The Guardship

Chapter 30

IT WAS absolutely black on the cable tier, save for the little bit of light thrown off by the lantern Elizabeth had carried below. She sat in a far corner of the tier. Whether she was forward or aft, starboard or larboard, she could not tell, for she was all turned around. She was perched atop a burlap bag filled with bits of old, stiff rope. At least that was what it felt like through her skirts and petticoats and shift.

Lucy sat beside her, all but on top of her, clinging to her and crying bitterly on her shoulder. She could feel the dampness of the girl’s tears spreading through the cloth of her dress. Lucy was terrified. Terrified of what the pirates might do to her, terrified of what Marlowe or James or Elizabeth might do to her, terrified at what might happen to them all as a result of her betrayal.

Elizabeth understood. Lucy had just confessed to her what she had done. Or, more correctly, what George Wilkenson had forced her to do. The bastard.

“Oh, Lord, please forgive me, Mrs. Elizabeth, please forgive me…,” Lucy wailed, softly, and then fell to sobbing again.

Elizabeth wrapped her arm more tightly around Lucy’s shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug. “Don’t you fret, sweetheart, there is nothing to forgive. Any woman would have done

the same. It wasn’t your fault.”

At that Lucy wept harder still.

Lucy’s hysteria had gone on far longer than was quite justified by the circumstances, or so Elizabeth felt, given that Wilkenson had made her do what she did and that Lucy had in point of fact betrayed no one, save for the dead cook, so Elizabeth turned her attention from the girl to the ship around them.

She stared off into the dark and tried to get a sense for what was happening. The great guns had fired, larboard and starboard, and there had been a great rushing about, but that was some time ago. She had braced for the sound of fighting on deck, but it had not come. Instead things seemed to have settled down. She could still hear gunfire, but it did not seem to be the Plymouth Prize’s guns; it seemed too muffled and distant for that.

It seemed as if nothing significant had happened for some time, and Elizabeth found her thoughts drifting back to the murder of her ersatz husband. It had shocked her; she had no idea that the slaves had been capable of such a thing. She pictured the old woman putting the poison in Joseph’s food, the smug satisfaction she must have felt serving out death to that bastard.

But the old woman never left the kitchen. She could not have known who would get the poison dish. If Joseph had been the target, then he had to have been poisoned by the person who actually presented him with his plate, which was…

Elizabeth leaned back, knitted her eyebrows, took a long look at Lucy, still clinging to her. Hadn’t Lucy taken over that duty not a week before Joseph’s death?

A question was forming in her mind, her lips shaping around it, when the women were startled by the sound of rushing feet and a man’s voice, issuing orders, judging by his tone. It sounded like Thomas, but she could not hear the words.

She felt herself tense. Lucy felt it as well and peeled herself from Elizabeth’s shoulder. The faint light of the lantern

gleamed on the tears that covered her face. “What’s happening

now?” she asked, her voice quavering with uncertainty.

“I don’t know.”

Then the ship, which had been heeling in one direction, came upright on an even keel. The two women looked at each other, but their concentration was directed toward listening to what was taking place on deck. There seemed to be a fair amount of commotion, the kind that Elizabeth had come to associate with sail maneuvers.

And then a moment later the ship began to heel the other way. They felt their whole world tilt back and then stop, and then it was quiet again.

“I believe we have…tacked, if I recall the sailor’s vernacular,” Elizabeth said.

“Is that a good thing?”

“I suppose. At least it means we are still sailing. Lucy…?” Elizabeth continued, but the question was quashed by the sound of feet on the ladder above. Both women tensed. It was the first movement they had heard belowdecks in what seemed an age at least.

“It ain’t them pirates, is it?” Lucy whispered.

“Shhh,” Elizabeth said, though her thoughts were moving along the same lines. She was certain that the Plymouth Prize had not been taken. At least she had been certain a minute before, but now doubt began to creep in. It did not seem as if a fight had taken place, but then, she did not really know what a fight would sound like.

She reached slowly for the pistol on the deck at her feet, wrapped her hand around the butt, and raised it to chest level. She did not know what she would do with it. Marlowe’s advice concerning the disposition of the two bullets was clear and sensible, but she did not know if she had the nerve for that. What was worse, she knew that Lucy did not, so for Elizabeth it would be a matter of shooting Lucy first and then herself.

The steps came down another ladder. They could see the loom of a lantern coming closer. Elizabeth drew back the lock

of the pistol. The mechanical click was loud in the confines of the

cable tier.

The footsteps stopped.

“Mrs. Tinling?” came an uncertain voice. “Mrs. Tinling, it’s Lieutenant Middleton, ma’am? You there?”

Elizabeth met Lucy’s eyes, and the women smiled. “Yes, Lieutenant, we’re here, in the cable tier.” She eased the lock back into the half-cock position.

The lantern grew brighter and Lieutenant Middleton appeared. “Ma’am, Captain Marlowe reckons it’s safe for you to come out now.”

“What of the…Have we defeated the pirates? Surely there has not been a battle?”

“No, ma’am. The pirates run aground, and they ain’t moving for some time, what with the falling tide and all.”

“I see. That is a good thing, is it not?”

It was, in fact. At least it was as far as Lieutenant Middleton was concerned, and he described the morning’s events to the women as he led them up and aft to the great cabin, with much talk of drogues and hawsers and draft, tacking and bow chasers and ebbing tides. Elizabeth was able to follow perhaps a third of the monologue. But what she grasped was enough to make her understand that the Plymouth Prize had been lured into a trap and had just managed to escape. Apparently it had been a near thing.

Middleton opened the door to the great cabin and Elizabeth entered, nodding her thanks. She was in high spirits, having discovered how narrowly she had just avoided a most unpleasant fate, and she expected that the others would be similarly enthusiastic.

They were not. Elizabeth sensed the mood, tense and volatile, even as she stepped through the great cabin door. The smile faded from her face.

Marlowe was seated behind the table that he used as a desk. Bickerstaff and Rakestraw sat across from him and to either side. King James was in the far corner.

“I give you joy, gentlemen, on your victory,” she said. Despite the dearth of joy in the room.

“Thank you. You are well?” Marlowe asked. He was not smiling, did not seem overly concerned about her health-or anyone else’s, for that matter.

“Yes, thank you, we are well,” Elizabeth replied. “Are you not pleased to have beaten this pirate?”

“We have escaped, ma’am,” Bickerstaff supplied, “we have not beaten him.”

“And we were goddamned lucky to do that,” Marlowe said, and his tone implied that this was the point in contention. “I think we should not press that luck overhard.”

“Let me say again, Captain,” said Bickerstaff evenly, “that he is stuck on a sandbank. It would be no great difficulty to come about and destroy him where he lies.”

“Oh, you presume to tell me what can and cannot be done when it comes to a sea fight? Well, then, since we are repeating ourselves, let me say again that he has near one hundred men and two ships. That is twice the men we have and twice the ships, and only one ship is aground.

“And even if both were stuck, there are always his boats. His men could board us from boats, come over the rails from so many points we could never repel them. What is more, those men there are desperate and experienced killers, sir, not the pathetic rabble we call our crew.”

“That pathetic rabble was sufficient for you when it came time to remove Elizabeth from jail. They were sufficient to defeat the brigands on Smith Island and to help you carry off what you fancied was your considerable portion of the booty. Yes, I am perfectly aware of that. They will follow you anywhere. My suggestion is that you lead them where you yourself are duty-bound to go.”

Marlowe stood suddenly and pounded the desk with his fist, then shook a finger at Bickerstaff. “Do not, do not, presume to tell me my orders. I do not believe the governor had it in mind to have the guardship taken by pirates, have her guns turned against the colony.”

They were silent for a moment, glaring at each other.

“Mr. Rakestraw,” Marlowe said at last, his eyes never leaving Bickerstaff, “what say you?”

“I will do whatever you order, Captain. I won’t question what you say.”

“James?”

“Like Mr. Rakestraw says.”

“I find this loyalty very refreshing,” Marlowe said. “I wish it were more universal.”

“And I think,” said Bickerstaff, “that I am aware of certain influences coloring your decision that perhaps the others are not. I think perhaps your history leads you to overestimate the abilities of your adversary.”

“What are you saying?” Marlowe growled the words. Elizabeth took a step back, had never seen Marlowe like that, furious, smoldering, feral. “Are you saying I am a coward, sir? Is that it? Should you need me to prove that I am afraid of no one, least of all you, I would be delighted to oblige.”

“Oh, for the love of God, Thomas…,” Elizabeth said. This was too much. Bickerstaff was the truest friend any man had ever had.

“Silence!” Marlowe roared, glared at her. His expression was frightening. He swept the room with his eyes. “We shall proceed to Jamestown and lie at anchor with a spring rigged to the cable. We can then perhaps prevent any vessel from coming upriver, protect ourselves from this bastard once the tide floats him free.”

Marlowe looked around at the men once more. His eyes settled on Elizabeth. “I would hope that I can still count on some loyalty, that all sense of honor and obligation has not been forgotten.”

The words hung in the air. Elizabeth broke the silence. “Oh, for God’s sake, Thomas-forgive me…Captain Marlowe-this is not the time to turn on those who love you.”

“Well, it is refreshing indeed to know that I am loved. But love is not loyalty, is it, ma’am?”

Elizabeth just shook her head. God, but men could be such idiots, such absolute idiots. She had seen it in all its manifestations. It was absurd to think that Marlowe could rise above it, because he, too, was a man. He could not change that.

She spun around and marched out of the great cabin. If Marlowe was going to be an ass in that uniquely masculine way, then there was nothing she or anyone else could do.

There were about eighty men aboard the new Vengeance, dirty, bearded men in long coats, torn and filthy shirts, slop trousers, and old breeches. They wore pistols draped around their necks with fancy bits of ribbon. Some had feathers or more ribbon fastened to their cocked hats, or bright cloth bound around their heads.

They carried cutlasses and swords and axes and daggers, each man according to his preference. They stood in the waist or the quarterdeck or in the rigging or perched on the great guns. They all were watching their master, Capitain Jean-Pierre LeRois.

And LeRois was scanning the countryside around the ship, the green fields and the brown river and the blue, blue sky. The whiteness was gone, the blinding white that had seared everything away, and in its place was the world, the earth, all bright and vivid, new, like the first day of creation.

“Rum?” One of the men standing beside him offered him a bottle. LeRois looked at the bottle and then at the man, and then all the men standing there watching him. He had forgotten about them.

“No,” he said to the man with the proffered bottle. He did not want rum. Rum just dulled everything. He was finally seeing things clearly, more clearly than he had ever seen them. He did not want the sharpness dulled.

He could no longer feel the bugs under his clothes. The screaming was gone as well, and in its place were the voices, and the voices told him it was time to move.

His eyes locked on a big white house at the far end of the field that ran along the north shore. “We go ashore now!” he

shouted to the men. “La maison, we take that. We take them all, oui?”

Heads turned toward the shore. Whatever he had said seemed to agree with the men. A low murmur ran across the deck and built and built into a chorus of shouting and chanting and vaporing as the men rigged up the stay tackle and yard tackle and swayed the boats out over the side.

LeRois did not know how long it took, minutes, perhaps, or hours, but finally the boats were in the water and the Vengeances were pouring over the rails and down onto the thwarts, filling each boat, then pushing off and making room for the next.

At last there was only LeRois, and he clambered down the cleats and took his place in the stern sheets of the launch. The other boats moved deferentially aside while the launch went first to the far shore.

The boat nudged into the bank and the men leapt out into water up to their knees and pulled it farther ashore, then LeRois made his way to the bow and hopped out.

He headed out across the dark brown field. There were row upon row of small dirt hills with plants bursting from the top like little green volcanoes. There were people in the field as well, blacks, starting to move back from the advancing pirates. Some were turning and running. From a cluster of small buildings, the slave quarters, LeRois imagined, more Negroes were fleeing toward the big house.

“Slaves,” he said out loud. “They are all slaves.”

From the corner of his eye he could see his men spread out in a line behind him as they advanced. People appeared on the porch, white people. One of them had a gun. To defend the place. LeRois could not imagine why. He was an irresistible force. They could do no more than run.

And that was what most of them did, white and black. Fled down the far road in the face of the pirates, clutching a few pathetic possessions.

Let them run. LeRois imagined himself and his men as a great wave, pushing all ahead of it, destroying all in its path

until at last those people trying to stay ahead would be trapped and dashed to pieces. There was only so far they could run.

The pirates picked up the pace, stepping faster, then jogging toward that huge house, that repository of comforts and riches. The front door was left open, as if welcoming them in. They swarmed up the small hill on which the house stood and poured across the porch.

A window was smashed and a musket was thrust out-some hero remaining behind to protect his home-and the musket fired into the crowd. A man screamed and dropped, but the pirates did not hesitate in the least, as if they were not even aware of the gunfire.

One of them grabbed up a chair and flung it through a window, leering at the satisfying sound of smashing glass and shattering wood. More chairs were taken up, more windows were broken in.

LeRois caught a glimpse of the hero who had fired the single shot. He was struggling to pull a pistol free from his belt when the horde fell upon him and dragged him through the window and onto the porch, pulling him over the jagged glass he himself had broken. He screamed and disappeared beneath a mass of brigands. There was a brief thrashing, and then he was dead.

The pirates went in through the door and the windows. They tore through the house, wild with the opportunity to loot and destroy. They pulled down curtains and overturned tables, smashed whatever they could smash, just for the sheer delight of it. A bag was located and stuffed with anything that might be of value, and when that one was full another was started.

The family had apparently been at dinner when the Vengeances had interrupted them, for the big dining-room table was spread with turkey and fritters and tripe and asparagus. The pirates swarmed around, grabbing handfuls of whatever struck their fancy and stuffing it into their mouths, smashing the plates on the floor as they emptied them.

They burst into the kitchen. Cooking utensils lay scattered where they had been discarded by the cook as she raced from the house. They ripped through the pantry and the cupboards and feasted on whatever they could find, the freshest food they had had in over two months.

They pulled paintings off the walls and slashed them with their swords and urinated on the faces of the family’s ancestors. They raced up the wide stairs and tore the bedrooms apart, hacking the mattresses until blizzards of feathers filled the rooms. They found all of the alcohol in the house. It was mostly wine, which was a disappointment, but there was enough of it at least that each man had two or more bottles to himself.

It was the greatest frolic they had ever had, and the pirates went about their business with a thoroughness and enthusiasm that was rarely seen in men on the account. One by one the rooms were torn apart. Furniture was smashed into cord wood, walls were hacked up, any badge of wealth or privilege was desecrated. Great piles of wreckage filled the place. The screaming and shouting and merriment did not abate for a second.

LeRois walked slowly from room to room, watching his men have their fun. That was fine. There was no harm done. He enjoyed seeing his men so happy.

He had no idea how long they had spent in the house. There was an elegant clock on the mantel in the sitting room, covered with cherubs and birds and such, that seemed to ring and ring until finally LeRois could take it no more and shot it to pieces. They had been there for some time, he decided. Long enough. It was time to go.

“Allez, allez, we go, we go!” he shouted, walking through the house and screaming at the men and after some time of this finally getting their attention. “Burn this son of bitch, we go now!” he ordered.

The men glanced at one another. The fools did not want to leave. They wanted to stay here, on this one little spot of land, when there was an entire continent lying at their feet.

“I said, burn this son of bitch! We must go down the road, go to the next house! They are waiting for us there!”

This seemed to motivate the men. A curtain was torn down and gunpowder spilled on it and then ignited with a flintlock. Soon the cloth was blazing and the pirates piled paintings, broken furniture, and books onto the fire. In just a few minutes the entire sitting room was engulfed. The ceiling above began to cave in and the fire found the second floor.

The Vengeances shouted and hooted and swilled from their bottles of wine. They understood now that the destruction had just begun.