edge of the settee. The old man with the gun sat as well, facing him from across the room, the round eye of the musket staring at him.
The next hour and a half was the worst in all of George Wilkenson’s thirty-seven years. He sat unmoving, red- faced, as a servant, a
It was utterly humiliating, and all the while his stomach churned with dread, waiting, knowing that any minute Marlowe would walk through the door, led by some other servant, who would point and say, “There he is, Mr. Marlowe,” and Marlowe would start and say “Wilkenson, what the devil? This is mighty irregular.”
He clamped his teeth together and took comfort in the one thought that could provide him with comfort-the thought of what he would do to Marlowe, and what he would do to that bitch.
Sheriff Witsen came at last, breathing hard, his round face red and lathered in sweat, his stockings falling down. He had clearly dressed in a hurry. If he had not, then Wilkenson would have crushed him like a bug.
“Mr. Wilkenson, what have they done?” he huffed.
“Nothing. It was all a mistake,” Wilkenson said, and said nothing more. With the sheriff there, the servants could hold him no longer. He did not meet Witsen’s eyes, or the black men’s, as he stormed out of the house, more frightened than ever that Marlowe would make an appearance.
George Wilkenson had never been more humiliated in his life. Not while being flogged as a boy by his father and his tutor, not after puking at his brother’s death and shrinking from Marlowe’s threats, not from Jacob Wilkenson’s insinuations of his inadequacy. Never. Had never understood the concept of blind rage. Until now.
And he swore that Marlowe would pay for that humiliation. He would pay. Not just for what he himself had done. For what they all had done.
Elizabeth Tinling stood behind the big oak, unquestionably hiding, and watched George Wilkenson and Sheriff Witsen, illuminated by the lights from the house, as they stepped across the porch and down onto the lawn. Wilkenson was practically running. The sheriff, one of Wilkenson’s foremost lickspittles, was racing to catch up with him, though Wilkenson seemed to be ignoring him.
She put her hand over her mouth. She could not let herself laugh out loud. Her note telling Wilkenson not to come, which he would find upon returning to his home, along with her protests that she had not gone to Marlowe’s that night, would create enough doubt in his mind that she might not get the full brunt of his wrath. But if he discovered her hiding behind the tree, she would be undone.
She shook her head as she watched him swing himself up in his saddle and thunder blindly past. She wondered what perverse aspect of her personality drove her to play such tricks, even when she knew that she would pay for them later.
But it was more than that, and she knew it. It was war now, war between Marlowe and the Wilkensons, and she could not hope to be a neutral party. She had to choose sides, and she had chosen the side that she thought was the stronger. The decision had not been arrived at lightly.
She had immediately dismissed any hope of Wilkenson tearing up the note of hand. He would never do that, not when he realized the power he wielded over her as long as he held it.
Nor would he call in the note. Ruining her would do him no good. No, he would hold her in limbo, as he did with all
his debtors. Make use of her. Demand her help in tricking some poor bastard one night. Demand a quick fuck the next.
But Marlowe was also a force to be considered. He had already killed one of the Wilkensons. He commanded the guardship, had the governor’s ear, and the governor probably would not care to see his choice of captains hanged. If she bore false witness against him, and he was not hanged, then she would suffer his vengeance.
But it was more than just that. She had chosen Marlowe for more than mere pragmatic reasons. Marlowe seemed a decent man, and what Wilkenson proposed to do to him was despicable, and Elizabeth Tinling was sick of doing despicable things. She had chosen to side with Marlowe because she liked him, and that actually surprised her.
She hoped that she had chosen well.
Chapter 12
IN THE end Marlowe did not flog to death the man who had fired the first shot. It was not that he did not want to, he simply could not discover who he was. It seemed none of the dozen men standing shoulder to shoulder noticed him, or at least they would not give him up. In any event, Marlowe probably would have let him off with no more than two or three dozen lashes, just as a lesson and an example of his charitable nature.
They spent a nervous night on Smith Island, or at least the men of the
Bickerstaff, Middleton, and his men went out to the pirate ship and took possession of the five rogues aboard her, who, having witnessed the capture of their fellows and having no boats or any means of escape, had become insensibly drunk. They were rounded up, lowered into a boat by way of a gantline, and taken ashore to join their captured brethren.
All the hands stood guard all night. This was not by Marlowe’s orders, but simply because the men were too agitated by the fight and too wary of the pirate captives to think of sleep. Marlowe, Rakestraw, and Middleton stood watch with them by turns, just to make certain nothing went amiss.
“It was a good fight, was it not?” Marlowe said to Bickerstaff as he rose to take his watch. Bickerstaff had been sitting up all that time, away from the men, in contemplative silence. The fire was burning down, and the circle of light had retreated to just a few fathoms out from the red glowing logs. Bickerstaff’s face seemed to glow, light and shadow dancing across it as the fire flared and subsided. Marlowe could see his weariness and his satisfaction.
“It was a good fight, Tom,” he said. “You were born to this kind of command. This honest command. I know of no other that could have made these men stand and fight.”
“I am grateful to you for saying so, sir,” Marlowe said, and he meant it, because he knew that Bickerstaff did. Idle flattery had never polluted Bickerstaff’s lips. “Nonetheless, it was no Agincourt. Had you not shown up when you did, I think we must have been routed by the rogues.”
“But you held your ground. Or your surf, as the case might be.”
They stood there for a few moments in silence, staring into the fire. Enjoying their comradeship. They had been together for six years, six years as friends, shipmates, pupil and tutor. They had seen a great deal together, but they were still, after all of it, very different men.
“Well, good night, Francis,” Marlowe said at last.
“Good night, Tom.” He smiled and ambled off into the dark.
The sight that greeted them in the morning was grotesque, the hellish aftermath of a battle. The bodies of two dozen men at least, Prizes and pirates, lay on the beach or floating in the shallow water. They were black with dried blood, and bloated so their clothing seemed ill-fitting. A swarm of birds clambered over them, tearing at their flesh.
Those corpses in the water seemed as if they were making some halfhearted effort to shoo the scavengers away, their arms waving slightly as the small surf rocked them back and forth. There were dozens of crabs. It was a ghastly sight, and one or two of the Prizes had to race into the dune grass to be sick.
But the rest seemed quite unmoved by the sight, at least after they began to poke around the great piles of booty that had been deposited on the beach. Much of it consisted of manufactured goods taken from English merchantmen: crockery, plate, silks, linen, barrel hoops, great piles of clothing. It was an unusually rich haul.
The pirates had had a successful cruise, were no doubt ready to sell their prodigious capture. In Charleston and Savannah there were plenty of merchants, strangled as they were by the government’s policy toward importation, that were eager to purchase such things. They would not ask embarrassing questions about bills of lading and
