Mary thought about questions she could ask, but all of them felt wildly intimate. “So that’s where we are now. Do you know where we’re headed?” she asked, keeping her gaze fixed on the map. Say Nassau. Show me Nassau.
Anne’s fingers inched over to a tiny red blob off of a large red island’s southwest shore. “Isla de Cotorras. Isle of Parrots. We’re going to lay low there, until all the disagreement among the crew gets settled and we decide what to do next. It’s deserted, although the Spanish lay claim to it. That’s why it’s red. Cuba’s the island just beside it, also Spanish. As you can see, they own most everything.” Her fingers walked down the map to a small island in blue. “That’s Jamaica. The blue color means it’s a British crown colony—we’ll be passing that shortly, but giving it wide berth. And Curaçao is way down here, just off Terra Firma—that’s where we picked you up.” The island she poked at, one of three beside the swath of red on the left side of the map, was picked out in white—the Dutch color, Mary imagined.
“Where’s Nassau, then?”
Anne nudged her delightedly. “Oh, yes!” She pointed to a small blue dot among a cluster of them. “If I have me way we’ll be headed there next,” she added. “Don’t you worry. You’ll be reunited with your sweetheart soon.”
Mary stared. She was almost there, a fact that was exhilarating—and terrifying. “It’ll be thrilling to hide out on Isla for a bit,” Anne continued. Mary smelled the briny tang of her hair as she turned her head. “Rumor has it that Edward Teach buried some of his treasure there. Blackbeard’s treasure! Wish we had a map for that.” She nudged Mary with her hip, and Mary felt her cheeks color. “Might be worth doing a little searching anyway, while we’re there, eh? You up for a bit of treasure hunting?”
“I—ah—” There was something elastic about Anne’s skin, something round and smooth that seemed so young, up this close, for all her confidence and posturing. The barest hint of freckles dotted her cheeks. She can’t be much older than my seventeen years, Mary thought.
Anne tilted her head and turned to face Mary. They were almost the same height. The table’s edge dug into Mary’s buttocks as she leaned away. “There’s something about you that’s familiar,” Anne said, tapping her filthy fingernails on the table. Tap, tap, tap. Her breath was sweet, an echo of the fruity taste on Mary’s tongue.
Mary attempted a careless, masculine stance, but her pulse quickened. “Oh?”
Tap, tap, tap. “Hmmm. Not sure what it is …” Anne trailed off as she smiled. “But I’m quite sure I like it.”
Mary’s exhale sounded loud in the still cabin.
Louder still was the bang as the cabin door was thrust open. They both jumped and spun around. “What’s this?” Jack stood in the doorway, the beginnings of sunrise silhouetting him so that his face was dark in shadow.
“Oh, Jack!” Anne whirled around the table and flounced toward him. “Sure I was just showing the new lad the route we’re on.” She placed a coy hand on his arm. Jack didn’t take his eyes off Mary.
She began to sweat. “Morning, captain,” she said, dipping her head nervously.
“The boy that shot his captain for you,” Anne reminded him. “Mark, remember?”
“Mark.” Jack narrowed his eyes. “Ah, yes. I like the looks of you. You remind me of me, when I was joining the account.” He put his arm around Anne but kept his eyes on Mary. “Which makes me think I need to give you something to do, to keep you out of trouble.”
Mary didn’t like the way he said trouble. “Have you need of some mending?” she asked quickly. “Paddy was the sail maker on the Vissen, and I apprenticed under him. I noticed yours could use some work.”
“Perfect. I’ll lash you to the mainmast till you finish mending all our buggered sailcloth.”
“Now, Jack,” Anne giggled. “You ought to give this boy some gold and let him lie about, else Bill will get the votes he needs to maroon the two of us on some deserted island.”
“I had a good talk with Bill last night,” Jack said tightly. “He knows I’m only trying to do what’s best for the crew.”
“Oh, I know,” said Anne softly. “Sure, I was only joking. Besides, it wouldn’t be so bad to be marooned with me, would it?”
Jack’s demeanor cracked when he looked down at her. “That’s enough out of you,” he said severely, but he was smiling. “Mind you make yourself useful as well, or I’ll see you walk the plank.”
Anne placed her palms against Jack’s chest. Mary’s face grew warm as he pulled Anne in for a kiss, but she couldn’t look away. Anne’s dress crushed against Jack’s body as his grip tightened, heat flaring between them. Mary knew what it was like to want to kiss someone no matter who was watching. How nice it must be, to be able to just pull that person close.
She looked down at the map in front of her as Anne murmured against Jack’s lips. All that water, bits of land—so many places she could be in this new world. But for all of Anne’s geography lessons, Mary was still hopeless at figuring out where exactly she might fit in it.
CHAPTER SIX
WAPPING, LONDON—1717
BY THE DISTANT ROARING THAT WAS GROWING EVER CLOSER, MARY WAS sure the cart would be rolling past on its way to Tyburn from the Old Bailey at any moment. The crowd was hot and surly, and she was glad she hadn’t tried to get any closer to the gallows, opting instead to find a spot for her and Nat in the tight streets near the rookeries of Saint Giles. Several people had died in the crush at the last hanging.
The condemned would be completely drunk by now, promising a good show. She craned to see over the crowd and thought she could make out the city marshal on horseback, surrounded by a thicket of staves carried by those charged with beating back the crowd. Almost here!
She twisted around, trying to spot Nat, but the crowd was so thick that Mary doubted he’d make it back. He’d heard someone hawking the Old Bailey handbill and pushed his way after the sound, insisting he get one so Mary could read him all the wretched details of the condemned.
She was grateful to get away from Mum for the day, whether Nat kept her company or not. Granny’s gout had finally gotten bad enough that she’d asked Mary to come be her footboy, and Mum had been crowing about it for days. This is it, Mark! Next thing you know, she’ll be leaving everything to you! Then she’d look up from her bottle, as though remembering who her child really was, and her mood would start to darken. She’d begin to wonder why God left her with her bastard daughter, instead of the golden son who would have let her live such a life honestly.
If anyone finds you out we’re done for. We’ll both be sent straight to Newgate, to be hanged or transported.
You are impulsive, thoughtless. You don’t take enough care.
You’ll be found out, one way or another.
Mum was right. Mary was impulsive and thoughtless and—worse—a girl, not the boy she pretended to be. It was ridiculous to think she could live in a house full of servants and her shrewd grandmother and fool them all.
She took a deep gulp of air, trying to calm her breath, but her ribs were constricted by her new binding. Mum had bound Mary’s slight curves up tight with a strip of linen, and she eyed her suspiciously every time she saw her now, as if trying to discern any visible hint of their secret.
“Got it!” panted Nat, pushing through a narrow opening in the crowd next to her and brandishing a small pamphlet. “You owe me a ha’penny.”
“Do I, now?” she said, grinning. “It wasn’t my idea for you to go after it!”
“The chap selling it told me the gist,” Nat said, handing her the pamphlet and settling into the press just behind her. “Wait till you hear this! Sodomites, all of them. Apprehended near Saint James wearing women’s togs. Apparently they fooled crowds of fellows into thinking they was ladies, until one clever chap tipped off the Society!”
“Disgusting,” spat a woman next to Mary. “Did you hear that?” she asked the man next to her. “They’re hanging mollies today.”
M
ary’s stomach turned over as she trained her eyes on the pamphlet. She was jostled so much by the crowd she could hardly focus on the words. “‘A full and true account of the discovery and apprehending of a notorious gang of sodomites in Saint James,’” she read aloud slowly. “‘Taken in for wearing the dress and affecting the mannerisms of women.’ They’re being hanged for that?” She felt sick.
“That ain’t the worst of it,” Nat said over her shoulder. “A man dressed in women’s clothing—he’s fooling men for one reason only, as you might imagine. Keep reading, would you? I want to hear all of it.”
Mary flipped through the pages of cramped print, the words blurring before her eyes. Lurid details jumped out: COQUETTISH LAUGH, BRANDISHED FAN, LIFTED SKIRTS …
“Go on, what else does it say?”
A roar drowned Nat out as the throng surged around them so tightly, it lifted Mary off her feet. The city marshal was just passing now, the crowd tightening like a vise as people were beaten back off the street. There was no way out. Everyone was screaming, even people leaning out of the windows above.
“Hanging’s too good for sinners like you!”
“The likes of you condemn us all to Hell—”
“Disgusting, evil, immoral—”
Though Mum fretted about what would happen if anyone found out, she always insisted that Mary dressing as her brother had God’s blessing. But it sounded like He’d send Mary to Hell for it, from what these people were screaming.
“Would you look at that cheek!” Nat’s voice was right in her ear, his chest pressed against her back. “Some of them wore dresses to be hanged in!”
Not all the men who rode the coffins stacked on the cart wore dresses, but many of them did, their faces painted too, red lips blowing kisses as they hung off the cart drunkenly. Others were catatonic, their lips moving slightly, eyelids occasionally flickering. All of them were skin and bones from their time at Newgate. People flung rotting vegetables, mud, a dead cat. One of the condemned took a flask someone in the crush of bodies held up and drank from it. “Thank you, lovey!” he sang. “I’ll pay for it on me way back!” The crowd laughed uproariously at the joke, but the insults kept coming. The man flinched as an apple struck his cheek and left behind a streak of rotten pulp, but then he was back to winking and waving, ducking the thrown filth, swaying with every jolt of the cart.
Mary couldn’t breathe; she had to get away, she had to—she fumbled against the crowd, trying to find a way to escape. She pushed in all directions, a frantic sob escaping her—
“Here now, it’s all right,” Nat said in her ear. She’d turned herself around and her face was mashed into his shoulder, her newly bound chest pressed against his. She struggled to push away but it was no use, the crowd was too tight—she let her body sag against him, her tears soaking into his shirt. If he didn’t figure out her secret right this instant, he’d at the very least never let her hear the end of how she cried over a bunch of mollies. “It’s all right,” he said again, his hands coming up to her shoulders. “I know. Sometimes it hits you, how wrong it is. But there’s nothing you can do.”
Mary took a few gulping breaths of air.
“They’re completely soused,” he soothed. “They won’t feel a thing. They’re blacked out drunk already.”
“I didn’t know you could be hanged for wearing the wrong clothes,” Mary murmured.
“I don’t think it’s right either,” Nat said quietly. “You’d think a stint in the pillory would be punishment enough. It’s not like they killed anyone.”
Mary breathed in the smell of him, slowly becoming aware of the breadth of his shoulders, how he’d filled out in the past few months, all of a sudden standing half a head taller than her. The feeling of his hands resting on her shoulders. The curl of his hair that tickled her cheek. They were both sweaty from the crush of the crowd. It was useless to try to move away, so she didn’t, and he didn’t move either, until the cart had passed, trailing men with javelins who threatened those who came too close.
The cart turned a corner up ahead, and the pressure around them abruptly softened.
She didn’t want to let go.
“All right, there’s enough of that,” said Nat, a teasing note in his voice as he squeezed her shoulder. “Else they think we’re sodomites, and throw us up on that cart along with the others.”
She looked up sharply as she pulled back—but when her eyes met his he smiled. His face was so close. That freckle on his lip, like a smudge of dirt she always wanted to wipe off—she felt as though she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out and pressing a finger to it.
She stepped back suddenly, her heart pounding.
He dropped his gaze. “Seems like we’re both losing our taste for this sort of sport,” he said, taking the crumpled pamphlet from her fist and tossing it in the mud. “Come on, let’s find something better to get into.”
She watched him push through the crowd and disappear. She didn’t want to move from where he’d held her. She could still feel the echo of his chest against hers.
Impulsive, thoughtless. You don’t take enough care.
If anyone finds you out …
Nat reappeared, straining over the crowd to look for her. She shivered, then ducked and pushed toward him before he could see how long she’d lingered, staring after him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CARIBBEAN SEA—1719
MARY GAZED DOWN, FROM A SWAYING PERCH ATOP THE FOREMAST, AT the mottled pirate crew below her, all readying the ship to drop anchor without a single order from the captain. Votes, Anne had said. Everyone on the crew had one, even Mary. After sailing from Rotterdam on a merchant vessel it sounded too good to be true.
Why have a captain at all, if that was the case?
There was Jack, with his flashy britches and genteel air, near the helm with Anne draped across him. It was hard to believe the pirates had mutinied against their last captain to follow him. What lay beneath his sleek surface that would command respect from such a band of rogues? Mary had been observing the crew all day as she climbed the masts and inspected the damage done to the sails in the battle, but from up here everyone looked perfectly amiable. No conspiratorial meetings, no dirty looks. What had Anne meant by “disagreements among the crew,” and her joke about marooning?
A thin strip of beach holding back a riot of jungle materialized against the dusky natural harbor the Ranger was maneuvering into. A cluster of sailcloth tents and awnings dotted the sand, along with a couple of overturned canoes and the burned remains of fire pits. A plundered brig and a couple of piraguas stood in the harbor.
Mary gave the gaskets one last pat and monkeyed down the shrouds. The brisk wind felt wonderful on her skin. After being separated from Nat, it had been much easier to appreciate what her disguise allowed. Even Anne, despite her unusual liberty, would never have been able to climb up the rigging in all those skirts. She would never feel the breeze up here.
The Ranger rolled forward and turned toward the wind, slowing considerably. Mary alit on the deck just as Anne sprang up from the hold, almost bowling her over. The shiny new ruffles of a baby blue petticoat were conspicuous beneath Anne’s soiled skirts. “You! Take these—” She shoved a few wine bottles into Mary’s hands, then plunged back down below deck. A passing pirate swiped one and began to work the stopper out with his teeth.
The crew, some of them already soused by the looks of it, ran about like madmen collecting wine, sails, rope, machetes, and knives. Jolly boats swung over the sides of the Ranger. Mary followed Paddy onto the closest one, noticing that his arms were full of wine bottles as well.
The little boat lurched as it lowered to the water, rocking with the weight of men jammed in on every side. Mary hauled an oar with Paddy, making sure to brush him only with bony elbows and knees. She could see the sea floor clear through the surf, though it must have been forty feet below. Rocks shaped like the heads and fingers of drowning giants reached up, swarmed by fish and seaweed. She put he
r hand to the water. The sea was cool and smooth, softer than silk stockings. Petticoats and lace hats floated like pale, beribboned jellyfish in their wake.
When she looked up her eyes met those of the dark-skinned man with locks in his hair who had manned the helm as they’d dropped anchor. “So you’re the new boy,” he said. He had a gritty, steady voice.
“Mark,” she said. “And this is the new old man, Paddy.” Paddy chuckled and gave her an elbow to the ribs as the man nodded.
“Bill,” the man said, introducing himself. “I’m the quarter-master.”
A commotion erupted in the boat ahead, men shouting as the vessel rocked crazily. Jack stood with Anne shrieking in his arms and chucked her into the shallows. She flailed around and came up howling. He hopped out after her into waist-high water and pulled her to her feet, shouting, “I told you I’d make you walk the plank if you didn’t mind yourself!” She kissed him on the mouth, water streaming from her hair. Mary cracked a smile as the others laughed or ignored their captain’s antics. She glanced back at Bill, still grinning. He had an unreadable expression on his face as he watched Jack and Anne kiss.
Mary’s boat ground onto sand and she pitched out into sea-foam warm as bathwater. She resurfaced whooping, blowing water out her nose as men sloshed the boats to shore. The waves were mild, bare ripples that swelled before breaking softly on the sand, but Mary’s sea legs were unbalanced by them. She sank to her knees, and little silvery fish swirled around and nipped at her legs. She had made it to land at last! Putting her head under, she scrubbed hard at her scalp and shouted into the water, gibberish bubbling up around her face.
She flipped her head up to suck in air just in time to hear Jack ask about the wine. “It’s here!” Mary called, and turned to pull the bottles out of the boat. When she turned back the captain was beside her, his dark curls haloing his face. Mary’s stomach tightened, and she tugged her shirt away from the contours of her skin with one hand as she handed him a couple of bottles with the other. The others had left her alone with the boat and the wine, already dragging driftwood into a pile next to a fire pit on shore, chatting and laughing as kindling ignited.
The Unbinding of Mary Reade Page 3