chance to put a bullet through the insouciant pirate before him.
But he did not, and at length he lowered the gun, eased the flintlock down. He seemed to sag, his face, his body, the stiffness gone. He seemed suddenly much smaller.
Black Tom and Howland stepped around, guns still trained. The night watchman was holding his hands in plain sight, unwilling to be shot on suspicion that he was trying to defend himself.
“I am afraid we must tie you up. We can’t have an alarm sounded, you know,” Billy said, and Dunmore just stared, said nothing.
“Tom, pray, go find something with which we can bind all these gentlemen. There must be a rope of some sort attached to the bell.”
Tom nodded, lit a candle from the lantern, and headed off toward the base of the steeple. “Ezra, you had best shut and bolt the door. We have had quite enough visitors tonight.”
Ezra did so, and Dunmore and the night watch stepped out of his way. Then Dunmore spoke, and his voice had none of the gravel that Elizabeth had heard before, and for a moment she did not even realize it was him speaking.
“It’s not true, you know,” Wait Dunmore said.
“What? What is not true?” Billy asked. “That your son murdered an innocent old black woman? Killed her with his bare hands?”
The words were like a slap to the Reverend’s face. He frowned, shook his head slowly. “That I do not know. He might have, the poor creature. The evidence was there that he did. Had he been tried he probably would have been hanged. Never was a trial, of course, but in my heart I fear it is true.
“No, the lie is about Frederick’s blood, my blood. There was never a child by Nancy. My father, Isaac, was the progeny of my grandfather, Richard, and my grandmother, Anne, and never did my grandfather fornicate with a slave.
“That story, the thing about Frederick…me… being in part Negro was made up by someone and it spread fast, as such a story will. You see, Frederick hated the Negroes. Always did. I don’t know why. Some are like that. I think Negroes frightened him. It made Frederick insane to think it true, that he was…part…”
“Why would someone make up such a story?” Billy demanded, and at that Dunmore actually gave a weak smile.
“You two are acquainted with Frederick, that much is obvious. And it is just as obvious that you hate him. You have gone to great lengths to destroy him.
“Well, you are not the only ones who felt thus. Frederick was never one to make people love him. There were plenty in Boston who might have started such a rumor. Plenty who knew of the loathing Frederick had for Africans, what it would do to him to think he was part Negro himself. To have all of Boston think it.”
Elizabeth shook her head. Incredible. Frederick Dunmore moved to a murderous rage by a well-placed rumor, an untruth. She did not think old Dunmore was lying. Whoever had thought of that trick to drive young Frederick mad was more conniving than she could ever hope to be, leagues more.
“And so,” Reverend Dunmore continued, and this time there was a hint of the old iron in his voice, “this burglary of yours has been for naught. If you were looking for proof of Frederick’s blood, or his crime, you have not found it, because it is not there.”
“No, it is not,” said Billy. “But your son was kind enough to have delivered to us proof enough of his murderous spirit. See here.” He took the letter from Elizabeth’s hand, picked up the lantern, held the paper up for Wait Dunmore to read.
Elizabeth watched the old man’s face as he read, saw the horror spread over his features, his mouth moving as he read but no words coming out. When he was done he looked up at Billy, as stunned as Elizabeth had been. More so, actually. He looked as if he wanted to speak but no words came.
And then Black Tom was back with the bell rope. Dunmore and the night watch were escorted back into the office, the still-unconscious murderers were dragged back, and all four men were bound tight where they would remain until morning at least. Enough time for the Bloody Revenge to be under way.
Elizabeth and Billy stood at the office door, took one last look around, one last check that the men were well bound. Out in the church Black Tom and Howland carefully opened the door-from the office they could hear that all too familiar creak-and checked that the streets were still empty.
Elizabeth met Dunmore’s eyes and held them. They considered each other, the two of them, the minister and the lady of Marlowe House, the father of a murderer and the former whore. The old man looked much older than he had that morning.
Billy Bird turned, led the way out, and Elizabeth followed, turned her back on Reverend Dunmore, on Boston, on the lot of it.
Out into the church and out the side entrance. The big door squeaked closed behind her. Before it shut tight she listened for some sound, some reaction-sobs, curses-from the Reverend Wait Dun-more, but the church was as quiet as a tomb.
Chapter 30
Whydah.
Marlowe stood grim at the break of the quarterdeck, watched that city of slave traders emerge from the predawn black.
He had been up and down the African coast in his varied career at sea, from Cape Verde to the Congo. Mostly during his time with the pirates. Wealth bled from the continent’s dark interior, streams of blood money that poured over the Europeans that gathered on her shores. And Marlowe and his former mates had been there to relieve them of some of it. Africa was a good place for pirates.
Yes, Marlowe had tasted Africa. Had eaten the spicy, peppered food of the Kroomen, had slept in the mud and grass huts of the fierce men of the Bissagos Islands, had lain with dark-skinned girls in Cabo Monte and Elmina and Brass and Old Calabar.
But Whydah. He had been there only once before, as a very young man. Thirteen, perhaps. Experienced enough by then to be rated ordinary seaman. He had been seduced into joining a blackbirder’s crew. Good money, damned good money, and at thirteen he felt himself quite impervious to the fevers that struck down white men by the score along the Bight of Benin.
It had been worse than a nightmare, worse than anything he could have imagined. Those poor people, led down into the hold, terrified, beaten, wailing in their despair. And then the stink and the moaning and the rattling of chains. There was no escape from it, like being separated from hell itself by a few inches of oak planking.
And the bodies. Carried up every day and tossed overboard. Stiff, wide-eyed, covered in their own filth, body after body, and every day he had to help carry them up, had to go down into that place, look into the eyes of the living and fetch the dead ones up. Over the leeward side, to the trail of sharks that kept constant company with the ship.
They had arrived in Jamaica with half the number of Africans they had left with, and young Malachias Barrett had jumped ship, fled into the city, not even bothered to collect his pay.
A year later he was a pirate.
And in all his years with that marauding clan he had never sailed with a more depraved and soulless bunch as the crew of that black-birder.
It was odd, he realized, that he had never once felt the same pity for the victims of his piracy that he did for those slaves he had helped transport. The Lord knew he had seen terror aplenty in their eyes, had seen atrocities carried out against them, was guilty of enough himself to see him damned many times over.
Perhaps he did not think of those people as helpless victims as he did the slaves. Certainly those who had not resisted the pirates’ attack had not been harmed-they had that opportunity to save themselves- whereas nothing the Africans could have done would have spared them their awful fate.
He wondered if perhaps that experience with the blackbirder was the real reason he had freed his people at Marlowe House. But that would suggest an emotional rather than a pragmatical reason for his actions, and he rejected that outright. He had always scoffed at Bickerstaff’s notion that slavery should be abolished the world over.
