“I don’t think me binding will do you much good. You’re too, ah—womanly.”
The corner of Anne’s mouth crooked up. “You can keep your shirt on ’neath the dress. I’ll use me shimmy as me shirt, so I just need the britches and the binding if you please.”
A mess of green parrots swarmed above them, screeching and shaking the palm fronds until the whole canopy danced. Anne had told her that cotorras meant parrots, and that the whole island was swarming with them. Mary looked up. The birds twisted their heads around and fixed their little black eyes on her, calling and preening, taking off and landing here and there.
Mary climbed onto the bank, untucked her shirt, and reached beneath it for the knot. After Anne had untied it the night before last, Mary had cinched it extra tight, and she couldn’t find a way into it again.
Anne laughed. “Maybe you’d do better if you took your shirt off so you could see?”
Mary turned away, blushing furiously, and lifted her shirt, tucking the hem beneath her chin. She finally managed to loosen the knot. Once the binding was gone she dropped the hem of her shirt, made sure it fell straight to her knees, and then eased out of her britches.
Suddenly the red dress was in her hands, and Anne was giggling as she wrapped the binding around herself. Mary pulled the dress over her head gracelessly, floundered her arms into the holes, and did the buttons up with shaking hands.
When she turned, Anne was swaggering along the riverbank in Mary’s britches. “Oooh, just look at me!” she squealed. “Don’t I look like a proper cove now!”
Mary watched her, annoyance rising in her chest as she buttoned up Anne’s red dress. “You look as much like a boy as I do a girl.”
“What’s that, my dove?” Anne swaggered over, her version of a manly stride just serving to enunciate the sway of her hips. Likewise, it seemed even a dress couldn’t make Mary look like a girl. The sleeves cut into her armpits, the soft velvet contrasted with her cracked, broad hands, and the neckline drooped away from her negligent bosom. She remembered the men she’d seen dressed up in women’s clothes, and she knew just how she appeared.
“I look like a molly.” She swallowed a wave of nausea that rose up at the memory of the cart going by—and then of Nat’s arms around her. Somehow she’d thought becoming someone he might desire would be as easy as putting on a dress, but this didn’t feel right at all.
Anne wiggled up close. The britches clung to her thighs, and the binding slimmed down her bosom. She looked leaner, certainly, without her skirts billowing around her—some new sort of virility hung about her. She looked as if she could scale a mast or helm a ship much more easily than she could have before.
Anne cocked her head. “Here now, let’s see what we can do.” She pulled Mary’s hair out of its pigtail and down around her face. Anne took a look, then shook her head and braided it over one shoulder. “There now. Tilt your chin down.”
Mary obliged, and Anne studied her again as Mary snuck a peek through her lashes—girlishly, perhaps—but that felt wrong, more an act than wearing a dress. She wasn’t the kind of person that looked at anyone like that. Perhaps she’d spent so much time being a boy that it was impossible for her to be anything else.
“Aye,” Anne said finally. “Britches is the better look for you.” Anne bit her lip in an arresting manner, like Nat used to do with that freckle of his. “Too bad I’ve taken yours.”
She shrieked as Mary lunged for her. Mary stopped, changing tactics, fumbled the buttons open, and pulled the dress over her head, throwing it with great show in the river. Anne stopped with a gasp and ran toward it, and Mary dove at her. She wrestled Anne down, yanking the britches from her waist as Anne shrieked and hung on to them—
Mary realized she was only wearing a shirt, and though it came to her knees she still felt awfully exposed. She froze and for a moment they were nose to nose in the dappled sunlight, parrots screeching as they stared breathlessly at each other with wide eyes. Mary’s gaze dropped to the full curve of Anne’s bottom lip—
Mary let go and jumped to her feet. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared, breathing hard. “Give them back,” she said gruffly.
“Well aren’t you cross all of a sudden!” Anne rolled her eyes as she wiggled out of the britches and unwound the binding from her chest. She jumped in the river to fish her skirts from the water.
Mary set her appearance right again with trembling fingers.
Anne had been staring at her for a while now, abandoning all pre-tense of hunting for mussels.
“What are you doing?” Mary hissed, dropping a mussel into the makeshift shoulder bag she’d sewn from sailcloth. “You’re making everyone uncomfortable. Especially me.” The tide was out and they stood in the swash, looking for shellfish among the exposed rocks. Others were building a fire to cook over, fishing, or hunting for mussels. Everyone was on edge, but they had settled into a resentful routine, still hunting and fishing and hauling water, still keeping watch from the crow’s nest on the Kingston. Waiting for Bill and Jack to return.
Anne cocked her head. “I’m watching the way you walk. I’ve realized I’m never going to pull it off just by putting on a pair of britches—there’s a whole act you’ve got going on.”
Anne didn’t realize that it wasn’t an act. “How do I walk?” Mary asked.
“It’s the way you carry yourself. No extra flourishes. A sureness. Something like that.” Anne lowered her voice. “It’s rather thrilling, when it’s a girl pulling it off.”
That made Mary painfully aware of her own strangeness—but she had never considered that someone might like the looks of her act. “Let’s see you try it, then, and I’ll tell you if I find it as thrilling as you do.”
Anne handed her sack of mussels to Mary and smoothed her skirts. “Well. It’ll be hard without the britches.” Then she took a deep breath, closed her eyes—her lips twisted up very seriously—and she walked across the sand like a mummer acting the constable, all stiff-limbed and waddling.
Mary’s hoot of laughter caught the attention of the men. They were all looking, or trying not to look.
“Don’t feel bad,” Mary said, when Anne mock-scowled at her. “It’s not as if your life depends on it.”
“It will if I ever need to make it on me own,” Anne said determinedly. “Jack’s proved that he can leave me to fend for meself more than once, so I’ll not trust him to protect me once we get back to Nassau, whether we storm the fort or go back with our tails between our legs.”
Mary frowned. “If it’s any comfort,” she said, changing the subject, “it’d be just as ludicrous if I tried to walk like you.”
Anne crossed her arms, but there was a glint of daring in her eyes. “Let’s see it then.”
Imitating a girl in front of the whole crew seemed like an awful risk. But after their clothing experiment a few days before, Mary expected she was so thoroughly boy that she could try it and no one would be the wiser.
She passed the mussels to Anne, copying her skirt smoothing and deep breath in preparation—the other pirates watched askance—and then Mary sashayed down the beach, hips swinging wide as she tossed her head back. She must have done a good imitation, for the pirates watching her began to guffaw and cracked a joke or two at Anne’s expense.
Mary’s heart sank. She didn’t have to worry that acting like a girl would give her away. Her disguise was so complete, playing a boy was no act for her—it was who she was.
She didn’t know whether to feel proud, or to despair.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ISLA DE COTORRAS—1719
“I’M GLAD WE BUTCHERED THE LAST OF THE SHEEP, EVEN IF JACK AND BILL should be back soon,” Cager said as the men that had been seated around the fire stood. “It’s lovely when there’s more than enough to go around!”
The other men laughed and nodded, but they looked pensive as they rose to make water and find another bottle. Mary glanced up as she hacked a second helping of meat from the r
ibs of a sheep carcass, trying to gauge Anne’s reaction to the mention of Jack’s return.
“It’s odd,” said Anne, looking sideways at Mary as she licked the grease from her fingers. “I’m almost sad Jack is coming back. I thought I’d be so lonely and scared while he was gone, like I always am—but it’s been fine. I haven’t been lonely at all.”
Mary managed to tug a meaty rib from the spit and sat back down. “I know what you mean,” said Mary, with a flash of nerves. “It’s been—nice. I’ve never been able to be free with someone before.”
“So you’ve never been honest, even with a boy?” asked Anne, raising her brows. Light from the fire flicked across her face, lips glistening.
“No.” Mary spat a bit of gristle into the fire.
“Have you ever wanted to?”
Mary thought of Nat, tapping that spoon against her lip on a dusk-darkened pallet. “Aye.”
“Oh,” Anne sighed. “How terribly star-crossed. I can just imagine it!”
All the little bits of Nat she’d memorized—Mary had never talked about them with anyone. She tried to picture him, all of him, but found she had trouble recalling his hands, his eyes, his shoulders, his smell. He was starting to grow dim in her mind, even his freckled lip not as real to her anymore as the one Anne rubbed a stained sleeve against to wipe off a smear of grease. “I was speaking the truth that first morning we met,” she said. “Chasing him is what brought me here to the islands.” She needed to remember all his sweet details, the passion that had driven her across the ocean. She needed the last time she’d seen him to not be the end of their story.
“Well. When we return to Nassau, guns blazing, we’ll be sure to demand your sweetheart is delivered straight to you.”
Anne was still going on about rebellion and seeing the governor swing. The fire snapped and flared, and Mary remembered Bill’s mussel-burning brand. When he and Jack got back, the winds would shift one way or the other. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said casually. “Why don’t you side with Bill? Why don’t you stay as far away from New Providence as possible, if you’re so afraid of your husband?”
Anne’s jaw set. “It’s me home. Before Governor Rogers came I felt safe enough there, protected by Jack and others. I’m livid every time I think about what Jimmy did to me, but you know what enrages me even more? How people started to think that he had a right to do what he did, and that I was the one who should be put in the pillory. That whole town needs to be burned to the ground and started over.”
“There must be some way to get justice besides that,” Mary mused. “There must be some way for you to go home without destroying it.”
“Have you ever been made to feel completely powerless?” Anne challenged her. “Have you ever been dismissed, just because you’re not a man? Why no, I don’t believe you have. You have no idea what it’s like.”
That made her teeth clench, and Mary chose her words carefully. “That has happened to me, actually. But it’s not as simple to fight back as you make it sound. Some things are the way they are, and all there is for us to do is to find a way to live with them.”
“You sound just like Jack, you know that?” Anne snapped. “I shouldn’t have to be content to accept things as they are. I deserve better.”
“What if you could go home to Nassau and find a way to keep you safe from James?” Mary asked, an idea dawning on her. You could end a marriage if you had a man and enough money. “Jack gets that double share. So long as the crew is behind Jack, a couple more prizes like the Vissen, and Jack could pay James off for you, whenever you end up returning to Nassau.”
“Ugh, like I’m a bloody cow. He could pay for me, and then he could leave me or do whatever he wanted because I belonged to him? I’d only marry Jack if I had no other choice.”
“It wouldn’t be so different from what’s happening now, would it?”
“How’s that, Mary?” Anne’s eyes narrowed. “Please, I’d love to know.”
“I’m just saying that Jack’s not the worst person to serve. I’m rather enjoying the freedom I enjoy under Jack’s command, and it seems like you enjoy quite a bit of it yourself.”
Anne’s mouth twisted in disgust. “You’re never free, so long as you’re subject to someone—to a captain, or the crown, or whatever good-for-nothing man decides to lord over you.”
“You’d rather burn New Providence to the ground than compromise?”
“Not if I’m the only one who has to compromise!” Anne’s voice rose. “If we went back to Nassau and Jack paid James off, I’d have to see Jimmy’s smirking face every day and know he got away with being such a devil. No—he got paid for it. He got rewarded. Can you even imagine?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Mary said exasperatedly. “Storming Nassau is never going to happen, no matter that there’s a handful of rebels egging you on. In the meantime, what happens if the crew decides Jack shouldn’t be captain? What if the crew mutinies, and you’re caught in the middle of it? Or what if he goes back for pardon and leaves you here to rot?”
Anne stared at her for moment, lips parted. “I can’t believe this,” she said finally, outrage building in her voice. “You act so sympathetic, so sorry for what happened, but then you refuse to do anything about it, just like every other bloody man. You’ve spent so much time living as Mark that you haven’t had to think about how it might be for someone like me!”
“You have no idea how hard it’s been for me!” Mary said, voice rising to match.
“It’s been just as easy for you as for every other arsehole parading around this beach!” Anne shouted. Men sitting at other fires quieted their conversations, turned to look. “Otherwise you’d understand!”
Mary stood, tossing her bone into the flames. “If that’s what you think, you can go to hell,” she said and stalked off.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WESTMINSTER, LONDON—1717
MARY PLUCKED A FEW SPRIGS OF CATMINT OUT OF THE FRONT GARDEN and caught up with Beth as she hauled a bucket of filthy water down the steps from the kitchen, her hair steamed into frizzy ringlets around her face. The leaves of the trees above their heads exploded in yellows and reds and oranges, and Beth’s smile when she saw Mary approach matched their exuberance.
As Mary held out the flowers, she realized what a bad idea they were. She’d wanted to soften the blow, but Beth’s expression when she saw them made Mary think they’d only make it worse.
“I think they’re the last thing left blooming,” Mary said. Beth set down her bucket, setting the violet blossoms to nodding as she took the flowers from Mary’s hand. She looked pleased but tired, and Mary felt an unexpected rush of concern. Beth was hard at work every time Mary saw her, always in motion. “I hope your day’s been easy enough?”
“Seeing you eases it considerably,” said Beth warmly. The maid looked expectantly at Mary.
“Ah, good. That’s good.” She didn’t know how to begin. Disguising herself as Mark was bad enough, but that was a matter of survival. God would never forgive her if she didn’t end this—and neither would Granny.
“Tomorrow’s me half-day,” Beth said after a moment.
“Is it,” Mary said. Should she be firm? Should she make a joke out of it? Should she blame Granny, or make it sound like it was her own idea?
“You’re done after supper, ain’t you?” Beth asked. “Tomorrow?”
“Aye.”
The corners of Beth’s mouth turned up.
She was waiting, Mary realized. For her to say she’d like to steal a few moments with Beth tomorrow evening, if she guessed it right.
The silence stretched too long, and Beth sighed. “Would you like to meet up with me then, for a walk about the garden?” she asked.
No. Mary couldn’t let herself. “Listen, Beth. Granny—You see, I—”
Beth leaned in and kissed her.
At first, Mary was too surprised to pull away—and by the time she remembered that she should, it was very hard to fo
llow through. Not at all as slight as she appeared, with their lips touching suddenly Beth was all curves, out at the hip and in at the waist, a slight roundness to her belly beneath Mary’s thumbs. She parted her lips, and Beth did too, and then they were really kissing, still soft and warm but now something secret as well. Beth made a hmm noise against her lips as Mary leaned into the kiss—and at that sound a wild feeling rose up in her, longing and sick-to-her-stomach and queasiness and elation. She never wanted it to stop.
All of a sudden Beth’s fingers caught on the binding of Mary’s chest, paused there, then seemed to study the contours of the hidden wrapping with her hands, fingertips bumping over the subtle, uneven layers. Beth’s body stilled and Mary froze, her stomach dropping.
Tracing a strip of binding to the worn knot, Beth tapped it a few times and then pushed away so she could look at Mary. She ran firm hands over Mary’s chest and drew in her breath. Mary stood there, unable to move, too shocked to speak, still trembling from the heat she’d felt.
“Is there something you’ve been meaning to tell me, Mark?” Beth asked. Mary, prepared for anger, heard only bemusement in her voice.
They stood still as pond water, Beth’s hands still on her chest, staring at each other. Beth remembered herself before Mary did and pulled away abruptly. She looked at her splayed fingers, as if they were what had shocked her. Her lips had a shine to them, but her eyes grew shadowed as her brows drew down.
“You let me think …” Beth put her hands to her mouth, looking at the leaves along the walk as they turned belly-up in the breeze. She’d dropped the catmint on the cobblestone, and the blossoms were strewn around their feet. When she looked at Mary, her mouth twisted in disgust. Suddenly she bent, grabbed the handle of her bucket, and heaved. Cold, stinking water struck Mary like a blow that left her gasping and drenched.
“Don’t come near me ever again,” Beth said evenly. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me.”
The Unbinding of Mary Reade Page 8