Pirate Freedom

by Gene Wolfe

  "Adulteress!" Estrellita hissed it. It does not hiss as good in Spanish, but she hissed it anyway.

  "Right," I said. "She was, only he's dead now. You two couldn't marry in Coruna. Nowhere in Spain, really. Or anyhow, there wasn't any place where he'd feel safe. Some people must have known you'd been the maid, too, and that can't have been nice. Maybe he could have gotten a different girl, but he still wouldn't have been able to marry her. So you two decided to go to New Spain, where you could play lady and he could tell everybody you were his wife."

  When I had translated it, Bouton laughed. "I'd have told them to go to the devil."

  "So would I, but they were his business connections, or some of them were. Besides, this was better. He'd buy a big place, build a house for her, and raise cattle and corn. Have a bodyguard of vaqueros. Any man who lived within a hundred miles would pull his hat off when Jaime Guzman rode by. De Santiago told us a fairy tale about Guzman's losing his money. He hadn't. He had a lot. What he'd lost was his wife. If he'd really lost his money, I doubt that de Santiago would have agreed to take him across the Atlantic."

  "You said he was dead, Captain. Did we kill him?"

  I shook my head. "He killed himself, or that's what they say. When they were a week out of Coruna, he wasn't around anymore."

  "It is accursed," Estrellita burst out, "this horrible ship! Will you not take me from it?"

  "Yeah, sure." I went back to Bouton. "I've got two ideas. I'll give you both of them. First idea-he really did kill himself, like everybody says. He'd beaten his wife and lost her, he was giving up his house, his friends, his country, everything. And he was giving up all that for a girl who was already cheating on him."

  "That is a lie!"

  I told Estrellita to sit down. "The heck it is. You were cheating on him with de Santiago."

  In French, Bouton said, "It was this de Santiago?"

  "Right. When I first saw that trick hiding hole, I thought both of them must have known about it. When I'd had time to think it through, I saw that couldn't be right. In the first place, de Santiago wouldn't have trusted Guzman that much. If Guzman knew, he could open the cabinet on his side and take de Santiago's money. So he didn't."

  Bouton scratched his chin. "But he let de Santiago put his money in there?"

  "No, of course not. He had his money in his cabin, locked up. Or maybe hidden someplace, although there aren't a lot of places to hide things in there, because it's so small. I asked Estrellita how she'd been able to put food and wine and all that stuff in there when you and Rombeau showed up, and she said she hadn't. It had been in there already. She didn't tell me, but what she really did was grab the gold-the money she thought was hers now that her man was gone-and take it with her when she hid."

  "Smart girl."

  Novia laughed. "She is a fool. Even I know that. I know her far better than either of you."

  "She was sure a fool to start fooling around on the voyage," I said, "so you've got a point. Besides, she wasn't smart enough to remember in all the excitement that she'd left her jewelry on top of that chest. When things quieted down, she was fool enough to sneak back out and get it."

  "Holy God!" Bouton had seen the light.

  "That's the goods. It's what tipped me off to start with. Me and Novia had looked all over the ship for the missing woman. After we gave up, it hit me that it wasn't just the woman who was missing anymore. Now her jewelry was missing, too, even though it had been locked in. The simple explanation was that she'd popped out and taken it. That meant she was hiding in the cabin where it was, which had always been the logical place-she wouldn't have known her way around the ship."

  Novia said, "In a better world, you would be an admiral, Crisoforo." She sounded as if she meant it.

  I said, "Thanks, Sabina."

  Bouton said, "But she would not have known about the place unless that man who owned this ship had shown it to her. I see."

  "You've got it. There were blankets and a pillow in there. Two wineglasses, not just one."

  Estrellita whispered, "You did not have to tell that, Crees."

  I felt pretty bad right then. I have felt pretty bad quite a few times in my life, but I have always gotten over it. I said, "I didn't have to tell Bouton and I sure as heck didn't have to tell Sabina here. But I had to tell me. I need to understand what it would be like if you and I got together the way I wanted to once, and the only way I'll ever understand it is to say it out loud. Say it a lot."

  Estrellita said, "I confess to you the truth. Jose surprised me in the dark. I was asleep. Jaime was still on deck but I think he has come back to our room. We kiss, we make love. Then he reveal himself. He is not Jaime. He is Jose. After that, I must do as he ask, or he will tell Jaime."

  Novia made a noise that sounded like I felt.

  I said, "Sure. To you, one man's just like another in the dark. I got it."

  I translated for Bouton, then I said, "So as long as Jaime was around, they used the space between the cabins. She just hated it, but she lay down in there with Don Jose and had a little wine and ate some dried apricots every couple of days. Then Jaime jumped-I can guess why-and after that they didn't have to. They had nobody to fool but Pilar, so they could use the Guzmans' cabin and-"

  Novia cut me off. "Two ideas you say, Crisoforo. One I know. What is the other?"

  "It's pretty obvious, isn't it? Jaime didn't jump. De Santiago killed him. He wanted the money, and he wanted Estrellita. Jaime had them both."

  Bouton said, "He would have to get rid of his wife, wouldn't he, Captain?"

  I shook my head. "He might want to, but he probably wouldn't. He'd set Estrellita here up in a cute little house someplace, with enough money to keep her happy. He had Jaime's money, and he'd tell her he was keeping it for her, and give it to her in dibs and dabs. She'd keep hoping to get it all, and she'd know that if she left him she'd never see another real of it. You haven't seen much of Don Jose and Pilar, but Sabina and I have. He'd have about as much trouble managing Pilar as you'd have managing a cabin boy."

  We said a lot more, but there is not a lot of point in writing it all out. After that, sleeping arrangements were the problem. Novia and Estrellita wanted to sleep with me, although Novia was too proud to say it. Estrellita just about begged.

  I did not want to sleep with either of them-but I did not want to get them raped either. On top of all that, I was worried about what Novia might say or do if I left her with somebody like Rombeau or Jarden. She was a good-looking girl, and I knew by then how smart she was. I ended up tying Estrellita's hands and sending her over to Rombeau to be held with the other prisoners, and locking Novia in the Guzmans' cabin. From inside, it was not hard to jam her trick cabinet's latch so she could not open it. That was what I did, and I never unjammed it. That night I drank most of a bottle of wine trying to get to sleep. Eventually, it worked.

  And when we got to Port Royal, those cabinets went, along with the whole fake wall. I cannot tell you how much I hated that whole deal by then.

  There is just one other thing I ought to say before I wrap up for tonight. The next day I was on the quarterdeck trying to forget my headache, which was about like trying to forget that somebody had just whacked off your thumb. Boucher came up and said that one of the men had seen something funny.

  It had been a man. Nothing fancy, just a man. Only this guy had seen him, and felt like he was not one of our crew but somebody he had never seen before. He had yelled at him, and then he was gone.

  Boucher said this guy had seen his own shadow, and Bouton thought he might be having hallucinations. I told everybody about it just the same, knowing they would find out anyhow, and told them to keep an eye out. I think it was a day out of Port Royal.

  19

  Novia, Estrellita, and Some Others

  Yesterday I talked to a lady who has come to the U.S. from Jamaica. I asked whether she had lived in Port Royal, and she laughed and said she had been born and raised in Kingston. I said I knew it had been a b
ad town a few hundred years ago. That was gone, she said. It had been destroyed by an earthquake, and a new Port Royal built near the same site.

  Yet I know that it is not gone. It is back there, where she is, where the hurricanes blow and lean, hard ships snap at the edges of the Spanish Main like wolves around a sheepfold.

  Before I went to bed, I spent an hour or more just studying those maps. When I was at sea, I was crazy about maps. Give me a map, and I wanted no other book. I knew that many details were wrong or at least inaccurate. I committed them to memory just the same, knowing that it was better to know them than not, yet knowing that we would have to proceed cautiously always.

  That was how I proceeded when we brought the Rosa and the Castillo Blanco there, getting the best price I could for Rosa, and making sure that the carpenters I hired to alter the Castillo Blanco knew their business.

  First, however, I saw to our prisoners and to Novia. Capt. Ojeda and his crew I simply freed, giving Ojeda a little money, shaking his hand and wishing him well. I thought I had seen the last of him when I did that.

  I let Don Jose write three letters explaining his fix and asking friends and relatives to ransom him. I read them before I mailed them, and made sure that he had told each of the men he had written to that the money was to be sent to me in care of a ship chandler in Port Royal we were buying supplies from. He had promised to handle the money end of the deal for us for ten percent. There were others who would do it cheaper-seven for one and five for the other-but I was not sure they were honest. This guy would take his ten percent and hand over the rest, and there would be no trouble about it.

  After that was all set, I knocked on Novia's cabin door and told her I needed to see her. She came into my cabin half an hour later and gave me quite a surprise. No calico gown this time, and no makeup. She was dressed the way she had been when I had first seen her on the Magdelena-sailor's white canvas pants, boobs tied in and hidden under a loose blue shirt, and her hair in a long braid down her back.

  I told her I was going to give her enough money to pay her passage back to Spain.

  "I must walk unescorted in this Port Royal of yours. It is a bad place, you have told me."

  I nodded.

  "I wish a favor, Crisoforo. You owe me none, I know. Already you do me a favor, giving me money so that I may go home. I ask another. I would recharge my pistols? May I do so if I swear I will not shoot you? Please?"

  I said sure, and handed her the box with the powder flasks and so forth. That was when the carpenters came to tear out the wall and the secret compartment, and cut new gunports in the gunwale. I got busy with them, and when I looked for Novia again, she was gone. The beautiful wooden case that her pistols had come in was still there on the table, with the ramrod, the bag of bullets, and the other stuff still inside. But no Novia, and no little brass pistols. Not crying can be hard sometimes. Not often for me, but sometimes. That time I tried not to, but I did not make it.

  Of course, I still had my worst problem-what to do with Estrellita. There were complications. Here I am supposed to advise other people about their problems, and they just about always have complications, too. So I will list mine here. I do not want to, but it will be good for me, and I have never done enough penance. The last one was the big one. 1. She had no money and nobody to take care of her except Don Jose and Pilar, and they were not going to be loose any time soon. If we kept her until they could look out for her, we might have her for a year. Two prisoners was bad enough. 2. She had been cheating with Don Jose. If I handed her over to him, I would be aiding and abetting. I had met Pilar, and I did not want to do that. 3. Sooner or later Don Jose would cut her loose, probably with nothing. She might be worse off then than she was now, and in fact it seemed pretty likely. 4. He might do something unpleasant with Pilar so he could have Estrellita all the time. I thought there was a good chance he had killed Jaime Guzman. If Don Jose wanted Pilar out of the way, she just might have some sort of accident. My father would have said, "It's been known to happen." 5. I had wanted her more than anything for so long. Now she looked like something the cat dragged in, dirty and chained with her hair all messed up and her eyes red from crying. Pretty soon she was going to look worse, and I was not sure I could keep from getting her chains taken off, giving her a square meal and a chance to clean up, and after that so on and so forth. From what I had learned about her, and what I had seen of her since I had grabbed her in the dark, that would be a big, big mistake.

  I do not know now just how long I worried about her, walking up and down the little quarterdeck of the Castillo Blanco and watching the carpenters. By the time they were ready to knock off, I had made my mind up. I got Antonio to come over and keep an eye on the ship and went ashore.

  I had thought it was going to be tough to find Ojeda, but it was not. Finding Vanderhorst on Virgin Gorda had been a lot harder. Spaniards hardly ever came to Port Royal, and everybody had noticed them. He and Alvarez were splitting a room in a private house, and my guess is that they were paying through the nose for it.

  "I need your help, Captain, and I'm willing to pay for it." I got out a couple of doubloons and showed them to him. "You'll leave soon for Spain?"

  "Si." His beard and mustache were nice and neat now, and his face told me he wanted the money but was going to be darned careful not to say too much.

  "You've found a ship that will carry you?"

  "To Spain?" He shook his head.

  "To New Spain, then."

  "From here there are no ships, Capitan. One must take passage to your island of heresy. At times, our ships come to trade." He was watching the doubloons.

  "An expensive journey, no doubt." I tried to look sympathetic. "What I ask will increase the cost. Thus I offer these." I made them chime softly in my hand. There is nothing else exactly like the mellow chink of gold. "Maybe you remember Senora Guzman?"

  He nodded, his face tighter than ever.

  "I'm holding Senor de Santiago and his wife. A matter of business. A man's got to live."

  "I comprehend. He has friends, Capitan."

  "But Senora Guzman?" I shrugged. "What am I to do with her? Her husband was ruined, and he's dead now. She hasn't a brass cuarto. I could kill her, but Rombeau objects. His honor is involved. You know how that is."

  "Si."

  "You can help me here, Captain. You can take her back to Spain. These will pay her fare."

  He did not actually kiss me, but I could see he wanted to. We went to the Magdelena together, and I got her chain off and turned her over to him. They were holding hands before they were out of sight.

  Could I have done it without the two doubloons? Heck, yes. He would have paid me for her if I had pitched it that way. The thing was, I got a lot more fun out of my money than the guys who spent theirs guzzling kill-devil or hiring women nobody in his right mind would want. Also, I still had that soft spot for Estrellita. A little one, but it was there. I did not want her for myself, but I did not want her to suffer, either. With two doubloons, she and Ojeda would be able to skip Jamaica for sure, and that was what I wanted. I felt good about the whole thing. I still do.

  After that I chewed things over with Dubec awhile. He had spent more time on the Magdelena than I had, and I wanted to know what he thought of her sailing qualities. He thought she should be carrying a little more weight astern. He had told Rombeau, and they had agreed to try it. We planned to buy a lot more ammunition for the big guns, round shot, grape, canister, and maybe even some chain shot. They would load it aft and see what it did.

  He thought most of the men would be back, which interested me. There were a few, he said, who planned to take what I had paid out already- money from de Santiago and Guzman, mostly-and head home to France. Because I knew it had been French before America got it, I asked about New Orleans. Dubec had never heard of it. There was a place called Acadia, he said, way, way up north. He did not think any of our men would go there. I thought for a while that might be another name for Louisiana, bu
t the way he talked about it, it sounded like it was north of the North Pole.

  What he said got me to worrying about manning my ships (what Bishop Scully would call staffing) although I could not do much about it. We would have two ships instead of three, which meant that Jarden, Antonio, and some of the other Rosa men would be on the Magdelena or the Castillo Blanco. That would be good. But we would lose men in Port Royal, too, and not just those who went home. We would lose them, and there was not one darn thing I could do about it, beyond paying out what everybody had coming when we sold the Rosa and telling each man, individually, how much I wanted him back.

  I thought all that over while I was shooting the breeze with Dubec, and later when Antonio and I were checking out the new gunports and the other carpenter-work. I told him about the wall between the cabins I wanted ripped out, and the little compartment inside, and we went into the one that had been the Guzmans' and had a look at it. The carpenters had taken the doors off both cabins that day and started changing the frame over to make one big door, like I had told them. I stood there looking at it, and wondered why I was doing it, now that Novia was gone. The back cabin would have been plenty big enough for me, and I could have let Bouton have the other one. I told myself that I would get another woman someday-you can imagine all that I said. But I did not believe me, no matter how often I said it in my mind.

  I would have a big cabin with three windows, a nice one too low for me to stand up in, and that is where I would sleep at night, stretched out on two blankets on the floor, unless I decided to sleep on deck. That night it was going to be hard to get to sleep no matter where I slept, and I knew it.

  Just to change the subject, I said, "We're going back to Hispaniola, Antonio. You ever been there?"

  "No, Captain. I have not. There is gold there?"