The Brotherhood of Pirates

by William Gilkerson

  “With all of this loaded into Golden Hind’s belly, plus the plate, bags of gold and gems, and jewellery you’ve looted, at last your ship will hold no more; there’s only the job of getting it all home. You can’t go back the way you came. You’ve left quite a lot of very angry Spanish chaps in your wake who are now fully alert and waiting for you. If you make it through that lot, there’s Cape Horn again. Now what do you do?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Well, think about it later.” He checked his watch again, listening. “Let’s think about getting our own cargo home, as soon as we’ve got our gear back.” We took up our oars and again pulled for the enemy shore.

  Ever so quietly we landed, unrigged the boom, loading it and its tackle back aboard Annabelle, leaving the Moehners their gun carriage. Like wraiths in the night, we were then gone, back into the mist, where I raised sail for the reach home.

  “Your decision?” He picked up his story as though there had been no interruption. I had to make room in my brain—which was boiling with what we were still going through—for Drake’s predicament. I had no idea.

  “Well, you go north, as far as you can, hoping there is a northwest passage around America, but when you get past Northern California, the prevailing winds are still in your teeth, and that’s out. Your ship needs work and provisions, so you find a place to beach her near what is now San Francisco, and immediately make friends with the native locals. Again, you are very good about this. Also, you take people of all races into your crew, making no distinction, and you require officers to work shoulder-to-shoulder with common sailors. You are a great egalitarian, a true liberal. Also, you make a point of never killing any enemy who surrenders, and treating prisoners with courtesy. These things are very unusual, and much remarked on. You have in your crew a full chamber orchestra. They play courtly music for dinners and ceremonies, with a lot of krummhorns.”

  During the next quarter-hour, Golden Hind reached across the whole, broad Pacific, felt her way through treacherous and uncharted waters to the Indian Ocean, rounded Africa and sailed back to England after a three-year, fifty-thousand-mile circumnavigation, with the greatest haul of loot in anybody’s experience.

  “How much?”

  “Nobody rightly knows. It’s hard to measure in today’s terms, but historians reckon it about equivalent to the annual income of the British government at the time. Be still.” This last remark was in a low tone. “Do you hear that?” I heard only the lapping of wavelets as Annabelle loafed through the night. “Let’s get down her sails,” said the captain, “and stand by oars.” When I had furled the sails, my ear picked up what he had heard, the low, rhythmic growl of a vessel’s engine, somewhere in the mist ahead.

  I had no idea what boat might be out in the cold, moonless wee hours of a Sunday morning, or which way it was going, or why. I hurriedly started to ship my oars. “Do nothing until it passes,” the captain stopped me. “Just wait.” Everything, our entire plan, hinged on not being seen by anybody. We waited. The engine noise receded, and we began to row. “Things by night never seem to go out of fashion,” he commented.

  There was nothing wrong with the captain’s navigation, because the first shoreline we came to was the breakwater. Ten minutes later, Annabelle was alongside our dock, and we were again rigging the boom, this time to her own mast. Here was less distance to hoist the gun—onto a sturdy wooden sled that the captain had made to receive it. It had drag ropes by which we were able to skid it down the dock, then attach a tackle to drag it up the steps without making too much noise, and to the end of the service drive, in plain sight where delivery trucks dropped things off.

  “There’s that,” muttered the captain, when we had levered the gun off the skid. Then there was the boom and its tackle to put back into storage, and Annabelle to secure as though she had never been out, and the sled to dispose of, until 4:00 A.M. had come and gone, by the captain’s watch.

  “Now we’ll turn in,” he said, cautioning me to be up on time and ready for church. “And try to look bright-eyed, not like somebody who’s been up most of the night.”

  “Lust is not limited to the flesh,” Reverend Corkum enunciated. The reverend was still embedded in the seven sins, devoting a full sermon to each of them, week after week, and I went almost immediately to sleep. I had gone to sit next to Jenny, who was with her parents, and I told her to help me stay awake. This she was unable to accomplish, but she did keep me propped up, and nudged me for prayers and hymns. The captain sang with the choir with good aplomb, and after the services joined us again for the family’s Sunday dinner.

  The immediate topic of conversation was the discovery of our cannon, first noticed by Robin while wheeling in Aunt Karen. “Who brought it?” he asked. Mother’s surprise was real, and Meg’s. Nobody knew. It was a big mystery. Everybody in the family was very aware of the entire cannon incident; all had largely given it up for lost, and here it was, returned anonymously, raising many questions. Why had the Moehners brought it back without telling us? Why had they brought it back at all? After some speculation, there was a consensus as to the most likely explanation, which was that one of the Moehners who didn’t like Roy brought it back to us just to tweak his tail. When the Moehners didn’t have a feud going outside the family, they were famous for feuding with each other. Robin questioned when a truck could have come in through the inn’s gates, opening and closing them without anybody hearing it. Nobody could say, not knowing how long the old barrel could have been lying there unnoticed. It was not all that conspicuous, with its grey-green colour.

  “We are assuming it came by truck . . .” Robin started a thought, but was interrupted by the captain, who had listened politely to the conversation without comment. “Is it permitted for me to know what the situation is with this cannon? Or is it family business?” Robin, hastening to mind his manners, briefed our guest as to what everybody had been talking about. The captain listened attentively, with a bare glance at me, hearing again the story I had told him.

  “It sounds like it’s your cannon,” he said to Mother, “and whatever providence is at work here, it would seem possession puts the law back on your side, eh?” This put a cap on the subject of the cannon, pending further revelations, but the conversation had another twist in it.

  “Captain Johnson,” said Aunt Karen, as he was just finishing his dessert.

  “Madam?”

  “Captain Charles Johnson?”

  “Yes, Madam?”

  “In checking for your writings through the library, I have come up with a curiosity.” She produced a book, opened it to the title page, and displayed it to him: “A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates,” it read; “by Captain Charles Johnson.” Aunt Karen cocked an eye at him. “We see this is a 1926 reprint, by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, of a very much older work, 1724 to be exact.”

  “Yes. Quite,” said the captain, engaged with his apple crisp. Aunt Karen pressed on.

  “This edition opens with an editor’s note. May I quote?”

  “Please,” said the captain, munching.

  “‘Nothing is known of Captain Charles Johnson: the name may even be an assumed one. All that can be stated with any certainty is that in 1724 a small octavo volume appeared, entitled A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates . . . by Captain Charles Johnson. Nor, beyond a general remark in the Preface, is there any hint of the sources whence the author got his information; that he was accurate, even to the smallest particular, is attested by every English or American historian who has had occasion to corroborate his stories from other sources . . .’ and it goes on.” Aunt Karen regarded him with a quizzical smile.

  “Yes,” he nodded, dabbing his lips with his napkin. “Johnson. He is the cornerstone source for any study of English pirates of the early eighteenth century. He was not totally accurate. It’s ready for a corrected edition. But he knew more about the pirates of his time than anybody; that’s so
mething all the historians have agreed about, and will agree about all the more in future years, as more evidence comes to light.”

  “What is your relationship?”

  “He is my teacher. One of them. Also Anson, Dampier, Esquemeling, plus others. How do I come to have the same name and occupation? I would have to ask, why anything?” A smile. “Madam, I have no officially known record of a relationship to this two-hundred-year-old author.”

  “I’ve read it,” said Aunt Karen, leafing through the pages, “and given it some thought, and my own view is that this Captain Johnson could not possibly have known as much about the pirates of his time as he did, and in such intimate detail, unless he was one of their brotherhood.”

  “Hmmm,” said the captain, pondering the thought.

  Aunt Karen continued: “He was a sailor. No doubt about that. I used to sail, once, and I’ve read the logs and journals of Johnson’s time, and he writes in a seaman’s language. He is genuine. Nor was he a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe, as some have suggested. I have read all of Defoe, and he is not this Captain Johnson.” The captain nodded. “ So, who do you think he was?”

  “I would not presume to guess. I would say a knowledgeable chap in his field who wished to be anonymous.” He excused himself, and went upstairs where he slept until suppertime.

  The following week was a nervous one for me. In town, Christmas lights began to sprout around the stores, and I was set to making wreaths. Day-by-day, I expected a visit from Chief Moehner and his big nephews. Or something. Robin told us he had officially logged the anonymous delivery of the cannon, as discovered by himself, and his report got no comment that he knew about.

  “Why is there no rumpus about it?” I asked the captain, when we had a moment to ourselves around midweek. On his advice, we had been avoiding each other.

  “Nobody knows what happened, not even the Moehners. They think no one except themselves had access to it. They’re probably trying to figure out which one of them drove out there and got it, and why, and family politics, and it’s likely occupying a lot of dinner conversation. But what can they do about it?” He ruminated. “I think it would be good to make a proper carriage for the gun, using its original ironwork, and mount it on the inn’s deck.”

  On Thursday, Uncle Bill notified the court that the disputed cannon had been returned, presumably by the borrower, arguing that the point was now moot. “They can drag this thing out,” he advised Mother, “but now the shoe is on the other foot, and I would say you have your cannon back. Who do you suppose delivered it?”

  On Friday night, the captain and Meg made music again, this time with customers clearing aside chairs and a table so that they could dance, and we didn’t close until midnight.

  On Saturday, while running errands, I saw the captain in conversation with Noel Nauss. This was disturbing. For the past two weeks, I had seen my new mentor talking to all kinds of people. He had spent considerable time chatting up Becky Bushnell, the head lady at the post office, and he had gotten two haircuts from George D’Autrement, hanging out to converse with the usual group that frequented George’s barbershop. I had even seen him telling jokes to Klaus Moehner in the Sou’wester Beverage Room, but none of his diversions had been as surprising as his apparent interest in Noel Nauss.

  Nobody talked to Noel Nauss. Noel was a logger with the physical qualities of a Sherman tank, and a similar temperament. It is not that he was a bad person as such. Indeed, he had his own notions of morality, which were usually correct, and he went to church; but he lived alone, and was given to great rages if his sense of balance was upset. The one thing that nobody in town wanted to do was trigger this delicate mechanism in Noel, and the best way not to do that, all had learned, was to avoid him.

  Not even the police, or anybody in their right mind, wanted to take on Noel when he was upset. Recreationally, Noel lifted small automobiles by their rear ends as you or I would lift a book. Notoriously, he had once demolished Jeff Moehner’s garage because there was a dogfight there, with betting. Noel liked animals better than people, judging by the number of men he sent to the county hospital that night. He would have gotten into a lot of trouble, except the cops had an excuse to leave him alone because it was an illegal event to start with. “He would have been a handful to bring in,” was Robin’s remark about the incident. I thought it prudent to warn the captain about Noel, but he showed no sign of having heard me.

  “What do you think of having a Christmas concert?” he asked, first to me and then the family at Sunday dinner. It turned out to be an idea to which he had given some thought.

  “You mean,” said Meg, “music by just you and me?”

  “And the choir, if they care to come, and perhaps another fiddler or two you might know. I’ll bet we can pack the place.” Everybody liked the idea, even Meg, and especially Mother. Mother was never happier than when putting together a special event, and there hadn’t been one since the funeral reception for Floyd Watson’s family the previous spring, a very subdued occasion.

  “We’ll need to give the place a good cleaning,” she fussed, “and get all the old chairs out. How many people do you think might come?” And so the planning began. Later that Sunday I heard the end of Drake, by the fire.

  “Elizabeth knighted him for what he had done, even though it helped to destroy what was left of her relationship with Philip of Spain, leading eventually to war. Drake sailed for the West Indies again, now with twenty-five ships, ravaging the Caribbean with great success. Philip had had enough, and started gathering a great armada of ships intended to carry the soldiers it would take to invade England, capture it, and reinstate Catholicism—making the whole annoying island a reasonable place again in his view. The port where the expedition was being put together was Cadiz, and the process took long enough to be well known to Elizabeth. She unleashed Drake on the operation.

  “Again, his tactic was total surprise. There he was all of a sudden, with a fleet sailing right into Cadiz Harbour, under its very guns, with a whole night in which to burn everything he could get at. That was a lot. Besides ships and supplies, he torched all the cured barrel staves that had been accumulated to build the kegs to hold the water and salt meat that the armada would need for its thousands of sailors, soldiers, and officers. Then he sailed out again and went home. The raid delayed the Spanish invasion of England by a year, and when it did come, it faced an enemy that was fully prepared.

  “The rest is history. Into the English Channel sailed the proud Spanish armada under Medina Sidonia in overwhelming force, with Drake and his colleagues nibbling at their edges. The Spanish—we called them the Dons—headed for Flanders to pick up an army under the Duke of Alba, but the English kept at them, nibbling, then sending blazing hulks drifting into their anchorage at Gravelines—Drake’s idea—so that they had to make sail again in confusion and were dispersed. After that, the English could take them one by one. Also, all the Spaniards by this time had the squitters because their provisions were casked in uncured barrels since Drake had burned Cadiz. On top of that, the wind was southwest, so they couldn’t get back to Spain without sailing first around the northern tip of Scotland, and then south around Ireland. There they were battered by storms and many were driven ashore. And that’s where we’ll leave off with Drake. He made another, last voyage to the Caribbean, where he died of a fever in 1598. But the Spanish ships of the armada that went down off Ireland are where we should pause, until your friend Jenny can come back. When does she plan to come back?” he asked.

  I fumbled, trying to tell him her visit was more or less a one-time thing, and that she would not be back.

  “Hmmm,” he said, groping in his pocket, bringing out an envelope, folded a number of times. He opened it fold by fold, extracting another fold of cotton, which he laid gently open to reveal a single gold link, clipped open, apparently one piece of a golden chain. “Give this to Mistress MacGregor, and tell her that it is a fragment of the treasure of Grace O’Malley, who was the pirate qu
een of Ireland, as she’s known to history. Tell her if she wants to know any more about this trinket, she should be on hand Sunday, eight bells sharp. That’s 4:00 P.M. to her. Now let us rest.”

  7

  Of Queens and Princes

  FEW OF US got much rest over the next week, or for a while to come. True winter descended with a southeaster that clung for days, and the last of the boats were hauled out before the annual freeze, including Klaus’s boat. I was again on Grendel alert, taking my different routes to and from school, and to town. I had more errands than usual because of the preparations for the inn’s Christmas concert now in the works, scheduled for Boxing Day, less than three weeks hence.

  “We’ve got a lot of things to do before then,” said Mother, issuing orders right and left, pressing everyone in sight into service. Besides multiple errands, I got the assignment of making posters. Meg’s job was rounding up the musicians, which she did right away. She got hold of Jason McGridley, who was the oldest and best fiddler around, who said he would come with his guitarist and flutist and niece (who was a good step dancer), if Meg would sing with them. She would. She also recruited the First Anglican Church choir, some of whom had worked up a couple of numbers on their own time that they couldn’t present in church. She even got a promise from Tapping Tim MacCurdy to come and play a set, and he was passing famous.

  “That sounds like enough to make a draw,” the captain commented, finishing a draft of the story he had composed for the Baywater Beacon. “Admiral Anson Inn Christmas Concert,” he read the title to us. “In a musical celebration of the season, the oldest continuing establishment in the province will host an afternoon and evening of music and dance by a rare gathering of talent. This includes . . .”—here everybody on the programme was named—an impressive list. The event would begin at three o’clock and proceed through suppertime, when there would be a ticket charge at the door; food and beverages would be served; no reservations. The notice had an added emphasis that this was a chance to hear good music live and sit close to the performers, which was even better than television.