Jack gave a cough. “I have here what we call the ship’s articles, and every man what will sail in our company must sign and agree to live by them. They are the rules of the ship. They must be obeyed, and if you think you cannot, then we’ll put you ashore. What say you?”
Mary looked from Jack to the woman and back. “I say I’d be honored to read them, first.”
That brought a snicker from the men, a flush to Jack’s face. “Can you read, then?”
“Aye.” Jack handed the articles to Mary and she unrolled the document, holding it out at arm’s length.
There were ten articles, each enumerating an inviolable part of the pirates’ code. Every man had a vote in affairs of the moment, and equal title to fresh provisions and liquor. Every man was entitled to an equal share of any prize, but if any defrauded the company of the value of a dollar they were marooned. Lights and candles out by eight o’clock, after that drinking and smoking on the open deck only. No striking another on board, every man’s quarrels to be settled on shore with sword and pistol.
Incredible.
Populacy, democracy, here it was. An impossible system of governance, the road to anarchy and confusion. Any born aristocrat would tell you that the common people could not govern themselves, and yet here were the most debased men on earth doing just that thing, and obeying their own laws like a bishop obeys the word of God.
It was unlike anything that Mary had ever experienced, Mary who was so accustomed to hierarchy, to officers layered upon officers for the better management of the lower sort. She could only shake her head in wonder at it, that such things could exist.
“Will you sign? Or no?” Jack asked.
“Yes. Yes, I will sign your fine articles, to be sure.”
She took the quill he offered and set it on the deck. Two of her fellow pirates took the vellum and rolled it out flat for her and she knelt before it, felt like a religious taking her vows. At the bottom of the document, a few scrawled names along with a series of X’s, and beside the X’s, “John Davies, his mark” and “Noah Harwood, his mark” and such, written out in a distinctly feminine hand.
Mary took up the quill, tapped out the excess ink, and then with a flourish wrote “Michael Read” at the bottom of the page.
She looked up. The others were grinning at her. “Welcome aboard the Pretty Anne,” Dicky Corner grinned and Mary grinned back at him. She felt like she was home.
It all came back now, as Mary sat up on deck, wrapped in the night, looking around. The bells had stopped tolling and dark shapes were rising around her, men who, like her, had been woken by the sound and were ready to go on watch.
“Here, Read, that you?” Noah Harwood’s voice came out of the dark.
“Aye.”
“Your watch.”
That was it. Aboard every vessel she had ever sailed the change of watch was a formal affair, with the on-coming watch expected to be on deck and ready before the first bell rang. They would relieve the helm and relieve the lookouts with a proper exchange of information.
But not aboard the pirate, apparently. Here men staggered aft when it suited them, five, ten minutes after the bells, relieving a watch that was in any event none too watchful to begin with. The pirates hated formality, shunned structure and hierarchy, save for their precious articles.
She pulled herself to her feet, worked the kinks from her muscles, and stepped aft, winding her way through the sleeping forms of men who did not care to stand watch that night.
George Fetherston was first officer and in charge of Mary’s watch. He stood on the quarterdeck, near the helm. He grinned when he saw Mary approach, but then he was grinning most of the time. Fetherston was so jubilant and content that Mary thought he must be mad.
“Ah, Read, you are alive! Wasn’t sure, with you sleeping like a dead ’un. Worked you like a son of a whore, yesterday, didn’t we?”
“Aye, sir, that you did.”
Fetherston threw back his head and laughed, a great bear’s roar of a laugh. When he was done he wiped the tears from his eye and said “Belay that ’sir’ shit, Read, this ain’t the fucking Navy! We don’t stand on that kind of thing, none of your ’hop to, yes sir, no sir, beat yer arse with a rope-end if you ain’t aloft fast enough’ nonsense here.”
“Aye . . .” It threw her off to not say “sir,” so she cleared her throat and said, “aye,” again.
“How was you rated, Read, aboard the froggy?”
“Able bodied.”
“You can hand, reef, and steer?”
“Aye, that I can.”
“Good. Then, what say you, take the helm then, and we’ll have one trick at least with a sober hand at the tiller, eh?” He laughed again.
“Relieve the helm, aye,” Mary said, struggling to be informal. It did not come easily, and she was surprised to find how very ingrained was her respect for authority and the chain of command.
She stepped back to the tiller, the five-foot tapered wooden bar that attached to the head of the rudder, a few feet behind them. Took the tiller from the tired-looking James Dobbin who held it. Dobbin, thus relieved, gave Mary a pleasant nod and headed forward.
“Ah . . .” Mary said and Dobbin stopped, turned back.
“Yeah?”
“What course?”
“Oh . . .” Dobbin walked back, peered at the compass in the binnacle box, lit by a small candle. “Looks to be around south southwest. I’d make it around there, then.”
That was it. He nodded again, headed off forward.
Mary held the tiller with one hand and let it press against her thigh, felt the weight of the bar as the rudder held the sloop on course. A bit of pressure, but not too much. The sails were nicely balanced for the strength and direction of the wind. As stunningly lackadaisical as the pirates were, they were seamen through and through and knew how to sail a ship.
“You got the feel of her, Read?” Fetherston sidled up, still grinning.
“Aye. A touch of weather helm . . . feels about right.”
“Good, good. Here.” He held out a bottle of rum and with a second’s hesitation, Mary took it from him. “Ain’t ever had a sober helmsman, to tell the truth, and I reckon we don’t want to start nothing new this night.”
Mary grinned, nodded, put the bottle to her lips and tipped it back. Rum . . . She felt the liquor warm her mouth and throat and belly as it went down, let the pungent odor fill her nostrils.
Rum. The taste and smell were so integrally tied to so much of her life—her tot in the Navy when she was just a girl, rations while campaigning. It was often their only warmth and pleasure during brutal winter encampments. Rum poured with abandon in taverns all over England and France and the Low Countries or wherever her peripatetic life had taken her.
Hot spiced rum in front of a big fire at the Three Trade Horses, resting in Frederick’s arms, silent and happy, watching the flames.
But never, never, had she actually quaffed rum while standing a trick at the helm. Just the day before she would have considered such liberties inconceivable.
She took another swallow, handed the bottle back to Fetherston who took a swallow himself. “You’re second in command then,” she said, “so I reckon if you say it’s all right, the helmsman having a nip, then it must be all right.”
“Oh, to be sure. You’ve a power to learn about our ways, I reckon. Ain’t never been on the account?”
“No. Merchant seaman. And a soldier before that.”
“Ah, so that’s where you’ve learned your skill with a blade. And that ’yes, sir’ horse shit, too, I’ll warrant. No, we don’t do things the same here. Men on the account have had a bellyful of that nonsense. Fellow here obeys the articles, don’t shirk in a fight, don’t steal from his shipmates, well, he can do pretty near as he pleases.
“And as to me being second, that don’t answer here. With the pirates it’s the quartermaster is second. He talks for the men, like. Me, I just stand me watch, on account of I was rated master’s mate
once, in the Navy. Dicky Corner’s Quartermaster. He’s a good man, don’t you worry, and he won’t hold no grudge, and you nearly besting him. Fact, he thinks more of you for it. That Billy Bartlett’s a mean bastard, and Dobbins is something of a chucklehead, but the rest is good men, too.”
Mary nodded. Good men. They were pirates, sea robbers, men burnt in the hand, the scorned and despised of the civilized world. Their lives were debased, squalid, and short. And yet they, of all men, accepted each other on their merits, and gave not a tinker’s cuss what their parentage was, or how much they had per year.
It would take some thinking on, to get it all straightened out.
“I’ll keep a clear hawse around Bartlett then. There was another, didn’t get the name . . .”
She saw Fetherston glance over, then take a drink. He handed her the bottle. She held it as she gave the tiller a bump to put the sloop back on course, then drank as well and handed the bottle back. She could feel the rum now, working at her. Sober, she might not have pursued this line, but she was not sober now, not quite.
“The young fellow,” Mary said, “the one keeps near by the captain? With the yellow hair?”
Fetherston was starting to grin, was fighting it back. “Yeah? What of him?”
“Well, for starters, he’s a woman.”
At that Fetherston threw back his head, gave his great bear laugh. When he was done he wiped his mouth with his frayed sleeve. “You smoked that, eh?”
“Yeah, I did.” Pretty bloody obvious.
“Well, you’re right, young Read, and a sharp eye you have. Didn’t reckon anyone would see through that. Aye, she’s a woman. Captain’s woman, name of Anne Bonny. Met her in Nassau and she shipped aboard with us. A right hellcat, that one, fights like a man, like you seen. We don’t treat her no different than any other man aboard. She’s the prettiest thing you’ll ever see, dressed like a proper girl, but don’t you be getting no ideas. She’s Calico Jack’s; she dotes on him, and he’s damned jealous of her.”
“I know better than to get my nose into that, you can be certain.”
“Don’t care to mix it up with Calico Jack, eh?”
“No.” She let that ambiguous answer hang in the air. In fact, the thought of fighting that strutting, dandy pirate captain would not have given her a second’s pause.
“But see here,” Fetherston added, his tone more serious than was his wont, “don’t you let on I told you. If she wants you to know the truth of her, she’ll tell you herself. Until then, she’s just another one of us. Don’t you give her no special attention.”
“You have my word on it.” And wouldn’t you be surprised, was you to know the real reason I’ve no interest in bedding this Anne Bonny, she thought.
It was an odd situation, odd indeed. How many women could there be, dressed as men and sailing as foremast jacks, let alone pirates? And for two of them to come together on that spot on the great ocean? It would take some thinking, some real philosophizing to figure it all out.
But not now.
It was not time for deep thought. The night was warm and overhead the stars spread in a great dome down to every point on the horizon, the constellations like old friends, the cloudy band of the Milky Way marking its path in the sky. The Pretty Anne was well balanced and tracking straight on course with just the smallest adjustments of the helm. The rum was warming her, dulling her senses, slowing her racing mind and it felt good. Fetherston was a great jolly bear and Mary found his company agreeable.
This was not so far from what she had imagined, back in the icy hell of the North Sea. She had been a pirate now for less than a day. There was still plenty of time to regret her decision, she knew, but right then she could not. And she did not think she would soon.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE PRETTY ANNE plowed her long, straight wake through the Caribbean, cleaving the rich blue water into two even lines of white during the daylight hours, and at night leaving behind a wide glowing swath as she agitated the phosphorescence in the sea. She was a restless hunter, prowling the sea lanes, never stopping, never pausing, even as her people slept, woke, ate, stood their watches, drank to insensibility, passed out, and then started the cycle again.
Anne sat on the rail just forward of the quarterdeck, leaning with her back against the shrouds. It was four days since they had taken the Dutchman. In that time they had run south by west under easy sail, enjoying steady winds and the flawless weather of the Caribbean. They had seen no hint of another vessel, but the weather was so fine and their hold so full that no one aboard seemed to mind.
Indeed, Anne thought that another prize might be viewed as a distraction in that idyllic setting. And she, for one, had distractions enough.
Black smoke belched out of the galley stove pipe and rolled away from her, over the lee rail, but still she could catch a whiff of it: burning wood and boiling salted meat and dried peas. Their fresh food was gone and there had been none aboard the Dutchman for the taking.
She felt her stomach give a little growl. She was hungry.
But her thoughts were not on food. Her attention was directed forward and half way out along the bowsprit. Where Michael Read was lashing new foot-ropes in place.
They had to be near the same age, she and Michael. He had not a hint of a beard, and yet there was something about him that was not youthful either. He had none of the silly naiveté or the boasting, swaggering, childish self-confidence of most young men.
He was quiet, which was an anomaly among the pirates, and he seemed to enjoy working, which was utterly unique. But of course any man aboard the Pretty Anne was free to do as he wished, and if it was work he wanted to do, then no one would say anything about it. Certainly no one would object.
Anne reclined against the shrouds, her lean body relaxed, her eyes taking in Read’s every action. There was a grace with which he moved that Anne found intriguing, a fluidity of motion, like a dancer.
Most of the men aboard the Pretty Anne were great brutes, blundering through whatever task they were about with tremendous strength and little subtlety, like bears at needle-work. Jack was the most refined of the lot, by far, but even he could not match Read’s finesse and easy carriage.
He wore his dark hair clubbed, like most of the seamen. He was dressed in worn slop trousers and a loose shirt, much like the one Anne wore, and over that a faded red waistcoat. It was an odd sort of a garment but he was never without it. In the small of his back, a big rigging knife, and his hand extracted it and sheathed it again with a thoughtless familiarity as he went about his work.
He had small hands. They looked almost childlike holding the big knife. But they were not child’s hands. They bore the scars and calluses of a lifetime’s hard work.
Anne had spoken with Michael Read a few times. He was always friendly, always reserved. She had not revealed her own sex to him. She had not been able to pry from him one real detail of his former life.
She found him at once frustrating and intriguing.
This is not good, she thought. She could see the path down which she was heading. Jack Rackam is my man, he is unlike any other and I love him, truly. There will never be another for me. But assuring herself of that fact and actually believing it were two different things.
“Annie, whatever has caught your eye?” She jumped at the sound of Jack’s voice, turned with a guilty flush.
“Ah, Jack, I thought I saw a sail, fine on the starboard bow, and Carty aloft quite blind to it, but I was wrong.”
Jack, of course, had to look in that direction, fine on the starboard bow. It was an irresistible reflex. But when he did, he saw that she might also have been looking at Michael Read, out on the bowsprit. Anne could see the cloud pass over his face.
This is not good.
In Jack’s hand were two plates piled with food. “Jack, my beloved, have you brought me my dinner?”
“Huh? Oh, yes . . .”
She looked at him, innocence and seduction, playing the coy mistress
, an act that she knew Jack found quite alluring. “Jack, you villain. Do you think for such a little kindness I’ll yield to you the final favor?” She could all but see the thought of Michael Read fly from his head.
“Will you be coy with me?” Jack teased. “Perhaps I must ply you with drink as well.”
Anne took the plate from him. “You are a villain, to rob an innocent wench like me of my delight.”
“Ah, but it is my delight to do so,” said Jack, sitting beside her on the rail.
Anne picked up her luke-warm salt pork, tore a piece off with her teeth, chewed it with no little effort.
Men are such dogs, she thought. It still amazed her, after six years of experience with the breed, how easily they could be manipulated. Just like a dog. Kick ’em again and again, and then offer them a bone— or the hope of a good thrumming—and they were back with tongues wagging and tails swishing.
She wondered if the same would be true for Michael Read, if he were to discover the truth about her. He seemed an altogether different creature from the men she had known. Would he be able to resist her charms, if she were to taunt him with her sex? How much encouragement would it take to set Read’s tail a-wagging?
I cannot be thinking on Michael Read.
She tried to conjure up some topic she and Jack might discuss. She thought to ask him about his intentions for the cruise, or his thoughts on how their luck might run, but he always became defensive when those topics were raised.
Actually, she had nothing to say to him.
They ate in silence, and when Jack was done he dumped his scraps overboard and said, “I have business that calls me below, Annie, dear. Might I have the pleasure of your company? Eh?”
He gave her a cock of the eyebrows, a visual nudge in the ribs. Anne wondered if he had any business at all below, or if it was all about wanting a little after-dinner flourish. She suddenly found the whole thing irritating and distasteful.
“No, Jack, dear. I have promised Corner that I would put a patch in the number two jib and I can put him off no longer.”
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