The Blackbirder botc-2

by James L. Nelson

  A few months in the backcountry and he would return to Whydah with a string of captives and begin again. Now he had only to get what specie he could find in the factor’s house and be off into the night.

  He made his limping way back across the compound. He recalled the moment that the Virginians had rolled back the tarp on the blackbirder’s hatch and he had stepped on deck and seen the slaughtered crew of the slaver. From dark despair to a faint trace of optimism, a suggestion of hope. It was how he felt now.

  King James reached the head of the trail and paused, stepped into the forest, ran his eyes over the factory in the middle of the open ground. The big gates were open but he could not see anything within, could not see Madshaka. But where else might he have gone?

  Then through the gate came two men, Kru, running hard. The last two left behind? Judging from the number of men he had seen on the trail there could not be many more. He stepped back, one step, two steps, three steps into the forest, leaned against a big ironwood tree, let the shadows wash over him.

  The Kru raced over the open ground and onto the trail and right past him with never a pause. James waited until he could no longer hear their footfalls and he stepped from the trees and started across the open ground.

  It was no way to approach, he knew that. He should have worked his way along the tree line, raced to the wall, kept close as he moved along the perimeter, but he was too exhausted, too hurt, too far beyond caring to do that. So he half ran and half walked in full view across the clearing until he reached the gate.

  There he stopped and pressed himself against the wall, then inched his way forward. He heard a voice, shouting, outraged and demanding, but he could not quite make out what was said.

  Silence, and then a gunshot and James jumped in surprise. He felt the wound in his side throb. He pressed himself against the wall again. Screaming, panic, and another shot and another. He moved forward, peered around the edge of the gate. Madshaka was standing in front of a small cell and one by one shooting the men inside.

  The fourth man flung himself at Madshaka but missed and Madshaka shot him too and tossed the last gun aside, observed his handiwork for a moment, then shuffled off toward the factor’s hut. His walk was heavy, painful. James realized that his cutlass must have found more of a mark than he had thought. Good. In his condition he could not hope to fight and win against an unwounded Madshaka.

  He followed Madshaka’s labored movement with his eyes, saw his big form silhouetted in the frame of the door of the well-lit factor’s hut, and then he disappeared inside.

  James waited a moment more, then stepped from the shadows and hobbled into the factory’s compound. He felt horribly exposed, vulnerable, as if someone he could not see was drawing a bead on him, following his movement with a musket barrel, preparing to shoot him from the dark corners. But no shots came, and he could see no motion anywhere: no guards on the mud walls or moving around the compound, no white slavers, no Kru.

  The only living souls he could see at all were the captives in the trunk. Of those he could catch only glimpses, movement in the dark. He could see little beyond that and the people there made no noise. James knew what it was like to be in that cage. He knew they did not want to attract attention.

  Across the open ground and as he drew closer he could hear Madshaka tearing the factor’s hut apart, searching for something. James made it unnoticed to the hut’s earthen wall, pressed himself against it, peered in the lower edge of a window.

  There were several lanterns lit, illuminating the big room. A table in the center, the remains of a meal and numerous empty bottles strewn around. A sideboard, a desk, a blanket chest, all decently crafted bits of European furniture, very much at odds with the mud-built walls, and the various examples of native African weaponry that were mounted there.

  Madshaka was at the desk, towering over it, tearing it apart. It looked like a child’s play furniture in his hands as he pulled drawers out, emptied their contents, tossed them aside. Finally he picked the whole thing up, examined its underside, and then flung it away, disgusted. Whatever he was searching for, it was not in the desk.

  He turned to the blanket chest, flipped open the lid, knelt before it, began flinging its contents over his shoulder.

  James held his cutlass in his left hand, wiped his palm on his shirt, took a renewed grip on the weapon. He saw the pistol in Madshaka’s belt. He knew he had to get within killing distance with his sword before Madshaka could pull it free and cock it.

  He hobbled toward the door, stood for a second just beyond the fall of the light, clenched his teeth, then charged.

  He raced into the room, the pain in his side forgotten, kicked a chair out of the way. Madshaka whirled, stood, grabbed at the pistol in his belt but James was there first, cutlass at arm’s length, right under Madshaka’s chin, the point pressed into the dark flesh, a little trickle of blood running down.

  Madshaka struck at the cutlass like a snake, his left hand wrapping around the blade, pulling it aside. James pulled hard but could not break the big man’s grip. He could see the blood running between Madshaka’s fingers as he held tight on the vicious edge of the weapon. His eyes were wide, his teeth were set against the pain, but he did not loosen his grip.

  With his right Madshaka went for the pistol, pulled it from his belt and James kicked him hard in the hand, sending the gun thudding to the dirt floor.

  For a second they were motionless, then slowly Madshaka twisted the cutlass, twisted it back, in a direction that James’s wrist would not admit. Then with a jerk he wrenched the cutlass from James’s hand, tossed it aside, went for the gun.

  James leapt back, grabbed the chair he had kicked aside. The pistol was in Madshaka’s hand, coming up, Madshaka’s big thumb on the flintlock. James could see the great bloody wound on Madshaka’s side and he smashed the chair into it, hard. It shattered against Madshaka like hitting a marble statue, and James hit him again with the broken piece that remained in his fists.

  The big man bellowed, doubled over, grabbed at the wound, but the pistol did not drop from his grip. James leapt back again, grabbed the edge of the table, tossed it over, tumbling it toward Madshaka, and Madshaka fended it off with his arm.

  Madshaka screamed again with pain under the jarring impact of the table but James hardly noticed, because turning the table over had opened his own wound again, like sticking a red-hot iron in his side. His head swam with the agony, his eyes watered, and he stumbled back, trying to clear his head, aware of the pistol, of Madshaka, six feet away.

  He hit the wall and the impact sent another wave of pain through him, radiating from his shoulder and his side and crackling through his limbs like Saint Elmo’s fire.

  His hand went out and wrapped around the hilt of a sword hanging on the wall and he jerked it free. It was a great, heavy, iron affair, heavier even than the cutlass he had carried, a long, straight blade, a hilt bound in leather. It was a sword like the swords he had been trained to wield as a boy, an African sword, and if it was not Malinke, it was certainly from that region.

  He leaned back against the wall, breathing hard, the sword held before him. He blinked the tears from his eyes. Madshaka had fallen to his knees, clutching his wound, but now he looked up, then painfully regained his feet, as if he was aware that James had recovered, as if he knew the fight was now to resume.

  The pistol was still in his hand. Madshaka straightened, as much as he could, leveled the pistol at James, thumbed the lock back.

  The two men stood there, staring at each other, hating each other, breathing hard.

  “You,” Madshaka said at last, and his voice was no more than a harsh whisper, “you are a sorry, sorry little worm…”

  James shook his head, slowly. “No, Madshaka. No. I am a Malinke prince, from the House of Mane. And you… you are just a filthy… stinking… blackbirder, and all the gold you steal won’t change that.”

  Madshaka flinched, he actually flinched, as if the words had physically s
truck him. He scowled, took a half step forward, the pistol held straight-armed before him, aimed right at James’s heart.

  A second more and the arrogant, defiant Madshaka was back. “Well, Prince of the Malinke, I hope you got big magic that will make this bullet dance off you, because if you don’t, then you going to be just another dead bastard. You think you can run that sword through me before I shoot you?”

  James knew he could not. As close as Madshaka was, he could not cover that distance before Madshaka put a bullet through him. Very well. That was the way it was.

  He shook his head slowly, lowered his sword, a gesture of defeat. He saw Madshaka grin, saw his straight-arm grip on the pistol relax, and James guessed that that was as good as it would get, and might even buy him a step or two.

  He held Madshaka’s eyes, felt his hands begin to shake, felt the war cry building silent in his gut, felt it creeping out along his limbs where before there had been only pain. He saw a moment’s hesitancy in Madshaka’s face, a wash of fear, and then he launched himself across the room, the big iron sword held shoulder high, point forward, aimed right at Madshaka’s chest.

  One step, two steps, a leap over the upturned table, and Madshaka’s arm shot out straight. Over the table and the flash of the pan and the flash of the muzzle, those final seconds unfolding slow and dull, like moving underwater.

  James felt the bullet tear into his chest, rip through his right lung, felt the searing heat of the heavy ball as it tore through his back, clean through, and then the tip of his sword was on Madshaka’s chest, right on his heart, and he saw Madshaka’s eyes go wide with surprise.

  The momentum carried him on and the needle tip of the big iron blade pierced Madshaka’s chest and kept on going, going, deeper and deeper. There was a scream, a high anguished scream, but James did not know where it was coming from. Everything was becoming dulled and soft to his eyes and he was aware that he was no longer running, just falling, falling, pushing the big blade before him as he went down.

  Down, down he fell and then he knew he had stopped but he had no sensation of hitting the ground, or of jarring or of anything. He thought there might be other people in the room, or some great commotion, but he was not able to turn his head and look, so instead he closed his eyes and let the warmth wash over him.

  He was thirsty. There was liquid in his throat but it did not sate his thirst. Thirsty, but beyond that, not uncomfortable, not in any pain. He felt ready. More ready than he had felt in a long, long time.

  Then something was disturbing the comfort, forcing him back to the surface. He opened his eyes; the effort seemed impossible, but he did it. Swimming in front of him, a fuzzy image. Marlowe. He looked so concerned. A good man, Marlowe. He cared, he cared more than he himself knew.

  “James, oh James, damn it, damn it…,” Marlowe was saying. Silly. So hard to talk, why waste the effort?

  James closed his eyes, tried to find the strength in his shattered and numb body. Had to tell Marlowe it was all right.

  He opened his eyes. “I’m going now.” So quiet. Could Thomas hear him? Marlowe leaned closer. “I’m going to the only place I got left to go.”

  He closed his eyes again. That was the last of his strength. He felt the soft darkness wash over him, the warm embrace, the gentle evening air, the warm water, the loving arms of Africa, his new Africa.

  Chapter 34

  He was dead. Marlowe laid his fingers gently on James’s face, eased his eyelids shut, laid him back on the dirt floor. He stood and looked at the fresh blood that covered his hands. James’s blood. He did not try to wipe it off.

  The room was crowded with men: Bickerstaff, the Elizabeth Galleys. Less than a minute before, the Galleys had been a howling, blood-crazed mob, set on looting and tearing apart whatever fell in their path, but now they stood silent, respectful.

  They all knew King James from the Elizabeth Galley’s fitting out. They had witnessed his final act as they raced for the factor’s hut, had seen him fling himself headlong into the pistol’s barrel, charging blade-first with such momentum that he had skewered his enemy and driven the sword right through him and through the mud wall of the hut, leaving the man pinned upright, even after he had suffered his mortal wound. The Elizabeth Galleys could respect such a man.

  “A minute. A bloody goddamned minute more and we would have been here,” Marlowe said.

  “And then what?” asked Bickerstaff. “Prevent James from dying thus, so that he could fulfill his promise to go back and be hanged like a dog? This thing”-Bickerstaff nodded toward the corpse pinned to the wall-“must be the infamous Madshaka. We should all be so lucky as to die quick at the moment of our ultimate triumph.”

  Marlowe smiled a weak smile. “You are right, of course. As always. Now I pray, Francis, that you will be kind enough as to live until we return to Virginia? I shall tell the governor that we did indeed hunt King James down and we saw him dead, but I am not certain he will take my word on it. He will believe you, if you say it is so, but I am not convinced he would take my word alone.”

  “I shall certainly endeavor to live that long and I will be happy to confirm your story. There is nothing in it that is not the truth.”

  Marlowe looked around the wreckage of the room. A big ring of keys hung from a hook on the wall and he crossed the room, snatched them up. He turned to his men. “I need ten of you with me, the rest are free to find whatever is worth carrying away from here. Francis, you will never object to our looting slave traders, I assume?”

  Bickerstaff sniffed. “I do not care to be involved with your moral relativism, Thomas.”

  “Good, then come with me.”

  They crossed the compound, approached the trunk carefully. To Thomas’s great relief there was one among the captives there who had a small amount of English and a small amount of the coastal pidgin, enough that Marlowe could convey to him what he intended, and he to some others, and those to others, until everyone in the trunk was reasonably sure that they were not in for greater torment from these new white men. And when Marlowe was sure they were sufficiently mollified, he opened the iron door and let them shuffle out and knocked the chains and yokes off those who were still so encumbered.

  They met up with the rest of the Elizabeth Galleys, who had found a small quantity of gold and some firearms worth the taking. They wrapped King James’s body in a sheet stripped from the factor’s bed and fashioned a litter from the tablecloth and carried him back down the trail.

  On the beach they found the men who had not fared well in the surf; some of them were well recovered and some were not, and of those that were not, three were dead.

  At the edge of the tree line they dug graves, four of them, eight feet deep and two wide, and in them they put King James and the three seamen who might have been James’s shipmates but instead had died while hunting him down.

  Francis Bickerstaff said a few words and they covered them over with the African soil.

  The sun was just below the horizon and starting to light the eastern sky. Soon the land breeze would fill in to lift the Elizabeth Galley and her prize off the shore and out to sea.

  Marlowe watched the last bit of dirt being thrown on the grave, took a deep breath, looked up and down the beach. The longboat had been hauled back down to the water’s edge and his men and the people freed from the factory were milling about on the hard-packed sand.

  “To hell with this damned place,” Marlowe said to no one in particular. “Let us be gone from here.”

  He turned toward the sea, marched off toward the waiting boat. James was not the first good man he had left to his eternal rest, not the first friend, and Marlowe did not think he would be the last.

  Beware, beware, beware…

  Billy Bird made the proposal to allow a woman, one Elizabeth Marlowe, to take passage with them to Virginia, and the Bloody Revenges agreed by formal vote.

  They took their democracy very seriously, and though there was not one aboard who was not aware of the rea
l facts of the matter, there was never a hint from one of them that he had ever set eyes on Elizabeth before. They all viewed Elizabeth as something between a talisman and a pet, which was their singular reason for agreeing to override an otherwise iron-clad rule.

  They would take her to Virginia, but no more. Seven days down the coast and they hove to in Hampton Roads in the dark hours of the morning and took Elizabeth ashore by boat, depositing her amid the tiny cluster of homes that constituted the town of Newport News. And despite Billy’s profuse apologies for such treatment, and his promise to return shortly for another visit, he seemed as anxious as the others to be back aboard the Revenge and gone.

  A few hours later, when the sun broke from the water and burned off the late-summer mist that clung to the top of the bay like cotton batting, the Bloody Revenge was nowhere to be seen.

  When the morning had progressed enough that she felt she could go abroad without arousing suspicion, she made her way into town and hired a horse and from there rode the twelve miles to Marlowe House.

  She had no notion of what to expect after her five-week absence. Charred ruins, perhaps, or Frederick Dunmore living there, having found some way to lay legal claim of possession?

  What she hoped more than anything was to find Thomas home, to ride up and see him sitting there on the big porch in his familiar position, booted feet kicked up on the rail, a glass or a pewter mug in his hand, engrossed in some philosophical discussion with Francis Bicker-staff, or goading his friend with silly banter.

  But he was not there, no one was there, and the house was little changed. The garden was overgrown, and the grass looked wild, more field than manicured lawn, and the house itself forlorn, empty, musty, but still generally in the same shape it had been in when she left. The animals were still alive, and looked well fed, which meant that her neighbor had sent a boy over to tend to them, as she had asked he might in the note she had dispatched to him.