In the glow of the anchor light Mary could see great, wide grins of triumph, of delight, of utter relief. They might have been prepared to die, but they still preferred to live, and now there was every chance that they would, and aboard a new vessel taken from the Spaniards in a bold and audacious stroke.
Fetherston took down the anchor light and blew out the flame, and the sloop made the best of her way toward the east, plowing a wake through the dark sea, leaving the unsuspecting Guarda del Costa astern.
Mary slept and then she woke before dawn and stretched and looked around and recalled where she was. She pulled herself to her feet and scratched distractedly at her stomach.
Anne was awake, standing in the bow, staring off toward the slight gray band of light in the east, just the hint of sunrise. Mary walked over to her. They were alone there.
“Bonny, what say you? You appear low this morning.”
“Hmm? Oh, good morning to you. I have been thinking.”
“Indeed?” Mary said, but Anne ignored her.
“I’ve been thinking about Jack. Sometimes I don’t know who he is.”
“How is that?”
“Oh, Lord, I do not know. He takes the weight of his responsibilities so hard. It distracts him, sometimes to the point where he cannot think, or so it seems.”
It is called “panicking,” my dear, Mary thought, but all she said was “Hmm . . .” in a thoughtful tone.
“I thought . . . oh, I swear . . .” She looked away again, sorting her thoughts out, shaking her head slightly as she did. “I might have thought the very worst of him, were it not for this bold thing that he has done, taking this sloop from right under those damnable Spaniards’ noses!”
“Bold indeed, and well done. He has saved us all.”
“But still . . .” Anne turned back to Mary, and there was a searching look in her eyes. “Back in the channel, when it seemed all was lost . . . Jack seemed . . .”
There were a dozen things Mary thought to say, but she kept her mouth shut. It was part of the lesson she had learned in Cuba.
“So what think you of Jack?” Anne asked.
Mary shrugged. “I don’t know what’s inside him. I know only that he was Captain, and he led us in this bold thing and we have won. Beyond that I cannot say.”
Anne gave Mary a weak smile. “I reckon you are right,” she said. “And you are one to know. I won’t even tell you what thoughts I had.”
The sky was growing lighter and they could now see all the way to a watery horizon. Off the starboard rail, the mainland of Cuba, and behind them, directly behind, and a good eight nautical miles, the island behind which they had tried to hide. The Guarda del Costa was nowhere in sight.
Mary and Anne stood for a moment, enjoying the morning quiet. And then, far off and muted, came the sound of gunfire. Heads snapped around, ears cocked, listening. The sound came from astern, from the place they had left. It was the Guarda del Costa, opening up on the abandoned sloop Pretty Anne.
The cannonade was unrelenting, and soon a billow of gunsmoke could be seen rising up above the little island astern. The pirates smiled, shook their heads, spit on the deck in derision. But they did not cheer, did not congratulate themselves or throw insults at the Spaniards. It had been too close for that.
In the next hour they put another four miles between themselves and the guard ship, and in all that time the gunfire did not cease, only grew less audible as the distance opened up.
They hove to long enough to hustle their Spanish prisoners into the longboat in which they had attacked the sloop. It was in poor shape, as indeed all of the former Pretty Anne had been, but it would serve to get them safe ashore.
Ten minutes later they were under way again, and still the gunfire did not let up, or even slacken.
“They are damned earnest, ain’t they?” Fetherston offered, and no one laughed, but several nodded their heads in agreement.
Then from the forward scuttle came the voice of Thomas Earl. “Halloa, there, lads, see what I have here!” he shouted, and out of the scuttle stepped a man of middling age, gray and thinning hair that was wild on his head, his clothes in great disarray and filthy, and behind him, two more men and then Earl, herding them along. “See here, Jack!” Earl called aft. “These here is the rightful owners of the sloop, and don’t you have some explaining to do!”
Jack stood and ambled forward and Mary saw he was the confident, swaggering Jack whom she had first seen aboard the captive Hoorn. He stepped up to the older man, bowed an elegant bow. “And who might I have the pleasure of addressing?” he asked.
“I am James Larson and I am owner and master of this vessel. We was taken by the Dons four days back. I don’t know who you are, or how you come to have her now, but I am right grateful to be free of them Spaniard bastards.”
“As well you should be, sir. I, sir, am John Rackam. Calico Jack Rackam. You have heard of me?”
“No.”
“Well, you bloody have now. And you may be sorry to learn, sir, that this sloop is no more yours now than it was when the Dons had her. For the price of rescuing you I shall keep her for my own use. You may be glad at least that you will not be burned at the stake as a heretic.”
Larson regarded Jack for a moment and then glanced around at the rough men in his company. He had the look of a seaman, and as such he was able to see right off how things lay.
“Pirates. Bloody pirates,” he said. “Just my bleeding luck. Well, I wish you joy of your capture, sir, and I will be grateful if you could put us ashore in the first place that don’t answer to the pope.”
“Perhaps I will,” said Jack, “and perhaps I will not.”
All this Mary watched from the bow, but her attention was not on the interplay between Calico Jack and James Larson. Rather, she was watching one of the two men behind Larson, presumably the former crew of the sloop.
The young man—he looked to be somewhere in his twenties— was frightened, but standing straight, head up and defiant, pushing his fear down by force of will. His hair was curly and almost black and tumbled over his shoulders. His chin was strong and covered with several days growth of beard, his features finely chiseled, almost feminine in their precision.
He wore the clothing typical of a deckhand on a small vessel, the wide slops, the loose shirt, the neckerchief bound around his throat. In his arms he held, most incongruously, a violin, which he seemed to shield as a mother would a child.
He was, if not the exact image of Frederick Heesch, then something very close. And it was not his looks alone, but something in his bearing, the pride and resolve to not be afraid, that damned violin.
Mary shook her head, pulled her eyes away, looked over the side toward Cuba, toward the horizon, toward anything but that man. She did not want to look on him because when she did she could see her past and her future, all at once.
Oh God, Jack, put him ashore, she thought. Please Lord, Jack, do not make that one sail with us.
BOOK THREE
A TRYAL OF PIRATES
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
WHEN AT LAST the bailiff returned to the holding cell to tell the men on trial for their lives that His Excellency the President, Sir Nicholas Lawes, and the Honorable Commissioners had rendered their verdict, he found John Rackam still sitting on the stone bench, back against the whitewashed bricks, staring straight ahead.
The bailiff saw a pensive and serene Calico Jack.
What he could not see was that Jack was no longer afraid.
He had gone beyond fear. The fear had finally consumed everything that was inside him, there was nothing left, and like a fire that incinerates all the flammable material within its reach and then goes out, so Jack’s terror had faded to a cold nothing, a charred black spot.
The bailiff held up a list, one of his interminable lists, and called, “The following prisoners will proceed with escort to the courthouse: John Rackam, George Fetherston, Richard Corner, John Davies, John Howell, Patrick Carty, Thomas Earl, Ja
mes Dobbin, and Noah Harwood.”
Those men stood in a jangling chorus of manacles and leg irons and Jack stood as well, though it took an extraordinary effort. He would have been pleased to just sit on that bench, unmoving, until he died. But Sir Nicholas, he knew, would not allow that.
He glanced over at Jacob Wells and those others, standing at the far end of the holding cell, trying to distance themselves as much as they could from the genuine pirates, those bound for the gallows. Jack thought for a moment that he would march back into the courthouse and tell old Lawes that they had joined in with the pirates as willingly as ever did the most despicable rogue. He would do it just for spite, just to bring them along to hell with him, but even as he thought it he knew he did not have the will or the energy.
At the door to the holding cell stood the merciless bailiff and four armed soldiers. Through the door Jack could see the audience and standers-by, who had withdrawn from the courthouse for the Commissioners to render a verdict, now filing back in. They had been disappointed in their desire to see the women pirates stand their trial, but at least they would have the chance to watch the men’s faces as they were sentenced to death.
Finally the last of the crowd shuffled by, and Jack and the others were led back into the huge courtroom and once more set at the bar.
Sir Nicholas made them stand and wait for a few minutes as he shuffled papers and mumbled to the bailiff and generally let the tension build, as one will do who understands the mechanics of drama. At last he looked up, his face like a sunburned bulldog, scowled down at the men at the bar, and said, “This court, having maturely and deliberately considered all the evidence which has been given against the prisoners—”
Jack felt a spark of hope, a little orange glow where the charred stuff was stirred, but then it went out because he knew it was foolish.
“—have unanimously found you all guilty of piracy, robbery, and felony charged against you in the third and fourth articles of the abovesaid articles which have been exhibited against you. Have any of you anything to say or offer why sentence of death should not be passed upon you, for these said offenses?”
Why should he not be killed? The reasons flowed from Jack’s mind. How could this body, this physical thing that had been Jack Rackam, that had given pleasure to himself and to so many women, how could this thing that was he be put to death, be killed, be strung up until it was just a lifeless nothing? It was absurd, it could not be done. It was an unimaginable waste.
But it would be done, and Jack knew it, and he said nothing.
The others were silent as well, for the most part, save for a few desultory mutters of “We’re not guilty, m’lord, we swears it,” which did nothing at all to aid their circumstance.
“Very well,” said Sir Nicholas, when he had listened to all the halfhearted protests he was willing to hear. “You, John Rackam, George Fetherston, Richard Corner, John Davies, John Howell, Patrick Carty, Thomas Earl, James Dobbin, and Noah Harwood, are to go from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, where you shall severally be hanged by the neck till you are severally dead. And God in His infinite mercy be merciful on every one of your souls.”
Lawes issued that last order to God in the same disinterested and mechanical manner with which he had ordered the men’s death, and then he rapped his bench with his mallet.
And then Jack heard his own voice speak. It sounded very far away, and he seemed to have no knowledge of what he would say.
“My Lord?”
Lawes scowled down. “Sentence has been passed. It is too late now for further argument.”
“My Lord, might I request that, before I am hung, I be allowed to say my farewells to Anne Bonny, to whom I am in spirit betrothed.”
Lawes continued to scowl as he considered that. “This court does not consider a betrothal in spirit to be anything more than adultery and fornication, which it is. But yes, I will allow this. Bailiff, you will see that the condemned, before going to the place of execution, is allowed to speak one last time to the prisoner Bonny.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
The condemned . . . Jack thought. Yes, that is me. The condemned. And such was I from the day I was born.
At five o’clock the jailor brought Mary and Anne’s supper—boiled meat of some sort, bread, small beer—pretty unappetizing fare, but by the standards of shipboard, not so bad, and Anne and Mary took it without complaint.
“What of the trial? Is it done with?” Mary asked. There was anxiety in her tone, but of course, there would be, and the jailor was a kind man.
“Aye, done and gone. Would you know the outcome?”
“I have no doubt of the outcome,” said Anne from her cell across the alleyway. “They did not need that great farce of a trial to sentence them to hang, but I reckon Nicholas bloody Lawes will sleep better if he knows he done it the way the King wishes. Very well then, for the sake of formality, what was the verdict?”
“Guilty, Annie. Each and every one of them, severally guilty.”
“Well,” said Anne, “we need no ghost come from the grave to tell us this.”
“What of those other rogues?” Mary asked, and her tone was a reasonable approximation of disinterest. “That Wells and Montgomery and them? They were not at the bar with Jack Rackam and the others.”
“No, they was tried separate, and I do not know why. But they was all found to have been forced into piracy, and so was set free. Them Frenchmen what gave testimony, they both swore those fellows was forced into it.”
Mary nodded, but inside she felt herself floating, her spirit lifting off. Jacob would not hang! It was the most she could hope for, indeed it was all she could hope for, and it had come to pass and so the rest of it, what would happen to her, did not matter.
She knew that she and Anne would hang. They would be charged with the same articles as were Rackam and his crew, and condemned by the same witnesses. But Jacob would not. She could die if she knew she had not sentenced Jacob to death as well.
All of this joyful song she kept inside her and betrayed none of it to the jailor, who, if he became suspicious that Mary had some special feelings for the young man, might feel compelled to report the same, kind man though he was, and Jacob would find himself once more under the angry stare of Sir Nicholas Lawes.
So instead she took a bite of bread, chewed it, and said, “Well, I’ll warrant them for drowning, since they wasn’t born to be hanged.” Jacob Wells, clutching his fiddle and standing up bold to Calico Jack. Mary had pulled her eyes from him and wished that Jack would set the young man ashore. She did not want him aboard, because in that first glance she could see how things would go, could see it with the startling clarity that one gets looking through tropical water down many fathoms to the bottom.
She did not need the complications, the heartbreak. She had run away to the Caribbean to escape that.
Jack was in fine, strutting form, safe as they were with the Guarda del Costa miles to leeward. He was leaning on his sword, making Larson, the former owner of the sloop, answer questions for the pirates’ amusement. It was nearly as good as any such performance he had given, but he had been drinking, more than was his custom, and it somewhat dulled his delivery, though the Pretty Annes saw nothing amiss.
“Do you, sir, not wish to be a freeman and lord, such as we here are?” he asked, and when Larson said, “I am a free man without being a pirate as well,” his answer brought jeers and howls and laughter from the gathered men, as, indeed, any answer would have.
They laughed at Larson and they mocked him, but in the end he won their respect because he showed no fear. He was bold and defiant and that was worthy of admiration among the Brethren of the Coast.
When Jack was done with him, he moved on to the young man with the fiddle, as Mary knew he would.
“What ho? What have we here? A musician? Play us a tune, then.”
“I am no great artist with this,” the man said, his voice clear and
strong.
“No? But you hold it like a mother holds her babe, which ain’t what I would expect from one who does not know the use of an instrument. Play.”
The young man put the violin under his chin. His eyes were fixed on Jack’s, holding them firm. He raised the bow and drew it across the strings in something like a melody, but with enough screeching and squealing to make the hair on the back of Mary’s neck stand up, and set the others shouting and hissing.
Jack lifted the sword, held it under the man’s chin so that the wicked point was just pricking his skin.
“Play good,” Jack said.
For a full measure they stood, regarding each other, and then the dark-haired man applied the bow again, moving it fast and smooth, and the sound that came from the instrument was the sweetest that Mary had ever heard.
He played on, a tune that was at once lively and melancholy. Fore and aft the pirates fell silent as they listened, and the young man closed his eyes and looked as if he had no notion of where he was, or that he was playing under duress.
He played beautifully, passionately. It was a form of defiance, showing all of them that he was not too afraid to perform with such grace. He was saying, Sod the lot of you, you cannot do this.
Mary shook her head. You bloody fool, she thought. You have just sealed your fate.
With a grand flourish the young man brought the piece to a close. He lowered the bow and the violin and looked Jack in the eye once more, as if to say, There. Now what say you?
There was a second of silence on deck and then the pirates burst out into cheers and applause. Jack smiled wide, stepped up to the young man, clapped him on the back, and said, “Excellently well done! What is your name, lad?”
“Jacob Wells.”
“Well, Jacob Wells, we have need of a skilled fellow like you, can spin a merry tune such as that! How would you care to join with our company of gentlemen adventurers?”
“I would not. I’ll have no truck with piracy.”
This bold statement brought more howls and jeers. Over the others Jack said, “Well, my dear, the thing of it is, we’ll not give you the choice. Willing or no, you are a pirate now, lad! And God in His infinite mercy be merciful on your soul!”
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