Corsair (2 page)

“I’m certainly not pandering to all this lechery,” the governor said. Sir Harold Neil Luce was almost out of his depth: a recent Roundhead and only just able to change to being a Royalist in time as the King was restored to the throne, Luce had been lucky enough to badger the Privy Council into giving him the governorship of Jamaica without the Council knowing too much about the man or the island, or caring that he would have to be given a knighthood to go with the job.

“Steady on, Your Excellency,” O’Leary persisted. “Jamaica depends on trade. That means ships, and ships mean seamen. No seamen means no ships and no trade.”

“Shutting the brothels won’t drive away ships,” Luce said stubbornly. “Ships go where their owners say, not where seamen please. If there’s a cargo in London for Port Royal, then that’s where the ship goes.”

O’Leary sighed and looked round at the other eleven councillors, as though trying to draw patience from them. “Your Excellency forgets the shipowners already have to pay more to get seamen to come here: the sickness and the Spaniards mean a seaman is reluctant to sign on in London, or Bristol, or Liverpool. But it isn’t only the ships with cargoes that matter here: you’ll drive away the rest of ’em, and that’s what we have to worry about.”

The governor looked puzzled, his lips drawn back to reveal his yellow teeth. “What do you mean, ‘the rest of them’? I don’t understand you, Mr O’Leary.”

The chandler looked across the table at Ned and then sighed without trying to hide his exasperation. “Your Excellency, remember this: the Spaniards surround us – the Main, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico. Very unwisely our King, while he was in exile in Spain and before he was restored to the English throne, promised to return Jamaica to the Dons. That you know.

“Fortunately, he hasn’t taken any steps to do this yet, but the Spanish are prodding him: you know as well as I that the Prince de Ligne is in London for that very purpose.

“Quite apart from that, the Spaniards claim the whole of the Caribbee for themselves: every foreigner is a trespasser who risks the garrotte round his neck for being a heretic. Yet, one of the first things you did when you arrived here was to disband the Army and pay off the soldiers. So any minute the Dons might try to recapture Jamaica – and how many of the King’s ships do you have to drive them off?”

“Ah, answer that!” Kinnock said sharply, knocking on the table with a thick gold ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand. It was heavy enough to sound like a gavel.

“You know perfectly well I don’t have any ships,” a startled Sir Harold admitted. “Anyway, the Spanish haven’t made a move yet.”

“That’s not to say they won’t,” O’Leary persisted. “Once they hear about you disbanding the Army and driving away our defence, they’ll be here, never fear! You can’t keep a dog away from a bone.”

“What do you mean, ‘driving away our defence’?” Luce demanded.

“I mean,” O’Leary said deliberately, raising his voice and looking round for the approval of the other councillors, “that we have to look after the buccaneers. Drive them away and we are defenceless. The Dons could capture the island with one ship carrying a hundred men, a priest and a donkey.”

“I fail to see what all this has to do with closing the brothels,” Luce said pompously. “Really!”

O’Leary, his face growing red, pressed his hands flat down on the table, as though to prevent it rising in the air. “Your Excellency,” he said, his voice tight with suppressed anger, “there are more than a thousand buccaneers and thirty or so of their ships using Port Royal as a base. They can get cordage, sailcloth and that sort of thing from my chandlery. They get fresh meat from the market and salt meat and boucan from shops. That means the ships can be kept in good order. It also means,” he said emphatically, “that we have thirty ships and more than a thousand trained men to defend us against the Dons. Providing they stay here.”

He pointed at Luce and asked: “What do a thousand men do when they are not working on board their ships? Go to church and pray? Pick bananas? Throw mangoes at the wild dogs? Perhaps it’s escaped Your Excellency’s attention that we don’t have a proper church, even if the buccaneers were given to praying, which they aren’t. No, wenching and boozing is what they want to do o’ an evening, and now Cromwell and his Puritans are dead and gone, who is to forbid them? Surely not the governor of Jamaica, who depends on them for his defence.”

“No,” Luce said stubbornly, his tiny eyes blinking like a dazzled ferret emerging from a rabbit warren into bright sunlight, “my mind is made up. Port Royal is not going to continue to be a city of sin and debauchery. It’s an indication of what I mean that there are more than twenty brothels and, as you’ve just pointed out, no proper church.”

“Twenty, eh?” O’Leary said sourly. “Well I’m damned, I never heard of anyone going round counting them. That’s the advantage of being governor.”

Ned coughed and the governor and councillors looked at him.

“I was just going to say that the brothel owners and tavern keepers have all built their own establishments and have to pay out money to run them. If Port Royal is to have a church, perhaps the governor could give instructions…”

“Where’s the money to come from?” Luce demanded.

Ned coughed again and said nothing, but Sir Thomas Whetstone, sitting beside him, burst out wrathfully: “The Brethren of the Coast have supplied the present government with guns, gold, silver and gems worth scores of thousands of pounds. Pieces of eight have fallen like rain. Where has all
that
money gone?”

“Into the Treasury,” Luce said sharply. “There are dozens of expenses the government must meet. Sometimes I think you don’t understand.”

“Your Excellency,” Sir Thomas said, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, “long before you arrived out here Mr Yorke and I, along with the Brethren, were raiding Spanish possessions – like Portobelo, for example – to bring riches to this island. Why, the island’s currency is founded on the very pieces of eight brought in by the Brethren. Its forts bristle with guns the Brethren brought over after the raids on Santiago and Portobelo. And the Treasury only recently received even more bullion from the Spanish galleon Mr Yorke and I captured at St Martin. Are you
sure
the Treasury can’t afford a church?”

“We’re not discussing the church,” Sir Harold said evasively. “We’re discussing the closing of the brothels.”

“Ah yes,” Whetstone said, “the sacred and the profane. Well, the choice is yours. Brothels, buccaneers and the island defended; or no brothels, no buccaneers, and no defence.”

“I don’t think the safety of Jamaica should depend on a lot of pirates hanging about brothels and taverns,” the governor said stiffly.

“Pirates!” O’Leary said wrathfully. “I thought by now you could tell the difference. I find it alarming that the governor of this island in the second meeting of the legislative council can talk of ‘pirates’. If you mean Mr Yorke’s buccaneers – the Brethren of the Coast – then please refer to them as buccaneers. But if you really mean pirates, then remember that if you want them hunted down you have to ask the buccaneers to do it: you don’t have a single ship of your own.”

Ned looked up at the ceiling of the small room and said quietly: “If you don’t intend to rely on the buccaneers lounging in brothels and taverns to defend the island against the Spanish, who had Your Excellency in mind?”

“The whole idea is absurd,” Luce said. “The Spanish will never attack Jamaica.”

“Why not?” Sir Thomas asked. “After all, they do own Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and all the Main. Apart from a few little islands up to the eastward that they can’t be bothered with, they own everything else. Don’t forget, they value Jamaica enough to get our King to agree to give it back!”

Luce looked patronizingly at Sir Thomas. “You can take my word for it: the Spanish will not come.”

“Oh, most reassuring, most reassuring,” Sir Thomas said. “You have been out here, Your Excellency, for fewer months than I have years, but I must admit that I’d never dare give such an assurance – and with so much authority, too. Most grateful,” he said caustically.

“The Spanish won’t come and we don’t need brothels,” Sir Harold repeated emphatically, banging the table as if to drive home the point.

“But supposing the Spanish
do
come?” persisted Kinnock.

Sir Thomas Whetstone gave a bitter laugh. “The first thing they’d do is plan a church. And while the plans were being drawn they’d reopen the brothels. After all, they are men and fighting men need brothels and taverns.”

“Why do they?” the governor demanded angrily. “Lewdness and lechery, venery and vileness.” He lingered over each word as if savouring it. “They don’t have them on the Main.”

“Oh, don’t they?” asked a startled Sir Thomas. “How do you know, Your Excellency, you who’ve never been to the Main? All I can say is that every Spanish town and city I’ve ever visited had its share of what looked remarkably like brothels to me. Shall I describe them?”

“There’s no need,” Luce said hurriedly. He looked around the table defiantly and said: “I shall be signing the decree closing the brothels at the end of this meeting.”

Ned Yorke looked up and said: “Your Excellency, as Admiral of the Brethren of the Coast, I should warn you that what you have heard – that the Brethren base themselves here in Port Royal because it has all what I might call the amenities – is perfectly true. If you start removing those amenities they’ll go elsewhere.”

“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.”

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.”