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“My name’s Anne,” she says. She rolls a shoulder to the man behind her. “This is Jack.”
They don’t need further introduction. There aren’t any other pairs in the Caribbean like them--they’re infamous; Bonny and Rackham. Her swords hang heavy at her sides, a weapon slid into every crevice of her body, wrapped between layers of dark cloth, hat obscuring most of her face from the unrelenting sun of an endless sky. Anne contrasts Rackham; his yellowing shirt hangs open in the light breeze, a long jacket that hides nothing (his sabre dangles almost delicately from his usually cocked hip), his skin open to the elements.
The man on the deck looks back at them, considering. He’s handsome, his poores oozing violence; armed, scarred, tall, hair slung round a bandana, the same colour of a recently opened wound. “I’ve heard of you,” he says, with an infliction Anne's not familiar with: somewhere from the continent, not French. Perhaps Holland, judging from how the u's roll off his tongue. There’s been enough wars on the mainland to create a generation of listless men who have battle in their blood who find their calling in the freedom of the sea. “The name’s Read.” he continues, eyes tracing the rim of her hat. “Mark Read.”
It sounds a bit like a challenge.
Mary Read had always been a difficulty for her mother.
When Maggie Read needed more sons, she'd pushed out a daughter instead, screaming, another mouth to feed; a mouth that would require a dowry, later, rather than bring home a bride-price. Mary Read is a born a disappointment.
(It is the year of our lord 1690. Husband, dead, two young children who need to be provided for. It’s a hard life, blighted by the threat of the world. A king whose head is heady with war, the danger of disease, poverty, you name it. These are times which try men's souls.)
It doesn't help that Mary is not exactly a model daughter. It’s almost a relief when Mark dies, and she takes his place. She doesn’t require much persuading. Life would be easier, her mother whispers, when you’re older, you can go to London and be Mary again. Marry, settle. No one would ever know Mark Read.
She thinks, I don’t want to settle. She thinks, this is my chance. She thinks, Mark Read.
Opportunities like this are few and far between for farm girls.
Mary Read is dead. Long live Mark Read.
People in the village comment, quietly, amongst themselves that “Mark” changed when Mary died; he got harsher, spitting and swearing, causing his mother no end of grief. He used to be so sensitive, so quiet, they say, shaking their heads. Something brought the devil out in him.
Fifteen years later, when the recruiters come for another of Queen Anne’s wars, they all point to Mark Read. That’s a boy made for the fight.
When she goes to war for the first time she realises that, for once, they were right. Nothing suits her quite as well as battle.
They’re celebrating. Nassau has be won back (for now, the voice in Jack’s head says, he’s already won and lost this town before--not again, he swore, never again), and even Flint can see the attraction in letting loose for a night. It might be a piss up, but it is well deserved.
A drink is pressed into his hands, different from the usual tavern swill--the bottle looks Spanish, expensive. The owner is man from Teach’s ship, the one with the bandanna.
“Thought you deserved somethin’ good,” says Read, Jack remembers, who is showing off a few more marks than the last time they met, including a slice down the collar bone which disappears under his shirt. “My gift.”
He raises an eyebrow. No one in Nassau is known for giving gifts. This will be an interesting dance. “My thanks, friend,” he says, watching Read’s reaction. He’s impassive, there’s almost a twitch of humour in his mouth. Jack wonders, absently, as Anne wanders over to join them, what kind of dance it is they’ve started.
“You fight well,” Read says to Anne, taking a swig of his own bottle of Tequila, “You think well,” he continues. Jack watches how his neck bobs, more red material is wrapped around it. Read’s a handsome man (Jack doesn’t touch, not these days, but that doesn’t mean he can’t look, when the mood strikes), all sharp lines and leather. He talks sparingly, only when he needs too. He reminds Jack of Anne, funnily enough. He sees the lines of his face, smooth skin, and speculates. “You work together well.”
Anne, hat off for once--her hair shines in the light, reaches forward and lifts the bottle out of Read’s hands. “We’re a team,” she says, “‘Til the end of it.” Calico Jack (a new moniker, but all good--all infamous--pirates need a nickname, standing around the likes of Long John Silver and Blackbeard, there’s always a flair for melodrama) and Anne Bonny, ‘til they’re in the ground. It’s a deal he’s happy with.
“My Captain--” Read stops, correcting himself, “In the Army. Not Blackbeard. My Captain always said I was pragmatic.” he reaches back for the Tequila from Anne, but his hand lingers on her wrist momentarily, a finger brushing the skin.
Jack continues to speculate.
Read takes a swig, mouth twisted into amusement. “I had to ask to ask him what that meant. Realistic, he said it meant. Sensible.” he pauses again, “I know a good bet when I see one. You two, you’re a good bet.”
Jack raises his eyebrows, and can’t quite smother the slice of pride which cuts through him.
He raises his bottle of Tequila. “To good bets.”
When Mary’s fighting the French for a Queen she doesn’t care for under a name that isn’t her’s, her fellow soldiers question Mark on his success with women.
“You can hear them moaning in the next house,” one of them whispers. He’s a pale boy, fresh out of London. He’ll probably die tomorrow, a bullet clipped through his chest, a canon wrecking through him like he’s freshly churned butter. But tonight, they drink, they talk. They don’t know who they’re fighting, not really, nor why, but they know that this is better than a life of vagrancy--many of these men were made for the poorhouses, a life time hanging around the whorsehouses, or worse.
Mary looks at him. He’s probably a virgin, judging by the way his cheekbones (that she can see, under the mud) are lightly tinged pink. In another life, the thought idly occurs to her, you could have been my husband. She tries to imagine those thin hands around her waist, looks down at her own, which are calloused by gunpowder and the sword. Such is her lot in life. She doesn't regret a moment.
“Call it intuition.” She says shortly, winking. “The rest is a secret.” She makes a complicated and lewd looking hand gesture, which leads the surrounding men to roaring laughter. Mary knocks the pale boy on the back, like a brother might, smiling into her beer (or whatever the quartermaster is calling ale this days--it has been a long campaign).
She’s eighteen, and she’s invincible. No one suspects.
(One man doesn’t laugh, he just watches, dark eyes glinting in the light of the fire. Later, she’ll take her hair out of the short, blue ribbon that folds it together. Later, his voice will not betray surprise at this revelation. He’ll never ask who Mark was. But that’s later. Tonight, they drink.)
The next day, the boy does die. It’s a paltry ambush, but his death is short and clean which is more than many others could have hoped for, their lives pulled out by the tortuous threads of fate. Blood is slashed across her face like a tattoo, it feels like this violence will forever be imprinted on her skin.
Many other men die, some English, Scottish, Welsh, Flemish, the French they kill too. Mary doesn’t die. She knows what is says in the good book: live by the sword, die by the sword.
And as it just so happens, Mary Read is a very good with a sword.
They’re a tangle of limbs, and Anne feels an acute sense of history repeating itself. She feels Mary (that’s her name, she likes it more than Mark) stiffen slightly, assumedly waking as well. She rises, muscles rippling in the faint light of dawn--her back is marked too, slices and bullet wounds. It’s a history of warfare, shoulder to shoulder, spanning across continents. Mary pulls a shirt off the floor, with little care of who owns it, and moves to the chair by the window.
Jack snores.
(Months have passed since their first, proper conversation, the night they won Nassau. Last night, after the three of them took their crew to a fine prize off the Carolinas, they’re sat in Jack’s cabin, drinking, laughing, talking.
They end up talking about the who they were before. There’s a moment, Anne realises now, when Mary must have faced a decision. Does she shed her skin or keep that scrap of red wrapped around her neck?
Read had paused, considering, and said: “I had a man, once.” Neither Jack or Anne are surprised by this revelation. Who are they to judge? Mark’s quick with a sword and has a good mind for tactics, that’s all that matters out in the deep. “He was a soldier, I met him in Holland.” The infliction on some of Mark’s words are explained, then. “He saw me. I loved him.”
She’d raised her glass, then--a toast, to lost loves.
They all knock back a slug. It’s nice rum.
Mark--Mary had then pulled on the red bandana, revealing the pale line of her throat, smooth--without the bob of an adam's apple. Hair, longer than it looks, fell out in a wave across her face. A handsome man became a handsome woman.
“I should introduce myself, I suppose.” Read says, swallowing lightly. “My name is Mary Read.”
Jack’s eyes found Anne’s, shining in the light. “It’s our pleasure,” she says, and the night is full of possibilities.)
The ship, the William, rocks, quietly creaking and groaning. It’s been a lullaby to Anne for many years: as familiar as swords on her hips and a hat low on her brow. It’s a scrappy ship, but it’s fast, a good hunter. They’ll make her into something, something to inspire fear and awe, under the skull and crossed swords. Rackham and Bonny--and Read, she knows now, watching the wind pass through Mary’s hair. She’s as much a part of this as they are. Her secret sits in this cabin, and trust afforded in it unspoken but definitely heard--it echoes, its importance reverberating between the three of them.
Anne watches the dawn light lick Mary’s skin, who looks like she’s enjoying this moment--all her layers stripped away, disguise and pretense. Nothing but the morning sun.
Anne had thought, for a while, when she’d lost Max and she was on the edge of loosing Jack as well, that she might always be a wanderer--alone. She got Jack back, of course, she’d kill the world to know he was safe--but she knows that it was easier to rescue Jack from Rogers than it would be to wrestle Max from her ambition. She came to terms with this easier than she thought. Max will always own a part of her heart.
She slides over, casting a fond eye over Jack’s lax form, sprawled over the bed, before rising. Anne crosses the room to lean against the window, not bothering to dress. The warmth of the sun slides over her, submerging her skin. Mary looks at her, a thoughtful finger pressed under her lip.
“This is the beginning of something, isn’t it?” Mary asks, reaching her hand out to Anne.
Anne reaches back.
Mary ends up with Blackbeard like so: she’s on a boat to Jamaica. She’s not sure what she wants from there, but she knows that there’s nothing left for her in Holland, just hollow memories of better times. The Inn’s closed. Her man with dark eyes which had shone in the light of the moon and the fire (it hurts to think his name, now, after) is cold in the ground.
She’s dressed as Mark, again, resurrecting her old guise. If Mary had anyone to justify it too, she’d probably talk about how dangerous the sea is, the safety of a man’s clothes, demeanour. She can handle herself, but it's better to save the bother. But Mary doesn’t have anyone to justify it too, so she pulls the breeches back on, more familiar than skirts now--she’s been Mark longer than she’s been Mary, she ponders, if her mother wasn’t long dead, she’d ask.
The ship, of course, is overrun. She sees the black fluttering in the ocean breeze. A skeleton holds an hourglass in one hand, a spear in another, pointed down to a blood red heart. The crew for some unknown, god forsaken reason, decide that they should try and fight their way out of it--an attempt, she supposes, to delay the inevitable butchery ahead. Probably something to do with insurance.
Her choice becomes immediately obvious, before the cannon starts: fight with this crew, die with them. Or, she thinks, memories of the bloody battlefields of Europe, laughing around the campfire, somewhere she’s not a disappointment but a brutal and magnificent success, or, the black.
Blackbeard, she muses, picking up a gun.
(The crew of Queen Anne’s Revenge board a merchant ship with a prize which will keep them going for a month or so. There’s a man with a scar down in his face holding a pistol to the head of the Captain, sword in another hand, strong and still, dripping with blood, pressing into the neck of another man. Three others lie dead on the deck. The rest of the crew is unmoving, uneasy with the outcome of this stand off.
“Capt’n Teach?” The man calls out, pressing the nuzzle of his gun harder into the Captain’s head, pushing him forward slightly. The Captain quivers, the white flag in his hand shaking. “You lookin’ for any volunteers?”)
You can’t hang us all, said Charles Vane on a hot afternoon in Nassau.
“Well,” Anne says to Mary, later, when they’re sat in a prison cell, “They bloody well tried.”
Mary turns back to her, a snort of laughter falling out of her. “Not all of us, though.”
Jack’s gone, now. Flint and Silver have disappeared, Rogers back in control, Eleanor murdered. Only Max has survived, which, really, they all should have seen coming. Mary’s developed a sweat that she hasn’t shaken; they’re creatures of the sea, trapped too long in dungeons. Anne thinks of a quiet morning, bathed in light. “No. Not all of us.”