from sight around her bow, then reappeared again.
“What he doing?” Joshua asked.
“Marlowe don’t know it ain’t a trap,” James said. “He don’t understand why he don’t see no men on board. He going to take a good look before he goes aboard her.”
The longboat stopped under the Frenchman’s counter, and though they were too far to hear any conversation, King James could well imagine the one that was taking place. Marlowe was looking for the white crew, trying to find out why this ship was manned by African women alone. Marlowe could speak a bit of the patois of the coast; he might even be able to communicate with one of them.
Five minutes of that, and then the longboat pulled up to the Frenchman’s side and one by one the men boarded her. James could not identify any of them in particular, but he had no doubt that one was Thomas Marlowe and another was Francis Bickerstaff.
Bickerstaff. He would be the key to this thing. He would be the calm voice of reason. If there was to be any cooperation, any mercy or forgiveness or contrition between two headstrong, arrogant, stubborn men such as King James and Thomas Marlowe, then it would be through the intercession of Francis Bickerstaff.
They watched for another ten minutes, but nothing of note happened, nothing at all that they could see. Marlowe and his men would be searching the ship, deck to keelson, moving carefully in case it was a trap.
It was time to confront him, time to prostrate himself before Thomas Marlowe and beg for the lives of his men. James looked up and down the beach, as far as he could see from their place of concealment, saw a dugout canoe pulled up in the sand. It would be a tricky thing, getting through the surf, but they would do it.
He turned to his men, was ready to order them forward, when he heard something else: voices, a number of them. They were not close, and were all but drowned by the crashing surf, but in the lull between the breakers he could hear them, talking loud.
“Come along,” he said, and rather than leading his boys out onto the exposed beach he led them back into the forest, deeper than where they had slept that night, to a place where the thick undergrowth hid them completely. “Wait here. I be back.”
James headed off through the woods, moving fast, despite the thick tangle of vegetation. He knew instinctively where each foot should fall, and the next, and the next. He moved silently, more silent than was necessary with the crash of waves a scant fifty yards away, following the line of the beach, moving toward the voices. He was amazed at how quickly the woodcraft he had known as a child came back, as if the knowledge of it was embedded in the ancient earth of that continent, and he needed only to be reunited with her to have all that dormant skill wake again.
They were standing at the trailhead, where the packed forest floor gave way to the fine sand of the beach. James could hear them clearly even before he could see them, and though he did not understand the words, he recognized the rapid, clipped sound of the Kwa language. They were Kru, Madshaka’s elite.
Another dozen steps and he could see them at last, in glimpses through the foliage, but it was enough to tell him what he needed to know. They were heavily armed, a hunting party, eight out of about twenty of the Kru who had stood by Madshaka. Apparently his place at the slave factory was not so secure that he was willing to send off even a majority of his private army.
The Kru might have been sent to hunt for James and the rest, but they were not hunting now. Rather, they were pointing out to sea, talking fast among themselves, with wild gestures, and again James did not need to know the language to understand what was being said. They were discussing the arrival of the Elizabeth Galley, the significance of the longboat going over to her.
Despite the rudimentary seamanship that James had drilled into them, ships and the sea were not their world. They would not recognize the Elizabeth Galley from the brief encounter they had had on the other side of the Atlantic. They would not know how to interpret this new development.
James knew already what they would do-send two men back to inform Madshaka of the Galley’s arrival, post two to watch the ships for further activity, send the remaining four off to hunt the Virginians- and five minutes later they did just that.
The hunters split up and James receded back into the woods, moving diagonally until he could see a section of the beach. He had no fear of his men being found out. They would have been nearly impossible to discover in any event. And while eight well-armed men might have made a vigorous and effective search, the hunters now were outnumbered and looking for an enemy they knew to be armed with cutlasses and knives at least, and so they were not putting any great effort into the task.
James watched for ten minutes as they made their perfunctory inspection of the tree line, looking for where the Virginians might have entered the forest, and then worked his way back to his men.
They spent the remainder of the morning there, hiding, resting, eating what wild fruit James was able to obtain.
Noon, with the sun overhead, beating down on the beach but unable to penetrate to where they hid, and more voices drifted up from the shore: chatter, then the crash of surf, chatter, crash.
James made his way to the tree line once more. Madshaka and the eight hunters stood, feet in the swirling sea, staring out at the two ships that bobbed in unison like dancers and tugged at their thick anchor cables.
Madshaka was making wild gestures, twirling around now and again when his fury got the better of him. The Frenchman represented a fortune to him, stuffed as it was with booty and slaves for the reselling. Even the ship itself, sold at a fraction of its value, would be worth more than most Africans would see in a lifetime.
Twelve hours before, Madshaka had all that, plus King James’s very life depending on a single word from him. And now, in just half a day, it was coming apart, and Madshaka was not the kind who would let that happen. There was no life that Madshaka would not expend to protect his empire.
James knew now who Madshaka was.
And he knew Madshaka was not stupid, and he was not rash. He would do everything in his power to get the Frenchman back, but he would not attack in the daylight and he would not make a headlong assault against an overwhelming enemy. The capture of the slave factory told James all he needed to know about Madshaka’s tactical mind, and so he rested easy through the daylight hours, certain that no move would be made until dark, certain that Madshaka would not move until he thought he could win.
The sun went down in a great show of red and orange, filtering through the sands that were lifted off the African deserts by the steady winds and drawn up into the far reaches of the sky. And then it was dark and King James roused his men, led them slowly toward the beach.
Flickering light danced over the Frenchman’s lower masts and through her gunports. The women had lit their nightly fire. James could picture them gathered around it, sitting cross-legged, holding in their laps their children, or the children they had adopted out of the “cargo,” rocking slowly to the rhythm of some sad song of the Ibo or the Yoruba or the Aja.
And from the Elizabeth Galley, a single anchor light forward, and the big stern lanterns, and below them, the brightly lit great cabin. Marlowe and Bickerstaff and probably Fleming drinking their port, the remains of dinner spread before them.
The five men waited, silent, for the most part, as the moon climbed higher and higher and first the fire aboard the Frenchman faded away to nothing and then the lanterns in the great cabin were extinguished one by one until there was nothing to be seen of either ship, save for the lanterns burning topside aboard the Galley.
“Time to go,” James said quietly.
“We going aboard the Elizabeth Galley?” It was Quash, and his voice was eager.
“No, not ‘we.’ I am.”
“Oh.” There was no attempt to hide the disappointment. Sanctuary, or so they saw it, within sight, and James would not allow them to enter.
“Listen here, boys. We still outlaws, you understand? Might be we goes aboard and they hang us all, right there. Can’t take that chance.”
“So why are you going aboard?”
“Because I gots to see that you boys will be safe. So I’m going to go aboard first, and I’m going to have a talk with Captain Marlowe.”
Captain Marlowe was not asleep, had not been asleep, and did not envision being asleep anytime soon. He lay still in his cot, stared up at the blackness. He had tried to use his arm as little as possible, but he still was forced to use it a lot, and now it hurt like hell. On the deck above he heard the clanging of the bells, seven bells, half past
