What cheer, fellows? See here, I am a charitable man, so I will offer you both the main chance. I will give you leave to join with us gentleman on the account. What say you?”

  “We’ve no taste for piracy and we’ll not go willing with you,” McKeown spat the words, and the other man nodded.

  “Very well, you sniveling puppies, I shall send you crawling back to your master. Put these rascals in the boat!”

  Richard Corner and four others grabbed the men roughly and pulled them back to the gangway. “Pray, give our service to Woodes Rogers!” Jack called after them. “And let him know we shall return the sloop once we have had a little use of it!”

  The men’s hands were freed and they were hustled down the boarding cleats and into the boat and a moment later the boat was lost in the gloom astern. Jack stepped back to the quarterdeck, leaned against the windward rail, and Anne took her place beside him, as close as she thought proper, which was not very close. After all, they were shipmates now, brothers in arms, not lovers. Not at that moment.

  This is it, she thought. They were in open water, Nassau was astern, and under their bows, the Caribbean, the Spanish Main, the American coast, wherever they wished to go.

  They had stolen the sloop Nathaniel James right out of Nassau harbor, and her part had been the most active of all of them, hers and Jack’s, and that made them the first candidates for the gallows.

  She was an outlaw now; there was no going back. She was a pirate.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE CARIBBEAN was blue-green, a warm and unfailing breeze, humps of high, jungle-covered mountains in the far distance. It was as good as Mary had hoped it would be.

  Fifteen knots of wind blowing over the starboard quarter, blowing so steady that they had not had to go aloft to set or take in sail for four days, had not even needed to tend a sheet or a brace. The air was warm but not hot, a temperature that matched hers so perfectly that it seemed neutral, as if there was no temperature at all.

  Overhead, the sky was a robin’s-egg blue, with big white anvil-head clouds building on the horizon, but safely to leeward. They might mean a squall for some unlucky mariners, but not for those aboard the Hoorn.

  She lay stretched out on the foredeck, her head propped up on the forecastle hatch combing. Bare feet, loose, wide-legged trousers. She wore a big soft canvas duck shirt as well and over that a faded red waistcoat of the same material—an unusual piece of clothing for a sailor, but then sailors were given to adding their own idiosyncratic touches to their kit, and no one thought anything of it. They certainly did not think that the waistcoat was there primarily to compact and disguise her breasts.

  Her shoulder-length black hair had been plaited and clubbed by a shipmate, sailor-fashion. Her re-emergence as a seaman was complete.

  It was the middle of the forenoon watch, ten o’clock in the morning. Normally she would have been on watch, taking her trick at the helm, or standing forward lookout, or at day work, up aloft overhauling running rigging or slushing masts with rancid tallow or any of the myriad jobs required on shipboard.

  But it was Sunday, a day off. Dirk Bes, master of the Hoorn, was a good man—Mary could see right through his facade of hard-bitten ship driver—and he was not the type to deny his crew the simple pleasure of four hours free time once a week, as much as the bully of a mate, Waalwijk, would have loved to work them.

  “This is your first time in the Caribbean?”

  Mary opened her eyes. Hans Franeker was sitting beside her, fiddling with a piece or rope, attempting to tuck an eye-splice.

  “Turn that over . . .” Mary waited while he obeyed. “Now take that third strand and tuck it right to left . . . right to left . . . there. That is the hard part done. Now over and under with all three strands.”

  Hans smiled at his eye-splice, correct now after a dozen attempts. “This is your first time in the Caribbean?” he asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You seem surprised.”

  Hans grinned, a sheepish look, shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just . . . well . . . it seems you’ve done so much. Had so many adventures, it is hard for me to think of something you have not done.”

  Mary smiled. God, but he was young! He had taken to following her like a little brother, or a puppy or some such. She could see the worship in his eyes. All because of her one instinctive grab as he fell, and the sheer luck of catching her fingers in his belt. But she did not mind, because she liked him and she could keep an eye on him if he was close by.

  Lord, if you knew the truth of me, wouldn’t you be surprised! she thought. It was not a thought that she had very often. She had been too long among men to think about it much any more.

  She moved her eyes up to the rigging overhead. The sails of the mainmast rose up and up above her—mainsail, main topsail, main topgallant sail. They bowed out in great, round, elegant curves, like the belly of a pregnant woman with the fabric of her dress stretched taut over it.

  Oh, Frederick, why did we not have children? Then there would be a piece of you still alive for me to love.

  They were not childless for want of trying, but never was she able to conceive. Mary had come at last to believe she was barren, that perhaps playing the man for so long had somehow affected her womanhood in that way.

  W
here would she be, if she had had children by Frederick? Not here, that was for certain. She would never have abandoned them, would never have forced them, or even allowed them, to live the life that she had been made to live.

  “You have been on the Continent, then, these years?”

  Mary looked over. Hans was still trying to pry information from her about a life that he reckoned was rife with fine adventure. She gave him a thin smile. “I have been on the Continent since . . . 1710, I believe. Cadet with an infantry unit at the outbreak of the late war, and then I rode with Walpole’s Regiment of Light Cavalry.”

  “It must be a fine thing, to be a trooper of horse.”

  “It can be. It can also be an absolute hell. War is not a fine thing, Hans, it truly is not.”

  “I believe you,” Franeker said, though it was clear he did not.

  Mary closed her eyes again, let the warmth wash over her. This was just the thing she had envisioned, back during the torment of the North Sea. Why did anyone live in Europe when such a place as this existed on earth, she wondered. The ship moved under her in a steady rhythm—down, up, a slight corkscrew motion and then over again, like a giant cradle rocking her to sleep.

  The sun was warm on her face. Her stomach was full. Her clothes were fairly clean and entirely dry. Once they had found good weather south of 30° North latitude Captain Bes had given them leave to rinse their clothes in fresh water—just two buckets for the entire crew— but it was enough to wash away most of the salt.

  She was dry and warm as well. At that point in her life she did not feel there was much more she could hope for. That was enough.

  And then the forward lookout’s cry of “Sail, ho!” and she sat bolt upright, every muscle taut.

  “Where away?” the master called from the quarterdeck. Everyone seemed to be frozen in place, everyone staring at the lookout.

  “Three points off the weather bow! Topgallant up.”

  Weather bow. Topgallant up. Most of the vessel was still below the horizon, at least from the deck, so there was no telling what she was. Still, the same thought flashed through the mind of every sailor in those waters at the sight of a distant sail—pirate.

  “You there, Ratten, up to the main crosstrees with a glass!” Franeker called. Able-bodied seaman Ratten grabbed up a telescope, flung himself into the weather main shrouds, and scrambled aloft. He clambered up into the crosstrees, extended the glass and put it to his eye. There was a moment of silence as he stared out at the horizon and everyone else aboard the Hoorn stared at him. At last he called, “Sloop, with all plain sail set and coming down fast!”

  Sloop. It was a popular and common rig in those waters. Popular with honest traders and with pirates as well.

  A moment more of silence and then Bes called “Is she altering course, at all?”

  “No! Wait . . . she . . . she’s set stuns’ls, sir, topmast stuns’ls!”

  Stuns’ls. This stranger was not turning away at the sight of the Hoorn. Rather, she was closing with them as fast as she could.

  Mary met Hans Franeker’s eyes and she could see that he was afraid. Even he understood that the pirates were the only ones in those waters likely to close a strange vessel.

  In the momentary silence Mary said, “Now, Hans, you will see what grand adventure is really like.”

  Before Franeker could reply, Captain Bes exploded in a series of rapid-fire orders, turning the ship as directly away from the pursuit as he could, sending hands to trim the sails to their maximum efficiency, setting the Hoorn’s stuns’ls as well.

  Waalwijk paced fore and aft, applying his rope end to the shoulders of those who did not work fast enough. The speed with which the crew set sail now had a direct bearing on his own personal safety, and that brought a powerful motivation to his beatings.

  Twenty minutes of furious activity and the fat Dutch merchant ship was fleeing the distant sloop as fast and as directly as she was able.

  They ran for an hour and then Ratten called from the main crosstrees, “Just hull up now, on the rise!”

  For all of their effort, the sloop was still gaining on them.

  “All hands, lay aft!” Bes bellowed and all the crew of the ship crowded around the base of the mainmast, looking up at the quarterdeck and the master and mate. The murmuring was loud, the buzz of speculation in fast, guttural Dutch, but there was little doubt in Mary’s mind what Bes would say.

  “See here, lads,” the master began and the murmuring died away. “I don’t know what yonder sloop is, but we got to reckon on the worst, that she’s a pirate and she’s chasing us. We’re running best as we can, but it looks like that ain’t going to be fast enough. So if she overhauls us, and they’re pirates indeed, we have to decide, do we fight or do we surrender?”

  That is the question, Mary thought. It was well-known among mariners that often the pirates would not harm those who surrendered, and would show no mercy to those who fought back. But not always. It was a gamble.

  “I reckon you men know what can happen, do we fight and lose,” Bes continued. “This ain’t a decision I can make for you. I’ll give you a minute to talk on it, then we’ll vote.”

  Mary listened to the talk, back and forth, heated opinions expressed with force. She did not participate. She had seen men in this state before, fear mixed with bravado and ignorance, and she knew that debate was pointless. No one would be swayed. Let us vote and be done with it, she thought.

  Five minutes of shouting and then they voted, and the vote was to fight.

  Mary voted that way as well, realizing that her years in the army and naval service had made the thought of passive surrender anathema to her.

  We shall fight then, and see what comes of it. She sighed. Was there no place on earth where she could go to be free of this violence?

  And then Claude Waalwijk shouted, “And let me say this, if any of you bloody cowards tries to run below, by God I’ll shoot you myself!”

  “Michael . . .” There was Hans Franeker, wide-eyed. “That was the right decision, weren’t it? Fighting, I mean?”

  Mary looked at the boy and thought of all the answers she might give. But the young man did not need any of her weary philosophy at that juncture, so she just said, “Yes, it was the right decision. Don’t you worry, we’ll do for these bastards.”

  The relief in Franeker’s face was at once gratifying and disturbing. Lord, don’t look to me to save you, Mary thought, I’ve made quite a hash of my own life.

  For four hours they ran, south by west, with the breeze all but right astern and the sloop growing larger and larger in their wake. The strange vessel had run up a Dutch flag, which was meaningless. The only fact they knew for certain about the vessel following was that it was following, and trying to overhaul them, and that was all they needed to know.

  Up through the scuttle came two men bearing between them an arms chest, and then more men carrying pikes, cutlasses, boarding axes. All the meager assortment of weapons the merchantman carried, they dumped them all unceremoniously on the deck.

  “Very well, you men, take up the arms you want!” Bes shouted from the quarterdeck, and the crew swarmed around the pile of weapons like children to free candy.

  Mary managed to push her way through. She picked up a cutlass, felt the heft in her hand. It was lighter than a cavalry saber, but not as well balanced. She tried a tentative feint and recover. It would do.

  Beside her Hans had a pistol in his belt, a cutlass in one hand, and a pike in the other. He was grinning.

  “Not the pike, Hans,” she said. A pike was useless in all but the most skilled hands, and Hans’s were most assuredly not that. “One loaded pistol in your left hand, another in the belt and a cutlass in your right hand.” She found a cutlass for him. “Here.”

  Hans looked disappointed, but he laid the pike down, took the cutlass from Mary. Then over the sound of the men’s speculation and the clash of weapons and the working of the ship came a flat banging sound that sent Mary reeling ba
ck through the years, stirred up memories of morning guns in camp and the opening rounds of artillery duels as she waited for her turn to charge into the fray.

  It was a cannon shot, a ranging bow chaser from the sloop astern. A spout of water shot up one hundred yards off their starboard quarter and all of the cocky high spirits of the men were blown away by that single round.

  Weapons in hand, they raced to the rail and up the shrouds to stare at their pursuer. The Dutch flag was gone, and in its place a black flag, with some pattern they could not make out from that distance. Not that it mattered.

  “That’s it, it’s pirates then, and they means to take us . . .” Hans said, as if trying to convince himself that any hope of it being otherwise was gone, as if hoping someone would tell him his conclusion was wrong. But it was not.

  “Yes, Hans,” said Mary. “We’ll be grappling with them in an hour, I should think. Perhaps less.” She pointed with her cutlass to a spot on the deck, to her left and two feet behind. “You stand there. No matter what happens, you stay this close to me, on this side. When the fighting starts I don’t want to have to wonder where you are.”

  Hans nodded, and though they were still an hour from the fight he took up the position Mary had indicated.

  Good lad. She hoped something would happen so that they did not have to fight. If they did fight, she hoped they would win, she hoped that none of her shipmates would be killed, she hoped that she would survive.

  But all that was too much to hope for. So instead she would try to keep Hans Franeker alive, and if she could achieve just that one tiny thing, then that would be something, at least.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ANNE BONNY sat on the sloop’s quarterdeck, aft by the tiller, and sewed, looking for all the world like a young Jack Tar stitching his clothing on make-and-mend day.

  She was dressed in her loose sailor’s trousers and a big cambric shirt she had stolen from Jack. Her long-tailed blue coat had been exchanged for a short blue jacket like the sailors wore. Her head was bound in a bright red cloth, and the cocked hat that she generally wore over that was on the deck beside her. Her thick reddish blond hair was tied back with a length of yellow ribbon.