For a moment Adam was too frightened to speak. He didn't dare let eagerness sound in his voice.
"Zephary Evans?" he asked after a while, sounding casual, offhand.
"Could be. Long lank man with a long thin nose. Looked like a crane —like he ought to be standing on one leg." He put the pipe aside and leaned forward. His earrings went back and forth, making a kaleidoscope on the top of each shoulder. "Well, Tom Hart swung, though he was a slick 'un, I'll grant you. Ask me, he was sold out by somebody—maybe your smug Mister Evans. But that's no porridge for this meal. What we want to know now is: Will you sign up?"
Adam paused.
There was a knock on the door. For a moment, startled, they ignored this; but the knocking continued. One of the men went to the door.
"Captain Long's mate." He made the announcement to van Bramm. "Wants to speak to him."
"Why not?" said van Bramm.
Adam went to the door. Relief leapt into the eyes of Resolved Forbes, who stood there. Forbes had been sent by Maisie—Adam saw this right away—to make sure that he was alive.
Behind Forbes, too, though a respectful distance behind, a worshipping crowd was pleased by the appearance of Adam. It was as though he were royalty. There was a glad bumble of greeting, even a few cheers.
One of these men seemed vaguely familiar; but Adam did not permit himself to look at them; the last thing he wanted just then was cheers.
"It's still tonight?" he whispered to Forbes.
"Aye. Bond and the boy, too. You all right in there?"
"I'll get through till dark—somehow."
"Just one other thing—"
"Yes?"
"Man named Willis Beach wants to join up. Says he knows you."
"Willis Beach?"
"Says you saved him from a press gang. Wants to serve under you, the way they're allowed to pick their skippers here."
"Oh. Well, sign him on. We sure need another hand. But keep him aboard. Don't trust him ashore."
"What about Lady Maisie, sir?"
"She mustn't know, of course."
There was a great deal of silence when Adam turned back into the dim room, closing the door behind him. They all looked at him. The talk about who'd hanged and who hadn't was all very well, but the issue was clear enough. Was he or wasn't he joining them?
"Well?"
"You have been patient, gentlemen, but I'm going to ask you to wait till tomorrow morning. I want to talk it over with my wife."
They snarled at that, and moved toward him, reaching for their knives, for they supposed that he was jeering at them. But Everard van Bramm, the only one who mattered, raised a hand.
"You others get out," he said.
Soon these two, alone, faced one another.
Van Bramm took the pipe out of his mouth.
"Captain, you're planning to bolt tonight."
A blow in the mouth couldn't have startled Adam more.
Van Bramm still was smiling, even chuckling a little, down deep.
"No, nobody's betrayed you. I just put two and two together. Captain, I've been watching you. You didn't see me, but I was there. You don't want to join up. But you don't want to die either."
Adam said nothing.
"So you think to escape. You could probably do it alone, in a small boat. But you want to take your crew—those of 'em who want to go with you—you feel you owe it to them. And you want to cut out your own vessel. You love that schooner. Captain. I've watched you look at her. You just couldn't leave her behind. Well, tonight's the logical time. That mock trial ought to draw almost everybody in camp. You hope it'll draw Senac and Williamson from the fort, too, don't you?"
He was guessing, but he guessed with an uncanny accuracy. Recovered from his first jolt of amazement, Adam was silent, watchful.
Van Bramm waved his pipe stem.
"Good, good. Why don't you escape then, tonight?"
Adam might have looked puzzled. Was he being played with, cat-and-moused? Van Bramm shook a sleepy head.
"I could have you killed, but—they like you too much." He waved the pipe stem to indicate the crowd outside, unseen but audible. "Today you are their hero. Tomorrow it may be different, but today is the day we live in, no? If I kill you now, I might have trouble with them. If I let you stay, I'm sure to have trouble. Kellsen was a fool. You're not. You'd be heading an uprising in no time at all."
"I see," softly.
"I'm sure you do. By all means, run away. I'll miss that bonnie boat of yours, but it's worth it to be rid of you. Captain. I'll even go so far as to promise that Williamson and Senac won't be out at the fort tonight— and if they're not there nobody else'll be. Oh, there might be a few shots from the beach, but only musket fire. You can clear the Point before the cannon's manned."
"How do I know this ain't a trick to get me out there, sink me?"
"You'll see Senac and Williamson at the trial. Besides, how can you lose? If you don't go, Captain, I'll have no other choice—I'll have to kill you.
Adam nodded. It made sense, admittedly.
"There's only one other thing. Captain. When I call Cark and the others back, I'll tell 'em you've agreed to go on the account. You don't have to take any oath! Simply hear me say that—and don't deny it. That will be my justification for calling in the gunners. If you're one of us, we don't have to watch you. The others, afterward, they might think I was too trusting—but they won't suppose I helped you to get away. Understand?"
"I think I do."
"It would seem to make you a traitor to the brotherhood—and you know what that means, if you should get caught—or if you should ever come back to Providence here. But I don't think you ever will, eh?"
"It doesn't seem likely," said Adam Long.
Atop a tun in the middle of the marketplace sat a tat man wrapped in a rich red robe trimmed with ermine—real ermine—and he wore three wigs, one above the other, through the topmost of which a sea gull's feather had been thrust. He walloped the tun with the flat of a hatchet, his gavel. He hiccupped.
"Oyez, oyez!"
Somebody emptied a jack of rum onto the wigs and it soaked through these to zigzag in erratic rivulets down the face of the fat man.
"Order in the court!"
A dumpy fellow with the pocked face of a frog now rose. An inverted thundermug was over his head. He wore the handle on the left.
"If your honor please— If your honor please—"
"I don't please! Sit down—before I order the sergeant-at-arms to knock you down!"
This was very funny. There were roars of laughter. The torches spat and hissed, and smoke coiled out of them to hang in aerial hanks around the camp.
Adam Long loosened his sword in its scabbard, his knife in its sheath. He sat quiet, but his eyes were busy. It looked as if almost everybody in the colony was here in the marketplace, excepting van Bramm himself, who never showed up at such affairs. Certainly the company's best gunners, Williamson and Senac, were there. All the same, Adam was uneasy.
"If your honor please, we have a very serious case here tonight. A very serious case indeed. If your honor please, this is the very serious case of a man who is in love with his wife."
"Oh, no! Not that!"
The Brethren of the Coast, here assembled in all their tatterde-malionism, and for the most part drunk, thought a great deal about the law. When they were not defying it, they liked to deride it. This, now, was their way of celebrating some special occasion, their favorite form of amusement, a mock trial. They were hilarious.
Adam was in a conspicuous place, necessarily. Nearby, Resolved Forbes said, as usual, nothing, seeing, as usual, everything. Jeth Gardner with his one leg, John Bond with his touch of fever, and the not-trusted Willis Beach, the Londoner, were aboard the schooner in the bay. Maisie of course was at Tarpaulin Hall, unguarded, alas, just for the moment.