James Nelson - The Guardship

He squinted against the harsh glare of the sun on the sand and the water and searched among the bodies for William Darnall, the quartermaster of the Vengeance , that much-battered ship that was his command. His command for now. His command as long as those men who sailed her agreed that it should be his command. As long as he could, through success, intimidation, and brutality, make them obey.

It was twenty-five years since LeRois had deserted from the navy of his most Catholic Majesty of France. He had been a very junior master’s mate then, but he had been telling people that he had been a maitre , a master, for so long that he now believed it himself.

For nearly twenty years he had been on the account, an extraordinarily long career for a pirate. His name was well

known among those who used the sea. It carried with it suggestions of the most egregious debauchery and violence. Accurate suggestions, and much to LeRois’s liking.

Six years before, seven years before, no one would have questioned LeRois’s right to the rank of captain. He was one of those few of the pirate tribe who was strong enough and mean enough and lucky enough that he could consider himself the undisputed master of his ship. No voting, no arguing, no threats to his authority. Such things were the practice aboard other ships. Not his.

But that was before he had fought young Barrett, and lost.

He scowled as his eyes swept the beach. He paused, squinting at a familiar face. Not Darnall. It took LeRois a few seconds to place it-the face seemed to shimmer like heat off the beach-but then he gasped in surprise, staggered back a few feet in the soft sand.

It was Barrett. He stood not twenty feet away, leaning against a stack of casks, grinning. Just as LeRois remembered him all those years before, a frightened young seaman of fifteen aboard a little English merchantman, a victim of LeRois and his tribe.

“Son…of…bitch!” LeRois shouted, the protracted curse starting as a low rumble in his throat and building to a scream. He brought the bottle back over his head. The boy changed into the man as he had last seen him, sword dripping gore and blood, LeRois’s blood, bidding farewell.

LeRois heaved the bottle, and even as he did he realized that Barrett was no more than a hallucination, another of those ghostly images that were appearing to him with disturbing frequency.

The half-full bottle shattered against the stack of casks, showering the man sleeping in their shade with glass and whiskey. He startled up, looked around, and saw LeRois standing there, shaking, sword drawn.

“LeRois, you are a goddamned crazy son of a whore. Fucking lunatic,” the man growled, pulling himself to his feet and walking away. LeRois followed him with his eyes. Did not

move. There was a time when no man would have dared to say that to him, no man would have insulted him and then turned his back. That was before he had been bested by the whore’s git.

He felt something inside him snapping, breaking with the strain. Like the slow bending crack of a yard springing under the pressure of a sail. Like shoring giving way. The vision of the boy had unnerved him. Now this bastard was ignoring him as if he presented no threat at all. That was too much. Too much by half. Jean-Pierre LeRois was indeed a threat, and it was time to remind the others of that fact.

He had let things slip, but now there was a plan, a plan that would make them all rich, and the means to carry it off. That thought gave him back the confidence he had enjoyed in the early days. It was time to regain his control.

He wiped his sweating hand on his coat, took a fresh grip of his sword. He headed off across the beach, his eyes fixed on the back of the man he had disturbed. His shoes sunk deep in the sand, and he felt the hot grit under his stockings. His footsteps made no noise. He picked up his pace, his breath coming faster, though he had walked no more than a dozen yards.

He was ten feet away when the man sensed the threat, the loom of LeRois’s six-foot-two-inch, two-hundred-and-ninety-pound frame coming up behind. He turned fast. His eyes leaped from LeRois’s sword to his eyes and back to his sword. He jerked a pistol from a sash around his waist, cocked it, and pointed it, but it had been many years since LeRois was bothered by the sight of a pistol pointed at his gut and his advance did not falter.

LeRois raised the sword over his head. An animal scream began to build in his throat. The lock of the pistol snapped and nothing happened. The man’s eyes went wide as he looked up at the gleaming sword that the big man held aloft.

“LeRois!”

LeRois stopped and glanced to one side, then the other. He had heard his name, clear as a pistol shot: “Ler-wah,” spo

ken with that ugly English pronunciation, as if the fucking Roast-beefs could not work their tongues to create the elegant French sound.

But had he, really? Or had he just imagined it? There were men around him, watching him. Were they real? He was suddenly very uncertain. He could taste the terror in the back of his throat.

“LeRois!” William Darnall came trudging up. He paused, reached his hand under his wool shirt, and scratched hard. Spit a stream of tobacco into the sand. “Reckon we should get under way today.”

LeRois stared at him. Darnall had called his name. His quartermaster. He had not imagined it at all. “ Oui , we get under way.”

Darnall squinted at him, and his eyes moved toward the sword. “What do you reckon to do with that?”

LeRois looked at the sword in his hand as if he had never seen it before. He remembered the man he was about to kill.

He turned, but the man was gone and he could not see him anywhere among the pirates and whores who were watching the confrontation. A fight to the death in the pirates’ camp was considered a fine amusement. Like a good cockfight or bull baiting.

LeRois shrugged and slid the sword back into its scabbard. “The fucking cochon . I let him live,” he said to Darnall by way of explanation.

Darnall took a long and contemplative chew of his tobacco and then spit another brown stream onto the sand. With the sleeve of his light blue wool coat, which had once been a dark blue wool coat, he wiped away that part of the spittle that had not cleared his long black beard. He resettled the faded, battered, and salt-stained cocked hat on his head.

Like LeRois, he wore a red sash around his waist and under that a leather belt that supported a cutlass and a brace of pistols. Rather than breeches he wore the wide-legged trousers of the common seaman. Flea-bitten calves and ankles protruded from the frayed ends of his trousers. He was barefoot.

As quartermaster, Darnall was second in command of the Vengeance , though in fact, like most pirate quartermasters, he ran the ship, save for those times when they went into a fight.

LeRois squinted at him. Darnall was being very familiar with him, as if they were old friends. More and more the quartermaster had been treating him that way. LeRois did not see in Darnall’s manner the hesitancy and the underlying fear that he had once evoked in all men, and that irritated him.

He was swimming up to the surface of the sea from the black depths. He had been bested by Barrett all those years before, and it had dragged him down. But now he could see daylight again, overhead. He would break through. He would see the fear again.

“What say you, Captain? We get under way on the ebb this afternoon?”

LeRois was certain that the men of the Vengeance had been discussing this, had indeed already decided. They had finished careening her a week before, had set her rig to rights and loaded stores aboard. She was ready for sea.

He felt the shoring in his mind slipping further, cracking and splintering. Soon there would be no more playacting like this. He would take absolute command again.