At this the others cheered and crowded around Jacob Wells and slapped him on the back and plied him with rum, which he drank after sufficient coercion.
Mary shook her head, looked beyond the bow toward the island of Cuba to starboard and the open ocean beyond the larboard rail.
She was happy that Jack had made Wells join them, and she was angry and she was miserable and she was delighted. It was all mixed up in her, and she did not know what she was, beyond very, very uncertain.
The new Pretty Anne stood north and east, leaving Cuba below the horizon as quickly as she could, making for the relative safety of open water. They sailed on in that manner for all of the next day, then came about and made their way southeast, finally running down the windward passage between Cuba’s easternmost end and the northwestern tip of Hispaniola.
It was not long before the pirates realized how fine a bargain they had made. The sloop they now manned was newly built and fully provisioned, her sails crisp and white and not hanging in big, baggy pockets, her bilge clean and sweet smelling.
It was a further delight to realize that not only had they stolen the Spaniards’ valuable prize, and left a near worthless one in its place, but that the Spaniards had beaten the only prize left to them to kindling before they knew it.
A fortnight after their escape from the Guarda del Costa they raised the island of Jamaica. They skirted the northern shore and stood in to Dry Harbor Bay, and there they put Captain James Larson ashore, but kept on board Thomas Montgomery, who proved to be a skilled carpenter, and Jacob Wells, who was their delight.
Jacob was an adequate sailor, but his skill with the violin was astounding. At dinnertime every afternoon he was made to play for an hour, and again during the dog watches, often for two hours straight.
He seemed never to repeat a tune. Mary could not tell if he was making the melodies up as he went, or if he had in his head a great repertoire of music. He played hard and tirelessly, he played because he loved it and because he could lose himself in the music and forget his circumstance, he played out of defiance, just as he had first played for Jack.
And despite his oft-expressed dislike of the pirates, the pirates came to like him very much, because he was a good-natured fellow, and a fine musician, and a tolerable sailor.
“You love him, do you not?” Anne said one morning, high aloft, and it startled Mary.
“Who?” Mary asked, flushing, since she had at that moment been staring down at Jacob Wells, who was standing in the bows and sewing a patch in his second best shirt.
“’Who’!” Anne laughed. “La, Mary, do you think I am blind?”
“If you mean Wells, well, he is a handsome lad, with much to recommend him, but as for love, I think not.”
“A short life and a merry one, dear. I do not know how long we can go like this. You must take what you wish and take it quick. I would never warrant you for being afraid, but in this I think you are.”
“Afraid? Of what?” Mary asked, but of course, she knew full well. She was surprised that Anne understood what was in her, but then she had learned before that Anne was a woman of more insight than one might guess. Mary was not pleased to hear that insight given voice.
“You are afraid to love him.”
“Perhaps, I’ll grant you, there is something in what you say . . .” It was all very complicated, and all jumbled together in Mary’s head, all of the implications of her feelings. “But we are not exactly in a private drawing room here. I’m still playing the man and don’t care to see what these rogues would do if the truth were revealed. How would I tell Jacob and be sure he wouldn’t tell the others?”
At that Anne laughed, to Mary’s annoyance. “Forgive me, Mary, dear, but that is a weak excuse. You revealed yourself to Frederick in the midst of the army, revealed yourself to me and your secret has been held. I am sure, with some thought, you could manage the same with Jacob.”
Mary nodded. Anne was right, of course. Keeping her sex a secret was the least of it.
“You’re afraid to be hurt,” Anne continued, “such as you were with Frederick. I can understand that. But if this all ends and the two of you are parted, you will never have the chance again. Given a choice, would you prefer to have never known Frederick, to have never had what you had with him?”
Mary thought about that as she stared out at the horizon. She had always told herself that it would have been better if she and Frederick had never met, never fallen in love, never married. Better that she should never have known what happiness was, so that she would not know later what she had lost.
But she knew that that was not true. Better to have had that bright moment of joy, better to have known Frederick and loved him and lost him than to never have had that honor.
And then something else that Anne had said called for her attention. “What do you mean, you do not know how long we can go on like this?”
Anne frowned, shrugged, looked out to sea. “I feel sometimes that it is all coming to an end. They are rounding up the pirates and hanging them by the score. We have taken nothing worth the taking in . . . nothing since you and me rejoined the ship, and they took little while we were in Cuba. Fishing boats . . .”
Anne paused and then turned and looked Mary in the eye. “Jack is shattered, Mary, my dear. I cannot guess what happened to him back there, with the Guarda del Costa and such, but he has not been the same man since. Only once since then has he lain with me, and it was a poor attempt at best. Have you not seen how nervous he seems? How much more he drinks?”
Mary nodded. “I have. And I have seen it before, I daresay, in other men. A person can take but so much: so much fear, so much worry, so much responsibility. With no respite, anyone will collapse under the weight of it, in the end.”
“I fear that has happened to my Jack. And if he is not able to command, then we are done for, in the sweet trade. There is no other. Dicky Corner may be a great brute in a fight, but he is no leader.”
“No, he is not.”
They were silent for a moment and then Anne said, brighter, “So, my dear, don’t squander your opportunity. I suggest that you make love to this handsome young man, with ever as much passion as I made love to you. And let us hope, with happier results.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THAT EVENING, as the Pretty Anne plowed along the north coast of Jamaica, Mary listened to the wistful strains of some tune that flowed like magic from Jacob’s violin, watched him as he played as if in a trance.
His eyes were closed and his mouth was set in a bit of a frown, giving his otherwise boyish face a stern look. His bowing arm moved with a motion that hardly seemed human, more like a sapling swaying in the wind, or water tumbling over rocks.
His long fingers crawled over the neck of the instrument—Mary could not pull her eyes from those fingers. His body had none of the soft, awkward quality of one who had spent his life in conservatories and drawing rooms. He was lean and well formed. The muscles in his arms stood out as he worked his bow and produced those lovely airs.
Mary glanced fore and aft, saw with some amusement the hairy, beastly pirates who were quietly listening to the delicate melody, some looking as if they might weep.
She thought of Annie’s words, about making love to Jacob, about how all this might end.
That talk frightened her. It echoed a sort of nebulous dread of pending disaster that had overcome her now and again. Nothing that she could examine, it was not so definite as that. Just a sense of the end coming closer.
Hardly bloody surprising, she thought. Piracy was not a trade that offered much longevity. Killed in battle, or by disease, or drowned, or hung, a pirate’s life might not always be merry, but it was generally short.
Then I shall not tarry a moment more, Mary decided. Into the breach and all that.
She stood as Jacob finished up his evening performance, and as the others drifted away she approached him and leaned against the bulwark. “That bit you played, next to the last, that was by
that fellow Bach, was it not?”
Jacob looked up, surprised. “Yes indeed. I didn’t know you were so learned about music.”
Mary shrugged. “I’ve picked up a bit, here and there.” In fact, she knew nothing about music, save for marches and camp songs and that one piece that Jacob had played, which she had heard when a traveling musician played it at the Three Trade Horses and it had so delighted the audience that he was made to play it three more times. “But tell me, how does one so talented come to be a pirate?”
“I was forced. You know that.”
“I know. I’m fooling with you. But how did you come to be sailing aboard this sloop?”
Jacob wrapped his violin in a cloth and placed it gently in a wooden box that Montgomery had been ordered to run up for him, the pirates being now as anxious as he to preserve the instrument. “We lived in Bath. My father was a tutor of music and dance. A few years ago he decided to move us all to Jamaica. He reckoned on grand opportunities there, but soon after we arrived he and my mother and sister took sick with the yellow jack and died.
“I was quite destitute and could not make a living with my playing, and then Captain Larson was good enough to take me in and offer to teach me the sailor’s trade. He is a kind man and we are very close, though he acted as if he hardly knew me after you . . . people . . . discovered us on board. I think he reckoned it would go hard on me, was these fellows to think I was close with the captain.”
“Mmm,” Mary said. You have seen your own share of pain, she thought. It showed in his eyes. That was part of what drew her to him, she realized.
“Will you follow the sea, still?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know. I reckon now I shall be hung for a pirate before I ever get the chance.”
Mary laughed at that. “I don’t think your time in the sweet trade will be very long lasted. I do not reckon mine will be.”
“Are you forced to this? Do you not wish to be . . . on the account, as these rogues are wont to say?”
“Oh, I entered into this trade of my own free will, I will confess to that. Mine has been a rambling life. Soldier, man-of-war’s man. I have been such as one would call a pirate for near two years now and I have come to see the folly of it. It is not the life for me, and as soon as I get the chance I will go ashore and forswear it.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
Honestly? Perhaps. Or perhaps I say that so that you will not find me despicable.
Mary did not know. To have again what she and Frederick had, there was nothing she would not forswear. But she would not trade this carefree life in the West Indies for the misery of Europe, the frigid hell of sailing the North Sea.
She would give up the sweet trade for something better, but right then she could not picture what that might be.
Jacob Wells seemed much relieved to have a sympathetic friend aboard the Pretty Anne. After their discussion at the rail that evening, he made an effort to stick close to Mary, which did not displease her.
Soon she invited him to join her mess, the four-man groups into which the crew was divided for purposes of cooking and eating. It was one of the most intimate divisions on shipboard, and one’s messmates were considered to be of higher priority even than one’s other watchmates or crewmates.
This invitation Jacob gladly accepted, and soon he found himself taking his meals with Mary and Fetherston and Thomas Earl, and slowly, day by day, he grew more comfortable in that rough company. And day by day, Mary’s affection for him grew.
Aft and below in the tiny great cabin, which was an altogether finer dwelling than the cabin aboard their former sloop, Anne Bonny was waiting on Calico Jack.
She lay back, propped up on her elbows on the cushion on top of the after lockers. Her hair was loose and hanging in all its thick, reddish blond beauty over her shoulders and down her back. Her shirt was partway unbuttoned, revealing the alluring tops of her round breasts. Her belt was off, and she was barefoot, and the top buttons of her trousers were undone.
Jack was drunk.
“Ah, Annie, dear, you are a one to set a man’s heart to pounding!” he said. He took an uncertain step toward her, and then steadied himself on the table and raised the bottle of brandy to his lips and drank.
“That was my hope, Jack, dear,” she said. “Now, pray, put down the bottle and come and attend to me.”
Jack nodded, but he did not look his old cocksure self. He wedged the bottle in place between two cushions, stumbled over to where Anne lay. He pulled off his coat and tossed it aside and lay down on top of her, kissing her, exploring her mouth with his tongue.
Anne closed her eyes, tried to enjoy herself, tried to summon up her former passion. Jack’s mouth tasted of brandy and rum and the smoke from his pipe and some other vague memories. His mouth had always tasted that way, but now there was something decayed about it, something miserable and desperate, and as Jack fumbled clumsily with Anne’s shirt, squeezing her breasts overly hard, it just made the whole thing worse.
Anne ran her hands through his hair, stared up at the deckhead above, and missed the beautiful, attentive lover with whom she had run away.
Jack pulled her shirt open, popping the buttons off. It was not the first time he had done that, but for the first time Anne thought, Now I shall have to sew the damned things on again . . .
He ran his mouth over her breasts, handling her roughly, but it was not the alluring, desperate, panting rough play they had once enjoyed. It was just rough.
Anne moved under him, made a sighing sound, but she did not really mean it. Jack was breathing hard and sweating and once his hand slipped off the cushion and he fell on top of her, and then pulled her hair as he set his hand back on the locker.
Ten minutes of that awkward, irritating play and Jack sat up, closed his eyes, threw his head back. He looked as if he might cry.
“Annie, my love, it is no use. Do you see? I am unmanned; I cannot make love to you.”
Anne looked at him. Once she would have been angry. She could picture Anne Bonny of a year before flying at him, furious that he should not be able to perform. She would have seen it as a personal affront. Putting hands on her fine body should be enough to send any man into a frenzy of desire.
“Come, Jack, my dear, let me hold you.” She reached out her arms and he lay down in them, and she hugged him as he rested his face against her chest. She could feel his tears on her naked flesh.
Oh, Jack, Jack, my love. Is it all over? And what will we do now, my dear? Wherever can we go?
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THEY SPENT some time in the spring of 1720 tucked away in a small harbor on the northern coast of Jamaica. Some luck had finally come their way in the matter of prizes, and they went to that hidden place to celebrate, riding at anchor so that there was not even the concern of keeping a vessel at sea to interfere with their revelries.
For the rest of the spring they continued to hunt the seas between Jamaica and Cuba. They took what vessels they could, but they were small-time prizes, for the most part merchant sloops and fishing boats smaller and poorer than the pirates themselves. The great days of buccaneering on the Spanish Main, the days of the noble Spanish bullion fleets, the armies of freebooters, the Drakes, the De Graafs, the Morgans, were gone.
Jack was not doing well. Mary could see that. He was drinking more than she had ever seen. He was quiet, morose, and spent more and more time below. She had tried to broach the subject with Anne, but Anne was not of a mind to discuss it, so Mary let it be.
At the same time, Mary’s feelings for Jacob Wells—soft-spoken, gentle, yet quick-witted, firm in his opinions and masterful with his violin—had grown deeper and more complicated. They were dear friends, which was the most they could be, with Jacob believing as he did that Mary was a man.
Mary showed him the ways of arms, and how to display the proper ferocity when boarding a prize, and how to play the pirate so he would not seem too ill-suited for his role. And Jacob,
while never embracing the pirates’ ways, came at least to find his situation tolerable, and at times, though he would not say as much, enjoyable.
“Come, Mary, dear,” Anne asked, after a few weeks of this, “will you not let the poor fellow know?”
They were sitting way out on the bowsprit, in the late evening, while behind them the bulk of the Pretty Anne plowed her way along, and on deck Jacob gave his evening performance to an appreciative crew.
Mary, for all of her passion for Jacob and the pleasure she took from his company, would not allow that affection to come between her and Anne. She loved Anne. Sometimes she thought that she loved Anne more than she could any man, because there was between them none of the complications that come between a man and a woman.
“Yes,” Mary said, “I think I shall give him a hint.”
“A hint?”
“I will tease the poor fellow. For my own amusement.”
“You are a wicked villain, if ever I saw one.” Anne was quiet for a moment, and then in a different tone said, “You told me once of the terror you felt in revealing yourself to Frederick. Do you not feel that now?”
Mary thought about that. “No, I do not,” she said at last. “I don’t know why. Perhaps because I don’t feel so desperate here, in the West Indies, as I did in Flanders. Perhaps this life, the sweet trade, has made it so I can’t take anything too serious.” She smiled at Anne. “Perhaps because I know that even if Jacob did reject me, I should still have you.”
Anne smiled as well. “That you would, my dear. Blood sisters, do you recall?”
And so there was a certain playfulness, a certain lightheartedness in Mary when she told Jacob to accompany her down below and help her rearrange some cables. She felt none of the panic she had with Frederick in the tent when, in the sweltering heat of the cable tier, she unbuttoned her red waistcoat and then, in a convincing accident, tore her shirt and let the rent hang open just long enough for Jacob to get a glimpse, to draw in his breath with a startled gasp, before she closed it up again.
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