Devil's Ballast by Meg Caddy

Author:Meg Caddy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2019-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

I was no stranger to beatings. The first time I was thirteen or fourteen. My mother had just died and we were new in Charles Town. Most of my days in Ireland had been spent running riot, dressed as a boy, but when we arrived in America I was confined to the sticky heat of the household, wearing corsets and laces. It made me wild, and when one of the maids muttered some insult about my mother I drove a knife into her hand. My father, tolerant and distant until that point, had me whipped. It put a rift between us that never healed. I continued to push him and he continued to punish me. And once I was out of my father’s household, Jim Bonny beat me at the end of his temper or at the beginning of a drinking night.

But I had never given birth before. I took a fever the night Calico was captured and that fever held me for almost a week. I remember very little: Rose’s face in front of mine, Johnny’s thin wail from the next room, flies buzzing around my face, the sour smell of sickness, fever dreams…

Calico was at my side, looking out at the bobbing ships. He levelled his finger towards an elderly, slim vessel to the west of the harbour.

‘See her?’ he asked. ‘She’s mine.’

She was a patchwork of different woods, a rugged and weathered ship with keen lines. She leaned with a strong wave and then rocked back. She looked like she was beckoning.

When the fever broke I woke to a clean room and the sound of the sea outside. For a few moments I was lost in the after-breath of the delirium. I thought I could hear Calico. Felt him, close and loving and willing.

And I knew I had to go after him. To the worst place.

I was sure Barnet would take him to Nassau.

‘Anne.’ Rose watched me as I hobbled across the room. My body felt slow, ungainly as it had when I was still pregnant. Sore. I scraped my hair back from my face and twisted it into a knot at the back of my head.

‘What?’

‘We can…’ She hesitated. ‘We can find work for you here in Havana. You can stay here until you find a place.’

I glared at her. She winced and gentled her voice.

‘You know Calico wouldn’t want you to lose yourself. He’d want you to go on with things. Find a life for yourself. Survive.’ She reached over and touched my shoulder. ‘He wouldn’t want for you to put yourself in danger for him. Especially when there’s nothing that can be done.’

‘Have you heard any news from Nassau?’

‘Nothing.’

‘From Jamaica?’

‘No.’

‘How long has it been?’

‘Over a week.’

It would only take a week to sail from Cuba to Nassau. A week to get there, a week for the news to travel back. If Barnet had reached Nassau I was sure we’d find out soon. Wanting the message to reach me—as a lesson; to reach other pirates—as a warning.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.