James Nelson - The Pirate Round

With Honeyman as coxswain, they were rowed ashore to a dubious wooden pier that jutted out like a poorly executed appendage to the dirt road that ran along the shore to the town. Marlowe stepped onto the slimy ladder, took a few rungs, turned, and helped Elizabeth up, and then Bickerstaff and Dinwiddie followed.

“You keep the boat crew sober, at least until we get back to the ship,” Marlowe ordered Honeyman.

It was an interesting situation. By the law of the pirates, Marlowe could not give such an order. If his men wanted to get wild drunk, he could not stop them, not since he had agreed to turn his legitimate merchantman into a pirate ship.

But, to his relief, Honeyman just nodded and said, “Aye, Captain.”

That done, Marlowe turned his attention to the town in front of him. There were two roads that he could see, no more, the one that ran from the end of the dock along the shore and another that wound its way up the hill to the stockade and the big house beyond. These crossed at a right angle and formed the town’s single intersection. The roads were dirt, but not overly dusty in that wet, tropical climate.

Off to the right were the warehouses, big wood-frame buildings, a few shuttered windows on the upper floors, the remnants of paint still clinging to the weathered boards. Scattered around them coils of line, rusting anchors, piles of standing rigging stripped from some vessel or other. Bursts of bright green vegetation grew up around them and even through them, showing how they had not been moved in some time.

The two roads were busy. There were a few carts and oxen and one horse that Marlowe could see, but for the most part it was foot traffic. Pirates. They wore the dress of seamen-loose trousers, bare feet, long hair-as well as those things that marked them as men on the account-bright sashes, cocked hats with feathers jutting out, gentlemen’s coats, weapons hanging off them in abundance.

They were hurrying or staggering or sitting on the road and singing or passed out, drunk. They were clustered about small, round tables on the street just outside one of the dilapidated taverns. They were promenading with local girls in European dress on their arms as if they were at the Court of St. James’s. Several hundred men, Marlowe had to guess. The town might be no more than a little enclave carved from the jungle, but the spirit was Port Royal in its buccaneering heyday.

Marlowe and his party made their way up the road to the intersection, then turned and tramped uphill to the big house. They stopped at the stockade and were questioned by a pair of guards who stood at the gate. Marlowe explained who they were, and they were let to pass and continue on the one hundred yards to the main entrance of the house.

The house itself was a magnificent affair, even more extraordinary considering that it was built on a jungle island. The lower half, up to the second story, was stone, harvested from the ground and stacked uncut, but done so neatly that little mortar could be seen between each.

Above that, the structure rose two more stories, built of wood frame and stucco, in the Tudor style. A great, wide veranda jutted out over the grounds, and several of the windows had their own little verandas that looked out over the harbor. The roof was a massive field of thatch.

Marlowe paused, caught his breath, stared with admiration at the building. He wondered at the drive and vision of the man who had built it.

“That Baldridge fellow, he done this, right?” Dinwiddie asked, breaking the silence.

“Yes, I believe so,” Marlowe said. “But I gather from Henry Nagel that Lord Yancy does not care to be reminded of that. Pray do not mention Baldridge again.”

“No, I won’t,” Dinwiddie said. He sounded as if the reminder had offended him. He was growing touchier by the day.

They stepped up to the door, and before Marlowe could knock, Henry Nagel opened it and ushered them in. They entered a cool foyer that rose two stories above them, with a wide staircase running up to the second floor.

Nagel had managed to say no more than “Welcome-” when Yancy stepped into the foyer, his cape nearly dragging on the floor.

“Welcome, welcome to my home!” he said, expansive and gracious now, more vital in his own domain. “Captain Marlowe, the lovely Elizabeth, welcome.” He glanced at the others, apparently could not recall their names, and said nothing. “Pray allow me to give you a tour before we eat. It is a simple, rustic place, but we must endure such to live in this tropical splendor!”

Yancy proceeded to show them the drawing room, the sitting room, the bedchambers on the second floor, shuffling from here to there, pausing to catch his breath or to indulge a coughing spell. There were a few other men in the house, those men, Marlowe guessed, that Yancy could genuinely trust. Yancy made introductions as they chanced to meet, named the others as though they were minor nobility, but they looked to Marlowe to be the same sort of rogues as wandered the streets below, if better dressed.

There were native men as well, servants, and native women, who seemed to outnumber the men three to one. The women smiled demurely, did not say anything to the strangers, and Yancy did not introduce them.

More bedchambers, drawing rooms upstairs, baths. Yancy showed them around with a pride as if he had built it all with his own hands.

It was a fine house, Marlowe had to agree, but he could also see that it was not wearing well. There was plaster flaking off walls and door-frames no longer square and mold creeping along window frames. He could see dirt accumulating in corners, broken bottles kicked aside, rooms with smashed furniture shoved into corners.

The grand house must have been magnificent when Baldridge had lived there, but those days were gone. Yancy and his pirates were the Visigoths, living among the crumbled glories of Rome.

They had dinner in the great hall, two stories tall, that made up the northeastern end of the house. Long tables ran nearly the length of the room, with Yancy’s trusted friends sitting along them and native servants, silent, darting between broad-shouldered men, pouring wine, serving dishes piled with food, taking empty ones away.

The men ate with the refinement Marlowe would have expected from the Roundsmen, snatching food with their hands mostly, though some used sheath knives as well. Bones were flung aside to the half-dozen dogs that waited eagerly for scraps.

Marlowe and Elizabeth and Bickerstaff and Dinwiddie sat at the head table, flanking Yancy. No sooner had they sat than the great monster of a man sitting next to Bickerstaff-with matted, encrusted beard, smelling of rum and tobacco smoke and sweat-stood and extended his hand to Marlowe, across Yancy’s face, nearly knocking Yancy over and saying, “Obadiah Spelt. Your servant, sir,” with an arrogance that made it clear he considered himself to be no one’s servant.

Marlowe took the hand and shook it and waited for the explosion, for Yancy’s troops to fall on the villain and cut him up, but Yancy seemed not to notice this blatant lack of respect, and neither did anyone else, so Marlowe ignored it, too. He sat again, wondered who this fellow might be, who could get away with such disrespect. Yancy’s brother? Someone who had saved Yancy’s life? Marlowe could not guess, and he really did not care.

For a good part of the dinner Yancy brooded and said nothing and ate nothing. It was only when the others were half done that Yancy finally called for food for himself, telling the servants specifically which platters to take from and set on the plate before him.

After a few bites Yancy seemed to brighten a bit. He turned to Elizabeth. “Tell, me, ma’am, what think you of my little house?”

“I think it is beautiful, Lord Yancy,” Elizabeth said, though to Marlowe’s certain knowledge she had already told him as much three times. “As fine as any of the great country houses of England,” she lied.