Pirate Freedom

by Gene Wolfe

  Maybe I should save what happened after that for a big surprise-which it was to us. All right, I will, but there was a big hole in Lesage's story that I should have thought of right away, and I am going to say that here. I should have seen through him. So should Capt. Burt. We trusted him and so we did not.

  Did I think of Valentin? Yes, I did, but that did not seem to be the time to bring it up. Everybody was pulling gold off dead mules, and yelling, and marveling at the weight of the ingots: one dozen to a mule, and solid gold. If Capt. Burt had been right about a mule carrying three hundred pounds, each of those ingots weighed about twenty-five pounds.

  For the rest of the day, we were all rich.

  The killing started that night when most of us were asleep. I was lying awake. Maybe it was because I had not had anything to drink, but I think it was mostly because of what Novia had said.

  I was going to be a father. I had never expected it or thought much about it. Novia had been married to Jaime Guzman for thirty-four months and had never been pregnant, so it had seemed to us that there was a good chance she never would be. Now I knew it had been him. Maybe he had known it, too, and that was why he had been so jealous. All I know is that when I was lying there thinking about the kid who was on the way and money that the three of us would have, I was not jealous of anybody in the whole world.

  Somebody started screaming and there were three or four shots. I jumped up, felt around for my belt and pistols, and yelled for Mahu.

  He was not there, just a guy with a cutlass coming for me. I could barely see him in the moonlight filtering through the trees and what was left of our little fire: a big guy with a dead-white sling for his pistols that jumped out at you. That, and I saw the gleam of his cutlass.

  Just about then, I found mine. If this were TV or a movie he and I would have a big cutlass fight that would last long enough for somebody to go for popcorn, and for sure I would not kill him the same way I killed Yancy. This is real, and that is what happened. I grabbed a burning stick and stuck it in his face, and cut him down when he dodged it. I have never been really sure, but I think my blade must have caught the side of his neck.

  After that four guys came for me, and I dropped my cutlass and ran away like a rat.

  If I had been a hero I would have fought them and died. If I had been a superhero, I would have killed them all. I am not a hero and have never claimed to be. As for superheroes, that is a sandwich. I have no idea how far I ran, but it must have been a good long way. After that I should have gotten myself under control and gone back to the fight.

  Right.

  You bet.

  I did no such thing. When I was certain I had shaken them, I went to my knees and thanked God for preserving my life. I did not try to go back to where the fight had been, either. There had been a fight, people had died, and my side had lost. That was all I knew, and all I needed to know just then. For as long as it was dark, I stayed there on my knees, trying to make some sort of deal with God. When I could see my shadow, I stood up and went looking for the road, knowing it would take me back to Rio Hato.

  Sometimes it does not matter what you set out to do. You do what you are fated to do. I did not find the road. I found the battle-where it had been at least, because everybody who could leave was gone by the time I got there. I saw dead mules and dead men, quite a few of them men I knew. Somebody had gone around killing the wounded, I think. Or maybe only killing those hurt so bad they could never recover.

  What was for sure was no one had looted the bodies. (No, I did not try to loot them either.) But that was how it had to be. I could see that there had been so much gold on those mules that no one had bothered to turn out pockets or cut off fingers to get rings.

  "Chris… Chris…"

  It was so faint I thought for a minute I had imagined it. The voice came again, like the sighing of the wind, and I found Capt. Burt.

  He had been shot at least twice. Maybe more, I do not know. I started trying to help him, but I could see it was no use, so I stopped when he told me to. A modern ER, with plasma and whole blood and an expert surgeon, might have saved him, though I doubt it. For me, kneeling in the jungle and tearing strips off my shirt, it was as hopeless as trying to sweep away the sea.

  "I'm dead man, Chris. Dead man breathin'… Knew you'd come."

  I said I was there, I would not go until he died, and would have masses said for his soul.

  "You like maps, Chris. Take my maps… In my coat."

  Nodding, I reached into the big blue coat he always wore and pulled them out.

  As I did, he died.

  He died smiling, still the big boss pirate and still confident. Confident of what? I would love to know.

  I was able to fold his hands over his chest in a way that hid one of his wounds, but that was all I did. I thought of burying him or trying to, but I was worried sick about Novia and left him lying there among his men. Now that I have had time to think about it, I know that is how he would have wanted it.

  34

  Afterward

  I am going to end this tonight. If I have to sit up all night writing, that is what I will do. Yes, and catch a plane in the morning. There is not much more to tell, nor any reason that I should not finish before midnight.

  Back to Darien, a place I am very glad to be out of. The Magdelena was a mile or so out to sea when I reached Rio Hato. That is the important point, and the only thing I remember accurately. Weald had gone already, I feel sure. Perhaps the rest had, too. Or perhaps they were actually closer than Magdelena. I cannot be certain. One of the ships I saw may well have been Bretagne. If so, I can remember nothing about her rig.

  This, although I stood on the little quay and watched them go until Magdelena was out of sight. I thought then of buying a fishing boat, stocking her, and chasing them. But nothing could have been more hopeless, and Novia was almost certainly dead.

  When the last sail was out of sight I went to the village's tiny inn, bought a bottle of wine I did not particularly want, and asked the innkeeper what he had to eat.

  It was bread and cheese, but the first bite reminded me that I was ravenously hungry. After that, I found no reason to complain of it. The first glass of wine soon reminded me, too, that I had fought twice, had been awake all night, and now had been up another half day. I asked the innkeeper whether he rented rooms.

  He shrugged. (He was a stocky, cheerful-looking man about ten years older than I was back then.) "One room, Senor. Only one room, and it is occupied already." He leaned a little closer. "A distressed lady, Senor."

  "A lady?" I could not believe my ears.

  Leaning closer still, he whispered, "A lady who escaped the pirates!"

  I think I had found the room and started pounding on Novia's door before he had finished.

  We hugged and kissed and did it all over again, and went to bed in the middle of the day-a siesta, with a little foreplay to begin with. The funny thing is that neither one of us said a lot-we were too happy to find each other alive. Words cannot cover things like that. It takes kisses and hugs, laughter and tears. Eventually we got up, got the innkeeper's wife to feed us, and went back to bed.

  Here is what I learned the next day. Lesage had come into the bay with four ships, as friendly as could be. When he saw how few men there were on our ships-Novia had five-he said it was too dangerous. What would they do if the Spanish came? He put twenty men on the Magdelena, telling Novia they were a loan, not a gift. She did not know how many he had put on the others, but it was probably a hundred men all told.

  As soon as the introductions were over and Lesage and the rest had gone, those men seized the ships. They were going to rape Novia. Or perhaps they did, or some did. She said they had not, only torn off her gown. I believe her, knowing that not everyone would.

  Whether they did or not, she got away from them, jumped over the side, and hid under the overhang of the stern until dark. We had both seen enough of pirates by that time to know that hardly any of them could sw
im. My guess is that when she did not come up after a minute or two they decided she had drowned.

  While we were fighting Lesage, she had swum to shore, penniless and pretty nearly naked. Almost everybody had left the village by then, or else they were hiding in their cellars and keeping quiet. Finally she heard a woman's voice, went to the window, and begged for help. The woman, God bless her, had let her in.

  That woman was the innkeeper's wife. When she had given Novia an old gown, Novia had told them both that she was a reputable Spanish lady (naming her father and a bunch of distinguished relatives) who had been kidnapped by pirates. (All of which was true, as a matter of fact.) She had promised that if they let her hide in their house and helped her, they would be repaid ten times over. I had enough gold in my money belt to make good on that promise before we left, giving them as much as the room would have brought if they had rented it for a month.

  Together, we explained that we were husband and wife. I had thought that Novia had been killed by the pirates, and she had thought I had been. And that was true, too, except that we were not technically married any more than Adam and Eve were.

  From that point on, everything we did was dictated by two things. The first thing was the maps I had gotten from Capt. Burt. One was a general map of a part of the Pearl Coast, showing the Pearl Islands and Pearl Lagoon, with a lot of other things. Another one was a not-terribly-detailed map of the Pearls themselves, with the islands marked on which Capt. Burt had buried the money he meant to take back to Surrey.

  The last map was on the back of the island map, and it was a sketch map that he had drawn himself. It showed both those islands, and how to find the places to dig.

  The second thing was that Novia was pregnant. We knew that even if we made it to the Caribbean just as fast as we could, she was going to be showing a lot by the time we got there. After that we would have to get a boat, fit it out, and so forth. It was bound to be dangerous for her, and might be terribly dangerous. A girl in Port Royal had told me once that rough sailing in a small boat is about as good a way to get a woman to miscarry as there is. She said some of her friends had done that on purpose, and I still get sick just thinking about it.

  What it came down to was that Novia wanted to go after the treasure and I wanted to park her in a good safe place, a place where they had good people and good midwives, and go after it by myself.

  In the end, I won-I think mostly because she really wanted me to.

  There is not a lot more to tell, and I have not a lot of time left in which to tell it. Eventually we were able to buy horses and a lot of other things. When Mahu joined us (I think two days after we left Puntarenas) we bought him a horse, too. By that time I was Don Crisoforo de Vega, and Novia was Senora de Vega. Mahu became our servant, Manuel. I was pretty worried then about his talking addiction, but need not have been. In the first place, he did not know a whole lot of Spanish. And in the second, we had rescued him from slavery on a pirate ship. The story changed every time he told it, and nobody who took the trouble to listen believed it no matter which version they heard.

  If you want to point out that Puntarenas is not on the way to the Pearls, you will be dead right. It is not. I did not want to go anywhere near them for fear that I would give in to temptation, get some kind of a boat, and go off treasure hunting.

  There was also the chance we would run into somebody else who had known me when I was Capt. Chris, just like we had run into Mahu. Somebody from Santa Maria, say, or Portobello. Every time I went into an inn, I was scared half to death that somebody who had been drinking in the taproom would set down his glass and stare.

  It never happened. We just kept traveling and trying to look like we enjoyed it, asking about the safest roads and taking those, and wondering if so much riding was good for the baby. If there had been good roads and a chance to buy a good coach with decent springs, we would have jumped at it. The roads were all bad, and there was nothing but wagons and farm carts. Neither of those had any springs at all.

  We stayed at private houses when we could, because they were generally cleaner and had better food. As soon as the siesta hour was over, we started looking for one. The bigger it was and the richer it looked, the better we liked it. Good clothes and good horses helped, so we bought better ones every chance we got-and always apologized for what we were wearing and riding. Travel, you know. We were thinking of buying a hacienda and settling down in the New World, we told our hosts, and were looking for the right place. Novia's maid had fallen ill and been left behind in… Whatever town seemed most credible at the time. Thinking about what had really happened with Estrellita could make it tough for me to say that without laughing, but I generally managed.

  Somewhere in here I ought to say that I had a nice Spanish sword, a couple of pistols on the pommel of my saddle, and a musket in a boot I had a saddle-maker fix up for it. Novia had a dagger and two guns-not the brass ones she had used for so long, but silver-trimmed iron ones she had found in Managua. All that hardware stayed hidden under the big, full skirts she wore. "Manuel" had a short musket and a fancy machete, partly because he might need them and partly because they established straight off that he was a paid servant, not a slave. That got him better treatment and may have saved a couple of lives. Guys who have crewed on pirate ships awhile are a certain way, and that is something nobody but God can do anything about.

  We stayed a week in Mexico. Everybody calls the country "Mexico" now, and the town is "Mexico City." Back then the country was New Spain, and Mexico was just the capital of New Spain. It was nice, but all three of us wanted to be nearer the sea.

  I had a special reason for picking Veracruz. If you read this far, you will have guessed it already.

  It did not take me long to find the priest who had carried water to the slaves. "Padre," I said, "I know you won't remember me, but…"

  He was nodding and smiling. "You are the sailor who showed me how to tie my jug to the hook, my son. An angel of God. How could I ever forget you?"

  I shook my head. "I'm not really an angel, Padre."

  "God may think otherwise. You have sinned. Did you think angels never sinned? If that were true, my son, they would stand as high in the sight of God as Our Lord. They are not, but are mere servants, even as we."

  "There's this girl, Padre. We loved each other and wanted to marry, but we couldn't. We were in a place where it couldn't be done right, just to start with, and there were other problems."

  "I see. Is she with child?"

  I nodded. "You're going to say I ought to marry her. That's what I want to do. Those other problems aren't around anymore, and we're both right here in Veracruz. We want to be married here in this church, and we want you to do it."

  After that he asked about impediments. Were we sister and brother? Cousins? Was either of us married already? And so forth. I explained that we were not related at all, that I had never been married and that Novia was a widow.

  "You're certain of that, my son?"

  I was, naturally, and I told him so. He married us the next day.

  My guess is that Novia thought I would get a boat and go after Capt. Burt's treasure right after the ceremony, and she liked it a lot when I did not. The truth is that I did not want to, because I was so worried about her. I could leave her quite a lot of money, and I would. Still, I knew that I would be worried sick as soon as I cast off. If waiting until our child was born was all it was, I would have done it, and been glad to. It would only have been a couple more months, so that would have been okay. The trouble was that I could not risk taking our child out on a boat for weeks and maybe a month or more until he or she was a lot older, eight at least, and ten would be better. So I would have to leave Novia alone with only Mahu to look after her, and it scared me half to death.

  Then one day I was walking down the street and I saw a tall, thin man with a beat-up face. I stared and stared, and he just grinned at me.

  "Brother Ignacio! Goombah!" I yelled it so loud everybody must have
thought I had gone crazy.

  "Hello, Chris." He stopped grinning, but he could not stop smiling. "How are things with you?"

  I brought him back to meet Novia and heard his story while the four of us ate and drank a little wine.

  "There really isn't much to tell, Senora. I was a lay brother at the monastery in which Chris was educated. The students had to work as well as study- working is one of the most important things a boy must learn-and Chris used to help me, hoeing the garden and pruning our vines and orange trees. Minding our pigs. I came to love him like a son, and I know he looked up to me."

  I said, "He still does."

  "Thank you, Chris." Grinning from ear to ear, he went back to Novia. "When he left our monastery, I realized I didn't want to stay without him. I followed him, hoping to help him."

  He tried to stop grinning but could not. "You owed me this chicken, Chris. I'd paid for one, and you stole it."

  "That was you!" I could not believe it.

  "It certainly was. So you owe me one, but I'm being repaid tonight. Might I have another helping?"

  Novia passed the chicken to him.

  "I lost sight of you after that," he said, "and there is not much left to tell. I found honest work, confess often, attend mass when I can, and here I am. You've done well for yourself, Chris, as I always knew you would."

  "In some ways I have," I told him, "and in some ways I haven't. Maybe someday we'll have to talk about that. Now I have to ask my wife something. Novia, do you remember what I said about Brother Ignacio when we were on Virgin Gorda?"

  She nodded. "You said he was the second father to you, Crisoforo. I have remember what you say of him ever since, and you speak of him many times."

  "Right. I also said I'd trust him further than I'd trust myself."

  She nodded again. "This I remember also."

  "Do you trust him, too, Novia? Now that you've seen him?"