“Yes, I’ve killed a few.”
“Good,” the girl crosses herself again. “Since they’re French, it’s not a sin.”
PÉPÉ LOBO PUSHES away the drunk begging for a cuarto to buy wine. He is not rough but patient, simply trying to stop this sailor in filthy rags from blocking his path. The drunk reels then stumbles into the shadows beyond the pool of yellow light cast by the lantern on the corner of the Calle de la Sarna.
“We have a problem,” says Ricardo Maraña.
The first mate on the Culebra has just stepped out of the darkness where he has been standing, motionless, his presence revealed only by the red glow of his cigar. He is tall and pale, dressed all in black, wearing a handsome pair of English-style turndown boots, and no hat. The light from the street lamp directly above makes his eyes seem more sunken in his gaunt face.
“Serious?”
“That depends on you.”
The two men are now walking down the street, Maraña limping slightly. In doorways and alleys groups of men and women have gathered and there is the murmur of conversation in Spanish and other languages. From tavern doors or open windows come voices, laughter, insults. Sometimes the sound of a guitar.
“The nightwatch came by half an hour ago,” Maraña explains. “An American sailor has been stabbed and they’re looking for the culprit. Brasero is a suspect.”
“Did he do it?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Any other suspects?”
“They picked up six or seven men, but none of the others are ours. They’re holding them for questioning at the tavern where it happened.”
Pépé Lobo shakes his head angrily. He has known the bo’sun—nostromo in seamen’s slang—for fifteen years and knows that when he is in drink Brasero is not only capable of stabbing an American sailor, he could even stab his own father. But the bo’sun is a key member of the crew he has spent days recruiting here in Cádiz; to lose him a week and a half before they put to sea would be disastrous.
“They’re still at the tavern?”
“I assume so. I left orders that I was to be informed if he was arrested.”
“Do you know the officer in charge?”
“Only by sight. He’s a young lieutenant with the ‘macaws.’ ”
Pépé Lobo smiles to hear the word “young” from his first mate, since Maraña is himself not yet twenty-one. The youngest son of a noble family from Málaga, Maraña is nicknamed “the little Marquis” for his aristocratic manner and his distinguished appearance. A former midshipman—his limp was acquired when his knee was shattered aboard the Bahama at the battle of Trafalgar—he was dishonorably discharged from the Royal Armada at the tender age of fifteen after a duel in which he wounded a fellow officer. Since then, he has sailed on corsairs, initially under French and Spanish flags, and more recently with the English allies. This is the first time he will sail with Captain Lobo, but the two men are well acquainted. Maraña’s most recent ship was the Corazón de Jesús, a four-gun místico out of Algeciras whose Letter of Marque expired four months ago.
The tavern in question is just one of the many seedy dives around the port frequented by soldiers and sailors, both Spanish and foreign: the ceilings are grimy with soot from candles and oil lamps, there are huge casks of wine, and low stools with upended barrels serving as tables, everything as black and filthy as the floor. The locals and whores have been sent packing, leaving only seven thuggish men guarded by half a dozen “macaws” with bayonets fixed.
“Good evening,” Lobo addresses the lieutenant. He quickly introduces himself and his companion: Captain so-and-so and first officer such-and-such of the corsair cutter Culebra. Some of his men are being held here. Apparently suspected of something.
“Of murder,” the lieutenant confirms.
“If that is the case”—Lobo gestures toward Brasero, a man of fifty with a shock of graying curly hair, thick mustaches and hands like shovels—“I can assure you this man had nothing to do with it. He has been with me all evening. I sent him here on an errand a short while ago … There has clearly been some mistake.”
The lieutenant blinks. He is very young, as Maraña said. A well-bred lad. He is hesitating, a little cowed by the title “corsair captain.” An officer in the Army or the Armada would not be so impressed, but the macaws are local militia, not real soldiers.
“Are you sure, señor?”
Pépé Lobo is still staring at Brasero, who is standing, poker-faced, with the other prisoners, hands stuffed into the pockets of his overcoat, looking down at his shoes. The words corsair and bootlegger almost seem tattooed on that weather-beaten face, fretted with scars and wrinkles as deep as hatchet blows. A gold stud in each ear, he is tight-lipped and calm. And as dangerous now as when he and Lobo plied the Straits, before being caught in ’06 and sharing the same miserable fate in Gibraltar. Cretinous fool probably did stab the American, Lobo thinks. He never could abide anyone who speaks English. I wonder where he’s put that vicious knife he usually keeps tucked in his belt. I’ll wager it’s on the floor, buried in the wine-soaked sawdust under the tables. I’ll bet he stashed it the moment the macaws showed up. Son of a bitch!
“I give you my word of honor.”
The macaw hesitates for a moment, more worried about his authority than anything else. Local wits nicknamed the militia “macaws” because of their garish uniform—red frockcoat, bright green collar and cuffs, white belting—worn by the two thousand citizens from the upper classes who are enlisted in the Distinguished Volunteer Corps. In war as in everything, the citizens of Cádiz do not stray from their social class. They may share a fierce patriotic fervor, but it is the only thing they share. The aristocrats, the merchant class and the lower class each have separate militias. And there is no shortage of volunteers since those enlisting in the militia are exempt from being conscripted in the real army and facing the dangers and privations of the front line. For the most part, the military posturing of the militia simply entails wearing a gaudy uniform and parading with a military swagger through the streets, the squares and cafés of the city.
“You are prepared to vouch for him personally?”
“Of course.”
Pépé Lobo leaves the tavern with Maraña and Brasero in tow and the three men walk along the walls of Santa María towards El Boquete and the Puerta de Mar. For a long time no one speaks. The streets are dark and the bo’sun shuffles behind the officers like a meek shadow. Aboard ship, Brasero is the most peaceable and trustworthy of men, with a particular talent for managing a crew in difficult circumstances, a good-natured old salt. But when he sets foot on terra firma, he sometimes loses control to the point of going completely berserk.
“Curse you to hell, nostromo,” Lobo says finally, without turning to look at the man.
There is a tense silence from behind. Next to him he hears a stifled laugh from his first mate. A laugh that dies out in a cough and a ragged hiss of breath. As they pass beneath a street lamp, the corsair glances at the thin figure of Ricardo Maraña as he casually pulls a kerchief from his sleeve and presses it to his thin, bloodless lips. The first mate of the Culebra is a man who burns the candle at both ends: a libertine, dissolute to the point of recklessness, cynical to the point of cruelty, courageous to the point of despair, he is paying his debt to life in advance in a somber race against time. He has a confidence unusual for his age and squanders his money with no thought for the future, since his future has long been decided by a diagnosis of incurable tuberculosis.
The three men are stopped by sentries as they arrive at the double gates of the Puerta de Mar, which, given the hour, is closed. Comings and goings to the city are strictly regulated between sunset and sunrise—the Puerta de Tierra closes every morning at Lauds, the Puerta de Mar every evening at Vespers—but an official permit or a few coins in the right palm is sufficient to expedite matters. Identifying themselves as the crew of the cutter Culebra and showing permits stamped by the Captaincy, the three sailors pass b
eneath the stout gate of stone and brick ringed by watchtowers and lit on either side by a street lamp. To the left, beneath the cannons set into the embrasures of the Baluarte de los Negros, is the broad spur of the jetty, flanked by columns bearing the statues of San Servando and San Germán, the patron saints of Cádiz. Beyond, on the dark waters of the bay, huddled like a flock of sheep sheltering from the wolves on the far shore, the dark shapes of vessels of every kind and tonnage bob gently at anchor, bows facing west, anchor lights snuffed out to frustrate the attempts of the French artillery to fire on them from across the narrow strip of water.
“I want you aboard in fifteen minutes, nostromo. And I don’t want you to set foot ashore again without permission from me or from the first mate, understood?”
Brasero grunts his agreement. Compliant. Pépé Lobo approaches a group of figures dozing among the merchandise piled up on the quay and wakes one of the boatmen. As the man is readying his boat, slotting oars into rowlocks, a group of drunken English sailors pass by, the crew of a warship, coming back from a tour of the bars around the port. The three corsairs watch as the Englishmen board their launch singing and laughing, and row off clumsily, probably in the direction of the 44-gun frigate anchored off Los Corrales.
“Allies my ass,” mutters Brasero bitterly.
Lobo smiles to himself. Neither man has forgotten Gibraltar.
“Shut your trap, nostromo. I’ve heard enough out of you today.”
Standing next to his first mate, Lobo watches the boat carrying Brasero disappear into the darkness with the slow slap of oars. The Culebra is somewhere out in the inky blackness east of the pier, moored over four fathoms of mud, its lone mast bare, the sails and rigging still to come. She is still twelve men short—two artillerymen, a ship’s clerk, eight sailors and a trustworthy shipwright—of the forty-eight men needed to sail the ship and fight.
“The Navy has supplied the gunpowder,” says Lobo, “fifty-five pounds of it, twenty-two powder horns and eleven and a half pounds of fuse. We had to move heaven and earth to get it shipped here from Tarifa, but we’ve got it. The governor signed off the chit this morning.”
“What about the sixty rifle flints and forty pistol flints?”
“Those too. As soon as we bring the cutter in, you’ll need to deal with that; but don’t load anything until I’m aboard. I have to pay a visit to the shipowners first.”
There is a brief flash from the Trocadero. The two men stop and stare across the bay while Pépé Lobo mentally counts off the seconds. As he reaches ten, they hear the boom of the cannon and seventeen seconds later, a plume of spray lights up the darkness between the black shapes of the anchored ships off the quay.
“They’re firing short tonight,” Maraña says coolly.
The two men stroll back toward the Puerta de Mar. In the glow of a lantern a sentry peers down at them from his watchtower. Maraña stops before they reach the gate, glancing quickly toward a small jetty under the city walls that run toward the Plataforma de la Cruz and the Puerta de Sevilla.
“How are we set with the paperwork?” he asks.
“Everything is in order. The shipowners have posted their bonds, the contract will be signed on Monday.”
The first officer of the Culebra is only half-listening. In the lamplight, Pépé Lobo sees him glance again toward the end of the pier, toward Puerto Piojo and the flight of steps leading down to a beach hidden in the shadows of the city walls and exposed only at low tide.
“I’ll walk a little way with you,” he says.
The other man looks at him grimly. Suspiciously. Finally, he gives a little smile which in the darkness looks more like a sinister scowl.
“How many have invested in the venture?” Maraña asks.
They walk on, their shadows stretching out before them, the sound of their footsteps mixing with the water lapping against the stone pier, whipped by a fresh westerly breeze.
“Two, as I told you,” says Lobo. “Both very wealthy. Emilio Sánchez Guinea and Señora Palma … Señorita rather.”
“What is she like?”
“A little dry. Don Emilio says she was difficult to persuade. She has rather a low opinion of corsairs.”
He hears a hoarse, wet laugh then a cough being stifled by a kerchief.
“I tend to share her opinion,” Maraña mutters.
“Well, it’s part of her character I suppose. Playing the respectable merchant. At the end of the day, she’s the boss.”
“Pretty?”
“An old maid. But she’s a handsome woman. Still handsome.”
They have come to the steps that lead down to the beach. Below, on the shore, Lobo thinks he can make out a sailboat and two men waiting in the darkness. Bootleggers, probably. They regularly ply these waters, delivering supplies to the enemy shore where hardship has quadrupled the value of everything.
“Good night, Captain,” says Maraña.
“Good night.”
After the first officer has gone down the steps and disappeared into the shadows, Pépé Lobo stands for a moment, listening to the rustle of rope and canvas as the boatman hoists his sail and casts off. Rumor has it that there is a woman; that Ricardo Maraña has a sweetheart or a mistress in the occupied zone near the Puerto de Santa María. And that some nights, with a following wind and the help of some bootlegger, he crosses the bay to visit her in secret, risking his liberty or even his life.
* * *
* An elite regiment of the Spanish Royal Guard.
CHAPTER FOUR
The pine forests surrounding Chiclana are ablaze. A gray-brown pall of smoke, punctuated here and there by cannonfire, hangs between earth and heaven while from the distance comes the muffled crack of rifle shots. The path that rises from the coast toward Chiclana and Puerto Real is teeming with French troops beating a retreat, a tide of fugitives, of carts carrying equipment and injured men, of soldiers trying to make it to safety. It is pandemonium: the news, such as it is, is vague and contradictory. They say there is heavy fighting up on the Cerro del Puerco, where the forces of generals Leval and Ruffin have been caught in a pincer movement, or have already been defeated by the Anglo-Spanish troops who landed at Tarifa and are advancing towards Sancti Petri and Cádiz, trying to break the stranglehold on the city. There are also rumors that the villages of Vejer and Casas Viejas have fallen to the enemy and that Medina Sidonia is under threat, meaning that the entire southern section of the French front line around the Isla de Léon might crumble within a matter of hours. Fearing they will be stranded on the coast, cut off from the interior, the Imperial forces between the sea and the Alcornocal canal are retreating northward.
Simon Desfosseux is swept along by a stream of men, carts and pack animals that stretches back as far as the eye can see. He has lost his hat and is dressed in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, frockcoat over one arm, sword in hand, the sword-knot wrapped around the hilt and scabbard. Like the hundreds of bewildered men, the captain has just waded waist deep through the creeks that ring the small island on which the Almansa mill stands. His breeches and jacket are soaked with muddy water which trickles into his boots at every step. The dirt track is narrow, flanked to the left by swamps and salt marshes, and to the right by a bank that rises steeply to a hill covered in mastic trees and brushwood, beyond which is a pine forest. Shots ring out from behind the hill and everyone turns fearfully, expecting the enemy to appear at any moment, panicked at the thought of falling into the hands of ruthless Spaniards. And if they should think of the vicious guerrillas, that panic turns to terror.
Desfosseux has been unlucky. The enemy attack took him by surprise four leagues from his usual post in the Torre Bermeja camp, where he and General Lesueur, commander of the Premier Corps artillery, spent the night under an escort of six dragoons. Dissatisfied with the firepower of the Las Flechas battery against the Spanish bastion at the mouth of the Sancti Petri channel, the general insisted that Desfosseux come along to help resolve the problem. Or to confirm it. Despite the sk
irmishes along the front lines in the past week, the landing at Tarifa and the enemy’s attempt to throw a pontoon across the lower part of the channel two days ago, Lesueur had decided not to retreat.
“At ease, gentlemen,” he said over a dinner washed down perhaps a little too liberally with manzanilla. “The Spanish have dismantled their pontoon and scuttled off like rats. Besides, a little action is good for troop morale, don’t you think? Those seditious peasants turned tail and fled tonight when three of our regiments advanced along the beach under cover of the dunes. They made it to the far bank and gave them what for. Fine soldiers, General Villatte’s men, brave lads. So we have nothing to fear. Pass me a little more wine, Desfosseux, if you would be so kind. Thank you. We’ll carry on with our work tomorrow. In the meantime, get some rest.”
The rest was short-lived. In the early hours advance enemy parties attacked the French from the rear on the Cerro de Puerco and pushed along the Conil road and across the hard sand laid bare at low tide toward Torre Berjema, while on the far side of Las Flechas, the Spanish once again threw a pontoon bridge over the channel and began to cross. By midday, caught between the enemy forces, the four thousand men of General Villatte’s division were retreating chaotically toward Chiclana, and General Lesueur had set off at a gallop with his escort of dragoons leaving Desfosseux, whose horse had been stolen by some unscrupulous individual, wearing out his boot leather.
The gunfire is closer now, almost on the hill abutting the pine forest. There are shouts that the enemy are just on the other side of the hill. The fleeing masses scrabble and jostle, pushing aside any stragglers blocking their path. A cart with a broken wheel is pushed off the road and its occupants straddle their mules and whip them on, riding roughshod over those on foot. Panic quickly spreads and Simon Desfosseux, scrambling forward, his face a mask of fear, peers anxiously up at the hill that looms on his right. He has no desire to get a close view of the sharp blades of the Spanish knives. Or the regimental English bayonets.
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