The Guardship

He felt a spark of fear and panic flash through him, but there was something delicious about it, something thrilling and redemptive. He had no thought of dying, because he no longer had any thought of living. He was ruined, he was humiliated, he was a part of the clan that had unleashed the terror on the colony. He was as much a burnt- out shell as his family’s home.

He pushed the canoe into the water, just as he and the Finch boys had done so many times in the past. He climbed in, carefully, and found his balance, then dipped the paddle into the river and started for the other side.

Chapter 34

THEY WERE feeling their way down the James River under fore and main topsail alone, a blind man with arms outstretched trying to keep to the center of a bridge. In the fore chains, larboard and starboard, experienced hands swung lead lines, their soft chants relayed aft down the length of the deck by the men stationed at the guns.

Marlowe stood by the break of the quarterdeck. He could just see the face of the man below him, calling up, “And a half four, and five, and a half four…” A smoky haze hung over the trees and the river and carried the sharp smell of wanton destruction. It blotted out most of the natural light from the moon and stars, making it that much more difficult for Marlowe to get his ship and men into battle.

He looked to either side. He could not see the distant shores. But he knew that stretch of water well enough to know from the depths alone that they were running down the center of the stream. That and the glow of the burnt and burning houses, standing like lighthouses on the north shore, told him that they were closing with the enemy.

He stared blankly at the flames half a mile away. The Wilkenson home. He considered all the things that he should be feeling-elation, pleasure, the glow of vengeance reaped- and he wondered why he was not. He was too tired, he concluded, too tired of it all, and too frightened of what was to come.

“And three, and three…,” the man below him said.

The water was shoaling, which meant they were nearing Hog Island. Marlowe turned to Rakestraw, who was standing ten feet away. “We shall bear up a bit, pray see to the braces,” and when the first officer had done that he said to the helmsmen, “Bear up, three points.”

The Plymouth Prize turned to larboard, the change, of course, imperceptible save for change in the bearing of the fires on the shore.

“And four and a half, and four and a half…”

Marlowe turned to say something to Bickerstaff, but Bickerstaff was not there. He was off on the Northumberland with King James and a dozen other of the Plymouth Prizes, somewhere ahead in the dark.

They were employing their old tactic, the one that had worked so well on Smith Island. Once the Plymouth Prize was alongside and fully engaged, then those aboard the Northumberland would swarm up the other side and come at them from behind. It was not much of a plan, but any edge was better than none, particularly as they were outnumbered two to one in ships and men, and the men they were facing were very experienced killers indeed, with no reason at all to surrender and every reason to fight to the death.

Marlowe took some comfort from the plan, from the thought that they were not just going right at the pirates but instead were using some of their God-given cunning. He took comfort from the thought that the pirates had been on a rampage for some time now, were probably drunk and collapsed on the deck of the Vengeance, near comatose. He was comforted by the thought that the Plymouth Prizes were drunk as well, not blind drunk but fighting drunk, and he was keeping them that way. He took comfort from the fact that Francis Bickerstaff and King James would be with him on the killing ground.

But for all the comfort that he gleaned from those thoughts, he was not optimistic about their chances. He of all of them knew what they were up against. The Vengeances under LeRois had never been bested in all the time he sailed with them.

Of course, these were not the same men. Most of the men aboard now would have signed the articles after Marlowe had given up the life on the account. But he did not think that they would be any less capable than the others who had sailed under LeRois.

He turned and glanced at the place where Bickerstaff would have been standing had he been aboard. He missed his friend’s steadying presence. They had been through so much together: bloody fights, and lessons in Latin and history, and two years as landed gentlemen. He owed his brief but glorious career as a member of the tidewater gentry, and his brilliant flash of passion with Elizabeth, to his friend and teacher. He would miss him.

And he would miss King James as well, belligerent, surly King James. Marlowe understood the man perfectly, understood what drove him, and he had used that knowledge shamelessly to manipulate James into doing him great service. But he liked James, respected him.

And he had given back to James as much as he had taken. Pride, honor, those things that most of the first men of Virginia did not think a black man capable of having. James, he knew, would not mind dying, as long as he died with a blooded sword in his hand.

But at least he would see them one more time, albeit across a smoke-filled deck as they fought their last in defense of their adopted colony and in defense of their own honor, their own genuine, unvarnished honor. He could not say the same for Elizabeth. He did not think that he would ever see Elizabeth again.

He had found the time to scribble out a will, leaving to her everything that was his-the house, the land, the specie-a brief document that unbeknownst to Elizabeth was included in the packet he had sent back with her and Lucy. It was something.

He thought of her smile, her smooth and perfect skin, the way her long yellow hair had a habit of falling across her face, the way she would whisk it away. He would never see her again, and for that, and that alone, he was truly sorry.

George Wilkenson swallowed hard, made a bold stroke with the paddle. The hulls of the pirate ships seemed to materialize out of the night, the formless dark suddenly coalescing into solid and unyielding shapes not forty feet ahead. From the low vantage of the canoe they seemed to loom overhead, forbidding black cliffs, and rising above the cliffs the dead forest of masts, the spiderwebs of rigging.

George gave another stroke and pulled the paddle from the water, letting the nimble, silent boat glide along. The farther ship was the bigger of the two, and even in the dark night he could see that she was the Wilkenson Brothers. The pirates had altered her in some way-the line of her deck did not look the same-but still George knew the family ship well enough that he could never mistake her for another.

The closer ship, the small one, he did not recognize, and he assumed it was the vessel that had brought the pirates to the Chesapeake Bay. He stared as he drifted closer. He began to see a few dim, square patches along her side, aft, some muted light from within gently illuminating the open gunports.

It was fantastic to be that close to so frightening, mysterious, and alien a world.

Once when he had found himself alone in Norfolk he had ventured into a whorehouse, stayed long enough to have two glasses of ale. He had not managed the courage to indulge in the main attraction of the place, but still it had been thrilling to be in the presence of such debauchery and danger. And this was the same, only many times more.

He dipped the paddle carefully back into the river and gave another stroke, and the canoe surged ahead again. He was still more curious than afraid, which surprised him and pleased

him as well. Of course, he had seen no one moving on either ship, had heard no voices, seen no lights. He was perfectly aware that he might lose all of his courage, might even soil his breeches, if even one voice called out a challenge. But the smaller ship was only fifteen feet away, and he was closing with it, and as yet it seemed that no one had noticed him.

The canoe was still making good way through the water when he came alongside. He put the paddle in the water and with an experienced twist of the blade brought the boat to a stop right against the pirate’s hull.

He hit with just the tiniest of thumps, but it sounded like a thunderclap to Wilkenson. He reached up and grabbed on to the main chains and sat, absolutely silent, waiting for the shouts of alarm, the blasphemous curses of