The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  Yancy came down on top of her, his hands planted on either side of her, and he began to kiss her neck roughly. She shifted under him, gave a low moan, swallowed hard to try to quell her revulsion. She could make it to the door, she concluded, but she would not have time to grab the key, work the lock and get out, then lock it again from the outside. Not unless Yancy was genuinely disabled. And for that she needed the rapier.

  Timing, timing, timing, it was everything, and she knew she had to endure a minute more of his insult. She ran her fingers through his hair, stretched out her neck, forced her mind to concentrate on visions of Marlowe House, her beloved garden, long rides through the fields.

  Yancy ran his mouth over her neck and down her chest, and his hands grabbed at her breasts. She could hear his breathing growing raspier. She moved her hand over his back and down his leg, shifted under him. He reached up and tugged at her bodice, kissing her roughly above her breasts, getting swept up in his desire, his former caution forgotten.

  Elizabeth pressed her lips together hard, slid her hand along the inside of Yancy’s thigh and up. She could feel his erection under the loose fabric of his breeches. She ran her hand along it, and he pressed against her and made a guttural sound and bit her neck. She moved her hand lower, cupped his balls.

  Yancy groaned, pressed closer, and then he sensed the danger. He began to push himself off her, and she squeezed him hard, crushing him with a grip grown powerful after half a year at sea.

  ‘Bitch!’ Yancy shrieked, tried to stand up on his knees, but the pain doubled him over. Elizabeth let go of his privates, rolled out of the way just as Yancy would have collapsed on top of her.

  She rolled off the far side of the bed, hit the floor, and leaped to her feet. ‘Ahhhh!’ Yancy screamed, part pain, part fury. Elizabeth raced around the bed, eyes on the door, thinking, Perhaps I can make it…

  But then Yancy was off the bed, hunched over, staggering for the door, the stiletto in his hand. He was half lost in the deep shadows that filled the room, the little pools of yellow light from the candles. ‘Go on, go for the door, you rutting bitch! Think you can make it?’ he hissed.

  Elizabeth stopped, took a step back, reached up, took hold of a rapier on the wall, and pulled it free. The weapon danced in her hand, felt as natural there as her hairbrush or glass, but Yancy did not notice the ease with which she wielded it. He stood between her and the door, straightening slowly, grimacing. ‘Come on … you want to leave, you have to go through me first …’

  She advanced on him, point of her blade at the height of his eyes. He stood straighter, and his grimace resolved into a grin as the pain subsided. ‘I said I wanted a fight, and, oh, you do not disappoint, do you, my dear?’

  Elizabeth paused. She felt taut, every muscle pulled tight like a ship’s rigging. Everything in the dim light seemed sharper, every sound distinct and clear. Yancy was grinning at her, holding the stiletto in front of him. Knife against sword, it did not seem to be such a problem.

  She lunged at him, arm extended, back leg straight, forward leg bent, tip thrust at his chest, and to her amazement he caught her blade with the hilt of his stiletto and turned it aside. He tried to twist her blade, to disarm her, but she knew the trick and leaped back, en garde, pulling it free.

  She lunged again, instantly, automatically, and that move, fast as it was, took Yancy by surprise. He could do no more than leap out of the way of her attack, scrambling around her in satisfying flight as she whirled with him, keeping the tip of her rapier pointed at his chest.

  Yancy backed away. ‘You are no dainty little thing with a blade, I see,’ he said, sneering, patronizing. ‘Good, good. I’ll cut you a little before I fuck you. Before I kill that bastard Marlowe right before your eyes.’

  Elizabeth pressed against the door, felt for the key on the table while she kept the tip of her rapier between herself and Yancy.

  Yancy stepped back again and again, always facing her. She cursed under her breath and patted the tabletop with her hand, but she could not find the key.

  Then Yancy turned and grabbed the second rapier and turned back fast, and Elizabeth could not worry about the door. He held the rapier low, beckoned with the stiletto, now in his left hand. ‘Come on, come on, try and stick me, you bitch …’ He circled toward her.

  Elizabeth stepped away from the door, gave herself some fighting room, as she had been taught.

  Yancy paused. He was waiting for her to make a move, and she knew better than to comply, but she did not have the advantage of time. Every minute might mean someone coming to Yancy’s aide. Killing Yancy would do no good if Nagel was waiting outside the door.

  She advanced on him, and he held his ground, the point of his rapier on the floor. She lunged, full out, and Yancy’s rapier came up and knocked her blade aside, and he slashed out with the stiletto, missing her stomach by half an inch as she leaped back.

  Damn me! she thought. Yancy was fast as a snake, faster than Bickerstaff or any of the men she had sparred with. She circled around.

  In a blur Yancy was on her, his rapier flicking out, and she parried him by instinct alone – lunge, parry, riposte, parry – the familiar clash of steel on steel in the small room. A slash with the stiletto that threw him off balance, and Elizabeth was able to leap away and then make an awkward lunge. She caught him in the shoulder and sank her blade an inch deep into his flesh before he was able to leap clear.

  ‘Ahhh, damn you, you bloody whore!’ he yelled, furious now. He clapped his hand with the rapier over his shoulder, and Elizabeth knew opportunity when she saw it. She lunged again, a running attack.

  Too late to parry, Yancy twisted, and her blade, aimed at his chest, caught him in the upper arm and tore through flesh and cloth like a knife cutting meat, and Yancy shrieked and leaped clean away, onto the bed and over it, rolling on the sheets and coming up on his feet on the far side.

  Elizabeth turned and raced for the door, tried to find the key among the shadows on the table, but she could hear Yancy coming at her from behind.

  She turned back, blade up as he lunged, fully extended. She parried his sword, flicked it aside, and lunged back at him. He caught her blade with the stiletto, pushed it aside and held it down.

  They stood facing each other, eyes locked, breath coming fast, both of them too close to use their rapiers. A moment of silence, motionless they stood, and it was as if a year were compressed into that one instant. Elizabeth could smell him, the sweat and perfume and garlic.

  She felt the pressure come off her blade as he slashed at her with the stiletto, and she kicked him in the groin. He doubled up, still too close for her to skewer him, so she swung her hand and hit him in the side of the head with the steel cup-hilt of her weapon.

  Yancy was knocked sideways by the blow. He staggered, fell, and his head hit the edge of the table as he went down. Elizabeth heard the thump, saw his head jerk in an unnatural way, and then he was lying curled on the floor and still.

  She stood, heaving for breath, the tip of her rapier resting on the floor, ready to move if Yancy did. For a full minute she stood there, breathing, watching Yancy for any sign of life, listening for any sound from the hallway. She wondered that all the noise had not brought people running, but perhaps it was not unusual to hear screaming from Yancy’s bedchamber.

  At last her breathing was under control, and she could hear nothing beyond that. She kicked Yancy’s rapier away from him, leaning her own against the wall, and picked up the stiletto. She held it down at her side, ready to strike, and prodded Yancy with her toe. He did not move. She crouched down beside him, felt his neck for a pulse. It took a few tries, but at last she felt it, the life still beating in him, and she did not know if she was happy or not.

  She gritted her teeth, rolled him onto his stomach, stepped back, and waited for him to move, but he did not. Another second, then she straddled him, grabbed his hair, pulled his head back, stretching out his neck. She reached around with the stiletto, pressed the razor-shar
p blade against his throat, and stopped.

  Do it, do it, damn your eyes … she cursed herself, but she could not. ‘Oh, damn me for a weak fool,’ she whispered, letting Yancy’s head drop. His chin hit the floor with a thump, and she heard his teeth snap against each other, but he did not stir.

  She stood up, staggered over to the bed. She was very tired, and her body ached. She found the lashings that had held her to the bed, and a few pieces were long enough for her to use. She carried them back to Yancy’s prone figure, knelt with her knee in the small of his back.

  Along with sword work Elizabeth had learned a great deal about lashing things in her time at sea, it falling to her to secure all of her and Marlowe’s things in the great cabin against the roll of the ship, and she applied those skills to Yancy. Round turns around the wrists, crossing turns between, finished off with two half hitches, the bitter end hauled taut betwixt them. Yancy was not going to untie that by himself. She cut off the excess, bent it onto another piece of cordage with a double sheet bend, and served Yancy’s ankles out in the same manner.

  That done, she tucked the stiletto into her skirt and found the key. She picked up her rapier and unlocked the door, eased it open, peered out into the hall. There were lanterns glowing dimly at either end, but in the muted light she could see nothing else. She stepped back into the room, retrieved the second rapier, then stepped silently into the hall. She closed the door, locked it, moved softly toward the big staircase.

  She would find Thomas. If he was alive, she would free him and they would get off the damned island. If he was dead …

  She pushed that thought aside, moved fast and silent down the hall, the rapier at her side, ready.

  CHAPTER 25

  Elizabeth came to the head of the wide stairs and stopped, crouched down in the shadows. She had worn her silk slippers leaving the ship, had understood instinctively that she would need to move quickly and quietly and could not be encumbered by her fashionable footwear.

  She waited for several minutes in that place, listened for movement: alarm, guards pacing – anything. She did not know the hour but guessed that it was somewhere around two A.M., dead time. Nothing moved.

  She took the steps, catlike and urgent, her every sense sharp, but there was nothing there but the silent building and only the tiniest amount of light from sundry lanterns illuminating it. The stairs emptied onto the big, two-story grand entrance, and across that open space with its polished tiles was the front door.

  Elizabeth skirted around the grand entrance, keeping to the shadows, making not for the front door but rather for the door half concealed in the wall down which she had seen them take Marlowe and the others, hours before. Prison, torture chamber, place of execution – she had no idea what was at the bottom of those steps.

  She paused again at the door, looked around, then held her two rapiers under her arm and lifted the latch, slowly, and eased the door in. She braced herself for a squeal of hinges, a creak of the door, but it moved silently. She cracked it enough to squeeze through and then closed it behind her.

  It was nearly black beyond the door but for a faint glow from below stairs, enough to see that the stairs went down to some kind of landing, then doubled around, presumably going down to the floor below.

  She reached out with her toe, found the first step, and took it, then the next and the next, moving carefully toward the light. Five steps and she was on the landing. She crept up to the edge of the second staircase, darted her head around, and pulled back quick.

  She looked for no more than an instant, but in that glimpse she saw a guard, another of these big piratical bastards, slumped in a chair, his back to her. The light came from a single lantern on a hook over his head. She could not tell if the man was asleep or awake, could not see what was beyond him, down the passageway.

  Softly she drew in a breath, steeled herself for what she would have to do. The staircase was too narrow for the swords; she would have to use the stiletto. She laid down the long weapons gently, silently, pulled the stiletto from her skirt, and eased herself around the corner.

  Down one step. The guard was six feet away, and she realized that she did not really know what she was going to do. Stab him? Could she? Another step, and her slipper crunched on loose gravel on the stone stair, like a thunderclap in that silent prison.

  The guard gasped, leaped to his feet, spun around, hand on his sword. Elizabeth froze. She saw the man’s face go from shock to confusion to delight at the sight of her. She turned and fled.

  Back up the stairs, around the wall, and onto the landing, and she stopped, stiletto out, the guard’s footsteps pounding behind her. The big man turned the comer, charging for the next flight of steps, not expecting her to have stopped dead. He brought up short with a sharp intake of breath, the needle tip of Elizabeth’s weapon under his chin.

  ‘Hold!’ she hissed at him. ‘Back down with you.’

  The guard took a step back and then another, glancing over his shoulder at where he was stepping, his hands held up in front of him, never taking his eyes off Elizabeth for more than an instant. One step back, another. He paused. There were three steps down to the floor of the prison below.

  ‘Turn around. Down you go,’ Elizabeth said softly, trying to sound as menacing as she was able. The man nodded, half turned. Then his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist and jerked it sideways, and Elizabeth gasped at the power of his grip, and he wrenched her arm, twisting her partway around.

  She pushed off as hard as she could, using all the strength of her legs to slam into his chest, shoulder first. She felt him sway back, like a tree cut nearly through, and then the two of them went over.

  Elizabeth had an image of flogging coattails and waving arms and clattering weapons and a grunt of surprise, and then the pirate hit the stone floor, and she fell on him, and the tight space was filled with a rendering crack and then the beginnings of a shriek of pain.

  She pushed herself up, the stiletto still in her hand, pressed it under the pirate’s throat. ‘Quiet!’ she hissed. She could see the man’s arm caught below him, broken and twisted at an unnatural angle, but he stifled his scream of agony for fear of worse.

  Elizabeth stood slowly, keeping the dagger in the man’s face. ‘Make one sound and I’ll cut your throat.’ The pirate was gritting his teeth and breathing with the pain of his compound fracture, his eyes shut tight, but he nodded, and Elizabeth stepped away from him. She took the lantern down from the hook, stepped along the narrow passage between barred cells. Did not know what she would find.

  Then, suddenly, right in front of her, leaning on the bars, the one thing she hoped for above all others. Thomas, her husband, looking on her with wide eyes.

  ‘Elizabeth? My God …’

  ‘Thomas! Oh …’ She ran to the bars, took his outstretched hand in hers. His hair was wild, with bits of straw sticking to it. He looked exhausted and still half asleep, but beyond that unhurt.

  ‘Thomas, are you …?’

  ‘I am well. And you, did that bastard …?’

  ‘No, no. I left Yancy bound, but he might be discovered soon. We must go.’

  ‘The guard had keys on his belt.’

  Elizabeth pulled herself away, stepped back to the guard, who was groaning as he tried to get his broken arm from under him. Hanging from a leather lanyard on his belt, a big set of keys. Elizabeth cut them free, hurried back to the cell. She picked one, fumbled it into the lock, but it would not turn.

  ‘Try the other,’ Thomas whispered. Behind him, in the deep shadows, she could hear Honeyman rousing their sleeping men. Elizabeth worked the key out of the lock, inserted the other, twisted, and heard the click of the lock opening.

  ‘You men.’ Thomas turned to the others, addressed them in a whisper. ‘Follow me. We haven’t the weapons to fight our way out of here, so let us be damned quiet. Come.’

  He pushed through the cell, stood aside as the others followed.

  ‘Marlowe!’ a voice whispered from th
e cell on the other side of the alleyway. Elizabeth turned in surprise. It had not occurred to her that there might be others there. But there were. Roger Press, his face pushed against the bars.

  ‘Marlowe! You can’t leave me here!’

  ‘Oh, no?’

  ‘Son of a bitch, Marlowe! You won’t get out of here without me and my men.’

  ‘I don’t reckon I would get out with you and your men. You have a way of seeing to that.’

  ‘You bastard! If you don’t let me out, we’ll wake the whole goddamned house! You’ll never make it to the harbor!’

  ‘We’ll chance it. Fare thee well, you stinking bastard. I hope Yancy lives long enough to impale you.’ Thomas pushed through his men, down the alleyway, and Elizabeth walked with him. He pulled the sword from the guard’s scabbard and headed up the stairs.

  ‘Marlowe! Marlowe, you bastard!’ Press screamed at the top of his lungs, the noise filling the prison, frightening in its volume. Elizabeth bounded up the stairs, collected the rapiers, gave one to Billy Bird and one to Bickerstaff, and the men filed up the passage and out into the grand entrance.

  Behind them Press’s screams spilled from the door, but the sound was thankfully muted by the floor and heavy walls. It was not enough to wake a man, but if anyone was already awake – a guard, for instance – then it would be heard.

  They filed quickly through the door, and the last man shut it behind him, and Press’s shouting was blotted out.

  Elizabeth and Thomas stood side by side, listening, but still the household slumbered on.

  ‘Come along,’ said Marlowe, and he led them across the grand entrance and out the big front door, to the open air, to the grounds that would lead to the stockade gate, to the road that would lead to the harbor and the sea and escape from that horrible place.

  Elizabeth took a lungful of the night air. It was sweet and clean and free of the odor of the big house. It was like being on the ocean, and she felt her spirit lifting, lifting, though there were still a hundred chances for bloody death between the front door and the sea.