“I have never been so happy, Mary,” I said one night in bed, tracing her palm with my fingertips. “My life began with you on this ship.”
She linked our hands together, kissed me soundly on the mouth and began to sing:
Annie and me, Annie and me, born of the sea, always will be.
Annie and me of the sea.
Happy we’ll be, born of the sea, Annie and me of the sea.
Then she leaned over me, reached into her coat pocket, and pulled out a thin gold necklace. A single pink pearl dangled from the chain.
I gasped. “Is that a –”
“Queen conch pearl? Yes. I found one. On our island, Annie.”
She unclasped the necklace and carefully fastened it around my neck. She smiled at me. Kissed my mouth, my neck, the pearl, my chest. Then she moved lower.
***
That was our last night on the William. Early the next morning the ship came under a devastating attack from an English warship, its plentiful cannonballs blasting our hull to smithereens, shocking us from our slumber.
Mary and I tore out from our quarters, barely clothed. The ship loomed above us like a pale mountain, a vast three-masted 120-foot sloop-of-war. As it drew alongside, I saw two-score of armed sailors standing at the taffrails, ready to lower their gangways onto the William. The men were smartly dressed in black greatcoats with gold buttons that gleamed in the morning sun.
Mary and I looked at each other, our eyes wide with fear and an unmistakeable sense of foreboding.
“I am not going down without a fight, Annie,” Mary said fiercely.
I kissed her, refusing to acknowledge that this might be the end. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
She ran her fingertips along my jaw. Then she turned and charged forwards with both her swords drawn.
“Jack!” I screamed. “LADS! Main deck, now!”
I stuck my head into the stairwell and hollered for them again, but there was no response. I whipped my head back towards Mary. Two gangways had already been lowered and men were beginning to make their way over. She positioned herself at the end of the first gangway and began to fight off the onslaught.
We were out of time.
I sprinted to the second ramp to defend against the other line of invaders.
Mary and I fought the men alone for as long as we could. Jack and the crew stayed below decks the whole time, most likely still drunk and scared. As it turned out, there was a good reason why Jack only took small ships.
These men were a different breed of fighter to any I had faced before. Mercenaries. Well trained and well organised, they swung their swords at me with such precision and strength that, soon, all I could do was dodge the blows.
Eventually, two of them managed to disarm and restrain me. Mary continued fighting valiantly for a while, her face showing the despair I felt, all the while screaming for the crew to come and help us. She even fired a pistol below decks in vain, such was her bitter disappointment. (Later, we found out that she had killed our boat swain. We were both aggrieved it was not Jack.)
Finally, when Mary was surrounded by men and it was all too clear we stood no chance, I pleaded with her – urging her to surrender, terrified she would be killed. In desperation, I cried out that we were both women. There was simply nothing else I could think to do to ensure her survival.
***
The entire crew were arrested by the warship’s captain, a privateer turned pirate-hunter named Jonathan Barnet, who had been hired to pursue and detain Jack and me, and our crew, thanks to a tip-off from an informant of Governor Woodes Rogers. That informant, I later found out, was none other than a bitter and revengeful James Bonny.
Mary and I decided to lie and “plead our bellies” – pretending we were both pregnant – to delay our own trials, at least for a short time.
Before his piracy trial in Port Royal, Jack requested to see me in the cell I shared with Mary, due to my reported condition and his apparent paternity. When the gaoler brought him, I could barely hold Mary back from strangling Jack through the bars.
“Woah. Steady, woman!” Jack leant back, keeping a safe distance from Mary’s clawing hands. “Well, well. Who’d’a guessed it…Mark Read, a woman, no less! Still canny believe that one, such a strong fighter. And, so I hear, a woman in no condition to fight me right now. Although I have been wonderin’ which of my crewmen managed to sneak you a stiff one.”
“You are a sorry coward, Jack,” Mary spat, shaking with fury. “We could’ve taken on that warship if you had grown a pair.”
“Ahh, come now. Mary, is it? We both know I have more than you will ever have. Anne can testify to that, can’t you, Anne?”
Mary leapt against the bars, trying desperately to gain an extra inch to reach him with her fingernails. I placed a soothing hand on her shoulder, brushed my lips against her cheek, and walked calmly to the cell door. I knew it was no use trying to reason with Jack – he had valued bluff and charm above bravery all the time I had known him.
I stood face to face with him, knowing this would be the last time I would ever see him.
“Despite reports to the contrary, I do not carry your child,” I said. I could scarcely contain my disgust at the notion. “I’m sorry to see you here, Jack. But it is richly deserved. If only you had fought like a man, you
