SOON AFTER, Abuelita De Jesús came and took the baby from Mary and gave him to a wet nurse, and Mary saw him again only a few times. It was better that way, she knew, because her sense of loss was only increased with each moment she held the child.
Anne Bonny’s convalescence lasted for one night. She was up early the next morning, buoyant and cheerful, and Mary might have thought that she had been drinking at that early hour if she had not been so clear-eyed. Having some semblance of her former body back, and the dread of pending childbirth behind her, seemed to lift Annie extremely.
“Now that I am able, Mary, I will cheerfully help you with your housekeeping. Sweep, cook, beat shirts with a bloody rock, whatever you might wish.” Anne was perched on the edge of Mary’s bed, and Mary, still half-asleep, could only grunt in reply. It was quite the opposite of the natural order of things.
“And when we are done with that,” Anne continued, “I think we should look to our weapons. It is in the articles we signed, you will recall. I grieve to think of the state of our blades in this horrid climate, not to mention our firelocks. We must be ready for when the others return.”
Again Mary grunted. But she knew Anne was right. Soon they would be in the sweet trade again. She threw off her blankets, pushed her fantasies aside, and climbed out of bed.
For another week they carried on with their routine, helping out with the housekeeping, eating, sleeping, strolling in the evenings. Anne became more animated with each passing day, discussing future plans, places where the Pretty Anne might cruise, things that they might do with their growing fortune.
Mary was polite, and listened, but did not add much.
And then, on the morning that Anne’s son turned eight days old, on the morning that Anne first said, “Damn it, it is high time that Jack returned,” in a tone that was at once hopeful and edged with growing concern, one of the fishing boats pulled back to the beach with the news that Calico Juan’s sloop had been seen in the offing.
Anne and Mary hurried down to the beach. From the surf line they looked out over the water. That familiar topsail was just visible past the low-lying islands around the entrance to the harbor at Caibarién.
Anne turned and looked at Mary with the most genuine look of pleasure she had worn in some time. “Oh, body of me, Mary, I have never been so happy to see anything in my life!”
Mary nodded, but she did not smile. “Yes indeed, Annie, dear. It is time for us to quit this place.”
They walked back up to the De Jesús home and Mary went into her room and with great sadness she took off her soft cotton dress and once again pulled on her wool shirt, slop trousers, red waistcoat, and blue jacket.
But she had not lied to Anne. She was happy to see the sloop, ready to leave that town. She had been playing at the quiet life, but it was not really hers. The peace, the near bliss, she had found in Caibarién was not real. It was an illusion. Mary Read had had a surfeit of ephemeral happiness and she wanted no more.
It was time once more to go to sea.
The Pretty Anne rounded up into the wind and the anchor was let go and it plunged down through the clear water. Jack Rackam stood at his quarterdeck rail, his best sword at his hip, his fine clothing hanging a bit loose on him. He had not been eating well.
He felt a vague dread that seemed to center in his stomach, but he could not attribute it to his being reunited with Anne. That was a part of it, to be sure, wondering how he would be greeted, wondering if Anne had fared well, if she had had a difficult birth, facing the silent censure of that bitch Read—Lord knew what they had been up to, what unnatural things she had been filling Anne’s head with—but that was only a part of it.
The dread, the hard thing in his stomach, was not a passing fancy. It had settled in, like an unwelcome guest who would not leave. It was all his fears, wound up so tight that they became something solid and took up residency in his guts.
It was the poor hunting they had found, the few pathetic fishing boats they had robbed, the potential discontent of the men who might turn him out, like he did old Charles Vane. It was the certainty of the noose if they were caught, with him having accepted the governor’s pardon and then gone out on the account once more. It was the possibility of disgrace and the possibility of piling the sloop up on the rocks and the yellow jack and the thousand things that plagued a man such as he.
It was the Pretty Anne. She was growing increasingly decrepit, beyond what the pirates were able to repair in their secluded coves on their sparsely inhabited islands. They would have to get another ship, but that meant his finding one and then successfully capturing it.
It was the Guarda del Costa, the Spanish guard ships that patrolled the Cuban coast. The Pretty Annes’ depredations had not been grand, but neither had they gone unnoticed. Jack had no doubt that they were being hunted; the Dons were keeping a damned sharp eye out for him.
Damn Dons, goddamn Dons and their damned guard ships . . . The Spaniards would draw and quarter him, disembowel him, burn him at the stake, impale him so that he would take days to die. When he thought of it, it made the hard thing in his stomach turn over, made his insides feel less than solid, so he tried not to think on it, but he could not help it.
Of all the world of enemies he faced, it was the Spaniards he feared the most.
“Anchor’s holding, Captain,” said Richard Corner, lumbering aft, and then, a second later, “Are you well, Jack, my dear?”
“Yes. Why would you ask such a thing?” Jack snapped.
Corner shrugged. “You looked like you was not well.”
“I’ve a world on my shoulders, you know. I’ll warrant you don’t appreciate what it is like, to have command such as I do.”
Corner nodded. He was a big dog. Kick him, pat him, it made little difference. “Shall I get the boat over, then?”
“Aye, get the boat over.”
Jack wondered if other captains felt these fears. Old Charles Vane, who always seemed so cool, did he have that hard thing in his gut? It was difficult to believe. And if not, did that mean that he, Calico Jack Rackam, did not have the stuff of which captains are made? That possibility frightened him most of all.
Ten minutes later, Jack, in the sternsheets of the boat, hand resting on the tiller, was rowed ashore, into the bosom of the enthusiastic crowd on the beach, and that gave his sagging confidence a bit of a prop. Jack stood and lifted a small chest of money and handed it down. It was for all of the village, he explained to the grinning men, and though it cut much deeper into his personal fortune than his previous gifts had, still he could not let the people of the town think that he was any less successful now than he had been in years past. His sense of himself would not allow it.
He hopped down into the sand, pleased by his welcome but nervous still because he had yet to see Anne. And then, like a ship parting the seas, Abuelita De Jesús pushed through the crowd, Anne on her arm—a smiling, lovely Anne in her European dress, a relieved, beaming Anne, Anne with arms wide, happy to see him, and for a moment Jack felt a reprieve from all the anxiety as he took her in his arms and hugged her to the cheering of the crowd.
They made their farewells to the De Jesúses and the others, gave their thanks all around, collected up Anne’s things and Mary’s as well, and within the hour they were back aboard the Pretty Anne and under way.
The lovely little town of Caibarién was just disappearing around the headland when it occurred to Jack that he had never asked after the baby. He opened his mouth, even uttered the beginning of a word, and then thought better of it. If Anne had not mentioned it, no reason that he should. Best not to stir all that up.
At least, he hoped that that was the best course of action. He was not sure. He felt the thing in his stomach turn over again.
They stood on for another mile or so and then the wind, which had been steady, began to come in puffs, a sure sign that it soon would fail altogether.
Anne had shed her fancy silk dress and once again was wearing her big wool shirt and her loose-fitting slops with the wide leather belt and sheath knife around her waist, a red cloth bound around her head. She was barefoot and she delighted at the smooth, warm planks underfoot once more. She loved the familiar motion of the sloop.
“Let us come to an anchor, yonder,” Jack said, pointing over the starboard side. A half mile away was the mainland of Cuba. At the place where Jack pointed, a small island stood just off the coast, no more than two hundred yards at the farthest, a green hump of jungle-covered land with a shallow channel between it and the big island.
Thomas Quick, at the helm, pushed the tiller over. Anne sprang to her feet, whipped the mainsheet off the cleat to which it was made fast, let the rough line run through her palms. Her hands had grown soft again during her time ashore, and the rope burned her and the tiny sharp bits of manila left splinters where the sheet passed, but Anne did not mind. It was time to get her hands tough again.
They ran down toward the channel that passed between the small island and Cuba proper, sometimes bobbing in the swell as the wind failed, sometimes shooting ahead in a burst of speed when they caught a puff. The water grew more shallow and light in color as they closed with the land, the seas more choppy.
At last they were in the mouth of the channel, tucked in between the island and the mainland. On either hand, the shorelines were a thick tangle of mangrove, impenetrable, impossible to determine where the water left off and the shore began, a dark and wild place. Jack ordered the sloop to luff up and the anchor let go. The Pretty Anne was as hidden from view as she could get.
The anchor plunged into the clear water and took firm hold of the sandy bottom. The sails came down on a run and were hurriedly stowed. The breaker of rum came up on deck, and the portable stove and the unhappy goat they had purchased in Caibarién, and soon a grand bacchanal was under way, with the sky growing dark and the evening warm and the sloop gently rocking in the swell.
Anne drank her share of rum—no insignificant amount—and dined on goat and enjoyed the rough companionship of her tribe. She was glad to be back with Calico Jack, glad to have his company, his fawning attention, as annoying as he was being that moment. He was ready to dive below for a flourish, she could tell, and it was irritating him that she wished to stay on deck and enjoy the company of the others.
She ignored him and his ill-disguised peevishness, and continued her banter with Dicky Corner and George Fetherston and Mary Read and Noah Harwood and her fellow rogues.
Anne Bonny had gone to sea so that she might be with Jack, but it was more than that now. She was more than Jack’s woman. She was a part of the crew, an equal to any in their company, and she was starting to resent Jack’s assumption that she was there as his plaything.
At last the men began to drift away and find places to sleep, or to change from a sitting position to one that was prone or supine. Mary had lain on her back on the main hatch, enjoying the stars, and now she was breathing soft and regularly.
Anne stood and stretched. “What, ho, Jack? Are we for bed?”
Jack, who had been leaning against the bulwark with arms folded, straightened and said, “I reckon,” though he was annoyed, and Anne wondered if he still wished to make the beast with two backs. Either way, she would be content.
Jack picked up the lantern that was sitting on the hatch and they stepped aft and climbed down the narrow scuttle to the tiny great cabin. Anne stepped aside for Jack, stretched her arms, and said, “Oh, I am exhausted.”
Jack came down behind her, hung the lantern on a hook driven into an overhead beam, then put his hands gently on Anne’s waist and turned her around until she was facing him. For a second she was looking up into his eyes, and then he pulled her toward him and kissed her.
Anne was ready for a rough kiss, a coarse embrace, the kind of love-making that was as much an expression of anger as love, but it was not there. Jack’s lips on hers were tender, and passionate and exploring and forgiving, but more than anything they were desperate for her.
She was surprised, but his kiss made her own passion flare like an ember in tinder, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him into herself and for long moments they stood, devouring each other.
Anne felt Jack’s hands moving down her back, over her bottom and down her thighs. He took hold and lifted and Anne lifted her legs and wrapped them around Jack’s waist and he was holding her like that, and she was wrapped completely around him, arms and legs, and their lips never came apart.
Jack carried her across the cabin, moving with precision, avoiding the hundred obstacles there, and Anne felt as if she were clinging to a rock, so strong were Jack’s arms, so steady was he on his feet.
He laid her down on the cushion on top of the after locker and with a swift motion shed his coat and his waistcoat as Anne lay on her back and watched him. He moved like a dancer or an expert swordsman, not a wasted motion, his allure undeniable, and Anne felt herself growing hot.
He came down on top of her, resting on his elbows, kissing her mouth, running his lips over her neck and pulling her shirt aside and kissing her shoulders. He took little bites of her neck and with his tongue he tickled her behind her earlobe and she gasped—she could not contain herself—and wrapped her arms around him and pulled him tight. If Jack sometimes did not seem so sure of himself on the quarterdeck, in these maneuvers he was absolutely composed of confidence and he had no equal.
Anne felt her desire and her love and her relief all building in equal measure. It was so good to be back aboard, to have her Calico Jack back, have things the way they had been. Cuba, the baby, it was just an interruption, and it had changed nothing, and Anne’s trepidation began to melt away.
Jack ran his lips down her neck and over her chest. His fingers curled around the edge of her shirt and then he pulled and the fabric parted and Anne felt the cool evening air and Jack’s warm mouth on her breasts and her hard nipples.
She moved under him and savored the sensuous pressure of his body on hers. And then she half sat up and gently pushed Jack off and he let her. She stood and pulled her tattered shirt off and let it fall and undid her slop trousers and let them fall. For a second she stood there, running her hands over herself, watching Jack as he watched her.
Then she kneeled before him and unbuttoned his shirt and ran her lips and hands over his strong chest, his flat stomach. She pushed the shirt off his shoulders, worked the buttons on his breeches, and peeled those and his socks off in one practiced motion. She took his hard cock in her mouth, reveled in his manly smell, enjoyed the way that Jack writhed and groaned with the pleasure of it.
At last he eased her back onto the cushion and entered her, and they fell into the familiar rhythm of their lovemaking.
It was when they coupled like that, with a motion so perfect that it did not seem possible that they could be two separate people, it was then that Anne was certain that she and Calico Jack were together through some force greater than simple coincidence. It was too perfect to be chance, the way they gave such pleasure to each other, the way that together they came to their gasping, teeth-clenching climax, trying to mute the screams that threatened to burst out of them, their bodies seeming to compact and then explode out like hand grenadoes.
And then lying together, their skin slick where it was pressed together, breathing hard in a kind of numb rapture.
It was in that blissful situation that Anne fell asleep in Jack’s arms. At some point in the night she was aware of him pulling a blanket over them to defend against the night air that was cool on their naked skin, but other than that she slept, deep and luxurious.
It was bright daylight when she woke and she was aware of some commotion on deck. She sat up and listened, and it seemed that whatever was happening had been happening for some time.
The scuttle overhead opened and Jack, in clothes hastily pulled on, came below.
“Jack, my dear, whatever is it?”
“It is the Dons. The damned, goddamned Guarda del Costa,” he said, and in the morning light Anne thought he looked very pale.