Page 17

T oo little, too late.

It was done. Boukman was locked in the brig. Chow was a traitor.

But it was not enough to save them. Even if Chow gave the order to change course, the winds were against them. The Ghost didn’t have the option of cutting away from the frigate. The royal ship was coming straight towards them, and there was no way for the Ghost to get away from its cannons in time.

And worst of all—Boukman hadn’t revealed Chow’s secret.

Standing on the quarterdeck, telescope in hand, Chow’s mind was blank, his heart numb, and he realized he had been waiting for Boukman to do the confessing for him.

He had been counting on the crew turning against him. On Rebecca reeling away horrified. But most of all on Boukman doing the telling, so that Chow wouldn’t have to.

And now he was the de facto captain. They all thought he was worthy of deciding what to do next. When he caught Rebecca’s eyes on him, they were wide with hope and admiration.

The villainous part of Chow’s heart wanted to accept the reprieve. If they survived this fight and if he got rid of Boukman on some deserted island, no one—and especially not Rebecca—would ever know the truth about his past.

But if Rebecca never knew the truth, then Chow was tricking her into loving a man who wasn’t worthy.

He could accept being a traitor to free the Ghost of Boukman. He could even accept the title of captain without telling the crew everything about his past.

But he could not be a husband to Rebecca if she did not know what he had done.

Before he decided how to evade the Royal Navy, he had first to confess.

Even if that meant Rebecca would disavow him just before the battle that would take his life.

A nd so it was all coming to an end.

The mutiny over, Sharkhead was now their captain.

In all their hurried whispers these past few days, they had not discussed what the mutiny meant for their marriage.

But Sharkhead had already become distant, his eyes barely seeing her, his hands barely touching her.

He didn’t so much as squeeze her hand before climbing to the quarterdeck to peer through the telescope at the fast-arriving frigate.

And now Boukman was in the brig, no longer a threat to her.

Rebecca need not be an albatross weighing on Sharkhead’s neck.

If he was going to part ways with her, so be it. If the entire crew of the Ghost decided she had better leave them at the Azores, then she would go. She wasn’t a woman to stay where she wasn’t wanted. And she would be as nice as she could about it. No snarling, no snapping, just an honest farewell.

This she promised herself as she trudged towards the ladder, anticipating Sharkhead’s order to make ready for battle.

He probably wouldn’t even allow her to fight.

He would confine her below, as if she were a mere passenger, and send her on a longboat to the naval ship for mercy if it looked like the Ghost would lose.

She was almost to the ladder when Jack Davies slapped her on the shoulder. “Congratulations, pirate.”

She blinked in surprise. Then Fearsome Fred, from where he sat oiling his blunderbuss, added, “Perfect aim. Should have known, of course. Ave Rebecca has God on her side.”

It was the nickname that made her smile. Her pirate name, which Liberty Johnson had promised to tattoo onto her wrist, and which these men had bestowed upon her as a token of welcome.

Perhaps Sharkhead still intended to drop her at the Azores, but Fearsome Fred seemed happy to keep her on. Rebecca teased back, “I wouldn’t know God from Adam.”

“ I would thank God we’ve got you on our crew,” Jack Davies said, then winked. “If only I believed in God.”

Rebecca found herself looking around to see a dozen pirates she knew and respected vying for her attention, not because she was a warm body, but because she had earned her place among them.

She considered, with a brief pang, that she could remain on the ship no matter what. She would not have her husband, but she would still be a pirate.

She would still have these men as her family.

Her thoughts—and the men’s teasing—were interrupted by Sharkhead’s gruff call. “Rebecca!”

He said it with no tenderness at all. Which allowed Rebecca to shield herself as she climbed the steps to join him on the quarterdeck.

This would be the moment he ordered her below, and when he did, she would force him to say what he really meant.

She would do it nicely, for he had been good to her, but before they went into battle, she would know exactly how he felt.

He stood with two feet firmly planted, the telescope clutched in his left hand.

There was no emotion on his face, which made the tattooed shark on his neck that much fiercer.

After all this time, Rebecca couldn’t read the silence of his expressions.

She could only feel her heart hammering too loudly in her chest. “Aye, Captain?”

At least he emoted in response to that: a grimace. “That frigate is coming for us fast.”

“Aye.” She didn’t turn toward the horizon. She had never needed to look in order to sense doom on her doorstep. “And now you’re our captain.”

She saw him reel back from the words, though she hadn’t intended them to hurt. She had only meant to get to the point of the conversation: that he was no longer her not-husband.

Her hand landed on his sleeve before she could stop herself. “You’ll get us out of this. I’m sure of it.”

His opposite hand, the one without the telescope, took her fingers and pulled her close.

So close that the crew might think they were embracing.

So close that when his words came out as soft as raindrops, Rebecca could still hear them.

“When I left England, I was a man who thought he knew better than everyone around him. Better than my parents and certainly better than Lord Preston. I paid for a ticket on an East Indiaman, same as the white brother and sister going to Calcutta to make their fortunes and the white missionaries off to save souls in Shanghai. But as soon as we were past Ireland, the bosun ordered me below—not them. It wasn’t even the captain, can you believe that?

Just a bosun, a Lascar himself with a cat-o’-nine-tails that I can still feel on my back.

That was my first lesson: money doesn’t guarantee you anything, not when you look like me. ”

Rebecca watched anger steal over his face, his eyes narrowing and his lips hardening.

“We were somewhere off the coast of Africa, five weeks into the journey, when a pirate ship attacked. The East Indiaman survived, but I followed the pirates onto their ship and begged the captain to take me on.”

She pictured it like her own entrance on the Ghost , the crew watching with interest, waiting for the man in power to decide.

“Even still, I thought I knew everything. If rank doesn’t matter, as I learned from Lord Preston, nor money, as I learned from the East India Company, then what makes a man is strength.

And I decided to be the strongest by learning from the strongest. We were fearsome, we pirates, and we did terrible things with our strength.

I knew they were terrible things, but terrible things had been done to me, so why should I not return the favor? ”

Now his eyes shone with a horrific brightness, stuck on the horizon far beyond her. Despite the unending heat, a chill ran down Rebecca’s spine. She knew what pirates did. She had done it too, now.

She had never imagined this not-husband of hers doing anything terrible . Fighting, yes. Killing in a battle, yes. But shooting cannons into towns? Waking women in their beds? Setting fire to houses whether or not there were still children inside?

She steeled herself not to break away if he confessed to any of that.

“I lived by their code for a year or so. Attack ships, steal their treasure, sell it somewhere on the coast, and do it again. Then we attacked Calliope .” His pause was not for dramatic effect but because his voice seemed to be giving out.

“Off the coast of Brazil. I should have known…What other kind of merchant ship would it be?” He cleared his throat.

“It was a slave ship. That was clear when we boarded. A few of them were armed to help fight us off. We killed them.” His body shrank, withdrawing from her.

“I thought we were going to free them. Or maybe make them pirates. Give them free rein of Calliope and let them sail off to do whatever they wanted.”

In the silence that followed, Rebecca guessed, “Instead, you sold them at the nearest town?”

“But first, we got our pick of the women. Raped them.” His words came fast now, like they might not come out at all if he didn’t rush through them. “Not me. I didn’t—couldn’t—but I was there. On the deck. I saw it. No one tried to hide it.”

At last, his eyes landed on Rebecca. Dark. Hopeless. Condemned.

“I didn’t try to stop it.”

Rebecca could feel the scene as viscerally as if she stood on Calliope that moment.

The humiliation of being naked for months on end, inspected, disregarded, and now, when there should be salvation, being pressed to the hard deck, still shackled, and used by a greedy pirate who smelled and spit and didn’t care if any of it hurt.

But she also felt the scene as Chow, a man standing futilely by the railing, pressing backward and backward and backward as he tried to escape the crime.

She felt the sun burning his skin, the helplessness of having nowhere to look.

The weapons that hung at his side boasted the dried blood of slavers, yet he couldn’t wield them now.

If he did, he would be shot, hanged, or thrown to the sharks, and the women would still be raped.

And so he remained where he was. He let it happen. The moment ended, but it lived on in him, until one day, years later, a captain threatened to take a woman to his cabin, and Martin Chow broke free from his silence and claimed her as his own instead.