The voices were now screaming in LeRois’s head, screaming to be heard over the raucous laughter of the Vengeances, the gunshots, the breaking glass, the gasping pleas of this Jacob Wilkenson.
Two of the pirates hauled the fat man to his feet again, and again he was made to stagger around the chair. His white skin was streaked with blood, which ran freely now down his sides and legs. Bottles were smashed over his head and shoulders and gouged into his flesh. He was whimpering and pleading and praying, and that made his tormentors laugh harder still.
Malachias Barrett! Malachias Barrett! The voices broke through the din, screaming their warning in LeRois’s brain. The room seemed to swirl around, the faces undulating, the fat man coming in and out of focus.
He had forgotten! He had forgotten! But the voices had reminded him. To the ship! To the ship! All of this could wait, all of this would be here, but first Malachias Barrett had to die.
LeRois felt the scream rising from his bowels, and as the sound came up so his sword seemed to float out of its scabbard and rise with the sound over his head.
He charged forward. Faces floated by, surprised faces of his own men as they stepped away, and then the great fat man on the floor, a blood-streaked, terrified face, looking up at him, and then his sword came down again and again and again and he could not stop hacking away at the man.
Malachias Barrett! the voices screamed again, and LeRois stepped back and looked around, the dead man at his feet forgotten.
“We get back to the ship. I will burn this son of a bitch maison now and go back to the ship.”
The men stood in silence for a second, and then as if on a signal raced off to destroy and carry off all that they could before the flames drove them away. They would not question LeRois’s decision. He knew that they would not. No one would, who wished to live.
Thomas Marlowe took a long pull from his rum bottle. Stared through the great cabin windows at the yellow, flickering light on the horizon. He could not move. He could not take his eyes from the sight of his colony, his adoptive home, burning in front of him.
He was alone in the great cabin. He was not drunk, despite his best efforts.
He wished the fires would stop. He wished they would just go out and LeRois would leave, but every time he thought that they had, a new fire flared and grew, one after another, following the march of destruction up the banks of the James River.
How many had LeRois killed thus far? There was no way to know. Perhaps no one. Perhaps they had all fled before him. Marlowe could picture the gentry of Virginia, in all their finery, fleeing like rats before the pirate’s filthy, drunken tribe. Perhaps he had killed them all. And still he, Marlowe, sat there, immobile.
LeRois was working his way toward the Wilkenson home. Perhaps he would sack that as well, kill all of those bastards, save him the trouble. Wouldn’t that be a fine thing?
The Plymouth Prize was safe, and her people were safe, and that was his primary concern, his first obligation. He had
tried to stop the pirates, but he could not, not without killing all of his people in the process, and Elizabeth and Lucy as well. He had done what he could.
He took another drink from the bottle. He did not really believe any of that.
“Thomas Marlowe,” he muttered to himself, speaking the words slowly, disdainfully. They tasted bad in his mouth. That was over now. He was no longer Thomas Marlowe. It had been a good run, two years as a member of the tidewater’s elite, but it was over now. He was Malachias Barrett once again.
He supposed that once LeRois had cleared out he would take the Plymouth Prize to the Caribbean. His men would go with him, he was certain of that. Most men who sailed before the mast were only a few places removed from piracy, and the Prizes were even closer than that, thanks to his guiding influence. It was a short step now to the sweet trade. Bickerstaff would not go with them, of course, and Rakestraw probably would decline. He wondered about Elizabeth.
And then, as if summoned by his thoughts, he heard the sound of her light footfalls in the alleyway, her soft knock on the door. “Thomas?”
He turned in his chair, smiled as best he could. “Pray, come in.”
She closed the door behind her, crossed the cabin, sat on the settee facing him. “I’m sorry for walking out as I did.”
Marlowe took her hand. As if she had anything to be sorry for. “I am sorry for being such an ass. I am pleased you are safe. I am pleased that the ship and her people are safe.”
“Are you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you really pleased with your safety?” she asked, and when he did not respond she continued. “You men have a great advantage over us women. When we are humiliated beyond tolerance we can do no more than cut our wrists. You can die in battle and have it said that such was a noble death.”
“And you think that an advantage?”
“Having the means to preserve one’s honor is always an advantage. That is why I came to this place.”
“Me as well. But even here I find honor is like good family: You are either born into it or you can despair of it ever being yours.”
“I do not believe that. I will not believe that. That may be true for what these arrogant bastards, the Wilkensons and the Tinlings, call honor, but it is not true of real honor.”
“Real honor? Real honor is no more than what these arrogant bastards, as you style them, say is real honor. Is there such a thing as honor in an objective sense?”
They paused, Marlowe with the bottle halfway to his lips, and listened to a sudden commotion on deck. It had been going on all night, something or other causing the men to hoot and howl. They were all drunk, celebrating their escape. But this time it was louder, more sustained. He put the bottle down, looked questioning at Elizabeth, and she shrugged in reply.
He heard footsteps outside the cabin door, loud, rude voices, a gang of men pushing toward the captain’s sanctuary. Perhaps it was a mutiny, Marlowe speculated. He hoped it was. He hoped they would hang him.
But rather than a foot kicking in the door there came a polite knock. Marlowe sat for a second more, then stood and tugged his waistcoat into place. “Come,” he called.
The door opened and Bickerstaff stepped in. “Captain, a gentleman has come out to see you,” he said stiffly.
A gentleman? The governor, perhaps, or Finch or one of the burgesses. Marlowe could well imagine what they would have to say.
“Very good, show him in.” There was a pushing and wrestling in the alleyway. Whoever the visitor was, he was getting rough treatment from the men. If it was the governor, this would go even harder on them.
The gang of men parted like tearing cloth and the gentleman stepped forward. Marlowe’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open. He took an involuntary step back, so shocked was he, for the visitor was George Wilkenson, hat and wig
gone, clothes twisted, sweating with fear, standing there in the door of the guardship’s great cabin.
The questions swirled around in his head. His eyes narrowed. He glared at Wilkenson.
It occurred to him that he could hang the bastard then and there. If he just said the word he felt confident his men would put a halter around Wilkenson’s neck and run him up to a yardarm. At the very least, they would not try to interfere if he did it himself. From the look in Wilkenson’s eyes Thomas guessed it had occurred to him as well.
“Come in,” Marlowe said, and Wilkenson stumbled into the cabin, pushed from behind. “Get back on deck, you men!” Marlowe shouted, and the men dispersed, laughing, howling. Bicker-staff shut the door.
They stood there, the three men and Elizabeth, silent, staring at one another. Finally, Marlowe spoke.
“This is most unexpected.”
“I would imagine so.”
“What do you want?”
“I have come to beg you, with all humility, to come to the aid of this colony. You-you and your men-are the only force in the tidewater that can stand up to these animals.”