The Blackbirder

Chapter 16

By the time he set foot on the deck again, Marlowe knew that he just did not care anymore.

His apathy was not directed toward King James. He still cared very much about him, still wished very much that he did not have to kill the man.

It was privateering, pirating, all these fine points of Admiralty law. He was too tired of the whole issue to give one damn more. “Sod them all, with their treaties and their laws and letters of marque…,” he muttered.

He wondered at his own failings, his inability to hold the moral high ground for long, once he had taken it. What would Bickerstaff think, that he might so easily slip back into the amorality of the Brethren of the Coast? But his was a fatalism born of long years at sea, long years among the pirates, those most fatalistic of creatures, who cared about no man’s life. Not their own, not that of anyone else.

“Well, set a thief to catch a thief,” he said to himself, then aloud: “I reckon I’m the one to go after that pirate James. Mr. Bickerstaff, pray, sir, a word?” Marlowe waved him aft, led him back to the taffrail, out of earshot of the helmsman or any of the others forward. Bickerstaff would still care. It was not fair that he should be led blind into this thing.

“So, Francis, it is quite a situation we find ourselves in. The far ship is some merchantman; English, Spanish, French, I know not. The nearer ship is King James and his horde.”

He let those words sink in, waited while Bickerstaff stared forward, looking at nothing, thinking the situation over.

“Will you attack King James?”

“I will not. We will fight, if James attacks us, but I do not believe he will. No, the governor’s wishes aside, I fear I cannot let another prize go by. The men will not stand for it. And it will do no one any good if this lot turns pirate.”

“Indeed, they are a most piratical bunch, upon my word. And that Griffin is the worst of them. He does more damage to the crew than all the rich prizes we might ignore.”

“Yes, Griffin, well, we shall see about him. In any event, we’ll let James sail off, for now, and if this other is a legal prize, then we are for them.”

“The thought of riches must ease your pain somewhat.”

“Yes. Yes, it does.” Marlowe looked aloft at the fine billows of canvas against blue sky, then back at their long wake, foaming white under the counter and streaming off behind in a long, straight line.

Ah, how he loved the sea! How unfair it seemed that the perfect simplicity of this life, the steady rhythm of the watches, those basic considerations of conforming canvas to weather, the needs of the ship and her crew, should be polluted by such worries and considerations. Legalities and duplicity and petty negotiating were things for buildings on shore, not ships at sea. But like Bickerstaff he was not so naive as to think that being afloat made him immune to such intrigue.

He pulled his eyes from the wake, looked at his friend again. “There is one other thing of which you should be aware. I do not, in fact, have a letter of marque and reprisal.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bickerstaff said, after the merest of hesitations.

“I do not really have a letter of marque. Nicholson would not give me one until I had brought in King James. I lied to the men about it, and to you as well.”

Bickerstaff said nothing. He looked away, then looked back at Marlowe. “That is why you let that other ship go? There was some high talk aboard that she was a legal prize.”

“That’s right. But I cannot do that again, and I certainly cannot tell the men that they have been deceived.”

“Good Lord, Thomas! But if you take yon ship, then it is piracy, no more.”

“Piracy, indeed. Funny how I keep falling into it. The sweet trade attracts some men like a lodestone. Men of a certain mettle, I suppose.” He hoped Bickerstaff would note the cleverness of that remark-mettle, metal-but Bickerstaff just sighed, looked outboard, shook his head.

“Francis, I told you this because I would never have you unwittingly do something you think immoral. The men forward, they don’t give a damn and frankly neither do I any longer, but I would not have you join in this fight in ignorance.”

“Well, Thomas, it’s a damned thing, ain’t it? Will you tell these men the reason I am not willing to fight, that you lied about the letter of marque, or just let them assume I am a coward?”

Marlowe nodded. It was a damned thing. “You know, Francis, the sea is a dangerous place. Questions of right and wrong become… muddied. I fail to understand why you go to sea with me, me and all my moral failings. Why not stay home, at Marlowe House, with your books and your farming?”

“I do not know, Thomas, and I do not like to think on my reasons.”

The two men were silent for some time, and then Bickerstaff said, “In faith, for all my high morals, I do believe I envy you and your pragmatic view. There is a certain excitement that the scholarly life lacks, and I fear that, like strong drink, when one gets a taste of it, it is hard to put it aside.” He considered his words and then added, “The drinking simile is a good one, for I daresay that adventure such as yours is no more healthful or acceptable to society than being a wretched drunk.”

“Give me time, Francis, and I may be that too.”

“I would have thought that likely, but for Elizabeth, who is a better person than either of us, and who I trust will keep you sober and sane. And since by your admission we do all of this in order that she can enjoy her place in society, I suppose we can say that it is all justified.”

“Good for you! You see, just as you taught me to read and write, so I have taught you to justify any misdeeds you wish to undertake.”

“Yes, with the difference being that you can make yourself believe that nonsense, and I cannot.”

They left off their discussion of the morality of what they were doing, which was fine with Marlowe, because he had already decided on his course of action and did not need his decision cluttered with such considerations.

And Bickerstaff, though he made it clear that he thought Marlowe was reprehensible for what he had done, nonetheless armed himself with pistols and sword and took his place in the waist, supervising the forward section of guns and backing Marlowe up in the boarding party.

Dinner, and an extra dram of rum, and the men were in a fine fighting spirit. They stood by their guns and leered at one another and worked themselves up to a high pitch as the Elizabeth Galley closed with the two ships distant.

King James maintained his heading longer than Marlowe would have thought likely. There was no doubt he would recognize the Elizabeth Galley. Even when she was hull down he would probably know her. No man alive, save for Marlowe, knew that ship as well as James.

They were within cannon shot of the former French merchantman and still James kept on the other ship’s heels. Marlowe ordered the men at the bow chasers to give them a peppering, which they did, with great delight, and that at last convinced the black pirates that this was not their fight. They wore around, awkwardly, slowly, and headed off east with the wind over their beam.

The other ship was on a more northerly course and now she turned her transom to the Elizabeth Galley and made a race out of it, but it was a race she had no hope of winning, or even prolonging for very long.

There was half a mile of water between them when Spanish colors broke out at her masthead.

“Well, thank God for that, at least,” Marlowe muttered to himself. A Don, a legal prize for an English privateer. For the Elizabeth Galley she was close enough.

“Let us have Spanish colors as well,” Marlowe ordered the seaman standing by the flag locker, halyard in hand, and a moment later the Elizabeth Galley was showing the same bunting as her victim. But the real Spaniard was not fooled and did not alter course or take in an inch of canvas.

An hour of hard driving and they were looming up beside her, and there was Griffin on the foredeck, shouting curses and playing the big man, the fearsome pirate, rattling his saber at this pathetic merchantman.

“Here, Griffin, lay aft!” Marlowe shouted, and with a suspicious look Griffin left off his bravado and ambled back to the quarterdeck.

“Now, Griffin, let us plunge into battle together, eh?” Marlowe said, filled with bonhomie. “Comrades in arms? We shall board her side by side!”

“Aye, Captain…” was all that Griffin got out. He looked at Marlowe sideways, trying to puzzle out what he was about, suspicious, but there was nothing for it. He could hardly decline, so he took a position on the quarterdeck behind Marlowe and with the others he waited.

Stick close to me, you bastard, thought Marlowe, and I shall plunge a sword right through you, when things get hot.

They did not wait long. Ten minutes, and the Elizabeth Galley’s spritsail topmast was up with the Spaniard’s stern and overhauling her. The two ships were charging ahead on parallel tracks, like two horses in a race, and separated by a strip of water one hundred feet wide.

The aftermost gun of the Spaniard’s broadside shot off, the ball striking the Elizabeth Galley amidships with a great crash but doing nothing in the way of serious damage.

“Wait for it!” Marlowe shouted to the men hunched over the guns. The atmosphere was explosive, as if the men would blow apart from the internal pressure if they did not have at the Dons that instant. “We’ll give her a full broadside and then board her in the smoke!”

Marlowe looked back at the helmsman, gestured toward the Spaniard, and the tiller was pushed over, the bow inclining toward their victim.

Someone on the foredeck began to pound a belaying pin against the rail, slowly, rhythmically and the pounding was taken up fore and aft. And then another began to chant, “Death, death, death…,” and that built as well, built in a crazy, terrifying, hypnotic rhythm that sent a chill down Marlowe’s spine, though he had heard the like before, though they were his own men chanting.

We are pirates now, he thought, pirates through and through.

He remembered the false colors flying at the masthead. He could not go into a fight under false colors; that was too much, even for him.

The sailor who had run them aloft was fully entranced with the chanting, and the enemy, growing closer, the gunfire, gun after gun blasting into the Elizabeth Galley from the Don’s well-aimed broadside, so Marlowe spun the halyard off the pin himself and let the flag fall to the deck in a big, brightly embroidered pile.

Now, now, now. “In the waist, stand ready…!” So close now, the chanting breaking down into screams, clashing of steel, but the Spaniards ready for them, not giving up, lining the side with weapons drawn, forty, fifty men perhaps.

“Fire!”

The Elizabeth Galley’s broadside went off as if it were one great gun, and the entire ship rocked away from the blast and the iron flew across the few yards of water and tore up the Spaniards’ ship, smashing ornate carvings and strakes and wales, deadeyes, and channels in one great devastating stroke.

Marlowe jerked one of his four pistols from his crossbelt, held it in his left hand, grabbed Griffin by the collar, and pulled him around until they were face-to-face.

“Ready, Griffin?” He leered at the man, wanted him to know that the time of reckoning was at hand. Saw the fear in Griffin’s eyes.

And then they staggered together as the Elizabeth Galley smashed bowfirst into the Spaniard and there was the screaming and the wave of men over the bow and the pop-pop of small arms, the shriek of the first wounded and killed, just like so many times before, and Marlowe wondered that such horror could be so familiar.

Then the stern swung in, ground against the Spaniard, which was higher than the Galley. Marlowe let Griffin go, pointed to the quarterdeck rail, ten feet above their heads where they stood on the Galley’s quarterdeck.

“Let’s go! Go!” Marlowe shouted, leapt up onto the quarterdeck rail, then stepped onto the Spaniard’s mizzen channel and into the mizzen shrouds, up over the level of the rail and over the quarterdeck.

The officers were there, and several of the crew and passengers, all armed, determined to defend their ship or die in the process. Marlowe had his pistol aimed at the captain’s chest, had the lock pulled back before the captain even saw this new threat. He shouted, twisted, aimed his own pistol. Both went off and both missed.

Marlowe swung around inboard of the shrouds and dropped to the deck and pulled another pistol with his left hand, his big straight-blade sword with his right. Felt a pistol ball whiz by his ear, turned a sword aside, thrust, felt the tip bite.

He was alone, and for a second he wondered if he had been abandoned, if Griffin had done for him, but here came more of the Elizabeth Galleys, up the shrouds and down onto the Spaniard’s quarterdeck, and soon the space was crowded with fighting men.

Griffin was the last of them, the craven bastard, coming sheepishly up the shrouds, shouting like he was in the thick of it, looking around for a safe place to jump. Marlowe stepped out of the melee, took two steps over to the mizzen shrouds, grabbed Griffin by the coat, and pulled him to the deck.

Griffin’s knees seemed to buckle under him and Marlowe pulled him to his feet, propelled him forward, shouted, “Get in there, you cowardly bastard!”

Time for you to die.

One of the passengers came at Griffin, and Griffin raised his sword and fended off the attack, pulled a pistol from his belt, and in his panic discharged it into the deck before he could even bring it horizontal.

Marlowe pulled pistol number three from his cross belt and aimed it at the man fighting Griffin, then swung his arm right three inches until the muzzle pointed right at the back of Griffin’s head. He began to squeeze the trigger and then the Spaniard knocked Griffin’s sword aside and Griffin stumbled and the Spaniard skewered him in a shrieking, bloody final thrust.

Griffin arched back, eyes wide, his scream cut off by the blood bubbling from his mouth. Marlowe adjusted his aim again, saw the Spaniard over the muzzle, pulled the trigger.

The ball ripped through Griffin’s cheek and struck the Spaniard in the chest, tossing him back. He let go of the sword and Griffin fell squirming at Marlowe’s feet and then was still.

Marlowe looked at the Spaniard, dead before he hit the deck. Thank you, sir, he thought, you saved me from having to be a murderer as well as a pirate this day.

And then he was back in the fight, his sword knocking aside whatever defense was presented, but the fight had all but ended even as Griffin was screaming his life away. Swords and pistols were thrown aside, hands raised over heads, calls for quarter in Spanish.

“That’s enough! That’s enough! Give quarter, there!” Marlowe shouted. He raced to the quarterdeck rail, shouted it down into the waist, and the powder-blackened, blood-smeared, crazed men lowered their weapons, stared at the surrendering Spaniards, stood heaving for breath.

That was the difference, Marlowe told himself, the difference between the Elizabeth Galleys and true pirates, because true pirates would have continued with the killing, would have shed every drop of Spanish blood aboard in retaliation for the unspeakable offense of their fighting back, and because they were Spanish, which was reason enough.

They searched the ship and found hiding in the bread room a half a dozen women. A few were old, matronly, but the rest were young, the oldest of them perhaps twenty-three, and all lovely, olive skinned, with the untainted virginal beauty of the aristocracy’s daughters. They were terrified, as well they might be, but Marlowe saw they were treated with great respect and set Bickerstaff, who spoke the lingo well, to look over them.

Here again, Marlowe assured himself, they were not pirates. He knew what the pirates would have done to them and he did not like to think on it.

It was a rich prize, as a Spaniard homeward bound from that country’s American possessions was wont to be, and the Elizabeth Galleys were a happy crew once again. They worked with a will, emptying the hold, swaying its contents over and down into the Elizabeth Galley, tending the wounded, throwing the dead into the sea.

Marlowe spoke to the captain, who had survived the fight with no more than a vicious gash on his arm, which was bound in a blood-soaked shirt pulled from the body of one of his men. He had been in the far-flung settlements of the Spanish empire, had not heard of the war in Europe, would not have been in those waters if he had.

The war was fully involved, Marlowe told him. Land and sea, and they, the Elizabeth Galleys, were no pirates, but legal and legitimate privateers. Their behavior after the fight was proof enough of that.

The captain bowed, nodded. He was sensible to the fact that their treatment would have been much different in the hands of the Brethren of the Coast.

Mr. Fleming stood to one side in obvious hope of attracting Marlowe’s attention.

“Yes, Mr. Fleming?”

“Sir, I wish you joy of your victory, sir,” he said.

“Our victory, Mr. Fleming,” said Marlowe, nodding to the bandage around the first officer’s hand. The blood that soaked it was dried and brown and only a little of the white cloth was visible.

“Oh, ’tis nothing, sir. But, pray, sir, these Dons has some spare sails that might well be worth the having, sir, but our haul has been so prodigious that we’ve scant room aboard, even now. I had a thought to start some of the water, sir, and break down the casks and then we could have the sails as well.”

“Hmmm.” Marlowe considered that. “No, I think not, and let me tell you why. You may as well know, no point keeping good news a secret. You recall that ship with whom this Don was engaged? That took off and made easting when we came up with them?”

“Yes. Some of the lads was saying it was the Frenchys’ ship, them Frenchys we rescued.”

“Yes, that is exactly the thing. Now this Don captain had some knowledge of that ship and apparently she had quite a rich cargo aboard. The Frenchys won’t tell you that, of course, but it’s true. And those black pirates have been raiding all along the coast. Vast amounts of booty crammed in their hold. So how does this relate to the water? Well, sir, I’ve a mind to go after those heathens, take all that they have accumulated, a dozen ships’ worth in one stroke, and by my reckoning they are bound away for the Guinea Coast, and we shall follow them.”

“ Guinea Coast, sir?” Fleming did not sound so sure.

“Aye, I know, it’s not a fit place for a white man, but think of the riches in that one ship! And nothing but a parcel of Negroes to defend it, which is like no defense at all.”

“Really, sir? That ain’t how those Frenchys told it. I don’t speak the lingo, but as I understood their story those black men were like mad dogs, sir, and twice as fierce.”

“Well, to a Frenchman I am sure they would appear thus.”

Fleming nodded. He could see the reason in that argument and he clearly understood the potential profit to be had in taking a pirate ship. And he would not be shy in spreading the word. “Very good, sir, then we’ll leave the sails be?”

“Oh yes, we are after bigger things than sails.”

Fleming hurried off to his work and Marlowe stepped aft, up to the high quarterdeck where the Spanish officers and the passengers were milling about. The women, now secure in the knowledge that they would not be raped, were talking among themselves and to Bickerstaff, whom they apparently found quite intriguing.

“Francis, how goes it here, sir?”

“Very well, Thomas. These people are very grateful for the gentle treatment they have received.”

“It would have gone easier if they had just surrendered, but they could not have known that.”

“I must say I am pleased as well. If you must descend once more into piracy, at least you are being civilized about it.”

“I thank you, sir, for those kind words.”

“Griffin did not make it, I see.”

“He did not. If you saw the body, you will have observed a bloody great Spanish sword thrust clean through him. I think that should leave no doubt as to how he met his end.”

“I was not aware that the matter was in question. Whatever do you mean?”

“Nothing, sir, not a thing. But see here, I think the men are quite mollified by this great haul we have made. When we are done here, it will be away to the east and hunting that rogue King James down.”

“You think the men will not object now?”

“I think they will be entirely agreeable, even if we must chase them clear to the Guinea Coast.”

Agreeable they would be, once Fleming spread his tale through the gunroom and it wound its way through the inferior officers’ quarters and at last to the lower deck. The Lord only knew how inflated the story would be by then, the great riches carried aboard the Black Pirate, the treasures of the Orient, the plunder from the Spanish Treasure fleet.

Enticing enough to lure them clean across the ocean, to the shores of the Dark Continent. Sure, he could fool them into going; there was no more art in that than there was in driving sheep.

It was fooling himself that was the problem.

God, but he did not want to go there, did not want to do this thing.

Beware, beware, the Bight of Benin…