by Dudley Pope
While the crowd of men, women and children fell over themselves in panic as they made room to let Ned pass through, Aurelia and Mrs Judd, both still in monks’ robes, faces darkened with dust to make them appear mannish and unshaven and their hair tied down, walked beside Ned, each waving a pistol and Mrs Judd shouting blood-curdling threats in English at the frightened Spaniards.
A young man in the crowd who suddenly ran towards Ned waving a sword paused for a moment as Mrs Judd bellowed at him but, recognizing a woman’s voice, started running again.
Mrs Judd calmly aimed her pistol and shot him, his sword sliding along the ground in front of him as he lurched a pace and then collapsed, his legs folding under him.
An enormous tamarind tree, its dense branches spread out horizontally like a parasol only a few feet above the ground and shading the far end of the plaza, had been chosen as the rallying point for the buccaneers.
Ned, beginning to lurch as Diana started wriggling, was unable to hear what she was saying because of the screams of the crowd trying to push back to make room for what seemed to them to be the leader of a party of mad monks.
Finally he stopped, heard Diana shouting that she could walk now, and set her down. As she slid from his shoulder, one magnificent breast surging from a torn bodice, she gasped: “Where’s Thomas?”
Ned looked behind and pointed to Thomas only a few yards away. His feet were hardly touching the ground and he had one arm draped round Saxby’s neck, the other round Lobb’s.
“They almost killed him on the rack,” Diana said. “He can’t stand.”
“He doesn’t need to!” Ned said impatiently. “Come on – we’re making for that tree!”
Then the yells and screams of the crowd began to fade as Ned heard a chorus of shouts growing over his right shoulder: the seamen, shouting in a variety of accents “Griff-in, Griff-in…” as they were cut free, picked up the cry from their rescuers and began running towards the tamarind tree.
Ned heard shots from the same direction, followed by agonized screams of wounded men. As all three women hesitated Ned said savagely: “Get to the tree! There’s nothing you can do!”
Diana, although able to hurry, was finding it difficult to walk in a straight line. Ned took her arm and found himself momentarily fascinated by the movement of the bared breast. At that moment Mrs Judd bellowed more threats to the crowd in front of her as the people fought each other to make way, and Ned was proud to see Aurelia waving a pistol and screaming equally terrible threats in Spanish. The sight of a clearly enraged but beautiful woman monk waving a pistol at them left no doubt what she meant.
At last the four of them reached the tree and Mrs Judd turned with her back to the trunk, empty pistol waving threateningly. “Come on dearie, stand by me and look fierce!” she told Aurelia. “All right now?” she asked Diana. “Nice breast, but you’ve never suckled brats, that’s for sure. But tuck it away for now, dearie, in case it rouses lewd thoughts in the minds of these ’eathen Dons!”
Diana blushed, and Ned laughed at her embarrassment in such surroundings: pointing pistols, pointing nipples, pointing fingers: at the moment all seemed to be chaos as Diana struggled with her bodice.
Then between the other two men Thomas lurched up, followed by Mitchell. “Ned,” Thomas gasped, “there I am sitting ready to meet my Maker but instead I meet you!”
“Sit down and rest,” Ned said. “We’ve still a long way to walk.”
By now the crowd in the plaza was thinning as scores of panic-stricken Spaniards escaped along the track running beside the church. As Ned watched them for a moment he was surprised to see bodies sprawled at the top of the steps. By now the first of the ragged seamen, still shouting “Griff-in!”, reached the shade of the tamarind and began whooping as they saw Thomas and Diana.
“Saxby – you and Lobb go over and see how they’re getting on freeing those men,” Ned snapped, “and make sure all the Spanish soldiers are accounted for. I counted twenty-one with muskets and there were eleven others.”
“Their commanding officer is dead, no doubt about that. Fine shot o’ yours,” Saxby said as he hurried off across the plaza.
“I suppose I should address you as ‘Abbot’,” Thomas told Ned. “When do we set off for the monastery?”
“Just as soon as all our men are back here. I hope we have enough stretchers for the wounded – that shooting sounded bad.”
“Stretchers? Do you mean to say you’ve brought stretchers?”
“We’ve brought poles and we’ve brought pieces of rolled up sail cloth into which we’ve sewn open-ended pockets on the long sides, so we just slide the poles in to make stretchers strong enough to carry portly folk like you, my lord bishop!”
“I’ll walk!” Thomas protested.
“Oh no you won’t. You, Diana and Mitchell and any wounded go on stretchers. We’re in a hurry to get back to Boquerón. We don’t have time for invalids like – hello, what’s this?”
Four of the Peleus’ seamen had stopped in front of Ned, obviously waiting to talk to him.
“Excuse me, sir, but we…well, we want to present this ’ere to you, as a kind o’…well, a token,” one of them said.
With that he brought a large and ornate sword in its scabbard from behind his back and presented it to Ned, who recognized it as the one which the commanding officer of the Spanish soldiers was going to use to signal the first of the executions.
Thomas saw Ned hesitating and growled: “Take it, Ned! That dam’ sword was going to signal the end of each of us. You might as well have something to remember today by.”
Ned took it, and Aurelia, tucking her pistol in her belt as thought it was a comb, helped Ned put the leather strap over his head. “Say something!” she whispered.
“I – er, well, thank you.” Then he remembered something. “Those bodies on the top of the steps?”
“Ah yes, sir. We caught the town governor and his deputy – the governor was the one that made the speech after the bishop – and a few others: the ones that watched the torturing of Sir Thomas and the lady, and were then the judges at the trial.”
“What did you do with them?”
The man turned and waved towards the church. “You can just see ’em at the top of the steps.”
Ned was puzzled. Why had the military governor and the bishop waited, instead of escaping when it was obvious the prisoners were being rescued? He asked the seaman, who gave a dry laugh. “We heard the speeches and one of the men understood enough Spanish to guess the rest. So as soon as you shot the captain, sir, and we were freed, we got cutlasses and ran up the steps and – well, we executed them what was going to be executioners.”
“Quite right, too,” Thomas growled. “I take against bishops and governors who put me on the rack for hours to make me change religions, and put Diana on as well and make me watch, and then sentence us to death at the end of it.”
“Don’t worry about him,” Diana said, “he always gets these attacks after he’s killed a few deserving Dons.”
Ned waved to the groups of seamen hurrying across the square, all of them shouting “Griff-in” in chorus, so that the name must be echoing through the whole town. The men started running, forming up breathless round the tamarind.
Finally Ned saw Saxby with the last group. They were carrying three men. By this time some of the Griffin’s men who had earlier reached the tree were preparing the stretchers, and Ned called: “We’ll need six.”
Saxby strode up. “All here now, sir. Had to leave two men for dead, and we’ve three wounded.”
“What happened?”
“The firing squad. Our fellows made them drop their muskets and a few watched over them while the rest cut the Peleus men free. They never reckoned on the Dons having pistols, but half a dozen o’ ’em did…�
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“What happened to the soldiers?”
Saxby shrugged his shoulders. “There’s no chance of any of them following us, sir.”
Seamen now had the stretchers ready and while the three wounded were put on them, a protesting Thomas again demanded that he be allowed to walk.
“My lord bishop,” said an exasperated Ned, “we’ve given offence to just about everyone in this town – apart from anything else, they put on their Sunday clothes to see more than sixty of you executed and they were cheated. They may well saddle their horses and chase us with billhooks and scythes and swords and curses just to show their annoyance, so we need to hurry. Because of over-indulgence in the past you are in no condition to hurry. So – on the stretcher!”
Within five minutes the column of more than one hundred and seventy buccaneers was marching out of San Germán, led by Mrs Judd, still in her monk’s robes and singing bawdy songs, beating time with her empty pistol.
As they approached each village, Mrs Judd waved her pistol in the air and, keeping time, led the seamen in the shout “Griff-in… Griff-in…!” As the roar swept over each street, doors slammed when the inhabitants ran for shelter and the usual packs of dogs started barking from the safety of clumps of trees.
Ned walked between the stretchers carrying Thomas and Diana side by side and was startled to find both of them feeling guilty about the whole episode.
“Just because of those damned water casks!” Thomas said crossly. “I should have known they’d dry out, left empty for weeks. I knew the wood wasn’t seasoned.”
“That fool of a carpenter didn’t tell you of the seepage and the water he was finding in the bilge until it was too late,” Diana said.
“I know that,” Thomas growled, “but having lost the damned water I should have run back to Port Royal for more. Fact is, Ned, beating to windward day after day leaves your brain numbed. You’re stunned. I must have been mad to send in that flag of truce at Boquerón. Me, trusting the Dons,” he said disgustedly.
“I was as bad,” Diana confessed. “What with the King signing the new peace treaty with Spain, and old Sir Harold Loosely being so huffy when you pointed out that what’s decided in Europe doesn’t affect us out here…”
“You were just getting thirsty,” Ned said jokingly. “Anyway, we’ve got you out. One of our Spaniards – you remember Julio? – Well, he’s been trotting back and forth, pretending he’s the owner and master of the Griffin, and he’s so well in with the mayor of Boquerón they’ve nearly agreed on a price for him to buy the Peleus prize!”
“Good for him. Right at the moment I’d sell her cheap!”
Three hours later, preceded by the roars of “Griff-in… Griff-in!” they all arrived in Boquerón to find the boats of the Griffin and the Phoenix pulled up on the beach waiting for them and not a Spaniard in sight.
“Oh yes,” Ned told Thomas, “there were three Spanish soldiers left on board the Peleus as guards. They’ll have been dealt with by now.”
As seamen launched the boats and were about to carry the stretchers across the sand to them, Diana held out her hand to Ned. “We haven’t yet said thank you. But I wish you hadn’t let Aurelia take such a risk, even if a monk’s robes become her…”
“I tried to make her and Mrs Judd stay here. Still, but for Mrs Judd shooting him dead, you and I would have been spitted by that madman who ran out of the crowd.”
Thomas said: “When do you want to sail, Ned?”
“Your water casks are still up by the well empty. Let’s get them filled and then leave for St Martin. I wonder if that galleon is still there?”
Chapter Twelve
Led by the Griffin, the three ships weighed anchor and, with the last of the day’s offshore breeze, sailed out through the Canal Sur, the channel between the reefs which were marked on the starboard hand by the small clumps of mangroves sprouting from the end of the Bajo Enmedio.
Aurelia, standing beside Ned at the taffrail, looked back astern into the quiet bay, ringed by mangroves and palms (most of which, seeming to bow, leaned slightly to the west under the constant pressure of the Trade winds).
“Apart from the visit to San Germán, I’ve enjoyed every minute of our stay in Boquerón Bay,” she said. “It’s so peaceful. Palms rustling at night, the birds singing – land birds, Ned, singing for the joy of it, not your miserable sea birds that only squeal and squawk when they’re fighting over bits of fish…”
“You appreciate it now we’re leaving, but you weren’t so happy before we rescued Diana and Thomas!”
“Of course not. Anyway enjoying things is the memory of them; they never seem so much fun at the time…”
“You seemed to be enjoying yourself running across the plaza with Martha Judd, waving a pistol and screaming French and Spanish words I’ve never even heard before!”
“Just as well you haven’t,” Aurelia said, blushing. “I didn’t know I knew them. They just – well, they just came out in the excitement.”
“Very effective they were too,” Ned said drily, signalling to Lobb to give the order to harden in sheets and braces as the Griffin finally passed through the channel. Ahead on the starboard bow, he could just see more clumps of mangrove, rows of small rocks and waves breaking lazily on the Bajos Resuello, reefs which protected the channel into Boquerón from the west but left a wide channel to the south. This went past three points, Melones, Moja Casabe and Aguila, before allowing ships bound to the east to cross the Bahia Salinas and then round the appropriately named Cabo Rojo, recognizable because of the red cliffs forming the south-western tip of Porto Rico.
An hour later the Griffin reached down to Cabo Rojo, followed by the Phoenix and then the Peleus. Off the cape the wind had been fluking – no doubt swirled round by Cerro Maraquita, a mountain about a thousand feet high at the end of a row of peaks which, standing back from the sea, ran parallel with the south coast of the island.
“Here we go,” Aurelia said as the sea became choppy, “beat, beat, beat… You know, Ned, once we’re back in Port Royal I never want to beat to windward again.”
“Ladies with floppy bosoms should never be made to beat to windward,” Ned said, “and gentlemen only rarely. But we’re only about two hundred and fifty miles from St Martin.”
“Yes, two hundred and fifty in a straight line,” Aurelia said crossly, having been caught before, “but how many miles do we have to sail, with this everlasting tacking?”
“This time we’ll stretch down to Guadeloupe or Dominica – about three hundred miles – and we shouldn’t be hard on the wind, unless it blows from the south-east.”
“Why are we going so far south?” Aurelia asked suspiciously. “That’ll put us a couple of hundred miles south of St Martin.”
Ned gave an exaggerated sigh. “There I am, making it easier for us all, and you start looking suspicious. Once we’ve had a good sail to, say, Dominica, we ease sheets and reach up to St Martin with the Trade winds comfortably on our quarter.”
“Except they’ll blow hard from the south-east all the way from here to Dominica, and then back north-east as soon as we arrive, so we have to go on beating all the way to St Martin.”
Ned laughed and held his hands out, palms uppermost. “Of course, my darling. Obviously you’re a witch who can foretell the future. But if, instead of steering south-east for Dominica or Guadeloupe, I steer due east, direct for St Martin, do you know what the wind will do?”
“It’ll back to the east and head us,” Aurelia said promptly. “That’s why I said I’m sick of beating to windward.”
As the Griffin rounded Cabo Rojo, revealing a coastline stretching to the eastward lined with mangroves, with dozens of small cays scattered just offshore and many long dark patches in the water showing where coral reefs reached up within inches of the surface, Aurelia u
nexpectedly said: “That’s where I’d like to live. No mountains – except those well inland – no cliffs, and with all those cays and reefs to protect it, no rough seas…”
Ned looked at the small chart he was holding. “The first village along there is called Parguera, and it’s about three miles nearer to San Germán than Boquerón. Seems not to have any fort or gun battery, so there’s probably no garrison.”
“Just the place for us,” Aurelia said. “Can’t we call and see if anyone has a large house to sell?”
“Yes – if you fancy piloting us through reefs scattered up to three miles to seaward, most of them running east and west like gates in front of us and a foot of water over them!”
“We should have walked down from San Germán,” said Aurelia. “We wouldn’t have had the sun in our eyes, as we did going back to Boquerón.”
“Well, the Spanish seem so unfriendly that perhaps we’d better finish building the house in Jamaica first. Let’s see what mistakes we make with it.”
“The first mistake,” Aurelia said bitterly, “was to think of building a house on an island claimed by Spain when there’s such a government in London.”
“Such a King,” Ned said.
“It’s the same thing. Oh Ned, you’re so wrapped up with loyalty to the King you don’t realize that your feelings are like a great river: everything flows one way. You’re loyal to the King, or government, but you can’t see that to them you are – well, a scribble on a piece of paper, a number, as important as one of those waves approaching us.”
“You don’t understand loyalty to a cause or a country,” Ned argued, hurt by her words. “I can’t describe it; it’s just inside me, like appreciating beauty, or being revolted by wanton killing.”
Aurelia was suddenly angered: Ned’s attitude was an outrage against her practical attitude towards life. “You and Thomas and the buccaneers have saved Jamaica several times. Without you, England would have lost it years ago.
