Chapter 7
Elizabeth knelt on the lawn at the edge of the flower beds, sunk her hands in the moist dirt. She could feel the dampness creeping through her skirt and wool stockings, but it felt cool and good, with the sun beating on her back and her wide straw hat.
She picked up a spade and scooped the loose dirt out until she had a hole ten inches deep. Then she carefully, lovingly picked up the little rosebush and set its roots in the hole before pushing the dirt in around it.
Playing at agriculture. Sometimes that bothered her. All over the tidewater people broke their backs working the soil, slaves and freemen alike, just to eke out a living or to make someone else rich. But she just played, like the noblewomen in France who found amusement in pretending to be simple country girls.
But those were just minor concerns, because she loved to work in the gardens, loved to make Marlowe House a more beautiful place. More her own.
She had lived there since coming to the New World with Joseph Tinling. But the house had not been her home, it had been merely a place to endure Master Tinling’s brutality. After his death she had sold it to Marlowe, then a newcomer to Virginia, had moved to town, happy to be shed of those echoing rooms and their horrible memories.
But after she and Marlowe wed she had moved back, and now she was exorcising those demons of her former life, remaking the wretched Tinling house into the Marlowes’ ancestral home. New furnishings, new carpets, new portraits, fresh paint.
The gardens were a big part of that, Elizabeth ’s chief contribution, because unlike the furniture or the paintings, which were just items to be purchased, the garden was something that she could do herself, something pure and organic. Coaxing beauty and nourishment from the earth.
It was midmorning but she had been at it since just after sunrise. She needed the garden’s cathartic influence, the release of tension that comes with physical labor.
She had seen Thomas and Francis Bickerstaff off in the predawn hours. Before, she had been angry about his going off privateering, abandoning her. She was angry that Thomas had grown bored with the home she was trying to make.
But that all changed the moment Sam blurted out his awful story.
It was a very different departure than the one she had envisioned. There was none of the suppressed excitement, none of Thomas’s feigning disappointment in leaving when in fact he was aching to be under way, none of the footloose buccaneer that made Thomas so equally loved, hated, feared, and appreciated in the tidewater.
Rather, it had been a somber moment, and Thomas had been genuine in his desire not to go. But go he must, they both knew that.
And Elizabeth, who was no fool, was not insensible to the fact that he was going after James more for her than for himself. Thomas could have told Nicholson to sod off, but for her sake he had told the governor “Yes, sir.”
She worked her shovel in the dirt, spacing the plants three feet apart. In a few years they would be great thorny bushes, spilling over with brilliant small red flowers, like drops of fresh blood on mounds of green.
And then a shadow fell over the turned earth and a man’s voice, loud and full of delight and surprise, said, “Lizzy? Could that be you?”
Elizabeth wheeled around, gasped in surprise, squinted against the sun. The man was standing no more than five feet away, had approached over the grass so she could not hear him.
She stood, slowly, and threw her spade down like throwing a knife. It stuck in the dirt and quivered. She wiped dirty hands on her apron, leaving arched brown streaks on the linen, folded her arms across her chest. “Dear God…,” she said.
“Oh, no, Lizzy, none of that. Well, certainly, there are some women think I am a god, but not you, surely?”
She held him in her harsh gaze, then at last she had to smile and shake her head. “Billy Bird. I had never thought to see your face again.”
“Ah, like a bad penny,” he said, swept off his cocked hat, a big plume trailing astern, bowed elegantly at the waist. He wore white silk stockings and white breeches bleached so bright that it hurt to look at them in the late-morning sun. Under a red coat with neat embroidery around the pockets and cuffs he wore a red waistcoat and a calico shirt. A buff leather shoulder strap ran diagonally across his chest, the silver buckle winking in the sun, a heavy sword hanging at his waist. He wore no wig, and his hair was long and clubbed, as the seamen wore it.
“You look like a damned peacock, as usual, Billy.”
“And you…” He straightened, held out his hands. “Is this what has become of the beautiful Elizabeth Sampson, late of Plymouth and London? Working in the dirt like some pickaninny?”
She did not know if she wanted to hug the man or stick a knife in his guts. She never did. She and Billy Bird went back many years. “My name is Elizabeth Marlowe now, Billy, and it gives me great pleasure to work in the garden of the home of which I am mistress.”
“Ah, great pleasure! And you know there is no one who can give you great pleasure like old Billy Bird, my darling.”
“Billy, lay one hand on me and I will cut your balls off and stuff them down your throat. You know me capable of it.”
Bird chuckled at that. “Yes you are, yes you are. But how about a hug for an old friend?” He held out his arms again, and after a second’s hesitation Elizabeth stepped into them and gave Billy Bird a hug. He held her to his chest, gently, affectionately. He smelled faintly of perfume and tobacco smoke and tar. They squeezed each other and then stepped back again.
“It’s been… three years at least,” Elizabeth said. “Where have you been?”
“Rhode Island, mostly. Boston, New York. And off on the far-flung oceans of the world.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Well, you shouldn’t have come here. Governor Nicholson has no love of pirates. He has hanged any number of them already.”
“Pirates! Oh, Elizabeth, really! I am an honest merchant, and besides I have never committed anything that smacks of piracy against a Christian. That I know of.”
“Indeed. I am sorry to say that you just missed meeting my husband, speaking of people you should not cross.”
“Oh, have I really? I am sorry to hear that.”
“Uh-huh,” said Elizabeth. Bird’s timing would not be an accident. Everyone in Williamsburg and Jamestown knew that the Elizabeth Galley had sailed on the tide that morning.
“Though in fact I believe I have met your husband…Thomas Marlowe? In Port Royal, some years back. But his name was not Thomas Marlowe then, and he was something less than an honest man of the soil…”
“You are mistaken, I am sure. But whatever you think, I am certain you can keep it to yourself, just as you are certain that I’ll tell no tales about you.”
“I am the soul of discretion, ma’am, you know that.”
“The soul of discretion.” But for all his loudmouthed boasting, Elizabeth knew that Billy Bird could keep his mouth shut when he had to, and she trusted him. “What brings you to the tidewater? Are you staying?”
“I have taken up lodgings at the King’s Arms. Just temporary, of course.”
Just until Thomas returns, Elizabeth thought.
“I’ve some small business here,” Billy continued, “and my ship is down at Norfolk, fitting out. Ship, I say. She is a brig, in fact, just a little thing. Lost my last ship off Madagascar. I will tell you all the unhappy details, but first I think you should invite me in for a cup of chocolate.”
“Do you?” Elizabeth folded her arms, cocked her head, regarded Billy Bird. Plymouth, London, Williamsburg. Since she was fourteen years old she had known Billy, and he always seemed to pop up again, wherever she was. They had been friends, had enjoyed the occasional roll in bed. And here he was again.
She could well imagine what he was hoping for now. He would be disappointed, but he would get over it. A cup of chocolate, however, was within her newfound moral boundaries.