“Come now, Anne,” said James, cheerfully. “This day marks the end of your old life and the beginning of a new one with me. Together. Let us travel happily, in peace, from this moment on.”
I did not dignify his nonsense with a reply. Instead, I took his offered hand and stepped up into the carriage silently. I sat in the coach with James and Alasdair squeezed tight on either side of me. A rose between two pricks.
***
As we made our way into town, I understood why the governor had sent an open carriage.
People lined every street.
And not just men. Women and children filled the cobblestones in their hundreds, all of them dressed in brightly coloured suits and summer frocks. It seemed to me that there was a considerable number of women, especially. They gathered in excited groups, standing on tiptoe, pointing at me and gossiping with one another, every one of them straining for a good look at the infamous lady pirate.
Groups of girls played with whittled wooden sticks, pretending they were sword fighting. One little lass even had her dress tucked into her stockings to make it look as if she was wearing breeches. She swished her pretend sword left and right, a handkerchief tied around her mop of unruly, bright red hair. As our carriage passed, I caught her eye and smiled. It was the first time I had truly smiled in days. Her mother stepped in front of her, admonishing the girl and pulling her dress free before anyone else could notice.
It felt like I was in the middle of a grand wedding procession. And I was the bride.
Then a thought struck me: not only was I the first female pirate anyone had ever heard of, but I was most likely the first woman anyone had seen publicly whipped.
Usually, few people attended floggings. They had been such a commonplace occurrence on land for so long, that those present generally consisted of the culprit, his guardian or master and the guards tasked with carrying out the punishment. And maybe a drunk or two.
It seemed I had single-handedly made whippings a popular spectator pastime again.
The driver slowed the horse from a trot to a walk and the line of people street-side began to deepen.
We had arrived.
I peered past the driver’s shoulder as he brought the carriage to a complete stop.
In the centre of the town square, roped off from the crowd of onlookers, stood a tall wooden whipping post on a raised stone platform. The stage was flanked by a pair of King’s Guards dressed in their customary red, white and black uniforms. One of the guards was armed with a long rifle, capped with a gleaming bayonet. The other held a cat o’ nine tails whip at his side.
My stomach flipped and dropped heavily into my groin.
A cat o’ nine tails!
Lashings were usually administered using the single-tailed whip, either a single rope’s end or a leather cord used for horses and the like. Not at all pleasant, but overnight I had imagined the pain would be manageable. I was used to injury, to hurting.
The cat o’ nine tails, however, was an entirely different prospect. It was reserved for the punishment of the most severe offenders. A short whip, with nine knotted strands of rope connected to its handle, it was said to make you feel as though you were being lashed with nine whips made from sharp rocks, all at the same time. Whipping sentences were set in groups of three, up to a maximum of thirty-nine lashes. Men had died from the blood loss that came with thirty-nine lashes of a cat o’ nine tails.
As I climbed down from the carriage, I frantically tried to remember the sentence I had been given. I had been so intent on antagonising the governor and James in the courtroom that I had barely taken any notice of the formalities.
Had he said twenty-one lashes? For a woman? With a cat o’ nine tails?
For the first time ever, I feared for my life.
Silence fell on the town square as Alasdair and James ushered me towards the whipping post. There were no children playing here. The raffish crowds on the outskirts of town had given way to a higher class of spectator: wealthy landowners, their wives well clad in the latest fashions. Up close, the women lining the square found it harder to look me in the eye, their heads bowing as I was led past. One group had lined up close to the platform, yet were so prudish that they hid their faces within their deep-brimmed summer bonnets, twitching the hems of their long dark cloaks as if to pull them as far as possible from my path. Opposite them stood a group of older men and women, all dressed in black and white – I knew most of them as the colony’s elders. They looked at me with a queer mixture of interest and pity. It was just a small measure away from satisfaction. No wonder James felt so at home here.
We reached the stage and James left to join the elders. Alasdair pulled me onto the platform, dragging me over to the whipping post.
“Allow me, Mrs Bonny,” he murmured, very close to my ear.
He lifted my trussed wrists above my head and tied them to a metal ring nailed high on the post. Then he crouched and removed my silk slippers, squeezing my ankles spitefully. I felt him tie my feet together tightly. He tethered that rope to another ring at the foot of the pole. Then he straightened and used a knife to cut through the delicate shoulders of my dress. The gown parted and slipped away from me, leaving me completely naked.
I heard gasps from the crowd. And a low chuckle from Alasdair as he left my side.
Behind me, the guard’s footsteps were approaching.
I felt wetness on my cheeks and realised I was crying. I
