James Nelson - The Pirate Round

Hesiod, Marlowe, and Bickerstaff skirted the fall of the light and stepped through the gate, into the shadows of the stockade wall.

From that dark spot they surveyed the big house. To their left the banquet hall rose up two stories. The tall windows glowed with the light of the iron chandeliers that hung from the rough beams of the ceiling. They could hear the muffled roar of the riot taking place within, as Yancy’s anointed took their nightly pleasure. On the second story there were lights burning in three rooms that they could see and two on the third.

“She may be in one of those,” Marlowe said, nodding toward the windows in which lanterns or candles burned. “Or not.”

“There’s but one way to find out,” said Hesiod. “Coming, Honey-man, or standing guard here?”

“Coming.”

The four men hurried toward the house, moving along the stockade wall, keeping to the shadows. They came to the corner of the building, paused, crouching in the dark, listened for any guards walking the grounds. There was nothing beyond the revelry in the banquet hall and the revelry in the town below.

“Let me try the door,” Honeyman said. He stood and walked toward the front door, not running or hiding but striding with purpose and a bit of a wobble, not like an intruder but rather a drunk who had no concerns about his right to be where he was.

Up the stone steps, and Marlowe could just see him in the shadow as he tugged at one door, then the other, then both, before turning and walking back the way he had come.

“Damn,” Marlowe said softly. They would need another way in. He ran his eyes over the front of the house, pictured it from the inside, as it had been shown to him by Yancy.

“Hold! Who’s that?” The voice from the dark startled him. Honey-man was no more than a shadow against the gray house. Marlowe saw him pause and turn toward the guard. Then he caught a flare of light overhead. He looked up, quick.

On the balcony attached to one of the rooms, a figure was holding a torch, a great flaming mass of fire. To Marlowe’s surprise, that person was Elizabeth.

He stood, took a step forward. He did not know what to do. Shout? Remain silent? She was two stories up. She could not jump, nor could he climb up to her.

As he stood there, paralyzed with his indecision, Elizabeth turned her back to him, leaned over the edge of the balcony, and whipped the torch up in the air. It flew from her hand, tumbled end over end, slowly revolving in the air, and then landed on the thatched roof above.

The flame gutted, smoldered, and then flared as the dry thatch caught. The guard who had challenged Honeyman now forgot him completely as he ran for the door, shouting, “Fire! The damned bitch lit the damned roof on fire! Fire, there!”

Honeyman ran across the grounds, into the shadows where the others stood. He was grinning. “Men hear about this, I reckon they’ll elect your wife captain in your stead, Marlowe,” he said.

“I reckon she would do a better job.”

Someone unbarred the big door at the guard’s pounding. People came streaming out, and others came from around the building, looking up at the roof, which was now well on its way to being engulfed. Pandemonium began to sweep through the half-drunk men. Several were shouting orders, each trying to take command of the situation, no one listening to anyone else.

“Come on,” Marlowe said, hurrying out of the shadows and racing along at the edge or the growing crowd. There were thirty or forty people on the grounds now-pirates, servants, women. Their attention was on the burning roof. No one noticed the four men at the edge of the light.

Marlowe paused, ten feet from the door. Circling the crowd unnoticed was one thing, but going inside was another. He braced himself, ready to make his move, when Nagel, like a wild bull, burst through the door, pulling up his breeches as he ran, his booming voice trampling the buzz of excitement and the orders that were flying around the yard.

“Here, you motherless bastards!” he roared. “With me! Get buckets! Get axes! We have to cut the roof away before it sets the whole god-damned house ablaze!”

He waved his arm, turned, and charged back into the house, and the others charged in behind. Now they had someone to lead them, and it would not be long before they had the blaze contained.

The last of the men in the yard rushed past, and then Marlowe and the others joined them, running in through the door at the tail of the crowd, hats pulled low, hands on pistol butts.

Across the high foyer and up the stairs, Nagel led his mob, and the four men from the Elizabeth Galley followed, lost in the chaos.

At the far end of the hall there was a rough ladder that led up and under the thatch, and Nagel bounded up it, heedless of the danger that the fire might present, and behind him the bolder of Yancy’s men followed. Sloshing buckets appeared and were handed along.

“This way, I think,” Marlowe said, and they pushed their way through the crowd toward the open hall beyond.

Marlowe looked up the corridor in one direction, then another. Doors lined the way, three on one side, three on another. He was turned around in the house, could not guess in which of the rooms he had seen Elizabeth. He grabbed Bickerstaff by the arm. “Take Hesiod, start looking in those rooms!” He pointed across the hall. “Honeyman, with me, here!”

They pushed past the pirates, the servants, the wives, and down the hall. Bickerstaff pushed open the far door, shouted, “Fire! Clear out! Fire!” as he searched the space for Elizabeth.

Marlowe tried the far door on his side, but the room was dark and empty, as far as he could see. He moved to the next, lifting the heavy latch, swinging it open.

The room was lit with a smattering of candles, giving it a dreamy, soft quality. In the middle of the room stood a big four-poster bed, draped with shiny, gauzy material. Two women were there on the bed, naked, their long black hair falling over brown shoulders. They looked up at the intrusion, and one of them propped herself on her elbow, unabashed. They gazed at Marlowe with little curiosity, as if they had no interest in what would happen to them next.

Between them, in the bed, lay Peleg Dinwiddie, flat on his back, snoring. There were various glasses and bottles and pipes scattered around the room and on the bedside table and in the bed itself. Dinwiddie’s big belly rose and fell with his breath. It seemed to glow white in the light of the flames.

Marlowe crossed the room quickly, grabbed Dinwiddie’s shoulder and shook it, hard.

“Peleg! Peleg!” he said in a whisper, as loud as he dared. “Peleg, wake up!”

At last the big man moaned, opened a bleary eye, looked up at Marlowe. There was no recognition in his face. “Peleg, it’s me. Marlowe. Come, we have to go!”

“Marlowe?”

“Yes, yes, come along…”

Dinwiddie rolled his head away. “Sod off, you bastard…”

Marlowe paused, unsure if he had heard correctly. “What?”

Dinwiddie rolled his head back, looked up into Marlowe’s eyes. “I said ‘sod off.’ Let that whoreson Honeyman take my place, never had any goddamned respect-”

“Peleg, you cannot stay here. Come with me, we’ll sort this out.”

“Sod off, bastard. Treat me like a fucking lord here…”

“Marlowe,” Honeyman called from the door. “We ain’t got much time…”

“Right.” He looked down at Dinwiddie. “Son of a bitch…” There was no way he could carry him out of there. Perhaps he really did wish to stay. Marlowe did not know where his duty lay.

“Marlowe!” Bickerstaff was at the door. “There is a room at the other end of the hall, seems to be where the fire is centered!”

That had to be Elizabeth. He could not waste any more time with Dinwiddie. “Very well, I shall sod off,” he said, then turned and hurried from the room, shut the door on his former first officer, who was already asleep once more.