Lowcountry Mysteries (Boxed Set #1)

by Lyla Payne

  That’s how I discovered right away that one of our new men was not a man at all, and I’ll tell you that the discovery of another woman who desired the same life as I seemed to me an impossible gift from the heavens. A treasure bigger than any we’d ever stolen from a passing merchant or from one crown or another. Mary Read and I became fast friends, and the months we marauded together were the happiest of my life.

  It all came to an end, strangely, the night Jack learned I carried his child. The pregnancy had grown thick around my middle, and unable to hide it any longer, the news had to be shared. He’d been elated, full of happiness that burst from him in unexpected smiles and affection. He’d ordered a celebration, and the entire crew had gotten slobbering, deck-hugging drunk. It was the reason the lookout never saw the ship until it was upon us—not that our ragtag crew could have succeeded against the British Navy were we sober as the day we were born.

  The trials were short, the lot of us sentenced to hang. I advised the judge of my pregnancy and was the only person in the courtroom not shocked when Mary advised the judge of her like condition. English common law demanded we be spared long enough to whelp our babes. All I could do was hope he would have my strength and Jack’s strength, and make a life for himself even without our hands to guide him.

  Some might say he would have been better off, even, away from the influence of the likes of us.

  They let me say good-bye to Jack Rackham, and my lack of grace in that moment will haunt me until the last breath of my life. I was angry—at him, at how things had turned out, that none of the days and years we’d planned together would come to fruition. We both knew not leaving a sober lookout was a mistake. I shouldn’t have pointed it out again.

  Instead of letting my anger have its head that day, I should have hugged him and told him I loved him, made sure his final memory of me was good and right. But I guess that’s just not the kind of woman I am. My last words to my love were that if he’d fought like a man perhaps he would not have hanged like a dog.

  Terrible thing to say, but Jack only smiled and squeezed my hands through the bars before they dragged him away.

  I never saw him again, but I know one thing—no one knew me better than that man. He knew how much I loved him. It’s a small comfort but one I have clung to with desperation more nights than not.

  Mary and I rotted in adjoining cells. Her pregnancy was further along than mine, and even during all of those endless days with no other company, she never named the father. Perhaps she herself didn’t know.

  One day she told me she had a fever. The next, no answer came to any of my questions. I screamed for days, until my voice went away and came back and went away again, before anyone came to check on us. By that time Mary had gone into early labor, and that night delivered a small but healthy baby girl. The stress of the delivery and the illness killed my friend, though, and the day left me totally and utterly alone. They even took the baby, even though I begged to keep her with me.

  I lost track of days and months, and the shock when my father’s clerk showed up to bail me out almost sent me into early labor as well. I didn’t want my father’s help and would have turned it down, accepted my fate, but for the child almost grown inside of me. If I could give him a chance, protect him a little longer, it was worth sacrificing my pride yet again. In the end, I only asked for one thing in return for leaving the prison under the cover of night—that Mary’s baby came back to Charleston with me.

  It took some negotiating, I was told, but the British government had no use for a suckling babe that would just as like grow into the same sort of heathen as her mother. In order to secure this favor, and my release, my father paid a handsome sum to the governor of Jamaica, and I signed a document swearing that upon my return to the mainland I would change my name and never speak of my previous life. My father’s additional demand was that Mary’s babe be sent away. He located a cousin willing to take and raise the child. I would rather have kept her, of course, but knew that my father’s charity was likely near breaking.

  I still have no idea why he saved my life at all.

  He arranged my marriage to a wealthy local man with a strong family history. Joseph Burleigh, from a less affluent and less respected line of that great family, is nothing but an abusive piece of scat who has no regard for the beings in this world weaker than him. I am not weaker than he but have allowed him to take his rages out on me rather than my son.

  Jack, so named after his father, of course, is Joseph’s son, as far as anyone suspects. My husband—though I shudder to use the word—had spent time abroad, and the community believes we met and married during his time in London. My boy looks so much like his true father, though, and nothing like the British ass who shares my home. If only Jack favored my Irish roots a little, if he could pass as a boy from the British Isles, or if I’d been able to bear Joseph a strong son of his own, it might not have come to this:

  Joseph Burleigh has always despised my son, both for his parentage and his fiery temperament. The latter has been a trial for me, as well, but a secret joy as well, as the fruit of my love with Calico Jack Rackham could not have created anything less. He’s almost thirteen now, and loves me so well it hurts my heart to look into his eyes at times. In public, the boy has never claimed to be anything but the son of Joseph and Anne Burleigh, but in private he and I share tales of his true father, of all of our exploits and love, and how living life on our own terms was all we ever wanted. A boy deserves to know where he came from, especially when that place is much nobler than the one he’s been living inside the whole of his life, despite what the rest of the “respectable” world has to say about it.

  Last night, Joseph came to me and said he’s arranged for Jack to leave our house. He blames it on a false concern for our other children, our little girls, asserting that Jack can be no less a murdering psychopath than his father and namesake. The real reason is that he’s ill, and the thought of turning over his holdings and estate to a bastard eats him alive. He’s arranged it with the local officials, even showed me a signed death certificate for James (Jack) Burleigh, but he’s leaving it up to me where to send my son, with the stipulation that it must not be nearby.

  I have thought of taking him away myself, of course, but Joseph has threatened to hunt down and kill us both if I try it. There is the matter of my girls, to consider as well, though I must say I’ve never loved them as well as Jack’s son. I’ve been thinking how to do right by my love this one last time, by this child who has made all the trials of my life worth suffering.

  I’ve decided to write to Mary’s cousin, the one who took in the baby girl when I returned to the mainland. I know she lives in Virginia and am sending Jack to her with new identification naming him Jack Cormac, along with what money I’ve been able to siphon here and there from Joseph’s accounts.

  He’s a strong boy and will be a man grown before long. I have to believe that he will be okay, that this woman who took in one pirate child will find room in her heart and home for another.

  I have written all of this to convince you that I am the real Anne Bonny and that I did not die on Port Royal Island as some continue to claim. The rumor exists, too, that I disappeared from my cell, but as time passes and people forget what amounts to little more than idle local gossip, I suspect neither will be remembered as true, or false, or of enough consequence to be remembered at all.

  This has all been the tale that has taken me here, to a life that is not better than any before Jack, and one that, save my son, is no better than the death I earned aboard the Revenge.

  This next part is important. It’s the reason I wrote down my story. My confession.

  Whoever you are, if you’ve been nodding off or losing interest, this is where I beg for your attention.

  There is a woman who works in our kitchen—Zolarra. She’s of Caribbean descent, most likely Jamaican, though she pretends to not understand me when I question her directly. Her skin is as black as night and matches her e
yes, as well as the braids that dangle halfway down her back. Inked paintings, markings, decorate most of her skin that’s exposed on a daily basis; none of the language or marks are familiar to me. She is a fearsome creature, not due to her African heritage, or the fact that she’s been sleeping with my husband for years, but because her heart is blacker than the rest of her put together.

  The facts I know about her have been dragged from the rest of the staff in tiny crumbs and morsels, dropped in my waiting palms and brushed against my eager ears in whispers, eyes always darting around and white with terror. They believe she’s a priestess of one of the island religions that’s forbidden and feared. There are others, more transplants in the lowcountry, and all live in secret, practicing under the cover of the darkness that serves them.

  I encountered the strange, frightening religions during my time in the Caribbean. I witnessed things that cannot be explained by any natural law or spiritual truth. Their beliefs are ancient, brought from the heart of their home continent, and they protect their secrets with a ferocity that shrouds their practices in mystery, which only amplifies the fear of the uninitiated. In the islands they call it voodoo, a conglomeration of hexes and curses, dark and light, and even speak of returning the spirits of the dead to life. I have no way of knowing if this religion is still active, or if it has disappeared from the pages of history, but I can tell you this true—I never feared anything in my life the way I feared this woman and her ways.

  And she’s put a curse on my Jack.

  I heard bits and pieces of a conversation shared between the woman and Joseph as they were abed together, and one thing I heard clear enough—she said, “The descendants of Calico Jack Rackham will never flourish, never outnumber those from your own loins. I have asked, and the spirits have agreed.”

  I’m burying this diary as soon as the ink dries on the page, but in the weeks between now and when Jack is forced from my arms, I vow to discover the contents of this curse and detail it in a second journal, which I’ll send with my son to his new home. If you’re reading this, and you’re able, please deliver these words to my descendants. I have a feeling that whatever this woman has arranged for the years to come, it will affect every Cormac and Rackham that lives.

  I hope I’m wrong, I truly do. I hope my son finds health and happiness in the hills of Virginia, that he marries a nice girl and she bears him sons and daughters, so many they fill up his home and bring him joy, then turn around and do the same, in time. If that’s what he desires.

  I can’t explain it, but my gut says this is not to be. That this woman, because of the hatred Joseph bears my son and me, has ruined any chance my children have to be bountiful and happy. It kills me that there isn’t any more I can do, but I swear I will not rest until I unearth the truth of this thing and find a way to set it right.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Ms. Harper?”

  The voice sounds far away by two hundred or so years, but eventually my brain remembers that’s where I belong, too. I blink a few times, then look up to find Dr. Fields—the good-looking one—eyeing me with the same kind of worry Mrs. Walters displays. The kind that suggests they’d be only too happy to make me an appointment with the best shrink they can find on short notice.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re certainly into whatever you’re reading there. What is it?”

  I cover the diary with the tissue, feeling protective of Anne’s hopes and devastations and fears. “Nothing, just a journal.”

  “I have the results of your X-rays, and as we suspected, your ankle isn’t broken. You’ve stretched and bruised a few ligaments, but it should be back to normal in a week or so. You should stay off it as much as possible, and I’ll have a nurse wrap it for you.” He rips a piece of paper off the top of his pad, scribbled with a prescription for painkillers. “Have you had a chance to talk to your grandfather about how he’d like to proceed?”

  I shake my head, sneaking a guilt-laced glance toward the other bed. Gramps still sleeps, but has he been out this entire time? I’ve been reading for the better part of an hour.

  “No, he’s been asleep. My aunt will be here in the morning, I think. We’ll discuss it with him then.”

  “Martin’s daughter?” His look of relief bubbles irritation in my blood.

  “Yes, why?”

  “No reason,” he covers smoothly. “It’s just good to involve as much family as possible during these times. The support is invaluable.”

  I barely stop myself from snorting. If he knew my Aunt Karen, he wouldn’t utter her name and the word support within six paragraphs of each other.

  “I’ll check in around lunchtime tomorrow to see what you’ve decided,” he finishes lamely when I don’t respond to his comment about the comforts of family.

  The nice aspects of small towns such as Heron Creek are always the same things that grate on my nerves during times like these. Everyone thinks they know you, considers themselves friends, and therefore feel not only free, but obligated, to proffer unwanted advice. Apparently that extends to doctors I’ve never met, but I’m willing to admit my prejudice against physicians in general might be coloring my opinion.

  In the last twenty-four hours I’ve gotten lost, found out my grandfather is dying, and read a two-hundred-year-old journal that left me feeling heavy inside, as though pregnant with sorrow that has no intention of leaving in nine months, or at all.

  It’s more than possible I’m not being fair to the handsome Dr. Fields.

  “Thank you,” I manage, mostly just to get him the hell out of the room.

  He leaves, and I give myself a badly needed mental pep talk. I’ve been slacking on those of late, since there hasn’t been much about my life or my future to paint in a positive light, but today definitely calls for some pump. And my own personal problems don’t seem like much to write home about after learning of Anne’s. And hers are two centuries old.

  Her story intrigues me, for sure, but I’m not sure where it’s going or why she needed so badly for me to find it. I’m convinced the woman who penned this journal is who she claims, and the true story of her life and what happened to her when she disappeared from the jail in Port Royal is invaluable, historically. It needs to be authenticated, cleaned, preserved, and filed with the rest of the things I stole from the archives.

  Thinking of Mrs. LaBadie’s hands on it makes me want to fling what’s left of Gramps’s dinner. I’m not sure why, or if it’s residual from Anne’s healthy paranoia, but I’m not at all convinced the mean old bag would take very good care of it. Whoever I turn it over to isn’t going to buy the story that I found it because her ghost led me to the spot. I’m going to have to make up some tale about stumbling upon it in the dark, which isn’t technically a lie. Either way, it can be authenticated.

  What I really want to know is why Anne led me to it. Why does she think I’ll be any more willing to believe her, to track down the other half of the diary, to care about her and Calico Jack’s descendants than anyone else?

  It could be my background in history, but there are plenty of people in town obsessed with local lore—and more that would be faster to believe in her ghost, too. Mrs. LaBadie, even, seems like a more logical choice, with her access to the archives and all the time she spends in the library.

  The image of the kitchen woman she described pops to mind and makes me think perhaps Anne’s a little skittish around African-American women who, for all intents and purposes, do kind of resemble voodoo priestesses. In fact, I’m not going to be able to face her now without thinking the same thing.

  My sympathy—and empathy—for a confessed murderer and pirate surprises me. It could be that I identify a little too much with a girl who never desired a life of convention, a girl who felt stuffed into too-tight dresses and pinching shoes, nothing ever fitting right. Anne wanted adventure, a different kind of life, and in the early seventeen hundreds there wouldn’t have been many options available to her. It’s kind of amazing, actually, that
she had the guts and the knowledge to turn pirate at all.

  I wonder when I stopped dreaming of a bigger life. It had been my reason for leaving Will behind, the idea that I wouldn’t be free to search for something special, to trip and fall without bringing someone else down with me. In the end, I’d stumbled straight into shackles forged by my sophomore year ancient history professor. It had seemed exciting to me, at first, but from the moment he proposed and I said yes, the relationship started to chafe.

  Now, with perspective, I wonder if I would have walked meekly down that aisle, knowing in my heart it wasn’t right. Or if I, like Anne, would have had the courage to hunt until I discovered the life, the person, that would let me be the most myself.

  I must have dozed off with those scintillating, self-absorbed thoughts running through my head, because when I wake up my ankle is wrapped and the room is dark, save the very first pale sheen of morning peering through the gaps in the cheap hospital curtains.

  And I smell her.

  She doesn’t startle me, even though she’s sitting in the chair between my bed and Gramps’s like she’s just another concerned family member who couldn’t stand the idea of going home for the night. I breathe through my mouth, wondering if Gramps’s nose is as deaf as his ears, because that’s the only explanation for not waking up to the stench.

  Anne’s ghostly green eyes travel in a deliberate arc from my face to the journal where it rests on the stand next to my bed. I’m still sore at her for abandoning me in the woods, though, and for some reason reading the diary makes me less scared of her.

  She needs me. Or someone, but she seems to think it’s me in particular.

  “Nice of you to show up.”

  I know she can’t respond, but she doesn’t even react. The sweep of her eyes doesn’t change. It’s exhausting, but the gal has a one-track mind. It makes me scowl, but that doesn’t earn a reaction, either. “I read it. I still don’t understand what you want me to do with it, and I’m guessing you don’t know what happened to the other half or where I can find Mary Read’s mythical descendants.”