Chapter 6
Spanish Town, Jamaica
“Right this way, Captain,” an apple-cheeked soldier said to Johnson the next day, escorting him to the other end of the garrison.
The second female pirate in custody was also rumored to be with child.
What scandal. Johnson could hardly fathom his luck.
Every account mattered to his growing manuscript.
But these women, he knew, would tip the scales.
“I follow your lead,” Captain Johnson replied, his bag gripped in hand.
He was no simpleton. To make good on his promise to Rivington in London, to have a manuscript that would make up for his last three failures at the press, Johnson needed something remarkable.
Something that would appeal to the sensibilities of old salts, readers of novels, and even the most uptight of priests.
Something that would sell as well as pirate trial pamphlets.
The subject held inherent intrigue. Johnson, a seafarer with a natural interest in these rovers and a proclivity—obsession, really—toward the particulars that come with research, knew what this chance meant.
Debts stalked him like shadows. He could scarce show his face in society.
But if he was honest with himself, even without profit on the line, Johnson would still be here in the Caribbean.
Nothing fascinated him more than sea rogues.
It had been so since the moment he took his first steps aboard a ship half a lifetime ago.
What memories! Some fond. Most fonder in hindsight.
The ones he avoided scrutinizing emerged in occasional nightmares.
“Right in here, sir.”
Johnson gave a slight bow to the soldier as the cell creaked open. The smell of vomit caught him in the gut. He saw at once why there had been no fuss about supervision as there had been with Anne, and his earlier elation flitted away. Mary lay shivering under a tattered blanket.
Shivering in this heat?
“This gentleman is here to see you,” the guard said to Mary, curled up on the straw floor. Her brown hair spread around her shoulders. She did not move or speak.
Johnson turned to the guard and lowered his voice. “Good heavens. Has a doctor attended to her?”
“The day before last.”
Johnson tried not to look alarmed. “Bring the doctor again. The woman needs medicine.”
He hoped he was not too late.
Johnson shuffled inside, careful of where he stepped. The guard remained outside the door—in no hurry to carry out Johnson’s requests.
“Make haste, man!” And only then did bootsteps sound down the corridor.
Breathing through his mouth, Johnson found the three-legged stool in the room.
He tentatively scooted it closer to the woman, unsure how best to proceed.
She lay on her side with eyes closed. She was not a beautiful woman, and Johnson guessed her to be in her mid-thirties—ten years older than Anne, at least. She too wore a man’s loose shirt and trousers.
She had little by way of curves save for the swell of a stomach he spotted under her blanket.
The only other feminine feature worthy of note was her sharp cheekbones, emphasized by what must have been hunger.
What an unpleasant business. “Miss Mary?” Johnson tried.
To his astonishment, her lids slowly opened.
Johnson composed himself. “Excuse my intrusion. I am … Well, there will be time for that later.” He felt heartsick at the sight of so much misery. “How are you feeling?”
Mary’s eyes fixed on him, and something about her direct gaze felt unnerving. Like she mocked him, or perhaps even pitied him. Though drenched with fever—it didn’t take a doctor to see that much—she seemed surprisingly alert.
“Just as you might surmise,” she answered through raspy breath. Her voice was low and quiet. Distinctly English, West County.
“I’ll have the guard bring more water.”
Mary gave a slight nod of thanks. But she did not speak again.
“How far along is the child?” he dared to ask, wondering if this might be the way into the conversation.
For a long time, Mary said nothing. Her dark eyes and lack of response put him on edge. Johnson wondered if there might be a more opportune time for a visit.
Perhaps she’d gone mad.
At last, she spoke. “If you are not a doctor or a soldier,” she said, pulling the blanket to her chin, “or a priest who has come to take a confession, or a saint here to release me from my pain, why are you here?”
Johnson set his bag down but paused before removing his writing desk and papers.
He was practiced at exercising proper distance between himself and his subjects.
But in Mary’s cell, the fraught reality of his task nagged at his conscience.
This was not like trying to claw trust from that stubborn Anne, nor was it like listening to the typical desperation of accused pirates or the prattling of gentlemen he’d interviewed.
For a moment, they just watched each other. Something flickered in him, not attraction and not judgment—but also not that familiar flutter of writing something he knew would cause a stir. Something about this woman disarmed him.
“I’m a fellow countryman here to listen,” Johnson said at last, by way of beginning.