Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  She tried not listening to the raging sound of the men coming from below, but she could not ignore it. It seemed sometimes the deck might burst from the pressure of the noise filling the hold.

  Then the after scuttle opened and the noise spilled out and Anne looked aft. Jack was making his way with some difficulty onto the deck. “Hey, there, boy! We’ll have some music below!” he shouted.

  No one on deck moved or spoke. Jack took an uncertain step forward. “I said we’ll have some music, boy!”

  Jacob got to his feet. “I’ll not play to that crowd.”

  “What? I am ordering you to play! Will you defy me?”

  “I said only that I will not play to that mob.”

  “You pup!” Jack roared. “Oh, will you have your little doxy run me through, like she done Bartlett? Or will I kill you both, right now?”

  Now Mary was on her feet and Anne took a step closer—like players arranging themselves for the final scene, the resolution of all the tension that had been building, act upon act.

  Mary would not suffer much of Jack’s threats or abuse, and Jacob had been long enough among them that he would not either. Jack could hardly stand, he was in no position to fight, but the drink made him bolder.

  “Jack,” Anne started, swallowing her disgust, hoping she sounded reasonable. “Pray, my love . . .” But Jack seemed to have forgotten the fight already.

  “What ho? What ho?” he cried, staring out past the starboard bow and staggering toward the rail. “Is this dog back again?”

  Anne turned and looked in the direction that Jack was pointing. A sloop, standing in around the headland, her sails dull gray in the moonlight, a silent specter looming in the dark.

  “Back for more of our metal, are you?” Jack shouted, but Anne was not so certain. The cut of the jib, the length of the mainsail’s foot . . . Anne had learned a few things about sailing ships in her time on the account.

  “Jack, I do not think this the same sloop as the last,” she said.

  “Anne’s right,” Mary concurred, but Jack said, “Bah, you bloody doxies, what in hell does Betty know about such things?” He staggered back to the scuttle, shouted down into the din, “Come up, lads, come up! They have come back for more, the sorry dogs!”

  One by one the pirates and the turtlers came back on deck and their condition was worse than before. Those whose stability was not what they might wish sat on the deck and the others staggered to the rail.

  “Your eyes are all out from the rum, Jack Rackam,” said Corner. “This is never the same sloop as that what we drove away. She is half again as big, and she is for us, I’ll warrant.”

  Bloody horse’s arse, Anne thought. Had she not told him it was a different sloop? But she was too furious, too disgusted, to take any pleasure from being right. She did not mention it to Jack. She did not think he would recall their conversation of two minutes before.

  “I say, let us quit this place!” shouted Noah Harwood, and that met with a chorus of “Aye!” and a gang of men staggered forward and with much difficulty began to haul the anchor in, hand over hand, while others went clumsily about setting the mainsail and the jib.

  Anne went aft and grabbed up the tiller because no one had thought to man it. A moment later Mary joined her. She had two pistols jammed in her belt and two more hanging from a ribbon around her neck. Another pair dangled from a ribbon she held in her hand.

  With never a word she looped the ribbon over Anne’s neck, like she was presenting her with a knighthood. The guns thumped against Anne’s stomach as she moved the tiller, and the ribbon pressed into her breasts with the weight of the weapons.

  The Pretty Anne’s bow began to turn, slowly, the stars moving lazily past as the anchor came free from the bottom. At the same instant, Anne and Mary turned and looked for the approaching sloop.

  “She carries the wind with her around the point, and we have all but naught,” Mary said. The strange sloop’s sails were filled, not billowing out, but full enough, and she was making way through the water, while the Pretty Anne was doing little more than wallowing, catching only the lightest puffs of air off the land.

  “Damn it, damn it,” Anne said. She was not accustomed to feeling afraid, had never experienced any real sense of dread, but she was getting it now. “What sloop do you think this is?”

  “I have no notion. But see how she comes for us. I think they know what we are, and are seeking us out, and that means they must reckon they can take us.”

  Anne nodded, bit her lower lip, and pushed the tiller over as the Pretty Anne caught a puff and heeled a bit to larboard. She was moving, but she was moving too slow.

  “Come along, come along, load the bloody gun!” Jack roared as his drunken men stumbled and cursed and wrestled with the cannon as they tried to load it. One might have thought the cannon a living thing, something that was consciously trying to resist them, for all the difficulty they were having.

  “Come along!”

  Jack felt like two men. There was Calico Jack Rackam, ready for a fight. That man was a shell, filled with rum; rum was the blood that animated him. And inside that shell, way inside, utterly hidden, the tiny little cowering John Rackam who wanted only to crawl back below and curl up in a ball and hide and hope that it would stop, all of it.

  He threw a filthy oath at the approaching sloop and took another long pull from his bottle. He had to keep the lifeblood flowing. If the shell collapsed, then there would be nothing left, nothing but the little cowering figure inside.

  “Stand clear, stand clear, you bastards!” roared Harwood, and the others scattered and he touched off the gun, which fired with an impressive roar and blast of flame on the moonlit night.

  The sloop rocked with the recoil and the sails fluttered and filled and the Pretty Anne gathered a little way. Then the sails fell limp and flogged as the puff deserted them, and the approaching sloop, which still held a bit of the ocean breeze, drew closer still.

  “Oh, damn them, damn their eyes!” Jack roared. He felt the shell collapsing inward. He took another drink, but it did not seem to help. They had fired into these people and still they came on, and that could only mean they were ready for a fight and reckoned they could win.

  Oh, damn it, damn it all! Panic was setting in, even with all the rum in his belly.

  Wait, wait . . . Jack flailed around for a reason to hope. I got us free of the damned Guarda del Costa, did I not?

  But of course, he had not. That had been Corner’s plan. He had been ready to roll over and die. And if Corner or some other man of the crew did not think of something now, then they would all die, be it tonight under the sword, or in a month at the end of a rope. This was it.

  Someone bloody think of something!

  The two sloops, the Pretty Anne and this black and gray specter, continued their macabre drifting chase in the light winds behind Negril Point. Jack had no notion of how long it was, or what had happened, really, but it seemed to take an extraordinarily long time.

  The others were screaming and cursing at the approaching vessel, but all the sound seemed to blend together. And then a voice, not from the Pretty Anne but from the other, which was no more than one hundred yards off, called, “What sloop is that?”

  George Fetherston leapt up onto the rail, shouted back, “John Rackam, from Cuba!” And Jack thought he might puke. You stupid bastard, don’t give them my name! he wanted to shout, but he kept his mouth shut.

  Fetherston jumped down from the rail, grabbed up a swivel gun and a slow match, and pointed it toward the sloop.

  “Strike!” came the voice again. “Strike to the King of England’s colors!”

  “We’ll strike no strikes!” Fetherston roared, and touched off the swivel gun, blasting its load uselessly at their enemy.

  Then the voice called, “Fire!” and the dark exploded with the blast of five cannon and countless small arms, big and little flashes of fire, the roar and crack of great guns and small. The shot tore up the air around
them, screaming and buzzing and smashing into the hull and tearing up rigging.

  A cannonball struck the main boom square and shattered it. The heavy spar fell in two pieces to the deck and tore the mainsail from foot to head and ended for the Pretty Anne any hope of sailing out of danger.

  “Goddamn them! Goddamn them!” Jack cried, and this time he made no effort to keep the despair from his voice. The shell of Calico Jack was gone now, and he was only the little thing inside, and he cursed this sloop that had come up with them and he hated it for exposing him and for taking away what little he still had and for the fact that it would soon take even his life.

  “Goddamn them all!” he shouted, and threw his sword onto the deck and staggered aft. He would go below, he would sit and drink and wait for them to come. He had nothing left inside. It was over.

  Goddamn them all. He staggered below.

  Mary watched, incredulous, as Jack abandoned the deck. If he had fled below in terror, she might have understood, but he did not. He just left, as if his work there were done.

  She was about to make some comment on this when Fetherston shouted, “There now! Brother Jack has the idea! Damn them all, I am with him! Will we let these bastards stop our revels?”

  And with that Fetherston stumbled after Jack, and behind him, the other Pretty Annes and the turtlers made for the scuttle.

  “What are you about?” Mary screamed. This was not possible; they could not be leaving the deck at such a time. “They will be on us directly. Where do you think you are going?”

  “Ah, damn their eyes, Mary, dear!” Fetherston shouted. “Come below and drink with us!”

  “Get back here, you bastards! You blackhearted, cowardly sons of bitches!” Mary screamed, but she was yelling at their backs and one by one they made their way below and then once again it was just Mary and Anne and Jacob, and the sloop, fifty yards away, drifting down on them.

  “Goddamn them!” Anne shouted. She looked around, as if searching for the cause of this incredible behavior. Mary could see that she was frantic, desperate, confused. “What are they about?”

  From the sloop, an order was shouted, as clear as if it were given aboard the Pretty Anne. “Boarders, stand ready!”

  Mary felt panic, and rage at being thus abandoned. She raced back to the scuttle, threw the door open, and shouted below. “Get up on deck, you cowardly dogs! They are near upon us, get up here and fight like men!”

  She pulled a pistol from her belt, fired it down into the hold, but in the quiet as the gunshot faded she could hear nothing of her shipmates but some low talk and the thump of bottles and clattering of tin cups.

  Mary flung the pistol below. “Damn their black hearts!” She turned to Anne, who was staring wide-eyed at her.

  “They are gone. It is you and me, Annie, my dear. We are the only here who will fight like men.”

  “I’m with you,” Jacob said. He poured a measure of powder down the barrel of his pistol.

  “No, Jacob,” Mary said. “Go below.” But Jacob just shook his head and applied priming to the lock.

  “Damn you, there’s still a chance that you can prove you sailed against your will. Remember the Frenchmen, why you talked to them? But there’s no defense if you’re taken on deck, fighting. Go.”

  “I will not, damn you!” Jacob shouted, his face red, and not since the moment Calico Jack had first made him play for the crew had Mary seen him so angry. “We’ll all die this night, or within the week. Would you have me die a coward?”

  Mary pulled another pistol, pulled back the cock, pointed it at Jacob’s head. “You don’t have to die.” She could see the end of the muzzle shake, could feel the tears in her eyes. “Go!”

  “No. You would not shoot me.”

  “I bloody well will shoot you! I’ll blow your damned head off before I’ll see you hang! I’ll kill you this instant, damn your eyes, and then kill myself, before I let these dogs take us!” The tears were flooding now, running unchecked down her face.

  “Please, Jacob, I beg of you, do not make me do this thing.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Jacob said, “I will always love you, Goodwife Wells.” He backed away, and then turned and disappeared down the scuttle.

  And then it was only Mary and Anne, alone on the sloop’s deck, and the night was quiet save for the lap of the water and the ominous sound of many, many men gathering to board them, the click of flintlocks going to half cock, the clash of cutlasses banging on bulwark as the boarders prepared for their leap.

  Fifteen yards away and the women were looking right at this ghostly sight, bearing down on them. A strange quiet hung like mist around them. Side by side they stood, their shoulders pressing against one another.

  Mary reached out with her hand, found Annie’s and gave it a squeeze.

  Anne turned and they looked at one another, hand in hand, and Mary thought, Blood sisters, and she knew that Anne was thinking it as well.

  Barnet pulled his eyes from the anchored vessel long enough to check on the readiness of his own men. They were crowded at the rail, stomping like racehorses at the starting line, wielding pistols, cutlasses, swords, dirks, axes. They were grim-faced, but they were eager and ready, like him. There was glory to be had tonight, and possibly riches as well, and those things were powerful motivators.

  Barnet had been sailing in company with Captain Paul Bonevie, who had command of a small sloop. Bonevie had rounded Negril Point, had discovered two sloops at anchor, one of which had fired on him. Rackam. As soon as Bonevie had reported the incident, Barnett knew.

  He looked back at the sloop. Fifty yards away and they were closing fast, despite the mere puffs of breeze. Details of the enemy were coming visible now: the sweep of the rail, the few guns, the boom sagging in the middle and the sail spilling in an unholy bundle off the spar. He took a fresh grip on his sword. Thirty yards and he could see everything on deck, quite clearly now. It was just as he had imagined, save for the men.

  “Where the bloody hell are they?” A voice from the waist of his own vessel, as if the fellow were reading the text of Barnet’s own thoughts. Where were they? There were only two men on deck that he could see.

  “Watch for a trap, lads!” he called out. “Watch the scuttles and behind the bulwarks!”

  Barnet had a sudden flash of apprehension, a sensation approaching fear. Where were they all? What surprise did these rogues have in store? What were they about? For a wild instant he thought of hauling his wind, standing off, blasting them with cannon fire.

  Too late! Too late! Five yards, they could not turn now. Barnet stared at the two figures facing them, shoulder to shoulder. Young men and clean shaven, standing bold and ready.

  Had in their company two women, dressed as men . . . Barnet recalled what the governor had read to him and his mouth fell open because it was suddenly clear that these were the two facing him, the women. Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

  He opened his mouth to shout an order, an admonition to take them alive, to go easy, that these were women and were to be treated as such, and then the two vessels struck.

  Mary released Anne’s hand, jerked a pistol from her belt. The sloop, this enemy, hit their ship with an impact that jarred the Pretty Anne and made the women stagger.

  “Bastards!” Mary screamed, and she fired the gun into the mass of men as they broke over the rail and crashed down onto the deck. She flung the gun away, snatched up two more that hung from ribbons, and Anne did the same and they fired, four guns at once, and it did not slow the rush for an instant.

  They dropped the guns and pulled their swords, in perfect synchronization. Pistols went off, lead balls plucked at Mary’s clothes, she felt the burn of a grazing wound on her leg. Then, together, Mary Read and Anne Bonny charged.

  Headlong into the press of men, screaming like demons, sweeping great arcs with their blades, striking their tormenters down as they came, Anne and Mary plunged into the fight.

  It was the maddest thing that
Mary had ever seen, and she had seen some madness in her day. Faces loomed up around them, men shouting, weapons flashing, and she and Anne hacked away, slashing at whatever was before them.

  Mary could feel the warm, wet blood running under her clothes from a dozen wounds, but the wounds themselves did not hurt and she fought on. Already her throat ached with screaming.

  “Watch the scuttles! Watch for the others!” she heard someone shout, and in another circumstance she might have smiled. How could these men guess that she and Anne were all there was, all who were willing to stand the deck and fight?

  Arms enveloped her and she put her shoulder into the man’s chest and heaved him back, half turned. Anne was surrounded; hands reached up behind her, swords flashed like a school of fish.

  “Anne!”

  But before Anne could react, before Mary could move to protect her, an arm wrapped around her neck, choking her, hands grabbed on her arms, and suddenly she could not work her sword. More hands snatched at her, and then more, like devils grabbing her up and dragging her down into hell.

  She felt the weight of the men on her, hands holding her like she was bound with rope. She could not see Anne through the press of men who were falling on her. Fleeting images of faces and hands and shirts and feet, the smell of stale sweat and rum on breath.

  “Stand to the scuttles and hatches! Keep a look!” There was that voice again, still convinced this was a trap, still sure that it could not be only these two women standing in defense of their vessel.

  Down, down to the deck, Mary was pressed, first to her knees, then on her side, hands grabbing her everywhere, and she could not move. She had meant to die fighting, but now she realized that she might not.

  She cursed, kicked, and twisted, but she could not break free of the hands. She struggled until she had no strength left and then she just stopped and closed her eyes.

  “Down below! You lot, down the forward hatch. The rest follow me! Have a care!” Mary listened with eyes still closed as the boarders prepared to search the vessel for the others. She listened to the sound of the scuttle doors thrown open, of footsteps rushing below. She could hear shouts of surprise, roaring, drunken curses from her own shipmates, harsh orders, the sounds of submission. She heard not one gunshot or clash of steel, not one note of even token resistance.