CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CARIBBEAN SEA—1719

FAR BELOW, SAILORS SCALING THE POOP DECK LADDER AT A FAIR CLIP caught Mary’s eye. Something was amiss in the urgency of their movement. She frowned, leaning forward.

Paddy continued, “I knew the first time, with me Katie—”

“Look.” Mary knocked at his arm and pointed to the poop deck. Paddy’s brow furrowed when he saw the running and shouting below.

“What do you think has them jumping about like that?” she asked.

Following the gestures of the sailors below, they squinted portside. The Zilveren Vissen was passing a small cay as they came within spitting distance of Curaçao. The sun reflected off the smooth sand of its beach to create an intense glare, and it was hard to make out much.

Mary swayed light-headedly and narrowed her eyes against all that dazzle and brilliance, reminded that she hadn’t had a meal since morning the day before.

“I don’t see nothing.” Paddy leaned farther out, shading his eyes.

As Mary strained to see, a vague shadow coming around the cay began to materialize, fading in and out against the glare like a specter. She leaned out and stared past the bow, and then all at once she saw it: the silhouette of another brigantine slipping through the water and fast gaining ground toward them, a black flag dancing in the wind. Her whole body prickled as each hair stood on end, and she clutched the yard beneath her. Before her mind could properly register the sight, she heard the fearsome shout from the crow’s nest above.

“Pirates!”

The word pulled a trigger, the crew exploding into frenzied action. Within moments they dragged weaponry out from the forecastle and began distributing it among the frantic swarm of sailors. Mary and Paddy fumbled down the ratline as fast as their trembling limbs would carry them.

Mary stared toward Curaçao. As large and promising as it had loomed moments before, it suddenly seemed terribly far away.

Paddy dashed toward the growing throng surrounding the weapons. Mary trailed after him, watching the approaching brig. That first jolt of panic still coursed through her body, but ideas were forming in her mind. She had no intention of fighting—the pirates could kill the bloody captain and take whatever was in the Vissen’s hold, for all she cared. All she wanted was to set foot on land.

The ship intercepting theirs grew larger and darker as it gained on them, becoming solid against the sea. Why should she fight for Baas? She might have joined the crew of her own free will, but she knew about press gangs, how men were stolen from their beds and their families to work a ship.

Mary stumbled into a murky din below deck, the air sharp with gunpowder and sweat. Down the row of cannons and shirtless scrambling bodies, a shaft of light coming through an open gun port illuminated Paddy’s grizzled torso. Mary wormed her way through the madness. “Paddy!” He looked up. The light reflected off his eyes unnaturally in the darkness as he strained to adjust the cannon. Mary crouched down and heaved with him.

“Now’s me chance to make it off the brig, and you should come with me!” Mary shouted, trusting that the chaos around them and the English she spoke would keep the other tars from overhearing. “You really planning on fighting these pirates, then going all the way back to Flanders with the Baas-tard? On the chance that he might find it in his heart to pay you once you’re there, if the both of you make it through today alive?” Metal scraped wood as the four-pounder resisted sliding into place. Paddy clawed up to the gun port and peered through.

“We can’t get another shot in, they’re following too closely!” Paddy’s voice was high and tight, echoing down the line in Dutch as the other sailors registered the same sight. Then the brig lurched again, words turning to garbled shouting as men pitched to the floor.

“They must’ve jammed the rudder!” Paddy said as a sailor at the foot of the ladder bawled over the racket, “Alle hens aan dek! Alle hens aan dek!”

All hands on deck. Mary followed Paddy into the crowd swarming up the stairs. “No one will notice!” she hollered. “Me and you and that wee jolly boat—sure, no one’ll miss us in the middle of this! The two of us, starting fresh in the Indies—we’ll have a better chance at making our fortune than this!”

He turned sharply, and the press of men pushed her too close to him. “If Baas or one of the officers saw us jumpin’ ship mid-battle, it’d be a bullet in the back and no mistake,” he hissed into her face. “And I’d not leave the other men besides. It’s deserters like you who lose a fight for the rest of us!” He turned and heaved himself up the ladder. A smattering of gunfire echoed above. Feet pounded on the deck, and enemy ammunition thumped as it burrowed into the hull.

Deserters like you. She didn’t think of herself as a deserter. She didn’t owe this ship or this crew or this captain anything.

People wanted to think that everything was black and white. Laws were laws. Family was family. Right was right and wrong was wrong. Boy was boy and girl was girl. Her crew was good and the pirates were evil.

Life had revealed itself to be much more complicated.

The first grappling hooks tore into the stern. She grabbed a musket and had just loaded it when the ship rolled violently and ocean water sprayed across her face, blinding her for a moment. When she wiped her eyes smoke from the muskets had already dimmed the onslaught, but she could see enough to make her stomach drop.

Wild, screaming men with gold earrings, brightly patterned bandanas, and cutlasses in their teeth crawled up the grappling lines. Pirates already on deck cleared the path before them with their bullets, firing flintlocks with both hands. Swordsmen slung themselves on board from the taffrail with swirling blades. They shone with vigor, barefoot and naked to the waist, all shades of sunburned, brown, and even the darkest black. A few dropped from musket fire as they cleared the gunwales, collapsing backward into the sea, but already swordplay and pistol fire along the quarterdeck gave them the clear advantage.

Bolting to the forward end of the ship, Mary crammed herself between the forecastle and a barrel, so that the forecastle ladder blocked her from view. She peered at the fight through its rungs, giddy with nerves. No one was coming this way, pirate or sailor. Bending low, she scurried over to the jolly boat and lay the musket at her feet. She untied the tarpaulin and rolled it back, letting it slide to the deck. She’d need to winch those ropes to let it down into the water. She just might make it.

Mary looked back toward the fighting again, to check that she still went unnoticed—and what she saw changed everything.