This is stupid, this is bloody fucking stupid . . . it is only a damned brig, six men at the most.
Back when he had been just another of the pirate band, even when he had been Vane’s quartermaster, Jack’s fear encompassed only the possibility of physical injury. But it was different now, now that he had the responsibility he had once so craved. Now, along with concern for his bodily safety came the fear of possible failure, the anxiety of humiliation, the terror that his crew might grow restless and turn on him.
For the moment they were content—they had been lucky in their hunting—but how long would that last? Would this brig put up a fight? Would it prove to be a worthless prize?
They had spotted her that morning, the second sail in three days. Jack had woken, fully dressed and splayed along the locker, to the sound of “Sail, ho!” and an all but unbearable pain in his head. His memory was blotted by the rum-induced fog from the night before.
Anne had been there, dear Anne, with water and a dram of rum to ease his agony. When he was finally in a position to listen, Anne had gone over with him again the events of the evening, Mary’s gender, the fact that she, Anne, had known all along that Mary was a woman.
It was hard to imagine how the other brigands aboard the Pretty Anne would react to Mary’s secret, but it was possible, likely perhaps, that they would not react well. The women agreed it would be better if they did not know. Jack agreed to keep the secret.
“Yes, but see here, Annie,” Jack said, then paused. The pain in his head was insufferable, and he was afraid to speak what was on his mind. But it had to be said. “See here, I understand how you two are friends, but you’ve made it look like a damned sight more than just that. No, hear me . . .”
He held up his hand to ward off Anne’s protest. It was hard enough to say this; he did not want to be stopped once he was under way. “It does my authority no good for the men to think you’ve put horns on me. Don’t think there have not been mutterings; there have, I know it. I’ll thank you two to act the bully friends and no more. Remember, the rest will still think Read a man.”
Anne said nothing, just nodded.
“Very well, then,” said Jack, and there was an end to it.
So now I have this bloody secret to keep? he thought, pacing the quarterdeck under the relentless tropical sun. What will these bastards do if they find I’ve held this secret close?
What if we can’t run this brig to ground, what if she sails us under, like the schooner?
And if not this one, what about the next?
Oh, Annie! He wanted her by his side, but now she was with Read, up aloft, where they could talk in private. Mary Read, he reminded himself, a woman, so he knew she was not rutting with her. But it was not rutting that he wanted at the moment. It was love and sympathy.
Who am I bloody well fooling? Anne was not the type to give sympathy, Read or no Read. Wild women were not maternal and they were not sympathetic, and all his wishing in the world could not change that.
Jack felt the overwhelming need to speak, thought he might explode if he did not release some words. “Harwood!” he called to the helmsman. “Start easing her over now, ease her over and we’ll bring her alongside. See if these bastards’ll dance to our tune. And let’s have Annie’s fine bunting aloft, eh?”
He glanced up to see if Annie had heard that, but she and Read were not paying attention to the goings-on on deck. They stood on either side of the topmast, looking out toward the brig, which was now less than half a mile away, proving to be no match for the Pretty Anne’s speed.
Jack stared at the two of them. They were laughing about something, he could see them laugh, though the sound of their laughter was lost over the noise of the sloop. He wondered what they were laughing at, felt a flush of anger and embarrassment.
What do these others think, seeing them bloody well together all the time?
There was something very unsettling about Mary Read. Jack guessed her to be in her late twenties—younger than he—yet there was a quality about her that made her seem much older. She seemed to know things, to understand.
He knew absolutely nothing about her background, save that she had spent most of her life dressed as a man, had been a man-of-war sailor for some time. He thought Anne had said something about her having been a soldier, but Anne apparently did not know much either.
Mary was secretive about her history, and that made her more unsettling still. She always seemed to be looking right through his skin when he looked at her. She had almost killed him, that night in the forepeak. He had not been so drunk that he did not recall the blade coming at his throat.
Mary was enjoying the company of her newfound friend. She liked standing on the crosstrees, high above the deck, talking aimlessly.
But it worried her as well. The others, save for Jack, still thought she was a man. Would they think she was making a cuckold of their captain? What would they do about that?
“The others, the men, I mean, they will not object to our keeping company?”
“No,” said Anne. “It is not their affair. They might talk amongst themselves, but they’ll do no more.”
“Hmm,” Mary said. Talk was not so benign a thing as Anne seemed to think, at least not in the close confines of a ship.
“If Jack cannot endure it, then it will be his responsibility to act. Challenge you to a fight or some such, but I do not think he will.”
“I hope not.” An ambiguous statement, and though Mary meant by it that she did not wish to kill Jack, which would certainly be the outcome of their fight, she did not clarify, nor did Anne ask for clarification.
Anne looked down at the deck, at the growing activity there. “We’ll be into the fight with yon brig soon, I reckon. Best lay down to deck. If we are lolling about up here when there is fighting to be done, that they will not forgive.”
Mary gave one last careful scan of the horizon to see that there were no other vessels, that there would be no surprises from another quarter while they were engaged with the brig. Then she grabbed hold of a backstay, twisted her foot around it, and slid down to deck in a controlled plummet.
Her feet hit the cap rail and she hopped down to the deck below. Preparations for battle were under way. The men had armed themselves, the four-pounder cannon along the side loaded with grape over round shot. A rum cask had been set on deck and the head stove in with an ax, and the pirates were dipping into it like it was a water butt.
And there was Dicky Corner, looming up over her, his big dog grin spread across his face, and Mary thought if he had a tail, it would be wagging furiously.
“Here, now, Read, are you ready for a fight, then? Ready to give out to these bastards like you done for us, eh?” He held his ear in his fingers, bent it toward her so she could see the ragged edge her pistol ball had left in its wake. It was mostly healed, but still it was not pretty to look at.
“Aye . . .” she said, and stopped herself just before the “sir” came out. She was becoming more accustomed to leaving off the “sir,” but it was a habit that died hard. “And what of weapons, then?”
“Weapons? What happened to your fucking weapons?”
“Nothing. I’ve never had any.”
“What? Ain’t we been in a fight since we took your goddamned Dutchman?”
“No.”
“No? Well, goddamn my eyes. Very well, come on then.”
Corner stepped aft and Mary trailed along behind him. Set next to the binnacle box was a barrel that held a variety of edged weapons, like ax handles for sale in a dry goods store, and beside it a chest half-filled with sundry pistols and such.
“These here is weapons we took from some of the ships we’ve had, which none has claimed as his own. Take what you want, then,” Corner said, nodding to the arms stores. Mary poked through the blades, found cutlasses and sabers and straight swords. A couple she recognized as having belonged to the Hoorn. At last she pulled out a curved saber, very like the cavalry sabers that had once been such an
integral part of her life.
“Ah, there, there’s a great beastly blade. Cleave some bastard from head to arse with that!” Corner was grinning his approval. “Recall, too, the articles says each man is to keep his weapons clean and fit for service, so you have a mind for that. Now, some pistols for you?”
Mary poked through the chest. Some of the pistols were very fine weapons indeed, plundered from ship captains or the cabins of wealthy passengers, no doubt. Mary picked one up, pulled back the lock and pulled the trigger, looked with satisfaction at the trail of sparks that drifted off the steel frizzen. “This one will serve admirably,” she said.
“One? No, take a brace, take two braces.”
“Two braces? How will I hold two braces?” She could not imagine jamming four of the big pistols in her belt.
“What we do is we use ribbon, you see? Tied to the butts, drape ’em around your neck. Makes them who we’re attacking shit their drawers, just to see you come over the rail. Scares the fight right out of ’em, and that’s how we prefers it, do ya see?”
“You rather they don’t fight?”
“Damn my eyes, you’re a shit-fire! Course we want them to not fight. You read the articles, great scholar that you are. If a man loses an eye or an ear, well, it’s two shares for him, and eight hundred dollars from the public stock if he lose a limb. That’s less money for all but the unlucky dog who’s hurt, so of course we don’t want them to fight.”
Mary nodded. That made sense. She knew these men loved a good rough and tumble, but if fighting might mean some fiscal loss, then they would want as little of it as possible. “Did you get two shares, then, for what I done to your ear?”
“No, on account of you only taking off the one piece. Next bastard shoots at me, I hope he aims better.”
“But not too much better.”
Corner laughed, his deep-throated laugh. “No, not so much as to put a bullet through my head. No extra shares for a dead man, and I don’t reckon I’d care much even if there was!”
He ambled off forward, still chuckling at the thought. Mary searched through the pistols, found the mate to the one she had chosen, and then two more. A bit more searching revealed a linen bag full of shot to fit the guns and a flask of powder as well.
She sat on the deck, cross-legged, and loaded the weapons, while around her the excitement built like thunderheads, men moving fast, talking loud, bursts of shouting, even the odd pistol fired in the air.
It is like sex, she thought, the way this tension will build and then explode at last when we board this poor bastard brig.
She had never thought of it before, but now that she did she realized how alike the two things really were, at least in the pattern they followed. She thought of how many things in life were like that.
She mused on that notion as she tamped the wadding down in the fourth pistol and then Anne’s feet—shapely and feminine, yet big for a woman—appeared on the deck beside her.
“I have brought this for you. You will need them, now that you are a beastly pirate.” She held in her hand two lengths of bright red and gold ribbon and a buff leather shoulder belt with a frog to hold the saber.
Anne Bonny looked very like a beastly pirate herself, as much as she was able with her young and pretty face. She was wearing her long blue coat. A cocked hat was pushed down over the red cloth around her head, a brace of pistols dangled from ribbons around her neck, and a rapier hung at the end of a shoulder belt.
Mary took the ribbon and the belt that Anne held out to her and said, “Thank you.”
She tied the ends of the ribbon to the butts of the pistols, draped the shoulder belt over her neck and the pistols after that, and stood up. The weapons were heavy. They clattered against each other as she moved. But they did make her look fierce, piratical.
Perhaps we can frighten these poor whoresons into surrender, she thought. Perhaps we will not have to butcher them all.
The brig was close now, just two cable lengths beyond the starboard bow, around four hundred yards away, rising and plunging through the sea as she ran for her life, like a deer running pathetically, uselessly, from wolves.
In any event, we shall know soon.
A cheer ran along the Pretty Anne’s deck, men yelling, weapons raised overhead, and Mary, who had been admiring the way the pistols looked draped around her neck, looked up.
The black flag was run aloft, the white death’s head, the crossed cutlasses beneath. Mary stared at it, recalled how she had first seen it from the Hoorn, how fear had swept along the merchantman’s deck at the sight of it. These men know the game of the mind, she thought. They understand how terror works.
“Do you like it?” Anne asked, looking up at the flag, smiling. “I made it, you know. It was Jack’s idea, but I sewed it.”
“It is a fine piece of work. You are the master of many trades.”
“It is true. Seamstress, pirate, whore, I shall never be without a living.”
George Fetherston passed a bottle of rum to Mary and she took it, took a deep drink, felt the rough liquor burn her throat and stomach, but the pain was in perfect step with her mood. She took another drink, handed the bottle to Anne, who drank as well and passed it on.
Two hundred yards to the brig. The Pretty Annes were lining the rail, standing in the shrouds. They wore long coats or waistcoats or were bare-chested. Some wore hats, some had bright cloth tied around their heads or waists, some let their long hair flog in the wind. They looked like impoverished gentlemen or fugitives from the madhouse, but they all looked dangerous, frightening, loaded down with weapons, screaming like the damned.
Mary followed Anne aft onto the quarterdeck and they pushed up against the rail, joined in the shouting.
Just forward of where they stood, Calico Jack Rackam paced back and forth, his big straight sword in his hand. He slashed at the air, shouted with the others, glanced aloft and over at the brig.
There was a jerky quality to his movements, a hesitancy that Mary had not seen in him before.
She looked closer, watching him when he was not looking in her direction. She saw him yawn, made a great show of looking bored.
He is afraid, she thought.
She had seen fear before, many, many times, and she knew its face. She had been afraid herself, more often than she could recall, but with damn more reason than Jack had now, racing down on some pathetic merchant brig.
Mary glanced around at the others. Do they not see it? Apparently not. But, of course, they did not see she was a woman, and the men of the Hoorn had not detected the same of Anne. Mary did not give much credit to the average man’s capacity for observation.
Then a cannon went off, fired from the brig, and the noise jarred her from her thoughts.
The two vessels, the Pretty Anne and her intended victim, had been sailing near parallel courses, like they were racing for some distant point. Now, by Jack’s order, the Pretty Anne was slowly inching over, closing the gap of water between them, until at last they would collide, side by side.
Mary caught Anne’s eye and Anne grinned at her, a grin that said, Isn’t this grand, isn’t this a thrill! This is the greatest wickedness! Risking life this way, it is life itself!
Mary grinned back. She did not agree, but she knew how Annie felt.
The brig’s shot punched through the outer jib, leaving a ragged hole in the sail, and the pirates redoubled their shouting and cursing and waving of weapons.
And there was Jack, calling out orders, and at last the men were quiet enough to hear.
“We’ll give ’em a broadside! The bastards, fire on us? We’ll cut them to fucking ribbons, blow them to hell!” Mary could hear the edge of hysteria in his voice, but she knew the others were too caught up in the excitement of the thing to notice. It took years of experience under fire to remain as aware as she was of her surroundings when the energy was really starting to pulse.
The men came down off the rails, swarming around the starboard battery of guns. Anne ra
ced amidships, snatched up a powder cartridge from the powder chest, and stood behind the line of guns ready to hand the powder forward if the men would reload. Mary stepped over to the powder chest, took another cartridge, took her place beside her friend.
The helmsman pulled the tiller to starboard, just a hair, and the Pretty Anne turned away from the brig, and when she had turned enough that all the guns would bear, Jack’s voice cut through the din with one word.
“Fire!”
There were only five guns per side, and they only fired four-pound balls, but in that charged atmosphere it seemed like the battery of a ship-of-the-line. The gray smoke erupted from the muzzles, filled the air with its acrid and bellicose smell. The sharp sound of the gunfire was taken up with the shouts of the wild men who lined the Pretty Anne’s rail.
That was enough cannon fire for the pirates. They abandoned the guns and clambered back on the rails. Anne and Mary returned the cartridges to the powder chest. Mary thought to secure the lid, and then they joined the others at the ship’s side.
Anne pulled her rapier, waved it, and joined in the shouting, her high voice in contrast to the bass shouts of the others.
Mary shouted as well, waved her saber, and let the tension and excitement vent, tried to mask her guilt with the rough language. She knew that she should be revolted by the whole thing, or at least not be so enthused, but the energy was infectious, like the cavalry charges, or plunging bayonet-first onto the field of battle when she was an infantry soldier.
“Death, death, death . . .” There was Fetherston chanting, standing on the rail, banging the side of the Pretty Anne with his big sword. The others took it up, “Death, death, death . . .”
And that was enough for the brig’s crew. The vessel rounded up into the wind, her sails in a great disarray. Her flag came shooting down from the masthead in surrender.
One shot, and then they put their fates in the pirates’ hands.
Only Life That Mattered Page 23
