The Pirate Round

Chapter 16

DUNCAN HONEYMAN insisted on coming. Pleaded, in fact, and Marlowe could not have been more surprised.

Marlowe figured that his own choice was Elizabeth or the Elizabeth Galley. He reckoned that Honeyman would see this as his big opportunity. Dinwiddie gone to God knows where, the captain and Bicker-staff off the ship. The Galley, now complete with guns, powder, shot, stores, was his for the taking.

Marlowe was ready to make that sacrifice. In some way he even hoped for it, penitence for his incalculable stupidity and hubris. “There is a sort of a code, you know, with these fellows. They are not wont to meddle with another’s wife.” Lord, those words mocked him! And it did not help to recall that he had not really believed them, even as they were coming out of his mouth. He had pushed his luck clean over the brink.

Marlowe had planned on giving Honeyman temporary command, ordering him to return for them at dawn, but he never really thought Honeyman would. He figured that Honeyman would head for the horizon, leave them to rot, so his real plan was to make his way to Madagascar in the open boat with Bickerstaff and Elizabeth, once he had freed her, and find passage from there. It was a risk he had to take.

Back on board, climbing up the side under Nagel’s vigilant eye, Marlowe had ordered the anchor up and topsails set. They stood out of the harbor with never a word spoken, save for those necessary to the running of the ship.

When at last they had cleared the headland, Honeyman approached. “Captain? Where’s Dinwiddie? And Mrs. Marlowe?”

“Dinwiddie has elected to stay behind, or so it would seem. My wife has been kidnapped. Please see the jolly boat cleared away and over the starboard side, quiet as you can. I do not want anyone on the island to see. Bickerstaff and I are going back for my wife. You will have command of the ship until we return.”

For a moment the quartermaster did not move or say anything, to Marlowe’s annoyance. At last he said, “I’m with you.”

“No,” Marlowe said.

“There’s no one at Yancy’s house recognizes me. They all know you and Bickerstaff. You need me with you.”

Marlowe had no argument to make. Honeyman was right. And for some reason Honeyman needed to be a part of this.

They got the jolly boat over the side, and Marlowe gave his orders to Flanders, who inherited command of the ship. Honeyman went down into the boat, Bickerstaff ready to follow, and up stepped Hesiod, cutlass and two braces of pistols draped over him, haversack at his side. His body looked as solid as a statue. “Jolly boat’ll move faster with four men to pull oar” was all he said.

Marlowe looked at Bickerstaff, and Bickerstaff nodded. Among the former slaves at Marlowe House, Hesiod had been the hunter, the one who could disappear into the woods with an old smooth-bore musket and some snares and come back with game: deer, turkey, rabbit- nothing was safe from him. A good man to have, but Marlowe felt compelled to say, “Hesiod, there’s a better-than-even chance we won’t come back.”

“Don’t matter. It’s Mrs. Marlowe,” he said as he stepped down and took his place at the oar.

They pushed off from the Elizabeth Galley’s side, the vessel never slowing in her stately progression away from the harbor mouth. They let her pass, bobbing in her wake, then pulled for the shore, oars double-banked, a dark boat invisible on the dark water.

It took twenty minutes to fetch the shore. Honeyman went over the side in water up to his knees, pulled the boat farther up. Then the rest jumped out, and they dragged the boat up the deserted beach, half lifting it to keep the keel from making a grinding noise on the sand.

They let the boat down easy and then hurried across the beach to the edge of the trees and followed that toward the glimmer of lanterns that marked the pirate haven of St. Mary’s, half a mile away.

Marlowe and Bickerstaff were dressed in old clothes-slop trousers and tar-stained shirts, sashes, battered cocked hats. Marlowe wore the tall boots and faded blue coat and cross belts he had saved since his days on the account. The clothes gave him a certain strength and reassurance. It felt good to strip off the dandified attire he had worn to Yancy’s dinner and to put on these old, rugged, well-worn garments. They were like armor to him; in them he felt able to fight back.

Honeyman and Hesiod were dressed in their usual garb, save for the profusion of weapons that hung from their belts and cross belts. But none of them looked in any way unique for the pirate enclave.

Four white men and one black, equals and brothers in arms. In nearly any other place on earth they would be absurdly conspicuous, but not on St. Mary’s, not among the pirates. As long as they were not recognized, they would not attract notice.

They came at last to the edge of the dirt road that paralleled the harbor, where it seemed to dissolve into scrub and then jungle. Hesiod pushed ahead, peered along the road, and when he saw that it was all clear, he signaled the others.

They fought their way out of the brush, walked down the center of the road. Stealth would attract notice, but there was nothing odd about four brethren staggering along. They were one hundred yards from the intersection with the road that ran up the hill to Yancy’s place. They could hear the distant sounds of the night’s bacchanal: shouting and music and women’s screams and gunshots.

They stopped, and Hesiod pulled a bottle of rum from his haversack, uncorked it, and they passed it around as they talked in low tones.

It would appear as the most innocent thing in the world in that place, if anyone was watching, four men sharing a bottle and a yarn.

“Stockade’s pretty solid, far as I ever seen,” Honeyman observed. “Don’t reckon there’s a break anywhere.”

“I got ten fathom of rope in my haversack,” said Hesiod. “If we find a dark place, we could up and over pretty easy, I reckon.”

“It’ll be some hard climbing to get around the back,” Honeyman said. “That house was built in a damned good place, far as defending it goes.”

“No,” Marlowe said. His anxiety was growing to the point where he could not contain it. Every second that passed put Elizabeth in greater danger. Standing still was making him wild with fear. “No time for such fancy plans. We go right through the gate.”

The others looked at him. Hesiod nodded slightly. Marlowe did not see any argument in their faces.

“We must be smart, however,” said Bickerstaff. “We are outnumbered ten to one at least. It will do Elizabeth no good if we are slaughtered. It may in fact make her situation worse.”

“Very well. Smart. But we go right at ’em.”

Marlowe led the way down the road. He and Bickerstaff pulled their hats low over their eyes, and they all assumed a slightly unsteady gait as they made their way past the ramshackle taverns and tent whorehouses and the groups of men sitting around open fires, drinking and eating. The air was all wood smoke and expended gunpowder and meat cooking and rum and unwashed men. No one made any comment or even seemed to notice as they walked by.

Halfway up the hill Honeyman stopped. “Captain, they know you at the house, but Hesiod and me, we ain’t been. What say you and Mr. Bickerstaff wait here, we’ll see to them bastards at the gate?”

Marlowe hesitated. He did not want to stop. But what Honeyman said made sense. “Very well. But hurry.”

Marlowe and Bickerstaff stepped off the road, standing half hidden behind a thick palm that rose up into the night. They watched the two others staggering up the road until they were lost in the dark. The gate, with the ubiquitous guards, was fifty yards away.

The night was still and the sounds of the carousing at the bottom of the hill muted, and Marlowe could hear the guard challenging Honeyman and Hesiod. It was quiet after that, and then a burst of laughter. More quiet, and then Marlowe heard a sound like the wind knocked from someone or a body hitting the ground, he could not tell. Another minute, and then Hesiod’s voice from the dark: “All right, Captain” was all he said.

Marlowe and Bickerstaff stepped from the underbrush and hurried up the hill. The gate to the stockade loomed in front of them, visible in the circle of light thrown off by the lantern the guards had hung from a hook just outside the big door.

One of the guards was still standing there, in the half-alert position that Marlowe was accustomed to seeing, and he realized it was Honeyman. Another guard sat leaning against the big door, again in the relaxed attitude that the pirate sentries assumed. His eyes were open. The lantern light glinted on the blood that soaked his shirt and coat.

Hesiod, Marlowe, and Bickerstaff skirted the fall of the light and stepped through the gate, into the shadows of the stockade wall.

From that dark spot they surveyed the big house. To their left the banquet hall rose up two stories. The tall windows glowed with the light of the iron chandeliers that hung from the rough beams of the ceiling. They could hear the muffled roar of the riot taking place within, as Yancy’s anointed took their nightly pleasure. On the second story there were lights burning in three rooms that they could see and two on the third.

“She may be in one of those,” Marlowe said, nodding toward the windows in which lanterns or candles burned. “Or not.”

“There’s but one way to find out,” said Hesiod. “Coming, Honey-man, or standing guard here?”

“Coming.”

The four men hurried toward the house, moving along the stockade wall, keeping to the shadows. They came to the corner of the building, paused, crouching in the dark, listened for any guards walking the grounds. There was nothing beyond the revelry in the banquet hall and the revelry in the town below.

“Let me try the door,” Honeyman said. He stood and walked toward the front door, not running or hiding but striding with purpose and a bit of a wobble, not like an intruder but rather a drunk who had no concerns about his right to be where he was.

Up the stone steps, and Marlowe could just see him in the shadow as he tugged at one door, then the other, then both, before turning and walking back the way he had come.

“Damn,” Marlowe said softly. They would need another way in. He ran his eyes over the front of the house, pictured it from the inside, as it had been shown to him by Yancy.

“Hold! Who’s that?” The voice from the dark startled him. Honey-man was no more than a shadow against the gray house. Marlowe saw him pause and turn toward the guard. Then he caught a flare of light overhead. He looked up, quick.

On the balcony attached to one of the rooms, a figure was holding a torch, a great flaming mass of fire. To Marlowe’s surprise, that person was Elizabeth.

He stood, took a step forward. He did not know what to do. Shout? Remain silent? She was two stories up. She could not jump, nor could he climb up to her.

As he stood there, paralyzed with his indecision, Elizabeth turned her back to him, leaned over the edge of the balcony, and whipped the torch up in the air. It flew from her hand, tumbled end over end, slowly revolving in the air, and then landed on the thatched roof above.

The flame gutted, smoldered, and then flared as the dry thatch caught. The guard who had challenged Honeyman now forgot him completely as he ran for the door, shouting, “Fire! The damned bitch lit the damned roof on fire! Fire, there!”

Honeyman ran across the grounds, into the shadows where the others stood. He was grinning. “Men hear about this, I reckon they’ll elect your wife captain in your stead, Marlowe,” he said.

“I reckon she would do a better job.”

Someone unbarred the big door at the guard’s pounding. People came streaming out, and others came from around the building, looking up at the roof, which was now well on its way to being engulfed. Pandemonium began to sweep through the half-drunk men. Several were shouting orders, each trying to take command of the situation, no one listening to anyone else.

“Come on,” Marlowe said, hurrying out of the shadows and racing along at the edge or the growing crowd. There were thirty or forty people on the grounds now-pirates, servants, women. Their attention was on the burning roof. No one noticed the four men at the edge of the light.

Marlowe paused, ten feet from the door. Circling the crowd unnoticed was one thing, but going inside was another. He braced himself, ready to make his move, when Nagel, like a wild bull, burst through the door, pulling up his breeches as he ran, his booming voice trampling the buzz of excitement and the orders that were flying around the yard.

“Here, you motherless bastards!” he roared. “With me! Get buckets! Get axes! We have to cut the roof away before it sets the whole god-damned house ablaze!”

He waved his arm, turned, and charged back into the house, and the others charged in behind. Now they had someone to lead them, and it would not be long before they had the blaze contained.

The last of the men in the yard rushed past, and then Marlowe and the others joined them, running in through the door at the tail of the crowd, hats pulled low, hands on pistol butts.

Across the high foyer and up the stairs, Nagel led his mob, and the four men from the Elizabeth Galley followed, lost in the chaos.

At the far end of the hall there was a rough ladder that led up and under the thatch, and Nagel bounded up it, heedless of the danger that the fire might present, and behind him the bolder of Yancy’s men followed. Sloshing buckets appeared and were handed along.

“This way, I think,” Marlowe said, and they pushed their way through the crowd toward the open hall beyond.

Marlowe looked up the corridor in one direction, then another. Doors lined the way, three on one side, three on another. He was turned around in the house, could not guess in which of the rooms he had seen Elizabeth. He grabbed Bickerstaff by the arm. “Take Hesiod, start looking in those rooms!” He pointed across the hall. “Honeyman, with me, here!”

They pushed past the pirates, the servants, the wives, and down the hall. Bickerstaff pushed open the far door, shouted, “Fire! Clear out! Fire!” as he searched the space for Elizabeth.

Marlowe tried the far door on his side, but the room was dark and empty, as far as he could see. He moved to the next, lifting the heavy latch, swinging it open.

The room was lit with a smattering of candles, giving it a dreamy, soft quality. In the middle of the room stood a big four-poster bed, draped with shiny, gauzy material. Two women were there on the bed, naked, their long black hair falling over brown shoulders. They looked up at the intrusion, and one of them propped herself on her elbow, unabashed. They gazed at Marlowe with little curiosity, as if they had no interest in what would happen to them next.

Between them, in the bed, lay Peleg Dinwiddie, flat on his back, snoring. There were various glasses and bottles and pipes scattered around the room and on the bedside table and in the bed itself. Dinwiddie’s big belly rose and fell with his breath. It seemed to glow white in the light of the flames.

Marlowe crossed the room quickly, grabbed Dinwiddie’s shoulder and shook it, hard.

“Peleg! Peleg!” he said in a whisper, as loud as he dared. “Peleg, wake up!”

At last the big man moaned, opened a bleary eye, looked up at Marlowe. There was no recognition in his face. “Peleg, it’s me. Marlowe. Come, we have to go!”

“Marlowe?”

“Yes, yes, come along…”

Dinwiddie rolled his head away. “Sod off, you bastard…”

Marlowe paused, unsure if he had heard correctly. “What?”

Dinwiddie rolled his head back, looked up into Marlowe’s eyes. “I said ‘sod off.’ Let that whoreson Honeyman take my place, never had any goddamned respect-”

“Peleg, you cannot stay here. Come with me, we’ll sort this out.”

“Sod off, bastard. Treat me like a fucking lord here…”

“Marlowe,” Honeyman called from the door. “We ain’t got much time…”

“Right.” He looked down at Dinwiddie. “Son of a bitch…” There was no way he could carry him out of there. Perhaps he really did wish to stay. Marlowe did not know where his duty lay.

“Marlowe!” Bickerstaff was at the door. “There is a room at the other end of the hall, seems to be where the fire is centered!”

That had to be Elizabeth. He could not waste any more time with Dinwiddie. “Very well, I shall sod off,” he said, then turned and hurried from the room, shut the door on his former first officer, who was already asleep once more.

Marlowe and Honeyman and Bickerstaff pushed down the hall, still unnoticed in the pandemonium. And now the hallway was filling with smoke, which served to further hide them.

Down the hall, and Hesiod was standing guard beside the door. “Locked” was all he said.

Marlowe looked back but still no one was paying him any attention in the commotion and the dark and the smoke. He kicked at the door, felt it yield under his boot. Kicked again, then Honeyman stepped up and kicked it, and it swung open, and they plunged through.

It was like stepping through the gate to hell. The fire had spread across the thatch above that room, had dropped to the plaster ceiling overhead and burned clean through. The entire ceiling was ablaze, and in the middle of it a great charred hole looked right up to the burning roof overhead.

Marlowe stumbled into the room, hand over his face. It was brightly lit by the flames, but he had trouble seeing through the thick smoke, which gagged him and made his eyes water.

“Elizabeth!” he shouted, thinking he would not be heard over the roar of the fire. “Elizabeth!”

The others followed him in, and Honeyman slammed the door again, leaving them in their brilliant, hot, smoking inferno.

“Elizabeth!”

And then from across the room, a voice high-pitched with controlled terror: “Thomas? Thomas?”

Marlowe stumbled across the room, stepping around the burning bits of thatch and fallen lath and plaster that were setting the floor and the carpets ablaze. Out onto the small balcony, and there he found Elizabeth, pushed back against the railing, where there was some relief from the smoke that rolled out the door. Her face was black with soot, white lines cut down her cheeks by tears.

He grabbed her, hugged her. “Are you all right? Did Yancy…”

“I have not seen him since you left! Oh, Thomas!” She threw her arms around him, hugged him tight. “I was so afraid you were-”

“What? You never thought I would really leave you?”

“No, never, I never thought that.” The building shuddered. Something overhead gave way, and the room flared as more flames sprang up. “I fear I have killed us all, with my stupid act!”

“No, no. We would never have gotten to you if you had not set the fire!”

And then over the din of the fire and the shouts of those fighting it, Marlowe heard a shrill shout of surprise and outrage and fury.

Through the smoke Marlowe could see the door pulled open. The draft swirled the smoke away, sucking it out of the room, and Yancy stood in the frame, a big ax in his hand.

Honeyman, who was by the door, jerked a pistol from his belt, raised it, cocked the lock, pointed it at Yancy as Yancy swung the ax. It caught Honeyman’s hand, knocked the pistol away, and opened up a wide red gash. Honeyman shouted, grabbed his hand as Yancy pulled back to cleave his head in two.

As the ax arced toward Honeyman’s skull, Hesiod bounded across the room, grabbed his shoulder, pulled him back, and the blade came down into thin air. Marlowe was surprised. He did not think the weak little man had it in him.

Now Bickerstaff was there, his sword striking like a snake, and it caught Yancy’s arm before Yancy could move away. Yancy screamed, as much in outrage as in pain, raised the ax again.

Yancy and Bickerstaff faced off, sword against ax. Marlowe saw the telltale waver as Bickerstaff prepared for a feint, then a lunge, which would have killed Yancy.

But before he could strike, the building shook again, the sound of the fire like thunder, and overhead a section of the ceiling sagged down, splitting and spitting fire out from the cracks as it fell. Yancy leaped for the door, and Bickerstaff leaped back into the room, and a ton or more of beams and plaster and thatch fell in, making a flaming wall between them.

Yancy shouted, flailing at the fire with his ax, trying to cut his way through. Marlowe charged into the room, grabbed Bickerstaff’s arm, pulled him back toward the balcony and what fresh air it might afford their aching lungs and burning throats and streaming eyes.

Now what the hell will we do? Marlowe wondered.

He stumbled out onto the small balcony, crowded now with Elizabeth and Hesiod.

“Where’s Honeyman?” he shouted, glancing fearfully back into the burning room, but Hesiod nodded to the ground.

Marlowe looked down. The rope that Hesiod had brought in his haversack was looped through the legs of a table wedged against the balcony wall and the two ends flung over the edge. On the ground, Honeyman held both ends of the rope in one hand, a pistol in the other, watching for anyone who might approach.

Hesiod turned to Elizabeth. “You next, ma’am,” he said.

Elizabeth looked down at the ground and shook her head. “I can’t do that,” she said.

“Mind if I help, Captain?” Hesiod asked, and Marlowe had no more than nodded when Hesiod bent over and grabbed Elizabeth around the waist, then straightened with her over his shoulder.

“Son of a bitch! Put me down, goddamn your eyes!” Elizabeth shouted, her long hair trailing on the balcony, her rear end up in the air. She was furious, but she retained enough sense to refrain from struggling as Hesiod stepped over the balcony rail, wrapped his free arm and his legs around the rope, and fell to the ground in a controlled plummet.

“Strong son of a bitch” was all Marlowe said as he waited for Hesiod to reach the ground and set the fuming Elizabeth down before he gestured for Bickerstaff to follow.

Bickerstaff hit the ground, and Marlowe looked back toward the door. The room was engulfed. He could not see past the wall of flame, which meant that Yancy, if he was still there, would not see their egress. He would think they had burned to death if he did not guess they had a rope.

Marlowe put his leg over the rail, grabbed the rope. It had been years since he had done anything like this, and it was with some difficulty and burned palms that he finally reached the ground. Hesiod grabbed one end of the rope and hauled away, unreeving it from the table jammed in the balcony. It fell free and came down in a pile at his feet, and he coiled it quick.

“Let’s go,” Marlowe said.

The yard was well lit by the great bonfire that was the roof, but the few people standing there and gawking up at the flames did not notice them or did not care who they were. It was one of the great advantages of the pirate community. Curiosity was not encouraged.

They made their way out the gate and down the road, the flickering light of Elizabeth’s fire nipping at them as they hurried along. Down through the center of town and down the road running along the harbor and at last to the beach with never a challenge. No one even spoke to them.

Marlowe helped Elizabeth into the boat, and then the four weary men pushed it out into the water and clambered in over the gunnels. They took up oars and with never a word spoken they fell into their easy rhythm, pulling away from St. Mary’s, pulling for the open sea. The flames of Yancy’s mansion were like a distant lighthouse, but it looked to Marlowe as if those fighting the fire were at last getting it under control.

He turned on the thwart, smiled at Elizabeth, then looked past her, out to the open sea. The Elizabeth Galley should have stood on for an hour, then come about and beat back to the island, to the extent that she was able. Marlowe did not hope to see her in the dark. They would have to wait until first light to find her and close with her.

That was if she was there. He wondered if perhaps Flanders would cross him, betray him, sail off with the ship. That thought had never occurred to him till now.