WHEN AT LAST the bailiff returned to the holding cell to tell the men on trial for their lives that His Excellency the President, Sir Nicholas Lawes, and the Honorable Commissioners had rendered their verdict, he found John Rackam still sitting on the stone bench, back against the whitewashed bricks, staring straight ahead.
The bailiff saw a pensive and serene Calico Jack.
What he could not see was that Jack was no longer afraid.
He had gone beyond fear. The fear had finally consumed everything that was inside him, there was nothing left, and like a fire that incinerates all the flammable material within its reach and then goes out, so Jack’s terror had faded to a cold nothing, a charred black spot.
The bailiff held up a list, one of his interminable lists, and called, “The following prisoners will proceed with escort to the courthouse: John Rackam, George Fetherston, Richard Corner, John Davies, John Howell, Patrick Carty, Thomas Earl, James Dobbin, and Noah Harwood.”
Those men stood in a jangling chorus of manacles and leg irons and Jack stood as well, though it took an extraordinary effort. He would have been pleased to just sit on that bench, unmoving, until he died. But Sir Nicholas, he knew, would not allow that.
He glanced over at Jacob Wells and those others, standing at the far end of the holding cell, trying to distance themselves as much as they could from the genuine pirates, those bound for the gallows. Jack thought for a moment that he would march back into the courthouse and tell old Lawes that they had joined in with the pirates as willingly as ever did the most despicable rogue. He would do it just for spite, just to bring them along to hell with him, but even as he thought it he knew he did not have the will or the energy.
At the door to the holding cell stood the merciless bailiff and four armed soldiers. Through the door Jack could see the audience and standers-by, who had withdrawn from the courthouse for the Commissioners to render a verdict, now filing back in. They had been disappointed in their desire to see the women pirates stand their trial, but at least they would have the chance to watch the men’s faces as they were sentenced to death.
Finally the last of the crowd shuffled by, and Jack and the others were led back into the huge courtroom and once more set at the bar.
Sir Nicholas made them stand and wait for a few minutes as he shuffled papers and mumbled to the bailiff and generally let the tension build, as one will do who understands the mechanics of drama. At last he looked up, his face like a sunburned bulldog, scowled down at the men at the bar, and said, “This court, having maturely and deliberately considered all the evidence which has been given against the prisoners—”
Jack felt a spark of hope, a little orange glow where the charred stuff was stirred, but then it went out because he knew it was foolish.
“—have unanimously found you all guilty of piracy, robbery, and felony charged against you in the third and fourth articles of the abovesaid articles which have been exhibited against you. Have any of you anything to say or offer why sentence of death should not be passed upon you, for these said offenses?”
Why should he not be killed? The reasons flowed from Jack’s mind. How could this body, this physical thing that had been Jack Rackam, that had given pleasure to himself and to so many women, how could this thing that was he be put to death, be killed, be strung up until it was just a lifeless nothing? It was absurd, it could not be done. It was an unimaginable waste.
But it would be done, and Jack knew it, and he said nothing.
The others were silent as well, for the most part, save for a few desultory mutters of “We’re not guilty, m’lord, we swears it,” which did nothing at all to aid their circumstance.
“Very well,” said Sir Nicholas, when he had listened to all the halfhearted protests he was willing to hear. “You, John Rackam, George Fetherston, Richard Corner, John Davies, John Howell, Patrick Carty, Thomas Earl, James Dobbin, and Noah Harwood, are to go from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, where you shall severally be hanged by the neck till you are severally dead. And God in His infinite mercy be merciful on every one of your souls.”
Lawes issued that last order to God in the same disinterested and mechanical manner with which he had ordered the men’s death, and then he rapped his bench with his mallet.
And then Jack heard his own voice speak. It sounded very far away, and he seemed to have no knowledge of what he would say.
“My Lord?”
Lawes scowled down. “Sentence has been passed. It is too late now for further argument.”
“My Lord, might I request that, before I am hung, I be allowed to say my farewells to Anne Bonny, to whom I am in spirit betrothed.”
Lawes continued to scowl as he considered that. “This court does not consider a betrothal in spirit to be anything more than adultery and fornication, which it is. But yes, I will allow this. Bailiff, you will see that the condemned, before going to the place of execution, is allowed to speak one last time to the prisoner Bonny.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
The condemned . . . Jack thought. Yes, that is me. The condemned. And such was I from the day I was born.
At five o’clock the jailor brought Mary and Anne’s supper—boiled meat of some sort, bread, small beer—pretty unappetizing fare, but by the standards of shipboard, not so bad, and Anne and Mary took it without complaint.
“What of the trial? Is it done with?” Mary asked. There was anxiety in her tone, but of course, there would be, and the jailor was a kind man.
“Aye, done and gone. Would you know the outcome?”
“I have no doubt of the outcome,” said Anne from her cell across the alleyway. “They did not need that great farce of a trial to sentence them to hang, but I reckon Nicholas bloody Lawes will sleep better if he knows he done it the way the King wishes. Very well then, for the sake of formality, what was the verdict?”
“Guilty, Annie. Each and every one of them, severally guilty.”
“Well,” said Anne, “we need no ghost come from the grave to tell us this.”
“What of those other rogues?” Mary asked, and her tone was a reasonable approximation of disinterest. “That Wells and Montgomery and them? They were not at the bar with Jack Rackam and the others.”
“No, they was tried separate, and I do not know why. But they was all found to have been forced into piracy, and so was set free. Them Frenchmen what gave testimony, they both swore those fellows was forced into it.”
Mary nodded, but inside she felt herself floating, her spirit lifting off. Jacob would not hang! It was the most she could hope for, indeed it was all she could hope for, and it had come to pass and so the rest of it, what would happen to her, did not matter.
She knew that she and Anne would hang. They would be charged with the same articles as were Rackam and his crew, and condemned by the same witnesses. But Jacob would not. She could die if she knew she had not sentenced Jacob to death as well.
All of this joyful song she kept inside her and betrayed none of it to the jailor, who, if he became suspicious that Mary had some special feelings for the young man, might feel compelled to report the same, kind man though he was, and Jacob would find himself once more under the angry stare of Sir Nicholas Lawes.
So instead she took a bite of bread, chewed it, and said, “Well, I’ll warrant them for drowning, since they wasn’t born to be hanged.” Jacob Wells, clutching his fiddle and standing up bold to Calico Jack. Mary had pulled her eyes from him and wished that Jack would set the young man ashore. She did not want him aboard, because in that first glance she could see how things would go, could see it with the startling clarity that one gets looking through tropical water down many fathoms to the bottom.
She did not need the complications, the heartbreak. She had run away to the Caribbean to escape that.
Jack was in fine, strutting form, safe as they were with the Guarda del Costa miles to leeward. He was leaning on his sword, making Larson, the former owner of the sloop, answer questions for the pirates’ amusement. It was nearly as good as any such performance he had given, but he had been drinking, more than was his custom, and it somewhat dulled his delivery, though the Pretty Annes saw nothing amiss.
“Do you, sir, not wish to be a freeman and lord, such as we here are?” he asked, and when Larson said, “I am a free man without being a pirate as well,” his answer brought jeers and howls and laughter from the gathered men, as, indeed, any answer would have.
They laughed at Larson and they mocked him, but in the end he won their respect because he showed no fear. He was bold and defiant and that was worthy of admiration among the Brethren of the Coast.
When Jack was done with him, he moved on to the young man with the fiddle, as Mary knew he would.
“What ho? What have we here? A musician? Play us a tune, then.”
“I am no great artist with this,” the man said, his voice clear and strong.
“No? But you hold it like a mother holds her babe, which ain’t what I would expect from one who does not know the use of an instrument. Play.”
The young man put the violin under his chin. His eyes were fixed on Jack’s, holding them firm. He raised the bow and drew it across the strings in something like a melody, but with enough screeching and squealing to make the hair on the back of Mary’s neck stand up, and set the others shouting and hissing.
Jack lifted the sword, held it under the man’s chin so that the wicked point was just pricking his skin.
“Play good,” Jack said.
For a full measure they stood, regarding each other, and then the dark-haired man applied the bow again, moving it fast and smooth, and the sound that came from the instrument was the sweetest that Mary had ever heard.
He played on, a tune that was at once lively and melancholy. Fore and aft the pirates fell silent as they listened, and the young man closed his eyes and looked as if he had no notion of where he was, or that he was playing under duress.
He played beautifully, passionately. It was a form of defiance, showing all of them that he was not too afraid to perform with such grace. He was saying, Sod the lot of you, you cannot do this.
Mary shook her head. You bloody fool, she thought. You have just sealed your fate.
With a grand flourish the young man brought the piece to a close. He lowered the bow and the violin and looked Jack in the eye once more, as if to say, There. Now what say you?
There was a second of silence on deck and then the pirates burst out into cheers and applause. Jack smiled wide, stepped up to the young man, clapped him on the back, and said, “Excellently well done! What is your name, lad?”
“Jacob Wells.”
“Well, Jacob Wells, we have need of a skilled fellow like you, can spin a merry tune such as that! How would you care to join with our company of gentlemen adventurers?”
“I would not. I’ll have no truck with piracy.”
This bold statement brought more howls and jeers. Over the others Jack said, “Well, my dear, the thing of it is, we’ll not give you the choice. Willing or no, you are a pirate now, lad! And God in His infinite mercy be merciful on your soul!”
At this the others cheered and crowded around Jacob Wells and slapped him on the back and plied him with rum, which he drank after sufficient coercion.
Mary shook her head, looked beyond the bow toward the island of Cuba to starboard and the open ocean beyond the larboard rail.
She was happy that Jack had made Wells join them, and she was angry and she was miserable and she was delighted. It was all mixed up in her, and she did not know what she was, beyond very, very uncertain.
The new Pretty Anne stood north and east, leaving Cuba below the horizon as quickly as she could, making for the relative safety of open water. They sailed on in that manner for all of the next day, then came about and made their way southeast, finally running down the windward passage between Cuba’s easternmost end and the northwestern tip of Hispaniola.
It was not long before the pirates realized how fine a bargain they had made. The sloop they now manned was newly built and fully provisioned, her sails crisp and white and not hanging in big, baggy pockets, her bilge clean and sweet smelling.
It was a further delight to realize that not only had they stolen the Spaniards’ valuable prize, and left a near worthless one in its place, but that the Spaniards had beaten the only prize left to them to kindling before they knew it.
A fortnight after their escape from the Guarda del Costa they raised the island of Jamaica. They skirted the northern shore and stood in to Dry Harbor Bay, and there they put Captain James Larson ashore, but kept on board Thomas Montgomery, who proved to be a skilled carpenter, and Jacob Wells, who was their delight.
Jacob was an adequate sailor, but his skill with the violin was astounding. At dinnertime every afternoon he was made to play for an hour, and again during the dog watches, often for two hours straight.
He seemed never to repeat a tune. Mary could not tell if he was making the melodies up as he went, or if he had in his head a great repertoire of music. He played hard and tirelessly, he played because he loved it and because he could lose himself in the music and forget his circumstance, he played out of defiance, just as he had first played for Jack.
And despite his oft-expressed dislike of the pirates, the pirates came to like him very much, because he was a good-natured fellow, and a fine musician, and a tolerable sailor.
“You love him, do you not?” Anne said one morning, high aloft, and it startled Mary.
“Who?” Mary asked, flushing, since she had at that moment been staring down at Jacob Wells, who was standing in the bows and sewing a patch in his second best shirt.
“’Who’!” Anne laughed. “La, Mary, do you think I am blind?”
“If you mean Wells, well, he is a handsome lad, with much to recommend him, but as for love, I think not.”
“A short life and a merry one, dear. I do not know how long we can go like this. You must take what you wish and take it quick. I would never warrant you for being afraid, but in this I think you are.”
“Afraid? Of what?” Mary asked, but of course, she knew full well. She was surprised that Anne understood what was in her, but then she had learned before that Anne was a woman of more insight than one might guess. Mary was not pleased to hear that insight given voice.
“You are afraid to love him.”
“Perhaps, I’ll grant you, there is something in what you say . . .” It was all very complicated, and all jumbled together in Mary’s head, all of the implications of her feelings. “But we are not exactly in a private drawing room here. I’m still playing the man and don’t care to see what these rogues would do if the truth were revealed. How would I tell Jacob and be sure he wouldn’t tell the others?”
At that Anne laughed, to Mary’s annoyance. “Forgive me, Mary, dear, but that is a weak excuse. You revealed yourself to Frederick in the midst of the army, revealed yourself to me and your secret has been held. I am sure, with some thought, you could manage the same with Jacob.”
Mary nodded. Anne was right, of course. Keeping her sex a secret was the least of it.
“You’re afraid to be hurt,” Anne continued, “such as you were with Frederick. I can understand that. But if this all ends and the two of you are parted, you will never have the chance again. Given a choice, would you prefer to have never known Frederick, to have never had what you had with him?”
Mary thought about that as she stared out at the horizon. She had always told herself that it would have been better if she and Frederick had never met, never fallen in love, never married. Better that she should never have known what happiness was, so that she would not know later what she had lost.
But she knew that that was not true. Better to have had that bright moment of joy, better to have known Frederick and loved him and lost him than to never have had that honor.
And then something else that Anne had said called for her attention. “What do you mean, you do not know how long we can go on like this?”
Anne frowned, shrugged, looked out to sea. “I feel sometimes that it is all coming to an end. They are rounding up the pirates and hanging them by the score. We have taken nothing worth the taking in . . . nothing since you and me rejoined the ship, and they took little while we were in Cuba. Fishing boats . . .”
Anne paused and then turned and looked Mary in the eye. “Jack is shattered, Mary, my dear. I cannot guess what happened to him back there, with the Guarda del Costa and such, but he has not been the same man since. Only once since then has he lain with me, and it was a poor attempt at best. Have you not seen how nervous he seems? How much more he drinks?”
Mary nodded. “I have. And I have seen it before, I daresay, in other men. A person can take but so much: so much fear, so much worry, so much responsibility. With no respite, anyone will collapse under the weight of it, in the end.”
“I fear that has happened to my Jack. And if he is not able to command, then we are done for, in the sweet trade. There is no other. Dicky Corner may be a great brute in a fight, but he is no leader.”
“No, he is not.”
They were silent for a moment and then Anne said, brighter, “So, my dear, don’t squander your opportunity. I suggest that you make love to this handsome young man, with ever as much passion as I made love to you. And let us hope, with happier results.”