CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

NEW PROVIDENCE—1720

THE NIGHT AIR WAS HOT. IT WAS INFERNALLY HOT AND SO STILL, THE bugs and animals making an obscene racket in the jungle behind the hut as they crept toward the water in darkness. Mary kept peering over her shoulder, at the hut where they had left Robbie trussed and bleeding beneath the table, but no one emerged.

Her fingers found the sun-splintered edge of their jolly boat, then Anne’s hand on the other side. She held it for a moment. Anne’s eyes were dark and bottomless and beautiful. Anne was here. She would push the boat to the water with Mary. She would row to Hog’s Island. She would sail across the world with her.

She leaned forward and Anne did too and Mary kissed her and it was a shout, it was a cheer, a celebration.

Then they silently slid the boat into the weak foaming waves lapping the sand—no wind to rile the water—and under the cover of a thousand crickets and the light of a thousand stars they slipped away.

They stayed silent all the way to Hog’s Island. The water was deathly quiet, after the noise of the jungle on Nassau, broken only by the gurgle of paddles slipping in and out of the water, and the creak of the boat. The air cooled a bit over the water. Mary wished for the cover of clouds—but then she wouldn’t be able to see Anne in front of her, moonlight pearling the hollow of her throat.

The knock of water against the hull echoed loud as they maneuvered the boat beneath the docks at Hog’s Island. Mary stood up and put her hands to the planks above. They could pull themselves up from here, she was sure. They held their breath in the darkness, listening hard.

Then—men’s voices murmured above them. The rattle of dice tossed across wood.

Mary sat down again, liquid beginning to pool around her ankles as the jolly boat let on water. She pushed off of a piling with her paddle, and they tried another dock.

The third dock down was the charm. No words or footsteps. No cigar ash feathering down, signaling someone above. No stench of alcohol or pipe tobacco, just the dank smell of ship. Mary had missed it. She’d been ashore too long. She wanted to hug a slimy piling, mush her face in the stink.

Pulling herself up proved a bit of a challenge. The footing of ankle-deep water in the unsteady bottom of the jolly boat was no help, nor the sharp edges of the beams above her, cutting her palms. But she managed, barely; then she lay flat to the dock and hung her torso down, pulling Anne up and into her arms.

They lay on the dock for a moment, breathless, the soggy bottom of Anne’s dress sticking to Mary’s legs. Mary’s breath caught in her throat when she looked over at her.

Everything was different. I am different. She had shaken loose from her moorings. She could go anywhere from here.

Mary wished they could lie there forever, staring up at the stars.

They crept along the docks until they saw their vessel, its prow glowing in the moonlight. It was in such gleaming condition that it stood out clearly among the other boats and brigs, light catching on its bright spars and beams and railings. John Ham’s sloop. John “Catch Him if You Can” Ham—the famous privateer, made so by the quickness of his little ship. Small enough to man with just a few people, if it were needed. Big enough to carry them across the ocean. Fast enough to get them there before they died of starvation or thirst, if they were lucky.

“There it is,” Mary whispered. “That’s our ship.”

Anne nodded, a slow smile spreading across her lips. She’d come back to life, Mary could see it. She had been crushed, living in New Providence. She needed more room. She needed a whole ocean.

It was a handsome sloop, with six guns, its lines sleek and well-maintained. Its name was the William. Asking around, Mary had learned that John Ham was on shore, receiving commission for his latest raid on the Spanish. It was tethered to the dock by a sturdy line and bowline knot that was easily untied. No plank to board it with, but there was a plank on the ship next to it, and how easy it was to slide it off one ship and lay it against another, with the two of them to move it. It thunked against the railing of the ship, and Mary held her breath. Surely if someone was aboard, they would have heard that. Ham might be at the governor’s mansion, but he could have left someone to guard his precious ship.

But no one came.

They crept up the plank. Their bare feet hit the William’s deck. They pulled the line in, and then the plank. They set about hoisting the sails.

Just a bit; just enough to get them moving.

The Delicia, the governor’s flagship, stood guard at the entrance of the harbor between Nassau, Hog’s Island, and open water. In a jolly boat, they’d been too slight to warrant notice. On their way out, though, in John Ham’s precious sloop—

Mary had a plan.

On the docks of Hog’s Island, no man looked up from his dice long enough to see the sail inch up along a mast. No man set down his bottle long enough to notice that Ham’s ship had come unmoored. No man looked past the glowing end of his pipe to see the silhouettes of two women creeping along the railing, hands held fast.