The Blackbirder

by James Nelson

  She felt at ease, despite the need to be clandestine. It felt good to be back in a town, if such Williamsburg could be called. It had been a long time, a rough time.

  The hike back to Marlowe House had been the worst.

  Elizabeth and Plato had sat and rested in the cool forest for an hour, and their clothes were all but dry when they heard the hunters again, coming back down from their fruitless search. They had scrambled back into the thicker wood, pulling themselves into a dense patch of brush, wriggling forward as the branches scraped at their faces and hands and tore little rents in their clothes. They lay face down, watching as the men filed past, led by a visibly angry Frederick Dunmore.

  Saquam trailed behind, his expression of indifference at odds with the scowls on the other men’s faces. The Indian gave no indication of knowing they were there.

  An hour after the sounds of Dunmore’s party had faded in the east, Plato headed off into the woods, leaving Elizabeth alone with only a brace of loaded pistols for company. She spent a long time examining them, for lack of anything else to occupy her mind, holding them close to her face, studying every detail of the weapons, the muted colors of the flints, the ridges and valleys left where they had been chipped into shape.

  When she could bear that no more she leaned back and looked up at the forest canopy, watched chickadees flashing through the trees in their frenetic bursts of flight, nuthatches hopping headfirst down the trunks, cardinals the color of fresh blood fluttering limb to limb.

  Elizabeth secretly hated the woods, and all of her mental activity was calculated to prevent her from panicking at the realization that she was now alone in that wilderness. She was a city girl, born and raised in Plymouth and then a resident of London until the age of twenty-one. She felt more safe in those close-packed, filthy, crime-ridden streets than she did in the uninhabited forest. Tinling House – Marlowe House – was the most rustic living she had encountered and she was only now coming to embrace it. Being alone in the woods like that was too much.

  The crack of a twig and she jumped, gasped, brought the cocked pistol around fast and only just avoided shooting Plato right through the heart at a distance of thirty feet. The black man stood, hands up, a look of surprise on his face. Behind him, George and Wallace. George carried two of Thomas Marlowe’s fine muskets. Wallace carried what looked like a giant scroll, six feet long.

  It was not a scroll, of course, but a litter: two stout pine saplings with a piece of number-two canvas lashed between them. Once Elizabeth had lowered the gun and eased the lock back down, Wallace laid the thing beside her and unrolled it and without a word he slipped his hands under her calves and Plato apologetically slipped his hands under her arms and they eased her onto the cloth.

  Elizabeth wanted to protest, but that was pointless because she knew she could not walk all the way back to Marlowe House on her injured ankle. She tried to find some position that made her feel like she was retaining some modicum of dignity, but there was no such thing. So she lay back, stiff, looking up at the trees overhead in the late-afternoon sun and tried to pretend she was enjoying the ride back down the trail.

  Her arms were crossed under her breasts and she held a pistol loosely in each hand and that at least made her feel less like a helpless and pathetic child.

  George scouted ahead, hurrying off down the trail, and they did not see him again until they came to the edge of the forest, three miles down. The hunters were gone. He had not seen anything that was worth warning them about.

  They were actually on Marlowe’s land by then, in the trees that marked the furthest point of clearing and cultivation. The big plantation house was a mile away and between it and their hiding place, and away to their left, were the former Tinling slaves’ homes.

  Wallace and Plato set the litter down and Elizabeth insisted that they help her to her feet. She stood on her good ankle and balanced against a mature oak tree and regarded her home in the distance. She cursed herself for not thinking to bring one of Marlowe’s telescopes, but George assured her that he had approached as close as one hundred feet to the house and he could see no one there, inside or out.

  They waited until it was dark, and while they waited Elizabeth insisted that they fashion her a crutch. Her dignity, which had been so under assault during the past week, would not allow her to be carried that last mile to the front door of her own home.

  An hour after the sun set and it had gone full dark and there were no lights to be seen anywhere – no fires, no lanterns, no orange glow of pipes – the four of them emerged from the woods and covered the last mile back to Marlowe House.

  Elizabeth had never in all the time she had lived there, as Mrs Tinling and as the widow Tinling and as Mrs Marlowe, been so happy to climb the steps of that porch and throw open the big front door.

  She thanked the men for bearing her back home, asked them if there was anything more they might take back with them, but they said there was nothing they needed. She pressed one of Marlowe’s telescopes on them, instructed them to keep an eye on the house, and they promised they would. She might be gone for a while, she told them, but when either she or Marlowe was back they were to send someone for news.

  They would be able to return to their homes, she assured them, to their former lives as free men and women under Marlowe’s protection.

  The black men thanked her. They did not seem too certain.

  For a full day she rested, let her ankle recover from its wrenching, let herself recover from her unwelcome sojourn into wilderness living. She watched from the window as Dunmore led his hunting party into the woods again, and then back out, with nothing that she could see by way of accomplishment.

  They left Marlowe House unmolested They did not even approach. Even in his absence, Thomas Marlowe’s reputation as a dangerous man threw a net of protection over his home, at least.

  Around midnight she left Marlowe House. She had no notion of when she might return.

  Nothing moved on Duke of Gloucester Street. At various irregular intervals buildings loomed up, square patches of black against the stars, inns and ordinaries, mostly, and taverns and a few shops and homes.

  She looked down the length of the street. A light appeared, how far off it was impossible to tell, a yellowish, bobbing light. A lantern, carried no doubt by a man on horseback. The night watch, she imagined.

  Elizabeth stepped into the side street that ran like a tributary off Duke of Gloucester, pressed herself against the high wooden fence that separated some private garden from the traffic. She stood silent, watching the light approach.

  The rider went past on Duke of Gloucester Street, the light of his lantern illuminating his face from below. The night watch, on rounds. He looked bored, as well he might be on that uneventful night.

  Once he was well past, Elizabeth stepped from the gate and hurried up the side street, past the back gates of private homes, past the blacksmith and the familiar brick wall surrounding the Burton Parish Church.

  She turned again at the next corner and walked down that street, more of an alley, really, to where it joined with the streets bordering the long strip of village green. To her right, the church loomed high against the stars. To her left, and half a block distant, was the King’s Arms.

  She stepped quickly up the street to the front door of the inn, looked up and down, saw nothing, and so stepped inside.

  The King’s Arms was not the finest inn in Williamsburg, but neither was it some mean hovel. Across the wide front room, scattered with tables and chairs, was a huge fireplace, clean and unused in those summer months.

  A couple of candles burned in sconces on the walls, providing light for any of the inn’s patrons that might come stumbling in at that late hour. They illuminated the place with a dull light and left deep shadows in the wake of the furniture. The ceiling was low and made up of heavy beams with wattle and daub between. The smell of pipes and roast beef and rum still hung in the air.

  There was a desk in one corner, and on
it an inkstand, paper, and a ledger that Elizabeth hoped would give her some idea of which room Billy Bird occupied, or indeed if he was still there.

  She moved across the room and flipped the book open to the last written page, angling it so that the light of the candle fell across it. Names, rooms, receipts, all in neat columns. She squinted at the words, turned back a page, squinted again. There was Billy’s name and ‘Room Five’ beside it and no amount yet received so she had to imagine that he had not yet left.

  A footfall creaking on the floor and she froze, held her breath. Another, and the sound of a doorknob turning and she shut the book and stepped quickly back, finding the dark hall, stepping back and back into the shadows.

  A door opened, another flickering light was added to the front room, and Elizabeth could see the proprietor in his nightshirt frowning and looking around. She pressed herself against the wall, silently pleading with the man to forgo making a complete tour of the premises.

  What would that do for her reputation, to be found lurking around an inn at four o’clock in the morning? Whore. Whispers of Marlowe the cuckold. Would he believe her?

  Then to Elizabeth’s vast relief the proprietor shook his head and turned and went back the way he had come, satisfied that nothing was amiss. She closed her eyes and threw back her head and took several long and silent breaths, waited for the pounding of her heart to subside.

  When at last it did she proceeded down the hall, the light from the front room reaching far enough that her now-accustomed eyes could see the numbers painted in white on the doors. One, two, three …

  Four was the last on that floor and where five might have been there was instead a narrow staircase. Elizabeth climbed, slowly, easing her weight down on each tread to avoid creaking and avoid damaging her tender ankle. After what seemed a long time she came to the top of the stairs, the second floor, and there right across from her was a door with the bold number five.

  She glanced down the hall, but it was dark and deserted, so she stepped across and paused at the door. She was not sure what to do, so she just stood for a moment and then gave the door the lightest of raps, not enough, she imagined, to wake Billy if he was asleep.

  She listened, heard nothing from within, and then tapped again. Still nothing. She doubted that Billy had even heard her, but she did not dare knock louder. She shook her head, then felt for the latch on the door and slowly lifted it and swung the door inward.

  A single candle on the washstand guttered in the last of its melted wax, but compared with the hall the room was brilliantly lit. A sleeping form lay under the cover of the bed, back to Elizabeth. She closed the door behind her, softly and slowly, then stepped across the floor. She put a hand on the shoulder, shook gently, whispered, ‘Billy? Billy?’ She did not want to startle him. It was never a good idea to startle a man such as Billy Bird.

  Then the figure rolled over – long, thick brown hair, a pretty young feminine face, pert, milky white breasts – looked up through half-closed eyes, and said, ‘Billy?’

  Elizabeth jumped back in surprise. ‘Damn,’ she said, and then from behind, the click of a flintlock and Billy’s voice saying, ‘One move and I shall blow you away.’

  She froze, knowing that Billy was quite capable of doing so. The girl in the bed pulled the blanket up over her, recoiled, began to scream, but Billy said, ‘Silence!’ and she bit off her cry.

  ‘Let me see your hands.’

  Elizabeth held her hands out from her side. She guessed that in the muted light Billy could see no more of her than a dark, hooded shape.

  ‘Turn, slowly.’

  She turned, saw Billy standing quite naked in the corner, the pistol held straight out. ‘That is not the only gun you have been fooling with tonight, I take it?’ she said.

  Billy stared for a moment, unmoving, and then the gun dropped to his side and he smiled and said, ‘Lizzy, dear, you are likely to get yourself killed, sneaking into a man’s room like that.’

  Before Elizabeth could answer, the girl in the bed said, ‘What’s this, then? Billy, what are you about?’

  ‘Oh, Nancy, darling,’ said Billy Bird as he snatched up his breeches and pulled them on, ‘I fear you must be on your way, my love.’

  ‘Now, see here—’ the girl began, but Billy crossed the room quickly, clambered onto the bed, and pressed something into her hand. In the candlelight Elizabeth saw a dull flash of gold and Nancy became instantly cooperative. She climbed out of bed and began pulling her clothes over her firm and shapely body.

  Billy met Elizabeth’s eye and Elizabeth said, ‘Very nice, Billy Bird,’ and Billy smiled sheepishly.

  In a minute Nancy was dressed. Billy gave her a kiss and a quick squeeze of her arse and said, ‘We’ll see you soon, my darling,’ and then she was gone.

  Billy turned to Elizabeth. ‘Ah, Lizzy, I’m all but done in by that little bunter, but I think I can muster the energy yet.’

  ‘As luck would have it, you need not even try. I’m here on other business.’

  Billy stepped over to the little table in the corner, poured two glasses from a bottle of wine there, handed one to Elizabeth. ‘Something involving that miserable Frederick Dunmore, I’ll warrant?’

  Elizabeth took a sip, sighed, said, ‘Billy, I need your help. I am at a loss. I have no notion of what to do. My people are chased out into the wilderness and as long as that bastard continues his campaigning against them they shall never be allowed to return.’

  ‘Not to mention that you are wanted as well for harboring them.’

  ‘I am? What have you heard?’

  Billy waved his hand. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. One hears rumors. But see here, you have come to the right place, as ever. I will take care of your little Dunmore. A tread on the coat, a few harsh words, a meeting arranged, and ten minutes after dawn he will never trouble you again.’

  Elizabeth shook her head. ‘No, Billy, you can’t kill him. That won’t help. There’ll be more rumors, and surely someone will connect the thing to me. Not to mention the danger to you for killing a prominent citizen. No, there must be some other way.’

  ‘Well, there are only two ways to stop such a man that I know of: kill him or disgrace him. You won’t let me kill him, so I reckon we’ll have to see what we can do to disgrace him.’

  ‘You said there was something that happened to him in Boston.’

  ‘Yes, but I fear I’ve not remembered any more than that.’

  Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly very tired. Her ankle was throbbing. ‘What can we do to find out what it was?’

  ‘We shall go to Boston.’

  Elizabeth looked up at him, taken aback. ‘Go to Boston? Just like that?’

  ‘Yes, go to Boston. My ship swims again now, in fine fettle, all predied for sea. There is no way we can find out what we need to know without we go and look for it ourselves. You couldn’t do it through the post. You’d be an old woman before you were done, and even then I doubt you’d find out anything. No, we must go to Boston, discover the players in this drama, people who knew Dunmore, look them right in the eye, and ask them what is what.’

  Billy’s enthusiasm built as he spoke and soon he was carrying Elizabeth along with him, but still she was not certain. It seemed such a crazy thing to try.

  ‘Oh, Billy—’

  ‘No. Don’t “Oh, Billy” me. It is Boston for us. That is how we will rout this foul demon out. After all our years of friendship, my dear Lizzy, I can do no less to help you.’

  Elizabeth sighed again. It still seemed insane, but Billy’s arguments were good, his enthusiasm infectious, enough so that she felt herself wavering, inching toward agreement. ‘I will pay you for your services,’ she said. ‘Pay you in specie.’

  ‘By which you mean that we will go together to Boston?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Grand. But never in life would I have you pay for my services. Hell, you never made me pay for yours.’ Billy saw how unwelcome that joke was, and he stammered
on. ‘There are … a few considerations before we sail, but nothing of consequence. And now, my dear one,’ he said, sitting beside her, ‘will you not enjoy the luxury of my bed? It has been left quite warm for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Billy, I will.’ She unbuttoned her cloak and wheeled it off, catching Billy’s glance down at her breasts as she reached behind her. ‘And you, my dear friend, will comfort yourself on the cold and lonely floor.’

  CHAPTER 15

  A cannon fired some ways off, a puff of smoke, and a spray of splinters forward. King James looked up. The impact set up a great howling among the men clustered near the bow, shouting and chanting, like hitting a beehive with a stick, but it did not seem to James that anyone was injured.

  It was a big Spaniard firing on them, a fat merchantman they had been chasing since sunup. It was not the way James had thought to spend the day.

  First light and the lookout aloft had sung out and Madshaka said, ‘He see a strange sail, right ahead of us.’

  James’s first thought was to turn away, to lose whatever ship that was below the horizon, but before he could say anything Madshaka was calling the men of the various tribes aft.

  ‘What are you doing, Madshaka?’

  ‘We vote.’

  ‘Vote? On what?’

  ‘On if we attack that ship or not.’

  The men talked. They voted. Ten minutes later they opted for piracy. There was a surprising amount of unanimity in the vote.

  James had not seen that coming, not at all. He felt as if he had been punched from behind. There had been talk behind his back, he knew that, and he did not doubt that Madshaka had been doing the talking.

  For that matter, there may have been talking right in front of him. And even if he wanted to stop running the ship by vote, his explanation would have to be filtered through Madshaka, and James no longer trusted the grumete enough that he would try.