do.”
A moment of silence, and then Noah Fleming, first mate, a steady and unimaginative man, just what Marlowe liked in an officer, shouted, “Three cheers for Captain Marlowe, then!”
The men belted out their huzzahs, and with genuine gusto, Marlowe was pleased to see.
What they would be doing in a week’s time remained to be seen.
Ten minutes later, Bickerstaff joined him in the great cabin, waited silently while Marlowe poured a glass of wine, guzzled it, poured another, and finally turned and said, “Wine with you, Francis?”
“Thank you, yes,” said Bickerstaff, taking the glass, sitting in his familiar chair. “The governor gave you a letter of marque?”
“He did. Damned reluctant, but he did. That bastard Dunmore was there as well. Lucky he did not get a bullet through his head.”
“I commend you on your restraint, sir. We are to leave on the morrow?”
“Yes. There is one other thing. Didn’t tell the men, didn’t reckon they’d be so happy about it.”
Marlowe paused, slugged down the wine, poured another glass. He was not so happy about it himself. Miserable, in fact. Had not realized how miserable until that moment, the moment he had to explain himself to Bickerstaff.
“We must go after King James, bring him back.”
Bickerstaff stared at him, silent, for what seemed quite a long time. “You agreed to this?”
“What else could I do? But look, there is every chance that we will never find them.”
“And if we do, you’ll bring James back to be hanged like a dog?”
“I shall try. I imagine James or I will be killed in the trying. I don’t reckon we’ll both be coming back.”
“James would not come back alive.”
“I have no choice in this, Francis, please understand. There would have been no privateering without I agreed to this.”
Bickerstaff shook his head. “Privateering? We are talking about betraying a friend.”
“Betraying?” Marlowe was getting angry and trying not to. “James betrayed me, putting me in this position.”
“You know why James did what he did. You would have done the same.”
“Indeed I would have.” Marlowe leaned back, his mind weaving through the maze of arguments. “And I would have been an outlaw as well. See here, Francis, you are the one forever harping on the law, the rule of law. Recall how Wilkenson took the law into his own hands, burned our tobacco crop? Well, how is what James has done any different? What law gives James the right to murder a ship’s crew, as detestable as they might be, eh?”
Bickerstaff thought on that for some moments, long enough for Marlowe to consume two more glasses. Finally he said, “You are right, Thomas. It grieves me to say it, but you are right, in a philosophical line. I cannot deny that you are morally justified in trying to bring James to trial. But of course you do not believe a word of your own argument.”
“Not even the first syllable of it.” Marlowe closed his eyes, took a deep breath, tried to drive the misery away. “But I must do this thing, because if I do not, then Elizabeth loses everything dear to her.”
He opened his eyes. “And I must justify it to myself, or I shall never sleep again.”
Chapter 6
Twenty-four hours since they had cut the blackbirder’s cable and gone, riding the northeasterly wind through the capes and back out into the big sea. Twenty-four hours and that innate human reflex to find order began asserting itself.
The eighty or so Africans still alive, some just barely, had organized themselves into clusters, by family, by clan, by common language, the men talking and planning, the women tending to their families, the children emerging slowly from their trauma, looking about, exploring the world within arm’s reach of their mothers.
The ship-James did not know her name and did not want to know-was drifting, the sails brailed up and hanging in great folds, the light airs pushing them along more sideways than forward.
He knew where they were, or close enough. James had learned to dead-reckon, had sailed the Northumberland in fog enough times to understand about noting speed and heading and drift, if it could be figured, and to deduce from that where the ship was. He had found a chart, had pricked their position hourly. Knew that it would be important, once they had decided what they would do.
He was on the quarterdeck, alone. He had no clan, save for Cato and Joshua, Good Boy and Quash, and they were forward, knotting and splicing and fixing those things that needed fixing for the ship to function.
King James sat atop the nearly wrecked binnacle box, surveyed his command. The people. The family. The clan.
The pumps were the only work that needed doing, and they needed a distressing amount of attention, as the ship was taking on quite a bit of water. Madshaka had organized gangs who relieved each other at the turn of the half-hour glass. The creaking of the pumps, the gush of water, were the leitmotif under the babble of talk on deck.
James looked forward, and saw Madshaka emerge from the hold, his head and big shoulders rising up from the dark as he mounted the ladder, his face grim, set. None of the other people had by choice gone back down there after Cato and Joshua had unbattened the hatch, and James doubted that they ever would.
Only those dozen strong young men chosen by Madshaka had gone down, gone back into the pit with Madshaka and James to clear away the bodies, the parts of bodies, and throw them overboard, to light brimstone fires and replace the stink of death with the stink of hell. Hell burnt clean.
It had taken hours. Among the worst hours in James’s life, and the competition was fierce for that distinction. Now it was time for the next step.
“Madshaka, pray, a word.”
Madshaka trotted aft, his big bare feet making no sound on the planking. Madshaka was a blessing to James, a natural leader, like himself, invaluable in bringing order, second in command by tacit consent.
“Yes, Captain?” Madshaka said, with his big smile quite at odds with the somber look he had had coming up from the hold.
“We have to figure what we will do next. We can’t drift forever. We must decide.”
“That true. That true.” Madshaka screwed up his face, as if framing a question, began, paused, and then said, “Captain James, you know much about them pirates?”
James knew quite a bit about pirates, in fact, having fought them at Marlowe’s side aboard the guardship, having learned of their ways from Marlowe, who knew from firsthand experience.
“Yes. Some.”
“When the pirates aboard this ship, I listen. They aboard a long time, and I listen, but I don’t understand. They have no chief, I think. Each man have a say in what they do. And black men too, black men among the pirates and they have a say. Is that right?”
James nodded. How to explain those nefarious people? He hated pirates, those robbers, murderers. He had killed many of them with his own hands. And yet, and yet…
Madshaka was not wrong in what he perceived. The men who turned pirate were the world’s downtrodden, and they would no longer suffer such abuse. Each man had a vote, each man received an equal share. Total equality. The color of their skin was not an issue, only their courage and devotion to the brotherhood.
Marlowe was the first, one of the few white men to treat James as an equal. He had gained his color blindness among the pirates. How to judge such men?
“The pirates pick their captain, their chief. But he is only chief when they fight. Other times, they all choose what they are to do, where they go. Every man gets an equal share of what they steal.”
Madshaka nodded, raised his eyebrows. “That is very fair, I think, very just.” He paused, looked around the deck at the various clusters of people. “You could tell them what to do, and they would listen. I could tell them, and they would listen to me. But maybe, we do like the pirates? Maybe we vote on captain, on where we go? It seem…most just.”
