Pirate Code

by Helen Hollick

  She sidled over to him, took hold of his chin and turned it to left and right, studying his face critically. “I see a man where there was once a boy. You are not the fresh-faced youth I bedded last time you were here, Jesamiah Acorne. Are you a man now in other areas as well?” Her hand went towards his crotch but he clamped his fingers around her wrist and backed away.

  “I’m a respected captain now, darlin’, these lines of maturity on m’face are the marks of responsibility, and I take m’responsibilities seriously. I’m ‘ere on business, not pleasure.”

  “Last time you were here you said nothing was more important than pleasure.”

  “Well I were right, nothing is more important.” Glancing around the tavern he saw no other face he recognised. “Where’s Emilio? His wife?”

  Mireya tossed her head, sniffed and then shrugged one brown-tanned shoulder. “Dead. Been dead these four years. The Sickle Moon’s got new owners. He don’t treat me as well as Emilio did though.”

  Jesamiah was sorry to hear the news, Emilio had been a good man, a good smuggler and a good friend. His wife had been good in bed too. He was not going to say that to Mireya, however, for she was one of those tavern whores who liked to keep clients to herself.

  “What did they die of?”

  “Del Gardo strung them up from that beam over there soon after you were last here. Said they were rebel spies. Said they were too friendly with you English.” She sneered the last, disgruntled that he had turned her down.

  Involuntarily Jesamiah looked towards the beam she indicated with a toss of her impertinent chin. Double chin, she was beginning to run to fat, was not the pretty thing he remembered from four years ago.

  Del Gardo was right about Emilio being friendly with the English, but not about the rest. At least, as far as Jesamiah knew. He had been hoping Emilio would have been able to shed some light on the several conundrums that were bothering him. Damn. He would have to find someone else to ask now. He certainly was not going to solve any puzzles by asking ‘Cesca – she was riddle number one!

  “A woman came in just now, a Señora Escudero. Where is she?”

  Mireya pouted jealously at his question. “If you would rather poke her than me…” She pointed towards a door at the rear.

  Jesamiah took her cheeks between his fingers, kissed her on the mouth and with his other hand, pressed a gold coin into her cleavage. Helping himself to a bottle of rum, he unstoppered it and took a long, satisfying mouthful. “I’ll get back to you darlin’. Promise.” More often than not, Jesamiah never kept a promise.

  Distracted, he did not notice one of the men finish his ale, set an ostrich-feathered hat over his thinning grey hair and disappear at a jog trot into the rain.

  Sauntering to the rear of the tavern Jesamiah turned and winked at the girl. “Tell the landlord I’ll pay later. With the rest of what I’ll owe.”

  Appeased, the girl preened and retrieved the coin.

  Pushing the door open he could hear ‘Cesca talking. Being naturally curious he paused to listen, taking one or two long swigs of the bottle as he stood there.

  “You say a pirate brought you here, Señora? Can he be trusted? Do you not think he could bring us trouble?”

  “He is not as much trouble as the trouble I will be in if I do not have anything to tell del Gardo when I return.”

  Swallowing a fourth gulp, Jesamiah felt intense disappointment swell his innards. He liked ‘Cesca, had been so hoping she was not what he suspected her to be, but then, who was he fooling? For all her fancy ways, she was del Gardo’s whore, and the honesty of a whore was no more dependable than the honesty of a pirate. He pushed the door wide, deliberately let it bang against the wall behind as he swaggered into the kitchen.

  ‘Cesca was sitting beside a lively fire, her bare feet in the hearth, a blanket around her shoulders hiding the fact that she had stripped to her undershift. Her cloak, the scarlet stockings, embroidered pink petticoat and the red gown dripped from a wooden-framed rack suspended from the ceiling. In her hand a glass of cognac. The other woman, ample in bosom and buttock, and everything in between, was stirring a pot of stew hanging from the iron firehook.

  “I take it you know each other?” Jesamiah observed as he joined ‘Cesca beside the fire, steam rising from his wet coat, rain dripping from his hat as he removed and shook it.

  ‘Cesca grumbled and moved aside as the wet showered her. She could feel her bad temper rising higher, knew she was being silly, but his rejection of her had hurt. She had so wanted Jesamiah there in the Kismet’s cabin – had been so ready for him, yet as soon as they had been interrupted he had dropped her as if she were poxed. Why had he not shouted for the steward to go away? Why had he not ignored the wretched man and continued making love to her?

  Why? Oh she knew why! Men were all the same, they used women as if they were blocks of wood. No man ever considered that a woman had feelings!

  Pouting she snapped, in Spanish, “This is Madelene, the landlady. She does not speak English.”

  Jesamiah bowed and removed his coat, hung it beside his hat on a peg. So, ‘Cesca and Madelene were friends? She seemed to know a lot of people, did ‘Cesca Ramon Escudero.

  He guessed, from the shrewd way Madelene was looking at him, that he was being assessed for how much he would pay for a tumble with the girl outside. Or herself. If the gossips of fashion were to be believed, it was hips and buttocks that were appealing to men at the moment. Jesamiah did not agree, he was a bosom man. He liked big breasts, and Madelene’s were the size of over-ripe melons about to burst their skin, but he’d never had much of a fancy for a woman old enough to be his mother. For all the amount of enticing flesh escaping over the top of a tight-laced bodice. He chuckled to himself. His preference was for large tits, yet the woman he loved, the woman he wanted as his wife, was so slight she barely sported any bust at all.

  Sitting on a chair beside the table, he stretched one boot towards the fire and brought the other foot over his knee to inspect a crack in the sole. No wonder his stocking was wet. “You going to arrange transport to this convent then?” he asked.

  “While you were dallying outside, I have already hired horses.”

  He grunted. His backside did not much like horses.

  Madelene served stew into a bowl, placed it on the table in front of him. It smelt good. Goat stew with a thick gravy, spiced with ginger and herbs. One or two blobs of fat and lumps of gristle floated on the surface, but used to food that was stale, mouldy, bad and riddled with weevils, Jesamiah did not notice. He wolfed it down.

  Belly full, Jesamiah tipped his chair back, balancing by resting the holed boot on the edge of the table. He stretched, realised the lash marks on his back were uncomfortable but were no longer hurting. Tiola had said her salves would heal them quickly.

  Irritably he removed his foot and let the chair drop, square, to the floor. Why had he remembered her again? He would have to learn to stop this. To stop seeing her face, hearing her voice. Stop wanting her. He drank more of the rum, said to ‘Cesca, “I assume you’ve sorted yourself a bed for the night?”

  ‘Cesca had remained seated by the fire; she made a valiant attempt to be congenial. “There are three rooms upstairs. One belongs to Madelene and her husband, one to that spot-faced slut outside, and one for weary travellers. I have taken that room.”

  Dare I? Dare I try once more? she thought.

  Gathering the blanket tight around her she rose, swayed over to him, emphasising the movement of her hips. Deliberately allowed her covering to slip slightly, exposing a good portion of her breast, and a glimpse of the nipple as she bent forward to whisper into his ear.

  “You are welcome to share.”

  Jesamiah knew all about the number of rooms upstairs. He gulped a few more mouthfuls of rum. It had been a long day. Last night had been longer. He was tired and had no intention of sleeping with her, just in case of… well, in case he couldn’t get it up. He was more than a little drunk after all.
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br />   What if it was permanent? What if Tiola had put a spell on him to ensure he remained faithful? He dismissed the idea. She had promised she would never secretly use her Craft on him. Maybe it was just one of those things that occasionally happened?

  Or maybe not.

  There was only one way to ensure he maintained his reputation. He had to decline her offer.

  Placing one hand over the revealed breast, he smacked a kiss on her lips. “If y’care to nip upstairs and get the sheets warmed, I’ll mebbe fit ye in as soon as I’ve emptied me bladder, passed this wind and got me shillin’s worth from that wench out front.”

  ‘Cesca slapped him. He didn’t blame her.

  The door slammed as she walked with dignity from the kitchen, he heard her run up the stairs though, heard her chamber door slam.

  Bugger, he thought, bugger, bugger, bugger.

  Avoiding Madelene’s disapproving glare he drank more of the rum and considered moving to what promised to be a more comfortable chair in the corner, but he ought to check on the Kismet, ensure her mooring lines had not come loose. He stood, a little unsteadily, reached for his hat and coat. Said nothing as he sauntered out. There was nothing, really, that he could say.

  Seventeen

  Sunday Night

  La Sorenta. Stefan van Overstratten had expected more than a ramshackle hotch-potch of mud huts and lean-to shelters most of which were falling down. All he could see of the two enormous storehouses were lighter patches of bleak, grey, evening sky through the gaping holes in the walls. Except for the black silhouette of beams and rafters, neither of them had a roof. The house was a ruin – the fields? Perhaps it was just as well he could not see the fields.

  “This is disgraceful,” he bawled, swiping at a clump of ragged weeds with his walking cane. “A shambles, a pigsty, a…” He faltered to a stop, lost for suitably expressive words.

  There was nothing Señor Mendez could say as a counter argument. It was all true, and twice now the plea that this was not of his doing had fallen on deaf ears. The Dutchman, justifiably, was in a rage. Mendez kept silent and took the verbal blows. There was no use in denying what the man could see with his own eyes.

  Stefan’s rage was made the more potent for the person he ought to be shouting at was a corpse somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Mereno had cheated him. All this waste ground was of no recent demise, the place had been decrepit for years. His anger was heightened by the fact he knew this to be his own fault. He had told Phillipe he was in the market to buy more land, had already purchased a tobacco plantation from him – that had been a flourishing establishment, but only small, two hundred acres. La Sorenta was to have been his triumph over his brother-in-law. Now he knew why Phillipe had sold it so cheap. Now he knew why the bastard had wanted to leave Nassau in such a hurry. And Acorne had killed the cheating whoreson? Stefan never thought he would be grateful to that pirate for something.

  Frustrated, defeated, Stefan sank to the top step of the shallow flight that led up to the house and dropped his head into his hands. This estate was a ruin, and so was he.

  With a deep, sorry, sigh and lifting his head, Stefan faced his one, last, hope of survival. He asked; “The indigo. Please tell me there are barrels of indigo stored here.”

  Señor Frederico Mendez spread his hands, lifted his shoulders, let them fall. What could he say? He could only tell the truth.

  “I am sorry, Señor, there is no indigo here. There has been no indigo here since Señor Mereno died, more than ten years ago.”

  Eighteen

  They were waiting for him. Three men hit him, hard, one with a fist to the stomach, one with a cudgel on his shoulders and the third, as he sank with a groan to his knees, kicked a boot into his groin.

  That’s m’excuse sorted for not entertainin’ the ladies, Jesamiah thought grimly as he went down. With another blow to the back of his head, fell unconscious.

  He awoke, with no idea of how long he had been out cold, to find himself suspended by his wrists from a meat hook attached to an overhead beam. His arms and shoulders were taking the full weight of his dangling body. His first thought was that this was a bloody undignified way to wake up. His second was a bitten off scream of pain.

  The bruising had barely faded from the damage Phillipe had done to him, his ribs were still not healed and now it felt as if they were broken again; his right eye was crusted with dried blood and his back hurt like the damnation of the devil. He’d had better days.

  Squinting through one eye he discovered he was in a cellar; barrels and kegs were stacked on two sides, wooden chests and tall racks of bottles on the other two. The foetid air was damp and musty, smelt of rat pee, mouldering wine and stale tobacco. Another blow, this one to the small of his back. He felt moisture trickling beneath his cotton shirt. Sweat? He had a feeling one of the lash marks had opened up, it felt more like blood. The floor was only an inch or so beneath his feet but it could have been a mile away for all he could do to reach it and take the strain off his screeching muscles.

  He recognised where he was, in the cellars beneath the Sickle Moon.

  On his last visit down here he had satisfyingly poked Emilio’s wife on top of that old chest over there. One of the men had left his hat on it, a black hat with a curled ostrich feather. What was it he had been told about Emilio’s wife? Ah yes. She was dead, hanged as a spy.

  “So, you are awake. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell us why you are here?”

  “Go suck yourself.” Perhaps not the wisest of replies. A fist connected with Jesamiah’s stomach.

  “I ask again. Why are you here? We do not trust bastard pirates.”

  “Just as well I ain’t no bastard nor a pirate then, ain’t it?” Another blow. Jesamiah grunted, what the heck – he had nothing to hide. “I am here with Señora Ramon Escudero. We’ve come to fetch someone’s daughter home to her dying mother.”

  “Have you now? More likely you’ve come to steal our valuables.”

  “Got valuables worth stealing ‘ave you? I ain’t noticed any.”

  “Or maybe you’ve come to spy on us, to tattle tales to del Gardo, like you did last time.”

  So that’s what this was all about. Del Gardo. By God he loathed that man! He struggled to loosen the cord chafing at his wrists, protested indignantly, “I ain’t no spy! Who the fok suggested I was? It’s a bloody lie!”

  Pirate, bastard, whoreson… most insults he could tolerate for most of them were true. Spy? He was not a spy. Spies were weasel-gutted, black-hearted ferrets. Apart from ‘Cesca. She was a spy, well, she was spying on him.

  It occurred to him maybe that was why he had not been able to get aroused when he’d had the chance to have her. Perhaps it was nothing to do with Tiola and woven spells. On the other side of the deck, perhaps it had everything to do with Tiola. That and a guilt of conscience.

  One of the men, with a wicked scar slicing across his forehead, withdrew a knife from its sheath, ran the blade over the stubbled whiskers of Jesamiah’s cheek. “You need a shave mate. Shall I give you one?” He shifted the knife lower, moved it down Jesamiah’s sternum, prodded his stomach and stopped at his genitals where he poked the tip a little harder.

  Jesamiah willed his body to relax, tried not to show fear. It wasn’t easy.

  “I say you are a spy.”

  “And I say I ain’t.”

  Scarface brought the blade upwards again to Jesamiah’s throat and drew a trickle of blood just below his Adam’s apple. “I think it strange that not long after you were here last time, Emilio and his wife were strung up. You and the others – who was it now? Ah, sí, Taylor was your capitán. If I remember rightly, he and almost all his crew escaped the Tower and sailed away, unharmed.” The knife bit again. “Now how did that happen to be, I wonder? Talk for your freedom did you? Talked to Don Damian del Gardo about Emilio being a rebellious traitor to Spain?”

  “Emilio was never a traitor, he was a good friend, none of us would have betraye
d him! If you knew me before, then you would know that also!” It occurred to Jesamiah that he did not know this man, had met none of them, yet clearly they knew who and what he was. How was that so? Something here stank as rotten as old fish.

  A door creaked open somewhere behind and to his left. A waft of air made the candles flicker, brought in the sound of talking and laughter from the tavern above. Footsteps descending wooden stairs, a bobbing light.

  Closing his eyes Jesamiah prayed it was not a fourth person coming to add to the fun. What was it they wanted? He had told no lies here, admittedly neither had he told the whole truth, but they knew nothing of the indigo. If they did, would they not be asking where it was hidden?

  “Leave him be, you great oaf!” Madelene.

  “I apologise for my idiot of a husband,” she said as she set the lamp down on a barrel and indicated Jesamiah was to be released. “My dotard here,” she pointed to Scarface, “keeps his brains in his codpiece, and as his pizzle is only this big,” she indicated less than an inch, “that is not much brain.”

  Grinning weakly, Jesamiah tried to shout not to cut him down, but it was too late. Scarface had pulled a keg over, climbed up and slashed through the cords with his knife. Falling heavily to the floor the jolt shuddered through Jesamiah’s body. He lay, winded, hurting too much even to groan, his body rigid as the restricted blood rushed into his hands and arms.

  “Maybe it was you who betrayed Emilio,” he countered to Scarface. Pins and needles were shooting down his arms. “Maybe you wanted the Sickle Moon and found an easy way to get it?”

  Scarface lifted his boot to kick out but his wife snapped at him to not be so stupid. To Jesamiah said, “My husband got that scar fighting the soldiers who came to hang Emilio and his wife. Emilio was his brother.”

  “Ain’t always much love lost between brothers,” Jesamiah remarked hauling himself to his knees. Thought, I’d ‘ave hung mine for them.

  With a huge effort of willpower he managed to get to his feet, massaging his wrists as he did so. He tottered to one of the racks, lifted down a brandy bottle. Finest French. That would do.