The Blackbirder

Chapter 20

It dawned on King James that he was not captain anymore. He still slept in the great cabin. The white pilot still showed him their position on the chart. He still gave orders to wear ship when necessary, to take in or set sail, but he was not in command.

There were subtleties going on, undercurrents running below the smooth surface of their daily routine, machinations taking place that he could not identify or understand for the differences in language.

They had been in stasis for a while, for three weeks or so, as they plowed their easting away, making for their homes in Africa, the waking at the end of sleep.

There had been a routine, of sorts, a nervous peace, between him and those few with him-Quash, Good Boy, Cato, and Joshua-and Madshaka and the rest of them, and around them nothing but the uninterrupted sea.

And so they sailed, south southeast, running before the wind as it curled south along the coast of Africa, like a stream of water butting up against a seawall. Over the larboard side and below the horizon, the continent, dark only to those who did not know it. What would happen once the anchor was down, James did not know, but he was desperate to be there.

Every day the Frenchman gave him the course, and if the daily headings did not seem to mesh with James’s rough idea of where in relation to the ship Kalabari lay, James did not have the enthusiasm to question him. He looked at the chart, nodded, gave orders for changing course, trimming sail.

The puppet captain. He said the words, made the gestures. Madshaka pulled the strings. He knew that, and knew there was nothing he could do but wait for it to end.

Some time after their escape from Marlowe-two weeks, three, James did not know-they raised a headland, low and green, two miles away off the larboard beam. The people crowded the rail and stood in the shrouds and the tops, some jabbering, pointing, singing. Others quiet, just looking, silent tears streaming down dark cheeks.

Africa.

“ Cape Palmas,” the Frenchman said. His eyes were wild, his face overgrown with an unkempt beard. He stunk.

James looked at him, nodded. If his own thoughts were somehow made flesh, James thought they might look like the French sailor, wild and unhinged. He picked up the glass and trained it on the distant shore.

He could see little. A strip of white sand that showed beyond the lines of breaking surf, tall palms with their burst of fronds on top, the green, green forest behind.

It was hot on deck, running as they were before the wind, the sun hammering them from directly above. African sun, less than eight degrees north of the equator. And on the breeze, the smells from the shore, the salt smell of the sea, the rotting vegetation of dark and tangled forests.

It was not the smell of America, not the smell of a new land, fresh and simple. It was the deep and profound smell of an ancient land, a land that had seen so much of humanity. It was a smell that James had not smelled in more than twenty years, a smell he had not understood when he had lived within it, but he understood it now.

He lowered the glass. “ Cape Palmas?”

“Cape…yes… Cape Palmas.”

James did not think so, but he could not argue the point. The sight of the African shore had spun his thoughts off on a whole new heading.

When he had first been taken from those shores he had thought of nothing but getting back.

Then he had despaired of ever returning, and then later he had thought only of escaping his bondage and finding a home somewhere in the New World.

Then, finally, he had thought only of the life he might make at Marlowe House, what happiness he might carve out as a free black man in the context of a slave society.

And now he was back.

Cape Palmas. Very well. If the pilot was right, then they were not above a thousand miles from Kalabari. A week of sailing if the wind held for them.

James felt his thoughts coming in a jumble, a disorganized heap. He was supposed to be giving orders to the people, but he could only give them to Madshaka and hope that Madshaka told the people what he said. He felt as if he had to break out of this pattern, but he could not see how. He could not figure what he might do to gain control.

It was like bondage again, like the shackles and the yoke that kept him from moving, but it was worse. Then, there had been a physical restraint to chafe against, something he could feel and understand. Now the shackles were invisible: confusion, indecision, an inability to speak.

James stared at the green headland and wished he could fling himself onto that beach, curl up on that land as if it were his mother’s lap, let Africa comfort him the way he had not been comforted in so very long.

The point receded in their wake and the pilot said, “Our new heading, it should be east northeast, a half east…”

James looked at him, sharply. “East northeast?”

The pilot cleared his throat. “The land, it tends away here, we must cross the Gulf of Guinea now. There are currents…”

Finally James nodded. The land did tend away, to be sure. Very well. He could not think about it. His mind was awhirl and he could not think. “Madshaka,” he called, “we must wear ship.”

The ship came around, settled on the new course. Lines were coiled down, the rhythm of the shipboard community resumed, and James wondered again if any of those dozens of people forward were aware of the silent drama, the lopsided struggle for dominance, going on aft.

He did not think so.

They knew only what Madshaka told them. Just like him. They followed Madshaka’s orders, and if they thought that those orders originated with King James, then they were mistaken, and there was no way for them to discover the truth.

Marlowe woke, and when he came to he realized that he had one foot on the deck of the sleeping cabin, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other going for his pistol. Beyond the door, a light rapping, someone politely knocking to wake him.

I have got to bloody relax, he thought. These are not the mutinous villains of a month past.

He released the weapons, put both feet on the deck, stood, stepped out of the sleeping cabin into the great cabin, and called out, “Come!”

Gosling, foretopman, stepped through the door. It was still sometime in the middle of the night-the stern windows were like mirrors with the darkness outside and the single burning lantern within.

“Sir,” said Gosling, “Mr. Fleming’s compliments, sir, and we sees some lights, sometimes, on the rise.”

Marlowe nodded. His heart was still pounding from his coming suddenly awake and ready to fight. He worried that his mind was becoming unhinged by all of this. “Lights, on the rise…” The thoughts began to organize themselves, questions formed. “Where away? How many?”

“Right ahead, sir. Looks like three, right in a row. Looks like taffrail lights, sir.”

Thomas instantly formed a picture in his mind of the big taffrail lights on the French merchantman. Right ahead meant right downwind, right where he would expect King James to be. It was possible that they were not so very far behind that renegade band.

“Very well, I’ll be up directly.”

He went back into his sleeping cabin, found a shirt, and pulled it on.

It was far too much to hope. The arrangement of three lanterns on the taffrail was hardly unusual. There was a plethora of shipping in those waters. Absurd to think it might be James.

But still he could not rid himself of that silly anticipation, and it was with a strange amalgam of emotions that he climbed up onto the dark quarterdeck and looked in the direction that Fleming pointed.

He had to wait a moment, but then there they were, like a little constellation, low down in the water, and moving with a rhythm different from that of the Elizabeth Galley. Three little lights, the center one a bit higher than the outer two. Taffrail lights, beyond a doubt. But whose?

“What time is it, pray, Mr. Fleming?”

“Just gone seven bells, sir.”

Just past three-thirty in the morning. An hour and a half or so until dawn. No need to roust the men up from below, not yet. They’d be up soon enough.

“At the next change of watch we’ll clear for action. Quietly. And let’s have the watch below roused nice and gentle, too. Like mothers kissing their babes.” Marlowe was in fine spirits and he realized it was because he had already decided that this was King James and his outlaw band in whose wake they were sailing.

But that, he recalled, was an absurd assumption, and that realization cooled his ardor a bit.

The next turn of the half-hour glass signaled eight bells, though in the interest of stealth no bells were actually rung. The watch below was called, quietly, and all hands were sent to quarters.

In the predawn dark the Elizabeth Galley was readied for a fight: guns cast off and loaded, temporary cabins under the quarterdeck broken down and stowed in the hold, decks sanded, linstocks supplied with lit match, tubs of water set between the guns, small arms distributed.

And when that was done the men fell to that most ubiquitous of combat duties. They waited.

The men knew exactly as much about the situation as did their captain, at least as far as the chase was concerned. There were three lights to be seen up ahead, steady now, not just on the rise, which meant they were overhauling whoever it was. That was all they knew. The rest was speculation, and it ran thick and fast along the crowded gundeck.

Marlowe and Bickerstaff stood all the way aft, in their familiar position back by the taffrail, where they could speak in almost normal tones with no fear of being overheard. They too knew only that there was a ship ahead, but unlike the men forward, they also understood the tricky political and legal issues involved, niceties that Marlowe had done his best to keep to himself.

“You hope that this is King James?” Bickerstaff said, his eyes on the three bobbing lights.

“I hope with all of my heart that it is him. I hope we are able to kill them all by dinner and have all their ill-gotten booty stowed down in our hold by the first dogwatch.”

“Indeed? That is quite an agenda for one day. But what if it is not King James. Will you let them be?”

“There are three other possibilities. The first is that it is a vessel that belongs to England or Flanders or some such friend of ours, in which case we must bid them a fare-thee-well. The second is that it is a manof-war belonging to one of our enemies and too much for us to handle, in which case we run like a dog. The third is that it is a legal prize, or would be for a ship with a letter of marque, in any event.”

“And if that is the case?”

“Oh, Lord, sir, I do not know.”

Since it was, by Marlowe’s thinking, useless to worry about something he could not change, he didn’t, and instead contented himself with a little breakfast for him and Francis and an extra tot of rum all around, to bolster the spirits of men whose spirits really needed no bolstering at all.

An hour after the ship had been readied, the first hints of dawn began to appear. Marlowe sent the sharpest pair of eyes aboard up into the main topmast crosstrees. He recalled a time when the sharpest pair of eyes aboard meant his. Not anymore. He felt decades older than he had just two months before.

A very long fifteen minutes passed and then the lookout cried, “On deck! I sees her, sir, right ahead, with them lanterns still lit!” From deck the taffrail lights had been swallowed up in the gathering dawn.

Another long few minutes during which Marlowe forced himself to not call out. The lad up aloft was no fool, he would sing out when there was something to sing about.

Finally he did so. “On deck! I can see her proper now…topsails and fore course, nearly the same heading as us… big son of a bitch…”

The anticipation hung like gunsmoke over a battlefield. Every eye was trained aloft or forward. “Breaking out colors, sir! Looks like a Frenchy, sir!”

Smiles, grins, hands rubbing in anticipation. A Frenchman was the best they could hope for, an undisputed prize for a privateer. Every man aboard knew that a Frenchman was fair game. It would all be spelled out in the letter of marque that Marlowe had shown them.

“French colors,” Bickerstaff said, let it hang in the air.

“Still might be King James. It was a French ship they took, after all. He’d have to run something up if he was playing at the innocent merchantman.”

“Yes he would. So in fact this ship yonder still could be the solution to your troubles, or a twofold increase in them, and we still do not know which.”

“Yes, very neatly put. I thank you for that, Francis.”

They plunged on, the Elizabeth Galley spreading more and more sail, as the gray dawn sky turned to the light blue of morning. Up ahead the ship in question was setting more sail as well: the main course, the topgallants, then studding sails to weather, but slowly, methodically. It was not the actions of a ship fleeing pursuit, but the routine setting of more sail with the onset of day.

“Well, damn him for an impudent bastard,” Marlowe said at last. “Whoever he is, James or not, he seems none too concerned with having a well-armed privateer nipping at his behind.”

“Pirate,” Bickerstaff corrected.

“Perhaps. We have yet to see.” Marlowe took the big telescope from the binnacle box, climbed up into the mizzen shrouds to where he could see past the mainsail, and trained the glass forward. They were still too far to make out any of the finer details, but the big telescope told him something, and years of experience with ships and the sea filled in the unknowns. He climbed back down to the deck.

“I take her for an Indiaman. A French East Indiaman, and a damn big one. Of course, they are all damned big, and well armed too, like a man-of-war, really. That’s why she ain’t frightened of us, I reckon.”

“Well… she is a handful, to be certain. Will you run from her?”

“I am loath to give that order. It would not do for me to look shy in front of the men. They are still a volatile bunch, for all the good fortune we have had, Griffin’s untimely demise and all. But they are privateersmen, you know, which means they are after riches and don’t much want to risk their necks for them. So what I will do is let them vote on it.”

“You’ll let them vote? How very republican of you. But is that not at odds with your insistence on absolute command? That sounds more like pirates’ ways to me.”

“Nothing like it. See the clever way I frame the thing.”

Marlowe stepped up to the binnacle box where Fleming had stationed himself. “Mr. Fleming, pray have the men assemble aft.”

Five minutes of calling around the ship and jostling in the waist and the Elizabeth Galleys were all gathered, looking up at Marlowe on the quarterdeck like they were waiting for a Royal address.

“You men, listen here,” he began. “If I’m not mistaken, yonder ship is a French East Indiaman. You people are not strangers to the sea, you know how well armed the Indiamen are. Trained like men-of-war’s men. You didn’t sign on to attack an enemy that was so greatly superior to us. We’re not a man-of-war, not under Admiralty orders to risk our lives. So I don’t feel it’s my right, in this case, to order you into battle, not when the odds are this much against us. I won’t do it. So in this one situation, I am going to allow you to vote! Either we fight, and the odds be damned, or we’re off seeking other prey. What say you?”

From forward the captain of number-two gun, a great burly fellow from Plymouth, called out, “I say we’re with you, Captain!”

Smart fellow, Marlowe thought.

And then another man added, “Aye, hear him! I say the odds be damned! Let’s have at them!”

His words were greeted with a great rolling cheer, up and down the deck, as the Elizabeth Galleys shouted their concurrence.

Bickerstaff stepped up to Marlowe’s side. A smile was playing across his lips. “Very cleverly framed, indeed. The men never suspected you. They seem not to have even been listening.”

Marlowe sighed. It was the sound of a man accepting the inevitable. “You know, Francis,” he said, “I envy King James and his piracy. At least for him it is a fate of his own choosing.”