“Very well,” Marlowe said. “I’ll offer you the same terms I offered Honeyman. I’ll hire you for the fitting out, seaman’s wages, and if you work out, you can stay on for the voyage. Tobacco to London and back with cargo, that’s all I can promise. And I’ll thank you to not say more, regarding any other venture we might try.”
The three men exchanged glances but made no protest. At last they all muttered their agreement.
Honeyman ran his eyes along the deck and up the lower masts. He squinted slightly, but beside that his face showed no expression. “This the crew?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“They sailors?”
“Not yet. But they’ll do a hard day’s work. And they’ll learn. Do you have a problem with that?”
“Not if you don’t.”
“Good. Take these men and report to Mr. Dinwiddie, on the quarterdeck there. With the black coat. He’s first officer. He’ll set you to work.”
Honeyman nodded, and without another word he led the three men across the brow and aft. Five minutes later they were aloft, seeing the main topmast set in place, the standing rigging ganged over the masthead and set up.
For three weeks the Elizabeth Galley’s rig rose higher as masts were stepped, yards crossed, running rigging rove through blocks and belayed at the pin rails. At the same time her hull sank deeper and deeper in the river as stores of water and food came aboard, and after that barrel after barrel of tobacco, all that Marlowe House had harvested that year and much of the harvest of the Marlowes’ three closest neighbors as well.
Marlowe continued his recruitment, picking up another five able-bodied seamen, and saw to the outfitting of the great cabin and the acquisition of those things they would need for navigation.
Bickerstaff took careful inventory of everything that went aboard. Dinwiddie saw to the stowage, and Honeyman, quiet and generally surly, proved at least to be a competent bosun and was left to supervise the setting up of the rig and bending of sail.
Elizabeth kept track of the money and fretted about their funds, which were being spent at a frightening rate on stores and gear and all those things that a ship consumed before she could put to sea.
Marlowe tried to assuage her fears. He did not succeed.
The night before they sailed, the night that Marlowe should have been resting after the unmitigated labor of getting the ship ready for sea in an absurdly short time, he found himself instead pushing a wheelbarrow across the dark lawn of Marlowe House. The wheelbarrow held a shovel and an unlit lantern. He had to wonder at himself.
Old habits died hard, his need for a secret held back. He thought of a trick he had used many times at sea, dragging a sea anchor behind his ship to slow it down, give an enemy or victim a false sense of his own ship’s abilities. Then the sea anchor was cut away, and suddenly his ship could move with an unanticipated speed. This was like that. The little thing held in reserve.
He pushed the wheelbarrow onto a trail in the woods, and when he was lost from sight from Marlowe House, he pulled out his tinder pouch and lit the lantern. In the light of its feeble glow he made his way down the trail to the spot of dirt he had last turned six years before.
It was not easy to find-the weeds and the shoots of young trees had grown up around it and over it-but Marlowe had been careful over the years never to let it become lost completely in the bracken.
He set the lantern down, lifted the shovel, and jammed it into the dark earth. Five minutes of digging, and the spade hit the iron-bound box, hidden under a foot of dirt. He moved the lantern closer and worked the point of the shovel around until the box was fully exposed.
Why have I never told Elizabeth about this? Or Francis?
It was not a matter of trust. He trusted them both, completely, more than he had ever trusted anyone.
Perhaps that was it. He had never trusted anyone, until he had met them. Perhaps he could not get past that.
He breathed deep, readied himself, and then grasped the handle of the box and pulled. He thought at first it must still be caught on something. It would not move. He tried again, and this time it yielded, just a bit, and he realized that it was just heavy as hell, which he knew. Another deep breath, he braced himself and tugged, and the box came up from the dirt. He pulled it over the edge of the hole and rested it on the ground.
He stood up, flexed his back, gulped breath, cursed his creeping age. When he had recovered from the exertion, he knelt beside the box and held the lantern close.
It was wrapped in tar-soaked canvas, which was still intact. He pulled his sheath knife, cut away the canvas, and was pleased to see that the box was not rusted through. It looked pretty much as it had when he buried it in 1701.
He fished the key from his coat pocket and worked it into the lock, which sprang open after a moment’s fiddling. Marlowe took it from the hasp and paused, looked around, listened. There was nothing but the sounds of the woods at night. He swung the lid open, held the lantern up.
The gold inside the box gleamed its lustrous metallic yellow, a great jumble of gold. A few bars, but coins mostly, Spanish escudos in various denominations, doubloons and ducats of Venetian and Spanish mintage. Their origins did not matter. It was all gold.
Marlowe sat for a long moment and looked at it. Here was his financial sea anchor, and he was about to cut it away. He had been tempted often enough to dig this up, during hard times in the past few years. Yet he had always resisted, and the need had passed.
But this was different. He was at the end now. This box was all the wealth he had left, and if he did not rebuild his fortune on this voyage, then he was finished.
He closed the box and locked it, then stood and braced himself. With painful effort he hefted it up onto the wheelbarrow. He grunted through clenched teeth, felt something pop in his arm, knew whatever it was would hurt like the devil in the morning.
But it was done. The gold was on the wheelbarrow, the last of his wealth unearthed and ready to be put to use. He set the lantern and shovel beside the box, took up the handles again, and made his way back down the trail to Marlowe House.
Chapter 3
ROGER PRESS sat back in the velvet wing chair and worked the silver toothpick around with his tongue. He liked the feel of the hard, smooth metal between his lips. The toothpick was almost a part of him now, a constant companion. He gave no thought to it as he worked it into his gums, probing them till they bled. He liked the coppery taste of the blood in his mouth.
In his hand he held a snifter of brandy. He pushed the toothpick to one side, tucked it in his cheek, and sipped the liquor. Magnificent. These rich bastards drank it like water. The brandy mixed with the blood in his mouth, swirled down his throat.
Tall and thin, but not handsomely so, with big hands and feet, joints like doorknobs, his face scarred from a childhood bout of the smallpox, his teeth growing black around the edges and often painful, Captain Roger Press was not a lovely man to look on. And so the other men in that richly appointed drawing room arranged themselves in their seats, busied themselves with some little thing, and avoided his eyes.
In the uncomfortable silence he glanced down at the snifter, the knife-edge rim, the seemingly impossible delicacy of the glass. He could crush it in his hand, make it explode into a thousand glittering fragments. The thin glass probably would not even cut through his cal used palms.
That would surprise them.
“Captain Press…” The older one broke the silence. Sir Edmund Winston. He was the owner of the house in which they sat, a grand edifice that fronted on Pall Mall. It was one of a half dozen he owned, the house he used when he was in London for the season.
Sir Edmund blathered some nonsense about how grateful they were that he could come. Press worked the toothpick in his mouth and ran his eyes over the room. Rich velvet on the walls, portraits of brooding Winstons glaring down at this coarse intruder. A carpet laid over the polished oak floor, the kind that a younger, diffident
