Corsair (19 page)

“Damned if I know,” Ned said. “You can make us an offer for those three ships. You’ll find enough seamen in the taverns. Send ’em off after the pirates.”

“What good will that do? Seamen picked up out of the taverns won’t know how to deal with pirates.”

“No, they probably won’t,” Ned agreed. “My goodness, you
are
in a fix, aren’t you?” With that he stood up. “Well, Your Excellency, thank you for telling us about it.”

“Don’t go!” exclaimed Luce, agitatedly. “Please sit down again. I need your advice.”

Ned sat down with a show of reluctance. “I’ve given you the only advice I can think of: buy those three ships from us – we won’t wait for the court to condemn them as prizes – and fit ’em out. I can’t think of anything else, can you, Thomas?”

“No. Very sound advice, I reckon. The ships have plenty of provisions and more than enough water. We’d consider any reasonable offer, wouldn’t we Ned?”

“Of course! I was just waiting to hear from Sir Harold.”

The governor waved his hands helplessly. “What hope have three ships of finding these pirates?”

“We found four with only three ships,” Ned reminded him.

“But where would they start looking?” Luce asked, a note of desperation in his voice.

“Why, wherever you tell them!” Ned said, apparently surprised at the question.

“But I don’t know where to tell them: I’ve no idea what the coast of the island looks like. I’ve only the map.”

“And a damned poor map that is,” Thomas growled. “The coast where we built our houses is quite different from what the map says.”

“You forget,” Luce said woefully, “that I haven’t been governor very long.”

“I assure you,” Ned said sarcastically, “that thought is never far from our minds.”

“But you–” Luce paused, and then seemed to pluck up courage. “Can’t you sail with your ships?”

“What, thirty ships to chase a few pirates?” Ned asked incredulously. “Anyway, chasing pirates away is not going to end the problem. They’ll be back. Burn down villages at one end of the island, suddenly swoop down on the other, then the moment you relax swoop on the middle. Oh dear,” Ned said, sympathy now in his voice, “you have a problem, Your Excellency.”

Luce swallowed hard and said, the words tumbling out: “What would you do if you were me?”

Ned looked at Thomas, who nodded.

“If I was the governor,” Ned said carefully, “I wouldn’t waste my time with two or three pirate ships. I’d teach the Spanish such a lesson that they’d leave us alone.”

“But what sort of lesson, pray?”

“These raiders come from Cuba, probably Santiago. Pick a town not far from Santiago and burn it down. Ransom a few of the leading citizens – the Dons will soon take the hint and leave Jamaica alone.”

“But we can’t go attacking a Spanish town like that,” protested Luce. “That would be an act of war.”

Ned thought of Riohacha, and heard the petard exploding against the doors of the fort. “Burning five villages…trying to capture that ship of ours off the Caymans…in effect capturing Grand Cayman… Seems to me the Spanish have declared war on us already.”

“The choice is yours,” Thomas said, fingering his beard. “Either let the Dons make war on us, and smile at ’em, or hit back. They couldn’t blame you in London for hitting back.”

“Oh yes they could,” Luce said feelingly. “The King, the Catholic Church, the Pope and the King of Spain – they’re all mixed up in this.”

Ned thought of a possible Spanish attack on Jamaica, the attack about which the governor of Colombia was so reticent. “It’ll be another three or four months before a frigate comes out from England with despatches – the
Convertine
has only just sailed. Another three months for her to return to London…that’s seven months before London hears what you’ve done. In seven months anything can happen. Why, within seven months the Spaniards may have attacked us from the Main, or the King might have handed over the island to the Dons… Seven months is a long time.”

“Where would you attack in Cuba?” Luce asked cautiously.

Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Santiago is too big for the purpose. Santa Lucia would be just about right. Thirty miles east of Santiago, a sheltered bay, and from all accounts a prosperous town.”

“Do you think raiding Santa Lucia will deliver the message to the Spanish?” Luce asked.

“I’m certain of it, providing the attack is successful.”

“Who would lead it?”

Ned shrugged his shoulders again. “You’ll have to find someone. Why not General Heffer?”

“But he knows nothing about ships.”

Ned could not resist his next remark. “You’ll have only three ships, so it won’t be an enormous expedition.”

“Three ships?” Luce repeated. “But I thought you’d take all your ships!”

Ned pretended to look puzzled. “All my ships? But the Brethren of the Coast no longer exist. You took away their commissions, and said if they took any action against the Spanish, they’d be pirates.”

“But this is an emergency!”

“For you, not for us,” Ned said. “I’m afraid you must leave all those ships out of your calculations: they will not obey any orders you may give.”

“Won’t you lead them?” Luce asked pathetically. “It’s our only chance.”

“Lead a fleet of pirates?” Ned pretended he was shocked at the idea. “No, no, really, you ask the impossible.”

“But Heffer and three ships won’t do any good: Heffer and the dregs of Port Royal’s taverns… It would be a waste of time sending them,” Luce lamented.

“You
have
got a problem,” Ned said sympathetically.

“Please, won’t you reconsider? The buccaneers raiding Santa Lucia means it’s bound to be a success. Heffer’s not the man to lead three ships to go anywhere.”

Ned pretended to consider for a minute or two and then shook his head. “No, I couldn’t think of it,” he said. “I would be acting as a pirate myself, and I value my good name. Nor would my men – my former men, I mean – want to be regarded as pirates.”

Luce obviously wished he had never used the word pirate. “Well,” he said, assuming the nearest he could get to a judicial manner, “men defending Jamaica would hardly be called pirates, you know. After all, the defence of this island concerns every man and woman that lives here.”

“Ah yes, defending the island is one thing,” Ned said, unable to resist giving the knife another twist, “but by raiding Santa Lucia they wouldn’t be defending Jamaica, they’d be attacking Cuba.”

Luce looked cornered once again and tugged at his moustaches. “Couldn’t you persuade your men that they are acting with the governor’s blessing?”

“With respect, they don’t give a damn for the governor’s blessing. They remember the governor took their commissions away from them – and shut down the brothels.”

Luce flushed when Ned reminded him. His tiny eyes flickered back and forth from Thomas to Ned, as though trying to intercept any secret messages that might be passing between them.

Thomas caught Luce’s eye and said lugubriously: “Mr Yorke’s put his finger on the problems. Commissions and brothels. You took away both. You took away their livelihood and their pleasure. Don’t forget they come from all sorts of countries – Spain, France, Holland…they don’t really care what country owns Jamaica: to them it’s merely an island with a convenient anchorage. Or, rather, an anchorage that
was
convenient, until the brothels were closed down and a number of taverns shut.”

Luce stared at the table top, as if expecting a solution to appear out of the grain of the wood.

“Supposing I leave the same number of taverns…”

Thomas roared with laughter and slapped the table. “Yes, and offer each ship a cask of wine, eh?”

“I don’t see what’s so funny about my proposal,” Luce said sheepishly.

Thomas turned on him, eyes glittering. “Your Excellency, your problem is that Spanish raiders are burning villages here in Jamaica. It’s a problem that’s not going to be solved by your reopening a few taverns.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?” Luce sounded trapped.

“Do you really want to know?” Ned asked. “I’ll give you our terms, but I warn you, we don’t debate ’em.”

“All right,” Luce agreed, “let me have your terms – the terms for attacking Santa Lucia.”

“First of all,” Ned said firmly, “you allow Port Royal to be a base for the buccaneers. That means as many brothels and taverns as are needed for the men.”

“Oh bless my soul,” Luce mumbled while Ned paused for breath. “I don’t know what my wife will say.”

“Just think what your wife would say if Spanish pirates sailed into Port Royal and burned her house around her ears.”

Luce nodded mournfully: for a moment, Ned thought, the ferret was replaced with a cadaverous bloodhound. “Just the brothels and the taverns?” Luce asked hopefully.

“Oh no,” Ned said grimly. “Brothels, taverns and commissions for every one of the ships.”

“But I can’t do that,” Luce wailed. “What would the Privy Council say?”

Ned stared at him. “What would the Privy Council say if the Spanish attacked and captured Jamaica? It wouldn’t concern you, of course, since the Dons would have slit your gizzard.”

Luce thought for several moments, swallowed hard and then nodded reluctantly. “All right, then, I’ll issue commissions for three months.”

Ned shook his head wearily. “You’ve misunderstood me. Port Royal is to be an open port for the buccaneers, and the commissions issued without any time limit.”

“But supposing the Privy Council later order me to withdraw the commissions?”

“We’ll deal with that when it happens,” Ned said. “That would be a year ahead.”

“When can you sail for Santa Lucia?”

“When can you issue the commissions and tell the people that the brothels are open again?”

“I still have the original commissions which I withdrew: they can be issued again. The brothels,” Luce said, turning red, “are a different question: I understand most of the women have disappeared…”

Ned laughed. “That’s no problem; I know where they are. Just give permission for the brothels to be opened again.”

Luce nodded and rang the small silver bell on the table in front of him. There was a knock on the door and Hamilton came into the room. “All those commissions that were withdrawn from the buccaneers,” Luce told him. “I want them.”

“Very well, sir,” answered a startled Hamilton. “They’re in the next room.”

“I don’t care where they are, get them!” Luce snarled and Hamilton scuttled out.

Luce was obviously deep in thought and he said to Ned: “This raid on Santa Lucia – there’ll be no looting, will there?”

“If there’s to be no looting, there’ll be no raid,” Ned said abruptly. “You call it loot; my men call it purchase, compensation for the danger.”

“I suppose so,” Luce agreed helplessly. “I was thinking of the Spanish ambassador in London complaining to the King…”

“Think of the King being told that he has lost Jamaica to the Dons,” Ned said unsympathetically. “You are looking at this through the wrong end of the perspective glass.”

“I suppose so – ah, here are the commissions,” he exclaimed as Hamilton came into the room with his arms full of rolled parchment. “Put them on the table.”

Luce made a grandiloquent gesture to Ned, as if to say: “They’re all yours.”

“Are they all there?” Ned asked.

“Count them,” Luce ordered Hamilton.

When Hamilton gave the total, Ned said to Luce: “Now some string to put round them!”

The buccaneer captains made an excited group as they gathered on board the
Griffin
. With the exception of Thomas, none of them knew the reason for the summons. They were a motley crowd but one or two of them dressed carefully, with neatly trimmed beards. Ned saw Edward Brace, the owner and captain of the
Mercury
, red-haired, tall, thin and angular, run his silver-backed turtleshell comb through a carefully trimmed beard, while near him was Jean-Pierre Leclerc, the French owner of the
Perdrix
, unshaven, his face greasy, his clothes looking as though they had been slept in for a month.

Charles Coles, owner of the
Argonauta
, was talking to Gottlieb, of the
Dolphyn
, and neither man showed any sign of their recent captivity. The blond-haired and blue-eyed Coles had the same hearty manner, and Ned could hear his Yorkshire accent as he talked with Gottlieb. The Dutchman, with widely spaced eyes, and hair so fair it was almost white and made his eyebrows nearly invisible, was grunting in reply to Coles’ remarks. Secco, the swarthy and black-haired Spaniard, was talking to Saxby and another Frenchman, Rideau, listened.

Many men and many nationalities but, Ned thought, no real loyalties except to the Brotherhood. They were all refugees from some kind of persecution: the Frenchmen were mostly Huguenots who had fled from the Catholics; the Spaniards had left Spain because of some complex reason Ned had never fully understood. The Englishmen were all men who had quit the country under Cromwell: not necessarily Royalists, but men who could not stand the grim don’t-laugh regime – Roundhead haircuts, long prayers for all meals – imposed by the Puritans. All of them, Ned realized, were men who had to be free; who gave their loyalty to the Brethren but who were free men acting freely when they did it.

The last few weeks of idleness had not done some of them much good. The Riohacha raid had been a welcome interruption, but several of the men showed signs that they had been at the rumbullion too frequently, and that having the trollops from Port Royal’s brothels on board was leaving them as dry as sucked oranges.

Ned stood by the aftermost gun on the starboard side and in front of him was a small table, looking incongruous on the
Griffin
’s deck. Finally he jumped up on to the breech of a gun and shouted for attention.

“Welcome on board,” he said. “It’s a long time since we had a meeting like this. Well, you’re all wondering what it’s all about. First, I have some news for you. The governor has given permission for the brothels to be reopened again, and the taverns that were closed can now reopen their doors.”