Corsair (22 page)

He was a plump little man also dressed only in his nightshirt, although Ned could not distinguish his features in the darkness. “Take him down to the boat and hold him there,” Ned told three of the buccaneers.

Back out in the
plaza
he saw the flicker of flames coming from buildings at the seaward end of the town. A few burning houses, he thought grimly, will help us see what we are doing.

As he made his way towards the flames he heard Thomas’ booming voice.

“Search these big houses,” he was shouting. “They don’t eat their meals off pottery!”

He found Thomas in the next street, cutlass in one hand and pistol in the other.

“Ned! You got off that rock then! Must be the only one in the bay. Gave me quite a turn when I saw the
Griffin
stop: thought it might be a wide reef. Not much purchase in this place!”

“I found the mayor,” Ned said. “He’ll be worth a bit of ransom.”

Thomas waved towards the burning buildings. “Do we burn the whole town?”

“No, but a few of these big houses should go: the owners are the influential people in this town.”

“What about stoving in some of the fishing boats on the beach? I saw a dozen or more drawn up when I landed.”

Ned thought a moment then shook his head. “No, leave them: the fishermen are poor folk and have no influence.”

“We were lucky there weren’t any out in the bay to raise the alarm,” Thomas said, pausing to shout orders to a group of buccaneers.

Ned watched as buccaneers smashed down another door and ran into the house, shouting threats. By now several of them had lanterns and burning torches, and he could see the glow at many other windows as the men searched for valuables.

But Santa Lucia’s streets stayed empty except for the roaming bands of buccaneers and if there had been a watch in Santa Lucia its members stayed behind closed doors. He heard a triumphant shout as one buccaneer found something valuable, and suddenly he realized that his heart was not really in the raid. Yes, the raid was necessary to teach the Dons a lesson and warn them off Jamaica, but terrorizing people like this, robbing them and setting their homes ablaze round their ears…?

Yet it was a weird contradiction: if the Spanish raided a town in Jamaica they would have no hesitation in putting houses to the torch; nor, more important, would they hesitate to murder the occupants. From what Sir Harold had said, eight people had been killed in the five villages. Ned felt a chill; this was no time to be faint-hearted, he told himself. To the Spaniards – to any Spaniards, be they young soldiers or old women – the people of Jamaica were heretics, doomed to the rack, hellfire, brimstone and eternal damnation.

By now Thomas’ buccaneers had searched the houses and were busy setting fire to two of them. The fires started as little more than bonfires in the rooms, but the wood was bone dry and in moments flames were leaping up, crackling like splintering wood and roaring as random puffs of wind fanned them. Walls collapsed with a crash; roofs caved in, hurling more wood into the fires.

Was it worth looking for the town treasurer, and finding out who were the two or three most prosperous merchants? Ned decided not: they would demand a high ransom for the mayor to make up for it.

Ned called to his buccaneers and made for the other side of the
plaza
. There were several big houses there that needed searching. Already he could see some of Thomas’ men staggering down to the boats, carrying and dragging items they had found.

His own men were soon battering down doors, shouting at the terrified occupants and disappearing into the houses, their lanterns lighting up the windows as they flung open the shutters. Ned suddenly realized that apart from the crackling of flames, the loudest noise was the hysterical barking of dogs, which were obviously racing through the town in excited packs. There was the yapping of small dogs mixed with the deep baying of hounds, and all clearly frightened by the flames.

By now it was clear that many of the buccaneers had found wine and spirits in the houses and were getting drunk, but Ned knew it was hopeless to try and keep the men sober. If there was drink, the men would find it, and anyone trying to stop them risked his life. Ned knew that it would be stupid to risk his authority by getting into drunken arguments with a group of besotted men. Do as much as possible while the men were sober, and then get them back to the boats when they were too drunk to carry on. Buccaneer raids had their own pattern.

By the time dawn started picking out the shape of the houses, the buccaneers had searched through the last of the big houses and staggered down to the boats with their loot. Ned checked that the mayor had been taken out to the
Griffin
and handed over to guards. They did not speak a word of Spanish, but Aurelia would have acted as interpreter should any explanations be necessary.

The next time Ned found Thomas – still in control of several hundred drunk and half-drunk buccaneers – he raised the question of the mayor.

“Shall we ransom him here or take him back to Jamaica?”

“Lot easier if we do it here,” Thomas said. “Once it’s daylight, we’ll gather up some of the townsmen and tell them what we want for their mayor.”

“We might have taken all their money,” Ned said.

“Then we’ll take him away while they look for more!”

By nine o’clock, a dozen of the most important of Santa Lucia’s inhabitants were lined up in the
plaza
, with the burned-out row of houses over on the left. The whole
plaza
reeked of the burned buildings, and the twelve men stood in a group.

When Ned walked up to speak to them, he realized that all twelve thought they had been selected for execution. Certainly the
plaza
looked a grim enough place for a file of musketeers to line up to form a firing squad, he thought to himself.

He stood in front of the twelve men. “A few days ago,” he said in Spanish, “a number of your ships appeared off the north coast of Jamaica and set fire to five villages. Five up to the time we left; there may have been many more since then. And they killed eight people.

“So now you know why we are here: we could have burned down the whole of Santa Lucia, but as you see we have burned only a score of houses. We could have taken all of you as hostages, but in fact we’ve only taken the mayor.

“We hope you will complain to the authorities in Havana, and explain to them that this raid is a reprisal for the raids on Jamaica. Now, we have to talk about the mayor. Obviously you respect him, or else he would not be your mayor. To get him back, you are going to have to pay a ransom.

“Don’t,” he said sternly, holding up his hand to silence some of the men who were beginning to protest, “argue that you have no money. You have plenty, and it is still where you hid it. I shall return here at noon, and you will all be here, and you will have with you enough gold and coins to ransom your mayor.

“How much? Well, we will be generous. This is a small town and your mayor is a small man. So we will fix the price at forty thousand pieces of eight, or its equivalent in gold objects. If you do not pay, then your mayor will be hanged–” Ned gestured across the
plaza
, “–hanged from the cotton tree over there…”

With that Ned gave what he hoped was a bloodcurdling laugh and stalked out of the
plaza
, followed by Thomas. As they reached the boats Thomas said: “My Spanish wasn’t good enough to follow everything you said, but that was a diabolical laugh; it even made
my
blood run cold!”

“Well, I don’t want to have to hang the mayor from that tree, so let’s hope those worthies produce the ransom. Our men will also see what they missed!”

“Yes, I guessed you have given them time and let them go so that they can get their valuables out of their hiding places.”

“Yes – robbing houses is a waste if the people have time to hide things. That’s why it’s better to attack a big town where there’s a treasury. Still, I told them why they’ve been raided, so Havana will hear all about it.”

By the time that Ned was rowed out to the
Griffin
he was beginning to feel the effects of a night’s lost sleep. Aurelia reported that the mayor had been put below in leg irons, with a couple of seamen guarding him.

“He was terrified when he was brought on board,” she said. “He was trembling so much I had a hard time making him understand what was going on. He’s convinced he’s going to be killed. He has a wife, seven children, his mother and four aunts depending on him; that he told me when he had calmed down a bit. Every one of them will mourn him, he says, and every one of them will starve if he doesn’t provide for them.”

“Did you reassure him that he wasn’t going to die?”

Aurelia shook her head. “No: I found I had nothing but contempt for him. Once he found out that a woman appeared to be in command of the ship, he began weeping, trying to get sympathy – for himself and all his family.”

Ned described the raid on Santa Lucia, and how a dozen of the town’s leading citizens had until noon to collect the mayor’s ransom.

“I saw many houses burning,” Aurelia said.

“It probably looked worse than it was: a score at the most. Just enough to teach them a lesson.” He took out his watch and looked at it. “The dozen worthy burghers have to be in the
plaza
at noon to pay the ransom. Wringing their hands and saying they have no money…”

“So what do you do then?”

“Frighten them. Daylight might have given some of them a little more courage.”

“How do you do that?”

“I’ll take the mayor with me – is he still in his nightshirt?”

Aurelia nodded. “He made me too cross to try to find clothes for him. Anyway, I don’t think we have anyone as fat as that on board.”

At noon Ned led the
Griffin
’s men into the
plaza
. Groups of buccaneers from other ships still roamed through the town, occasionally breaking into a house but more often just drinking spirits from bottles and casks. In one street several men had set up a cask and were refilling the mug of any man that passed. The town, Ned noted, smelled like a bonfire doused with water: burned houses reeked like piles of wet charcoal.

He arrived at the
plaza
with the mayor, who was still barefooted and in his nightshirt, unshaven and pale-faced, his eyes flicking round him, as if wary that a cutlass could jab at him from any direction.

The group of citizens were standing in the same place, waiting for him. Ned counted them. Only eleven men.

“Where’s the twelfth man?” he demanded.

“He hasn’t come back,” one of the eleven said.

“I can see that,” Ned said, and gestured to some of his men.

They went over to the cotton tree and, starting off by climbing on to each other’s shoulders, they got up the tree and two of them scrambled out along a branch. Round the end of it, as far as they could reach out, they tied a block, reeved a rope through it, and dropped the two ends down to the men waiting on the ground below.

As the men aloft climbed down, so a man on the ground tied a noose in one end of the rope, while several of the others picked up the other end and walked a few feet with it, until the noose was shoulder high.

As soon as they had finished, Ned gestured towards them and said to the eleven: “You–” he pointed to the most prosperous-looking of them, “–go over to that tree and put your head in the noose.” He took out his watch and examined it. “Yes, you–” he pointed to the youngest-looking of the men, “–have ten minutes to find the missing man. If you fail, then the men holding that rope will walk away from the tree and your neighbour will be hauled up head-first to the bough.”

While the young man hurried from the group the prosperous-looking man sighed and fainted. Ned gestured to the other men to attend him, and turned to the mayor.

“You’ll end up in that noose if they don’t pay your ransom. Say a few prayers that your neighbours value you.”

In fewer than ten minutes the young man was back with the missing citizen, who was white-faced and trembling. He looked at his neighbour, who by now had been revived and was standing under the tree with the noose round his neck.

“What happened to you?” Ned asked politely.

“I – well, I was detained.”

“Indeed? You nearly caused the death of your friend,” Ned said, gesturing towards the tree. He took out his watch and examined it again. “Yes, another four minutes would have done it. It’s not long, four minutes.”

He waved as he saw Thomas come into the
plaza
at the head of a score of buccaneers, and while Thomas came over to join him Ned said to the group of Spaniards: “You have the ransom?”

Three of them spoke at once, and Ned held up his hand to silence them and pointed at one man to be the spokesman.

“No, we haven’t been able to find the money,” the man said, looking first at the tree and then down at the ground. “Not nearly that money.”

“How unfortunate,” Ned said softly. “Well, if you say you can’t find it, that’s an end of the matter. Since you will now all hang, we might as well start with that fellow who has the noose round his neck. He can be first and the mayor last. That makes you the thirteenth,” Ned said to the mayor, who groaned piteously and started saying prayers in a low, trembling voice.

“You can’t do that!” exclaimed the man chosen as spokesman. “That’s murder!”

“Some of your people murdered eight villagers in Jamaica,” Ned said. “I’ll hang eight of you first and then we’ll have a pause before we finish off the last five.”

“But you’ve given us no time to find the money!”

“You had two hours or more.”

“We need more time,” the man grumbled.

Ned spoke in English to Thomas, translating what had been said so far. Thomas had no sympathy. “String that fellow up,” he growled. “The sight of him kicking about at the end of a rope might change their minds.”

Ned turned back to the men. “Well, my friend and I agree: no ransom means you don’t value your mayor, so he will be hanged. But,” Ned added ominously and speaking very slowly and distinctly, “he’ll be hanged last. He’ll have the pleasure of watching the twelve citizens who did not value him being hoisted up to the bough first.”