The Guardship

Chapter 23

GEORGE WILKENSON peered into the cell where King James lay, his unconscious body deposited on a pile of hay, the only amenity in the cold, damp stone room in the Williamsburg jail. He was manacled hand and foot, even though he was locked in a cell and did not even look capable of moving. Indeed, he did not even look like he was alive.

They had really beaten him good. Wilkenson winced at the sight of the welts, the swollen eyelids, the dried blood covering his chin and staining his shirt. It was hard to tell, sometimes, with these black fellows, if they had been hurt. But not in this case.

The deputies had taken the opportunity to vent their annoyance at King James’s arrogance, and to express, in a physical way, what they thought of a free black man. It was what Witsen had told them to do, of course, and Witsen was doing what George Wilkenson had told him to do, though the deputies had gone a bit beyond what George had had in mind.

But it would do the job, assuming they had not killed him. Wilkenson stared for a moment more, until he was certain that the black man was breathing, then turned away.

It was midafternoon. James had been in the cell for half a day. The only light in that dreary place came from a small window high overhead. There were bars across it, even though a child could not squeeze through the space. A stone wall with a single iron door separated the three cells from the other half of the building, where the jailor lived. Wilkenson took one last look at James and then stepped through the door and pulled it shut.

The jailor was not home. Wilkenson had sent him away. He wanted the jail all to himself, a private office for the afternoon. He sat on the battered chair beside the room’s single table. Surveyed the crumbs and the dried food and sundry other filth with disgust, then stood and paced back and forth.

He wondered what was causing the delay. Wondered if there was some problem. That thought made his stomach twist with anxiety. He stepped over to the window and peered out from behind the heavy canvas curtain.

Across the wide lawn surrounding the jail he could see the sheriff’s men approaching, and between them, half running to match their pace, was Lucy. There did not seem to be any problem. Not for him, in any event.

This was not entirely necessary, of course, this thing that he was about to do. William Tinling’s letter alone was enough to humiliate and ostracize Elizabeth, and perhaps even see her charged with some crime. But he had to be certain. He had been fooled before. He would not let it happen again. He wanted confirmation, and no one knew more about Elizabeth Tinling than Lucy.

The door opened, and the sheriff’s men all but shoved the young slave girl into the room. She recovered from her stumble, looked up. She saw Wilkenson standing at the far side of the room, and her eyes narrowed.

“Good day, Lucy.”

She was silent for a long second, looking at him with contempt, but she was a slave and knew better than to voice that emotion. “Good day, Mister Wilkenson.”

“Lucy, I want you to see something.” George Wilkenson straightened and crossed the room to the door that opened into the cell block, swung it open, and gestured for her to enter.

She hesitated, glanced around, and then tentatively stepped through the door. Wilkenson followed.

She paused for a moment and looked around in the dim light, and then she gasped and flung herself at the bars of James’s cell.

“You killed him, dear Jesus help me, you killed him!” she cried, reaching through the bars, stretching out her hands to the unconscious man ten feet away.

Wilkenson stepped up behind her. “No, he’s not dead. Not yet.” He put a hand on her shoulder and half turned her toward him. Tears were running down her face. She avoided his eyes. He put a hand under her chin and tilted her face up to his, and their eyes met.

“The sheriff’s men caught him sneaking around the town last night. And he had a gun. You understand what that means, Lucy? You understand he can be hanged for that?”

He looked into her dark eyes, wet with tears. She nodded her head, just slightly, acknowledging that she understood.

“Good. Come out here, please.” He guided her back into the jailor’s quarters. “I wish to talk to you.”

He sat her down at the small table and stood opposite her, looking down at her, waiting patiently as she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her eyes.

“I have an idea, Lucy, that you are very much in love with James.”

Lucy nodded and the tears came again, and between gasping sobs she said, “We is going to be married.”

“That’s nice, Lucy. It is. But see here. It has come to my attention that there was something not…not quite regular about the situation between your mistress, Elizabeth Tinling, and her late husband. You know that Joseph was a particular friend of mine, and I am anxious to know just what it was that was going on.”

Lucy looked up at him, and there was a flash of defiance beneath the fear and the sorrow. “What’re you asking me for, Negro girl like me? Ain’t no good me telling you anything.”

“Oh, you won’t be telling me anything I don’t know. I know everything that went on, from an impeccable source. But I would like you to confirm it. I want to hear it all from someone else as well, and I don’t reckon there’s anything happened at the Tinling place that you don’t know about.”

Lucy bit her lower lip and looked around the room. The sheriff’s men flanked the door, arms folded, watching, expressionless. She was a cornered animal, small and frightened.

Wilkenson put his hands flat on the table and leaned toward her until their faces were only a few inches apart. Lucy drew back and half turned away, but her eyes never left his. “You have a choice to make here, Lucy,” Wilkenson said, his voice soft and calm. “I can have King James released, or I can have him hanged. I can do that. You know I can, don’t you, Lucy?”

She nodded, her eyes fixed on his, a bird hypnotized by a snake. The tears were flowing with abandon now, and the dull light coming in from around the curtain shone off her wet skin. She stifled a sob and sat more upright and summoned up the strength to speak.

“If you knows what happened, then you know she didn’t have nothing to do with it. Mrs. Elizabeth. She didn’t even know. Still don’t. It was the old woman, the one who did the cooking, it was all her doing, and she’s dead this year and more, so there ain’t nothing can be done.”

Wilkenson frowned, shook his head. “I don’t understand-”

“Mr. Tinling…he was an animal…an animal. Beat my mistress like nothing I ever seen. Beat her worse than a dog, worse than a slave. Almost killed her once, she was in bed for a week, all black and blue. I…I…don’t know why. She never did nothing. He just liked it, liked to hit her. Finally he said he’d kill her, and I swear to the Lord he meant it and he would have done it.”

She broke down and put her face in her hands and sobbed.

“Go on, Lucy, it’s all right…”

Lucy braced herself again and looked up. “The old woman couldn’t stand it no more, she loved Mrs. Elizabeth, we all

did. Old woman had the knowledge, poisons and such. She put something in his food, make it look like his heart give out. He dropped dead right in his bedchamber, trying to have his way with me. Ripped my clothes, had himself all hanging out…and it weren’t the first time…and he dropped dead. We all thought his heart give out. Old woman told me the truth of it. Right before she went to her rest, she told me.

“The sheriff, he find the son of a bitch dead that way, breeches all down, and he don’t want to talk about it, don’t want no one to know how the old bastard died.”

She looked around again. Her lower lip was quivering and she was sobbing, but there was a certain defiance about her as well. “It was the old woman killed him, all right, but he would have killed Mrs. Elizabeth if she didn’t do for him first. He said so, I heard it, and he meant it, too. He was crazy, the meanest bastard I ever known. I’m glad for what she done.”

There was silence in the small room. Wilkenson glanced over at the sheriff’s men, noting their wide-eyed surprise, imagined that his own face carried the same expression. He had hoped only to confirm William Tinling’s letter, fan the sparks of a rumor, get people talking. But this was another matter, an issue for the law, the courts. Testimony under oath.

“There, is that what you wanted?” Lucy asked.

“Yes…yes,” George Wilkenson said, but that was not entirely true. It was not really what he had wanted. It was much, much more.

The Plymouth Prize dropped her anchor in Hampton Roads to await the flood tide before working up the James River to Jamestown. It would make the trip upriver that much easier, and twelve hours on the hook would allow time for the word to spread about Marlowe’s second triumphant return.

The anchorage in the Roads was deserted. Even the Wilkenson Brothers was gone. Marlowe wondered how they had mustered enough hands to get her back to her mooring. He pictured George Wilkenson tentatively laying aloft to loosen

sail, shaking like a leaf, the old man standing at the wheel bellowing orders, and the thought made him smile.

Marlowe was alone on the quarterdeck, leaning on the taffrail, enjoying the calm of the evening as best he could. The image of that black flag, with its skull and crossed swords, kept swimming in his head.

He was back. LeRois was back. The sight of him was as frightening as it had been the first time, so very long ago, when Marlowe had been no more than a sailor aboard a merchantman. When he had been someone else entirely.

No, that was not true. It was more frightening now. Now he knew what LeRois was capable of, knew what fury LeRois would unleash upon him, given the chance. Pray God he did not get that chance.

Bickerstaff stepped out into the waist. Marlowe hoped he would come aft, distract him from his thoughts, offer him some counsel. His old friend paused and looked to larboard and starboard, taking in the lovely Chesapeake Bay, lighted as it was by the lowering sun, then climbed up the ladder and walked aft. He had a precise, almost delicate way of moving, as if he were dancing, or fencing.

“Good evening, Thomas,” he said.

“Good evening.”

“It would seem to be as perfect as the original garden, this Virginia.”

“Indeed it would, though I seem to recall that the garden had its serpents as well.”

“By this awkward and altogether uncharacteristic allusion to Scripture I take it you are making reference to Monsieur LeRois?”

“I am.”

“Do you think he is here? On the bay?”

“I do not know. He could be. He could be anywhere.”

The two men were quiet for a moment, watching a pair of swallows twisting and turning overhead. They looked black in the red and fading light of the day.

“You called him the devil himself,” Bickerstaff said at last.

“An exaggeration, perhaps. Not by much.”

“I saw him only the one time. Is he much worse than the others?”

“Most of these piratical fellows do not live so long, do you see? A few years, and then they are caught and hanged, or die of some disease, or are cut down by their own men. But LeRois, he has managed to survive, as if he was blessed by Satan and cannot be killed.

“He was not so bad, you know, when first I was pressed into his service. But by the time I…we took leave of him, he was quite mad. Inhumanly cruel. Drink, I believe, rotted his brain, the drink and the pox and the hard, hard living. And that would not matter so much if he were not so cunning as well, and so able with a sword. At least he was then, and I have to reckon he still is.”

“You defeated him in this last fight,” Bickerstaff pointed out.

“I drove him off, I did not defeat him,” Marlowe corrected. “And that will only serve to make him more dangerous still, because he will be furious over it, and now he will be cautious.”

“You bested him once.”

“Once. And it was a close thing. I would not like to try that again.”

It was first light, with the edge of the sun peaking over Point Comfort, when they won their anchor and made their way upriver under topsails alone. Marlowe had expected word of their return to spread. He had expected boats to greet him, people on the shore to be waving at the mighty guardship, with her bright flags and bunting flowing in the warm breeze. But it seemed as if there was no one there to take notice, as if the very colony had been abandoned.

By midafternoon they had arrived at Jamestown. The Northumberland was there, tied up to the dock, deserted, as was the dock itself, save for one black man, who paced and flapped his hands. Marlowe put his glass to his eye. It was Caesar, and he looked as if he could not wait another second for Marlowe to step ashore. Agitation was not in Caesar’s nature. It made Marlowe uneasy. Something was not right.

They dropped the anchor and put the longboat over the side, ready to pass the warps to the warping posts and haul the Prize up to the dock. Marlowe took his place in the stern sheets, Bickerstaff beside him, and he directed the coxswain to deliver them ashore before the work commenced. Marlowe climbed up the wet wooden rungs onto the dock, Bickerstaff right behind.

“Caesar, what the devil is going on?” he asked. “Has no one heard of our return? Where is everybody? Where is King James?” Where, for that matter, were the governor and the burgesses and all of the admiring multitude he had come to expect?

“I ain’t seen King James, Mr. Marlowe, not since he left with you. And the others, I reckon they wants to keep out of your way.”

“Whatever for?”

“I reckon folks afraid of you, don’t know what you’ll do. Some is afraid to be seen with you. It’s on account of Mrs. Tinling, sir. Mrs. Tinling’s in jail. They done arrested her. Arrested her for playing some part in the killing of her late husband, that son of a bitch, God rest his soul.”