Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  The Dutchman was less than one hundred yards away and the Pretty Anne was flying down on her. Anne could see the activity in her waist as they loaded and fired their pathetic guns as fast as they could, trying to knock something away before the pirates overwhelmed them.

  Too late, too late, too late for you . . . the thought ran through Anne’s mind, over and over. She glanced up at the big black flag snapping at the masthead, took joy in her handiwork. Too late for you, it says.

  She reached across her taut belly, grabbed the hilt of her cutlass and pulled it out, held it over her head and waved it, shouting her Irish war cry in time with the chanting of the others. The noise circled her, embraced her, carried her up and up as she yelled and chanted and banged her sword with the others. The vaporing terrified their victim and whipped the pirates up into a frenzy.

  It was unrestrained madness, like the Norse berserkers. She jerked the pistol from her belt, fired it at the Dutchman, realized that it was a waste of a loaded weapon.

  Forty yards and the Dutchman’s guns went off again and iron shrieked overhead, a banshee cry, and ten feet to her left David Wolcot was torn near in two by the gun fire.

  Anne watched his body as it hurled across the deck, the viscera spilling out on the planking, the eyes wide, dead before he came to rest. She watched with a detached fascination—not frightened, not sorry, not revolted—just interested. Here was a part of the whole thing. Train the cannon an inch to the left and that would be her, but that thought did not bother her either.

  She pulled her eyes from the horror on the deck. The vaporing had broken down to random screaming and clashing weapons. The pirates were firing off their pistols at that impossible range.

  Twenty yards away and now she was looking up at the high-sided merchantman and she realized that they would be attacking up, climbing up and over the bulwark rather than leaping down onto the deck. She felt a touch of fear, a taste of apprehension. But all around her, her fellow pirates were screaming and clambering up on the sloop’s rail, wild to be at them, and Anne took comfort from that and forced the fear down.

  “Let ’em go! Grapples away!” Jack shouted, and a bold sight he made, standing on the quarterdeck rail, one hand on the main shrouds, waving his long straight sword at the Dutch merchantman, his long hair flowing and his bright calico jacket swirling around as he moved.

  Those men who had grappling hooks stood at the rail and on the channel, swinging the hooks in small arcs. At Jack’s command they drew their arms back and let them fly. The hooks soared through the air in great elegant arcs and fell from sight on the Dutchman’s deck. The Pretty Annes grabbed onto the lines and heaved and heaved, drawing the two ships together.

  To Anne’s right, four men leaned into the line, heaving away, then collapsed to the deck in a heap as someone aboard the Dutchman thought to sever the rope tied to the hook. But there were other grapples and the gap between the vessels fell off to ten yards, then five yards.

  Dicky Corner elbowed her aside, pushed a glowing match to the short fuse of hand grenadoes and flung it over the side, and with it went half a dozen more from the Pretty Anne’s deck. A few seconds’ pause, and then a series of deafening explosions and the high-pitched scream of a dying man.

  Something flew back toward the sloop, landed on the deck, bounced, and Anne saw it was one of their grenadoes. Someone aboard the Dutchman had thrown it back. The fuse sputtered, threw off sparks, was too short even to see.

  Anne whirled around, collided with Corner standing beside her. She grabbed him around the waist, pushed him over one of the four-pounder cannon and down to the deck. They landed in a heap, Anne on top of Corner. She heard him yell “Goddamn it!” loud in her ear, and then the grenadoe exploded.

  She pressed herself down, could smell the sweat and grime and tar and spilled rum on Corner’s clothing while around her the air was filled with the scream of the iron bits, the clang of metal hitting the gun barrel, punctuating the bass tone of the explosive.

  The deck jarred beneath them, the screaming iron replaced by the sound of smashing wood and the screech of wrenched iron and Anne thought Have I been hit? Has this grenadoe sunk us?

  She looked up and the Dutchman loomed over them and she realized that the two ships had struck, that the shudder was not the grenadoe, it was the collision, and with never a thought she was on her feet, cutlass in hand.

  One foot on the cannon barrel, a step up, the next foot on the Pretty Anne’s rail and then she was on the Dutchman’s main channel, where the main shrouds terminated, which thrust like a staging from her side. Hand up on the shrouds, foot on a deadeye and she was up, up, her face level with the deck.

  A pistol banged out, ten feet away. She felt the ball pass close and she kept climbing. She was screaming, cursing, a constant noise pouring from her mouth, had no idea of what she was saying, just let it come.

  Up the main shrouds and then she stepped onto the rail. Fore and aft the rest of the Pretty Annes were pouring over the merchantman’s side, heavily armed, bearded, wild pirates, splashes of color from their bright clothing, shouting, cursing, howling like wild animals, firing shot after shot; the air was filled with the crack of pistols, the clash of steel as blade met blade.

  There was Calico Jack, a little aft of her, engaging someone with sword and dagger. Anne let go of the shroud, dropped to the deck, hit the planks in a crouch, just as she had fantasized about doing so many times: tensed, alert, cutlass at the ready.

  And then someone was in front of her, screaming, charging, a great bearded seaman wielding a cutlass. He slashed at her, swinging the weapon in a wide arc, and she jumped back and the blade swished past, missing her waist by inches.

  He cocked his arm to slash again, a backhand stroke from three feet away. Anne could see the rage in his eyes, the crooked teeth in his snarling mouth.

  The cutlass came around and this time Anne reacted the way Jack had instructed, the way her own instinct told her to act. She brought her blade up, met the oncoming cutlass. The two weapons hit with an impact that sent a shudder up her arm, made her hand ache, and wrenched the cutlass from her grip.

  It dropped to the deck and the man lunged. Shit shit shit shit shit, Anne thought as she twisted sideways and his cutlass pierced her coat, tangling in the cloth. He cursed, wrestled it free, stepped back to give himself room.

  Anne was pressed against the bulwark, her cutlass at her feet as he stepped forward again, bringing his own cutlass back, his eyes locked on Anne’s, his wicked blade winding up for a death stroke.

  Her mind was in a fury, the edges of her vision dulled, all the noise around her blended into one great swirling sound, and through it all, as she stared at the blade that would kill her she heard, the gun, the gun, the gun.

  She did not know if she had said it, if she thought it, or if someone else had told her, but suddenly one of the pistols dangling around her neck was in her right hand and her left palm was pushing back the flint lock.

  The man’s sword was already coming down in a clumsy stroke when Anne fired the pistol into him. She had meant to put the ball right through his heart but instead she hit his left shoulder. The impact of the lead sent him reeling back. The cutlass stopped in mid-swing as he instinctively clapped that hand over the wound.

  He stumbled back five feet, six feet, but his wound was not mortal and the fight was not out of him. She saw him glare at her, heard him howl in pain and outrage as he stumbled forward again, cutlass raised, his right arm and shoulder unscathed.

  Anne darted forward, snatching her cutlass off the deck as she moved, closing with him even as he came at her, bellowing like a bull, ready to deliver the coup de grâce that would cleave her head in two.

  Right foot forward, arm extended, every ounce of power in her arm and shoulder and chest behind the blade and she lunged. She saw the deadly point touch the man’s blue jacket, felt the resistance, then the give as it passed cloth and then flesh as she pressed the lunge home and the man’s own momentum
carried him onto the blade.

  She heard the bellow turn to an agonizing cry, and she took a step forward and pushed harder and felt the man’s body yielding to the blade as she drove it home.

  She looked him in the eye and he looked back at her, his eyes wide with disbelief. He made a coughing motion and blood spurted from his mouth. He began to waver and his eyes rolled back.

  Around them the fight swirled, surging across the deck, men shouting, guns firing, blades clashing, but on that spot of deck Anne Bonny stood, silent, watching the man die at the end of her sword.

  He fell to his knees, and Anne pulled her sword free of his body and he fell sideways, dead before he hit the deck, his eyes still open, his arm twitching.

  My God, my God, she thought, so that is what it is to kill a man . . . She felt the excitement boiling in her guts and she shouted out loud, screamed in triumph, let her elation vent from throat and mouth.

  Then she stopped shouting and looked down at the man again, looked into his dead eyes, the pool of blood spreading from his wound. She found herself panting for breath. The elation passed like a warm puff of air and behind it came remorse, revulsion, emotions she would never have guessed she might feel.

  Anne whirled around, bent double, vomited into the Dutchman’s scuppers.

  Mary was standing by the main fife rail when the pirate ship struck them, a solid collision that made the heavy Hoorn shudder and knocked her to the deck. Through numb ears she could hear the victory scream of the buccaneers and the wrenching of wood as the two vessels ground against one another.

  She leapt to her feet, pulled Hans up by the collar, and shoved him back away from the rail. The pirates swarmed over the side from the fore shrouds all the way aft to the quarterdeck. Great bearded beasts of men, weapons hanging from belts and ribbons and shoulder belts, they screamed as they came over the bulwark and the Hoorns fell back, the merchant sailors, new to combat, overwhelmed by the ferocity of the attack.

  Mary cocked the lock of the pistol in her hand, and glanced back to see that Hans had done the same. Her head was filled with the unreal, dreamy quality of the fight. It was such a familiar sensation, the horror and the numbness and need to move swiftly and to be aware of what was around you, all around you.

  Some great brute of a man charged at her, cutlass raised, and with never a thought she lifted her gun and shot him and he fell and skidded to a stop at her feet.

  Stupid bastard, she thought, tossed the gun away, pulled another. There was Captain Bes locked into a fight with another of the rogues and she could see Bes was no swordsman.

  She raised her gun, firing it at the pirate’s head. She missed, and the bullet clipped off a part of his ear, but it took his attention from Bes and turned it toward her and that was good enough. Two more strokes and Bes would have been a dead man.

  Hans Franeker was crowding her now and she reached behind, gave him a bit of a shove, wondered if there was time to snatch up her last pistol, all in the two seconds it took the man with the bleeding ear to disengage from Bes and come after her, slashing as he came.

  No, no pistol, Mary thought as she caught his blade with hers, turned it aside, stepped forward and brought her heel down hard on his knee. He shouted in pain, stumbled away, and Mary thought she had him as she cut sideways with her cutlass. But the pirate’s cutlass was there to meet hers, blade hitting blade in an oscillating clash of steel as the two combatants fell away from one another.

  Mary glanced back. Hans was right behind her, safe, and there was no enemy at her back. She held her cutlass low and loose, beckoning to the limping pirate with her left hand. “Come on, come on, have at me you bastard . . .” she said, “come on, you whoreson, you prancing French dancing master . . .”

  The pirate roared, and charged in a limping stride, entirely off balance, lunging at her. He had none of Mary’s skill or training with a blade, but he nearly compensated for his failings with ferocity and brute strength.

  Mary caught his blade with hers, was just able to turn it away, then lunged herself, missing as the big man stepped back.

  He lunged again and this time Mary hit his blade hard, knocked it aside, thrust her cutlass at him, felt the tip bite and cut flesh, but again the pirate fell back before she could deliver more than a superficial wound.

  Damn me, you’ll take some killing . . . she thought and before he could recover she was on him, cutlass moving fast, overwhelming him with speed of arm and foot. He cursed and worked his blade to keep hers away.

  A step backward, and another. The bulwark was right behind him and Mary knew that when he hit it he would stumble and drop his guard—then he was hers.

  “Bastard!” she shouted, attacked with a fury that drove him back another step. He hit the bulwark and stopped. He stumbled, dropping his guard, and his eyes went wide with surprise.

  Mary knocked his sword aside, brought hers around and then from aft the cry, in Dutch, “Quarter! Quarter!”—it was Waalwijk’s voice—and the clash of weapons being thrown to the deck.

  “No!” she shouted, turned toward her shipmates and as she did she felt the burn of a cutlass blade as it sliced through the flesh of her upper arm.

  The pirate she was facing had lunged at her just as she turned, and would have put his cutlass right through her heart if she had not wheeled around in surprise as her shipmates called for quarter.

  She leapt back, en garde, ready for the attack, but suddenly the noise on the deck dropped off until it seemed silent in contrast to the raging fight of a second before.

  Mary glanced side to side, fast, never taking her eyes from her adversary for more than a fraction of a second. She could feel the blood running down her arm, under the sleeve of her shirt.

  No one else was fighting. Waalwijk was on his knees before two of the pirates, hands clasped in supplication, tears streaming down his face as he pleaded in Dutch. The rest of the Hoorns had dropped their weapons, and had their hands in the air or were on the deck, bleeding.

  Mary straightened. The man she was facing grinned at her, shrugged his shoulders. Pointed with his cutlass to the weapon in her hand.

  In all of her years of combat, Mary had never surrendered to an enemy, and every part of her resisted doing so now. She looked around again. She was the only one of the merchantman’s crew still bearing arms.

  In disgust she threw her cutlass to the deck.

  For all the Hoorns’ high talk about beating the villains or dying in the attempt, they had called for quarter after all. They had surrendered themselves to the pirates.

  And now it was up to the pirates to decide if they would live or if they would die, if they would scream out their lives in agony, paying the price for their resistance.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IT WAS A LOW POINT in Mary’s life, second only, perhaps, to the evening when she held Frederick’s hand and watched him slip away.

  They had been overrun by the pirates. They had called for quarter. They had been herded like cattle up into the bows. They stood there in a cluster, those of the Hoorn’s company that could still walk, and waited for what horror the pirates would now visit on them.

  But still the Caribbean seduced her. The sun shone down warm on her head and face, the Trade Winds blew steady over her. The gentle swells of the sea rocked the two ships, still bound together, in their hypnotic rhythm. Mary could not seem to conjure up the dread that she knew she should be experiencing.

  Hans had come through the fight with a deep gash in his shoulder where a pistol ball had grazed him, but nothing worse than that. She hoped that he would not be harmed further. But other than that she could not seem to make herself care what happened next.

  Am I so done in? she wondered. Can’t I muster any interest in my fate?

  The pirates were tearing into the main hatch and carrying up from Captain Bes’s cabin all of the alcohol and tobacco they could find, handing it around, swilling with abandon. For the moment they had no time for their captives.

  Th
e tarpaulins on the hatch were rolled back, the gratings removed, and the buccaneers leaped down into the dark ’tween decks to see what they had acquired. Then, from below, muffled shouts of enthusiasm, whoops of triumphant joy, as they surveyed the Hoorn’s valuable mixed cargo.

  And all the while the Hoorns stood by and watched the mounting bacchanal. The tension they had felt before, with the pirate sloop closing with them, was nothing at all compared with waiting for the torture to begin.

  They had all heard the stories—mouths stuffed with burning oakum, thin cords twisted around heads until the victim’s eyeballs popped out, and sundry other horrors. Mary wondered when one of them would break under the pressure and begin to sob or fling himself at the pirates or into the sea.

  She did not love to think on it. So instead she studied the pirates as they went about their business.

  They were a frightening bunch. Big men, for the most part, but some of the small, wiry type—the most dangerous in a fight, in Mary’s experience. They were dressed like common sailors, though their clothes were more filthy and tattered than most and adorned with flashy embellishments such as bright cloth bound around their heads, or red silk sashes around their waists, or wild feathers in their hats, audacious points of color that proclaimed for the world what they were.

  Except for the captain. He was dressed in breeches of striped calico, a waistcoat and coat of the same material, but white with little flower prints on it—a look that was almost foppish. His long curling hair tumbled down his shoulders, unbound, and under his proud nose a big, well-groomed mustache. He strutted around like a peacock, using his sword as a walking stick.

  You’re a dandy one, ain’t you, Mary thought, and then her eyes moved to the brigand standing beside him, close, in a companionable way, but something more than that.

  Her mouth fell open.

  Dear God, that is a woman! Damn me if that ain’t a woman!

  She glanced around at her fellow sailors, wondering if any of them had made that startling discovery as well, but they all looked too stunned or frightened or despondent to notice anything.