Corsair (11 page)

Aurelia brushed back her long, ash-blonde hair with her hand, a gesture which could mean either that she was impatient or too hot. “You’re just being stubborn Ned. You’re refusing to help the governor when you should be thinking about the island. Just suppose the Spaniards
did
allow a trade – what an enormous difference it would make to Jamaica. Why, the merchants could do ten times the trade. Five times as many ships would call here…”

Ned said: “I can’t forget the buccaneers will end up starving because of that damned governor… The Dons regard them as pirates anyway, commissions or not, but commissions meant they could still use Jamaica as a base, and get their prizes properly condemned in the court.”

“The buccaneers won’t end up starving,” Aurelia said crisply. “They’re all rich men. They could all buy enough land to start estates, just as we have done.”

“Yes, they could,” Ned agreed, “and they’d be just as unhappy: never knowing whether to be on their estate or on board their ship.”

Aurelia nodded: that was an argument she had to concede because, when she was up at the house she dreamed of being at sea in the
Griffin
, and when she was on board the
Griffin
she thought only of the cool house, the gardens now being cultivated, the flowering shrubs and trees growing, spurting higher with every shower of rain. She liked walking along the corridors; she enjoyed being in the kitchen discussing dinner with the cook. Yet there was the thrill of the
Griffin
pounding to windward, sheets of spray hurling back across the deck, the thrill of new landfalls, the thrill of wondering what new adventure was waiting over the horizon.

But the governor was over there, in that house, which had been taken over as the governor’s residence, and he was a defeated man; defeated because he could not carry out his orders, and defeated because the former buccaneers would not help him.

“Although you refused him a ship,” Aurelia said, “you don’t know that one of the ships wouldn’t agree to be chartered.”

“That’s true,” Ned said. “Who do you think would want to go – Secco, and be garrotted as a traitor? Or Gottlieb or Coles, with the bruises still showing?”

“No, I think you should take Heffer in the
Griffin
.”

A startled Ned stared at her. “Take the
Griffin
?” he repeated incredulously.

“Yes. Make the governor agree that you will take Heffer to Santo Domingo and nowhere else, so there’s no risk. Obviously you can’t go to Santiago or anywhere on the Main because they know you, but Santo Domingo is safe enough: safe in the sense the Spanish would accept a flag of truce.”

Ned looked questioningly at Thomas. “It’s the sun,” he said lamely. “It’s deranged her.”

Thomas twiddled the end of his beard and then slowly shook his head. “No, she may be right, if you look at it from the point of view of what it might mean for Jamaica.”

“So you think I should take Heffer to Santo Domingo?”

Thomas nodded slowly. “I’ll come with you in the
Peleus
. We’ll toss up to see who carries Heffer – the man is a bore, and he’ll probably be devilishly seasick the whole way.”

“All right,” Ned said reluctantly, “but let’s be quite clear: all we do is carry Heffer there: once in Santo Domingo all the negotiating is up to him. Translators, transport, and all the rest of it – Heffer and whoever he takes with him deal with that.”

“Yes,” Thomas agreed. “After all, Heffer is the deputy governor. He’ll have his instructions from old Loosely, so we are simply shipmasters.”

Ned said to Aurelia: “Being fair to governors will get us all into trouble one of these days.”

Ned and Thomas went on shore the next morning to see Sir Harold, who met them in the council room looking uncomfortable and nervous, troubled by the heat and puzzled over their request to see him.

“A humid sort of day,” he began nervously. “I haven’t got used to the heat yet, and Lady Luce suffers cruelly.”

“It’s always harder on the women,” Ned said, thinking ironically of the deeply tanned bodies of Aurelia and Diana, who gloried in the sun. He could picture Lady Loosely – withered, sharp-eyed and with a querulous voice. He pictured her sitting tight-lipped in a rattan chair, anxious to catch every cool draught of wind coming through the window, calling for more lemonade, and never leaving the house without the enormous parasol which was already becoming famous in Port Royal.

“Now what can I do for you gentlemen?” Sir Harold asked ingratiatingly.

“Nothing,” Ned said firmly. “We were going to offer to do something for you.”

“Oh, indeed?” Sir Harold said warily. “What had you in mind?”

“There’s just one question first,” Ned said. “Where do you want to start negotiating with the Spaniards?”

“Bless my soul,” Luce said in surprise, “I hadn’t thought about it. Where do you suggest? Santiago de Cuba? Santa Marta? Or even Cartagena?”

“What about Santo Domingo?” Thomas asked.

“That would do as well as anywhere,” Luce said. “It seems an excellent place. But why do you ask?”

“We might be able to find you a ship to carry General Heffer,” Ned said cautiously. “All negotiations with the Dons would be up to Heffer. We just provide a ship.”

“But that would be capital, just capital,” Luce exclaimed, hardly able to believe his luck. The frigate was sailing in five or six hours: there would just be time to write another despatch for the Privy Council and get it out to the frigate captain, and substitute it for the one he had written last night, reporting his inability… Luce shuddered: it would be a close-run thing.

“When would this ship be ready to sail?” Luce inquired.

“Three or four days – just as soon as she has taken on water and provisions. How many would there be in General Heffer’s party?”

“Well, the General, and I expect he would like a couple of ADCs, and a secretary, and a translator. I assume there’s someone available who speaks fluent Spanish. We don’t want to rely on the Spanish trying to find someone who speaks English.”

“There are many who speak Spanish in Port Royal: that’s no problem.”

“Then I will tell General Heffer,” Luce said. “What ship have you chosen?”

“Perhaps my own ship, the
Griffin
,” Ned said. “Sir Thomas will be coming in the
Peleus
. General Heffer will go in one or the other.”

“What sort of fee had you in mind for this – ah, this charter?”

Ned shrugged his shoulders. “We’ve never done anything like this before, so there’ll be no charge.”

“Tell me,” Luce said unexpectedly, “do you think General Heffer will make a good envoy?”

“You haven’t much choice,” Ned said bluntly. “Anyway, there’s no negotiating to be done. Just a straight question to be asked. I should have thought Heffer could do that.”

“I had in mind…” Luce hesitated, as if trying to pluck up courage. “I was thinking that if you are prepared to take your ship to Santo Domingo, perhaps you would do the negotiating.”

“No,” Ned said firmly. “I’ll take whoever you choose as your envoy, but he does the negotiating.”

And takes the blame, Ned thought. It would be very useful for Luce to have someone else to blame for failure – someone who was not himself or his deputy. If the former leader of the buccaneers came back to report failure (whoever came back would be coming empty-handed, there was not much doubt about that) then Luce would very soon twist the story round to imply that the failure was deliberate; intended to make sure there was no friendship with the Spanish. Ned felt quite pleased with himself: he was (thanks to watching Heffer over the past years) now able to think like a politician or a diplomat: at last he could understand duplicity, and although he was never going to practise it himself, it enabled him to spot it in others. Luce breathed duplicity as other men breathed fresh air.

“I hope that you’ll act as an adviser, then,” Luce said lamely. “Not many people on this island have your experience in dealing with the Spanish.”

Ned shook his head. “I’ve dealt with the Spaniards from behind a sword or musket; I’ve never negotiated with them.”

He almost laughed at the thought of telling Luce about the recent voyage to Riohacha: supposing Luce was told that the governor of the province of Colombia, the bishop of Colombia, and the mayor of Riohacha were all within a mile of this room, on board the
Argonauta
,
Dolphyn
and Secco’s ship?

Ned stood up. “Very well, Your Excellency; tell General Heffer and his staff to be ready to embark in three days’ time.”

A week later Ned stood with Aurelia and Lobb, the mate, on the afterdeck of the
Griffin
as she surged to windward with Hispaniola passing close on the larboard hand and the
Peleus
a mile astern in her wake.

The sun was bright; the clouds were startlingly white; the sky was so blue that many men knew they would make a fortune if they could create just the dye to produce a cloth of that colour. Blue, Ned thought; curious that it is the hardest colour to create. Good red dye came from the cochineal insects that lived on the cactus; but blue – that always created problems. Hard to dye cloth blue – and even harder to stop the blue fading in the sun.

How was old Heffer? Was he capsized in his hammock, white and perspiring, wishing he could die instead of being seasick? Or was he on his feet, chattering away and boring Thomas and Diana, straining poor Thomas’ self-control?

He was thankful that when they had flipped a piece of eight Thomas had lost the toss, so that he had to take Heffer and his party. Fortunately there had been no question of splitting Heffer’s party into two – Ned felt almost guilty at having pointed out that they all had to stay together in case something happened to the
Griffin
and Heffer would find himself without his translator and ADCs, or other members of his mission.

Thomas had not been shrewd enough to counter that with the argument that the
Peleus
might be lost or delayed. Still, that was Thomas’ fault, and now he was paying the price: five days of Heffer’s company.

“Why are you grinning to yourself?” Aurelia asked.

“I was thinking of Thomas having to listen to Heffer!”

“Spare a thought for Diana. She has to listen to Heffer, then all his staff agreeing with every word he says, and then Thomas trying to be polite. And no doubt all the time she’s afraid Thomas will explode.”

“Thomas has more patience than me, so be thankful I won the toss and you don’t have Heffer under your feet.”

Lobb coughed and Ned looked up. “That chart of Santo Domingo – do you think it is accurate?” the mate asked.

“It’s old, that’s all I’m sure of, and we must allow for more coral growing on those reefs. What do they reckon – a couple of feet a year, for some of the corals? Best to trust your eyes and hope the sun is behind us when we go in.”

The chart had come from Secco – a man who disapproved of the whole idea of the mission to Santo Domingo, though he had found the chart among his papers.

Ned said: “The flags of truce – you have them sewn up ready?”

“One for each yardarm, almost as big as the mainsail; and four for the two boats, bow and stern.”

“I wonder if the Dons will take any notice of them,” Ned mused.

“Why shouldn’t they?” Aurelia asked. “If a Spanish ship arrived off Port Royal and came in with a flag of truce, or sent in a boat, we wouldn’t shoot at it.”

“Darling,” Ned said affectionately, “sometimes you are so reasonable I could hit you.”

“The fact is,” Aurelia said patiently, “that you want old Heffer to fail. You’d hate it if he came back from the Spaniards and said everyone was free to trade.”

“That’s not true,” Ned protested. “There’s nothing I’d like better than taking Heffer back with that news. It’s just that you know as well as I do that there isn’t a hope of the Spanish agreeing to trade, so we’re just wasting our time.”

“Is that the last headland before Santo Domingo?” Aurelia asked.

“Yes – one tack out, and the next tack back should bring us in.”

“The flag of truce is going to work,” Aurelia said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“If it doesn’t you’ll hear roundshot whistling around your ears,” Ned said feelingly. “They say Santo Domingo is heavily defended.”

Ned gestured to Lobb, who gave orders to put the ship on the other tack, so that the
Griffin
started out on the first leg of a zigzag which would take her away from the land and then, with the second tack, bring her back.

“You can see Santo Domingo’s at the mouth of a big river,” Lobb said, pointing over to the larboard side. “Look, the water is getting muddy already.”

“Probably there’s been a lot of rain up in the mountains,” Ned said. “I hope we’ll be able to see the bar.”

“Once I can see the banks of the river, I’ll find the bar,” Lobb said. “Anchoring is going to be our problem. There’s a lot of mud, and the river flows out strongly – there’s a note on Secco’s chart that says it’s a couple of knots, and thrice that in the rainy season.”

After about fifteen minutes Ned looked back to the north-east.

“That must be the city coming clear of the headland,” he said. “There’s the savannah and the amphitheatre of hills that Secco said was to the west of it.”

“I wonder if the Spanish are watching us yet?” Aurelia said.

“I doubt it – it must be pretty quiet along here. The last time they had any excitement was when Cromwell sent Penn and Venables.”

“Tell me about them; I forget,” Aurelia said.

“Well, General Penn and Admiral Venables were sent out by Cromwell and they were supposed to capture Santo Domingo. They came from the east and for reasons no one ever explained properly, let themselves get swept past, landing twenty or thirty miles down the coast. They then tried to march back to attack Santo Domingo, but yellow fever, ague and the Spanish beat them, so the survivors went back to the ships and they went on to Jamaica, which they captured instead.”

“Well, they achieved something!”

“The last person to capture Jamaica was a privateer, so taking the island with a force of thousands of men wasn’t so remarkable.”