The Guardship

Chapter 36

THE WAIST of the Wilkenson Brothers was in deep shadow, with the bulwarks shielding the deck from the light of the burning ship. Men moved in and out of the night. Swords raised overhead gleamed as they reflected the fire. The flash of pistols, pan and muzzle, lit those dark places for a brilliant second and then the shadows closed in again.

Marlowe felt the burn of a cutlass cutting across his arm even as he tried to recover from his leap to the deck. He twisted instinctively, swung his big sword around, reached for a pistol as he fell. Felt the jar of the blade making contact, but he heard no scream and did not know if he had even struck his attacker.

He hit the deck flat on his back, his sword in his hand. The pirate was standing above him, leering, cutlass raised, ready to deliver the coup de grace. Marlowe brought the pistol up, pulled the lock back with his thumb. The pirate bellowed outrage as he tried to bring his cutlass down before Marlowe fired the gun.

He did not succeed. Marlowe pulled the trigger, tossed the gun aside, giving no more thought to the big man he had just blown to the deck. He scrambled to his feet, his back to the bulwark. In a half-crouch, sword gripped in both hands, he got his bearings.

The Plymouth Prizes and the pirates had smashed into each other like surf across a bar of sand, and now they were fighting it out where they stood. Most of those who were wounded or dead had been shot down by the Plymouth Prize’s great guns or by pistols in that first wave, but once those guns had been fired there was no time to reload, and now it was steel against steel.

Marlowe looked aft. More dead men there, more wounded crawling away or curled up in the shadows. His firing the great guns had had some effect, made the numbers a little more even, and now the Plymouth Prizes were plunging in with a fury to match the pirate defenders.

If I’ve turned them all into brigands, at least I’ve taught them more than just greed, Thomas thought as he stepped into an open place in the line and matched swords with a wiry, bearded little man with a scarred face and black teeth.

The little man was fast, trying to cut Marlowe down with a quick, darting attack, while Marlowe attempted to overwhelm him with his strength and the weight of his sword. It was an interesting match, and one that might have been more difficult for Marlowe to win just a few years before, before he had learned under Bickerstaff’s careful tutelage the more subtle aspects of fighting with a blade.

He wielded his big sword with two hands, as was his custom, beating back the attack with twice the force needed, throwing the little man off with the sheer momentum of his parry. His left arm was starting to ache where it had been cut; he could feel the blood, warm and liquid, under his shirt. He considered pulling his second pistol and just shooting the man, but he needed that bullet to kill LeRois. He had a higher duty here, and he was just wasting his time with this ugly opponent.

The pirate darted forward, lunged, as Marlowe leaned back. The tip of his blade pierced Marlowe’s coat, and Marlowe brought his own sword straight down on the man’s outstretched hand. The pirate screamed, the sword fell to the deck, and Marlowe lunged himself, running the man through, then

pulled the blade clean, turning to face any new threat on his flank even as he heard the man’s body hit the deck.

LeRois. He could avoid it no longer. He could not continue to pretend that the Prizes needed him here in the waist.

Rakestraw was ten feet away, fighting like an ancient Norseman, rallying the men. At any moment Bickerstaff and his men would come swarming up the other side and fall on the Vengeances from behind. Ten minutes before, there would have been enough pirates to fight both sides of the deck, but that was before he had delivered the blasts of case shot right into the vaporing tribe.

LeRois was not among the men fighting in the waist, which meant either he was among the dead or wounded or that he was holding back, perhaps waiting for Marlowe to come to him.

There were no more excuses. He had to hunt the man down. As much as he did not wish to, he knew that he had to go.

“Oh, Lord, please let him be dead,” Marlowe muttered. He imagined LeRois’s scarred and battered body tossed up against the bulwark, half torn apart after taking a blast of canister right in the chest, those mad eyes open and dead, staring sightless up at the sky. He felt as hypocritical as a man can feel, calling on God at that juncture.

He stepped back from the fight, pressed himself against the bulwark, worked his way aft, toward the quarterdeck. It was the body of the serpent that his men were fighting. It was his job to cut off the head.

A fire was flicking, burning aft. Marlowe thought perhaps the flames from the other ship had blown across and caught in the rig. But it was not the ship that was burning. It was a torch, held aloft, and holding that torch was Jean-Pierre LeRois.

He stood on the quarterdeck ladder, on the other side of the deck. The undulating light illuminated the dirty, powder-burned face, the matted beard, the dark, wild eyes, the red sash under a once-fine coat. Jean-Pierre LeRois. Older than Marlowe had last seen him, dirtier, meaner looking, but there he was.

The pirate was squinting, searching through the crowd, and it was no great difficulty to guess for whom he was looking.

And then their eyes met. LeRois paused, leaned back, leaned forward, glaring, and then he smiled, his big filthy teeth gleaming in the light of the torch.

Marlowe took a step aft. They would meet on the quarterdeck, fight it out in that land of the dead, among the bodies of the men Marlowe had swept away with his broadside.

But LeRois did not go aft. Rather, he stepped down into the waist, standing head and shoulders above the others, and with his eyes still holding Marlowe’s he stepped over to the doorway leading to the aft cabins, pulled it open, stepped through, and shut it behind.

“Goddamn it!” Marlowe shouted. LeRois had gone below. With every last bit of body and soul he wanted to let the pirate go, did not want to follow the snake down its hole. But he could not let LeRois get away, and there was no knowing what he was about. He had to go.

He pushed past the struggling, shouting men, edged around the break of the quarterdeck, worked his way to the door that LeRois had shut behind him. Felt the sting of sweat running into his eyes. He blinked it away and shifted his sword to his left hand and took hold of the handle of the door with his right.

He pulled the door open, quickly, and leapt aside before LeRois could put a bullet into him. But there were no shots fired, no noise of any kind from within.

He stepped forward, peered through the door and down the alleyway. There was a short hall, lined with small cabins, that terminated at the far end with the master’s great cabin, all in darkness save for a single lantern burning in the aft cabin. It was just as he remembered it from the time that he and Bickerstaff had come aboard to enforce the king’s rules governing trade. It seemed years before.

Marlowe wiped his slick palm on his coat, pulled his remaining pistol from his cross-belt, cocked the lock with his thumb. He breathed deeply, again and again, as if relishing

the very act of breathing, as a man might relish a last meal, then he stepped into the dark alleyway.

He put a foot down on the deck, carefully, let his weight come on it slowly, and listened. The fighting on the deck had swelled in pitch, and Marlowe guessed that Bickerstaff and his men had come over the side, but he pushed those sounds aside and concentrated on the space around him.

There was nothing, no sound at all, save for the faint protest of the deck under his foot. He took another step inboard. Nothing. Perhaps LeRois was waiting aft in the great cabin. He ran his eyes over what little part of the place was visible to him, readjusted his grip on the pistol, and stepped forward again.

Then the door to the small cabin behind him seemed to explode outward, shards of wood showering the deck and light bursting into the dark confines. Marlowe twisted around as the great cudgel of a torch swung in an arc toward his head, behind it the big, grinning face of Jean-Pierre LeRois. He raised the pistol, and his finger squeezed the trigger as the torch slammed into the side of his head, knocking him against the bulkhead. The alleyway and the flames and the pirate swam in front of him, and his knees buckled from under him.

LeRois’s laugh filled the space, as loud and sudden as the pistol shot. “Quartermaster, I am the devil himself, your bullets do not harm me! I have waited for you all night and you try to shoot me? No, no, we must go down to hell together!”

Marlowe slumped to the deck. His right hand grabbed up his sword, moving by instinct alone, but he did not have the strength to raise the blade in his defense. He felt LeRois’s hand on his collar, felt the massive strength of the man’s arm, felt himself being dragged aft along the deck. He clung to his sword as if it alone were keeping him alive.

His shoulder slammed into the door frame as LeRois pulled him into the great cabin. He was pulling Marlowe as if he were a child, pulling him into the aft cabin with one hand while he held the torch aloft with the other.

Marlowe tried again to raise the sword, tried to drive it through the pirate, and he managed to get his arm to move when he felt the deck disappear beneath him. He was falling, plunging down into the dark, and before he even realized that he was falling he stopped, slamming into the deck below.

His sword wrenched from his hand. He heard it clatter away in the dark. He rolled over. Above him was the square hatch through which he had been dropped, and beyond that the white painted deckhead in the great cabin.

Then the hatch was filled with LeRois’s huge frame. Marlowe rolled out of the way, and the pirate jumped down after him. He heard the man’s boots hit the deck a foot away, and his only thought was to get his sword.

He rolled again, onto his stomach, and looked up, waiting for LeRois to run him through. They were in the hold, the lowest part of the Wilkenson Brothers, and the black space was now lit with the flames from LeRois’s torch. The pirate was stamping off forward as if he did not know Marlowe was there.

Thomas pushed himself to his knees. His head was still spinning from the blow, his shoulders and one knee ached from the impact with the deck. The wound he had received when he first leapt aboard was bleeding again, but his thoughts were on nothing but his sword and LeRois’s back.

He could just see his sword, all but lost in shadow. He clenched his teeth, shuffled over and picked it up, then painfully stood.

LeRois was at the far end of the hold. He was bending over, holding the torch to a black pot on the deck. It sputtered and lit, like a little bonfire. He turned and lit another and another. Smoke poured from each as it took flame.

LeRois straightened and turned, squinting into the shadows. Thomas did not move.

“Barrett? Are you here, Barrett?” LeRois’s voice was pleasant, as if welcoming a guest into his home. “We are in hell now, mon ami, and we will see which of us can last the longer. We will fight to see who rules here, eh?”

Marlowe crouched, held his sword in front of him. LeRois was a mad dog; he had to be killed. He took a step forward.

The hold was filling with smoke, yellow smoke, that made a halo around the pirate’s torch. Thomas’s eyes were burning and watering, his lungs ached. It was brimstone burning in those pots. LeRois had set brimstone on fire, and now the hold was filling with the sulfur smoke. He had indeed created his own hell, and now they would do battle to see who was prince of the underworld.

Marlowe knew he could not last long in that yellow fog, but neither could he leave LeRois to his own devices. He had to finish the pirate and go.

He made his way along the hold, his various aches and wounds all but forgotten in the energy gleaned from the pending battle. He moved toward the flaring light of the torch. He could no longer see LeRois through the smoke, but perhaps the bastard was still holding the thing. He held his hand out, feeling his way, unable to see more than a few feet in any direction.

“You have been haunting me, Malachias Barrett,” the pirate called out from the fog. “Your spirit has been haunting me, but now the devil has made you flesh so that we can see who is to be capitain, eh? Capitain in hell.”

The voice seemed to come from the direction of the flames, but Marlowe could not tell for certain. Still he kept moving toward the burning torch, the only reference in the dark and smoke-filled hold. Ten feet away. He paused and listened. He could not see LeRois. The torch did not move; it looked as if it might have been jammed in place. Perhaps LeRois was not there at all.

And then he heard a flurry behind him, a rustle, sensed a motion at his back. He spun around, sword up, horizontal, and out of the yellow smoke LeRois’s weapon came down with the familiar shock and ring of steel on steel.

Marlowe twisted his blade aside, knocking LeRois’s sword away, then stepped forward on the attack. He could just see the man now, shadows of a black beard and a swirling coat, the suggestion of wild eyes through the sulfur smoke.

Marlowe slashed away, but LeRois’s blade was back, fending him off. Marlowe swung again and again, wielding the sword like an ax, driving LeRois back. He could hear the old pirate’s breath coming harder, realized that he was gasping as well, forced to take shallow breaths to avoid choking in that lethal atmosphere.

Here we are again, Barrett and LeRois, he thought. Both a little older and a little slower, and the Vengeance beneath them might not be the same as that of years before, but it was the same fight.

He had to kill LeRois and get out. He lunged, but his sword found only air. LeRois was gone.

Thomas stopped, crouched low, listened. He closed his eyes and was rewarded with a wave of relief from the burning sulfur. Overhead he could hear the muffled sounds of the men still locked in battle. He took a step back and felt his shoulder press against something. It felt like a cask. He could hear LeRois breathing, somewhere off in the smoke.

“Eh, quartermaster, you are still the devil with a sword, but can you live in hell as I can? Eh? Can you breathe, quartermaster? Can you see?”

“I can breathe, LeRois,” Marlowe said, which was just barely true. “But you do not sound so good yourself. Perhaps you are not the devil you think you are. Perhaps you are just a drunk old man who is too weak to be a capitain.”

“Merde!” LeRois roared, and suddenly he emerged from the smoke, sword swinging as if he were trying to cut a swath through the fog, hoping that Marlowe was in the arc of his blade. Marlowe dodged the weapon, leaped across the deck, and this time it was he who lost himself in the smoke.

He heard LeRois coughing, gasping, and wanted desperately to cough himself, but he held back as long as he could. He shuffled forward, and when he could hold it no longer he doubled over, coughing and gasping and retching.

“I am coming for you now, quartermaster,” LeRois shouted, croaking the words through his damaged throat. The hold was entirely engulfed. Marlowe could no longer see the burning pots of brimstone, and the torch fire was just a dull

yellow light illuminating the thick gloom. He coughed again and held his sword up, and LeRois was on him once more.

There was less power in the pirate’s strokes, and that was the only thing that saved Thomas’s life, for he barely possessed the breath to defend himself. Thrust and parry, attack and fend off, the two men went back and forth, emerging and disappearing in the yellow smoke, coughing, wheezing.

Marlowe could hardly see through his watery eyes. He had no sense for what was forward and what was aft. He stumbled on something and almost fell, and as he recovered he waited for LeRois’s blade to come through the smoke and finish him off, but it did not, and Marlowe was alone again in the yellow acrid hell.

“LeRois!” he croaked, then gagged. “LeRois, you stupid son of a whore, you drunken useless madman! You pathetic wretch!” If he could make him mad, furious, he might make a mistake, and then he could kill him and get back on deck before he passed out. “LeRois!”

Coughing from somewhere in the smoke, retching, and then LeRois’s voice, slurred, faltering, “The devil, he has brought us here, and he will kill us both.”

Marlowe blinked hard, looked in the direction from which the voice had seemed to come. There was a dancing light, like a ghost, like a spirit moving through the smoke-filled space. He blinked again. He could no longer tell if he was conscious or not, dead or alive. Perhaps he was already in hell. He was no longer afraid. He did not care.

And then from some back corner of his mind came the realization that the moving ghost was the torch. LeRois must have picked up the torch. He must be carrying it, and that meant that where the light was, so was LeRois.

Marlowe panted, coughed, and held his sword in front of him like a lance. He took a faltering step forward, and his foot came down on something soft. He bent at the knee and touched it. It was a hat. LeRois’s hat. He picked it up and took a step toward the bobbing light, then another, stumbling toward

the torch, trying to reach it before he passed out, before he fell for the last time.

The fire burned brighter as he ran, and suddenly he could see flames, actual flames, but LeRois was just a shadow, a dark outline in the yellow smoke. He paused, tensed, and then threw the hat at LeRois.

“Merde!” the dark shadow screamed, then twisted, and a blade cut through the smoke, the shadow slashing at whatever had hit it.

Marlowe charged. Two steps, and in the diffused light of the torch he could see the dark face of Jean-Pierre LeRois, his filthy cheeks streaked where the tears ran down. He saw LeRois blink and look up from the hat, confused by what was coming out of the smoke, and then Marlowe felt the point of his sword make contact with flesh and with all the strength remaining in his arms he shoved the blade in.

LeRois’s eyes shot open, his mouth gaped wide, and he screamed, a long, prolonged howl. The torch fell from his grip, and he staggered back as Marlowe twisted the blade and dragged it free.

They were so close that Marlowe could smell LeRois, even through the sulfur, smell the sweat and the rum and the foul breath and corruption. He could see the dark blood erupting from his mouth as he fell. He watched, unable to move, unable to breathe as the man he feared most in the world collapsed onto the deck.

He took a step forward, leaned over, unable to believe what he was seeing. It was not possible that LeRois was dead, yet here was his sword, Thomas Marlowe’s sword, dripping with the pirate’s blood.

And then suddenly LeRois gasped and choked and coughed up more blood that ran black down his cheeks and into his beard. He blinked and looked up at Marlowe with wide eyes, and then with a sound that was equal parts retching and coughing and screaming he rolled over and grabbed the torch and flung it away.

They were swallowed by the darkness again, the darkness and the diffused yellow smoke from the sulfur pots, and out of the dark came the retching and the coughing as LeRois fought his last battle.

And then the torch flared and the light grew many times brighter. The yellow smoke was lit up from within, and Marlowe could see the wild death grin on LeRois’s face, but there was still life in his eyes. He coughed and in a weak voice said, “Cochon.”

From the center of the light Marlowe heard a crackling and a popping and hissing, the unmistakable sound of gunpowder burning. He felt his eyes go wide, despite the pain from the sulfur smoke. LeRois must have laid a powder train to the magazine. Of course he would. He would not have created his own hell without thinking of that.

“Oh, damn you!” he heard himself say, and at his feet the pirate laughed until he started to choke. Marlowe rammed his sword into the sling at his side and crouched low and raced back in the direction he had come. The ship was going to blow up. He had to get his men off. Did not know how long he had.

He plunged through the smoke, coughing, gasping, wasting his precious breath cursing LeRois. He stumbled on something and began to fall, arms flung out in front of him, hit something solid and caught himself. He was inches from whatever it was he had run into, but he could not see what it was. He ran his fingers over it. A stack of barrels. There had been no barrels aft that he could recall. He must have run in the wrong direction.

He felt his head spinning, felt his legs grow weak as the smoke overwhelmed him. He tried to stand, but he could not. His knees buckled, and he fell. He grabbed at the barrels for support, but they slipped from his weak hands and the next thing he knew his face was pressed against the deck and he was gasping and coughing.

But he was breathing. He was breathing clean air, or at least cleaner air than he had had in some time. Down next to the deck the smoke was not so thick. He felt himself revive,

and he breathed deeply until he began to gag again. He crawled away, prayed it was the right direction.

Off to his right the fire flared and began to race along, illuminating the yellow fog. Marlowe got on his hands and knees and crawled faster. Could hear the hissing sound of burning powder.

As long as the fire was just consuming loose grains the powder would only burn. It was when it hit the tight-packed barrels that it would explode. He had until then to get his men off, and he did not know how long that would be. Minutes, if he was lucky, but it could just as easily be seconds.

He scrambled along, and now he could see LeRois’s lifeless body illuminated by the fire he had started as his last act on earth. Surrounded by the glowing light, he looked as if he was being lifted up into heaven, which Marlowe very much doubted. It was a reference point, a landmark in the fog, and Marlowe scurried past.

The fire flared again, igniting something, and Marlowe leapt to his feet. He had to risk passing out. He had to get on deck fast.

He careened off a post, stumbled, kept running. He could see a motion in the smoke, a swirl of gray and yellow as the sulfur was sucked up overhead, and he knew that he had found the hatch. He leapt for the space, and his hand found the combing and he pulled himself up.

“Oh, Lord, help me!” he cried, trying to find the strength in his tired arms and aching lungs to pull himself up through the hatch. His hand touched something-the leg of the cabin table-and his fingers wrapped around it and he pulled himself out of the smoke-filled hold, out of that special hell that LeRois had laid along for them, and up into the great cabin.

The cabin was filled with smoke as well, but after the hold it seemed like the freshest of air, and Marlowe wanted to just collapse on the settee and breathe, just breathe. He took a staggering step aft, recalled that the ship was about to explode. How had his mind become so addled?

He turned and lurched out of the great cabin and down the alleyway, careening off the cabin doors as he struggled to get to the waist. The door was open, and he stumbled out into the open space.

The old pirate ship was still burning, though not as bright now, and Marlowe’s damaged eyes could see nothing but a few shapes moving about. The fight was over, apparently, but he did not know who had won. He tried to shout a warning, but all that came was coughing and retching.

“Marlowe! Marlowe, dear God!” It was Bickerstaff, standing in front of him. His face came in and out of focus, and he looked so very concerned.

“Bickerstaff…,” Marlowe managed to get out, and then broke into a coughing fit again.

“Marlowe, pray, sit! We have won the day!” Bickerstaff said, but Marlowe just shook his head and pointed feebly down. “Magazine…,” he said, “…fire…”

Bickerstaff stared at him as if not comprehending. Marlowe tried to summon the power to explain further, but Bickerstaff said, “The magazine is on fire?”

Marlowe nodded. It was all he could do.

“Shall we get the Plymouth Prize under way?”

Marlowe shook his head. No time for that, not by half. He glanced over at the guardship, still riding against the pirate’s side. They would never save her. He pointed toward the other bulwark, the one closest to shore, and staggered toward it, hoping Bickerstaff would understand.

And he did. The teacher let go of Marlowe’s arm and turned to the dark shapes in the waist that Marlowe guessed were his men. “The magazine is on fire!” he heard Bickerstaff shout. “Over the side! Everyone over the side! Throw the wounded over, we shall get them to shore! If you cannot swim, grab something that will float!”

Marlowe sensed the stampede to the side but could see no more than dark shapes rushing past, men carrying other men. He heard the pounding of bare feet and shoes on the deck, voices full of fear and pain, the cries of the wounded. He could still smell the sulfur, but mostly it was sweet night air, the most

delicious sensation he had ever had. He paused by the main hatch and closed his eyes and just breathed.

And then he felt rough hands on his arms. He opened his aching eyes to see King James and Bickerstaff on either side of him, hustling him to the side of the ship. Men were leaping over the rail. He could hear splashing and shouting in the river below.

They reached the bulwark, and he heard Bickerstaff say, “Marlowe, can you swim? Isn’t it odd that I don’t know?”

But Marlowe did not know either. Can I swim? He could not recall.

He felt the deck heave under his feet, thought that he was going to pass out again. It was the strangest sensation, the solid deck moving thus. Wanted to comment on it, felt hands lift him up. Realized that the ship was about to explode.

“Dear God!” he shouted, regaining some of his senses. He put a foot on the pin rail and stood up, and on either side James and Bickerstaff did the same, then he launched himself out into the air.

He felt himself plunging down through the dark, and then the warm water was all around him, covering him, smothering him with its blackness.

And then the water was lit up like it was daytime, only much brighter than that, and the colors were brilliant reds and oranges, not the pale yellow of sunlight. He felt himself shoved through the water as if pushed by a giant hand.

He kicked and kicked again, and his head broke the surface and he gasped for air, that precious element. Flaming bits of the Wilkenson Brothers were falling all around him, splashing and sizzling in the water.

He could see things-people, wreckage, he could not tell-bobbing in the water, lit up by the great flames that were consuming the merchantman turned pirate. A night of fire, a night of death.

There was something beside him, floating, and he grabbed it. It was a section of a yard. The main topsail yard, he thought. He could see the footropes trailing off of it, a charred section

of the sail still made fast by its robands. He held on as a child clings to its mother. Drifted until he felt sand scraping the bottom of his feet.

He drifted a few more feet and then realized that he could stand, so he began to walk for shore, pushing through the water, dragging the section of the yard behind him, because suddenly it was very important for him to save it from the flames.

At last he was in only a few inches of water and he could not pull the yard any farther, so he decided that it would be all right where it was. He just wanted to sit down for a moment, and then he would find Bickerstaff and King James and they could start cleaning all this up.

And then he was sitting. And then he was lying with his cheek pressed against the rough sand of the beach. He was very warm and comfortable. He felt himself sinking into the earth, and the darkness enveloped him like a blanket and then all thought just floated away.

It took him some time to realize that the voices were not in his head, that what he was hearing was not a dream. When he finally realized that he was indeed awake, he lay very still and listened and tried to reckon what was going on. He did not open his eyes.

His body ached as if he had not moved for some time. Where he was pressed into the sand he was still damp, but his face was warm and the parts of him exposed to the air were dry, and he guessed that it was daytime, a warm, sunny day. What day, he could not begin to imagine.

Then memories began to filter back of the last night that he could recall. He could still taste the sulfur in the back of his throat. He remembered the fight on the deck, the brimstone-filled hold, LeRois.

He opened his eyes and was greeted with a face full of sunshine that made him blink and turn away. He could feel the tears rolling down his cheeks, and he groaned out loud. He put a hand down in the warm sand and began to push

himself up, and that made him groan even louder with the pain and the effort. At last he sat up and held his face in his hands.

“Here, sir!” he heard a voice call out, a voice that he did not recognize, so he ignored it. “Here’s one still alive!”

He heard the soft sound of footsteps in the sand, getting closer. Guessed that he was the one they meant. He opened his eyes again and blinked, easing them into the full brunt of daylight. He let the tears run unimpeded down his cheeks.

At last he looked up. He was on the edge of the James River. It was a fine day, the sky blue and the sun warm, the few clouds overhead white and pleasing to the eye. It was all quite at odds with the way he felt.

Forty feet off the beach the charred bones of the former Wilkenson Brothers and the Plymouth Prize reached up from the brown water, skeletal hands from the grave, two enemies locked together in death. Wisps of smoke still rose from the black timbers. He could not see the Northumberland but guessed she was down there too. Half a cable length beyond that the burned stumps of the other pirate vessel’s masts stuck up from the river like old pilings.

None of those things were a surprise, of course, now that he had pieced together his memories of the night.

What was a surprise was the man-of-war, anchored just beyond the farthest wreck, her lofty rig towering over the river, sails furled to perfection, her many gunports open, great guns run out. Colorful bunting flew from all her masts and yards. She did not look real.

He closed his eyes and then opened them again. The ship was still there.

He looked to his left. The beach was scattered with blackened pieces of hull and rigging. Men lay in clumps, some in the surf, some well up in the sand. It would take a closer inspection to see if they were alive or dead.

“You, there!” a voice called, and he looked to his right. A sailor was approaching him, pointing at him, and behind him

came a gentleman with a long white wig and a walking stick and a sword at his side. Wearing a uniform of sorts.

“You there,” the gentleman said again. “I am Captain Carlson of yon man-of-war, HMS Southampton. I am looking for the captain of HMS Plymouth Prize. The guardship.”

“There is no more guardship.”

The gentleman sighed, an exasperated sound. “Well, the captain of the former guardship, then.”

“I am he.”

“You are Captain Allair?”

“No.”

“Well, then, sir, who are you?”

That was an interesting question. He almost said Malachias Barrett, but he did not. There was still the hope that Malachias Barrett was dead. Was he Thomas Marlowe? Would Governor Nicholson still call him that? He did not know if Wilkenson had told the governor the truth of his past. He did not know, after all that had happened, if he would be called a hero and praised for defeating LeRois, or called a pirate and hanged.

He answered the question truthfully.

“I have no idea.”