The Guardship

“We get back to the ship. I will burn this son of a bitch maison now and go back to the ship.”

The men stood in silence for a second, and then as if on a signal raced off to destroy and carry off all that they could before the flames drove them away. They would not question LeRois’s decision. He knew that they would not. No one would, who wished to live.

Thomas Marlowe took a long pull from his rum bottle. Stared through the great cabin windows at the yellow, flickering light on the horizon. He could not move. He could not take his eyes from the sight of his colony, his adoptive home, burning in front of him.

He was alone in the great cabin. He was not drunk, despite his best efforts.

He wished the fires would stop. He wished they would just go out and LeRois would leave, but every time he thought that they had, a new fire flared and grew, one after another, following the march of destruction up the banks of the James River.

How many had LeRois killed thus far? There was no way to know. Perhaps no one. Perhaps they had all fled before him. Marlowe could picture the gentry of Virginia, in all their finery, fleeing like rats before the pirate’s filthy, drunken tribe. Perhaps he had killed them all. And still he, Marlowe, sat there, immobile.

LeRois was working his way toward the Wilkenson home. Perhaps he would sack that as well, kill all of those bastards, save him the trouble. Wouldn’t that be a fine thing?

The Plymouth Prize was safe, and her people were safe, and that was his primary concern, his first obligation. He had

tried to stop the pirates, but he could not, not without killing all of his people in the process, and Elizabeth and Lucy as well. He had done what he could.

He took another drink from the bottle. He did not really believe any of that.

“Thomas Marlowe,” he muttered to himself, speaking the words slowly, disdainfully. They tasted bad in his mouth. That was over now. He was no longer Thomas Marlowe. It had been a good run, two years as a member of the tidewater’s elite, but it was over now. He was Malachias Barrett once again.

He supposed that once LeRois had cleared out he would take the Plymouth Prize to the Caribbean. His men would go with him, he was certain of that. Most men who sailed before the mast were only a few places removed from piracy, and the Prizes were even closer than that, thanks to his guiding influence. It was a short step now to the sweet trade. Bickerstaff would not go with them, of course, and Rakestraw probably would decline. He wondered about Elizabeth.

And then, as if summoned by his thoughts, he heard the sound of her light footfalls in the alleyway, her soft knock on the door. “Thomas?”

He turned in his chair, smiled as best he could. “Pray, come in.”

She closed the door behind her, crossed the cabin, sat on the settee facing him. “I’m sorry for walking out as I did.”

Marlowe took her hand. As if she had anything to be sorry for. “I am sorry for being such an ass. I am pleased you are safe. I am pleased that the ship and her people are safe.”

“Are you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you really pleased with your safety?” she asked, and when he did not respond she continued. “You men have a great advantage over us women. When we are humiliated beyond tolerance we can do no more than cut our wrists. You can die in battle and have it said that such was a noble death.”

“And you think that an advantage?”

“Having the means to preserve one’s honor is always an advantage. That is why I came to this place.”

“Me as well. But even here I find honor is like good family: You are either born into it or you can despair of it ever being yours.”

“I do not believe that. I will not believe that. That may be true for what these arrogant bastards, the Wilkensons and the Tinlings, call honor, but it is not true of real honor.”

“Real honor? Real honor is no more than what these arrogant bastards, as you style them, say is real honor. Is there such a thing as honor in an objective sense?”

They paused, Marlowe with the bottle halfway to his lips, and listened to a sudden commotion on deck. It had been going on all night, something or other causing the men to hoot and howl. They were all drunk, celebrating their escape. But this time it was louder, more sustained. He put the bottle down, looked questioning at Elizabeth, and she shrugged in reply.

He heard footsteps outside the cabin door, loud, rude voices, a gang of men pushing toward the captain’s sanctuary. Perhaps it was a mutiny, Marlowe speculated. He hoped it was. He hoped they would hang him.

But rather than a foot kicking in the door there came a polite knock. Marlowe sat for a second more, then stood and tugged his waistcoat into place. “Come,” he called.

The door opened and Bickerstaff stepped in. “Captain, a gentleman has come out to see you,” he said stiffly.

A gentleman? The governor, perhaps, or Finch or one of the burgesses. Marlowe could well imagine what they would have to say.

“Very good, show him in.” There was a pushing and wrestling in the alleyway. Whoever the visitor was, he was getting rough treatment from the men. If it was the governor, this would go even harder on them.

The gang of men parted like tearing cloth and the gentleman stepped forward. Marlowe’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open. He took an involuntary step back, so shocked was he, for the visitor was George Wilkenson, hat and wig

gone, clothes twisted, sweating with fear, standing there in the door of the guardship’s great cabin.

The questions swirled around in his head. His eyes narrowed. He glared at Wilkenson.

It occurred to him that he could hang the bastard then and there. If he just said the word he felt confident his men would put a halter around Wilkenson’s neck and run him up to a yardarm. At the very least, they would not try to interfere if he did it himself. From the look in Wilkenson’s eyes Thomas guessed it had occurred to him as well.

“Come in,” Marlowe said, and Wilkenson stumbled into the cabin, pushed from behind. “Get back on deck, you men!” Marlowe shouted, and the men dispersed, laughing, howling. Bicker-staff shut the door.

They stood there, the three men and Elizabeth, silent, staring at one another. Finally, Marlowe spoke.

“This is most unexpected.”

“I would imagine so.”

“What do you want?”

“I have come to beg you, with all humility, to come to the aid of this colony. You-you and your men-are the only force in the tidewater that can stand up to these animals.”

Marlowe stared hard at him. He was telling the truth. This was no trick. “Indeed. You have come to ask that I lay down my life, and the lives of my men, to save the great Wilkenson estate? Is that it?”

George took a step aft and peered out of the big stern window of the great cabin. “That fire, the closest one, that is the Wilkenson estate. It is quite beyond saving. It is the rest of the colony that concerns me now.”

“And do you know who these ‘animals’ are? Who their captain is?”

“He is some pirate named LeRois, that is all I know. And he is here in part because of my father. I am utterly ashamed of my family’s role in this. Had I even an ounce of pride left I could not have come to you, but I do not, and so I am

willing to admit here and now that you, and you,” he nodded to Elizabeth, “have been horribly used by me and my family.”

Marlowe just stared at him, then sat down behind his desk and continued to stare. He did not understand how Jacob Wilkenson was responsible for LeRois’s presence on the bay. That was an intriguing bit of news. He did not know what to say.

“My father is dead by now, I should think,” Wilkenson continued, “and if you do this, if you stop them from killing anyone else, then you shall never have any trouble from my family again, I swear to that.”

Marlowe swiveled around and stared out the window, at the flames reaching up over the trees that surrounded the Wilkenson home. The only thing more pathetic than Wilkenson’s pleading was the fact that it was necessary for him to plead at all, to plead with Marlowe to do what he had sworn he would do. If the Wilkensons had used