James Nelson - The Pirate Round

“Oh, for the love of God,” Marlowe said. All this because he was too craven to row two hundred yards to the shore and walk another hundred to a warehouse to sign some papers? It was absurd. “I shall just go ashore and sign the damned papers and be done with it.”

Elizabeth looked up, surprised and afraid. “No, Thomas, that is not possible. You cannot do that.”

Dinwiddie nodded his head. The concern on his face made him look like a big dog, of the jowly, drooling variety.

“Of course I can. This is nonsense, this crawling around like some frightened thing. It is night, there is a fog, I shall speak only to those to whom I must, sign the rutting papers, and be gone. There is never a thing to fear. Mr. Dinwiddie, pray see the gig cleared away and a boat crew told off.”

“Aye, sir,” Dinwiddie said grudgingly, and he lumbered off to see it done. Marlowe met Elizabeth’s eyes, held them, and heard all the arguments forming in her head.

“It will be all right, my dearest,” he said softly, heading the arguments off. “And we have no choice in the matter.”

Marlowe went below for his coat, hat, and sword. When he returned to the deck five minutes later, the gig was floating at the bottom of the boarding steps, four men at the oars and Honeyman at the tiller. Marlowe noticed they were armed, with pistols hidden under jackets and cutlasses wrapped in canvas in the bottom of the boat. Mr. Dinwiddie’s caution and efficiency.

Marlowe went down first, then Elizabeth climbed down after him, and he helped her make the difficult step into the boat while Honey-man and the crew looked discreetly away. When they were settled in the stern sheets, the bowman shoved off and the boat pulled slowly through the crowd of shipping.

“See here.” Marlowe nodded to the ship under whose high stern they were passing, drawing Honeyman’s attention to her. “What do you reckon she’s about?”

Honeyman looked up, cast a critical and professional eye over the vessel. “Queen’s Venture…” He read the gilded letters under the big stern windows. “A frigate. Older frigate, but she’s flying East Indiaman’s colors. Looks to be fitting out for some cruise or other.”

She did that. She had about her the look of a ship readying for sea, not the worn look of a vessel just in. Her decks sported the telltale clutter of stowing down. But for all that, she looked formidable enough, her long row of shut gunports promising significant firepower behind.

“Humph,” Marlowe said, and nothing more. She was a curiosity, but she was not his affair.

They pulled up at last to the slick, wet granite steps that emerged from the water and led through a break in the stone seawall up to the cobbled road that ran along the river. Again Marlowe stepped out first and offered his hand to Elizabeth. They climbed the steps together, and Marlowe said, “You must show me the way, dear, you being so familiar with these streets.”

They reached the road, paused as Elizabeth got her bearings, and then a voice-gruff, slurred-asked, “Got bags, guv’nor, which I can carry for you?”

Marlowe turned without thinking, said, “No, my man, we are just-”

Eyes met, Marlowe’s and the old man’s. A wrinkled, leathered face, a smooth gash of a scar across his cheek. The man was a sailor, or had been. They paused, and something passed between them.

It was not recognition, not on Marlowe’s part, just some vague familiarity. In the dim light of the sundry lanterns that lit the waterfront, in the mist turning rapidly to fog, they held one another’s eyes for a second, less than a second. Then Marlowe turned fast, took Elizabeth’s arm, hurried off down the road.

It is not bloody possible, he thought. The first bloody face I see?

It was nothing, it was his imagination, he assured himself. All these old broken sailors, they all looked alike. He had known a dozen men who looked just like that old beggar.

But those eyes, that scar. He tried to take twenty years off the face, place it where he might have seen it last.

It was not possible he could have been recognized, not by the first man he met! He hurried Elizabeth along the cobbled road until she had to ask him to slow down, ask what was the matter.

“It is nothing, dear, not a thing. Just anxious to be done with this, I reckon. And afraid the merchant’s office will be closed. Do you know when they close?”

“Nine o’clock. We have an hour or better,” Elizabeth said.

Marlowe glanced back over his shoulder but saw only darkness there and mist and the odd halos of lanterns glowing in the fog.

They came at last to the merchant’s office, set in the front of a vast warehouse. In the common area were stationed tall desks for the harried bookkeepers and behind them a few walled-off offices for those of greater importance.

They stepped through the door, into the din, lit with the pools of light spilling from various candles and lanterns, messengers and stevedores and scriveners hurrying about, great stacks of casks and unidentifiable bundles lurking in the shadows in the back of the big building.

A clerk met them at the door. Both he and his clothing had a wilted, resigned quality. “May I help you?” he asked, and then, “Ah, Mrs. Marlowe, of course. And this would be…”

“Captain Marlowe,” Elizabeth said curtly. “He has come to sign the bills of sale, and he does not care to waste another moment with this nonsense.”

“Of course, of course,” said the clerk, running his eyes over Marlowe, seeming to try to gauge how far this fellow could be pushed. “Let me inform Mr. Dickerson that you are here, sir.”

The clerk disappeared into one of the offices and a moment later was back, saying, “Mr. Dickerson instructs I tell you he is grateful you could come in person, and he will attend to you the very instant he is done with the business he is on.”

“Very well,” said Marlowe in a tone that conveyed his feeling that this was not very well at all. He loosened his cloak, crossed his arms, gave Elizabeth an arched eyebrow, and silently they waited.

Five minutes, ten minutes, and never a sign of Dickerson.

“That son of a bitch,” Elizabeth whispered. “He is doing this because he is angry about the deal I struck, I know it. I think he reckoned on getting some great bargain when you would not show up.”

“If he does not see us now, then he shall get more than a bargain.

I’ll cut his damned throat in another minute,” Marlowe muttered. He was worried and angry and anxious to be gone, all at once.

And then the door opened, and the clatter of the streets drowned out the muted noise of the office. Marlowe turned, and there, filling the door, was Roger Press.

He stepped through, and behind him came two other men, big, rough-looking men, hands resting on cutlass pommels, but Marlowe had no eyes for them.

He looked only at Press, who stood in a relaxed attitude, arms folded, shifted his silver toothpick with his tongue, and looked back at him.

Tall, gangly, pockmarked and, to Marlowe, inexplicably still alive, Roger Press. And all that Marlowe could think was It is not bloody possible.

THEY STOOD there, said nothing. Here it was again-that face, this background. The two did not seem to go together. Half a minute passed.

Finally Press broke the silence, saying, “Surprised to see me, I’ll warrant. Fear not, I am no ghost.” Then he smiled, and the toothpick waggled obscenely. “But perhaps it would be better for you if I was a ghost, eh, Barrett? What say you?”

Barrett. Even that name did not fit. Malachias Barrett, that was the name by which Roger Press knew him. His real name, before he remade himself into Thomas Marlowe, gentleman planter.