“Ah, Roger Press, I reckoned you’d come calling someday.”
Press whirled around again. No, no, no! It cannot be!
Elephiant Yancy, standing next to the lifeless body of Jacob Tasker. He grinned, gave Tasker’s body a push with his foot, and the dead man fell forward onto the ground.
Press felt the scream building, deep inside. “Aaaahhhh, you son of a bitch!” he shouted, the sound escalating, and then he charged forward, pushing past the big man, his eyes focused on Yancy’s throat.
And then he stopped, doubled over, thought for an instant he had been shot, but in fact the big man had hit him in the stomach. He collapsed to the ground, gasping, thrashing in the dust.
“Roger, Roger, oh dear,” he heard Yancy say. “You never did know how to be a proper guest. You did not when I saved you from that spit of sand, do you recall? Tried to lead a mutiny against me. I reckon you weren’t such a good guest for the Dons neither. The Inquisition don’t like it when someone gets out alive. Not a pirate anyway.”
Press sucked air into his lungs. A thousand words crowded in his head, but none could get out. He heard Yancy’s feet on the stone steps and then on the ground, and he knew the little bastard was standing over him, but Press would not give him the satisfaction of looking up.
“So you lie at my feet once more?” he heard Yancy say.
“I’ll kill you for this,” Press gasped, the first words to find voice.
“Yes, yes. God, but you are tiresome.” Yancy paused. Press braced himself for a kick or a blow, but instead he heard Yancy gasp as well. “Oh, Roger, is it possible?” Yancy asked. “Have you brought me Thomas Marlowe, too? And Elizabeth?” Yancy laughed, his high-pitched, squeaking laugh. It always reminded Press of a rat being crushed underfoot.
“Oh, Roger, my beauty,” Yancy said when he had finished laughing, “you could not have done more for me if you had brought me the treasure of the Great Mogul himself!”
Chapter 24
MARLOWE THREADED his arms through the iron bars of the cell, looked across the stone-floored alleyway to the cell facing him.
“Lord, Roger, is there any damned thing you haven’t made a hash of?” he called across the open space. “You were the richest man in Christendom for… what? Two weeks? And then you deliver it all to Yancy like it was a tribute. Lord, what a dumb arse.”
“Shut your fucking gob.” The voice came from the dark cell, the speaker unseen.
They were in the prison in the big house, built into the lowest part of the building, under the first floor. The prison consisted of no more than two big stone rooms fronted with iron bars that faced each other across a six- foot-wide walk. The cells were cool and damp and lit by only a single window in each, a slit eight inches high and two feet across set at the top of the wall.
A lone flight of steps led from the alleyway up to the first floor. Two steps, a landing, and then a 180-degree turn and five more steps up to the grand entrance. A bored guard sat in a chair at the bottom of the stairs. There was no need for more. The cells were impenetrable, the iron bars thick and sound.
Marlowe, Bickerstaff, Honeyman, and Billy Bird, along with their men, those who had come ashore as prisoners, were in the one cell. Two-thirds of Press’s captured men were in the cell opposite, with Press. A third had elected to join Yancy.
More than a third, actually, but Yancy was not so stupid as to allow too many men of dubious loyalty into his personal army. Yancy chose the few he wanted, locked up the rest.
Yancy had kept warring crews apart. Marlowe guessed he did not want them killing one another. That was Yancy’s office. He figured that Yancy would not have locked up the officers with the men if there had been more than two cells, but there was not.
What had become of the rest of the men of the Elizabeth Galley and the Bloody Revenge, Marlowe did not know. He imagined they were still battened down aboard their respective ships, their guards waiting for word from Press. He reckoned Yancy would take them in his own time.
He did not know where Elizabeth was, but he could guess.
Marlowe wondered if his circumstances were any better or worse now than they had been three hours before, when he had been Roger Press’s prisoner. His concern for Elizabeth was the greatest thing on his mind, and that had not changed at all.
But now at least he had Roger Press’s profound misery to cheer him. “You should have killed me, Press. You pissed that opportunity away. Now Yancy will butcher you, and you’ll never have the chance.”
“Butcher me? I reckon he’s butchering that little doxy of yours right now. Thrumming her good. What do you say to that, Marlowe?”
“I say he tried that before and nearly lost his whole damned house. Elizabeth can take care of herself.” He spoke the words with a confidence he did not feel. But he would not let Press exploit his one area of genuine fear.
“Captain said ‘shut your gob,’ ” Israel Clayford said. He was leaning against the iron bars of the cell he shared with Press, six feet away. He was a big bastard, and mean-looking.
“Don’t you get into this,” Marlowe said to him. “Captain’s a dead one. You just look to your own neck.”
Then Press emerged from the gloom and ran his hands through the bars, like Marlowe, and faced him. “Look, Marlowe,” he said, his voice low, “I know you want to kill me much as I want to kill you. But I say let’s set that aside for now, work together. Won’t do either of us any good if that bastard Yancy kills us both, will it?”
Marlowe smiled, and then he laughed, and his amusement was genuine. “What you mean is, I help you save your sorry hide and then you stab me in the back again?”
“Damn your eyes, Marlowe! Don’t you see that we’re both dead if we don’t work together, and it ain’t going to be pleasant, I’ll warrant. I say-”
The guard was up, and with two steps he was in front of the cell. He slammed the flat of his sword against the iron bars. Press jumped back in surprise, shouted, “You whoreson!”
“None of that,” the guard growled, looking at Press and then Marlowe. “I hear one more goddamned word like that and one of you goes in the pit.”
Marlowe and Press glared at the guard, and the guard glared back as he retreated to his chair by the steps. Marlowe did not know what the pit was. He did not care to find out.
How they were going to get off St. Mary’s alive, he had no idea.
Elizabeth was stretched out on the big four-poster bed in Yancy’s bedchamber. The space was lit softly with candles placed around, throwing off pools of light, while the rest of the big room was lost in shadow. In another circumstance she might have found the room lovely, warm and romantic.
Her wrists were bound tightly together and tied to the bed’s headboard, forcing her into her supine position. She gritted her teeth and pulled, jerked at the constraints, worked her wrists under the rough cordage.
She had been struggling for twenty minutes, and her wrists were raw and bleeding in places, and she was no freer now than she had been when Henry Nagel first forced her onto the bed and lashed her in place.
“Son of a bitch, son of a bitch…” she muttered as she struggled and then finally gave up, let her body go limp, exhausted from the effort. “Oh, God…” she whispered.
Yancy had learned his lesson the last time, apparently, about letting Elizabeth wander free in the room in which she was imprisoned. She knew that as long as she remained tied as she was, Yancy was free to do as he pleased. She might be able to get in a good kick or two, but in the end he could rape her to his heart’s content.
“Oh, God…” she said again, giving in to the despair.
She had been alone in the room for an hour. At first she had not dared move, but she lay very still and listened, hoping to hear something that would give her some indication of what was happening.
Yancy had sprung his trap, had marched Press’s men and Thomas and Billy and Francis and their men off to some prison, she supposed. She had been held at gunpoint in the grand entrance while the men were led down a half-concealed stairway to a level below the house. From there she had been taken to the great hall, alone but for the three guards who stood over her.
