Kingston by Starlight Read online

  When I walk quayside and see my reflection in the water I invariably carry in my mind’s eye a picture of my self that stands in sharp contrast to the visage I see before me in real life. This has long been the case, even in the days when I skipped along the banks of the River Lee as a young girl, but, until I left my father’s influence and control, I had not the spirit nor, it must be said, the thought to act on it. There had to be some way for me to escape my flesh and with it my past! Women, it seem’d to me, were prisoners of themselves. I had heard whispers, when I was in Cork, that my skin would do me in, that no dowry would make me attractive to a man of stature. I endured the whispers, suffered the sidelong glances, and ignored the slights, the mournful looks from my own kin. By my faith, I say, my coloring comes from my fair mother and it signifies nothing more than God’s abundant humor and nature’s capacity for infinite variety. Now here, in New Providence, I was finally free from all those who would laugh and smirk and point.

  But I was running low on silverware. There was little work for an honest woman— as a female, I could not join a guild to learn a trade, I would be ridiculed for any job on the dock, and the pay for farm labor was little more than an insult. Shopkeepers laughed me out of their stores; ship captains threatened to whore me out if I returned again. Never before in my life had I actually given thought to what I was going to do with my life. It seemed every line had already been written. Either I would be married, happily or not, to a man of means or a man without, and I would bear children or else I would be barren. And if I was not taken by a man in marriage, then I would live the life of a spinster, caring for the children of others, or, if I was choleric, bitterly shooing them from my property. In any case, my life would be filled with farmwork and housework, with laundry and the teets of cows, with sewing and planting and cooking and skinning fish and making a man happy or miserable or both. Now there were real choices before me, and the prospect filled me not so much with exhilaration as with fright.

  My options were not all good ones, and there were not so many of them. The life of the slammerkin was the main occupation of the women of New Providence. Harlots clustered on street corners, in taverns, and quayside. They sang bawdy songs, and showed their elbows and ankles to strangers on the street. They clawed at patrons who didn’t pay and fought one another over customers who paid well. One thing I took note of: none of them were old, but neither were any of them young. The profession aged newcomers instantly, and it used them up almost as quickly. That was not the life for me. I was out of work, but not out of ideas. If I could not find work as a woman, I would take some other form, at least in appearance, since true change is relegated to myth. Thus outfitted, I would join some trade of the sea. Resolved in this matter, I needed only to put the scheme to the test. My da had his new life. I would have mine.

  * * *

  Looking back on the matter, the first time I dressed as a man I must have looked the fool. The style of privateers, among all the men of the sea, had stood out to me the most because it was so bold and so evocative of things foreign and wild: silk shirts, felt hats, gold chains, silver crosses encrusted with all manner of precious stones. I had never seen the style’s like. So, inspired by that lot, I clad myself in a crimson damask waistcoat (taken off a drunken officer), leather breeches (borrowed from a similarly inebriated sailor), and leather bucketboots (many sizes too big but purchased at a bargain price), all topped off with a purple scarf tied around my head and a red feather stuck behind my ear. My face I disguised as well, cutting my curly red hair above my ears, like a boy’s, and adjusting my countenance and gait, like an actor in the theater, to take on a sterner, more decisive manner.

  New Providence was a perfect breeding ground for privateers and runagates, freebooters and sea-dogs. Nassau Harbor, sheltered by Hog’s Island, was deep enough for smaller ships, but too shallow for warships to wade entirely in, giving the advantage to speedy craft looking to run the edges of the law and society’s rules. Food was plentiful— from the peach-fringed white flesh of conch to local sweetfruits such as dilly and tamarind— and fresh water, too, was available in abundance. The high hills around the port provided ample lookout for any approaching fleets dispatched from London, Havana, or Rotterdam, and the hundreds of neighboring islands, ranging in size from simple knolls rising only a little above the waves to large islands hundreds of miles in length, provided any number of cays and coves in which a ship on the run could take shelter until the attention of any pursuing authorities had moved on to other matters.

  So all the sea scum and desperadoes who could came to New Providence, and many others of similar ill repute followed to cater to them. Taverns and gambling establishments and whorehouses, mostly wattle huts with palmetto fronds for roofs, crowded and leaned and elbowed one another for space around the bay like travelers seeking warmth ’round a fire. Vagrants and piles of garbage lay along the length of the streets and alleyways, often indistinguishable from one another either by form or by smell. There seem’d to be no silence in that place, only a constant cacophony composed of wildly disparate noises— the barking of stray dogs, the clank of swords crossing, the splash of dead bodies deposited in the water, the rude laughter of slammerkin, the patter of merchants, the drinking songs of drunks, the thump of barrels of indigo and rum and sugar being set down in storehouses, and innumerable other varieties of sounds. And yet all this discord served to make a kind of turbulent music, as a thousand braying variations combined to form a single grand theme: a city alive, inexhaustible, defiant.

  The Falcon and the Bull was the first drinking establishment I entered in my new life as a man; it was, I had heard, among the toughest and randiest spots along the wharf, and that was quite a boast. It was a small, scabrous joint, burrowed into Dorchester Street off of Bay Street like a tick that had scratched its way into a scalp. No ladies ever passed through its swinging wooden doors unless the lady in question was ready to offer up her body for whoring, and at a considerable discount. No landsmen entered either, lest they were well armed and well schooled in the art of close combat; men who were not of the sea were considered easy marks, and, once identified, were quickly and continually tested by the ocean-hardened patrons that made up the bulk of the tavern’s clientele. So many men, of such varying character, dress, and countenance, passed through the place each day, I figured that I would hardly be noticed.

  I entered the tavern as smoothly as possible, as if I was a customer of long standing. Luckily, as I slid into a booth in the corner, my face did not betray my heart and stomach. Even as I ordered a mug of coconut water blended with sweet milk and gin, my innards seemed to fill with a hot excitement which, if it had a color, would have been bright red bordering on the white hot of metal when placed in a forge. Nonetheless, I kept my face impassive and my voice calm and low as water without wind.

  The bar was as small and cramped as a coffin. The patrons, and there were many, came in all shapes and sizes and shades— some with skin as dark as well bottoms, others with cheeks as pale as clouds. I heard a variety of languages— Spanish, French, Portuguese, and other tongues that I supposed came from Arab lands. It was very loud, and the stale air sounded and resounded with boisterous oath-taking and cursing and debate over games of dice and the like. In one corner a scuffle had broken out over quoits, and as the participants began to swing at each other with the iron rings and target pins used in such matches, spectators began to take bets on which of the combatants would ultimately lose his life that night as the violence inevitably escalated. As one man struck another in the face, and thus drew blood, loud laughter erupted, and a chant rose up for the dispute to be settled with blades, since, in order to resolve an argument in an entertaining manner, gunplay was usually over too quickly and fisticuffs, in general, took too long.

  I was readying my own wager, preparing to either toss a ring or pick a survivor, when a harlot, still breathless from servicing a band of British midshipmen lately put into port, came over to my booth. Acting quickly, she
ordered herself a mug of Kalik, the light wheaty local brew, indicating to the barkeep that I would settle her bill. Before I could mount an effective protest, she was in my lap, her hands rubbing my neck, her lips pressed roughly against mine. Then she pulled back.

  “Your Captain Johnson has not offer’d his salute,” said the harlot.

  “I—”

  “Shhh. It matters not. Moors, Chinamen, Jews, Turks— if they sail in the company of privateers, they are welcome in the harbor of my bed. Mark you my credo— in the dark, it matters not who is atop the masthead. I earn my shillings.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Why are we still talking?” the harlot asked, drawing back slightly. “Is there some other secret you hold? Do you make your bed with Woodes Rogers’ men?”

  I quickly realized that, given this woman’s obvious breadth of experience, any show of faintheartedness and lack of passion on my part would betray my gender not only to the harlot, but to the devil’s company that comprised the bar’s patronage. So I kissed the harlot’s rouge-smeared lips with as much passion as I could muster for a creature of my own sex, and, after she whispered into my ear her carnal rates, I used the monetary revelation, tho’ her rates were more than reasonable, as an excuse to spill her from my lap, in as rough a manner as to seem manly but not so viciously as to undermine my natural empathy for a woman making her way in this world. Then I quietly and hastily made my exit. I had dipped my toe in the waters.

  A smile played on my lips as I walked down Bay Street, past the ships rocking in the shadows of the harbor, past shirtless louts relieving themselves in spattering streams on the prone forms of other shirtless louts who had fallen down, past the dark whispering promises of West Street and Queen Street, past the Iron Goat, the Blue Mermaid, and the Five Corners Drinking Hole, all the way back to my small flat on Culmer in the cheap section of the bad side of town. There is this enigmatic space between who we are and who we must be. All our lives we seek to cross it, to bridge it, to follow, apostolic, the image we see in our soul’s mirror. A thousand daily distractions and derelictions keep us from our goal, from the great work, from the best self, but, in the end, we are all on a journey toward that secret soul or away from it. It stands waiting, indigenous, on the continent of our hopes. And like those explorers who first discover’d the Indies and the Orient and other far-flung places besides, I, too, had set a bold booted foot on a new land— in me.

  chapter 8.

  Things of value in this life are ofttimes captured by the strangest nets. There is a nigrescent substance called ambergris that washes up on tropic beaches, in particular the sands of the islands of the Bahamas. I have seen it in the mornings, quivering in piles on the surf, as if dozens of ill-disciplined children had upended bowls of black pudding. By touch, it is soft and gelatinous; by origin, it is said to issue from the intestines of those great sperm whales that navigate the blue fathoms. It would seem no more than waste, flotsam and jetsam to be paid no more mind than the poisonwood tree branches, empty crab shells, and speckled bodies of dead angelfish that similarly litter the white sands. But ambergris has proved to be a rare and valuable fixative for perfumery, as an ingredient that locks in a given fragrance, preventing sweet odors from escaping and evaporating into the surrounding air. Ambergris, which hardens into a grayish brittle substance of a pleasing redolence, can fetch up to four pounds an ounce in the salons of Paris and London, no small sum.

  The taverns of New Providence were my ambergris. Their dirtiness, their fighting spirit, kept me in corporal form, and prevented me from vanishing into the breeze. Tho’ hard-pressed for funds, I put aside my active search for employment for a time, feeling it best to practice my ruse among those best qualified to see through it. One establishment in particular grew to become my most familiar haunt: the Roach and Salamander. There was no sign above the door of the old R. & S., the patrons of the tavern having pilfered the marker with such persistent regularity that the owner long ago despaired of raising a nameplate ever again. Because of this, the tavern’s location, indeed its very existence, was very much a secret among the lower ranks of the folk of New Providence. It was a thing spoken about softly in the ear, with the lips cupped with one hand, much as one would relay the location of a treasure key or the family shame of some close relation. Also, because the Roach and Salamander had no marker, the tavern tended to move from spot to spot, Union Street one month, Augusta Street the next, like some recurring rash or boil that no physician can salve or lance.

  So I had taken to raising a pewter cup with regularity at the Roach and Salamander, having fallen into an acquaintance with the barkeep, a short, stout man named Punch whose face resembled a closed fist, but whose jocular manner belied his appearance. I was also affable with a number of the serving maids, who all doubled as harlots and slammerkin, and from whom, on occasion, I bought kisses at a shilling a piece in order to maintain my image of virility and manliness. I am of a sufficient height and with broad enough shoulders, that my secret was never guessed. I felt more at home than I ever had in Cork or the Carolinas. Whenever the tavern would open for business, new location or no, I would take my same spot at the leftmost portion of the bar, my back against the wall to better guard my health and fortunes against the establishment’s more colorful and dangerous clientele. And so the Roach beckoned.

  The latest location for the tavern was as foul and dissolute as any of its former incarnations. It was currently inhabiting a shack on Charlotte Street directly across from the cemetery. A plank of wormy wood, salvaged from a recent shipwreck, was laid out to form a splintery bar counter; two granite tombstones stolen from the cemetery supported it. I recognized the name on one of the stones as that of a former patron of the bar at a previous location. I took my customary spot on the left, my back ’gainst the wall, and ordered my usual, a pewter cup full of Kalik, which I sipped slowly, as was my custom, to keep my wits about me throughout the evening.

  * * *

  “By Pluto’s damn’d lake, this I swear— you’re nobody ’til somebody kills you!”

  I heard his voice before I saw him. His manner of speaking was not louder or more booming than that of other men, but it carried with it an air of command. With such a throat, and with such a tongue, must fair Antony have deliver’d, in tribute, his funeral oration for murder’d Caesar! Once heard, I could only but listen to this man, and him alone. Even his laughter was direct and to the point, utterly lacking in frivolity. The sound of his voice separated itself, and made itself known, from the other voices in the air and from all the other sounds, the belches and the guffaws, the clattering of pewter and the stomping of boots. It rose above them, the sun ascending from the sea in the morn.

  He was sitting on a stool at the dead center of the bar counter and all eyes were on him. He was a lodestone pulling every compass needle. He was turned not toward the barkeep, but out toward the general area of the bar, addressing no one in particular but everyone in general as if he were engaged in intimate dialogue with every soul in the bar. He cut quite a rakish figure, even among rakes. He was dress’d crown to toe in black: black scarf tied around his head, black coat with black buttons ’round his body, black leather breeches, and square-toed black boots (his footwear was of particular note, for his boots were polished as bright as gemstones). His chest, which was broad, was crisscrossed with bandoliers, each of which held a brace of pistols. Around his waist he wore a wide leather belt, also black, and tucked into it were two long, naked dirks and a sheathed cutlass the length of an arm. In his right hand he held a pewter mug filled to the brim with some dark brown brew; in his left hand he twirled in his fingers a small black die with blood red markings.

  I had long considered myself a sort of connoisseur of men, and yet, I had never seen this one’s like in all my studies. I had once seen a panther, brought to Cork as part of some traveling carny. This man reminded me of that creature in his sleekness, his equipoise of viciousness and serenity, of power held in reserve. One longed t
o stroke his side but feared it might cost a limb. This man before me, like that jungle cat, was neither too heavily muscled nor too lightly so. His visage, also, was arresting: he was not what one would describe as pretty or handsome, but rather he was in possession of a rough, dramatic grandeur, like the jagged face of a cliff. He boasted a strong chin, as solid as if he had been hewed from rock, or the heavy wood of lignum vitae. High square cheeks hung over the lower half of his face like balconies. His lips were full, his nose prominent but broken and shifted to the left, his eyes two onyx stones, deep set and penetrating, the night staring back at you. His curly black locks tumbled out of his scarf at the back as if his hair was an autonomous thing, too vibrant to be contain’d by mere fabric. In manly form, he was akin to Apollo or Adonis, save for two things. The first was that he was shorter in stature than one might presume upon first hearing him speak— his voice seem’d to issue from the throat of a taller man. The other unexpected detail was this: on his jaw was a port-wine stain, the size of an infant’s palm, the color of a congealing pool of blood. I knew who this was. The spot gave birth to his nickname, which I had heard in talk throughout the town these many weeks and months: this was Calico Jack Rackam. His stratagems in things pyratical and amorous were known to be identical: no time wasted, straight up alongside, every gun brought to bear, the prize boarded quickly.