The Guardship

by James L. Nelson

  LeRois scratched at his beard. He thought it had been that long, but now he was not certain. He tried to recall what Ripley had said, but the sand underfoot seemed unusually soft, making walking inordinately tiring, and the sun was beating down on them and he could hear voices talking somewhere, and all those things made it very difficult for him to concentrate.

  He took a big drink of gin from the bottle in his hand, held it in his mouth, swallowed it. Looked around the white sand. Off near the dune grass some animal had unearthed one of the poor bastards who had died there, and now a few turkey vultures were taking desultory stabs at what little remained. At first glance LeRois had thought the dead man was Barrett, thought he saw the corpse reaching for a sword, had gasped in fear, but he had been mistaken.

  In the surf was the odd pistol or cutlass, half buried in the dark sand. A big blackened circle indicated where the pirate’s fire had burned before they had been murdered by the black-heart Marlowe, new captain of the guardship, the one who stood between LeRois and the ultimate fulfillment of his plans.

  “Merde alors,” LeRois muttered. Drank again.

  “He just shot ’em down where they stood,” Ripley said. “No call for them to surrender, just shot ’em down, and them that called for quarter is to be hung any day now.”

  “Merde.” Something was giving off a terrible stench. LeRois wondered if it was Ripley or himself. Perhaps the poor dead bastard getting picked apart by the birds. “And the ship, the one that was taken, what of the things they had on board?”

  “As I hear it, the bastard Marlowe let his men have what they wanted, split it up on a barrelhead and give ’em all a share.”

  LeRois took another drink, swallowed, and grinned. “This Marlowe, he sound more like a pirate himself than a king’s man, no? The son of a bitch. Who is he?”

  “Ain’t seen him. I keeps away from the towns. Told you. This here’s more to my liking.”

  The little rat was all fluffed up again with self-importance, as if everything that had taken place had been his own doing. LeRois spit in the sand.

  The three vessels were riding at anchor above the glassy water of the harbor. The largest of the three was the Vengeance. She rode to a single anchor with her gray and much-patched sails hauled out by their bowlines to dry.

  Made fast to the Vengeance’s starboard side was the small sloop that was the one and only legitimate command of former pirate quartermaster Ezekiel Ripley. On the starboard side of Ripley’s sloop was tied a brigantine from New York, which had been northbound a week out of Barbados when she had been spotted from the Vengeance’s masthead.

  The brigantine had run for all she was worth, which infuriated LeRois. When at last she had been overhauled her crew had fought rather than surrender, which made LeRois lose all semblance of reason.

  That was three days before. The last of her crew had just died that morning.

  The deck of the brigantine and the deck of the Vengeance and the deck of the little sloop were crowded with men. Cargo was coming up from the hold of the pirate—the accumulated plunder of seven vessels they had taken since leaving New Providence—and the hold of her eighth and most recent victim, and with stay tackles and yard tackles it was swayed over to Ripley’s sloop and stowed down below.

  “If that cochon Allair had not lost his ship, we would not have to sneak around here like frightened puppies,” LeRois growled.

  “Yeah, well, you done for him.”

  “Where is the son of bitch Marlowe now, and his fucking guardship?”

  “They’re careening the ship by Point Comfort. This past week Marlowe’s been at the trial for them poor bastards they took here. I reckon they’re at the hanging now.”

  “Careening, eh? Well, why don’t we go and blow their goddamned ship to hell while they are careening?”

  “Marlowe set up the great guns on the shore. He ain’t that dumb. I reckon you should just stay clear of him and we’ll just carry on like we are.”

  LeRois grunted and drank the last of his gin and flung the bottle into the surf. The hot sun felt good now, and the warm sand around his shoes was like a heavy blanket. The voices were gone, and in their place was music, lovely music. LeRois glanced around the beach, but he could not see where it was coming from.

  There was reason for happiness. The plan that he and Ripley had devised seemed to be working, despite their not having the cooperation of the guardship. They had met up at Smith Island, that familiar haunt, as planned, LeRois with a hold full of pilfered goods, Ripley with a chest full of hard money to pay for it. No haggling with bastard shopkeepers in Charleston or Savannah, who insisted you practically give the goods away. LeRois could let Ripley pretend he was important as long as things kept working as smoothly as that.

  And just as important, the Vengeances were a happy crew. The hunting had been good around the Capes. They had been drinking and pillaging and tormenting victims almost nonstop since arriving in those waters, and that made for a contented band of men. And as long as they were contented, there would be no questioning of authority.

  It would have been better, of course, if they had not had the guardship to worry about, but the guardship had not bothered them yet. It may have done for the stupid bastards on that beach, but LeRois was not stupid and he would not be caught in that manner.

  “The flotte, the tobacco convoy, they sail soon, eh?” LeRois asked.

  “Yes, a week or so. Gathering now, down by Hampton Roads, but sod the fucking tobacco fleet. We have all the fucking tobacco we needs. There’s no call for tobacco around here. It’s goods like them”—Ripley thrust his pointed, bristled chin at the barrels soaring out of the Vengeance’s hold—“that gots a ready market here. Imports, goods from England, the things what have a high tariff, that’s what can be sold here. Besides that, convoy’ll have an escort. The guardship, with that Marlowe, what served these bastards out, he’ll be there, I reckon.”

  “Bah, fucking guardship,” LeRois grunted. He looked around in the sand, hoping to find a discarded bottle of alcohol of some description, but there was nothing.

  Sod tobacco? he thought. I reckon not. Tobacco might not be much in demand in Virginia, but Virginia was not the only market, and he was feeling confident. Tobacco ships had specie aboard them.

  He would see about this tobacco fleet.

  Marlowe sat, silent and unmoving, and stared out of the aft window of the Northumberland’s great cabin. He felt the anger wash over him and then recede, wash and recede, like the surf on the beach. He was aware of the gentle tap of Bickerstaff’s foot on the deck, King James’s shifting uncomfortably in his seat, but he ignored them until he trusted himself to speak.

  “They burned it? All of it? The hogsheads as well?”

  “All of it. And the hogsheads. Near the end, when they were emptying the casks first, I pointed out that they needn’t throw the empty casks on the flames, but it did no good.”

  “Damn their souls to hell,” Marlowe said. “Does honor mean nothing in this place? What, pray, is the use of playing the gentleman if we must endure this petty vengeance? And under the guise of the law?”

  “As long as Witsen and half of the tidewater is in debt to the Wilkensons,” Bickerstaff said, “then the Wilkensons are the law.”

  “They are the law on land, sir, but now I am the law on the sea.”

  The law on the sea. He was that, and that very morning the people of Williamsburg had had a very dramatic demonstration of the fact, as fifteen men were marched to the gibbet set up on the tidal flats of the James River and hanged by the neck until dead.

  It was just two years before that an Act of Assembly had given the colonies the right to try men for piracy, rather than transport the accused to London, and Nicholson had leapt at that chance, for he hated piracy with a nearly religious zeal. A court of oyer and terminer had been appointed, a jury sworn in, and the men captured on the beach on Smith Island brought up on charges for their crimes.

  It had not been a lengthy
trial.

  From the start of the thing it seemed unlikely that the men would be found innocent, even if the evidence against them had been less overwhelming. But as it happened, there were a few mariners in the tidewater whose ships had been taken and plundered by the accused, and they provided a most damning testimony. That, combined with what Marlowe had to tell and the evidence found aboard the Patricia Clark, was more than enough to find them all guilty.

  The three youngest among them were given life in prison in consideration of their youth. A fourth managed to convince the jury that he had been forced against his will to join the pirates—a not uncommon occurrence—and he had been set free.

  The rest had been sentenced to die.

  Sheriff Witsen had his orders. “You are to hang the said Pyrates upon a Gibbet to be executed by you for that purpose up by the neck until they be dead, dead, dead…”

  And that was what he had done, before an enthralled crowd of four hundred men, women, and children who lined the banks of the James River. It took two hours to kill them all. The people gasped and shook their heads, pointed to the swinging bodies, showed their children what became of those who did not mind their parents.

  It had been a high time for Marlowe, who was once more the center of attention. All of the great men of the tidewater made a point to congratulate him again, to be seen in company with him. Governor Nicholson sat by his side for the duration of the thing. The only thing missing to complete his happiness was Elizabeth, but she had told him, in a tone of disgust, that she had no stomach for such things and would not attend.

  Bickerstaff had kindly waited until the end of the day to inform him of what had happened to the tobacco crop during his absence.

  They sat in silence for a long moment, Marlowe and Bickerstaff and King James. Marlowe could feel the anger receding again, receding for good. In its place, an objective view of the situation. “It’s damned awkward, you know,” he said at last. “We shall have no profit from the plantation this year. I’ll have to pay the hands out of pocket, as well as buy all of our supplies.”

  Of course, he had taken from the pirates three times what the crop would have fetched, and hoped to do more of the same, but he did not care to tell Bickerstaff as much. Still, he had hoped to use the crop to explain his sudden increase in wealth. Now he would have to be more circumspect about spending the money.

  But those considerations were nothing compared to the great insult he had suffered at the Wilkensons’ hands. What they did was beyond the pale, and more so because it was dressed in the guise of law enforcement. It could not go unanswered.

  “You know, Tom,” Bickerstaff looked up from the table, “I’m not one for vengeance—it is the Lord’s domain, not ours. Nor do I care to see this thing go on. But setting your people free is one of the most decent things you have ever done, and it was their profit, innocents that they are, that the Wilkensons destroyed, as well as yours. It grieves me to see them get away with such egregious behavior.”

  “It grieves me as well.”

  “Yes, well, it occurs to me that in your position as captain of the guardship, your duty is not just to chase pirates. It is also your duty to enforce His Majesty’s trade and navigation laws.”

  That was absolutely true. Marlowe had all but forgotten that part of it, which was no surprise since he had never intended to enforce them. There was no profit in it. Waste of time. What was more, he intended to raise his stock among the planters and aristocrats of the tidewater. Levying fines on those very people, making them obey the law, would accomplish little to that end.

  Marlowe stared out the window, pondering Bickerstaff’s oblique suggestion. The Wilkensons could work the laws ashore to their own advantage, but he, Marlowe, was the law on the sea.

  “You are quite right, Bickerstaff, quite right,” Marlowe said at last, and smiled for the first time since hearing the news. “I have been shamefully negligent in my duty. If George and Jacob Wilkenson will keep an eye on the quality of the colony’s tobacco, and so selflessly defend the good name of the tidewater planters, then it is only fair that I should do the same.”

  Chapter 18

  ONCE A year the great fleet of merchant ships from England and the colonies assembled in Hampton Roads to take on board the eighty thousand or so hogshead casks containing the year’s tobacco crop from Virginia and Maryland. It took nearly one hundred and fifty ships to carry it all, and the duty on that crop, when it was unloaded in England, would yield the government £300,000 sterling.

  The government was thus highly motivated to see that it got there.

  For that purpose, the Plymouth Prize, with her clean and tight bottom, fresh rigging, new sails, and now enthusiastic crew, dropped down from Point Comfort and took up her station, anchored to windward of the fleet. She would escort the tobacco ships one hundred leagues from land, through the cordon of seagoing vultures that hovered around the Capes, and out into the deep water where they would be protected by the vastness of the ocean.

  One hundred leagues from Land’s End in England, on the other side of the Atlantic, another ship of the Royal Navy would rendezvous with the fleet and escort it to London, protecting it from the dangers lurking in the English Channel. And thus the great wealth rising from the earth of the Crown Colonies poured into Old England, and the taxes on that wealth poured into the government that had organized the whole affair.

  And His Majesty’s naval representative in the colony, the man who exercised ultimate authority over the fleet once it had passed beyond the purview of Governor Nicholson, was one Thomas Marlowe, Esq., Master of HMS Plymouth Prize.

  He was all but laughing with anticipation as he clambered up the side of the Wilkenson Brothers.

  The Brothers was the merchant vessel owned by the Wilkensons, one of the few families wealthy enough to ship their tobacco in their own bottom. Few planters owned ships. Most had to contract independent merchantmen to carry their crop.

  The Wilkenson Brothers was a big ship for a merchantman, and well armed. Indeed, as far as size and firepower was concerned, she was more powerful than the Plymouth Prize, and she would have been quite able to see to her own defense if the Wilkensons had shipped enough sailors to simultaneously sail the vessel and fight her.

  But they had not, because they did not care to spend that much money, and because they would never have found that many seamen even if they had wanted to. There were precious few qualified mariners to go around, and each vessel had just enough men to sail her, and not one more.

  Marlowe stepped through the gangway and onto the deck, stepped aside to make way for Bickerstaff, directly behind him, and the dozen or so armed and dangerous-looking men from the Plymouth Prize who were following him.

  George Wilkenson was aboard, as was his father, just as Marlowe had hoped they would be. He was staging the show for their benefit. They had been conferring with the master of the vessel up until the moment they spotted the Plymouth Prize’s long boat heading toward them. Now the three men stood by the main fife rail, an early frost in their eyes, arms folded, awaiting an explanation of this most unwelcome intrusion.

  “What is the meaning of this? You were not invited aboard this ship, sir, and you are not welcome,” Jacob Wilkenson said. He looked like he might explode.

  “I understand, sir,” Marlowe replied, “and I would not presume to call were it not that duty required it.”

  “Duty? What duty have you here?”

  “As captain of the guardship, it is my duty to see the enforcement of His Majesty’s laws concerning trade and navigation, and so I am doing my inspection of the fleet.”

  “The fleet? You are trespassing aboard my vessel, not the fleet. Is this some kind of trick you are playing, some petty harassment?”

  “Nothing of the sort. I shall inspect all the vessels, if time allows. I am simply starting with yours. Now, pray, break open the hatches and let us sway out a few hogsheads for inspection.”

  “Break open…” the master sputter
ed, speaking for the first time. “Why, we’ve just got everything stowed down, and hatches clapped down and battened.”

  “Well, sir,” Marlowe said, “unbatten and unclap.”

  “We shall do nothing of the sort,” said Wilkenson with finality.

  “Very well, then, I shall do it myself.” He gestured to the Prizes and they fell to unbattening the hatch, knocking the wedges out to free the tarpaulins.

  “No, no, no time for that,” Marlowe said. “Ax men, just cut it open. Just cut through the tarpaulins and grating.”

  The four men in the boarding party whom Marlowe had ordered to carry axes leapt up on the hatch and raised the blades over their heads.

  “No, no, belay that!” the master shouted, mere seconds before Marlowe’s men destroyed his tarpaulins and hatch gratings. “Boatswain, see the hatches broke open.”

  The guardship’s men stood in silence as the Brothers boatswain and his gang undid a morning’s worth of work, hauling back tarpaulins and lifting off the gratings. The stay tackle was let off and swung out over the gaping hatch, and three of the Prizes climbed down into the dark hold with slings to go around the casks.

  George Wilkenson and his father and the master watched with sullen expressions, arms folded. They said not a word, but Marlowe knew that their silence would be short-lived.

  Twenty minutes later, the Prizes had a half-dozen hogsheads swayed out and standing on the deck. Marlowe looked them over, walking slowly between them, shaking his head. “This does not look good, I fear. Bickerstaff, be so kind as to measure this.”

  Bickerstaff laid his measuring stick across the top of the cask and then against its side, and he shook his head as well. “Thirty-six inches on the head, fifty-two inches tall.”

  “Thirty-six…” Marlowe said. “Is that true for all of them?”

  Bickerstaff moved down the line, measuring each. “Yes, I fear. They are all the same.”