up where he’ll have a fine view for eternity. These fellows”-he nodded toward the men who were wolfing down their cold roast beef and bread and butter and ale-“sat vigil with him. Now they are here to work, what with their vigil done.”
“Good, good,” said Dinwiddie, taking a tentative sip of ale and waiting to see how it would settle in his stomach. The men at breakfast, with their lively banter and ribald jokes, mouths overflowing with food that sprayed across the tabletop as they talked, did not seem to be in any deep mourning for their former lord and master.
Honor among thieves and all that. As the ale cleared his head a bit, Dinwiddie thought of how he would whip them into a real company, how they would be more grieved by his passing, were it to happen.
He drank another glass, and that gave him the strength to eat something, and that made him feel even more revitalized. Time to get to work.
Lord Dinwiddie slammed his hands on the table, palms down, with a loud smacking sound calculated to stop the conversations and gain everyone’s attention, but no one seemed to notice, and the loud talk did not pause for even a beat. He slammed his hands again, with the same results.
He scowled, made ready to bark out his unequivocal displeasure, when Nagel shouted, “Here, you great sons of whores, listen here!”
With that, the pirates fell silent and turned and looked at Nagel, who said, “Lord Dinwiddie, he wishes to say something to the gentlemen.”
“Thank you, Nagel,” Dinwiddie said, standing. “I reckon we’re finished with our breakfast. There’s a power of work to be done. Roof to repair and then the batteries to overhaul, the stockade to repair.” He fell easily into the role of command, after more than a decade as mate and master aboard merchantmen. “Damned lot of work and no time to waste. So right now I want you men up on the roof. You know what to do. I’ll be up to inspect your work directly.”
To his annoyance the men just sat there until Nagel barked “Go!” and then they stood and shuffled out. Soon there was only himself and Nagel in the hall.
“They’re villains and rogues, my lord. Pay them no mind,” Nagel said. “They’ll learn.”
“Oh, they will, I’ll see to that. And I think you had better get up there with them, Nagel. It will not serve discipline for them to see you lounging about.”
“Aye, sir,” Nagel said, but Dinwiddie could see that he was not happy about it. Still, it had to be done. Nagel could not be allowed to get too big for his britches. That was just what Marlowe had allowed to happen aboard the Elizabeth Galley. He had let Honeyman start to think he was some kind of an officer, and the whole thing had broken down. That sort of thing would not happen on St. Mary’s.
Nagel left, and Dinwiddie climbed back up to the second floor and out onto the wide veranda, which was becoming his favorite place to sit and think. There were still great splashes of blood on the flat stones where Yancy had slaughtered his daily pig. Dinwiddie had to wonder at the sanity of someone who would do such a thing.
He stood at the low wall and looked down at the harbor, the green jungle, the hibiscus and bougainvillea. There were two more vessels getting under way, bound off for the Red Sea, no doubt. It was more activity than he had seen yet in the three weeks that he had been there, and he wondered if Marlowe’s example had spurred these others.
After a few hours of contemplative thought and a light midmorning meal, he made his way down the hall to inspect the work on the roof. He was not happy with what he saw, and he said so. He ordered the repairs that had been done thus far be torn away and redone.
The next morning none of the men returned to work. Dinwiddie set the servants to repair the roof, but they proved even less competent or willing than the pirates. Soon they, too, began to melt away.
By the fourth day of his reign there were only half a dozen servants, a third of his harem, and four sodden pirates still living in the big house that Adam Baldridge had built. But Lord Dinwiddie was not discouraged. Rather, he took comfort from the situation. The men that Yancy had trained were unreliable-rogues and villains. They were not the stuff of which he would make the core of his empire, the nucleus of his dynasty.
He would recruit fresh blood from the incoming ships. He was a wealthy man now, with all that he had inherited, and he would grow wealthier still as he developed and grew the trade that Yancy had begun. New men, who would be loyal to him. He would greet each arriving ship, impress them with his status, his power, his sovereignty over the island.
He would start immediately. In fact, a lookout had just come down from the high peak that rose to the east of the harbor. He had asked for Nagel, but when Dinwiddie explained to him how things now lay, he gave his report to the new lord. Two ships, hull down. A big vessel and her tender, it appeared.
Dinwiddie thanked the man for the information and sent him back up the mountain to watch the vessels’ approach. He summoned his servants, that they might begin their preparations for the newly arriving vessels, the first guests that Dinwiddie would entertain as lord of St. Mary’s.
Yancy and Nagel stood on another peak, to the north of the harbor, and alternately looked through a powerful glass at the same pair of topgallant sails, the hulls of the vessels below them still lost beyond the horizon.
Yancy nodded. “It must be him. The big ship, the tender-it must be him.”
For one who had ostensibly died of cancer, Yancy seemed remarkably fit. He was pacing, punching his fist into his open palm, looking again and again through the glass. He felt as if his nerves were charged through with St. Elmo’s fire.
On the day they recruited Spelt, Yancy let Nagel understand that the cancer was a fraud. He had no choice. Nagel would not be pleased to see someone besides himself chosen as successor otherwise.
The night of the fire in the roof he had let the other Terrors in on the secret. He apologized, after a fashion, yet assured them that he had no choice but to fool them. The ruse had to be perfect. Everyone- Dinwiddie, the hangers-on at the house, the people in the town-they all had to genuinely believe in Yancy’s death.
Together, Yancy and his men had retreated to the mountain hideout, this time with Yancy leading the way, not lagging behind, racked by his ersatz disease. Yancy had not dared leave the running of the island to Spelt, but Dinwiddie was so exactly the man that Yancy had
hoped to find that he knew it was time to go.
And none too soon, as it happened.
It had been months since he had received the letter from Atwood. Months of planning and agonizing and waiting. But now the moment had arrived. Press was there, in the offing.
And I am here, ready for him.
Press would have been preparing as well, of course, would have been focused on this moment as intensely as had Yancy, but there was a difference, and Yancy knew it. Press thought he had surprise as a weapon. He did not know he was compromised. That put the real surprise in Yancy’s camp, which made it much more potent by far.
“Good bloody thing he showed up now,” Nagel grumbled. “The lads won’t go back, long as that horse’s arse is there.”
“Oh, they would go back.” Yancy looked sharply at Henry Nagel. “If I told them to, you had better goddamned believe they would go back. If I ordered them to.” Yancy was not pleased with the abandonment of Dinwiddie, stupid chucklehead though he might be. He, Yancy, had ordered his men to act loyal to their new lord, and they had managed only one day of it. He was not pleased.
It was lucky for them that Press happened to show up at that moment and bring an end to their charade. Had he not, Yancy would have made them return to the big house and show some real contrition to Lord Dinwiddie. He needed Dinwiddie in place.
He held Nagel with his hawk stare, saw the contrition that he expected, that he demanded. “I do not care to have my orders ignored,” he continued. He had to drive the point home. “This is a delicate thing. If you villains start acting of your own accord, then Press will kill us all. Is that clear?”
“Yes, my lord. And the men, they know it, too.”
“Good.” Yancy was silent for a long moment, and then in a more contemplative tone he added, “Press is a very difficult man to kill. Many have tried. I tried, and I failed.
“The joke of it is, I saved him, too. Found him marooned on a strip of land, near death, and I saved him. He sailed with us for half a year, and then he tried to betray me, to usurp my position as captain, get the men to vote me out.
“I turned him over to the Spanish authorities, who were looking for him. He had led a raid on Nombre de Dios,
