And he had come to believe that Marlowe was, ultimately, a good and moral man who for all of his life had been deprived of solid instruction in honor and Christian decency.
They had come to Virginia to start over. For Bickerstaff that meant finally becoming more than a half-starved pedagogue who for all of his learning was still regarded as some kind of inferior because he had Latin and Greek but no money.
For Marlowe it meant taking his place in society, real society, society where one’s worth was not measured by ability with a sword or accuracy with a pistol.
But what measure did this colonial society use to gauge a man’s worth? His money? The number of acres he had under cultivation, the number of slaves doing his work? Bickerstaff found himself wondering if this society was indeed better than the brutal but utterly egalitarian world of the pirates.
Bickerstaff shook his head and turned to the task to which he had been assigned. He could not be Marlowe’s moral compass forever; at a certain point Marlowe would have to find his own way.
He walked to the break of the quarterdeck and then down into the waist. The pirate ship, he saw, was in fact a former merchantman, as they generally were. She had been taken by the brigands at some time and converted, in the pirate way, to a blackguard’s man-of-war.
There were half a dozen new gunports pierced through her bulwark. Bickerstaff thought of them as gunports, having no other term for them, but in reality they were little more than holes chopped out with an ax and adorned on either side with eyebolts for the breeching.
There had once been a quarterdeck and a forecastle, but the pirates had taken a saw or an adze and hacked them off, leaving the vessel flush-decked fore and aft. The white and weathered deck planking ended abruptly where the bulkhead had once stood and turned to a darker, less worn wood that had until recently been shielded from the weather. It looked like the high-tide line on a beach.
The gangways had been torn down and most of the fine trim was gone, with only bare patches of wood to indicate where it once had been. The original figurehead was gone as well, replaced by some pirate’s carving. Bickerstaff could not venture a guess as to what the new head was supposed to be.
He heard the creak of oars in tholes, and looking over the side saw the Prize’s gig pulling out, Marlowe in the stern sheets. A moment later, he stepped through the gangway.
“Ah, Marlowe,” he called, “I have yet to write out the inventory, but there’s little aboard. They were going to careen, as we reckoned, so most everything is on the beach.”
“Have you discovered what ship this is? Or was?”
“Yes. Come see this.”
Bickerstaff led the way aft to what was once the great cabin but was now the quarterdeck. The entire weather deck, bow to stern, was littered with empty wine bottles, some broken, and various articles of clothing, discarded bones, and the odd cutlass or pistol. Just to starboard of the binnacle box was a small cask of gunpowder, a pile of bullets, and another pile of made cartridges. Beside that was a leather-bound journal from which the pirate who was making up the cartridges was tearing paper for that purpose. Bickerstaff picked it up and handed it to Marlowe.
“As it happens, this is the ship’s log. The villain started from the back, so the name of the ship and crew remain.”
Marlowe flipped open the cover, holding it so both men could read. There in a neat hand was written “Journal of the ship Patricia Clark, Boston. Mr. Paul McKeown, Master.” He flipped to the back. The last twenty or so pages were gone. The last entry read “Winds light from the SSE. Up topgallant yards, set topgallant sails.” No indication of what had become of the crew of the Patricia Clark.
No doubt some of them had thrown in with the pirates, and were now in irons in the Plymouth Prize’s hold or being torn apart by crows on the beach. As to the others, Bickerstaff hoped that they had got off as easy, but he reckoned they had not.
God have mercy on their souls, he thought. The sea was a dangerous place, he knew that all too well. A dangerous place for thieves and honest men alike.
Chapter 13
LEROIS STAGGERED down the middle of the dust-and gravel-covered street that constituted most of the town of Norfolk. The waning moon and the few stars visible through the thin haze were enough to reveal the half-dozen new buildings that had been put up since his last visit to that port, over a year before. Norfolk was growing quickly, for though it was in the colony of Virginia, it served as the entrepot for the blossoming trade of North Carolina, a colony with no natural harbor save for distant Charleston.
The air was filled with the sounds of a late night in a port city-drunken laughter from any of several taverns, muted behind closed doors, arguments, the occasional scream, pistol shots. And behind it all was the constant buzz of the insects, frogs, and birds that lived in the swampy regions that surrounded the place.
The Vengeance was anchored off Willoby’s Point, just beyond Cape Henry and the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. It had taken the gentleman whose wife LeRois had detained aboard no more than two days to journey to Williamsburg, deliver LeRois’s message, and return. His haste was motivated no doubt by the thought of what was happening to his wife during his absence, what would happen to her if he did not return.
During those two days the man’s lovely young wife had been locked in the caboose of the great cabin, where her weeping and praying and carrying on had nearly driven LeRois to distraction. When he could take no more he would pound on the door and scream “La ferme! La ferme!” and that would quiet her down for an hour or so, and then it would begin again.
In the past LeRois would have had his way with her, just as a matter of principle, his promise to her husband notwithstanding. But it had been several years since he had felt sufficient arousal to lie with a woman. That concerned him, put him in a black mood when he thought on it, but he blamed it on the drink and knew there was nothing he could do.
He did not give her to the crew. He had to have something left when her husband returned. What was more, the pirates found it amusing to see her husband’s great surprise at finding her unharmed and his even greater surprise at their being released, just as had been promised.
LeRois came at last to the Royal Arms Tavern, a low, dark building opening onto an alley rather than the main street. One of the least regal-looking establishments in the New World. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. His hat brushed against the rough-hewn beams overhead. There was a haze of smoke hanging like a fog over the upper third of the room. Beyond the dim light of the three lanterns that illuminated the place there seemed to be no colors other than grays and blacks and browns.
The Royal Arms was a rough establishment, the refuge of those sailors and laborers who were not welcome in the other public houses and whores too old or ugly to attract a more genteel clientele. It was also one of the older taverns in the town, a place that LeRois knew well and frequented when in that part of the world. No one in the Royal Arms was in the least bit curious about anyone else’s business. He liked that about the place.
He stood stock-still, ran his eyes over the room. He was sweating with abandon and felt a vague terror in his gut, afraid that his carefully laid plan would fall apart, afraid that the screaming would start again.
A curse was forming on his lips just as he caught sight of the man for whom he was searching.
The man was Ezekiel Ripley. He sat hunched over a table, small and ratlike, with a big nose and protruding teeth, dark eyes darting about, and a pipe thrust in his mouth.