Corsair Read online

  Aurelia sighed. “You men. You’ll always have excuses. And anyway, you didn’t succeed: you still don’t know anything for sure.”

  “At least we know the Dons think they can take Jamaica,” Ned said. “It’s either an attempt on Jamaica or a plate convoy.”

  He pushed away his plate. “It’s time we got under way. Lobb won’t be coming with us – he’s commanding the Argonauta or Dolphyn. Thomas has given up Mitchell, too.”

  Aurelia sighed again. “Not much sleep for us, then, with no mate.”

  “At least we don’t have two sick captains to nurse.”

  “Ha, Martha Judd will be loving it. Nothing she likes better than nursing people. It’s something she knows about.”

  Up on deck, Ned sent men to the windlass, and soon they were heaving down on the bars, bringing home the anchor cable. Water spilled across the foredeck, squeezed out of the cable along with sand which it had brought up from the bottom mixed with foul-smelling mud. Ned quickly had men with buckets swilling off the mud with sea water before the cable went below: it would attract enough flies without being coated with mud.

  The clunking of windlasses came from all the ships as they followed the Griffin and began to weigh their anchors. The Griffin’s mainsail was soon hoisted and sheeted home, followed by the foresail.

  Aurelia, standing beside Ned on the afterdeck, gave a shiver. “I wonder what waits for us in Jamaica this time,” she said. “There always seems to be some nasty surprise.”

  Light winds gave them a slow passage: it took five and a half days to reach Port Royal, when the Griffin led the squadron of ships past the Three Fathom Bank and Salt Pond Reef to cross Green Bay, leaving Fort Charles and the Palisadoes to starboard. They passed the battery to larboard which had for obvious reasons been called the Twelve Apostles, and passed through the Port Royal anchorage before turning to windward to get up to the governor’s jetty.

  Slowly the Griffin began tacking up the anchorage. Ned saw that the buccaneer ship left behind because she was being rerigged was now ready for sea. And there, close in off Plumb Point and the governor’s house, a small frigate was at anchor.

  He examined it with the perspective glass. “Either the Convertine or a sister ship,” he told Aurelia. “So the Committee for Foreign Plantations has sent out more despatches for Sir Harold. I wonder what nonsense it is this time.” He thought a moment. “I hope it’s not telling old Loosely that the King is carrying out his agreement to hand over Jamaica to the Dons…”

  “Do you really think that London merchants would let the King do that?”

  Aurelia sounded both puzzled and alarmed. On the north coast, at the top of some cliffs, they had just built their house: large, airy, surrounded by trees and rich land, and not far from a similar house that Thomas and Diana had built. They now had a stake in the island: no longer was their only home their ship: the house was there, cared for by servants, bulletwood shutters covering the windows should it be attacked, two wells providing more water than they could ever want. But if the island was handed back to the Spanish… I would burn it down, Aurelia told herself. I would rather flames had it than the Spanish.

  Ned noticed her withdrawn silence. “What are you thinking?”

  “About the house and the Spanish coming.”

  Ned laughed lightly. “The Spanish aren’t here yet, whether the King gives them the island or they try to invade. Cheer up, the merchants and the buccaneers will be on your side.”

  Aurelia gave a weak smile. “What is Sir Harold going to say about your hostages?”

  “I haven’t talked to Thomas yet, but my own feeling is that corsairs don’t have to account to the governor!”

  “Corsairs? Why are we corsairs?”

  “Well, we’ve no commissions and we have just acted against the Spanish: I’m sure Sir Harold would rate that an act of piracy. I think Sir Harold would prefer to know nothing about it. That way he can’t be blamed for anything.”

  “But Ned, you can’t keep a Spanish governor, a bishop and a mayor prisoner in Port Royal without telling the governor!”

  “I can, but if it worries you let’s take ’em to Tortuga. There we can hang ’em from a kapok tree, if we feel like it.”

  Aurelia thought a few moments, rubbing her brow, obviously perplexed.

  “You’re probably right,” she said finally. “I agree that it’s nothing to do with Sir Harold. But can you keep it secret?”

  “Not many of the men know about it, but does it really matter? If old Loosely makes a fuss, then we’ll go to Tortuga.”

  “But what are you going to do with them? You can’t hold them hostage indefinitely.”

  “They’re useful to have around,” Ned said with a grin, “but the chance will come to ransom them. A governor and a bishop should fetch a fair price!”

  “What about the mayor?” Aurelia asked mischievously.

  “We’ll throw him in as a make-weight,” Ned said.

  By now the Griffin had tacked up almost abreast of Plumb Point and the anchored frigate, and Ned gave the signal to luff up, anchor, and back the mainsail before furling it. As soon as the ship was anchored he gave the order to hoist out one of the boats.

  By the time the boat was in the water and Ned was ready to climb down into it, Aurelia was ready: her hair was combed and tied with a fresh ribbon, she had changed into a blue jerkin and a white split skirt, and she was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat.

  Thomas and Diana greeted them cheerfully, Thomas gesturing at the frigate. “Any bets?”

  “The King is handing over the island to the Dons,” Ned said.

  “Don’t joke about it,” Thomas said with a shudder, “although I must admit that was the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw the frigate at anchor.”

  “Well, she’s carrying instructions, that’s for sure,” Ned said, “and nothing has ever arrived from London – including old Loosely – that was good news for us.”

  “Your luck must change some time,” Diana said lightly. “Why, your brother might send you a packet of sweetmeats.”

  Ned gestured towards the Phoenix. “Thomas, let’s leave the ladies to gossip while we go over and see what Martha Judd has done for Coles and Gottlieb. They’ve probably recovered enough to go back to command their ships.”

  Saxby was waiting on board the Phoenix, and he immediately commented on the frigate, saying gloomily: “More trouble for all of us…”

  “At least her ship’s company haven’t any brothels to visit,” Thomas commented. “They’ve probably been thinking about nights of sin all the way across the Atlantic, and now they’ve found a Puritan has sneaked back!”

  “Let’s hope they riot,” Ned said sourly. “Come to think of it, we ought to have let our chaps riot in the streets. A few bottles through the governor’s windows might have worked a treat.”

  “Bit late to think about that,” Thomas muttered. “All the whores have become nuns by now.”

  Ned laughed sourly. “That’s what puzzled me about old Loosely. Did he think that shutting down the brothels would change anything? A whore’s a whore, whether in a house or out in the street.”

  “Just go to the door of a tavern and whistle,” Saxby said unexpectedly.

  “How are the patients?” Ned asked.

  “Both up and walking about,” Saxby said. “Both anxious to get back to their ships.”

  “So Martha’s sorted them out?”

  “She’s been enjoying herself. I think both Coles and Gottlieb have enjoyed their convalescence, too. Special soups, hot poultices, tots of rumbullion – they haven’t been looked after like that for years!”

  At that moment Martha Judd, a large woman with breasts like sacks of potatoes and a cheery red face, came on deck, took one look at Ned and said: “She’s not feeding you right: you look t
hin.”

  “It was all the chasing about building the house,” Ned said defensively.

  “Sir Thomas was chasing about just as much, but he looks as plump as ever.”

  “I’ll tell Aurelia,” Ned said. “How are your two men?”

  “They were right poorly when they arrived. That Dutchman was worst. But they’re both all right now. I have a sovereign remedy for men in that condition, and it soon put them right.”

  Ned wondered what the “sovereign remedy” was but decided not to ask: it had worked and that was all that mattered.

  “Well, we’ll get our mates back, then,” Thomas commented.

  Saxby looked round for the Argonauta and Dolphyn, spotted them and said: “I’ll send ’em off in one of my boats and deliver Lobb and Mitchell on the way back.”

  He suddenly pointed to a boat which had left the jetty at Plumb Point and was heading for the Griffin.

  Ned groaned. “It’ll be that damned secretary to the governor.”

  “Your men will send him to the Peleus. We’d better say hello to Coles and Gottlieb, and then be getting back to wait for him.”

  Ned shook hands with the two men and, after being assured that both had fully recovered, asked Coles: “What do you remember of the questioning by the Spanish garrison commander?”

  “The Army here,” Coles said. “He just kept on asking about the governor disbanding the Army. If it was true.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Well, it seemed important to him to know, so I didn’t tell him: I just said I didn’t know what the Army did, though I did say there always seemed to be plenty of soldiers in the taverns…”

  “You didn’t say the governor was paying off the soldiers?”

  Coles shook his head. “As soon as Gottlieb and I worked out what the Dons wanted to know, we didn’t give ’em any answers. Not the right answers, anyway. If they went on what we said, then the Army was still marching up and down during the day, and getting drunk in the taverns at night.”

  “That was fine,” Ned said. “I’m sorry you were beaten so badly.”

  “We’d have been beaten whatever we said,” Coles commented cheerfully. “That garrison commander wouldn’t have known what to believe. Just supposing we’d told him the truth – that the governor had disbanded the Army and withdrawn our commissions: the Spaniards would never have believed that!”

  Ned thought of the Viceroy in Panama. Was he at this very moment trying to make up his mind about the same thing? Neither disbanding the Army nor withdrawing the commissions of the buccaneers sounded likely: they would seem to be rumours that had become distorted in the telling.

  Ned shook Coles and Gottlieb by the hand. “I’m sorry it had to be you, but thanks for keeping your mouth shut.”

  Back on board the Peleus, Ned and Thomas found the women sitting side by side on a hammock underneath an awning which had been rigged for them.

  Diana waved towards the Griffin. “A man has just gone on board – he was rowed out from the jetty. Our men are now telling him he’s at the wrong ship if he wants Mr Yorke.”

  “He does: he’s the governor’s secretary,” Thomas said. “He’s about as useless as the secretary old Heffer used to have when he was acting as governor. There’s something about governors’ secretaries…”

  The secretary arrived on board ten minutes later and minced across the deck to Ned. He gave a stiff bow and introduced himself as William Hamilton, although Ned remembered him from the legislative council meeting.

  He was wearing a sabretache and he opened it, removing a sealed letter, which he gave to Ned. “From the governor. Would you be kind enough to give me the answer.”

  “Wait here,” Ned said. “I am going to the cabin. You’d better come with me, Sir Thomas.”

  “Yes indeed,” Thomas said formally. “A letter from the governor…”

  Ned sat at Thomas’ table, broke the seal and unfolded the letter. “Just as I thought,” he said disgustedly. “He’s calling a meeting of the legislative council for tomorrow morning at half past eight, and will I attend and bring you.”

  “That doesn’t warrant a written answer,” Thomas growled. “Tell that clown up on deck that we’ll be along.”

  When Hamilton had left to return to the jetty, Ned said to Thomas: “We’d better decide on what we do, if we can guess what the meeting will be about.”

  “I can’t help thinking it’s about handing the island over to the Dons,” Thomas said gloomily. “What do we do then?”

  “There’s not much choice. Aurelia is determined to burn down our house. We take the buccaneers to Tortuga and just raid the Spanish: there’ll be no one to say whether or not we should have commissions: the nearest English authority will be at Antigua, and we don’t give a damn about them.”

  “Well, I agree with all that. What other surprises could old Loosely spring on us?”

  Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Well, he’s disbanded the Army and withdrawn our commissions. He’s shut the brothels on his own authority. Not much else left, is there…?”

  Thomas asked: “What do we do about our hostages?”

  “If we hand Sanchez over to Loosely, he’ll probably hold a banquet for him – and the bishop, too. There’s nothing old Loosely won’t do to get snug with the Dons: he’ll never believe anything we say.”

  “I can just imagine,” Thomas said. “‘Well, Sir Harold,’ we tell him, ‘the Dons are getting ready to invade Jamaica.’ ‘Oh no, no, no,’ says Sir Harold, ‘the Spanish are our friends: why, they’re so friendly I’ve been able to pay off the Army and I’ve told those naughty buccaneers to go away…’”

  “Or else,” Ned said, “Sir Harold will say, ‘Let us all be friends – I’m just giving the island back to the Spanish, from whom we wickedly took it, much to the embarrassment of our King, even if he was in exile at the time and the country was being ruled by Sir Thomas Whetstone’s impetuous uncle, Oliver Cromwell…’”

  Thomas ran his hand through his beard, curling the end of it outwards and giving himself a satanic look. “The fact is, Ned, we don’t have many friends. If we move to Barbados, or Antigua, or one of the other Windward or Leeward islands, we’re a long way from the Main, and thus a long way from our targets. Tortuga is going to be no use with the Dons at Jamaica…where will we get stores?”

  Ned folded the governor’s letter into a ball. “So for the time being we keep the Spanish governor, the bishop and the mayor on board the ships–”

  “Yes, we might need them as hostages,” Thomas interrupted.

  “–but we don’t make any secret of it, do you agree?”

  “No secret at all,” Thomas said. “After all, as far as old Loosely is concerned we are pirates, and holding some Dons as hostages is just what you’d expect pirates to do, isn’t it?”

  Ned nodded. “Not that we shall be staying here long.”

  Thomas held up a hand. “Supposing we heard for certain that the Spanish are coming – do we still leave the island to its fate, or do we stay and fight?”

  Ned shook his head ruefully. “I’m just muddled,” he said. “We leave for Tortuga – for the time being – if Loosely is handing over the island to the Dons. But if he isn’t and there is a warning that the Spanish are coming, then I suppose we stay and defend the island. But,” he reminded Thomas, “supposing all the Dons intend to do is run a plate convoy to Spain what then?”

  “We go after it,” Thomas said promptly. “No doubt about that.”

  Ned nodded contentedly. “What a handful of alternatives,” he said. “The trouble is, we don’t know whether Sir Harold is our friend or our worst enemy.”

  “I’m sure Sir Harold isn’t very sure, either. Unless of course that frigate brought him news that lets him make up his mind. Certainly he hasn’t many friends in the le
gislative assembly. I hope that chandler, O’Leary, will be at this meeting tomorrow – he’s the one that has all the common sense.”

  Chapter Six

  Sir Harold Luce came into the small, airless room, where the members of the legislative council were sitting waiting for him, like a ferret coming out of a rabbit hole without having chased a rabbit. He had a smug look about him that made Ned glance across at Thomas, an eyebrow raised.

  “Good morning gentlemen,” Luce said, “please be seated.”

  This was an unnecessary remark since no one had risen, even though Sir Harold had been preceded by his secretary, who had announced him to a council that went on chatting.

  Luce took his chair at the head of the table and put down some papers he had been carrying. His tiny eyes flickered round the table and he hunched forward as if about to make a speech. “I expect you wonder why I have called this meeting of the council,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t,” O’Leary said flatly. “It’s a damned nuisance. I’ve enough work to do, with the buccaneers just back in port. They all want cordage and things. Wish I wasn’t a member of this council,” he growled. “All talk and no do, unless it’s debating brothels.”

  “Yes, quite,” Sir Harold said uncomfortably, “but I expect most of you have seen that a frigate’s arrived from England. It brought me instructions–”

  “Well, I’m damned,” O’Leary interrupted sarcastically. “I thought she was laden with lace for the ladies and sweetmeats for the children.”

  “Yes, quite,” Sir Harold repeated, unable to deal with O’Leary. “No, well, instructions for me, from the Committee for Foreign Plantations.”

  “So now you reopen the brothels, eh?” O’Leary inquired.

  Luce could not think of an answer and ended up by appearing to ignore him, his sallow face flushing as though he had just been slapped a couple of times.