The Story

There have been a number of documented women pirates in the history of seafaring, but none so well documented as these two women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. As the Captain Johnson quote above would suggest, the extraordinary coincidence of these women meeting on the high seas and joining forces would stretch credulity if it were not documented fact. Without going into details that might spoil the book, it suffices to say that the story of Anne and Mary and Calico Jack is the stuff of great fiction, and possible because it is not fiction at all, which it the only thing that prevents the reader from tossing to book aside and saying "This is too much to believe!"

Author's Note

The story of Anne Bonny and Mary Read is familiar to even the casual student of piracy. One could not pick up a book on the subject of pirates and not find their story. While there were no doubt other women who sailed secretly (and some not secretly at all) as pirates, theirs is the only case of two women sailing together. Further, having been caught and tried, there is actual eyewitness testimony to women's piratical activity. No wonder their story is so popular!

I was aware of the story for many years before I wrote this book. I first heard about it from a fellow sailor (who is now my wife) on the deck of the Golden Hinde. Since then, it was always in the back of my mind that it would make a terrific book. When the opportunity came to write it, I looked at the primary source material (of which there is little) and the secondary material, most particularly Captain Johnson's 1724 A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, the basis for much of what we know about pirates today. From those sources I imagined what kinds of people these must have been, to lead them to the places where they ended up. Historians are free to agree or not with what I have imagined.

A warning: The Only Life That Mattered is a reprint. The book was originally published under the title The Sweet Trade and the pen name Elizabeth Garrett. There were a number of reasons whey the book could not come out under my name, and my agent and I thought it might have more appeal to a female readership if it was ostensibly written by a female author. My wife never thought anyone would believe a woman wrote it, but so far no one has called me on it.

Originally we had a hard time selling the book. I think most editors who read it were looking for a romance, but it is not that at all (though Romantic Times said "A great fictionalized biography...Wild adventures and great heroines!" and gave the book four stars). Once they read it, most editors did not know what to do with it, and so turned it down. I will be forever grateful to Stephanie Lane, formerly at Tor Books, for understanding and seeing the book to publication.

When Sweet Trade went out of print and the rights reverted back to me, we took the book to McBooks, the small but terrific publisher that is responsible for bringing so much great maritime fiction to this country. McBooks agreed to reprint the book under my name. We edited it, tightened it up, and have published it under its new title, The Only Life That Mattered.

My thanks to all the folks at McBooks Press for giving this book a new life. I hope you will read it and enjoy it. A number of people have felt it is the best book I have written, and they may be right.

Chapter One

The bells rang out from the whitewashed towers of St. Iago de la Vega on Jamaica's north shore. Their deep bass tone filled the narrow cobbled streets, the cool, stucco homes, glanced off the red tiled roofs of the Government buildings, so like those of Old Spain on which they were modeled. Pealing, pealing...Today the court sits in session. Today is a trial of pirates. Today will be tales of the sweet trade, of murders and crimes most notorious, villainy on the high seas.

The ringing found its way into Mary Read's cell, where she sat on the stone bench - an outcropping of the cell wall, really - and traced with her eyes the lines of dark mold that snaked along the mortared crevasses between whitewashed bricks.

A pretty sound, she thought. She had been hearing the bells for five minutes, but she was just now listening. Pretty, for a death knell.

A shaft of morning light came in through the single window, divided into five equal parts by the iron bars. The light looked like a solid thing as it passed through the ubiquitous dust, like Mary could reach out and break off a piece and hold it in her hands.

At least it is warm, she thought, warm and dry. There were times enough in her life when she would have gladly traded freedom for a prison cell, if it meant being warm and dry. In fact, she mused, that was just what she had done, and she still reckoned she had ended up with the best of the bargain.

She shifted uncomfortably, looked up at the arched ceiling. It was stone, whitewashed like the rest of the cell, like all the buildings of those Spanish Colonial towns. Now that the British were the masters of Jamaica, it was a wonder to Mary that they did not paint everything brown, or some such dreary tone, as the British were wont to do.

But no, the West Indies would not allow that. It affected people, it got inside them, and before the English could remake the West Indies into a drab replica of London, the West Indies had remade them in her own bright image. Mary had seen it happen time and again, to Englishmen on Nassau and Jamaica and Bermuda. It had happened to her, and that was why she loved the West Indies so.

She stood up at last, paced the few steps forward and then back again. Her body still ached from countless bruises, some overlapping one another, purple and ugly. Her skin was hard and tight where a dozen lacerations were just now healing.

She paused, stretched, idly scratched herself. Realized what she was doing and stopped, thinking I have been too long in the company of men.

She was wearing a dress of sorts, no more than a crude home-spun wool sack with sleeves. It hung like a monk's rope and itched intolerably, and caught in the sharp places of her half-healed wounds. It was difficult to get any relief from the scratching fabric and the vermin that was starting to plague her.

Mary Read was no stranger to itchy clothes and vermin, but familiarity in this instance did not bring comfort.

The cell, her home for the past few weeks, was not a closed room, with four solid walls and a single, impenetrable door. Rather, the front of it was all bars, floor to ceiling and side to side, an entire wall of bars. It made Mary feel like a circus animal, there on display for the amusement of others, and she hated that.

Anne's cell was directly across the narrow stone alleyway that ran down the length of the cell block. They had unimpeded communication across that five feet of space, and that alone kept Mary from going mad. Confinement was something new to her, and it did not sit well.

She paced again to the front of the cell, thrust her hands through the bars, rested her forearms on a cross piece, laced her fingers together. She arched her back, flexed her legs, groaned slightly as she worked out the kinks that came with sleeping on a bed of matted straw. Not bloody seventeen anymore, she thought.

Mary looked across the passage into Anne's cell. It was on the west side of the building and did not get the morning sun and was still mostly lost in shadow. Near the back wall, on a straw bed like hers, she could make out the hump of rumpled home-spun that was Anne's sleeping figure.

The ringing stopped. Mary looked up, cocked her ear, listened for...something. Anything. But there was only silence in the wake of the bells.

Mary looked back into the darkness of Anne's cell. Anyone who did not know Anne would have to believe she was feigning sleep, or was too bitter and despondent to rise. How could anyone actually sleep on such a morning? But Mary knew her friend well, and knew she was genuinely asleep, slumbering untroubled.

Anne Bonny was twenty years old, seven years Mary's junior. She still had the sense of indestructibility that accompanies youth, and she had not a fraction of Mary's experience with violence and death.

For a few minutes Mary watched Anne sleep and involuntarily she smiled and shook her head. Even if Annie lived to see old age - an unlikely prospect - she probably would grow no wiser. Anne was not one for lessons. Her passions burned like a pyre and she was ruled by them and Mary loved her for that.

"Annie! Annie! Stir yourself!" she called across the alleyway. She saw Anne move a bit, heard her mumble something incoherent. "Come on, Anne! They can't hang you laying down like that, you know."

At the far end of the cell, all but lost in shadow, Mary saw Anne sitting up, heard her spit a bit of straw from her mouth.

"Oh, sod it," she heard Anne mutter. Anne was not given to springing cheerfully from bed, not even in the best of times.

At last she stood up and staggered toward the front of her cell. Her thick, reddish blond hair was askew, falling in great disorganized piles over her shoulders and hanging half over her face. Bits of straw clung to it, nearly the same color as her wild locks. She paused, arched her back, ran her fingers through her hair, forcing it into some kind of order. "Sod it," she said again.

Mary waited silently while Anne stretched and scratched and came a bit more awake. It was pointless to try and talk to her now.

Finally Anne yawned, wide, like a lion, flashing white teeth. Mary had to marvel again at what a beauty she was, even in those unfavorable conditions. It was no wonder that men had died for her, that more would die before her story was told.

"Mary, dear, did I hear bells?" Anne asked at last.

"You did. They are a signal that a court of Admiralty will sit today."

"A court of Admiralty? Whoever is to be tried?"

"Pirates, as I hear it. Notorious cutthroats and piccaroons."

"Detestable people. I wish they would hang them all."

Mary smiled and Anne smiled back. "They may yet, Annie, my dear."

"Indeed. Well, I must now go and express my opinion of all courts of Admiralty and prosecutors and judges and such," Anne said, and with that she retreated to the back of her cell and made use of the nightjar there.

When she was done she returned to the bars that fronted her cell and said "Do you reckon they will give us a shift of clothes? Or a hairbrush, at all?"

Mary shook her head. "Easier to prove us pirates and sluts if we look like pirates and sluts. I do not think they will give us leave to look otherwise."

Anne nodded. "Would they but give me back my cutlass and a brace of pistols, I would show them what a pirate and slut I truly am."

At the far end of the alleyway a key rattled in a lock, loud in the still morning. Neither woman made an effort to look. They knew who it was, why they were coming.

Their eyes met and Mary gave Anne a half smile and Anne gave Mary a slight cock of the eyebrows, and then the heavy door at the end of the walk swung open and the footfalls on the stone floor echoed around the cells.

Quite a lot of footfalls. The thick-set jailor in his homespun coat and battered cocked hat over thinning hair. Beside him the bailiff in the more elegant dress of the court; silk coat and waistcoat, silver buckles on his shoes. A guard of four soldiers trailed behind.

"Look how many they have sent," Anne said. "One would think these men afraid of us, weak and helpless women though we be. Sure we are not a threat to great brutes such as yourselves?"

"Shut yer gob," the jailor growled, though he did not sound as fierce as he might have wished.

For all of Anne's sharp tongue, the jailor and his assistants had treated them well. Mary had all but assumed they would be raped in prison, but in fact they had not been molested at all. It was one reason to be thankful they had been captured by the British, and not the Spaniards.

The fact that they would be hung, and not burned alive, was another.

The jailor opened Mary's cell door first, with the guards arrayed in such a manner that she could not step out as the bailiff stepped in, manacles jangling in his hand.

"This one becomes a sword," Mary said, nodding toward the bailiff. "Do you reckon he knows the use of it?"

"Shut it, you bitch, or by God I'll see you gagged!" The bailiff was not the kind soul that the jailor was.

"It won't answer, Mary, dear, caressing that one," Anne said. "I don't think he likes women. Perhaps if you dressed as a boy again, he'd fancy you more."

The bailiff scowled, flushed red. Mary held out her hands, made no effort to resist. There might be the chance yet for an escape, or a clean death while making the attempt, but this was not it.

The bailiff put the heavy iron shackles around her wrists, slid the bar through them and fixed the pin in the end that would hold the manacles in place. She let her hands fall across her belly.

"Now you look a right villain," Anne called from behind the bars of her cell. "I should convict you sure, were I on the jury."

"Then I am pleased you will be on the same side of the bar as me," Mary said. The bailiff took her by the arm, half guided and half pushed her out of the cell and up against the wall. Two of the soldiers who made up the guard stepped off, faced her, the stiletto points of their bayonets a foot from her chest.

The other men turned to Anne's cell, opened it and secured her in the same fashion, and then she too was moved roughly into the alleyway. Two soldiers ahead of the women, two behind, with the jailor and the bailiff last of all, they marched down the narrow space between cells, like a tiny parade, toward the door at the far end.

It was the first time the women had left their cages in a fortnight, the first time since the long sail around from Negril Point, locked down below aboard Barnet's sloop. Mary could not resist glancing into the other cells as she passed by, but as she suspected, she and Anne were the only residents of that block.

They stepped out the door at the far end and into the big room that Mary recalled from the one other time she had seen it, on the way into the prison block. The rough stones of the prison floor gave way to polished Spanish tile. The walls were a smooth stucco, white, of course, but without the streaks of mold that found their way into the humid cells.

The bailiff and the jailor led them through the big door and into the courtyard around which were clustered the jail and His Majesty's court and sundry government offices.

It had been dark when last they had passed that way, the courtyard ringed with torches. But now it was brilliant with the morning sun and Mary had to turn her eyes from the brightest spots, blinking tears from her streaming eyes.

Great irregular pieces of flagstone covered the open ground. The ubiquitous whitewashed buildings made up three sides of the courtyard, and the fourth was a row of columns, connected along their tops. Beyond the columns Mary could see the red roofs and the white homes of St. Iago de la Vega, and a quarter mile beyond that, the sea.

A fresh breeze blew unchecked across the open space.

Mary breathed deep, glanced around, took it in the way a woman dying of thirst might gulp water. The sea. It glinted in the sunlight, sharp diamond slivers on the aqua-blue surface, right up to where it made a straight, sharp line on the horizon.

Mary sucked the clean ocean air into her lungs. She lapped it up, swallowed it, devoured as much of the sensation as she could in the time it took their escort to hustle them across the courtyard and through the door at the far end.

And then the ocean was lost from sight and they were in a small room with benches on either side, another door beyond, a soldier posted guard. The bailiff stopped.

A few men lounged on the benches in the bored attitude of government officials, but they sat up, their interest piqued, at the sight of Mary Read and Anne Bonny.

"Take a good look, boys, its the best you'll get," said Anne, her head up, her eyes fixed forward at some distant point.

The bailiff nodded, the soldier at the door stepped aside, pulled the door open.

Through the door, the courtroom. A big, airy space, the ceiling thirty feet overhead, rows of polished benches like pews in a church. It was crowded with spectators for this event, after a month of mounting anticipation. They filled the benches, stood at the back of the room and along the walls. The Members of the Council off to the one side, a long table with a row of clerks, already scribbling with their quills. And over it all the judge's bench rose like a cliff.

Their little parade stepped out, down between the rows of benches, and Mary could not help but thing how like a wedding it was. Past the gawking faces, she and Anne kept their heads back, eyes forward, looking at a spot just above the judge's bench.

They have taken everything, Mary thought. Everything but our lives, and soon they will have those too, but they cannot take our dignity if we do not yield it.

To her left, standing in chains, were her former shipmates, the pirate band, the hapless sea-robbers taken down at Negril Point. They were pushed off to one side, waiting for their chance to be set at the bar, to plead guilty or not, as if it would make a difference.

The men were not center stage. Mary knew that that spot was reserved for her and Anne, because they were the chief attraction that morning. Mere pirates were commonplace, but female pirates were something else altogether. The prosecutor knew his business, knew how a spectacle should be staged.

Anne was led to a place just left of center of the judge's bench, Mary right beside her. Their hair was wild, their hands manacled, and they were clothed in prison garb. It seemed impossible that any juror could look on them and think them innocent.

Mary glanced to her left, quick, looking for Jacob, not letting her eyes linger. She did not want anyone to notice the particular interest she took in that one individual. But in any event he was not there.

"All rise!" the bailiff's voice rang out. The great mass of sound that rose from the muttered conversations of the hundreds of spectators dropped off, and in its place came the sound of the people getting to their feet.

"This Wednesday, November the 16th, year of our Lord 1720, a court of Admiralty to be held before his Excellency Sir Nicholas Lawes, His Majesty's Captain-General and Governor in Chief in and over his Majesty's Island of Jamaica and other territories thereon depending in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the same, President!"

A soldier opened the door off to the side of the judge's bench and Sir Nicholas, the bearer of those weighty titles, stepped out. His black robe hung down to his feet, his massive wig stood out against it in sharp relief. He did not look up, did not acknowledge the presence of the vast audience as he stepped up to his bench.

He sat, arranged some papers before him, scowled down at them, left the rest of the courtroom standing. Finally he looked up, and still scowling he said "You may be seated."

Mary studied the judge's face, trying to read in his visage what kind of man he was. Pink, jowly, heavy-set, British to the core, he would not be seduced by the easy ways of the Caribbean. Neither did he look to be a man of great sympathy.

The buzz of the spectators grew again, like an approaching swarm, and Sir Nicholas said, "Bailiff, you will order silence."

"The court will be silent!" the bailiff cried and dutifully the noise fell away.

"Let us proceed with the reading of the King's Commission," said Lawes. He nodded to the secretary, who stood, a great sheet of paper in his hand, cleared his throat and began.

"George, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, et cetera. To our truly and well-beloved Sir Nicholas Lawes, Knight, Our Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over..." the secretary's voice settled into an easy monotone, no more intrusive or interesting then the hum of the spectators that the bailiff had silenced, as steady and mesmerizing as the surf lapping the beach.

The words moved in and out of Mary's ears, swirled without meaning around her head. On and on the secretary droned, five minutes, ten minutes, she was ready to plead guilty just to shut him up.

"Sweet Jesus!" Mary heard the voice of George Fetherston. She glanced sideways at the big man standing in irons with his fellows. "Hang us if you will, but don't bloody bore us to death!"

Sir Nicholas's scowled, slammed his gavel down, demanding order. It was the only sound in the vast chamber. No one had dared laugh.

Mary wanted to, she wanted to laugh out loud, but she did not even smile. She had learned long ago how to keep emotion from her face.

"Silence!" Lawes ordered. "One more word from the prisoners and you all shall be gagged!"

The pirates fell silent. The secretary continued on.

Mary's eyes wandered to the seven Members of the Council who sat as jury in the Court of Admiralty - some tanned, some pink-faced - wealthy Englishmen all, with their long white wigs draped over rich silk coats, ample midriffs.

She heard the secretary read, "...to call and assemble any other persons on shipboard or upon the land, to make up the number seven. And it is thereby also provided that no persons, but such are known as Merchants, Factors or Planters, or such as were Captains, Lieutenants or Warrant Officers in any of his said late Majesty's Ships of War, or Captains, Masters or Mates of some English ship should be capable of being so called..."

Bloody marvelous. None could be called to sit in judgement save for merchants, planters, naval officers, officers of merchant vessels - just the men to have no compassion for the men (or women) of the sweet trade, just the ones who would have suffered the most by the depredations of the pirates.

No, she thought, suffer is not the word.

They might lose ships to the pirates, they might be plundered of a cargo or two, lose some slaves, and come out the poorer for their investment, but they did not suffer. She did not think these men sitting as Members of the Council knew what it was to suffer, and she wished she could teach them, as she herself had been taught.

At last the secretary stopped and set the King's prolix Commission down on the table. Sir Nicholas publicly opened the court, took the oath which the act had directed him to take, then administered it to the commissioners.

It was all so formal, all so silly. Just bloody hang us, you'll do it in the end in any event.

When the oaths were done the prisoners were ordered set at the bar. Rough hands grabbed Mary's arm, pushed her forward, right up against the low wooden rail, Anne at her side. Off to their left, the men were brought forward as well.

The Register now stood, ready to read the articles brought against the prisoners, but President of the Court Sir Nicholas held up his hand.

"Hold a moment, Mr. Norris," he growled. "Mr. Nedham," he turned to the Chief Justice, who looked up in a great wave of white wig, "it is your intention to try for any piracies, felonies or robberies committed upon the sea..." he looked at one of the papers, as if he could not recall the name, "...one John Rackam, et al, late of New Providence?"

"Yes, Sir Nicholas," said William Nedham.

Sir Nicholas looked up from his papers, still scowling, swept the court with his eyes, as if just now noticing it.

"Do you intend to try these..." he nodded toward Anne and Mary but did not look at them "...these women along with the others?"

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"No, no, this won't answer. These women stand accused of adultery and fornication along with piracy. Do you mean to charge the men with adultery and fornication?"

That brought a laugh to the courtroom, and when it died the prosecutor said "No, Your Excellency."

"Very well, then, we shall proceed with the charges against Rackam and the others, and them we shall try separate. Bailiff, you may return them to their cell."

So that is it, Mary thought, so ends our day in court, after waiting for better than a month.

She could hear the guards assembling to march them back and she took that last chance to glance around once more. She cocked her head, looked to her left, where the others were standing in their chains.

In the center of the group, and two steps in front, Captain John Rackam. Calico Jack.

God, but he looks a pathetic sight.

His coat and breeches were filthy and torn, and his stockings hung baggy around his shins. His enviable hair, long, brown and curly, was matted and tangled. His face was dirty, his long moustache twisted, a week's growth of beard on his cheeks. He seemed physically smaller, as if he had collapsed into himself.

His fine bright clothing, once the mark of the flamboyant buccaneer - the calico of Calico Jack - now seemed to mock him.

He glanced over, as if sensing that he was being watched. Anne kept her eyes straight ahead, would not look at him. But Mary caught his eye and they looked at one another for a second - less than a second - and then Jack quickly looked away.

Mary Read, Anne Bonny and Calico Jack Rackam.

How many coincidences and accidents needed occur, that we three should find ourselves in this place? Mary wondered. How very odd that our three lives should this way intersect.

She heard the bailiff step up behind them and mutter a gruff order for them to follow.

But it was not an accident at all, that their three lives should come together as they had. Mary understood that. There was no other way that it could have turned out.

They had been born to it. It was their fate.