Corsair

by Dudley Pope

  “Rubbish,” the governor said curtly. “You must order them to stay, and anyway there’s nowhere else for them to go.”

  Ned shook his head sadly. “Your Excellency has forgotten. I am the elected leader of the Brethren, and if we are raiding some Spanish town they will follow me, but the question of where they should base themselves would be put to the vote of all the Brethren. And there most certainly is somewhere else for them to go: Your Excellency forgets Tortuga. That’s where they’d go. They know the island well, they like it, and once there they’ll be too far from Port Royal for you to cry to them for help if the need arises.”

  Sir Harold shook his head. “My mind is made up. We will pass to the next business.”

  O’Leary stood up with a violence which hurled his chair backward so it fell with a crash.

  He said angrily: “I’ve just heard that my business is to be ruined and it’s only a matter of time before the Dons find out that the island is undefended. Then they’ll be down on us like a wolf on the fold. There’s nothing I can do to prevent it, but I don’t have to sit here and vote for my own destruction.”

  “My dear fellow,” the governor said ingratiatingly, “that’s the wrong attitude. Just think, your wife will be able to walk through Port Royal without seeing all the lewdness and lechery…”

  “She’s never complained,” O’Leary said abruptly. “She understands that’s the price she pays for sleeping safely o’ nights.” With that he left the room.

  Then Ned stood up and turned to Sir Thomas. “Well, I suppose that goes for us too. There’s not much point in being present at a council meeting which does not interest itself in Jamaica’s safety.”

  Sir Thomas stood and said, with a contemptuous wave towards the governor: “Seems as though the Puritans are back. I expect the next item on the agenda is to forbid laughing on Sundays. Then everyone will have to have their hair cut short. Roundhead style.”

  Chapter Two

  As the two men left the building and walked across the sandy path to the jetty, sheltered from the scorching heat of the sun by a row of rustling palm trees, Ned said: “It’s hopeless, we’ll never get that fool to realize the Spaniards may be just waiting…”

  Sir Thomas Whetstone sniffed. “When he goes on about brothels and sin, he sounds just like my late and unlamented uncle Oliver Cromwell. There’s more sin than sunshine in the governor’s life. His wife is shocked by seeing the whores in Cannon Street! What’s that sour old bitch doing in Cannon Street anyway? It doesn’t lead to anywhere she’d want to go.”

  “Don’t tempt me to speculate,” Ned said. “Perhaps she wants to build a chapel there and hold prayer meetings for the fallen women.”

  At that moment both men stopped walking: the sound of a cannon firing echoed across the anchorage, sending pelicans flapping off, unbelievably ungainly until they got into the air.

  “Not shotted,” Ned said. “It’s a signal.” He glanced across the anchorage and pointed. “Look, there’s a ship coming in now. And another puff of smoke – she’s firing a second gun. Come on, let’s see what it’s all about!”

  They hurried down to the boat waiting at the jetty to take them back to their ships. They jumped in and Ned told the crew: “Row for where that ship’s going to anchor.”

  By now the ship was turning as she tacked her way up to the anchorage and Thomas said: “Looks like the Perdrix. I wonder what news Leclerc has got?”

  “That Frenchman has enough experience not to rouse out the anchorage unless it’s something urgent,” Ned said.

  Ten minutes later, while the Perdrix’s men were still paying out the anchor cable, Ned and Thomas climbed on board the French ship and were greeted by Jean-Pierre Leclerc, the ship’s owner and master and one of the very early buccaneers, who had been with Ned and Thomas on all their raids. Leclerc was gross and unshaven; his ship was always filthy. But he was one of the shrewdest of the buccaneers.

  “Riohacha!” Leclerc said excitedly. “I’ve just come from there. The Dons have got Gottlieb and Charles Coles. They’ve seized both their ships: I saw the Dolphyn and the Argonauta at anchor and flying the Spanish flags.”

  “What happened?” Ned asked.

  “I don’t know,” Leclerc said. “I was passing the port when I saw both ships anchored off. I bore up to join them and was just about to anchor when one of my men spotted the Spanish flags. Then I realized there were no men on deck.”

  “What did you do?”

  Leclerc slapped his hands together as though brushing off dust. “I hoist my sails again and get out quick: there was nothing I could do.”

  Ned scratched the back of his neck. “Gottlieb and Coles had about sixty men each. There’s a fort at Riohacha, and that’s about all apart from the little town. The Spaniards would keep prisoners in the fort.”

  “Yes,” Whetstone agreed, “but what the deuce are the Spaniards doing?”

  “Probably the mayor thinks he can ransom the men and he’s emptied the ships of any trade goods and spirits they were carrying,” Ned said. “Maybe a new mayor who wants to impress the governor of the province. He must have taken both ships by surprise.”

  “What’ll we do?” Thomas asked, running his fingers through his thick curly beard.

  “The Dons don’t give us much choice,” Ned said. “We go across with a dozen ships and sack the place, release Gottlieb and Coles and their men, retake their ships – and that’s that. Make the mayor pay compensation if he looted the ships.”

  “And the governor here?”

  “What about Sir Harold?”

  “Are you going to ask him for commissions?”

  “After the performance he’s just given, do you think he’ll issue commissions?” Ned said sourly. “More likely he’ll forbid us to do anything and say that Gottlieb and Coles must have done something to offend the Spaniards. I can just hear that sanctimonious voice…”

  “No commissions makes us pirates.”

  “So it does,” Ned said calmly. “With that bushy beard you’ll make a good pirate if you scowl hard enough.”

  By now several boats from other buccaneer ships were converging on the Perdrix, roused out by the gunfire and anxious to hear the news. Ned wiped the perspiration from his forehead and sat down on the breech of a gun, realizing that soon there would be enough captains on board to have a meeting and give orders.

  One of the first captains to clamber up the side of the Perdrix was a red-headed Englishman, Edward Brace, who owned and commanded the Mercury. Brace waved to Leclerc but walked across to Ned. He was a tall man with an angular face and very neatly dressed. His beard was well combed, softer in colour than his hair, which hung in curls.

  “What’s the matter – has he spotted the Spanish fleet coming?” Brace asked with a grin.

  Ned shook his head and told Brace what little he knew. The Englishman grunted. “Going to Riohacha shouldn’t take too long. By the way, I hear you and Sir Thomas went to the legislative council meeting this morning. Anything of interest?”

  Ned gave a sour laugh. “The governor is shutting down all the brothels, and there’s to be only one tavern in each street. Oh yes, and he assures us that the Spanish will never attack Jamaica.”

  Brace stared down at the deck. “People like him never learn, do they? Nothing new about the King’s idea of returning Jamaica to the Dons, I suppose?”

  “No, nor will there be until we get another frigate out from England with fresh despatches from the Committee for Foreign Plantations. In the meantime the governor contents himself with closing brothels.”

  “It’s that wife of his, I expect,” Brace said shrewdly. “Only seen her once but she has a mouth like an old leather purse with the drawstring pulled tight.”

  “You’re right: he grumbled that his wife couldn’t walk down Cannon Street without seeing the la
dies of the town displaying their wares. Didn’t say what her ladyship was doing in Cannon Street – it doesn’t lead to the market. Couldn’t have been buying mangoes or bananas, and the governor’s lobsters come direct from the crawl at the fish market. Just being nosy, and getting shocked for her pains. Knowing old Maude, she probably offered her ladyship a berth in her establishment. The best offer she’s ever had!”

  Brace turned to Ned and said seriously: “He’s dead set on closing the brothels?”

  “He’s signing the decree this afternoon.”

  “The men won’t like it. And one tavern to a street – why, half a dozen to a street don’t hold our men when they all go on shore. They won’t stay here,” Brace warned. “They’re not monks.”

  “We told the governor,” Ned said. “We warned him quite clearly.”

  “But he didn’t listen?”

  “Oh, he listened – and then assured us we were wrong, and told me I should order the buccaneers to stay.”

  “Well, that man’s an asset,” Brace said bitterly, “to the Dons. As soon as they know, they’ll wait for us buccaneers to move to Tortuga and then arrive here with all the ships they can muster. Nothing to stop them, now the Army’s been disbanded.”

  “We told him all this,” Ned said. “He told us the Dons would never come. The man’s a fool.”

  “That wig,” Brace said. “Was he a Roundhead before the Restoration?” Brace knew how popular wigs had become among former Roundheads, disguising their cropped heads.

  “You’re not the only one to wonder if his hair is short under that wig, as if he used to be a Roundhead. The man’s a puzzle. His attitude towards the Dons makes him sound like a Papist but with his wig and determination to close down the brothels, he seems a true Puritan.”

  “It’s that wife,” Brace muttered darkly. “Oh, hello Secco,” he said to a black-haired and sallow-faced captain, who had just come on board. Secco, a Spaniard with a neatly trimmed pointed beard, his hair held back by a red cloth band, said in good English: “You hear Leclerc? Poor Gottlieb and Coles, they’ll be tortured.”

  Ned said: “It means going to Riohacha as quickly as possible. Will you come?”

  “We watered yesterday, so all I need to do is send men on shore to buy a beeve, salt it down and then we can sail. One, two hours.”

  “I’ve just stowed more boucan and we watered yesterday,” Brace said. “I can be under way in an hour.”

  Ned looked at the men now assembling on the Perdrix’s deck. Saxby had just come on board from the Phoenix, his lame leg making its distinctive thump. That made his own Griffin, Thomas’ Peleus, Saxby with the Phoenix, Brace and the Mercury, Leclerc with the Perdrix, the two Portuguese with the unpronounceable names, two Dutchmen who had followed Saxby on board, Secco and one other Englishman. Eleven ships so far, and glancing over the side he saw five more boats approaching. That would mean sixteen ships. The rest of the buccaneer captains must be on shore, or late getting into their boats.

  Sixteen would be enough. It was just a question of waiting for the five boats to get alongside, and then telling all the captains what he proposed. Not that it was a very complicated plan: he did not know enough to be able to give them details.

  As he stood waiting, he noticed the smell of Leclerc’s ship. The Frenchman was an odd fellow. Ned knew from previous visits that Leclerc’s own cabin was scrupulously clean, but the rest of the ship looked like a back street: scraps of meat and bits of fruit and vegetable were lying rotting in the scuppers, which obviously were only cleaned when a heavy sea swept the deck.

  Ned thought back to the legislative council meeting. A dozen councillors, the governor and the deputy governor, all crowded into that tiny office which used to belong to Major-General Heffer, the former acting governor and now Luce’s deputy. A small room with one window: hardly suitable for Jamaica’s legislative council – although, to be sure, if there were many more meetings like today’s Luce would end up with only four or five members attending, the usual residue of sycophants.

  Of course, Luce would always have two or three allies on the council: the optimists who wanted to trade with Spain, which they saw as a source of slaves. But trade with Spain was just a dream: there would only be smuggling, which had been going on for years and which Gottlieb and Coles were doing when they were – for reasons quite beyond Ned’s comprehension – captured.

  The whole affair of supplying the Dons with what they needed and their own merchants could not provide depended on trust. So few ships ever came from Spain now and the Spaniards living on the Main and on the Spanish islands were short of everything – pots and pans for cooking, thread and needles, cloth to sew, wine and olive oil, spades to dig with and rakes and hoes… All they had were the vegetables and fruit they could grow – and gold and silver from the mines. You could not eat gold and silver: the Dons were in the ironic position of having gold in their pockets but no pots to cook with and only threadbare shirts on their backs – except for what they bought from the smugglers.

  Although trade with other countries was officially forbidden by the Spanish authorities, there was no way they could stop smuggling: with many hundreds of miles of open coastline, the smugglers of many nations brought their ships in at night and unloaded whatever the Spanish wanted and could pay for in gold, coin or specie. Most of the Spanish – mayors, commanders of garrisons, customs and excise officers – were involved in the illicit trade. For all the regulations that came from Spain, the fact was that people had to live, which meant that officials had to look the other way when the smugglers came. Look the other way and pocket bribes.

  Which made it all the more puzzling that Gottlieb and Coles should suddenly be met with trouble in Riohacha. A new mayor? Had the Viceroy received new and strict orders from Spain? Was this the first hint of a new policy towards the smugglers? Even a straw in the wind that the Spanish planned an attack on Jamaica?

  As soon as all sixteen captains were on board, Ned jumped up on to the breech of a gun and waved the men to gather round. They were, he reflected, a desperate-looking crowd. Some, like Brace and Secco, were dressed with fastidious tidiness, hair and beards neatly combed, jerkins and breeches clean, hose without holes, shoes polished. But the others: they looked as though they had all sat round in a circle, stripping and throwing their clothes in a tub, and when someone gave the word, reached into the tub and donned what came to hand. One captain wore the old seaman’s apron of a century ago; another’s jerkin had more holes than material. Most of them wore scarves round their hair, to prevent it blowing in their faces and also to catch the perspiration before it went into their eyes.

  Ned looked round at them. “You’ll have heard Leclerc’s news,” he said. “The Dons have taken Coles and Gottlieb at Riohacha, and captured or massacred their crews. Both ships, the Dolphyn and Argonauta, are at anchor in Riohacha flying Spanish flags. That’s all Leclerc knows: he saw the ships at anchor and very sensibly cleared out.

  “I’m planning to rescue Coles and Gottlieb and their men. Apart from anything else we have to show the Dons they can’t get away with this sort of thing. In the meantime, until we find out why the Dons have suddenly turned on smugglers, be warned.

  “Now, who’s coming to Riohacha with me? Hands up those not coming.”

  One of the two Portuguese held up his arm, explaining apologetically in halting English that all his running and most of his standing rigging was now down on the deck: the ship could not be ready for sea in under a couple of days.

  “Very well,” Ned said. “I make it fifteen of you are coming. I want you under way in a couple of hours. The weather seems set fair, and Riohacha is about 475 miles away to the south-east. All of you are familiar with it. With this wind we should take four days. So provisionally we meet five miles off Riohacha at midnight in five days’ time. That gives a day to spare for calms. Then we go in with boats and atta
ck the fort – that’s where they’ll be holding prisoners.”

  “Just muskets and pikes?” asked Brace.

  “And swords and pistols,” Ned said. “I’ll be responsible for the petards. I don’t know how many gates and doors the fort has, but better go through a door than have to climb over a wall. We don’t want to have to carry scaling ladders in the boats. And remember – we have to rely on surprise. No talking and coughing as we approach. Muffled oars. Once we’re all ashore, rendezvous at the fort.”

  The woman waiting for Ned on board the Griffin had fine ash-blonde hair, grey eyes flecked with gold, and was heavily suntanned. Her nose was small, the cheekbones were high and her mouth was generous. She wore a cream-coloured smock and her skirt, of faded blue, was split and divided, like very long breeches.

  “The guns – what is the trouble?” she asked Ned in a voice which had a distinct and very attractive French accent.

  Ned wiped the perspiration from his brow and told her Leclerc’s news. She nodded and said: “I saw all the boats going to the Perdrix: what have you decided to do?”

  “We sail at once for Riohacha.”

  She nodded again: Aurelia had been Ned’s mistress from the days when they had both fled from Barbados, hunted by Cromwell’s men. She had been on every raid in which Ned had led the buccaneers.

  “Leclerc’s guns interrupted the legislative council, then?”

  “Probably, but Thomas and I had already walked out.”

  “Walked out? You didn’t let the governor…?”

  “No, we weren’t rude to him. He’s going to shut down all the brothels and doesn’t give a damn that the buccaneers will leave and go to Tortuga.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I hate Tortuga.”