Chapter 52
Mary lay awake as her hammock swayed with the rhythmic rocking of the ship.
Her hands rested on the small swell of her stomach as she inhaled the damp smell of cedar and listened to the sound of the ballast. Mary waited all day for this time of night—the chance to be alone with her better thoughts, and her baby, without prying eyes on her or weapons tied to her hip.
She wiggled her toes with joy—a joy that was hers, a feeling that had returned after years of winter.
How sweet it tasted, this spring of unexpected happiness.
She tapped her fingers to her belly, wondering if the baby could feel her playing, hear her tap out a tune as if on a grand pianoforte—all those seafaring songs Ma used to sing at the docks on frigid mornings while selling bread, her breath visible in the crisp dawn.
What Mary wouldn’t do, what she wouldn’t give, to raise this wondrous gift in a safe place of their own—a home filled with love. Mary still felt that quickening inside her, that subtle flop. She recalled the night when the captain walked in on her and Anne.
Rackham. Her fingers stilled, then flexed. She couldn’t stand by and let him drive the crew toward disaster. She wouldn’t let him ruin her chances for a better life.
Howell and Fenwick took turns snoring somewhere down the berth, and Anne tossed and turned in the hammock to her left.
It was Anne’s first time not sleeping in the captain’s quarters. She’d entered the sleeping berth long after the others, her eyes rimmed and puffy. She’d slipped into a hammock without a word to anyone, avoiding Mary’s gaze, then blew out the candle.
Anne rustled, then exhaled with exasperation.
Mary looked over the rim of her own hammock. “Trouble sleeping?” she whispered in the dark.
The rustling stopped, but Anne didn’t answer. Mary closed her eyes, unfazed. She understood the need for privacy. If Anne wasn’t ready to talk about whatever argument she’d had with Rackham, Mary would be the last to force her.
“It’s that woman, Dorothy, that we interrogated today. I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Ah,” Mary said. Anne had said very little to Mary since Rackham had foolishly seized the lady.
The liability hung in the air, and Mary had made her concerns known to all—much to Rackham’s displeasure.
But Mary did not apologize for recommending that they kill the woman, however vile the thought.
Anne must have known that Mary had killed before as a soldier.
But perhaps the full truth had not settled in until now.
Snuffing out a beating, human heart. It was the very thing Mary vowed she would never do again after she and Bjorn broke away to start a new life.
Male. Female. Unarmed victims deserved better. But she did not, Mary admitted, give preference to the life of a woman over a man. All life was precious and fleeting. Why did a fine dress and a delicate disposition privilege Dorothy’s life over others? She failed to understand.
“What does it mean to be a woman?” Mary asked.
Anne snorted. Mary worried it might wake up the others, but Howell went on snoring.
“I’m serious,” Mary said, hands resting on her stomach again. “I’ve spent more days pretending to be a man than not, and yet, I was born a woman. And when others find that out, it changes everything. But nothing about who I actually am has changed.”
“Bloody hell. Not like you to be the talkative one.”
Mary smiled, and the words kept tumbling out.
“Is being a woman a behavior? The ability to bear children?” Mary shook her head.
“That’s not right. Because even when I couldn’t, I was still a woman—still unfit for the path I’ve trod according to a great many others.
” People like Bjorn’s father, who needed no other evidence to cut her out after Bjorn passed.
Anne said nothing for a moment. “No, surely being a woman means you have a natural ability to scour chamber pots or serve extra shifts cooking in the galley.”
They laughed under their breaths, a bitter yet relieving feeling that knocked something loose in Mary’s chest. Since her reveal, she had been relegated to more menial tasks, had been less esteemed by some of her male peers—and this after proving herself in a dozen raids.
Sure, half of the crew—Corner, Featherstone, and other men worth their salt—still respected her hard-earned skills, never forgetting that she’d recently bested their own captain.
But the other shipmates? She caught them staring at times, something unnerving in their gaze, as if they found her strange.
Unnatural. A monster they were pleased to have on their side, but a monster all the same.
How wondrous and strange and beautiful, to have someone to talk with about this dimension for which she’d never had words. It was as easy as breathing. Was this what she’d missed all those years without female companionship?
“Perhaps being a woman is a kind of stance or expected conduct in the world,” Anne said. “I haven’t told a soul, but”—her voice lowered—“the other week, I walked in on Earl in the hold. He’d draped himself in a bolt of red linen, donning it like a ball gown.”
Earl? Mary puzzled over this information.
At least someone seemed to have found a use for the fabric they’d stolen.
Did this new knowledge fundamentally change how she saw or esteemed Earl as a crewmate—as a talented scout and a hardworking sailor?
No. Should it? “What has it meant for you?” Mary asked. “This business of being a woman?”
Anne sighed. “Being a burden—not a son. I told you of my own disguises as a child, my parents’ notion to pass me off as an heir.
” She paused. “To be a woman is to be a liability. Dependent. Vulnerable. Trapped. Blamed. Hunted.” Then she sighed.
“No, that’s not right—not the better part, anyway.
But to give it language somehow feels … small.
Limiting. And whoever I am—whatever it means that I was born a female and go about the world as such—I resist being caged, confined and cornered, fixed into a time and place, stuck in a certain way or position.
Determined. I’m as much in flux as the shifting tides, as a ship aching to make way. ”
“If this is fundamentally female, as you are suggesting,” Mary said, burning with a truth she recognized—whether or not it was specific to women and not the whole of humankind, “then why are women not welcomed aboard ships? If men call the ocean female, and refer to their beloved sloops and pinks and brigs and even their tiny fishing boats as female, why don’t women make up the majority of the crews? ”
“My mam used to tell me old stories. Didn’t yours? Tales of sirens. The old pagan legends?”
“No,” Mary said, the word like a vise around her heart. Ma only had her secrets and her songs.
“The Greeks saw the sea as female. The Cretans worshiped a gorgeous goddess of fertility who also granted protection to sailors.”
Mary didn’t know who the Cretans were, but she’d spent many nights at sea. She had poured out thousands of prayers while lying next to Bjorn, and they had done nothing for her fertility.
“Then there were the sirens, who ate up the hearts of poor, defenseless sailors. Mermaids, as you’re no doubt familiar with—seducing men and luring them to their demise by using their appetites and fantasies against them.”
Mary knitted her brow. “You’re suggesting that it isn’t women’s competency that prevents them from joining crews, but rather men’s fear of them?”
“Yes. Some rubbish like that. It threatens a man’s strength. His way of being in the world. The natural order of things.”
At this, Mary sat upright. It came to her in a flood of revelation. The way forward. A way to change their fortunes. “I have an idea,” she said, fighting the urge to shout it to the entire crew.