Buccaneer (22 page)

“I get the impression, Yorke, that you ran the plantation and that this man Saxby –” he nodded at the master, who was over on the other side of the deck talking with the rest of Whetstone’s party “–is the master of the ship, and you have few experienced crew.”

Ned nodded but said mildly: “Does it show as clearly as that?”

“No, not really, providing you are simply trading between Barbados and Curaçao.”

“What makes you think that we are not?” Ned asked out of curiosity.

“You have been in collision within the last few days –” he turned and pointed to the starboard quarter “–and that gouge across your deck was caused by roundshot which came through one bulwark and went out of the other. And I’ve seen four men with bandages.”

“That shows we have been in action, but surely not that we are inexperienced?”

“There are other shot holes, but I note your guns have not been fired because the paint inside the bulwark is not scorched. That means that some ship – a Spanish
guarda costa
? – fired a few broadsides and then collided with you, presumably because you made a mistake that she did not anticipate.”

“Thomas! Apologize at once!” Diana Gilbert-Manners was angry with him now.

“No, ma’am,” Ned said, “there’s no need. He’s quite correct except for the last part: Saxby ran across the
guarda costa
’s bow, so she lost her jibboom and bowsprit and that brought her mast down.”

“So thanks to Saxby you lived to tell the story,” Whetstone commented grimly. “But what were you doing so close to the Main? The Dons normally stay within sight of the coast.”

Ned told him of their smuggling visit to Carúpano and the
guarda costa
’s trap off Cumaná.

“Yes, that’s an old trick,” Whetstone commented. “The mayor makes a profit both ways. They don’t do it to the Dutch, who seem to have the smuggling monopoly along the Main, and the Dons need their regular calls so they can dispose of their hides and coffee and tobacco. And salt, of course: salt mined by all their prisoners. Don’t get captured off the Main: it’s terrible working in those salt mines. Not salt pans, where they let in sea water and wait for the sun to evaporate the water and leave the salt behind, but deep mines. Like coal mines. The deposit of centuries.”

“You sound as if you are speaking from experience!”

Diana Gilbert-Manners’ hand gripped his arm as Whetstone said quietly: “I am. I’m one of the few who ever escaped alive.”

“We never take Spanish prisoners,” Diana Gilbert-Manners said, in the sort of tone she might have used to say that they never drank Spanish red wine.

“What are you doing now, then?” Aurelia asked.

“Buccaneering. The Spaniards call it piracy,” Whetstone said with a mirthless laugh.

“This is privateering, then? You have the commission, or letter of marque?”

“One could call it ‘privateering’ out of politeness, dear lady, but I do not have a letter of marque – who is there to issue one to a Royalist nephew of the Lord Protector? More to the point, to whom would I show it? Who would bother or dare to ask?”

“I wish to ask you a question, Sir Thomas, but do not feel obliged to answer. But first I must ask Edouard’s permission. Forgive me for a moment.” She whispered for several moments to Ned, who nodded several times. “
Alors
, you know already we are not very experienced smugglers, and our next attempt could be our last. When your ship came in sight, we were all debating – well, what the future held for us.”

Whetstone held his mug upside-down so that Mrs Judd could see it. She bustled over with a jug and poured rumbullion until Whetstone told her to stop, and when he said he would like limejuice with it she bellowed for Mrs Bullock, who hurried over with another jug.

“’Ow about you, dearie?” Mrs Judd asked Diana. “You ain’t drinking.”

“Thank you, no; I leave it to the men.”

“Very wise. Once they get a skinful you can make ’em do anything!”

Whetstone gave a bellow of laughter and Diana said cheerfully: “I learned that lesson at my mother’s knee!”

As soon as the two women had moved away, Whetstone said: “When did you leave Barbados?”

“About a week before Penn and Venables arrived.”

“Where did you go?”

“We had a look at Antigua and then Montserrat.”

“Why?”

“In case I could buy a plantation. It was a silly idea, but my father’s letter telling me he and my brother were going to France and warning me to get away was a shock.”

“Bad place, Antigua,” Sir Thomas said, shaking his head. “Wrong type of men go there. Like all the rubbish that drifts into one corner of a harbour. Then what did you do?”

“Well, we decided to try smuggling. We had the sugar loaded at Kingsnorth, and some trade goods I bought in Antigua. We went into Carúpano, told them we’d trade only for cash and did good business.”

Whetstone nodded. “That’s why the mayor betrayed you. His people were left with goods they normally exchange, and he guessed you were English and new to the game. But after you’ve sold all your sugar and trade goods, what then?”

“That’s what we’re trying to decide,” Ned said. He was cautious enough not to say that with the ship full of money but empty of goods, they had no idea when Diana looked at Whetstone and gave a jolly laugh that made her breasts vibrate in a way that made Ned suddenly thankful, for his own peace of mind, that Aurelia’s jerkin was less revealing.

“Oh Thomas, all this is a familiar story, eh?” she exclaimed.

Whetstone nodded ruefully and explained. “I left England with the
Pearl
and Diana. My debtors were proving very insistent. Diana had money which she was quite prepared to spend on my welfare but she adopted quite a callous attitude towards the fate of the debtors.”

“What he means,” Diana said, “is that I paid for all provisions and trade goods for the Pearl and the wages of her crew for three months –”

“Why three months?” Aurelia asked.

“You’ll see in a moment,” Diana said. “Then, having a pretty shrewd idea from Thomas what his Uncle Oliver was planning, we embarked my family at Portland and took them to France with their most treasured possessions. Now you continue, Thomas.”

“Well, I signed on men that I selected very carefully. I wasn’t concerned if he was an escaped murderer, a lawyer, a counting house clerk or a pickpocket – they all have much in common, of course – but I was very careful with seamen. I made it clear we were bound for the West Indies and they’d be paid for three months. After that, I told ’em, we’d all be earning our own pay, and it would make them rich men or see them launched over the side sewn up in a hammaco. I was careful signing on seamen because I didn’t want any sea lawyers arguing at the end of the three months.”

“Did you have any?” Ned asked.

“One.”

“Tell them, Thomas.”

Whetstone looked embarrassed. “We were somewhere south of Barbados when this fellow starts grumbling. We had not yet begun buccaneering but we’d met a couple of buccaneering ships and had good news from them. Well, this man really starts causing trouble and came towards me one day with a knife screaming he was going to kill me. I must say I believed him, and so did the rest of the crew.”

“Thomas, finish the story!” Diana said.

“There’s not much more to it. Before he could get to me a couple of men had grabbed him and slung him over the side.”

“Did you have any more trouble with him?” Ned asked.

Whetstone shook his head. “We didn’t stop.”

Diana saw the shocked look on Aurelia’s face. “You must understand, my dear, that one bad man can infect the crew. Our men knew that and threw him over the side. Remember, out here you face yellow fever, the Spanish and mutiny. All can kill you, if you let them. We have stayed alive because Thomas has a loyal crew – and is a successful buccaneer.”

Whetstone tapped Ned’s arm. “Believe me, success is the best protection!”

Aurelia asked the question just as Ned was trying to phrase the sentence. “What is buccaneering really? Is that an indiscreet question?”

“Buccaneering…well, earlier you mentioned a letter of marque and I don’t have one, so what we’re doing I suppose is piracy. It’s legal if you have a letter (sometimes it is called a commission), and illegal if not. But that’s not important: just remember that if the Dons or yellow fever catch you, they kill you, whether you have a commission or not. Anyway, let’s call it buccaneering.

“Buccaneering really means some English governor or other gives you this commission to make war on the country’s enemies – I nearly said ‘the King’s enemies’ – at your own expense and using your own ship. We’re at war with Spain, so a buccaneer, or privateer, can capture Spanish ships and cargoes and bring them into an English port where the Admiralty court considers it all and condemns the Spaniard as a prize to the buccaneer.”

“So then you sell the ship and cargo?” Ned asked.

Whetstone gave a bitter laugh.

“In the old days, the court charged various fees, the judge had to be paid, and the King had a percentage, and you had what was left: you sold ship and cargo, ransomed the crew (or let them free) and that was that.”

“What is different now?” Aurelia asked.

“Madame,” Whetstone said heavily, “your friend and I share two things in common. We have superb tastes in the women we love, and we are Royalists. Pray tell me what English Admiralty court today will listen to us, and legally condemn our captures as prizes? Can you imagine those Roundheads in Barbados? Or Antigua? Or Surinam? That is why I have no commission, or letter of marque. That’s why what I do is called piracy. And why Diana said we act as our own judge out here… When we’ve fought a Spanish ship and captured her, we hardly need an English Admiralty court judge to charge us a fee and tell us she is Spanish and our prize…”

“So what do you do?”

“Capture the Dons’ ships, sell their cargoes to the Dutch (who smuggle them to the Main and sell ’em back to the Dons), and often we sell the ships to the Dutch too, if they are not too badly damaged.”

“So you were on your way to Curaçao when we came in sight,” Ned said.

Whetstone glanced at Diana, his eyes asking a question. She thought for a few moments and then nodded.

“No, we weren’t going to Curaçao. Or rather, we were calling in for water and to pay some bills and collect money owing to us. Then we were going to make a long passage.”

Both Ned and Aurelia stood closer to each other: there seemed no doubt to either of them that what Whetstone was going to say would greatly affect their lives.

“Before I tell you where we were going, I must give you some news. It reached Curaçao last week and there is no doubt about it: a Dutch ship saw some of it and shipped three deserters who told them the rest.

“Penn and Venables did not capture Hispaniola; in fact they never reached the capital. They landed in the wrong place and marched towards Santo Domingo. The Spaniards chased ’em off and they went back to where they landed and camped. It rained and rained for days – and the storeships with their tents and supplies still had not arrived from England. Within two weeks, five thousand were dead from cholera.

“The gallant admiral and the gallant general knew that the Lord Protector would find it hard to believe they could be so stupid; he would suspect treason. So, knowing that the island of Jamaica had once been taken by a single privateer, they decided to capture it with their fleet.

“It is a small island south of Cuba and west of Hispaniola. Anyway, off they went, and since they outnumbered the Spanish by about fifty to one, they captured it. So Jamaica is now English.”

Aurelia murmured: “All those poor men dead from cholera…”

“My uncle emptied the jails of England to supply the men for that army,” Whetstone said bitterly. “I don’t know which is worse – to rot in England from jail fever, where your only crime was to be in the Royalist army, or to die of cholera in the pouring rain in a field in Hispaniola.”

“Your voyage?” Ned prompted.

“Ah yes. Seeking new pastures, really. We have raided the smaller towns along the Main and ransomed the leading citizens so often that the government in Spain has sent out a dozen or more
guarda costas
– you’ve already met one.

“But if we use Jamaica (or the Caymans, some tiny islands not far away) we have hundreds of miles of the Cuban coast to raid, quite apart from Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Places that have heard only gossip about privateers!”

Whetstone’s eyes were lighting up as he thought about it and his arm had gone round Diana’s shoulders. “Ransom and still more ransom! Ten thousand pieces of eight for archbishops, five thousand for bishops, and for mayors and tradesmen, according to the size of their business. Why, for a couple of years we don’t have to fire a broadside at another ship! Just improve our musketry and buy some more pistols, and another grindstone for sharpening swords and pikes – remind me when we get to Curaçao,” he said to Diana.

“But Jamaica…” Ned said cautiously. “The new governor and the garrison will be entirely Roundhead! You won’t dare enter the place!”

Whetstone gave Diana a squeeze. “He’s learning fast, this son of the Earl of Ilex. No, Yorke, my dear fellow, if Sir Thomas Whetstone sails the
Pearl
into whatever the main port of Jamaica is called, he’ll end up hanging from a gibbet and I dare not think what would happen to Diana. But if John Brown and his wife Mary, joint owners of the
John and Mary
sloop, registered in the port of London, sail in with a cargo of goods like flour, sugar, rumbullion and sweet potatoes, well, I’m sure they’ll be very welcome.” He grinned at Aurelia. “Why, the new military governor of Jamaica, or whoever is in charge, might even give them a commission so they could take up privateering!”

“You are very brave,” Aurelia said to Diana, “or you love him very much.”

“I love him, I suppose,” Diana said, jabbing Whetstone in the ribs with a finger, “but more to the point I have confidence in him. I think it will work.”

“It had better,” Whetstone said. “She thought of it!”

“We haven’t much left here along the Main,” Diana said soberly. “The Spaniards are even leaving the towns on the coast and building new ones fifteen or twenty miles inland. You whisper the name
La Perla
along this coast and everyone loads his possessions into leather panniers, slings them across his horses’ backs, and gallops into the distance.”