The Guardship

Chapter 15

THE LATE-SPRING weather in the tidewater of Virginia was yielding slowly, day by day, to summer.

The winds, always variable in that region, had hauled around from the predominantly north and northwest of the winter months to something approaching south and southeast. And when the wind came from that quarter it brought with it warm air. In later months that air would be hot and moist and miserable, but in those first days of summertime weather it was just perfectly warm, as if there were no temperature at all.

It was just such a day, an hour before slack water, when Marlowe’s party came aboard the Northumberland. It was not much of a party, consisting only of himself, Elizabeth Tinling, and Lucy, but then, the little sloop did not have the space to accommodate too many more.

Still, King James, now once more in command of the vessel, had prepared for her owner’s arrival as if it were the royal yacht. Bunting was flying from the rigging and flags flapped at every high point aloft. The gangplank was freshly painted, with rails set up and strung with rope handholds, made white through the application of pipe clay and finished off with spritsail sheet knots at the bitter ends.

Marlowe stepped aboard first and offered his hand to Elizabeth, helping her over the gangplank. The Northumberland’s four-man crew, two black men and two white, were dressed out in matching shirts and fresh-scrubbed slop trousers and straw hats. They stood at some semblance of attention as the owner and his guest came aboard, and then with a word James scattered them to the various tasks necessary to get the ship under way.

“Welcome aboard, Elizabeth,” Marlowe said.

“Oh, Thomas, it is magnificent!” she said, and she meant it, entirely. With a hand on her wide-brimmed straw hat, she craned her neck to look aloft. The many-colored flags waving in the breeze, the bunting, the white scrubbed decks and varnished rails and black rigging were all too perfect, like a brand-new, brightly painted toy. “It’s like something from a storybook.”

“Life can be like that, I find,” Marlowe said, “if one is able to write one’s own story.”

They cast off at slack water. The Northumberland drifted away from the dock, King James at the helm and Marlowe and Elizabeth standing by the taffrail, enjoying the morning. Forward, the small crew set the sails-jib, staysail, and the big gaff-headed main-with no orders given and none needed. James swung the bow off and the sloop made her way downriver, close-hauled, making a long board to the east until they were almost aground on the northern bank, then tacking across the river and tacking again.

“Your men work very well together,” Elizabeth commented as the Northumberland settled down for another long run on the starboard tack. “I hear no yelling or confusion, as one often associates with a ship’s crew.”

“They have been together awhile,” Marlowe said.

“They are not the same men as sailed her when my…when the sloop was owned by Joseph, I observe.”

“No. I let those men go. They were not willing to suffer King James as captain of the vessel.”

“They were very foolish, then. King James seems very much the competent master.”

“King James is of the type of man who does well whatever he sets his mind to. That is why I did not dare let him remain my slave. He is not the kind of man one needs as an enemy.”

“Do you not need him to run your household?”

“He does, when he is not running the sloop. But there is not much to the house. Caesar can run things well enough. It is a waste of James’s talent to keep him there.”

The Northumberland continued on down the river, standing right up to the banks with their strips of sandy beach and meadows of tall grass and patches of woods. Overhead marched a great parade of clouds, flat and gray on their bottoms and swelling up into high mounds of white, sharply defined against the blue of the sky.

They sailed past several plantations, the brown-earth fields stretching down to the water, the slaves moving slowly between the hillocks, preparing the earth to receive the young plants.

The finest of them all was the Wilkensons’ home, standing on a hill not one hundred yards from the river, a great white monument to the wealth that family had amassed in just a few generations in the New World. Neither Marlowe nor Elizabeth commented on the place.

It was dinnertime when the Northumberland came about after a short tack to the southwest and stood into the wide bay where the Nasemond and Elizabeth join up with the mighty James River. Marlowe’s cabin steward appeared on the quarterdeck and set up a small table and chairs, and on the table he laid out a meal of cold roast beef, bread, cheese, nuts, fruit, and wine.

Marlowe helped Elizabeth into her seat.

“Your tobacco crop has come in well, I hope?” Elizabeth asked as Marlowe poured her a glass of wine. Tobacco was never far from the minds of anyone in the tidewater.

“Excellently well, thank you. We’ve had a prodigious crop, and it is now all but stowed down…‘prized,’ I believe, is the correct term, into its casks and quite ready for the convoy at the end of May.”

“You have learned a great deal about cultivating tobacco in the past few years, it would seem.”

“Not a bit of it, not a bit of it. Some of this cheese for you? No, I leave it all up to the people, and they do a fine job. They have forgotten more about the weed than I shall ever know. Bickerstaff takes an academic interest in the eultivation, but I content myself with the odd pipeful and a ride through my fields.”

Elizabeth took a sip of her wine. Regarded Marlowe. Such an odd man. “You leave the planting and cultivation up to your Negroes? And they do the work, with never an overseer?”

“Well, of course they do. They are paid a percentage of the crop, do you see? It is in their interest to work just as hard as they can. They are not such fools that they cannot understand that.”

Marlowe took a bite and smiled at her as he chewed. There were times when she thought Marlowe might be quite mad. He seemed perfectly willing to consider a Negro as his equal. Indeed, he treated King James more as his fellow than his servant.

Then forward one of the deckhands dropped a hatch cover with a loud bang, like a pistol. Marlowe’s head shot in the direction of the sound, his body tensed, and his hand moved automatically to the hilt of his sword. In his eyes that quality like a smoldering flame, the suggestion of a predator. To be sure, the pirates on Smith Island had found out how dangerous he could be. There was not a bit of the mad fool in him then.

He smiled, and his body eased, like a rope when the strain is let off. “Clumsy, clumsy,” he said, and poured some more wine.

Once dinner was cleared away they took their place again at the taffrail.

“That is Point Comfort there.” Marlowe pointed to a low headland just off the larboard bow.

“And why do they call it Point Comfort?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it was a great comfort to see it, after the long voyage from Europe.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth thought of the time when she and Joseph Tin-ling had stood on another quarterdeck and viewed that point as their ship stood in from sea. “I can’t say that I had that reaction when first I saw it.”

“Were you not pleased to see this new land?”

She had never considered that before. There had been so many emotions, whirling like an eddy. “Oh, I suppose I was. My…husband was more enthusiastic than I. It was a long voyage, as you say, and a difficult one. I thought one could not-what do you call it?-careen a ship on the Chesapeake.”

“That was what Allair would have the governor believe,” Marlowe said, and Elizabeth was grateful that he did not remark on her abrupt change of subject. “But he was just too lazy to try. One can careen a ship just about anywhere there is beach and tide enough. Why, I’ve…I’ve careened ships in some very odd places indeed.”

An hour later they passed Point Comfort, rounded up, and dropped anchor a cable from the beach. There on the dark wet sand was the Plymouth Prize. She looked sorry and vulnerable, her rig completely gone save for the lower masts: fore, mizzen, and the bright new main. Her guns were gone too, and her gun-ports stared up at the sky like the hollow eyes of a skull. She was rolled over on her larboard side, and all of her great worm-eaten, weed-covered bottom was exposed to the world. The Plymouth Prizes swarmed around her like ants on a mound of spilled sugar.

“Oh, my goodness,” Elizabeth said. It looked as if something had gone terribly wrong. “Is she wrecked? What’s happened to her?”

“No, believe it or not, this is what we do. Those fellows with the torches are breeming her, burning all the weed and barnacles and such off of her bottom. Then, once we’ve made the repairs we need, we’ll coat her anew with stuff made from tallow, sulfur, and tar.”

“You astonish me, sir, the depth of your knowledge,” Elizabeth said. Marlowe was clearly an experienced seaman as well as an experienced fighting man. There was no faking that.

Had he earned all of his wealth at sea? No one became as rich as he was by sailing as an honest merchant captain or naval officer. Was it family money?

He rarely mentioned his personal history prior to arriving in Virginia, and she had the distinct impression that he would rather she didn’t ask. She knew so little about him. She found it intriguing and irritating all at once. She could imagine any number of possibilities, many of which she did not care to think about.

Marlowe nodded toward the Prize’s long boat, which was pulling toward the sloop, Lieutenant Rakestraw in the stern sheets. “I reckon we’ll know soon how much work needs to be done before we can go a-hunting pirates again,” Marlowe said.

A minute later Rakestraw climbed up the side, saluted Marlowe, and gave Elizabeth a shallow bow. He was dressed in old clothes, the same as were worn by the sailors, and he was quite filthy.

“Forgive my appearance, I beg, sir, but I have been all day climbing about the hull,” he said.

“Please, Lieutenant, don’t think on it,” Marlowe said. “If you were clean, I should think you weren’t seeing to the job properly.”

Elizabeth had seen Rakestraw in Williamsburg on several occasions over the past few years. He looked happier now, and more like an officer, than she had ever seen, his dirty, common clothes notwithstanding.

“It appears, sir,” Rakestraw continued, “that the chief of the water was coming in where the butts was pulled apart. We found the four on the larboard side, like I reported the other day, and six on the starboard today. There was some soft wood around the sternpost and three planks needs replacing near the turn of the bilge, but the worms haven’t got at the bottom nearly as bad as I would have thought.”

“No. Allair spent a great deal of time at anchor in the freshes where the water’s brackish at best. That might have done for the worms.”

“The only constructive thing that Allair has ever done, to the best of my knowledge,” Rakestraw said, the disgust evident in his voice.

“Indeed. Well, Mr. Rakestraw, I do not wish to keep you from your work.”

“No, sir. Will you be sailing back tonight, sir?”

“I had intended to do so, but we had slow going coming down and I fear we have missed the tide now. I think we must spend the night here,” Marlowe answered, not meeting Elizabeth’s eyes but looking instead at Rakestraw, “and wait for the flood tomorrow.”

“Oh, quite right, sir, quite. Tide is quite gone,” Rakestraw agreed. Had he kept his mouth shut Elizabeth might have believed what Marlowe said, but Rakestraw was not nearly as accomplished a liar as Marlowe.

“I apologize profusely, ma’am, and trust that that will not inconvenience you?” Marlowe turned at last to Elizabeth, looking his most contrite. “You and Lucy shall have my cabin, of course, and I shall take the small cabin. If you wish, I shall send ashore for a coach.”

“That will not inconvenience us at all, sir. If we are to be kidnapped by pirates, I am pleased at least that we have found one who is such a gentleman.”

“Oh, a former pirate, ma’am. Fear not, I have forsworn that life.” He was smiling, but his eyes suggested there might be something deeper, more personal, to his simple joke.

It was one of the possibilities that Elizabeth had considered.

The Northumberland was absolutely quiet. All hands were below and asleep, and the sloop rode perfectly still at her anchor, held steady in the soft arms of the current. The only sounds that King James could hear were the occasional call of a night bird from shore, the buzzing of the distant insects, the gentle gurgle of the water.

He crouched over the compass, taking a bearing on Point Comfort and a tall stand of trees just abeam, which he was just able to discern against the background of stars. Once he

had taken the bearings he would wait for an hour or so and then take them again and thus make certain the sloop was not dragging her anchor. That was why he was still awake and on deck.

Or at least that was what he told himself. Why he felt the need to fool himself he did not know, especially because he was not. He was perfectly aware of why he was loitering in that place. He was hoping that Lucy would come to him.

He heard the low creak of the after scuttle opening, did not react. It could be anyone-Marlowe or the cabin steward.

But it was not. Lucy stepped hesitatingly on deck, looking forward and then aft. She looked directly at him, but he could see that she was struggling to make out who it was she was looking at.

“Come on back here, girl,” he called out softly.

Lucy squinted aft again, then lifted her skirts and climbed up the two short steps to the quarterdeck and came aft. There was just the faintest light on deck, the stars and the dim glow of the covered candle James was using to see the compass, but it was enough for him to see her lovely face, her soft brown hair hanging around her shoulders, her shapely form under her petticoats. Lucy and Elizabeth. They made quite a pair.

She leaned against the rail where King James stood, an inch closer than a casual acquaintance might stand. “What are you doing up at this hour?” she asked.

“I’m seeing to the ship. And you?”

She glanced down at the deck and then looked at him, though not directly. She was not half as shy as she was pretending to be. James knew it. She had learned a great deal working for Elizabeth Tinling. “I just wanted to get some air,” she said.

“Good night for it.”

They were silent for a moment. He could smell the subtle perfume that Lucy was wearing, the scent of her skin and hair. She was wildly attractive, and he felt emotions rising up that he had not felt in many years. It had been that long since he had felt anything but hatred and anger.

“How is it with you, Lucy?” he asked, surprised by the tenderness in his own voice. “I’ve seen little of you these past years. How is it in town?”

“It’s wonderful, James, truly. There’s just that little house, and none of the misery there was at the Tinling place. Best thing that son of a bitch Tinling ever done any of us was to drop dead.”

“Hmmph,” James said. He could not disagree. “And you’re safe enough, because of it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean Mrs. Tinling ain’t about to sell you off, ’cause she don’t want no one to know how they found old Tinling, breeches around his ankles, his heart burst ripping the clothes off his wife’s slave girl.”

He stared out into the night, mused on this netherworld of the slaves in the tidewater. An entire society, with a common knowledge and a social structure and their own set of laws about which the white people knew nothing.

And there was not a one who grieved for Joseph Tinling.

Without thinking, James turned and put his hand on Lucy’s shoulder. He could barely feel her smooth skin under the calluses of his palm, but he felt her tense up, just a tiny bit, and turn more toward him.

“It’s history, Lucy. Don’t think on it,” he said, as tenderly as he was able. Felt her relax under his hand. Without a word she pressed herself against him and he hugged her, encircling her tiny shoulders in his powerful arms.

“You’ve changed, James,” she said at last. “I…I used to be so afraid of you. I wanted you and I was afraid of you, all at once. Now I just feel safe when I’m with you.”

“I’m a free man now.”

A free man. He pressed Lucy closer, thought about those words. Freedom had meant nothing to him when Marlowe had given it. James had not believed he would really grant it, did not believe anything that a white man said. And even if Marlowe was true to his word, there was nowhere that the former

slaves could go. The others had embraced their freedom from the first, but not he. Freedom had come slowly for King James.

It had come with his being taken out of the fields and given a position of authority. It had come with his efficiently running the house, proving to the white men that he was just as able as they. It had come with command of the Northumberland. It had come with a restoration of pride. And finally, it had come with being a warrior once again.

“I love you James. I do,” Lucy said. She spoke into his chest, and her voice was muffled.

James pressed his lips against her head and kissed her, and buried his face in her lovely hair. There were tears in his eyes, and he would not let her see them. Not her, not anyone.

Marlowe was fast asleep when he heard the soft footstep, the quiet squeak of the door opening. He came instantly awake, and his hand shot out and grabbed the hilt of his sword, and in the same instant he realized that there was probably no one aboard the Northumberland who might wish to slay him in his sleep.

The door was at the end of the small cabin and communicated with the great cabin astern. It swung open, ever so slowly. Marlowe released his grip on the sword. Did not dare hope for what might be.

Elizabeth was standing there, wearing nothing but her silk shift. The light from a shuttered lantern in the cabin shone through the gauzy material, silhouetting her slender form beneath the garment.

She stepped into the cabin, reached up, and untied the ribbon holding the shift in place. The shapeless gown slid down her body and piled on the deck, and she stepped out of it and silently climbed into Marlowe’s narrow bed.

She was the most beautiful woman that Marlowe had ever seen. He felt a tremor of excitement building in his gut and rushing out to the extremities of his hands and feet. He put his arms around her, running his hands over her skin, smooth, golden, perfect skin. She lay back on his bed and he rolled

half on top of her, kissing her, his tongue probing her mouth, finding hers.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, running her fingers through his hair, and wrapped a long leg around his thighs. He ran his lips over her neck and shoulders, covering her with small kisses, cupping a breast in his hands and gently caressing the firm nipple with his lips. She shifted under him and moaned softly, and Marlowe felt his passion building to a dangerous peak.

They spent two hours exploring each other, making love, talking in whispers, holding each other. At last Elizabeth lay still in his arms, and her breath became soft and regular.

Through the half-open door of the cabin he could see the first blue light of dawn. He reached over and grabbed the hilt of his sword, moving carefully so as not to disturb her, quietly drew the blade. He put the sharp point against the door and pushed it closed. He laid the sword on the deck, and together they slept.