The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  The Elizabeth Galley had now crossed the Atlantic three times, with never a bit of attention paid to her hull, and he knew that attention must be paid. They were taking on water, and great tendrils of weed could be seen streaming aft under the counter when the tide flowed around the hull. They would have to strip her top-hamper and careen her, run her up on the beach and roll her on her side to get at the weeds and the leaks. It was an onerous task, though not as bad as it might have been, since they had no guns to get off of her and precious little in the way of food or water left to sway out of her hold.

  Marlowe was pulled from his consideration of that grim reality by a second hail from the lookout, the report of yet another boat pulling for them. Marlowe fixed the boat with his telescope. It was bigger than the last, sort of an ornamental barge with a canopy and a big ensign that he did not recognize streaming from a staff in the stern.

  ‘This would be Lord Yancy, I’ll wager,’ Bickerstaff said, his voice carrying the subtle flavor of irony and amusement.

  ‘I’ll wager you are right. And it will do us well to recall that, crackbrained though he might be, he is nonetheless the crackbrain who commands all of the guns past which we must sail. I think the utmost deference is called for, until such time as we are well beyond long-cannon range. Mr Honeyman, what have we in the way of bunting?’

  They managed to muster quite a bit in the fifteen minutes it took for the barge to make its leisurely way across harbor. Along with that, they rounded up what musicians the Elizabeth Galley could boast – a fore topman who was something of a hand with a fiddle; the cook, who was a master of the recorder; and one of the boys who had been practicing with a drum and found a natural talent with that instrument.

  These few, and the men with cutlasses, made their best show as the barge drew alongside and Lord Yancy stepped slowly up and through the gangway.

  Given the size of Henry Nagel, Marlowe had expected Yancy to be a hairy giant of a man, and so he was surprised at what stepped onto his deck. A small, thin man, squirrel-like, with a neat mustache and chin beard. He wore a wide hat with a great feather, like a French soldier of a former age. From his shoulders a cape fell nearly to the deck, lined with brilliant red silk. His clothes were immaculate. He wore a jewel-studded rapier on his waist.

  ‘I take it I have the honor of welcoming Lord Yancy aboard the Elizabeth Galley?’ Marlowe said, making a shallow bow.

  ‘You do,’ Yancy said, never looking at Marlowe but rather darting his eyes around the vessel, not the slow, professional assessment of the seaman but rather a jerky, suspicious motion. He made to speak and then stopped as a coughing fit overcame him, and he bent over, hacking into a blood-stained handkerchief. Finally he straightened again and said, ‘You did not salute the fort.’

  ‘Forgive me, my lord, I was unaware of the protocol of the island,’ Marlowe said, ‘and, as you see, I have no great guns.’ He struggled to sound sincere, did not care for that kind of kowtowing. Two sentences, and already he wanted to twist Yancy’s thin neck. He concentrated on the big cannon on the island, which he reckoned were concentrated on him.

  ‘Yes, well, do not forget again,’ Yancy said, and met Marlowe’s eyes at last. The man was clearly sick with some ailment, and yet there was an energy about him that seemed out of place. ‘You wish to buy guns, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. And powder and shot. And I would hope to careen as well.’

  Yancy nodded, and his eyes fell on Elizabeth, and he looked her up and down as only a man used to having supreme authority would dare do. Marlowe gritted his teeth. Yancy shifted his gaze a fraction of a second before Marlowe was about to speak.

  ‘This is your wife?’ Yancy asked.

  ‘Yes. Lord Yancy, allow me to present Elizabeth Marlowe.’

  Elizabeth gave a shallow bow. Yancy shuffled across the deck with his weak gait, took up her hand, and kissed it as he bowed to her. He continued to hold it, turned to Marlowe. ‘Not many men would bring their wives on a Red Sea voyage,’ Yancy observed, his eyes drifting back to Elizabeth.

  ‘There are not many wives such as Elizabeth,’ Marlowe countered.

  ‘No indeed.’ Yancy finally eased her hand down, looked at Marlowe. ‘You will have your guns. We shall discuss price later. And you are welcome to careen as you wish. Plenty of good beach, you can see from here. You will dine with me tonight?’ It did not sound like a question.

  ‘I would be honored,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Good. Please bring your wife and whatever officers you see fit.’ Then he turned and climbed back down into the waiting barge with never another word.

  ‘Well, he seems disposed to helping us, in any event,’ Bickerstaff observed as the barge pulled away.

  ‘Yes, so he does.’ But that fact did not ease Marlowe’s anxiety in the slightest measure.

  By the time the sails were furled and the ship stood down to an anchor watch, there was not much left: of the daylight. Marlowe and Elizabeth dressed for dinner, as did Bickerstaff and Peleg Dinwiddie, got up in the same attire he had worn to Governor Richier’s dinner in Bermuda, so many months before. Fortunately, he had retained the lessons in fashion that Elizabeth had so diplomatically foisted on him, and he looked only a little bit odd as he met the others topside.

  Marlowe did not think it would matter much. This was a pirate community, where the odd, the depraved, the bizarre were commonplace, even expected.

  They gathered in the waist as the boat crew took their places on the thwarts, and Bickerstaff said, ‘Thomas, do you think it is entirely safe, bringing Elizabeth into this viper’s nest?’

  No, Thomas thought, but he said, ‘I should think it is safe. There is a sort of a code, you know, with these fellows. They are not wont to meddle with another’s wife. Not when the other is willing and able to fight for her honor, as of course you know I am.’ That last he addressed to Elizabeth, with a bow.

  ‘We shall trust your judgment in this, naturally,’ said Bickerstaff.

  ‘And even if I am wrong,’ Marlowe added, ‘Elizabeth is now the finest blade in all Madagascar, thanks to your tutelage. I should think we might look to her to protect our persons.’

  They climbed down the side, and Marlowe took his place in the boat. He hoped very much that he would still be joking at evening’s end. He did not point out to the others that there really was no choice but to bring Elizabeth ashore, did not point out that there was more danger to all of them, Elizabeth included, in ignoring this Yancy’s wishes than in acquiescing. They could only play along and hope that things broke in their favor.

  With Honeyman as coxswain, they were rowed ashore to a dubious wooden pier that jutted out like a poorly executed appendage to the dirt road that ran along the shore to the town. Marlowe stepped onto the slimy ladder, took a few rungs, turned, and helped Elizabeth up, and then Bickerstaff and Dinwiddie followed.

  ‘You keep the boat crew sober, at least until we get back to the ship,’ Marlowe ordered Honeyman.

  It was an interesting situation. By the law of the pirates, Marlowe could not give such an order. If his men wanted to get wild drunk, he could not stop them, not since he had agreed to turn his legitimate merchantman into a pirate ship.

  But, to his relief, Honeyman just nodded and said, ‘Aye, Captain.’

  That done, Marlowe turned his attention to the town in front of him. There were two roads that he could see, no more, the one that ran from the end of the dock along the shore and another that wound its way up the hill to the stockade and the big house beyond. These crossed at a right angle and formed the town’s single intersection. The roads were dirt, but not overly dusty in that wet, tropical climate.

  Off to the right were the warehouses, big wood-framed buildings, a few shuttered windows on the upper floors, the remnants of paint still clinging to the weathered boards. Scattered around them coils of line, rusting anchors, piles of standing rigging stripped from some vessel or other. Bursts of bright green vegetation grew up around them and even throu
gh them, showing how they had not been moved in some time.

  The two roads were busy. There were a few carts and oxen and one horse that Marlowe could see, but for the most part it was foot traffic. Pirates. They wore the dress of seamen – loose trousers, bare feet, long hair, as well as those things that marked them as men on the account – bright sashes, cocked hats with feathers jutting out, gentlemen’s coats, weapons hanging off them in abundance.

  They were hurrying or staggering or sitting on the road and singing or passed out, drunk. They were clustered about small, round tables on the street just outside one of the dilapidated taverns. They were promenading with local girls in European dress on their arms as if they were at the Court of St James’s. Several hundred men, Marlowe had to guess. The town might be no more than a little enclave carved from the jungle, but the spirit was Port Royal in its buccaneering heyday.

  Marlowe and his party made their way up the road to the intersection, then turned and tramped uphill to the big house. They stopped at the stockade and were questioned by a pair of guards who stood at the gate. Marlowe explained who they were, and they were let to pass and continue on the one hundred yards to the main entrance of the house.

  The house itself was a magnificent affair, even more extraordinary considering that it was built on a jungle island. The lower half, up to the second story, was stone, harvested from the ground and stacked uncut, but done so neatly that little mortar could be seen between each.

  Above that, the structure rose two more stories, built of wood frame and stucco, in the Tudor style. A great, wide veranda jutted out over the grounds, and several of the windows had their own little verandas that looked out over the harbor. The roof was a massive field of thatch.

  Marlowe paused, caught his breath, stared with admiration at the building. He wondered at the drive and vision of the man who had built it.

  ‘That Baldridge fellow, he done this, right?’ Dinwiddie asked, breaking the silence.

  ‘Yes, I believe so,’ Marlowe said. ‘But I gather from Henry Nagel that Lord Yancy does not care to be reminded of that. Pray do not mention Baldridge again.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Dinwiddie said. He sounded as if the reminder had offended him. He was growing touchier by the day.

  They stepped up to the door, and before Marlowe could knock, Henry Nagel opened it and ushered them in. They entered a cool foyer that rose two stories above them, with a wide staircase running up to the second floor.

  Nagel had managed to say no more than ‘Welcome—’ when Yancy stepped into the foyer, his cape nearly dragging on the floor.

  ‘Welcome, welcome to my home!’ he said, expansive and gracious now, more vital in his own domain. ‘Captain Marlowe, the lovely Elizabeth, welcome.’ He glanced at the others, apparently could not recall their names, and said nothing. ‘Pray allow me to give you a tour before we eat. It is a simple, rustic place, but we must endure such to live in this tropical splendor!’

  Yancy proceeded to show them the drawing room, the sitting room, the bedchambers on the second floor, shuffling from here to there, pausing to catch his breath or to indulge in a coughing spell. There were a few other men in the house, those men, Marlowe guessed, that Yancy could genuinely trust. Yancy made introductions as they chanced to meet, named the others as though they were minor nobility, but they looked to Marlowe to be the same sort of rogues as wandered the streets below, if better dressed.

  There were native men as well, servants, and native women, who seemed to outnumber the men three to one. The women smiled demurely, did not say anything to the strangers, and Yancy did not introduce them.

  More bedchambers, drawing rooms upstairs, baths. Yancy showed them around with a pride as if he had built it all with his own hands.

  It was a fine house, Marlowe had to agree, but he could also see that it was not wearing well. There was plaster flaking off walls and doorframes no longer square and mold creeping along window frames. He could see dirt accumulating in corners, broken bottles kicked aside, rooms with smashed furniture shoved into corners.

  The grand house must have been magnificent when Baldridge had lived there, but those days were gone. Yancy and his pirates were the Visigoths, living among the crumbled glories of Rome.

  They had dinner in the great hall, two stories tall, that made up the northeastern end of the house. Long tables ran nearly the length of the room, with Yancy’s trusted friends sitting along them and native servants, silent, darting between broad-shouldered men, pouring wine, serving dishes piled with food, taking empty ones away.

  The men ate with the refinement Marlowe would have expected from the Roundsmen, snatching food with their hands mostly, though some used sheath knives as well. Bones were flung aside to the half-dozen dogs that waited eagerly for scraps.

  Marlowe and Elizabeth and Bickerstaff and Dinwiddie sat at the head table, flanking Yancy. No sooner had they sat than the great monster of a man sitting next to Bickerstaff – with matted, encrusted beard, smelling of rum and tobacco smoke and sweat – stood and extended his hand to Marlowe, across Yancy’s face, nearly knocking Yancy over and saying, ‘Obadiah Spelt. Your servant, sir,’ with an arrogance that made it clear he considered himself to be no one’s servant.

  Marlowe took the hand and shook it and waited for the explosion, for Yancy’s troops to fall on the villain and cut him up, but Yancy seemed not to notice this blatant lack of respect, and neither did anyone else, so Marlowe ignored it, too. He sat again, wondered who this fellow might be, who could get away with such disrespect. Yancy’s brother? Someone who had saved Yancy’s life? Marlowe could not guess, and he really did not care.

  For a good part of the dinner Yancy brooded and said nothing and ate nothing. It was only when the others were half done that Yancy finally called for food for himself, telling the servants specifically which platters to take from and set on the plate before him.

  After a few bites Yancy seemed to brighten a bit. He turned to Elizabeth. ‘Tell, me, ma’am, what think you of my little house?’

  ‘I think it is beautiful, Lord Yancy,’ Elizabeth said, though to Marlowe’s certain knowledge she had already told him as much three times. ‘As fine as any of the great country houses of England,’ she lied.

  ‘You are from England, then?’

  ‘I was born there. My husband and I live in the colonies now, in Virginia, where we—’

  ‘I am from Newport, in Rhode Island, though my business has kept me from there these many years. I do business with London now and New York and, yes, Rhode Island.’

  ‘My husband and I grow tobacco mostly—’

  ‘Tobacco is nothing.’ Yancy gave a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Growing things from the ground? That is for the last age. It is commerce now that is the only means to riches.’ He turned from Elizabeth, apparently done with her, looked at Dinwiddie. ‘You, sir, tell me of yourself …’

  It was one of the most bizarre dinners that Marlowe had ever endured. Yancy spoke to them each, not so much a conversation as an interview, and when he was done, he did not speak again, save to Elizabeth.

  Spelt was raving drunk, singing, shouting, throwing beef bones, but no one seemed to notice, or at least there was tacit decision by all present to ignore him. Near the end of the meat course, thankfully he passed out and fell on the floor, where he was allowed to remain.

  At last it was over – the fruit and nuts, brandy and pipes – and Marlowe could reasonably insist that they had to return to the ship. This seemed to revive Yancy, and he stood and walked with them out of the great hall and along the wide corridors to the main door. He sat wearily in a chair by the door and closed his eyes. A moment later he opened them again and said, I have much enjoyed your company, Captain, and that of your fine crew and, I need not say, your lovely wife.’ He reached out and took Elizabeth’s hand and kissed it, augmenting the annoyance that Marlowe had felt all night, the result of the special attention Yancy had lavished on her.

  ‘I trust you will visit
with me again, before you sail. Tomorrow I will send Nagel down to make a deal with you for the guns. And as to careening, I shall see that you have all the help you might need. I am so very delighted by your company, I wish nothing but to aid you in any way I might.’

  He stood, bowed weakly, kissed Elizabeth’s hand again, bade them good night as they stepped into the evening. Marlowe heard the big door close behind them, and it was a blessed relief.

  The next morning, an hour after dawn, Nagel arrived in a longboat with twenty-five men. Marlowe watched it approach with some trepidation. He did not trust Yancy any more than he would trust a dog mad with rabies.

  In accordance with his orders, Honeyman and the boat crew had remained sober while the rest of the men of the Elizabeth Galley had become insensibly drunk. After Marlowe and his party had returned, the boat crew had joined their fellows, gulping rum in an effort to catch up.

  Now there was no one aboard the ship who was awake, save for himself and Bickerstaff and Dinwiddie, no one to defend the ship if it came to that. Nagel and his band could stand on the deck and bang drums, and it would be enough to induce the crew to surrender.

  Fortunately, Nagel had no such bellicose intentions, and as the boat drew alongside, Marlowe could see that none of his men was armed beyond carrying a sheath knife, which was as much a part of the sailor’s attire as trousers.

  Nagel climbed up the side. ‘Morning, Captain,’ he said. ‘I come to see about selling you them guns. And Lord Yancy, he sent the men here to help you with your heaving down.’

  ‘Thank you. That is very kind,’ Marlowe said, and he meant it. Careening the ship was a great deal of work, even for men who were not still half drunk. Perhaps he had misjudged Yancy. Or, more correctly, perhaps his madness was not entirely of a malicious nature. He had, after all, done no more than flirt with Elizabeth, despite Marlowe’s concerns. Flirting was nothing. There were few men, sane or otherwise, who could resist giving Elizabeth special attention.

  Marlowe had known megalomaniacal tyrants who could be kind and helpful. It kept people off balance.