Admiral (17 page)

“That would be Rowlands, I suppose,” the general said. “A grave disappointment to me…”

“–will be ready for the grave in ten minutes or so. The ranges were too short to offer a long life to the targets,” Leclerc said. “How do you like that for a joke in a foreign language?”

“It’s not foreign to me,” Thomas said with a straight face. “So we have three live and unwounded subalterns and a sergeant left, eh?”

“At the moment,” Leclerc said unambiguously. “We will walk them down to the jetty.”

Ned looked at Heffer, considered for a moment that but for the buccaneers the general would have been hanged within the hour by these same three subalterns, turned back to Leclerc and nodded.

Heffer coughed apologetically. “First I must thank you, then I must apologize that you were submitted to all this.” He waved a hand round the room to indicate the bodies and the prisoners. “Might I ask what you are now going to do with your – er, your little fleet?”

“Return to Tortuga,” Ned said, shortly, knowing that he had won the battle for his buccaneers. “Once my captains have bought more stocks of rumbullion, they’ll be anxious to get back.”

“
Your
captains?” Heffer said, with a heavy-handed attempt at humour. “You sound like an admiral!”

“I am. At least the buccaneers have just elected me their admiral, so I have a little fleet of twenty-eight ships. Four times the size of the one that took Santiago.”

Heffer tugged at his jerkin to straighten it up. A night without sleep was being unkind to him, and the long face sagged as though the muscles holding the flesh were gradually surrendering. “I must congratulate you. What do they call themselves, ‘The Brethren of the Coast’?”

“Yes, and I trust that when you write your dispatch to General Monck describing tonight’s affair, you will mention the help you received from them.”

Heffer looked embarrassed. He shifted the position of the lantern a few inches and turned it so that his face was in shadow.

“I was hoping…somehow…the confidential nature…”

Ned stared at him. “How will you account for the loss of four colonels and three subalterns?”

“With your agreement,” Heffer said, “it can be done.”

“I’m not signing any false declarations,” Ned said firmly.

“No, no, nor would I ask. No, it is only a question of you and your people maintaining a discreet silence. The seven of them are dead or dying. My next dispatch has to report the death already of nine officers and twenty-three private soldiers from yellow fever, various fluxes and malaria. The extra seven –” he waved a hand around the room “–it matters little how their deaths are described in my dispatch.”

Ned gave a dry laugh. “Well, they can’t have died of yellow fever if you are going to hang their bodies in chains at Gallows Point.”

“My goodness!” Heffer said, and Ned realized that he must be the only man who could make that expression sound like an oath. “I’d forgotten all about that. What a decision to have to make. If I conceal the mutiny from London, I can’t hang the men in chains. But I want to string them up, as a dreadful example to the rest of the garrison of the perils of mutiny. What
shall
I do?”

“Are you really asking me?” Ned said, trying to sound friendly.

“Well, yes, you’ve always spoken freely and honestly – haven’t you?”

“Yes, but you rarely like what I say.”

“But these are unusual times,” Heffer said. “What do you think I should do?”

“I don’t think,” Ned said quietly. “I know, and I know Sir Thomas agrees. The fact that four colonels still supported Cromwell and the Commonwealth, despite the Restoration is not your fault. Why not tell them in London? It gives them a good idea of the problems you face. Point out that you have to defend yourself against the Spanish with officers you cannot fully trust. But at the same time describe the batteries you’re building with the guns the buccaneers brought from Santiago.

“Who knows? The army or the government might send you some more guns, powder and shot. Emphasize that while the main threat is from the sea, you have no ships. You can say you have to rely on the buccaneers.

“Meanwhile, string up these colonels and subalterns in chains. Get the gibbets built first thing in the morning – put a couple on that stretch of beach at the end of the spit but on the landward side, so everyone can see them as they’re rowed over to the landing stage to go to St Jago, and the rest beside the road where the Palisades begin.”

Thomas rapped the table with his knuckles. “That’s the best advice you’ve had for years, Teffler; worth a guinea a word. You can’t keep the mutiny secret, and since you’ve quashed it and shot the mutineers, why the devil should you try? Bodies wrapped in chains will stop anyone with similar ideas dead in his tracks. And let me add my penn’orth: here in the island give the buccaneers all the credit you can for helping you stop the mutiny: let your garrison think the buccaneers are on your side and will support you.”

“But aren’t they? Won’t they?”

“No, they’re not, and I doubt it,” said Ned brutally. “Why should they? They’re not English – or, rather, those that are have been ill-treated by Cromwell’s England. No, Teffler my friend, the buccaneers came on shore tonight to rescue their admiral and Sir Thomas, and they punished the men who had kidnapped us. The fact this led to your rescue was – for you –a lucky coincidence.”

“Perhaps I ought to give them a reward? What should it be?”

“Ah, you’re a lucky man,” Thomas said. “Just think of it, Ned, our friend Teffler can give a reward that not only costs him nothing but brings him even more advantages!”

Ned simply laughed and nodded.

“I don’t understand,” Heffer said. “What must I do?”

Ned leaned forward and lowered his voice, to provide more emphasis.

“The scuffle this evening with those wretched colonels has made you forget what the main threat is – to this island, not to you personally.”

“You mean the Spanish troops from Portobelo and Providencia landing on the north coast?”

“Yes.
Is
there a greater threat?”

“No, indeed not. I was telling you before you went to Tortuga, I don’t know what I am going to do!”

“You ask for our advice, so I’ll give it. For yourself, get those batteries completed here on the Palisades – I noticed that first one, where we found the men asleep, is still not finished. Concentrate your troops – if the Spanish are going to land and march, there’s no point in you exhausting your men by marching them over the mountains and through the jungle. Place them in positions you want to hold. After all, that’s how the Spanish beat you in Santo Domingo, wasn’t it? They just massed their men between you and the city and you bolted as soon as you smelled powder – no, not you personally, but just about everyone else.”

“Why can’t your ships stop the Spaniards landing?” Heffer asked plaintively. “That would be the best defence!”

“We have just told you: the buccaneers have absolutely no interest in defending Jamaica for you: they’ve no allegiance to England.”

“Sir Thomas mentioned a reward,” Heffer said, finally accepting that he could expect no more help from the buccaneers.

“Yes, I’m coming to that: I wanted first to remind you about the Dons. You can reward these buccaneers and at the same time give yourself a considerable insurance by offering them Port Royal as a base.”

“But you’ve already said they won’t come!”

“I said they won’t come while you shut down most of the taverns and make the place like the inside of a Puritan church!”

“What must I do then?”

“There’s no need for you to do anything – except not
forbid
everything. First, invite the buccaneers to use Port Royal – that means making the offer to me. Second, assure them that you will leave the town to develop normally. Third, issue every ship with a commission, or letter of marque to operate as a privateer –”

“But you have already said the Spaniards ignore commissions,” Heffer interrupted.

“Yes, but I’m not concerned with the Spanish; I’m concerned with you, or the government of Jamaica. If you set up an Admiralty Court and have it administered fairly, we’ll bring in our prizes and have them condemned in court, so that the King gets his share and so does the Lord High Admiral, if one has been appointed. The prizes are then legally condemned, and local men can buy the hulls or use them for trading – or buccaneering. In that way Jamaica gets defended and also prospers.”

“But you said the buccaneers won’t fight for England!”

“They won’t, as such,” Ned said patiently. “They’ll fight for purchase and they’ll fight for a base which lets them turn their purchase into money and their money into liquor and women: it’s as simple as that!”

Thomas roared with laughter. “Don’t look so shocked, Teffler. Instead of paying out cash for a navy, you are getting one free. Listen, if a buccaneer takes a prize ship into Tortuga, he has trouble selling the cargo and the hull. But here he’ll be able to sell the ship and the cargo – you are short of everything, and the merchants are going out of business – so your people, merchants and gamblers, can trade, or even start buccaneering.”

“Yes, but…well…”

“Yes, all your psalm-singing hypocrites will be shocked o’ nights, hearing the roisterers sing raucous songs as they stagger out of the taverns and bordellos, but remember – drink, food, women and trinkets and fine dresses to put on them: it all costs money. The buccaneers will be
spending
the money, and your merchants and the tavern keepers will be
pocketing
it. And no doubt you’ll be charging customs and excise soon, and landing charges once the trading ships start bringing cargoes. The buccaneers will make the place prosperous, Teffler, and in the meantime they’ll make it safe!”

Heffer turned to Ned. “If I do all this, will you as admiral guarantee to keep the ships here while the Spaniards from Portobelo and Providencia threaten us?”

“No,” Ned said promptly. “If you invite the buccaneers to make Port Royal their base, they’ll defend their base, but as their leader I warn you that the best way of defending Port Royal is by attacking the Spanish elsewhere!”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Heffer grumbled.

“Well, the best way of preventing the Spaniards landing in Jamaica,” Ned explained patiently, “or making them withdraw if they’re already here, is to threaten one of their own towns. One which suddenly needs the Dons in Jamaica to defend or retake it.”

“Yes, I can see that, but where can you attack so that the Spanish take fright and leave us alone? And will the buccaneers agree to such an attack if they think it is simply to defend Jamaica?”

Ned and Thomas both laughed together and Ned said: “Buccaneers will only fight to get purchase, but you need purchase, too, General, so that your merchants and tavern keepers prosper. Why don’t you issue the invitation and the commissions, all signed and drawn up in legal form, and with no charge, and then leave the rest to Sir Thomas and me? But while we are away, tell the tavern keepers and bordello owners and merchants what you’ve done, so they’re ready for our return…”

“It is beyond belief that we are becalmed in sight of the island after three days of being flung about in that dreadful weather,” Diana grumbled crossly. “And where are the rest of them?”

“Ask Ned,” Thomas said wearily. “He’s to blame for all bad weather and straying ships. I’m responsible only for your moral downfall.”

“Immoral,” Ned corrected. “And give me credit for having four ships still with the three of us, rather than twenty-one missing!”

“When it blows a storm for three days and seven ships out of twenty-eight manage to stay together, that’s chance, not good seamanship,” Thomas said amiably. “But you’re the admiral…”

“My lord bishop,” Ned said, “you are too generous. I am sure it was divine intervention.”

“What is this ‘bishop’ joke?” Diana asked.

Ned explained: “When the mutinous colonel broke into the general’s office he wanted to know who we were. I introduced Thomas as the unfrocked bishop of Woolwich, because he had that sanctimonious but well-fed look…”

“I know it,” Diana said. “It usually means I’ve caught him out doing something wrong, like taking an extra glass of rumbullion.”

“Extra?” Aurelia asked. “Do you ration him?”

“I have in the last few months. A bottle of wine with dinner and only two glasses of rumbullion.”

“Those hills,” Thomas said conversationally to Ned, pointing to the pearl-grey blob on the southern horizon, indistinct and seeming to shimmer because the sun reflected from every wavelet on the almost flat sea. “You can always identify Old Providence, or Providencia, as the Dons call it, by the three peaks in the middle, each about the same height. And remember the main danger is Low Cay, lying about nine miles north of the northern end of the island. You can’t distinguish the small island at this distance. Let’s look at the chart.”

Carefully he unrolled the sheet of parchment. It was small, about a foot square, with round-cheeked cherubs blowing from each corner. Beneath an ornate scroll were drawn two islands, Isla Providencia and the tiny Isla Catalina, and beneath the title was the name of the Spaniard who had drawn it. A cartographer? Master of a ship? There was no indication of its origin – or, Thomas noted, its accuracy.

As soon as Thomas had unrolled it on the deck and weighted down the ends, the four of them knelt and examined it once again. In a different handwriting – by comparison a scribble – was noted a latitude, 13º 25’ North and a longitude, 81º 25’ West.

“Coincidence that the minutes of the latitude and longitude are the same,” Ned commented.

“Well, judging by our noon sight, the charted latitude seems fairly accurate,” Thomas said. “It put us thirty miles north of this latitude, and I reckon we’re about thirty miles from those peaks.”

“Those peaks” were now astern as the
Griffin
, her sails hanging like limp laundry, slowly turned as she lay becalmed, twisted by currents which they could see only as thin and curling lines of grass-like brown weed all round them, as though the sea was veined.