The Pirate Round

Chapter 25

ELIZABETH CAME to the head of the wide stairs and stopped, crouched down in the shadows. She had worn her silk slippers leaving the ship, had understood instinctively that she would need to move quickly and quietly and could not be encumbered by her fashionable footwear.

She waited for several minutes in that place, listened for movement: alarm, guards pacing-anything. She did not know the hour but guessed that it was somewhere around two A.M., a dead time. Nothing moved.

She took the steps, catlike and urgent, her every sense sharp, but there was nothing there but the silent building and only the tiniest amount of light from sundry lanterns illuminating it. The stairs emptied onto the big, two-story grand entrance, and across that open space with its polished tiles was the front door.

Elizabeth skirted around the grand entrance, keeping to the shadows, making not for the front door but rather for the door half concealed in the wall down which she had seen them take Marlowe and the others, hours before. Prison, torture chamber, place of execution- she had no idea what was at the bottom of those steps.

She paused again at the door, looked around, then held her two rapiers under her arm and lifted the latch, slowly, and eased the door in. She braced herself for a squeal of hinges, a creak of the door, but it moved silently. She cracked it enough to squeeze through and then closed it behind her.

It was nearly black beyond the door but for a faint glow from belowstairs, enough to see that the stairs went down to some kind of landing, then doubled around, presumably going down to the floor below.

She reached out with her toe, found the first step, and took it, then the next and the next, moving carefully toward the light. Five steps and she was on the landing. She crept up to the edge of the second staircase, darted her head around, and pulled back quick.

She looked for no more than an instant, but in that glimpse she saw a guard, another of these big piratical bastards, slumped in a chair, his back to her. The light came from a single lantern on a hook over his head. She could not tell if the man was asleep or awake, could not see what was beyond him, down the passageway.

Softly she drew in a breath, steeled herself for what she would have to do. The staircase was too narrow for the swords; she would have to use the stiletto. She laid down the long weapons gently, silently, pulled the stiletto from her skirt, and eased herself around the corner.

Down one step. The guard was six feet away, and she realized that she did not really know what she was going to do. Stab him? Could she? Another step, and her slipper crunched on loose gravel on the stone stair, like a thunderclap in that silent prison.

The guard gasped, leaped to his feet, spun around, hand on his sword. Elizabeth froze. She saw the man’s face go from shock to confusion to delight at the sight of her. She turned and fled.

Back up the stairs, around the wall, and onto the landing, and she stopped, stiletto out, the guard’s footsteps pounding behind her. The big man turned the corner, charging for the next flight of steps, not expecting her to have stopped dead. He brought up short with a sharp intake of breath, the needle tip of Elizabeth’s weapon under his chin.

“Hold!” she hissed at him. “Back down with you.”

The guard took a step back and then another, glancing over his shoulder at where he was stepping, his hands held up in front of him, never taking his eyes off Elizabeth for more than an instant. One step back, another. He paused. There were three steps down to the floor of the prison below.

“Turn around. Down you go,” Elizabeth said softly, trying to sound as menacing as she was able. The man nodded, half turned. Then his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist and jerked it sideways, and Elizabeth gasped at the power of his grip, and he wrenched her arm, twisting her partway around.

She pushed off as hard as she could, using all the strength of her legs to slam into his chest, shoulderfirst. She felt him sway back, like a tree cut nearly through, and then the two of them went over.

Elizabeth had an image of flogging coattails and waving arms and clattering weapons and a grunt of surprise, and then the pirate hit the stone floor, and she fell on him, and the tight space was filled with a rendering crack and then the beginnings of a shriek of pain.

She pushed herself up, the stiletto still in her hand, pressed it under the pirate’s throat. “Quiet!” she hissed. She could see the man’s arm caught below him, broken and twisted at an unnatural angle, but he stifled his scream of agony for fear of worse.

Elizabeth stood slowly, keeping the dagger in the man’s face. “Make one sound and I’ll cut your throat.” The pirate was gritting his teeth and breathing with the pain of his compound fracture, his eyes shut tight, but he nodded, and Elizabeth stepped away from him. She took the lantern down from the hook, stepped along the narrow passage between barred cells. Did not know what she would find.

Then, suddenly, right in front of her, leaning on the bars, the one thing she hoped for above all others. Thomas, her husband, looking on her with wide eyes.

“Elizabeth? My God…”

“Thomas! Oh…” She ran to the bars, took his outstretched hand in hers. His hair was wild, with bits of straw sticking to it. He looked exhausted and still half asleep, but beyond that unhurt.

“Thomas, are you…?”

“I am well. And you, did that bastard…?”

“No, no. I left Yancy bound, but he might be discovered soon. We must go.”

“The guard had keys on his belt.”

Elizabeth pulled herself away, stepped back to the guard, who was groaning as he tried to get his broken arm from under him. Hanging from a leather lanyard on his belt, a big set of keys. Elizabeth cut them free, hurried back to the cell. She picked one, fumbled it into the lock, but it would not turn.

“Try the other,” Thomas whispered. Behind him, in the deep shadows, she could hear Honeyman rousing their sleeping men. Elizabeth worked the key out of the lock, inserted the other, twisted, and heard the click of the lock opening.

“You men.” Thomas turned to the others, addressed them in a whisper. “Follow me. We haven’t the weapons to fight our way out of here, so let us be damned quiet. Come.”

He pushed through the cell, stood aside as the others followed.

“Marlowe!” a voice whispered from the cell on the other side of the alleyway. Elizabeth turned in surprise. It had not occurred to her that there might be others there. But there were. Roger Press, his face pushed against the bars.

“Marlowe! You can’t leave me here!”

“Oh, no?”

“Son of a bitch, Marlowe! You won’t get out of here without me and my men.”

“I don’t reckon I would get out with you and your men. You have a way of seeing to that.”

“You bastard! If you don’t let me out, we’ll wake the whole god-damned house! You’ll never make it to the harbor!”

“We’ll chance it. Fare thee well, you stinking bastard. I hope Yancy lives long enough to impale you.” Thomas pushed through his men, down the alleyway, and Elizabeth walked with him. He pulled the sword from the guard’s scabbard and headed up the stairs.

“Marlowe! Marlowe, you bastard!” Press screamed at the top of his lungs, the noise filling the prison, frightening in its volume. Elizabeth bounded up the stairs, collected the rapiers, gave one to Billy Bird and one to Bickerstaff, and the men filed up the passage and out into the grand entrance.

Behind them Press’s screams spilled from the door, but the sound was thankfully muted by the floor and heavy walls. It was not enough to wake a man, but if anyone was already awake-a guard, for instance-then it would be heard.

They filed quickly through the door, and the last man shut it behind him, and Press’s shouting was blotted out.

Elizabeth and Thomas stood side by side, listening, but still the household slumbered on.

“Come along,” said Marlowe, and he led them across the grand entrance and out the big front door, to the open air, to the grounds that would lead to the stockade gate, to the road that would lead to the harbor and the sea and escape from that horrible place.

Elizabeth took a lungful of the night air. It was sweet and clean and free of the odor of the big house. It was like being on the ocean, and she felt her spirit lifting, lifting, though there were still a hundred chances for bloody death between the front door and the sea.

Lord Yancy woke, opened his eyes quickly, and shouted with the pain, then whimpered with the agony brought on by shouting. “Oh, God, oh, God…” he gasped, closing his eyes against the flashing lights and the pounding in his head. He lay very still, let his breathing return to normal, then slowly he opened his eyes again.

He could not move his arms or his legs. He wondered if his neck was broken, and he felt the panic starting in again. He forced himself to be calm. He could feel his limbs, could feel a burning sensation at his wrists. He was bound hand and foot and lying on the floor.

“That bitch!” he yelled, and was greeted with a renewed pounding in his skull, and he had to lie quiet until it subsided. He breathed, slow and steady, braced himself, then rolled over and sat up.

The sky was still black outside, the room still illuminated by the candles, which had not yet burned all the way down. He could not have been unconscious for so very long, which meant the bitch might yet be in the house. He struggled against the ropes around his wrists, but they were solid and unyielding. His fingers felt cold and thick and numb. He was tied well.

“That bitch!” he shouted again, and this time the pounding was not so debilitating. He searched the floor. His stiletto and both rapiers were gone. There was a clasp knife in the pocket of his coat, which was flung over the far chair. He considered the difficulty of retrieving it and cutting himself free as opposed to the practicality of shouting for help. He pictured Henry Nagel finding him thus, beaten and bound by a woman, and he had an uneasy feeling that that would be the end of his reign over St. Mary’s.

With great difficulty he squirmed around until he was standing on his knees. He tried an experimental hop, but the pain was excruciating, jarring him at a dozen points of agony. The pain in his head flared, and he thought he might pass out. With a groan he flopped onto his side and squirmed across the floor, the most humiliation he had suffered in memory, and he could think of nothing beyond Henry Nagel opening the door and finding him writhing there like a broken snake.

Five agonizing, embarrassing moments later and he was across the room. He reached his arms around as best he could, found the clasp knife in the pocket of his coat, and pulled it out. With numb fingers he struggled to unfold it and then held it awkwardly as he sawed at the bonds.

Four times he dropped the knife, and he was near weeping with despair when he felt a little give in the rope, and he knew that a strand had parted. With a renewed effort he sawed at the cordage, and soon he felt the rope part altogether, felt the rock-hard lashing fall away.

He let out a great groan of relief, brought his hands around in front, rubbed the raw flesh, felt a sharp tingling as the blood flowed unimpeded to his fingers. He snatched up the knife and cut his legs free and stood, shaking, to his feet.

What now, what now…? Get the bitch back.

He had saved himself from the humiliation of being discovered bound like a pig for slaughter on the floor, but still it would not go well for him if the tribe he ruled found he had been bested by a woman.

Find that whore, bring her back, bloody well teach her…

Where would she go? The waterfront? What would she do?

She’ll free Marlowe!

“Goddamn it!” Yancy said out loud. Of course she would try to free Marlowe. “Goddamn it!”

He limped across the room and tried to open the door, but it was locked. He cursed, looked around the table for the key, but he could not find it. He snatched up a candle and looked closer, looked on the floor around the table, but the key was not there.

He was locked in, but it did not matter. He abandoned the door, limped back across the room, pulled aside an ancient tapestry that hung from the wall on the other side of the bed. A small door was concealed behind it, and he pushed that open and stepped into the dark passage beyond.

The air was dusty and smelled of sealed-off spaces, the odor of the tomb. Adam Baldridge was a man of foresight; he had envisioned the need for a second way out of the master bedchamber. But Yancy was also a man of foresight. He understood that if he had to use that exit, he would probably need weapons as well, and so he kept them there, ready.

He took down the brace of pistols, their butts bound by a ribbon, draped them around his neck. A sword belt hung from a hook, with a sword and dagger hanging from it. He took that down next, strapped it around his waist.

Down he went, down the steep, narrow stairs built into the smallest possible space, his shoulders brushing either wall as he hurried down, the candle guttering and wavering and threatening to go out.

He came to the bottom door and unlatched it and pushed it open as best he could. It, too, was concealed behind a tapestry that adorned the grand entrance, and Yancy had to push against the heavy cloth as he slipped out the door and into the big open space.

There was nothing amiss that he could see. The door leading to the cells was closed. It was silent, everything silent. Either she had not come that way or they were long gone. He raced across the grand entrance, flung open the door to the prison, took the steps fast.

From the landing he could see the guard, passed out or dead on the floor, two steps below, his arm broken and twisted under him.

“Bitch!” Yancy shouted, jumping down the steps and past the guard. The door to the cell that held Marlowe and his men was open. The cell was empty.

“Bitch!” Yancy shouted again, his voice high-pitched, too wild with fury even to think of what he would do next.

Then a voice beside him, thick with urgency. “Yancy!” Roger Press pushed himself against the bars, looked down on Elephiant Yancy.

“Press, what happened here?” Yancy demanded.

“Marlowe’s little doxy let him out. Was she not in your care?”

“She escaped from the idiots guarding her. After I was done with her,” Yancy added, and then realizing how inappropriate it was to address Press as if he were an equal-or even a human being-he added, “though it’s no concern of yours. You are a dead man either way.”

Yancy turned and headed back for the stairs, moving fast, but Press called, “Wait! Wait, Yancy, there is something you don’t know!”

Yancy stopped but did not turn, considered whether or not he should listen. Press was like a snake, and his words could be as hypnotizing as a snake’s eyes.

But that was for weaker men. Yancy knew he was not fool enough to be drawn in, to be charmed and persuaded by Press’s rhetoric. He turned. “What?”

“Marlowe will go for the harbor, try to make it out to his ship-”

“You reckon that didn’t occur to me?”

“No, wait for it. This is what you don’t know. While I was out hunting Marlowe, I captured the Great Mogul’s treasure ship. My ship, and Marlowe’s, is stuffed with treasure, more wealth than even you would see in a lifetime. Without my help, Marlowe will sail off with it!”

“Without your help?” At that Yancy laughed out loud. “You have been help enough, bringing it to me. I can take it from Marlowe and his pathetic little band! But thank you for telling me this.”

“It ain’t just Marlowe!” Press said, and Yancy heard the genuine note of conviction in his voice. “I left two hundred men aboard when I come ashore. You have the force to take on two hundred trained men? Men-of-war’s men? If Marlowe gets out to those ships and convinces them I’m dead, they’ll sail off with a fare-thee-well, and you can’t stop ’em. Maybe they’ll kill Marlowe, maybe not, but either way the treasure is gone. They have to see me alive or they’ll sail, and you can’t stop them. Do you hear?”

Yancy hesitated, felt himself slipping down the ways of Press’s logic.

Then Press drove home the final argument. “You can have half the treasure or none of it, simple as that.”

Yancy made up his mind. He would, in fact, have all the treasure. He would simply double-cross Press after the booty was secured, lock him up again. He had men enough to keep Press in check until then. He crossed the narrow alleyway, retrieved the keys hanging from the other cell door, and let Press and his men go free.

“How long have Marlowe and the others been gone?” Yancy asked as he twisted the key in the lock.

“Half an hour, thereabouts,” Press said. There was an eagerness, a hint of triumph in his voice that made Yancy uncomfortable, but the lock was unlocked and the door half opened, and it was too late to close it again. “Probably clear to the harbor by now.”

Yancy swung the door open all the way. “Follow me,” he said, and hurried for the stairs, his unlikely allies at his heels.

Marlowe and his band were at the harbor, pulling across the harbor, in fact, spread out over four boats. They had met no resistance. The big house was asleep. The guards at the stockade gate were looking for threats from the outside, not from within.

They showed only a dull curiosity when Marlowe pulled the gate open behind them, turned to see who it was, and were clubbed down by Honeyman wielding a heavy stick he had found on the ground. They fell with no more sound than that made by a bread bag dropped from five feet. Their inert forms were dragged into the shadows and relieved of weapons.

Down the hill, down the dark road with dawn still four hours off. They moved fast, silent, and if anyone saw them, he did not raise an alarm. Marlowe realized that there would be no telling who they were in the dark, and if anyone mistook them for Yancy’s men on some clandestine mission, he would not be eager to give them away.

From the stockade all the way to the wooden wharf, they heard nothing but quiet night sounds, saw nothing unsettling in the motionless, dark, and disinterested world.

They stepped out along the wharf, their shoes making hollow sounds on the boards. Across the water they could make out the dim shapes of the four anchored ships. Closest to them, anchored by herself, was the Bloody Revenge. Beyond her the dark mass, the seeming tangle of spars and rigging of the Queen’s Venture with the Elizabeth Galley tied to her seaward side and hidden from the men on the dock. And one hundred feet beyond the Elizabeth Galley, the tender Speedwell. All four ships like stepping-stones across the water. They seemed peaceful, asleep.

Not for long, Marlowe thought.

All the boats from the Queen’s Venture and the Bloody Revenge were still there, tied to the dock, right where Press had left them.

“We can’t leave any boats for Yancy to use if he tries to attack,” Marlowe said. “Billy, divide your men up. Take the longboat, there, and that gig. I’ll get my men in the others. We’ll all make right for your brig, since she ain’t rafted up with the other ships. I don’t think there’s much of a prize crew on board, anchor watch at best. Take her, loosen off sail. Load the guns. I reckon we can feel our way out of here in the dark.”

“Right,” Billy Bird said, then hesitated. “Actually, damn the hellish brig, I say. Marlowe, do you mean to just sail off? Leave your own ship behind?”

“I do. Whatever are you thinking?”

“Well, there is a damned lot of booty in that beastly ship of Press’s. In yours as well. Surely we can’t leave it for Yancy?”

“You are suggesting…?”

“At the very least we should take that bloody Queen’s Venture. Just sail it right out of here. That fothered sail has held this long, it will hold a while longer. All our men go up her side, take her, and we take your ship as well, and then we sail them both out of here.”

“And leave your ship?”

“Damned leaking bucket, with my share of that booty I could buy ten like her.”

“Please, Marlowe,” Bickerstaff spoke up, “tell me you are not actually considering this.”

“Well, there might be some sense in it…”

“You are overreaching, I fear. Let it go, get out with your life.”

“We cannot let Yancy have that treasure,” Billy Bird argued. “Lord knows what wickedness he would get up to with such wealth! And we can’t just sink the ship-the water is too shallow, and these natives can dive like fish. No, we must take her with us.”

“We have three swords, two rapiers, four pistols, and a stiletto between the fifty of us,” Bickerstaff reminded him.

“Oh. Right…” Marlowe was clutching a weapon and for that reason had forgotten that he was almost entirely unique in that.

“We’ll take the Bloody Revenge first,” Billy Bird suggested. “Should be no great task, as you said, easily done with what we have. Free my people, increase our numbers. Plenty of weapons aboard. From there we fall on the big ships.”

In the darkness Marlowe could barely see Bickerstaff, though he was no more than five feet away, but he could feel his friend’s sharp eyes on him. Bickerstaff sighed. It was close enough to concession for Marlowe.

“A good plan, Billy. Let us go.”

They spread the men out among the boats, Marlowe, Bickerstaff, Billy Bird, and Honeyman together in the big longboat by virtue of the fact that they had between them four of the five swords. The fifth was given to Hesiod, and two of Billy Bird’s trusted men were handed the two pistols. They represented the Forlorn Hope, the first into the breech, and the rest were instructed to come up behind and grab what they could-fallen weapons, belaying pins, handspikes-and join in the fray.

Across the harbor like giant water bugs, the oars squeaking in the tholes, no time for such niceties as muffling them. Fifty feet from the Bloody Revenge, and the not overly watchful anchor watch finally caught sight of them.

“Hoa! The boats, ahoy! Who’s there?”

“Captain Press!” Marlowe shouted through cupped hands.

“What? Captain Press is aboard?”

“Captain Press!” Marlowe called again, ambiguous and unhelpful.

Silence. The oarsmen leaned into the oars. Thirty feet off. Marlowe could almost hear the confusion in the anchor watch’s head. Then, “Stand off, there! Stand off, I say!”

Twenty feet, and the anchor watch began to shout, not at the boats but at his shipmates, “Turn out! Turn out!” Bare feet ran across the deck, a muffled voice shouting down a hatch, “Turn out! To arms! To arms!”

The longboat thumped alongside, and Marlowe raced up the boarding steps, accidentally kicking Billy Bird as Billy scrambled up close behind. They burst through the gangway and ducked right and left, and the anchor watch fired a blunderbuss into empty space, illuminating the deck and himself, and then one of Billy Bird’s men armed with a pistol shot him down.

Sleepy and surprised men raced up through the scuttle, one at a time through the narrow passage, and Honeyman and Burgess and Hesiod were there to greet them. Not with cold steel but with belaying pins that made no more than a dull thump as the three men laid out the unwary crew, one by one.

More men came charging from under the quarterdeck, and Marlowe and Bickerstaff and Bird met them, blade against blade, but the half-dressed men, startled from deep sleep, were no match for the desperate and ready boarders. A minute of fighting, and they threw away their swords and called for quarter.

More and more men came pouring over the side from the boats below, and they herded the prisoners forward and dragged those wounded or unconscious out of the way.

“That was well done,” Billy Bird said, leaning on his rapier.

Marlowe nodded. “We best move quick. They’ll be alerted, aboard the Queen’s Venture. But with luck those bastards at the big house are still asleep. They won’t have heard the gunshots in any event.”

Then from aft, from the dark under the quarterdeck, came a sputtering and hissing. The two men turned. The powder train burning in the touchhole of a cannon, there was no mistaking it. In the dim light that the sparks threw off they could see the figure of the man who had lit it, scurrying away.

Billy took one step toward the gun, and then it went off, a great blast of red and orange flame shooting out its mouth, lighting up the water and the boats. The gun flung itself inboard against its breeches. The blast echoed around the harbor.

The noise subsided until it was no more than a ringing in their ears.

“They bloody well heard that,” Billy Bird said.