Voices screeched and sang in the night. Anne held court at her fire as if she were still queen of the crew. But Jack sat slumped, staring broodingly into the flames, pushing Anne away when she leaned in close. Bill sat by the edge of the water, keeping watch on the horizon. Mary watched men stroll up to him, pause, squat down to talk.
Mary pulled what was left of her torn sailcloth tent tight around her. She had her bayonet in one hand, a broken wine bottle in the other, hunched just inside the tree line so that she was hidden in shadow.
She’d gone down to the fires at first, to prove she wasn’t frightened. Paddy had sat beside her, fiddling with his pistol. “I won’t let anyone mess with family,” he’d said quietly. “I won’t let no one touch you.” She knew he’d be on her side if it came to it, but she couldn’t rely on a man like Anne did. One man was no guarantee.
She’d felt a hundred eyes on her every time she stood, every time she moved. They’d stared outright, searching her face and body for a hint of softness, a whisper of curve, swearing now that they’d seen them all along. As they grew drunker they’d hollered at her, asking lewd questions as they leered.
Didn’t Anne say she was sweet on one of us? Come on, Mark, give us a hint!
A girl that joins up on a ship, mates—what do you suppose she’s after?
I’m still not so sure there’s woman’s bits under there at all. Come here, sweet Mark—
Come prove it to us—
Give us another glimpse, will ye? Just a wee little peek?
That strip of linen around her chest had been a safeguard, not a binding. As much as it had chafed Mary, now she wished her whole body was bound in linen, thick enough that no penetrating gaze, no curious hands could reach any part of her, no matter how hard they tried.
The men had burned what was left of her binding, tossing the scraps into the fire. The fabric wouldn’t have been any use to her anyway, cut to pieces as it was. Even with all of that, she’d been determined to prove that she was still one of the boys. But when Anne had laughed and laughed—Let ’em breathe, Mary, you’ve kept ’em tied up tight too long! That’s no way to get your man—Mary couldn’t bear it any more. She’d given up her secret for Anne, and Anne only cared for Jack.
They’d go to his tent together tonight. Mary knew what they’d do: Anne would lie back in the sand. She would reach for him and draw him down to her—he would sink into her, put his lips to hers—Mary shuddered as she pictured it.
What do you think a girl could do for me, after having a man like you?
Was it the same between them as it was for Anne and Mary? Did it feel different, a kiss between a chap and a lass? Could anything feel and taste as good and right as Anne pressed up against her?
This was insane, this was nonsense. Mary had been enchanted, all her longing for Nat taken hostage by a girl. Mary had felt seen and desired and admired—everything she’d wanted from Nat. He was the one she longed for. She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t study his body, memorize his movements, long for him to see her as she always saw him. Her longing for him had drawn her across a whole ocean. It had drawn her here, to the Caribbean, onto a pirate crew, onto this outlaw island. Into this trap.
Tommy and Cager walked up to Jack, and Mary sat up straight, straining to make out what was happening. Jack stood, his fists clenching as they spoke. Bill’s head turned toward the gathered men, and he got up and strode over, hands clasped behind his back as he listened. He nodded and held his hand out to Jack, who was rigid as he shook it. Bill turned to Anne, and they faced each other for a moment. Finally he offered his hand to Anne. She stood up sharply, spat in the sand at his feet, and stormed away.
Mary’s heart sank.
Men began to gather around the fire to shake Bill’s hand. His supporters raised their bottles, shouting and laughing as Jack slumped back down, head in his hands.
He had lost.
A few men’s voices began to rise in an argument. Bill intoned a warning as a couple of pirates stood and shoved each other, and a man punched the fellow next to Jack and knocked him to the ground. A man at another fire shot a pistol into the air and those surrounding him jumped up and wrestled him to the ground as Mary watched with a pounding heart. The pistol was wrenched from his grip, and the man sitting on his back tied his fists behind his back and left him to cool off. The shouting and laughter now had an edge to it, but a brawl had been averted. For now. Most of them were drunk, so anything could happen.
Paddy stood up, scanning the beach. Looking for her.
Mary swallowed the lump that rose in her throat, trembling as she tightened her grip on her weapon. She wanted to talk to him, but she was terrified to let the others know where she was.
Mark had earned his place on the crew, but Mary was someone else. And Nat might as well be in England again, for all that she’d find him now.
The future was dark, utterly unknown. Nothing was certain anymore. Mary stared at the fires. They burned black spots in her vision that grew until nothing was illuminated.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WAPPING, LONDON—1717
SHIPS CROWDED THE WATER AS THICK AS TARS SWARMED THE DOCKS, three and four deep, men and boats all knocking into each other in a din of curses, shouts, groans, creaks, thumps, and booms that rang out over the roar of the river. A forest of masts with pennants snapping in a stiff wind blocked out the afternoon sun. Mary pushed against the throng, following Nat as he strode toward the Queen Catherine, his mate Johnny’s ship. He kept looking over his shoulder, squinting past Mary as if afraid his da was after him—Mary was doing the same, she realized, trying to pick a Westminster constable out of the crowd. But Granny wouldn’t know where she’d fled. She tried to keep her eyes on Nat, to keep looking forward.
Nat pointed ahead. “It’s that brig, there—not a fighting vessel as it’s rigged up now, but just you wait!”
The ship was middling size compared to those around it, with a couple of gun ports and two masts besides the bowsprit. It wasn’t the prettiest ship in the river but it was clean, its paint fairly fresh, with a magnificent bust carved into prow.
Mary lost her footing and almost pitched into the river as soon as she stepped onto the plank connecting the Queen Catherine to the dock. “Careful,” said Nat, catching her hand and pulling her upright. “You haven’t been on a boat since we played around as kids, have you?”
She adjusted her standing and loosened her knees, Nat’s firm grip steadying her. She took a breath, the scent of sun-warmed canvas and rope stronger than the stink of the river. Nat gave her an approving nod and let go of her hand as a man came down the plank.
“Took ye long enough, boy—we’ll be run ragged before we weigh anchor yet, no thanks to ye.” The man wiped his lips and pulled out a ledger. He must have been close to seven feet tall, bare-chested, gray hairs sprouting from every inch of him. He looked like an old wolf, silver and sinewy. His eyes flicked to Mary, and she had to keep herself from taking an involuntary step back. “This one a bit young, is he?”
“Same age as me, sir. Hasn’t been sick a day in his life. Still has all his teeth. Can shoot a gun and obey an order, sir.”
Mary had never shot a gun, but thought it sensible to keep that to herself.
The man looked her up and down. “And this one has Johnny vouching for him as well?”
“Aye,” said Nat without hesitating.
“Indeed. Well, let me see here …” The man’s gaze ran over the papers in his hand, and he flipped a page. “Suppose we’ve need of a nimble bugger to reach the topsails proper—what’s your name, son?”
“Mark Reade.” Mary could scarcely believe it was happening. “Sir.”
The man shook his head, scribbled something, and turned up the plank, muttering under his breath. He had a silver pigtail that hung halfway down his back. “Come on, ye lazy bastards,” the wolf-man growled. “It’s down in the hold with ye. You’ve got till dark to prove you’re worth the grub it’ll take to kee
p ye.”
Nat nudged her as they followed the wolf-man. “Don’t let old Abe put you off none. Johnny’s brother, he is, and a devil of a sailor. If he’s signed you up, that means you’re in—he knows we’ve need of you.”
Johnny, another gray giant, was down in the hold. He was too worked up over the state of the sails to mind the second boy who willingly went to work threading needles and mending holes. Mary and Nat dragged a pile of canvas up to the deck and spent the rest of the afternoon bent over in the sun. Mary slowly worked her thread through sailcloth while Nat sat on the crate next to her and rattled on about which sail was which, how to splice a line, and which shroud did what. At some point Mary cocked her head. “Where’s all this coming from, then?” she asked. “Here you are speaking like a regular tar, and all this time I thought you was a landlubber like me.”
“I’ve sailed a few times since you left Wapping. Short trips—a few quick hauls to Flanders—this feller Johnny knows trades in that Flemish lace everyone’s raring for lately. Johnny’s been hauling it over as fast as he can.”
Mary knew that lace—Granny had it tacked onto the cuffs and neckline of every dress she’d bought the past few months. “This feller,” Mary said. “This is the one we’re going to see before we set off hunting pirates?”
“Aye. The Dutch hate pirates more than the English, even. Seeing as it’s English pirates always stealing off them.” Nat tugged on a corner of his sail to smooth it, frowning thoughtfully at his work. “Anyway, Johnny says that if this feller’s willing, he’s got more than enough money to send us off with everything we need to round the scoundrels up.”
They stitched on. Mary eventually put down her sail, rubbing the needle-sore pads of her fingertips as she stared up the masts. The topgallants flicked lazily now, the wind settling into a warm late-afternoon breeze. Ropes knotted in many different ways draped down from all sorts of bits and pieces above them. “You’ll have to teach me all this cleverness you’ve picked up, else Abe will throw me overboard when he realizes how useless I am.”
“I picked it up quick enough. A smart, book-reading feller like yourself should have no trouble.”
She gave him a wry look. “You shouldn’t be so cocksure—he might send you over too if I make a mess of it, seeing as you’re the one who brought me.”
He gave her a brilliant smile, his sweat-slicked skin shining in the sunlight. “We’ll go down together, then, if we have to go down.”
“Not so sure that’s a comforting thought,” she retorted, but his words warmed her. Here they were, the two of them. Together, whether they found their fortune or not.
He shook his head, still grinning as he bit through his thread. “Of all the coves in London, you’re the one I’d have been saddest to see the last of,” he said, knotting off his last row of stitches. “Thank God I found you before we shipped out, eh?”
She looked down at her work quickly, in case the pleasure she felt shone too bright on her face. He was just scared to go off on his own, desperate for a friend to commiserate with. But she couldn’t help savoring those words. “What of Susan?” Mary asked. “Does she know you’re leaving?”
“Things between the two of us have cooled,” Nat said, shrugging. “It wasn’t anything worth sticking around for.”
“Would you have stuck around,” Mary asked, “for the right girl?” She didn’t need to pretend to be Mark for Granny anymore. The thought of being able to tell Nat—someday—made her dizzy.
“I don’t think there’s anything that could have made me stay,” Nat said. “Mum gave me her blessing, told me she wanted me to go. If she didn’t make me stay, there’s no other woman who could.”
Mary hardly slept that night, crammed between a damp wall and Nat’s bony back. Belowdeck smelled like she imagined a coffin would after months underground: rotting wood, fusty cloth, and fermenting bodies. But she was beside Nat at last, the musky salt smell of him keeping her warm. She could feel his shape against her, a bit of his hair tickling her neck when he shifted. She hugged her arms around herself. Against all reason, she was exhilarated. This moment … what they were doing … it felt momentous. This could be something they wrote plays and told stories about.
She would find a way to tell him. What she felt was too big not to spill out into the open.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ISLA DE COTORRAS—1719
A DISTANT SHOUT WOKE HER. THE AIR WAS GRAY, THE SUN A PALE PINK promise on the horizon. At some point she must have dozed off, once the fighting and revelry had quieted. She was stiff, disoriented, her tailbone aching from sitting up all night. She stretched her neck one way and the other to work the tightness out. Her mouth tasted awful. The bayonet was still in her fist.
It seemed she had survived the night.
She heard another shout, more like a hoarse scream echoing from far away, then the distant crack of a gun. She squinted down the beach. A few gently smoking fire pits, men and their makeshift tents pitched everywhere. No one moved. The Kingston and the Ranger stood silent in the bay beyond.
Still, someone shouted.
She squinted at those distant ships. Something looked amiss. Another distant gun fired, and the screaming stopped. She thought she saw movement in the Ranger’s crow’s nest, a shape falling to the deck below. She didn’t hear it hit; the ships were anchored too far off. The light was strange this time of day, all the shadows blurring together. Mary looked back at the water line, and a nervous feeling tightened her gut.
A third ship stood beside the Kingston.
She could see how she’d missed it at first glance. The strange brig was nestled right alongside the Kingston, almost hidden from view, a few fragile grappling lines connecting the two vessels. It almost looked like the ship’s shadow, its bristle of masts blending into the Kingston’s rigging.
Was this some plot readied in the night by a man disgruntled over the vote? But what was that third ship, then? Mary sat up and strained to see.
There was movement beneath the Kingston’s prow. Shadows bulged, then detached from the ship. They bobbed closer, materializing into jolly boats being rowed ashore. More details became clear as they approached: men inside hunkered down beneath broad-brimmed hats, bayoneted weapons rising from their backs like sharp fins as oars sliced through the water.
Mary’s whole body went cold. That wasn’t her crew. What else could it mean but that they had been discovered by pirate hunters? It had taken her stupid, sleep-fogged mind too long to understand, and now these strange men were within gunshot range, and she had warned no one. All her crew could be picked off by gunfire if she screamed and they jumped too soon. If it was even enough to wake them, dead drunk as they all were.
She frantically scanned the bodies down by the water for Anne’s familiar shape, the color of her dress, but she couldn’t pick her out, thank God. Even now some of the men in the boats were taking guns from their backs and training them on the men that lay sprawled in the sand.
It would be a rout.
Jack’s tent was near the tree line. She could wake him without alerting the enemy, and make sure Anne was safe. The thought of seeing them together was unbearable, but she had no other option. Jack would know what to do.
She stood, hunching down so that she was sure the bushes hid her, and scrambled for Jack’s tent. She was trembling so hard she could hardly walk straight. Straggling grass tangled up her feet and tripped her. She pushed it aside with the tip of her bayonet and crouched as low as she could, praying that the shadows were thick enough to hide her.
The boom of a single cannon firing shocked her into stillness. She looked out to the water, past the men in jolly boats rising to their feet. Smoke wisped from a cannon on the Ranger’s starboard side. It wasn’t quite oriented so that the cannon could shoot anything useful—the ball splashed into the water a ways beyond the Kingston’s prow—but some pirate on board the Ranger still lived, and he had fired a shot in warning. Someone had hoped to wake the men on the shore.
And there, on the beach—a man or two raised their heads, looking about groggily—
Mary bolted from the cover of trees. “Ambush!” she screamed, pointing toward the water as men rolled over dazedly to look at her, wiping the sleep from their eyes. “Ambush! We are attacked!”
She saw Paddy’s sandy head lift by the water and turn to her. Her eyes met his, squinting and bleary as he pulled a sailcloth blanket from his chest. He sat up, frowning at her as she waved and screeched, then turned to look back at the water.
“Run, Paddy!” she screamed.
A volley of gunfire shattered the stillness.
Men rising from the sand staggered backward, bloodstains blooming on their chests and shoulders. A few grabbed pistols and fumbled with them, training them on the boats. A bullet pocked the sand beside Mary’s foot as she took off along the tree line, still screaming at Paddy. “For God’s sake, run!”
Paddy started to his feet, agonizingly slow. She watched in horror as the men in the jolly boats reloaded beneath a thin cloud of gun smoke, then aimed their weapons again. Paddy was up, lurching toward her, his whole body exposed. The pirate hunters had plenty of targets to choose from as everyone swarmed to standing. Another bullet kicked up dust in front of Mary as the second wave of gunfire echoed over the beach. She darted behind a palm and bolted for Jack’s tent, frantically scanning the beach from between the trees.
Their attackers jumped into the shallows, aiming, firing, and shouting. Several dropped under the waves as the pirates discharged their guns, but most of her crew was stumbling for the jungle, weaponless and wine-stupid. Bill towered over everyone, pistol in his hand, shouting orders.
He hadn’t drunk so much, she remembered. He never did. He swiveled, locked hair flicking like snakes around his shoulders as he picked off attackers, standing guard as a few pirates secured one of the stranded jolly boats. He dove into the boat with a handful of men, hunched down, and began rowing hard, as another pirate stood and picked off assailants with his pistol.
The Unbinding of Mary Reade Page 11