Mary's Fall

Mary and Anne are to be strung up before the public, accused of piracy. They only have one trick up their sleeves and it's a sorry one.

I couldn’t believe I found myself caught in such a precarious situation. Anne and I, standing before an audience, waiting to be executed. Damn Jack Rackham! Damn him to Hell! He’d gone and gotten himself and the rest of the crew too drunk to fight while Anne and I took action. That goddamned British galleon destroyed our ship and took half the crew with it. Anne and I fought hard but not hard enough. Next thing we knew, we’d been captured off the coast of Jamaica, waiting for our inevitable fates.

This was so humiliating, this waiting. It felt even worse than when we had been tied up in the brig of these pompous b******s’ ship. That rocking back and forth that had always been comforting was nauseating and sickly. There was so much shame as we held our heads low, refusing to even give them the satisfaction of looking them in the eye.

I had been such a fool, getting my own ship ruined by Jack himself. If I had been just a little quicker, I would have had him captured and killed. That was back when I wasn’t known as Mary Read, I was Sam Pearce. I wished that scum Jack had just killed me there. But no, he forced me to join him and his crew to live a ‘short life but a merry one’. I wouldn’t go down to a lowly noose, not with Anne nor my own child.

I glared at our audience who were oh so bold to watch the great Mary Read and Anne Bonny finally fall from grace. Our stiff bodies would hang from a rope, ready to be hauled into a filthy pile, away from prying eyes. Families would tell tales of us and our lives as two of the greatest female pirates in history. But then they would say how a pathetic piece of woven twine was our demise. I wouldn’t accept such a pitiable end.

Anne and I would make it out of this. We would adopt new aliases and not a soul would recognise us. We would plunder and pillage as many ships as we pleased and live a life of luxury and merriness. I knew exactly how to make it happen. Time. Time was all we needed, and I was going to grant us exactly that.

“We’re quick with child!” I revealed to the executioner suddenly as he read from his list. The crowd before us began to stir and mutter to one another in hushed tones at my announcement. Our children would save us before they were even born, and for that, I thanked them dearly.

“What?” asked the executioner, not quite understanding.

“I believe their pleading with their bellies, sir,” his right-hand man informed him.

“If what you say is true, than you shall have a stayed execution,” he announced, causing a sense of relief to wash over my body.

We were marched away, our hands bound behind our backs. They were bringing us to our prison cells to stay until our terms were up. After that, we were done for. I didn’t believe a word of it. We were cunning and strong. Anne, especially. She’d get us out of this for sure.

Days went by. Then those days turned into weeks and finally months. I was forced to birth my own child in my cell alone without aid. I couldn’t hold my bundle in my own arms for I was far too weak and he was not warm. Born cold, without a pulse. My baby was stillborn.

The days following were hell. I felt so very hot and I couldn’t do anything about it. It kept me up all night and all day. Beads of sweat had poured down my face and I hadn’t a patch of cloth to wipe myself clean. I was dirty. Dirty and sick.

There was no hope for me. I wouldn’t make it to the noose. I would die right here in my own filth without even my name read from a faded sheet of parchment. There would no burial nor an applauding audience. My final thoughts were my own and no one would ever hear them. No one but God above who would watch over my body in my final hours before I perished.

I counted in my head. One. Two. Three. Four. I never made it to five.

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[aj milton]

Here's me waiting for the next season of Black Sails... and instead I can get a tiny fix right here!