James Nelson - The Blackbirder

The Bloody Revenge was all but motionless, riding at a single anchor, after five days of working her way south around Cape Hatteras and into Charles Town Harbor.

They were anchored in Charles Town Harbor, but not the raucous, lively, well-populated section, not anchored off the busy waterfront that bordered the Cooper River, with its several docks and crowds of shipping and boats pulling to and fro at all hours, its chandlers and slave markets and whorehouses, taverns and ordinaries.

Rather, they were tucked into a dark corner behind low, marshy Hog Island, across the river from the town, tide rode at the mouth of Hog Island Creek. In a town such as Charles Town, which trafficked quite openly with pirates, Elizabeth had to wonder what Billy Bird and his “honest merchant sailors” were about, that such secrecy was required.

She could hear shoes and the soft padding of bare feet on the deck above. She stared up at the beams over her head. The rough cut marks left by the adze that had formed them stood out bold in the deep shadows of the single flame.

Billy Bird… She called him a pirate and he was not unequivocal in his denial. But still, his ship was not like what she had been led to believe pirate ships were. Billy gave orders and they were obeyed. Billy lived in the fine aft cabin, and no one entered that space without knocking first.

But Billy was polite to the men, and careful not to violate those “rules” that governed their ship.

Well, there were pirates and there were pirates, and she imagined that Billy and his men had come to some understanding that worked for them all.

Billy Bird. He was handsome, wild, and reckless. Fun. If she were not married to Thomas, then this meeting might have been very different. But Thomas made her feel secure and safe, which Billy never could, and that was the thing she most craved now.

She wished Thomas would come back. She had no idea of how long he might be gone, and she hated the uncertainty. She did not know if he was dead or alive.

She let her head fall back on the pillow, closed her eyes, sighed audibly. She knew fine ladies in Williamsburg who chafed under the boredom of their lives in their far-flung plantations, who dreamed of running off to London or Paris or being taken and ravaged by pirates, or what they thought pirates to be-handsome noblemen in disguise, like the highwaymen in their silly novels.

For Elizabeth, it was the boredom she craved, a simple life with her husband and her garden and not one damn thing happening out of the ordinary.

She sighed again, opened her eyes, swung her legs over the edge of the cot, and reached with her toes for the deck to stop the bed from swinging. She could hear that something was going on on deck, someone had come aboard, conversations taking place in low tones. It was none of her business, she did not even want to know what was happening.

She pulled out the chamber pot, set it on the trunk, reached down to grab the hems of her skirts, and only then recalled that she was not wearing skirts at all. She cursed under her breath and fumbled in the dimness with the buttons of the breeches, those damned irritating, awkward breeches.

She got the breeches down at last and relieved herself and then with even more difficulty pulled the breeches back up, buttoned them, and tucked in the shirt. She cracked the door to the day cabin, not wanting to carry the chamber pot past Billy, but the cabin was empty and unlit.

Through the aft windows, which were swung open in hope of finding some relief from the sultry night, she could hear frogs and crickets and mosquitoes and a host of other creatures that inhabited the swampy island under the brig’s stern. Higher up, over Hog Island, she could see a few lights from the town of Charles Town, about one hundred perches away.

She picked up the chamber pot and stepped carefully across the cabin, letting her eyes adjust to the dark, not wanting to spill the contents on Billy Bird’s fine furniture or the elaborate rug that occupied most of the deck underfoot. At the after end of the cabin she knelt on the lockers that ran athwartships under the windows, leaned forward with the pot, and poured the contents out the window.

She heard the liquid splash and then, to her complete surprise, a shout, a splutter, a curse, right under the window.

“Damn me!” she yelled, and with a start dropped the chamber pot into the dark. It did not hit the water but rather shattered on something hard. She leaned out the window. In the blackness under the counter she could see the vague outline of a boat, loaded with men, dark shapes against the water.

“Who are…what… what in hell are you about?” she shouted, more from surprise than anything, not thinking about who they might be, or why they were there.

And then, from the boat, “Damn you!” and another voice, “No!”

and the flash of priming, the blast of a pistol and the window a foot from Elizabeth ’s head shattered. She felt the shards of glass prick her cheek and she fell back, fell back to the deck. Through the window, shouting, a voice commanding, “Give way!” Feet stamping the deck above, shouts of surprise and outrage, curses, the language of violence.

She pushed herself to her feet and listened. Overhead she could hear steel on steel, a pistol shot, then another, more shouting fore and aft.

“Goddamnit, goddamnit, goddamnit…” She said it over and over like a chant.

She snatched up two of Billy’s pistols, thrust them in her waistcoat, two more in her belt, two more in her hands. She knew the guns were loaded, knew that Billy thought an uncharged gun the most useless thing on earth. She was not thinking, just acting, just knowing somehow that she wanted to be on deck, in the open, and armed, not trapped inside the cabin.

Through the door and down the dark alleyway, she bounced off the cabin bulkheads on either side as she ran. The door to the waist was ajar and she kicked it open and burst onto the deck, a pistol in each hand, stepping right into the fray.

The fight was fully joined in those few seconds it took her to grab the weapons and race out of the cabin. The men from the boat were pouring over the side and meeting the Bloody Revenges, steel clashing against steel, pistols blasting away the dark, and Elizabeth could not tell who were her friends and who were the enemies.

She took a step forward and with the edge of her left hand cocked the firelock of the pistol in her right.

A man coming over the side, a man she did not recognize. He turned, looked at her, brought his pistol around, and she knew he was not her friend and she shot him, square in the chest, blowing him back over the rail.

She flung the spent gun away, transferred the other to her right hand, cocked the lock. The man fighting Quartermaster Vane, standing over his kneeling form, cutlass drawn back, she shot in the head from a distance of three feet, just as he was about to slash Vane’s throat.

He tumbled to the deck and she saw his brains blown in a great red swath across another man’s shirt and in the unreality of the moment all she could think was, will such a mess ever come clean?

She tossed that gun aside, pulled another from her belt. Billy Bird was standing on the main hatch, a long sword in his right hand, a dirk in his left, fending off a wild, savage attack, the tails of his coat swirling around his legs as he lunged, parried, danced side to side.

Then there was a sword in front of her, wielded by a man she thought was the Revenge’s gunner, and she tried to smile at him but he lunged at her, point first.

She pivoted, turned sideways with a dancer’s grace, and the sword made a rent in her waistcoat as it passed and she brought her pistol up, the end of the barrel actually touching the man’s forehead.