The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  ‘Where is he? I must go to him.’

  Nagel shook his head again. ‘He knows it’s his time. He asked to be carried away, to his secret place, where he can pray and such. He said to tell you you’re lord of the island now. All this is yours. And “Godspeed,” he says.’

  Dinwiddie looked at the big pirate in front of him. His head pounded harder, and he felt a surge of panic. Lord of the island? Dear God, whatever do I do now?

  ‘Marlowe? Is he still here? Is the Elizabeth Galley still at anchor?’

  ‘No, and good riddance, I say. When the fire broke out, we sent word to Marlowe, asking would he help with putting it out. “No,” says he, “and with the tide making, won’t we just be on our merry way.” There’s gratitude, for all that Lord Yancy done for him.’

  ‘Humph,’ Dinwiddie said. He thought of the wrecked Indiaman they had encountered. Marlowe hanging from that hawser, working his way out to the stranded sailors. Tried to reconcile that image with the Marlowe that Nagel had just described.

  ‘Very well, then, sod Marlowe,’ Dinwiddie said, and then he found himself flailing for what he might say next. He was lord of the island. He would have to do something. Wouldn’t he?

  ‘Beg your pardon, my lord,’ Nagel said, ‘and not wanting to be too forward or nothing … but Yancy, he asked would I stay here and be your aide, like. Like I done for him. He wanted to be here, to tell you what he knows about ruling the island, but he hasn’t the strength. Don’t reckon he’ll live till morning next.’

  ‘Oh. No, I would not reckon it too forward, was you to help me …’ Dinwiddie said, and the realization that Nagel would be there, enforcing his authority, helping with the unfamiliar, gave Dinwiddie a new confidence.

  Suddenly he felt not as if he were standing in the burned-out remains of a hallway on a strange island full of outlaws but rather as though he were standing on the quarterdeck of a ship, in command, the crew forward ready to jump to his command. His headache was gone.

  ‘I think first we had best get some hands to this roof, get it repaired. And the ceiling as well. Round up a gang and get them right on that. And I’ll need my breakfast. Turn the cook out.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ said Nagel with a smirk. Dinwiddie caught the expression, guessed that the man was happy to have someone in charge again, someone who knew how to give commands without equivocation. Happy that Yancy had chosen a successor worthy of the office.

  By noon of that day Dinwiddie was dressed, fed, and growing increasingly angry. Nagel had managed to round up all the men he could to work on the roof, a total of three. Nor did they turn to with much of a will. They moved at a near sleepwalking pace, cutting away the charred bits of the beams and pulling out the unusable thatch.

  The servants and the girls from his harem that he had ordered to clean the hall were doing better at least. The water had been mopped up, the walls washed down, the chunks of debris cleared away. Save for the great hole in the roof, the hall looked much as it had when he had retired with his girls the night before.

  He stood on the veranda looking out at the harbor. The Elizabeth Galley, which he was accustomed to seeing at her anchorage, was gone. It seemed as if there was a hole in the vista.

  It seemed as well that there were a few other vessels that had sailed. He had never taken a real count of the ships at anchor, so he was not certain, but it seemed as if there were fewer now. Occasionally, he looked back at the roof. There was little happening there.

  ‘I got some more hands, should be on their way,’ Nagel said, stepping from the house and crossing the veranda.

  ‘Where the bloody hell is everyone?’ Dinwiddie asked. The big house had always seemed crowded with people.

  ‘Some of the men, they wanted to be with Lord Yancy in his last hours,’ Nagel said. ‘They’ll be back … after. You gots to remember, most of them what lives in the house, they sailed with Yancy from the colonies, like me. But if Yancy says they are to follow your orders, you can count on it they will.’

  ‘Humph.’ Dinwiddie did not care for that so much, nor did he care for Nagel’s still referring to Yancy, who had abdicated, as ‘Lord’ Yancy. But he did not feel he should be a stickler on the point, not with Yancy about to draw his final breath. In fact, Dinwiddie reckoned he would start off easy on his men.

  ‘I understand full well, Nagel,’ he said. ‘Such loyalty is admirable, damn me if it ain’t. Let us do this. You tell these fellows working on the roof to just get the burned bits cleared away and then stand down for the day. Get back at it first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Very good, my lord. That’ll sit well with ’em.’

  The next morning found quite a large gang of men eating their noisy breakfast in the great hall. Twenty at least, all come to work on the roof, per Dinwiddie’s command. He was gratified to see them as he staggered into the big room, half asleep still, his eyes burning.

  ‘This is good, this is good,’ he said to Nagel, who stood when he entered and held the chair for him.

  ‘Aye, my lord. But news that will make you sad, I fear. Lord Yancy, he passed in the night. Over the standing part of the foresheet he went, but with rum enough in his belly to make the pain bearable. We buried him, first light, up where he’ll have a fine view for eternity. These fellows’ – he nodded toward the men who were wolfing down their cold roast beef and bread and butter and ale – ‘sat vigil with him. Now they are here to work, what with their vigil done.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said Dinwiddie, taking a tentative sip of ale and waiting to see how it would settle in his stomach. The men at breakfast, with their lively banter and ribald jokes, mouths overflowing with food that sprayed across the tabletop as they talked, did not seem to be in any deep mourning for their former lord and master.

  Honor among thieves and all that. As the ale cleared his head a bit, Dinwiddie thought of how he would whip them into a real company, how they would be more grieved by his passing, were it to happen.

  He drank another glass, and that gave him the strength to eat something, and that made him feel even more revitalized. Time to get to work.

  Lord Dinwiddie slammed his hands on the table, palms down, with a loud smacking sound calculated to stop the conversation and gain everyone’s attention, but no one seemed to notice, and the loud talk did not pause for even a beat. He slammed his hands again, with the same results.

  He scowled, made ready to bark out his unequivocal displeasure, when Nagel shouted, ‘Here, you great sons of whores, listen here!’

  With that, the pirates fell silent and turned and looked at Nagel, who said, ‘Lord Dinwiddie, he wishes to say something to the gentlemen.’

  ‘Thank you, Nagel,’ Dinwiddie said, standing. ‘I reckon we’re finished with our breakfast. There’s a power of work to be done. Roof to repair and then the batteries to overhaul, the stockade to repair.’ He fell easily into the role of command, after more than a decade as mate and master aboard merchantmen. ‘Damned lot of work and no time to waste. So right now I want you men up on the roof. You know what to do. I’ll be up to inspect your work directly.’

  To his annoyance the men just sat there until Nagel barked ‘Go!’ and then they stood and shuffled out. Soon there was only himself and Nagel in the hall.

  ‘They’re villains and rogues, my lord. Pay them no mind,’ Nagel said. ‘They’ll learn.’

  ‘Oh, they will, I’ll see to that. And I think you had better get up there with them, Nagel. It will not serve discipline for them to see you lounging about.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Nagel said, but Dinwiddie could see that he was not happy about it. Still, it had to be done. Nagel could not be allowed to get too big for his britches. That was just what Marlowe had allowed to happen aboard the Elizabeth Galley. He had let Honeyman start to think he was some kind of an officer, and the whole thing had broken down. That sort of thing would not happen on St Mary’s.

  Nagel left, and Dinwiddie climbed back up to the second floor and out onto the wide veranda, which was beco
ming his favorite place to sit and think. There were still great splashes of blood on the flat stones where Yancy had slaughtered his daily pig. Dinwiddie had to wonder at the sanity of someone who would do such a thing.

  He stood at the low wall and looked down at the harbor, the green jungle, the hibiscus and bougainvillea. There were two more vessels getting under way, bound off for the Red Sea, no doubt. It was more activity than he had seen yet in the three weeks that he had been there, and he wondered if Marlowe’s example had spurred these others.

  After a few hours of contemplative thought and a light midmorning meal, he made his way down the hall to inspect the work on the roof. He was not happy with what he saw, and he said so. He ordered the repairs that had been done thus far to be torn away and redone.

  The next morning none of the men returned to work. Dinwiddie set the servants to repair the roof, but they proved even less competent or willing than the pirates. Soon they too, began to melt away.

  By the fourth day of his reign there were only a half a dozen servants, a third of his harem, and four sodden pirates still living in the big house that Adam Baldridge had built. But Lord Dinwiddie was not discouraged. Rather, he took comfort from the situation. The men that Yancy had trained were unreliable – rogues and villains. They were not the stuff of which he would make the core of his empire, the nucleus of his dynasty.

  He would recruit fresh blood from the incoming ships. He was a wealthy man now, with all that he had inherited, and he would grow wealthier still as he developed and grew the trade that Yancy had begun. New men, who would be loyal to him. He would greet each arriving ship, impress them with his status, his power, his sovereignty over the island.

  He would start immediately. In fact, a lookout had just come down from the high peak that rose to the east of the harbor. He had asked for Nagel, but when Dinwiddie explained to him how things now lay, he gave his report to the new lord. Two ships, hull down. A big vessel and her tender, it appeared.

  Dinwiddie thanked the man for the information and sent him back up the mountain to watch the vessels’ approach. He summoned his servants, that they might begin their preparations for the new arriving vessels, the first guests that Dinwiddie would entertain as lord of St Mary’s.

  Yancy and Nagel stood on another peak, to the north of the harbor, and alternately looked through a powerful glass at the same pair of topgallant sails, the hulls of the vessels below them still lost beyond the horizon.

  Yancy nodded. ‘It must be him. The big ship, the tender – it must be him.’

  For one who had ostensibly died of cancer, Yancy seemed remarkably fit. He was pacing, punching his fist into his open palm, looking again and again through the glass. He felt as if his nerves were charged through with St Elmo’s fire.

  On the day they recruited Spelt, Yancy let Nagel understand that the cancer was a fraud. He had no choice. Nagel would not be pleased to see someone besides himself chosen as successor otherwise.

  The night of the fire in the roof he had let the other Terrors in on the secret. He apologized, after a fashion, yet assured them that he had no choice but to fool them. The ruse had to be perfect. Everyone – Dinwiddie, the hangers-on at the house, the people in the town – they all had to genuinely believe in Yancy’s death.

  Together, Yancy and his men had retreated to the mountain hideout, this time with Yancy leading the way, not lagging behind, racked by his ersatz disease. Yancy had not dared leave the running of the island to Spelt, but Dinwiddie was so exactly the man that Yancy had hoped to find that he knew it was time to go.

  And none too soon, as it happened.

  It had been months since he had received the letter from Atwood. Months of planning and agonizing and waiting. But now the moment had arrived. Press was there, in the offing.

  And I am here, ready for him.

  Press would have been preparing as well, of course, would have been focused on this moment as intensely as had Yancy, but there was a difference, and Yancy knew it. Press thought he had surprise as a weapon. He did not know he was compromised. That put the real surprise in Yancy’s camp, which made it much more potent by far.

  ‘Good bloody thing he showed up now,’ Nagel grumbled. ‘The lads won’t go back, long as that horse’s arse is there.’

  ‘Oh, they would go back.’ Yancy looked sharply at Henry Nagel. ‘If I told them to, you had better goddamned believe they would go back. If I ordered them to.’ Yancy was not pleased with the abandonment of Dinwiddie, stupid chucklehead though he might be. He, Yancy, had ordered his men to act loyal to their new lord, and they had managed only one day of it. He was not pleased.

  It was lucky for them that Press happened to show up at that moment and bring an end to their charade. Had he not, Yancy would have made them return to the big house and show some real contrition to Lord Dinwiddie. He needed Dinwiddie in place.

  He held Nagel with his hawk stare, saw the contrition that he expected, that he demanded. ‘I do not care to have my orders ignored,’ he continued. He had to drive the point home. ‘This is a delicate thing. If you villains start acting of your own accord, then Press will kill us all. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. And the men, they know it, too.’

  ‘Good.’ Yancy was silent for a long moment, and then in a more contemplative tone he added, ‘Press is a very difficult man to kill. Many have tried. I tried, and I failed.

  ‘The joke of it is, I saved him too. Found him marooned on a strip of land, near death, and I saved him. He sailed with us for half a year, and then he tried to betray me, to usurp my position as captain, get the men to vote me out.

  ‘I turned him over to the Spanish authorities, who were looking for him. He had led a raid on Nombre de Dios, you see. The Spanish turned him over to the Inquisition. How he ever escaped from them I cannot imagine, but I reckon his time with them weren’t pleasant. And now, now he will have his revenge, or he will die trying.’

  Yancy looked up at Nagel. ‘It is up to us, my dear Henry, to see it is the latter.’

  I failed … Yancy thought. How many times had he said those words? he wondered. Not very many. In fact, he could think of no instance, other than his attempt at delivering Press up to a painful death, where those words might apply.

  And then he thought of Elizabeth Marlowe. He had failed there. She was not with him, not submitting to his carnal needs. He had failed to take her.

  That being the case, he was pleased to think of her dead. Nagel had told him that the room was well burned out, nothing but the charred remains of the furniture and the walls. But Nagel did admit, after questioning, that they had not actually found charred bodies, and while that could just mean that they were burned up entirely, Yancy did not think so. He had seen men burned; they did not generally burn away to nothing.

  He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. They were not productive. He had real concerns that needed his attention.

  ‘Nagel, you must get out of your fine clothes and don the garb of a drunken Roundsman. I need you to take up a place in the town, keep an eye on what is going on. You know people, you can find out all that is happening. Keep me informed.’

  ‘Aye, sir. And, my lord, when do we move on this bastard, this Roger Press?’

  ‘The moment he makes a mistake, my dear Henry.’

  CHAPTER 18

  The sight of St Mary’s rising before him, the long green coast of Madagascar stretching away to larboard, did much to restore Roger Press’s equilibrium. For weeks now he felt as if his head were spinning around, as if he were in an uncontrollable plummet. But now everything had stopped.

  The Queen’s Venture and her tender had encountered chronic and uncharacteristic calms around the Cape of Good Hope. That stretch of ocean between the bottom of Africa and the bottom of the world was well known for its wild weather. A surfeit of wind was most often the problem, not a lack of it.

  But a lack of wind was what Press’s expedition had found. After being hurled by strong gales and big
seas past thirty-eight degrees south, the storms seemed to blow themselves out, leaving the two ships wallowing in the long ocean rollers and moving in little bursts with the occasional cat’s-paw of a breeze.

  They lost a week and a half at least, floating around south of the Cape, and it made Press wild with impatience and anxiety. There were no real time constraints, of course. Yancy did not know they were coming; there was no reason for Press to think he would miss him. But all the logic in the world could not keep at bay his desperation to be moving again.

  At last the breeze had filled and stayed that way, driving them along, around the Cape of Good Hope, northeast to Madagascar. Forward motion was more soothing to Press than all the rum, all the laudanum he could have ingested.

  He stood alone at the weather rail of the quarterdeck, contemplatively rolling his silver toothpick back and forth, back and forth across the roof of his mouth. Silent, taciturn, and angry, he had been that way for the past three weeks.

  He was still silent and taciturn. But now he was no longer angry.

  ‘Mr Tasker,’ he said in a conversational tone, and the first officer, always in a state of high readiness, raced across the deck.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Let us clear the ship for action. Load but do not run out the great guns. Men will remain at quarters. And let us have the East Indiaman bunting aloft.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ A minute later the ship was a bustle of activity as the large, disciplined, and well-trained crew turned to, clearing away all of those bits of gear and temporary structure that did not involve bringing the ship into battle.

  The sea chests and hammocks and hanging tables belowdecks were flung down into the hold. The flimsy walls of the officers’ cabins were broken down and stowed away, the furniture and paintings, the rugs and bunks and cushions and other amenities of the great cabin carefully carted below and stowed in a dry place in the hold so that the men at the guns in the great cabin area could work them unimpeded.