Chapter 64
Spanish Town, Jamaica
Anne had been warned about wanting to gouge out her eyes for lack of sleep. About the endless washing of soiled swaddles. About her body feeling like a wool shawl stretched out of proportion. They weren’t wrong.
But no one had bothered to mention this: The ear print, the tiniest ear imprint left on her chest when her son pressed against her bare skin, falling asleep on her breast.
If this was a brand of motherhood, she’d take it.
Anne wore a fresh dress. They held her in a locked room with barred windows, but still—a room with windows somewhere outside the main garrison.
Sunlight.
She cooed to Mark as she sat in a slat-back chair, her voice a mix of humming and terrible singing. Her past came to her in snatches. An old Irish lullaby:
“Mo sheoid gan cealg, mo chuid gan tsaoil mhór.”
My flawless jewel, my piece of the world.
“Seo iad aniar iad le glaoch ar mo leanbh / Le mian é tharraingt isteach san lios mór.”
The song spoke about a thieving fairy. A warning. Anne would be damned before anyone tried to lure this child away from her, or she from him. If she wasn’t already damned.
He was anything but.
It’d been a month since Mark’s birth. She saw no one but the midwife and nothing but the water buckets and food trays.
The oak door pushed open with a creak. Anne stiffened, resisting the urge to tell the midwife that the baby was sleeping. But it wasn’t the quiet old woman who stoked her unease—not after all her kindness. Every time the door opened, Anne’s stomach lurched. Waiting.
She was so tired of waiting. Worrying her miserable guts out.
Then, an infant’s soft cry. A baby, but not her son.
Anne’s eyes alighted on the midwife, that meaningful look in her pearl-gray eyes. The wailing bundle in her arms.
Anne tried to stand, tried to breathe. To ask the question blistering on her tongue.
The midwife patted the bundle, then approached Anne with assured steps. Anne wouldn’t, couldn’t, look up again. The midwife placed a heavy hand on her shoulder.
No.
The words formed, cutting a hole through the better part of her heart. Her throat burned and tears burst the dam of her eyes.
I said, no!
“She needs to be fed. If she doesn’t—”
The walls fell away, Anne’s vision blurring with oceanic grief. Bottomless, endless salt. A world without Mary. The wind abandoned her lungs, leaving her bones washed upon the shore of this land of the living.
But the midwife paid no mind to Anne’s trembling. She unwrapped the crying child. Those wrinkled toes. That snatch of black hair.
“The doctor believes—though he could not be sure—that Mary Read declared her intention for you to have her.”
“Did Mary suffer long?”
Did she get to meet this child before …?
We’ll find a way—Mary’s words, rising from the depths to meet her despair.
We’ll look after each other. And the babies.
The midwife blanched and did not answer.
Instead, she placed the fussing infant on Anne’s breast beside the still-sleeping Mark.
Anne shifted and tried to contain her guttural sobs, the anchor of responsibility dropping on her like an anvil.
Did the letters arrive yet? How, how to fight for a life that belonged to more than just her now?
The midwife aided Anne, positioning the baby to nurse. Good Lord, she was so small.
The wailing heightened, then stopped, replaced with the sound of suckling. The midwife exhaled with surprised satisfaction at the easy latch. “You’ll need extra food and water to encourage your milk supply. I’ll see to it.”
Anne heaved in a raw breath of relief, despair—she wasn’t sure which. She placed an arm around her wee little daughter.
“Mo stór,” she breathed. My treasure. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—you’ll know how loved you are.”
Even if it’s the last thing I ever do.
One week turned into two, two into three. Anne’s son grew, and so did her daughter. Every day, every hour, every second.
And as she counted, Anne also waited. Half with dread, half with hope like a flickering ember in the pit of her throat. Her resolve deepened as time marched on. Her plan had to work.
But what if it doesn’t? She began to fear when three weeks passed.
What if Captain Johnson failed to send the letters?
The rotten man. Then she’d write them all again, and more letters, starting immediately.
She’d write them again and again—procure more paper from the midwife, the boy who delivered the food trays, anyone.
She refused to let them kill her, especially now. Not now.
And if that doesn’t work? The question jolted her awake in the startling silence of the night.
She’d find another path forward. Anne had been stripped of her blades, but she still had her wits. Devil help the person who tried to hang her or take the children away.
It was a June morning when she was awoken by Mark’s crying. At three months, he could roll himself over onto his belly—a position he found distressing. She forced herself to arise in the pink-purple air, scooping him up from the bed and placing him to her breast.
“Don’t wake your sister,” she soothed, glancing over her shoulder at the swaddled girl. She swooned at the sight of that tuft of inky, velvet-soft hair.
Anne paced with Mark, back and forth, rocking him in her embrace, then paused at the door.
It stood ajar.
Her pulse rose as she tiptoed toward it in the dawn, pale rays streaming in from the windows. She nudged her head out, down the long white hallway. The rising sun at the end of the tunnel. A garden terrace on the other side.
She jolted, almost tripping over a breakfast tray on the ground. Strange. She crouched, spotting the subtle but unmistakable glint of something through the pores of the bread.
She studied it, breaking apart the loaf, and the thumping in her rib cage threatened to burst through her skin.
Gold.
Bloody hell, the bread was laden with ingots of it! Her fingers shook as she picked up the loaf before spying the envelope that had been tucked beneath the food, still lying on the breakfast tray. She tore it open, her fingers shaking. A dagger fell out, wrapped in written instructions.
She stuffed her pockets as hope shot through her veins. Who? she breathed, reading the directions to safety.
She’d find out soon enough.
Anne quietly backed into the room, then sprinted for the girl.
Think, she calmed herself, eyes darting between children. She used the knife to rip the bedsheet in two. With one piece, she covered her notorious hair. With the second, she created a wrap for the babies. She tied her son to her back and her sleeping daughter to her chest.
Hands free, shoulders squared, Anne padded barefoot toward the door. She inhaled deeply, moving through the fear, searching for that still point within her.
Act.
Go boldly.
Head held high—armed with a sharp knife she now knew how to use—she stepped forward into freedom.