An hour later they passed Point Comfort, rounded up, and dropped anchor a cable from the beach. There on the dark wet sand was the Plymouth Prize. She looked sorry and vulnerable, her rig completely gone save for the lower masts: fore, mizzen, and the bright new main. Her guns were gone too, and her gun-ports stared up at the sky like the hollow eyes of a skull. She was rolled over on her larboard side, and all of her great worm-eaten, weed-covered bottom was exposed to the world. The Plymouth Prizes swarmed around her like ants on a mound of spilled sugar.
“Oh, my goodness,” Elizabeth said. It looked as if something had gone terribly wrong. “Is she wrecked? What’s happened to her?”
“No, believe it or not, this is what we do. Those fellows with the torches are breeming her, burning all the weed and barnacles and such off of her bottom. Then, once we’ve made the repairs we need, we’ll coat her anew with stuff made from tallow, sulfur, and tar.”
“You astonish me, sir, the depth of your knowledge,” Elizabeth said. Marlowe was clearly an experienced seaman as well as an experienced fighting man. There was no faking that.
Had he earned all of his wealth at sea? No one became as rich as he was by sailing as an honest merchant captain or naval officer. Was it family money?
He rarely mentioned his personal history prior to arriving in Virginia, and she had the distinct impression that he would rather she didn’t ask. She knew so little about him. She found it intriguing and irritating all at once. She could imagine any number of possibilities, many of which she did not care to think about.
Marlowe nodded toward the Prize’s long boat, which was pulling toward the sloop, Lieutenant Rakestraw in the stern sheets. “I reckon we’ll know soon how much work needs to be done before we can go a-hunting pirates again,” Marlowe said.
A minute later Rakestraw climbed up the side, saluted Marlowe, and gave Elizabeth a shallow bow. He was dressed in old clothes, the same as were worn by the sailors, and he was quite filthy.
“Forgive my appearance, I beg, sir, but I have been all day climbing about the hull,” he said.
“Please, Lieutenant, don’t think on it,” Marlowe said. “If you were clean, I should think you weren’t seeing to the job properly.”
Elizabeth had seen Rakestraw in Williamsburg on several occasions over the past few years. He looked happier now, and more like an officer, than she had ever seen, his dirty, common clothes notwithstanding.
“It appears, sir,” Rakestraw continued, “that the chief of the water was coming in where the butts was pulled apart. We found the four on the larboard side, like I reported the other day, and six on the starboard today. There was some soft wood around the sternpost and three planks needs replacing near the turn of the bilge, but the worms haven’t got at the bottom nearly as bad as I would have thought.”
“No. Allair spent a great deal of time at anchor in the freshes where the water’s brackish at best. That might have done for the worms.”
“The only constructive thing that Allair has ever done, to the best of my knowledge,” Rakestraw said, the disgust evident in his voice.
“Indeed. Well, Mr. Rakestraw, I do not wish to keep you from your work.”
“No, sir. Will you be sailing back tonight, sir?”
“I had intended to do so, but we had slow going coming down and I fear we have missed the tide now. I think we must spend the night here,” Marlowe answered, not meeting Elizabeth’s eyes but looking instead at Rakestraw, “and wait for the flood tomorrow.”
“Oh, quite right, sir, quite. Tide is quite gone,” Rakestraw agreed. Had he kept his mouth shut Elizabeth might have believed what Marlowe said, but Rakestraw was not nearly as accomplished a liar as Marlowe.
“I apologize profusely, ma’am, and trust that that will not inconvenience you?” Marlowe turned at last to Elizabeth, looking his most contrite. “You and Lucy shall have my cabin, of course, and I shall take the small cabin. If you wish, I shall send ashore for a coach.”
“That will not inconvenience us at all, sir. If we are to be kidnapped by pirates, I am pleased at least that we have found one who is such a gentleman.”
“Oh, a former pirate, ma’am. Fear not, I have forsworn that life.” He was smiling, but his eyes suggested there might be something deeper, more personal, to his simple joke.
It was one of the possibilities that Elizabeth had considered.
The Northumberland was absolutely quiet. All hands were below and asleep, and the sloop rode perfectly still at her anchor, held steady in the soft arms of the current. The only sounds that King James could hear were the occasional call of a night bird from shore, the buzzing of the distant insects, the gentle gurgle of the water.
He crouched over the compass, taking a bearing on Point Comfort and a tall stand of trees just abeam, which he was just able to discern against the background of stars. Once he
had taken the bearings he would wait for an hour or so and then take them again and thus make certain the sloop was not dragging her anchor. That was why he was still awake and on deck.
Or at least that was what he told himself. Why he felt the need to fool himself he did not know, especially because he was not. He was perfectly aware of why he was loitering in that place. He was hoping that Lucy would come to him.
He heard the low creak of the after scuttle opening, did not react. It could be anyone-Marlowe or the cabin steward.
But it was not. Lucy stepped hesitatingly on deck, looking forward and then aft. She looked directly at him, but he could see that she was struggling to make out who it was she was looking at.
“Come on back here, girl,” he called out softly.
Lucy squinted aft again, then lifted her skirts and climbed up the two short steps to the quarterdeck and came aft. There was just the faintest light on deck, the stars and the dim glow of the covered candle James was using to see the compass, but it was enough for him to see her lovely face, her soft brown hair hanging around her shoulders, her shapely form under her petticoats. Lucy and Elizabeth. They made quite a pair.
She leaned against the rail where King James stood, an inch closer than a casual acquaintance might stand. “What are you doing up at this hour?” she asked.
“I’m seeing to the ship. And you?”
She glanced down at the deck and then looked at him, though not directly. She was not half as shy as she was pretending to be. James knew it. She had learned a great deal working for Elizabeth Tinling. “I just wanted to get some air,” she said.
“Good night for it.”
They were silent for a moment. He could smell the subtle perfume that Lucy was wearing, the scent of her skin and hair. She was wildly attractive, and he felt emotions rising up that he had not felt in many years. It had been that long since he had felt anything but hatred and anger.
“How is it with you, Lucy?” he asked, surprised by the tenderness in his own voice. “I’ve seen little of you these past years. How is it in town?”
“It’s wonderful, James, truly. There’s just that little house, and none of the misery there was at the Tinling place. Best thing that son of a bitch Tinling ever done any of us was to drop dead.”
“Hmmph,” James said. He could not disagree. “And you’re safe enough, because of it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean Mrs. Tinling ain’t about to sell you off, ’cause she don’t want no one to know how they found old Tinling, breeches around his ankles, his heart burst ripping the clothes off his wife’s slave girl.”
He stared out into the night, mused on this netherworld of the slaves in the tidewater. An entire society, with a common knowledge and a social structure and their own set of laws about which the white people knew nothing.
And there was not a one who grieved for Joseph Tinling.
Without thinking, James turned and put his hand on Lucy’s shoulder. He could barely feel her smooth skin under the calluses of his palm, but he felt her tense up, just a tiny bit, and turn more toward him.