they heard the sound of men swarming up the side, and then the first of the Bloody Revenges appeared over the bulwark, swords and pistols in hand.
“Hold! Hold!” Marlowe shouted. “The ship is ours, the Moors are below! Hold, there!”
It was like shouting at deaf men. The Revenges did not pause for a beat before they fired a volley into the stunned men of the Elizabeth Galley and then fell on them-those still standing-with sword and cutlass.
Chapter 22
THE FIGHT did not last long. It was shorter even than the battle with the treasure ship’s original defenders. The Elizabeth Galleys were exhausted, stunned, and taken entirely by surprise.
A pistol ball grazed Marlowe’s ribs, and it hurt like the devil, but it did not put him down. He had time enough to recover from the shock, time even to draw his sword and shout again for the boarders to hold their attack as the Revenges swarmed across the deck to fall on his men.
Even as Marlowe’s sword rang with the clang of steel on steel and he turned aside an attacking blade, he could not believe the depth of the betrayal. He did not know Billy Bird well, but Elizabeth did, and he could not believe that she could have misjudged him to such a degree.
He parried the sword thrust, leaped back from the slashing dagger his opponent wielded in his left hand, lunged forward. The move was slow and awkward-like his men, Marlowe was tired-and his blade was easily beaten aside. Marlowe leaped back away from the riposte, the man’s blade missing him by inches.
Billy Bird, son of a bitch! Marlowe thought, even as his eyes kept track of every move his opponent made. But he had not seen Billy come over the rail. His eyes darted around. No Billy that he could see. Had Billy Bird been voted out by a faction of his crew bent on betrayal?
The other man lunged again, a full-body attack, sword and dagger, and Marlowe had all he could do to fight him off. The man-Marlowe did not recognize him-was fast, but Marlowe could see his tendency to expose himself as he countered with the dagger, and he knew that was the weakness that would kill him.
One step back, sword held low, and the man leaped forward, brought the dagger around, and Marlowe had him right under the arm, drove his sword into his thrashing body. The man’s eyes went wide, his mouth fell open, and he screamed as if the sword puncture had released the sound from his chest.
Sword withdrawn, and the man collapsed. Marlowe turned to see who was next. Searched the deck for a familiar face. He had met most of the Revenges during their floating bacchanal. But he recognized no one.
And then one of his own men threw down his sword, shouted, “Quarter!” And then another did the same, and then the fight was over, the furious, confused, stunned Elizabeth Galleys dropping their weapons, glaring at this new enemy, who looked on them in gloating triumph.
And then on the far side of the deck, up the boarding steps and through the gangway came Billy Bird. He stepped with great difficulty. His face was a battered wreck, his nose broken, both his eyes blackened and one of them swollen shut.
He stood there for a moment, swaying. And then, coming up behind him and shoving him to the deck, appeared Roger Press.
Hours before, Billy Bird had heard the signal, two guns in quick succession, then a third, and he knew what it meant. His head had jerked up from the deck, half turned toward the sound, and then Roger Press had slammed his boot into Billy’s stomach and driven the breath out of him.
“What was that?”
Billy Bird, eyes wide, gasping, as if all the air had suddenly been sucked from the deck. At last he managed to draw breath. “Cannon fire, you stupid bastard…” he croaked.
Press kicked him again. “I know it’s cannon fire. Whose? Sounds like a signal to me. Is someone signaling you, Captain Bird?”
More coughing and spitting blood, and at last Billy Bird managed a weak “Sod off…”
Press kicked him again, then straightened and stared out at the horizon. He didn’t need Bird to tell him it was a signal; that was clear enough. Soft, muted, coming from someplace over the horizon, but it was definitely a signal.
He picked absently at his teeth with his silver toothpick.
He’s no coward, this foppish little prick, I’ll give him that, Press thought.
The Queen’s Venture had sighted the Revenge’s topgallants at first light, the first European ship they had seen since leaving St. Mary’s. With the lookout’s hail, Press had been consumed with hope that this might be Barrett’s- Marlowe’s-vessel. They had run their East India-man bunting aloft, closed fast with strange sail.
But she proved to be a brig, and Dinwiddie had said the Elizabeth Galley was a ship. So the next-best possibility was that the brig was working with Marlowe or at least had spoken to him.
The brig flew the British merchantman’s ensign. They did not try to run at the sight of the Queen’s Venture. There was no need; an East Indiaman would do them no harm.
The Venture ranged up alongside, ran out her great guns, overwhelming the brig with her size and firepower and the strength of her company, armed and arrayed along her deck. The brig wisely hove to, agreed to a boarding party, acquiesced to all of Press’s demands with never a shot fired.
Billy Bird had tried to bluff his way through the interview, an interview that took place on the brig’s quarterdeck with all the Bloody Revenge’s company herded forward and held at bay by the muskets carried by Press’s men, the great muzzles of the cannons that aimed at them from the Queen’s Venture’s side, fifty feet away.
Bird began with hollow protests at the treatment they were receiving. But Press, wanting to put some veneer of legitimacy on what he was doing, showed Bird the queen’s commission that he carried and then asked to see Bird’s privateering commission. Bird produced some document issued by the governor of New York, which Press glanced at and declared invalid.
Press informed Bird he was subject to arrest. Asked him about Marlowe. Billy Bird did not know any Marlowe but had seen a sail running off to the westward just the day before, thought perhaps that was him.
Then Press began to interrogate him for real, using his fists and boots and a belaying pin taken from Billy Bird’s own ship. He went at Billy for twenty minutes in that manner. The Roundsman never wavered in his story and even had the fortitude to continue to hurl back insults and abuse. And the more Billy cursed him and verbally abused him, the more punishment Billy endured, the more Press was certain that he was lying.
And then came the signal from beyond the horizon, and it did not matter anymore what Billy Bird said. Someone was out there. It was time to go see who it was.
Roger Press had it all: the Bloody Revenge, the Elizabeth Galley, the Moorish treasure ship, St. Mary’s. It was the bastard’s greatest moment of triumph, but Marlowe did not feel privileged to witness it. As he sat on the deck with his hands held behind his head, which was humiliating enough, he searched his mind for something that would make Press’s victory less complete. But he could think of nothing.
Press himself had taken pains to give Marlowe the particulars. Told him about his conquest of St. Mary’s and all the riches there, his capture of the Bloody Revenge, his idea for using the brig in a ruse de guerre that completely fooled the men of the Elizabeth Galley-and their captain. And all the time the damned toothpick waggling at him.
Press made certain that Marlowe was there to hear his first officer’s report of the preliminary inspection of the cargo carried aboard the captured Moorish ship. Gold and silver in coin, bar, and dust; pearls; jewels, set and loose; jewel-encrusted statues and daggers and crowns and even a saddle emblazoned with rubies and diamonds. Bundles of silks, spices, ivory. It was the booty that the Roundsmen dreamed of. The booty that for a brief moment had been the take of the Elizabeth Galleys. And now it was in the hands of Roger Press.
“Dear God, Press, you whoreson, either kill me or give me a sword and fight me like a man!” Marlowe shouted out at last, able to bear no more. “You hung back before, when your men boarded us, never gave me a chance to kill you. Just like your damned cowardice at Nombre de Dios. Play the man now, if you will, but for God’s sake don’t bloody bore me to death!”
He did not expect a sword. He expected a belaying pin across the head. But instead Press just grinned, poked at his teeth with his toothpick. “No, no, Marlowe. If I give you a sword, you’ll just fall on it and deprive me of the pleasure of killing you. And I haven’t the time to do a proper job of that now. I have all this booty to get into my
