The Blackbirder

Chapter 7

Elizabeth knelt on the lawn at the edge of the flower beds, sunk her hands in the moist dirt. She could feel the dampness creeping through her skirt and wool stockings, but it felt cool and good, with the sun beating on her back and her wide straw hat.

She picked up a spade and scooped the loose dirt out until she had a hole ten inches deep. Then she carefully, lovingly picked up the little rosebush and set its roots in the hole before pushing the dirt in around it.

Playing at agriculture. Sometimes that bothered her. All over the tidewater people broke their backs working the soil, slaves and freemen alike, just to eke out a living or to make someone else rich. But she just played, like the noblewomen in France who found amusement in pretending to be simple country girls.

But those were just minor concerns, because she loved to work in the gardens, loved to make Marlowe House a more beautiful place. More her own.

She had lived there since coming to the New World with Joseph Tinling. But the house had not been her home, it had been merely a place to endure Master Tinling’s brutality. After his death she had sold it to Marlowe, then a newcomer to Virginia, had moved to town, happy to be shed of those echoing rooms and their horrible memories.

But after she and Marlowe wed she had moved back, and now she was exorcising those demons of her former life, remaking the wretched Tinling house into the Marlowes’ ancestral home. New furnishings, new carpets, new portraits, fresh paint.

The gardens were a big part of that, Elizabeth ’s chief contribution, because unlike the furniture or the paintings, which were just items to be purchased, the garden was something that she could do herself, something pure and organic. Coaxing beauty and nourishment from the earth.

It was midmorning but she had been at it since just after sunrise. She needed the garden’s cathartic influence, the release of tension that comes with physical labor.

She had seen Thomas and Francis Bickerstaff off in the predawn hours. Before, she had been angry about his going off privateering, abandoning her. She was angry that Thomas had grown bored with the home she was trying to make.

But that all changed the moment Sam blurted out his awful story.

It was a very different departure than the one she had envisioned. There was none of the suppressed excitement, none of Thomas’s feigning disappointment in leaving when in fact he was aching to be under way, none of the footloose buccaneer that made Thomas so equally loved, hated, feared, and appreciated in the tidewater.

Rather, it had been a somber moment, and Thomas had been genuine in his desire not to go. But go he must, they both knew that.

And Elizabeth, who was no fool, was not insensible to the fact that he was going after James more for her than for himself. Thomas could have told Nicholson to sod off, but for her sake he had told the governor “Yes, sir.”

She worked her shovel in the dirt, spacing the plants three feet apart. In a few years they would be great thorny bushes, spilling over with brilliant small red flowers, like drops of fresh blood on mounds of green.

And then a shadow fell over the turned earth and a man’s voice, loud and full of delight and surprise, said, “Lizzy? Could that be you?”

Elizabeth wheeled around, gasped in surprise, squinted against the sun. The man was standing no more than five feet away, had approached over the grass so she could not hear him.

She stood, slowly, and threw her spade down like throwing a knife. It stuck in the dirt and quivered. She wiped dirty hands on her apron, leaving arched brown streaks on the linen, folded her arms across her chest. “Dear God…,” she said.

“Oh, no, Lizzy, none of that. Well, certainly, there are some women think I am a god, but not you, surely?”

She held him in her harsh gaze, then at last she had to smile and shake her head. “Billy Bird. I had never thought to see your face again.”

“Ah, like a bad penny,” he said, swept off his cocked hat, a big plume trailing astern, bowed elegantly at the waist. He wore white silk stockings and white breeches bleached so bright that it hurt to look at them in the late-morning sun. Under a red coat with neat embroidery around the pockets and cuffs he wore a red waistcoat and a calico shirt. A buff leather shoulder strap ran diagonally across his chest, the silver buckle winking in the sun, a heavy sword hanging at his waist. He wore no wig, and his hair was long and clubbed, as the seamen wore it.

“You look like a damned peacock, as usual, Billy.”

“And you…” He straightened, held out his hands. “Is this what has become of the beautiful Elizabeth Sampson, late of Plymouth and London? Working in the dirt like some pickaninny?”

She did not know if she wanted to hug the man or stick a knife in his guts. She never did. She and Billy Bird went back many years. “My name is Elizabeth Marlowe now, Billy, and it gives me great pleasure to work in the garden of the home of which I am mistress.”

“Ah, great pleasure! And you know there is no one who can give you great pleasure like old Billy Bird, my darling.”

“Billy, lay one hand on me and I will cut your balls off and stuff them down your throat. You know me capable of it.”

Bird chuckled at that. “Yes you are, yes you are. But how about a hug for an old friend?” He held out his arms again, and after a second’s hesitation Elizabeth stepped into them and gave Billy Bird a hug. He held her to his chest, gently, affectionately. He smelled faintly of perfume and tobacco smoke and tar. They squeezed each other and then stepped back again.

“It’s been… three years at least,” Elizabeth said. “Where have you been?”

“Rhode Island, mostly. Boston, New York. And off on the far-flung oceans of the world.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Well, you shouldn’t have come here. Governor Nicholson has no love of pirates. He has hanged any number of them already.”

“Pirates! Oh, Elizabeth, really! I am an honest merchant, and besides I have never committed anything that smacks of piracy against a Christian. That I know of.”

“Indeed. I am sorry to say that you just missed meeting my husband, speaking of people you should not cross.”

“Oh, have I really? I am sorry to hear that.”

“Uh-huh,” said Elizabeth. Bird’s timing would not be an accident. Everyone in Williamsburg and Jamestown knew that the Elizabeth Galley had sailed on the tide that morning.

“Though in fact I believe I have met your husband…Thomas Marlowe? In Port Royal, some years back. But his name was not Thomas Marlowe then, and he was something less than an honest man of the soil…”

“You are mistaken, I am sure. But whatever you think, I am certain you can keep it to yourself, just as you are certain that I’ll tell no tales about you.”

“I am the soul of discretion, ma’am, you know that.”

“The soul of discretion.” But for all his loudmouthed boasting, Elizabeth knew that Billy Bird could keep his mouth shut when he had to, and she trusted him. “What brings you to the tidewater? Are you staying?”

“I have taken up lodgings at the King’s Arms. Just temporary, of course.”

Just until Thomas returns, Elizabeth thought.

“I’ve some small business here,” Billy continued, “and my ship is down at Norfolk, fitting out. Ship, I say. She is a brig, in fact, just a little thing. Lost my last ship off Madagascar. I will tell you all the unhappy details, but first I think you should invite me in for a cup of chocolate.”

“Do you?” Elizabeth folded her arms, cocked her head, regarded Billy Bird. Plymouth, London, Williamsburg. Since she was fourteen years old she had known Billy, and he always seemed to pop up again, wherever she was. They had been friends, had enjoyed the occasional roll in bed. And here he was again.

She could well imagine what he was hoping for now. He would be disappointed, but he would get over it. A cup of chocolate, however, was within her newfound moral boundaries.

It was a still morning, little wind, and the insects were just starting in with their buzzing. Elizabeth was about to ask Billy in when she heard the horses, a long way off. She paused, lifted her head, and listened.

There was more than one, not galloping but not walking either. The sound grew louder as the riders approached. She looked down the long, tree-lined road that ran up to Marlowe House.

She couldn’t see anyone, so she knew they were still a ways up the rolling road that connected their plantation to Williamsburg in one direction and Jamestown in another.

Men on horses, riding fast. That was never a good thing. All these men, racing around on their great animals, always off on some important duty, inflicting some misery or another on someone. Like a pack of wolves. Chasing down fugitive slaves, chasing down pirates, chasing down threats to their beloved property.

“These would be friends of yours?” Bird asked.

“I doubt very much friends.”

They listened for a moment more. The riders grew closer. “I say, Lizzy, I never care to be conspicuous when there are men, no doubt armed men, charging about the countryside on horses. So if you do not mind terribly, I shall just duck into your house, perhaps indulge my eye with your exquisite taste in furnishings. You always did know how to spend a man’s money.”

“As ever, the soul of discretion.”

Billy Bird gave another of his elaborate bows. “Your servant, ma’am.” Then he straightened and trotted off toward the porch.

“Caesar!” Elizabeth called out, and then again, louder. “Caesar!”

Behind her she heard the main door open, heard bare feet on the wide front porch.

“Ma’am?” said Caesar. He was a former field slave, now head of the household. Past fifty, a gentle, soft-spoken man. No great demands were made of him. Marlowe figured that he had earned his rest, his easy duty.

He looked with only vague curiosity at Billy Bird, who brushed past him with a friendly nod and disappeared into the cool interior of Marlowe House.

Elizabeth climbed up to the porch, scanned the road again from that higher vantage. She could see a cloud of dust, a mile or so away, kicked up by the approaching riders.

“Do you hear those horses coming?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.” Caesar’s hearing was not all one might wish.

“About half a dozen, I should think.”

“They gots to know Mr. Marlowe ain’t here. What you think they want?”

“I don’t know.” That was true, but she could guess. Marlowe’s free blacks were the topic du jour in Williamsburg. This visit would involve them in some way. She did not think it would be for the black people’s benefit.

“I don’t imagine that whoever is coming is going to do us any favors,” Elizabeth said, and Caesar nodded. “Round up all the people in the house and hurry out back and tell everyone working in the fields to lose themselves. Do you think you can all hide yourselves until these people go?”

Caesar nodded. “If they’s only six of them, and no dogs, we can hide so they don’t find us.”

“Very well. Go.”

With that, Caesar disappeared and Elizabeth stepped slowly down to the lawn. In the far distance, on that part of the rolling road visible from Marlowe House, she could see the riders, small, bobbing specks against the green fields. She only hoped she had heard them in time.

They turned onto the road running up to Marlowe House, seemed to pick up their pace for that last charge down to the plantation. Halfway there, two hundred yards away, and Elizabeth could see the white coat and breeches of Frederick Dunmore at their head.

And I thought I would be lonely with Thomas gone, she thought.

Hurry, Caesar. Pray, hurry.

They reined up in front of her, their great, sweating, panting beasts pawing and shaking heads, twisting around under their riders, as if anxious to be at it. Dunmore, foremost, in his white coat, filmed with dust, the locks of his long white periwig flung back over his shoulders, twisted and tangled like Medusa snake-hair. Sword, brace of pistols in his crossbelt, musket thrust through a loop in his saddle.

Behind him, three more plantation owners, and behind them, deferential, Elizabeth recognized the overseers from those plantations. Professional slave handlers, men whose earnings were commensurate with their ability to enforce discipline, their measured brutality.

“I am sorry, Mr. Dunmore, but I am afraid you have missed my husband,” Elizabeth said.

“Didn’t come to see your husband, ma’am. We come for your niggers.”

“I’m sorry, you’ve what?”

“We’ve come for your niggers. Threat to the tidewater. Too bad that innocent white men had to die before anyone would listen to me. We’ll hold them until the burgesses figure out what to do with them.”

Elizabeth held his eyes and he held hers as his horse shifted and worked under him. She hoped her expression could convey even a fraction of the contempt she felt. “Had you come yesterday you might have discussed this with Mr. Marlowe. Now you will have to wait for his return.”

“No waiting. No time for that, and nothing to discuss.”

“Damned convenient, sir, that you did not get around to this until this morning, when you knew Mr. Marlowe had sailed. One might think it…cowardly? Craven? What word might one use for a sneaking, crawling puppy such as yourself?”

Dunmore’s face flushed, to Elizabeth ’s satisfaction, but his demeanor did not change. “I shall deal with Mr. Marlowe, depend upon it.” He wheeled his horse, shouted, “We’ve no time for this nonsense! Let us go!”

With a dramatic wave of his hand he led the men off, around the house, off between the barn and the tobacco sheds, off to the former slave quarters-now the homes of Marlowe’s free laborers-and back to the fields where they worked.

Mr. Marlowe shall deal with you, depend upon it, she thought. Deal you out a bullet through your head.

Elizabeth had never been a great supporter of Marlowe’s freeing his slaves-formerly Tinling’s slaves-whom he had purchased along with the Tinling plantation. But she loved the people, cared for them in a maternal way, and knew they were no threat. She had to agree with her husband that Marlowe House had none of the volatility of other plantations.

And now this. This bastard Dunmore, a Boston man of all things, taking it upon himself to keep the tidewater safe from such abominations as free blacks.

Oh, Caesar, please, please have warned them all in time.

“Do you know, Francis,” said Marlowe, breathing deep, patting his

chest, “one could almost forget one’s woes, in these circumstances.”

“Almost.”

The two men stood leaning against the weather bulwark on the Elizabeth Galley’s quarterdeck, all the way aft. The wind had filled in once they had cleared the capes, and now they were enjoying fifteen knots over the larboard quarter. The Galley was bowling along with all plain sail set, making nine and ten knots with every cast of the log. There was not a cloud to be seen, nowhere on that unbroken, three-hundred-andsixty-degree horizon.

Marlowe turned and leaned over the rail, peered astern. The wake was arrow straight, deep blue and white furrows under the counter that faded away as it stretched back toward the land. To the north, but well behind them now, was Cape Charles, to the south Cape Henry, the gaping entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, like monstrous jaws from which they had just narrowly escaped.

And before them, nothing. Just the wide, blue Atlantic. No impediments, considerations. No politics out here, just seamanship and gunnery.

Below them, the ship, tight and yare, well armed, well manned. She felt solid underfoot. It was always a source of wonder to Marlowe that something that heaved and rolled and pitched could at the same time feel so solid and unyielding. A trick of the mind, no doubt. It didn’t matter. The Elizabeth Galley was everything one could wish in a ship, just as her namesake was everything one could wish in a woman.

He was about to say as much to Bickerstaff when he was jerked from his contentment by a crack, like a pistol shot, and for that instant he was back aboard some fetid pirate ship where the winner of a quarrel was the one who snatched his gun and fired the quickest. He wondered if his men were looking to their pistols already, and if so, who had killed whom?

All that he thought in the instant between the crack like a gunshot and the banging and flogging of canvas that had broken free of its restraints.

He whirled around and his eye was drawn to the chaos aloft.

Something had snapped and now the weather clew of the main topsail was free and the entire sail was slamming and twisting and flogging itself to death. Marlowe could see it wrapping around the main topmast forestay, dragging itself across the heavy rope, shredding itself against the gear aloft. Streams of canvas blew away like bandages coming undone.

At the base of the mast, Griffin, looking up, shouting. Not orders, not instructions, just cursing, useless filthy invectives spilling from his mouth, directed at the sail.

Useless man. In the rush of getting under way fast Marlowe had neglected to replace him as bosun.

He pushed past Bickerstaff, raced forward, ready to give the orders himself to get the big sail under control when Fleming burst out from under the quarterdeck, shouting orders as he ran. “Clew up! Clew up! Come along, you lazy bastards, lay into them clews! Ease away the sheets there, ease away, handsome now! Mr. Griffin, mind your duty!”

Half a minute more and the sail was subdued, hauled up to the topsail yard by its clews and bunts while all the time Griffin kept up his pointless and useless cursing.

The ship was quiet again, the men attentive, and Fleming ordered the main topgallant sail in and the yards lowered into their lifts and hands away aloft to unbend the topsail. The crisis had lasted no more than three minutes, but it had been enough to shatter Marlowe’s fine mood and force him back to the unhappy reality of the moment.

Fleming stood at the base of the mainmast, examining the frayed end of a long piece of cordage that lay strewn over the fife rail and the main hatch. He squinted aloft, then dropped the rope and stepped up the quarterdeck ladder and aft. “Looks like the topsail sheet chaffed right through. Must have had a bad lead,” he announced.

“Indeed. We’ll have quite a few such kinks to work out, I wouldn’t wonder,” said Marlowe. “Let us hope we get it all straight before we have a real situation. And well done, Mr. Fleming.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Fleming, embarrassed. He coughed, mumbled something about seeing to the new topsail, and disappeared down into the waist.

“Good man, Fleming,” Marlowe observed.

“Indeed,” said Bickerstaff. They were standing just forward of the mizzenmast now, out of earshot of the helmsmen aft and quite ignored by the men below them in the waist, who were busy with the new topsail. “Now Thomas, forgive me, but I must ask. You have not yet said anything to the men about hunting down King James and the others aboard that wretched slave ship. Are you intending to tell them?”

“Of course I am,” Marlowe said, pleased with his genuine sincerity. “Of course I am,” he said again. “But it is a delicate thing, you see. They won’t be happy with it; quite a lot of risk and no reward, save for my reputation.”

“These are not pirates, Thomas. You do not need their approval.”

“No, but they ain’t man-of-war’s men either. Privateers are tricky business. Push them too hard one way and they take French leave of you, and there you are, stranded in some port with no crew. Push too hard the other way and they chuck you overboard and turn pirate. In truth, I am in charge only as long as they all agree I am in charge. I suppose they are like the pirates in that, except that it’s a bit more of a fuss for them to depose me.”

“But it is still your intention to hunt James and the others down?”

“We are hunting them now. It is just that you and I are the only ones who know it.”

“Hunting them how? How can you guess where they are?”

“James and Cato and Joshua were the only ones who know any bit of seamanship, and Cato and Joshua know only the sloop, really. James’s experience with square rig is limited to the Plymouth Prize, and though he is a capable fellow there is only so much he can do with his untrained people and his own limited knowledge. Right now I should think they are running for it, downwind. They would not try and shape

a course to windward, not now.”

“But they might later?”

“Perhaps. Once James has trained them a bit.”

“They will go to Africa.” It was a statement.

Marlowe was silent for a moment. “Yes. I had thought of that. That is why we must catch them now. These men”-he gestured toward the waist-“will not care to go to Africa to hunt them down. And do not think it has not occurred to them that they need only knock me and you and Fleming on the head and suddenly they are equal partners in the finest pirate ship afloat. They lack only sufficient motivation. And if it has not occurred to them, you can bet that little bastard Griffin will point it out.”

The two men were silent, watching the hands forward bundling up the new topsail in readiness for sending it aloft.

“Beware, beware, the Bight of Benin…” Marlowe muttered.

“Pardon?”

“Oh, just some old sailor’s nonsense. One of these warnings set to a bit of verse. ‘Beware, beware, the Bight of Benin. One man comes out for each forty go in.’ The Slave Coast is a deuced unpleasant place. Deadly to white men.”

“One might think that Divine retribution.”

“Perhaps. Whatever it is, let us pray to all that is holy that we do not have to plunge into that dark place.”