The Guardship

even if LeRois did not. Or he would try, and Marlowe would refuse to give it up, and then he would become as much a criminal as LeRois, all his hopes of a legitimate life pissed away.

“Oh, damn them all,” he said out loud. His mind was reeling with the arguments and counterarguments, plans and contingencies. He would just run the damn guardship into the dock at Jamestown and let his men disperse into the countryside, let the governor deal with this problem. If they made it to the dock.

Hog Island was coming abeam of them now. They would have to sail past that point of land and tack and hope they could point high enough to get around the bend in the river with the wind from the quarter that it was.

“Fall off, helmsmen, fall off, damn your eyes!” Marlowe suddenly shouted, panic making his throat tight. They were skirting the point too close. He could see the muddy shoals rising up to grab them, see the dirty water swirling around

where their passing had churned up the bottom. If they went aground, they would be dead.

The helmsmen pushed the tiller over and the bow of the Plymouth Prize swung away. It was a close thing, and it was Marlowe’s fault. He had not been paying attention. He cursed himself, considered apologizing to the helmsmen for cursing them, remained silent.

They stood on, with the north shore growing closer by the second. “Hands, stand ready to come about!” Marlowe shouted, and the men ran to their stations and stood there, grim faced, looking aft for further orders. Each man aboard knew what this meant; if they missed stays, which was easy enough to do in the open ocean, let alone a river with tidal currents to contend with, then the Vengeance would be on top of them. The Prizes had figured out what Marlowe already knew: that these pirates would not die as easily as those on Smith Island, that the outcome was likely to be very different indeed.

“Ready…helms alee!” Marlowe called, and the bow of the guardship began to turn. There was a fine plantation house on the north shore, a big white house with slave quarters down by the water and fields of young tobacco plants. It seemed to sweep past as the guardship turned.

“Wait for it…wait for it…,” Marlowe muttered to himself, his eyes on the leeches of the square sails. They held fast, immobile, and then in the next instant they began to flutter and break as the wind came down their edge.

“Mainsail, haul!” Marlowe called, and the main yards were hauled around as the sails on the foremast came aback.

“Turn, turn, turn, you son of a whore…,” he heard Rakestraw muttering at his side.

And the Plymouth Prize was turning, swinging through the wind with her foresails pressed against the mast. And then they were through and Marlowe called “Let go and haul!” and the foreyards swung around and the guardship settled on the new tack, on the other side of the point. He could feel the tension ease fore and aft, as if the ship itself had been holding her breath.

He turned to look aft, to see if the poorly handled pirate would be able to accomplish that evolution, or if the chase would end there.

He stared at the black ship. There was something amiss, but he could not grasp it.

And then he smiled, and then he laughed out loud and said, “Thank you, Lord! Dear God, thank you!”-for the Vengeance was hard aground.

LeRois knew that the drogue was there half a second before it was cut away. He was standing on the new Vengeance’s quarterdeck, watching with delight and profound satisfaction as his trap closed around the very son of a bitch who had fooled him before, when it occurred to him that something was not quite right.

The breeze was good and the guardship had everything set to topgallants, and yet she seemed to be plodding along, sluggish and dull, though she looked as if she should be quick and handy.

He brought his telescope to his eye and examined the after section of the ship, taking care not to look at the quarterdeck for fear that the vision of Barrett would appear again.

At first he saw nothing. And then, from the window of the great cabin, he noticed the light hawse running down at a sharp angle and disappearing into the water. It had to be a drogue. He had used it himself, many times.

“Merde alors! Come up!” he shouted to Darnall. “The son of bitch-”

He got no farther than that. The line whipped out of the great cabin window, cut from inside, and suddenly the plodding ship that was right under their bows surged ahead, leaving the Vengeance pointing at open water.

“Merde! Son of bitch! Come up, come up!” LeRois shouted again, but now the helmsman was already pushing the tiller over, trying to keep the bow pointed at the guardship’s vulnerable waist.

The vaporing began to die away, and in its place came the sound of flogging canvas.

“Allez haut le bras! Allez haut le bras, vite, vite!” he screamed, then screamed it again, and then realized that he was speaking French, could not recall the English words. “Goddamn…go to the fucking braces, now!” it came to him, and the Vengeances raced aft, threw the braces off the pins, hauled around to match the sails to the wind.

LeRois looked outboard. The guardship was alongside, heading upriver as the Vengeance was heading down. The Vengeance was turning in her wake, turning under a hail of gunfire, but the scream of the shot bothered LeRois no more than a swarm of mosquitos. It was a minor annoyance compared to the drogue, compared to the fact that his perfect trap had become a stern chase.

His sword was in his hand, he realized, and as he was shouting orders he was hacking at the rail as if it were the skull of the son of a bitch who was in command of the guardship.

He had to see him. Damn the ghosts. He had to see the son of a whore who had rigged that drogue, wanted to better picture his bloody death.

He squinted and peered across the water. The quarterdeck of the king’s ship was not crowded like his own, and it was easy enough to see which of the few there was the master. The bastard had a glass to his eye and was staring at them as the ships passed, watching him, which made LeRois madder still. He sheathed his sword, snatched up his own telescope, trained it on the man he intended to kill.

The image of Malachias Barrett filling his lens, solid, with none of the ephemeral quality it had formerly possessed. He staggered back, stunned. “Son of bitch…,” he muttered, and put the glass back to his eye, forcing himself to watch, to watch and wait for the image to go. It had to go.

But it did not. Just like the last time. He put the glass down again and shook his head and then looked once more. It was still there.

He felt his palms go greasy on the telescope, felt the sickness in the pit of his stomach, the desperate need for a numbing shot of rum or gin. What did this mean? Why would it not go?

And then from somewhere in the back reaches of his mind, like the first growling of thunder, building and rolling forward, rumbling and shaking the earth, the thought came that perhaps this was not a vision at all.

Of course. The realization washed over him. Of course. Where else had this son of a bitch learned all these tricks, disguising the ship as a crippled merchantman, the men dressed as women, the drogue? What festering king’s officer could be as clever as that?

He could no longer see the guardship, he could not see anything. The whole world was bathed in a bright, white light and there was music, and with the music, more subtle, like something happening on the street outside, was a terrible, agonizing screaming.

“LeRois? LeRois, you all right?” Darnall’s voice was like something from a grave. LeRois looked at him, and suddenly the world was back and the music was gone and in its place there was only the screaming, the endless screaming.

And Malachias Barrett, watching him through a telescope. Fifty yards away.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!” LeRois’s shriek started low and built in pitch and volume. He threw his telescope overboard and jerked a pistol from his belt. He fired it at Barrett, flung it aside, pulled another, fired that as well.

“Catch him, catch him, catch that son of a bitch!” LeRois screamed. He could feel the tears welling up in his eyes. It was Malachias Barrett. He was getting away.

“I will kill you all, all of you, if you do not catch him!” LeRois shrieked at the men on the quarterdeck.

Darnall spit a stream of tobacco juice on the deck. “I reckon he ain’t gonna get away if he’s sailing up a fucking river, Captain. Gotta run out of water sometime.”

LeRois stared at the quartermaster, trying to make sense of the words. River. Water. He would run out of