“Smith Island, oui?” LeRois said, jerking his head in the direction of the muted gunfire.
“I reckon,” Darnall agreed. “That’s where she bears.”
LeRois listened for a moment more and then shrugged. “It is of no matter,” he said, and then, like men who could hold their breath no longer, the pirates resumed their shouting, their cursing, and their raucous destruction.
LeRois kicked the captain once more for good measure and then walked aft, using his sword as a walking stick, gouging it into the deck and jerking it free as he walked. The men of the Vengeance had torn open the liquor stores and the captain’s private reserve and were consuming it all as fast as they could. They were making great sport of terrorizing the few passengers on board, forcing them to drink great quantities of rum, making them curse the king and the governor and damn their own souls to hell.
The pirates would have their fun in that manner, but they would do no more harm than that. The merchantman had surrendered without a shot, surrendered at the first sight of LeRois’s black flag. By way of reward, the people aboard her would not be tortured and they would not be killed.
The merchantman’s crew had been compelled to break open the ship’s hatches and were swaying out all that was in the hold: tobacco, mostly, but also some fine cloth that had made its way up from the Spanish Main, as well as barrels of wine that would bring a fair price if not consumed by the Vengeances first. Along with that, the pirates would take the spare sails, some coils of rope, and the anchor cable to replace their own rotted one.
There had been gold as well, doubloons that had no doubt come up the coast with the Spanish cloth. Not many, but enough to share out among the men.
The captain, foolishly, had refused at first to reveal where the coin was hidden, but a few thumps with the flat of LeRois’s sword and a length of burning match tied between his fingers had ultimately rendered him quite vocal on the subject.
Even after they had the gold in hand, the pirates kept at the old man, burning the pieces of match down the full length of his fingers. They jeered as their victim, lashed to a ringbolt on the deck, had twisted and screamed and cursed. The man needed to be punished for his reticence. His example had assured the future cooperation of the people on board.
LeRois made his way over to where the passengers stood huddled against the rail, shrinking back from their tormenters. The few women among them were shielded by their husbands, as if that would do any good at all if the pirates chose to have them.
The Vengeances were screaming and running up and down the deck, dancing, firing off guns, drinking, cursing, banging drums, urinating, and hacking to pieces any part of the ship or rig within reach of their cutlasses.
LeRois was as drunk as any of them, and the weird images swam in front of him, lit up in frozen scenes by the flash of pistols. The screams seemed to come in layers, each building on the other, building to a cacophony of anguish and terror. He found it harder and harder to tell if the images around him were a reality or a nightmare, if he was awake or asleep or dead and in hell.
He took another long drink from the bottle of rum in his hand, savoring the burn of the liquor going down his throat, the earthy reality of the pain. He looked over the passengers who were providing his men with so much amusement. They all looked wealthy enough, and he reckoned that any would do for the business he had in mind. Any that were married.
He grabbed the first couple he came to, a gentlemanly sort of fellow of middling age and his pretty wife whom he was shielding from the screaming tribe. He grabbed them both by their clothing and jerked them away from the rail and shoved them into the open deck. Before the gentleman could utter a word, LeRois pulled a pistol from his belt and pressed it against the woman’s forehead.
“Where are you from, cochon?” he asked the man, but the man remained silent, scowling at LeRois.
LeRois felt the snapping in his brain. He began to tremble. He cocked the lock of the pistol and jammed the muzzle against the woman’s head, pushing her back with the force. “Where are you from?” he screamed.
“Williamsburg.”
“You know many people, live in Williamsburg?”
The man hesitated. “Yes,” he said at last.
“Bien, bien, you fucking pig. You know a poxed son of a whore named Malachias Barrett?”
“No.”
“You certain, you son of a bitch?” He pressed the gun into the woman’s head. She shut her eyes and grimaced, her lip trembling as she waited for the end.
“No,” her husband said with finality.
“Very well,” said LeRois at last. “I have a message for you to deliver, and if you do, the belle femme she is okay, and if you don’t, then I take her first, then I give ’er to the crew, you understand?”
The man hesitated again, no doubt envisioning what his wife’s final days on earth would be like if he did not understand and obey. “Yes, I understand.”
LeRois squinted at him, trying to assess his sincerity. It was hard to think. He wished the screaming would stop, just for a moment.
Yes, he decided, the man would do as he said.
A shadow of a movement caught his eye, like a dark ghost overhead. He looked up, shot through with fear, but it was only his flag, his own flag, stirring in the breeze. It flogged and collapsed, the black flag with the grinning death’s-head and the cutlasses crossed below, an hourglass at the bottom to show that time was running out.
It was a flag that had already caused terror across the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, a flag for which the Royal Navy had been hunting for nearly twenty years.
And when he was done with the Chesapeake, he vowed, the people there would shit themselves just at the sight of it.
Elizabeth Tinling sat at the small desk in her sitting room. She stared at the blank paper. Stared up at the ceiling. Twirled the quill between finger and thumb and then began to write.
G,
Have just received word that Marlowe has Changed his Plans at the last instant and will not be home tonight so I shall not venture to his home. I pray this Note reaches you in Time. I will send word to you again when I am Certain of his being home.
E.
She stared at the note for a moment, her thoughts elsewhere. When she saw the ink was dry she folded it, sealed it with wax, and wrote “George Wilkenson” across the front.
She stood and smoothed out her skirts and tugged her short riding jacket into place. On her head, pinned securely in place, was a small, round riding hat, and on her feet Morocco half-boots.
“Lucy,” she called, and the servant, who was hovering just beyond the door, appeared instantly, giving a shallow curtsy.
“I shall be off now,” Elizabeth said. “You are certain that Caesar quite understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I have one more thing for you to do. Take this note. Once it is near dark I want you to go to the Wilkenson plantation. Conceal yourself just off the main road and keep a lookout. When you see George Wilkenson leaving, wait another twenty minutes or so and then deliver this note to the house. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.” If Lucy was at all curious about these instructions she did not let on, and Elizabeth was grateful for that. Lucy had never questioned the part she played in any of Elizabeth’s plans. She was a wily girl hidden beneath a veneer of innocent beauty. Elizabeth thought them two of a kind, Lucy a dusky reflection of herself.
Elizabeth called for the boy to bring her horse around. She swung herself up onto the saddle and headed off down Duke of Gloucester Street and the long ride to Marlowe’s home.
To her old home.
Home? No, she thought. House, perhaps. The word home implied a certain tenderness that she had never associated with the Tinling Plantation.
Indeed, she could not recall any dwelling that she might have called a home. Not the clapboard, waterfront house in the poorer section of Plymouth where she had lived till the age of fourteen with a brutal father and a mother
too utterly cowed even to protect herself. Certainly not the house in London where she had met Joseph Tinling.
The town of Williamsburg yielded to the countryside of Virginia as Elizabeth rode down the long, brown-earth rolling road, worn hard and smooth by the hogsheads of tobacco that were yearly rolled down that way to be loaded aboard sloops and barges at Jamestown. The rolling road was lined on either side by split-rail fences, and beyond those stretched the wide green fields of tobacco that seemed to hold the far woods at bay.
She thought about Marlowe. Marlowe with his hoards of gold, his fine manners and eccentric ways, his apparent disregard for any danger, physical or social. In London he would be shunned. He was too wild by half for that society. But Williamsburg was not London, and the colony of Virginia was not Old England.
It was a new land, a land where a transported criminal could, through his cunning and strength of arm, rise to a position of prominence. It was a place like no other on earth, and a new place needed a new kind of man. She thought that Marlowe was such a man. And she was staking a great deal on her being right.
She came at last to the big white house, just as the sun was becoming tangled in the trees at the far end of the tobacco fields. She handed her horse to the stable boy, mounted the steps as she had done so many times before, and stepped through the big front door.
“Hello, Mrs. Tinling.” Caesar was there to greet her, with his ingenious smile, his dark, kind, wrinkled face. His eyes were permanently squinted from many, many years in the sun, and his forehead and cheeks still bore the vague traces of some pagan design with which his skin had been scarred, half a century before on the Gold Coast.
She had never seen Caesar wearing anything but rags, but again she had not seen him since Marlowe had bought the plantation and set them all free. Five years before, Caesar had been too old to work in the fields, but Joseph Tinling had kept him at it nonetheless. It was the most prudent thing to do, economically, working the old slave to death.
But after freeing him, Marlowe had asked him to work in the house, second to King James, who gave the old man light duty. Now he wore a clean white cotton shirt and a linen waistcoat. Bare brown calves and wide, splayed feet projected from the legs of white breeches—Caesar could never become accustomed to shoes. “How does it go on here, Caesar?”
“It’s as close to heaven as we’s likely to see, us poor souls, Mrs. Tinling. Master Marlowe, he set us free, just like he said he would.”
Elizabeth knew all this, of course. Lucy kept her well informed of what Marlowe was about, and Lucy still had many friends among her former fellow slaves. But she let Caesar continue and feigned surprise and delight.
“Now we works for wages,” Caesar was saying, “and we puts our money together and Mr. Bickerstaff buys us what we need. Them old slave quarters, Tinling-town we used…” Caesar’s voice trailed off in embarrassment.
“Don’t concern yourself. I know that my husband was not well loved, nor should he have been.”
“Bless you, ma’am, it ain’t nothing about you. You know we all was fond of you. Couldn’t abide to see how that son of a bitch used you so, beg pardon. Like I was saying, them old slave quarters are fixed up proper now. It’s like we got our own little town there now. Little houses all whitewashed…”
“I long to see it. Perhaps later,” Elizabeth said. She could hear the pride in the man’s voice, and it made her feel good. He deserved no less after a lifetime of bondage.
She despised slavery, for she understood about involuntary servitude, and it was only because she so feared being an out-cast that she kept her opinions to herself and did not give her own few slaves their freedom. “Now, come along and show me Master Marlowe’s sleeping chamber.”
“Ah, yes, ma’am.” Caesar was not so certain about that request. “Miss Lucy didn’t say nothing about that.”
“Oh, it’s no great concern. Just a little fun I wish to have. Mr. Marlowe would never mind. You trust me, do you not?”
“Ah, well, I reckon.”
They walked up the wide stairway, Caesar leading the way. The gloom of twilight settled on the house and the colors of the walls and the patterns in the carpets became less distinct in the light of that juncture between day and night. Elizabeth followed behind, as if she were a stranger in that house, and indeed she felt like one.
Little had changed in the two years since she had been there; it seemed at once so familiar and so strange. The house filled her with a vague dread. There were ghosts lurking in all the corners. Little good had happened there.
She hoped that Marlowe had not chosen the master bedroom as his own. It was not a room that she cared to see. But, of course, he had. There was no reason for him not to do so. Caesar stopped and opened the door, and Elizabeth stepped into the room.
It was almost exactly as she had left it: the big canopy bed in the same place, the wardrobe, the winged chair, and the trunk. All that was missing was her dressing table, and all that was added was a gun rack. Other than that it was the same.
Caesar stood in respectful silence as she ran her eyes over the rooms. She let the ghosts rise up; she knew that they would in any event. Like recalling a play she had seen a long time ago. She envisioned the beatings, the brutal sex forced upon her. Even when she was willing to give herself voluntarily, he had forced her. Joseph Tinling’s type liked it that way. They liked to see a little blood.
She ran her eyes over the big bed. Did Marlowe ever imagine what had taken place there? She let the ghost of Joseph Tinling appear again, the image of his mortal remains as she had found them.
He had been stretched out on that very bed, his breeches down around his ankles, Lucy, half naked, her clothes torn, cowering in the corner, screaming, incoherent. Elizabeth and Sheriff Witsen, with whom she had been speaking belowstairs, had burst in to witness that depraved scene.
She shook her head and turned toward Caesar and met his dark, watery eyes, and an understanding passed between them.
“Here, let me take a look at Mr. Marlowe’s wardrobe,” she said, forcing brightness into her voice. She stepped across the room and pulled the doors open. There were a dozen coats there, all lovely. She pulled out one made of red silk with gold on the pockets and cuffs. It was the same coat that Marlowe had worn to the Governor’s Ball the night this had all begun.
She held it up to Caesar’s chest. “Goodness, this would look fine on you, Caesar.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. That’s a gentleman’s coat, that ain’t for me.”
“Well, let us just see. Pray, try it on.”
“Try it on? But, ma’am, that’s Mr. Marlowe’s coat! I got no business tryin’ on Mr. Marlowe clothes!”
“Oh, come along, now,” Elizabeth said, holding the sleeve up and practically shoving it over Caesar’s arm. “Remember. I am a particular friend of Mr. Marlowe’s, and I am here to help him.”
“I don’t see how this is helping him…” Caesar muttered as he struggled into the coat, which was in fact a good fit, if a bit big. He straightened and tugged the front in place, then ran his eyes along the garment, clearly not displeased with the way it looked.
“Very good, Caesar. Now…” Elizabeth looked around the room. In the dressing room adjoining the sleeping chamber she saw four wigs carefully placed on wooden heads, their long white curling locks hanging down past the edge of the table.
“There we are.” She fetched one of the wigs and made as if to put it on Caesar’s head, but the old man balked, shielding his head with his hands.
“Now what you doing? I ain’t gonna be seen wearing Mr. Marlowe’s wig! Bad enough I’s wearing his coat.”
“Now, come along, Caesar, you know I wouldn’t do anything to get you in trouble. This is all for Mr. Marlowe’s good.”
It took five minutes of her most persuasive arguing before Caesar grudgingly placed the wig on his head and followed her down the stairs. She paused outside of the sitting room that faced the lawn bordering the front of the house. It was dark now
. The bright painted walls and the rugs and books and furniture were all turned shades of gray and black.
“You have some others here?”
“Yes, ma’am. William and Isaiah is in the back room.” Caesar called for them, and they appeared in the hall. They were both field hands, big men in their twenties and strong as any man was likely to be. Isaiah carried a musket. It looked like a stick in his hand. Elizabeth noticed that their clothes were clean and newly made. Apparently they could now afford a suit for working and another for special occasions. Amazing.
“William, pray go and light the lamps in the sitting room,” Elizabeth said.
William, who along with Isaiah had been staring open-mouthed at Caesar, adorned as he was with Marlowe’s coat and wig, pulled his eyes away and said, “Yes, ma’am.” He fetched a candle and proceeded to light the lamps, making the room brighter and brighter with each one lit.
There were ghosts there as well.
It was in that room that he had first struck her, knocked her to the floor just by the settee, and in that one stroke had forced her to face all of the things she had suspected about him but had not allowed herself to believe, or even consider. All of the rooms there had their memories, all were stages upon which had been played the tragedy that was her relationship with Joseph Tinling.
William stepped back into the hall, and he and Isaiah retreated to the back room.
“Hold here a moment, Caesar,” Elizabeth said. She stepped over to the edge of the window, the curtains still pulled back. “Caesar, I want you to stand right here, but with your back to the window. Do you understand? Under no circumstances are you to turn and face out the window.”
“Yes, Mrs. Tinling.” There was a note of resignation in his voice now, as he gave in to the nonsensical wishes of this woman.
Elizabeth turned away from the window, and with her back to him she said, “Very well, Caesar, please take your place.” She turned and watched the old man move carefully across the room, and then, with his back turned, edge into the place where she had stood. She hoped that the move did not look too awkward.
The Guardship Page 11