They kept a sharp lookout now, and it was not for prizes primarily. It was a lookout ahead, eyes on the clear blue water, alert for the killing reefs and sandbars that fringed the island. And it was eyes on the horizon, watching, looking sharp for the Guarda del Costa, the small Spanish men-of-war that jealously guarded the coasts of Spain’s possessions in the New World.
The pirates were enemies of the world, wanted by every nation, and while they did not care to be captured at all, they wanted least to be captured by the Spanish. Being tried as a pirate was one thing. Being tried as a pirate by Spanish civil authorities and as a heretic by the Inquisition was another.
So they watched the glittering blue sea to starboard and the green jungle-covered mountains to larboard, the long stretches of white-sand beach and, when they were in close enough, the languid palms that waved like beckoning arms. They saw poor fishing boats and island traders and pettiaugas like big canoes, but never a vessel that was a threat to them, nor any that was worth their while in taking.
The mood aboard the Pretty Anne was easy, jovial, despite the threat of the Spanish patrols. Anne could see that Jack was more relaxed now, with their imminent arrival ashore. He was drinking more, and had been for the past month, which was annoying, and he would rarely touch her, never mind make love to her. But at least he seemed once more the carefree buccaneer she had loved in Nassau, and she was happy at least to have that Jack Rackam back.
Anne was glad to have Mary, and said so one afternoon, as they sat alone in the bows watching the Archipelago de Camagüey slip past their starboard side.
“I am glad as well, for your friendship,” Mary said. “I have never had a woman friend.”
“Nor I . . .” said Anne. “Indeed, I’ll warrant I’ve never had a friend at all. Lovers, to be sure. A husband even. But never a friend.”
“Was your husband not a friend?”
“No. Once you put carnal desire into the thing, it changes everything. A husband is a fine creature, but he cannot be a friend.”
“Oh, I don’t know. My—”
She stopped short, so abruptly that Anne looked sharp at her. “Your . . . ?”
“It’s nothing. Perhaps you’re right.”
“No, you were saying? Your . . . husband?”
“Yes, my husband.”
“You are married?”
“Was. Annie, pray, I do not wish to discuss it.”
“Very well.”
They were quiet then, sitting there side by side and staring out at the archipelago’s islands, like a blue-green necklace between the Pretty Anne and the mainland of Cuba. Anne glanced around to see that no one was looking their way. She reached over and took up Mary’s hand and squeezed it. “I will never ask again,” she said. “But if you ever wish to tell, I will listen. Blood sisters.”
Mary smiled. “Blood sisters,” she said, and squeezed Anne’s hand in return.
They sailed on for the rest of the day, and the next morning felt their way in through a gap in the islands south of Cayo Fragoso. The shore of the main island, Cuba itself, which had been no more than a vague and distant line, began to resolve itself into individual trees and a line of small surf along a white beach.
Jack was on deck now, in command at the helm, directing the vessel through the channels with an ease that could only come with familiarity.
“There, now, Palmer,” he said, loud, “do you see that house on the western side of the town? The big one? Make your head right for there. Yes, yes, good. Steady as she goes. Oh, Annie! What think you of this, girl? Is this not the finest place in the Caribbean, and those damnable Spaniards ahold of it?”
“It is fine, Jack, truly,” she said, and she meant it. They were close in enough that they could smell the shore, even with the contrary sea breeze, and it smelled of warm sand and vegetation and the perfume of tropical flowers. There was smoke rising from several homes in the distant village, and they could smell that as well, burning wood, and fish and meat cooking.
The richness of the aromas enveloped them and enticed them, they having been so long at sea with only the occasional tang of salt air and the stink of the sloop, which, in any event, they no longer noticed.
Anne was in a dress, one of the fine silk affairs they had liberated from the schooner and which she had modified to fit her expanded belly. If felt odd, encumbering. She had not had so much cloth draped over her in almost a year.
Beside her, Mary leaned easily on the bulwark, still one of the men.
“This is the village of Caibarién,” Jack said. “Just a poor fishing village, in truth, but good people. I have had occasion to make friends here. They do not abide by that heretic nonsense and all the prejudice of old Spain, no, they will judge a man by who he is.
“There is a certain family here, name of De Jesús, who are particular friends of mine. Did me a good turn once, nursed me when I was sick. Palmer, let us come to anchor just astern of that fishing boat, there.
“Actually took a bullet out of me, then nursed me, but that is a different story,” Jack continued. He was buoyant, Anne could tell, pleased to have arrived and no doubt pleased to know the pregnant woman would soon be off his ship, safe ashore and no longer his responsibility, ashore before she had the chance to give birth. But he was acting like the old Calico Jack, larger than life, and Anne was happy to see it. It was the Jack she loved.
“In any event, I have managed to make them a fair amount richer over the years, for their kindness, and we are like family still. They will be kind to us, dear, and Abuelita De Jesús—Abuelita means ’grandmother’ to these Spaniards—she is physician to the town. Not really a physician, of course, no formal schooling, but oceans of experience with this sort of thing. I’d put her up against any of your quacks in old London.”
“I am pleased to hear it.” God, he thinks this is some kind of new thing, like no woman has ever given birth before. But for all her annoyance with Jack, Anne had to admit, to herself at least, that she was frightened as well. There were moments when she did feel as if she were the only woman to ever go though this.
They rounded up and let the anchor go and Anne Bonny stared over the taffrail at what would be her new home for . . . she did not know how long. A month or two at least. And she liked what she saw.
Caibarién was a small town, fifty homes perhaps, and unmistakably Spanish. The buildings were brick and stucco, whitewashed and brilliant in the sun. Red tile roofs. Most were one story, only a dozen or so larger than that. Biggest of all, a church with its tall bell tower, farther inland but still dominating the village.
A main street ran from the beach right up the center of the town, a sandy dirt road that was the same white color as the beach itself, giving no clear point where the beach ended and the town began. But that seemed only appropriate for a town that was completely oriented toward the sea, as the dozens of canoes and pettiaugas and sundry small craft pulled up on the beach or anchored just a few hundred feet off seemed to indicate.
Of all the vessels there, the Pretty Anne was the largest.
“It is quiet . . .” Mary observed.
“It is Sunday, Read, if I ain’t mistaken,” Jack said. “They are a God-fearing bunch here. And papist. That will never bother you, will it, Annie?”
“Papist, Anglican, Jew, cannibal, it makes no difference to me.”
“Well said,” Jack answered.
From where they were anchored, they could look right up the main street to the town square—a circle, actually—at the far end of which was the facade of the big, white church. The land on which the town sat seemed carved out of the jungle. Just several hundred yards beyond the farthest building the tree line began, like a besieging army, waiting patiently for the moment when it could sally forth and overrun the village.
Suddenly the still air was filled with the sound of ringing bells, lovely, bold, and melodic. Jack put his glass to his eye. “I do believe church is out!” he announced. “Sorry, lads, to get you here late for Sunday service. Let us clear
the boat away, mayhaps the padre will count his beads for us anyway.”
Jack ducked below, and Mary went forward to help the others cast off the gripes and rig the boat falls. Ten minutes later the longboat was riding in the water alongside the Pretty Anne. By then the church had emptied, and all the village, it seemed, had come down to the beach to see the new arrival. There looked to be several hundred people there, dressed in their dark Sunday clothing, the women’s heads covered with their velos, men with their wide straw hats, children running in their heedless way.
Jack emerged from the great cabin scuttle. He had changed into his best coat, the calico with the small rose pattern, clean breeches, and silk stockings. His shoes were an unmarred black; the silver buckles stood out bold. At his hip hung a delicate rapier, tricked out with gold and jewels. He held his best, all-but-new hat under his arm, a great plume jutting out from the band.
“My dear Calico Jack Rackam, you are a fine sight!” Anne said. And he did look fine. Tall, square-jawed, his chiseled face set off by the big mustache, dressed out in his best clean, tailored clothing, it excited her, looking on him.
“And you, my love,” he said, taking her hand, holding it up, running his eyes over her. It was a gesture he had done a hundred times, but this time it was different, the look was different, the feel. It was not the smoldering regard he had always had before. It was something less than that, something more restrained.
Anne was ready to be done with her pregnancy. She wanted Jack to have that old look again.
“Might I help you down into the boat, my dear Annie?” he said, and there was warmth and love enough in his voice that it helped to mitigate some of Anne’s misery.
She followed him to the boarding steps and glanced down. The boat was manned, six hands per side, and heavily armed, as the pirates always were whenever going ashore, even in the most amiable of ports. On the second thwart, starboard side, Mary sat with her oar held straight up, like the others. Their eyes met and Mary winked and Anne was very glad that her friend would be there with her. Her one, immutable friend.
Awkwardly she climbed down the three steps and into the boat, where helpful hands grabbed her arms and guided her to the stern-sheets.
“Sod it, sod it . . .” she muttered as she sat heavily on the small wooden seat aft. She was more agile than any of those apes, she prided herself on that fact, and annoyed her to be so clumsy and in need of such help.
Jack bounded down the boarding steps, sat in the sternsheets beside Anne, and took up the tiller. “Shove off, give way,” he called in a cheery tone. Anne could see that he was excited by this landfall, like some local hero coming back to the accolades of his public. We shall see, Anne thought.
But as it happened, Jack had guessed right. The longboat ground up in the sand and the men and women on the beach surged forward, surrounded it, olive-skinned faces smiling wide, and she heard, “Juan!” “El capitán Juan!” “Juan Rackam!”
The men splashed out into the surf, grabbed the longboat by the gunnels, and hauled it up the beach, so that the Pretty Annes could step dry from the boat onto the sand.
Jack stood. In the stern of the boat he was several feet above the heads of the crowd. He smiled and waved, and the people cheered. He looked like Caesar making his entrance into Rome, and Anne wondered just how much gold he had spread through that town to make himself so welcome.
He hopped out of the boat, down into the white sand, and the crowd parted as an older couple—in their fifties, perhaps, it was hard to tell—pushed through. The woman wore a dark dress and shawl over her plump, matronly body and a velo on her head. She unabashedly grabbed Jack and squeezed him and Jack called, “Abuelita!”
When she released him, Jack extended his hand to the man beside her, a thin man, the top of his head bald, with a meager mustache that drooped down on either side of his mouth. The man took his hand, shook it vigorously, said, “Juan!” and Jack replied “Abuelito! Abuelito De Jesús! Como estás?”
Abuelito replied in rapid Spanish and Jack nodded as he listened, then replied in rapid Spanish of his own.
“Anne, dear, this is Señora De Jesús,” Jack said, presenting her to the older woman. “You must call her Abuelita, everyone does. It is like . . . grandma, in the Spanish tongue. And Señor De Jesús. You must call him Abuelito.”
I never knew he had any Spanish, Anne thought, and here he was talking like a native, as best as she could tell. What more surprises do you have for me, Jack Rackam?
Then, as if in answer to her question, another person pushed through the crowd, a young woman, twenty, if that. She was tall, slender, and her conservative church clothes could not hide her perfect figure, her voluptuous breasts. Her head was draped in a black velo, like the other women, but rather than making her look penitent or devout, the lacy fabric made her look more alluring still, like she was trying to hide her beauty. Thick black hair tumbled out from under it, framing a delicate face, a light olive complexion, and big, dark brown eyes.
She stepped toward Jack with a feline grace, put her arms around his neck and hugged him with an exuberance that went well beyond camaraderie or sisterly affection.
Anne scowled, looked over at Mary, and Mary gave her a cocked eyebrow, a hint of a shrug. She looked back at the little scene below, saw Jack disengaging the girl, holding her at arm’s length, his composure not what it was. “Marie!” he said with somewhat feigned enthusiasm. “Marie, elle es mi esposa, Anne.”
He turned and Marie turned and looked up at Anne, and Anne nodded a greeting to the girl. She watched demurely as Marie’s thoughts and passions played across her face—confusion, realization, and then anger, the profound anger of a woman betrayed—and Anne thought,
So that is how it is.
Jack held up his hand to Anne, to help her out of the boat. Anne stood, awkwardly, and she heard Marie gasp, saw her turn and push her way through the crowd, and Jack, uncertain now, looked from Anne to the place where Marie had been, and then back.
“It would appear she has not seen a woman quick with child before,” Anne said, acidly, “or at least not quick with your child.”
Jack said nothing, just scooped her up in his arms and lowered her until her feet hit the beach. “She is a girl . . .” he whispered, “a silly infatuation . . .”
“Indeed.” As if I do not recognize the look of a scorned lover. Jack hadn’t mentioned this little wrinkle. “Are there any other girls here with ’silly infatuations’?” she asked in a harsh whisper. “Will I find a horde of half-white children here, with brown curly hair?”
“You will not, I assure you. What Marie De Jesús is about, I cannot reckon.”
“De Jesús?” Anne grabbed Jack, half turned him around until they were face-to-face. “She is never the daughter of the family with whom we are to stay?”
“Well . . . yes . . .”
“Oh, this is brilliant, Jack, just bloody brilliant!”
“What? I see no problem with it . . .”
“No, Jack, you don’t. And that, my dear, is half the problem right there.”
The Pretty Annes leapt out of the boat and onto the warm sand, and while they did not receive the same enthusiastic greeting that Jack did, still it was clear that they were welcome, that the people of Caibarién did not regard them with the same disgust and fear that most honest citizens did.
They feasted that night, on local fare—black beans and fish and spicy goat meat—and the food and wine the buccaneers had plundered from the Havana brig. Long tables were set up in the town square. Torches fringed the open area, illuminating the place, giving it an appropriately festive air. A quartet of musicians played their Spanish-sounding airs. It was a raucous but civilized affair, a restrained bacchanal, and at the head of the table, Calico Jack Rackam, and beside him, his ersatz esposa, Anne Bonny.
It was a fine feast, and Anne would have enjoyed it thoroughly had it not been for Marie De Jesús, who sat with her family just a few feet down the table from them and with
folded arms glared her hatred at Anne. There was something about the dark skin, the dark eyes, that made Marie look particularly threatening, and while Anne was not intimidated—it was unlikely that any woman or man could intimidate her—still she could not thoroughly relax with the young Cuban glaring at her.
“Jack, dear.” Anne leaned over and spoke in a soft voice. “However is it that the De Jesúses welcome you into their house after you have seen your way to rogering their daughter?”
“Marie? I have never laid a hand on her. The De Jesúses know that perfectly well. I am not so very stupid nor randy that I can show no control, Annie. Nor can I help it if the dear young thing gets some silly infatuation.”
“Hmm.” Anne did not know whether to believe it. Jack certainly sounded sincere, though Marie would be a hard one to resist. Harder still, perhaps, with a pregnant wife with whom he had not had a flourish in two months.
Perhaps I shall show this dear young thing how things sit, Anne thought, and she leaned over, nestled against Jack, gave him a hungry kiss which he returned with enthusiasm and not a little surprise.
For a few minutes Anne lost herself in Jack Rackam, let him put his arms around her, envelop her, as she pressed close. She let the silent bond build, even as Jack continued on his other conversations, bantering loud in Spanish to his friends from the town and in English to the pirates, sometimes translating for one or the other.
Finally Anne looked down the table, met Marie’s furious eyes with her own, gave her a look that said, There. Now you know who owns Jack’s heart.
Marie held Anne’s stare for a moment, and then the tears erupted from her dark eyes. She stood fast, knocked her chair over, and fled into the darkness.
“That was not so kind a thing to do,” Mary, seated beside her, whispered in Anne’s ear.
“Did you follow that?”
“I did. I hope she will not be trouble for you.”
“I think not. I do not delight in such cruelty, you know. But sometimes one must mark one’s territory.”
“Perhaps you should have just pissed on Jack’s leg.”
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