James Nelson - The Blackbirder

“Humph” was all that Elizabeth said.

Billy Bird had told her, in all fairness, that there were “considerations” to her sailing with him, and here was one of them.

“You see,” he had expanded on that comment, “we’ve these sort of… rules… aboard the ship. Something we’ve all signed on to, and even me, as lord and master of the vessel, cannot quite get around them.”

“Pirates’ articles?”

“No, no, dear Lord… pirates’ articles! No, just some rules, you know, for fair governance of the vessel. In any event, one of those rules is that no women are allowed aboard, and the punishment is marooning, not a pleasant thing at all. But I should think we could get around that, with just a bit of the creative touch.”

Billy had left at first light, collected her horse from where she had left it at the Wren Building, ridden back to Marlowe House. There he had gathered up a bagful of Marlowe’s clothes, shoes, wigs, and hats.

The clothes he carried to a seamstress who took them in significantly, but with no great art, since they were very pressed for time.

Now, back in his room at the King’s Arms, they made Elizabeth ’s transformation.

“You would never pass for a foremast hand, of course,” Billy told her, “one of these great hairy fellows. But you look every inch the foppish youth. Even without playing the man, you are more manly than some of the silly dandies I have seen prancing about this town. It was not that way a few years back, as I recall. There was a time when Virginia was a place of men alone, with little opportunity for these mincing dance masters.”

“Humph,” Elizabeth said again. She stood and regarded herself in the full-length mirror in the corner, assumed as masculine a stance as she could, one hand on her hip, the other resting on the hilt of her sword.

Billy Bird was right; she had to admit it. She would easily pass for a young man. The coat and waistcoat entirely obscured her breasts and her hourglass figure. She was not altogether pleased with that fact, that this disguise was so convincing, as if it made her somehow less of a woman.

It was late afternoon when they headed out, down the road to College Landing near the head of Archer’s Hope Creek. Riding with them, bareback on a tired old mare, was a boy from the inn who took the horses back to town once they had arrived at the landing: Elizabeth ’s to be liveried and Billy’s to be returned to the man from whom he had hired it.

At College Landing they hired a boat pulled by two big watermen. Evening was settling around them as they rowed down the creek to the James River and then down the James to the shallow mouth of a tributary on the southern bank called the Pagan River. Up the Pagan, as far as it might go without taking the ground, a solitary brig was riding at anchor. She was all but invisible from the James, her hull lost in shadow, her spars undetectable against the tall trees that lined the banks.

“Hoay, the boat!” a voice called from the brig’s quarterdeck, called with a low, rumbling menace.

“It’s Billy Bird, come back to you!” Billy called out, and nothing more was heard from the dark ship.

The watermen pulled alongside and Billy said to them, “I would be pleased if you would forget all about the presence of this vessel.” And then he pressed into their hands two coins, pieces of eight, and from the look on their faces it was clear that Billy had just bought their undying loyalty.

Billy stood, tossed his seabag aboard the low-sided brig, grabbed Elizabeth ’s, and tossed that as well. “Come along, then,” he said to her matter-of-factly, man to man.

Elizabeth nodded. Her palms were sweating and she knew if she held her hands out straight she would see them shake. She felt very exposed, as if her disguise was just the merest wisp, as if it should be clear to everyone that she was not a man. But the boatmen and the boy from the inn had not given her a second look, and she tried to take some comfort from that.

But again, the boatmen and the boy would not leave Billy Bird to die of thirst on some barren strip of sand if they found out, would not have their way with her until they were satisfied and then cut her throat, as the pirates would.

Billy stepped out of the boat and up the brig’s side and Elizabeth stood and followed him, not nearly as sure on her feet as he, certain that her every move would betray her sex. She tried to step with a self-confident air, the kind of cock-first swagger she associated with men such as these, but that only made her feel pathetically obvious in her deception.

She took hold of the cleats mounted on the brig’s side. Her leather gauntlets-Thomas’s gauntlets-were ill-fitting, though Billy himself had restitched them with a care and delicacy that surprised her. Her shoes did not fit right either; handkerchiefs were stuffed around her feet to hold them in place. But despite these encumbrances, and the strange sword hanging from her waist, she managed to get aboard in a credible manner.

Billy was talking with a rough-looking man, a big man with a battered cocked hat on his head, a long, dark broadcloth coat, a cloth tied around his neck in the manner of seamen, all but hidden under a thick beard, cutlass, pistols thrust in his belt.

Elizabeth stepped through the gangway. The man glanced up at her; Billy followed his eyes, said, “Ah, Mr. Vane, this here is an old friend, who will be taking passage with us. William Barrett, younger brother of Malachias Barrett. Do you recall Malachias Barrett, from Port Royal, some years back?”

Vane frowned, then nodded, slowly. “Yes, yes, I do.” He extended a hand to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, who had anticipated that, grabbed it lustily and shook, squeezing back as hard as she could, which she feared was not very hard.

“I told William we would give him passage to Boston. He’s just cargo, I fear, never the seaman that old Malachias is. William, Mr. Vane here is quartermaster, runs the show, pretty near.”

Vane nodded, released Elizabeth ’s hand, and Elizabeth nodded back. “Welcome aboard, William,” Vane said.

“Pleasure,” Elizabeth said, and Vane turned back to Billy and the encounter was done, and if Vane had any suspicions about their passenger’s gender then, he gave no indication that Elizabeth could see.

She was tense, she realized, every muscle in her body taut. Now she forced herself to relax, to let her muscles loose, like untying the laces of a bodice. She crossed her arms over her chest in what seemed to her a masculine stance, and ran her eyes over the brig.

She had seen just one pirate ship before, the one that Thomas had captured at Smith Island back when he had command of the guardship, and she had heard his tales and Bickerstaff’s of what others were like.

The deck she stood on now did not resemble those descriptions, she had to admit, nor did it remind her of the one she had seen. There were none of the empty bottles kicked into the scuppers, none of the tangles of cordage and discarded remnants of meals and men passed out in various places around the deck.

Rather, it was fairly tidy, shipshape, more like the respectable merchant vessels she had been aboard-Thomas’s guardship, the Plymouth Prize, or her namesake Elizabeth Galley. There were a few men on deck and they were working at something, talking quietly, and paying no attention to the business of their captain and quartermaster.

She heard Billy Bird say, “Very well, then, three bells in the middle watch,” and she turned to him and he turned to her and he said, “Come along, William, we have some hours before the tide turns and we can get under way. I shall show you your cabin and let us have a glass together.”

He led her aft, under the overhanging quarterdeck and through a door in a bulkhead that led to the after cabins, a series of doors lining a narrow alleyway dimly lit by a few lanterns swinging from the beams overhead. At the far end of the line of cabins, the door to the great cabin, the captain’s domain. Billy opened the door, gestured her into his rather finely appointed quarters: wine rack, sideboard, polished cherrywood table amidships, various weapons mounted on the bulkhead and ceiling.