Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  Mary looked back at the captain and the pirate next to him. She was dressed as a man entirely, and her long blue coat did much to disguise her sex. Her hair was reddish blond and bound back in a queue, sailor fashion. But still there was no doubt in Mary’s mind. The way she moved her body, her stance as she stood with arms folded across her chest, the way she smiled, all the myriad nuances that Mary had trained herself not to do. It was a woman.

  What manner of pirate is this, where a woman ships aboard and fights with the men?

  None of the other pirates paid her any more attention then they did anyone else. Do those other villains know? Mary wondered. It did not seem possible to Mary that they could not know, when it was so obvious to her.

  And then the pirates’ initial exploration of the Hoorn was done, and it was time to turn their attention to the crew. The pirate captain in his bright calico strode forward, still using his sword like a walking stick. Mary could feel the tension among the Hoorns rise as he approached in his insouciant manner, as if brutal murder was no more than an afternoon stroll to him.

  “Good day,” the captain said, bowing low. “I am Captain John Rackam, of the sloop Pretty Anne. They call me Calico Jack.”

  They call me Calico Jack . . . Mary had to force herself not to smile, despite the uncertainty, despite the terror that this Calico Jack’s performance was striking in the others.

  Lord, but we are carrying it high, aren’t we . . .

  “You people failed to strike when we run up our black flag, and that don’t answer among the Brethren of the Coast. You’re all dead men, by our practice, but . . .”

  Mary took a step forward. “They don’t speak English, Captain.” In his eagerness to strut, “Calico Jack” seemed to have overlooked that possibility.

  He stopped, whirling around in an impressive flurry of coat and hair. “Who speaks? You? What say you?” He crossed the deck fast, stood three feet from Mary. “What say you?”

  “I said, they don’t speak English, Captain. They’re Dutch, the lot of them.”

  She could see the anger flash in his face. His cheeks turned a darker hue and then his sword was up under her chin, pushing her head up and back an inch, and she wondered if she had miscalculated, if he would slit her throat then and there. The needle point dug into her skin, and she could smell the warm steel. She heard Hans gasp behind her.

  “Does that amuse you?” Jack asked, his voice a snake’s hiss.

  Years of military service had taught Mary the art of deference, and when she said, “No, Captain,” there was not the least hint of irony or amusement.

  Jack eased, like the tension coming off a line, and lowered his sword. “But you are not Dutch?”

  “No, Captain. I’m English.”

  “But you speak this Dutch lingo?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The pirates were crowding around now. Mary guessed they had come to see a throat cutting, and she understood that they might still.

  The big man with whom Mary had fought pushed his way through. “This is the one almost done for me, Jack. Mean little bastard, fierce as a snake. Look, he shot the tip of my ear clean away.” There was no malice in his voice. He reported the fight matter-of-factly, perhaps even with a bit of admiration.

  “You almost done for Corner, eh?” Rackam asked.

  Mary shrugged. “It was a nice thing. Might well have gone either way.”

  And then the woman was there, the woman with bright blue eyes and her thick blonde hair spilling out from under the red cloth around her head, and she said, “Oh, this is a pretty one, Jack. He’s too handsome a lad for the likes of us.”

  Mary shifted her gaze to the woman. Their eyes met and they fixed each other with their stares, but Mary had no fear that this woman would see through her deception. She was too practiced in the art of playing the man for that to happen.

  “You there,” he turned back to Mary, “you tell them others they’ll be put to work, swaying out whatever we please from the hold of this ship and stowing it aboard ours, and if they don’t work like dogs, it’ll go hard on them.”

  Mary stepped forward, translated Jack’s words and then added her own suggestion that they should be very cooperative, indeed, and perhaps they would not be tortured to death after all. She could see the relief sweep through the men, the all but unbearable tension easing away as they heard her words.

  She turned back to Jack. “I have told them. I have told them to cooperate, and they will. I am in no position to ask anything, but I would beg you to spare them.”

  Jack looked at her for a long moment. “You are right. You are in no position to ask anything. But if they do like I ordered, then we might spare their lives. We might, I say.” He continued to stare at her, as if trying to see what was behind the blank “trooper at parade rest” expression on her face.

  “These Dutch frogs ain’t of use to us,” Rackam continued. “However, seeing as how you are an Englishman, and all but bested my quartermaster, I’ll give you leave to join us, if you cooperate too.”

  At that Mary shook her head, taken aback. “Join . . . you? Turn pirate?”

  “Yes. If you think yourself man enough.”

  Mary smiled. “No. To be sure, I do not think myself man enough.”

  “Very well. Get these men down into the hold and see that stay tackle cleared away.”

  He turned and walked aft and for a moment Mary could only stand there and watch him go. It was not three minutes before that she had been envisioning a horrid death. But instead she had been asked to join them, and her shipmates, it appeared, would suffer no worse torment then an afternoon’s work.

  She turned to the Hoorns, told them what Jack had said, suggested they get to work quickly and silently. And they did.

  First they flung overboard the bodies of those few killed in the fight. Pirates and Dutch sailors, together they went over the side with no more ceremony than that.

  Then they sweated the afternoon and evening away, breaking out the cargo they had stowed down in Riga, heaving it up from the hold with the heavy stay tackle and then swinging it over to the pirate ship and down through their yawning main hatch. They worked fast and efficiently, as only frightened and motivated Dutchmen can, and an hour before the sun had set the small pirate sloop was filled to where she could not contain a barrel more.

  And all the while the pirates carried on their revelries, guzzling all the drink they could find on board, tearing into whatever food there was—the cabin stores first, the fine food Bes had brought for his own use and to serve to any guests he might entertain—and only when that was gone, the salt horse served out to the foremast jacks.

  They took little interest in what the Hoorns were doing, save for the odd glance to see things were stowed down right, or nothing of great value was being left behind. They jeered at the Hoorns and mocked them—taunts that had no effect since they were not understood—and on occasion threw beef bones at them, but the torment was no worse than that. The Hoorns had been treated more inhumanely by their own first mate.

  Mary stationed herself on deck, working the stay tackle, where she was able to translate those few orders that Jack or Quartermaster Corner had for the laboring seamen. There she had ample opportunity to observe the brigands, and she was intrigued by what she saw.

  There was no hierarchy that she could identify, no deference to anyone, not even Captain Rackam, just a good natured bonhomie, a mutual celebration of their successful plundering. To one who had spent her life in one military establishment or another, it was unprecedented. There was something even a bit frightening about that degree of freedom, that complete lack of structure or organization.

  She had watched the woman particularly, trying to guess what secrets she held, what her status was among the pirates. A whore? A fellow brigand whom they all took for a young man? Mary could see no difference between the woman and the others. She boozed with the rest, ate her share of cabin stores, cursed, spit, laughed—as authentic a buccaneer as
any of them. Extraordinary.

  When at last the shifting of cargo was done, the Hoorns were rounded up and forced down below into the forecastle. One by one they went down the narrow scuttle and Mary stood near the tail end of the line, waiting her turn. The men’s faces were grim once more. They did not relish being trapped below.

  “Here, boy.”

  A voice behind her and she turned to find herself face to face with the woman. Her blue eyes were rimmed with red and she had something of a sagging quality, the effects of a day of fighting and drinking and carousing under a blazing Caribbean sun. Still, the evening light illuminated her from behind, made her hair seem to blaze from within. The abuse she had endured at her own hand, the drinking and the sun and the violence, had not marred the perfection of her skin, the fine lines of her face, her trim physique, obvious to Mary even under the long coat and big shirt she wore.

  Mary folded her arms. “Yes?”

  The woman grinned, a sloppy grin. She was not sober. “You’re a fine lad, ain’t ya? And a regular shit-fire, eh?” There was hint of Ireland in her voice. “Almost bested Corner, and that’s no mean feat, great beast that he is.”

  “He is that.”

  “You have been watching me, I perceive. Do not think I didn’t see you. For what reason have I caught your eye?”

  Well, for starters, you’re a woman playing the man, just like me, Mary thought, but if this pretender was not going to admit to her sex, then Mary knew better than to let her know she had smoked the truth. “You are a singular pirate, I think,” Mary said.

  The woman gave a little laugh, as if to say you do not know the half of it.

  But I do, Mary thought.

  “How do you happen to be here, then, on a Dutch ship?”

  Mary gave a little shrug, her most noncommittal gesture. “I find work, now some and then some. This ship was a-wanting hands.”

  “You speak this froggy language like a born Dutchman, but you’re an Englishman. How does that happen?”

  “I would not bore you with the story of my life. It is too dull a tale by half.”

  A spark of anger in those blue eyes, and the woman said, “You’ll not speak, then? Are you too grand a fellow to talk to the likes of me? And what if I was to beat you insensible, would that loose your tongue, what say you?”

  Mary studied her, this woman in pirate’s clothes. She was capable of as much, Mary could see that. There is a fire in this one.

  “It would not be worth the tiring of your arm for, rest assured.”

  The woman made to give reply, but then Calico Jack Rackam was there, stepping quickly between them. He turned to the woman and said, “Prisoners down below.”

  “And what if I would have this one for my own amusement?” the woman pirate said.

  “Prisoners down below,” Jack snapped, and the anger in his voice was more than was warranted by one prisoner lingering on deck. “Now.”

  The woman scowled but said nothing more.

  Mary turned, walked toward the forecastle scuttle with never a word. That exchange, between Calico Jack and this woman buccaneer, told her more than she could have learned from an hour of questions.

  I have been fighting all my life. For what? For what?

  England? Less than half of my life I have spent there. How many men did I kill to stop Philip of France becoming King of Spain? Why should I give a tinker’s damn who is the King of Spain?

  Mary lay in her bunk, her thoughts whirling around Jack’s one simple statement—seeing as how you are an Englishman, and all but bested my quartermaster, I’ll give you leave to join us. Over and over.

  It was dark and quiet. She could hear the sounds of the pirates in their on-going revelries, loud, but muffled by the deck. Their capacity was astounding, even by seamen’s standards.

  There was only that, and the sound of the water on the hull, and the occasional soft voice of the frightened men in the forecastle, quiet speculation on their fate—shot, drowned, tortured, the Hoorn set on fire.

  “Read?” a voice called, soft. It was Captain Dirk Bes, who had been shut down with them. “Read, you speak their language, what say you? Will these villains murder us all?”

  Mary was silent for a moment, thinking of her answer. What manner of villains are these? This Calico Jack Rackam might think himself a cock of the roost, might strut like some upstart dandy on Pall Mall, but he is not a murderer. He has not killed anyone for vengeance or pleasure, and that is something.

  Mary had seen so much killing. As silly as the foppish Calico Jack might appear to her, still she had respect for a man who could kill and chose not to. She had been on both sides of that fence herself.

  “No, I do not think they will harm us. When they have had their fun, they will go.”

  He has not killed anyone for pleasure.

  No, but he bears the blame for deaths enough, attacking us as he did, robbing us.

  Robbing us? No. Robbing the fat rich merchant who put this cargo aboard in Riga. A merchant who will collect the insurance money from the underwriter. That is what I nearly died defending.

  Hers had been a life of campaigning, structured by the rigid hierarchy of the military, where people like her did not question the reason for which they fought.

  And she never had.

  But now, lying in her dark bunk, she began to wonder why she had not.

  On the deck above, people just like her—foremast sailors, the most ill-used of creatures—debauched themselves on the food and drink of the fat Riga merchants.

  And they were doing more than debauching themselves. There was a symbolic quality to their madness. They were thumbing their noses at all rules and laws and any measure instituted among men for the purpose of holding such people as them in check.

  And it occurred to her that her vision of herself—a good soldier who followed orders—was a lie, every inch of it. She had been thumbing her own nose at all rules and laws every second she spent playing the man.

  She lay awake all that night, staring into the blackness, listening as the shouts of the pirates faded to loud talk, and then less and less of that and then quiet as they passed out, one after another.

  These West Indies are so very beautiful. God, can I go back to the mud and the cold and the shit, after seeing this? The very thought of it made her feel sick. The warmth and the brilliant sun seemed to burn her misery away, and she could not bear the thought of leaving it. She did not think she would ever again have the strength to stand up under the heavy gray skies of Europe.

  What allegiance do I owe to anyone? What allegiance have I ever shown for myself?

  She was still awake the next morning when the forecastle hatch was flung open and the brilliant morning sun cut a square hole in the gloom and a hoarse voice called down, “Out of the roost, now, little chickens! Up, up!”

  It was with renewed trepidation that the Hoorns once more clambered up on deck, blinking in the sun, tears running down cheeks from the onslaught of light.

  They found the deck in shambles. Bottles, broken crates, stove barrels, and bits of food tossed everywhere. Halyards and braces were cut, lines falling limp off the pinrails or hanging down like bell pulls from aloft, swaying with the roll of the ship.

  And they found the deck all but deserted. Most of the brigands were aboard the sloop, which was now held alongside by two lines only. The pirates were laying out their halyards, preparing to go.

  There were three pirates aboard the Hoorn still, and one of them was Calico Jack. He gave an elegant bow, hat in hand, foot extended. “I thank you, people, for your hospitality. You have been the perfect hosts . . .” Mary could see the others grinning at this.

  Is it all play with these people?

  “But, alas, we must be on our way. Good day to you all, and, pray, clean up this mess.”

  That received an outright laugh from the pirates and Jack with a flourish turned to go.

  Mary stepped forward, made to grab his arm, thought better of it.

&n
bsp; “Captain?”

  Jack turned, still smiling. “Yes?”

  “I’ve been thinking, Captain Rackam . . . about the offer you made . . .”

  That one stammered-out phrase, and she was committed. Mary Read, man-of-war’s sailor, infantry soldier, horse trooper, merchant seaman, now off on yet another odd by-way in the bizarre route of her life.

  Now she would be a pirate.

  BOOK TWO

  THE SWEET TRADE

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  JACK’S SHOULDERS ACHED. He felt as if his entire body was being pushed down toward the Spanish tiles on the floor of the Court of Admiralty, as if the very hand of God was on his back, crushing him under His palm.

  The drone of the secretary’s voice as he read the King’s Commission was intolerable. “It is among these things enacted, that all piracies, felonies, or robberies committed in or upon the sea, or in any haven, river, creek, or place . . .”

  He could sense the restlessness of his fellow pirates. There was Big Dick Corner easing from one foot to another. Jack caught a whiff of perfume, and with it the unwashed bodies of his brethren, and from the open window, jasmine and a hint of the ocean.

  “ . . . directed to all or any of the Admirals, Vice Admirals, Rear Admirals . . .”

  “Sweet Jesus!” There was George Fetherston, calling out, “Hang us if you will, but don’t bloody bore us to death!”

  Jack felt his innards go liquid. Dear God, you’ll make it go harder on us, with your fool wit!

  Sir Nicholas’s gavel came down, again, demanding order, but the court was silent. No one dared laugh at this effrontery, if, indeed, they found it funny at all.

  The pirates thought it funny. A quick glance and Jack could see the grins on their ugly faces. You lot aren’t afraid to die, are you? he thought. Why should you bloody be, what do you have to live for? His fellows would take this all as a great joke, just like they took all of life as a great joke.

  A short life and a merry one . . . Those were words to live by, until you came around to the end of that short life, and then it was not so damned funny.