“No, Dunmore. Why the hell couldn’t he have stayed put, why did he have to come here?”
“He is not from this country?”
“No. He arrived a year ago. Less, I should think. Came from London, I understand, but he is from Boston originally.”
“ Boston…,” Billy said thoughtfully. He frowned, looked down at the ground. “ Boston…”
“Do you know something about this?”
“Well, now that you say he is from Boston, I do seem to recall something. Yes. Yes.”
“What? What of it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Billy, damn your eyes…”
“No, truly. I recall him now. Saw him around town on a few occasions. But mind, I was not in Boston long, dreadful place, all full of Puritans and their somber nonsense. Anyway, there was something about him…what was it?”
Elizabeth wanted to scream, wanted to slap Billy, to make him blurt it out before she could change her mind and tell him not to. She hated rumor, vicious stories, had been nearly brought to ruin herself by them. She didn’t want to hear any more.
But Dunmore, some vile thing about Dunmore, that was different, was it not?
“Never you mind, Billy Bird. I don’t want to hear any of your vicious gossip, even if it is about that bastard. I promised you some hot chocolate and you shall have it and then you shall be on your way because I have not a moment to lose.”
James sat on one of the small cannons on the quarterdeck and looked down the length of the flush-decked ship. The people had worked hard and they were hungry.
They were gathered in their clans, little clusters of people dressed in whatever they had been able to find in the great cabin, in the crew’s dunnage. A woman had wrapped herself in one of the curtains pulled down from the great cabin windows, had managed to make the cloth look like a respectable garment.
The men, dressed out in the former crew’s clothes, the contents of the slop chest, were beginning to look like proper sailors. They were becoming acclimated to their surroundings and initiated into the mysteries of square rig.
Children, with the resilience of their age, were starting to wander away from their mothers, to play. Squeals and laughter cut across the deck, that former killing field.
They had worked hard for the past two days. The men at sailing, under James’s command, under the tutelage of Joshua and Cato, as translated by Madshaka and Kusi. They had organized by mast, and those with knowledge of such things had explained in rough terms how a big-wind ship was sailed.
Young, strong men. Those were the ones the slavers took, and those were the people who made up the crew now, to their great advantage.
James had led them aloft and out along the yards, had shown them as much as they needed to know to set and furl and reef sails.
They were agile, fearless aloft, natural sailor men. And Madshaka and Kusi, the grumete, were accustomed to the water, familiar with ships, having made careers bringing white men and cargo in their boats through the huge surf that pounded the African shore.
It had gone better than James would have dared hope. He had seen some of God’s greatest idiots become tolerable sailors, and these men were far above that class.
He had seen the pirates-filthy, depraved, subhuman-but sailors to the bone. These African men could learn.
The women had cleaned the decks, had set things to right, had seen to the family units. They cleaned in order to make the ship their own, to purge it of what it had been, for the same reason that James had lit brimstone in the hold.
They had to remake it in their way, otherwise they could not stand to remain aboard.
The sun was disappearing toward Virginia. They were on a broad reach, foresail, topsails, and topgallants, braced about just a bit. The leaking, weed-cover hull was able to make five knots, no more. But they were making progress, leaving the New World farther and farther below the horizon.
James had a vague idea that they should be making more northing, that the sailing route to Africa was that way, a great arc up through the north Atlantic and down, following the winds, but he knew little about offshore navigation.
He did understand leadership, however, and knew that they had to do something, had to make some progress, even in the wrong direction. Without progress there was no hope, and where hope was gone, terror and despair were sure to come.
And he had problems bigger than navigation. By now Marlowe would have passed through the capes, would be out there, somewhere, in their wake. Marlowe was a cunning bastard, and though it would seem an impossible task for one ship to find another on the great ocean, James did not think it unlikely that Marlowe would find them.
And he had problems bigger even than Marlowe.
Food: there was little of it. He and Madshaka and Cato had searched the ship, from great cabin down to the keelson, had taken note of everything that was aboard. Madshaka told them the people had been half starved, and now James saw that it was not merely capricious cruelty. There simply was not much food aboard.
On the deck was a portable stove; a fire sparked up with firewood from the galley and the doors of the binnacle box. Around it the women gathered, cooking the meager rations for their families, just as they had done thousands of times in their far-flung villages. The men sat on the deck, leaned on the rails, rested from the day’s exertions, talked about what they would do next.
Madshaka came ambling down the deck. There was the suggestion of power in his loose-limbed stride, the potential of power, like a man holding the bulk of his strength in reserve. He held two of the wooden plates they had found in the galley, carried them easily in his big hands.
“Captain, I bring you some food.” He held out the plate and James took it with a grateful nod. He was terribly hungry. A small piece of salt pork and a little clump of dried peas from the sailors’ stores, some of the thin porridge for the slaves. James ate it all greedily.
“Thank you, Madshaka.”
Madshaka nodded and was silent while he ate and James ate. Then he said, “We got food for two, three more days. We need more.”
James nodded. He had been thinking the same thing. But where to get it from?
There was only one reasonable answer, but James did not care to think of it.
“We got to take it.” Madshaka said it for him. “We got to stop another ship and take it. I know you don’t want to do it, I don’t neither, but these people will starve if we don’t.”
James was silent for a long moment. Madshaka always addressed him in English, never Malinke. Somehow it seemed the African tongue would have been more appropriate. Madshaka no doubt thought him more comfortable with English. “You’re right. You’re right. We got no choice.”
Pirates. They were running the ship with that rough pirate democracy. Now, raiding on the high seas. But there was no choice, the thing had to be done. “We’ll take food, just food. And not all that’s aboard.”
“Just food,” Madshaka agreed.
“There’s shipping here,” James explained, “this way, between the Caribbean and the American colonies. Good chance we see something tomorrow, the next day.”
“All these men we got, good, brave, strong men,” Madshaka added. “No problem. We go alongside, jump on other ship, take her, no problem.”
“No problem,” James agreed. No problem in terms of the tactical situation. The morality of the thing was another question.
But it was just food. His people had to eat. James was suddenly very tired.
“Madshaka, I must rest. I think the wind is steady, should stay like this through the night, I reckon. No need to trim the sails or change course. Things should be-”
“Captain, captain,” Madshaka interrupted. “You go sleep. I look after things here. The people need you, you no good to them if you too tired to think. You go down to the great cabin, you sleep.”
James nodded, gratefully. Sleep. Nothing had ever sounded so good to him as sleep did at that moment. The
