he wanted to twist Yancy’s thin neck. He concentrated on the big cannon on the island, which he reckoned were concentrated on him.
“Yes, well, do not forget again,” Yancy said, and met Marlowe’s eyes at last. The man was clearly sick with some ailment, and yet there was an energy about him that seemed out of place. “You wish to buy guns, I understand?”
“Yes, my lord. And powder and shot. And I would hope to careen as well.”
Yancy nodded, and his eyes fell on Elizabeth, and he looked her up and down as only a man used to having supreme authority would dare do. Marlowe gritted his teeth. Yancy shifted his gaze a fraction of a second before Marlowe was about to speak.
“This is your wife?” Yancy asked.
“Yes. Lord Yancy, allow me to present Elizabeth Marlowe.”
Elizabeth gave a shallow bow. Yancy shuffled across the deck with his weak gait, took up her hand, and kissed it as he bowed to her. He continued to hold it, turned to Marlowe. “Not many men would bring their wives on a Red Sea voyage,” Yancy observed, his eyes drifting back to Elizabeth.
“There are not many wives such as Elizabeth,” Marlowe countered.
“No indeed.” Yancy finally eased her hand down, looked at Marlowe. “You will have your guns. We shall discuss price later. And you are welcome to careen as you wish. Plenty of good beach, you can see from here. You will dine with me tonight?” It did not sound like a question.
“I would be honored,” Marlowe said.
“Good. Please bring your wife and whatever officers you see fit.” Then he turned and climbed back down into the waiting barge with never another word.
“Well, he seems disposed to helping us, in any event,” Bickerstaff observed as the barge pulled away.
“Yes, so he does.” But that fact did not ease Marlowe’s anxiety in the slightest measure.
By the time the sails were furled and the ship stood down to an anchor watch, there was not much left of the daylight. Marlowe and Elizabeth dressed for dinner, as did Bickerstaff and Peleg Dinwiddie, got up in the same attire he had worn to Governor Richier’s dinner in Bermuda, so many months before. Fortunately, he had retained the lessons in fashion that Elizabeth had so diplomatically foisted on him, and he looked only a little bit odd as he met the others topside.
Marlowe did not think it would matter much. This was a pirate community, where the odd, the depraved, the bizarre were commonplace, even expected.
They gathered in the waist as the boat crew took their places on the thwarts, and Bickerstaff said, “Thomas, do you think it is entirely safe, bringing Elizabeth into this viper’s nest?”
No, Thomas thought, but he said, “I should think it is safe. There is a sort of a code, you know, with these fellows. They are not wont to meddle with another’s wife. Not when the other is willing and able to fight for her honor, as of course you know I am.” That last he addressed to Elizabeth, with a bow.
“We shall trust your judgment in this, naturally,” said Bickerstaff.
“And even if I am wrong,” Marlowe added, “Elizabeth is now the finest blade in all Madagascar, thanks to your tutelage. I should think we might look to her to protect our persons.”
They climbed down the side, and Marlowe took his place in the boat. He hoped very much that he would still be joking at evening’s end. He did not point out to the others that there really was no choice but to bring Elizabeth ashore, did not point out that there was more danger to all of them, Elizabeth included, in ignoring this Yancy’s wishes than in acquiescing. They could only play along and hope that things broke in their favor.
With Honeyman as coxswain, they were rowed ashore to a dubious wooden pier that jutted out like a poorly executed appendage to the dirt road that ran along the shore to the town. Marlowe stepped onto the slimy ladder, took a few rungs, turned, and helped Elizabeth up, and then Bickerstaff and Dinwiddie followed.
“You keep the boat crew sober, at least until we get back to the ship,” Marlowe ordered Honeyman.
It was an interesting situation. By the law of the pirates, Marlowe could not give such an order. If his men wanted to get wild drunk, he could not stop them, not since he had agreed to turn his legitimate merchantman into a pirate ship.
But, to his relief, Honeyman just nodded and said, “Aye, Captain.”
That done, Marlowe turned his attention to the town in front of him. There were two roads that he could see, no more, the one that ran from the end of the dock along the shore and another that wound its way up the hill to the stockade and the big house beyond. These crossed at a right angle and formed the town’s single intersection. The roads were dirt, but not overly dusty in that wet, tropical climate.
Off to the right were the warehouses, big wood-frame buildings, a few shuttered windows on the upper floors, the remnants of paint still clinging to the weathered boards. Scattered around them coils of line, rusting anchors, piles of standing rigging stripped from some vessel or other. Bursts of bright green vegetation grew up around them and even through them, showing how they had not been moved in some time.
The two roads were busy. There were a few carts and oxen and one horse that Marlowe could see, but for the most part it was foot traffic. Pirates. They wore the dress of seamen-loose trousers, bare feet, long hair-as well as those things that marked them as men on the account-bright sashes, cocked hats with feathers jutting out, gentlemen’s coats, weapons hanging off them in abundance.
They were hurrying or staggering or sitting on the road and singing or passed out, drunk. They were clustered about small, round tables on the street just outside one of the dilapidated taverns. They were promenading with local girls in European dress on their arms as if they were at the Court of St. James’s. Several hundred men, Marlowe had to guess. The town might be no more than a little enclave carved from the jungle, but the spirit was Port Royal in its buccaneering heyday.
Marlowe and his party made their way up the road to the intersection, then turned and tramped uphill to the big house. They stopped at the stockade and were questioned by a pair of guards who stood at the gate. Marlowe explained who they were, and they were let to pass and continue on the one hundred yards to the main entrance of the house.
The house itself was a magnificent affair, even more extraordinary considering that it was built on a jungle island. The lower half, up to the second story, was stone, harvested from the ground and stacked uncut, but done so neatly that little mortar could be seen between each.
Above that, the structure rose two more stories, built of wood frame and stucco, in the Tudor style. A great, wide veranda jutted out over the grounds, and several of the windows had their own little verandas that looked out over the harbor. The roof was a massive field of thatch.
Marlowe paused, caught his breath, stared with admiration at the building. He wondered at the drive and vision of the man who had built it.
“That Baldridge fellow, he done this, right?” Dinwiddie asked, breaking the silence.
“Yes, I believe so,” Marlowe said. “But I gather from Henry Nagel that Lord Yancy does not care to be reminded of that. Pray do not mention Baldridge again.”
“No, I won’t,” Dinwiddie said. He sounded as if the reminder had offended him. He was growing touchier by the day.
They stepped up to the door, and before Marlowe could knock, Henry Nagel opened it and ushered them in. They entered a cool foyer that rose two stories above them, with a wide staircase running up to the second floor.
Nagel had managed to say no more than “Welcome-” when Yancy stepped into the foyer, his cape nearly dragging on the floor.
“Welcome, welcome to my home!” he said, expansive and gracious now, more vital in his own domain. “Captain Marlowe, the lovely Elizabeth, welcome.” He glanced at the others, apparently could not recall their names, and said nothing. “Pray allow me to give you a tour before we eat. It is a simple, rustic place, but we must endure such to live in this tropical splendor!”
Yancy proceeded to show them the drawing room, the sitting room, the bedchambers on the second floor, shuffling from here to there, pausing to catch his breath or to indulge a coughing spell. There were a few other men in the house, those men, Marlowe guessed, that Yancy could genuinely trust. Yancy made introductions as they chanced to meet, named the others as though they were minor nobility, but they looked to Marlowe to be the same sort of rogues as wandered the streets below, if better dressed.
There were native men as well, servants, and native women, who seemed to outnumber the men three to one.
