James Nelson: The Blackbirder

Marlowe thought of the decrepit, half-rotten Plymouth Prize, his former command. “No, she ain’t the Plymouth Prize.”

“I’ve a mind for something along those lines myself…,” Page added. “So, what say you? Dine with me?”

Why not? It was hard to refuse Hartwell Page’s invitation, which he gave with such force.

“Delighted. And we should be pleased to have you along afterward, Hartwell. I would welcome your advice.”

“Ah, Marlowe, you are a lying dog, but I thank you. You know I’ll give advice, whether I know a thing or not.”

And advice he gave, through a protracted dinner of hominy, hashed beef, squirrel, asparagus, red herring, and sallet, advice on everything from plantation management to growing tobacco to Marlowe’s current enterprise.

And Marlowe and company listened, ate, laughed, drank, enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Page was one of those few who could pull off an hour of running monologue without being insufferable.

That fact aside, it was still a relief when the two parties took to their separate carriages for the seven-mile ride to Jamestown and the docks that thrust out into the James River.

They settled in their seats, Marlowe, Bickerstaff, and Elizabeth, the first private moment they had had since morning, and Bickerstaff said, “I am sorry, Thomas, that you must suffer that idiot Dunmore. And of all things, for freeing your slaves. I have said it before, it is the most decent act you have ever committed.”

“I thank you, sir. I know that you suffer no delusion about why I did it. Purely selfish reasons, didn’t care to live surrounded by a great crowd of people-clever people, and stealthy, you know, can come and go as they please-who wish to cut our throats in the night.

“I think it no exaggeration to say that our people love us for what we did, paying them, treating ’em like human beings. We’re the only plantation owners in the tidewater that don’t lay awake nights worrying about an uprising. I know from my… former days…what men in bondage are capable of.”

“Well, whatever your motives, it was a decent thing. Though it seems to greatly offend this Dunmore, the upstart little bastard.”

There was no more that needed saying on that subject, so as they rolled south Marlowe and Bickerstaff talked of preparedness, of future plans.

Elizabeth participated a little in the talk, then fell silent, looking out the window at the green fields and patches of oak and maple and yellow pine.

Marlowe glanced her way a few times, but she did not notice. Whatever was troubling her, he would hear about it before he slept that night.

And then they were there. The coachman gave a shout, a command in some African tongue, punctuated by a flick of the reins. The horses stopped and Thomas and Elizabeth rocked forward and the loud clatter of hooves was replaced by the whine of insects and the ringing of a single hammer.

That would be King James, Marlowe thought. King James, former prince of the Kabu Malinke, former slave, now Marlowe’s majordomo, captain of the Northumberland, the plantation’s river sloop, which he could see tied to the quay.

King James. His comrade in arms. No day off for him. He would be too impatient to get to sea to observe the Sabbath.

Marlowe was on his feet and out the door, anxious for an uninterrupted look, anxious to take her in before Page struggled out of his carriage and began talking.

He strode forward, toward the dock. Heard Bickerstaff behind him, giving Elizabeth a hand down from the carriage. Doing his office. He would apologize later; she would understand.

Thomas stopped, breathed deep. Jasmine, pine, brackish water. Fresh-cut wood and tar and new cordage. Paint drying in the hot sun.

She lay tied to the dock, floating on a perfectly even keel, the slow-moving river breaking around her bows and sweeping aft, giving the illusion that she was already under way.

Marlowe’s eyes moved up, slowly up, sweeping along her lofty rig, now rising to its full height with topgallant masts in place. Her spars were tapered like a woman’s leg, her masts raked at a jaunty angle, as if she were fully aware of her beauty and did not feel the need to flaunt it. Marlowe made a low, guttural noise in his throat.

She was eighty-four feet on her waterline, one hundred and twenty-three feet sparred length, from the end of her bowsprit, on which sat the little doubling of the spritsail topmast, all the way aft to the big lantern that stood proudly over the taffrail.

The black muzzles of guns, eight along each side, jutted audaciously out of their gunports, gleaming in the sun. Fore, main, and mizzen masts rose from her decks, bright oiled wood crossed by black spars. Gangs of thick black shrouds sprouted from the doublings and ran down and aft, terminating at their deadeyes with symmetrical perfection.

One hundred and eighty tons of fighting ship, laid out to Marlowe’s specifications under his oppressively watchful eye.

The Elizabeth Galley. His savior, financially, spiritually. His private man-of-war.

Old King Charles was dead. He had missed ruling over Spain ’s greatest era by two generations, had weakened his country further with his relentless fighting with Louis XIV of France. And now he was gone.

It seemed odd to Marlowe that the death of one old man he had never met, in a city that he had never seen, could have so profound an effect on his life, but there it was.

King Charles had died leaving behind no offspring, no one to occupy that place on the throne of Spain on which his royal arse had sat for the past thirty-nine years.

But in his last days he had declared Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip, his heir. Philip, great-grandson to Spain ’s Philip IV. Philip, a Frenchman and a Bourbon.

With that one declaration the old man had ended years of maneuver and haggling by the nations of Europe, dashed the ambitions of the House of Hapsburg in Austria, shown England the frightening visage of France and Spain united under Bourbon rule.

It was unacceptable. It meant war.

For thousands of officers and gentlemen from England, from France and Spain and the Netherlands and Bavaria and Savoy and a handful of others it meant glory, promotion, the majesty of leading men in a noble fight.

To those people who stayed at home and dealt in weapons, cloth, and food, it meant high prices for guns, uniforms, and barrels of salt pork and salt beef.

For the tens of thousands of men who filled the ranks of the armies it meant mud and hunger and disease, bitter nights and mornings of terror and death in distant countries for causes they only vaguely understood.

And to Marlowe, standing in the bright sun, two thousand nautical miles away from that unholy quagmire, in a land which, on a day such as that, was as close to Paradise as one might find on earth, it meant privateering.

It meant venturing forth on the great ocean, his element. An end to the monotony of domestic life, the possibility of great riches. Action. It meant a letter of marque and reprisal, a license to play the pirate against half the shipping in the world.

Before him was the ship. On the morrow he would receive the letter of marque. In a week he would be at sea, stalking the fat merchant ships, as he had so many times before. But this time it would be legal. Patriotic, in fact.

“Damn me, damn me!” Thomas felt Page’s meaty hand slap him across the back; it made him stagger forward a step. “Lovely, Marlowe, damned lovely, this ship!”

“Thank you, Hartwell. Will you come aboard, allow me to show you around?”

“Delighted, delighted. Mrs. Page will wait in the coach. But look, son, you see to your little lady there, reckon you’ve put her nose out of joint. None of the old flourish tonight, hey? Hey?” The elbow struck home. Page walked toward the gangplank, chuckling all the while.