The Guardship

such.

There was also a tolerable amount of gold and silver, as well as an abundance of weapons: swords, pistols, beautiful muskets. There was a most piratical gleam in the eye of many of the Plymouth Prizes as they fingered the goods, Marlowe’s insinuation about their potential rewards having apparently found an attentive audience.

“Mr. Rakestraw,” he called out to the first officer, who was poking through a crate of muskets. He set aside the gun he was holding, a beautiful musket, and with a sheepish look on his face, as if he had been caught in some indiscretion, he came over to the captain.

“Mr. Rakestraw, here is what I would have you do. Divide the gold and silver in half. One half shall be for the governor. Then count up how many of our men are still living and divide the other half of the gold and silver into equal shares. Two shares for the officers. And those that suffered wounds, the ones you believe will recover, are to get two shares as well, so figure that in. Never mind those you reckon are done for. Then we shall draw numbers and each man by number will be allowed to choose a new suit of clothes and a sword and pistol. Officers first.”

“Yes, sir,” Rakestraw said, but he seemed to hesitate. “But, sir, you know that all of this, rightly speaking, sir, is prizes of the Crown. This…ah…what you’re doing here, sir, it ain’t regular.” Rakestraw’s protests were weakened, Marlowe thought, by the fact that he kept glancing over at the gun he had been holding, and seemed near panic when someone else picked it up and examined it.

“You, there,” Marlowe called to the man holding the musket, “bring that over here.”

Grudgingly the man shuffled over and handed him the gun. It was indeed beautiful, not the kind of crude weapon turned out by second-rate gunsmiths in dark and tiny back alley shops, but a custom-made piece with beautiful engravings on the lock plate and an ivory inlay on the bird’s-eye walnut stock. If Rakestraw was to be led into temptation, Marlowe was pleased to see that he would not settle for second best.

He handed the gun to the lieutenant.

“Mr. Rakestraw, you fought well last night, damn well, we should have been bested without you. And you have done a good job of getting the ship in fighting order,” he said, which was no lie. “I wish you to have this gun.”

“Oh, thank you, sir. But, sir…”

“Listen, Lieutenant. Each of the officers and men are entitled to prize money, are they not? We all have a legal claim to a portion of what has been captured. But we both know that it will take a year at least to see any of it, assuming the Lords of Admiralty don’t find some means of cheating us of our share. All I wish to do is see that the men get what is rightfully theirs, without having to wait an age for it. I’m just cutting through red tape, no more.”

“Oh, I see, sir,” said Rakestraw, and he did see, largely because he wanted to. With that fine gun in his hand and the piles of gold and silver ten feet away, he was quite willing to ignore the more dubious parts of Marlowe’s justification, such as the fact that the men were getting far more than they ever would in prize money, and that what the captain was doing would be considered no more than pilfering if it was found out.

But it would not be found out. Both men knew that it would not. The pirates were unlikely to tell, nor was anyone likely to believe them. And Marlowe would see that they were locked down in a dark hold before the division of loot began.

The Plymouth Prizes, who in the next hour would make more money than they had in their entire lives up until that moment, were even less likely to tell. What Marlowe was doing for them was only just, after their ill usage by the navy, and must be kept secret. At least that was how they would see it.

Rakestraw, with his new musket tucked under his arm, hurried off to order the prisoners ferried out to the Plymouth Prize and to oversee the dividing up of the booty.

“Yonder comes the Northumberland,” said Bickerstaff, stepping up beside Marlowe and nodding toward the harbor. The little sloop was standing into the bay under mainsail, jib, and topsail, the canvas white in the morning sun. They stood there for a moment, watching the small ship sail into the harbor on the quartering breeze.

“Excellent,” Marlowe said at last. “Now, I need you to-”

“Marlowe, pray, what is Lieutenant Rakestraw about?”

He turned and looked in the direction that Bickerstaff was looking. Rakestraw had all of the specie and gold and silver plate piled up on a couple of chests, and an impressive pile it was. He was counting it out into numerous small piles and placing them like chess pieces on the second chest.

“Well,” Marlowe said, “he is counting out the specie, you see. Just getting a fair accounting of it for the inventory.”

“Indeed? It looks very much to me as if he was dividing it up like plunder. In order that each man might be called up to receive a share.”

“Oh, well, I had a notion that the men, lacking as they are in the most basic things, might at least get a shift of clothing out of all this, and perhaps decent weapons to aid in future fighting.”

Bickerstaff turned, looked him in the eye. Marlowe wondered why he was unwilling to simply tell Bickerstaff the truth, that he was indeed giving each man a share of the take. Be

cause Bickerstaff would disapprove, deeply disapprove, and he would make it worse by keeping his disapproval to himself. He would think that it smacked of a life that Marlowe had forsworn.

“See here,” Marlowe said, “I know that this is not quite in line with the rules of the admiralty, but look at these poor bastards. They’re in rags, and the navy has done nothing to better their lot. You think if I ask Nicholson for new clothing for these men he’d do anything but laugh? They fought well. The least I can do is give them some reward.”

“They deserve decent clothing, I’ll grant you that-” Bickerstaff said, and Marlowe cut him off before he could continue.

“Exactly. Now I need you to go out to the pirate ship and begin an inventory of what is aboard. See if you can discover her original name, owners, what have you. If there is not aboard as far as records, I suppose she can be considered our prize. Perhaps we shall name her the Plymouth Prize Prize, eh?”

Bickerstaff did not laugh, did not even smile. “Very well, then, I shall be off.” He called out for the boat crew.

It took only an hour to purge from the men the last vestige of despondency that Allair had built up in his four years of command. That was the hour that it took to call each man up and put in his hands a little pile of gold and silver, then to draw numbers and allow each man a choice of weapon and a shift of clothing. Just as Marlowe had done so many, many times before. It made him a bit uneasy for just that reason.

Soon the beach was littered with discarded rags and the men were prancing around in their new garments, sashes tied around waists, pistols and cutlasses thrust in place. They were a happy tribe, a band of brothers ready for more fighting and more booty. And they would not be disappointed.

Marlowe viewed with some satisfaction the scene on the beach. In less than a week he had turned these men around, fought a desperate battle, captured a band of vicious pirates, and in the next hour would greatly increase his own worth. Once word got back to Williamsburg he would be the great

hero of the age, his star rising fast in the firmament of the Virginia aristocracy. He would be a gentleman of note, and Elizabeth Tinling, for one, would be impressed. And he had only just begun.

“Mr. Rakestraw,” he called. The lieutenant picked up his new musket and hurried over. “I fear we are most vulnerable here, spread out over the beach. If another of these pirates were to sail in, we should be undone. I want to get as much of this prize cargo to safety as soon as we can.”

He looked out at the Plymouth Prize, pretending to consider his options. “The Prize will need a jury mainmast before she sails. Here’s what we shall do. Let us load as much as we can aboard the Northumberland, just to get it out of here, and the rest can go on the guardship once she’s ready.”

Then, with Rakestraw in tow, he went through the piles of booty, indicating what among them should be loaded aboard the Northumberland. There were three trunks of ladies’ clothes, and he found among them a gold cross on a tiny gold chain, as thin as a spider’s web. The cross itself had a diamond in the center, and a delicate swirling pattern was etched in the gold, so fine that one might miss it. It was a beautiful piece, and he tucked it in his coat pocket. “Put these trunks of ladies’ things aboard the Plymouth Prize,” he instructed, “and the rest of this aboard the sloop.”

It was only natural, of course, that the most valuable things should be sent off first, and it was those things