Lightkeeper's Wife (7 page)

A crowd of sailors gathered below to watch. Daniel had been called topside. He was a speck down there, indistinguishable from the other men. Had she ever loved him, or had she loved the idea of sailing around the world and living at sea? Whatever it was in her that had cared for Daniel had died when the baby died. She couldn't stand the sight of him as he stood below staring at the bottoms of her boots. His arms beat the air, sending a signal she chose to ignore. As the wind picked up, the mast rocked to and fro in great sweeping arcs, and Annie gave herself over to the motion. She focused her eyes on the steady line of the horizon, and then she climbed down, one foot first, then the next foot feeling for the ratline. With each step into the world of the ship, the air closed in around her. The expansive silence of wind and sky atop the mast shrank to the noise of the crew shouting up at her and Daniel cussing out Donovan, whom he blamed for Annie's trespassing on the ship's rigging.

Some of the men gathered by the bowsprit, snickering loud enough for the captain to hear. They scattered when she swung herself from the rigging onto the deck, landing with her knees bent, using her legs like springs to break her fall. She gazed at Daniel triumphantly.

“I will speak to you in my quarters,” he said, teeth clenched, and turned a dismissive shoulder to her.

Annie sat at the table in the captain's quarters, tapping her fingers restlessly, as if he'd kept her waiting. He flung himself through the cabin door and unbuttoned his coat, threw his shoulders back as if he could bolster himself for the conversation, drawing upon his authority as captain of the ship since she didn't respect his authority as her husband.

“You're making me look ridiculous in front of my crew, Annie. You can't dress up in my clothes and climb the rigging like a man. It's simply not acceptable!” He sputtered these last words and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “It's practically immoral,” he said, calmer now and seemingly convinced of the validity of his argument.

Annie stared into his bloodshot eyes and wondered what she'd seen in him that made her marry him. He'd seemed courageous to her four years ago, a man who sailed around the world conducting his business, buying and selling goods to make a profit.

Daniel cleared his throat. “It was a reckless thing to do. I'll not have it happen again. Not on my ship. I'll put you off at the next port and you'll not sail with me again. I can't be concerned about you putting yourself in danger when there are real dangers to consider. Do you understand?”

Annie sat up straight now. She blew across her red, burning palms, chafed from holding on to the rigging, and looked into his face. “It's no more dangerous for me to go aloft than for one of your men, Daniel, and I'll do it again.”

“Since that baby died, you've done nothing but try to humiliate me. You've embarrassed me in front of my men and eroded my authority. You'll not climb the rigging again.”

“I've embarrassed you, that's all you have to say?” she stood and yelled back at him.

“I've been a much better husband to you than you've been a wife to me. At least I've tried, Annie.”

“You left me alone to lose our baby,” she said, bitter and disgusted.

“You'll never forgive me. If I'd been there, the baby still would've died.”

“But you would've been there! You fool!”

The cabin door slammed behind her. It rattled the brass lanterns in her wake. On deck, she felt free of him. He might be captain of the ship, but she was in charge of herself, and he could not take that away from her.

***

The next morning she was in the cabin when Daniel ran down the steps to tell her that they'd been boarded by pirates. His voice was fused with authority and fear. She heard a scuffle on deck, strange men barking orders.

“They're onboard?”

“They said if I turned over the cargo and supplies they'd leave us with our lives. I don't see any choice. I don't have the manpower or weapons to fight them.”

“You can't let them take the cargo,” she said. “If you don't fight, we'll lose everything.”

“We'll let them take what they want and hope they don't notice you. No telling what they'll do with a woman,” he said. “You've got to hide.”

The sound of Daniel's voice infuriated her. “You need to gather the men. You let our daughter die, now you're going to give up without a fight?”

“Stop it, Annie.” The conviction of her rage caused him to doubt himself, not as a ship's captain, but as a man—had he let his daughter die?—and this was where she found her stronghold. She took the pistol he kept beneath the foot of the mattress ticking, and she tossed the machete hanging from a sling by the doorway directly at him so that he caught it by the handle.

“This is not a fighting ship,” he said, but once armed with Daniel's pistol, Annie shoved past him.

On deck, she found O'Malley. “Go below, get arms. You'll take your orders from me, not the captain. Do you understand?”

O'Malley eyed the pistol and hesitated.

“Are you in, O'Malley?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Annie hid behind the bulwark to watch the pirates work with a frenzied sense of purpose, unloading crates of cargo one after another and loading them onto their own ship. They wore guns, machetes, hammers. Fear broke through her resolve, but she realized that she wasn't afraid of being robbed. She was afraid of dying. She didn't want to die, and she wasn't going to let her husband's cowardice cost her her life.

When Donovan, Nickerson, and O'Malley appeared from below, armed with pistols, she said, “We can protect our ship, or we can roll over like dogs. What'll it be?”

O'Malley scanned the deck for Daniel, then eyed Annie. He looked from one of his fellows to the next. “We'll fight, ma'am.” O'Malley spoke for the lot of them. A few more men came up from belowdecks, armed and cautious.

“All right, then.”

“If we go at them from the stern, we'll surprise them. That's our only chance. Wait until most of them are on their own ship stowing the cargo. When they come back across the gangplank we can shoot them one at a time,” O'Malley said.

“Where's the captain, ma'am?”

“Gathering ammunition, and getting the rest of the men in formation. He wants to try to reason with them, but there's no reasoning with men like this.” Her lie came easily. She didn't want to tell them that he was hiding.

She ventured up the ladder to peer across the deck. “You'll wait for my signal,” she said. When one of the pirate crew, a thin man in oversize trousers held about his waist with a rope—he looked more like a pauper than a pirate—caught her eye, she fired and hit him in the leg.

“That's her signal,” one of the men said, and they ran up the ladder on either side of her.

She aimed again and got the man in the shoulder. Shots rang out until three pirates lay on the deck near the hold, blood pooling around them. Annie loaded her gun and readied herself for the attack. She positioned herself aft of the helm so that she had a clear shot to the gate where the pirates boarded, and when they began running across, guns and cutlasses raised high, she and the crew fired. The flinty smell of gunpowder and smoke filled the air. Daniel was a fool. “The worst kind of fool,” she muttered.

The
Intrepid
's crew picked up arms from the fallen pirates and fought the men coming at them from the other ship. They took orders from Annie, and she led them into surrounding the pirates, and shooting at them from behind cabins, and distracting them with stray shots from the foredeck while a group of sailors attacked from behind.

The danger heightened her senses so that she could feel and hear an approach from behind or the backward swing of a cutlass or a pistol's cock in time to react. The motion of her body felt separate from herself, as if her physicality had a mind of its own, her body driven by instinct rather than reason. Annie strode across the deck until she heard the words, “Stop. Don't move. Not a muscle, or I'll take your head off right here.” Her body froze and her senses took in the sound of a man's heavy breathing. He stepped closer, nearly pressed himself against her back but did not touch her. His heat radiated through her jacket. “Turn around slowly,” he said, and she followed his orders. “A wench who thought she could save her ship. Well, I'll be.” He seemed pleased with himself to have captured her. “You could be very useful to me,” he said, and turned her by the shoulders to face him. “If you're willing to fight like that.”

She considered the man in front of her, thick arms and menacing eyes. He was taller and wider and certainly stronger than her, his gun pointed at her ribs. Thick black hair rolled in waves to his whiskered jaw, and sideburns tapered to a fine point near his chin.

“I'm the captain here, Jack Hawkins. I'll sign you onto my crew. How would you like that? The wayward life of a pirate? It's so easy even a woman could do it,” he said, rubbing his closed fist over his mouth. “It's that or else I'll kill you where you stand. Or keep you for my own use. I haven't decided which.”

She couldn't speak.

“I got plenty of bullets. I can put one in you right now. I saw you kill perfectly good men, and now you will replace them. First you'll have to prove you're up to the task,” he said, grabbing her by the elbow and shoving her aft toward the captain's quarters, his pistol pressed hard into her ribs, while her own gun dangled from her hand. There was something utterly masculine about his odor and his gait and his brutality that intrigued her as much as it repulsed her. He stood atop the companionway and pulled her closer. “Go down there and finish the job.”

He searched her eyes for signs of fear, but she wouldn't reveal herself. She shook her elbow loose and climbed down the steps into the cabin. Daniel sat on the edge of his bunk worrying the button of his waistcoat, twirling it around as if it would deliver answers from its shining brass surface. When he saw her, he turned to slap her, but he couldn't reach.

“You've ruined us,” he said. “If we'd let them take what they wanted, they would have left us alone. How many of my men are dead? What in God's name are you doing? Have you gone completely mad?”

“Shut up.” She stood back, held the gun with both hands, and tried to level it at his head. She wanted to remember why she hated him or if she ever loved him, but rage shook her—she would not die for Daniel. Her certainty coalesced in a cold and thoughtless will to carry this out.

“Think for a minute, Annie. What are you doing?” When she didn't release her focus, he said, “You are utterly lost. You are not my wife.”

The gun shook violently in her hands. She pushed the muzzle into his chest to steady it.

“That's my gun,” he said.

“Finish it, or I'll kill the both of you myself,” Jack said, leaning down the hatch, his voice a serrated edge.

“You'll not be the end of me,” Annie said.

Daniel shoved her back against the wall. He lunged at her and struggled to reach the gun, but she moved her arm back and forth, dodging his reach. She had to get him off her, but he was taller, stronger. She drove her knee into his groin, and when he doubled over, she swung the gun at his head. Then he was on top of her, trying to pin her right arm to the deck. His breath on her face infuriated her, and she shook herself loose. The strength she'd gained over the last months of working on the ship drove her into a frenzy of activity, and she swung the gun at his head again. The crew's attention on the fight only heightened Annie's focus. She wasn't going to die, but she started losing track of herself. She was tired. They struggled back and forth amid the hollering crowd of sailors. When the gun went off, the sound ricocheted in the cabin, loud enough to burst the wooden boards.

Jack climbed down the stairs, his buttons rattling like coins in a pocket. He stood over the pair and watched as blood ran across the floor. Daniel lay on top of Annie, and Jack kicked him off with the heel of his boot, so that he fell onto his back, blood pooling from the hole in his stomach.

“You did good,” Jack said. “Now get up and make yourself useful. Get me a sack or a sea bag.”

Annie stared at the blood, the gun hanging from her hand as thoughtlessly as a child might hold a rag doll.

“Move it!”

Once she handed over Daniel's sea bag, Jack went to work ransacking the drawers. He took a watch engraved from her father as a gift, Daniel's gold cuff links, and a pair of sailing pants, whatever he could find of any value.

Annie headed for the ladder to get out of the stuffy room where it reeked of blood and gunpowder. Her legs swayed beneath her.

“You're not going anywhere. Where's he keep the money?”

“Under there.” She swung the gun toward the drawer beneath the mattress. “That should be enough to buy my freedom,” Annie said.

“Your freedom's not for sale. You'll fight with us to replace the men you killed, and we'll need some of the ship's crew to replace the others. Which are worthy?”

Annie let her face reveal nothing while a typhoon of emotions swept through. Sheer terror at the prospect of the pirates, rage at Daniel for not fighting. “They're all useless. Not a fighter in the lot of them. You've seen for yourself.” She grabbed the trousers back from him, and a red jacket. “I'm keeping these. I'm going to need them,” she said.

“Keep your pistol, too. Johnson, take her aboard while I collect what's mine.”

Johnson walked her to the break in the rail that opened onto the pirate ship. Her stomach lurched and she leaned over the side to puke into the sea, and then wiped her mouth on her shirtsleeve. Johnson laughed.

The two ships bobbed together in the swells amid wafting clouds of gun smoke. When her boot struck the unfamiliar deck and she caught her balance, she saw two cabins with round portholes and the helm and binnacle positioned at the stern and the same rigging, masts, and sails that she'd learned aboard
Intrepid
. The only difference in this ship was the guns loaded into holes cut in the bulwarks. She stood clear of the gate and watched the men loading crates down into the hold. When Jack crossed onto the ship, the sailors cast off the lines, and Annie watched as they drifted clear of
Intrepid
. Daniel lay dead in the captain's quarters. She wanted to feel regret or remorse, but she didn't feel anything at all.