The Guardship botc-1

by James L. Nelson

  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 mad
e 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.

  She glanced up briefly at the window, but from the brightly lit room she could see nothing but darkness through the glass. But she knew that he would be there.

  He might trust her. He might think that she would not dare betray him, after his threats and his promises, but he would not take her word alone. He would need more proof than her assurance before he burst into Marlowe’s house. He would want to see for himself that she was there and Marlowe was there. He would be watching. George Wilkenson liked to watch.

  He stood half concealed behind the big oak that grew in the Tinlings’ yard. Marlowe’s yard, he thought, and the realization that the big house now belonged to that bastard Marlowe, and not his friend Joseph Tinling, was enough to spark his anger again.

  George felt his horse tug nervously on the reins and said some soothing words. He was not hiding, he told himself. Hiding would have been too nefarious, too sneaky. He was just standing by the tree, sort of behind the tree, and looking at the dark house. He did not know who he was trying to fool with his feigned disinterest. There was no one around, and if there had been he would not have taken that place by the oak.

  It was all but dark now. Wilkenson guessed that it was somewhere close to eight-thirty, and still the house was dark.
He felt a growing concern.

  It was not possible that the bitch had betrayed him. He could ruin her. By that time tomorrow he could see her disgraced and homeless. She could not be so stupid as to think that Marlowe could protect her from his wrath. No one in Virginia could protect her from the Wilkensons’ wrath.

  And then he saw the flame of a candle move in the sitting room. A lamp was lit. Wilkenson could see a servant going around and lighting the others. So he is home, he thought. She had better be there with him.

  At last the sitting room was brightly lit, and though he was over two hundred feet away Wilkenson could make out the

  book-lined walls, the paintings, the furniture, just as it was when Joseph had been alive. For all his wealth, Marlowe did not seem to have much in the way of personal possessions.

  Then Elizabeth was there, partially hidden by the curtain, her blond hair lit from behind by the lanterns. She was too far for him to see the details of her face, but he was certain it was she. Who else could it be? She looked out of the window and then turned; he had only a fleeting glance at her face, but it was enough. He smiled. Felt his former fears and doubts dissipate. He rested his hand on the butt of his pistol.

  She crossed the room, and in her place stood Marlowe. Wilkenson recognized the red silk coat, the same as he had worn to the Governor’s Ball, and the long white wig with its tight ringlets. He stood with his back to the window, apparently engaged in conversation.

  He watched them for some time, he did not know how long, and then Marlowe stepped from his view and Elizabeth followed. He pulled his watch from his pocket and squinted at the face. The light from the moon and the few stars was enough for him to read the time. Five minutes to nine. He replaced the watch, pulled his pistol from his belt, and checked the priming. Time to go.

  He led his horse up to the front of the house, tied it to a hitching post. Felt his palm sweating under the wooden grip of the pistol. It occurred to him that it might look suspicious, having the gun already drawn, but he could not bring himself to tuck it away. I won’t go in until I hear a scream, and that will be reason enough to have a gun out, he thought.