The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  The next day he surprised them all. ‘Mr Dinwiddie,’ he called the mate aft, ‘some of the men, I perceive, are still in their shore clothes, and that won’t do. I think today we will have a “make and mend” day.’

  The ‘some’ whom he meant were the black men; the white hands were all sailors and had come aboard in their wide slop trousers and work shirts, sheath knives and neckerchiefs. The black men still wore the clothes in which they had labored in the fields at Marlowe House.

  ‘Make and mend, aye, sir, and they’ll be glad of it.’ A make and mend day was almost as much a holiday as was a Sunday.

  ‘Issue out cloth and needles and thread to those that need it. Have the hands that know how to run up clothes help their watchmates who don’t.’

  ‘Make and mend?’ Francis Bickerstaff asked an hour later as he stepped onto the quarterdeck and joined Marlowe in observing the work going on forward. All over the deck men were paired up, the sailors helping the new men make their wide-legged slops, their work shirts cut in the seaman’s way.

  Marlowe knew that the former field hands would not know how to sew clothes. The deep-water sailors, however, the men who sailed ocean voyages and were used to being long out of the company of women, all were adept at the necessary chores that landsmen left to wives and daughters. Now the white sailors were patiently instructing the young black men in the tailor’s arts.

  ‘Clothes make the man, Francis, be he a gentleman or a sailor man.’

  And while the clothes might not, in fact, make the man, they did much to help the men make themselves. The newly minted sailors laughed at their new rigs, pretended to be unimpressed with them, felt a certain degree of embarrassment in wearing them, like they were dressing up in costumes. Hesiod, on the foredeck, his black skin sharp against his new white clothes, doing a wild parody of a sailor’s hornpipe to the delight of the other black men.

  But that embarrassment faded with just a few days, and soon Marlowe could see them strutting the deck with the air of old salts. Neckerchiefs appeared around their necks, sheath knives worn with casual grace behind.

  By the end of the week Marlowe noticed that the men were starting to congregate more by watch than by race. They were becoming a crew now, a single unit that would work to his command.

  And all for the price of a little cloth and thread.

  For four weeks they plowed the North Atlantic, with never a sail sighted and nothing worse than two days of fierce rain and an uncomfortable, lumpy sea to slow their progress. The Elizabeth Galley reeled off an easy six and seven knots, running her easting down.

  Four weeks, and Francis Bickerstaff, who had developed considerable skill in celestial navigation, worked out an evening sight and announced that, if the wind held, they would raise the Lizard the following day.

  Halfway through the next day’s dinner, the masthead lookout called down that he had sighted land, fine on the larboard bow. By nightfall the Lizard, the headland that formed the southwesternmost point of England, that familiar landfall to sailors inbound and outbound from the southern coast, was plainly seen from the deck.

  They were in among shipping now, all manner of vessels from coasters and fishing vessels to deep-sea merchantmen, Indiamen, and men-of-war. It took them four days to skirt the coast, run through the Strait of Dover, and weather Foreness Point, where they turned west and worked their way toward the wide mouth of the Thames River.

  Marlowe stood on the quarterdeck with Elizabeth at his side and pointed out the various landmarks as they passed, related tales of his life at sea as one or another place sparked a memory. He had spent enough time in those waters to be familiar with them, but not intimately so. He did not know the Thames the way he knew Jamaica or New Providence or Tortuga. It was on the Thames, however, that he had done his legitimate seafaring, and the stories were ones that he could tell without embarrassment.

  ‘Here is Gravesend,’ he said, pointing over the larboard rail. ‘That is where I was born.’

  Elizabeth looked at the small cluster of buildings huddled on the grimy shore, then turned and put her arm around her husband. ‘I did not know that,’ she said softly. ‘How could I not have known that?’

  ‘I am not much given to discussing it.’

  ‘So much of your life, a whole world before we met.’

  Marlowe pulled her closer. ‘My life began when we met. Everything that went before was prologue, useless stuff.’

  His words were not idle flattery, and Elizabeth knew it.

  They anchored with the turning of the tide and twelve hours later were off again, working their way up the river, which grew narrower, more crowded, filthier with each mile made good.

  For Thomas and Elizabeth and Francis it was the oddest sensation, watching that familiar shoreline slip by with London springing up around them.

  They each had spent considerable time in that city, long before the odd quirks of fate had thrown them together. They all had their own memories, their own feelings that were evoked by seeing ancient, stolid London again. They were familiar with each other, they were familiar with the city, but somehow the two did not fit with one another, like two separate lives pushed together.

  ‘How very foreign it seems,’ Elizabeth said in a whisper. ‘I have become a country girl, I reckon. I cannot fathom why anyone would ever live in such a place.’

  She smiled. ‘In faith, I thought the same thing the first time I saw the wild places in Virginia, six weeks after sailing down this very river.’

  They came at last to the heart of London, as far upriver as they could go, where the shipping seemed to accumulate against London Bridge, like detritus caught on a dam. Ships were tied up four and five deep along the docks, a towering jumble of masts, and moored in every open spot of water, leaving only enough room for more ships to work through the narrow channel in center stream. And weaving their way between them, like bustling servants, was a vast fleet of smaller boats under sail or pulled by oars.

  As huge as the Thames was, it seemed less impressive now to people who had lived alongside the great rivers that cut through Virginia – the James and the York and the Rappahannock – and it seemed that not one more ship could be wedged into that place.

  They managed to find room enough to drop anchor, with two cables bent and the second bower ready to go down to moor the Elizabeth Galley and hold her in place in either a flood or ebb tide.

  There was a wild rush of activity as the ship was made fast and sails stowed and hatches broken open, and then it was quiet, and Elizabeth and Thomas were able to survey the city from their familiar place on the deck.

  Dark and filthy, loud, gritty. Once-familiar smells of sewage and smoke and cooking and blacksmithing and horses and fetid water swirled around them in a now-alien cloud. The excitement their younger selves had once felt when in the midst of all that rush of activity ashore was gone, and now they wanted only to finish their business and sail away again.

  Honeyman and Dinwiddie went ashore and arranged a lighter, while Flanders began to break bulk. The next morning the lighter – a wide, flat-bottomed barge, propelled by long sweeps – came alongside, and the Elizabeth Galleys fell to with yard and stay tackles. They hauled and swayed and eased away handsomely, and one by one the casks of tobacco, which had last seen daylight in Virginia, over two thousand miles away, emerged from the gloomy hold and swung over the rail and disappeared into the lighter’s guts.

  It took the better part of the day to transfer the tobacco from the Galley to the boat. As that work proceeded, Elizabeth went over the accounts, the bills of lading, the inventory of their and their neighbors’ tobacco.

  ‘Now, recall, there is nothing illegal about our landing this tobacco,’ Marlowe lectured. ‘Permits for sailing unescorted are none of this fellow’s business, and don’t let him tell you otherwise. We are a month at least ahead of the convoy. Our cargo should fetch twice what it did last season. And none of his letters of credit either. Ready money. He’ll have it on hand. Settle
for no less.’

  Elizabeth slammed her account book shut, looked up at Thomas with her exasperation showing plain. ‘Damn it, Thomas, if you are so sure I will make a hash of it, then go see the goddamned merchant yourself!’

  ‘Me? What an idea! Elizabeth, I have told you time enough that I cannot show my face around the waterfront, not in London, for the love of God! It is exactly where I would expect to see a familiar face. Would you have me hanged for piracy?’

  ‘If you do not shut up, I shall hang you myself.’

  Before he could reply, there was a polite knock on the great cabin door, and Peleg Dinwiddie announced that the lighter was preparing to leave. It was early evening, and a mist was beginning to settle over the river, leaving the far bank obscured in shades of brown and gray.

  Elizabeth draped her wool cloak over her shoulders, collected up her account books, and followed Dinwiddie topside, with Marlowe trailing behind. The decks were dark and wet with the falling mist as the three of them crossed to the gangway.

  It had been explained to Dinwiddie and Flanders and Honeyman, and word had filtered down to the men, that Marlowe was wanted for piracy. Marlowe told them how he had foolishly become involved in a Red Sea scheme sponsored by powerful men within the government. How, when it all fell apart, the government men tried to put the blame on him, accused him of turning pirate, to save themselves.

  It was all a fiction, of course, but believable enough, with shades of the fate that had befallen Captain William Kidd. Dinwiddie and Flanders seemed to accept the story, shocked at such perfidy, but without question. Honeyman nodded, shrugged, as if he needed no explanation and did not care why his captain could not go ashore.

  Marlowe paused at the gangway, put his hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders. ‘You will do brilliantly, I would never doubt it,’ he said and kissed her, then handed her down to Dinwiddie, who was already on the lighter’s deck.

  He watched the lighter’s hands cast off fore and aft, watched the gentle breeze lift the barge from the Elizabeth Galley’s side, and he felt a deep shame that he should cower thus while his wife went ashore to do his office, a profound regret that he had lived his life in such a way that now he could not show his face on London’s waterfront.

  It was almost full dark, an hour and a half later, when a hired boat returned with Elizabeth and Peleg. Marlowe waited at the gangway eager to hear of Elizabeth’s triumph. But as she climbed up the boarding steps, scowling, her eyebrows held in that attitude of fury that he knew all too well, he realized he would be hearing something quite different.

  ‘Whatever happened?’ he asked, even as he held out his hand to help her through the opening in the bulwark.

  ‘That bastard will not allow me to close the deal,’ she said. ‘Bloody stupid man. He says that since the cargo was consigned to you, you must be the one to sign the bills of sale.’

  ‘But I consigned the cargo to you. You are my representative.’ This made no sense.

  ‘For the tobacco you own, yes. That was not the problem. It is the crop that our neighbors consigned to us. Apparently you cannot transfer the consignment for that, since it is not your property. Bloody stupid—’

  ‘Did you manage to strike a good deal in any event?’ Marlowe was looking for some bright spot while he searched for a way out of this.

  ‘Yes, yes, fine …’ Elizabeth said, but Peleg stepped through the gangway next and said, ‘Ah, she was bloody brilliant, Captain! I’ve never seen the like, not in all my years as a merchant seaman! Had the rutting bastard all twisted around, got half again as much per pound as we done on our best year before the war!’ He was beaming, the admiration in his face genuine.

  ‘What good it might do, I do not know. We cannot sell the tobacco that is not ours, and it will be ruined if we try to bring it back to Virginia. We shall make a profit ourselves and ruin our neighbours. They will of course demand indemnity. No, it won’t do. Thomas, I am at a loss.’

  ‘Oh, for the love of God,’ Marlowe said. All this because he was too craven to row two hundred yards to the shore and walk another hundred to a warehouse to sign some papers? It was absurd. ‘I shall just go ashore and sign the damned papers and be done with it.’

  Elizabeth looked up, surprised and afraid. ‘No, Thomas, that is not possible. You cannot do that.’

  Dinwiddie nodded his head. The concern on his face made him look like a big dog, of the jowly, drooling variety.

  ‘Of course I can. This is nonsense, this crawling around like some frightened thing. It is night, there is a fog, I shall speak only to those to whom I must, sign the rutting papers, and be gone. There is never a thing to fear. Mr Dinwiddie, pray see the gig cleared away and a boat crew told off.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Dinwiddie said grudgingly, and he lumbered off to see it done. Marlowe met Elizabeth’s eyes, held them, and heard all the arguments forming in her head.

  ‘It will be all right, my dearest,’ he said softly, heading the arguments off. ‘And we have no choice in the matter.’

  Marlowe went below for his coat, hat, and sword. When he returned to the deck five minutes later, the gig was floating at the bottom of the boarding steps, four men at the oars and Honeyman at the tiller. Marlowe noticed they were armed, with pistols hidden under jackets and cutlasses wrapped in canvas in the bottom of the boat. Mr Dinwiddie’s caution and efficiency.

  Marlowe went down first, then Elizabeth climbed down after him, and he helped her make the difficult step into the boat while Honeyman and the crew looked discreetly away. When they were settled in the stern sheets, the bowman shoved off and the boat pulled slowly through the crowd of shipping.

  ‘See here.’ Marlowe nodded to the ship under whose high stern they were passing, drawing Honeyman’s attention to her. ‘What do you reckon she’s about?’

  Honeyman looked up, cast a critical and professional eye over the vessel. ‘Queen’s Venture …’ He read the gilded letters under the big stern windows. ‘A frigate. Older frigate, but she’s flying East Indiaman’s colors. Looks to be fitting out for some cruise or other.’

  She did that. She had about her the look of a ship readying for sea, not the worn look of a vessel just in. Her decks sported the telltale clutter of stowing down. But for all that, she looked formidable enough, her long row of shut gunports promising significant firepower behind.

  ‘Humph,’ Marlowe said, and nothing more. She was a curiosity, but she was not his affair.

  They pulled up at last to the slick, wet granite steps that emerged from the water and led through a break in the stone seawall up to the cobbled road that ran along the river. Again Marlowe stepped out first and offered his hand to Elizabeth. They climbed the steps together, and Marlowe said, ‘You must show me the way, dear, you being so familiar with these streets.’

  They reached the road, paused as Elizabeth got her bearings, and then a voice – gruff, slurred – asked, ‘Got bags, guv’nor, which I can carry for you?’

  Marlowe turned without thinking, said, ‘No, my man, we are just—’

  Eyes met, Marlowe’s and the old man’s. A wrinkled, leathered face, a smooth gash of a scar across his cheek. The man was a sailor, or had been. They paused, and something passed between them.

  It was not recognition, not on Marlowe’s part, just some vague familiarity. In the dim light of the sundry lanterns that lit the waterfront, in the mist turning rapidly to fog, they held one another’s eyes for a second, less than a second. Then Marlowe turned fast, took Elizabeth’s arm, hurried off down the road.

  It is not bloody possible, he thought. The first bloody face I see?

  It was nothing, it was his imagination, he assured himself. All these old broken sailors, they all looked alike. He had known a dozen men who looked just like that old beggar.

  But those eyes, that scar. He tried to take twenty years off the face, place where he might have seen it last.

  It was not possible he could have been recognized, not by the first man he met! He hurried Elizabeth al
ong the cobbled road until she had to ask him to slow down, ask what was the matter.

  ‘It is nothing, not a thing. Just anxious to be done with this, I reckon. And afraid the merchant’s office will be closed. Do you know when they close?’

  ‘Nine o’clock. We have an hour or better,’ Elizabeth said.

  Marlowe glanced back over his shoulder but saw only darkness there and mist and the odd halos of lanterns glowing in the fog.

  They came at last to the merchant’s office, set in the front of a vast warehouse. In the common area were stationed tall desks for the harried bookkeepers and behind them a few walled-off offices for those of greater importance.

  They stepped through the door, into the din, lit with the pools of light spilling from various candles and lanterns, messengers and stevedores and scriveners hurrying about, great stacks of casks and unidentifiable bundles lurking in the shadows in the back of the big building.

  A clerk met them at the door. Both he and his clothing had a wilted, resigned quality. ‘May I help you?’ he asked, and then, ‘Ah, Mrs Marlowe, of course. And this would be …’

  ‘Captain Marlowe,’ Elizabeth said curtly. ‘He has come to sign the bills of sale, and he does not care to waste another moment with this nonsense.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said the clerk, running his eyes over Marlowe, seeming to try to gauge how far this fellow could be pushed. ‘Let me inform Mr Dickerson that you are here, sir.’

  The clerk disappeared into one of the offices and a moment later was back, saying, ‘Mr Dickerson instructs I tell you he is grateful you could come in person, and he will attend to you the very instant he is done with the business he is on.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Marlowe in a tone that conveyed his feeling that this was not very well at all. He loosened his cloak, crossed his arms, gave Elizabeth an arched eyebrow, and silently they waited.