The Guardship botc-1

by James L. Nelson

  The pirate, the new Vengeance, was one hundred yards from the guardship, her bowsprit pointed right at the Prize’s waist. Marlowe could picture the sea of pirates breaking over the rail, pouring down on the deck, sweeping all away before them.

  Rakestraw was pushing the men to the sides and others back as reserves, ordering them to take up their small arms, telling them to stand fast. But telling them would not do. This was not the drunken lot at Smith Island. This was the crew of the Vengeance. This was LeRois.

  Fifty yards separated the ships when the flag broke out at the mainmast head, the grinning skull and swords and hourglass in sharp relief against the black field, and the rhythmic

  vaporing broke down into random screaming and gunshots. Marlowe felt his guts turn liquid.

  LeRois is just a man, he thought to himself, but he did not believe that in any way that mattered. He had seen LeRois live despite inhuman wounds, had witnessed him torturing prisoners in ways that could not be countenanced by any creature in possession of a soul. After years in the sweet trade, it remained that Jean-Pierre LeRois was the only man of whom Marlowe was frightened.

  He clamped his teeth together, balled his fists.

  In his mind he was there again, on the deck of another Vengeance, knowing that he had to best LeRois or die the kind of protracted death that only LeRois could arrange. He was there, face-to-face with that madman, sword against sword.

  “Oh, damn me to hell,” he said. They were thirty yards apart and the Vengeance was committed to her course. Marlowe realized he may have left it until it was too late.

  “Rakestraw! Rakestraw!” The first officer looked up. “Cut the damned drogue away! Cut it now!”

  There was a second’s confusion on the man’s face, enough for a curse to form on Marlowe’s lips, and then he understood and raced aft with all the speed that Marlowe could wish.

  The Vengeance was twenty yards away, running downwind, turning slightly to keep her bow pointed at the Plymouth Prize’s side.

  And then, through the screaming and the gunfire and the cheering of his own men Marlowe heard the distinct thump of Rakestraw’s ax coming down on the line holding the drogue. He heard it again, and then the Plymouth Prize seemed to leap forward under his feet, bounding away like a wild animal set free from a leash.

  The Vengeance, which had been abeam of them, was suddenly astern. She turned hard, trying to keep on her collision course, but the pirates were gathered in the bow, ready to board, not standing to the braces, and the sails that were set for a downwind run began to flog and collapse as the bow came up.

  Marlowe could hear the vaporing dying away, could hear a voice, a voice he recognized-heavy, indistinct, the accent thick-calling the hands to trim the sails.

  “Come up, come up!” Marlowe shouted to the helmsmen. They pushed the tiller over and the Prize turned further upwind, her bow pointing upriver in the direction from which they had come. “Good, steady as she goes! Make your head to pass Hog Island!” He did not know where he was going, he knew only that he had to get away from that place, away from that ship.

  “Permission to fire, sir?” Middleton called from the waist.

  Marlowe glanced over at the Vengeance. She was almost abeam of them, and they were passing on opposite tacks. “Yes, yes, fire!”

  The guns went off in a ragged order, and each shot told on the pirate just forty yards abeam. The Vengeance was turning hard, and her yards were swinging as the braces were manned at last, but she had lost a great deal of distance. Now she would be in the Plymouth Prize’s wake and catching the guardship would be no mean feat.

  Marlowe picked up his telescope from the binnacle box and put it to his eye. He felt a wave of terror and fascination all at once, like watching a pack of wolves from what one hopes is a safe distance.

  There were any number of the villains on the Vengeance’s quarterdeck, since a pirate did not observe any of the distinctions of rank found aboard a man-of-war or any other vessel on earth. Some were bare-chested or wore only waistcoats; others were fully dressed in clothes that might have once been fine garments. All were well armed, he could see that, but that was no surprise.

  And then he was there, a head taller then the rest, his great mass filling Marlowe’s lens as he screamed orders forward. LeRois’s face was red and contorted with rage. He was stomping around, slashing at the rail with the sword he held in his hand, gesturing wildly.

  The Frenchman would be as furious about the drogue as Marlowe was about the mock battle. They were pirates both, brigands and villains, and neither of them liked to be played for a fool.

  Marlowe saw LeRois pause in his tirade and look over at the guardship. It seemed as if he was looking right down the tube of Marlowe’s telescope. Then the pirate picked up his own glass, and as their ships drew apart the two men stared at each other across the water.

  Marlowe saw LeRois let his glass fall to his side. He looked frightened and confused, quite in contrast to the LeRois of a few seconds before. The pirate put the glass back up to his eye, and then down again, up and down, three times.

  And then LeRois staggered back and pointed the glass up and up until it seemed to Marlowe that he must be staring straight into the sun. And then, a second later, it seemed as if something inside the pirate exploded.

  He flung the glass over the side of his ship and pulled a pistol from his belt, cocked it, and fired it straight at Marlowe.

  Marlowe jumped in surprise-it was startling, magnified as it was by the glass-but he was quite out of pistol range. LeRois flung the gun down, grabbed another, fired that as well. He was waving his arms, shouting at the men around him, gesturing at the guardship.

  He has seen me, Marlowe thought. He has seen me and recognized me, and now he knows it is not just a king’s ship he is pursuing, it is Malachias Barrett.

  God help me, God help us all, if he runs us down.

  Chapter 29

  THEY RAN north with the wind abeam and the tide beginning to ebb. The Vengeances continued to shoot their bow chasers, though they had no hope of hitting the guardship since the guns did not point forward enough to bear. The pirates just liked to shoot the guns. Marlowe understood that.

  He looked over the taffrail at the big ship in their wake. It was the Wilkenson Brothers. He realized that once he had taken a good look at her, once they had settled into the chase and thus dealt with their more immediate concerns.

  He recalled what Finch had said, about rumors of the merchant ship being taken. The big, powerful merchant ship. Bigger, more powerful even than the Plymouth Prize.

  He recalled what Finch had said about how she would have been safe from the pirate had it not been for him, Marlowe, taking his revenge on the Wilkensons. Well, that was ironic indeed.

  And not only was the Vengeance nee Wilkenson Brothers stronger than the Plymouth Prize, she was faster as well, being a bigger vessel with a longer waterline. This might have been a concern if she was handled better, but as it was her sails were not trimmed quite as perfectly as they might be, nor had her new owners set all the canvas that she would bear.

  Marlowe imagined that this was due in part to an unfamiliarity with the ship-LeRois could not have had her for more than a week or so-as well as the high probability that all aboard her were drunk and too taken with the excitement of the whole thing to bother with the effort needed to coax another knot or two out of her.

  And the Vengeances would realize there was no need to run the Plymouth Prize down. They were heading upriver, bound to run out of deep water sooner or later. Then, easy pickings. That had certainly occurred to Marlowe, and from the expressions he saw around him, he guessed others had thought on it as well. The old Vengeance was also under way, limping upriver after the two combatants. Two ships on one, with twice the men he had. He did not have a clue as to how he would solve that dilemma.

  He was going to lose the Plymouth Prize, one way or another. For his present cowardice, running upriver with his tail between his legs, the go
vernor would take the guardship away from him even if LeRois did not. Or he would try, and Marlowe would refuse to give it up, and then he would become as much a criminal as LeRois, all his hopes of a legitimate life pissed away.

  “Oh, damn them all,” he said out loud. His mind was reeling with the arguments and counterarguments, plans and contingencies. He would just run the damn guardship into the dock at Jamestown and let his men disperse into the countryside, let the governor deal with this problem. If they made it to the dock.

  Hog Island was coming abeam of them now. They would have to sail past that point of land and tack and hope they could point high enough to get around the bend in the river with the wind from the quarter that it was.

  “Fall off, helmsmen, fall off, damn your eyes!” Marlowe suddenly shouted, panic making his throat tight. They were skirting the point too close. He could see the muddy shoals rising up to grab them, see the dirty water swirling around

  where their passing had churned up the bottom. If they went aground, they would be dead.

  The helmsmen pushed the tiller over and the bow of the Plymouth Prize swung away. It was a close thing, and it was Marlowe’s fault. He had not been paying attention. He cursed himself, considered apologizing to the helmsmen for cursing them, remained silent.

  They stood on, with the north shore growing closer by the second. “Hands, stand ready to come about!” Marlowe shouted, and the men ran to their stations and stood there, grim faced, looking aft for further orders. Each man aboard knew what this meant; if they missed stays, which was easy enough to do in the open ocean, let alone a river with tidal currents to contend with, then the Vengeance would be on top of them. The Prizes had figured out what Marlowe already knew: that these pirates would not die as easily as those on Smith Island, that the outcome was likely to be very different indeed.

  “Ready…helms alee!” Marlowe called, and the bow of the guardship began to turn. There was a fine plantation house on the north shore, a big white house with slave quarters down by the water and fields of young tobacco plants. It seemed to sweep past as the guardship turned.

  “Wait for it…wait for it…,” Marlowe muttered to himself, his eyes on the leeches of the square sails. They held fast, immobile, and then in the next instant they began to flutter and break as the wind came down their edge.

  “Mainsail, haul!” Marlowe called, and the main yards were hauled around as the sails on the foremast came aback.

  “Turn, turn, turn, you son of a whore…,” he heard Rakestraw muttering at his side.

  And the Plymouth Prize was turning, swinging through the wind with her foresails pressed against the mast. And then they were through and Marlowe called “Let go and haul!” and the foreyards swung around and the guardship settled on the new tack, on the other side of the point. He could feel the tension ease fore and aft, as if the ship itself had been holding her breath.

  He turned to look aft, to see if the poorly handled pirate would be able to accomplish that evolution, or if the chase would end there.

  He stared at the black ship. There was something amiss, but he could not grasp it.

  And then he smiled, and then he laughed out loud and said, “Thank you, Lord! Dear God, thank you!”-for the Vengeance was hard aground.

  LeRois knew that the drogue was there half a second before it was cut away. He was standing on the new Vengeance’s quarterdeck, watching with delight and profound satisfaction as his trap closed around the very son of a bitch who had fooled him before, when it occurred to him that something was not quite right.

  The breeze was good and the guardship had everything set to topgallants, and yet she seemed to be plodding along, sluggish and dull, though she looked as if she should be quick and handy.

  He brought his telescope to his eye and examined the after section of the ship, taking care not to look at the quarterdeck for fear that the vision of Barrett would appear again.

  At first he saw nothing. And then, from the window of the great cabin, he noticed the light hawse running down at a sharp angle and disappearing into the water. It had to be a drogue. He had used it himself, many times.

  “Merde alors! Come up!” he shouted to Darnall. “The son of bitch-”

  He got no farther than that. The line whipped out of the great cabin window, cut from inside, and suddenly the plodding ship that was right under their bows surged ahead, leaving the Vengeance pointing at open water.

  “Merde! Son of bitch! Come up, come up!” LeRois shouted again, but now the helmsman was already pushing the tiller over, trying to keep the bow pointed at the guardship’s vulnerable waist.

  The vaporing began to die away, and in its place came the sound of flogging canvas.

  “Allez haut le bras! Allez haut le bras, vite, vite!” he screamed, then screamed it again, and then realized that he was speaking French, could not recall the English words. “Goddamn…go to the fucking braces, now!” it came to him, and the Vengeances raced aft, threw the braces off the pins, hauled around to match the sails to the wind.

  LeRois looked outboard. The guardship was alongside, heading upriver as the Vengeance was heading down. The Vengeance was turning in her wake, turning under a hail of gunfire, but the scream of the shot bothered LeRois no more than a swarm of mosquitos. It was a minor annoyance compared to the drogue, compared to the fact that his perfect trap had become a stern chase.

  His sword was in his hand, he realized, and as he was shouting orders he was hacking at the rail as if it were the skull of the son of a bitch who was in command of the guardship.

  He had to see him. Damn the ghosts. He had to see the son of a whore who had rigged that drogue, wanted to better picture his bloody death.

  He squinted and peered across the water. The quarterdeck of the king’s ship was not crowded like his own, and it was easy enough to see which of the few there was the master. The bastard had a glass to his eye and was staring at them as the ships passed, watching him, which made LeRois madder still. He sheathed his sword, snatched up his own telescope, trained it on the man he intended to kill.

  The image of Malachias Barrett filling his lens, solid, with none of the ephemeral quality it had formerly possessed. He staggered back, stunned. “Son of bitch…,” he muttered, and put the glass back to his eye, forcing himself to watch, to watch and wait for the image to go. It had to go.

  But it did not. Just like the last time. He put the glass down again and shook his head and then looked once more. It was still there.

  He felt his palms go greasy on the telescope, felt the sickness in the pit of his stomach, the desperate need for a numbing shot of rum or gin. What did this mean? Why would it not go?

  And then from somewhere in the back reaches of his mind, like the first growling of thunder, building and rolling forward, rumbling and shaking the earth, the thought came that perhaps this was not a vision at all.

  Of course. The realization washed over him. Of course. Where else had this son of a bitch learned all these tricks, disguising the ship as a crippled merchantman, the men dressed as women, the drogue? What festering king’s officer could be as clever as that?

  He could no longer see the guardship, he could not see anything. The whole world was bathed in a bright, white light and there was music, and with the music, more subtle, like something happening on the street outside, was a terrible, agonizing screaming.

  “LeRois? LeRois, you all right?” Darnall’s voice was like something from a grave. LeRois looked at him, and suddenly the world was back and the music was gone and in its place there was only the screaming, the endless screaming.

  And Malachias Barrett, watching him through a telescope. Fifty yards away.

  “Ahhhhhhhhh!” LeRois’s shriek started low and built in pitch and volume. He threw his telescope overboard and jerked a pistol from his belt. He fired it at Barrett, flung it aside, pulled another, fired that as well.

  “Catch him, catch him, catch that son of a bitch!” LeRois screamed. He could feel the tears wel
ling up in his eyes. It was Malachias Barrett. He was getting away.

  “I will kill you all, all of you, if you do not catch him!” LeRois shrieked at the men on the quarterdeck.

  Darnall spit a stream of tobacco juice on the deck. “I reckon he ain’t gonna get away if he’s sailing up a fucking river, Captain. Gotta run out of water sometime.”

  LeRois stared at the quartermaster, trying to make sense of the words. River. Water. He would run out of water. He would be trapped.

  LeRois turned and began to pace, trying to think. To do that he had to talk out loud, for there was no room in his head for thoughts, not with the screaming and the voices, and even then he had to talk loudly enough to hear his own voice over the noise.

  Through it all he could hear Darnall issuing orders to the sail trimmers. They were pursuing Barrett as fast as ever they could. If they did not run them down in the next hour, then they certainly would by end of day. The new Vengeance was fast and clean, and they were on a river.

  LeRois shook his head as he paced. It did not seem possible. It did not seem possible. All those years of hating Barrett for what he had done, all those years, and now Barrett was here, and LeRois would have him soon. He could not imagine how he would kill him. He had thought about it for so long that he hardly knew where to begin.

  Big guns were firing. The Vengeances were shooting off the bow chasers. LeRois felt relief at the sight of the smoke, proof that there were indeed real guns firing. He did not want guns going off in his head. That would be too much, too much by half.

  He had no sense for how long they had been pursuing. There was something crawling around under his clothes. Bugs of some kind. He could feel them. He scratched and scratched, but they were still there.

  He had stopped speaking to himself and had begun to listen to what the voices were telling him, and it was extraordinary. Why had he not just listened to the voices before? Why had he fought them for so long?