Before Elizabeth could answer, the girl in the bed said, “What’s this, then? Billy, what are you about?”
“Oh, Nancy, darling,” said Billy Bird as he snatched up his breeches and pulled them on, “I fear you must be on your way, my love.”
“Now, see here-,” the girl began, but Billy crossed the room quickly, clambered onto the bed, and pressed something into her hand. In the candlelight Elizabeth saw a dull flash of gold and Nancy became instantly cooperative. She climbed out of bed and began pulling her clothes over her firm and shapely body.
Billy met Elizabeth ’s eye and Elizabeth said, “Very nice, Billy Bird,” and Billy smiled sheepishly.
In a minute Nancy was dressed. Billy gave her a kiss and a quick squeeze of her arse and said, “We’ll see you soon, my darling,” and then she was gone.
Billy turned to Elizabeth. “Ah, Lizzy, I’m all but done in by that little bunter, but I think I can muster the energy yet.”
“As luck would have it, you need not even try. I’m here on other business.”
Billy stepped over to the little table in the corner, poured two glasses from a bottle of wine there, handed one to Elizabeth. “Something involving that miserable Frederick Dunmore, I’ll warrant?”
Elizabeth took a sip, sighed, said, “Billy, I need your help. I am at a loss. I have no notion of what to do. My people are chased out into the wilderness and as long as that bastard continues his campaigning against them they shall never be allowed to return.”
“Not to mention that you are wanted as well for harboring them.”
“I am? What have you heard?”
Billy waved his hand. “Oh, it’s nothing. One hears rumors. But see here, you have come to the right place, as ever. I will take care of your little Dunmore. A tread on the coat, a few harsh words, a meeting arranged, and ten minutes after dawn he will never trouble you again.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, Billy, you can’t kill him. That won’t help. There’ll be more rumors, and surely someone will connect the thing to me. Not to mention the danger to you for killing a prominent citizen. No, there must be some other way.”
“Well, there are only two ways to stop such a man that I know of: kill him or disgrace him. You won’t let me kill him, so I reckon we’ll have to see what we can do to disgrace him.”
“You said there was something that happened to him in Boston.”
“Yes, but I fear I’ve not remembered any more than that.”
Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly very tired. Her ankle was throbbing. “What can we do to find out what it was?”
“We shall go to Boston.”
Elizabeth looked up at him, taken aback. “Go to Boston? Just like that?”
“Yes, go to Boston. My ship swims again now, in fine fettle, all predied for sea. There is no way we can find out what we need to know without we go and look for it ourselves. You couldn’t do it through the post. You’d be an old woman before you were done, and even then I doubt you’d find out anything. No, we must go to Boston, discover the players in this drama, people who knew Dunmore, look them right in the eye, and ask them what is what.”
Billy’s enthusiasm built as he spoke and soon he was carrying Elizabeth along with him, but still she was not certain. It seemed such a crazy thing to try.
“Oh, Billy-”
“No. Don’t ‘Oh, Billy’ me. It is Boston for us. That is how we will rout this foul demon out. After all our years of friendship, my dear Lizzy, I can do no less to help you.”
Elizabeth sighed again. It still seemed insane, but Billy’s arguments were good, his enthusiasm infectious, enough so that she felt herself wavering, inching toward agreement. “I will pay you for your services,” she said. “Pay you in specie.”
“By which you mean that we will go together to Boston?”
“Yes.”
“Grand. But never in life would I have you pay for my services. Hell, you never made me pay for yours.”
Billy saw how unwelcome that joke was, and he stammered on. “There are…a few considerations before we sail, but nothing of consequence. And now, my dear one,” he said, sitting beside her, “will you not enjoy the luxury of my bed? It has been left quite warm for you.”
“Thank you, Billy, I will.” She unbuttoned her cloak and wheeled it off, catching Billy’s glance down at her breasts as she reached behind her. “And you, my dear friend, will comfort yourself on the cold and lonely floor.”
Chapter 15
A cannon fired some ways off, a puff of smoke, and a spray of splinters forward. King James looked up. The impact set up a great howling among the men clustered near the bow, shouting and chanting, like hitting a beehive with a stick, but it did not seem to James that anyone was injured.
It was a big Spaniard firing on them, a fat merchantman they had been chasing since sunup. It was not the way James had thought to spend the day.
First light and the lookout aloft had sung out and Madshaka said, “He see a strange sail, right ahead of us.”
James’s first thought was to turn away, to lose whatever ship that was below the horizon, but before he could say anything Madshaka was calling the men of the various tribes aft.
“What are you doing, Madshaka?”
“We vote.”
“Vote? On what?”
“On if we attack that ship or not.”
The men talked. They voted. Ten minutes later they opted for piracy. There was a surprising amount of unanimity in the vote.
James had not seen that coming, not at all. He felt as if he had been punched from behind. There had been talk behind his back, he knew that, and he did not doubt that Madshaka had been doing the talking.
For that matter, there may have been talking right in front of him. And even if he wanted to stop running the ship by vote, his explanation would have to be filtered through Madshaka, and James no longer trusted the grumete enough that he would try.
So pirates they would be, and all that James could do was to fulfill the peoples’ wishes as best he could.
The Spaniard wore around again, presented a new broadside, fired, the iron smashing into the black pirates’ ship.
She was well handled, or at least better handled than her attacker. She had tacked and wore around and fired round after round and skillfully eluded James’s attempts to lay alongside and board her.
James looked down at the men at the tiller, yelled, “Halloa!” They looked up at him and he pointed over the larboard bows and the men pushed the tiller to starboard.
“Madshaka!” James called forward, and when he had the man’s attention he pointed aloft and Madshaka nodded and began to shout out orders for bracing around to the new heading. It was slow and awkward and by the time they were squared away on the new heading the Spaniard would no doubt alter course again, pelt them with another broadside, and gain a cable length or more on them.
James was standing on top of the quarterdeck bulwark. He could feel the warm oiled wood of the caprail under his bare feet, callused though they were. His loose sailor’s trousers slapped at his legs. Around his waist he wore a wide leather belt, his sheath knife in the small of his back, a vicious dagger hanging at his right side.
He was bare-chested, save for his leather jerkin, and two buff leather shoulder belts that made an X on his chest. Two braces of pistols were clipped to the belts. A cutlass hung at his left hip. His head was bound in red damask over which was a cocked hat.
He was a frightening sight, piratical in the extreme. That was the intent. He did not wish to kill anyone if he could avoid it. If the Spaniards could be frightened into surrendering, then they might be able to pull off a bloodless victory.
But it would do no good, in terms of frightening an enemy into surrender, if they could not close.
At first they had tried their ruse de guerre, acting as a ship in distress, the ensign flown upside down, the gun to leeward. The Spaniard had responded by flashing out more sail and bearing away. They had not been fooled.