The war was fully involved, Marlowe told him. Land and sea, and they, the Elizabeth Galleys, were no pirates, but legal and legitimate privateers. Their behavior after the fight was proof enough of that.
The captain bowed, nodded. He was sensible to the fact that their treatment would have been much different in the hands of the Brethren of the Coast.
Mr. Fleming stood to one side in obvious hope of attracting Marlowe’s attention.
“Yes, Mr. Fleming?”
“Sir, I wish you joy of your victory, sir,” he said.
“Our victory, Mr. Fleming,” said Marlowe, nodding to the bandage around the first officer’s hand. The blood that soaked it was dried and brown and only a little of the white cloth was visible.
“Oh, ’tis nothing, sir. But, pray, sir, these Dons has some spare sails that might well be worth the having, sir, but our haul has been so prodigious that we’ve scant room aboard, even now. I had a thought to start some of the water, sir, and break down the casks and then we could have the sails as well.”
“Hmmm.” Marlowe considered that. “No, I think not, and let me tell you why. You may as well know, no point keeping good news a secret. You recall that ship with whom this Don was engaged? That took off and made easting when we came up with them?”
“Yes. Some of the lads was saying it was the Frenchys’ ship, them Frenchys we rescued.”
“Yes, that is exactly the thing. Now this Don captain had some knowledge of that ship and apparently she had quite a rich cargo aboard. The Frenchys won’t tell you that, of course, but it’s true. And those black pirates have been raiding all along the coast. Vast amounts of booty crammed in their hold. So how does this relate to the water? Well, sir, I’ve a mind to go after those heathens, take all that they have accumulated, a dozen ships’ worth in one stroke, and by my reckoning they are bound away for the Guinea Coast, and we shall follow them.”
“ Guinea Coast, sir?” Fleming did not sound so sure.
“Aye, I know, it’s not a fit place for a white man, but think of the riches in that one ship! And nothing but a parcel of Negroes to defend it, which is like no defense at all.”
“Really, sir? That ain’t how those Frenchys told it. I don’t speak the lingo, but as I understood their story those black men were like mad dogs, sir, and twice as fierce.”
“Well, to a Frenchman I am sure they would appear thus.”
Fleming nodded. He could see the reason in that argument and he clearly understood the potential profit to be had in taking a pirate ship. And he would not be shy in spreading the word. “Very good, sir, then we’ll leave the sails be?”
“Oh yes, we are after bigger things than sails.”
Fleming hurried off to his work and Marlowe stepped aft, up to the high quarterdeck where the Spanish officers and the passengers were milling about. The women, now secure in the knowledge that they would not be raped, were talking among themselves and to Bickerstaff, whom they apparently found quite intriguing.
“Francis, how goes it here, sir?”
“Very well, Thomas. These people are very grateful for the gentle treatment they have received.”
“It would have gone easier if they had just surrendered, but they could not have known that.”
“I must say I am pleased as well. If you must descend once more into piracy, at least you are being civilized about it.”
“I thank you, sir, for those kind words.”
“Griffin did not make it, I see.”
“He did not. If you saw the body, you will have observed a bloody great Spanish sword thrust clean through him. I think that should leave no doubt as to how he met his end.”
“I was not aware that the matter was in question. Whatever do you mean?”
“Nothing, sir, not a thing. But see here, I think the men are quite mollified by this great haul we have made. When we are done here, it will be away to the east and hunting that rogue King James down.”
“You think the men will not object now?”
“I think they will be entirely agreeable, even if we must chase them clear to the Guinea Coast.”
Agreeable they would be, once Fleming spread his tale through the gunroom and it wound its way through the inferior officers’ quarters and at last to the lower deck. The Lord only knew how inflated the story would be by then, the great riches carried aboard the Black Pirate, the treasures of the Orient, the plunder from the Spanish Treasure fleet.
Enticing enough to lure them clean across the ocean, to the shores of the Dark Continent. Sure, he could fool them into going; there was no more art in that than there was in driving sheep.
It was fooling himself that was the problem.
God, but he did not want to go there, did not want to do this thing.
Beware, beware, the Bight of Benin…
Chapter 17
Billy Bird settled the cocked hat on her head, flipped the long curls of the wig over her shoulder in a jaunty way, stepped back, nodded his approval.
“Not so bad, really,” he said. “Bloody crude stitching, but what were we to do, on such a notice?”
“Humph” was all that Elizabeth said.
Billy Bird had told her, in all fairness, that there were “considerations” to her sailing with him, and here was one of them.
“You see,” he had expanded on that comment, “we’ve these sort of… rules… aboard the ship. Something we’ve all signed on to, and even me, as lord and master of the vessel, cannot quite get around them.”
“Pirates’ articles?”
“No, no, dear Lord… pirates’ articles! No, just some rules, you know, for fair governance of the vessel. In any event, one of those rules is that no women are allowed aboard, and the punishment is marooning, not a pleasant thing at all. But I should think we could get around that, with just a bit of the creative touch.”
Billy had left at first light, collected her horse from where she had left it at the Wren Building, ridden back to Marlowe House. There he had gathered up a bagful of Marlowe’s clothes, shoes, wigs, and hats.
The clothes he carried to a seamstress who took them in significantly, but with no great art, since they were very pressed for time.
Now, back in his room at the King’s Arms, they made Elizabeth ’s transformation.
“You would never pass for a foremast hand, of course,” Billy told her, “one of these great hairy fellows. But you look every inch the foppish youth. Even without playing the man, you are more manly than some of the silly dandies I have seen prancing about this town. It was not that way a few years back, as I recall. There was a time when Virginia was a place of men alone, with little opportunity for these mincing dance masters.”
“Humph,” Elizabeth said again. She stood and regarded herself in the full-length mirror in the corner, assumed as masculine a stance as she could, one hand on her hip, the other resting on the hilt of her sword.
Billy Bird was right; she had to admit it. She would easily pass for a young man. The coat and waistcoat entirely obscured her breasts and her hourglass figure. She was not altogether pleased with that fact, that this disguise was so convincing, as if it made her somehow less of a woman.
It was late afternoon when they headed out, down the road to College Landing near the head of Archer’s Hope Creek. Riding with them, bareback on a tired old mare, was a boy from the inn who took the horses back to town once they had arrived at the landing: Elizabeth ’s to be liveried and Billy’s to be returned to the man from whom he had hired it.
At College Landing they hired a boat pulled by two big watermen. Evening was settling around them as they rowed down the creek to the James River and then down the James to the shallow mouth of a tributary on the southern bank called the Pagan River. Up the Pagan, as far as it might go without taking the ground, a solitary brig was riding at anchor. She was all but invisible from the James, her hull lost in shadow, her spars undetectable against the tall trees that lined the banks.
“Hoay, the boat!” a voice called from the brig’s quarterdeck, called with a low, rumbling menace.
“It’s Billy Bird, come back to you!” Billy called out, and nothing more was heard from the dark ship.
