The Blackbirder botc-2

by James L. Nelson

  Thomas instantly formed a picture in his mind of the big taffrail lights on the French merchantman. Right ahead meant right downwind, right where he would expect King James to be. It was possible that they were not so very far behind that renegade band.

  “Very well, I’ll be up directly.”

  He went back into his sleeping cabin, found a shirt, and pulled it on.

  It was far too much to hope. The arrangement of three lanterns on the taffrail was hardly unusual. There was a plethora of shipping in those waters. Absurd to think it might be James.

  But still he could not rid himself of that silly anticipation, and it was with a strange amalgam of emotions that he climbed up onto the dark quarterdeck and looked in the direction that Fleming pointed.

  He had to wait a moment, but then there they were, like a little constellation, low down in the water, and moving with a rhythm different from that of the Elizabeth Galley. Three little lights, the center one a bit higher than the outer two. Taffrail lights, beyond a doubt. But whose?

  “What time is it, pray, Mr. Fleming?”

  “Just gone seven bells, sir.”

  Just past three-thirty in the morning. An hour and a half or so until dawn. No need to roust the men up from below, not yet. They’d be up soon enough.

  “At the next change of watch we’ll clear for action. Quietly. And let’s have the watch below roused nice and gentle, too. Like mothers kissing their babes.” Marlowe was in fine spirits and he realized it was because he had already decided that this was King James and his outlaw band in whose wake they were sailing.

  But that, he recalled, was an absurd assumption, and that realization cooled his ardor a bit.

  The next turn of the half-hour glass signaled eight bells, though in the interest of stealth no bells were actually rung. The watch below was called, quietly, and all hands were sent to quarters.

  In the predawn dark the Elizabeth Galley was readied for a fight: guns cast off and loaded, temporary cabins under the quarterdeck broken down and stowed in the hold, decks sanded, linstocks supplied with lit match, tubs of water set between the guns, small arms distributed.

  And when that was done the men fell to that most ubiquitous of combat duties. They waited.

  The men knew exactly as much about the situation as did their captain, at least as far as the chase was concerned. There were three lights to be seen up ahead, steady now, not just on the rise, which meant they were overhauling whoever it was. That was all they knew. The rest was speculation, and it ran thick and fast along the crowded gundeck.

  Marlowe and Bickerstaff stood all the way aft, in their familiar position back by the taffrail, where they could speak in almost normal tones with no fear of being overheard. They too knew only that there was a ship ahead, but unlike the men forward, they also understood the tricky political and legal issues involved, niceties that Marlowe had done his best to keep to himself.

  “You hope that this is King James?” Bickerstaff said, his eyes on the three bobbing lights.

  “I hope with all of my heart that it is him. I hope we are able to kill them all by dinner and have all their ill-gotten booty stowed down in our hold by the first dogwatch.”

  “Indeed? That is quite an agenda for one day. But what if it is not King James. Will you let them be?”

  “There are three other possibilities. The first is that it is a vessel that belongs to England or Flanders or some such friend of ours, in which case we must bid them a fare-thee-well. The second is that it is a manof-war belonging to one of our enemies and too much for us to handle, in which case we run like a dog. The third is that it is a legal prize, or would be for a ship with a letter of marque, in any event.”

  “And if that is the case?”

  “Oh, Lord, sir, I do not know.”

  Since it was, by Marlowe’s thinking, useless to worry about something he could not change, he didn’t, and instead contented himself with a little breakfast for him and Francis and an extra tot of rum all around, to bolster the spirits of men whose spirits really needed no bolstering at all.

  An hour after the ship had been readied, the first hints of dawn began to appear. Marlowe sent the sharpest pair of eyes aboard up into the main topmast crosstrees. He recalled a time when the sharpest pair of eyes aboard meant his. Not anymore. He felt decades older than he had just two months before.

  A very long fifteen minutes passed and then the lookout cried, “On deck! I sees her, sir, right ahead, with them lanterns still lit!” From deck the taffrail lights had been swallowed up in the gathering dawn.

  Another long few minutes during which Marlowe forced himself to not call out. The lad up aloft was no fool, he would sing out when there was something to sing about.

  Finally he did so. “On deck! I can see her proper now…topsails and fore course, nearly the same heading as us… big son of a bitch…”

  The anticipation hung like gunsmoke over a battlefield. Every eye was trained aloft or forward. “Breaking out colors, sir! Looks like a Frenchy, sir!”

  Smiles, grins, hands rubbing in anticipation. A Frenchman was the best they could hope for, an undisputed prize for a privateer. Every man aboard knew that a Frenchman was fair game. It would all be spelled out in the letter of marque that Marlowe had shown them.

  “French colors,” Bickerstaff said, let it hang in the air.

  “Still might be King James. It was a French ship they took, after all. He’d have to run something up if he was playing at the innocent merchantman.”

  “Yes he would. So in fact this ship yonder still could be the solution to your troubles, or a twofold increase in them, and we still do not know which.”

  “Yes, very neatly put. I thank you for that, Francis.”

  They plunged on, the Elizabeth Galley spreading more and more sail, as the gray dawn sky turned to the light blue of morning. Up ahead the ship in question was setting more sail as well: the main course, the topgallants, then studding sails to weather, but slowly, methodically. It was not the actions of a ship fleeing pursuit, but the routine setting of more sail with the onset of day.

  “Well, damn him for an impudent bastard,” Marlowe said at last. “Whoever he is, James or not, he seems none too concerned with having a well-armed privateer nipping at his behind.”

  “Pirate,” Bickerstaff corrected.

  “Perhaps. We have yet to see.” Marlowe took the big telescope from the binnacle box, climbed up into the mizzen shrouds to where he could see past the mainsail, and trained the glass forward. They were still too far to make out any of the finer details, but the big telescope told him something, and years of experience with ships and the sea filled in the unknowns. He climbed back down to the deck.

  “I take her for an Indiaman. A French East Indiaman, and a damn big one. Of course, they are all damned big, and well armed too, like a man-of-war, really. That’s why she ain’t frightened of us, I reckon.”

  “Well… she is a handful, to be certain. Will you run from her?”

  “I am loath to give that order. It would not do for me to look shy in front of the men. They are still a volatile bunch, for all the good fortune we have had, Griffin’s untimely demise and all. But they are privateersmen, you know, which means they are after riches and don’t much want to risk their necks for them. So what I will do is let them vote on it.”

  “You’ll let them vote? How very republican of you. But is that not at odds with your insistence on absolute command? That sounds more like pirates’ ways to me.”

  “Nothing like it. See the clever way I frame the thing.”

  Marlowe stepped up to the binnacle box where Fleming had stationed himself. “Mr. Fleming, pray have the men assemble aft.”

  Five minutes of calling around the ship and jostling in the waist and the Elizabeth Galleys were all gathered, looking up at Marlowe on the quarterdeck like they were waiting for a Royal address.

  “You men, listen here,” he began. “If I’m not mistaken, yonder ship is a French East Ind
iaman. You people are not strangers to the sea, you know how well armed the Indiamen are. Trained like men-of-war’s men. You didn’t sign on to attack an enemy that was so greatly superior to us. We’re not a man-of-war, not under Admiralty orders to risk our lives. So I don’t feel it’s my right, in this case, to order you into battle, not when the odds are this much against us. I won’t do it. So in this one situation, I am going to allow you to vote! Either we fight, and the odds be damned, or we’re off seeking other prey. What say you?”

  From forward the captain of number-two gun, a great burly fellow from Plymouth, called out, “I say we’re with you, Captain!”

  Smart fellow, Marlowe thought.

  And then another man added, “Aye, hear him! I say the odds be damned! Let’s have at them!”

  His words were greeted with a great rolling cheer, up and down the deck, as the Elizabeth Galleys shouted their concurrence.

  Bickerstaff stepped up to Marlowe’s side. A smile was playing across his lips. “Very cleverly framed, indeed. The men never suspected you. They seem not to have even been listening.”

  Marlowe sighed. It was the sound of a man accepting the inevitable. “You know, Francis,” he said, “I envy King James and his piracy. At least for him it is a fate of his own choosing.”

  Chapter 21

  The BLOODY Revenge had been five days under way, running north along the coast with the wind and the Gulf Stream under her coattails, before Elizabeth worked up the courage to ask even one of the questions that plagued her.

  She had stayed in the great cabin for the chief of the time, and Billy Bird had not encouraged her to come out. After the fight on deck, after she was secured aft and Billy had taken his leave of her and ordered the Revenges to up anchor and creep away under topsails, she had sat, silent, waiting for the sounds of Billy Bird’s men murdering him for having smuggled a woman aboard.

  But after a while he had come back to the great cabin and she let him examine the slight wound across her stomach as she held her breasts in cupped hands.

  “Whatever was that about?” she had asked, then gave a little gasp as Billy gently swabbed her cut with whiskey. “Who were those men?”

  “Bloody villains. We had an arrangement, you know, for certain goods, and those damned thieves were hoping to storm the ship and take it all. God’s body, I don’t know what is happening these days. Is no one to be trusted?”

  “Humph.” There was more that she wanted to ask, but she was afraid, and more afraid of the answer, and so she remained silent and waited for the moment when Billy would be killed and the others would come for her.

  But five days later it had yet to happen, and she could discern nothing but the routine operations of a ship at sea, the change of watch, the clanging of the bells, the men tramping below for their regular meals. So on that fifth day, when Billy stepped into the cabin bearing their dinner, she said, “Billy, my dear, I am pleased to see that you have not been knocked on the head or thrown overboard.”

  “As am I. But why ever would you think such a thing would happen?”

  “Well”-she spoke softly so that her voice would not carry through the skylight-“you did tell me that there was a rule concerning the smuggling of women on board.”

  “Oh, that? I suppose there could be some trouble, if I had brought a woman aboard, but you are the honored younger brother of Malachias Barrett. Besides, the punishment is marooning, and it ain’t so bad, you know. The guilty party is given some water and a loaded pistol for when that runs out.”

  “The soul of mercy, to be sure. But Billy, I fear that during the fight on deck I might have revealed my true colors, as it were…my hair and my… the tear, you know, in my shirt. And I believe I was screaming a bit.”

  “Oh, nothing of the sort. You were the very picture of manhood. I was screaming as well, you know.”

  “Billy, tell me the truth.”

  “Ah, the truth…well… let me say first that those lovely breasts of yours were never for a moment revealed to those who should not see them, not even to me, in fact, who should. But the hair, and the screaming, that may have given you away. In truth, it did.

  “But as it happens, we never suspected those rogues were laying for us. That’s why the chief of my guns was still below. They had insisted on no firearms. Would have taken us quite by surprise had you not kindly dumped piss on them. And even with that warning the fight was going badly for us, damned badly. Without you had come on deck when you did and shot such a string of them we might well have been taken. You saved Quartermaster Vane’s life, and he knows it. Saved mine as well.”

  “Shot a string of them, you say? For the life of me I cannot recall but a few images. Well, in any event, I am glad to have helped.”

  “You more than helped, my dear. I’ve been keeping a weather eye out for some grumbling amongst the men, but there is none. Not a word has been said. I do believe they are inclined to overlook the one little fact of your sex, in gratitude for the great service done them.”

  “I am pleased to hear that your people were pleased. But they will not turn on you?”

  “They will not. Though if I try to pull such a thing again, I must make sure the lady is of the same heroic bent as you. Now will you not come on deck and see Long Island? Long Island in New York?”

  Elizabeth did indeed go on deck, gladly, for she was heartily sick of looking at the inside of the great cabin, even for all its fine appointments and grand store of books and wine.

  The warm air that blew in through the after windows below was stronger still on deck. Her long hair would have plagued her, blowing forward and whipping her in the face, had it not been tightly clubbed, with a cocked hat shoved down on her head for good measure.

  She was still dressed in a thoroughly masculine fashion, she and Billy agreeing that if the Revenges were inclined to be so charitable as to ignore a capital offense, then they should not push their luck by flaunting it. So she stepped up to the quarterdeck, awkwardly, in Marlowe’s too-big shoes, her breasts and her feminine contours again hidden by shirt, waistcoat, and coat. She was greeted with enthusiastic smiles and nods-which she returned with what she hoped were manly gestures-and knowing smiles and lascivious stares, which she ignored.

  “William, good day to you,” said Quartermaster Vane without the least hint of irony. He pointed with his bearded chin over the larboard side. “That land yonder is Long Island, in New York. This wind holds, I reckon we’ll fetch Boston in a day or two.”

  Elizabeth nodded, smiled, a sort of crooked grin. She did not trust her voice, but neither did she feel she could remain silent, so she swallowed and said, “I look forward to that, Mr. Vane,” in as manly a tone as she could muster without sounding like she was trying to sound manly. Such an absurd charade! She would be glad to shed herself of it.

  But she could not until they were in Boston, and then she would be faced with a new set of problems. She was going there to find out what secret Dunmore held in his breast, what truth she might reveal to the world to destroy him before he destroyed her and Thomas and all that they had.

  It had seemed daunting enough in Virginia, but now, faced with the real question of how she would begin that search, the problem seemed insurmountable. And to make it worse, it was all based on a vague recollection of Billy Bird’s, a fact on which she quite purposely did not dwell.

  She turned her face into the breeze, cocked her head to feel the sun direct on her skin. It was warm and the air was fresh and the brig rolled along on a rich blue sea under a robin’s-egg sky.

  The Bloody Revenges were delighted with her presence, and it appeared that they would not leave her old, dear friend Billy Bird to die on a barren stretch of sand.

  That was as much as she could hope for, and there was nothing she could do about Boston until she arrived, and with that realization she allowed herself to relax and feel content, more content and more safe than she had felt in a long, long time.

  That feeling, and the fine weather that
in part engendered it, held for the next two days as they raised, then left astern, the green hump of Nantucket and then followed the long, low arm of Cape Cod north and west. At last they left the sandy shores of Provincetown in their wake and headed across Massachusetts Bay, and with every mile of open water they covered, Elizabeth found herself growing more tense, more grim, more doubtful.

  “Have you been to Boston before, William?” Billy asked, and in her pessimistic introspection it took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her, to recall that she was William. William Barrett, younger brother of the pirate Malachias Barrett, known also as Thomas Marlowe. Damn Billy Bird and his damned perverse sense of humor.

  “No, Billy, I have not.” They were at the quarterdeck hances, Billy sitting on the bulwark, a hand resting on one of the main shrouds, Elizabeth leaning on the rail that ran along the forward edge of the quarterdeck. Beyond the Revenge’s bow the green hilly country of Massachusetts Bay Colony took up more than one hundred and eighty degrees of horizon. The shore with which they were closing, which an hour before had appeared as unbroken land, was now revealing itself to be a number of islands scattered across the entrance to Boston Harbor, like a blockading fleet.

  “It’s a bloody dreary place, damned Puritans with their somber faces and their black clothes. Any woman there shows the least bit of spirit they hang her for a bloody witch.” He looked around to see if anyone was within earshot and added, “So you best watch yourself.”

  “If I am accused I shall make a quick escape upon my broomstick. But as I hear it, they are done with that nonsense.”

  “Perhaps. In any event, these Puritans have a bloody lot of money. They can hardly avoid it, they do nothing but work and pray. They are a serious, sober, chaste, and deeply pious people, which is why I find them such intolerable bores.”

  “Then why have you spent so much time in Boston?”

  “I just said, my dear. These Puritans have a bloody lot of money.”

  The Revenge followed the ship channel between Georges and Lovell Islands, winding her way northwest through island after island, pine tree-capped rock thrust up from the bottom of Massachusetts Bay. It was late afternoon when Governors Island and Bird Island passed along the starboard side and before them, two miles away, lay Boston, like a toy city, glowing in the rays of the late-day sun.