James Nelson - The Blackbirder

Damn that ship, Marlowe thought. He hated her as much as James must have. Damn her, she was the cause of all this.

Burn, you whoreson villain.

“Ah, Francis,” he sighed. “It was all so much simpler once. Being a barbarous pirate has its advantages, you know. When one operates beyond all morality, then one never suffers such a thing as a moral dilemma.”

Bickerstaff sniffed. “Neither does a frog or a maggot concern itself with moral considerations, but I couldn’t recommend the life. But let me ask you, Thomas, why were you so distraught to find they had carried off the chief mate? It did not seem to be from concern for his safety.”

“No, faith, it was not. The damned annoying thing is now they have someone who can navigate. If it had just been James I reckon he would have tried to beat to the eastward against the trades-he would not guess at any other way to fetch Africa. We could have run him down easy, put an end to this. As it is we are but a day or two behind them.

“But now they have someone who knows the sailing route. Now they can sail to Africa and we have to follow and I have to convince these dogs forward that we’re doing it all for their greater glory and riches, or who knows what they will do.”

He stared at the flames. They were all he could see now, with night having come full on them while they talked.

Frederick Dunmore wheeled his horse around, took in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of Marlowe House, the big white plantation house, deserted, the barn that waited for that season’s harvest, the row of slave quarters, abandoned.

But not slave quarters at all, of course. Houses for free Negroes. All trim and neat with paint and shingles bought with the wages that Marlowe paid and laid out in the circular pattern of an African village. Some were white, some were crazy colors, reds and blues. Some had African symbols painted on their walls. It was the most egregious kind of effrontery. He spun his horse again, could not bear to look on it.

Twenty or so men-well-to-do planters, their overseers, indentured servants, even some common mechanics and laborers-had now joined him in hunting down the escaped Negroes. They were gathered on the big lawn that stretched away from the back of the house, relaxing, waiting. The dogs raced all around the grass, barking, howling, tearing up this and that.

Between his legs Dunmore could see the wide black smudges from his saddle that stained his white breeches. Mud was splattered over his white socks. A constellation of little black holes spread across his dustcovered coat where sparks from the pan on his firelock had floated down and burned through the fabric.

But the clothing did not matter. He was happy to see the hard use it was getting. It was evidence of the great effort he was exerting in routing out this plague on the colony.

The people were starting to listen to him. They were starting to listen to reason.

Dunmore wanted slavery gone, abolished, made illegal. He did not wish to ever see another black man in America. Could not understand how the others failed to see that they were importing a plague, paying good money to bring into the land the means of their own destruction. Soon there would be more blacks than whites. And then, agitation, more and more liberties for the Negroes.

And then, with the lower sort of whites, inbreeding. Inbreeding. It was intolerable.

He turned again and looked at the Negroes’ houses. Neat, even comfortable and homey. Unbelievable.

Sailing to London, years before, his ship had been caught in a storm, midocean, a wild, disorganized blow with the wind boxing the compass and big seas rising up from all directions, knocking the ship first here and then there. Lightning from every quarter. It was a black, freezing madness.

Dunmore had never forgotten that storm, coming as it had mere weeks after his own steady life had been blown to ribbons. It seemed then such a perfect physical manifestation for the rage that ran wild in his head, coming from all quarters, overwhelming him from directions in which he was not even looking.

“You men!” he shouted. “Those niggers’ houses! Burn them!”

Glances back and forth, questioning looks. The storm in Dunmore ’s head raged harder. “They built these houses with money that was not theirs, by law! I say burn them!”

A few of the men, the overseers and mechanics, got to their feet. They would do it, willing or not.

Oh, I am so very brave while Marlowe is off to sea, Dunmore thought. Man enough to burn his property, threaten his wife.

Coward!

But what other approach? What good could he do if Marlowe put a bullet through his head? Who would carry on with his mission? Had to

be done that way, most effective, doing it for his race, a greater good.

The storm raged, lashed at him.

“Hey! Here comes Powhatan!” someone yelled, and everyone stopped and turned. Those men that were lighting torches for burning the Negroes’ homes dropped the materials, stared out toward the woods.

A single Indian was approaching them, dressed in buckskin, musket in hand, moving at an easy trot. His name was not Powhatan, of course, but no one knew what his real name was, and rather than ask, everyone just called him after that long-dead chief. He never seemed to object.

He was a sometimes scout, sometimes guide. Dunmore had finally broken down and engaged him for this business.

They had been hunting the Negroes for a week, forging out into the woods with dogs and horses, charging over trails and slashing through bracken, but they had found nothing. The dogs had picked up trails, sure enough, had set up great choruses of baying, had raced off like they had a fox treed, but it had always come to naught.

The damned Negroes had been leading them astray. Dunmore finally smoked it. They were sending a few of their men out to lay false trails, doubling back, splashing through streams, creating long meandering trails that dead-ended far from wherever it was the rest of them were hiding.

It was pointless. Hire a savage to catch a savage, Dunmore had concluded at last. Those Africans and their jungle ways. Perhaps a Red Indian could find them. He had all but given up hope that white men and dogs could.

He spurred his horse and rode toward the Indian, as did some of those others on horseback, wealthy planters who by tacit understanding were part of the decision-making cabal. They reined up around Powhatan and the red man looked up at Dunmore, and Dunmore alone, because Dunmore was the one who had put the gold in his hands.

“They about three mile from here. In a meadow. Tents, fire. They have scouts out in the woods, maybe what you call pickets. I can show you. But no dogs. That is why you don’t catch them. They hear the dogs, lead them away from the camp.”

“Damn it!” Dunmore said, and almost added “I knew it!” but since the dogs had been his idea he did not. “Very well. We will leave two of the more useless ones back with the dogs. McKeown, that lazy Irishman, and that big fellow. Let’s get the others ready to go.”

“And no horses,” Powhatan said, “we not surprise them with horses.”

The other men on horseback, wealthy planters all, looked at one another, uneasy, and Dunmore knew that they did not wish to go on foot. Three miles in and back was a long way for men used to riding. And being on foot put them at the same level as the laborers and mechanics. It actually gave the Indian, practiced woodsman that he was, a certain superiority.

“No, we need the horses. Can’t hunt them down without the horses. The speed they give us, and the fear they bring to these Negroes, will more than make up for a want of surprise.”

Powhatan shrugged and leaned on his musket. It occurred to Dun-more that the red man probably did not care one way or another about this fight. That did not matter, as long as he played his part.