“You best get in here before someone hangs you for a thief.” Lucy stepped aside, and James silently hoisted himself through the window. She shut it and turned to him, and he put his hands around her small waist, drew her close, and kissed her.
Lucy put her hands against his chest, so tiny against his bulk, and kissed back, demurely at first and then with a growing passion. She ran her hands over his neck and his hair, and he relished the feel of her thin, strong body, her smooth and perfect skin under the cotton shift.
“Oh, James,” she said softly, then put her hands against his chest and pushed away, just slightly, so that James was still able to hold her in his arms. “Tell me that you love me, James. You ain’t too proud to say that, are you?”
James looked into her dark eyes, childlike and sincere. Not so long ago he would have been too proud. Not so long ago he would not have been able to love her, or anyone. But a great deal had changed.
“I do love you.”
“Will you marry me, if my mistress gives permission?”
James felt a shot of anger go through him at the thought that Lucy would need permission of her mistress, her owner, before she could marry, as if she were some kind of livestock for breeding. And what would marriage mean to them? Would they be able to live together, to sleep together as man and wife?
“James, I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “Don’t be angry with me. I just…I want to be your wife.”
James pulled her tight and held her against his chest. “That ain’t it. Of course I’ll marry you. I’d be proud to marry you,” he said. And he meant it, absolutely.
“You think I’m just a silly girl, I know it. But you’d be surprised if you knew all there was to know about me, the things I thought up and done.”
Lucy turned her face up to him and kissed him again, even more passionately this time, and he kissed her back with a desperate longing, kissed her mouth and her cheeks and neck.
He scooped her up in his arms-she seemed to weigh nothing at all-and carried her over to the small bed in the corner. He laid her down on the hard mattress and then lay down with her, his feet jutting out over the end. She fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, and he ran his hand along her thigh, underneath the insubstantial cloth for her shift.
They made love quietly, passionately, trying to contain themselves enough that they did not disturb the entire household. It felt to James like the final letting go of all of his hatred, the expulsion of all of his rage, and the embracing of a new life, a life in which he could be his own master. A life where he could again know dignity, love.
Their whispered talk had died away, and they had lain in each other’s arms for the better part of an hour when Lucy rolled over and poked James in the chest with her finger. “You
best get out of here, mister. My mistress finds you here and there’ll be the devil of a time.”
“If you insist,” James said, reluctantly letting go of her and standing up. He glanced out of the window as he fumbled for his clothes. It was somewhere around three in the morning, black and silent in the city.
He dressed slowly, quietly, then picked up his haversack. Lucy was sitting up in bed, holding the sheet in front of her, smiling in a shy, modest way. James stepped over to her and gave her one last kiss. “I do love you, Lucy. Soon as Marlowe gets back I’ll come back here, see you again.”
“Next time you best have some ideas of marriage, mister,” she said. “Like a date, I mean.”
“Next time.” James smiled, and then he swung the window open and dropped to the ground outside. He crouched as he hit the lawn and remained in that position, tensed, listening to the night. There was a rustling somewhere, a movement, but it could have been anything, the wind or an animal. He stayed put for a minute more, but there was no other sound, at least none that seemed out of place.
He straightened and moved across the grass. He was careful with each footfall. His steps made no sound. He crossed the lawn, invisible in the shadows, moved down the narrow space between the fence and the small stable. A familiar mix of smells mingled in the air: horses and hay and manure and the slightest hint of leather tack.
James moved down the side of the building and paused before stepping from the shadows onto the road. There was no sound, so he took a cautious step out.
And then there was another scent, not animal but human, unmistakable to one who had spent so much time in close-packed confinement. James whirled around, and his hand moved for his pistol, and as he did he heard the sound of a flintlock snapping into place.
He stopped, like an ebony statue. Not ten feet away, hidden from the lawn by the stable, stood two men. Both had
muskets, and both muskets were pointed at James’s chest. They were both sworn deputies of Sheriff Witsen.
Finally one of the deputies broke the silence. “What the hell you doing, boy,” he asked, “sneaking around here in the dark?”
“Damn my eyes, that ain’t a gun in your belt, is it?” the second one added.
For three days the
There was little medicine aboard, save for rum, but at least there was plenty of that, and it was doled out unsparingly to wounded and healthy alike. Those with wounds of their arms and legs that were beyond bandaging were made insensible with drink and then held in place while the carpenter removed the damaged limb with the same tools he used to fix the smashed bulwark. The severed limb was tossed overboard, and in a majority of cases, the rest of the man followed a few days later.
By the fourth day all of those who were sure to die had done so and those likely to live were on their way to recovery. Nearly thirty men were dead or wounded, a quarter of the
LeRois stood on the quarterdeck watching William Darnall moving around the deck, rounding up the men and sending them aft. It was time to decide what they would do, and that included deciding if LeRois would remain in command. All of the popularity he had gained from all of the wealth his arrangement with Ripley had brought aboard had been nearly negated by the disastrous attack on the tobacco fleet.
The Frenchman ran a sweating palm over the walnut butt of his pistol, thrust in his red sash. He took a long drink from his rum bottle. If anyone presented a serious challenge to his command he would shoot them down, and if the others fell
on him and killed him for doing so, then such was his fate. He would rather die on the
“All right, all right, listen here,” Darnall called, and the many conversations fell off and everyone looked aft at the quartermaster and at LeRois. LeRois had decided to remain on the quarterdeck as if he were still in command, rather than join the others on the waist, and he could see the disapproving looks shot aft at him.
“I reckon there’s been some high talk about this fight, and what we’re about,” Darnall continued, “and I reckon we’re set to rights enough to get under way, so we had best decide where we’re heading.”
“We are heading back to the Capes,” LeRois announced with what he hoped was finality.
“We ain’t taking orders from you, you crazy old man,” the boatswain shouted. His face was twisted in anger. He had lost three fingers off his left hand in the fight.
“That is not for you to say.”
“Bloody son of a whore, you took us right into a trap!”
LeRois half turned and spit on the deck. “Bah, trap! You did not know it was a trap,
“He ain’t fit to be captain, fucking lunatic! He ain’t fit, I say!”
LeRois pulled his sword from the scabbard, slowly, eyes locked on the boatswain, and when he spoke his voice was even and terribly sane. “You do not say that to me, eh? You vote on captain, but you do not call me those things. Do you want to fight me now?”
That stopped the boatswain with his mouth hanging open, as LeRois figured it would. LeRois might have been old, and he might have been insane, but he was still the most dangerous man aboard, a skilled fighter, absolutely without mercy and absolutely without fear. That was a fact that no one questioned. He had been bested only once in his life, and that was by Malachias Barrett, and if he ever crossed paths with him he would kill him too.
