April 20, 17--: Though she does not appear to have slept the previous night or perhaps for several nights, the prisoner is alert enough. She bends her head with its golden tangle of hair and speaks more softly than is her wont, placing her hand often and absently over the waxing curve of her belly; whether in sentiment or as her talisman against the waiting noose one would be hard-pressed to determine.
II. Inconstancy
William Turner? Aye, I loved him. Will was my shore, my rock, my harbor. But Jack was my lodestone, my horizon, and I was a compass needle spinning, spinning, until, dizzy, I came to rest in him. Even before I knew him well enough to love him, from the first, he drew me from the shore and out onto his wild sea; and I followed, pulled by a persistent, restless knot of longing beneath my breastbone, here, like a bird flying north by the stars of Spring, not knowing whither she goes nor why.
You will fault me for leaving my fiancé, for faithlessness and cruelty. To which I answer: pirate. But beyond that answer, which should serve well enough but does not, it seems, satisfy you, I submit to you this question in its stead: would it have been fair to Will, who loved me with his whole being and deserved no less than the same in return, to live his life with a woman who could ever love him only with half her heart, while the rest of her strained and yearned and broke for want of freedom?
Would it have been fair to me?
But perhaps that last matters not to you, a man loyal to God and to the Crown, who regards me with such grave disapproval and regret, as if I were but a child who has lost her way.
I have not been a child for many years, and I have not lost anything; I found my way and follow it still. I tell you now, I have no regrets. Not now, nor ever; except for being fool enough to be caught by you and yours.