Elizabeth smiled, her stern, businesslike demeanor melting before his words, and suddenly they were connected again, like man and wife, not partners in a merchant firm. Their love and passion for one another, which had not diminished in the least over the years, sparked
between them and moved like a potent spirit.
“I had hoped you might feel that way,” Elizabeth said.
“Indeed, my love, I am much buoyed by this plan. No doubt we can scrape up the funds we need to get the ship to sea, and I am equally sure our neighbors will want to get in on this. Sailors we can find-yes, my beloved, I think this is a fine idea. I shall begin at once to get things moving along…”
His voice trailed off, and his eyes moved unconsciously down to the rolled chart on his desk. In his mind they had already completed Elizabeth’s plan, had the money in hand from the merchants in London, and now they were moving on to the next thing and the next after that.
Marlowe had made the decision even before he stood up from his desk. There was no reason to dally. Suddenly his desire to act was like a physical pressure, pushing from within. It was time to get under way.
Chapter 2
THERE WAS, unfortunately, a considerable distance between making a decision to get under way and actually getting under way, particularly aboard a ship that had not sailed in three years.
First an inspection of the Elizabeth Galley to assess her condition and determine her needs. Marlowe’s mind was working fast now. Round up a crew, of course, that was no easy task. Secure a cargo- Marlowe House would not produce enough tobacco to entirely fill the Elizabeth Galley’s cavernous hold. Might as well make a little extra hauling the neighbors’ weed.
“Oh, damn me,” he said.
“What? Whatever is the problem?” Elizabeth asked, concerned.
“We have committed ourselves to the racing at Joseph Page’s this afternoon.” Marlowe was eager now to move on their plan, and he was not happy to recall this social obligation. He felt like a charging dog brought up short by its leash.
“I’ve wagered ten pounds on that sorrel nag of his.” Like I can bloody well afford that, he thought. Declining to wager would place a greater tax on his appearance of wealth than ten pounds would place on his actual wealth. It was hard to gauge which was the higher price to pay.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, “and I am sure that Francis has quite forgotten as well. I’ll send Caesar for him.”
“No, no. I’ll go fetch him myself.” He smiled. “As lord of the manor, I suppose I should see what the common folk are about.”
“Good, my lord. But don’t be all day about it. We must leave in an hour, no more.”
Marlowe pulled on his coat and grabbed up his hat and stepped out of the library and down the hallway, then out the front door that opened onto the wide porch. The warmth of the sun and the fragrance from the plantation and the woods came on him redoubled, and he stretched and breathed deep before taking the steps down to the front walk and the grassy lawn.
The flowers that Elizabeth so lovingly tended were in full bloom, great bursts of color that lined the house and the walks and spilled out of her gardens. The grass was a rich green. Birds flashed around, twittering, diving, and lighting here and there.
Everything was alive, running over with life, growing, moving. It was so different from the sea, the cold, dead sea that always stretched away in its bleak sameness. The sea moved, to be sure, moved constantly, but it was not the motion of life. It was a random, thoughtless motion that cared not a whit for what effect it had, for whom it helped and whom it killed.
So why did he miss it so?
Marlowe stepped around the side of the house. Fifty feet away, the big tobacco barn yawned open, and spread out in front of it, on the brown patch of earth where the constant traffic had worn away the grass, the big lever arm used for prizing the tobacco, various hogsheads-some full, some waiting for their hands of tobacco-the cooper’s tools. But no field hands, no Bickerstaff.
Marlowe sighed. Bickerstaff was the real lord of the manor, as far as actually overseeing what went on. The field hands no longer even bothered asking Marlowe about agricultural considerations.
Bickerstaff had no doubt been called away on some business and now would have to be hunted down. Marlowe debated getting his horse. He did enjoy riding around his property, marveling at how much of it he owned. But his horse would be off somewhere else, grazing, and Marlowe decided that fetching him would take more time than just finding Bickerstaff on foot.
He continued on past the barn, over the small rise to where he could see the fields beyond. Every year they cleared a patch of forest to make way for that year’s seed beds. The tree line was noticeably farther from the house than it had been when Marlowe bought the place. The former slave quarters, once dilapidated huts but now fixed up, whitewashed, and cozy, had stood huddled at the edge of the woods then, but now they were in open field.
Marlowe paused at the top of the rise and looked around. He loved the plantation, loved his lord of the manor existence.
Back in ’02, when he bought the Elizabeth Galley, he had been restless for the sea. He had been ready for privateering-high adventure with higher returns and low risk. But instead he had spent nearly a year on his unholy mission of hunting down his friend and the former captain of his river sloop, King James, a freed slave who had turned renegade after killing the crew of a slave ship in a fit of rage.
Why did I do that, submit to the governor’s demand that I go after King James? He asked himself that question often enough. The answer: to preserve this. To maintain the life he and Elizabeth had built. To avoid becoming a pariah in a society that held him responsible for what James had done. He, Marlowe, lord of the manor, had freed his slaves. The Tidewater saw that as the seminal event in King James’s crime.
At the far end of the field, past the former slave quarters, Marlowe saw a little knot of men and guessed that one was Bickerstaff, so he headed out for them.
The long voyage to Africa and back had banished from Marlowe’s mind any thoughts of going to sea. For three years he had genuinely enjoyed the life of a country squire.
And then, just that morning, his hands had reached unbidden for the chart of Madagascar, and he found himself staring at it, caressing it with his dividers, remembering the feel of the ship underfoot, a misty morning, stepping on deck with a landfall rising out of the ocean ahead. And then Elizabeth had haltingly laid out her plan, and suddenly Marlowe’s wanderlust was awake again.
At last he came up with the group of men, Francis Bickerstaff and four of the former slaves, now hired hands, of Marlowe House. Hesiod, head man of the field hands, in his mid-twenties, strong and confident, was nodding as Bickerstaff spoke. Over his shoulder a big ax, his huge hand wrapped around the handle. He looked like a pirate.
They were deep in a discussion of the properties of various trees for use as firewood and building material and what stand they might cut next, when Marlowe interrupted them.
“Francis, how goes it here?”
“Very well, Thomas. These fellows wish to make a start of clearing wood and laying in more lumber, and we were discussing what we might cut next. Have you a preference?”
“Whatever you think best, Francis. And the prizing, how goes that?”
“Our yield has been prodigious as ever, as you know, and the fortuitous rain has given us weather moist enough for the prizing.”
“Indeed.” Marlowe did not realize that one needed moist weather to prize tobacco. He tucked that fact away, said, “I have come to remind you of the racing at Page’s this afternoon.”
“Yes, yes. Damned insufferable gatherings.”
“Good, then you will attend? Here, walk with me, and I will tell you of a plan that Elizabeth has concocted.”
The two men retraced Marlowe’s steps to the house, and as they did, Marlowe related his discussion of that
