The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  CHAPTER 2

  There was, unfortunately, a considerable distance between making a decision to get under way and actually getting under way, particularly aboard a ship that had not sailed in three years.

  First an inspection of the Elizabeth Galley to assess her condition and determine her needs. Marlowe’s mind was working fast now. Round up a crew, of course, that was no easy task. Secure a cargo – Marlowe House would not produce enough tobacco to entirely fill the Elizabeth Galley’s cavernous hold. Might as well make a little extra hauling the neighbors’ weed.

  ‘Oh, damn me,’ he said.

  ‘What? Whatever is the problem?’ Elizabeth asked, concerned.

  ‘We have committed ourselves to the racing at Joseph Page’s this afternoon.’ Marlowe was eager now to move on their plan, and he was not happy to recall this social obligation. He felt like a charging dog brought up short by its leash.

  ‘I’ve wagered ten pounds on that sorrel nag of his.’ Like I can bloody well afford that, he thought. Declining to wager would place a greater tax on his appearance of wealth than ten pounds would place on his actual wealth. It was hard to gauge which was the higher price to pay.

  ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said, ‘and I am sure that Francis has quite forgotten as well. I’ll send Caesar for him.’

  ‘No, no. I’ll go fetch him myself.’ He smiled. ‘As lord of the manor, I suppose I should see what the common folk are about.’

  ‘Good, my lord. But don’t be all day about it. We must leave in an hour, no more.’

  Marlowe pulled on his coat and grabbed up his hat and stepped out of the library and down the hallway, then out the front door that opened onto the wide porch. The warmth of the sun and the fragrance from the plantation and the woods came on him redoubled, and he stretched and breathed deep before taking the steps down to the front walk and the grassy lawn.

  The flowers that Elizabeth so lovingly tended were in full bloom, great bursts of color that lined the house and the walks and spilled out of her gardens. The grass was a rich green. Birds flashed around, twittering, diving, and lighting here and there.

  Everything was alive, running over with life, growing, moving. It was so different from the sea, the cold, dead sea that always stretched away in its bleak sameness. The sea moved, to be sure, moved constantly, but it was not the motion of life. It was a random, thoughtless motion that cared not a whit for what effect it had, for whom it helped and whom it killed.

  So why did he miss it so?

  Marlowe stepped around the side of the house. Fifty feet away, the big tobacco barn yawned open, and spread out in front of it, on the brown patch of earth where the constant traffic had worn away the grass, the big lever arm used for prizing the tobacco, various hogheads – some full, some waiting for their hands of tobacco – the cooper’s tools. But no field hands, no Bickerstaff.

  Marlowe sighed. Bickerstaff was the real lord of the manor, as far as actually overseeing what went on. The field hands no longer even bothered asking Marlowe about agricultural considerations.

  Bickerstaff had no doubt been called away on some business and now would have to be hunted down. Marlowe debated getting his horse. He did enjoy riding around his property, marveling at how much of it he owned. But his horse would be off somewhere else, grazing, and Marlowe decided that fetching him would take more time than just finding Bickerstaff on foot.

  He continued on past the barn, over the small rise to where he could see the fields beyond. Every year they cleared a patch of forest to make way for that year’s seed beds. The tree line was noticeably farther from the house than it had been when Marlowe bought the place. The former slave quarters, once dilapidated huts but now fixed up, whitewashed, and cozy, had stood huddled at the edge of the woods then, but now they were in open field.

  Marlowe paused at the top of the rise and looked around. He loved the plantation, loved his lord of the manor existence.

  Back in ’02, when he bought the Elizabeth Galley, he had been restless for the sea. He had been ready for privateering – high adventure with higher returns and low risk. But instead he had spent nearly a year on his unholy mission of hunting down his friend and the former captain of his river sloop, King James, a freed slave who had turned renegade after killing the crew of a slave ship in a fit of rage.

  Why did I do that, submit to the governor’s demand that I go after King James? He asked himself that question often enough. The answer: to preserve this. To maintain the life he and Elizabeth had built. To avoid becoming a pariah in a society that held him responsible for what James had done. He, Marlowe, lord of the manor, had freed his slaves. The Tidewater saw that as the seminal event in King James’s crime.

  At the far end of the field, past the former slave quarters, Marlowe saw a little knot of men and guessed that one was Bickerstaff, so he headed out for them.

  The long voyage to Africa and back had banished from Marlowe’s mind any thoughts of going to sea. For three years he had genuinely enjoyed the life of a country squire.

  And then, just that morning, his hands had reached unbidden for the chart of Madagascar, and he found himself staring at it, caressing it with his dividers, remembering the feel of the ship underfoot, a misty morning, stepping on deck with a landfall rising out of the ocean ahead. And then Elizabeth had haltingly laid out her plan, and suddenly Marlowe’s wanderlust was awake again.

  At last he came up with the group of men, Francis Bickerstaff and four of the former slaves, now hired hands, of Marlowe House. Hesiod, head man of the field hands, in his mid-twenties, strong and confident, was nodding as Bickerstaff spoke. Over his shoulder a big ax, his huge hand wrapped around the handle. He looked like a pirate.

  They were deep in a discussion of the properties of various trees for use as firewood and building material and what stand they might cut next, when Marlowe interrupted them.

  ‘Francis, how goes it here?’

  ‘Very well, Thomas. These fellows wish to make a start of clearing wood and laying in more lumber, and we were discussing what we might cut next. Have you a preference?’

  ‘Whatever you think best, Francis. And the prizing, how goes that?’

  ‘Our yield has been prodigious as ever, as you know, and the fortuitous rain has given us weather moist enough for the prizing.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Marlowe did not realize that one needed moist weather to prize tobacco. He tucked that fact away, and said, ‘I have come to remind you of the racing at Page’s this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Damned insufferable gatherings.’

  ‘Good, then you will attend? Here, walk with me, and I will tell you of a plan that Elizabeth has concocted.’

  The two men retraced Marlowe’s steps to the house, and, as they did, Marlowe related his discussion of that morning. He met the objections that Bickerstaff raised with the logic that Elizabeth had employed on him, and by the time they reached the house, Francis was in agreement with the idea.

  Elizabeth met them on the lawn, and the stableboy brought their horses around. They mounted and rode leisurely up the Archer’s Hope Creek Road, three miles to the Page plantation, and Elizabeth said, ‘Francis, did Thomas tell you? Madagascar is twice again as long as you had thought.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Madagascar. Were you two not discussing it?’

  ‘I don’t recall …’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Marlowe.

  Archer’s Hope Creek Road – known locally as a ‘rolling road’ – was packed hard by the barrels of tobacco that were rolled from inland plantations to the landing at Archer’s Hope Creek. In good weather it made for easy travel, and the three were able to discuss their plans as they walked their horses north, past brown-earth fields of harvested tobacco and patches of oak and maple, lush and green.

  The breeze picked up, dissipating the humidity some and making them more comfortable, though it was still too hot for real comfort, dressed as they were in their silk coats and bodice and skirts and breeches and socks
, rather than in the simple attire of the working-people and slaves.

  They came at last to the Page plantation, a somewhat grander version of Marlowe House. There were a hundred people there already – gentlemen and ladies, laborers, slaves, all manner of Tidewater society. Horse racing was a passion in Virginia, enjoyed with a zeal that Marlowe could not begin to muster.

  In fact, few of the things that delighted his peers – dancing and hunting, cards, bowling – did much for him, although he put on a brave front when forced to participate. He enjoyed fencing and billiards at least, and had garnered something of a reputation as a hand at both.

  But horse races were good venues for conducting business. None better, in fact, with the exception of the governor’s balls and Sunday worship, and so Marlowe contented himself that the afternoon might not be a total loss.

  ‘Ah, Marlowe, there you are!’ Joseph Page ambled up, red-faced, blustering with excitement. He loved a horse race, particularly his own. ‘Mrs Marlowe, Bickerstaff, glad you could make it.’

  Marlowe slid down from his horse, and a boy raced out with a step for Elizabeth. ‘Wouldn’t miss it, Page, never in life. I’ve ten pounds riding on your sorrel, I trust I won’t lose it?’

  ‘Lose it? Dear God, no. I only wish our harvests were as sure of profit as your wager, sir!’

  Marlowe chuckled obediently. ‘Indeed. And funny you should mention our harvest. As it happens, I have just this morning come upon a scheme that I think might profit us all …’

  By the time Page headed off to mount his sorrel for the race, Marlowe had secured his and two other neighbors’ tobacco for his unorthodox voyage. The risks were explained and the terms – 10 percent to Marlowe for carrying charges, with Marlowe assuring indemnity for loss due to negligence but not act of God – agreed upon.

  Having concluded that business, Marlowe accepted a glass of wine from Elizabeth and accompanied her to the edge of the straight quarter-mile track that Page had laid out. Scattered along the length of the track were the many people who had come out for this event. It was like the annual celebration of Publick Times in Williamsburg. In a colony so sparsely populated, the people took every opportunity to congregate.

  The buzzing among the crowd grew, the sense of anticipation swirling like smoke on a battlefield. The horses reared and jostled at the wide part at the head of the track, the starter fired his pistol, and mere seconds later Marlowe was poorer by ten pounds.

  Standing at the edge of the track, twenty feet away, Marlowe noticed Peleg Dinwiddie, whose expression suggested that he also had lost, and Marlowe’s disappointment was forgotten. Peleg was the master of Page’s river sloop, a thoroughgoing sailor man, and just the person that Marlowe needed.

  ‘Excuse me, my dear,’ Marlowe whispered to Elizabeth, and then he strolled off in Peleg’s direction. Dinwiddie took an inordinate – and, Marlowe thought, not entirely sincere – interest in horses. Peleg was something of a social climber, with none of the wit or grace to climb successfully. Marlowe suspected that Peleg was more interested in appearing to fancy horses, but that did not matter. It was not Dinwiddie’s view of horses that interested Marlowe now.

  ‘Peleg!’ Marlowe said, approaching with hand extended. ‘I haven’t seen you about, this past week or more.’

  ‘Been down to Point Comfort and up the York. Time of year, you know. A lot moving by water.’

  ‘Oh, and don’t I know it.’ Marlowe paused as if in thought. Peleg had been a merchant sailor all his working life, had been a boatswain for years and then mate before retiring to the much less demanding work of captaining a river sloop.

  ‘Peleg, you ever miss the deepwater sailing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really? Never wish to see that blue water again, nothing but the open sea, rolling away in every direction?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ Thomas paused again. ‘It’s where the real money is to be made, though.’

  ‘I went deep water all my damned life. Never made any real money.’

  ‘Ah, but did you ever go to … No, never mind.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Well, I was going to say Madagascar, but it don’t answer, because I probably am not going there now.’

  ‘Probably?’ Peleg stood a bit straighter, looked at Marlowe more intensely. Marlowe imagined he could peer into Peleg’s eyes and see the vision of Moorish treasure forming in his brain. ‘You sailing the Round?’

  ‘No. I am sailing to England, with a load of tobacco. Sod the damned convoy, I say. The Pirate Round? No, it is just something I am toying with, not so much chance I’ll do it.’

  ‘Not so much … but there is a chance?’

  ‘Yes, there is a chance.’

  Five minutes later, Peleg Dinwiddie agreed to report aboard the Elizabeth Galley in two days’ time.

  Marlowe felt no guilt about lying to him. What he felt was the oddest sort of confusion. He did not actually know to whom he was lying. Peleg? Elizabeth? Himself?

  He had made no real decisions, save for the one that would take them to London. What might happen after that, he did not know. He was acting now, not thinking.

  With the scarcity of seamen in the colonies, he needed Peleg Dinwiddie’s experience. He had to tell the man what he wanted to hear.

  The next morning Marlowe and Elizabeth and Bickerstaff rode south to Jamestown. It was time to inspect the Elizabeth Galley.

  They left their horses at a stable by the landing and climbed into the boat that Marlowe kept there. Thomas took up the oars – a means of transport much more familiar to him than horses – and rowed them across the slow-moving river to where the Elizabeth Galley was moored.

  She did not look so very seaworthy then, sitting motionless in the brown water of the river. The little bit of paint that adorned her sides was peeling off, and some of the fancy carvings were dry and cracked. She had only her lower masts – fore, main, and mizzen – in place, and the shrouds that supported those masts were slack, giving the ship an overall sagging appearance.

  But those things belied her true condition. When Marlowe had moored her, he had no notion of when she might sail again. But he loved her too much, and was too much of a seaman, to let her rot away.

  He had had the shrouds slackened off to keep from putting unnecessary strain on mast or rigging. He sent hands aboard her every month or so to apply fresh tar and check their condition, and he knew they were as sound as when they had first been set up.

  The rest of the rigging and spars had been carefully stored away, out of the weather, and he inspected them once a month. The sails were folded carefully and stored as well, and every few months they were brought out to air to prevent them from rotting. At least twice a year he had personally crawled through the lowest parts of the hull and checked for creeping rot or signs of an infestation of the teredo worm that bored itself into ships’ fabric, but he found neither.

  The Elizabeth Galley was in disuse, but she was not neglected.

  And so Marlowe was not surprised to find her in fine shape when he stepped aboard. Her decks had been swept fore and aft, and what little gear she still had aboard was in good order. He could smell fresh tar on her shrouds and linseed oil on her rails and sides. He looked around and nodded his approval.

  ‘She is spacious as a ballroom with the great guns gone,’ Francis observed. They had all come in through the entry port and stood in the waist, taking the ship in.

  ‘She is that,’ Thomas agreed. ‘And that relieves us of the need to carry powder or shot, which leaves plenty of room below for all our hogsheads and our neighbors’ as well. It is a good thing, really, the governor has taken our guns.’

  ‘I could almost believe you are sincere,’ said Francis.

  Marlowe took a step inboard, letting his eye roam over the familiar deck. So many ghosts floating around that space, too. He could see the big Spaniard looming alongside as he prepared to lead the Elizabeth Galleys over the rail. He could see again the men stru
ggling along that deck as they were blasted by the heavy guns of the French Indiaman. He could recall the sight of Whydah slipping below the horizon as he looked over that taffrail at the place where they had buried King James.

  Ghosts everywhere. His entire life was haunted.

  ‘Yes, well …’he said to no one in particular. ‘Let us inspect belowdecks. I’ll wager you will be pleasantly surprised by what you find.’

  He would have won the wager, had any taken him up on it. The lower decks were musty and hot, having been shut up and uninhabited for so long. But they were clean and maintained, with no sign of mold or rot or vermin. That was because Marlowe had his people wash her out with vinegar on a regular basis and fumigate her with brimstone once a year.

  They made their way through the hold, inspecting that lower part of the ship by lantern light. Nothing amiss. She was tight and seaworthy.

  They returned to the quarterdeck, blinking in the brilliant sun, blinded after the gloom of the hold. ‘She is in fine shape,’ Marlowe announced. ‘And I’ll warrant the rest of her gear is just as well preserved. Give me a decent crew and I will have her ready for sea in a month.’

  The first part of the crew was easy enough to find. Upon returning to Marlowe House, he summoned all the former slaves together and told them that he was going to sail the Elizabeth Galley to England and he needed men and would any of them like to sign on?

  There were no takers among the older men, those for whom ships meant the middle passage, the six weeks of hell stuffed into the festering hold of a slaver.

  But among the younger men that association was not so strong. Hesiod was the first of them to step forward. He, like several others, had been young enough then that the memory had faded. Still others had been born in the colonies and had no firsthand knowledge of that horror. They were the young, strong, adventurous types that Marlowe wanted, and twelve of them stepped forward and eagerly volunteered.