The Unbinding of Mary Reade

by Miriam McNamara

  At last she was at Jack’s tent. She whipped back the sailcloth. A warm, sour odor rose off the two tangled bodies beneath. “Up!” she yelled, yanking at Anne’s limp arm. “Up! We’re attacked!”

  Jack put a hand to his forehead and swore. He fumbled his britches closed and flipped to his hands and knees, fingers scrabbling against the sand. He began digging without a look at the beach, though the staccato of gunfire echoed closer and closer.

  Anne pulled her arm from Mary’s grip and curled into the empty space he’d left, moaning as she covered her eyes with her chemise.

  Mary put her arms around Anne’s ribs and pulled her to sitting as the gunfire approached. A few pirates had reached the tree line, their pursuers not far behind. “Come on, Annie,” she urged, whispering in her ear, fighting against her dead weight. “I’ll not leave you behind.”

  Anne’s eyelids fluttered, gaze fixing for a moment on Mary’s face. But she was limp, eyes welling with tears as they closed again.

  “Damn you!” Mary strained but couldn’t lift Anne to standing.

  Thaddeus crashed by, roaring and slashing his cutlass through the brush as he fled. Jack looked over his shoulder at the beach, cursed again, and abandoned whatever he had been digging for. He grabbed Anne’s shoulder and helped Mary pull her up. “Wake up, Annie,” he said. “Up we go now.”

  “Leave me here,” she mumbled. “I want to die.”

  “You’re daft.” Mary pushed her into Jack’s arms. She couldn’t force Anne to safety, but Jack could strong-arm her. “Go with him, now.”

  “I’m dead no matter what I do.” Anne’s head lolled, a tear leaking out from beneath her lashes as she put her arms around his neck. “Best leave me here and save yourselves.”

  “For Christ’s sake.” Jack picked Anne up and hoisted her over one shoulder, then crashed into the jungle as Anne’s flaming hair whipped behind them.

  Mary looked back and saw Paddy hoofing toward the trees. “Paddy, thank God!” She held her hand out for him.

  He was almost within her reach when the musket ball exploded through his shoulder, metal and blood and bone blossoming as he fell, screaming, to the ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ISLA DE COTORRAS—1719

  MARY SCREAMED AND RAN FOR PADDY. “NO, NO, NO, NO—”

  He moaned hoarsely as he tried to stand, terror in his eyes. “No, get out of here, get out before they get you, too—”

  She grabbed his good arm and tried to heave him to his feet, but he was off balance and too heavy. His legs scrabbled to find purchase, his face contorted in pain. “Leave me, dammit—” Tears streaked the dirt on his face.

  Mary dropped her bayonet and grabbed him with both hands. She gulped air—tried not to look at his right arm dangling—and finally got enough leverage to help lift him up. “Come on, Paddy. Come on, I’m not leaving you—”

  I won’t let anyone mess with family, I won’t let no one touch you—

  “I won’t let them touch you, Paddy. You just have to stand—”

  He coughed hoarsely, his legs fumbling weakly, grinding blood into the dust beneath his feet.

  Suddenly Mary felt hot, sharp pressure between her shoulder blades. “Drop him,” said a voice, the breath that carried it hot on her neck. The pressure at her back formed a picture in her mind—the powder-warmed muzzle of a musket.

  Her eyes went to the ground, her bayonet half-upright in a nest of weeds, just out of reach. Slowly, she lowered Paddy. He clutched his useless arm and rocked forward, curling over it. She crouched and pushed sweat-soaked hair from his forehead. “Be ready,” she murmured. He looked up at her, his face contorted, sucking air through his teeth. She wasn’t sure if he registered her words.

  Then the pressure between her shoulders pulled away, and the air that replaced it felt strangely cold. “Is that—”

  Through the disbelief in her attacker’s voice Mary heard some quality she thought she recognized—

  “Is that you, Mark?” the man asked.

  A straw-pallet beneath her elbows, the glint of a spoon in a dim room, fading light and the smell of salt through an open window—

  Her head went light.

  The bayonet lay just below her hand, Paddy’s blood leaking into the dirt beneath it.

  Paddy stared into her face, so desperate. Willing her to act. To run.

  Anne hadn’t cared when Jack and the other pirates threatened her. Mum, Granny, and the whole bloody world had done the same, even Nat, no one had stood up for her—

  No one but Paddy.

  She lunged for the bayonet on the ground, pivoted sharply to face her attacker, and threw her weight forward.

  The first thing she saw was his hands, blackened from gunpowder, flying up as he lost his balance—and then his shoulders hitting the dirt, a bit broader than she remembered. His full lips with that freckle on it were open in surprise, and her breath left her as her gaze fell upon his black, black eyes, wide with shock—

  She crouched on his chest, all her weight on her knees, flattening his shoulders to the ground, bayonet held to his neck.

  Nat’s throat worked beneath the blade, his clear astonishment quickly turning to anger.

  “Take the musket and go,” she growled to Paddy, her eyes never leaving Nat’s face. “I’ll catch up once I settle this.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ISLA DE COTORRAS—1719

  “I’LL NOT LEAVE YOU WITH HIM,” SAID PADDY.

  “You’re no use to me—just go!” Mary’s eyes never left Nat’s.

  Paddy was silent. Then a groan, a shuffling. The scrape of a musket being lifted.

  Nat’s nostrils flared, his lips tightening. But he lay still beneath her. She wasn’t sure how long she could hold him if he did try to throw her off.

  “Go, Paddy—now!”

  She heard him stumble off, crashing into the brush.

  The sound faded. She and Nat were alone—the pirates all fled to the woods, their attackers looting the beach camp. A bird called overhead, tentatively, but otherwise the air was so still around them. The shouts of the raiders seemed very far off.

  He looked different than the Nat in her mind, though his lashes were as thick as ever. His hair curled long over his collar, and he had a bit of stubble on his cheeks and chin. His skin had tanned quite dark. She was keenly aware of his gaze; of the empty space between her shirt and her chest, where her binding had always been; of her hair sticking to her forehead with sweat; of the soot streaking her skin, and the soil of her britches and shirt. Did she still look like the scrawny mate he’d left behind, or had she changed as well?

  This was the first time they’d seen each other since he’d found out she was a girl, and it didn’t appear that this exchange would go any better than the first. She was so angry that they’d met like this. She had so much to tell him, so much she wanted to say. She wanted to throw her arms around him—she wanted to smack him in the face—she wanted to cry—

  “Tell me you was pressed into this,” Nat growled.

  Anger took over. “I wasn’t,” she said. “Joined of me own free will, I did.” She took the bayonet from his throat and set it aside. “Not every pirate’s like your da, Nat,” she said, stabbing his shoulder with a finger. “There’s plenty of good reasons men find honest life impossible. I’d think you’d know that, growing up how you did.”

  His clenched jaw softened. “A dishonest life ain’t easier, is it?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Aye, no thanks to the likes of you,” she snapped. But her anger was subsiding. His eyes looked more concerned than angry.

  Paddy needed her, and if Nat’s crew caught up to them her life would be over, but she felt sick at the thought of fleeing. Her eyes flicked to the beach, where their attackers were piling booty into jolly boats and burning the rest. A handful of pirates had been rounded up and sat, shackled, in one of the boats. From this distance, Mary couldn’t tell who they were. The Ranger was slipping out of sight around the cu
rve of the island, surely under Bill’s direction.

  When she turned back Nat was frowning at her, as if searching for some missing detail. “I can’t believe I thought you was a lad, all those years.” He shook his head, voice hoarse. She felt tingly at that, and awkwardly shifted off him to sit in the dirt. “When we was young, I understand that. But looking at you now—” He looked pained as he sat up. “It was you the whole time, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded, unable to speak. How different would things have been, if she had had time to explain when her disguise had been ripped away from her that first time, on the Queen Catherine? And now, once again, there was no chance to tell him the whole story.

  He struggled to his knees and caught her hand, his fingers rough and dry against hers. “We sail for Jamaica to return the Kingston, stolen by your crew a few months back. Then we’re bound for Nassau to seek recompense from Governor Rogers for pirates killed or captured.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Go then, you bastard. I need to find me mate.” Her voice sounded odd in her ears, choked off. She tried to pull away, but he held her fast. She heard voices traveling up the beach. They were coming.

  She had to go.

  “I thought I’d never see you again.” His eyes burned as they searched her face. “I’ve never stopped thinking about you.”

  “What—what do you mean by that?” she stammered.

  “Nothing,” he said, his voice hard again. “You need to come to New Providence seeking pardon.”

  She looked over her shoulder, to where Nat’s mates were securing the Kingston and her crew. “It isn’t going to be easy for me to get there,” she whispered.

  “Look at me,” he said urgently. “I’d take you back with me right now, but you would have to stand trial.”

  “Of course,” she said, holding his dark-eyed gaze again.

  “Come to New Providence. Turn yourself in and get the pardon. And—come find me. Me kip’s just north of the main market. I can’t stand the thought of not seeing you again.”

  Was he offering a pardon of his own, for deceiving him all those years? The heat of his hand in hers seemed a promise.

  “I will if I can,” she managed. Then she pulled from his grip and ran without looking back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ISLA DE COTORRAS—1719

  MARY FOUND PADDY’S BODY BENEATH A FLOWERING TREE, BROAD RED blooms marking the end of his blood trail. She sank to his side and checked for breath and pulse, tears streaming down her face, but he was gone. What she could have offered him had he been alive? She had no knowledge of medicine, no idea what to do to save a man from blood loss or pain. But she should have been there to offer comfort as he died.

  Men crept out of the jungle all afternoon, looking haunted and sick. They were too subdued for Mary to feel threatened by any of them now, but she took a loaded flintlock from one of the dead and tucked it at her waist as a precaution anyway. Jack strode onto the beach angrily, Anne trailing him, and set about counting and identifying the dead. Anne looked like a phantom, pale and shaking, before she disappeared into a tent. Jack didn’t seem to care that she left; his face was set into a hard, unreadable expression. They were all numb, a bitter taste in their throats from the gun smoke that hung in the air.

  They counted almost forty of their men dead. There were another forty or so unaccounted for, either captured or escaped with Bill. Jack hadn’t seen Bill take the Ranger, but when she told him what had happened he seemed cheered. Bill would be back for them, wouldn’t he then?

  That night they burned what they could of the remains of the dead. The next morning Thaddeus helped Mary carry Paddy’s body from the jungle. She put Paddy out to sea on a raft she fashioned out of driftwood lashed together with rope, a bit of sailcloth laid over him. As she pushed it off the shore she imagined it headed for England, toward his beloved Katie.

  She clenched her fists and walked into the water behind the raft. She sank beneath the waves so that no one could hear her scream or cry.

  When she surfaced she was calm again.

  Bill did not come back for them, the eighteen pirates left alive on the island.

  “Nassau it is, then?” Mary asked. It was evening. They sat around a fire, picking meat off a few roasted parrots they’d shot out of the trees.

  Jack rubbed his forehead tiredly. At his feet lay twenty silver pocket watches that he’d stashed in a hole in the sand beneath his tent. They’d taken account of everything they had left—two jolly boats and a sailing piragua, a couple of pistols, a compass, a bale of bedraggled silk stockings and lace hats. Their attackers and the deserters had taken everything else, even the wine. “Nassau, is it,” he repeated, looking around as if for another alternative. He did not sound thrilled.

  “Or ye could come with us to Hispaniola!” said Thaddeus, ever the optimist. “I know ye were keen to get to Nassau, but that’s when you had something to show for yourself. Hispaniola is as good a place as any to start up again. Fresh water, meat aplenty, and a couple of jolly boats—we’ll have a bigger ship at our command in no time.”

  Jack snorted. “I’ve no mind to raid sloops or merchant ships from a rowboat,” he said. “Least, any longer than we have to. We should’ve gone for the pardon when it was worth our while, but our best chance is still in New Providence. I can figure out what to do from there.”

  “I’m only coming if you marry me,” said Anne. “I need you to get me an annulment, Jack.”

  Mary opened her mouth—and then shut it again. Why should Mary care what Anne did once they got to Nassau? Nat would be there, waiting for her.

  “We both know you’re coming with me no matter what,” said Jack, not meeting Anne’s eyes. “What do you think you’d do otherwise, stay on this island forever?”

  “I’ll not go back without that promise, Jack. You know I can’t, otherwise.” Her voice broke a little.

  Jack looked up. The hard look he’d had since the raid still hadn’t left his eyes, but he nodded. “You’ll get your annulment, Anne. I promise.”

  She leaned into him, but he turned away to throw his bones into the darkness.

  “You must be just delighted, Mary,” said Anne, shifting her attention, “about how all this turned out.”

  Mary fixed her with an icy stare. “Aye, I’m delighted Paddy’s dead, that our treasure is gone, that half our crew will hang on the gibbet in New Providence. Just thrilled.”

  Anne rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean—”

  “But yes, I’m eager to get to Nassau as soon as we can.”

  Anne leaned in and put her mouth to Mary’s ear. “It gives me comfort to know you’ll be there with me.” Mary flushed despite herself, though she knew Anne’s words were empty. “It gives me hope that maybe things won’t be so bad.”

  Anne scooted away to pull another blackened bird off the fire, laughing at something Thaddeus said. Mary closed her eyes and pictured Nat in her mind, imagining it was his words that made her tingle so.

  The next morning, nine of them were Nassau bound.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  RIVER THAMES—1717

  MARY AWOKE TO MUFFLED SHOUTING IN THE PITCHING HOLD OF THE Queen Catherine, her stomach sour and unsteady, muscles cramped from the hard, cold floor. She stumbled onto the deck to see the Wapping docks disappearing into dense morning fog. She ran to the railing, gripping the wood as thick mist swallowed her home.

  She’d been so close. Why hadn’t she pulled back when Beth kissed her? Why hadn’t she stayed far away from her from the start? It would have been so easy to avoid being found out. Everything she’d worked for, all her life, was all for nothing now.

  “Come here, you,” Nat called from above. Mary turned and looked up, squinting against the spray as her heart lifted. He swung down from a ratline—was that what he’d told her the rope ladders were called?—a few yards away, his black hair whipping about his face in the gray wet wind, and waved her over. “You best stick close with me, until you know your
way around the rigging. Up you go!”

  She had to make water, but she was more anxious about that than climbing a bit of rope. She walked over and put her hands on the lowest rung. Bristly, unweathered hemp cut into her palms as she heaved herself up, toes slipping off the wet railing. The ratline bellied out from the Queen Catherine as the ship listed, the ocean churning straight below her. She clung desperately to the rope, her feet scrambling for purchase. Then the ship rocked back in and her whole body planted against the ratline, rope scraping her face.

  “By all means, take your bleeding time!” Nat called up. “At this rate we’ll be in Rotterdam before you make it to the topsail!”

  Mary gritted her teeth and looked up. The first beam that crossed the mast seemed impossibly high, so she focused instead on the rung just above her. She could make that at least.

  She clawed her way up one rope at a time, trying to anticipate the rocking of the ship with each fumbling lunge. Finally she settled shakily onto the beam and tried to catch her breath. The wood beneath her was slick, and she kept a nervous grip on the ratline as the ship swayed sickeningly below. Nat pulled himself up beside her. “Now then, time for your lessons,” he said, patting the beam beneath them. “This here’s a yard, and that’s the mainsail below us. Above us, we’ve got the main topsail—and a couple of bloody monkeys, from the looks of it.”

  Mary looked up. Two fellows straddled a platform just above their heads, scattering crumbs as they smirked down at them with their mouths full. They were broad boys with big hands and jaws. One was dark, the other fair.

  “Oy, Nat!” said the fair one, yelling over the wind. “We heard you was aboard, but I didn’t believe it. A skinny cove like you’s no use against pirates, I said, but apparently Johnny didn’t mind me none.”

  “He knows you’ve got to be smart to catch pirates, see,” said Nat. “Which is why I told him not to take the either of you.”

  “And who’s this?” said the dark one. He peered down at Mary. “He better be smart, from the looks of him—don’t seem as if he could put up much of a fight.”