Corsair (4 page)

As soon as Lobb had gone back on deck, Aurelia asked: “Why has the governor decided to close the brothels? He sounds more like a Puritan!”

“I’m damned sure he was one, until the Restoration,” Ned said crossly. “He complains that his wife is offended by the sight of the brothels.”

Aurelia laughed softly. “Has anyone told her that both the leader of the buccaneers and his second-in-command have mistresses on board their ships?”

But Ned did not laugh. Instead he said: “Don’t use the word ‘mistress’ like that. I want to marry you; it’s you that insist we build a church in Port Royal first. And Diana may be Thomas’ mistress, but he can’t marry her while that dreadful wife of his stays alive in London.”

Aurelia grinned mischievously. “You know,
chéri
, you always get upset whenever I say I’m your mistress, but I love being your mistress. I am free to run away with a handsome man like Leclerc, or I can stay with you. Why, I’d just love to run away with Leclerc: I’d make him clean up that ship, wash and shave himself regularly, wear clean clothes: you’d never recognize him.”

“Women are the Puritans: they always want to reform a man,” Ned protested. “Leclerc is quite happy, gross and grubby, unshaven and looking as though he has slept in his clothes for a month. He doesn’t want to be scrubbed and polished. Probably some wife or mistress in the past overdid the scrubbing, and his present state is a protest.”

“Perhaps. Meanwhile,” she added, “Port Royal hasn’t got a proper church!”

“Oh yes, that came up at the legislative council, too. O’Leary, the chandler, asked Luce if he thought that once the brothels were closed the buccaneers would go to a church, if there was one. That led to Thomas suggesting that Luce should pay for a church.”

Ned started to unroll a chart on the table in the cabin. “Thomas pointed out that the buccaneers have brought a lot of treasure into Jamaica, and if old Luce will pay for a church, good luck to him: it’ll save me the expense.” He began plotting the direct course to Riohacha. With the trade winds usually blowing from the east or north-east, they should be able to stretch over to Riohacha without tacking. And Riohacha was one of the easier landfalls to make on the Main: the big range of mountains with the very high peak in the middle (the Pico Cristobal Colon, the Spanish called it) ended a few miles west of the port.

“I’ll be glad to be at sea again,” Aurelia said. “We’ve been in port too long.”

“But we’ve been busy building the house,” Ned said crossly. “Damnation, do you want a house or a ship? While we are up in the hills building the house, you want to be at sea. When we are at sea you want to be building a house.”

Aurelia laughed and clapped her hands together. “
Chéri
, that’s why I fascinate you: you can never guess how I’m going to be. Just think, supposing I was a fat and cheerful wife, always laughing at your old jokes, always wanting the same things, always content, always
predictable
. You would soon be bored,
mon chéri
. Oh so bored.”

One by one the fifteen buccaneer ships had weighed anchor in the great harbour, the pawls of their windlasses clunking monotonously as the anchor cables came home, streaming water as the pressure squeezed it out of the strands of the rope.

Lobb gave the orders for the
Griffin
’s mainsail to be hoisted, followed by the foresail, and the ship bore away, running parallel with the low sandy spit better known as the Palisadoes and ending at Gallows Point. As they passed Ned could see bodies hanging in chains from the gibbets on the Point. Not bodies now, with this heat; just skeletons, the remains of Army officers who had tried to overthrow Major-General Heffer when he was acting governor, before Luce arrived. The dissident officers had wanted to be sent back to England: they hated Jamaica and were frightened that they would be struck down by something like yellow fever, so that they would leave their bones in an island they hated. Well, treason had not helped – their bones stayed on the island, even if wrapped in rusty chains, a dreadful warning to any others who might have been nursing, before the Army was disbanded, any ideas of treason.

The
Griffin
sailed easily, skirting the palms along the Palisadoes, and then hauled her wind to round the Point and head out to sea, passing the newly named Fort Charles. In a few minutes she would have to bear up on to a reach which would end on the Spanish Main.

Aurelia walked across the deck and stood by Ned, careless of the heat of the sun, which was now almost overhead, so that it seemed they were growing from small pools of shadow.

“I always love it here: just as the open sea starts making us pitch and roll. It’s when I start to live. The ship, too, she comes alive: the creak of the hull and masts. Look, the guns strain at their tackles, as though they’re eager.”

“You sound bloodthirsty to me,” Ned said with a grin, “but I know what you mean. It excites me, too.” He turned and looked eastwards, along the Palisadoes. “I wonder if old Loosely’s watching us sail?”

“Sir Harold Luce,” Aurelia said with mock primness, “must be looking on you as pirates. He hasn’t given you commissions…”

“We haven’t done anything yet,” Ned pointed out. “There’s no law to say ships can’t sail out of the harbour, and that’s all we are doing.”

“Oh, quite,” Aurelia said, brushing back her hair as the wind caught it. “I’m sure that Sir Harold is looking out of his window and thinking what a coincidence it is that fifteen ships all suddenly sail.”

Ned shrugged his shoulders. “If he thinks back to what we told him this morning, he’ll think we’re all going to Tortuga. Probably thinks we’ve emptied the brothels, too.”

“A fleet of floating bordellos,” Aurelia said, laughing at the thought. “We must look a fine sight to Sir Harold: he’s getting rid of half the buccaneers and all the brothels – at least, he probably thinks he is.”

“When poor Lady Luce walks down Cannon Street again she’s going to get a shock,” Ned said. “All the brothels just as full…”

Five days later, as Ned stood on deck with the perspective glass to his eye, he said to Lobb: “Well, there’s no mistaking them. They’re the only landmarks along the coast for a hundred miles, and I can see the two sugarloaf hills clearly. The sun is reflecting off the snow.”

Lobb took the proffered glass. “That’s them,” he announced after a couple of minutes. “The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. I can see the highest peak poking up through the cloud. Ah,” he exclaimed, “I can just make out La Mesa!”

Ned took the glass back and looked further to the eastward. Yes, he could distinguish the prominent and flat-topped hill. They were too far offshore to make out Cabo San Augustin to the north-east.

Ned nodded contentedly. “Not bad, Lobb. Riohacha is about forty-five miles to the east of the Sierra Nevada and thirty east of La Mesa. We must be steering almost directly for it.”

“Yes, and the closer we get inshore the more the east-going current will carry us up to it. The west-going current dies out in another ten miles or so.”

Aurelia nudged Ned and pointed towards the
Peleus
, which was bearing up slightly to close with the
Griffin
. “Thomas has seen it too,” she said. “He’s coming to tell you about it. Are you and Lobb very clever?”

“Oh yes,” Ned said with mock seriousness. “Across five hundred miles of open sea, and there’s our destination nearly dead ahead.”

“We’re not there yet! How much farther?”

“It’s hard to guess how far off those mountains are. Forty miles to Riohacha, I should think. We should be approaching the town as it gets dark, with us just out of sight of prying eyes.”

“It’s calm enough for you to go over and see Thomas when he gets nearer. Are you going to?”

“Yes, I want to talk about some details of the attack. I forgot one or two things when we were on board the
Perdrix
.”

“Can I come with you? I’d like to see Diana.”

Ned laughed drily. “You’re bored already with being at sea. You want to see Diana to talk about the houses.”

“I don’t,” Aurelia protested. “But you’re the only person I’ve talked to for days, apart from Lobb…”

Half an hour later the
Griffin
and the
Peleus
hove-to while one of the
Griffin
’s boats was hoisted out and lowered. The wind was blowing a fitful ten knots and the waves were less than six feet high.

Ned and Aurelia climbed down into the boat and the six men at the oars rowed briskly towards the
Peleus
.

Thomas and Diana stood at the bulwarks to welcome them on board. As Thomas wiped the perspiration from his brow he said: “Seeing that snow on the tops of the mountains makes me think of cool drinks. What can I offer you, even though it will be warm?”

“Have you any limes left?” Aurelia asked.

“Sacks of them. With rum?”

Aurelia shook her head, and Ned said: “Just a limejuice for me, too: it’s too hot for rumbullion: I’ll only get a headache.”

Diana, like Aurelia, heavily tanned, with long black hair, dark brown eyes and a slim body that warned she would have to watch her weight or she would get fat, said in her deep voice: “If Thomas tells you he has given up drinking hot waters, don’t be too impressed. It only happened two days ago and I doubt the resolve will last another couple of days.”

Ned, who drank very sparingly and did not approve of Thomas’ heavier thirst, raised his eyebrows. “What’s this, penitence?”

Thomas looked embarrassed but Diana, with a glance at Aurelia, gave a delighted laugh. “Right first time, Ned. He got beastly drunk the night before the legislative council meeting, and so…”

“And so she started sleeping by herself,” Thomas growled.

“Yes, it seems Thomas was not built to sleep alone,” Diana said. “So we struck a bargain. He can come to my bed providing his breath does not smell of hot waters.”

“See he keeps to it,” Aurelia said. “Perhaps it will make that great paunch smaller.”

“Ah yes, we are working on that too,” Diana said. “He’s promised to cut down on the vast quantities he eats.”

“Seems to me that Thomas has entered into a lot of commitments,” Ned said. “Now, can we spend a few moments discussing Riohacha?”

Aurelia and Diana went below while Ned and Thomas walked aft and stood under the awning stretched across the afterdeck.

“I reckon we’ll sight Riohacha just as it gets dark,” Thomas said.

Ned nodded. “We’ll be much too far off for anyone on shore to see us. We heave-to until it is quite dark, and then close the shore to anchor in the river mouth some time before midnight.

“But what I came over to say was, I forgot the
Dolphyn
and
Argonauta
. They’ll presumably have small prize crews on board. You have three boats, and I want your second and third ones to take boarding parties to both ships – but after we have landed at the fort: I don’t want the sound of shots raising the alarm.”

“One boat for each ship?”

Ned shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll just have to chance it. I doubt if either ship will have more than half a dozen men on board, and they’ll probably be sleeping off a night’s heavy drinking.”

“Very well,” said Thomas. “We’re always short of boats. You haven’t forgotten the petards have you?”

“No, we’ve made four, but we’ll concentrate on the main door. That’ll be easy to find in the darkness. If all goes well, we’ll have about half an hour of moon – just enough time for us to get our bearings.”

Thomas looked up as a seaman walked over to him. “Ah, our drinks. You know, I’m beginning to like limejuice without rumbullion in it. Bit of a sharp taste, but it leaves your mouth nice and fresh.”

“From the look in Diana’s eye, you’d better get used to it,” Ned said.

“Yes, she can be remarkably strong-minded, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sleep alone like some monk!”

Ned looked round at the ships now all lying with their mainsails lowered: only two or three of them would heave-to satisfactorily. “Look at them,” he said, “as far as old Loosely’s concerned, they’re just pirates!”

Thomas laughed heartily and slapped his stomach. “I wish Loosely was here to see us. Still, if we told him where we are bound, he’d faint.”

“He’s probably prowling round Cannon Street at the moment to make sure all the brothels are closed.”

“Might have done him a bit of good to have visited one first,” Thomas said sourly. “Being married to that woman can’t help much, either.”

The two men talked for another five minutes and then Ned and Aurelia returned to the
Griffin
. “You had a good gossip?” Ned asked amiably once they were down in the cabin again.

“This is a hard voyage for Thomas.”

“How so?” Ned asked.

“Diana’s set up some rules. Apart from not drinking hot waters and eating less, there are others.”

“Concerning what?”

Aurelia laughed. “I shan’t tell you. I might want to apply them to you.”

“Thomas is frightened of Diana. I’m not frightened of you.”

“It’s not fear upsetting Thomas when he has to sleep alone,” Aurelia said matter-of-factly.

Ned took down the chart and unrolled it again. He looked at the small wedge-shaped indentation which was the Hacha River, with the town on the west bank. There were not many soundings and the river emptying into the sea meant mud or sand, so it could be shallow close in. But wherever it was deep enough to anchor the
Dolphyn
and
Argonauta
, it would be deep enough for the other buccaneer ships. But how far were the two captives from the fort? That was the distance that the boats were going to have to row. And they would be close enough in to be seen from the town – if any sharp-eyed inhabitant was awake at that time of the night.

He rolled up the chart. As usual, it depended on luck as much as planning, and in fifteen hours or so it would all be decided one way or the other.

Clouds kept cutting off the moon as though someone was opening and shutting the door of a lighted room, but the breeze was shifting the clouds fast. Ned looked astern and watched the rest of the buccaneer ships following the
Griffin
. Ahead the shore made a heavy, black outline; the
Dolphyn
and the
Argonauta
could be distinguished only by their masts jutting up above the land.