company. I’ll take seventy or so men with me. Pistols and cutlasses. Clayford will come with me.”
Press was not about to leave Clayford alone with all that treasure underfoot and only a hemp anchor cable holding him in place. Brown-law, however, was young and lacking in experience, the third son of a minor lord with enough money and sea experience to tempt Press into shipping him. He had that absurd sense of honor that all the aristocracy pretended to. He could manage things in Press’s absence, but he did not have the guts or the guile to betray his captain. “You are in command of the ships until I return. We may need to do a bit of disciplining up there.”
“Aye, sir,” Brownlaw said, and he turned to comply, but Press said, “Hold a minute…”
Roger Press paused and stared up at the big house and ran the numbers over in his head. Between the Queen’s Venture and the Speedwell he had somewhere around 250 men. He was taking a hundred with him. Another twenty or so were sick or injured from the fighting. That would leave nearly as many prisoners as men on board the three ships.
That would not do. Not with Marlowe and Billy Bird and that other one-Bickerstaff-still aboard. Any of those might organize the men, take back their ships and all the booty that he, Press, had captured. No, that would not do at all.
“Also, we’ll take… fifty of the prisoners out of here, lock ’em up in the prisons in the big house. Make certain that little fop Bird is with them and Bickerstaff as well. Get Marlowe out of the hold and his doxy from the cabin.”
“Aye, sir.” Brownlaw hurried off to see those orders carried out.
Press liked to make a show. The couple hundred half-drunk pirates and whores who were the residents of St. Mary’s would have dubious loyalty at best to anyone claiming sovereignty over the island. But Press knew their type, knew they respected power in the form of men and arms. So he would win their respect by displaying, as often as necessary, how much of each he had under his command.
One hundred armed men and fifty prisoners would do nicely.
Ten minutes, and the boats were manned. Elizabeth was brought up from the cabin where she had been held since they had set sail in the Gulf of Aden. She had not been molested in any way. Press had considered it, but in the end he had done nothing. His mind was too full of other concerns.
It was enough that Marlowe thought he was having his way with her. He would save the actual doing of it until Marlowe could watch.
Then, from the after scuttle, Marlowe emerged, hands bound before him. He looked as Press had imagined he would. Two weeks’ growth of beard, filthy, pale, squinting, and limping. His clothing was torn, his stockings around his ankles, his hair was a matted tangle. He looked like what he was-a broken man. Press hoped he still had enough of a spark left in him to take an interest in his own death and that of his wife.
“Marlowe, glad you could join us,” Press said, grinning, waggling the toothpick.
Marlowe looked at him, his head cocked, his eyes like slits. “I feel much refreshed, Captain Press. Are your saltwater baths for everyone or only honored guests?”
Press frowned, looked hard at Marlowe. He had not expected a flip response, had not really expected any response at all. He reckoned that Marlowe would be a jabbering idiot after two and a half weeks chained in the cable tier, with just enough food and water to keep him alive, meals served at odd hours to throw off his sense of day or night, not a one man allowed to speak to him.
But he was not a jabbering idiot, not a broken wreck. There was still a spark there, a bright one, and Press wanted to stamp it out like an ember from the fireplace that has fallen on the rug.
But time for that later. “Get them in the gig, let us go,” Press said, and he climbed down into the longboat, holding his sword out of the way as he sat in the stern sheets.
It was a short pull over smooth water to the dock. Press stepped ashore, his men behind them, and they waited there as the boats went back for the prisoners. Filthy, ragged, they were led up from below, and Clayford sorted them out, organized them, and bound their wrists.
Soon Press had his army assembled behind him, with the prisoners in their midst, and he led them once more through the town-his town now-and up the hill toward the big house. He tramped on, expressionless, but his eyes moved like a raptor’s over the building and the grounds in the distance.
He could see no signs of life, no party there to greet him. Tasker had to know he was back-he had saluted the squadron. So where was he?
The emotions started to roil in Press’s mind. Anger, concern, disappointment. But mostly anger. He picked up his pace, his long, thin legs moving fast, and the men behind him struggled to keep up.
The big gate in the stockade was closed, and there were no guards there, though Press had instructed Tasker to keep two at least posted at all times. Press pushed on the gate. It swung open, unlatched and unimpeded, and he stepped through to the empty grounds in front of the house.
He could hear noise now, shouting and yelling and… singing. He cocked his ear. Yes, it was singing, coming from the great hall. “Tasker, you worthless son of a bitch,” Press muttered, “letting those bastards go on a drunk.”
He let his eyes move over the house and the grounds, and they fell on a figure sitting motionless by the wide landing at the main entrance to the house. He was propped against the side of the house, unmoving, and he looked unhappily familiar.
“Come along,” Press said over his shoulder, stepping quickly across the open ground, his men filing in through the gate and following behind.
Halfway to the main door, and Press could see that the figure slumped against the building was Tasker. He held a bottle of rum cradled in his arm like a baby, his head was resting against the stone wall of the house. He was not moving.
“You stupid, stupid bastard,” Press said and moved faster still, already picturing the swift kick he would give his now-former second in command.
Ten yards from the man, and Press slowed, then stopped. Tasker did not look at all well. His face was gray and pinched, and there was something unnatural about the way he sat. He looked, in fact, like he was dead.
Roger Press felt a sick twist in his gut, and the memory of Nombre de Dios sprang unbidden into his head. He had planned it all, executed it perfectly. Sent Marlowe and the others off to their certain death, distracted the Spaniards while he and his chosen few made off with the booty. He had only to get the take into the boats and go; he had been that close. But Marlowe had not been killed. He had appeared at the landing, and Press’s whole plan had collapsed around him.
Why did that memory come to him now?
Press approached Tasker slowly, looked the motionless figure over carefully as he did. The man was dead. There was no mistaking it. What had killed him? Was the yellow jack there? The plague? Had he drunk himself to death?
Press looked around, as if he might see the answer somewhere in the compound.
And then a musket fired, the double crack of priming and powder, and the dust leaped at Press’s feet, and Press leaped back, looked up. From every window of the great house men leaned out, muskets aimed down, and suddenly the grounds contained by the stockade wall became a pen to hold animals for the slaughter.
Press whirled around. More men charging in from the open gate, muskets leveled, ready to shoot down any of Press’s men who reached for a pistol or unslung a musket from their shoulders.
He whirled again. More men charging from around the house on either side. Men with the look of pirates, with pistols and muskets and cutlasses. As many men as Press had. More, perhaps, and with their guns leveled and ready.
One of these men stepped forward, a big man, taller than Press even, and weighing three stone more. “Every one of you bastards, drop your firelocks or we’ll shoot you down!”
Press whirled around again, turned a half circle, too stunned to speak, and before he found his voice, before he could order his men to fight to the last, they tossed aside their weapons and put their hands meekly before them. The prisoners held their bound wrists aloft to show that they were no threat.
“Over there!” the big man said, nodding with his jutting beard toward the stockade wall and pointing with one of the two pistols he held. Press’s men began to back away, leaving behind a pile of muskets and pistols lying in the dust where they had been dropped.
And still Roger Press could not speak.
