James Nelson - The Blackbirder

Marlowe felt unwell, unwell in the pit of his stomach. He felt a decision looming, one that offered no good choice.

“Mr. Fleming!” he called down. “Pray send one of those Frenchmen up here, one of those fellows we rescued!”

Five minutes later the Frenchman settled beside him. There was still a craziness in his eyes and Marlowe knew it would be with him all his life. The unredeemable shock of seeing things his mind could not endure. He would die a drunken, broken wreck in some port town: Port Royal, Plymouth, Brest. They were all the same. Marlowe had seen it so very often.

He put aside such irrelevant thoughts, handed the man the telescope and pointed to the nearest of the two ships. The Frenchman put the glass to his eye and focused it with a practiced hand.

“Est votre bateau?” Marlowe asked with his modicum of French.

The man was silent for a long time, just looking through the glass. Marlowe could see his hands begin to tremble. “Oui.”

He put the glass down, looked at Marlowe. The two men held each other’s eyes for a moment. Then the Frenchman said again, “Oui,” and without another word he swung himself into the rigging and headed back down to the deck.

Les pirates negres. In an hour, King James would be within long-cannon shot. And beyond him, a merchantman that was no doubt a rich prize, just the thing that the Elizabeth Galleys longed for, indeed, the very thing that they required in exchange for their dubious loyalty.

And Marlowe would have to decide which to attack.

By the time he set foot on the deck again, Marlowe knew that he just did not care anymore.

His apathy was not directed toward King James. He still cared very much about him, still wished very much that he did not have to kill the man.

It was privateering, pirating, all these fine points of Admiralty law. He was too tired of the whole issue to give one damn more. “Sod them all, with their treaties and their laws and letters of marque…,” he muttered.

He wondered at his own failings, his inability to hold the moral high ground for long, once he had taken it. What would Bickerstaff think, that he might so easily slip back into the amorality of the Brethren of the Coast? But his was a fatalism born of long years at sea, long years among the pirates, those most fatalistic of creatures, who cared about no man’s life. Not their own, not that of anyone else.

“Well, set a thief to catch a thief,” he said to himself, then aloud: “I reckon I’m the one to go after that pirate James. Mr. Bickerstaff, pray, sir, a word?” Marlowe waved him aft, led him back to the taffrail, out of earshot of the helmsman or any of the others forward. Bickerstaff would still care. It was not fair that he should be led blind into this thing.

“So, Francis, it is quite a situation we find ourselves in. The far ship is some merchantman; English, Spanish, French, I know not. The nearer ship is King James and his horde.”

He let those words sink in, waited while Bickerstaff stared forward, looking at nothing, thinking the situation over.

“Will you attack King James?”

“I will not. We will fight, if James attacks us, but I do not believe he will. No, the governor’s wishes aside, I fear I cannot let another prize go by. The men will not stand for it. And it will do no one any good if this lot turns pirate.”

“Indeed, they are a most piratical bunch, upon my word. And that Griffin is the worst of them. He does more damage to the crew than all the rich prizes we might ignore.”

“Yes, Griffin, well, we shall see about him. In any event, we’ll let James sail off, for now, and if this other is a legal prize, then we are for them.”

“The thought of riches must ease your pain somewhat.”

“Yes. Yes, it does.” Marlowe looked aloft at the fine billows of canvas against blue sky, then back at their long wake, foaming white under the counter and streaming off behind in a long, straight line.

Ah, how he loved the sea! How unfair it seemed that the perfect simplicity of this life, the steady rhythm of the watches, those basic considerations of conforming canvas to weather, the needs of the ship and her crew, should be polluted by such worries and considerations. Legalities and duplicity and petty negotiating were things for buildings on shore, not ships at sea. But like Bickerstaff he was not so naive as to think that being afloat made him immune to such intrigue.

He pulled his eyes from the wake, looked at his friend again. “There is one other thing of which you should be aware. I do not, in fact, have a letter of marque and reprisal.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bickerstaff said, after the merest of hesitations.

“I do not really have a letter of marque. Nicholson would not give me one until I had brought in King James. I lied to the men about it, and to you as well.”

Bickerstaff said nothing. He looked away, then looked back at Marlowe. “That is why you let that other ship go? There was some high talk aboard that she was a legal prize.”

“That’s right. But I cannot do that again, and I certainly cannot tell the men that they have been deceived.”

“Good Lord, Thomas! But if you take yon ship, then it is piracy, no more.”

“Piracy, indeed. Funny how I keep falling into it. The sweet trade attracts some men like a lodestone. Men of a certain mettle, I suppose.” He hoped Bickerstaff would note the cleverness of that remark-mettle, metal-but Bickerstaff just sighed, looked outboard, shook his head.

“Francis, I told you this because I would never have you unwittingly do something you think immoral. The men forward, they don’t give a damn and frankly neither do I any longer, but I would not have you join in this fight in ignorance.”

“Well, Thomas, it’s a damned thing, ain’t it? Will you tell these men the reason I am not willing to fight, that you lied about the letter of marque, or just let them assume I am a coward?”

Marlowe nodded. It was a damned thing. “You know, Francis, the sea is a dangerous place. Questions of right and wrong become… muddied. I fail to understand why you go to sea with me, me and all my moral failings. Why not stay home, at Marlowe House, with your books and your farming?”

“I do not know, Thomas, and I do not like to think on my reasons.”

The two men were silent for some time, and then Bickerstaff said, “In faith, for all my high morals, I do believe I envy you and your pragmatic view. There is a certain excitement that the scholarly life lacks, and I fear that, like strong drink, when one gets a taste of it, it is hard to put it aside.” He considered his words and then added, “The drinking simile is a good one, for I daresay that adventure such as yours is no more healthful or acceptable to society than being a wretched drunk.”

“Give me time, Francis, and I may be that too.”

“I would have thought that likely, but for Elizabeth, who is a better person than either of us, and who I trust will keep you sober and sane. And since by your admission we do all of this in order that she can enjoy her place in society, I suppose we can say that it is all justified.”

“Good for you! You see, just as you taught me to read and write, so I have taught you to justify any misdeeds you wish to undertake.”

“Yes, with the difference being that you can make yourself believe that nonsense, and I cannot.”

They left off their discussion of the morality of what they were doing, which was fine with Marlowe, because he had already decided on his course of action and did not need his decision cluttered with such considerations.

And Bickerstaff, though he made it clear that he thought Marlowe was reprehensible for what he had done, nonetheless armed himself with pistols and sword and took his place in the waist, supervising the forward section of guns and backing Marlowe up in the boarding party.