9
New Providence looked nothing like I remembered.
There were no beaten-up, filthy pirate sloops anchored haphazardly in the bay. Only pristine merchant navy ships, smartly tethered to newly constructed jetties in Nassau Port; Saint George’s flags fluttering brightly overhead; sails gleaming white. Gone were the rickety old market stalls along the harbourside, selling stolen booty. Instead, half a dozen painted horse carts were neatly lined up, offering baked goods, milk and eggs, fruit and vegetables, woven baskets and the like. No prostitutes and pirates lurked in the tavern doorways or on street corners, only King’s Guards who marched the streets in pairs, stopping to talk with gentlemen in suits and ladies in bonnets and pretty summer dresses. The cobbled streets where I had spent many a drunken day were clean of barrels, bodies and bottles, and I could not spot one fight spilling out of the newly whitewashed taverns. I could not detect even the slightest whiff of sulphur, alcohol or tobacco in the air.
It seemed Governor Rogers’ clean-up mission had been a success.
“Isn’t Nassau a pretty sight now, Anne?” James said, cautiously edging closer to me on the deck.
On our approach, he had asked Alasdair to dress me in an ivory silk robe and tie my wrists to the foremast to stop me from lashing out, as I had on many occasions over the past few days. Underneath his perfectly pressed dress shirt and tunic, I suspected James was black and blue.
“Yes,” I replied. “I hate it.”
He ignored me and rocked on his heels, puffing out his chest like a proud frigate bird. “I think you’ll be most taken with Governor Rogers’ mansion. He converted the old wooden fort on Fitzwilliam Hill into a beautiful residence. He had the quarried stone shipped all the way from Kentucky! It’s even bigger than your father’s was in Charles Town.”
James pointed up to the hill behind Nassau Port where a huge stone house with four stout white columns stood. The windows were framed with white wooden louvre shutters and the exterior walls had been painted a bright conch-pink. It made me think of Mary.
“You’ve been careless in forgetting I don’t care nothin’ for life on land, James. You have wasted your time and mine by bringing me back here. My life is at sea. Back where you found me.”
“Nonsense. I am convinced there is a lady in you. You come from good stock, Anne. You need pulling back into line, that’s all.” He put a careful arm around my waist, and I twisted, jamming my elbow as hard as I could into his side. He yelped in pain and stepped quickly away from me.
“I’ve told you before,” I spat. “Get your filthy, traitorous snitch-fingers off me.”
With that, James turned on his heel and marched away to join Alasdair, who was overseeing our docking harbourside.
“She’ll come around,” I heard him say, with what sounded like a little less conviction than before.
***
In the crowded courtroom, I saw Woodes Rogers right away.
He sat in an ornate high-backed chair at the very front, behind a huge raised wooden desk. A black dress coat strained tight against his belly – I could see his white shirt through the gaping holes between his buttons – exposing a life of luxury and excess. He wore a ridiculously large judicial wig on his head, which I reckoned must have been made from at least five horses’ tails. I decided that he most likely wore one that big to help conceal his puffy red face.
Rogers was some twenty yards away, but I could feel his eyes on me as I approached. I wondered how many people he judged in this place every day. And how few people he spared.
James left me to take his place in the public gallery to one side and Alasdair led me to the front of the courtroom, my hands still bound tightly. As we walked, people on both sides swivelled in their seats and craned their necks to inspect me, whispering and tutting disapprovingly to one another. I recognised some of them as old acquaintances.
I tried to act as nonchalant as possible.
Inside, I felt like a fish out of water, gasping for breath.
I did not belong here. These people, this place, and everything I had left behind felt so suffocating, so unfamiliar to me now. I felt my old self clambering back up from somewhere deep within me. I suppose she was the only defence I had left to summon.
“Gov’nor Woodes Rogers. It’s surely a pleasure to meet you,” I said, as sunny and bright as a day in May.
Rogers appraised me with a strange mixture of intense disdain and complete indifference. It reminded me of the way my father used to look at me. Like a hawk inspecting an insect from someplace high above.
He plucked a long, elaborate quill from an inkpot, scratched out something in a huge leather-bound book and began to speak. His voice was high, thin and reedy, quite the opposite to his appearance. I fought an urge to giggle.
“Anne Elizabeth Mary Bonny. You are accused by your husband, James Bonny, of committing adultery with one Jack Rackham. You are also accused by the New Providence government of conspiring to steal the merchant navy sloop William from Nassau Port on July fourteenth, in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and nineteen. Do you confess to these crimes?”
I took a quiet, steadying breath, pushed out my chin and forced myself to look directly into Rogers’ cold eyes. Then I smiled sweetly.
“If you are asking me: did I have sexual relations with the famous Captain Jack Rackham, then yes I did. But there’s somethin’ you got wrong. I did not have sexual relations with just the one
