by Tim Severin
The motion of the boat eased as the fishing smack passed into the shelter of the headland protecting Paita’s anchorage, and soon the fishermen were changing course to lay their vessel alongside the jetty where a file of Spanish soldiers already stood waiting. Their grey-haired sergeant wore on his tunic the faded red saltire which marked him as a veteran of the European wars.
‘Here’s one of the pirates! And you’re welcome to him,’ called out the fisherman. The boat bumped against the landing place, Hector lost his balance, and he was pushed hard in the back so that he sprawled forward ignominiously onto the weed-covered stone steps. A hand seized him by the collar of his cloak, and he was hauled upright roughly.
‘Treat him gently. He’s an envoy, not a prisoner!’ Maria said sharply. She was being helped out of the boat by one of the fishermen and was glaring angrily at the sergeant. He looked back at her in disbelief. ‘He’s come here to speak with the Alcalde,’ she snapped. ‘Escort us to his office at once.’
The sergeant’s expression of disgust made his feelings clear as he ordered his men to form up on either side of Hector and march with him into the town. Maria kept pace, walking beside the little group as it made its way past the customs house and harbour offices and the warehouses where the merchants of Paita stored their goods. Looking about him, Hector saw that the town exceeded Arica for prosperity. Besides the usual piles of fishing gear, there were stacks of timber for boatbuilding, ranks of wine barrels awaiting shipment, huge jars which he guessed contained olives for export, and in open-sided sheds he glimpsed wooden crates and bales painted with strange markings. Maria noted his interest and remarked, ‘Those have come from China. They arrive in Acapulco with the Manila galleon, and are on their way farther south to customers in Peru. The consulado of Paita arranges the distribution.’ She saw his puzzlement and explained, ‘The consulado is the guild of merchants. They have the money and the influence if a ransom is demanded for Dona Juana.’ But Hector was not thinking of a ransom. Maria’s comment had reminded him of the maps and sailing directions he had been copying from Captain Lopez’s navigation notes. If the captain had been trading as far north as Mexico to meet the incoming Manila galleon, his knowledge of the northern shores was likely to be very accurate.
By now word had spread that the fishermen were bringing in a pirate. As the little group walked farther into Paita, more and more people appeared on the streets, and they were in an ugly mood. Women as well as men began to shout insults and make threatening gestures. There were cries of ‘Hang him but disembowel him first!’, ‘Hand him over to us. Let us deal with him’, and soon the onlookers were throwing lumps of dung and dirt and the occasional stone. Their aim was poor and, as often as not, the missiles hit the escorting soldiers. But occasionally Hector had to duck. He was shocked by the hostility of the crowd. Their hatred was like a physical force.
To her credit, Maria did not falter. She walked beside him, level with the crowd, and did not flinch when she too was hit by mis-thrown projectiles.
Eventually they arrived at the Plaza Mayor. Here a number of sentries were guarding the municipal buildings which stood across from the church, and they joined the escort guards in holding back the angry crowd. Hector, Maria and the sergeant hurried up a flight of steps and into the town hall, the angry jeers of the mob following them. After the gauntlet of their arrival it was a relief to be away from the hysteria of the crowd, waiting in an antechamber while a minor official went to find Dona Juana’s husband. He returned to say that the judge was at a meeting with the cabildo, the city council, and could not be disturbed. But the Alcalde was expected to preside over a session of the Criminal Court later that day, and it might be possible for him to interview Hector while the Court was in recess. In the meantime, the official suggested, Maria should go to her lodgings at the Alcalde’s house where she might like to rest. The official himself would take responsibility for looking after Hector until the judge was free to speak with him.
The moment that Maria was gone, the sergeant seized Hector roughly by the shoulder and bundled him along a corridor and down a short flight of steps. The official, who had been scurrying along behind making approving noises, produced a key to a heavy iron-bound door, unlocked it, and Hector was flung inside. He found himself in a small stone cell furnished with nothing but mouldy straw and a bench. The only light came through a small window, little more than a slit, high in the opposite wall. Behind him the door slammed shut, and he was left in half-darkness.
He made his way to the bench and sat down, gagging at the stench of urine from the damp straw. Evidently he had been confined in the holding cell for the Criminal Court, and he doubted that anyone would take the trouble to bring him anything to eat or drink. The malice and loathing shown towards him was so intense and venomous that he wondered if Bartholomew Sharpe had made a miscalculation. There would be no exchange of Dona Juana and the Santo Rosario because the Alcalde would never negotiate. Instead Hector would be taken out of the cell, tried and executed for piracy. If the mob did not get to him first.
HIS INTERVIEW with Dona Juana’s husband in mid afternoon got off to a disastrous start. He was led to what appeared to be a private chamber behind the courtroom. There the Alcalde sat waiting behind a massive desk. Clearly he had interrupted his court session for he was wearing his red and gold sash of office over a doublet of charcoal velvet. Hector, dishevelled and unwashed, was made to stand before him while the sergeant who had brought him up from the cell stood so close behind his right shoulder that Hector could hear his breathing. For several moments the Alcalde sat scowling at his visitor and not saying a word. Dona Juana’s husband was a hulking, heavy-set man who affected an old-fashioned appearance. His beard was carefully shaped to join thick dark mustaches extending across his cheeks in a downsweep that accentuated the fleshy, peevish mouth and bushy, scowling eyebrows. Hector wondered if such an intimidating appearance was genuine or merely an artificial pose to frighten those who appeared in court before him. But the Alcalde’s opening remark left little doubt that his bad temper was real.
‘Who do you represent?’ he asked rudely. ‘Your last captain’s head was paraded around Arica on a pole.’ Hector supposed that he was referring to Watling whose body they’d had to leave behind.
‘I am here on behalf of Captain Bartholomew Sharpe and his company,’ Hector began. ‘I have been sent to arrange terms for the release of the Santo Rosario and Dona Juana who is, I believe, your wife.’
Immediately the Alcalde bridled. ‘The identity of the passengers is of no immediate concern. What is evident is that you are guilty of piracy in seizing the vessel.’
‘With respect, your excellency. I have come here in good faith to arrange the return of the vessel, her passengers and crew, unharmed.’
‘Unharmed!’ The Alcalde thrust his head forward angrily. ‘I am told that Captain Lopez was shot down, killed in cold blood.’
‘He mistook our vessel’s approach as aggressive,’ said Hector. Maria must have already been interviewed.
‘He was callously murdered, and the crime will be punished,’ the Alcalde retorted.
‘If it pleases your honour,’ Hector said carefully, ‘I should like to state the message that I was charged to deliver.’
‘Then do so!’ The Alcalde leaned back in his chair and began to drum thick stubby fingers on the desk.
‘Captain Sharpe is willing to deliver up the Santo Rosario, her illustrious passenger and crew in exchange for the services of a pilot competent to navigate his vessel southward, and a store of seagoing supplies.’
Hector paused, allowing the Alcalde a moment in which to appreciate that he was being offered a way of ridding himself of the pirate menace.
‘If His Excellency agrees to these terms, I have been instructed to guide the pilot to the place where the exchange will take place. Captain Sharpe gives his word that the lady, Dona Juana, will be released unharmed. Afterwards he and his vessel will depart the South Sea.’
&nb
sp; The Alcalde looked at Hector with pure scorn. ‘What happens to your bandit comrades is not for me to decide. Were that so, I would see to it that Captain Sharpe and all his crew hang from the mastheads of our Armada del Sur. Unfortunately there has to be a due process.’ He looked towards the sergeant. ‘Take him away, and keep him locked up until further notice.’
The sergeant grasped Hector by the arm and was about to wheel him about. There was just enough time for the young man to add, ‘With respect, Your Excellency. Captain Sharpe instructed me to say that if I do not return within a week, he will steer south, without a pilot, and take Señora Juana with him.’
The Alcalde slammed his hand down on the desk. ‘Not another word!’ he barked.
BACK IN his cell, Hector watched the daylight fade through the small window in the wall, and thought of how much he depended on Maria. Only her evidence would persuade the Alcalde and his fellow officials that Dona Juana had not been harmed. Also, they were sure to question her about everything she had seen while a prisoner. They would want to know about Trinity, her condition and armament, the morale and number of her crew, and whether Bartholomew Sharpe was capable of carrying out his threat and sailing off if his seven-day deadline was not met, and if he could be trusted to honour an exchange. For a second time in twenty-four hours Hector found himself reassessing Maria’s qualities. On the fishing boat she had shown herself to be thoughtful and level-headed, and in the presence of the angry crowd she had kept cool. He told himself that she would not allow herself to be browbeaten by the Alcalde into giving false evidence or understating her case. And knowing her affection for Dona Juana, he was sure that Maria would do everything in her power to convince the Alcalde that he should agree to an exchange.
With that reassuring thought Hector stretched himself out on the narrow bench and closed his eyes. The image that once again floated into his mind just before he fell asleep was of Maria on the fishing boat earlier that morning as she stood up and faced into the wind. She had looked so composed and at ease. He allowed himself a moment’s optimism which had nothing to do with his mission to the Alcalde: he speculated that perhaps Maria had been pleased to be starting the day in his company.
A voice speaking English woke him. For a moment he thought he was back on Trinity. Then the rancid smell of mouldering straw rather than Stockholm tar reminded him that he was in a cell. ‘Well, Lynch, haven’t seen you since Arica,’ said the voice again. Hector swung his legs off the bench and sat up, conscious that he was very hungry, also that he was sore and stiff from sleeping on the hard surface of the bench.
The door to the cell stood open. Leaning against the jamb was a figure that stirred a hazy, vaguely disagreeable memory. Even seen against the light it was evident that the man in the doorway was well turned out. He was dressed in knee breeches and good stockings and a well-tailored dark blue vest with gilt buttons over a fresh white shirt. He wore expensive-looking buckled shoes and had tied his hair back in a neat queue. Everything about him spoke of prosperity and the contentment of a man of means. It took Hector, still slightly groggy, a moment to identify his visitor. He was one of Trinity’s surgeons whom he had last seen blind drunk in the squalor of the desecrated church in Arica. Then the man had scarcely been able to stand, his speech slurred with alcohol, and he had been wearing soiled and sea-stained rags. Now it was as if he had just emerged freshly washed and shaved from a barber shop, ready to take a stroll through a fashionable part of town.
The surgeon’s name, Hector now remembered, was James Fawcett.
‘I hear that conniving swindler Sharpe is back in command, and that he intends to run for home with his tail between his legs. But I doubt he’ll make it with his skin intact,’ Fawcett observed. His tone was casual, almost smug.
Hector’s mind was in a whirl. He looked searchingly at his visitor. Fawcett was in his late thirties, a lantern-jawed raw-boned man whom Hector remembered from as far back as Golden Island when Fawcett had gone ashore with Cook’s company. On the march through the jungle Fawcett had struck up a friendship with Hector’s own mentor, Basil Smeeton. The two had often compared medical notes and talked together of the new techniques in surgery. When Smeeton turned back after the disappointment of Santa Maria and its phantom gold mine, Fawcett had borrowed some scalpels from Smeeton and had continued on with the expedition. Later Hector had seen him firing a musket against the Spanish flotilla in the sea battle before Panama. So it was all the more extraordinary that Fawcett should now be loafing about a Spanish courthouse looking like a respectable member of Paita’s professional community. It would have been more understandable if he had been half-naked, shackled in chains and awaiting the garotte.
‘Don’t look so surprised, Lynch. The last time we met I seem to remember telling you that people like ourselves are too valuable to be slaughtered uselessly.’
Hector swallowed. His throat was dry. ‘Could you ask someone to bring me some water to drink, and perhaps a little food. I haven’t eaten for the past thirty-six hours,’ he said.
‘Of course.’ Fawcett spoke over his shoulder to someone in the corridor behind him. His Spanish was slow but accurate. Then he turned back to face the young man.
‘There’s no need for you to continue to be cooped up in this disgusting hole. The Alcalde can arrange for you to be transferred to more comfortable accommodation. I’ve persuaded him that you are halfway to having a full medical qualification. Smeeton always said that you showed great promise, and there’s such a shortage of surgeons here that you’ll be able to set up your own practice almost anywhere in Peru even without formal credentials.’
Hector was scarcely listening, his attention distracted by his recollection of what had happened in the church at Arica, the charnel house of the makeshift hospital, the wounded men lying groaning on the flagstones of the church floor.
‘What about the other surgeon? The other man who was meant to be taking care of the wounded? What’s happened to him?’
Fawcett gave a wolfish smile. ‘Same as me. He’s got a very lucrative medical practice. Not here in Paita but farther along the coast in Callao. Doing very well I’m told. Even found himself a wife, the handsome widow of a peninsular as they call those who were born in Spain. I doubt that he’ll ever go back to life at sea.’
‘What about the others? The wounded men in the church in Arica? What happened to them?’
Fawcett gave a casual shrug. ‘The Spaniards knocked them all on the head. Saved a lot of trouble. Not many of them would have survived their wounds, and those who did would have been tried and executed.’
Hector felt sick to the stomach. Fawcett appeared utterly indifferent to the massacre of the wounded.
‘The Alcalde said something about Watling’s head being carried around the town on a pole.’
‘The worthy citizens of Arica made a real fiesta of the affair. Dancing in the streets, bonfires, self-congratulatory letters to the Viceroy and the Court in Madrid saying how they had vanquished the pirates. Of course they exaggerated the number of the attacking force. Said it was four times more numerous than it really was.’
The mention of bonfires had jogged Hector’s memory. ‘After we evacuated Arica, the Spaniards sent up two columns of white smoke, the agreed signal to our boats. We thought someone, maybe the quartermaster Duill, was tortured to reveal the signal. It nearly brought our boats into harbour and they would have been annihilated. What really happened?’
There was a slight hesitation before Fawcett replied, and Hector noted that the surgeon did not look at him directly as he gave his answer. ‘I don’t know how the Spaniards obtained the signal. I have no idea of Duill’s fate. I didn’t even see his corpse. He simply disappeared.’
At that moment a court usher appeared, carrying a large pitcher of water and some bread, dried fish and olives. Hector gratefully drank, then leaned forward and poured the rest of the flagon over his head, neck and shoulders. He felt better, though he wished he could find a water trough and wash himself
properly. He sat up, stared at Fawcett and waited for him to broach the subject which, Hector had already guessed, was the real reason for his visit.
‘Lynch, don’t be in a hurry to judge me harshly. I came to the South Sea to get rich, to have my share of the wealth of this land. I have not altered that ambition. Instead I’ve decided to earn it honestly rather than take it at pistol point. I’m using my skills as a healer. I look after people who are ill with fever or have sickly children or need assistance in childbirth. Surely that’s something to approve of?’
‘So you are proposing that I do the same?’
‘Why not? You could settle down here and have a very pleasant life. You speak the language fluently, and in a year or so you too could find a wife and maybe go on to raise a family in ease and comfort.’
For a moment the thought of Maria flashed into Hector’s mind, but he put it to one side. ‘And to do this I have to betray Sharpe and the company?’ He did not add that he thought this was what Fawcett had done at Arica.
‘You owe Sharpe nothing. He would do the same in your position. He always looks after himself, first and last.’
‘And the rest of the men on Trinity, what about them?’
‘I realise you have friends on board. The striker Dan, and Jacques the Frenchman and big Jezreel. It’s quite possible that Don Fernando, the Alcalde, will agree to their freedom in exchange for your cooperation.’
‘My cooperation in what . . .’ Hector prompted him.
‘. . . in arranging some sort of ambush where Trinity might be lured into a trap and overwhelmed by Spanish cruisers.’
Hector stared down at the floor. Already he had made up his mind. It was the mention of Jezreel which had decided the matter for him. He recalled the day that Sharpe had tricked Jezreel into pistolling the innocent Spanish priest. Spanish prisoners had been exchanged or released from Trinity since then, and they would have carried the story of the atrocity back to the authorities. If Jezreel ever appeared before a Spanish tribunal, he would certainly be condemned to a painful death, even if Hector had pleaded on his behalf.
