James Nelson - The Blackbirder

Now the fear was in his expression, the uncertainty, eyes shifting from the paper to Elizabeth ’s face and back. He snatched the document from her hands, scowled as he studied it.

“This is a record of my uncle’s birth… this means nothing. How did you come by this? You stole this!”

“That record means nothing, it is true. I show it to you merely to demonstrate that I do have your family records. I would not put the important one in your hand. The record of your grandfather Isaac’s birth. The record of his father, Richard, and his mother…Nancy. The slave girl Nancy.”

Dunmore stared at her for a long time without speaking, then slowly crumpled the paper in his hand and tossed it away. “It is a lie. It was always a lie. Do you think I’m such a fool that I would not figure it was a lie?”

“You do not sound so certain. Are you?”

“Yes, goddamn your eyes, you goddamned pirate’s whore! It is a lie!”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Perhaps. And perhaps not. Perhaps I have the document I say I do, and perhaps I do not. But pray, allow me to show you one more.”

She pulled another document from her pouch, handed it to him. “It is in my hand,” she explained. “I transcribed the original, which is signed by you. I see you are too rough with papers for me to trust you.”

Dunmore ’s eyes ran over the words. Elizabeth could all but recite them, having read the note so many times. “I wish that the said Elizabeth Marlowe and her companion should never leave the town of Boston…”

Incredible. She was actually grateful for the letter. If there was ever a moment when she doubted the morality of what she was doing, she had only to think of that, and of the hired killers who had almost carried out those instructions.

Dunmore looked up at her. Again he could not speak, but this time his mouth hung open.

“The original was taken from a man who was trying most diligently to carry out your wishes. He had nearly one hundred pounds on his person. I am flattered.”

That wasn’t true, of course, about the money; there was only the bank draft that Billy Bird, the villain, had insisted on cashing the morning after the fight in the church. They had nearly missed the tide, thanks to his audacity, and only just made it to the ship ahead of the sheriff. But the money, divided among the men of the Bloody Revenge, had done much to improve esprit de corps.

They stood there for a moment more, Dunmore unable to think of anything else to say, Elizabeth not feeling the need to.

Finally she broke the silence. “I will take my leave, Mr. Dunmore. I have enjoyed this talk, more than you will know. And now I have no doubt that my people will be allowed to return unmolested to Marlowe House, and that you will be their champion, and that I, in turn, will keep secret papers secret. Good morning.”

She nodded, turned her back on Frederick Dunmore, and walked away.

He stood in the door and watched her go. Tried to pin a thought down long enough to examine it, tried to calm the tempest so that he could see above the churning water, see what was beyond, what he might do, where he was, but he could not.

The storm was on him again, raging as it had never raged before, smashing him, smashing him as it had on the ship, sending him reeling off the cabin door, puking on himself, unable to stop. Just when it had been calm for so long.

It was the eye of a hurricane, a false calm before it hit from an entirely new direction, and worse than before. He felt the urge to bathe, to scrub his skin until it bled, as if he could wash the impurity from him. He saw his hands once more around the old woman’s throat…

He turned from the door, staggered away, unseeing. He moved from room to room, trying to focus on something, anything, but he could not. He could not make his mind stop, could not even slow it long enough to have a rational thought.

Room to room he wandered, and back again. He bounced off a wall in the hallway, turned over a small table, sent a vase shattering to the floor, but he did not even notice. On his way around again he stepped on the broken shard, cut his foot through his silk slipper, left marks of blood in an even trail as he walked, but still he was not aware.

He paused, looked up at a big portrait of himself that stood above the fireplace. An epic work: he was on horseback, leading some fictitious charge, his great white wig flowing nobly down his shoulders.

He looked into his own eyes, rendered in oil, and as he stared the eyes seemed to stare back and he stood for some time, just looking.

And then a voice spoke to him. He did not know if it was the painting, or himself speaking out loud, or if he had just thought the words in his head. But no matter. They spoke clear, one sentence, that was all.

You are the fox.

Yes, yes, he thought. I am the fox. Quick, nimble. Vicious when cornered, able to fight with razor teeth. But that was rare, because the fox was too crafty to be cornered, too crafty by half. Doubling back, wading through streams, the fox knew how to elude capture, how to keep on the run.

Dunmore tore his eyes from the painting, raced up the stairs. In a back room, he found the old chest, pulled it out, dragged it to his bedroom, flung open his wardrobe, and began to toss suit after white suit into it.

There was money in the study, specie, quite a bit of it. He could send for the rest. Have the factor sell the house, the land, the horses.

But where?

He stopped in his packing, stood up straight, stared out the window. Where in that great world?

France. Yes, France, of course. England and France were at war, no one would find him there.

But would he be welcome in France? Of course… if he were a papist, seeking to escape from Protestant persecution at home. Of course. He had been a Congregationalist in Boston, Church of England in London, an Anglican in Virginia, why not a Roman Catholic in France?

He was the fox. He could make them lose his scent.

He grabbed up his three best wigs and threw them in the trunk. The damned Romish church had all sorts of nonsense in its service, kneeling and babbling in Latin and eating its bread. But it was not so different from the High Church of England. He could learn all that. He could be a papist.

He slammed the trunk shut. Sent for one of the field hands to drive him by carriage to Newport News. A bit of business in Boston, he would tell them. And then, to France, by way of whatever route he had to take, with the dogs lost and baying further and further behind him.

It was all something of an embarrassment in the end. Frederick Dunmore had convinced some quite important men in the tidewater of the righteousness of his cause, of the need to stamp out Thomas Marlowe’s example, and then he had disappeared.

An indentured field hand named McKeown had driven him to Newport News from which place, Dunmore informed the man, he was bound for Boston on some sudden business. A month later Dunmore’s factor received instructions to sell everything and to send the money to an address in Flanders. The factor did as instructed. No more was made of it, officially.

The unofficial discussions, however, the whispered rumors, tales of mental instability, were widely disseminated and continued to be a favorite topic for some time after the event. And to judge from those remarks, it seemed that everyone in Virginia had known all along that Dunmore was a lunatic, unstable, though they had not wanted to say as much-not the thing, you know, to tell such tales.

All this Marlowe learned in the early autumn after the battered, weed-encrusted Elizabeth Galley worked her way up the James River to her old berth at the Jamestown dock and Marlowe and Bickerstaff walked the few miles up the road to Marlowe House.