The Guardship

Chapter 25

LEROIS PRESSED the telescope to his eye, watched the river sloop for as long as he could. The image began as a complete thing, one single sloop, and then began to shimmy and divide, until there were two distinct, overlapping vessels, though neither had quite the substance of a solid object. He lowered the glass and shook his head hard, and then, happily, there was one sloop again.

Overhead there came a high-pitched, keening sound, like a gale wind blowing through taut rigging. He looked up in surprise. The day had been calm up until that point. The flags on the two ships, the Vengeance and the near wreck that had formerly been the Vengeance, were hanging limp, barely moving in the breeze. He did not know what was making that sound.

The two ships were made fast to each other, riding at a single anchor in one of the many small inlets branching off from the Elizabeth River, just north of Norfolk. A deserted place, an area where people generally ignored what others were doing, so the approach of the sloop was cause for some caution. LeRois would not be caught with his breeches around his ankles again. That would be an end to his command.

“Hmmph,” he grunted, putting the glass back to his eye.

He licked his dry lips and felt the sweat on his palms slick on the leather covering of the glass. He was afraid of whom he might see on board the sloop. These images of Malachias Barrett were becoming more and more frightening, more real and less apt to dissipate quickly.

Just as the sloop was beginning to divide again he caught sight of Ripley, standing at the helm, holding the sloop on course to luff up alongside the new Vengeance.

“C’est bien, c’est bien, it is all right, stand down there,” he called to the men who were crowded around the great guns and hiding behind the bulwark, small arms in hand. The silence that had held the deck broke into a dozen conversations as the men got back to their drinking, their gambling, their staring at the approaching sloop, and, in some cases, their work.

The new Vengeance was in excellent condition, having just been readied for a voyage across the Atlantic, and so there was not very much that needed doing. She was fully provisioned with victuals and water, loaded with tobacco and sundry other things, including a quantity of specie, her bottom clean, her rigging well set up, her sails new. She did not stink belowdecks. There was considerably less vermin aboard. She needed only a little finessing to turn her into the perfect raiding platform.

With the crisis passed, the carpenter and his mates had resumed their part of the finessing. They were hacking off the high forecastle to create more open deck space and expose the great guns in a clean sweep fore and aft. When it came to a bloody fight, they did not need bulkheads and such impeding their movement.

Likewise, the boatswain and his mates were working overhead, turning their new ship into a more manageable barque. She was a big vessel, and while the hundred or so men of LeRois’s tribe could have easily handled her, they did not care to expend any more energy than was necessary. Thus the cro’-jack and mizzen topsail yard and all their attendant rigging was struck down to the deck.

Another gang of men were over the side, painting the oiled hull black. Still more were over the transom, cutting away the fashion piece with the vessel’s former name carved in it and replacing it with her new, proper name.

The river sloop luffed up and her forward momentum carried her alongside the new Vengeance. She came to a stop with a shuddering crash into the hull, and her small crew threw lines aboard the bigger ship, which were caught and made fast.

Ripley stomped across the sloop’s deck and scrambled up the side of the ship that had been, until two days before, the Wilkenson Brothers.

LeRois took a long drink of rum, wiped his mouth, and regarded the wiry man approaching him. Ripley looked mad about something, but LeRois could not guess what that might be, nor could he care less. They had captured a big ship with a valuable cargo, and without a drop of blood spilled. Ripley’s master should be delighted.

“LeRois, you stupid drunk bastard, goddamn your eyes, what do you think you’re about?” Ripley called as he stamped aft and up to the quarterdeck.

LeRois squinted at him and chewed at something that had just dislodged from between his teeth. It was not possible that Ripley had just said what he, LeRois, had thought he heard. The shrieking in the rigging grew louder. LeRois dismissed it all as sound, just sound.

“Quartermaster, eh, qu’est-ce que c’est?” LeRois spread his arms in an expansive gesture and looked aloft. “The new Vengeance, what you think?”

Ripley approached until he was a few feet away and then stopped and spit on the deck. “I think, what the fuck are you about?”

“Quoi?”

“What are you doing on the bay, you stupid, drunk son of a whore?”

LeRois squinted at him again. That time he had heard it. Ripley had actually insulted him. He said nothing in reply.

“I told you not to take the tobacco ships, we have all the buggering tobacco we needs! It was general goods inbound,

Spanish stuff, that was what you was after! Are you too dull to remember?”

LeRois shifted uncomfortably. If Ripley went on like this he would have to do something. The quartermaster had apparently forgotten what happened to those who made LeRois angry, such as the old guardship captain in the tavern. “This ship, she is a good one. I can make us richer still with it.”

“That ain’t the point, you sodden, stupid wretch of a-”

That was it. LeRois’s hand shot out, and he grabbed the former quartermaster by the throat and squeezed with the crushing power of a shark’s jaws.

Ripley’s eyes went wide and he flailed out, trying to pry LeRois’s hand away, but with each second he grew weaker, while LeRois’s grip did not diminish in the least. After a minute of that, Ripley began to hammer weakly at LeRois’s arm. He might as well have been hammering at the mainmast.

After a minute and a half LeRois could see the terror in Ripley’s eyes, the terror of pending death, and that was what he had been looking for. He released his grasp and shoved Ripley to the deck, stood over him as he coughed and retched and rubbed his damaged throat.

“You do not talk to me that way, eh?” LeRois said, but Ripley was still far from being able to speak, so LeRois drained his bottle, tossed it over the side, and went forward to hunt up another.

By the time he returned to the quarterdeck Ripley was standing, after a fashion, and leaning against the pinrail, his arm entwined in the mizzen running gear for support. He was still wheezing and coughing in a most pathetic manner.

He looked up at LeRois, and the Frenchman saw fear in his eyes, which was as it should be. LeRois took a pull of his rum and offered the bottle to Ripley. Ripley took it and drank, gagging and coughing but getting the rum down at last. He took another drink and handed the bottle back.

“You listen to me now, quartermaster,” LeRois said. Some thoughts had come to him while he had been waiting for Ripley to recover.

Ripley looked at him with watery eyes and nodded.

“We cannot keep on, eh, with the old Vengeance. She is too weak, too rotten. With this ship we blow that fucking guardship right to hell.”

The mention of the guardship caught the quartermaster’s ear.

“Yes…,” Ripley croaked, and broke into a fit of coughing. “Yes,” he said again when he was done, “you can blow the fucking guardship to hell! That’s an idea that will sit well.”

“Bien, bien,” LeRois said, putting a brotherly arm around Ripley’s shoulder and leading him forward and down to the waist. “You go tell your friends ashore we make more goddamned money with his ship than they ever dream of, eh?”

“I’ll tell them, Capitain, I’ll tell him,” Ripley said, his voice hoarse. “But you are going after the guardship, ain’t you, like you said you was?”

“Oui, we go after the guardship,” LeRois assured him. And meant it. The insult he had suffered at the guardship’s hands was not to be endured.

He did not tell Ripley about the trap the old Vengeance had sailed into, the slaughter the guardship had caused. Perhaps he would later, after they had murdered every one of those filthy bastards, after he had served that Marlowe out in grand style, but not now. He could not bear to think on it now.

The Plymouth Prize was warped back out into the stream and rode there on her best bower. There was a spring rigged from the anchor cable to the capstan so that the vessel could be turned in any direction. The great guns were loaded and run out. Marlowe did not know what to expect, but he certainly would be ready for it.

It had been a long night, a violent, brutal night. When the Prizes had discovered that the beaten black man in the first cell was in fact King James they had not taken it well, for they had come to respect James and look upon him as one of their own.

James would not say who had done that to him, but the Prizes had a pretty good idea, knew the sheriff and his men were involved in some manner. Even if they had not actually done it themselves. That was enough.

They might well have killed the men, and the jailer as well, if Marlowe had not made them stand down.

As it was, the four men were considerably worse off when Marlowe finally locked them in the cell that James had occupied and formed his men up on the lawn outside. A stretcher was fashioned for James. There was talk of finding a chair for Elizabeth, but she assured them that she could walk, and so after much protest they took her at her word.

A small detachment was sent to Elizabeth’s home, where Lucy was roused out and told to dress and pack her things, and clothes for Elizabeth as well. They could not remain in Williamsburg, could not remain within the reach of the law. There was no safety for them anywhere in the colony, save for in the midst of the Plymouth Prizes.

Lucy was frightened, nervous, like a deer. Even the assurance that she would be there with King James did not seem to mollify her.

At last Rakestraw drew the men up into two rough lines and marched them out of town, with Elizabeth and Lucy and James on his stretcher sandwiched between them, and at the tail end six men carrying the three big trunks that Lucy had packed.

There was little chance that the alarm would be raised, with the sheriff and the jailer locked away, and little chance that the militia would welcome the opportunity to face this unknown band on the dark road. The march back to Jamestown was uneventful.

They arrived in the early-morning hours, exhausted, and filed back aboard. They warped the vessel away from the dock, anchored, rigged the spring, cleared for action, and collapsed on the deck.

King James was laid out carefully on the upholstered settee in the great cabin, and there he slept. Lucy curled up next to him and slept as well.

Without a word spoken between them, Elizabeth followed Marlowe into his small cabin. She held his eyes as she took off her hat and kerchief, then reached up and untied the lacing of her bodice and pulled it free.

Her dress and petticoats were torn and dirty from the rough treatment she had suffered, and she shuffled them off and let them fall to the deck. She untied the neck of her shift, as she had done before, and let it drop on top of the other clothing and then slid into Marlowe’s bunk.

Marlowe followed her with his eyes, then quickly pulled off his own clothing, pausing only to hang his sword on its hook and place his brace of pistols in their box.

He slid in beside her, wrapped his arms around her, feeling her perfect skin against his, her small shoulders under his big and callused hands. She murmured something he could not understand. He held her tighter.

Five minutes later, they were both asleep. They were far too exhausted, physically and otherwise, for anything beyond that.

The first light of the morning drove Marlowe from their bed, though he could have happily slept another ten hours, waking, perhaps, to make love to the flawless beauty beside him and then sleeping again.

But there were other concerns beyond that, such as what the day would bring, and so he extracted himself from her arms, taking care not to wake her, dressed quickly, and made his way to the deck. Bickerstaff was there, early riser that he was, and he nodded his greeting.

“Good morning, Francis,” Marlowe said. Bickerstaff would not lecture him further on the morality of what he had done the night before, plucking Elizabeth from jail. The deed was done. There was nothing more to say.

Rather, Bickerstaff turned to him and said, “I am greatly relieved to see that Mrs. Tinling has not been harmed. I like her very much. I think she may be just the thing to make a

gentleman out of you, something I have quite despaired of doing.”

“I thank you, Francis,” Marlowe said, and he smiled. “Were I you, however, I should not give up on me yet.”

“We shall see.”

“How does King James do?” Bickerstaff was the closest thing to a physician that the Plymouth Prize could boast.

“He was badly beaten. A weaker man might have succumbed by now, but I have great hope of James’s recovery. I shall give him a vomit this morning, which I believe will set him up admirably.”

It was two hours later that Marlowe and Bickerstaff, along with Elizabeth and Rakestraw, sat down to their breakfast in the great cabin. It was a fine meal, consisting of eggs, hashed beef, cold pigeon, and fritters, fresh food being one of the advantages of sailing within the confines of the bay.

On the other side of the cabin, King James lay propped up while Lucy fed him chicken broth and milk.

They were just enjoying their chocolate when Lieutenant Middleton knocked on the great cabin door.

“Sir, there’s a river sloop upbound, about a mile or so.”

“Indeed. Hail her and have her heave to and tell her master to come aboard. I would speak with him.”

“Marlowe,” Bickerstaff said after Middleton was gone, “I urge you not to do anything to further exacerbate this situation.”

“Never in life, sir. More chocolate with you?”

Twenty minutes later, they heard Middleton’s voice hailing the sloop through a speaking trumpet, then hailing again, and then a great gun went off forward as the sloop’s master, apparently, required a less subtle persuasion to heave to and repair on board the guardship.

They listened to the bustle abovedecks, and finally Middleton knocked again and said, “Sloop’s master is on the quarterdeck, awaiting your pleasure, sir.”

“I shall be up directly,” Marlowe said, and then to his company added, “Pray, excuse me. I shall not be long.”

He stepped through the scuttle, then around and up to the quarterdeck. The sloop’s master had his back to Marlowe, looking upriver at his own vessel. He was a thin, bony man. Dirty clothes, worn shoes. The queue that fell from under his cocked hat looked more like spun yarn than hair. Greasy spun yarn.

And there was something familiar about him, even from behind. Marlowe felt an odd sensation, an alarm in his gut, as if that man did not belong to the present time and place.

“Here, you,” said the seaman standing loose guard on the sloop’s master, “here’s the captain. Show some sodding respect.”

The sloop’s master turned and faced Marlowe. Their eyes met and held each other, and widened as recognition spread across both their faces.

“Dear God…Ripley,” Marlowe whispered.

“Barrett…it’s you, you son of a whore…”

It took both men less than a second to realize the implications of this meeting. Ripley turned and leapt up onto the quarterdeck rail, balancing there, arms flailing. “Grab him! Grab him!” Marlowe shouted, but the stunned guard just watched as Ripley plunged over the side.

“Shoot that son of a bitch! Shoot him when he comes up!” Marlowe shouted next, rushing to the rail, but again the guard was so shocked, and so generally dull, that he did not respond.

“Give me this, you idiot!” Marlowe jerked the musket from his hand and pulled back the lock as he pointed the barrel over the side. Ripley’s head appeared above the brown, muddy water. He swiveled around and looked up with wide eyes, then dove again as Marlowe pulled the trigger.

A small spout of water shot up from the place where Ripley’s head had been, and Marlowe recalled, with despair, that Ripley was one of those oddities, a sailor who could swim, and swim well.

“Get me another gun, damn your eyes!” Marlowe roared. He saw another of the Prizes rushing aft onto the quarterdeck, drawn by the gunfire, a musket in his hands. Marlowe ran up

to him, pulled the weapon from his hands, ran back to the quarterdeck rail.

Ripley was fifty feet away, pulling himself up the sloop’s side. Marlowe aimed and fired. The ball punched a small hole in the bulwark beside Ripley, slowed him down not one second.

Ripley tumbled over the side of the sloop, ran aft, calling for his men to cut the cable and set the sails. Marlowe turned forward. “Get some hands to the capstan!” he screamed. “Get the guns to bear on that sloop! I want him blown right to hell, damn you all, blow him right to hell!”

The Prizes moved fast, for there was no equivocation in their captain’s voice. They grabbed up the handspikes, thrust them into the capstan, heaved around. The spring lifted out of the river and grew taught, and the Plymouth Prize began to turn under the stain, bringing her broadside around.

The river sloop had her jibs up and taut and her mainsail half hoisted when Ripley himself brought an ax down on the cable and cut it in two. The sloop drifted free, drifted downwind, down toward the Plymouth Prize, before her sails filled and she began to gather momentum.

“That’s well!” Marlowe shouted. The guns would not bear perfectly, but they would bear, and he could not afford to let the sloop get too far away. He saw Bickerstaff and Elizabeth step out onto the waist, look around, then disappear below again, realizing, quite correctly, that they would do best to stay out of the way.

“Hand to the guns! Go!” Marlowe shouted, but the men, anticipating that order, were already training the guns around to bear on the sloop. One by one the guns found their targets and the gun captains brought their match down on the train of powder and the big cannons went off. The water around the sloop was torn up and a few holes appeared in the big mainsail and the low bulwark, but the sloop was not slowed and she was not stopped.

The Prizes leapt to reloading, working like demons to get one more shot off before the sloop disappeared around the

bend, upriver. They were frantic to stop the little vessel because they saw Marlowe was frantic to stop it.

Marlowe watched the sloop pulling away. He thought for a moment that she might run aground, but Ripley put her about on a tack that would take them around the bend upriver and beyond the Plymouth Prize’s guns.

It was useless to try to pursue. The wind was right over their bow, and the big, square-rigged vessel would barely be able to move in the confines of the river, let alone catch the nimble sloop.

“Secure the guns,” he called. Hoped that the despair that he felt was not conveyed by his voice. The sloop’s low hull disappeared behind the sandy point, and a moment later her rig was gone as well.

“Marlowe, what the devil was all that about?”

Bickerstaff stepped up onto the quarterdeck with Elizabeth right behind.

“That, my friend, was the sound of my own black history overtaking me.” Marlowe turned to Bickerstaff and smiled, a weak effort. “I am undone, sir, quite undone.”

Then he looked at Elizabeth, saw the concern in her face. “It seems this is the season for ghosts.”