Three

Jack

We'd now like to turn your attention, dear reader, to the other side of Nassau, where a man by the name of Jack was strolling down the street, talking to himself.

"I'm getting married," he said. He tried to picture it: standing up before his friends and family, saying the sacred vows of matrimony to his beloved. But Jack didn't have much in the way of friends yet, and his family situation was... complicated, and he had never actually been to a wedding before, so he was fuzzy on what the vows would be. So the best he could do was imagine himself all dressed up and looking handsome, standing in front of a crowd. That much, at least, was easy to picture.

Bonn would be there too, of course, standing with him, holding his hand. He was having trouble picturing her in a wedding dress, but he could imagine her staring up rapturously into his eyes, smiling that wicked smile of hers.

"I do," she would say in her husky Irish brogue.

He'd say it, too, softly, meaningfully, from the depths of his very soul. "I do."

Then he was pretty sure they would kiss, a special, magic type of kiss that would seal the deal.

And then they'd be married.

Just like Romeo and Juliet in Jack's favorite story, theirs would be a love for the ages.

Now all he had to do was to get her to say yes when he asked her tonight.

Which he was fairly certain she would.

She obviously loved him. She hadn't said as much, not in so many words, but he could tell. And he loved her. That was all that was required.

"Darling," he said now as a way of last-minute practicing. "I know we haven't been together for very long, but I adore everything about you. Please consent to becoming my wife."

"ARRR!" An old peg-legged pirate passed Jack in the street and bellowed out the greeting.

"ARRR YERSELF!" Jack hollered back, the proper response. He put a hand on the dagger he kept in his belt, just in case violence was going to be required, but the grizzled old fellow just step-clonked along his merry way.

Now, where was he? Oh yes. The "consent to become my wife" bit. Perhaps there was a better way to say it. "Please do me the great honor of joining me in official matrimony," he tried out.

Hmm. Not quite. Maybe his entire approach was too formal. Bonn was not the most formal of persons, even though she'd been educated well enough, back in Ireland. She was the child of a well-to-do lawyer and the family maid, a scandal from the moment she emerged into the world. Her father had eventually brought her over to America, where he had attempted to set her up as a fine lady and parade her around in high society. But it was not to be, obviously. Bonn liked to tell the tale of one fateful day, when she'd been stuck reading some tedious book of etiquette, near bored to tears, and finally could bear it no more. She'd flung the book into the bushes and run away—stowed away, actually—on the next ship headed out of port, which happened to be going to Nassau. And that's where Jack had first come across her, a happy three and a half months ago.

She was exciting.

She was everything.

"Marry me, Bonn," he said then.

But it shouldn't be that simple, should it? This was going to be classified as one of the most important moments of their lives. It should be memorable. It should be great. It should be EPIC.

This was turning out to be a lot of pressure.

He took a deep breath and tried again. "Say you'll marry me, Bonn, my darling, my only, my one. You are my sun, my moon, my starlit sky. Without you, I dwell in darkness."

That was pretty good. But how did Bonn feel about romantic metaphors? He didn't want her to laugh at him.

"AHOY THERE, MATEY!" Another pirate approached, swerving in a way that suggested he'd had too much rum. (Reader, let's assume that everyone in Nassau had had too much rum.)

Jack, his hand once again moving to his dagger, stuck out his chin in acknowledgment. "AHOY!"

The man belched deeply.

"ARRR!" replied Jack.

The man, satisfied by their interaction, stumbled on down the street.

Jack relaxed. But then he tensed up again, because he realized he'd arrived at his destination.

Now, there was some debate on the island of New Providence about what was the best restaurant in Nassau. (Yelp hadn't been invented yet, nor had the concept of starred reviews.) The problem with classifying such a place was that there were, technically, no restaurants in Nassau, only pubs, dance halls, and brothels that occasionally served food. It was confusing when you were hungry and just wanted something good to eat, and even more confusing was the fact that every establishment in town basically sounded the same: a pirate adjective followed by a pirate noun. Pirate adjectives, Jack had noticed, could be separated into four basic categories: health related (like lousy , festering , mangy , or rotten ), manners related (such as churlish , artless , or lumpish ), adjectives impugning a person's moral character ( low-down , spineless , lily-livered , dastardly ), and arbitrary undignified things (think quivering , slithering , or squelching ). Pirate nouns were a bit simpler, as these were always animals: cur, dog, jellyfish, bilge rat, snake, pelican, and so forth. Jack had recently seen an advertisement for a new place called the Shrieking Sea Cucumber, and while that was an alarming thought (sea cucumbers, in Jack's experience, were typically the silent type), it totally tracked with Nassau's general vibe.

The nicest building in Nassau (i.e., the one that was the most structurally sound and well furnished) was a place called GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. (We know, that doesn't have a pirate adjective or noun, but just go with it—it's the exception that proves the rule.) This had been at the top of the list Jack had considered for Romantic Locations to Propose to the Love of Your Life, because it was one of the only places in town with good lighting and relatively clean floors. But it was also a dance hall (*cough* brothel *cough*) and Jack had wanted somewhere more, er, private.

Next he'd deliberated on the place with the best rum in Nassau—because Bonn loved a good rum—but that had already been booked for some big pirate event.

So he'd picked the Poxy Parrot, a small pub in an out-of-the-way corner of town that reportedly made a damned good corned beef on Thursdays. He'd talked to the owner yesterday about reserving a table in a quiet corner, maybe lighting a few candles, you know? Then he'd asked Bonn to meet him there tonight with no other explanation, because a little bit of mystery is a good thing in any relationship. And now he was there, standing outside the door, trying to work up the nerve to go inside.

Jack was normally an optimistic person. A glass half-full, float where the tide takes you kind of guy. So while he was nervous now, feeling that this was about to be one of the Most Significant Moments in his life, after a moment he shrugged, thought to himself, Well, here I go; I'm sure it will all turn out well , and walked into the Poxy Parrot.

Bonn was already there. She liked to be early to appointments, which seemed to Jack a bit out of character for someone with such an obvious disregard for the rules of polite society, but she always said something about birds and worms that he'd never understood. It was easy to spot her, given that she was currently standing on top of the bar, a tankard of rum already in hand, belting out a rousing rendition of "YO, HO, HO (AND A BOTTLE OF RUM)" (one of the two pirate-themed songs that were on a constant loop pretty much everywhere in Nassau) at the top of her lungs.

Jack took a moment to admire her.

His true love.

Even in the overall dimness of the pub, Bonn was so beautiful it took his breath away. She wore a plain white linen shirt with a jaunty green vest over it that matched the spring-leaf color of her eyes, and an unremarkable brown skirt that she'd hitched up in the front, revealing tall leather boots to her knee. It was quite warm there in the Poxy Parrot, and she'd rolled her shirt to the elbows and unbuttoned the collar. A comelier figure he'd never beheld. But it was Bonn's hair that most caught his eye. He'd never encountered a person with such red hair before he'd met her. It was like a living flame, her hair, a mass of copper curls that tumbled all about her freckled heart-shaped face. He loved to tangle his fingers in that hair, to pull a curl and watch it spring back into form.

So here they were. He loved Bonn and her wild red hair. She loved him and his undeniable good looks and easy charm. They made a good match. He would ask her to marry him.

And she would say yes.

It really was that simple.

He located the table he'd reserved. (There was a piece of parchment set up in the middle of a table in the corner that read, Don't Ye Sit Here Unless Yer Jack Rackham, accompanied by a big red X over the figure of a person sitting, for those who couldn't read.) A single stubbed candle on the table cast just the right romantic glow. The owner had even put a bedraggled yellow flower in a mug in the center.

Excellent. Jack cleared his throat.

This was it.

"Marry me, darling?" he said quickly—one final bit of rehearsal.

"Well, maybe I'd consider it, if you asked me real nice," said the barmaid, who'd been scrubbing down the next table over. As he turned to her, surprised, she looked him slowly up and down, then gave him a crooked-but-sultry smile. "I definitely would."

Yes, yes. He was considered attractive by most everybody. Jack knew this.

"Alas, I wasn't speaking to you, although I'm sure you're delightful," he clarified. Then he stepped away from the table, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, "Bonn! Hey, Bonn! Darling, over here!"

Bonn didn't pay him any heed, partly because Jack couldn't be heard over the singing, and partly because by this time Bonn had leapt from the bar and was now enthusiastically punching some unsuspecting pirate in the face.

Jack beamed. So gloriously scrappy, his Bonn.

"BONN!" Jack bellowed, and then he pushed his way through the raucous fray until he reached his love, who he managed to wrest off the back of the bewildered pirate. This almost earned Jack a punch to the face himself, as she took a defensive swing at him. He stepped back just in time. "BONN, IT'S ME!" he cried.

Her bright green eyes lit up. "JACK! GAWL, AND I ALMOST CLOCKED YOU THERE, RIGHT IN THE KISSER."

Or at least that's what he thought she said. It was hard to know for sure, what with the general din of the place and Bonn's accent. He loved the way she talked, an intriguing mix of highborn lady and gutter rat.

He took her by the elbow and steered her to their table, pulling out a chair for her to sit.

But she didn't sit. Instead, she read the sign on the table, and then cocked her head at him quizzically. "What are ye doing? And why, for that matter, did you wish to meet me here? It's a wee bit out of the way, isn't it?"

He cleared his throat for dramatic effect. "It's a special place for a special night."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Special? How so?"

"Because..." He swallowed, his heart banging hard against his ribs. "Because I had something special I wanted to ask you."

He'd been planning to wait until after dinner to pop the question. But everything was feeling vastly more imperative now, with the barmaid still leering at them, and his heart beating fast, and his nerves jangling so that his hands were trembling. Best to get it over with as soon as possible.

He dropped to one knee.

"Oh dear God," Bonn breathed. "What are you up to, Jack?"

"You'll see in a minute," he said. "Just stand still and let me do this."

A hush fell over the pub as people noticed him kneeling there. So now it was more than simply the barmaid gawking at them. Now there were about forty pirates in various stages of drunkenness gazing in their direction, all beginning to point and stare.

"Woo-hoo!" one of them whooped. "Go get her, lad!"

"Good luck!" said another. "Yer going to need it with that one!"

"ARGH!" said a third, which Jack understood, in this instance, to be a form of encouragement.

Jack took Bonn's small rough hand in his suddenly-very-clammy one. "I haven't had time to woo you in the way you deserve," he said softly, "with fine food and flowers and starlit walks along the sand, but I've known you were the one for me, Anne Bonny, from that first night when I came upon you beating the tar out of those two rogues who'd tried to rob that old blind woman. You're the person I want to be with, always. Will you... will you have me?"

"Of course I'll have you," she laughed, but her voice was a bit strained, like she was nervous, too. "Now get up."

"Wait, I need to give you this." He reached into his pants pocket, drew his fist out, and held it up, uncurling his fingers so she could see what he offered.

A ring. A beautiful golden ring with a large dark emerald in the center, framed by a group of small diamonds. He didn't know her ring size (because ring sizes hadn't been invented yet) but he hoped it would fit her.

"Gawl," she breathed. "Oh, Jack. Where did you get this?"

"I, uh... found it." He thought it best not to tell Bonn where he acquired things. It would naturally lead to questions he didn't know how to answer.

"Right," she said with a little smirk. "You found it."

She thought he was a thief. He had never tried to correct that assumption, and he wasn't about to start now.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

"I..." She seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words. "I love it. It's beautiful."

"So you'll marry me?" he said.

Her mouth opened and then closed again.

"I swear I'll make you happy, Bonn. You're my sun, my moon, my starlit sky—"

"I know, I know," she murmured. "But, you see..."

Oh bollocks. There was something wrong. Some minor impediment to their bliss.

"I haven't told you everything," she said.

"Oh, that's all right," he said with a nervous laugh. "I haven't told you everything, either." In fact, he'd told Bonn nothing of his past outside of the barest of details. He'd considered telling her loads of times, but at first he didn't know how to do it in such a way that she could ever believe him, and then, after they'd been together for a while, it felt weird to bring it up. He'd never even told her how old he was—she thought he was older, twenty at least. But none of that mattered to Jack. "Nothing you could tell me would change how I feel," he insisted.

"I feel the same," she said. "I..."

"See? I'm sure it's fine," he said.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry. But I cannot marry you, Jack."

The men around them made an audible AWWWW sound, not like AW, that's adorable , but AW, how very disappointing we find this .

"But... why?" Jack asked hoarsely.

"I am already married," she blurted out.

The crowd of pirates made an OOF sound.

"I did not see that coming," said one.

"Nor I," said another. "I thought she'd just say no because she's the kind of lass who don't want to be tied down."

"I really thought she'd say yes," another said. "Because he's so pretty."

Jack said nothing. He was frozen in place on the floor in front of her. Very slowly, he closed his fingers around the emerald ring.

Bonn caught his aghast expression, and it was like something broke loose inside her and all the words just started to pour out. "Gawl, I wish I weren't—I kind of married this fellow by accident. I didn't know the rules, you see. When I first arrived here, in Nassau, I mean, I didn't know anything about anything. I didn't have a place to stay. I hadn't any money besides some jewelry I'd been wearing when I ran off. I was so hungry and tired and lost, and there was this man who took me in. He let me stay in his room, called me his roommate and everything. He even found me a job, he did, as a dishwasher at this little pub he went to, and... he was kind to me. Some days kinder than others. But I was grateful for the place to stay, and a job that wasn't wenching. But then one day he told me that I was his wife."

"He told you?" This was like a bad dream.

She nodded, tucking a fiery curl behind her ear as she gazed down guiltily into her lap. "He said that I was his common law wife. Because we'd lived together a certain length of time. Of course I told him off, told him I was nobody's wife, but he took me to the law house and showed me the record where it'd been recorded. I was his wife. There was nothing to be done for it."

"He tricked you," Jack said.

"He did. I tried to murder him in his sleep for weeks after. If he could make me a wife, I could make myself a widow, I figured. But he was too wily."

"So you unmarry him." Jack's knee was starting to hurt, so he staggered up from the floor.

"Tried that," she said. "A divorce can only be granted with the husband's permission."

Jack started for the door. "Be right back, my love," he said.

"Where are you going?"

"To get his permission," he said.

It was not difficult to track down James Bonny—that is, after Jack had the presence of mind to double back and ask Bonn to tell him her husband's name.

James Bonny. It baffled Jack that she would have taken the last name of this man who'd hoodwinked her so badly.

"I liked the name Bonny," she'd admitted. "My name was Anne Brennan before. But Anne Brennan was a bastard, a girl of no importance in this world. And when my father brought me to Charles Town, he introduced me as his daughter, Anne Cormac, but I never fit into that name, either. But Anne Bonny—now that had a ring. And if I went by that, my father wouldn't be able to find me."

"It is a good name," Jack had agreed, and then gone to hunt down the scoundrel James Bonny who'd given it to her. Who some other pirates told him could be reliably found in a brothel called the Dastardly Cur. Which felt like a fitting name.

James Bonny, for his part, did not seem surprised to encounter Jack.

"She's a terror, ain't she?" James said conspiratorially when Jack approached him. He took a huge swig of rum, grimaced, burped. "Like a beautiful storm. But she's also like ringworm—she gets under your skin and you can't ever be free of her."

"You're going to be free of her," Jack said. "Tonight. Now, if possible."

Bonny laughed. "Am I? Says who?"

"She does not wish to be married to you," Jack pointed out.

"She's a girl," James slurred. "So it's not exactly her choice, is it?"

"You're going to grant her a divorce," Jack said steadily, working himself up for violence. Jack abhorred violence. He preferred conversation if at all possible, so he was preparing to use every advantage and connection he had to talk the increasingly loathsome Mr. Bonny into capitulating to his request. If that didn't work: intimidation. And if that didn't work, well, he did happen to know a lot of pirates, and pirates generally didn't have a problem with murder.

"I might consider it," Bonny said.

"You might?"

"For the right bride price."

Jack blinked at him. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that term."

"Listen here," Bonny said with a smirk. "Anne is my property, seeing as she's my wife. I can do what I want with her. But I might be willing to sell. If the price was right. And sure, you and Anne could try to murder me to get your way—Lord knows she did try often enough, but I'm a tough bugger to kill, and besides, all these people here have been listening to this here conversation, so it'd be suspicious if I was to show up dead now. And it would be a shame to see a pretty, long neck like Annie's stretched out by a hangman's noose."

Jack felt his stomach drop most unpleasantly. He didn't have much in the way of currency. At most, he had about a hundred and fifty pieces of eight saved up. That and an emerald ring. He swallowed hard. "How much?"

"She's a fine woman, my wife," said Bonny, then looked him right in the eye as he said this next bit. "A thousand would do. One thousand pieces of eight."

"So what happened?" Bonn demanded to know the moment Jack stepped through the door of the room they shared in the Jumping Jellyfish, aka Nassau's best boardinghouse.

"Uh..." He scratched the back of his neck. "We had a conversation."

Her green eyes narrowed to slits. "And?"

"I think I made it worse," he mumbled.

"Didn't I tell you that's what would happen?"

Yes. She'd said it a few times as he'd marched determinedly out to find James Bonny. She'd said, "Don't go, Jack. You're only going to make it worse."

"You did tell me," he mumbled.

"How much worse are we talking?" she asked.

He told her.

"A thousand pieces of eight! Gawl! He told me a hundred, and I thought that was going to be impossible."

"He told you a hundred?" Jack sighed and scrubbed his hand down the front of his face. "Darling, that might have been good information for me to have before I entered into negotiations, don't you think?"

(A note, dear reader, on "pieces of eight." In the time our story takes place, the most common coin used was the Spanish silver dollar. The value of a coin was decided by its actual weight in gold or silver, and it didn't really matter what the coin looked like. Merchants preferred Spanish coins because they had a distinct pattern on the edge, which kept cheaters from shaving bits of the coins off. And, to make change, it was just fine to cut the coin into pieces. So a piece of eight was one of eight pieces that had been cut out of the Spanish silver dollar, a tiny silver sliver of pie. A single piece of eight was worth about the equivalent of $12.50 in US dollars today. In other words, James Bonny had just raised Anne's bride price from the equivalent of $1,250 to $12,500. So yeah, Jack had made things a lot worse.)

She crossed her arms over her chest. "You didn't ask me. You just rushed off half-cocked before I could tell you any more."

He nodded. "That's true, my love. I behaved rashly. I apologize. But not to worry about the money. I'll get that thousand pieces of eight for you, no problem."

"You'll get it," she said doubtfully. "How?"

"The way I come up with all our money." He'd never managed to get his hands on anything worth much more than a hundred pieces of eight, but he was sure he'd figure something out.

But Bonn had now apparently decided not to accept that answer. "And how do you come up with our money, exactly?" she asked.

"It's better if you don't know," he said.

And that was true. It was better.

For him.

She scowled. "Well. I have a different plan."

"Does that plan involve murder?"

She grinned for a moment, as if the idea was tempting, but then shook her head. "It involves us becoming pirates."

Oh. That again.

"Forgive me, darling," Jack said tentatively. "But haven't we tried that and failed numerous times?"

Her lips pursed. "I said I'll be a pirate someday, and I will. Give me piracy or give me death!"

He was always a bit alarmed when she talked this way. Death was bad, of course, but being a pirate wasn't that much better, as he understood it. It was hard and cold and sometimes hungry work, and it was also dangerous, in that it often ended in being run through by a cutlass, or being hanged by the various pirate-hating authorities, or, if you were really lucky, drowning in a shipwreck. So really one was likely to have both piracy and death.

But Anne—his little fiery Bonn—scoffed at such dangers. "I've tried the life of frills and frocks already," she'd told him the first time he'd expressed his various concerns. "Gawl, I was my father's porcelain doll for years. I'm ill-suited for such things. I'd rather die on the water, cutlass in my hand, stained with the blood of my enemies!"

She was passionate. She had goals. Jack admired that about her.

"Here's my plan," Bonn said. "Everybody in town's talking about how there's this big meeting of all the pirate captains, tonight, at this place called the Scurvy Dog. So we go there. We wait until the captains are assembled. Then I—dressed as a saucy lad—will pretend some slight and challenge Captain Blackbeard's quartermaster—a big, hulking fellow by the name of Caesar who Blackbeard trusts more than any other—to a duel, right then and there. And then I shall best Caesar, but not maim or kill him, of course, as that would truly offend the captain, and I'll demand that, in exchange for Caesar's life, I be given a spot aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge , a proper part of Blackbeard's crew."

"And me," Jack added. "I'll come on the crew as well."

"Right. You. Yes," Bonn said quickly. "Anyway, how could Blackbeard refuse if he sees my quality as a fighter?"

"Indeed," Jack said supportively. "You're a marvelous fighter. Best I've seen."

"And I'm a smart sailor. I could prove it to him if he liked."

"You do tie a mean knot," Jack said.

"And then, once he's said he'll have me—er, us—I will reveal myself to be a woman," she added. "I'll tell him that it's women who are the future of piracy! And because he's the Pirate King—if he allows women to become pirates, then all the captains might."

Jack nodded nervously. "That sounds reasonable. Where he leads, the others will follow."

"And if there's any argument," Bonn pressed on, "you'll stand by me and fight by my side."

"If you think that's best." Even though Jack was not the greatest fighter. He was absolute garbage with a sword, he'd discovered early on. Although he supposed he did all right with blunter objects. Like a frying pan. Still, he could not really picture himself prevailing over a pub full of angry pirates brandishing a frying pan. "But darling," he said delicately. "While I do love your plan, and I will happily go along with it—whatever you need—do you think the violence bit is absolutely necessary?"

She stared up at him blankly.

"Can't we just ask Captain Blackbeard if we can become pirates on his crew? Surely he's a reasonable fellow, a smart man, to have risen so high on the pirate career ladder. Can't we make him come around to our way of thinking with persuasive words instead of cutlasses?"

Bonn laughed. "Ah, my dear lamb," she said, patting Jack's cheek affectionately if not a bit too hard. "Violence is the language of piracy. We've got to speak their language, see? But don't worry, love. All will go according to plan. By this time tomorrow we'll be part of Blackbeard's crew. A true pirate, that's what I'll be, and I mean to chase every adventure on the seas. I'll plunder a hundred ships—nay, a thousand—steal my weight in gold, lounge naked in a bathtub filled with shining pieces of eight. Pay James back with interest and a kick in the ass. Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!"

"Yo ho," Jack agreed, and she kissed him, and it was the good kind of kiss, the kind that always made him feel like he was floating, and after that he would have agreed to anything she asked of him.

And so it was that about thirty minutes later, Jack Rackham and a saucy freckled lad sauntered into the Scurvy Dog.

"Blast," Bonn muttered under her breath as they took in the crowded pub, which was near bursting with various pirate captains. "We're too late to get a good table. Do you see Captain Blackbeard?"

"What does he look like?"

Bonn gave him a look.

"Right," he said. "Black beard. Got it." He glanced around. "A good many of these blokes have a black beard."

"His is huge and bushy, and he sometimes puts fireworks into it, to terrify his prey before he boards a ship," Bonn said.

Jack wasn't sure how that would work without burning one's face off in the process, but he didn't raise the question. "No one with fireworks in their beards, no."

"He's not here," Bonn said grumpily.

"At least we haven't missed him."

"That's true," she conceded. "Let's find a place to sit. Ooh, there's a little table in the back corner! You go claim our spot, and I'll get us some rum. I hear this place has the best rum in all of Nassau."

She started in the direction of the bar, where there was a huge line of thirsty pirates already waiting.

Jack moved toward the table in the corner. He was feeling a bit jumpy. Bonn's plan, he thought, had some flaws. Like, how was she going to fight a man she'd described as "big and hulking" and win without injuring him? And would this Blackbeard fellow really accept the fact that she was a woman and still allow her on his ship? And how exactly did Jack fit into all of this? And he didn't have a frying pan or a sword, just this puny dagger that wasn't even sharp.

"I'm sure it will all be fine," he told himself reassuringly.

"YOU!" Right then, at a nearby table, a man jumped to his feet so quickly that his chair clattered to the floor.

Jack looked around. "Me? Excuse me? Have I offended you, good sir?"

The man stared at Jack with wide blue eyes, and then began to stomp toward him. "SON OF A WITCH!" he yelled.