Chesapeake (53 page)

Rosalind, hastening to the bow of her sloop, made a rapid calculation born of years upon the bay: ‘The wind favors us. We can scuttle into the river ahead of them.’ And without further hesitation she directed the captain to trim sails and bring the swift-moving sloop onto a breathtaking course that would speed her into the Choptank.

As they approached the island they screamed and flashed signals, hoping to warn the Steed hands of the impending danger, but they were not seen or heard. So they sped up the river, looking constantly behind and seeing at last, with sickening fear, the two pirate ships nosing their way into the channel. The four slaves, who had learned that pirates relished capturing blacks as easily transferrable property for sale in Haiti, were more apprehensive than Rosalind, and when the mainland cut off the wind, they rowed vigorously, hoping to maintain their distance from the looming ships.

To forestall the sloop, the lead pirate ship fired a salvo, the heavy iron balls splashing into the waves not far from where Rosalind stood directing the flight. The reverberations echoed through the wintry air, and now those on the island were made aware of the danger pressing down upon them.

For several minutes, while the great ships came closer, nothing happened. And then Rosalind saw with relief that someone onshore was launching a longboat, manned by ten slaves, and when it sped toward the sloop, Rosalind saw that Mark Steed was in the bow, shouting
directions to the rowers. In less than ten minutes, Rosalind calculated, the fresh rowers would be aboard the sloop and escape would be possible.

But now the pirates fired a single round, coming perilously close to Mark’s longboat, throwing water over him, obscuring him for a moment, and Rosalind screamed, ‘No!’ But when the splash died, she saw that Mark was still in command, and she fell on one of the benches as if it had been her life that had been saved.

The reinforcements enabled the sloop to maintain distance from the pirates and reach an improvised landing short of the creek. There Rosalind and Mark scrambled ashore, with Mark shouting, ‘Leave the boats! Save yourselves!’ And he waited till all fourteen slaves had vanished in the woods. He was standing there as the pirates sailed ominously by, taking their time to effect a comfortable landing, for they knew they could not be opposed.

Rosalind and Mark hurried by forest paths to the cleared tobacco fields and across to the plantation house, shouting commands to all they met: ‘Pirates! Come to the big house!’

When they reached that vulnerable fortress Rosalind quietly asked for her daughter, and when Rachel was produced, golden-haired and sleepy from her nap, Rosalind embraced her and said, ‘You must be brave now,’ and she asked where Fitzhugh was, and the child said, ‘He hasn’t been here since you went away.’

She told Mark to fetch Amanda, and when the little Quaker wife waddled forward, heavy with child, Rosalind said, ‘You must hide in the far root cellar. Pirates do dreadful things to young women, even in your condition.’

She then asked if any other Steeds were on the island, and was gratified to find that none were; they would escape this day’s travail and be ready to rebuild. ‘If pirates come,’ she said grimly, ‘they also go. Our task is to keep them from destroying everything.’

Now the hulking ships were in the creek, arrogantly threading their way into waters that would have proved forbiddingly dangerous if English warships had been in pursuit. The island had no defenses, and when the lead ship drew close to the wharf it loosed a volley which tore through the upper rooms of the wooden house, shattering everything.

‘Oh God!’ Rosalind cried from her position on the porch. ‘This is going to be worse …’

Now the first pirates were storming ashore, lean men with beards and flashing swords. Ten came and then forty and then a hundred, scattering through the trees, tearing all things apart. The slaves they did not harm, herding them in great batches toward the ships, but the slave houses they set afire.

Then they came toward the big house, eighty or ninety of them,
hungry for spoils, dedicated to destruction. They approached viciously, hoping that someone would try to oppose them, for they had the wild courage of those who know that the enemy is unarmed. One caught a brand from a flaming slave hut and ran toward the house.

‘No!’ Rosalind screamed. She did not mean that the pirate should not enflame the house; she meant that Mark should not try to oppose him. But he moved to intercept the incendiarist, brandishing a pistol, and when the pirate kept coming, with the torch before his grizzled head, Mark took aim, fired and killed him.

Frenzy erupted. Other pirates, seeing their comrade fall with blood spurting from his forehead, became avenging monsters. Four leaped upon Mark, stabbing and shooting long after he was dead. Another, rushing like a maniac toward the house, swung his rifle in a great arc, catching little Rachel above the ear and demolishing her skull. This one then turned on Rosalind, striking her many times with the butt of his gun and knocking her senseless.

When she awoke she was propped against a tree; slaves had imperiled their own lives by dragging her to safety. As her eyes focused she saw the Steed plantation in flames: the big house, the slave quarters, the little houses in which the lesser Steeds had been invited to live; even the wharf. And on the porch of the gutted building from which all items of value had been stolen, she could see the shattered body of her daughter committed to the flames.

Only when the ravishment was complete did the captain of the pirates come ashore. Rosalind watched with cold hatred as he strode arrogantly among the trees she had planted. She would never forget him, a small, wizened old man walking with mincing steps and smirking at the destruction his men had wreaked. He came to where she lay and ordered his men to haul her upright. Then, walking about her as if he were in a slave mart, he said, ‘I’m Henri Bonfleur. I’ve met your family before.’ Viciously he struck her across the face, then said quietly to his men, ‘Turn her loose. She’s too ugly to bother with.’ He placed his right foot in her stomach and pushed her backward. As she lay on the withered grass he looked down at her and said, ‘Don’t send ships this time to Marigot.’ He was about to pass on to inspect the booty, but instead he turned and kicked her again and again. ‘Your men killed Griscom. Now see the fire!’ Contorted with hatred, he passed on, and when an underling asked, ‘Shall we kill her?’ he snarled, ‘No, let her live to enjoy this day.’

Bitterly Rosalind watched as the pirate ships triumphantly withdrew. Then slowly, painfully she pulled herself up and walked with faltering steps to where the few remaining slaves were hidden. She directed them in digging two graves in the family cemetery beyond the oak, and there
she buried the children on which her hopes had rested: Mark, who was not of her body but who was of her mind and her character, and little Rachel, whose naughty spirit might have enabled her to become an inheritor. As the earth fell upon their uncoffined bodies, she almost strangled with grief, and in that fearful moment swore that she would be revenged: ‘Pirates, run where you will, we’ll find you!’ All her actions became subservient to this consuming hatred: pirates must be driven from the sea and hanged. It was intolerable that they should be able to invade private homes with impunity, and if the government in London could not protect this bay, she would.

She summoned the two ships owned by the Steeds and had them refitted with banks of concealed cannon. She increased the number of sailors per ship and had them trained in repelling boarders. Guns and cutlasses were ordered by the barrelful and in the late summer of 1711 her stratagems bore fruit. One of the ships was accosted by a swift-moving pirate brigantine whose fore-and-aft sails allowed her to maneuver in light winds. What the pirate did not know was that the Steed captain sought to be overtaken, for when the brigantine was close at hand he revealed the bank of heavy guns whose fire tore away the superstructure of the pirate ship.

The pirates were not seriously dismayed by this, for their basic tactic was to grapple merchant ships, board them, and subdue the crew in hand-to-hand combat; but this time it was the merchant sailors who did the boarding, and with their cutlasses and pistols, killed many of the pirates. Nineteen they chained belowdecks, hauling them and their ship back to Devon.

‘You must turn them over to the authorities,’ Steed warned, but Rosalind said, ‘On this island you’re the authority.’ He asked her what she meant by this, and she snapped, ‘You’re a justice. Pass sentence.’ When he refused, she directed that the pirates be removed to Patamoke, where she demanded that the courts sentence these murderers to death, and when this was done she watched the building of the gallows at the wharf, and she was waiting there when the pirates were led forth.

To each of the nineteen she said, as he passed by, ‘If you see Bonfleur in hell, report what happened.’

These hangings created a scandal. On the one hand, they were illegal, for pirates were the responsibility of the province and all agreed that Mrs. Steed should have forwarded them to Annapolis. But on the other hand, pirates had ravaged the Steed plantation and had slain two of Mrs. Steed’s children, not to mention abducting more than twenty of her slaves, and her revenge was obviously pleasing to the general populace. Furthermore, it showed what a determined woman could do. She became a heroine, but when broadsides were published detailing the victory of her ship and the hanging of her pirates, she was not satisfied. She ordered thousands of these sheets for distribution in all Caribbean ports. She
wanted Bonfleur and Carpaux and Vidal to know specifically who it was that had hanged their fellows. She challenged them with the knowledge that she would not rest until they, too, were hanged.

Her stern example goaded the authorities into assembling a small fleet of privateers commissioned to destroy, once and for all, the pirate nests throughout the Caribbean, and when volunteers were called for, she offered the Steed vessels. She told her captains, ‘No more casual tobacco trips to London. We’ll fight in the Caribbean till the last devil is hanged.’

Her husband protested, ‘What will happen to our crops?’

‘They’ll rot,’ she said curtly. ‘They certainly won’t be ferried to London in our ships.’ And when he complained of this wastage, she said contemptuously, ‘If you had any manliness, Fitzhugh, you’d be serving on one of the ships.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes! Have you no sense of justice? Do you allow a fiend to burn your home and kill two of your children and make no counter? Do you want me to captain one of the ships? By God, I’ll sail that sea till I catch him by the neck.’

‘Catch who?’

‘The pirate. Any pirate. The great inhuman pirate that terrifies us, and comes up our bay to burn and slaughter.’

‘You must learn—’

‘I’ve already learned. I’ve learned what a weak, sick thing you are. I’ve stomached your behavior in the marsh. I’ve forgiven you for not being here when the place was burned. And I can even understand why you did not particularly grieve when your children were slain. But sheer cowardice I cannot tolerate.’

‘But, Rosalind—’

‘Do you get aboard that ship? Or do I?’

She was two inches taller than her husband, a few pounds lighter, but the difference in character was immeasurable. She saw the world as a unit, all parts interrelating, and for a boy of promise not to know Latin was exactly as grave an omission as for a father not to be concerned about the totality of his family. She had never made much of courage or the customary manifestations of manliness, no more than she had thought much of the so-called womanly virtues; there was no great advantage, she thought, in being able to coquette or bake a crumpet, but there was an immortal advantage in being a decent woman or a proper man.

I don’t want revenge to even things out, she told herself after her husband had reluctantly departed, but I do want it to tidy up the world. Piracy cannot be tolerated.

Hoping that the new American measures might bring the intolerable situation on the Chesapeake under control, she turned her attention to Devon. She did not want ostentatious gravestones for Mark and Rachel, but she did want reminders of the imperishable love she had felt for these
two excellent children; she would never see better and their loss would never be far from her thoughts. Their graves lay beside the oak, and sometimes she would go there and reflect upon her insufferable loss, but her tears were few, for she was not one to weep easily. On occasion she would think of the fine black women who had worked in her kitchen and done her sewing, and she would ponder their fate: raped and ravaged by the pirates and sold in Haiti. Then the cruelty of the world would overwhelm her, and she would drop her head and think of nothing, and after a long while she would sigh and return to her tasks.

Principally she must rebuild the house, and whenever she placed a pencil on paper she felt the loss of Mark. How she wished that he were there to help; he would know the measurements and the cost of brass. She sometimes speculated on why she had such an affection for this lad; he was not her son nor of her blood; perhaps it was because he represented all men, all husbands, all generals and captains, and the world would be far better if more were like him.

With no children of her own at hand, she lavished her attention on Amanda Paxmore Steed, as she was invariably referred to in the community, and as the time approached for her delivery, Rosalind speeded the rebuilding of her house so that a special room for children might be available. In fact, she became so oppressive in her attentions that the Quaker girl said one day, ‘Rosalind, I’m going back to Peace Cliff.’

‘But you’re a Steed.’

‘No. I’m a human being. And thee is stifling me.’

‘What a preposterous—’

‘Rosalind, I’m doing this so that I can have a fine, normal son. And after he’s safely born and truly started, we’ll come back. Of course we’ll come back.’

The firm set of her jaw warned Rosalind that she had better concur, and quickly, or she would lose a grandson. ‘An excellent idea,’ she said. ‘You’ll be out of the way while the builders are busy.’