Pirate Code

by Helen Hollick

  Jesamiah swallowed hard, that particular memory swarming to the fore and sending a cold shiver down his spine. There would be no lucky escape from a Spanish torture chamber a second time. He stopped walking, leant his hands against the harbour wall and was promptly sick, vomiting up the contents of his stomach.

  He had seen the inside of that gaol once, the inside of the room next to it. He vomited again. Once had been enough. Even for Tiola’s freedom, once had been more than enough.

  Seventeen

  Van Overstratten reseated himself, finished the wine. It had been a ridiculous idea anyway, asking that murdering thief for help. What had he been thinking? He sighed, ordered more wine. Angrily, he hit the tabletop with his clenched fist. Damn it, damn it! How could he coerce Acorne into getting that indigo?

  Another twenty minutes. Late afternoon sun was sending the grey clouds scudding into the distance. Tossing a handful of small coins on to the table the Dutchman gathered his things: hat, coat, walking cane, and went out into the street. Everything smelt clean and fresh-washed; damp earth, the saline tang of the sea. The aromatic smell of fruit and coconuts and the heady perfume of exotic flowers.

  “Good afternoon to you, Master van Overstratten, it is pleasant out now the rain has ceased, ‘though this wind has a chill to it.”

  The Dutchman spun around to find Commodore Vernon approaching. He disliked Navy people. Too many of them wanted to pry into his business affairs – not that he was dishonest, but no merchant paid tax when it was avoidable, and the Navy was too closely affiliated to the excise men. He smiled politely, touched his hat.

  “The wind scurries rather maliciously around the edge of the fort, I have discovered,” Vernon added.

  Van Overstratten made no comment, thought, What is it with the English and their damned interest in discussing the weather?

  Commodore Vernon indicated the Sea Witch. “I did not realise that by right she is your vessel. In your shoes I would be grieved to have lost such a fine ship.”

  “Grieved I am, Commodore, but Governor Rogers decreed there would be no repercussions for those who accepted his offer of amnesty, the terms were unconditional. Which meant those of us who lost valuables – in whatever form – to these pirate dogs will never have them returned, nor shall we see compensation. All we have is the dubious pleasure of observing a man like Acorne openly committing debauchery with our womenfolk.”

  A little embarrassed, Vernon cleared his throat. “With your wife in particular, I hear?”

  Van Overstratten made no immediate answer, watched with mild curiosity as a man hurried along the jetty from the direction of the shanty huts, unhitched a boat and began rowing as if the devil were after him.

  “You hear correct Commodore.” Van Overstratten chuckled cynically. “Would it have been Dunwoody who informed you by chance?”

  Vernon inclined his head. “It would. Is his information not reliable then?”

  The Dutchman’s chuckle became a full laugh. “I believe reliability depends on the value of the coin offered as payment.”

  The man in the boat was heading for the Sea Witch.

  Vernon stared across the harbour at her. She was a fine, fine, ship, better than any he had commanded. Quickly he asked, “Forgive me for prying into your affairs, van Overstratten, but why do you allow Acorne to so taunt you? Why do you not merely shoot him?”

  Indignantly pulling himself to his full height of five feet nine inches, van Overstratten retorted; “Would you have me a murderer, Sir? Would you take me down to his low level of depravity? I am a God-fearing man, Commodore. I do not condone wilfully breaking the Commandments. Thou shalt not kill.”

  “Then why do you not punish him in a way it would hurt far more than a flogging? A captain, though I doubt the legitimacy of the title for the rogue, would never willingly part from his ship. Take it back, take it off him.”

  The Dutchman tapped the cobbles fastidiously with his cane. “I do not want it, the thing is fouled. She has the stink of baseness about her.”

  She was actually a company ship and belonged to the business. Selling her would make him no profit at all and would alert the family to his predicament. “Aside, I want something else from Acorne.” Thought; Who will get my indigo if he does not?

  I would have her, Vernon was thinking, his gaze coveting her clean, sleek lines. I could sail rings around the Spanish with a ship like that.

  The man in the bumboat was holding on to Sea Witch’s mooring chains, shouting up to someone on deck. There was a long pause, then he rowed to the entry port and a woman was descending, settling herself in the stern. The man had pushed off before she had barely seated herself. Tiola.

  The reason was plain. A woman’s high pitched shrieking had been splitting the air this past half hour, and there had been a lot of coming and going from the third shack along the beach. Women’s business was bringing Tiola ashore.

  Touching his hat Vernon began to walk away, but halted, watching the approaching boat. “A word to a wise ear. Stay within doors after dark tonight. Nassau may become a little,” he cleared his throat with a resounding hrrmph, “how do I put this delicately? Restless?” Added, “I am assuming, from what I hear tell, that be y’wife?”

  Van Overstratten nodded.

  “Should she be delayed,” Vernon continued, “I would advise you to keep her out of harm’s way.” He touched his hat again and strode off, his seaman’s gait rolling in his long legged stride.

  Watching Tiola hurry to the shack the Dutchman considered matters. An hour, two, until dusk? What had Vernon got up his sleeve? With England at war, navy ships in harbour and insufficient crew to man them he had a shrewd idea. William Dunwoody would know for certain. And that slime-toad of a man owed a favour or two.

  Eighteen

  Tuesday Evening

  “Damn fine bit of beef that was,” Finch grumbled in his usual curmudgeonly manner as he cleared Jesamiah’s barely touched plate from the table. “You moping; Miss Tiola ashore an’ not ‘ere to eat. Ain’t much point you ‘avin a personal steward to do the cookin’ an’ such if you ain’t p’ticlar t’take notice of what I does fer ‘ee is there?”

  Finch always grumbled. The crew maintained he would find something to complain about in Heaven if he managed, against all odds, to somehow end up there.

  Jesamiah ignored him. “I’ll just have coffee on the quarterdeck.”

  “As long as ye’ bleedin’ drink it, an’ don’t leave it t’get stone cold like you usually do.”

  One shoulder hunched to ease the throb of pain, Jesamiah took the steps of the companionway ladder one at a time. There was more rain in the air. Usually, this late in September, the rainy season had ceased. Providing the weather did not bring any hurricanes rampaging over the horizon, who cared? He leant his elbows on the taffrail, stood staring at the town. The waterfront was lit by dozens of lanterns and pitch torches, their light spilling from the doors and windows of taverns and brothels. The beach, too, was ablaze with the flare from dozens of bonfires. Those who could afford a roof over their heads and a decent bed, paid for comfort; the rest lived along the shore in tents and shacks fashioned from salvaged canvas and driftwood, held together by hope and a prayer.

  He heard a woman’s high-pitched laugh; a man’s indistinct, drunken shout. The ever-present slap and thud of the sea against Sea Witch’s keel. Another woman’s scream; a long wail of terror that seared louder then stopped abruptly. She had been screaming for two hours now, the sound of a woman in labour and having a hard time of it. Tiola was with her, trying her best to save mother and unborn child. A difficult birth, with one arm caught behind the head, so she had said.

  ~ I cannot ease him through the birth canal, I will have to amputate the arm while he is in the womb. He will die, probably the mother also. ~

  Nasty.

  Sometimes, Jesamiah wondered why she bothered. Many of the unwanted brats birthed by the whores were dead before they learnt to toddle, and some of the women were probab
ly better off to slip away from the miserable life they endured. Whores were rarely treated well. Used, abused; no whore could ever cry rape even though not all sexual gratification was given by consent. The girls – aye, the boys too – were obliged to please, in whatever way their clients dictated. Several, good at their job, were without front teeth, deliberately removed by their madams and pimps to be the better accommodating when it was by mouth. And most of them, those who were not malnourished, without the pox or internally damaged, were continuously pregnant. Birth one child and another would be on the way almost immediately, unless she tried getting rid of it, which usually ended in the same result. The agony of a lingering death.

  Jesamiah snorted, mentally shrugged. At least the molly-boys did not have that disadvantage to contend with, although their shared pleasures were illegal and carried the penalty of hanging if they were caught. Personally, he could not see anything wrong with one man preferring another, but he could not understand a man not being interested in the many delights of a woman’s body, either.

  He occasionally felt guilty about using the street pullets, but then the poor girls had to make a living somehow; and what else was a fellow to do when he had an urge to spend a few shillings on easing a personal need? At least he paid them fairly, and took pride in his prowess in bed. It wasn’t just Tiola he treated with respect, he left no whore dissatisfied, either in her purse or her nether regions.

  Tiola would be tired and upset when she finally came home. In no mood to discuss her divorce and their predicament, and he was hurting too much, inside and out, to comfort her in the only way he knew; intimately in bed. There again, perhaps a bottle of rum would be a suitable painkiller and he could then rise to the occasion? He smiled to himself at the thought of making love to her as Finch sourly handed him a cup of black, sweet, coffee.

  “Bloody ‘eads need swillin’ out again Cap’n. They fair stink of piss and shit.”

  “You know, Finch,” Jesamiah responded dryly, his mildly stirring erection instantly collapsing, “you have a wonderful turn of phrase. I ought to suggest you to Tiola, she could make use of you as one of her more efficient contraceptive devices.”

  Not understanding, Finch shuffled off to his galley where he clipped the ear of his boy helper and wondered what the Captain had been on about. Contrary-septic? Sounded nasty. He would perhaps ask Jansy what it meant.

  Some of the crew were below, engrossed in the many pastimes that whiled away a sailor’s rest hours. Most of them had no money left for women or drinking, having spent the lot already. The London and Boston newspapers occasionally speculated on where Captain William Kidd had buried his looted treasure before he was captured and hanged; Jesamiah always laughed at such nonsense. He’d never yet met a pirate who had bothered to lug a heavy chest of gold to some remote island and bury it. Plunder was distributed fairly in equal shares, and usually fell through a pirate’s fingers like poured water.

  A crow of laughter spiralled up from the open hatchway. Ah, someone had won a few more pennies to spend. Out at sea Jesamiah would not permit gambling for money, it led to too many petty jealousies and major fights. He did not stop the games, but the stakes were wooden buttons or tally sticks. They could sort out who owed what to whom at the end of each voyage. Sensible rules that were followed on most pirate ships; the Pirate Code as written down in the Articles which every man signed as they joined a crew. In harbour, however, as long as nothing compromised the safety of the ship, each man was his own responsibility, could come and go, do, as he chose.

  Jesamiah’s mind wandered to the woman in grey who had stood in the rain watching him. She had been watching him, he was certain. Who was she? He thrust aside the thought that if he did not have Tiola he would have approached her, maybe offered a few gold coins for a night of pleasure. Damn it, what was the matter with him? Had his brains dropped into his breeches or something? Where was Finch with his verbal cold water when it was needed?

  Thrusting erotic, guilty, thoughts aside, Jesamiah settled his chin in his hand. What was he to do? What in all hell’s bits could he do?

  Domingo, the main port and town of Spanish Hispaniola. He groaned, rested his forehead on his arms. He could not go back there, not without a watertight, firm-tied reason. As appointed lick-spit to the British Government he might have got away with it, anything else, he would be dangling from a gibbet without his privy package within ten minutes of stepping ashore. Damn it – why should he be feeling bad about turning van Overstratten down? He could go swing for all Jesamiah cared! Yet… yet, if this was the only way, beyond shooting him, of ensuring Tiola’s freedom? He sighed again. It would be so much easier to kill the bastard but Tiola would know and would despise him for it.

  Another scream made his head shoot up. That was no woman in labour, that was a man’s shout of terror! A line of lanterns and torches were bobbing along the jetty; he crossed the deck, took the telescope from where it always rested beside the compass in the binnacle box. Vernon’s men? If they were on the prowl at night it could be for one of two reasons: to arrest pirates – which, considering everyone here in Nassau was under an amnesty of pardon was not likely – or to press men into service.

  “Rue!” All melancholy and sexual desire abandoned, Jesamiah leapt down the ladder, ran to the half-closed hatch cover and kicked it open, bellowed again for his second in command. “Rue! How many of our men are down there?”

  A few moments later the swarthy Frenchman’s head appeared, red-cheeked, smiling, the smell of brandy strong on his breath. “About fifty mon ami. Pourquoi?”

  “The press may be out.”

  Five little words, huge enough to stifle Rue’s merriment and to spread unease through the entire below-deck world. Many of Jesamiah’s men had served in the British Navy, had jumped ship and deserted to follow the Sweet Trade of a pirate. The life was often shorter but less harsh, was a life of free choice and self decision. Most of those same men had been pressed in the first place – taken by force, usually while drunk; snatched from families and sweethearts, treated brutally and forced to serve at sea. Those who had escaped and found a better existence serving Captain Acorne knew what it was like to endure the humiliation of a flogging.

  Rapid thoughts tore through Jesamiah’s mind: Tiola will be safe, soldiers’ll not molest a midwife. Then: What if things get out of hand? Close on a thousand men are sprawled along that beach. All of them drunk, as full as goats and spoiling for a fight. He swore aloud as Rue came to join him at the rail, several of the men with him, all peering uneasily into the darkness.

  There was more noise now, shouting, the sound of fighting; the pop, pop of pistol fire, the sharper, deeper crack of muskets. Shadows were flickering between the huddle of buildings, frightened men running, trying to hide or get away. A few women were screaming; mistresses trying to protect their lovers, whores to keep their customers. Madams and pimps would be throwing men on to the narrow streets, not wanting to be implicated in obstructing the Royal Navy attending its duty. Jesamiah did not need to see to know what was happening over there. He had personally experienced the press closing in; the heart-drub of fear as you hid in the dark, praying, praying they would pass by. For those captured by the press there was little chance of seeing freedom again, not unless the Grim Reaper or Davy Jones came to collect your soul – or peace was declared and there was no further use for many ships and many men.

  Nathan, a deserter from the Navy, was peering through Jesamiah’s telescope, panning it slowly along the shoreline. “That is not the Navy,” he announced with a sniff of disdain. “That is the Governor’s militia. I can see their black and white cross-belts.”

  Frowning, Jesamiah took the glass, held it to his eye. Nat was right, those were armed soldiers spreading through the town.

  “The press would choose one or two taverns, maybe blockade a street, take who they wanted then clear out. There could be a bit of resistance, a pistol shot or two, drawn knives, but you don’t need an entire regiment of Cherry-
Reds to round up a few drunken sailors. As Lieutenant I’ve supervised the press enough times to know, Captain.”

  Jesamiah grinned at him, slapped his shoulder. “As a drunken sailor I’ve avoided the press often enough to understand what you mean, Nat!”

  A flotilla of small boats was making way, several heading for the Sea Witch. Angling the telescope on them Jesamiah was pleased to see the anxious faces of his men come into sharp relief: Jansy, Toby, their carpenter Chippy Jones. Jimmy, Barnsey; Peter Piper.

  Musket fire from the jetty. Jesamiah swore as he saw young Jasper in the stern of the farthest boat slump forward – the press did not shoot men who made a run for it. Did they?

  ~ Tiola? ~ Jesamiah desperately thought her name, cursed his inability to be able to initiate communication. ~ Tiola? Are you alright? ~

  As he expected, no answer.

  The boats were alongside, men climbing aboard, breathing hard, agitated; all hands helping Jasper whose face was crumpled in pain, blood on his shoulder, seeping through his shirt.

  Quickly, efficiently, Jesamiah examined the wound; entrance and exit hole, the bullet had gone straight through. No broken bones.

  “You’re lucky lad, you’ll mend.” To a couple of the men, “Get him below, make him comfortable. Tiola will see to him as soon as she comes aboard.” He turned immediately to Jansy – Mr Janson – “What the hell is happening over there?”

  Bent over, almost doubled, his hands spread on his thighs, old Jansy was struggling to get his wheezing breath back. He lifted one arm, patted the air, shook his head.

  Toby spoke for him instead, although his breath was as short. “We only just got away Cap’n, several of the lads haven’t made it. The militia’s sealing the whole bloody town off. Our amnesty’s been revoked.”

  For a stunned half a minute, Jesamiah stared at him as if he had suddenly grown two heads.