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Everyone’s luck runs out sooner or later. Jack Rackham knew this better than anyone, and he knew that his luck was long overdue. What right did he have to have lasted so long when men far greater than himself did not? Charles Vane’s luck had run out. Edward Teach’s luck had run out. Even James Flint, the man who survived more deaths than one would think possible, had met his match in one aggrieved Long John Silver.
And yet, Captain Jack Rackham prevailed. Not the greatest of them, but certainly the last of the greats, and that had to count for something. As of late he’d been referred to as “Calico” Jack Rackham, which had made Mary laugh until she was nearly sick as she breathlessly tried to explain it was no doubt a reference to his- well, “flamboyant” was the word she used, Anne had said “fuckin’ ridiculous”- style of dress.
It had been funny, Jack had to admit. They should have known what such a name meant. People had noticed him. People were thinking about him. People were watching him.
Things had been too good. He’d gotten comfortable, and he ought to have recalled that, historically, that’s when he was most vulnerable. With all the wealth of the Urca de Lima at his fingertips, he’d been his most ineffective. And with his best friend, his twin, his shadow Anne on one side, and his new love Mary Read on the other, he was the most comfortable he’d ever been.
Oh, how Anne had laughed when Jack found out about “Mark”. Jack had been spluttering with indignation. He wasn’t angry with Mary, of course. He understood why she’d done the whole charade, having himself once helped Anne do the same thing. But to learn that Anne had known the entire time, and simply let him live in ignorance to see how long it would take him to notice? It had been humiliating.
Things happened rather quickly after that. Jack had felt a connection with Mary when she was still Mark, and had been wondering what to do about it when the truth came out. She knew about his past with Anne, knew how closely the two of them were bound. She didn’t care. She didn’t mind sharing. She was happy with even a piece of him.
One evening, a trimester or two before it all ended, there had been a particularly debauched drunken evening in Nassau. Jack, Mary, Anne, and Max, found themselves entangled with one another. Two missed cycles later, and it became clear that Mary and Anne had become pregnant at this little private party of theirs. Once Jack had finished preening at his own prowess, they’d agreed that Jack would be a parent to Mary’s child, but that Max would step into his role for Anne’s. Max had grumbled some off-hand comment about how she’d likely end up raising them both while the other three were off at sea, but it had been in good humor. Of the four of them, none of them had ever considered children as part of their future, and though none of them would admit it, they were all rather excited about their strange new family on the horizon.
Max wasn’t thrilled about Mary and Anne remaining on the account during their pregnancies, but she couldn’t very well stop them. She tried. (Later, she would wish she tried much harder.) But the two of them hadn’t fought tooth and nail for their right to sail to just give it up so easily.
Jack had never been more in love with the both of them than the day they’d been captured. He’d been nearly too drunk to stand, let alone fight. And it was through those unfocused eyes that he watched the pair of them cut down marine after marine. Some men find women to be at their loveliest in fine dresses with shining hair. But when Anne and Mary had fired into the hold at the craven crew members hiding within, screaming curses with blood spattered on their faces- why, those other men can keep their women in their fine dresses. Jack had never seen anything more beautiful.
It felt less beautiful the next day, when he’d woken up in the brig with a hangover so bad he nearly wished the British had just shot him. It would probably hurt less than the pounding in his head. He’d expected Anne to berate him for his drinking, or Mary to criticize the cowardice of his crew. They’d done neither. They’d been holding each other’s hands, speaking softly to one another.
What Jack found odd was how long it took for it to sink in that this, truly, was the end for him. There was no one left to rescue him. All his giants were dead or gone; the only people who cared about Jack Rackham were in the cell next to him.
Except for Max. She tried, of course. She sent agents and envoys to be witnesses in their defense, to produce documents insisting on the legality of their operations. But the reach of her power did not extend to the fort of Port Royal, and she no longer had enough power to muster a force to break them out. The best she could do was to extend the proceedings just long enough for Anne and Mary’s pregnancies to begin to show, allowing them to plead their bellies.
The court was still considering whether they’d accept it when Mary fell ill. Jack raged in his cell, promising riches, a confession, whatever they wanted, if he could only see her. They refused. She died.
When they told him, Jack felt something in his soul snuff out like a candle. He hoped that somewhere, back in London, Woodes Rogers was waking up in a cold sweat with the dim knowledge that a simple fever had done what he’d so utterly failed to do: break the spirit of Jack Rackham.
Finally the order came down: Anne would be released, and Jack would be hanged at dawn. They would be allowed one last meeting, a meeting that would only be partially recorded in the history books. Only the end.
That evening, the red light of the setting sun cut through the narrow window of the jail. Jack had spent many evenings watching the slit of red light travel up the wall, until it vanished as the sun sank beneath the horizon. This was not one such evening. Anne sat on a rickety stool, the little sliver of sunlight illuminating her hair the most brilliant shade of crimson. She’d been forced into a plain, hideous sack of a dress by her jailers. But Jack hardly noticed. He saw her hair, her lips, her eyes.
Her eyes, staring him down unwaveringly. At first, the emotion there seemed to him to be indescribable. But he’d known her too long to give himself that excuse. He’d known her every feeling as keenly as if it were his own. She was angry, she was sad. She was trying to memorize the details of his face so she could hold it in her memory. (He ought to know; he was doing the same thing.)
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jack said finally. “I wouldn’t be in this mess if I’d listened to you all those years ago, made off with the cache and left my name behind, gone off to- where was it again?”
“Amsterdam,” Anne told him. “We was gonna go to Amsterdam. Never did find out what they spoke there.”
“Dutch, darling. They speak Dutch in Amsterdam.” Jack sighed heavily. “I think we both knew that it was always gonna end like this.”
“Mary was a nice surprise,” Anne said.
Jack swallowed hard. “When she went-”
“It was quiet,” she told him. “Just sort of… stopped breathing.” (This is a lie. Jack knows this. Jack believes it anyway.)
“And how are you?”
“How am I? How could ask such a stupid fuckin’ question at a time like this?” She stood up, kicking her chair over as she did. “Mary’s dead, the crew’s gone, the ship’s shot. And the only person what ever really knew me is gonna hang and I can’t stop it on account of this- this thing in me.” She was only just starting to show, but she gestured at her belly all the same.
“Oh, hush,” Jack shushed her. “That child- our child- is the only reason you’re still alive, and if you can’t love her for it I’ll love her enough for the both of us.”
“I didn’t say that, Jack.” Anne sank to her knees in front of his cell, her fingers picking at the rust on the bars.
“I know, darling.” He reached out and clasped her hands. “But we can’t risk anything happening. We’re not as young as we once were.” His thumbs traced the scars on her palms. Though they were long healed, she’d never been able to hold a sword quite the same way.
“I could try,” she said. “I should try. You saved me-”
“And you paid me back a thousand times over. Do you really think I would have made it this far without you? Sailed with Charles? Stood next to Blackbeard? Taken down Governor Rogers? I always wanted to stand next to giants. And yet all the while, the only giant worthwhile was by my side the entire time.”
“Don’t say that. You were your own giant. You just never stopped to see it.”
“I’m nothing without you, Anne. And I’m not worth the risk to this child.” He kissed her knuckles, scraped and scabbed as they were. “Besides, you and Max will be brilliant parents, I’m sure. With you two raising her, I’m sure her only hardship will be deciding whether to kill people with her hands or with her words.”
“What makes you so sure it’s a girl?”
“Just a hunch.”
“Should we call her Jackie Rackham, then?” Anne tried and failed to muster a smile. “You always did want your name to outlive you.”
“I know you’re just trying to appeal to my ego to make me feel better,” he said. “But I actually quite like the sound of that. Will you… will you tell her kind things about her father?”
“No,” Anne said. “But I’ll tell her the truth.”
“You’re sweet,” Jack said. He kissed her hands again, then drew himself up. “Now say something cruel, darling, so that it hurts less to watch you walk away.”
Anne straightened up as well and did her best impression of her own withering glare. “If you had fought like a man,” she said. “You wouldn’t be about to die like a dog.”
Jack smiled. “That’s my girl.”
Captain “Calico” Jack Rakham was hanged at dawn. When asked for his last words, he replied, “You’ve been a wonderful audience, but as my good friend Charles Vane once said-” And here he turned to the executioner, speaking the words with careful pronouncement- “get on with it, motherfucker.”
As the lever was pulled and the rope went taut, as his feet twitched and his face swelled, a red haired woman was walking down the pier. She could hear the crowd in the square, jeering and yelling. But she turned away and found a ship bound for Nassau, and used what little money she had to buy passage. She signed her name as “Anne Rackham”, and was never seen nor heard from in Port Royal again.