Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  She turned and met the confused, open-mouthed face of Jacob Wells with an expression of innocence, then buttoned her waistcoat and announced they were done.

  “But hold a moment . . .” Jacob stammered, grabbing her arm.

  “Yes?” asked Mary, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Jacob, she could see, was not entirely certain of what he had seen in the dim light of the cable tier. No doubt it would seem more reasonable to him that he was mistaken than that Michael Read should be a woman.

  Finally he seemed to lose the courage to ask so outrageous a question as he had been considering. He let go of her arm, muttered something Mary could not hear.

  They went topside, into the brilliant sun and the cooling trade wind, and drank their fill of water. Mary could feel Jacob’s eyes on her, could see he was again on the edge of saying something, but again he did not.

  For two more days he did not, though Mary could tell that he was not easy in his mind.

  Finally he stepped up to her, an hour or so after his evening concert, after he had poured some Dutch courage down his throat, and said, “Michael, might I have a word with you? Below, perhaps?”

  Mary followed him below and forward, up near the bows, in the quiet place where the spare sails were stowed. He stopped, turned to her, and blurted out, “Michael, we are friends, and you will forgive me a question that seems too insane to even think on, but . . . god-damn my eyes . . . are you a woman?”

  Mary held his stare for a moment, and then she smiled and said, “Yes, Jacob. Yes, I am.”

  Jacob sat down heavily on the pile of canvas behind him, his eyes never leaving Mary’s. For a long time neither of them said a word, and Mary could not help but think back to a time, eight years ago—it seemed like eighty—and a similar scene in a tent in Flanders.

  Similar, and yet so very different. Her love for Jacob was real, as real as had been her love for Frederick. She wanted him to love her, and she knew that she would be unhappy if he did not.

  But still, the fear was not there, the desperation. Perhaps it was the Caribbean, perhaps it was Anne. Perhaps it was that she was beyond caring. In any event, she did not feel, as she had with Frederick, that her entire life hung on the decision that Jacob would make.

  And then he stood and put his arms around her and pulled her toward him, kissed her, gently, sweetly on the lips. She put her arms around his neck, ran fingers through his hair, and recalled how wonderful it was to be held and kissed by a man whom she loved.

  June was hot and dry in the Caribbean, with regular, violent thunderstorms in the late afternoons that forced the Pretty Annes to take in sail and allowed them, for twenty minutes, to enjoy a reviving shower of fresh water before the storm moved on and the sun came out again.

  Anne made Mary recount to her in every detail the mounting romance that she was enjoying with Jacob Wells. Mary did not ask, but she wondered if Anne was not taking a vicarious pleasure. Jack, often drunk, occasionally belligerent, did not seem up to his old, flamboyant, randy self.

  “Well, Mary,” Anne said in a conspiratorial whisper, even though they were up aloft and alone, as was their habit, “I could arrange for you and your Jacob to have the great cabin for an hour or so, and quite alone, if you would have such conversation with him.”

  “Ah, no, my dear, thank you. I am quite satisfied with our little play among the sails.”

  “But I’ll warrant your Jacob is not. Will you not lie with him?”

  Mary sighed. “I don’t know. I had long ago resolved never to lie with a man without the benefit of marriage. And so I have been with but one man, and he my husband.”

  “Just one man? La, Mary, what have you been doing all your life?”

  “Well, you know what I have not been doing.”

  “Indeed. But pray consider, there is little chance for marriage out here, and preachers are not so easy come by in our trade.”

  “I’ll warrant that’s so.”

  They were quiet for a moment, and then Anne began to laugh.

  “Something amuses you?” Mary asked.

  “You do, you and your morality. You would be a pirate, rob innocent merchants, kill them if they resist, fight those in legal authority if they came to arrest you, yet you will not lie with the man you love because it is a sin?”

  “You make a point, my dear. Though just because I am a wicked sinner on the one hand does not justify my being a wicked sinner on the other.”

  A week later they gave chase to the first prize they had seen in weeks, a fishing boat which even from a distance appeared to be of little value to anyone, including the fishermen.

  The mood aboard the Pretty Anne was dark and volatile. The ships they had captured were few and generally worthless. They were all but out of liquor. The sloop was leaking, weed covered below the waterline. The bilges stunk. Jack was drunk and had been for some time.

  Anne Bonny stood on the quarterdeck, aft, near the taffrail. She was dressed out in her long blue coat, her slop trousers, her brace of pistols around her neck, her sword heavy on her hip. Her head was bound in a red handkerchief, her thick hair tied back with a bit of tarred marlin.

  Ten feet in front of her stood Calico Jack. He was watching the fishing boat they were chasing, which was about to disappear around some headland and into an unseen harbor.

  He was a pitiful sight. He was losing weight, and his clothes hung loose on him, and they were wrinkled because as often as not he passed out wearing them. His hair, of which he had once been so inordinately proud—more so than Anne had ever been of her own—was now tangled and knotted and hanging in disarray.

  He held his sword in his right hand, one of the last bottles of brandy in his left. With his hands full he looked that much more awkward on those occasions when the sloop rolled and he had to grab on to something to steady himself, a move that would not have been necessary had he been sober. Anne closed her eyes, shook her head.

  Jack had not even attempted to make love to her after his last failed effort, despite her assurances that it was all right, that he was hardly unmanned by a onetime failure. He would hear none of it. He drank, became more withdrawn, muttered that the crew were plotting against him, that there were none he could trust. He made dark comments about Mary Read, but would not elaborate.

  Anne’s emotions boxed the compass, like an unsteady breeze, veering from pity to anger, from disgust to guilt. It occurred to her that she might be in part to blame for Jack’s downfall, that perhaps she had expected too much of him.

  She tried to think back to the old days in Nassau, when she and Jack had first become lovers, first gone on the account. Had it been her idea? Had Jack wanted to turn pirate again, or had she coerced him? It seemed a hundred years before, and she could not recall with any kind of clarity.

  The Pretty Anne followed the fishing boat around the headland, and behind the jungle-covered point of land, tipped with its strip of white sand, they saw a small half-moon harbor, more like an indentation in the coast. There was nothing onshore but a sandy beach, and beyond that, thick jungle. The fishing boat was just coming to an anchor, the four men aboard desperately trying to get their small yawl boat over the side.

  Forward, Richard Corner shot off one of the guns and the ball smashed the fishing boat’s short bowsprit. The Pretty Annes shouted and waved their weapons. It was not the lively vaporing of pirates eager for a fight. There was a different quality to the thing. Uglier. Anne could feel it. There was real anger there, and whatever the source, it was directed at this fishing boat which had foolishly fled from them.

  The fishermen had no more than a minute to get their boat in the water and make their escape, and that was not enough time. The Pretty Anne slammed into their side, Fetherston at the tiller making no effort to soften the blow, and the screaming pirates leapt onto the fishing boat’s deck, pistols firing, slashing at whatever they could, despite the entire lack of resistance.

  The fight was over in less than a minute. One of the fishing boat�
��s crew lay dead, his head half shot off, the others up in the bows, but Jack was not done with them. He raised his pistol, aimed at the one who seemed to be the captain, screamed, “Run, will you? Run, you goddamned sneaking puppy? You’ll not strike to the flag of Calico Jack Rackam?”

  There was a high-pitched quality to his voice, a nearly hysterical tone, and he shouted, “Goddamn your eyes!” and fired the gun and missed the cowering, unarmed man at whom he aimed.

  Anne spat on the deck. Jack was putting on a pathetic, stupid, cowardly display. She wanted to slap him, to push him over the side.

  “Jack,” she shouted. “Jack, leave them be and take joy in what you have captured.”

  Jack turned, squinted at her. She could see the gun trembling in his hand, like a leaf in a breeze.

  “Look, Jack, dear, you have made a prodigious haul. As grand as any you have taken in the past month, you wicked rogue. See here . . . fishing nets, empty barrels, some rotten canvas . . . oh, look here . . .” She kicked over a bucket of bait, festering, stinking fish guts, that spilled over the deck in a slimy, gelatinous pile. “See what you have here, Jack Rackam, you fearsome villain.”

  “Goddamn you!” Jack held his sword up, pointed the tip at her. He was ten feet away, but she could see that rage in his eyes and she did not care. “Goddamn you, you bloody whore! You mock me? What would you have me do, you bitch? Any of you, what would you have me do?”

  There was silence on deck, silence that was more than the mere absence of noise. The seconds went by, one, two, three.

  “I would have you play the man, Jack,” Anne said softly.

  “Would you? You little tart, were you a man, I would run you through!”

  “Do not let my sex stop you from trying, Jack,” said Anne and she pulled her sword from her shoulder belt and held it ready. She had learned a great deal about blade work in her time on the account. She did not think that Jack, drunk and furious, could best her.

  For another long measure they glared at one another, swords drawn, and then Jack said, “I’ll not have it added to my sins that I killed a woman,” and he slid his sword back into its scabbard.

  Anne continued to glare at him, toyed with the idea of making him fight her. At a certain point he would have to accept the challenge, and then lose to her, and let his men turn on him. Or he would have to refuse until it was clear that he was afraid, and again the wolf pack would fall on him and tear him apart.

  Anne was disgusted with him, furious with him, but she did not hate him, not to that degree. She remained silent, then pulled her eyes from Jack.

  The others fell to tearing the fishing boat apart.

  Anne slid her sword back into its scabbard, turned to help the others in their looting.

  Mary Read, with arms folded, leaning on the boat’s rail, watched the confrontation and wondered how it would play out. She was not happy with Anne, pushing Jack thus. Jack was teetering and Mary wondered if this would be the nudge that sent him plummeting. If he fought Anne, and lost, as Mary guessed he would, that certainly would be the end for him.

  And then what? Had Anne thought this through? But Anne let it go in the end.

  Mary straightened up as Anne slid her sword back into its scabbard, unfolded her arms, realized how tensed she had been. The others were tearing up the hatches, plundering the cabin, ripping into the fishing boat as much to release their own smoldering anger as out of any hope of finding something really worth the taking.

  Good, Mary thought. Let them get it out on these poor sods. If the Pretty Annes did not find some outlet for this rage, then they would turn on one another.

  She stepped forward along the side deck. From the bow Jacob was coming aft, toward her. Standing on the main hatch, Billy Bartlett was drinking deep from a bottle of wine he had found someplace.

  Mary stopped and gasped. It was as if the veil over the future had been pulled back to reveal the next minute, and the next. She could see what was about to happen. She opened her mouth to warn Jacob, but before a sound could come out, his heel came down in the spilled fish guts on the deck. His foot shot out from under him and he fell and he shouted, “Son of a bitch!” and then he fell against Billy Bartlett, who spilled the wine over the front of his shirt and down his trousers.

  “Bastard!” Billy shouted, and he kicked Jacob even before Jacob had pulled himself up from the hatch on which he fell. “Push me, you whoreson? And call me ’son of a bitch’?”

  “It was an accident,” said Jacob, leaping to his feet. “My words were not for you.”

  “Now you think me a fool? That I don’t know what I saw? Eh, you goddamned clumsy bastard?”

  “It was an accident, Bartlett.” Mary stepped forward and Bartlett shifted his rat gaze to her.

  “Oh, will you defend your boy, then, Read?”

  Mary shut her mouth, folded her arms, realized she had made a grave mistake. Now Bartlett saw an even better opportunity for mischief, and he would not suffer it to pass.

  “You, you little trained monkey.” He pointed a finger at Jacob. “I’ll have satisfaction of you, do you hear? At noon on the morrow, on yonder beach, we shall settle this with sword and pistol. Unless you will not play the man?”

  Jacob was no coward, Mary knew that, and his hateful glare did not waver as he accepted Bartlett’s challenge.

  “Aye, I’ll meet you, you blackhearted bastard,” Jacob said.

  Not that he had much choice. Forced into their company or no, the pirates would not allow a man to back down from such a challenge. To do so would be an act of unforgivable cowardice. Any man who did such a thing would be marooned, left on some desolate spit of land with the clothes on his back and a little jug of water and a pistol for when the water ran out and the thirst was more than he could bear.

  Better that he should die from a quick bullet or sword thrust on the beach, die like a man under the eyes of the watching crew.

  Bartlett turned to Mary, and he gave her just a hint of a smile, a flash of triumph. Her and Jacob’s friendship was no secret. Bartlett knew that with one pistol shot he could inflict misery on two people.

  Then he ambled forward to join in the looting there.

  Mary felt dizzy. The sun seemed overhot.

  She had seen Billy Bartlett in action many times. He had no training with sword or pistol, but he was wiry and fast and he had some natural ability. More, to be certain, than the musician Jacob Wells.

  Jacob would not back down, he would not die a coward’s death. He would meet Billy on the beach and fight him and die like a man. But what was that? He would still be dead. In all her time in the company of men, Mary had tried to understand the distinction that some men made between the two, but she never did, not really.

  The men she knew, combat soldiers, men who lived with death, understood that the distinction was meaningless. They, like her, had learned that dead was dead, and it hardly mattered how it had come about.

  And so Mary understood that on the morrow, not long after noon, on the beach yonder, she would, for the second time, witness the death of a man she loved.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  THE PRIZE, as it turned out, was engaged not only in fishing but in small-time island trading. As a result she had on board not just the items that Anne had cataloged for Jack’s benefit, but also two moderate-sized breakers of rum and a couple of goats. That, and the fact that they were now anchored in a pleasant and decently sheltered harbor, was reason enough for a grand bacchanal.

  The pirates abandoned their ship and moved the feast to the wide, sandy beach. The three living prisoners were allowed to bury their shipmate with whatever ceremony they wished, and when he was interred they were made to butcher and cook the two goats over a fire the pirates had built in the sand.

  Soon the air was filled with the smell of burning wood and roasting goat and rum and the sounds of freebooters who were, for the moment, satisfied with their lot. Even Jack seemed to unwind, just a bit. Mary saw him laughing with the others on a fe
w occasions as he stumbled around in the sand.

  Mary sat by herself, off near the edge of the jungle, brooding, as evening swept over the beach. Her mind moved from one plan to another: Put something—what?—in Jacob’s drink so that he would be too sick to fight. No, he would recover eventually. Steal one of the boats and make their escape, take Jacob and disappear up the trail that they had discovered through the jungle, near where the pirates had made their fire. But where did the trail lead? Would Jacob run from a fight?

  Every idea Mary had she dismissed. She took a sip of her rum. Goddamn Billy Bartlett, the little whoreson villain, the bastard . . . She had seen a lot of what men could be in her wandering life, and still she was amazed at the depth of his viciousness. She had never understood the reason for indulging in cruelty just for the pleasure of it, though she had seen it often enough.

  Would one not prefer friendship to hatred? she wondered.

  And then it came to her, and she smiled at first and then she laughed out loud, and shook her head to think so obvious a solution should elude her, even as she was thinking about such nonsense as running off into the jungle or taking a boat for the open sea.

  Mary got to her feet, picked up her tin cup of rum, and walked toward the fire. She was not so steady, and the soft sand made it worse.

  Jacob was playing his violin. He did it willingly now, not under duress, as when he had first been pressed into service. While he still made no secret of his distaste for piracy, it was clear to Mary that he no longer found the company so distasteful. He was coming to like the Pretty Annes. And they, in turn, loved him, for his affable nature and the beautiful music he could conjure up.

  Billy Bartlett was off a ways from the others, sitting in the sand with his knees drawn up to his chest. His fellow pirates were not pleased that he would be killing their musician on the morrow, and they let him know, but there was no more they could do about it. The articles they had signed were absolute law, and they could not make an exception just because they liked a fellow, or because he could play a sweet air.