Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  Anne looked away, tried to ignore the child. Confusion, uncertainty, conflicting emotions, these were not things that Anne was used to and she did not like them. For her, the path had always been clear. She had always understood what she wanted and she had taken it, and that was all there was.

  But near the end, with Jack, she had been unsure. And now she was unsure again.

  La, what am I on about? she thought. It is the gallows for me; there is not one damned thing I need think on now.

  Then, despite herself, Anne looked down at the baby and stroked her cheek as she nursed. There was something appealing about her, wrinkled and pink and alien as she was. Anne had to admit it to herself.

  “What is to happen to the child?” she asked the midwife.

  “In a few days I reckon it will be taken to the orphanage,” the midwife said in a brusque tone meant to cover her discomfort.

  “A few days . . .” Anne said, soft. “Well, I reckon I can play at being a mother for a few days, if it will keep the hangman away.”

  For the next two days Anne did her best to mother the child, nursing her when she was hungry and sleeping with her on her straw bed for hour after hour, and she felt her affection for the baby grow, despite all her assumptions about herself. Suddenly the thought of hanging seemed a dreadful thing, so it came as a relief, and a great shock, when the jailor announced a reprieve of her sentence, staying her execution for another week.

  There was no explanation for it; the jailor could not tell her why it had been issued, only that it had. And so Anne braced herself for one more week of life.

  On the morning of the seventh day of her reprieve, ten days after the birth of Jack and Anne’s baby, Anne Bonny woke to the sound of the prison door being opened. She sat upright and listened. For seven months their routine had hardly varied by a minute, day in and day out, and so she knew that this was not normal.

  They are coming for my baby, she thought, and she was startled to find herself in a panic. She picked up the sleeping child, held it close, and moved warily to the front of the cell.

  Across from her she could see Mary, just a hump of blankets, still sleeping, which was also unusual. Mary was the early riser. Anne would have expected the sound of the prison door opening, the footsteps approaching, to have woken Mary as it did her.

  Anne took a step back, instinctively, to protect her baby, hugged the child tighter, tried to see down the alleyway between the cells.

  Then the jailor was there, his round familiar face, the most familiar face in Anne’s life now, save for Mary’s. And behind him, a big man in fine clothing, his walking stick clicking on the stone floor. A familiar man, but in the dim light and against the backdrop of the prison it took Anne a moment to recognize him.

  “Daddy?”

  “Annie, oh, Annie!” Big Bill Cormac took a step toward the bars of the cell and Anne took a step back. She saw him as she had last seen him, red-faced, raging, physically shoving her and James Bonny from his house. Vindictive man, what was he doing here? Suddenly she was furious.

  “Have you come to see me hang, Father? Come to make certain they finish off your slut daughter, wipe out any disgrace to the family name? As if you were not disgrace enough.” She spit the words.

  William Cormac looked as if he had been struck. He stopped short in his approach, all but staggered back. “Annie, no . . . dear God, no. I have come to take you home.”

  Anne’s eyes narrowed. There was no vindictiveness in her father’s tone, no hatred or disgust. She could hear only love and worry. She was Bill Cormac’s little girl, just as the baby she held in her arms was hers. Two weeks before she would not have understood this, but now she did.

  “Home . . . ?”

  “Yes, Annie, my dear.” William Cormac took a tentative step forward, afraid of his daughter’s reaction, and then, when she did not move or speak, he took another and held the bars of her cell in his big hands.

  “You’re too late, Father. I’m condemned to die for my crimes. It will be any day now.”

  Bill Cormac shook his head. “No, Annie. I have friends here in Jamaica, men with whom I do business. Very powerful men. I have arranged it so that you are to be released into my custody. I will take you home. You and your baby.”

  Anne felt dizzy, confused. How could things change around so fast? How could this be possible? She looked at the jailor, whom she knew and trusted more than her own father, an imploring look, and he said, “It’s the truth, Annie. I have my orders to release you into his custody.”

  Anne shook her head, slowly. It was too much, too hard to change directions that quickly. But there it was, and there was no reason to believe that it was not true.

  “But not without Mary,” Anne said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I will not leave without Mary. She must be released as well, or I cannot go.”

  Bill Cormac glanced over at the jailor, uncertain. He did not look pleased. “Annie, my dear, it took no end of pleading and no small fortune to get you released. I do not see how they will be inclined to release this other one.”

  “‘This other one is Mary Read and she is my sister, as much as ever woman had a sister, and I will not leave her behind.” Digging in her heels, standing fast with absolute resolve, this at last was a sensation that was familiar to Anne Bonny.

  And she was resolved, absolutely. She and Mary would sail to Charles Town, or they would march to the gallows, but whatever they did, they would do it together.

  From the moment that Sir Nicholas had intoned those words—you shall be severally hanged by the neck till you are severally dead— Mary Read had felt depression and desperation coming over her like rising water, rising infinitesimally slow, a fraction of an inch per day. As the months passed, as the gallows grew nearer, she could not keep her dark thoughts at bay.

  She had not lied to Anne; her own life meant little to her. She would have marched to the gallows as boldly as ever did any man, but for the life inside her.

  A baby! A baby had always meant to her a home, a woman’s life, something to love without condition or deception, and something that would love her back, just as much.

  If she had a baby, then she would never again dress as a man. She would make her way and she would provide for her baby because she would have to, and with her strength of arm and mind she knew they would be all right. If she could not have Frederick, or Jacob, then she could have her baby and together they would face the wicked world.

  Anne’s baby had been born and Mary had held it, and it had given her just the briefest taste of what it would be like to hold her own baby in her arms, to nourish it with her body. It was a lovely feeling, like stepping from a night of freezing rain into a warm kitchen with fire blazing, it was a love so profound that it could only happen between mother and child, that sacred bond.

  But instead they would take her child away. She would give birth and her child would be taken from her arms and carried off to some place—where, she knew not. She would stand on the gallows, the rope around her neck, and in her mind she would see nothing but her baby: cold, frightened, alone, crying for its mother, but its mother would never come.

  And then on the morning that Big Bill Cormac came to take Annie home, Mary woke in the predawn hours, freezing, trembling with the cold. She struggled to pull the blankets more completely over her, to bury herself in their warmth, but still she shivered, and the beads of sweat stood out on her head and she felt as if she might fall down, even though she was lying on her bed of straw.

  She came in and out of consciousness in those hours, and once she was able to sit up and see if something had happened, if some strange quirk of the weather had plunged the island of Jamaica into a preternatural freeze. But the sunlight streamed in through the bars, as it always did, and Anne was moving around and nothing seemed any different than it had been for the past eight months.

  Mary pushed herself under the blankets again, huddled her arms against herself, clenched her teeth to keep the
m from chattering. Oh, no, dear God, is this it? she thought.

  Later that morning she heard the prison door open, heard footsteps and then voices. They moved through her head like a dream, just sounds without any meaning. She was drenched in sweat, but she did not dare move, because every time she did, the chill ran right through and then the shivering would start, with its attendant misery.

  Time did not seem to pass in its normal way, but later she heard her cell door open and heard Anne’s voice, which was cheerful and odd. “Mary, dear, stir yourself! This could be the day of our salvation.”

  With some difficulty Mary rolled herself onto her back. She could hear her breath coming, shallow and fast, and she clenched her teeth again because they were chattering against the awful cold. She opened her eyes.

  Anne was kneeling over her. She looked worried, terribly worried, and Mary could not recall having ever seen Anne look that way.

  Behind her, near the door of the cell, Mary could see the kind jailor and a big man whom she did not recognize. She heard the jailor gasp.

  “Mary, my dear,” Anne whispered. “My father has come. He is going to take us out of this place.”

  Mary nodded and smiled as best as she could. “God bless you, Annie . . .” she said, and her voice was hoarse. “You will have another chance. Rogues . . . like us . . . do not often get a second chance.”

  “We, Mary dear. We will have a second chance.”

  Mary shook her head. “Go. Go now.”

  Tears were coming down Anne’s cheeks, running in two perfect wet lines down her fine skin. “No, Mary, I won’t leave you . . .” she said, but Mary could hear the conviction going from her voice.

  “Go now, Annie.” Mary paused, let the shivering subside. “Go back to your home.”

  Anne took Mary’s hand in hers, and Mary thought her hands felt so warm against her own cold flesh. Anne was sobbing, Mary realized. She had never seen that before. “God bless you, Mary. God bless you, my sister . . .”

  “God bless you, sister Anne. Go and live for us both.”

  And then, exhausted, Mary closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, it was dark, and Anne was gone.

  Time held no sort of logic for Mary. She lay in the straw in a misery of cold and sweat, sometimes conscious, sometimes not, sometimes tortured by weird and undulating dreams. At times she would wake and it would be daytime and at times it would be night, and she had no notion of its passing from one to the other.

  Once she woke to find the jailor standing over her, a worried look on his face, and beside him, kneeling down and holding her wrist, the doctor who had once confirmed her pregnancy.

  She looked at the doctor, who looked off into the middle distance and shook his head. He laid her wrist down on the straw and stood.

  “Jail fever,” he said to the jailor as if she were not there. “It will not be much longer.”

  Mary woke later and he was gone and she could not tell if he had really been there at all. It was daytime, and the beam of solid light was coming in through the bars and it looked warm, but she was very cold.

  And then, as if she had stepped into another room, her teeth stopped chattering and she felt warm all over.

  Not warm like she was standing in front of a fire and being warmed from the outside, but rather warm from within, like the fire was inside her, not burning her, just warming her and making her comfortable and happy.

  She opened her eyes and smiled and looked up at the whitewashed ceiling of her cell. The sun had to be close to setting. It was growing dark in there, around the edges of her vision.

  Then, along with the warmth, Mary was filled with a great happiness, a joy that started in her heart and radiated outward.

  All along she had grieved at the thought of being separated from her baby, but now she understood that that was not going to happen. A good and just God would not allow her and her baby to be separated, would not allow their family—her and Frederick and their baby—to be pulled apart.

  It was Frederick’s child she held in her womb. The realization came like a flash of lightning. It had to be. Who else was there who could create life within her?

  Their family.

  And now they were all going to be together, all the disparate parts of their family joined again, the way it was supposed to be. It was a wondrous thing, and it made her profoundly happy.

  Mary looked down at her swollen belly and her child who resided there. She put her hands on her baby and she smiled and in a whisper she said, “I’ll take you away now, my little one. I’ll take you away to a better place. I’ll take you with me.”

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  THE STORY OF Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Calico Jack Rackam is true. This book could not have been written otherwise; as it is, the coincidences and extraordinary events that make up their lives are quite incredible. If this story were pure fiction, it would be too much to believe.

  In his A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, published in 1724, Captain Charles Johnson admits that

  the odd incidents of their rambling lives are such, that some may be tempted to think the whole story no better than a novel or romance, but since it is supported by many thousand witnesses . . . the truth of it can be no more contested, than that there are such men in the world, as Roberts and Blackbeard, who were pirates.

  It is a tricky thing, writing a novel based on the lives of real people, and the end result is, invariably, an odd amalgam of history and fiction, not entirely one or the other.

  Regarding the writing of history, the philosopher and historian

  R. G. Collingwood, in his book The Idea of History, says,

  . . . [I]n addition to selecting from among his authorities’ statements those which he regards as important, the historian must . . . go beyond what his authorities tell him. Thus our authorities tell us that on one day Caesar was in Rome and on a later day in Gaul; they tell us nothing of his journey from one place to the other, but we interpolate this with a perfectly good conscience.

  Thus a history, and likewise a novel based on historical fact, is constructed from the writer’s imagination of what took place, what Collingwood would call “a web of imaginative construction stretched between certain fixed points provided by the statements of the authorities.”

  The place where the novel differs from the straight history is in the extent to which the “web of imaginative construction” is indeed imagined, or made up, if you will. The historian will tell you that Caesar traveled to Gaul. The novelist will tell you what he (most likely) ate, drank, thought, and felt along the way.

  Anne Bonny and Mary Read are the most well documented of all female pirates, but that is not saying much. The authorities, or sources of information about them, are few. In fact, there are only three of any genuine importance.

  One of these is a proclamation for the arrest of Jack Rackam and crew for the theft of the sloop William out of Nassau Harbor on the 22nd of August, 1720. The published proclamation, issued by Governor Woodes Rogers, goes into much greater detail in describing the sloop than it does the pirates, who are merely mentioned by name.

  What is of particular interest to the historian is that the proclamation includes “. . . two women, Anne Fulford, alias Bonny & Mary Read . . .” Here we find one of the only firm dates for the whereabouts of Jack, Mary, and Anne.

  But more than that, the proclamation is singular proof that by that date it was well-known that the two women were sailing with Jack Rackam and engaging in piracy. There has been much debate among historians as to whether the crew of Rackam’s ship was aware of the women’s gender, especially Mary’s. Perhaps early on they were not. But clearly if Woodes Rogers knew their secret, then it is a safe bet that by that date others did as well, especially the women’s fellow crew members.

  The second source for their lives is the transcript of the trial of Jack Rackam, et al., and that of Anne Bonny and Mary Read (tried separately), and of the unfortunate turtle hun
ters who were taken up with Rackam and his band when Barnet captured them. The trial transcripts are fascinating documents, and arguably the only genuine primary sources, that is, the only actual eyewitness accounts by people who we can be reasonably certain saw Anne, Mary, and Jack in action.

  In those pages are firsthand accounts of the women’s participation in piracy, their being “both very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do any thing on board.”

  There are the words of Dorothy Thomas, who told the court

  . . . the two women, prisoners at the bar, were on board the said sloop, and wore men’s jackets and long trousers, and handkerchiefs tied around their heads, and that each of them had a machete and pistol in their hands, and cursed and swore at the men to murther [sic] the deponent; and they should kill her, to prevent her coming against them . . .

  Thomas is the only documented person to recognize Anne and Mary for women when they were dressed as men. There is also the testimony of the Frenchmen who saw Anne and Mary dress as men for a fight and as women other times.

  This documentation is in many ways the most interesting and compelling as it is the most indisputably authentic. In this novel, all of the astoundingly dull official court language, as well as the names of the officials involved and much of the proceedings and exchanges reproduced in this book, were taken directly from the trial transcripts.

  Unfortunately, the transcripts cover only the very end of Anne and Mary’s piratical career, no more than three months. For the rest we must look to the third and most important source, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates.

  A General History, a meticulous documentation of the lives of a number of pirates, was published in 1724 and was an instant hit. The book is credited to a Captain Charles Johnson, though many believe that Johnson was actually a nom de plume for the famous novelist Daniel Defoe. Whoever the author was, he knew pirates, and since the book’s publication there has been much evidence to corroborate the authenticity of Johnson’s work. A General History is the foundation for most of our current knowledge about the early-eighteenth-century buccaneers.