Henry Nagel ambled up out of the dark. He seemed to have little of the deferential snap he generally displayed.
“Lord Yancy?”
“We bloody need boats, Nagel!” A scream, barely suppressed. Yancy heard the high pitch of his voice, very uncommanding, and made a note to watch that.
“Some of them lads, the ones come from Press’s ship, they say there’s the treasure of the Great Mogul hisself aboard them ships,” Nagel said. It was a mere statement of fact, spoken plainly, but it had the weight of accusation.
“Yes, there is. Which is why we need bloody boats!”
“Some of the lads was wondering, how come we didn’t know that?”
Yancy frowned, took a step closer to Nagel, until he could make out the man’s face in the dark and hoped Nagel could make out his. “Don’t you question me, you son of a bitch! I tell you things when I am ready, do you hear?”
Oh, bloody hell! Yancy thought. He had just learned of the treasure himself. In the rush of going after Marlowe, Yancy had simply forgotten to tell Nagel about it, and now Nagel and the others thought he was betraying them.
That could not be happening.
He might, at some point, betray them all, but it was not possible that they should accuse him of doing so when he genuinely was not.
Nagel was quiet for a long moment. “There’s the canoe, there,” he said at last, nodding toward a small, leaky, half-rotten dugout tied to the dock. Then almost grudgingly added, “And there’s them two big boats, with the swivel guns in the bows, tied up, up harbor.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Yancy said. Two big ship’s launches, he kept them armed and concealed in the event he wished to make a boat attack on a vessel in- or outbound. They were ideal.
“Get some hands…” Yancy began, then stopped. Send Nagel off alone to man the boats, give him the chance to capture and make off with the treasure? No, that would not do, not now. Go himself? It would take forty minutes at least to reach the boats, another twenty to pull back to the dock. Leave Nagel behind? Press?
Damn it, I must keep a weather eye on every one of these disloyal, motherless bastards!
“All of you, with me! To the boats!” Yancy led the way back down the dock, back to the road that paralleled the harbor. At least Press did not know the way. He would not be able to push ahead this time.
Johnson of the anchor watch had been held at gunpoint for some time, near an hour, and in Marlowe’s extensive experience with such things, he knew that the threat of being shot would not keep the man’s fear up for that long. But he still needed Johnson’s help.
Marlowe climbed back up on the main deck, found Johnson sitting on the hatch, hands locked behind his neck. Burgess crouched before him, gun pointed at his chest.
“Johnson, how are you?” Marlowe asked.
“Been better,” Johnson growled. The fear was gone.
Marlowe crouched beside him. “Johnson, do you see these?” He held up three gold doubloons that Billy Bird had retrieved from a secret stash in his great cabin, saw Johnson’s eyes get a little wider. “I’ll wager this is more than that bastard Press would pay you for the whole voyage. Do you like working for Press, Johnson? Or do you think it might be time to change sides?”
Ten minutes later, the newest loyal member of Marlowe’s crew called across the water, “Hoa, Queen’s Venture, ahoy! Mr. Brownlaw?”
“Johnson?”
“Aye, sir! All’s well, got them bastards all battened down, sir! Thought I’d send your men back and come across myself, to report, like!”
“Very well. Do so,” came the reply from the dark.
Johnson turned inboard. “Right, you men, in the boat!”
On that command, twenty-five of Marlowe’s and Billy Bird’s men clambered down the side and into the boat, taking the places once occupied by the twenty-five men whom Brownlaw had sent across and who were at that moment locked up in a lightless place in the Revenge’s hold.
The men made as much noise as they could reasonably make as they climbed down, drowning out the sounds of the other four boats, hidden from Brownlaw’s view on the far side of the Bloody Revenge. Those boats, commanded by Honeyman, Flanders, Burgess, and Hesiod, were at that moment shoving off and pulling for the Elizabeth Galley, which they intended to board, take, and then cross over to the Queen’s Venture.
Johnson went down in the boat, and last came Thomas and Elizabeth, who had exchanged her skirts for slop trousers and her straw hat for tarpaulin. They sat on the farthest thwart aft, the aftermost rowing station, facing Johnson in the stern sheets.
Marlowe lifted up his oar, held it straight up. “Take up your oar, dear. Hold it like this,” Marlowe said to his wife softly. Elizabeth grabbed the oar that lay across the thwarts and with some difficulty lifted it so that like the others she was holding it straight up and down. With the wide-brimmed hat she wore, Marlowe did not think Elizabeth would be seen for what she was, not in the dark.
Dark. Marlowe glanced up. It was night still, but only just. He thought he could detect a general easing of the blackness, the first hints of light. It would be gray dawn in an hour.
Thomas Marlowe was well armed-the sword he had taken from the guard, a short sword, two braces of pistols-but he did not hold a gun on Johnson. Johnson was on his side now, and there was a tacit understanding that in case of betrayal he was the first to die.
Marlowe nodded to the man, and Johnson called, “Shove off! Ship oars! Give way!” and the bowman pushed the bow off. Elizabeth lowered her oar, slowly, until the weight became too much, and then she dropped it with a thump between the tholes. She cocked her head toward Marlowe and watched him and imitated his movements. Lean forward, blade down, pull and lean back, blade up, forward, down. She looked by no means as if she were an old hand with an oar, but she did well enough that she would not stand out.
They pulled slow for the Queen’s Venture to make it easier for Elizabeth to keep the rhythm and to give the others more time to pull around the far side of the rafted ships.
The Queen’s Venture appeared at last on the edge of Marlowe’s vision, facing aft as he was. They made for the boarding steps, and Johnson called, “Toss oars!” and all the oars came up at once, save for Elizabeth’s, as the order had taken her quite by surprise. But she managed to get the oar aloft before it caught on the side of the ship, and there was no comment made.
The boat glided against the Venture’s side, and Johnson climbed up the side and disappeared from Marlowe’s view. Marlowe had given him careful instructions to make his report to Brownlaw there on the gangway, within earshot. “The minute I can’t hear what you are saying, we board,” he said, the threat there, the placement of the first bullet.
But Johnson had the fidelity of a true Roundsman, loyal to whoever could do him the most good, and from the boat Marlowe could hear him clearly. “Mr. Brownlaw, sir! Lord, I had thought to never be speaking to you again! Those prisoners, I finally smoked it, knew of a secret way out of the hold. A passage through the forward bulkhead, sir. They bided their time, till they knew all but the anchor watch was asleep…”
Johnson talked loud and fast, a man excited by the events of the night, not letting Brownlaw get a word in, not letting him ask why the others did not come aboard, not letting him hear the sounds of the other boats.
But Brownlaw was not the only man awake. From across the deck, from the Elizabeth Galley, a shout of surprise, someone yelled, “Hey, there!” and another “Boarders!” and a gun went off and another, and Marlowe was on his feet.
“Now, men, away! Away!” he shouted, then grabbed on to the boarding cleats, scrambled up the side, and burst through the gangway.
Johnson, unarmed, was standing to one side. The fellow that Marlowe guessed was Brownlaw was charging across the deck, waving his sword and shouting, “To me! Queen’s Ventures, to me!”
There were a lot of men on deck-nearly sixty of Press’s horde, Marlowe guessed. But he had as many, and he had surprise.
The men from the boats were swarming over the far side, rushing along the Elizabeth Galley’s gangplanks and meeting her defenders with sword and pistol. The flashes of the muzzles lit up the place like a washed-out painting
