ship.
“But see here, I know you have a head for numbers. I think I shall have you write out the inventory of my treasure as it is swayed out. What say you?”
“I say kiss my arse.”
“Oh, indeed?” Press looked down at the quarterdeck of the Elizabeth Galley, fifteen feet below. “Say, ain’t that the little doxy who was a stranger to you back in London?”
Someone of the Elizabeth Galley’s crew, thinking the Moor taken, had told Elizabeth it was safe to come topside again.
“Is she a stranger to you still, Marlowe? Have you no care of what happens to her? Or do you think mayhaps you will cooperate with me?”
In the end it was cooperation. Marlowe rummaged through the great cabin of the Moorish ship, more like a setting for some sort of harem than a ship’s cabin, under the close scrutiny of three heavily armed guards. At last he found the ship’s ledger books and a silver writing set. He flipped through one of the ledgers. It was crammed with items written in a tight scrawl, the Indian letters utterly foreign. But the second half of the book was blank, and Marlowe reckoned he could use that to take the inventory in English.
Press did not intend to keep the Moorish ship. He did not explain his intentions to Marlowe, but then he did not have to. Taking the ship would have been pointless; dealing with her poor sailing qualities and the four hundred or so prisoners on board would have been more aggravation than the ship was worth.
No, Press would empty her hold into his own ship, rob the people on board of whatever valuables they had, and then let them go on their way. It was the only logical plan. It was what Marlowe had intended to do.
As the hatches were broken open and the Elizabeth Galleys forced at gunpoint to go below and begin breaking bulk on the valuable cargo, Press’s ship came up over the horizon. She was a fast one, and big. A former man-of- war, Marlowe guessed. He thought perhaps he had seen her on the Thames, back in London. That would make sense.
“Lovely, ain’t she?” Press asked, and Marlowe cursed himself for letting Press see him staring at her.
“Queen’s Venture. A gang of these rich bastards with the East India Company hired me to command her. I negotiated for half the prize money. But now I reckon I’ll just take all the prize money. Why go back and be a wealthy gentleman in England when I can be an even wealthier king on St. Mary’s, eh?”
“Roger, it’s hard for me to figure anything I could care less about,” Marlowe assured him.
“Yes, you always did lack direction, young sir. So here is something to keep your mind on your work.”
Two of Press’s men led Elizabeth onto the Moor’s deck, her wrists bound in front of her. They pushed her down to a sitting position and tied her wrists to a ring bolt in the deck.
“Just a reminder.” Press grinned. He held the toothpick between his teeth and waggled it with his tongue.
Marlowe looked at him, expressionless. I am going to rip your sodding heart out, he thought.
It took another hour for Press’s men to move the Bloody Revenge and to maneuver the Queen’s Venture alongside, but soon the two ships, the Elizabeth Galley and the Queen’s Venture, were tied to either side of the Moor, a floating island of wood and cordage, with the Bloody Revenge and her skeleton crew hove to a cable length away. Roger Press’s private flotilla, an armada of Red Sea Rovers.
The Elizabeth Galleys and the Bloody Revenges did the work while Press and his men oversaw the operation at gunpoint. The great wealth of the Mogul’s ship was swayed up from the hold and left to hang over the gaping cavern of the Moorish ship’s main hatch while Marlowe wrote down a careful description of whatever it was, along with the quantity in the column provided in the ledger book.
Press made regular inspections of his work, kept a close eye on him as he did his inventory. There was no need for further threats against Elizabeth. Both men understood how things lay.
When a guard from the hold dragged one of Billy Bird’s men topside and reported that he had caught the man slipping a loose coin into his shirt, Press smiled and gave the order to hang him, then and there.
The man kicked his way up to the end of the main yard, and when he was dead, his body was left in place, like a pirate hanged in chains as a warning to honest mariners. The execution took ten minutes, and then it was back to work.
The Queen’s Venture, being largely empty of stores after her voyage from England, absorbed a great deal of the Moorish treasure, but even her big, cavernous hold could not take it all. Once she was full, hatches were broken open aboard the Elizabeth Galley, barrels of food and water jettisoned, and Marlowe’s former ship-Press’s newest- was loaded with the last of the take.
It took two full days, bobbing along in the Gulf of Aden, to empty the Great Mogul’s ship, so prodigious was the treasure she carried aboard. As the sun set on the second day and Marlowe handed his last ledger book to Press, the third he had filled, Press smiled at him and said, “An excellent job, my dear Marlowe, excellent. You know, I had thought I would kill you now. Thought perhaps I’d bugger your pretty wife in front of you and then kill you, but Lord, I am far too tired for that! So much booty!
“So I think instead I will stow you safe away and let you wonder what I am doing to your wife, and then, when we get back to St. Mary’s, then I will kill you. It is far more amusing to think of you all alone, pondering your fate. You may think of me and how I sat in agony for eight days on that accursed strip of sand on which you left me. Do you recall, Marlowe? I hope so. Because I want you to think about it. You will have ample time.”
He was no longer smiling when he finished his speech and waved for two of the guards to take Marlowe away.
Marlowe glared at him. He wanted to shout, to threaten, to assure Press that he, Marlowe, would kill him slowly and painfully if he touched Elizabeth. But it was pointless, and if he made Press angry, then that anger might be vented on Elizabeth, so Marlowe kept his mouth shut and let the guards lead him off.
They took him down into the cable tier of the Queen’s Venture. It was the very lowest part of the ship, where the coils of hemp cable sat on a platform that kept them just a foot above the water in the bilge. It was a black, humid, and stinking place, with rats rushing about in the dark.
The guards sat Marlowe on a small open part of the platform and chained him hand and foot to a ring bolt driven into a heavy timber brace. They secured the bolts in the hand and leg irons, tested them, and when they found them secure, they left him.
He sat on the rough deck and tried not to let the despair sweep him away. On the Moorish ship the work was done, and Press was letting his men have their fun with the prisoners. Even so many decks down, and on board another ship, Marlowe could hear the screams of men, the shrieks and sobs of women, laughter, gunshots.
He could picture what was happening on board the Moor. He had seen it all before, on other ships and other oceans. He wondered what part Elizabeth was being made to play, but he pushed that thought aside. He would go mad for certain if he let himself think along those lines.
He contented himself with the thought that Press would not harm Elizabeth until they were back at St. Mary’s at least. Press would not do anything to her unless Marlowe was watching. He assured himself that he, Thomas Marlowe-Malachias Barrett-would kill every whoreson one of them, and he left it at that. He did not consider how realistic that thought was.
At some point Marlowe passed out from exhaustion, only to be tortured by nightmare dreams. When he awoke, he was in the cable tier still, still alone. He stared into the gloom, but even with his eyes adjusted as they were to the dark, he could see nothing beyond vague shapes.
He lay very motionless and listened. There was a great chorus of scratching as the rats scurried around the place, but there was little beyond that. The bacchanal on board the Moor was over. He did not know if it was day or night, but he was quite certain from the movement of the vessel that they were still hove to.
His legs and arms were stiff. He needed very much to relieve himself. He looked up at the dark deck overhead, could see nothing. He considered shouting out, calling for the irons to be removed so he could use the head. Wondered if anyone would hear him.
But as he considered it, he realized that Press would not allow the irons to come off, not so Marlowe could use the jakes. This was part of the torment, making him wallow in his own filth. He felt the despair rising again. He fumbled to undo his breeches under the constraints of the irons, then shuffled along the deck until he was at the end of the chains and there did his business as best as he could. It was disgusting, humiliating. Torture. That was the idea.
And so Marlowe established the one spot on deck that was the head and then, at the other extreme of his chains, the place where he lay.
