Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  Jack hesitated, as if stopped in mid-stride, thrown off balance by this. Anne could not recall any time she had refused him. His eyebrows came down a hair.

  “I am sorry, Jack,” she added. “I’ll warrant you are not accustomed to pirates who have their time of the month.”

  “Yes, well . . .” That kind of thing always made him uncomfortable and was sure to cool his ardor, but she could see he was not convinced of the truth of it. “Very well . . .” She saw his eyes flicker up and forward, over the starboard bow, and then he said “Well, do what you must.” He was being civil, still, but it was with effort. He turned, stamped aft.

  This is not good.

  A change of watch at eight bells and Mary Read found herself sent aloft to perch on the crosstrees seventy feet above the deck and keep a bright lookout at the horizon. It was one of the few stations on shipboard on a pirate vessel that was assiduously manned, and it was taken quite seriously. Spotting hapless victims, running them to ground, capturing and plundering them, it was their raison d’être.

  Lookout was a perfectly pleasant task in that fine weather, and Mary would have relished it were it not for the implications of what she was doing. Seeing a vessel on the horizon meant plunging into real piracy—standing with weapons at the rail, chanting, the leap onto the victim’s deck—and not just sailing around as they had been doing. It meant the lash of conscience as poor, innocent sailors died under her gun or sword.

  Not soldiers, paid to kill. Not an enemy who would have killed her in any event. But mariners like her, who wished nothing more than to be left alone, to plow their course to England or Jamaica or wherever. She was dreading that, dreading it all.

  Mary was not on her high, swaying perch above ten minutes before she saw the distant vessel. She sat there for a while, staring at the two grayish patches on the horizon, the unmistakable profile of a schooner making the best of the easterly trades. She sat there and stared and pictured the building terror on the schooner’s deck as some poor bastard aloft reported the presence of the Pretty Anne, if indeed they had yet spotted her.

  In her mind she saw the debate ranging across the distant schooner’s deck, to fight or flee or both or neither. She had heard the same debate aboard the Hoorn, imagined it took place aboard every vessel in those waters confronted with this situation.

  She did not want to put men in that situation. She did not want to terrorize, did not want to kill. Not any more. Not for the sake of plunder.

  Some bloody fucking pirate you are. She could not have it all ways and she knew it.

  Either you are a pirate or you are not a pirate, and I signed those articles of my free will. Went out of my way to ask Jack if I might join.

  “On deck!” she called down, a decision made with no further thought. “Sail, ho!”

  If they do not fight, she thought, they will not be harmed. The choice is theirs.

  The odd circumstances of her life had taught Mary Read to see moral issues in stark black and white.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Hmm?” Mary said. It was four hours into the chase.

  “Are you afraid?” Anne asked again.

  Mary looked up at her, held up her hand to shield her eyes. The late afternoon sun was almost directly behind Anne’s head. The strands of her reddish blond hair that had worked themselves free from her queue looked like they were on fire.

  Jack Rackam had kept Mary to it, ordering her to remain aloft and keep a weather eye on the schooner as the Pretty Anne raced after her. He did it, Mary had no doubt, to place her as far from him and Anne as he could get her, but Anne Bonny had joined her aloft.

  Indeed, Anne had been going out of her way to keep Mary’s company. This, despite Mary’s being no more than polite to her, and giving Anne nothing that might be considered encouragement.

  Anne’s persistent attention had not gone unnoticed. Not by Mary, not by the crew, not by Calico Jack Rackam.

  With one hand, Anne kept a loose grasp on the topmast shroud. She stood easily on the crosstrees, as if she was still on deck, as if they were not both rolling around seventy feet up.

  “Afraid of what?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t know. You look so very serious.”

  “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “Indeed? And I took you for such a fearsome creature, the way you near killed old Dicky Corner. Or fearless, I should say.”

  Mary lowered her gaze, shifted it outboard to the schooner which was no closer than it had been four hours before. They had some stuns’ls set, and some sort of square sail set below the topsail yard, every inch of canvas they could scrape up and send aloft. It would be a close thing, with the schooner and the Pretty Anne nearly matched for speed.

  “Fearless? No, not at all. But if you are wondering, am I afraid for my own skin, then no, I am not afraid for that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I am afraid that we will have to kill some poor innocent in the plundering of yon schooner.”

  “Really? Whyever would you fear that?”

  Mary sighed. “I just don’t care to kill people. Certainly not poor merchant sailors trying to earn a living.”

  “I have killed a man. Several.” There was a bit of confession in Anne’s voice, a bit of the brag.

  God, she is young, Mary thought, and wondered if there was ever a time when she herself would have found such a wicked delight in having killed.

  “Have you . . . ?” Anne asked. “Have you ever killed a man?”

  “Yes. More than several. And I have had a bellyful of killing, I can tell you.”

  “What an intriguing creature you are!” Anne was swinging side to side, pivoting on the shroud and it was making the topmast sway. “Tell me all?”

  “No, forgive me. I think not.”

  “Why not? Is it something so awful?”

  “No, not at all. Very ordinary sorts of things, soldiering, men-of-wars’ man. Just . . . nothing I care to discuss.” Mary had come to the Caribbean to wash that away with clean aquamarine water, and the Caribbean was working its magic on her. She did not wish to go mucking about in all that now.

  “You know,” Anne said, “a woman would find such mystery intolerably alluring.”

  Oh, God . . . Mary thought. “Yes, well, alas, there are no women aboard.”

  “No, but in their absence, I shall be intrigued.”

  “And intrigued you shall stay.”

  It was nice up there, aloft, high above the deck. It was nice to talk woman to woman, even if Mary was the only one of them who knew that that was what they were doing. Despite her discouraging Anne’s advances, which Mary feared were predicated on a desire for more than just conversation of the verbal sort, Mary found she liked the young woman’s company.

  Mary did not often find women with whom she had so much in common.

  “Could I tell you something?” Anne asked. “A secret? Would you keep it to yourself?”

  “Yes, I reckon,” Mary said.

  “When I . . . the first time I killed a man . . . ran my cutlass right through him . . . I was delighted at first. Thrilled, right through. And then I was disgusted and ashamed. I puked. I turned and puked, right in the scuppers.”

  Mary smiled, amused and relieved. That was not the secret she was expecting. “That is not so uncommon, you know. I have seen plenty of young soldiers do that.”

  “Really?” There was a look of genuine relief on Anne’s face. “Did you? Did you puke, when first you killed a man?”

  “I did.” Mary remembered the moment, like it had just happened. The chaos of battle rushing like wind around her, and her, bent over next to her first victim, her meager breakfast coming up again. The tears in her eyes, the burn in her throat. The tortured nights in her tent, seeing the young man’s dead eyes looking at her. It seemed like yesterday and it seemed like a thousand years ago, all at once.

  “You are so eager to pry my past from me, what of your past, then?” Mary said, as much to redirect the conversati
on as anything.

  “My past? Well, I am not so secretive, you know. I was born in Ireland, nineteen years ago. We emigrated to Charles Town, in the colony of Carolina, when I was young. My father was a wicked rogue . . .”

  “‘Was’? Is he dead? Or reformed?”

  “I am sure he is not reformed. If he is dead or not, I do not know. He is a wealthy man, but he has disowned me, threw me right out of the house.”

  “You don’t seem so very broken-hearted.”

  “Oh, my father was a right bully. Back in Cork when his wife took sick and had to move to a place where the air was better, he set right in to rogering the maid, who was my mother. Then his wife had my mother arrested on some charge of robbery, of which she was innocent. She spent near half a year in jail before she was acquitted and then I was born.”

  “My goodness, such an eventful life you had, and before you were even born!”

  “Oh, indeed. And it gets worse. My father, you see, still held my mother in great affection, and me as well, but his wife was making him a yearly allowance and he would not jeopardize that. So for the first five years of my life he kept us a secret. Do you follow?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “And then he bade me come live with him at last, but he passed me off as an apprentice to his law practice. Can you imagine?”

  “The dog . . .” Mary said, but all she really heard was the fact of a father who loved his daughter so dearly that he would jeopardize his living to have her near. The thought made Mary ache inside. How she would have loved to have a father! How her life might have been different if her father had been there for her, to love her, protect her.

  “ . . . so when his business fell to ruin, he packed us all up and took us to America, and there I was raised.”

  “It seems to me that your father loves you very much. He does not sound so terribly bad. If he could not keep his cock where it should be, well, that is the way we men are, is it not?” Mary looked up at Anne, smiled at her. “At least he is not a pirate.”

  “No, but he is a lawyer, which is as much as to say he is a pirate without the fear of being hanged.”

  Mary shifted her position and glanced down at the deck below. Jack was looking up at them from his place on the quarterdeck, and he shifted his gaze when Mary looked down.

  “So you came late to the sea, and this pirating,” Mary said. “The others do not hold your inexperience against you?”

  “The pirates are a singular lot, you will have noticed. It is their custom to accept every man on his merits—black men, too—and they give not a tinker’s damn what he is about, as long as he is honest with his shipmates and bold in battle. It is quite unique. If you have any familiarity with finer society then you will know how absolutely extraordinary such a view is.”

  Mary nodded. This was more insight then she might have expected from Anne Bonny, a wild nineteen year old, an adulteress and pirate. She was impressed, pleased to see that Anne gave some thought to such things. “I have no familiarity with fine society, but I do understand how unique this pirating life is.”

  She looked out at the schooner again. It was no closer, perhaps had even gained a bit of distance. If they did not blow out a sail or carry away a spar, the Pretty Anne would not catch her.

  Their intended victim, it appeared, was going to escape. Mary felt a great sense of relief, a distinctly unpiratical reaction.

  She did not share her feelings with Anne.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE SUN SET into the ocean with a remarkable flash of green, and then the nighttime settled fast over the Pretty Anne and the schooner was lost from sight. They continued the chase on through the dark hours, though they had no notion if their intended victim had altered course. They could not even tell if they were still following her.

  At first light Richard Corner went aloft, and after fifteen minutes of searching with a glass, announced that they had lost the chase. The men were disappointed, but not overly so, with the rich haul from the Hoorn still packed in the hold.

  They took in the stuns’ls and the ringtail, and the pirates settled into their daily routine. Mary stood her watch, did some little bit of work, ate, drank, avoided Anne Bonny as best she could.

  The sun set during the second dog watch. Another turn of the glass and then eight bells announced the commencement of the night watch, Mary’s watch below, as the off-watch was called, but she had no thought of actually going below on so fine a night.

  Rather, she lay up in the bows, her head resting on her rolled-up coat. Her belly was full; she could still taste the rum in her throat. She watched the stars overhead. They seemed to whirl about in small circles with the sloop rolling under her, rocking her like a giant crib.

  Around her she could hear some of her shipmates talking softly, laughing, but subdued. The smell of tobacco smoke came faint to her nose. It was getting late, probably approaching eleven o’clock. The usual wild bacchanal of the evening was easing into something more mellow.

  Lovely. Mary was still enjoying her sense of relief at the schooner’s escape. She hated the thought of disturbing this holiday with violence and crime. Would we could just sail on like this forever.

  She heard footsteps approaching, soft on the deck planking. She knew who it was. She did not move, just kept her eyes focused up, and Anne Bonny stepped into her arc of vision.

  “Evening, Read,” she said.

  Mary turned her head slightly, as if just seeing her now. “Evening.”

  “You are always in the bows. Never aft.”

  Mary cocked her eyebrow, like a shrug of the shoulders. “Some habits are hard to break. In the Navy, or the merchant service, the bows are the place for the foremast jacks.” And then, toying with her, added, “But you know that.”

  “Sure, sure . . .” Anne folded her arms, looked up at the headsails like she was scrutinizing their set. The sloop took a slight corkscrew roll and Anne staggered a bit, caught herself on the bulwark and then leaned against it, resting her elbow on the caprail, deliberately casual.

  Been drinking a bit, have we? Mary thought. What will you do now, with some liquid courage in your belly?

  For a long while she did nothing, just stood there, leaning on the rail, and Mary lay on the deck at her feet and they enjoyed the companionable silence. Finally Anne said, “Read?” It came out soft, a throaty whisper.

  “Yes?”

  “Would you come with me? I would have a word with you. In private.”

  Mary was silent for a moment. Good Lord, whatever does she intend? Is she making love to me? Aboard the sloop it was not physically possible to get more than one hundred feet from Jack Rackam. This did not seem a healthy thing for her relationship with the captain.

  Mary sat up and got wearily to her feet. We had best get this over with, she thought. “Very well, I will follow your leader.”

  Anne smiled, and Mary could see pleasure and victory and desire in her look. She pushed herself off the bulwark and led Mary down into the hold, and taking a lantern from one of the overhead beams, led her forward to the cable tier, where the great coils of rope like sleeping serpents were stored on gratings to dry.

  It was absolutely black beyond the feeble throw of the lantern’s light, and the air was dusty with the dried mud from the anchor cables. It smelled more like a farmer’s field than a ship at sea.

  The two women skirted the great bulk of rope and made their way forward, and Mary saw that they were headed for the forepeak, a small room in the very bow of the ship in which paint and tar and sundry stores were housed. It was the most private place on the small sloop, save for the great cabin, which was the very last place Anne might lead her.

  Anne paused just outside the low door to the forepeak, glanced back at Mary, gave her a significant look. Mary imagined that if she really were a man, she would be frothing at the mouth by that point. Instead she just nodded, and Anne opened the door and stepped into the small space.

  Buckets and paintbrushes and tools a
nd rags were piled up in a haphazard way, some lashed in place, some lying where they had fallen. It was enough to give a man-of-war’s boatswain an apoplexy, but it was just how the pirates liked it. It was certainly preferable to the effort required to clean it up.

  Anne hung the lantern on a hook overhead, put her hands on a low bench behind her and leaned on it, her back slightly arched. Her breasts pushed against the fabric of her shirt, and her thin waist and the curve of her hips were obvious in that position. Her full lips were parted, and she looked up at Mary with her head lowered, a wisp of hair hanging over her face, and even Mary could appreciate how enticing she was.

  “Read, there is something I needs must tell you.”

  Mary folded her arms. “Yes?”

  “I’m . . . I am, in fact, a woman . . .”

  Mary could not help but chuckle and shake her head at this solemn confession. She saw the anger flash in Anne’s face. “Do you not believe me, Read? Or do you think this funny?”

  “No, I believe you. It’s just that . . . I know.”

  Anne stood straighter and her eyebrows came down. “You know? Who told you?”

  “No one told me. It’s perfectly clear to me that you are a woman. I could see it directly.”

  “You . . . could? No one else has, none that we have captured, no one who did not already know. I don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t believe me, if you don’t wish to, but it’s true. I have known all along. Do you think I could hide my surprise so well, if I didn’t know?”

  Anne took a step forward, a new tack. She put her hands on Mary’s shoulders, ran them up to her neck. “If you have known my sex all along, then you cannot be insensible to my . . . feelings for you. You are not like the other men here.”

  “That is a true thing, I’ll warrant. But what of your Calico Jack?”

  “What of him? Are you afraid of him?”

  “No. But I had thought you loved him alone.”

  “I love him. But he can be tiresome. And I have so much love.” Anne was close now, almost pressing against her, caressing the back of Mary’s neck. Mary could smell her, a womanly smell, not one she was accustomed to. She could hear Anne’s breathing, soft and growing quicker.