The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  Press settled back into a more relaxed posture. He stretched his legs, assumed the proper degree of cool, put the toothpick back in his mouth, and rolled it with his tongue.

  ‘Would you like a drink of water, Dinwiddie?’ he asked, his tone pleasant.

  Dinwiddie nodded, so hard it looked painful. ‘Dear God, yes, water, please …’

  ‘Very well. But first, please tell me about Thomas Marlowe? Why he is here, where he has gone? Tell me all. I insist.’

  CHAPTER 19

  For two days the high mountains of Madagascar lingered on the southern horizon, visible from the deck of the Elizabeth Galley, a threatening presence, as if the horrors of that place were somehow trailing behind the ship. And then dawn of the third day broke, and the sea was empty on every quarter, and the Galleys felt a sense of relief that none of them vocalized, but of which each was aware.

  They made their course north by east, following a slant of wind that would take them far out into the Indian Ocean. There they would wear around and make a long board for the Gulf of Aden and then on to the narrow straits of Bab el Mandeb, that bottleneck into the Red Sea through which much of the wealth of the Moorish nations passed.

  The Elizabeth Galley was a happy ship, perhaps happier even than she had been before. Marlowe had not realized how Peleg Dinwiddie’s gloomy discontent had cast a pall over the vessel.

  Nor had he realized the extent to which Dinwiddie had become dissatisfied, and so he was surprised at what he considered Dinwiddie’s betrayal.

  ‘You cannot honestly think the man betrayed you?’ asked Bickerstaff, his incredulity genuine. It was the morning they found that Madagascar was lost from their view and themselves on the quarterdeck, discussing the events of the past week. They had not talked about it before then.

  ‘I certainly do. The man deserted, abandoned his responsibility.’

  ‘But sure you can see how he felt abandoned himself. Honeyman had more real authority than he did, even though Peleg had agreed to ship as second in command.’

  ‘That is the way of the Roundsmen. I could do nothing about it. Dinwiddie wanted to sail the Pirate Round, and that is a part of it. Ship’s articles, vote of the men, all of it. I do not love it any more than he did, but I accept it.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but it is also the way of these “Roundsmen,” as you style them, or pirates if one prefers to eschew euphemism, that any may leave the company if he so desires. Allegiance to none, a short life and a merry one, and all of that. That is what Dinwiddie did, no more.’

  ‘Humph,’ said Marlowe. ‘Well, damn you and your roundabout logic.’

  At that, Bickerstaff shrugged and smiled. There were certain kinds of dueling at which Marlowe would never best him.

  The men forward were happy to be free of Dinwiddie’s brooding and to labor under the more benign rule of now-First Lieutenant Flanders. They were also happy because the hull was clean and repaired and the ship provisioned with food and water, both freshly put down, and the magazine held barrels and barrels of gunpowder and the shot locker was full.

  Before Madagascar there had been the nagging fact that they had left from England, bound away for the hunting grounds of the Red Sea, with never a cannon on board with which to hunt. That had been the source of much concern and considerable discussion fore and aft, heated debate between those who thought that it would be no great difficulty to procure guns and those who believed that it could not be done.

  But now they had them. Sixteen fine six-pounders, the King’s mark on each of their black barrels, arranged starboard and larboard, housed with identical tackling and equipment, standing silent like soldiers on sentry duty. The once-great expanse of deck seemed crowded now with their presence, but no one was complaining. The sight of those big guns did more to improve spirits than anything Marlowe could think of, save for the capture of the Great Mogul’s treasure ship. And now that they had the guns for the job, that possibility did not seem so very remote.

  North by east, and then the Elizabeth Galley was turned to a course more like north by west as they pricked off the miles on the chart. The sun was blistering hot, melting caulking on the decks and making the tar drip from the rig, making it soft to the touch so that hands and feet and clothes were smeared with the black stuff when the men came down from aloft. But the breeze was steady, and that mitigated the heat some, and the forward motion it gave them kept them in good humor.

  They were seventeen days out of St Mary’s, with Raasiga Caluula, the cape forming the southern entrance to the Gulf of Aden, bearing due west and two leagues distant, when they sighted the first sail.

  Excitement ran through the company, and it did not diminish much with the discovery that the vessel was a dilapidated fishing boat not worth the bother of stopping. They were near the Red Sea, the legendary hunting grounds. The men of the Elizabeth Galley could practically smell the wealth.

  They came up with several more fishing boats as they worked their way into the gulf and one larger sail, which they pursued but lost in the night. Still, the enthusiasm only grew stronger as they felt the presence of the land around them, the hot dry air off the desert, the gritty sand borne on the wind. It was all tangible proof of their being at last at the place they had all dreamed of being: the Red Sea, the Moorish countries, the place of the Red Sea Rovers.

  There was something particularly foreign and exciting about the heat and the dust and the strange color of the sea as they drew closer to the land. They all felt it. They were in a very distant place, far from the gray, cold Europe or the green, wooded America that they knew. And somehow, because they were not a part of that place, because it was so unreal, they had a sense of invincibility, as if one could not be killed in so exotic a land.

  The men donned their loose shirts and slops, their red sashes and bright cloths around their heads and strutted the deck, ready to conquer the Moors. It took a truly extraordinary place to make experienced seamen feel the lure of the exotic.

  Twenty days out from St Mary’s, and the lookout called down another sail, right ahead, and once more the men cleared the ship for action. It did not take long. The men kept the Elizabeth Galley in a state of general readiness. This was not a deep-sea voyage. They were in among the Moorish shipping now. They had to be ready at all times.

  That fact aside, Marlowe, standing on the main topmast crosstrees, did not think it was a Moorish ship he was looking at through his glass.

  It was not a ship at all, in fact, but a brig, under easy sail, making way with no apparent destination in mind. She looked European, or colonial. She flew no flag.

  ‘I believe this is one of us,’ Marlowe said offhandedly to the lookout standing on the crosstrees on the other side of the topgallant mast.

  ‘Cap’n?’

  ‘This brig. I reckon she is a Red Sea Rover, here on the account.’

  The lookout nodded. ‘I’ll keep a sharp eye, then. You know what villains them pirates be.’

  Marlowe shut his telescope, made his way back to the quarterdeck, repeated his suspicions to Honeyman and Flanders and Bickerstaff. ‘We must speak to her, see what news,’ he added. ‘Perhaps she has got wind of some treasure ship or one of these fat fellows carrying pilgrims to Mecca.’

  ‘Maybe she will want to work with us. In consort, like,’ Flanders suggested.

  ‘Or maybe she’ll reckon us as good a prize as a Moorish ship and try and take us,’ Honeyman added.

  ‘Also a possibility,’ Marlowe said. ‘We will go to quarters, approach this fellow with caution. And grape over round shot in the great guns, I should think.’

  Elizabeth made one last attempt to coax her hair into looking like something she would consider presentable, but the heat and the dry air and the months of washing in salt water had rendered it as uncooperative as new ten-inch cable. Finally, disgusted, she bound it up in a ribbon and then found a square of red silk and tied that around her head. She looked at the results in the mirror and smiled.

  ‘I do believe I ha
ve become a pirate myself,’ she said out loud.

  She had come aboard the Elizabeth Galley in Virginia carrying with her all her social decorum and strict adherence to proper dress and manners and the protocol of society. During all of her poor, abused childhood, during the years she had been a high-paid doxy, she had dreamed of the day when she would have respectability and standing. She had them now, in Virginia, and she would not yield them gladly.

  The sea, however, is the enemy of propriety, and soon Elizabeth found herself slipping.

  At first it was her shoes. She had tried to walk while under way with the silly, impractical footwear that was the rage in London and thus, six months later, the rage in the colonies. Featuring pointed toes and big, chunky heels with leather soles, they presented a greater threat of injury to her on a rolling deck than all the raging seas and flying shot she might encounter.

  She did away with the shoes in favor of her slippers, which were better, despite her initial embarrassment at being seen on deck in such footwear. She imagined that everyone was looking at her, snickering.

  It took her a few days to realize that no one gave a tinker’s damn what she wore on her feet – or anywhere else, for that matter.

  For all the voyage to England and then the hasty departure, her general suit of clothing served her well: jacket, straw hat, bodice, apron, and simple skirts. But once they had left the cold behind and the men began to strip further and further, Elizabeth began to feel cumbersome, overdressed.

  The slippers went first. She loved the feel of the hot, smooth planks under her bare feet. And suddenly she found that she was surefooted when moving on the deck and no longer felt as if she were going to slip and break her neck with every roll of the vessel.

  It was not long after that when the lessons in swordplay began, and she discovered that she could hardly move with all the clothing she had. The bodice was next to go, and from the few surreptitious glances she caught from the men, she did not think this would meet with any vocal disapproval.

  It was a treat to live without the bodice’s confines, and she felt a new freedom of movement as she parried and riposted with Bickerstaff on the weather deck. The apron went after that, and then she was down to her shift and a single skirt, and for the first time since getting under way she was comfortable and able to move freely. Had there been even one other woman present, she would have felt abashed, humiliated, like some cheap punk or fishmonger. But there on board the Red Sea Rover she felt a kind of freedom she had never before enjoyed.

  She looked at herself in the glass, at her thick blond hair tied back, the red cloth tied over it. She smiled, grabbed up a red sash, tied it around her waist. It looked good, a bold touch that accentuated her figure. She picked up one of Marlowe’s pistols and stuck it in the sash. Perfect.

  If all of the sailors forward, who had roamed great portions of the world, were still enchanted with the strangeness of these Moorish waters, then Elizabeth, who for all her wild and unsettled life had never seen anything beyond Portsmouth and London and Williamsburg – and Boston, which was the worst of the lot – found herself being drawn into the thing with double the force.

  She crossed the great cabin, stepped out under the quarterdeck. Her legs felt strong and muscular, the result of months and months of walking on a rolling deck. It no longer bothered her to step in the warm pitch and feel it cling to her feet and leave little black marks on the deck as she walked. The bottoms of her feet were hard and most unladylike, but she loved the feel of strength and agility she had walking barefoot across the hot deck planks.

  She climbed up to the quarterdeck, where Marlowe and Honeyman and Bickerstaff were in conference, all looking forward and on occasion ducking to see under the foot of the mainsail. She ducked, too, looked forward, and her eyes – now accustomed to such things – caught the flash of sail, square-rigged, before the Elizabeth Galley plunged down and the foresail smothered the horizon.

  ‘What ho, gentlemen?’ she asked.

  The three heads turned in her direction, and the men smiled. ‘Look at you, my dear,’ said Marlowe, ‘as vicious a pirate as ever sailed the Spanish Main or the Pirate Round!’

  ‘I am that. Now, what of this sail?’

  ‘It is a brig, and I’ll warrant it for European or American. I do believe it is a pirate, though they shall run scared when they take one look at you.’

  ‘And if not,’ Bickerstaff said, ‘I do believe you have progressed in your blade work enough that you might take on the lot of them.’

  For the rest of the morning they closed with the vessel, which continued on its slow course for an hour or so and then hove to, not making any attempt to meet up with the Elizabeth Galley, but not running either. They were like strangers meeting on a dark road, approaching warily, each ready to fight or flee or exchange pleasantries, however things developed.

  Elizabeth remained on the quarterdeck, looking occasionally at the brig, and, as she did, an odd thought occurred to her. She knew little about ships, could rarely tell one from another, but there was something familiar about that one, something that sparked a memory.

  It did not seem possible, there, half a world away from Virginia, that it could be the brig she was thinking of, but still the thought nagged at her. She borrowed Thomas’s telescope, stared at the strange vessel, now no more than a mile distant. There was nothing she saw that lessened her suspicions.

  They drew closer, and more and more detail was revealed, and Elizabeth grew silent as she grew certain she was right. Lord, what in hell are the chances? she wondered. If she was right, she did not think this would be a very comfortable meeting. At least not for her.

  It could not be … what are the chances? But of course those piratical fellows tended to gravitate toward the same spots: Port Royal, Nassau, the Red Sea. Birds of a feather. Perhaps it was not so great a coincidence.

  The sun was near its zenith by the time the Elizabeth Galley hove to, half a cable length from the brig. The unknown vessel was definitely colonial built, probably from Massachusetts, most likely from Scituate, or so the speculation went among the more experienced hands who stared across the water at her. Elizabeth did not know. She would not necessarily have known that the vessel was a brig if she had not been told. But the different levels of the deck, the red and yellow paint scheme on her sides, the odd sort of female figurehead – those things she did recognize.

  Then, from across the water, a voice hailed them through a speaking trumpet. ‘What ship is that?’

  Marlowe picked up his own trumpet. ‘Elizabeth Galley, out of Virginia! What ship is that?’

  ‘Bloody Revenge, out of the sea!’ came the reply. That name, that voice with the slightly insouciant tone.

  ‘Thomas, it’s Billy Bird,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The captain of the Bloody Revenge. It is Billy Bird. I believe you know him.’

  Marlowe looked at her, an odd expression on his face. ‘I did know a Billy Bird, back in Port Royal. A somewhat showy fellow. This is the same Billy Bird?’

  ‘I believe it is.’

  ‘But however do you know him? How do you come to know his ship?’

  Elizabeth sighed. She had been somewhat sketchy about her activities of a few years back, while Thomas had been chasing around the Atlantic after his old boatswain-turned-outlaw, the freed slave King James. Billy had taken her to Boston aboard that very brig and helped her find the root cause of the persecution waged against the former slaves of Marlowe House. But she and Billy Bird went much further back than that.

  ‘I have known Billy for years, Thomas. From back in Plymouth. And then, when you were gone after King James, and Dunmore was hunting us, Billy was there to help. Perhaps this is not the time to go into it,’ she added, and her tone was sharper than she had intended.

  She looked at him, all defiance, daring him to question her, to ask, ‘In what way did you know him? Is he a former lover? When last did you lie with him?’ but he did not. Marlowe had
enough unsavory history of his own to understand he had no right to call hers into question.

  In fact, she and Billy had found themselves in bed together on several occasions, as much out of mutual loneliness and affection as any kind of eternal love. But that was long before Elizabeth had met Thomas, and though Billy had made every effort to taste her sweet charms again, she had rebuffed him.

  And Billy, true friend that he was, had accepted the rebuff, had helped her anyway, to the point of putting his own life in great danger on several occasions.

  ‘Well, my dear, perhaps you had best speak to him.’ Thomas held out the speaking trumpet.

  Elizabeth looked into his eyes. Her past was like the silted bottom of a clear, still pool, ready at any time to be swirled up, to make the clear water black. She feared censure, suspicion, condemnation. She kept a wary lookout for it, and she was ready to meet it with rage. But it was not there. She could see nothing disingenuous in Thomas’s remark or his manner. She took the trumpet.

  ‘Billy Bird? Is that you, you villain?’

  There was a pause, and then, ‘Aye? And who are you?’

  ‘Elizabeth Marlowe!’

  A much longer pause followed that revelation, and then Billy’s voice again, saying, ‘Well, damn my eyes, come aboard, come aboard! And bring your rogue of a husband, if you must!’

  They put the jolly boat into the water, and Elizabeth and Thomas and Bickerstaff and Honeyman went across, where they were greeted with great enthusiasm by Billy Bird, captain of the sometime pirate brig Bloody Revenge.

  Billy was in many ways the polar opposite of Marlowe: loud, buoyant, exuberant, and flashy. Elizabeth guessed that he had hurried below and shifted his clothing as they were rowing over. He was dressed in his usual cape with the red silk lining – oddly like Lord Yancy’s, Elizabeth thought – and a silk shirt and breeches, red stockings, shoes with gold buckles, and a vast, wide-brimmed hat with a big plume trailing off it.