Buccaneer

by Dudley Pope

“But,” she said carefully, “that was all he ever did to me.”

  There was such a distinct emphasis on “all” that her meaning was unmistakable, but how could it be so? Those negresses, the mulatto he kept in Bridgetown?

  “Beloved – it makes no difference to my feelings for you, but remember his mistresses!”

  “He did nothing to them: they whipped him. He is – how do you say, impotent. That is why we have no children. I suppose,” she added bitterly, “that is why I came out here from England with him. He disgusted me but the alternatives were worse. A wife abandoned in a foreign country…”

  An unusually large following sea lifted the Griffin and she rolled violently as she slid down the side of it. Aurelia, unprepared and with nothing to grasp, began staggering towards the ship’s side until, a few moments later and before Ned could grab her, she sprawled flat on her face as a heel caught in her dress.

  Ned ran to help her up and, finding she was unhurt and only her dignity ruffled, teased her. “Such beautiful ankles…such beautiful legs…who would want to hide them under breeches!”

  “I do,” Aurelia said firmly as Ned helped her to her feet. “Mrs Judd gives good advice. May I use some of your wardrobe?”

  Ned called Mrs Judd and when she came nodded down towards his cabin, now being used by Aurelia, and winked. “Mrs Wilson would like to experiment with the wardrobe…”

  The governor was most polite. Yes, he had heard of Mr Yorke’s plantation in Barbados; no, he had heard nothing of a fleet due in the West Indies under Vice Admiral Penn and General Venables. Yes, there were estates for sale in Antigua, mostly those abandoned by Royalists and neglected for up to five years – but they could be bought only by permission of the Council of State in London.

  Granting this permission, he said, took time (a year or more) and was preceded by a searching examination of the political allegiances of the applicant. He did not say in as many words that Edward Yorke’s would not even be sent off to London, but he made it clear that his single clerk was kept busy with other things. He agreed, though, that the Griffin could be careened but would offer no guarantees of their safety while doing so. Roving bands of deserted apprentices, he admitted, moved the length and breadth of the island, calling themselves cattle-killers, and took what they wanted, except at some plantations, where the owners had the buildings well defended with loopholes cut in the shutters covering windows.

  Yorke’s reference to the battery on the cay opposite the anchorage met with no response: the implication was that, like the church and the courthouse, the island looked after its own, and its own had to be supporters of Cromwell.

  As soon as Yorke had left the governor’s grubby house with Saxby, the master almost exploded. “He doesn’t want us staying here, that’s certain!”

  “I am sure he knows Penn and Venables are on their way and he doesn’t want them to find people like us in his waters.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Well, with so much barnacle and weed on the bottom we have to careen the Griffin as soon as possible, and the bad weather will be here soon. I intend finding a sheltered anchorage and staying there. We’ll careen – and wait for Penn and Venables to pass to the westward.”

  “What’s the advantage of that, sir?”

  “There are plenty. First, a large British fleet ahead of us will clear the seas of Spanish privateers for a few weeks.”

  “They’ll come back later.” Saxby had no doubt about that.

  “Yes, but while they’re out of the way we can move about safely. Visit other islands.”

  “Aye, that way we’ll be safe from the Dons and the bloody Roundheads.”

  “But Saxby,” Yorke warned as they walked along the track back to the ship, avoiding the thorns of the wild tamarind and the prickly pear cactus with its fine needle-sharp spines, “wherever we go, whatever estate I manage to buy, we’ve years of work ahead of us.”

  “We’d be better off buccaneering,” Saxby said bitterly. “There’s no call for honest work and honest men these days.”

  “Buccaneers are no better than pirates,” Yorke said.

  “No, sir, beggin’ yer pardon, they are.” Saxby stopped walking and, partly because they were walking over the crest of a hill which gave them a good view of the bay, Yorke stopped too.

  “I’d like to say this to you out o’ hearing of the others, sir, but buccaneering is something I knows about, and you’re wrong.”

  “Why, were you ever one?” Yorke asked curiously.

  “No, sir, but although you didn’t know, they’ve called of a dark night at Kingsnorth to visit me.”

  “What? Do you mean to say you had – well, pirates – on my property without me knowing?”

  “Yes, sir. And I’m glad I did. You’ll see you ain’t no call to be angry, if you’ll just listen to me for a few minutes, sir.”

  “Very well, but let’s sit in the shade of that divi-divi; it’s hot here, even though there’s a breeze.”

  They sat but had to move hastily to another tree when they found they had chosen a nest of red ants, several of which had crawled into their clothing before being noticed. Ned and Saxby slapped themselves vigorously and then sat down again, giving the soil a precautionary stir with their feet.

  “Now tell me about the buccaneers.”

  “Well, sir, will you forget all about pirates.”

  “That’s hard to do in these waters.”

  “I know, but just think about us. Why we’re here. Why we’re sitting under the shade of a divi-divi tree.”

  Yorke shrugged. “Well, we’ve had to escape from home.”

  “Ex-ackerly!” Saxby exclaimed, giving his knee a clout which sent up motes of dust which rose in the bright sunlight like tiny insects, “ex-ackerly. Take half a dozen people on board the Griffin and trace back why they’re there. Just six. You name ’em, sir.”

  Yorke thought for a minute. “You. Mrs Judd. Bullock. Me. Mrs Wilson. Yes, and Mrs Bullock, because she married him after she came out to Barbados.”

  “Very well, start with me. Father labouring on a farm in Lincolnshire, and me working alongside him. Pressgang takes me for a sailor. Suits me – better a life at sea than hoeing rows of ’taters and spreadin’ muck.

  “But I get tired of it and desert. I settle down on land – not far from where I was born. The war comes and I’m in the King’s army. Big battle, I get taken prisoner by the Roundheads, but refuse to serve with them. So I’m a special prisoner now. Royalist and Catholic, they said. Me a Papist! Anyway, I’m transported to Barbados in the next ship. So I’ve had me country taken away from me. I’m no Papist but if Protestant is what the Roundheads are, then I’m no Protestant either ’cos I can’t see no sin in laughing and wearin’ bright clothes. Not that I want to wear bright clothes; just that I want to be able to if I feel like it.”

  Yorke nodded but, curious, asked quietly: “You can be absolutely honest now. How did you find life at Kingsnorth, eh?”

  Saxby pushed round to face him. “Been the finest time of my life. You’ve left me alone. No special church services like on many of the plantations. No spyin’ to see I’m working and keeping the apprentices at work. Now it’s all over, destroyed once again by the Roundheads, and that’s the story of one of the six.”

  “Now tell me about Mrs Judd.”

  “A fine woman,” Saxby said. “I don’t know whatever became of Mr Judd, if he ever existed. But she was the housekeeper in the house of some big landowner near Oxford. Banbury, I think it was. Anyway, there was a lot of fighting there, round the house, too. Her master – a Royalist – was away with his troops and she was at the house with the wife and four young children.

  “Cromwell’s army – well, not his, but under some other Roundhead general – arrived and marched into the house, demanding to know where the
master was, and helping themselves to the silver plate. One of the children – the eldest boy, seven I believe he was – tried to stop them and they started beating him. Mrs Judd came out of the kitchen with a meat cleaver and would ’ave taken the soldier’s ’ead off, if ’e ’adn’t been wearing an ’elmet. So she’s sentenced to transportation. We meet in the same ship.”

  “It’s none of my business,” Yorke said, “and there’s no need to answer. But why have you never married her?”

  “To make an honest woman of her? Well, I’ve asked her enough times but she likes to feel free.”

  “Free? To do what?”

  Saxby gave a dry chuckle. “Well, I’m talking out of turn, I expect, but I thought everyone knew. When we get a new lad as an apprentice, Mrs Judd likes to – well, sort of try his mettle!”

  “Good gracious! Well, I suppose that’s a good idea. What happens to the ones that don’t measure up?”

  “The other women ’ave a try.”

  “Kingsnorth seems to have been something of a brothel!”

  “Not really, sir, don’t cost a penny, and young men and young women – well, I –”

  “Quite, as long as they remember their indentures are lengthened if the women get pregnant.”

  “They know,” Saxby said. “Anyway, who’s next?”

  “The Bullocks.”

  “Ah yes. He’s a good example. Scottish, as you’ve guessed from his voice. General Fairfax’s army caught him. He refused to change sides, so he’s transported. His wife – he met her out here and they married as you know – comes from Gloucester. She was married to a yeoman farmer. The Roundheads took against him, saying he’d no respect for the Lord’s Day. There was some violence and blows were struck. He was killed and she half killed the soldier that did it. They put her in the Bridewell for a year and then transported her. So she hates Puritans like the Devil hates holy water.”

  “I’m next,” Yorke said. “What about me?”

  “You’ll come into Judge Saxby’s summing up, sir, ’cos we know the details. There’s just Mrs Wilson left out of the six.”

  “Yes, tell me about her.”

  “Well, first off, sir, we all hope you’ll marry her!”

  “There’s the matter of her present husband!”

  Saxby sniffed, like a schoolmaster dismissing a pupil’s excuse. “We won’t be going back to Barbados…”

  “We might, one day,” Yorke said mildly, adding: “But anyway, the lady in question considers herself still married.”

  “Bullock was right,” Saxby said firmly.

  “About what?”

  “Well, it was his wife, too. Said they ought to have left Wilson for dead.”

  “And his widow regarding me as his murderer?”

  Saxby nodded glumly. “There’s that to it, I suppose. Anyway, let’s consider her. French Protestant, a Huguenot refugee whose parents were chased out by the Papists. Settle down in England, buy some land, treat their people well. The war starts and she has the misfortune to meet that man Wilson, who frightens them all into thinking they’ll lose everything to Parliament if she doesn’t marry him. If she’s his wife, he can protect her…”

  Yorke had never heard that before. “Was that what happened?”

  “So I hear. Mrs Bullock heard it from Mrs Wilson one day – the only time she ever mentioned it, but he’d so knocked her about there was talk of getting the surgeon.”

  “Go on, then.”

  “Well, her family really supported the King but Wilson frightened them. And, in a trice, from what I hear, had her married and everything in his name, the parents’ land as well.”

  How little he knew her, Yorke realized. He loved her, he knew every gesture, look, habit – every hair on her head. But he knew almost nothing of how she and her family had been robbed by Wilson. She had never complained – never mentioned it or even hinted at it. Refused to leave the man for – how long? He had been begging her for three years, and she had agreed now only because she had been almost kidnapped by himself and the Bullocks.

  “Saxby,” he said sternly, “we have wandered a long way from the subject of buccaneering.”

  “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, sir. We’ve just considered six people who are very typical of hundreds of people among the Caribbee islands at present.”

  “Typical? In what way?”

  “We’ve all got the same thread running through us, like a bit of cloth. Rebels, sir, that’s what we are. Or leastways, we’ve been made rebels, by our own country. None of us can go back. Not even Mrs Wilson, on account of she’s a Huguenot.

  “Outcasts,” Saxby corrected himself, “not rebels. Nor are we alone. What about the Dutch? I’ll tell yer, sir. The Spaniards ’ate ’em. Millions and millions of golden dollars they’ve spent on their army in the Netherlands, and still the Dutch ain’t beat. Then there are the maroons, too.”

  “The what?”

  “Cimaroons, I expect you call ’em, sir. They’re seamen put ashore on an island because the master doesn’t want them, either because they’ve misbehaved or he’s cheating ’em out of their wages. And escaped slaves, too, as well as the apprentices who’ve been bolting over the years.”

  Yorke sighed. “What has all this to do with buccaneers, Saxby?”

  The foreman looked as though he would have apoplexy. “They are the buccaneers, sir.”

  Yorke sat up sharply. “How can they be?”

  “An outcast with a ship – you, sir,” Saxby reminded him, “–has to live somehow. He might be lucky to get a crew as you did, but more likely he has to pick up who he can. So he might find some English who escaped after being transported (and risked execution by moving before their term was up), some Dutch who’ve had their ship captured and sunk by the Spaniards, some French Protestants who came out here to find peace but were followed by the priests, some cimaroons, and a dozen captured slaves.”

  “And you dare tell me that such a mixture makes a good crew?”

  “Aye, sir. They live well together because they’ve learned tolerance. But they don’t all serve in ships.”

  “What do they do then?”

  “Well, they go to one of the big Spanish islands like Puerto Rico, or Hispaniola, or Cuba. Very few Spaniards live there now, you know.”

  This was a new world being revealed to Yorke, and he found it hard to believe. “Very few Spaniards?”

  “Yes, sir. You see, they started off many years ago in Puerto Rico, looking for gold. No luck, so they went on to the next island to leeward, Hispaniola. They found some gold but not much and went on to Cuba, where they found a little more. The point is they abandoned one island and went on to another.”

  “Then they found Mexico…”

  “Ex-ackerly, sir: gold beyond what any man could ever dream of. And everyone – nearly everyone, anyway – quit Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba and rushed to Mexico after the gold, leaving all their cattle and asses behind them.”

  Saxby said that as though he had answered all the riddles that could ever be devised about buccaneers, but Yorke said obstinately: “I still don’t see what that has to do with buccaneers.”

  “Sir,” said Saxby, “there are no wolves, snakes, wild dogs or nothing in those islands. There weren’t nothing. No cows, pigs or sheep, until the Spaniards arrived. But it happens – and you know this is true of Barbados, too – cattle and pigs flourish here. Once the Spaniards came, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba became huge farms. No enemies – only men who killed them to eat. Then suddenly most of the men vanish to Mexico and leave these poor beasts in peace, and they breed at a fantastic rate.”

  “Buccaneers, Saxby…the sun’s getting high, and we seem to have chosen a divi-divi that’s going bald.”

  “Yes, sir. Supposing you was one of a group, and all you wanted out
of life was peace and quiet and enough to eat. Where would you go?”

  “Cuba, or Hispaniola, and chase those cattle and pigs.”

  “Ex-ackerly, sir. You’d have meat to eat, fat and hides for clothes and for trading, and all you’d need would be some powder and shot.”

  “Which you trade for hides from some passing Dutchman.”

  Saxby grinned happily. “Now you understand why they’ve gone westwards, to Hispaniola and Cuba. What’s happened mostly is that they’ve gathered in groups of five or six. They find a nice bay with savannah behind. They build a canoe – they learned that from the few Arawak Indians left, hollowing out the trunk of a mahogany tree – and use it for fishing.

  “They tan the hides and store the tallow and lard as best they can, and when they see a ship they row out in their canoe, taking hides and lard, and trade them for powder and shot – and hot waters, too; they’re great drinkers.

  “But they don’t harm no one. They’re called ‘cattle-killers’. They don’t attack the ships – the canoes are too small, and anyway the passing ships supply all they need. The Spanish, though – that’s a different question. The Spanish hate them and hunt them down whenever they have cavalry to spare. But Hispaniola and Cuba have long coastlines, Puerto Rico nobody cares much about. Too small and easy for the Spaniards to patrol.”

  “Yes, I can also see why the Spaniards are so alarmed by them,” Yorke said thoughtfully.

  “They’ve no need to be. What good are these islands to the Dons? All they want is gold and silver, and that comes from the Main, not the islands. From Mexico, and down in the South Seas. Anyway, that’s the cattle-killers. The buccaneers are a bit different.”

  Yorke realized that Saxby had a far greater knowledge of the Caribbees than he had given him credit for. Few people still called it the North Sea, to distinguish it from the South Sea, which lay to the south of the Isthmus of Panama, because it led to confusion with the North Sea in Europe, but clearly Saxby had a good working knowledge of its problems, dangers and – possibilities.

  It would bear a few nights’ consideration before deciding where to buy an estate. They could go ahead and careen the Griffin here, and by the time her guns and cargo were restowed, and the ship was ready to sail again, perhaps he would have a clearer idea himself. There must be no mistake: the plantation he bought would have to be the right one.