He chuckled softly to himself. That had gone very well. These others might not think of wealth, but he himself was no stranger to the notion.
He was an ambitious man, had once already worked himself into a position of real power and wealth before his ostensible partners had hit him on the head and sold him to the blackbirder. But he had not forgotten them. Their turn would come.
But first, pirating. By pure chance he found himself aboard a fast ship with a gullible crew of strong young men he could use as warriors. It was not an opportunity to be wasted.
When he was at last certain that no one knew or cared what he was about, he stepped forward and down the aftermost scuttle.
He was prowling now, hunting. He was aware of the power in his arms, his legs, the silence of his step, the strength that was there to be summoned instantly. He had seen lions before and they were the same, soft-footed, powerful. Nothing ostentatious, they did not need to be. When you were truly powerful you did not need to show it.
Down the after scuttle and down again to the lower deck, moving aft, crouched under the low beams, awkward for a man so tall, but still his motion was fluid. He was invisible in the dull light of the lower deck, his dark skin lost in the shadow. He did not expect to find anyone down there. The people stayed on deck as much as they could. They had had enough of ships’ holds.
Aft, past the stacks of cargo, to the tiny cabins that lined either side of the stern section, one deck below where King James slept. It was all blackness there, save for the one feeble light that lit the white mate’s cabin from within.
Madshaka stopped a few feet from the cabin door and listened. He could hear the man, breathing, making tiny movements. He could smell his unwashed body, the sharp smell of sweat, not sweat from exertion but sweat from fear. He wondered how long a man could live with that terror before his mind snapped. Perhaps he would find out.
He took a step forward, grabbed the latch on the cabin door and swung it open, slowly, slowly, letting the hinges give their menacing creak. Inside the mate lay on his berth, pushing himself back, back against the bulkhead, away from whatever new horror was coming to him, his bloodshot eyes wide.
Madshaka smiled, a broad smile, a look that he knew was terrifying under those circumstances. Reached to the small of his back and drew out his dirk. He let the light play off the long, thin blade, held it casually at his side as he stepped into the small space.
The white man shook his head in mute protest. Madshaka raised the knife, held the needle point under the man’s chin.
“You don’t want to die, do you, pilot?” Madshaka asked, softly, and the man shook his head again.
“I didn’t think so.” He held the knife there for a moment more, letting the man consider the situation, then he withdrew the blade and sat back on his heels.
“Where you taking us, pilot?”
The man thought about it, as if the question were a trick. “Kala-,” he croaked, coughed, cleared his throat. “Niger River Delta, Kalabari, like you say.” His English was heavily accented with French, but good.
Madshaka nodded his head, as if considering this information. “If I tell you to take us to Whydah instead, can you do that?”
“Yes.”
“And can you do it in a way King James don’t know?”
The Frenchman looked confused, considered the question, then said, “Yes…I don’t think King James know the navigation. I don’t think he know what I do.”
Madshaka nodded again. “You take us to Whydah, then. You take good care with your tools, we have perfect… how you say?”
“Landfall?”
The smile spread across Madshaka’s face again. “Right. Landfall. You understand me, pilot. And you don’t tell James, you don’t tell anyone.” He raised the knife up. “If anyone find out, I kill you, and I take a long time to do it. You believe me?”
The white man nodded, his eyes on the gleaming dirk.
“Good,” said Madshaka.
To Whydah then, and business to which he must attend. And when James found out who was really in command, it would be too late, too late by far for him.
Chapter 14
The night was black and still at that hour, somewhere around four o’clock in the morning, and it seemed as if there were no people left in Williamsburg, as if they had deserted the town, left it to the nocturnal creatures. It was the strangest sort of sensation, a floating, disconnected existence, something that Elizabeth was having difficulty adjusting to.
She slowed her horse to a walk when they reached Boundary Street at the western end of town and then stopped a block from the hulking shape of the Wren Building, that great brick edifice like an English country manor house. She listened, cocking her head this way and that, trying to discern any sound that was not crickets or frogs or any of the benign noise of the Virginia summer night.
There was nothing that she could hear, as if her horse were a raft on which she sat and drifted on a warm black sea.
Was it really necessary that she sneak into town this way? She had no idea. She had no notion of what was acting in the capital, what was being said about her, what accusations were being tossed about. She knew only that Dunmore had been able to run unchecked, and neither she nor Marlowe had been there to counter anything that the man had said, and so it had probably gone hard for them.
It was possible that the law did not want her for anything, that there were no charges leveled against her, but she thought it unlikely enough that she did not care to be conspicuous. She had slipped out the back door of Marlowe House, kept to the shadows, moving, stopping, listening. She had no reason to think that the house was being watched, nothing beyond a visceral uneasiness, but such premonitions had served her well in the past and she took note of them now.
After a long moment of hearing nothing, Elizabeth climbed down from the horse, easing down on her still-sore ankle, and led the animal across the grass, far from the road, to the young trees that dotted the lawn in front of the Wren Building. The college had graduated its first class just two years before, and the trees had been planted just a year or so before that, so they were none too big, just big enough for Elizabeth to secure to them the reins of her docile animal.
She patted the animal’s neck, then stepped back to the edge of the street and listened again, but again there was no sound. The two pistols she carried on loops inside her riding cape thumped silently against her hips as she walked; the dark hood masked her yellow hair.
She crossed Boundary Street at the head of Duke of Gloucester and hobbled east, keeping to the north side of that wide avenue. There was no moon, just a great dome of stars and the hazy Milky Way, and so every corner of the street was as dark as every other. Still, she kept close to the buildings, close to the trunks of the trees, where movement would be less likely to be noticed, sailing along like a dark spirit.
She felt at ease, despite the need to be clandestine. It felt good to be back in a town, if such Williamsburg could be called. It had been a long time, a rough time.
The hike back to Marlowe House had been the worst.
Elizabeth and Plato had sat and rested in the cool forest for an hour, and their clothes were all but dry when they heard the hunters again, coming back down from their fruitless search. They had scrambled back into the thicker wood, pulling themselves into a dense patch of brush, wriggling forward as the branches scraped at their faces and hands and tore little rents in their clothes. They lay facedown, watching as the men filed past, led by a visibly angry Frederick Dunmore.
Saquam trailed behind, his expression of indifference at odds with the scowls on the other men’s faces. The
