Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  I am not afraid. Wouldn’t Annie be proud of me now?

  He felt a hand on his back, pushing into the small of his back, and then a hard shove and his feet came off the edge of the cart. He saw his beloved ocean swimming in front of his eyes, felt himself falling down, down, felt the rough noose come tight around his neck, a fraction of a second’s constriction, and then he was dead.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  JOHN RACKAM’S BODY had been hanging in chains from a gibbet on Plumb Point for eleven days before the trial of Anne Bonny and Mary Read commenced.

  “That was not kind of you, sending Jack to his death thus,” Mary had said as the jailor led the broken man away.

  “It would have been quite beyond my poor powers to hide my disgust with that man,” Anne said, and they spoke no more on the subject.

  When the jailor told them how Jack had gone boldly to the gallows, with never a sign of fear, Anne could say only, “I would he had fought for his life with half the boldness that he gave it up.”

  Then on Monday morning, November 28, the seventh year of the reign of King George of England, the jailor and the bailiff and the soldiers came for them, and once more they were marched into a crowded courtroom, where hundreds of spectators jammed shoulder to shoulder to hear their sordid story.

  It was not so very different from the last time they had been in that room. The Commissioners were all there, the same men who had sent the other Pretty Annes to hang, and Mary did not think they would be any more disposed to mercy when it came to considering their fate. There was Mr Norris, the Register, and the Chief Justice, William Nedham, who was too busy with his papers to look up, the only man in the room not staring at them as they made their entrance, heads up, eyes ahead.

  They took their place at the bar and Sir Nicholas Lawes swept in, red-faced, white-wigged, jowly, and lugubrious, and the trial commenced in the usual, plodding manner. Norris took his place in front of Lawes’s grand bench and read the articles against them.

  “. . . did piratically, feloniously, and in a hostile manner, attack, engage, and take several certain fishing boats . . .”

  Bloody pathetic, Mary thought.

  “. . . and then and there, piratically and feloniously, did steal, take, and carry away the fish and fishing tackle to the value of ten pounds of current money of Jamaica and the goods and chattels of the aforesaid fishermen . . .”

  How humiliating, to hang for such a thing!

  At last Norris got to the second article, which covered the two sloops they had plundered in Hispaniola, and the third, which was Spenlow’s schooner, and the fourth, which was the taking of Dillon’s sloop, the Mary, which, with its apparel and tackling, was valued at three hundred pounds, and by that point it did not sound so bad.

  Three hundred pounds . . . as if we might have seen but a fraction of that . . . Mary found her mind wandering off, thinking of the use to which she would have put three hundred pounds.

  Then Norris was done with the articles and he turned to them and said, “What have you to say? Are you guilty of the piracies, robberies, and felonies, or any of them, in the said articles mentioned, which have now been read unto you? Or not guilty?”

  “Not guilty,” said Anne.

  “Not guilty,” said Mary. It was silly, but what else was there to say?

  Then the Register called the first witness, and Mary was not pleased to see the woman from the canoe step forward and take her oath.

  “I knew we should have run this one through,” Anne whispered.

  “We shall see many today we would have done well to run through,” Mary replied.

  The woman, who gave her name as Dorothy Thomas, took the stand and described to an enthralled courtroom how she had been stopped by Rackam’s sloop and how the two women now at the bar were then on board.

  She described how they wore men’s jackets and long trousers and handkerchiefs around their heads, how they each had a machete and a pistol. Her voice quavered as she described how Anne and Mary had cursed and sworn at the men to kill her to prevent her coming against them.

  That’s going it a bit high, Mary thought, recalling Anne’s one suggestion in that direction, which was quickly dismissed.

  “What was the reason,” Norris asked, “for your knowing and believing them to be women?”

  “Why, by the largeness of their breasts,” Dorothy Thomas replied.

  It did not get any better from there. Thomas Spenlow was called next and he gave much the same blunt testimony that had helped send the others to the gallows, adding only that in all the time he had been forced to keep company with the pirates, the women had been there as well, and they did not appear to do a thing against their will.

  After Spenlow, the Frenchmen were called, Peter Cornelian and John Besneck, speaking through an interpreter, and theirs was the most damning, the most provocative of all. They told how in the weeks they had been forced into involuntary servitude aboard the Pretty Anne they had witnessed Anne and Mary fully a part of the pirate tribe, the two women doing the same work as any of the men.

  “They were very active on board and willing to do anything,” said Simon Clarke, the interpreter. He paused, listened to Besneck’s rapid words, then continued. “Anne Bonny, one of the prisoners at the bar, handed gunpowder to the men. When they saw any vessel, gave chase or attacked, they wore men’s clothes, and at other times they wore women’s.”

  “Mr Clarke, pray ask the witnesses if the prisoners at the bar appeared to be kept or detained by force,” Norris said.

  Clarke translated the words. The Frenchmen shook their heads.

  “Non,” said Cornelian. Clarke did not bother to translate.

  But Mary could not hate the Frenchmen for their testimony because, in faith, it was the truth. What was more, it was their word that had led to Jacob’s release, and she did not think she could hope for more than that.

  When all of the depositions were done, Sir Nicholas asked Anne and Mary if they had any witnesses of their own to call, or if they would question any of the witnesses already deposed.

  “We have no witnesses, Your Honor, nor any questions to ask,” Mary said.

  The bailiff escorted them from the courtroom and placed them in a small cell and they could hear the sound of the standers-by leaving the chambers so that the verdict could be discussed behind closed doors.

  “I fear we are done for, Mary, my dear,” said Anne. “What Barnet’s men with all their swords and guns could not achieve will now be done by these fat men in silly wigs.”

  “I would that Barnet had given us a clean death. Fighting, that is how we should have died. The Lord knows we tried hard enough to bring it about.”

  “But now we shall have ample time to think of some clever thing to say before we hang, some stirring final word from the gallows. That way we shall be long remembered in history.”

  Mary smiled. “I do not think histories are written about such as us. Poor doxies who rob fishing boats. Camp followers who dress against their sex.”

  “Lord, you’re a sorry one today. One would think you had been sentenced to death, when in truth it will not be for another half an hour, at least.”

  It was in fact 45 minutes before the doors were opened again, the great crowd of standers-by allowed to jostle back into position to see the famous women pirates, and Anne Bonny and Mary Read released from the holding cell and once again escorted into the courtroom.

  They were stood at the bar, their manacled hands held before them. Mary stole a sideways glance at Anne. She was standing straight like a mast, her head slightly back, her eyes fixed in front, her face set. Her long, thick, red-blond hair was tied back with a piece of spun yarn and there were still a few bits of straw stuck there.

  Anne’s rough dress was tight around her breasts as her hands against her stomach pulled the cloth tight. She was still beautiful. Mary realized that she was seeing Anne, proud and defiant, in exactly the way she would look as they put the noose around her neck.


  Sir Nicholas took his place, cleared his throat, looked down at the women, and Mary was surprised to see that his look was not entirely without sympathy, his voice not as cold as it had been.

  “Anne Bonny and Mary Read, this court has unanimously found you both guilty of the piracies, robberies, and felonies charged against you in the third and fourth articles of the articles which have been exhibited against you. Have either of you anything to say or offer why sentence of death should not be passed upon you for your said offenses?”

  “No, Your Honor,” said Anne.

  “No, Your Honor,” said Mary.

  “Very well,” said Lawes, with more emotion than Mary had yet heard from him, and it occurred to her that there might have been some hope of finding mitigating circumstances, some thought of letting them go, but in the face of the witnesses’ testimony that was not going to happen.

  “You, Mary Read, and Anne Bonny, alias Bonn,” Lawes said, lapsing now into his official tone, “are to go from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, where you shall be severally hanged by the neck till you are severally dead. And God in His infinite mercy be merciful to both of your souls.”

  He banged his gavel down. Mary looked at Anne, and Anne gave her a conspiratorial cock of the eyebrow.

  “Your Honor?” Mary said, and Lawes, surprised, looked up.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “If it please Your Honor, we would ask that there be a stay of our execution.”

  “What? On what basis?”

  “We plead our bellies, Your Honor.”

  “Your . . . bellies?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” said Mary. “We are, both of us, quick with child.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  MARY READ was not much given to dramatics, but she had to admit to some small delight with the effect that this last statement had had.

  It was met at first with silence, absolute silence throughout the courtroom. And then, all at once, as if they had been cued by a stage manager, the standers-by all began to talk at once and the Commissioners exclaimed in surprise and Chief Justice Nedham and Register Norris both began to shout, “Your Honor? Your Honor?”

  Anne was smiling a hint of a smile, but Mary looked straight ahead with her parade rest attitude, betraying no emotion.

  It was not for dramatic effect that they saved this news until the end. They had discussed at length the moment that it might be revealed, had decided that there would be no reason to mention their being with child at all unless they were condemned to die. And so they kept their secret, right up to the moment when Lawes had ordered them hanged.

  Lawes pounded the desk with his gavel, bellowed for silence, and slowly, slowly, the courtroom settled down from their shock and listened close for what now must be a prurient tale indeed.

  “You are, both of you, quick with child?” Lawes asked.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Anne and Mary said together.

  Further silence as Lawes arranged some papers on his desk. “Anne Bonny, who is the father of the child you allege to carry?”

  “He is John Rackam of Cuba. If you wish to ask him the truth of that, you may find him at Plumb Point, I believe.”

  This brought a tittering from the standers-by, from those who dared laugh, and a pounding of the gavel from Sir Nicholas. “You will keep a civil tongue in your head or it will go hard on you,” Lawes warned. “Mary Read, who is the father of your child?”

  “I would decline to say, Your Honor.”

  This brought a louder buzz still from the audience and more pounding from Lawes. “If you will not say, then we must assume that he is not one of these rogues that was hanged. There should be no reason to not name him, unless you are afraid he might be taken up for a pirate.”

  “I will say only, Your Honor, that my husband was an honest man, with no inclination to such practices, and that we had both resolved to leave the pirates at the first opportunity and apply ourselves to an honest livelihood.”

  “Your husband? You mean to say you and this unnamed man are legally wedded?”

  “We had no church wedding, Your Honor,” Mary said. “We would have, sure, had we the chance, but such fine things are not to be enjoyed by the likes of us. I looked upon our marriage as a marriage in conscience, as good and true as any done by a minister, and so, yes, I will call this fellow ’husband.’”

  “Neither this court not the civilized world recognizes such a thing as a marriage of conscience. There is no difference to be made between your action and that of any adulterer and fornicator.”

  Mary stood stiff and met Sir Nicholas’s eyes. “I have never committed adultery or fornication with any man,” she said, and her voice was even and strong, “and I condemn any court that will say otherwise.”

  There was a long silence; even the standers-by held their tongues as Mary Read and Sir Nicholas Lawes looked one another in the eye. And in the strange atmosphere of that silence Mary sensed some sympathy from the red-faced judge.

  And then he nodded and his wig flopped a bit, back and forth, and he pounded the desk with his gavel.

  “Very well,” Lawes growled, “I will order that the condemned persons be taken from hence to whence they came and there an examination shall be performed by a qualified doctor of physic. And if it is found that Anne Bonny and Mary Read are in fact quick with child, as they so claim, then their executions shall be stayed until after the time of their lying-in. Bailiff, pray, remove the prisoners.”

  Anne and Mary were taken back to their cells, and soon after a doctor arrived to carry out the orders of the court. The women submitted themselves to his gruff and humiliating examination, and when it was over he said only, “Congratulations. You are both to bear the bastard children of pirates. May God have mercy on your souls.” And he went off to report his findings to Sir Nicholas Lawes.

  And so the guilty lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read were extended, by court order, in consideration of the innocent lives they carried in their bellies.

  The months dragged by in weary sameness, the one thing that Anne Bonny could not stand, and the passing of time was marked only by the changes in the sun’s angle as it streamed through the bars of her cell, and by her ever-increasing girth.

  She hated being pregnant. She grew more awkward by the day, more achy and unable to move, and she hated that. Her fine, feline body was gone, once again taken over by some alien thing, and she wanted it to end. Even the realization that she was bound to hang once the baby was born did not make her want to extend her pregnancy by a moment more.

  “Do you not loathe this being with child?” she asked Mary. It was a fine winter day, still some months from the time of her lying-in, and she and Mary were taking their exercise on the parade ground, walking back and forth under the less than watchful eye of a guard, who leaned against the building in the shade.

  “No, in truth, I do not,” Mary said. By their best guess, Anne was two months further along than Mary, but still Mary’s belly was showing to great effect. “I find there is something wondrous about having a baby growing in me. Jacob’s baby,” she added, softly.

  “Humph. For all your soldiering and rough and ready life, Mary, dear, you are far more womanly than I. I have always thought so. But just wait until you’re as far along as I am, and then you will not be so happy about this.”

  “Perhaps not,” Mary said, and they walked a few more turns, up and down.

  “No,” said Anne, as if their conversation had not paused, “you will love it all the more, when your belly is as great as mine. Do you think on hanging at all?”

  “I think of it. I think if it was not for the baby, I would not have so much care about it. I have lived with death for so very long that my own seems no great hardship. But it grieves me, Annie, it grieves me deep, to think on my little baby who will never have mother or father, who will grow up in circumstances that I cannot guess.”

  “Humph,” said Anne. “Well, as for me, this is
not the first child I leave behind, as you well know. And still I think that a child is better off with anyone but me for mother.”

  “You are too hard on yourself, Annie, too hard by half.”

  In that way they took the air on the parade ground every afternoon, and sometimes they even spoke of the chance for escape. But bored as the guards might be, the women knew that in their condition they could not fight and they could not outrun anyone. Nor was there much place to hide, not when nearly all of St Jago de la Vega had attended their trial and knew their faces well.

  And so they left off any discussion of escape, and with it any hope.

  The rainy months came and the women were not able to walk in the open air and Anne grew to hate her confinement more and more. “You are a wild animal, dear, and you do not take well to a cage,” Mary said one morning, and Anne only grunted, though she knew that Mary had hit it just right.

  And then May, and the weather grew warm and Anne’s water broke. There in her cell, on a pile of straw, with Mary and the midwife in attendance, Anne’s labor began. It was a sensation she remembered well from Cuba, the clenching contractions, the great release as they passed, the horrible anticipation as they came on again, faster and faster.

  And once more she was profoundly grateful that she had Mary there with her, holding her hand, mopping her forehead. The midwife was a kind woman, her fat face lined from decades of worrying over birthing babies, and she knew her business, but still there was no one on earth who could give Anne support and comfort the way Mary could.

  For three hours Anne labored in her cell, and then the insatiable urge to push, the stretching, the agony, and then the great rush of relief as the baby was born: a baby girl, healthy, pink, and bawling.

  Anne collapsed back on the straw, gulped air, let the feeling of being done wash over her. She cocked her head, watched Mary clean the baby some and swaddle it tight in clean linen that the midwife had brought. Then Mary brought the baby over to her, held it up for Anne to see the little face, then set her to nursing at Anne’s breast.