Chapter 62
Captain Johnson felt many things. But most pressing of all, he felt ill.
He held a clean handkerchief to his nose, hurtling away from the garrison. He winced at the assault of the sun, bending over and steadying his ragged breathing.
He inhaled the fresh air. Free air. A light breeze through the palms on a brilliant blue day.
He raised his hands to his throat, rubbing the back of his very-much-not-broken neck.
Johnson had meant to pay Mary a last visit too, alas. But perhaps this turn of events was for the best. A nasty business, all of it. Besides, she no longer spoke in full sentences, just the occasional phrase or word.
He shivered, feeling bile rise. He quelled it, then tucked away his handkerchief. With any luck, he’d never have to visit the gaol again. That is, unless his publisher wanted future editions with more pirates worthy of attention.
Look at him, losing his mind with aspirations. He couldn’t think this way, getting his hopes up.
When the queasy feeling in his gut abated, he straightened and walked back to his residence. Palms swayed and carriages zipped in and out of passersby. He had trunks of papers to load, notes he wouldn’t trust outside of his possession. The sooner he could get out of Spanish Town, the better.
He passed St. Catherine’s, its bell tolling. Spanish Town and Port Royal had never been the same after the earthquake three decades ago—or so he was told. But this church still stood, rebuilt.
He paused, listening to the clanging bell of the Anglican church.
It wasn’t much to look at. A plain, narrow, one-room design.
Tall. Three tiers of brick. The white cupola with its red roof and weathervane.
A crucifix, of course, as was customary.
He knew the symbolism. He was a practicing Anglican, after all.
Then, with renewed horror, he remembered the letters in his possession.
He leaned into his stride and walked on, away from the tolling bell and its incessant chiming.
But what to do? Where to dispose of them?
His stomach churned anew, and he fetched a carriage. He had to get out of the heat. Gather his effects. All things done in their proper time.
Hours later, Captain Johnson paced his stuffy room, his clothes and materials scattered around him. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then returned to the writing table.
He sat, poring over his notes. Which ones should he take on his person?
Which ones should he stow away as baggage in the hold?
Like this one, just here. He picked up the sheet of paper in question.
His notes from the penultimate meeting he’d had with Mary.
The ink was smeared from the speed of his quill.
Johnson squinted to make out the scrawl. But he remembered it well enough, asking her—as she lay on her side in the straw, curled over her stomach, those unflinching black eyes—why pirates risked so much.
Shifting his eye piece, he studied her response.
“As to a hanging, it is no hardship, for were it not for that, every cowardly Fellow would turn Pirate, and so infest the Seas, that Men of Courage must starve.”
But what of death? Johnson pressed, even now, hunched over his notes days after their conversation. Was she jesting? Mocking him? She’d insisted that they’d have no punishment except for death, the fear of which “kept some dastardly rogues honest.”
He read on, the script becoming more slanted, more desperate, in his attempts to snatch the record.
“Many of those who are now cheating the Widows and Orphans, and opposing their poor Neighbours, who have no Money to obtain ‘Justice,’ would then rob at Sea, and the Ocean would be crowded with Rogues, like the Land, and no Merchant would venture out; so that piracy, in a little Time, would not be worth following.”
His pulse spiked, feeling the truth of the words leap at him from the page, though he didn’t grasp their full meaning.
Land rogues. Were these the cheaters she described?
Those with money? Power? Or those without, thieving from their fellow men as they aspired for excellence?
He quite liked the idea. But what was she suggesting?
That the very basis of society was a kind of tyranny?
That every person, in their own way, depending on their resources and level of courage, had the heart of a pirate?
If so, what manner of rogue was he?
Johnson’s lip curved with delight. It would be a fine, fine book, he congratulated himself. Pamphlets would have nothing on what this volume could sell. Returning to stuff a pile of documents and the draft of his manuscript inside his bag, he flinched as if scorched.
Damnation. Anne’s letters. They were still there.
Johnson sank into his chair and stared out the window, dragging a hand over his cheek. The fading light glittering over the Rio Cobre. The sky ablaze with yellows and pinks.
Some recipients were in England.
The others, more local. Reachable through the post? A ship or revered captain that managed such deliveries?
He rubbed his head, his wig and tricorn on the bed. He closed his eyes, but all he saw was Anne’s assessing gaze. Her intensity and eloquence. Her stubborn loyalty. Her skewering judgments and tales so vivid, so harrowing, he wondered if anyone could survive them at all.
Would she survive this? Would the child, arriving even now, on the other side of town?
Anne burned through his mind. Her posture of victory despite her defeat.
He sighed, then crossed himself.
No one, he soothed himself as he resumed packing with haste, had to know it was he who’d sent them.