“I wish you could see me in silk and womanly clothes.”
“I would like that of all things.”
Mary ran her hand over Jacob’s face. His two-day growth of beard was coarse, though it made little impression on her calloused hands. She noticed for the first time the perfect line that the edge of his whiskers made across his smooth cheek, the tiny wrinkles that radiated out from his eyes, his dark blue eyes, the color of deep water. He was at least eight years her junior. Mary had not seen her reflection in a long time, but she suspected that the hard living had not been kind to her. She wondered if she was half as beautiful a woman as he was a man.
“You would plight your troth to me?” Mary asked. “Now?”
“This very instant.”
“Very well, then, Jacob. I will hold you to your word.” She smiled at him, his confusion. “Do you, Jacob Wells, take this woman, Mary Read, for your wife, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”
“I do.” Jacob stroked her cheek with his crooked finger. “Do you, Mary Read,” he said, “take this man, Jacob Wells, for husband, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”
“I do. You may kiss the bride.”
Jacob leaned down and gently pressed his lips against Mary’s and they kissed, a long, luxurious kiss. Mary wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back. Their tongues explored one another’s mouths and then Jacob ran his lips over her neck once more.
Mary let her head loll back and she sighed and shifted and felt the passion building within her. Jacob was breathing harder as he covered her with little kisses and Mary arched her back and thought the sensation was too much to bear.
With his famous dexterity Jacob undid her belt and the buttons of her breeches. He got to his knees and slid her breeches down, and Mary found herself naked, lying in the grass, a most unusual situation. She pushed Jacob back, pushed him down until he was lying on his back and then undid his breeches the way he had undone hers, pulled them off and explored his body with her lips.
With a moan, Jacob sat up, half on top of her, and began to kiss her all over. His sure fingers ran over her body, just barely touching her, exploring her, playing her as if he were playing his violin. She felt goose bumps rise at his touch.
“Oh . . . Jacob . . .” Mary said, catching herself an instant before she said “Frederick.” “Oh, I want you, now . . .”
She pulled him on top of her and braced because it had been a very long time and she knew it would hurt like it had the first time. But Jacob was no overeager lover, and he seemed to sense her fear, and he moved very slow, easing himself in with just the gentlest of motion.
Mary wrapped her legs around his thin waist and clenched her teeth and shut her eyes hard and felt herself consumed by Jacob, Jacob on top of her, Jacob pressing her down, Jacob inside her.
He moved slowly, letting the rhythm build, always aware of her, never doing anything that might cause her pain. And for Mary it was pure joy, the feeling of all their naked flesh pressed together and Jacob moving inside her. It was like being held in Jacob’s arms, but many, many times more.
Slowly, slowly the motion built. She dug her heels into him and ran her feet up and down his strong back and gasped with pleasure and then they were both stifling shouts as their ecstasy peaked, perfectly together.
They lay for a long time like that, intertwined, aware only of each other’s subsiding breath and the warm sun on them and the sound of the birds and the water bubbling up from the spring. It was so perfect that Mary wanted to lie like that forever, she wanted to die right there, just let the life seep gently away, like water from a cracked cup, so that her last moment on earth would be that perfect moment, and she would not have to go back to the beach and face whatever it was she had to face there.
At last Jacob rolled over and they were side by side in the grass and naked and looking up at the sky. The sun had moved quite a bit since the last time that Mary had looked and she knew it was time to go.
Mary kissed Jacob’s chest and smiled at him and then they both stood and pulled on their clothes. Jacob gave Mary his shirt, now quite dry, and she gratefully pulled it on. Then they made their way back down the trail.
The smell of fire and roasting pig and the sounds of the freebooters’ ongoing bacchanal greeted them long before the trail opened out into the wide sandy beach. They stepped from the shade of the forest and crossed to the fire. Mary’s heart was beating fast; she could feel her muscles tense and the sweat on her palms and she could sense that Jacob was tight as well.
One by one the pirates fell silent and all eyes turned toward them as they approached. Mary searched the band of men, seeking Anne out. She was on the other side of the fire, sitting cross-legged in the sand. Their eyes met and Anne did not speak, but gave a nod of her head, a barely perceptible motion that spoke volumes to Mary.
Mary stopped, arms folded, and looked from one man to the next, daring anyone to speak.
George Fetherston’s voice boomed out and made Mary jump. “Well, ’Michael,’ what the hell should we call you now?”
Mary held his eyes. She did not smile. “Mary. Mary Read.”
“Ah, ha, ha! Do you hear that, Corner, you great dancing master!” Fetherston roared. “It was a ’Mary’ near done for you, took off part of your ear! Ha, ha! And we thought our Annie the toughest bitch in the West Indies!”
“All right,” Noah Harwood yelled, “any other of you sons of whores are women, let us know now!”
The others laughed and then turned back to what they were doing and no more was ever said. Mary and Jacob took their place by the fire, ate their share of the wild pig that Thomas Earl had shot, and then lent a hand with loading everything back into the boat.
Near the edge of the jungle Mary could see the fresh-turned earth where they had buried Billy Bartlett.
Soon after, the pirates pushed the boat into the surf and tumbled in and pulled back toward the Pretty Anne.
The pirates under Calico Jack Rackam continued on in their hunting, wandering from Jamaica to Hispaniola, taking what they could. In the rough democracy of the pirates, Jack’s drinking and his wallowing in his misery did not matter so very much.
Mary found this both surprising and intriguing. In her experience, a failure of leadership meant that everything below would fall apart in turn. But not so with the pirates. The crew as a body voted on their actions, discussed their plans, and Jack’s faltering leadership had little effect.
It was only when they were in a fight that he became the undisputed master, and since in the past months they had fought with nothing more substantial than small trading sloops and fishing vessels, there was not that much required of him then, either.
So Jack managed to hold himself together well enough, and they soldiered on.
With Mary’s secret now revealed, neither she nor Anne felt the need to continue on in their disguises. When the pirates happened to take a sloop that had aboard a few bolts of fine white holland, the women took it for themselves and ran up simple dresses. These they wore as a matter of course, to the delight of themselves and the men aboard the sloop.
When the Pretty Anne cleared for action, the women shed their dresses and kitted themselves in their men’s clothing, their blue jackets and long trousers, with handkerchiefs bound around their heads.
They continued on, but the hunting was poor and the Pretty Anne was a weary vessel, the men tired, worn down by two years of near constant cruising.
They talked of Nassau. No one knew where the idea had come from, it just seemed to appear like a spirit among them, but once there it would not leave. They talked about the King’s pardon, abandoning the sweet trade, setting up taverns, all of the dreams embraced by broken sailormen in all the seaport towns of the world.
It was talk that Mary liked to hear, and she even dared hope that this was their moment, the chance to give up the life on the account, to settle down: her, Jacob, Anne.
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The more the pirates talked about Nassau, the more it appeared to them as some mythical place, some El Dorado where, if they could only reach it, they would find peace and joy, rivers running with rum, women desperate to bed them, filthy and vermin-ridden though they might be.
So they turned the sloop northeast and made for that place. It was a decision arrived at by tacit agreement, with never a formal discussion or vote, but it was a decision that sat well with all of them. And on the morning when the rising sun revealed the green crooked line of the island of New Providence rising up from the sea, the excitement and relief on board were palpable.
Mary stood on the heel of the bowsprit and watched the land as it seemed to rise from the sea. Unlike the other Pretty Annes, she had never been to Nassau, that fabled pirate haven. She knew that the others were expecting a grand welcome, a boisterous homecoming, the prodigal buccaneers returning.
She wondered if the others realized, as she did, that things might well have changed after two years of Woodes Rogers’s governorship. She wondered if the others were too swept up in their romantic vision of this pirates’ paradise to understand that they might, all of them, be people out of time, that the world might have moved on and left buccaneers such as them behind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
IT TOOK THEM the rest of the day to close with the island. The sun was hanging just above the hilly country inland as the Pretty Anne rounded the easternmost point and stood into the familiar channel that ran between New Providence and Hog Island.
The men lined the rails, pointing to this and that, commenting on what was new since last they came, what had remained unchanged. There was more shipping, and more of it looked of a reputable nature, and that was certainly a new thing. The fort in which Woodes Rogers had first made his home was much improved, and looked like a genuine defensive structure ringed with a high wood palisade, and not an abandoned ruin.
Jack stood on the quarterdeck, let the relief bathe him like the last rays of the sun. He had considered the possibility that there would be no welcome for him, that he might be a wanted man, but somehow he could not imagine it was so. Nassau had always been his haven, the place where he was the celebrated Calico Jack, and he could not think that the presence of one new Governor could change that.
They dropped the hook a cable length from the dock and took the longboat ashore. The dock to which they tied was not the same half-rotten structure from which they had embarked to steal the sloop Nathaniel James. Rather it was new built of substantial timbers, decked over with two-inch planks, as solid as a stone quay. They climbed up the ladder that ran into the water, stood silent for a moment, looking over their town in the golden light of evening.
It was not the Nassau they remembered, not entirely. Some of the old buildings still stood, but they were surrounded now by new construction: private homes and stores, taverns, ordinaries, chandlers, merchants. Nassau had grown in their absence, grown, apparently, into a legitimate town.
“Come, lads!” Jack said, loud and bold, breaking the quiet moment. “Let us off to the Ship, our old meeting place, and see what news is there!”
They walked together, a happy band of brothers, along the dock and then onto the dusty street. People stood in doorways and watched them pass, leaned out of windows to see the new arrivals. Jack waited for a hail, a hearty cheer of “Calico Jack!” or a wave from some familiar figure, but there was nothing. Only the muted sounds of a small Caribbean town at dusk, and the call of birds, and their own feet on the road.
They came at last to the Ship Tavern, and to Jack’s relief, it still stood, and looked much as it had the last time he had seen it. It would have been too much to bear, had it been otherwise. If the Ship had been gone, then Calico Jack would have understood there was no place left for him.
He pushed the door boldly open, just as he had the time he first met Anne. He paused, but there was no cry from within, no warm greetings. He walked into the low, dim tavern room and the others followed.
There were people there, sitting at the familiar tables, but none whom Jack recognized. He stepped up to the bar, his shipmates around him. The publican was tapping a keg, but he stopped, looked up, squinted at the men.
“Jack? Calico Jack Rackam?” he asked.
“It is me!” Jack said, loud, spread his arms. “Calico Jack, come back!”
The publican smiled a weak sort of smile, held out his hand. “We had heard you was shipwrecked, down around Cuba,” he said.
“Shipwrecked? Never in life. Come now, rum, rum all around!”
The publican began to produce bottles and glasses and the men began to pour and drink, but they did so in silence, and Jack wondered where all the raucousness was: the roaring good humor of the pirates, the musicians, and the pretty whores, and the unchecked debauchery.
They drank and talked amongst themselves and pried from the publican all the news of what had taken place over the past year and a half, since they had slipped the cable aboard the Nathaniel James and drifted silently out of the harbor.
They talked for ten minutes or so, learned of the great changes that had taken place in Nassau, the way that Governor Rogers had bent the people there to his will through tireless cajoling and hanging, inducement and exile.
The door opened behind them, the cool air swirling away the pipe smoke and fetid smell of the men. Jack turned and the others turned. A figure stood in the door, the dark shape of a man, and Jack felt a sudden flush of panic, an irrational fear, like he was watching the angel of death come near.
Then the figure stepped toward them and Jack smiled and laughed. “Ben Hornigold! Goddamn my eyes, it is old Ben!”
Hornigold came up to Jack and took his outstretched hand, but he looked more serious than delighted.
“Ben, damn you!” Jack continued. He ran his eyes over Hornigold’s rich coat and waistcoat, the glint of silver buckles on his shoes, the dull gleam of his gold-headed walking stick. Hornigold had not pissed his riches away as most pirates would.
“You have prospered, Ben, I see. Up to old tricks, I should think? On the account?”
Ben Hornigold shook his big head. “No, Jack, none of that.” He paused, looked around at the gathered men, nearly all of whom he knew, and with many of whom he had once sailed. “George, Richard, Noah,” he greeted them with a nod and they muttered their greeting back.
Ben’s eyes turned to Anne Bonny, standing at Jack’s side. “Ah, Annie, you have returned,” he said. “You’ve become damned well-known around here.”
His gaze moved past Anne. “And this must be Mary Read. Oh, don’t look so surprised. Tales have spread, you know. Such a one as you cannot be kept secret long.”
This talk was making Jack more and more uncomfortable. It was not the greeting or the banter he would have expected from his old friend. “Come, Ben,” he said, hoping to liven the increasingly funereal atmosphere in the tavern, “will you have a drink with us?”
“No, Jack. I think not.”
“Then what is it you want of us? Why have you come here?”
“The question, my dear boy, is more why have you come? For what reason have you returned to Nassau?”
Jack looked around, looking for some support from his fellows. “We had thought to accept the King’s pardon.”
Again Ben Hornigold shook his head. He frowned and his heavy jowls gave him a bulldog look. “You are far too late for that, Jack, dear. There’s no pardon for you.”
Jack said nothing. There was nothing to say. He did not trust himself to speak.
“This ain’t the place it once was, Jack. And the sweet trade ain’t what it was. Things have changed. I’m no longer on the account. I hold a command from the governor now.”
It took a moment for the words to register, but when they did Jack jerked upright, took a step back; his hand reached for the grip of his sword. “What say you? Are you here to arrest us?”
“No, no.” Ben held up his hands. “Word was sent to me as soon as you land
ed, but I have not seen fit to inform the governor. I take no small risk in keeping you a secret, you may be certain.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Someone poured more rum into a glass, thumped the bottle back down on the table. Ben Hornigold continued. “We were friends once, Jack. And I know you for a decent man, not one that kills and maims for the pleasure of it. That’s why I come here. To warn you. There’s no place for you here, and Rogers will hang you, hang the lot of you, if you stay. That goes for Annie and Mary as well.”
Hornigold looked around at the stunned faces. Then he turned and walked back toward the door. He paused and turned back, and for a moment Jack thought he might say, “Of course . . .” and offer some means to their salvation, but instead he said, “Get back aboard your sloop, Jack. The lot of you. Get back aboard and sail away and don’t come back. I won’t be able to pretend I didn’t see you a second time.” And then he stepped out into the night and was gone.
For a long time no one said anything, or if they did, Jack did not hear them. He was floating away, disconnected, like a feather lifted on a breeze. Nassau, his home, the one solid thing left to him, was gone, and all of the fantasies he had entertained were gone with it.
And then someone said, “We had best get out of here,” and then the others were moving, and Jack, with never a thought, followed along.
They hid out in the wild country west of town, near the beach, and decided what they would do. They could not stay. They could not sail the Pretty Anne— she was too far gone to be of service anymore.
The next evening they stole a sloop, the William, belonging to John Hamon, in much the same manner as they had the Nathaniel James. They drifted unseen out of the harbor and they were off to sea again.
Mary Read stood at the rail in the waist, watched New Providence fade in the distance. She had arrived with the vague hope that her life would take a turn onto a better path, and left two days later with things much worse than they had been.
They knew who she was. The word had filtered out somehow, traveled over the great network of people who plied their trade on the waters of the Caribbean, reached to the office of Woodes Rogers. Her sex, even her name, was known. She could not hope to retire in anonymity now. She could no longer dream of settling on some island in the West Indies, she and Jacob and Anne, and living as civilized people do. She was branded in the hand, as much as if a hot iron had been put to her flesh.
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