He turned to the jury. ‘I did not think it needful to burden the court with details,’ he said quietly. ‘It is true that I fought with Major Penner, who has already been mentioned to you as commanding the sloop, and that I killed him. True also that I provoked the quarrel on purpose to kill him. But that I murdered him I most emphatically deny. I regarded him as outlawed, and executed him because he was a clever, capable rogue who would certainly have undone my plans had he been allowed to live. And that I was given assistance by anyone knowing me to be in the King’s service I also deny.’
‘D’ye say she didn’t abet you to put the quarrel on Penner?’ demanded Rackham, pointing to Anne Bonney. He realised he might be making her case worse instead of better, but it was too late to stop now.
Kinsman considered the question. ‘That she helped me I do not deny. But that she knew me for what I was – an agent of His Majesty – is not true. She aided me for her own ends.’
‘Because she was your lover?’
‘Exactly,’ said Kinsman, his face as emotionless as ever.
Here was more sensation than the spectators had ever dared to hope for. It took repeated commands by the sergeant-at-arms to still the chatter and when they were quiet at last the judge put a question to Kinsman.
‘You slew the pirate Penner because you feared his ability to sway the other rascals? You believe they might have avoided ultimate capture had he remained to command them?’
‘Yes, my lord. Although he did not command in fact he had influence enough with them.’
His lordship nodded and up bounced Mr Mitchum to assure the jury that no blame could be attached to Captain Kinsman for the death of Major Penner, since he had merely forestalled the hangman, as the prosecution would show. Furthermore, it was evident from the witness’s testimony that the fact that the woman Bonney had been instrumental in bringing about Major Penner’s death could not be argued in her defence, since she had acted without intent to assist the Crown. Rather, Mr Mitchum submitted, it showed the type of woman she was – one who would not scruple to send a man to his death at her lover’s prompting.
Approval showed on the faces of the jury as Mr Mitchum, with little regard for the rules of procedure, drew a brief and unsavoury picture of the female accused’s morals and behaviour. Thereafter he summoned his next witness, Captain Bankier, and Rackham saw again the dull, heavy features which he had seen first on the deck of the Star – God, it seemed an eternity ago.
If the spectators hoped for sensational details from this witness, they were disappointed. Bankier gave his evidence without conviction, returning the briefest possible replies to the prosecution’s questions and occasionally quoting in a monotonous drone from a sheaf of notes. His testimony served the prosecution’s turn of damning Penner as the leader of the boarders, and of blackening the case against Rackham and Bull, but he was not an enthusiastic witness and to the onlookers he was merely tiresome.
The last prosecution witness was an officer from the King’s ship which had sunk the Kingston. His evidence was short, consisting of an affirmation that the pirates had shown resistance and had attempted to escape. Mr Mitchum dismissed him without comment, and the accused were then invited to speak or to call what witnesses there might be to their defence. Since they had been given no opportunity to summon such witnesses it was an empty invitation, but at least they had the opportunity to speak for themselves and several were ready to avail themselves of it.
Rackham was not among them. He knew there was nothing he could say that would make his position any better; his plea of not guilty had been a formality and he was not going into the witness box to be baited by Mr Mitchum for the sport of the gallery.
With contempt he watched his companions one after another take the oath and submit themselves to the prosecutor’s practised inquisition. Skilfully and mercilessly he brushed aside their various defences and exposed their guilt. For the entertainment of the public he played with the prisoners, weaving them round with a web of words or leading them on with series of apparently harmless questions until they were entrapped by their own answers. For Mr Mitchum it was easy sport; not a soul in the court-room but knew that these men were condemned already, and could not help but reveal themselves guilty wherever the prosecutor’s cross-examination touched. It was all so simple that a child could have deputised for Mr Mitchum without jeopardising the Crown case, and indeed his own conduct verged occasionally on the juvenile.
There was his examination of the simpleton Malloy, which provoked much amusement. Malloy had conceived the amazing plea that he had been forced to the business by Rackham and Bull, who, he alleged, had threatened him in New Providence with instant death if he did not fall in with their schemes.
Asked if he had first been threatened before the attack on Bonney’s house Malloy, after some thought, supposed that it was earlier that evening.
‘How did they threaten you?’ was Mr Mitchum’s solemn inquiry.
Malloy frowned. ‘Well, Johnny said ‘e would pistol me if I didn’t do as I was bid, an’ Davie swore to knife me. I knew they was ready for anythin’, ‘cos they’re desperate lads both.’
‘Did they threaten you with a pistol, then?’
‘Oh yes, yer honour.’
‘They held it to your head, perhaps?’ Mr Mitchum was almost genial.
‘‘Deed they did, sir. Calico claps it to me ‘ead an’ “Do as I tell ye, ye lousy little rat, or I’ll burn yer brains,” says ‘e. Powerful fierce, ‘e was’, Malloy added eagerly.
Mr Mitchum shook his head in mock dismay. ‘And doubtless he held it to your head all evening, while you were breaking into Master Bonney’s house and looting and burning it and taking the brig Kingston as well. Was he not fatigued by it?’
The ripple of laughter in the gallery rather than the question told Malloy he was being mocked. He saw the grins on the faces of the jury and the ponderous scorn of his questioner and looked about him helplessly. He was a pathetic figure, with his wispy white hair and bony manacled hands twisting together as he turned his head this way and that like a bewildered animal, and it was difficult to imagine him as the bloody pirate Mr Mitchum had painted him.
‘I dunno, sir,’ he said at last, thereby causing a fresh outburst of merriment.
Rackham found it a revolting spectacle. He bore no resentment to Malloy for the defence he had advanced – after all there was some truth in it, for Malloy was the kind of hopeless idiot who could never make a decision for himself. His hatred was all for the paunchy inquisitor, the expectant scoffers in the gallery, and the bored, impassive judge, who sat unmoved with lowered lids, never stirring a finger to stop the torment of the poor lunatic in the witness box.
At last it was over. All but Rackham, Carty, Ben, and Anne Bonney had spoken on their own behalf and had been torn to shreds by Mr Mitchum, who now prepared to address the jury. He was checked at the outset, however, by his lordship, who indicated that he wished to question the accused further.
‘It is not for me to counsel or instruct you,’ he told them, ‘but I feel myself bound to urge those of you who have not spoken to your defence to do so now while there is yet time, for unless you can make some answer the jury will have little choice but to convict you. That is more than I have a right to say, but my conscience forces me to deal with you frankly.’
He seemed almost friendly, with his youthful face and those clear eyes to which their very prominence lent a suggestion of ingenuousness. Seeing them still silent he went on:
‘I shall call you in turn, and you shall answer or no as you wish. John Rackham?’ He paused and the court waited breathlessly. ‘Patrick Carty? Benjamin Thorne?’ His lordship looked up after each name and waited, but none of the men made any reply.
‘Anne Bonney?’ His lordship’s voice cut sharply across the hush. For a few seconds he paused, and then added: ‘Come, mistress, have you nothing to say?’ There was a trace of irritation in his voice that made Mr Mitchum look up in wonder. ‘Have you thou
ght of the position in which you stand?’ the judge demanded.
He was looking directly at her, and his expression seemed to command an answer. She obliged him.
‘The position I stand in now concerns me less than the position I’ll be standing in a few hours hence.’
From a man her reply would have won a murmur of approving laughter, from a woman it shocked them, and his lordship no less than the rest.
‘This is not the time for lightness,’ he admonished her. ‘Remember the fate which will be yours if you are found guilty, as you must surely be unless you defend yourself. Again I urge you to think carefully before it is too late.’
She looked at him curiously, a little puzzled at his insistence. Her perplexity was not shared by the rest of the court, except perhaps the clerk, Mr Prentice, who was a bachelor and a misogynist.
Mr Mitchum, who was neither, understood his lordship very well. He noted with satisfaction that the men and women in the public gallery also appreciated the situation, and were watching with ill-concealed amusement.
‘Come now,’ his lordship encouraged, ‘will you not testify?’ His big grey eyes were almost pleading, and Anne Bonney felt again a surge of hope. His lordship was obviously human, and with humanity Mistress Bonney knew how to deal. She had already one card prepared to play at the last; with the judge’s sympathy she could be sure that it would take the vital trick.
‘What is there to say?’ She made a little pout. ‘Your lordship has heard.’
And your lordship has seen and the clever bitch knows it and there’s an end, thought Mr Mitchum.
‘Yes, but what have we heard?’ His lordship was grave. ‘Are we to understand that you have no answer to all this.’
She shook her head. ‘I know little of courts, my lord. If it was as they say, then—’ she shrugged ‘—I can only cast myself on your lordship’s mercy.’
Mr Mitchum coughed drily, but his lordship seemed not to hear. He said nothing, but sat back and motioned to Mr Mitchum to commence his address to the jury. But he no longer appeared to doze in his high-backed chair; his eyes remained wide and thoughtful, straying round the court and returning always to the dock and Anne Bonney.
The human side of Mr Mitchum could be amused at him, the professional side was a little angry. Everyone knew Bernard was susceptible, but he seemed to be pushing matters too far when he paraded his weakness in court over a red-haired slut with a moist mouth and wanton eyes. However, that was not Mr Mitchum’s concern; if his lordship wanted to play the fool let him do so by all means. Briskly then Mr Mitchum concluded the case for the Crown and sat down to watch with interest how his lordship would proceed to his summing-up.
He confessed later that he half-expected his lordship to plead with the jury on Mistress Bonney’s behalf. It would not have surprised him, for he knew his lordship too well for a spoiled darling of fortune to suppose that he would permit any scruples of justice to stand between himself and anything he coveted. However, no such appeal was made. His lordship’s address was as wholehearted a condemenation of the accused as the most fervid prosecutor could have wished; and presently the twelve good men, filled with honest zeal and the desire to show it, returned a verdict of guilty on all the accused without leaving the box.
Then, with the chaplain standing like a spectre at his side, the judge delivered the savage sentence demanded by law for those convicted of piracy on the high seas, his voice ringing hard and level above the whimpering of the boy Dobbins, who was crouching with his head on the edge of the dock between the pikes. The others, motionless, with their eyes on the judge, heard him order that they should be taken back to prison and thereafter half-hanged, disembowelled and dismembered, and their entrails burned before their faces.
Malloy put up his hand to his mouth to conceal its shaking; Carty’s lean face remained unmoved but for the working of his jaw muscles; Bull gripped the edge of the dock while his smouldering eyes stared at the judge; Ben listened with quiet attention. Rackham was conscious of no emotional change; to him the sentence was nothing but a formality; he had been expecting it since the moment when Malloy’s shout had brought him leaping from his resting-place on the deck and he had seen the King’s colours at the truck of the great ship standing in towards them.
‘And may the Lord have mercy on your souls,’ concluded his lordship, to which the chaplain pronounced amen.
The stillness which had accompanied the reading of the sentence was broken by a gentle sigh from the gallery. It was a significant sound, charged with horror as the men and women sitting there in their security mentally pictured the fate of the prisoners. But there was satisfaction blended with the horror, too; grim pleasure on the swarthy face of the merchant who sat in the front of the gallery and happy interest in the expression of the elderly rake beside him. The rake’s young blonde companion was pale but there was a sparkle in her eyes as she watched eagerly the reactions of the men in the dock.
Rackham was surprised that he could watch them now without rancour; his hatred had all vanished. It was a petty, tiny thing compared with the monstrous, overpowering horror of death. There was no room in his mind for anything beyond that, and these glittering butterflies in the gallery were unimportant specks of light in a dream-world which was already slipping away behind him. Now all that mattered was the rope, the knife, and the body of John Rackham, and he knew fear as he had never known it before.
From a long way off he was aware of Anne Bonney’s voice speaking, and the quiet that immediately descended as the court gave its attention. She was pleading her belly, as the saying was; it was the usual appeal of women sentenced to death to claim pregnancy since they could not be hanged until their child was born.
The judge sat forward with as much eagerness as his exalted position permitted, and Mr Mitchum rose to provide an abrupt check to his excitement.
‘This can be verified by examination by a physician and midwife,’ he said, and Chief Justice Bernard looked glum. He appeared to brighten, however, as the prosecutor went on to suggest that his lordship should give instructions to the effect that such an examination be made. Mr Mitchum did not doubt that the report would confirm the prisoner’s claim, but he was wise enough not to say so.
After all, they had had a most satisfactory trial and would presently have an equally satisfactory execution. Idly, Mr Mitchum looked round from his seat at the men in the dock. He could view them almost benevolently now, as having provided him with an ideal case: interesting, but not arduous. As the court rose for his lordship’s exit – still a trifle unsteady – Mr Mitchum continued to study the prisoners, noting each man’s expression as he was led from the dock. They certainly looked suitably condemned and hang-dog, all except the Bonney woman, of course. He saw her exchange a glance with Rackham; and Rackham’s head nodded, as though in approval, and she smiled a curious, crooked smile in return. Then she was led away under separate guard, and the pirates were filing out between their sentries.
Mr Mitchum sighed and began to assemble his papers.
18. KATE SAMPSON
While the prisoners were being taken back to Port Royal a ship was rounding Portland Point and standing into the harbour. It bore, among others, the Governor of the Bahamas, his betrothed, and his personal secretary, Master Tobias Dickey.
It was an irony that Woodes Rogers should have been pointing out to Mistress Kate Sampson the ponderous splendour of Fort Charles as they cruised past, at the very moment that Rackham, a condemned man, was being led back to his cell. For his presence there had nothing to do with them who were on their way to England to be married, and were touching at Jamaica only so that they might inspect the plantation which old Master Sampson, whose possessions extended beyond New Providence, had promised as a wedding gift.
They were not to know of the capture of the Kingston pirates, and Woodes Rogers would hardly have troubled about it if he had. At that moment he had no thought for anything except the marvel that this wonderful woman at his side, twenty-o
dd years his junior and incredibly lovely, was soon to be his wife and was apparently well content with the prospect. This was a source of wonder to a man whose one permanent miscalculation was his underestimation of his own attraction.
Their courtship had been entirely formal. Rogers, after his early months in New Providence, had realised that for the first time in his life he was leading a fairly settled existence: it had occurred to him that in his new-found security and affluence he required a wife, and he had looked about to see what New Providence had to offer. It was not a promising field, but it had contained Kate Sampson. The Governor had been interested, then attracted, and finally enslaved. He knew, of course, that she had once been betrothed to Rackham, but had dismissed the matter as of small importance. New Providence had been an unruly place before his arrival: its people had perforce mingled with the pirates who used it as a stronghold, and Kate had been a mere seventeen at the time – an age at which she would naturally be susceptible to the glamour attaching to the young swashbuckler who had become famous among the islands as Calico Jack.
So the Governor’s wooing had progressed and in course of time had been rewarded with Kate’s acceptance and her father’s approval. Rogers had no illusion that his own passion for her was returned in equal measure, but he had not expected it to be and was prepared to settle for simple duty and wifely devotion. It did not occur to him that he might fascinate a girl of nineteen.
And he was satisfied until the night that Rackham, like a ghost from Mistress Sampson’s past, had come again to Providence. That had been a bad time for the Governor’s peace of mind, but fortunately Kate had been the reverse of enthusiastic at her former lover’s reappearance, and fate and the Bonney woman had combined eventually to send Master Rackham a-pirating again and so out of Mistress Sampson’s life for the second and – Rogers fervently hoped – last time.