Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE PRETTY ANNE STOOD ON, closing fast with her victim, which was now stopped in the water. “Death, death, death!”

  The helmsmen swung the Pretty Anne away at the last second, lessening the impact, but still the two vessels came together with a mighty, shuddering crunch that made the pirates stagger and hold their grip for a fraction of a second before they leapt with their berserker screams from the Pretty Anne onto the brig’s deck.

  They came over the rail like a breaking wave, and Anne and Mary were at the crest, crashing down on the deck, blades and pistols in hand, looking for some resistance, some fight from the brig’s crew. They raced fore and aft, chasing the terrified crew toward the bow or stern or up into the rigging. It was all so familiar to Mary, the surge of energy, the heightened awareness, the muscles tensed and ready to react, her body all potential power, like a drawn bow.

  There was a sailor in front of her and he held a cutlass tentatively in his hand. Mary could read the uncertainty in his face. She lifted her pistol, aimed it right at his heart. “Drop it, damn your eyes!” she shouted, and the weapon clattered to the deck.

  There was more cheering all around, not the vaporing of attack but the wild release that comes with the end of the action. Mary kept the pistol leveled, looked around. She could see only a few of the brig’s crew, huddled against the far rail, and a few more half up the main rigging, and she imagined that that was all there was. The brig was taken, not a drop of blood had been shed.

  And now, the spoils.

  Mary’s education in pirating had been brief but intense, she having now seen pirates in action from the point of view of the victims and the pirates themselves. She knew from her experience aboard the Hoorn that the pirates were masters at the art of pillage, and they set in to practicing those skills again.

  Corner and Noah Harwood were standing on the main hatch, slashing at the tarpaulins with their cutlasses, but that was not efficient enough for the rest. In a flash James Dobbin was there with an ax in his hand and with a few strokes he reduced the grating beneath the cloth to kindling. The pirates pulled the hatch away, let the sunlight spill down on what was now their property.

  “Come along, Michael!” Anne shouted, slapping Mary on the back. “Let us get to the master’s cabin before these beasts tear it apart!”

  Mary lowered the pistol which she still held level with the sailor’s breast, saw the relief on his face as his tensed body sagged. Poor sod must have thought I was going to shoot him all that while.

  She followed Anne as she pushed her way through the wild pirate band and plunged eagerly down the after scuttle.

  Mary followed more slowly, saber sheathed, two cocked pistols in her hands. Her eyes were everywhere. They were still aboard an enemy vessel, there was no knowing who might be hiding in the shadows, a thought that had clearly not occurred to Annie, who whooped and shouted as she threw open the doors to the small cabins that lined the narrow alleyway aft.

  Mary could not shake the feeling of trespassing, of being where she had no right to be. Once, in Flanders, Mary’s regiment had looted a great country house, and it had felt just this way. Pillage, she guessed, was an acquired taste.

  At the far end of the alleyway was a door that Mary guessed must communicate with the great cabin. Anne stepped back, leg cocked to kick it in.

  “Hold!” Mary shouted. Anne stopped, turned around. “You do not know what is behind the door, my dear. What if it is some frightened bastard with a pistol, ready to shoot the first soul through?”

  “How right you are. You’re certain you’ve never done such as this before?”

  “I don’t believe I ever said that. Here . . .” Mary pushed past Anne, shoved the pistol in her left hand back in her belt, and held the other pistol in front of her. She put her hand on the handle of the door, twisted, threw it open, and jumped back.

  No shots, no screams, just the bang of the door as it swung against the bulkhead.

  “Better off safe, to be sure,” said Anne. She stepped past Mary, looked quickly into the cabin. “Empty.”

  Mary stepped in after her. The cabin was small, seven feet deep by twelve across, and modestly furnished, but still it had a neat, comfortable aspect. A chest was lashed to the deck, a sturdy table in the middle of the space, a small shelf of books secured for sea.

  Under the after windows, a row of lockers like a couch, and on top of them, red velvet pillows made to fit like pieces of a puzzle. It was light and airy, all very different from the pirate sloop, which was growing increasingly foul, dank, and vermin ridden.

  “You’re bleeding,” Anne said, pointing at Mary’s hand.

  Mary held her palm up. It was smeared with blood from a cut that ran from thumb to wrist. “I wonder how I did that,” she said. She could not recall cutting herself.

  Anne held up her hand. There was also blood on the palm. “I managed to cut myself as well.”

  “How?”

  “I am ashamed to say it, but in all the tussle of jumping aboard, I seem to have cut myself on my own sword!” She smiled at the silliness of it, then paused, as if hesitating in some decision. She stepped forward boldly, grabbed up Mary’s cut hand, and pressed her own to it. Mary could feel Anne’s palm, slick against hers, the blood mingling.

  “There,” Anne said, with a sheepish half smile. “Blood sisters. Bloodied in combat together.”

  Mary smiled back at her. There was something so childlike, so innocent about that gesture, as if she and Anne were, for that moment, not genuine pirates at all, but little girls playing pirates in the garden.

  “Blood sisters,” Mary said.

  And then Anne, embarrassed by the sincerity of the moment, pulled her eyes from Mary, spun around, arms extended, and shouted, “Ahh!” She crossed the cabin and sprawled back on the pillows atop the locker. “This is the life, eh?”

  “It is very like home,” Mary agreed. She crossed over to a small rack of bottles, pulled out one, and examined the label. It was French, she could read the words, but they meant nothing to her. Still, it looked like the kind of wine one saw in a gentleman’s stock, so she picked up the corkscrew that lay beside the rack and liberated the cork from the neck.

  She tipped the bottle up, let the wine run down her throat. It was smooth, almost buttery, with a hint of a fruit flavor. Delicious. She did not think the winemaker had imagined it would be consumed in such a manner, nor had it been made with such as her in mind. She took another drink.

  This is not so bad. They had not murdered anyone. She felt her earlier hesitancy melting away. A short life and a merry one. Very well, I am for that.

  Anne was on her feet again, poking through the master’s things. She flung open the chest that was secured to the deck, squealed with delight. “See here, Mary, dear!” she said, and pulled a silk gown from the chest, held it up in front of her.

  “Lovely,” Mary said, and she meant it. It was a beautifully crafted garment, rich colors, subtly contrasting textures in the fabrics. Was the master taking it home to his wife? His mistress? To market in Jamaica, where the wives and daughters of the British planters ached for the fashions of London?

  “There are more,” Anne said, poking through the chest again. “We must take them along. Who knows when we might have the opportunity to wear such as these?”

  “Who knows? They are not much use when a-pirating.”

  “No, but I am with child to see you dressed in silk and lace, my dear.”

  And then heavy footfalls in the alleyway, the doors to the cabins banging open again, and Anne stuffed the dresses back in the chest, shut the lid, her face flushed with embarrassment.

  The great cabin door burst open and there were Dicky Corner and Harwood and Billy Bartlett bursting in, practically filling the small cabin with their bulk.

  “Ho! Leave it to you then, to be first to the finer things!” Corner roared with his usual bonhomie, but Bartlett’s eyes were narrow, and he looked suspiciously at Anne, and
then Mary.

  “This here is the property of all,” he growled at Mary.

  “I am aware of that.”

  “It’s death, you know, to steal the value of one dollar from yer shipmates.”

  Mary glared at him, held his eyes in her unwavering stare. “You calling me a thief, Bartlett?”

  “I didn’t say nothing, I’m just telling you—”

  “If you’re going to call me a thief, you had best be ready to prove it . . .”

  The atmosphere was tense, like the seconds before a thunderstorm, and then Corner laughed, an incongruous sound, a laugh that filled the cabin, and the tension collapsed.

  “We’re all bloody thieves here, Read!” Corner shouted. The others smiled at the observation and then turned to tearing the master’s cabin apart.

  Mary leaned against the table, took another drink of wine. I will have to watch that little bastard Bartlett, she thought. One of these days I will have to put a sword through him.

  There was no more than five minutes’ amusement to be had in the master’s cabin, and when it was thoroughly looted the three men and two women stumbled back on deck again.

  Most of the Pretty Annes were aft. The brig’s crew had been rounded up, pushed back against the taffrail, and Calico Jack Rackam was addressing them.

  Mary recognized the performance. It was the same as he had given aboard the Hoorn. Fearsome Calico Jack the pirate, using his big sword as a walking stick. He was a frightening sight, and she could see that the brig’s crew were frightened indeed.

  “What think you of my man Calico Jack?” Anne asked, nodding toward the performance taking place astern. Her tone suggested that she herself did not think too highly of him.

  “He knows how to put the fear of his wrath in men. He makes a wondrous pirate.”

  “He threatens them, but he never does anything, you know.”

  “So it would seem. But you sound as if you do not approve of that.”

  “Well, it sets me to wonder at times. I would not like to think he was afraid.”

  “It takes no courage to torture defenseless prisoners. I have known some damned cruel men, and they were all cowards at heart. I think your Jack does just the right thing, frightening them half to death and then showing them mercy. It’s his most admirable trait, the fact that he doesn’t hurt his victims.”

  “Well . . .” Anne said. She looked surprised. “I had thought, sometimes, that you did not respect my Jack.”

  “I respect him in that.”

  Anne nodded. “Then I shall as well. I think I have much to learn from you.”

  Mary chuckled. “Yes, you do. If you would learn how to make an absolute hash of your life, then I am the one to teach it.”

  Anne smiled back. “In some things I need no instruction.”

  They had their way with the brig for two days, plundered everything that was worth the taking, which was not much, terrorized the crew, and then sent them on their way. Two days more and the Pretty Anne had settled back into her routine: desultory watches, eyes on the horizon for potential prizes or men-of-war, sleeping, eating, drinking, drinking, drinking.

  Anne was in the great cabin. She was kneeling on the lockers aft, leaning out the small stern window, looking down at the lovely blue and white ocean, the furrow of their wake, the rudder as it worked side to side in the gudgeons, just little movements as the helmsman on the deck above worked the tiller to keep the sloop on course.

  Ah, this is fine . . . she thought. Then the stern dipped in the quartering sea and rose up again with a fast, swooping motion and her stomach convulsed.

  She leaned farther out the window and her meal of an hour before was back up again. She watched it plunge into the sea below. Her body tensed, the muscles in her abdomen clenched, and then she puked again and again.

  She rested on her elbows, alternately gasping for breath and spitting into the sea. “Goddamn it . . .” she muttered.

  The hatch above opened and she heard footsteps on the ladder. It could only be Jack. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, rolled back into the cabin, and sat on the locker just as Jack reached the deck and turned toward her.

  She could tell by his expression that she looked as bad as she felt. The smile died on his lips and he came over to her, sat down and put his arm around her, and said, soft, “Annie, my dearest, are you sick?” He put his hand on her forehead, but she knew that she did not have a fever.

  “Just my stomach, Jack, dear, it is nothing.”

  “Nothing? Are you quite certain? We can get you to a doctor, if you wish.”

  “No, no, it is nothing.” Jack’s tenderness was touching, and Anne needed tenderness just then. She wanted him to cover her in tenderness like a thick blanket on a cold winter night.

  “I love you, Calico Jack,” she said, leaned her head against him. She could see the words were a warm breeze to him, a whiff of lilac, and his face shone with delight.

  “I love you too, my Annie.”

  She nestled herself against him, relished his strong arms enveloping her. She hoped she would not have to puke again, she did not care to spoil the moment. They rogered like dogs in heat, she and Jack, but they so rarely enjoyed just the simple act of holding one another.

  I am a cold bitch.

  She knew that Jack loved her, unconditionally. And she loved him. But she never felt able to give him love in the final measure, not the way he did her. It had been the same with James Bonny, even in the beginning. The same with her father. What is wrong with me?

  Sometimes she thought that Mary was the only person she could love, and the more time she spent with Mary, the more she felt that way. Their relationship was not complicated by physical desire or jealousy or a need to control or any of that. Theirs was a simple bond.

  He is still the Jack Rackam I fell in love with, she reminded herself.

  But he was different as well. He was not so much the carefree buccaneer she had known in Nassau. He is captain of the ship, leader of this band of bloody murderers. Is it any wonder he is distracted?

  She pushed herself closer, put her arm around his waist. What she had to say next would not help. But it had to be said.

  “Jack, my love, I must tell you something, and I’ll warrant it is something you have never heard from any of your fellow buccaneers before.”

  “Yes?”

  She pushed herself away, just a bit. She met his eyes, his arms still around her. “Jack, dear, I am going to have your baby.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THEY CARRIED ON with the sweet trade for another five months, cruising the great tracks between Bermuda and the northern islands of the Bahamas, but the hunting was poor. A pink from New England with pitch, tar, and stores, a small ship bound from Carolina to England laden with rice and meat in barrels. Anne wondered, as those barrels were swayed aboard the Pretty Anne, if perhaps her father had some financial stake in the vessel. It was entirely possible, and she enjoyed the irony of that.

  They put into Marsh Harbor on Great Abaco and sold the accumulated plunder in their tight-packed hold for less than a tenth of what it was worth. That was the price one accepted from a merchant who was not curious about bills of lading and receipts and such inconveniences.

  The pirates split the money into even shares, then each man and woman came up to receive his or her portion from Quartermaster Corner. For all of their discounting their haul, it still amounted to several hundred dollars per hand, and the Pretty Annes were well pleased.

  They left Great Abaco, which was not in the main very welcoming to their kind, and found a small island with which Jack was familiar. There they hove down the vessel and enjoyed a grand bacchanal onshore.

  Anne was no longer puking by that point, but she was growing large in the belly. She slit her slop trousers up the seams and sewed additional pieces of cloth in to accommodate her increased waist size. Her smooth, feline movements were becoming awkward. She was not sleeping well.

  Jack was increasingly uncomfor
table around her. The life of a sailor and pirate did not make one generally acquainted with pregnant women, and Jack did not know how to act. He was afraid to touch her, never seemed to know what to say.

  Anne found it frustrating, infuriating at times. She wanted her old body back, she wanted to be able to move the way she once had. She found herself sometimes angry, sometimes profoundly sad. Her emotions were like a leash, pulling her first one way, then another. She had no experience with that, and it made her angrier still.

  Everyone aboard—every man aboard—treated her like she was diseased, or else like she was a fragile china doll. Only Mary seemed to understand that she was the same woman she had always been. It was getting so she could not stand anyone’s company, save for Mary’s.

  “Annie, my dearest?” Jack approached her one afternoon. She was sitting on the main hatch, looking out over the empty sea.

  “Yes?”

  Jack had that tentative quality, like someone approaching a strange and potentially vicious dog, and it was irritating in the extreme. “My love, I think soon you will be in your confinement . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “This sloop is no place for that. I have some friends, a family, in Cuba. Fine people. Methinks we should go there, for . . . well, should I say . . .”

  “For me to have my baby, Jack? Your baby? Can’t you just bloody say it?”

  Jack pulled back like she had threatened him with a knife, and Anne was sorry for the outburst. Her expression softened and she saw the shock leave Jack’s face.

  “I am sorry, Jack, dear, I fear I do not know what I am about these days. Yes, Cuba . . . let us go to Cuba, then.”

  They made their course south by west, threading through the Mayaguana Passage and then turning due west to run along the north shore of the island of Cuba. They captured a brig bound from Havana to Madrid, emptied her of food and wine and some specie and other goods, and sent her on her way. There was no time to spend toying with her.