James Nelson - The Blackbirder

“I don’t imagine that whoever is coming is going to do us any favors,” Elizabeth said, and Caesar nodded. “Round up all the people in the house and hurry out back and tell everyone working in the fields to lose themselves. Do you think you can all hide yourselves until these people go?”

Caesar nodded. “If they’s only six of them, and no dogs, we can hide so they don’t find us.”

“Very well. Go.”

With that, Caesar disappeared and Elizabeth stepped slowly down to the lawn. In the far distance, on that part of the rolling road visible from Marlowe House, she could see the riders, small, bobbing specks against the green fields. She only hoped she had heard them in time.

They turned onto the road running up to Marlowe House, seemed to pick up their pace for that last charge down to the plantation. Halfway there, two hundred yards away, and Elizabeth could see the white coat and breeches of Frederick Dunmore at their head.

And I thought I would be lonely with Thomas gone, she thought.

Hurry, Caesar. Pray, hurry.

They reined up in front of her, their great, sweating, panting beasts pawing and shaking heads, twisting around under their riders, as if anxious to be at it. Dunmore, foremost, in his white coat, filmed with dust, the locks of his long white periwig flung back over his shoulders, twisted and tangled like Medusa snake-hair. Sword, brace of pistols in his crossbelt, musket thrust through a loop in his saddle.

Behind him, three more plantation owners, and behind them, deferential, Elizabeth recognized the overseers from those plantations. Professional slave handlers, men whose earnings were commensurate with their ability to enforce discipline, their measured brutality.

“I am sorry, Mr. Dunmore, but I am afraid you have missed my husband,” Elizabeth said.

“Didn’t come to see your husband, ma’am. We come for your niggers.”

“I’m sorry, you’ve what?”

“We’ve come for your niggers. Threat to the tidewater. Too bad that innocent white men had to die before anyone would listen to me. We’ll hold them until the burgesses figure out what to do with them.”

Elizabeth held his eyes and he held hers as his horse shifted and worked under him. She hoped her expression could convey even a fraction of the contempt she felt. “Had you come yesterday you might have discussed this with Mr. Marlowe. Now you will have to wait for his return.”

“No waiting. No time for that, and nothing to discuss.”

“Damned convenient, sir, that you did not get around to this until this morning, when you knew Mr. Marlowe had sailed. One might think it…cowardly? Craven? What word might one use for a sneaking, crawling puppy such as yourself?”

Dunmore’s face flushed, to Elizabeth ’s satisfaction, but his demeanor did not change. “I shall deal with Mr. Marlowe, depend upon it.” He wheeled his horse, shouted, “We’ve no time for this nonsense! Let us go!”

With a dramatic wave of his hand he led the men off, around the house, off between the barn and the tobacco sheds, off to the former slave quarters-now the homes of Marlowe’s free laborers-and back to the fields where they worked.

Mr. Marlowe shall deal with you, depend upon it, she thought. Deal you out a bullet through your head.

Elizabeth had never been a great supporter of Marlowe’s freeing his slaves-formerly Tinling’s slaves-whom he had purchased along with the Tinling plantation. But she loved the people, cared for them in a maternal way, and knew they were no threat. She had to agree with her husband that Marlowe House had none of the volatility of other plantations.

And now this. This bastard Dunmore, a Boston man of all things, taking it upon himself to keep the tidewater safe from such abominations as free blacks.

Oh, Caesar, please, please have warned them all in time.

“Do you know, Francis,” said Marlowe, breathing deep, patting his

chest, “one could almost forget one’s woes, in these circumstances.”

“Almost.”

The two men stood leaning against the weather bulwark on the Elizabeth Galley’s quarterdeck, all the way aft. The wind had filled in once they had cleared the capes, and now they were enjoying fifteen knots over the larboard quarter. The Galley was bowling along with all plain sail set, making nine and ten knots with every cast of the log. There was not a cloud to be seen, nowhere on that unbroken, three-hundred-andsixty-degree horizon.

Marlowe turned and leaned over the rail, peered astern. The wake was arrow straight, deep blue and white furrows under the counter that faded away as it stretched back toward the land. To the north, but well behind them now, was Cape Charles, to the south Cape Henry, the gaping entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, like monstrous jaws from which they had just narrowly escaped.

And before them, nothing. Just the wide, blue Atlantic. No impediments, considerations. No politics out here, just seamanship and gunnery.

Below them, the ship, tight and yare, well armed, well manned. She felt solid underfoot. It was always a source of wonder to Marlowe that something that heaved and rolled and pitched could at the same time feel so solid and unyielding. A trick of the mind, no doubt. It didn’t matter. The Elizabeth Galley was everything one could wish in a ship, just as her namesake was everything one could wish in a woman.

He was about to say as much to Bickerstaff when he was jerked from his contentment by a crack, like a pistol shot, and for that instant he was back aboard some fetid pirate ship where the winner of a quarrel was the one who snatched his gun and fired the quickest. He wondered if his men were looking to their pistols already, and if so, who had killed whom?

All that he thought in the instant between the crack like a gunshot and the banging and flogging of canvas that had broken free of its restraints.

He whirled around and his eye was drawn to the chaos aloft.

Something had snapped and now the weather clew of the main topsail was free and the entire sail was slamming and twisting and flogging itself to death. Marlowe could see it wrapping around the main topmast forestay, dragging itself across the heavy rope, shredding itself against the gear aloft. Streams of canvas blew away like bandages coming undone.

At the base of the mast, Griffin, looking up, shouting. Not orders, not instructions, just cursing, useless filthy invectives spilling from his mouth, directed at the sail.

Useless man. In the rush of getting under way fast Marlowe had neglected to replace him as bosun.

He pushed past Bickerstaff, raced forward, ready to give the orders himself to get the big sail under control when Fleming burst out from under the quarterdeck, shouting orders as he ran. “Clew up! Clew up! Come along, you lazy bastards, lay into them clews! Ease away the sheets there, ease away, handsome now! Mr. Griffin, mind your duty!”

Half a minute more and the sail was subdued, hauled up to the topsail yard by its clews and bunts while all the time Griffin kept up his pointless and useless cursing.

The ship was quiet again, the men attentive, and Fleming ordered the main topgallant sail in and the yards lowered into their lifts and hands away aloft to unbend the topsail. The crisis had lasted no more than three minutes, but it had been enough to shatter Marlowe’s fine mood and force him back to the unhappy reality of the moment.

Fleming stood at the base of the mainmast, examining the frayed end of a long piece of cordage that lay strewn over the fife rail and the main hatch. He squinted aloft, then dropped the rope and stepped up the quarterdeck ladder and aft. “Looks like the topsail sheet chaffed right through. Must have had a bad lead,” he announced.

“Indeed. We’ll have quite a few such kinks to work out, I wouldn’t wonder,” said Marlowe. “Let us hope we get it all straight before we have a real situation. And well done, Mr. Fleming.”