The Guardship botc-1

by James L. Nelson

  The cloud of smoke rolled away, revealing the unscathed enemy now closer still. The impact of the broadside had slowed the Vengeance’s momentum, but it was building again, sweeping the pirate ship down on her victim.

  LeRois could see them desperately reloading the guns, leaning into the gun tackles, hauling them out. Along the rail more men-there seemed to be hundreds of them-took up the curved wooden handles of the falconets and swiveled them around, finding where the Vengeances had bunched together and blasting them with deadly fire.

  And Barrett was still there.

  “No, no, no! Son of a bastard, no!” LeRois screamed. He felt the hands of despair clasping his throat, choking off his words. He could not be there. He had to go. The vision had to go, to be taken up by the thin air like the times before. He fired on it again, but still it floated in front of him, pale, like a ghost, but moving with that animal intensity that he remembered, could never forget.

  “No!”

  The big guns fired again, from ten yards away, tearing great sections out of the Vengeance’s rails and rigging, killing more of his men, sending them running, leaping off the rails to the protection of the bulwarks. None of them would run below, for anyone who did would be put to death by the pirate tribe,

  but neither would they remain on the rail. Better to die shoulder to shoulder with one’s brethren, and better still not to die at all.

  There was no more than five yards between the two ships. Aboard their enemy, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the men were standing on the rail, screaming, waving cutlasses, ready to board the Vengeance, just as the pirates had been ready to board them a moment before. A grappling hook soared through the air and caught in the shrouds above LeRois’s head. LeRois whipped out his dagger, severed the line.

  “Fall off, fall off!” LeRois screamed at the helmsmen who had been shielded from the gunfire by the men on the rails, and without hesitation the helmsmen spun the wheel and the Vengeance’s bow turned away from their intended victim, turned away from the convoy and turned toward the open sea.

  LeRois looked down into the waist of his ship. He had seen carnage before, lots of it, but he had never seen anything like that. Men lying in clumps, men crawling uselessly across the deck, men holding their guts to prevent them from spilling out. The vaporing, the triumphant shouts of a conquering tribe, had been replaced with the sobbing and whimpering and pathetic moans of wounded and dying men.

  LeRois glanced quickly over his shoulder. The enemy was setting more sail, but it did not matter. The Vengeance had all her canvas already set, and she was a fast ship. She would get away this time. She would be back.

  He shifted his gaze back inboard, quickly, blocking all vision of that death ship from his field of view. He glanced around to see that no one was watching him, then closed his eyes and begged God to never allow the vision of Barrett to appear again.

  “Stern chase, Captain Marlowe? Captain Marlowe?”

  On hearing his name the second time, Marlowe realized he was being addressed. Turned from the sight of the fleeing pirate ship, met the quartermaster’s eye.

  “Huh? Beg your pardon?”

  “I asked, sir, stern chase? Shall we follow?” The quartermaster jerked his chin in the direction of the battered enemy.

  “Oh…” Marlowe looked aloft. The foresail and mainsail were cast off, ready for setting. A gang of men were putting the fore topgallant gear to rights, and another was doing the same to the spritsail topsail. There was no other damage done to the Plymouth Prize beyond that which they had manufactured themselves.

  He glanced again at the pirate. The Plymouth Prize could not overhaul them. Nor could they abandon the convoy and go chasing all over the ocean after the bastard. No, they had their duty. They truly did.

  “Sir, are you quite all right?” the quartermaster asked with genuine concern.

  “Yes, yes, fine, thank you. No, we must rejoin the convoy. Can’t go running off to hell and back after him. I reckon we’ve done for him.”

  “Aye, sir,” the quartermaster said, just the faintest note of disappointment in his voice. They were going to let all the plunder that the pirate might have in her hold sail off beyond their reach.

  But Marlowe knew, as the quartermaster did not, that the greatest reward of all would be if that ship were to sail off and never return.

  “Marlowe, Marlowe, I give you joy again on a great victory!” Bickerstaff fairly leapt up the stairs leading to the quarterdeck, hand outstretched. Marlowe automatically extended his own, and Bickerstaff pumped it with enthusiasm.

  “It all happened just as you predicted, Thomas, I swear, like staging a play! We had one fellow wounded when a gun ran over his foot-the fool could not stand clear of the recoil-and another was unlucky enough to get a pistol ball in the shoulder, but beyond that there was not one casualty, and not the least wounding of the ship. I daresay you did for a good half of that brigand’s company. I should think the ship owners will reward you with some recognition of your meritorious service.”

  Bickerstaff, in the flush of victory, was far more garrulous than was his nature, and Marlowe was relieved to find that he was not being called upon to respond. He seemed to have lost his voice.

  “Did you see that villain, King James, circling around in the Northumberland, quite ready to board over the unengaged side if we-I say, Marlowe, are you unwell?”

  “What? Oh, no, no, I’m fine. I think the great guns have unsteadied me a bit.”

  “Unsteadied you? You look as if you had seen a ghost.”

  Marlowe stared over the rail. The pirate ship was a quarter of a mile away at the end of a long, deep wake, and drawing farther away by the minute. But he could still see that black flag snapping at the ensign staff, the horrible death’s-head with the twin cutlasses, the hourglass. He had not reckoned on seeing that flag again.

  “A ghost?” Marlowe turned to Bickerstaff. “No, Francis, I have not seen a ghost. God help us all, I have seen the very devil himself.”

  Chapter 21

  THEY HAD brought this disaster down upon their own heads. No, not they. Him. Jacob Wilkenson. And his beloved son Matthew. Those two, the unthinking, reactionary Wilkensons, had brought this plague upon their house.

  George Wilkenson found that that realization made him oddly calm, even in the face of what was, for him, the most unthinkable of nightmares: financial ruin, a choice between poverty and tremendous debt.

  How many times in the past had his father brushed him aside, cursing his timidity and showing him how the bold move was the right move? And how many times had his father been right? Every time. Until now.

  Now Marlowe had done to the Wilkensons just what the Wilkensons had set out to do to Marlowe, and both, apparently, were ruined. Like two men who shoot each other in a duel.

  “I have some people scouring Williamsburg and Jamestown, looking for sailors, and I have requested of the governor that he find us some men, as it was his own appointed captain who robbed us, but I despair of it doing us any good,” George said.

  The two men were seated in the library, the same room that a month before Jacob Wilkenson had torn apart in his rage. Now the old man was sitting in a winged chair, half staring out the window and listening to his son. He seemed utterly calm. George found it somewhat frightening.

  “Bah,” Jacob Wilkenson said with a wave of his hand. “It’s of no use. Even if we manage to get the damned ship to London without it being taken by some bloody pirate, the market for tobacco will have fallen out. The whole goddamned fleet will have arrived two weeks before, and we’d be lucky to pay the cost of the shipping.”

  George Wilkenson pressed his fingertips together and made an arch of his fingers. They looked like an old-fashioned helmet to him, like the kind one pictured John Smith wearing. “The tobacco won’t last until the next convoy. Are you saying, then, that we admit defeat? That Marlowe has beaten us? That we have managed to destroy one another?”

  “Marlowe beaten us? Not likely. We hav
e not begun with Marlowe, oh no. We shall crush him. That has not changed.”

  “Perhaps not,” George said sharply. His father seemed not to grasp the gravity of the situation. “But our circumstances most certainly have. The tobacco crop was our year’s income, almost. Without it we are not able to secure what we need for next year’s crop. We are not able to pay the overseer nor the master of the Wilkenson Brothers, nor the masters of the sloops. We have equipment that needs replacing. We shall have to borrow a tremendous amount or sell off land and slaves, but either way it is our ruin. If you paid the slightest attention to the books, you would know that.” There was a perverse pleasure in talking to the old man that way, even though it was George’s ruin as much as his father’s.

  Jacob stood up from the chair and began to pace. “We are not ruined, not by any means.”

  “You have not seen the books-”

  “Sod the damn books! I have more kettles on the fire than are shown in the books. Engaged in a business right now that’ll make us twice what the damned tobacco would yield.”

  “What…business? Why have you not told me about it?”

  “You ain’t got the stomach for it, boy. Matthew set it up, Matthew and me. More in his line. Not the kind of thing for a man who worries about books.”

  George felt his face flush, felt his calm give way to anger. Humiliated, once again. If there was one thing in which he took pride, it was his responsible handling of the Wilkensons’ business affairs. Now here was his father telling him that there was some entire enterprise of which he was not even aware, something more lucrative even than the plantation, as if all the work he did amounted to no more than a side business, some minor amusement. From the grave Matthew had trumped him again.

  George sat in silence as he waited for the flush of the humiliation to pass. At last he said, “You are telling me, then, that there is money enough?”

  “There is money enough, and there’ll be a damn sight more, as well.”

  “Might you tell me where this money is coming from?”

  “No, I will not. It ain’t a business for you.”

  “I take it, then, that it ain’t legal, either?”

  “That’s none of your affair. I’ll tell you how much money we got, and you can look in your damn books and tell me what we need for the plantation, and things’ll work out just fine. We have no concerns now but to do for Marlowe. We can live with the loss of our crop, but I don’t reckon he can. We have to watch close and see if he borrows money, or if he tries to sell the Tinling place.”

  George Wilkenson balled one hand into a fist and softly, rhythmically, punched it into the palm of his other hand. Everything had changed now. The arrogance, the triumph over his father’s failure, gone. Seemed as if the old man had been right again, as if he really had saved the Wilkenson fortune and finished Marlowe all at once.

  “Very good, then,” George said. He stood up quickly. “Let me know how I may be of assistance.” He could not meet his father’s eye. He coughed, glanced up, and then turned and strode out of the room. Could not stand to be there another second.

  They were all swimming in his head-Marlowe, his father, Matthew, Elizabeth Tinling-as he climbed the wide oak staircase, taking the stairs two at a time. He did not know where he was going, what he was doing. He was just moving by instinct. Getting away from the old man, trying to get away from his thoughts.

  At the top of the stairs he stopped and looked down the hallway, flanked on either side by bedroom doors. His room was at the end, and next to it was Matthew’s. He walked down the hall, approaching cautiously-why, he did not know. He grabbed the knob and twisted it and stepped inside.

  The room had not been altered since Matthew’s death, and George doubted that it ever would be. He knew that his father and mother sometimes went in there and sat on Matthew’s bed. Sometimes he could hear sobbing. He wondered if his own death would cause so much grief, if his room would be left as some kind of shrine if he was killed.

  “I wonder,” he said softly, left it at that.

  He stepped farther into the room, brushing his hand over the bedpost, the side table, the small secretary. He sat down in the chair in front of the secretary and began to rummage through the contents of the various pigeonholes in the desk. Notes, letters, a number of ribbons given him by young girls anxious to marry into the Wilkenson fortune.

  He shook his head as he thought of it. What a miserable husband Matthew would have made, how thoughtless and cruel he would have been. Marriage would not have slowed his frenzied copulation with every girl who would lie down for him. And with all of the lovely, lovely girls in the colony who swooned over him, he was interested only in Elizabeth Tinling. He would have been a worse husband even than Joseph, if that was possible.

  He pulled open a drawer and paused, thought about Elizabeth Tinling.

  His hatred for her had not abated, nor had his realization that she was the way to Marlowe’s downfall. His father may have found a way to ruin Marlowe financially, but George

  wanted more. He wanted Marlowe humiliated, scorned, and he wanted the same for the slut who was with him.

  It had all been her fault, right from the beginning. If George could bring her down, then it might make Marlowe do something stupid. At the very least, it would be another knife thrust in his side.

  His calling in the note of hand would be of no use, now that she was so cozy with Marlowe. He could just set her up in another place, and then he would be all the more her hero. She would be indebted to him.

  But Matthew had had something on her, some leverage. George had presumed that it had gone to the grave with him, but it occurred to him that perhaps it had not.

  He sifted through the contents of the drawer, tossing papers to the floor as he dug down, but there was nothing. He shut the drawer and opened the next, and again there was nothing beyond the mundane evidence of his brother’s former life. The third was the same, as were all the pigeonholes and small drawers inside.

  Matthew stood up and pulled the uppermost drawer out and dumped its contents on the floor, searching the drawer itself for anything that might be glued on or hidden. There was nothing, so he threw the drawer aside and pulled out the second, then the third, adding their contents to the pile on the floor, but still he found nothing.

  Though he had only just thought of it, he was now convinced that Matthew had something, some real evidence hidden somewhere in his room. He tipped the secretary over, searching for some hidden place, but there was nothing out of the ordinary.

  He abandoned the desk and its contents in a pile in the middle of the room and turned to the trunk at the foot of the bed. He tipped the trunk over and lifted it enough to dump out the blankets and clothing and old boots stored there into another pile on the floor. He got on hands and knees and rummaged through the pile, throwing sundry things across the floor, but still there was nothing there.

  “Oh, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, where is it?” George said, giving his words the full measure of despair he felt. He tipped the night stand over and emptied its drawer out.

  His eyes moved to the bureau on one wall and the small shelf of books on the other, and he decided on the books. He grabbed the first and flipped through it, but there was nothing concealed within. He grabbed the second and the third and the fourth, and still nothing, and in his anger he swept the remaining books off the shelf, hoping for something hidden behind, but there was only the wall.

  He turned to the bureau and stumbled on the pile of books as he tried to cross the room. He looked down at his feet. There was a black book lying there. A Bible. And three letters half fallen out.

  George leaned over and picked the Bible up, slowly, careful not to let the letters drop. He pulled them out from between the pages, slowly, like precious artifacts, and cast the Bible aside.

  “Oh, Matthew, what have we here?” he whispered. Each letter was addressed to his late brother. He unfolded the top one. His eyes moved to the bottom of the page to see
from whom the letter had come. There in a neat, familiar hand was written “William Tinling, Esq.” Joseph Tinling’s eldest son. Elizabeth’s stepson. Matthew’s particular friend. The return address was London.

  George moved his eyes back to the top of the letter, but he could not read it because his hands were shaking. He stepped over to the bed and sat down. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and read.

  My Dear Matthew,

  It was with great Delight that I read yours of the 23rd and I am pleased that all goes on well in the Colony. We have been much grieved here with the news of my Father’s passing, as I have no doubt all have been there, who knew him. But with him now gone from this Life, I think I must set certain things

  straight, if only so there is no Misapprehension between you and me that would serve to harm our dear friendship. You may have guessed that I speak of Elizabeth, who fancies herself Elizabeth Tinling and my stepmother, though I suffer the greatest horror at the very thought of it…

  George read quickly through the letter, then closed his eyes and forced himself to take several deep breaths and read it again and again and again.

  “Oh, my Lord,” he whispered. “Oh, my Lord, my Lord.” It was no mere letter that he held in his hand. It was the first step toward the ruination of Elizabeth. And when she went down, Marlowe would not be far behind.

  He sat and stared at the pile of books on the floor and thought about his next move, planning out each step, examining each possible cause and effect like a chess player, intent on his game.

  The sun was gone and Matthew’s bedroom was cast in the gloom of the early evening when George finally stood up. He ignored the wreckage that he had created as he crossed the room and stepped out into the hall. He had no time for a dead man’s room. He had a great deal yet to do.

  Chapter 22

  THENORTHUMBERLAND stood in past Cape Henry, beat southwest through Hampton Roads, and reached up the James River with the tide. It was six days after the Plymouth Prize’s fight with the pirate, and somewhere out on the big ocean Marlowe was about to bid the fleet goodbye.