MARY RAN as hard as she could. In front of her, the dusty road, on either side, the whitewashed stucco homes, shoulder to shoulder, seemed to fly past. Her legs kicked at the long dress as she ran.
She screamed again, loud and hysterical, but the voice seemed disembodied, as if it were coming from somewhere else, and her throat, burning with the effort, was the only proof that it was really her making that unearthly sound.
Come on, come on, you sons of whores. Her mind was moving fast, like her feet. She looked over her shoulder, wide-eyed, thought, Three of them, at least . . . three are following me . . . divide them up . . .
Up the gently sloping street, where just the evening before she and Anne had gone for their stroll. Up ahead, bobbing in her vision, the big church, so familiar to her now, so comforting. She had thought at first to go there, but realized now that this business could not be done in that hallowed place.
Twenty yards more, another frantic look over her shoulder. The one who had run his hand through her hair was gaining, pulling away from his comrades.
Ten more yards, Mary’s breath was coming fast. Now, now, now!
She stumbled on some imaginary obstacle, took a few faltering steps, and fell, face-first, hands outstretched to block her fall. She hit the road in a cloud of dust, rolled on her back, shielding herself with crooked arm.
The soldier, ten feet behind, came at her, his pace never slackening, his broken-tooth leer obscene. Three paces and he was over her and she braced herself with her elbows, cocked her leg, and drove her calloused heel right into his crotch, grunting with the effort.
The impact was solid and direct. Her leg jarred and the soldier was lifted inches off the ground and his eyes went wide and he doubled over, forward. But Mary was ready for that, because that was what they always did, and she snatched his musket as it dropped and rolled clear as he collapsed in the place where she had been.
It was one fluid motion for her: roll to her left and push herself up to her feet, come up with musket held at the charge bayonet stance, butt at her hip, the end of the muzzle at eye level, sorry that there was no bayonet there.
Here was the next of the soldiers, still running hard to catch up, though she was no longer running. She could see the confusion on his face. He tried to stop, but his momentum carried him along and she drove the end of the barrel into his stomach.
The wind was knocked from him, blown out like the last breath of a dying man. He, too, doubled over forward, and as his face went down it met Mary’s knee coming up and he was snapped back and fell spread-eagle in the dust.
He had not even come to rest before Mary was stepping over him going after the third man, who had stopped short, who was not so callously plunging into the fray.
No gunshots, no gunshots, she reminded herself. She flipped the musket over, held it by the barrel, club fashion, and descended on the third man, who had come to a halt five feet from the crazy woman. He hesitated, took a tentative step back, as if trying to assess what had happened, how this amusing pursuit, this whimsical prelude to rape, had suddenly turned so completely around.
Mary brought the musket back, like she was chopping a tree with an ax, and then the soldier understood that the danger was real. He shouldered his weapon, thumbed back the flintlock, and tried to train it on Mary just as Mary’s musket came around and slammed into the side of his head, knocking him from his feet. He hit the road on his right shoulder, sent the dust flying, and did not move again.
Mary stood for a second, catching her breath, searching the road and the perimeter of the square for further pursuit. The soldier who had caught the musket on the side of the head was not moving, and Mary did not think he would again, but the other two were thrashing, moaning, starting to recover. Bam, bam, the butt of her musket came down on their heads and they were still, and because they were no longer a part of her tactical considerations, Mary had no more thought for them.
She rolled the men over with her foot. They did not carry pistols, she was sorry to see, but pistols were an officer’s weapon and she did not really expect to see them. She took up a musket, checked the priming in the pan, and slung it over her shoulder. She picked up a second one, checked the priming, pulled a bayonet from one of the motionless soldiers’ belts, fixed it onto the musket barrel, and she was off.
Back down the road she ran, toward the red door of the De Jesús home, and her eyes were fixed on that.
She was twenty feet away when the door swung open and the fat one with the officer’s epaulet stepped out. He wore an expression of mild irritation as he looked up the road for his absent men. His eyes met Mary’s, his eyebrows came together in surprise, then his mouth came open in fear and then Mary drove the bayonet through his chest, drove it right up to the muzzle end with all the momentum she had gathered running downhill.
The officer made a strangled, gurgling sound and Mary jerked the bayonet free, wheeled around, and charged through the door.
Anne and Abuelita De Jesús were on their knees, and flanking them, the two remaining soldiers. Mary thumbed the flintlock as she burst through the door, leveled the gun and fired into the soldier standing by Abuelita, and he was blown away before he even knew what had happened.
Mary let the gun fall, whipped the other one off her shoulder, thumbed the lock, brought it up to her shoulder, but she was a second too late.
The remaining soldier, rather than try to shoot her, leveled his musket at Anne’s head, the barrel inches away.
“No! No!” he shouted, his rapid Spanish tinged with hysteria. Mary paused, just for an instant, and then they were at a stalemate, her gun pointed at his head, his gun at Anne’s. No one moved.
Damn it, goddamn it, Mary thought, why didn’t I shoot this bastard?
They were motionless, all of them. Anne on her knees, erect, teeth clenched, looking straight ahead, looking at nothing, the picture of stoicism. Abuelita had folded over as much as her girth would allow, and was weeping into her hands, but no one paid any attention to her. For long seconds her sobbing was the only sound in the room.
“Tira la arma! Tira la arma!” the soldier shouted, his voice rising in pitch, his eyes wild. It was clear enough what he wanted. Someone had to lower a weapon, and it was not going to be him.
Mary nodded. The soldier was young and he was profoundly frightened and that made him dangerous in the way of a cornered and panicked animal. He could easily blow Anne’s brains out with an involuntary spasm of his finger, brought on by fear alone.
“Very well, very well,” Mary said. Her tone was soothing, like a mother to a child. “Very well . . .”
Mary brought the musket down from her shoulder, lowering it slowly. The soldier nodded and Mary saw the tension drain from him as his eyes followed the butt of the gun coming down to Mary’s hip. He did not notice that it was only the butt that Mary moved, that the muzzle never wavered from its aim, right at his chest.
The soldier was starting to smile and lower his own weapon when Mary pulled the trigger. The impact of the ball spun him around, threw him back. His musket discharged as he fell, blasting apart one of the red tiles on the floor. Mary could feel shards of the tile hit her legs.
The soldier fell back and Anne was shouting, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” She watched him fall, sprang to her feet, then doubled over in pain.
“Annie, Annie, are you all right?” Mary dropped her musket, rushed up to her.
“Yes, yes . . . Goddamn my eyes, woman, what the hell was that?”
“Oh, he would never have got his shot off before me,” Mary assured her.
“You have done the like of this before?”
“No. But I reckoned it was so.”
“Humph,” Anne said, then, “Well, you scared me half to death, I’ll warrant. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’ve gone and pissed myself.”
Mary looked down. Anne’s dress was soaked through and there was a puddle of liquid on the floor where she was standing.
“Ay, Dios mío!” Here was Abuelita De Jesús, struggling to her feet, pointing at the puddle on the floor. “Se rompió la fuente! Tú vas a dar a luz ahorita mismo!” she said excitedly. The tears were glistening on her cheeks, her hands and lips trembled, but she was smiling.
Anne and Mary looked at her, shook their heads by way of saying that they did not understand. Abuelita patted Anne’s tummy. “Baby . . . now . . .” she said.
“Now?” Mary asked, stupidly.
“Ohh,” Anne gasped, grabbed her abdomen, doubled over in pain.
Two hours later the gasps had turned to teeth-clenching, deep-throated moans, the sound of a person in great pain who is set on a course of stoicism, and those sounds started coming at more frequent intervals.
Anne was stretched out on her bed, sweating with abandon, clutching Mary’s hand until the muscles in her forearm knotted, and then relaxing as the pain passed.
Mary sat beside her, mopping her brow, holding her hand when the contractions came.
“Squeeze my hand, squeeze my hand!” Anne gasped, and Mary squeezed, not so hard as to cause Anne more pain, but Anne shouted, “Squeeze my hand, goddamn you!” and so Mary squeezed for all she was worth, squeezed with the considerable strength in her hand and her arm, and Anne gritted her teeth and then the pain passed and Anne said, “Yes, Mary, dear, like that. Pray, squeeze like that from now on.”
“Yes, Annie, of course. Lemonade?”
It was all so beyond Mary’s experience, and yet so familiar as well. How many times, she wondered, had she held the hand of some poor boy, racked with the agony of wounds inflicted by gunshot, grapeshot, saber, hand grenadoe? How often had she blocked her ears to the screams, the cries, as the boys called out for help that could not be rendered? This scene, here at the bedside, was so much a part of her history, even if the stucco walls, the brilliant sun, the cool room were not.
And yet . . . those boys with their bloody and gaping wounds had been screaming their lives away, and the only relief they found came when their souls finally abandoned their shattered bodies. But Anne was not wounded, and she would not die; at least Mary hoped she would not. Abuelita did not seem concerned, and Abuelita knew about such things.
“Oh, Mary . . .” Anne said, and she sounded tired. “Bless you, my dear, for staying with me . . .” She gritted her teeth against a spasm and Mary wiped her forehead with a damp rag. “How I wish my dear Jack was here . . .” she added, “so I could wring his fucking neck . . .” and then another contraction was on her and she grabbed Mary’s hand and squeezed.
God, how well she endures the pain . . . Mary thought. After nearly a lifetime of playing the man, Mary had come to honor those things that men honored, and the stoic endurance of physical pain was one of them. She felt her admiration for Anne Bonny increase even as she wondered if she herself could be so hard in the face of such agony.
Abuelita said some soothing words and ran her hands over Anne’s huge abdomen.
Abuelita was in command now, and she was as competent, as self-assured, as totally in control as any field-grade officer Mary had ever seen, and no one knew better than Mary the need for command presence, the absolute necessity of having a steady officer in charge during crisis. The sight of Anne’s water pooling on the red tiles had driven from Abuelita’s mind the trauma of seconds before. With tears still streaking her fat, brown cheeks she began to shout orders, even as she led Anne to the bedchamber.
Servants scrambled in all directions. Abuelita nodded toward the bodies on the floor, shouted something else, and seemed to give no more thought to the two dead men in her house, the third lying just outside her door in a wide patch of blood-soaked dirt.
Abuelita guided Anne back to her room, had her lie on the bed, and her troops darted in and out with sheets, towels, water, lemonade, glasses, and bowls. Mary had never felt so eager to surrender herself to another’s authority. She stood by, ready to carry out any orders she was given, but Abuelita seemed to need no help from her.
“Here now, here now, squeeze my hand . . .” Anne gasped, half sitting up, the muscles in her neck standing out proud. Mary squeezed, but for all her strength she could not squeeze harder than Anne’s crushing grip. Mary gritted her teeth as well and endured the pain that Anne was inflicting on her, and in a way was even glad for it, as if it helped her in her empathy, as if she could share Anne’s pain and thus lessen it.
“Oh, dear God, oh, dear God.” Anne collapsed back on the pillow, her eyes wide, staring up at the ceiling. Mary wiped her forehead with a damp cloth because she felt like she had to do something, and that was the only thing she knew to do. She wished it would end.
Abuelita De Jesús placed her hands on Anne’s big belly and gently pressed her fingers down, here and there, feeling the living thing underneath. She frowned, stared off at nothing as she felt the baby’s position. She smiled, not a joyous grin but rather a small, intimate smile of satisfaction. She nodded, smiled wider at Anne, who ignored her, and issued another string of orders.
The afternoon dragged on, and the only real mark of time’s passing was the moving shadows across the room and the ever-increased intensity of Anne’s moans and the power with which she crushed Mary’s hand in her own seemingly tireless grip.
Finally, with back arched, she said between clenched teeth, “I have to push, I have to goddamn push!” but Abuelita, who understood the intent, said, “No, no! No . . . poosh!” and then Abuelita made gasping sounds to show Anne what she must do.
Anne fell back again, muttered some words that made Mary glad for Abuelita’s lack of English.
Some time later—it seemed like hours, but the sunlight coming in around the curtain put the lie to that—Abuelita again examined Anne, and with a genuine smile said, “Poosh, Hanne, poosh!”
Anne clenched her teeth, arched her back, and her face was a mask of pure determination as she pushed down. Mary, looking at her, could not begin to imagine what she was going through, what it felt like to be Anne Bonny at that moment.
“Poosh! Bueno!”
“Arrrrhh.” Anne pushed, panted for breath, pushed.
Abuelita tapped Mary on the shoulder, nodded toward the place between Anne’s legs, and since Anne seemed to have completely forgotten her presence, Mary stood and stepped back and looked.
There was blood and fluid everywhere. Mary was used to blood, but this was something different. Blood on the soaked white sheets, blood on Anne’s smooth, gleaming, muscular thighs, blood on her stomach and matted in her soft reddish blond pubic hair.
Her vagina was stretched out beyond what seemed possible and it made Mary cringe and emerging from that bloody place, a pink hump of flesh, a tuft of light-colored hair. It all seemed to Mary as if it was going terribly wrong, but Abuelita looked not in the least concerned as she coached Anne in her soft Spanish and gently, gently eased the little head out.
Anne arched again, clenched and pushed, and suddenly the head was out and in a great welter of liquid and blood and gray flesh and umbilical cord the baby was free, blinking in shock at this turn of events. The room, it seemed, sighed in relief, Anne collapsing on the bed, the attendants in their delight, Abuelita deftly severing the umbilical cord and wrapping the boy—Mary saw it was a boy—in clean white swaddling clothes.
Mary stepped back to the head of the bed, took Anne’s hand. She smiled down at her friend, who seemed to have finally succumbed to her exhaustion, lying still with eyes closed. “Annie, Annie darling, it is over,” Mary whispered, and Anne nodded her head, just slightly, in acknowledgment.
Mary smiled wide. She could hear the baby mewing now. A tiny life, a brand-new person.
“It is a little boy, Annie, a perfect little boy,” Mary whispered. “Would you hold him now?”
Anne did not open her eyes. She turned her head away from Mary. “No,” she said.
For an hour Mary sat in a straight-backed chair at the edge of the room and held the baby while Abuelita and her servants tended to Anne. Mary cradled the little bundle in her arms, looked down at the tiny face, the wide blue eyes which looked back at her.
She sang soft songs and the baby did not cry, did not fuss, did not make a sound. He just looked at Mary and Mary looked back. She imagined that the baby was trying to understand this profound change that had just happened and she hoped that he was thinking that it would be all right, that this new world might hold some joy for him. She was trying to show him that there was love to be found here, too, outside the warm embrace of the womb.
“Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish maidens, farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain . . .” Mary sung, soft. She did not know any songs that were really appropriate for children, but she sung soft and melodic and the baby was content.
Your first hour on earth. Whatever will the rest of them be like for you, little one? Mary thought. Your Aunt Mary could tell you much of what not to do . . .
Mary did not know what was to become of the child. The idea of the birth had been so monstrous a thing to comprehend, she had given little thought to what might happen to the baby after he was born, nor did Anne appear very approachable on the subject.
She looked at his little face and suddenly the thought of parting with him seemed too painful to consider. She forced herself to admit, silently but consciously, that he was not her baby, and that realization made her ache as well.
Mary stood, keeping the infant tight to her chest, and stepped over to where Anne lay with eyes closed on the bed. Abuelita and her troops had cleaned her up, changed her dress and sheets, and now she was letting her exhaustion carry her away.
“Annie, dear . . .” Mary whispered, and Anne’s head lolled over toward her and she opened her eyes.
“Ah, Mary. It’s over now, thank God. Now perhaps we can get back to where we are meant to be.”
“Back . . . ?”
“Back to sea, Mary, my beauty.”
Mary nodded, but inside she felt hollow. Back to sea? It seemed so unhappy an idea, like rolling out of a warm, dry bunk to lay aloft and stow sail on a stormy night. Thoughts of remaining behind, of raising the little boy as her own, flashed though her mind. “Would you like to see your baby?” Mary asked.
Anne made a noncommittal sound, lowered her eyes to the bundle of cloth, and Mary pulled back the cloth so that Anne could see his tiny face. “Hmm,” Anne said. “Odd-looking thing.”
“What is to become of him?” Mary asked.
“Oh, Jack has it all arranged, dear. Abuelita will take him in, raise him as her own.”
“But, Anne . . .” Mary did not know what to say. “Let another raise your child?” The thoughts and the emotions were coming fast and disorganized. “What of his welfare?”
At that Anne smiled a weak smile. “I am thinking of his welfare. Am I not doing the best for him, by not forcing him to suffer a mother so horrid as me? He will be happy here. Lord knows you love it enough.
“Abuelita will make up some tale. He will not grow up knowing he is the bastard son of a pirate and a whore.”
This seemed to exhaust her, and she rolled her head away and closed her eyes. “It is the best way, Mary, dear, depend upon it.”
Mary held the baby tight and felt tears in her eyes and she knew that Anne was right.