Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  Like all of the brigands aboard the sloop, she was barefoot. She relished the feel of the hard, warm deck planking against the soles of her feet. There was a brazen freedom about going barefoot, walking around in the company of rough men with her legs entirely bare from mid-calf down. She loved that. Her father would have had an apoplexy if he could have seen her.

  Overhead the sky was clear and blue, with big Caribbean anvil-head clouds building to the southward. The ship rose and dipped and rolled in a steady, hypnotic manner.

  They had been prowling the sea for a month, but still had little to show for the effort: a few fishing boats around Eleuthra, a small island trader bound away for Great Abaco. Their victims were poorer and more ill-equipped than the pirates, so they had plundered their vessels for what little was worth the effort to lift and let them go on their way.

  Their prizes, such as they were, did not run and did not fight. A shot across the bows and their sails came down fast, and the buccaneers swaggered aboard in the face of their wide-eyed and trembling victims.

  It was not exactly how Anne Bonny had imagined it, none of the smoke and thunder of great sea battles, none of the massive fleets of a Henry Morgan from an earlier age. Just fishing boats, small traders. Not an ounce of fight in them.

  Still, the crew of the Pretty Anne— she was the Pretty Anne now, the name painted on the fresh plank that replaced the one on which Nathaniel James had been carved—seemed content enough with things as they were. They offered their victims the chance to join the sloop’s company, and as often as not they agreed, so their numbers were somewhat increased now.

  They had stopped once in Tortuga and taken on supplies: rum, food, prostitutes, and then sailed to a small island in the Windward Islands where they careened the sloop and caroused on the beach for a week before setting off again.

  If the others did not seem restless for some real action then Anne reckoned she probably should not either.

  Far from restless, the pirates lolled around the deck, drinking furiously, constantly, eating when it struck their fancy, keeping a desultory sort of watch. They lived much the same life they had lived ashore in Nassau, save for the close quarters and increased discomfort and somewhat worse smells aboard the small sloop.

  Anne Bonny lived as the pirates did. She ate, slept, drank wine and rum. She humped furiously with Jack in the small cabin aft. She did what work she could aboard the ship, and though she was learning to be a sailor, she was still unfamiliar with most maintenance tasks, and she was of little help. It frustrated her. She chafed at her forced idleness and her lack of knowledge.

  But she had been raised as a lady, and one thing a lady could do was sew, so she sewed.

  She sat with her back to the bulwark on the weather side of the quarterdeck, in a place and manner that would never be allowed aboard a legitimate ship, doing work that would never be done in that place.

  Spread out on her lap and tumbling along the scuppers, a great spread of black cloth, a sturdy number-five canvas. In her hand, a sailmaker’s palm, the rugged sea-going equivalent of the thimble she had learned to use when her mother had schooled her in the fine art of sewing and embroidery. Awkward at first, but once she was used to working needle and palm together she saw her speed increase in a satisfying manner.

  She was making a flag. It was a labor of love for her man, Calico Jack Rackam.

  When he had brought the limping Ranger into Nassau, when he had returned to accept the King’s pardon, unsure of whether it would be extended or not, he had had the foresight to dump all evidence of his pirating over the side.

  Down into the depths went anything that bore the name of any ship they had taken, over the side went any instrument or journal or ship’s log that might be claimed by its owner and held up as evidence. And into the sea went the black flag.

  Now it was time for another.

  The design was Jack’s, one he had conjured up during long hours as Vane’s quartermaster, thinking on how things would be when he was captain. A black field, and on it, a death’s head, and below that, crossed cutlasses. Simple, elegant, terrifying. Anne quite approved, and her needle flashed in the sun as she built a new one for Calico Jack and the Pretty Anne.

  She took the last stitch on the crossed cutlasses, checking both sides to see that they were aligned, that the sail twine had gone through both, and then, satisfied, she finished it off with a few crossed plunges through the cloth.

  A shadow fell across her work and she looked up and Jack smiled down at her. “Annie, you are the master of all that you touch. Sailor, seamstress, is there nothing you cannot do?”

  “No, my dear Jack, there is not.”

  It was true that she was picking up the sailor’s arts quickly, and she had many an enthusiastic tutor among the Pretty Anne’s company. None of them had ever met a woman such as Anne, a woman who was not just a means to sate their sexual appetites but rather a fellow pirate, a woman who could dress like a man and drink and curse and work and plunder side-by-side with them.

  They showed her how to sweat a line, to heave and belay and coil, how to lay aloft and cast off gaskets, how to sheet home a sail and how to stow it again. They taught her the trick of keeping the ship on course with small adjustments of the helm, how to box the compass, how to tie a bowline and a sheet bend and a reef knot. Anne was smart and eager to learn, and she learned quickly. And the more she learned the more she wanted to know, and the more eager the men were to teach.

  “You’d best get that finished up, my dear,” Jack continued. “We’re nigh on half way betwixt Bermuda and Grand Bahama, and there’ll be some fine hunting here. I should think anyone who sees that flag will piss their trousers and then fall to the deck in surrender.”

  “Might we get ourselves in the way of something more valuable then barrel hoops and salted fish, Jack?” she asked and saw the anger flash across his face, the unintentional wound delivered. She did not mean to impugn his leadership; she thought she was commenting only on their poor luck.

  She opened her mouth to try and correct her blunder, but by then the anger had passed from Jack’s face like a cloud before the sun. He smiled down at her. “Yes, my dear, it should be fine hunting here.”

  Before Anne could respond to that, there came a cry from the masthead lookout, the only station other than the helm that was manned with diligence and consistency. “Sail, ho!”

  Jack made a little involuntary gasp and his head jerked back as he looked up at the lookout, and Anne did the same.

  Sail, ho! It was the call for which they waited during every moment of daylight, their operative phrase, their clarion call to action.

  Fore and aft the others looked aloft, a reflex action, since looking aloft would garner them no new information. “Right on the loo’rd beam. Ship rig, reaching to west southwest, I reckon,” the lookout called down.

  Nodding heads, smiles, wolfish grins passed among the fifteen or so pirates aboard the sloop. Ship rig meant a big vessel, and since the pirates had no national loyalties at all, there was no vessel that was not a potential prize, save for a man-of-war, and it was unlikely that she was that.

  Jack looked down at Anne, grinning as well, and his face showed avarice and pleasure and not a little relief. It occurred to Anne that Jack bore the responsibility of finding prizes, and a heavy responsibility it was, with the dubious loyalty of his crew depending on his success.

  “Sew like the devil, Annie, dear, we’ll need that flag directly, I’ll warrant.”

  “It is a done thing, my dearest,” she said. She hopped to her feet and presented the bundle of black cloth to him and he took it, let it spill out on to the deck so he could see the emblem, the grinning death head, the crossed blades. He smiled, and his delight was genuine and it filled Anne with pleasure.

  “See here, lads!” Jack turned and addressed the rest of the deck. He gave the flag a shake so it opened up full, eight feet long, six feet on the fly and the Pretty Annes cheered and Anne grinned, happy through a
nd through.

  “Come, you lazy bastards!” Dicky Corner shouted. “Let us tend to them braces and run yonder poor sod down and put Annie’s fine work to some use!”

  The men raced to the lines, hurried on by this new motivation to leeward. Anne crossed to the weather main brace and cast it off, kept a turn around the belaying pin as she had been taught, and as the Pretty Anne swung off the wind, pointing her bow toward her intended victim, so Anne eased away the line until the yard was braced around right. She stopped it there and let the men on the leeward side take up the slack. With a flick of her wrist she cast a loop around the pin again and thought, Damn my eyes, if I ain’t becoming a proper sailor-man!

  “Stuns’ls now, boys!” Quartermaster Corner called out and the men raced into the shrouds and up, and Anne along with them. There were none that moved any swifter or more sure at their task than she, of that she was certain. She loved working the ship, and she was proud of her ability.

  It took no more than ten minutes to set the four stuns’ls and the outer jib. Ten minutes, and then the Pretty Anne was flying through the water with everything she could carry set to the breeze, plunging into the rollers and sending the spray back over the deck in brilliant showers. Anne felt the flying water hit her face and her neck, felt the sloop bucking under her and she wanted to yell with exhilaration.

  It was like sex, this wild ride, and the climax would come when they plunged down on their victim’s deck, swords flashing, guns blasting away.

  “Ha!” the lookout called from aloft. “They’ve smoked us now, the sorry bastards, haven’t they, and running for all they’re worth! It’ll do you no good, you miserable bugger!” His report was tumbling out like he was narrating events for his own benefit.

  “Fenwick!” Jack called out, his voice a bit peevish. “What see you of her?”

  “She’s turned now, Jack, my beauty, and running right away from us, isn’t she? Ah, there they go, getting the fore and main topmast stuns’ls set, and a fucking clumsy job they’re making of it!”

  This seemed like troubling news to Anne. She had somehow thought they might steal up on their victim, remain unnoticed until it was too late. But this other ship had set stuns’ls as well, and being bigger, she would in theory be faster than the Pretty Anne.

  “Jack, what does this signify? Are we to lose them?”

  “Eh? Oh, no, I don’t reckon so. Great fat lumbering merchantman, they should be no match for us, with our new-cleaned bottom. We’ll fly over the waves, my dear, be up with them before they’ve had a chance to give themselves a good thorough scratching.”

  “Do you think they will fight, at all?”

  “Might do. Ship rig, they’ll have a bigger crew, no doubt as many as we are, perhaps more. They might well decide to fight when they see they can’t outrun us.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “Are you afeared, my Annie? I don’t think the men will hold you to fighting, like they do with one another.”

  “Afeared? No. No, not at all.” Her thoughts had been moving on quite another tack. She was thinking about the fight, the madness of plunging in with pistol and cutlass. Not just an opportunity for wild abandon, but an absolute need for it, a moment when hesitation and reticence could mean her death.

  Killing a man who was trying to kill her. A basic, savage reflex. Life distilled to its purest essence.

  When she thought about it, she once more felt the little bolts of lightning shooting down her arms and out her fingertips. Her limbs felt as if they wanted to jerk and spasm with all the energy she was holding in check.

  No, she was not afraid.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CALICO JACK could stand it no more. He wrapped his hand around the hilt of his big straight sword and pulled it from the scabbard, slashed at the air with it as he paced and waited for the next gun.

  Damn them, damn them, sons of bitches . . . he thought.

  The merchantman—Dutch, by the flag—was fighting back. The Pretty Anne had chased them for four hours, overhauling them cable length by cable length. They had approached to within half a mile and they had broken out Anne’s flag, a magnificent piece of needle-work, terrifying in its stark bold pattern, unequivocal in its meaning. They had fired bow chasers.

  But the merchantman continued to run, and when the Pretty Anne came within the arc of her small cannon she began to fire back. Jack could not shake the images of all the men he had seen who had been horribly disfigured in fights of one kind or another. Visions of their wounds swam in front of him. Noses, ears, limbs gone, whole sections of face slashed away, he could not get them from his mind, could not decide if he would rather be dead than thus maimed.

  A jet of gray smoke from the Dutchman’s side and a quarter second later the bang of the gun. The round shot skipped by and dashed water up into Jack’s face and made him start and wince in surprise.

  “We’ll make them pay for that, Jack dear, eh?” cried Anne.

  You don’t need to yell, you stupid bunter, I’m ten feet away, he thought.

  “Yes, damn them, that we will, Annie.”

  She seems to be enjoying this, the little tart, doesn’t know enough about a sea fight even to be scared.

  No, no, none of that . . . this is the girl I love, recall, a little charity is called for here . . .

  Of course, it did not appear to him that any of the others—Corner or Harwood or Dobbin—were scared either, and they knew damn well what a bloody brawl was like.

  Jack growled, paced, flailed around with his sword. It seemed that his fear must be obvious, the fox tearing at his innards, but no one had ever noticed before and they did not seem to notice now and so he guessed he was safe from detection.

  How many of you have foxes hidden away? he wondered. How many of you are really afraid right now?

  From what they could see of the Dutch merchant ship she had a full crew, as many men as there were aboard the Pretty Anne. They were just merchant sailors, of course, but hell, every man aboard the pirate sloop had once been just a merchant sailor, and now they were a bloody pack of cutthroats, indeed. Could be they were just as fierce a crew aboard the Dutchman.

  He turned, paced the other way, and Anne caught his eye and smiled and he made himself smile back.

  She must be afraid as well, he concluded. It was not possible that a woman could face this circumstance—going into a fight against an armed and equal opponent—and not be at least as frightened as he was. And if she was not, it had to be ignorance.

  Another shot from the Dutchman, and that one slammed into the Pretty Anne, up near the bow, and set the men howling and jeering, like a flock of birds startled by the blast. Jack leaned over the rail, looked forward, but he could not see any damage done.

  They were no more than a cable length away, perhaps less, perhaps closer to one hundred and fifty yards. They would be up with them soon. Waiting, always so much damned waiting . . .

  Jack lifted his glass, scanned the deck of their victim. He could see cutlasses and pikes and pistols too. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, this will not be an easy thing, he thought.

  He felt his fingers slick on the leather wrapping around the telescope. “Quartermaster, see them grapples ready, and hand grenadoes as well!” he cried, glad to have thought of an order to give. Made him look in control of the situation.

  “They’re laid along now, Captain!” Corner called.

  Jack looked forward. Dick Corner had already prepared the things they would need to grapple and board.

  Two of the Pretty Anne’s four-pounder guns went off, one after the other, slamming inboard to renewed shouts from the men.

  Oh, we are having a merry time . . .

  But Corner had called him “captain,” and such he was. Here they were, going into battle, and that gave him unquestionable authority. He was Captain John Rackam. After all those years, here he was. Captain Rackam.

  He felt his faltering courage get a little boost from that. He turned and began to bang his sword against the side
of the ship, began to chant “Death, death, death . . .”

  Anne watched Jack surreptitiously as he paced, slashing at the air, and she was worried about him. It was clear to her that he was afraid, and she was certain she knew the reason.

  It was the Dutchman.

  A rich prize if they could get up with her, but she was not as slow a sailor as Jack had thought she would be. Jack was afraid the prize would get away, that the big ship would sail from their grasp and he would not be able to lead his men into a fight on her decks or to secure for them the riches she held in her hold.

  She wanted to put her arms around him, to tell him that it would be all right, that there would be other fights if they missed out on this one. That his men loved him and she loved him and they would follow him anywhere, even if they did lose the Dutchman.

  But she did not. It did not seem right that she should do that. Stoicism was the sailors’ way and so she made it her way. And in truth, she had never been very good at that sort of thing. She was not the comforting type.

  Ten feet to her left the Pretty Annes touched off two of their four-pounder guns in rapid succession.

  The concussion of the gun fire hit her like a solid thing, made her stagger, knocked the voice from her throat. She put her hand down on the caprail to steady herself. Then, like a second concussion, the thrill of the cannons’ power overwhelmed her and she screamed, the high, keening shout of her Celtic ancestors plunging into battle. Here was a fight, and she was desperately eager to be at it.

  A bit aft of her Jack started in on the vaporing, banging his sword against the side of the sloop and shouting “Death, death, death . . .” and around her more and more of the Pretty Annes took up the chant.