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  The Guardship

  ( Brethren of the Coast - 1 )

  James L. Nelson

  Shortly after Thomas Marlowe's arrival in Williamsburg, Virginia, all in that newfound capital city are speaking his name. With the bounty from his years as a pirate--a life he intends to renounce and keep forever secret--he purchases a fine plantation from a striking young widow, and soon after kills the favorite son of one of Virginia's most powerful clans while defending her honor. But it is a daring feat of remarkable cunning that truly sets local tongues wagging: a stunning move that wins Marlowe command of Plymouth Prize, the colony's decrepit guardship.But even as the enigmatic Marlowe bravely leads the King's sailors in bloody pitched battle against the cutthroats who infest the waters off Virginia's shores, a threat from his illicit past looms on the horizon that could doom Marlowe and his plans. Jean-Pierre LeRois, captain of the Vengeance--a brigand notorious even among other brigands for his violence and debauchery--plots to seize the colony's wealth, forcing Marlowe to choose between losing all or facing the one man he fears. Only an explosive confrontation on the open sea can determine whether the Chesapeake will be ruled by the crown or the Brethren of the Coast.

  James L. Nelson

  The Guardship

  To Lisa, my beloved wife

  Chapter 1

  PUBLICK TIMES in Williamsburg.

  April the fifth, the Year of Our Lord 1701.

  The night before Marlowe killed young Wilkenson.

  The night Marlowe was asked to command the guardship.

  The colony of Virginia was a wild place then, a wilderness of great rivers and creeks and islands and mile after mile of woodland that had never seen a white man’s face. Otter and beaver in vast numbers. Enough fish in the water that a man could fill a canoe in half a day. A place where a man could disappear forever, and many did, and not always by their own design.

  There were few towns of any note in the tidewater regions. Travel in Virginia and Maryland was made easy by the great Chesapeake Bay. Rather than struggling over decrepit roads the people there used the rivers as their highways, and there was little need for them to bunch up in settlements.

  So, they lived in far-flung plantations where, with ax and torch, they beat back the thick forest to make room for tobacco, more and more tobacco, that unfailing cash crop.

  And when they did congregate for Publick Times in the capital city of Williamsburg, after their long and unnatural solitude, it was a raucous time indeed. The streets overflowed with people. Men and women, freemen, indentured servants, and slaves moved in throngs from one revelry to the next. Beautiful coaches with matching teams and footmen in fine livery pushed down sandy Duke of Glouchester Street.

  As the warm day gave way to the cool of evening, a spirit of good humor prevailed throughout the tightly packed taverns, boyling houses, publick houses, and ordinaries. All men, gentlemen and commoners, were fellows on that day, and planters, tradesmen, farmers, laborers, mechanics, sailors, thieves, and picaroons reveled together in the streets.

  Thomas Marlowe stood to one side of the ballroom, the grand ballroom in the governor’s house, watching the brilliant silks and velvets, the long white wigs of the gentlemen, and the great piles of hair atop the ladies’ heads as they moved across the floor in their elaborate cotillions and minutes.

  He could feel the sweat running down his face under his own wig. The weight of his red silk coat with its gold embroidery, the snug-fitting waistcoat, seemed to grow more unbearable with each moment. His shoes pinched intolerably.

  The air outside was cool, sweet, and pleasant, but inside the hall, with its great chandeliers and their hundreds of burning candles and the crowd of people all whirling and curtsying across the floor, the atmosphere was thick and all but unbearable.

  From a nearby open window Marlowe caught a welcome breath of air, and with it came the muted sounds of gunfire and singing and shouting and laughter. The common people had taken their celebrations to the public square, carrying on in the country manner. It was a very different kind of celebration than the governor’s highly civilized affair, and, Marlowe imagined, considerably more fun.

  But despite his discomfort he managed to do a tolerable job of appearing to enjoy himself. There was no one there, excepting Francis Bickerstaff, who stood beside him, who might have guessed at how miserable he was.

  “I quite fail to understand, Marlowe, why we must subject ourselves to this torment,” Bickerstaff said. “I am certain that

  we are witnessing one of the circles of hell. I should think we will see enough of damnation in the next life that we might forgo it now.”

  Bickerstaff was the most plainly dressed man in the crowd. This is not to say that his clothing was poor, far from it. He wore a blue silk coat, adorned with only a bit of embroidery, and that blue as well, a simple white waistcoat, and breeches, all of the finest silk, unadorned, a plain cut, subtle and of the highest order.

  “Now, Bickerstaff,” said Marlowe, “we could hardly decline an invitation to the Governor’s Ball. One does not advance in Virginia society by staying at home and ignoring such affairs.”

  “Why you should be so obsessed with rising in Virginia society is yet another mystery to me.”

  “‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Francis Bickerstaff.’” Marlow turned to his friend and smiled. “Is that not what your William Shakespeare said?”

  Bickerstaff sniffed. “Something to that effect, though he is hardly ‘my’ William Shakespeare.”

  Marlowe was Bickerstaff’s junior by about ten years, or so he guessed, but that was only a guess. Bickerstaff would not reveal his age, and Marlowe did not know his own for certainty, but he imagined Bickerstaff was around forty-five. He had a thin frame and the perpetually dour countenance of the serious pedagogue, which indeed he had once been. He was a learned man, skilled in Latin and Greek, mathematics, natural science, and all of those subjects befitting a gentleman.

  Marlowe opened his mouth to reply, when his eye caught a parting in the crowd as the dancers drew apart with the precision of soldiers on a parade ground. He turned, and for an instant he could see clear to the far end of the room.

  And there he saw her, for the first time that night.

  Her hair was the color of fresh straw and made up in a great pile, held in place by a gold comb, which in turn was

  covered with jewels that glinted in the light from the chandeliers.

  Her skin was white and perfect and smooth from her forehead to the tops of her lovely round breasts, pushed up by her bodice. Her waist was tapered down perfectly to the point where her farthingale held silk skirts far out from her sides. She was beautiful, and though Marlowe had made no overtures in her direction, thinking it improper given her circumstance, and indeed had spoken to her but a few times, he was her slave.

  Her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Tinling. She was twenty-three years of age and already a widow. Her late husband, Joseph, was one of the wealthiest planters in the tidewater. He had died two years before, of heart failure, or so it was generally presumed. There had not been much talk of his passing.

  Marlowe had purchased the Tinling plantation from Elizabeth soon after his arrival in the colony. That afternoon when they had closed the deal, and perhaps half a dozen other chance encounters, was all of the intercourse that he had had with her.

  From the moment he first saw her he had wanted more, but then, for all his wealth, he had held no place in colonial society, being newly arrived, enigmatic.

  Much had changed in the intervening two years, and while he might not be the first man of Virginia, still his star was on the rise. He had seen to that.

  He considered those things in the f
ew seconds that he had Elizabeth in sight. Then, like the Red Sea closing on Pharaoh’s legions, the crowd came together again and she was lost to his view.

  The dance that was now under way was one of the Scotch reels, a dance well within Marlowe’s limited ability to perform, and that bolstered his courage.

  “Bickerstaff, I do believe I shall ask Mrs. Tinling for the next dance.”

  “Bravely said, Marlowe, but I think you will be frustrated in that endeavor. Here comes the governor.” Bickerstaff nodded to another corner of the room. “And he seems to be making a rhumb line for you.” In the past few years Bickerstaff had taken to using nautical jargon.

  Marlowe looked in the direction that Bickerstaff had indicated. Governor Nicholson was indeed working his way toward them though the crowd. The long, curly white hair of his wig swished around his collar like a horse’s tail as he nodded greetings to his many guests. He was agitated, Marlowe could tell, despite his attempts at gaiety as he pushed his way across the room.

  He had reason to be agitated. Marlowe had seen to that as well.

  “Marlowe, Marlowe, how the devil are you?” Nicholson asked, plowing through the last of his guests and extending a hand.

  “I find I am well, Governor, thank you. And yourself?”

  “Fine, fine. As well as can be expected, with what I must endure. Bickerstaff, how are you, sir?”

  “Very well, Governor, thank you,” said Bickerstaff, giving the governor a shallow bow.

  “Listen, Marlowe, I know you did not come here to conduct business, and I must beg your forgiveness for making this request of you, but might we have a word in private?”

  Marlowe had quite expected this, but still it was annoying, just at the moment when he was intent on approaching Mrs. Tinling. He looked across the room, but the dancers filled the floor and he could no longer see her. “I would be delighted, Governor.”

  It took the two men another ten minutes to extract themselves from the ballroom. No one had come to the ball to conduct business, but still it seemed no one could resist the opportunity for a private word with the governor, even if it meant speaking into his ear over the sound of the music.

  At last they came to the governor’s office, just down the hall from the chief entrance to the building. It was a beautiful room with shelves full of leather-bound books, an enormous desk, and racks of firelocks and pistols. The ceiling was twelve

  feet high, and one wall was composed almost entirely of windows, which, mercifully, were flung open. The cool air wafted in, as refreshing as a rain shower. Marlowe wanted desperately to shed his wig and coat and enjoy the night air to its fullest, but that would never do in front of the governor.

  “Sit, please,” Nicholson said, indicating a chair in front of his desk. He sat, and the governor called for his servant to bring a sneaker of punch, which he did, and pipes as well, and soon the governor and Marlowe were enjoying a private glass and a smoke.

  “I suspect you know why I wish to speak with you,” the governor began.

  “If it is about the silver, I pray you put it out of your mind. The fault is entirely my own. I should have expressed more curiously as to its origins…”

  “Nonsense. It was in no way your fault, and your returning it thus was a noble gesture,” said Nicholson. “A noble gesture.”

  A noble gesture, thought Marlowe. Indeed.

  He had purchased an extensive set of silver tableware from Captain John Allair, captain of His Majesty’s Ship Plymouth Prize. The Plymouth Prize was the Royal Navy guardship on the Virginia Station, sent to enforce the customs laws and protect the colony against pirates. Virginia was the most valuable colony in all of America, but for all that the admiralty still considered the Chesapeake to be something of a backwater, a place to send their most rotten ships and failed captains. In Allair and the Plymouth Prize they had quite outdone themselves.

  Like most in the long line of inept guardship captains, Allair had a number of businesses on the side, most of them illegal. One such business consisted of confiscating “contraband” goods off of arriving vessels and then selling them himself.

  His luck in that venture came to an end on the day that he confiscated what was, unbeknownst to him, Governor Nicholson’s personal silver.

  Less than a week after he sold the silver to Marlowe, Marlowe invited Governor Nicholson to dine with him. The governor had instantly recognized the tableware that he had ordered from London half a year before. For Nicholson, that was Allair’s final, intolerable act.

  “I have suffered that rascal quite long enough,” the governor said, reaching across his desk for a pile of paper stacked near the edge. “The fact that he holds a commission as captain in the Royal Navy does not impress me. A thief’s a thief, no matter what his rank.”

  Through the open windows Marlowe could hear the unrestrained revelry of the crowd in the square, the sound of which nearly overwhelmed the delicate music drifting in from the ballroom away down the hall.

  The wide sleeve of Nicholson’s coat floated over the various things on the desktop-ink pots and quills and his glass of punch-as he reached for the papers. Marlowe tensed, waiting for him to knock something over, but he did not.

  “See here, Marlowe,” Nicholson said, locating the paper he wanted in the stack. “This is a copy of the invoice for my silver.”

  He handed the paper over, and Marlowe ran his eyes down the list. “One sugar bowl, silver, with king’s arms, one punch bowl, ditto,” he read. He nodded his head. It was not the first time he had seen that invoice, though Nicholson did not know that. “There is no question, sir, but that this invoice describes the silver I purchased from Captain Allair. By God, I do apologize.”

  “No apology needed from you, Marlowe.” It was an awkward situation, awkward for both men. “As I said, it’s none of your fault. It’s all on that thief, Allair.”

  “I am loath to think the worst of a King’s officer,” Marlowe said, “but I can’t imagine how he came to have your silver.”

  But of course that was not true, not true at all. Marlowe knew perfectly well how Captain John Allair had come by the governor’s silver.

  He had asked him for it.

  Chapter 2

  THE DANCERS came together, meshing like the gears of a clock, and blocked Elizabeth Tinling’s view of Thomas Marlowe at the far end of the room.

  Or, more to the point, they blocked Marlowe’s view of her. For Marlowe had been looking, had been bracing himself to ask her for a dance. She recognized the look, the posture, and she would have welcomed the overture.

  On the one hand, it would have saved her from having to further endure the vapid young Jamestown fop in the brocade coat who was trying to engage her in conversation.

  On the other, it would have saved her from Matthew Wilkenson, who was also eyeing her and was ever so casually approaching, a wolf circling toward an animal too wounded to escape.

  Of lesser consideration was the thought that she might do well to become better acquainted with Mr. Thomas Marlowe, might even enjoy his company. But now the open space was filled with dancers and she feared the moment was lost.

  “I swear,” she replied to whatever the fool from Jamestown had said, “this heat will be the undoing of me. I feel positively faint.”

  She flashed him a quick smile, cast her eyes over the room.

  Governor Nicholson was making his way over toward Marlowe, which would end any chance of Marlowe’s rescuing her, but it was an interesting development nonetheless.

  “…and so I said to him, ha, ha, ‘Well, sir, if this is the finest horse you have to offer-’” the idiot in the brocade coat was saying.

  “Oh, I beg, sir,” she interrupted, “but at the banquet table they have an everlasting syllabub for which I absolutely perish. Might I trouble you to fetch me one?”

  “But of course. Your servant, ma’am.” The young gentleman bowed and grinned, delighted to have some service to perform. He pushed his way through the crowd toward a table th
at to Elizabeth’s certain knowledge contained no syllabub at all, everlasting or otherwise.

  She smiled at his back, wondering how long he would search for it. Quite a while, she imagined. He would not wish to come back empty-handed. She felt just the tiniest glimmer of guilt at using him thus, but she could not bear to listen to him for one moment more, and such practical jokes were her secret delight.

  And men could be such fools.

  She turned back to the endlessly fascinating crowd, social interplays, the feints and attacks and flanking movements of the colony’s ruling class. A good deal of surreptitious attention was being paid to the governor, who was leading Marlowe out of the ballroom, a development that piqued her curiosity as well.

  Marlowe had been only two years in the colony, but in that short time he had managed to insinuate himself into Virginian society in a way that could only be accomplished through good looks, an affable nature, and a great deal of money, all of which he possessed. He was well liked and well respected.

  Elizabeth kept her distance, ignored his obvious interest in her. Elizabeth understood people, had observed the species in all its plumage, understood there was something not quite right about Thomas Marlowe.

  She stole a glance to her left. Matthew Wilkenson was making his way toward her, boldly now, his generally haughty and disdainful expression exaggerated by drink, his gait unsteady. If Thomas Marlowe was climbing the colony’s social precipice, then the Wilkenson clan stood on its summit, looking down. Matthew Wilkenson was the younger of the two Wilkenson boys, but the one who had inherited the old man’s force of personality, the heir apparent to the Wilkenson fortune.

  That, along with the Wilkensons’ close ties to the Tinlings, and Matthew’s insufferable arrogance, had apparently given him the idea that Elizabeth should, by rights, be his. He was becoming less subtle on that point.