Devil's Ballast

by Meg Caddy

  ‘Good, then,’ I said, not knowing how else to respond. I handed Johnny back; I tried to imagine Calico being so natural with the baby and couldn’t. As for myself…well. My hands were accustomed to firearms, not infants.

  ‘I can talk to a captain, ask him to take you on.’ Walter’s voice was quiet.

  ‘Really?’

  He nodded. ‘Jack was always a rogue, and he spent a good portion of our younger years getting me into the worst of trouble. But then, he was always there to get me out of it again, too. And between the two of you, you have given Rose and me a great gift.’ He smoothed a hand over Johnny’s head. ‘I know we can’t stop you. If you are Calico’s only hope for rescue, we want to help where we can.’

  I had known Walter was a decent man but a weight slipped from my shoulders. Not just a decent man; a good man. I stood and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘When do you want to leave?’ he said.

  ‘Before the week is out. I don’t—Calico doesn’t—have time for delay.’

  He nodded. ‘We’ll see it done.’

  That evening the Cunninghams gave me paper and ink. I sat down and did something I had not done in almost four years: I wrote a letter to my father. It was not an apology. We had both come too far for such things. But I told him he was a grandfather, and that I was bound for Nassau to stand by Calico. Perhaps becoming a mother had made me sentimental, but I felt I needed to tell him goodbye.

  I made my farewells to Johnny in the small of the morning. He was already awake, his eyes wide and his limbs waving as he stretched and grasped at the air. I crept into the room and took the boy into my arms, trying to memorise his face. I couldn’t see anything of me there, except for that red hair.

  ‘Stay safe,’ I whispered. ‘Be good.’

  My throat burned and the tears were shameful, pointless, absurd, so I set him back in his crib and retreated from the room. I pulled on my boots and a loose shirt, packed one spare set of clothes. I pulled my hair back from my face and slung the bag over one shoulder. The last time I had been to sea dressed as a woman, I had been bound for Nassau as well. Eloping with James Bonny. Leaving my father and his disapproval behind in Charles Town.

  The outcome would be different this time. I slipped out the door and closed it quietly behind me.

  The streets of Havana were grey in the early morning, before stripes of sunlight criss-crossed the buildings and docks. The city opened up to the harbour and the sea stretched out before me, waiting for me. The sea was a dull grey, already starting to brood though the air was still. I knew from the sky we would have rough weather before the day was out. The docks were coming alive, stevedores and sailors making their way towards their ships. Some vessels were already starting to pull slowly out of the harbour, labouring before the dead wind. The keening of gulls, the crash of the ocean, steadied me.

  I went down to a neat two-masted schooner that looked a nimble little thing. I was pleased; I was used to small, agile ships, and even if I couldn’t work this one it was nice to know I would be treading familiar decks. She would also be fast enough for a swift passage to Nassau.

  A small number of sailors stood at the jetty leading to her gangplank. I didn’t have any trouble identifying the captain. There was something about the way he stood, the way the other sailors stood around him. I made my way across to them, hand tight about the strap of my bag.

  ‘Captain O’Malley?’

  The captain was a burly man with a beard that seemed to grow in every possible direction. He couldn’t have been more than five years older than Calico and Walter but he looked like an old man to me. He waved his men away.

  ‘Well now,’ he said. ‘You’d be Missus Bonny then.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ I said. I’d left Ireland at thirteen but there was still a trace of Irish in my voice and I let it come out now, thinking he might be more likely to warm to a countrywoman.

  It didn’t seem so. ‘Cunningham told me you’d be along,’ he said curtly. ‘Bound for Nassau, are you?’

  ‘That I am.’

  ‘Without your husband?’

  ‘I go to join him there,’ I said. Walter was supposed to have handled this. Keep it simple, Bonny. ‘My husband had to return to Nassau for business.’

  ‘I’m not easy about you on my ship, unchaperoned. There’s no other women aboard. I told Cunningham that. There a man coming with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you’re not coming.’

  ‘I can pay.’

  He paused. I could see him wavering. I ground my teeth, frustrated and angry. I had sailed for months and I could shoot better than almost any man I knew. I had killed men. I wasn’t going to turn back now.

  ‘I can pay,’ I repeated, trying to keep my temper under control. ‘And…’

  ‘Annie!’

  I jumped as an arm came across my shoulders. I would have spun, shrugged the arm off, given someone a good punch to the face, but I realised halfway through turning that it was Read standing beside me. I froze.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ He extended a hand to the captain. ‘Martin Read.’

  The captain didn’t move. ‘And who’s that when he’s home?’

  ‘Missus Bonny’s cousin.’ He caught his breath. ‘I just came from the other side of Havana. We had thought I wouldn’t make it in time. I’m here to chaperone Anne to Nassau.’

  I stared at him. He sported a black eye and his shirt was rumpled. Something had stirred his usual calm and though he lied easily enough I could tell something was wrong. He was spooked, or hurt, or…I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Captain O’Malley looked at me.

  I leaned against Read, smiling at him to hide my surprise, my pure relief. ‘Just like you to be late, Cousin Martin.’

  ‘You both look like you’ve been brawling!’

  We waited.

  ‘Do you have passage enough for you both?’

  ‘We can manage,’ I said before Read could answer. I had just enough to get us both there. Nothing for any passage back.

  Read’s arm tightened on my shoulders as we waited for the captain to give us his reply. He hesitated but the crew was working around him and several of the men looked like they needed his attention. Finally he relented.

  ‘Fine,’ he snapped at last. ‘Go on aboard. But mind you stay out of the way when the crew is working, Missus Bonny. A ship is no place for a woman to be meddling.’

  Read and I walked up the gangplank arm in arm. I leaned in.

  ‘What changed your mind?’I asked. ‘You look terrible. What happened?’

  He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. ‘Didn’t you hear the captain?’ he said. ‘A ship is no place for a woman to be meddling. Someone clearly needs to keep an eye on you.’

  I opened my mouth to press him but I saw the expression on his face. There was a shadow there, a ghost of fear. I had never seen it in him before. And I didn’t ask what had driven Martin Read away from Havana, when only a week before he had been so determined to stay.

  24

  BARNET

  The storms grew in the south-east and pushed northwest, harrying the Albion further off-course. After the first few weeks of gruelling sail they glimpsed the coast of Florida. They were low on supplies by then, and the constant heave and turn of the ship affected even the hardened sailors, including Barnet himself. And while the open decks were battered with wind and rain, the conditions below decks were dire in a different fashion. Illness swept the ship, starting with the pirates and spreading to the crew.

  Barnet passed through the orlop deck and neared the brig. His stomach turned at the stench. The pirates were in a bad way. One of the younger men, James Dobbin, who had taken worse than the others, was huddled in a corner, shivering and occasionally bending over to retch. Noah Harwood, roughly the same age, sat with him, talking low. He stopped when Barnet neared and shook awake the tall slave they called Isaac. Soon all the pirates were awake. Some were too ill to pay Barnet much mind but the others
watched him warily.

  John Rackham’s bruises were an ugly yellow but his eyes were bright when he lifted his head. He struggled to his feet, stooping under the ceiling, and wrapped his fingers around the bars.

  ‘Barnet,’ he rasped. ‘I must say, I don’t think much of this voyage. We’ll be glad to reach Nassau, nooses be damned.’

  ‘You are flippant for a doomed man.’

  ‘You are sure of yourself for a lost man.’ Rackham bared his teeth in a smile. ‘A little off-course, aren’t we? I heard one of the men saying they sighted the Keys.’ He clicked his tongue.

  ‘Do not attempt to rile me, pirate,’ Barnet spat.

  ‘We need fresh water.’

  ‘You will have what I give you.’ He had planned to bring fresh water down for the pirates but he had no intention of letting Rackham think he was in a position to give orders. ‘And you will wait for it.’

  ‘How many men have you lost so far, Barnet?’

  The words stopped Barnet in his tracks. They prickled at him. There was a warmth in Rackham’s voice that he did not like.

  ‘Each crew has a breaking point,’ the pirate went on. ‘I sailed under Charles Vane for a while, you know. I was his quartermaster. And a more loyal crew you’d never see. That is—until he lost his nerve. As soon as he started abandoning ripe prizes, their loyalty snapped like a thin rope.’

  ‘Hold your tongue.’

  ‘How far do you think you can push your men? Have they seen conditions this bad before?’ Rackham smiled. ‘Perhaps by the end of this voyage we’ll have a whole ship full of pirates. Most men have a price. Maybe they’ll take the promise of riches and revenge on you. I am sure we can offer more hope than you can.’

  Barnet returned to the bars. He kept his voice low and steady.

  ‘If I suspect you are attempting to corrupt my crew, I will dispose of the rest of yours. I will leave only you alive, Rackham. And after you are finally dragged through the streets of Nassau, you will be tried alone and you will hang alone. Do not test me. I am a man of my word.’

  Rackham opened his mouth but the tall slave touched his shoulder. The younger pirate, Dobbin, retched again.

  ‘Captain.’ The bearded pirate quartermaster, Richard Corner, spoke from where he crouched by the old slave.

  Rackham glanced back at them. His jaw was locked. Hatred burned in his eyes but eventually he stepped back from the bars.

  ‘Watch your back, Barnet,’ he hissed. ‘There won’t always be bars between us.’

  The pirate was a prisoner. Beaten down, sick, crammed in with the tattered remains of his crew. Unarmed, half-starved, thrown around by the storm like die in a cup. Even so, his stare slipped past the wax seal Barnet had put on his nerves and for a moment the pirate hunter was uneasy.

  He turned on his heel and retreated to the upper decks.

  25

  BONNY

  Because I was paying enough, I had a cabin. It was one of the only three on the ship, the others belonging to the captain and the quartermaster. I found myself searching for traces of tobacco or brandy in the air. Instead, the smell of spices stored in the orlop drifted through the entire ship.

  Read and I alternated between resting on the bunk and the floor of the cabin with a few sacks and blankets for comfort. Read, never exactly verbose, was unusually subdued. By the end of the first day his silence was putting me on edge.

  ‘Tell me about the war,’ I said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Everything. How many men have you killed?’

  ‘Have you always been such a ghoul?’

  ‘Without a doubt. How many?’

  He shrugged, sitting back against the wall of the cabin. He bit into a strip of dried beef and thought for a while.

  ‘Hard to say,’ he mused eventually. ‘I cut down a lot of men, but I didn’t stop to check their vitals. Some may have survived. You don’t think about it so much, in the heat of it all. It’s different at sea. More contained. Out on the fields…’ His eyes drifted to some far-off place.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s a different world.’

  ‘I wish I could go to war.’

  ‘No. You don’t.’ He handed me some of the jerky. ‘If you must take up a sword, Bonny, stay at sea.’ We ate in silence for a while before he surprised me by pressing the conversation on. ‘What about you? I expect you’ve been counting.’

  ‘Three or four. Mostly among the crew of the Albion, to be honest.’

  ‘And before you came to sea? Any land-bound murders?’

  I hesitated, thinking beyond Nassau, back to Charles Town where I had spent much of my life. I had seen slaves walking with blood staining through their shirts. Had heard stories of monstrous cruelty from men who washed up and sat at dinner with us after church on Sunday. I glanced at Read. Cleared my throat. ‘I stabbed a maid when I was fourteen. One of the women who came over to Charles Town from Ireland with us. She insulted my mother.’

  Read stared at me. ‘Did the maid die?’

  ‘No. Knife went into her hand but it didn’t cut all the way through, and it was a clean wound.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘My father paid her for her silence.’ Read waited, listening. I found myself going on. ‘Two years after that, just before I met my husband, one of my father’s men tried to…he put his hands all over me.’ I could remember the way I shook, the rage igniting me like a linstock. But I had known greater pains and worse indignities since then. Now all I could feel was a dull pang of shame at the memory. I realised, vaguely, that I had never told this story before. Not even to Calico.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I took up a poker and beat him until he couldn’t stand.’

  ‘Good.’

  We traded grim smiles.

  ‘Tell me about your life at the inn,’ I said eventually. I nudged Read with my foot when he didn’t answer. ‘Come on. I’ve been entirely too frank with you, and you haven’t given me a single full answer.’ I grinned. ‘Did you have a sweetheart?’

  Read’s smile was gone. Finally he jerked his head in a nod. ‘I did.’

  There was something constrained and pained in his voice. I should have known to let things be, but: ‘What happened?’ I pressed.

  I saw the grief stoop his shoulders and tighten the lines of his face. He turned his eyes away and said nothing. I opened my mouth to break the silence, to apologise, to say anything to wipe that haunted look off his face. But eventually he spoke.

  ‘Measles,’ he said. ‘Got into the lungs.’

  A long, hard death. ‘I’m sorry.’ I wasn’t used to speaking the words but they had never come so readily from my lips.

  He lifted a shoulder. We sat in gentle quiet, listening to the waves on the hull and the dull sounds of sailors moving on the upper decks.

  ‘How did you meet Rackham?’ he asked at length.

  ‘Nassau.’ I scraped a hand through my hair. ‘He’d taken the King’s pardon and was planning to sign on with a merchant ship, him and the others. Then he met me. He tried to bribe my husband into giving me up but the governor intervened. I told Calico the only way we could be together was on his ship. I never expected him to even consider it.’ A smile found my lips, in spite of me. ‘But he didn’t hesitate.’

  ‘What are you going to do when we get to Nassau, Bonny?’

  He was sitting straight now and I knew he had been waiting for a chance to bring the conversation here.

  ‘I’m going to rescue Calico.’

  ‘I see.’ He didn’t sound convinced. ‘And what will you do if the worst has happened? What if he’s dead?’

  ‘I’ll burn Nassau to the ground. Starting with Jonathan Barnet.’

  I couldn’t spend too much time on the open decks. I didn’t want to push my luck with the captain. So for the most part I stayed in my cabin. It was better than travelling in the brig but confinement made me edgy. I paced the length of the cabin, wishing I could stop thinking about Calico
, wishing I could just go outside and shoot something.

  Read was a patient man but it only went so far. At the end of the third day he walked out of the cabin and spent a few hours on the deck, presumably just to get away from my restless energy.

  I flopped onto the bunk and worried at my hair. What if Calico was dead? The thought rattled around in my skull, echoing until my head pounded. He could be drowned. Beaten to death. Hanged. Hanged. Hanged and tarred and strung up.

  ‘Bonny.’

  I hadn’t even seen Read come back in. He threw a waterskin at me and it landed on my stomach.

  I sat up. ‘What?’

  ‘Get up.’ He rolled up his sleeves.

  Wariness flickered through me. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve seen you shoot, so I don’t imagine that needs much work. How are you without a gun?’

  ‘I get by.’

  ‘You’ve spent eight months carrying a child and another few months recovering. Done any fighting during that time?’

  ‘I shot someone in an alleyway, but that’s about it.’

  A fleeting smile shot across his face. ‘Come on, then. I think we could both do with a little practice.’

  My body was still soft from childbirth. I’d lost my milk during the fever but my breasts were still sore. All the same, I wanted to see Read fight. He was tall and broad-shouldered and I didn’t doubt that he knew how to use the muscle he had. This was a man who had seen war.

  ‘Not much room in here, is there?’

  ‘We’ll make do.’ He was relaxed and easy. There was a gleam in his eyes and once again I felt a thread of kinship. I bounced to my feet and rolled up my own sleeves.

  ‘I’ll do my best not to hurt you,’ I told him and he snorted. Then his smile was gone and he circled me. He moved with a prowling grace, comfortable in his skin.

  ‘Going to fight, Read, or just stand there?’