The Guardship

Marlowe poorly, then they, too, had been poorly used by him. They were all of a kind: Wilkenson, Marlowe, LeRois. Pathetic.

He turned back to the men in his cabin, and his eyes met Elizabeth’s. “What think you of all this?” he asked, as if Wilkenson were not there.

“I think George Wilkenson is vermin, but what he has done, coming here, asking this of you, is the bravest act I have ever seen from any man.”

“Hmmph. Well, you may be right. But he asks something that I cannot do. I cannot beat LeRois. Nor do I feel much compelled to see all my men die to defend people who have behaved with so little honor.”

Bickerstaff spoke for the first time. “You asked me once, you may recall, what I thought was the difference between a commoner and a person of gentle birth.”

“I do recall. You said that the one had more money than the other, and the one with more money made a greater pretense at honor, though in fact he had it in no greater measure.”

“That is what I said, and I should think all that we have seen this past year would bear that out. But that does not mean

that honor is not worth striving for, even if you are the only one in the land doing so.”

Marlowe leaned back in his chair. His eyes moved from Bickerstaff to Wilkenson to Elizabeth, and then back to Bickerstaff.

“I cannot beat him,” he said again.

“That is unfortunate,” said Bickerstaff, “but it is not important. It is only important that you try.”

Marlowe looked down at his desk and rubbed his temples. What Bickerstaff was saying, what Elizabeth had been saying, was right. He knew it. And he was afraid. That was the truth, distilled to its purest essence. He was afraid of LeRois because he knew all that LeRois was capable of doing. His head was starting to ache. He was sick of being afraid.

“Very well,” he said at last. He put his hands down flat on his desk, pushed himself to his feet. “We are all to die eventually.” He looked at Elizabeth, held her eyes. “Let us take the advantage given us by our sex. Let us have it said that we died with honor.”

Chapter 33

THEY WALKED back the way they had come, across the fields and along the dirt paths running beside the wide James River and down the smooth rolling roads. Pockets chinked with coins and silverware and other trinkets stuffed hurriedly into them. Pirates labored under bags filled with the bounty of their raid.

It was a dark night, but they had little difficulty in seeing their path. The flames from the last house they had set off reached far into the sky and danced and leaped across the ripples on the river’s surface in bright flashing patterns, just as LeRois had hoped.

And when the light from that conflagration grew too distant to do them any good they came to the mill, which was still burning well, and then to the other house, and then the house before that, their own destruction lighting their way back.

They returned at last to the first house they had torched that night. It was no more than a heap of glowing embers, but there were embers enough to light the bank of the river where their boats remained fast in the mud.

“Vite, vite, come along, hurry,” LeRois prompted the men. They had covered in their round trip perhaps six miles, and the Vengeances were dragging along, shuffling. The fire had gone out of them. It had been a long night, even for men well used to demanding physical activity, a long night of constant motion, screaming, drinking, destruction.

But it was not yet over, at least not as far as LeRois was concerned. There still remained the most important job, that of ushering Malachias Barrett through the gates of hell.

The heap of debris that earlier that evening had been a plantation house glowed red and orange, and the river picked up the muted colors and threw them back. Any light that might have come from the stars or the new moon was largely blotted out by the haze of smoke that hung over the countryside, a bitter, stinging smoke, smelling of charred wood and burnt paint and the ashes of three generations of tidewater wealth.

They stumbled down the long field, filing past the hillocks with their tobacco plants, and loaded their sacks into the boats. Then one by one they pushed the boats out into the stream and pulled themselves aboard and took their places on the thwarts.

LeRois went last, climbing into the longboat before it was pushed off. He did not want to get his shoes wet. It was not fitting for the capitain to walk through the mud like a pig.

The small crew aboard the old Vengeance had managed to work the decrepit ship upriver and drop anchor just below Hog Island. The Nouvelle Vengeance was at anchor as well, having floated free once the tide had lifted her off the sand.

LeRois grabbed hold of the cleats on the side of the Nouvelle Vengeance and pulled himself up onto her deck. There was no one there to greet him, no one conscious, in any event. Bodies were sprawled here and there, passed out in the warm night air, some still gripping the bottles they had drained.

“Uhh,” LeRois grunted. Let them sleep. Let them all sleep. He would remain awake and vigilant. He would watch, because he knew that Malachias Barrett would come to him once again, and he would send his old quartermaster on that long voyage of the damned. They would all go, if it came to that.

George Wilkenson was surprised at the quality of the horse he was riding, the steady planter’s pace it was able to maintain, the good manners it displayed. He was surprised because it was

Marlowe’s horse, taken right from his stable, the old Tinling stable. George had thought Marlowe knew nothing about horses.

Perhaps he did not. Perhaps it was his Negroes who had trained the beast, just as his Negroes had been responsible for that fine crop of tobacco that he and his father had burned. Free Negroes, who stayed and worked of their own volition. George shook his head at the very thought of it. Marlowe was an enigma, and George was almost sorry that he would never have the chance to fathom him.

He had left the Plymouth Prize shortly after his meeting with Marlowe. Marlowe had actually asked him to stay, suggesting that it would be safer for him to remain aboard the guardship, but that was too much. Coming to Marlowe, begging for his help, was all the humiliation he could endure. Remaining in the man’s protective care was beyond the pale.

Instead, he had done Marlowe a favor by escorting Elizabeth Tinling and Lucy to the Tinling-the Marlowe-house in Marlowe’s coach, which had been sent down for that purpose. He was well armed, Marlowe had seen to that, with a brace of fine pistols and a musket, and he sat in silence on the seat across from the women. No one said a word. They were careful not to meet one another’s eyes. It was not a comfortable trip.

When at last they arrived at Marlowe’s home, having encountered no one on the road, George spoke.

“Might I have a horse? Any will do. I do not know when I will be able to return it.”

Elizabeth glared at him, made no effort to conceal her dislike. “The horses here are not mine to let out, but under the circumstances I think Captain Marlowe would not mind.”

“Thank you.” He turned to go, then paused and turned back. He had the urge to reach out and hug her, an all- but-irrepressible need for some human contact, a touch, an embrace. But he knew the kind of rebuff he would suffer if he tried.

“Elizabeth…I am sorry. I can say no more than that.”

She had looked at him for a long and awkward moment. “I am sorry too,” she had said, then turned and disappeared into the house.

He slowed the horse to a walk as the loom of the fire from the Wilkenson house became visible over the trees. The road he had taken ran roughly parallel to the river, an almost direct route from Marlowe’s home to the Wilkensons’. The last time he had ridden that way was when they had returned from burning Marlowe’s tobacco. Now it was his own family suffering the ravages of the flame.

He turned the horse down the long road, past the oaks, to the front of the house. The second floor had collapsed. The entire place looked more like a giant bonfire than a home, and even from one hundred feet away he