Mother and Robin had been constantly back and forth to Halifax together, dealing with all of the things that had to be done. At the moment they were accompanying the body back home to Lucas Lamey’s mortuary. The funeral would follow church services on Sunday morning, with an all-afternoon reception at the inn. Mother had taken refuge from her grieving in all the activity involved. She had closed the place, preempting a visit from the inspectors. The work was going on, however; Clyde Hirtle was installing the last of the new plumbing at that very moment, and all of the workmen were still on the job, on faith, and as a gesture of support for the bereaved family.
Meanwhile, the Moehners were applying more pressure than ever, at the very moment when the inn had no income at all. With luck, and the money we had brought, the work would be completed next week, and the downstairs plumbing before that, in time for the funeral reception. Meg had been holding down the fort alone for the past several days, sitting near the telephone, cleaning up after the workmen, and trying to keep Chloe out from under their feet.
“How are you holding?” The captain regarded her.
“I’ve been better,” she conceded, “and if that’s rum you’re pouring for yourself, I’ll have one too, half-water.” He hastened to make it for her. All of her rudeness toward the captain was gone. “Then there’s you,” she regarded him, saying that two men in suits and ties had shown up at the inn looking for Captain Charles Johnson. One was an Englishman, and there was an Immigration officer, who had left his card with instructions that he was to be telephoned if Captain Johnson showed up.
“I couldn’t get out of them what they wanted to talk to you about, but here’s who might know more.” Tom was buzzing toward us in his skiff, then tying up alongside Merry and coming aboard. He had condolences for me, and concern for my head, but business with the captain, due to the police question about his papers. The men who had come looking for him had talked to Tom, as harbourmaster.
“What’s their interest in you?” Tom asked.
“No clue,” said the captain. “Same bleeding paperwork confusion that happens to all the Charles Johnsons, all the time.”
“I’m duty-bound,” announced Tom, “to notify both the British consulate in Halifax, and some gent at Canadian Immigration, if and when you arrive, and I intend to do that soon, very soon, right after you’ve poured me one of those.” He indicated the captain’s mug of rum.
“I’ll get it sorted out,” said the captain pouring the drink. “I always have to.”
“Easy with the water,” said Tom. “Anyway, since I won’t be able to call them by five o’clock, which is only an hour from now, that means they won’t have the message until Monday morning, meaning you can probably expect ’em midweek. Here’s to your being back,” he toasted, “and to the cannon, which we only need to mount.” While we were gone, Tom had finished all the carpentry and fitted the last of the cannon’s original ironwork, leaving only a few things to do, which they started to discuss with the zeal of true enthusiasts.
Meg soon left, telling me to telephone Jenny, who had been calling daily for any word about me. I went below, secured the drawstrings on my overpacked seabag, and wrestled it up through the hatch and onto the dock without help. I then carried it across my shoulders up all of the stairs to my room, where I blessedly dumped the thing, vowing never again to let my mother pack it for me.
Mother returned before suppertime, with Robin. Without Aunt Karen to tend, he had turned to caring for Mother, who seemed steady to me. She was delighted to see us home, concerned about my wound, and carrying a sadness for Aunt Karen.
“Aunt Karen’s out of her pain now,” she said, putting the subject aside.
During supper, I gave an abbreviated account of our trip, and, after the dishes were cleared, the captain produced the money we had brought home, piles of American dollars, plus a careful accounting of his expenses to be reimbursed off the top.
“Limousine and driver?” asked mother, looking through the account. “Clothing? A rubber raft? A radar reflector? Flares?” This all took some explaining but, in the end, the odd expenses were well justified by the take. The captain seemed very pleased with his own share, remarking that it would cover his year’s costs. A little windfall, as he put it. “But you’ll be with us for a while?” Mother asked him.
“A while,” he nodded.
“Good,” said Robin, bringing up the matter of the captain’s documentation. “I’m afraid I’m the one who may have caused that, because I ran a routine check on your passport, and when the British consulate eventually got back to us, the Home Office had no record of you on file, and they want to talk to you about it.”
The captain made a helpless gesture. “I’m used to it. Happens all the time. The universe is overloaded with Charles Johnsons, and I’m one of ’em, and somebody is always getting confused by there being so bloody many of us. I’ll get it sorted out.”
Mother went off to bed before long, and when Robin went home, Meg and the captain took their instruments out to the deck where they played music under the summer moon, and into the night.
Saturday
The inn was given to preparations for the reception that would follow Aunt Karen’s funeral. Bertha Hirtle arrived before breakfast, and by midmorning most of the Women’s Auxiliary were on hand, with cleaning gear to blast away the last traces of sawdust left by Clyde’s workmen, and ready to prepare a standing buffet for all the mourners, plus coffee and juices.
In the early afternoon Jenny showed up, catching me between errands. I told her that I had too much to tell her to begin telling it just then, but we could sneak off by ourselves during the reception, if she was coming. She was, but she was more immediately interested in whether I was keeping an eye on the captain’s trips to the cellar.
“Where is he right now?” she wanted to know, and when I told her he was working on the cannon carriage in the cellar, she dragged me down there. She had brought her flashlight with her, and was convinced that the captain had found treasure, or at least was still looking for it. Instead, we found him with Tom. They were fitting the last wheel onto the gun carriage, and Noel Nauss was standing by, waiting to lift the barrel onto its beds.
“You’re here just in time,” said the captain, giving the nod to Noel, who squatted, grasped both ends of the heavy bronze barrel, smiled, rose, and dropped it gently into place. “Perfect fit,” the captain pronounced, pleased, “and a lovely thing to behold, is it not?” All agreed. “Now, all we have to do is roll it out onto the parapet, and tomorrow we’ll put a charge into it, and send off Aunt Karen with a proper salute. We’ll make you the gunner,” he told me.
“What can I be?” asked Jenny.
“Gunner’s mate,” he responded without hesitation. “Mistress MacGregor. What brings you down to an old cellar on a fine summer Saturday afternoon?” Jenny reminded him that he had promised to tell her the stories of Anne Bonny and Mary Read before he left. “Did I promise you such a thing?” I tried to make cautionary signs to Jenny, warning her away from any more of his stories. Based on my own recent experience, they could be dangerous. “Why are you shaking your head?” he asked me.
“Because I have things to do right now,” I improvised.
“Here are some more,” said he, handing me a list of supplies he wanted me to get for him from the grocer. Noel would drive me and the load back in his truck. The captain’s preparations for his departure were obviously continuing. “Now, let’s roll this gun out onto the deck,” he said and, with everybody pushing, the cannon rumbled slowly toward the door.
“What about my story?” Jenny persisted.
“Not now,” said the captain. “I’ve weightier matters to deal with, y’see.” And so I went off about my errands, and Jenny went home, after urging me to keep an eye on him all the time. I pointed out that she hadn’t needed her flashlight, and she noted that the lock was off the iron grate over the stairs to the regions below. There we left it, except I cautioned her not to be too eage
r for one of his stories. I promised to explain later.
Just before supper, Meg dismissed the latest guitarist from her life. After supper, she took up her fiddle again with the captain, and they practised a song for presentation the next day. I heard Meg laughing.
Sunday
“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” rang Reverend Corkum’s voice, commencing the special service for Aunt Karen, who was properly eulogised. It was well attended with an audience that included a lot more people than ever attended my aunt during her long illness. I sat in the front pew between Mother and Robin. The highlight for everybody was a duet of “Amazing Grace,” in which the captain’s baritone was like a rumble of low storm cloud, over which Meg’s soprano soared into clear skies and sunlight. Some people forgot that they weren’t supposed to applaud.
To dispel the gloom at the reception, Meg got out her fiddle, and the captain his pennywhistle, inducing everybody out onto the deck. There Reverend Corkum’s salute to Aunt Karen’s entry into heaven was my cue to touch off the cannon. It boomed out with a satisfying roar and billows of sulphurous smoke that washed back over the patio, giving all the mourners a whiff of what old battles smelled like. The detonation made Jason Mosher Jr., aged two months, scream and cry and have to be taken away; and Jeff Joudrey’s black lab went jet-propelled right through a screen door, making a dog-shaped hole in it; and Beatrice McCurdy spilled whipped cream down her front. I would like to have fired the gun again.
Afterward, Jenny got me away to the cellar, where nobody was, and where the iron door to the nether-regions was plainly locked, and the captain’s chest was still where he and I had left it. “He’ll be back for that, anyway,” she noted. Outside, we strolled to Merry as I told Jenny as much as I cared to tell anybody about the Boston trip. She was especially interested in my stumbling description of getting stuck in a real fight, getting knocked out by a pistol, and waking up in Merry’s cockpit, where the captain had cleaned up a fair amount of blood. It was even caked under my fingernails.
“From that?” She indicated my head wound, which was subsiding. I said I thought so. He had told me scalp wounds bled a lot. If there was any other answer, I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about anything having to do with the entire incident. Not only had it rattled my notions of reality as I had learned it, but in such a very unpleasant way. I had no desire to relive any part of it, then or now. I told Jenny all of this as a warning, but it only sparked her interest, and she spent the rest of the afternoon stalking the captain. This was easy but unrewarding, because he spent most of it chatting with Meg, between their sets. I had never seen her so friendly with him. Toward suppertime, the only people still there were saying good-bye, or helping with cleanup, everybody making their own suppers from the leftovers. So did Jenny, who went to the desk to telephone her mother for permission to stay for a while.
“I’m supposed to be home before dark,” she said, returning. “Where did he go?” The captain had repaired to Merry, where Jenny cornered him alone at last, with me tagging along. Jenny didn’t understand the forces she was fooling with, and I thought I would try to keep her in the present, if anything strange started to happen. Also, the entire subject of his relentless teachings was unresolved in my mind. He had for sure given me a taste and a half of a different kind of history, but with no conclusion, which it seemed to want, and this I said to him as we stepped aboard.
“Conclusion? If you’ve learned anything, it should be about all the different kinds of conclusions. Make your own bloody conclusions, and then watch how they part company from what is, unless of course they don’t.” The captain, who had been drinking steadily all afternoon, refreshed his mug.
“Anne Bonny . . .” Jenny started.
“Right,” the captain cut her off. “This is the last of it, then, delivered at nine o’clock in the second dogwatch of this fine June evening just past the solstice, with a gibbous moon rising, and the sun sliding toward the sea. Next thing we’ll sight Venus, who was goddess of love and seduction, and highly female. Here’s to her,” he toasted. “As to you,” he regarded Jenny, “it should be easy enough for you to be Anne Bonny; you’re the same Celtic stock, same hair colour, build, same fierce and courageous temperament. When she was your age, her father had to disguise her as a boy for a while.”
“Why did she have to be disguised as a boy?”
The captain made an impatient gesture. “Long story. You can read that part in my book.”
“Your book?”
“You can borrow Jim’s. His copy is easier to read. In any case, she gets a taste for acting like a boy, when it serves her purposes. Otherwise, she can be all girl when she wants to. So, now you’re living in Ireland in a time when women aren’t allowed to go out and do the things that men do, and the only way around it—if those are the kinds of things you want to do—is by masquerading as a man. It’s the same situation in South Carolina, where you go with your mother and father, where he buys a plantation. He has high hopes that you will marry well.”
“And I do?”
“You marry, but not at all well. You take up with a common sailor, who thinks splicing with you will get him into your father’s wealth, but it goes the other way; your father hates him, and you both find yourselves evicted, out on your ear.”
“That’s probably just what my father would do,” Jenny reflected.
“Well, he just did, and you’re off with your sailor, who takes you to Nassau, where he hopes to settle you, and get a berth on some kind of ship. You’re a burden to him now, and it turns out he’s no prize, either. He only wanted your father’s money in the first place, and he doesn’t begin to appreciate you for who you are, which is probably better than about ten of him. What do you do?”
“I challenge my husband to a duel,” pronounced Jenny.
“Not actually. Jack Rackham’s in port, a bit of a sport with fancy clothes, and a way with him, and a fast, armed sloop, and a yen for you, so off you sail with him. You have to dress and act like a boy again, but you can do that, and you do, and there you are, off with your pirate lover, sailing the seas, capturing ships, getting a taste of life that few girls of your age ever see.”
“How old am I?”
“Early twenties by now, very athletic, first to lead a charge, made for the role of a corsair, except . . .”
“I’m a girl,” Jenny interjected, “and with glasses.”
“Pregnant, actually, as things evolve.”
“By . . . ?”
“What difference? Your cover’s blown when your belly starts to get big, so your pirate puts you ashore with some friends in Cuba, and you deliver and nurse your child, pining for the freedom of the seas with your bright lover in his calico clothes. And he comes for you, and off you go with him again, leaving your child in safe hands.”
“This happened?” asked Jenny.
“It gets better. You’re back at sea, getting a further look at your life, and your lover, and several things about him come to your notice—some mannerisms, hair patches, snortings and fartings, sundry stupidities—and you realise you’re worth ten of him, too. What now?”
“Now we duel!”
“Now you notice a certain young fellow who’s come aboard after the amnesty, one of the crew, on the account. He’s handsome, has a gentle side to him, and other qualities that take your fancy.” Jenny started to interrupt, but he pressed on. “So, getting an intimate moment for it, and feeling a bit frisky, you reveal your gender to him.”
“I can hardly imagine . . .”
“You can’t, so don’t try. The next thing you learn is that the pleasant young chap is doin’ the same thing you are, masquerading as a man, isn’t a chap at all, and you’ve just met Mary Read, who’s got an even more fantastical past than yours. She’s been soldiering with the British army in Flanders. In point of fact, there are quite a number of women who are doing things like that, and Mary’s one. Here your paths cross, and you become instant friends.
Calico Jack is jealous with it, so you have to let him in on Mary’s little secret, and peace is restored. Then a young chap is forced from a capture off Jamaica, and he takes Mary Read’s fancy, and this time he really is a chap. What do you do?” Jenny was confused.
“Who am I now?”
“If you’re Mary, you expose your breasts to the chap, and they are very white. He cannot resist you, but you can and do resist him, pending marriage. Funnily enough, you are, and always have been, chaste. In the meantime, he gets a quarrel with one of the pirates. There’s going to be a duel between them. You fear for his life, so you insult the same pirate in order to fight him first, which you do, pistol and cutlass, and kill him on the spot.”
“I . . .” Jenny was having a hard time keeping up.
“You are a free agent, and you marry, in conscience, as if it had been done by a minister in church, and you too get pregnant, though you don’t know that just yet. You stay on the account, and you’re good shipmates.”
“Which one am I?” asked Jenny.
“Be both. Either way, it is fall, 1720, and the trade winds blow your sloop from Hispaniola along Jamaica’s north coast to Point Negril, where you anchor to enjoy the evening with a jar of punch. You are interrupted by a royally commissioned pirate-hunting sloop sailing into your life, very unwelcome. Your captain ups anchor and you make a run for it, but the intruder catches up; fire is exchanged; the sloop is better armed and better manned, and before you know it, your fancy Calico Jack chap has taken shelter belowdecks with everybody else in the crew except for both of you, Anne and Mary, and one other chap. You fight, but you are overwhelmed and taken prisoner, along with everybody else. You are thrown into irons, and the next thing you know, you’re on trial for your life. I’ve noted the court documents in one of the editions of my book.”
“Your book?”
“Jim’s got a copy. Mary, your young lover is exonerated as a forced man, but you are sentenced to hang, along with you, Anne, and your lover Calico Jack, and the rest of the hard-core crew. What do you do now?”
The Brotherhood of Pirates Page 30