Galleon Read online

  “Around here we deal only in gold: reals, pieces of eight and dollars,” Heffer said, still puzzled by Luce.

  “But they are Spanish!” Luce protested.

  “They’re solid gold,” Heffer said stubbornly, and remembering a phrase of Mr Yorke’s, added: “Gold takes on the nationality of its owner!”

  “Yes, yes, my dear fellow,” Luce said soothingly. “I quite understand, but I’m talking about a great deal of money: enough to finance the working of this island.”

  “Well, we seem to have had enough so far, and if we run short we can probably get more.”

  “Yes, yes, quite,” Luce said, his patience getting strained, “but a country’s money is simply tokens unless there’s gold or silver to back it. That is what a treasury and mint are for!”

  “Well, I don’t know how much you had in mind, sir, but Mr Yorke seemed to think it would last us.”

  Luce was now getting angry with this sheep of a general. “Yorke, Yorke, Yorke…that’s all I hear from you,” he said crossly. “Mr Yorke says this… Mr Yorke says that… Mr Yorke thinks this… And pray tell me just how much money does Mr Yorke think is needed?”

  Heffer glanced through the pile of papers in front of him and found a particular sheet, which he put on top.

  “I don’t know that Mr Yorke ever said how much he thought would be necessary,” Heffer said, “but–”

  “Ah, now you see!” Luce exclaimed, “you can’t administer an island this size on the casual opinions of clodhoppers, you know.”

  “No, sir,” Heffer agreed. “What sort of figure had you in mind?”

  “Well, I brought £48,000 with me in the Convertine and have the authority of the Committee for Trade and Foreign Plantations to start a mint here.”

  “What metal would you use for the coinage, sir?”

  “Well, to start with it will have to be copper, and the coins would be tokens.”

  “We can let you have gold, sir, if that would be better,” Heffer said slyly, pleased with himself that the bait had so easily lured this pompous ferret of a man into the trap set in front of him.

  “Oh yes,” Luce said patronizingly, “how much had you in mind?”

  Heffer looked down at his list again. “Well, we have about half a million pieces of eight. Most of those are in the Treasury, with just enough in circulation to let us trade. A piece of eight is worth about five shillings, so that’d be about £125,000 you could re-mint. But maybe you don’t like the idea of gold?”

  Heffer deliberately misinterpreted Luce’s stunned look. “You’d prefer silver, Your Excellency? Now, let’s see,” he pretended to consult his list. “Yes, we’ve got more than two hundred pounds of silver in the Treasury, still in the original loaves, wedges and cakes that the Spanish cast ’em in. That could be melted down for silver coins, though I must admit, sir, the folk round here are not partial to silver coins on account of silver tarnishing and there being so much gold.”

  “But…but…” Luce stammered, and Heffer again deliberately misunderstood him.

  “There are several sacks of cobs, too, sir. Fact of the matter is that once those cobs were counted out to give the buccaneers their share, no one thought to make a note of the total.”

  “Give the buccaneers their share?”

  Luce screamed the sentence at Heffer, who grinned happily. At last he could see how much fun Mr Yorke and Sir Thomas must have got out of playing with him in the past, but now he, Major-General Heffer, had his own mouse to tease – for a brief while, anyway.

  “Yes, sacks of cobs, chests of emeralds – I see there were two hundredweight of them, and they’re still in the Treasury. Pearls – yes, one hundred and fifty pounds of them – from the island of Margarita, on the Main coast. Then there are the chests with seven hundredweight of gold and silver ornaments – plate, candlesticks, jewellery and that sort of thing; I suppose you could melt that down for coins, too: all bulky sort of things and hard to value except by weight. You can’t put a price on workmanship.”

  Luce, speaking almost incoherently like a man in a dream, stammered: “But where did all this – this treasure – come from?”

  “Oh, Mr Yorke brought it in to start us off,” Heffer said nonchalantly, knowing this was the chance to get his own back after a lifetime of slights, sneers, snubs and humbling jokes from his superiors.

  “But – I mean, where did Mr Yorke get all this wealth?”

  “He’s a wealthy man,” Heffer said. “He’ll be here soon, if he received your message, so you can ask him yourself.”

  And that, Heffer told himself, means I’ve avoided the responsibility of revealing any more of Mr Yorke’s business.

  “This man Yorke,” Luce persisted, “isn’t he just a pirate?”

  Heffer shrugged his narrow shoulders and licked his large and protruding teeth, which had a distressing tendency to dry so that the inside of his mouth stuck on them, giving him the appearance of a grinning ewe. “He’s saved the island from starving – that was at the beginning. Then he captured Santiago and took what we needed of the Spaniards’ great guns – they’re the ones we have out there in our batteries. Then he brought in all the gold and silver and suchlike. Some people might call him a pirate: others might regard him as lord of the manor. Frankly, sir, I don’t know what you’d call such a benefactor…” He had put just enough emphasis on the “you’d” that Luce glanced up and, to distract attention from the deep flush spreading over his face, said abruptly: “You’d better give me that list.”

  But Heffer was fast learning of the perquisites of power and he politely shook his head. “This is my own copy, sir; I’ll have another one drawn up for you.”

  As Ned and Thomas walked the few yards from the jetty to what was always referred to as “Heffer’s place” but which looked as if it was to become (temporarily at least) Government House, Thomas said: “Y’know, Ned, it seems only yesterday that we were rescuing old Heffer from his mutinous colonels.”

  “It wasn’t so long ago, either – I noticed their bodies are still hanging in chains from the gibbets at the end of the Palisades.”

  “No, I suppose it wasn’t. My ears still ring from the pistol shots in that damned little office of his.”

  “‘His office’, my dear bishop, is likely to be the island’s new council chamber.”

  “Who is this fellow Luce?” Thomas asked. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Aurelia heard somewhere that he was knighted for this job.”

  “Where’s he been for the last few years?” Thomas asked shrewdly.

  Ned shrugged his shoulders. “With the King in exile? Compounding with the Roundheads? Pouring the Protector’s ale? Hiding in the woodshed? Who knows – twelve years is a long time. Presumably he wasn’t a very naughty boy because he’s been given this job.”

  “That doesn’t follow,” Thomas was doubtful. “General Monck – sorry, the new Duke of Albemarle – persuaded the King to grant a general amnesty for all but the very worst scoundrels… This fellow might be a splendid Royalist who fought bravely for the King, but he might equally well be a thoroughly wretched scoundrel who compounded his way out of trouble.”

  “We’ll soon see,” Ned said cheerfully. “One look at Heffer’s face will tell all: he’s already spent hours with the man, handing over the reins.”

  “On the other hand, remember this fellow Luce has also spent hours listening to Heffer,” Thomas said with a chuckle. “They’re probably both very confused! By the way, who else is summoned to the presence?”

  “Damned if I know. I suspect we’re the first two lambs; the tradesmen will follow later.”

  By now the two men had reached the house, acknowledged the salute of the sentry (whose uniform had been hurriedly modified to disguise its Roundhead origins), and been hand
ed over to an elegantly dressed man of about thirty, bewigged and twirling a gold-topped cane like a bandmaster, and who had introduced himself as “William Hamilton, the Governor’s private secretary, you know; his major-domo.”

  “I don’t like the major-domo,” Thomas growled as they followed him. “One more flounce and he’ll turn into a yard o’ lace…”

  The secretary led the way to Heffer’s office, knocked and, at an answer from a voice Ned did not recognize, flung open the door and walked in, standing to one side and announcing: “Visitors for His Excellency the Governor!”

  Oh dear, Ned thought to himself; the Governor has not yet trained this tame spaniel to distinguish between tradesmen and scoundrels like buccaneers.

  Ned looked at the man seated at the head of the small table and saw a ferret complete in almost every detail, right down to the urine-coloured hair peeping out from the edges of the wig and which matched a ferret’s fur. Pointed face, sharp little hungry eyes, small and yellowed teeth and the skin freckled like pepper on cold pork. So this was Sir Harold Luce. Well, Ned would bet His Excellency had never fought in the King’s cause; he did not have the appearance of a man who had ever smelled powder or considered fighting for anything but his breath.

  The ferret face turned to Heffer and said casually: “You had better introduce these men.”

  Heffer, already standing, turned to Ned. “Sir Harold Luce, may I present Mr Edward Yorke and Sir Thomas Whetstone. Gentlemen, your new Governor, His Excellency Sir Harold Luce.”

  Luce nodded but made no attempt to shake hands. “Please be seated.”

  Ned looked at Heffer, and guessed that Thomas was doing the same.

  “Whetstone? Whetstone? Aren’t you Cromwell’s nephew?” Luce asked querulously.

  Thomas shook his head. “No. Oliver Cromwell, to whom I presume you are referring, is dead. I was the Lord Protector’s nephew until a merciful but tardy God gathered him to His bosom.”

  For a full minute Luce worked out the sentence. Was it a declaration by Whetstone that he was a Roundhead? Was it a sarcastic reference by a Royalist to Cromwell’s death?

  Thomas tugged his well combed, square black beard, and inquired politely: “Is Your Excellency one of the Northumberland Looselies or are you of the Denbighshire branch?”

  The Governor’s face had first gone pale, but now it was becoming purple. “Luce, Whetstone, not Loosely.”

  Thomas looked down at his clothes. “What’s loose, Your Excellency? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “My name, Whetstone. It is Luce.” He spelled it out, enunciating each letter.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. I must admit that I didn’t think you could be one of the Northumberland Looselies. Have it your own way, then; Loose it is.”

  Thomas managed to convey enough relief in his voice that Luce was left appearing as though he had been masquerading and, Ned realized, knew too little of the knightage to challenge Thomas about two families Ned knew had just been invented on the spur of the moment.

  “Yorke,” the governor snapped, but before he could continue Ned help up his hand.

  “Your Excellency, no doubt you have brought a copy of the table of precedence with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, out here among the Caribbee Islands, quite apart from what they might be doing in Europe, we use the conventional method of address.”

  “Well?”

  “Can’t think how I mistook his name,” Thomas mumbled, as though chiding himself for mistaking a gamekeeper for the owner. Then he said, loudly and clearly: “What Mr Yorke means is that in England you’d be seated at the table well to leeward of both of us and out here we peasants still hold on to the social graces. Thus if we address you as ‘Your Excellency’, you address us by our titles and observe precedent. I am a baronet and Mr Yorke is an earl’s son, but prefers just the plain ‘mister’. You, I imagine, are a knight by a very recent creation.”

  “And supposing I refer to you as ‘Whetstone’ and ‘Yorke’?” Luce said sarcastically.

  Ned stood up quietly, followed by Thomas. “We bid Your Excellency goodbye. If you’ll permit me to misquote from the Faerie Queene – ‘So with courteous congé both did give and take’. Not quite the ‘both’ that Spenser intended, but it must serve.”

  As Luce’s face twisted into the hurt look of the man who could not see what he had done to offend anyone, Heffer leapt up in a sudden spasm, sending his chair flying. “You’re not sailing, gentlemen?”

  “Yes, I have a feeling we shall be happier in Tortuga.”

  “You mean you are taking all your ships? All thirty-three?”

  “Yes, but you’ll have the Convertine to guard you for another week or so.”

  By now Heffer’s alarm warned Luce that something he did not yet understand had gone badly wrong; that adopting the high hand (but, damnation, he was Governor) with these two fellows had perhaps been a mistake.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen, you must excuse me: this is the first full day of my governorship, so forgive me for not appreciating all the social niceties. Please resume your seats, Sir Thomas and Mr Yorke; we have much to discuss.”

  Thirty-three ships? Luce realized that must mean just about every ship in the anchorage, apart from the Convertine. Did they all belong to this fellow Yorke? That would mean they were all pirates! Jamaica threatened by thirty-three pirate ships, and he had not yet slept two nights here…

  As soon as both men were seated and Heffer had picked up his chair, resuming his place white-faced and flustered, Luce said as amiably as he knew how: “All those ships out in the anchorage, Mr Yorke: they belong to you?”

  “No, Your Excellency. Only two.”

  “Who owns the others, pray?”

  Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Blessed if I can remember. Let me see… Five are Dutch, one is a Spaniard, there are a couple of Portuguese…”

  “Nine are French,” Thomas said.

  “Ah yes. One is Sir Thomas’, of course.”

  “Diana’s,” Thomas corrected.

  “I beg your pardon, Your Excellency. That one belongs to Lady Diana Gilbert-Manners. Sir Thomas is – er, the master.”

  “That makes a total of twenty,” Luce said.

  “Does it, by Jove!” Ned said. “You’ve a sharp mind with figures. Whom have we forgotten, bishop?”

  Thomas scratched his head and then slapped the table. “Damme, we forgot the English! Eight English. So with His Excellency’s twenty, that makes twenty-eight. Then there are the five prizes from Portobelo.”

  “But…but…” An appalled Luce was stammering now, “most of those ships belong to foreign countries; ones which don’t have Jamaica’s welfare at heart…”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that Spaniard, Your Excellency,” Thomas said reassuringly, “he’s a splendid fellow; one of our best captains.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘our’ but Spain is no longer our enemy; a peace has been signed. Obviously the news hasn’t reached you yet.”

  “It hasn’t and won’t make a scrap of difference when it does, Your Excellency,” Ned said quietly. “Not a scrap.”

  Again the ferrety face began to turn purple and Heffer wriggled uncomfortably: this meeting was not proving the success he had hoped.

  Ned turned to Luce, twisting his chair slightly. “Your Excellency – we’d be grateful if you’d bring us up to date with the happenings in England since the Restoration; then perhaps you might confide in us, ah, some indication of your instructions?” And, Ned thought to himself, if you expect more tact than that, you are nearly eighty degrees of longitude too far west.

  Luce nodded judiciously, as though considering what State secrets he could reveal. “Well, you know the most important facts: our gracious Kin
g is back on the throne and is relying on the Duke of Albemarle (who was of course General Monck before his ennoblement) to run the country’s affairs. You mentioned Spain – well, I can reassure you on that point: the King has just signed a peace treaty with Spain.”

  “Most encouraging,” Ned said, and reflected on the letter from his elder brother George which the Convertine had brought out. George, who had inherited the title and the estates on their father’s death and had been with the King during the royal exile in France and Spain, warned that the King had signed a secret treaty while in exile in Spain.

  “Oh yes, it is,” Luce said. “Indeed, the King of Spain has already sent an ambassador to the Court of St James, the Prince de Ligne, a most charming gentleman.”

  “And what did the ambassador demand, as a reward for Spain’s hospitality during the King’s exile there?”

  Luce looked puzzled, and Ned asked innocently: “Was not a secret treaty signed with Spain which would come into effect on the King’s Restoration?”

  Luce stared down at the papers in front of him. “If it was secret, Mr Yorke, then I don’t think it’s any concern of ours.”

  “Oh, it’s our concern all right: I just wondered if you had later news about it, or if the Duke had confided his views?”

  “My lips are sealed,” Luce said primly, squeezing them together until they vanished, leaving the tiny eyes and nostrils as the only marks on his face.

  Thomas, who had read the letter from Ned’s brother, roared with laughter and slapped the table again. “Well, your lips might be sealed, Your Excellency, but if you are going to survive out here in Jamaica, within musket shot of the Spanish Main, you’d better keep your ear to the grindstone and your nose to the keyhole!”

  “Grindstone…keyhole? I don’t–”

  “I think Sir Thomas is hinting that although we are but yokels, we do have friends in England watching our interests,” Ned said mildly.

  Luce eyed both men with wary suspicion. “What have you heard, then?”