How to explain what it meant to their hope of survival that Marlowe had found them at last?
The Elizabeth Galleys had heard the distant sound of great guns not long after first light, and it drew them like carrion birds to the smell of death. Mr. Fleming had had the watch when the first dull thud came soft over the horizon. He had sent down to the great cabin to inform Marlowe and to ask his permission to crack on more sail.
Marlowe had come up on deck to find the men already aloft, already laid out on the yards with hands on gaskets, ready to cast off and let fall.
They had been under easy sail all night because Marlowe did not want to risk sailing right by King James in the dark, though only Marlowe and Bickerstaff knew that. He was not surprised to find the men so eager to spread canvas, but that was some damned cheek, he thought, laying aloft without orders from him, and decided they could wait a moment longer.
“Aloft, there! What do you make of yon ship?”
“Topgallants sometimes, on the rise, sir! Fine on the starboard bow,” the lookout called down, “but there’s not beyond that!”
Only one ship to be seen from that vantage. Could be a man-of-war exercising her guns, but Marlowe did not think so. Not many men-ofwar bothered with such things.
“Very well, Mr. Fleming, let us set all plain sail.”
Fleming stepped forward, called out the orders, the words flying from him like some great pressure had built up behind them. Canvas tumbled from the yards, men leapt to backstays and slid to the deck, sheets were tallied aft and belayed while others ran away with the top-gallant halyards. The men fell to the tasks with a willingness and speed they had not demonstrated in some days.
“What think you of this?” Bickerstaff stood beside Marlowe on the quarterdeck as one after another the studding sails were hauled up and set to draw.
“Two ships in a fight of some sort. A running fight, by the sound. Men-of-war, perhaps, if this European war has reached this far already. Pirates? Privateers? One of those, I should think.”
“In any of those cases,” Bickerstaff observed, “there is not so great a chance of one or the other being a legal prize for us. A man-of-war or another privateer would not care to share their spoils. A pirate might make more trouble than is worth. Do you think these fellows have thought on that?”
Marlowe looked at the men aloft and on deck, the fast, efficient handling of the gear, the high spirits, the absolutely piratical gleam in their eyes, the avarice that shone in their smiles. “No, I do not think they have thought of anything but what they might plunder in the next few hours. Let us hope for the sake of ourselves that there is something for the taking. These men are eager for some reward. I would not put it past them to chuck us both overboard if there is not, like it was our fault.”
With all canvas set and drawing and trimmed with the skill of an eager and expert crew the Elizabeth Galley quickly overhauled the distant ships. It was an hour before noon when they were finally visible from the deck, an amazing feat, given that those ships were also carrying everything aloft that they could. But the Galley was fast, with a clean bottom, and everything about her was calculated for just this thing, running a potential prize to ground.
The men were crowded in the bows, craning their necks over the rail, and even those on watch found some reason to be forward, some work there that needed immediate attention. Marlowe would let no one go aloft who had no real business there. That kind of permissiveness led to chaos. That sort of thing was for pirates, not privateersmen.
Or, in their case, pirates who believed themselves to be privateersmen.
“Mr. Fleming, let us clear for action,” Marlowe said at last. It had to be done and the men needed something to do. “And when that is done let us serve out dinner and an extra tot as well.”
Marlowe shed his coat, took up his telescope, headed aloft. He had to go, though he dreaded what he might see. He felt like a man with a toothache, putting off his trip to the barber-surgeon, not sure what was worse, the pain or the cure.
He settled in the crosstrees and focused the glass forward. The furthest ship was still all but hull down. She was a big one and that meant she had to be a merchantman because a man-of-war that big would not be running from a pursuer.
The nearer one looked to be a merchantman as well. He watched her wear around, trying to dog the heels of the other. An awkward evolution, yards bracing around slowly, unevenly, fore, main, and mizzen not working with any coordination.
Marlowe felt unwell, unwell in the pit of his stomach. He felt a decision looming, one that offered no good choice.
“Mr. Fleming!” he called down. “Pray send one of those Frenchmen up here, one of those fellows we rescued!”
Five minutes later the Frenchman settled beside him. There was still a craziness in his eyes and Marlowe knew it would be with him all his life. The unredeemable shock of seeing things his mind could not endure. He would die a drunken, broken wreck in some port town: Port Royal, Plymouth, Brest. They were all the same. Marlowe had seen it so very often.
He put aside such irrelevant thoughts, handed the man the telescope and pointed to the nearest of the two ships. The Frenchman put the glass to his eye and focused it with a practiced hand.
“Est votre bateau?” Marlowe asked with his modicum of French.
The man was silent for a long time, just looking through the glass. Marlowe could see his hands begin to tremble. “Oui.”
He put the glass down, looked at Marlowe. The two men held each other’s eyes for a moment. Then the Frenchman said again, “Oui,” and without another word he swung himself into the rigging and headed back down to the deck.
Les pirates negres. In an hour, King James would be within long-cannon shot. And beyond him, a merchantman that was no doubt a rich prize, just the thing that the Elizabeth Galleys longed for, indeed, the very thing that they required in exchange for their dubious loyalty.
And Marlowe would have to decide which to attack.
Chapter 16
By the time he set foot on the deck again, Marlowe knew that he just did not care anymore.
His apathy was not directed toward King James. He still cared very much about him, still wished very much that he did not have to kill the man.
It was privateering, pirating, all these fine points of Admiralty law. He was too tired of the whole issue to give one damn more. “Sod them all, with their treaties and their laws and letters of marque…,” he muttered.
He wondered at his own failings, his inability to hold the moral high ground for long, once he had taken it. What would Bickerstaff think, that he might so easily slip back into the amorality of the Brethren of the Coast? But his was a fatalism born of long years at sea, long years among the pirates, those most fatalistic of creatures, who cared about no man’s life. Not their own, not that of anyone else.
“Well, set a thief to catch a thief,” he said to himself, then aloud: “I reckon I’m the one to go after that pirate James. Mr. Bickerstaff, pray, sir, a word?” Marlowe waved him aft, led him back to the taffrail, out of earshot of the helmsman or any of the others forward. Bickerstaff would still care. It was not fair that he should be led blind into this thing.
“So, Francis, it is quite a situation we find ourselves in. The far ship is some merchantman; English, Spanish, French, I know not. The nearer ship is King James and his horde.”
He let those words sink in, waited while Bickerstaff stared forward, looking at nothing, thinking the situation over.
“Will you attack King James?”
“I will not. We will fight, if James attacks us, but I do not believe he will. No, the governor’s wishes aside, I fear I cannot let another prize go by. The men will not stand for it. And it will do no one any good if this lot turns pirate.”