The Brotherhood of Pirates

by William Gilkerson

  I stood, stunned, trying to take in everything that had just happened, and the revolting task suddenly before me. “Get to it, then,” he said, going inside. And so I was left with bagging Grendel’s remains, sloshing down the area, dragging my late enemy to the cliff, and pushing him over into the sea. Afterward, I obscured the drag marks I’d left, and, by the time the inn opened, there was no trace of him, except as another item on my list of secrets, which was getting bigger.

  “That was some backfire we heard this afternoon,” Mother commented later. I agreed.

  10

  In the Cellars

  THE CAPTAIN CONTINUED in his gnarly mood. I approached him after closing time to thank him for erasing the most dangerous enemy I’d ever known, and he took a contrary view. “He was your best friend. He showed you what it means to really stay alert. Say a prayer for him; be grateful for his teaching, and try to remember it without him around. Be glad you met him at an age when you’re fleet of foot.” He shifted his own foot back onto its chair. I told him I’d save my prayers for worthier things than Grendel.

  “What worthier?” he asked with a lift of one eyebrow. “By your own account he was a magnificent animal, intelligent, beautifully trained to do exactly what he had been taught to do . . .”

  “Which was attack and kill things, like me!”

  “You were just a target he’d been pointed to; he was as loyal a soldier as any conscript, and better trained than most. And with a different teacher, he would have been the cuddliest, best parlour pet you can imagine, bringing in the paper, guarding the children. Never chasing the cats. Poor Grendel.” What he was saying seemed so absurd, and his look so dolorous, it occurred to me that he was making a spoof of the whole thing, and I laughed. It felt good to laugh, with Grendel gone, and my nerves starting to steady. But my listener just became more grim and my laugh trickled off. He fixed me with a melancholy eye. “It’s a dark and terrible thing to snuff the life of another sentient being; you’re taking away everything they have, and . . . well, then that’s what you’ve done. Or what I’ve done, in this instance.”

  “Have you ever killed a man?” I asked him. He loaded his pipe, not answering, until I became self-conscious for having put the question. “I mean,” I explained, “you must have been through both the world wars, weren’t you?”

  “It feels to me,” he sighed, “I’ve been through every bloody war in the whole verdomde universe.”

  “Verdomde?”

  “It’s Dutch. That’s the language in which Esquemeling first published his book in Amsterdam in 1678. The copy I’ve loaned you is a later English edition, from 1699. Are you enjoying it?” I had to confess I was finding it difficult to read, first because of the antique printing with S’s that looked like F’s; second because the content was just a little more horrible than I was ready for.

  “As to your first point, sorry I don’t have a newer edition. It’s never been out of print, actually; very popular indeed. As to your second point, I presume you must have met the Dutchman Rock Brasiliano, and read about his roasting Spaniards on spits, and the Frenchman Nau, called L’Ollonais, who tore open some unfortunate chap and cut out his heart and took bites from it in order to elicit information from his other captives. Is that what’s got you feeling squeamish?” It was indeed, particularly right at this moment, fresh after my close, personal disposal of Grendel. He seemed to read my thoughts.

  “Well, you get animals in any profession. Brasiliano and L’Ollonais are types who are always around.”

  “Around where?”

  “Everywhere. In every society since prehistoric times. I daresay if you could line up a hundred caveman chaps, and a hundred modern chaps—lorry drivers, dentists, accountants, and whatnot—and could wire up their heads to have a look at their hopes and fears and loves and hates—and problems—you’d get about the same readings. In each group, you can bet there’ll be some chap who’s a saint, soaked in loving-kindness, and another who’s an absolutely awful sod, ready to soak his beard in blood.”

  “But, the world’s come a long way . . .”

  “Toward much of the same,” he finished my sentence for me with a wave of his arm. “We’re on our way to conquering the planet with our machinery, maybe even space, but our minds have stayed the same size.” He brooded. “And I reckon we’ll always have our L’Ollonais one way or another. The irony is, when Alexander of Macedon, known to history as ‘the Great,’ let his army commit atrocities that I’ll spare you in your fragile frame of mind, it barely tarnished his reputation. Or when Caesar had the hands of thirty thousand prisoners chopped off or . . . on and on. L’Ollonais was a small-timer. And when it came to cutting out hearts, the Aztecs did them by the thousands, which the Spanish put a stop to. Read the journal of Bernal Diaz. Dear boy, you’re looking a bit sallow. Let’s pass on to a brighter subject.”

  “If the world’s hopeless, where does that leave us?”

  “Hispaniola, in your case. It seems to me I left you cruising around there with some rather agreeable new friends who are French buccaneer chaps, but not L’Ollonais. Your mates may be a bit rough round the edges, and short on etiquette, but they are not wantonly cruel. Like many other buccaneers, they’ll have nothing to do with sods like L’Ollonais. He’s a renegade among renegades.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He got chopped into pieces by a bunch of Darien Indians, and nobody mourned. It was the likes of him that gave a bad name to an honest profession.”

  “Honest?”

  “Well, you’ve got your letter of marque from your authority, and you’re out doing what he wants you to do, which is the same thing all the governments are doing, and there are quite a few ships like yours, large and small. Scores of them. Sometimes you get together with some other buccaneer ships, until you’ve got a squadron together with enough men to raid a Spanish port.”

  “Like Drake?” I missed being Drake.

  The captain nodded. “Or the Vikings. A surprise amphibious strike in force gets the place just long enough for you to go in, take what you like, and get out before anybody can come against you. It worked again and again. Esquemeling is full of examples, which I daresay you’ve read.”

  I said I preferred listening to him, rather than struggling through Esquemeling, and reminded him he’d said something about my meeting that author.

  “Did I?” He scowled. “Very well, meet him. He’s in your own crew. Decent enough bloke. Came out under indenture, got treated brutally for three years, and is now doing the same thing you are.” He became preoccupied with trying to light his pipe with a box of damp matches. I found him some dry ones. “Ahh,” he said, puffing.

  “And Esquemeling tells me . . . what?”

  “Not a bloody thing. He doesn’t speak English, and you don’t speak Dutch, or much French, for that matter. You are therefore grateful when your ship sails to rendezvous with a squadron of buccaneer vessels under Morgan. There are a lot of English ships, and you join one.”

  “You mean I jump ship again?”

  “No need. Your mates vote to let you go with your countrymen. Remember, it’s a free society, where the rules are about the same on all the ships.”

  “What rules?”

  “The rules of the brotherhood, which is quite a huge family, some thousands of free sailors, always on the move, no ground to call their own. But there are plenty of welcoming ports in which to spend your take and fix your ships. As to the rules, it’s time you learn them, but not until tomorrow, when I want to get down into the cellar and start designing a proper carriage for the gun.” This had been carried back to the cellar by Noel Nauss. “We’ll need all the original iron bits so I can measure ’em, and they’ll all have to get their rust knocked off. You can do that part. First we’ll require an electrical cord down to the cellar.” He handed me a list. “And here are some other things we’ll want.”

  Police Chief Moehner showed up on Saturday morning. The Chief had a flat pair of eyes stu
ck into a face that was also flat, with a squashed look to it. He was investigating a reported gunshot in the neighbourhood the previous afternoon. Mother said she’d heard something she thought was a backfire, and I nodded.

  “Do you have any firearms on the premises?” he wanted to know, learning there was my father’s old twelve-gauge shotgun. This he asked to see and, while Mother was off rummaging for it, the captain came down and was also questioned.

  “Eh?” he asked, cupping his hand to his ear.

  “Gunshot? Did you hear anything like a gunshot?”

  The captain reflected. “Didn’t somebody say a truck backfired?” He was again in bumbly mode. Yes, he did have a firearm, a flare pistol, which was on his yacht at Tom’s, but the chief’s interest was diverted by Mother reappearing with the shotgun. It was obvious from its dust that it hadn’t been fired in years.

  “Mmmm,” he said, handing it back to her. “Have any of you by chance seen my nephew’s dog, Grendel? I ask because he’s missing, and was last seen near here.” Mother shook her head, looking at me; I shook my head, too.

  “Problem about a pissing dog?” the captain asked, his voice louder than normal.

  “Missing,” said the Chief, raising his own voice automatically; “a missing dog.”

  “Oh,” said the captain. “No, I’m not missing any dog. Don’t have one. Frightfully good of you to come ’round with your concern, however. I do hope you locate the owner.”

  “Mmmm,” said Chief Moehner, flatly, and went away. Mother was amused by the captain’s treatment of him.

  “Are you having a little hearing trouble, today?” she asked.

  “No, Madam,” he answered with a straight face. “Never wore a little earring, or any other kind, although I’ve had a number of shipmates who did.”

  I spent the rest of the morning rigging lightbulbs and gathering all the tools he wanted so that work could begin after noon dinner. He had made a drawing of the carriage we were to build, and began marking it with measurements of everything while teaching me more nomenclature than I really wanted to know: trunnions, cascabel, astragals, fillets, ogees, chase, vent, muzzle swell and moulding, grips—and these things had only to do with the barrel. The carriage and all of its axle fittings, checks, caps, clamps, beds (and other things too numerous to list) made a universe of their own.

  “Rather sophisticated for such a plain old thing, eh?”

  It was indeed, and I was grateful not to have to memorise the names of all the pieces that I was put to rust-chip and wire-brush, tediously, according to what he called “the rule of procedure.” I reminded him of his own teaching that the only rule was that there weren’t any rules.

  “That, too, is true,”

  “How can they both be true?”

  “A splendid example of the parallel existence of contradictory truths; it’s also true that you’re holding your chisel at too sharp an angle, and you’re nicking through into the iron, which is very disrespectful of the rather rare artefact we’re here to restore.” I adjusted my chisel. “As to the rules, each ship’s crew made their own. Those were the articles, signed by everybody aboard.”

  “So I have to sign them?” I asked this question simply to prompt him into the present tense, and to spinning his story in the second person. Of all his methods, this was my favourite. There was something in its immediacy that bred my astonishing instants of being in the action, or at least having that very vivid illusion.

  “Everybody had to sign the ship’s articles,” he answered. “Rule one: no stealing, which meant no concealing of any loot. Every man could take whatever clothing he wanted, but nothing else over the value of one piece of eight—peso in modern lingo—on pain of marooning. Maybe death. It was the worst offence. As to the others, nobody could leave the ship without the permission of his mates . . .”

  “Which I get in order to join my new ship, right?”

  “Please keep your eye on your work, or we’ll never finish. Then there was the rule against women sailing with the ship, although in port their presence was vigorously welcomed. No gambling was allowed: too many problems came from it. No fighting was permitted aboard the ship. If a couple of blokes got across each other and wanted to square off, they had to wait until they could take it ashore. Every man was required to be armed, to his taste, with weapons that he was responsible for maintaining and using with skill. It was a martial community, and the chaps all took pride in their knives and swords, pistols and muskets, sometimes pikes, whatever combination they felt best with. Last, everybody did have to obey the officers, first the captain, then the first and second mates, but especially the quartermaster, who was elected like the captain. The quartermaster was the civil authority, led attacks, got command of any significant prizes. Under those chaps came the bosun, and his mates. I make it about four and three-quarters inches.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Width of the axles,” he said, making another note. “The rest of the rules had to do with shares. Everybody was on shares, like fishermen. The captain traditionally got two shares; the main officers got a share and a half; the petty officers and artists got a share and a quarter.” He explained that the word “artist” was applied to all who had a special skill, such as the surgeon, cooper, sailmaker, any navigator, and musicians. “The musicians always got Sundays off, but there was many a Sabbath when we played anyway.”

  “We?”

  “Musicians. We’ve always been around, and here we are still. Among the brethren of the coast, musicians were held in high regard. A good fiddler or piper could choose his ship. The buccaneer Montbars, also known as the Exterminator, had a wheel-fiddler aboard who got two full shares, same as the captain. Why? Because he could bring that whole rowdy lot to their knees with his music. Even drummers were honoured, and buglers—although as lesser artists, they usually got less share.”

  “What share do I get?” Trying again to insinuate myself into the scene, I got an irritated look.

  “For what? Where’ve you earned it?” he growled.

  I told him that was entirely up to him, expressing my confidence in his ability to make up a story where I could see some action and earn a share.

  “Make up, you say.” He looked at me in a way that I will never forget. It was a flat gaze that regarded me, looked directly into me, then seemed to drink me (there is no other way of describing this). His eyes became like black holes, pulling me into them, into a bottomless depth of nothingness. I had never seen the like.

  “Common hands got a share,” he said, continuing as though what had just happened between us had not happened. “Boys might get a half-share, if not worse. But nobody got any share until the social insurance money got paid out . . .” He paused, making another notation, which gave me a chance to recover from whatever it was that I had just experienced, and catch up.

  “Social insurance?”

  “Oh aye, and the first in the Americas, I would say. Here you had all these refugee chaps, all escaped from some navy, lord, army, indenturer, or owner who never looked after them except to use them, so the first thing they did with their new freedom, after founding their democracy, was to take care of each other in ways no government had ever done for them. And that’s how the rules were shaped, starting with payment for on-the-job injuries. For instance, on Esquemeling’s ship, the articles paid six hundred pieces of eight to anybody losing his right arm; the left one was worth five hundred, which was also the value of the right leg. Getting the left one shot away or lopped off you got four hundred.

  “Funnily enough, the Frenchies only paid one hundred pieces of eight for an eye. The Brits paid more for one of those. Details varied from ship to ship, but the convention was the same on all of them. And if you were killed, your share would be sent along to whomever you had designated. Perhaps your mother. All these moneys were paid off the top of the take.”

  “What was a piece of eight worth?” I asked. I was no longer so eager for one of his stories as I had been. He gave me n
o more alarm, however, just an answer to my question. I learned a piece of eight was a silver coin of about the size of an American silver dollar. It was easily clipped into halves, or quarters, or eighths, for making change. Two bits were a quarter. One eight-real piece of eight was worth about five English shillings, which was about one month’s wages for a common sailor aboard a merchant ship. It bought bed and board at a decent inn for a couple of days. A hundred of them bought a slave.

  Other silver coinage was in wide circulation—crowns, ecus, thalers, ducatons, and various kinds of dollars, but pieces of eight were the standard unit of currency throughout the Caribbean for some three hundred years. That was simply because there were so many of them, made in the millions from the silver mined by the Spaniards in Bolivia and Peru. The Spanish mines also yielded gold, which was minted into doubloons. These were about the same size as a silver piece of eight, but one doubloon was worth a heavy bag of silver. Gold coins were the most desirable of all booty: louis d’or, sovereigns, guineas, and such. According to the captain, the value of gold had remained more or less constant throughout all history, an ounce of it always being worth a full suit of clothes, head to foot, in any time, any civilisation.

  Following gold, he discussed the value of gemstones, silks, brocades, religious artefacts, and lesser, more usual, cargo down to logwood, hides, sugar, and rum. Here he paused wistfully, concluding the lesson with remarks on other desirable spirits that were sometimes found: “Brandy, aquavit, wine, gin . . . so many,” he sighed, promising to give me another story when he could tell it with a mug of punch in front of him, and at a time with nobody around to interrupt. Then he sent me above to clean up for my evening duties, leaving him alone in the cellar to finish his cannon notes.