THAT EVENING, as the Pretty Anne plowed along the north coast of Jamaica, Mary listened to the wistful strains of some tune that flowed like magic from Jacob’s violin, watched him as he played as if in a trance.
His eyes were closed and his mouth was set in a bit of a frown, giving his otherwise boyish face a stern look. His bowing arm moved with a motion that hardly seemed human, more like a sapling swaying in the wind, or water tumbling over rocks.
His long fingers crawled over the neck of the instrument—Mary could not pull her eyes from those fingers. His body had none of the soft, awkward quality of one who had spent his life in conservatories and drawing rooms. He was lean and well formed. The muscles in his arms stood out as he worked his bow and produced those lovely airs.
Mary glanced fore and aft, saw with some amusement the hairy, beastly pirates who were quietly listening to the delicate melody, some looking as if they might weep.
She thought of Annie’s words, about making love to Jacob, about how all this might end.
That talk frightened her. It echoed a sort of nebulous dread of pending disaster that had overcome her now and again. Nothing that she could examine, it was not so definite as that. Just a sense of the end coming closer.
Hardly bloody surprising, she thought. Piracy was not a trade that offered much longevity. Killed in battle, or by disease, or drowned, or hung, a pirate’s life might not always be merry, but it was generally short.
Then I shall not tarry a moment more, Mary decided. Into the breach and all that.
She stood as Jacob finished up his evening performance, and as the others drifted away she approached him and leaned against the bulwark. “That bit you played, next to the last, that was by that fellow Bach, was it not?”
Jacob looked up, surprised. “Yes indeed. I didn’t know you were so learned about music.”
Mary shrugged. “I’ve picked up a bit, here and there.” In fact, she knew nothing about music, save for marches and camp songs and that one piece that Jacob had played, which she had heard when a traveling musician played it at the Three Trade Horses and it had so delighted the audience that he was made to play it three more times. “But tell me, how does one so talented come to be a pirate?”
“I was forced. You know that.”
“I know. I’m fooling with you. But how did you come to be sailing aboard this sloop?”
Jacob wrapped his violin in a cloth and placed it gently in a wooden box that Montgomery had been ordered to run up for him, the pirates being now as anxious as he to preserve the instrument. “We lived in Bath. My father was a tutor of music and dance. A few years ago he decided to move us all to Jamaica. He reckoned on grand opportunities there, but soon after we arrived he and my mother and sister took sick with the yellow jack and died.
“I was quite destitute and could not make a living with my playing, and then Captain Larson was good enough to take me in and offer to teach me the sailor’s trade. He is a kind man and we are very close, though he acted as if he hardly knew me after you . . . people . . . discovered us on board. I think he reckoned it would go hard on me, was these fellows to think I was close with the captain.”
“Mmm,” Mary said. You have seen your own share of pain, she thought. It showed in his eyes. That was part of what drew her to him, she realized.
“Will you follow the sea, still?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know. I reckon now I shall be hung for a pirate before I ever get the chance.”
Mary laughed at that. “I don’t think your time in the sweet trade will be very long lasted. I do not reckon mine will be.”
“Are you forced to this? Do you not wish to be . . . on the account, as these rogues are wont to say?”
“Oh, I entered into this trade of my own free will, I will confess to that. Mine has been a rambling life. Soldier, man-of-war’s man. I have been such as one would call a pirate for near two years now and I have come to see the folly of it. It is not the life for me, and as soon as I get the chance I will go ashore and forswear it.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
Honestly? Perhaps. Or perhaps I say that so that you will not find me despicable.
Mary did not know. To have again what she and Frederick had, there was nothing she would not forswear. But she would not trade this carefree life in the West Indies for the misery of Europe, the frigid hell of sailing the North Sea.
She would give up the sweet trade for something better, but right then she could not picture what that might be.
Jacob Wells seemed much relieved to have a sympathetic friend aboard the Pretty Anne. After their discussion at the rail that evening, he made an effort to stick close to Mary, which did not displease her.
Soon she invited him to join her mess, the four-man groups into which the crew was divided for purposes of cooking and eating. It was one of the most intimate divisions on shipboard, and one’s messmates were considered to be of higher priority even than one’s other watchmates or crewmates.
This invitation Jacob gladly accepted, and soon he found himself taking his meals with Mary and Fetherston and Thomas Earl, and slowly, day by day, he grew more comfortable in that rough company. And day by day, Mary’s affection for him grew.
Aft and below in the tiny great cabin, which was an altogether finer dwelling than the cabin aboard their former sloop, Anne Bonny was waiting on Calico Jack.
She lay back, propped up on her elbows on the cushion on top of the after lockers. Her hair was loose and hanging in all its thick, reddish blond beauty over her shoulders and down her back. Her shirt was partway unbuttoned, revealing the alluring tops of her round breasts. Her belt was off, and she was barefoot, and the top buttons of her trousers were undone.
Jack was drunk.
“Ah, Annie, dear, you are a one to set a man’s heart to pounding!” he said. He took an uncertain step toward her, and then steadied himself on the table and raised the bottle of brandy to his lips and drank.
“That was my hope, Jack, dear,” she said. “Now, pray, put down the bottle and come and attend to me.”
Jack nodded, but he did not look his old cocksure self. He wedged the bottle in place between two cushions, stumbled over to where Anne lay. He pulled off his coat and tossed it aside and lay down on top of her, kissing her, exploring her mouth with his tongue.
Anne closed her eyes, tried to enjoy herself, tried to summon up her former passion. Jack’s mouth tasted of brandy and rum and the smoke from his pipe and some other vague memories. His mouth had always tasted that way, but now there was something decayed about it, something miserable and desperate, and as Jack fumbled clumsily with Anne’s shirt, squeezing her breasts overly hard, it just made the whole thing worse.
Anne ran her hands through his hair, stared up at the deckhead above, and missed the beautiful, attentive lover with whom she had run away.
Jack pulled her shirt open, popping the buttons off. It was not the first time he had done that, but for the first time Anne thought, Now I shall have to sew the damned things on again . . .
He ran his mouth over her breasts, handling her roughly, but it was not the alluring, desperate, panting rough play they had once enjoyed. It was just rough.
Anne moved under him, made a sighing sound, but she did not really mean it. Jack was breathing hard and sweating and once his hand slipped off the cushion and he fell on top of her, and then pulled her hair as he set his hand back on the locker.
Ten minutes of that awkward, irritating play and Jack sat up, closed his eyes, threw his head back. He looked as if he might cry.
“Annie, my love, it is no use. Do you see? I am unmanned; I cannot make love to you.”
Anne looked at him. Once she would have been angry. She could picture Anne Bonny of a year before flying at him, furious that he should not be able to perform. She would have seen it as a personal affront. Putting hands on her fine body should be enough to send any man into a frenzy of desire.
“Come, Jack, my dear, let me hold you.” She reached out her arms and he lay down in them, and she hugged him as he rested his face against her chest. She could feel his tears on her naked flesh.
Oh, Jack, Jack, my love. Is it all over? And what will we do now, my dear? Wherever can we go?