gangway, but no one out in that bright sunlight could see him in the gloom.
He waited while Tasker assembled a side party, going about the business with more care and efficiency than Press had intended. At last Press heard the boat bump alongside, and Tasker called his men to attention in two rows, making something of a path from the gangway to the middle of the waist.
A portly man stepped through the gangway, nodding his approval of the side party in a supercilious way. Press moved forward, still keeping to the shadows. It was not Yancy, that was certain. A bigger man than Yancy, lacking Yancy’s nervous, squirrel-like motion.
The man stepped through the ranks of drawn-up men, up to Tasker and took Tasker’s outstretched hand. Tasker said something that Press could not hear, but the fat man let go of the lieutenant’s hand and lifted his arms in an expansive gesture and boomed, “Welcome! Welcome, all, to my St. Mary’s!”
Who is this bloody horse’s arse? Press thought. Tasker, playing his role well, began to accept the welcome, but Press stepped quickly forward, his long legs rushing him along, silver toothpick clenched in his teeth.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded of the fat man, who could not hide his surprise at Press’s sudden appearance, his antagonistic manner.
“I, sir, am Dinwiddie. Peleg Dinwiddie. I am lord of the island of St. Mary’s.”
That declaration earned a smile from Press. “Not any bloody more, you’re not,” he said, and before the confused and increasingly nervous Dinwiddie could respond, Press said, “Where is Yancy?”
“Yancy? Yancy is dead, if you must know-”
“Goddamn it!” Press stepped toward the fat man, but the row of sailors for the side party partially blocked his way. Press grabbed the nearest man, shoved him to the deck. “Dismissed, you whoresons!” he shouted, and the two straight lines of the side party fell apart as the men scattered.
Press grabbed Dinwiddie by the collar of his fine coat, pulled him across the deck until they were inches apart. Press towered over Dinwiddie. He was looking down into the man’s bloodshot eyes when he once again asked, “Where is Yancy?”
“Yancy is dead!” Dinwiddie insisted again, and then, spluttering with outrage, he grabbed Press’s wrists with strong hands-seaman’s hands-and shouted, “Get your damned hands off me, you bastard, or I shall have you in irons!”
Another smile, and Press jerked Dinwiddie sideways and shoved, and Dinwiddie fell to the deck at his feet. He made to stand, but Press kicked him hard in the stomach, the face, the stomach again.
Dinwiddie lay gasping, blood flowing from his mouth. Press leaned low.
“How long have you been lord of St. Mary’s?” He said it with a sarcastic flourish.
Dinwiddie had to think. “Four days,” he said at last.
“Where is Yancy?”
“Dead…”
“When did he die?”
“Four days ago.”
“You know where he is buried?”
“No.”
Press straightened, looked out over the water, toward the big house. Could it be true? It was entirely possible.
But to die four days before they made landfall? Four days before he, Press, could arrive and kill him? A terrible irony, if it was true.
Once again Dinwiddie was struggling to get up, and once again Press kicked him to the deck. He would give this idiot another hour of such treatment, and if, after that, he was still alive and still insisting that Yancy was not, then perhaps he would believe him.
An hour later, with blood splattered in wild patterns across the deck, Press had to put a finger to Dinwiddie’s neck to check if he was alive. He frowned, felt around, and finally located a pulse.
Dinwiddie looked soft and fat, but that appearance was misleading. He was a strong man, with a strong constitution. He had remained conscious for most of the time that Press had beaten him and kicked him around the deck, to the great amusement of the men watching from various corners of the Queen’s Venture’s deck and lower rig. The few times he had passed out under the treatment, a bucket of seawater had revived him, and he had endured more.
But for all of that time Press could not elicit any answer about Yancy save the insistence he was dead.
He took his finger from Lord Peleg Dinwiddie’s neck, stood up straight, the bleeding, motionless bulk at his feet, and looked across the harbor at the big Baldridge house.
Perhaps Yancy was dead. There was no question that this idiot Dinwiddie thought so. Press had taken him well past the point where he would have continued to lie.
He looked down, surprised to see the boat that had taken Dinwiddie out to the Queen’s Venture still floating alongside.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?” Press demanded.
“We was told to wait. Lord Dinwiddie told us wait for him,” said the man at stroke oar.
At that Press laughed out loud. “I’ll see to ‘Lord’ Dinwiddie, never you fear.”
“We’re owed a shilling for our service,” the stroke oar insisted next.
“What!?” Press shouted. Such audacity was not to be suffered. “Get out of here, you son of a bitch, or I will shoot each one of you motherless bastards!”
The men in the boat needed no more encouragement than that. They shoved off, laid into the oars, pulled for the dock from which they had come.
Press watched them go. “Tasker!” he called out, and before the lieutenant could reply, he said, “We will be going ashore. Every able man is to go with the shore parties. Muskets and cutlasses.”
He climbed back up to the quarterdeck, sat brooding as Tasker assembled his private army, preparing them to storm the island. He would tear the town apart looking for Yancy. If it turned out the bastard was lucky enough to be dead, he would have to find out where he was buried, dig him up, have a look at the whoreson’s face. Leave him for the crows. That was the only way he could be certain.
He would be sorry to have missed the chance to kill him, slowly. He prayed that from the depths of hell Yancy would know that he, Press, was enjoying all the things that Yancy had worked so hard to build.
At last the boats from the Queen’s Venture and the boats from the Speedwell were manned and loaded with armed sailors milling about between the two ships, waiting. Press stepped down from the quarterdeck. His steward stood ready with his sword and his brace of pistols, and he put them on with a slow, ritualistic precision.
He looked down at Dinwiddie, who was starting to stir. “We’ll take that with us,” he said, pointing toward the former lord of the island, then climbed down into the stern sheets of the longboat. With no more than a nod he ordered the boat under way, and behind them the other boats fell in, and the small army of invasion, their own scaled-down Norman Conquest, pulled for the shore.
Press kept a sharp eye for any signs of anything. He had left no more than a skeleton crew aboard each ship, but he was not concerned with their being taken while he was ashore. He could see the batteries on Quail Island, or so the chart called it. Whoever commanded those guns commanded the entrance to the harbor, and by day’s end he intended to command those guns.
Up to the rickety, half-rotten dock, and Press climbed out and stepped ashore, walked down the wooden pier toward the road, slowly waggling the toothpick in his mouth.
He looked around, thought, Here I am.
From the sitting room at Pall Mall to standing on the island as his own army unloaded behind him. Magnificent. The big house, the batteries, the high hills, the warehouses-all his. Press felt closer to happiness and contentment and satisfaction than he had felt in many years.
It took fifteen minutes for the men to land and assemble, because Press had a big army with him, over two hundred strong. When at last they were formed up in columns as respectable as could be expected from sailors, Press stepped off, heading up the dirt road that led to the town, and met with the road that led uphill to the house. They passed through what must be considered the center of St. Mary’s: a few dilapidated buildings, some big tents, and off to the left a few warehouses.
Lining the street, the men and women of the town watched them pass. Sailors, pirates, whores, and natives, they did not interfere or even say a word. To a person, they had the look of a population that had seen much
