Galleon (11 page)

“Where else would Spaniards be sending troops?” Thomas inquired innocently. “Are they still seeking the land of El Dorado?”

“Well, they’re certainly no threat to us, even allowing that the Viceroy has called in the ships and proposed putting troops on board them. We now have a treaty of peace with Spain, which rules out any hostile act by the Viceroy such as you suggest.”

Secco laughed and Firman gave another grunt.

Luce raised his eyebrows. “Why do you laugh, my man?”

Secco waved his hat, using it as a fan. “Señor, I am just a simple Spaniard, but I know how my own people think and act. I know about these ships because Spanish people in Spanish ports on the Spanish Main have just told me about them. In other ports they told the same thing to my Dutch friend here. A treaty of peace with England?” Secco laughed again. “I’ll believe that matters when the Pope removes the Line. ‘No Peace Beyond the Line’, señor: no peace beyond the Line. You know where the Line is? Not many miles from the Azores. We are beyond the Line, Mister Governor; for us there’s no peace with the Spanish. Not for planters, for their wives and children; not for governors and their wives and mistresses; not for buccaneers, whores, pimps, tavernkeepers…no peace for no one, mister. For you, maybe a golden garotte; but believe me, mister, it strangles you and – if you’re lucky – breaks your neck just the same as an iron one.”

With that, Secco jammed his hat on his head, took Firman by the arm and, with a nod to Ned and Thomas, marched out of the room. Ned and Thomas were just going to follow when the Governor waved at them to stay.

“What’s all this nonsense about your people sailing?”

“You’ve taken away my captains’ commissions, so they’re not going to defend your damned island at their own expense,” Ned said bitterly. “You don’t believe the Spanish could possibly attack. We don’t say they will but – an opinion based on considerable experience – we say they could.”

“In that case you should stay,” Luce said lamely. “You owe it to the island. You have a loyalty to the King, too!”

“Do I?” Ned asked, his voice weary. “Cromwell confiscated my family’s estates claiming they were Royalist – which they were, of course. Now Cromwell’s long dead and the King is back on the throne, and what’s happening? I’ll tell you, in case you didn’t notice. The King has now taken over many of those confiscated estates and he’s giving them away to his favourites. Although my father and brother went into exile with the King, this may be the reward for their loyalty – the same treatment from the King as they received from Cromwell. As for us out here (and we are the people that did our best to protect Jamaica), our reward–” Ned looked Luce up and down contemptuously, “–our reward, Your Excellency, is to get a jobbernowl like you sent out to govern us. Well, we’re still free men so we can refuse the reward.”

“You insult me! You insult the office the King granted me! Why, I’d run you through!”

Thomas burst out laughing but managed to blurt out: “Even in your prime you’d have been hard put to run through a boiled potato!”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Heffer said, “all this won’t solve our problems!”

“Aaaah,” Luce cried as though in pain, “our problem is these damned buccaneers. Just because they buy a few provisions, all the tradesmen support them.”

“They put gold in the treasury, Your Excellency,” Heffer said quietly, “and guns in our batteries.”

“Everything was stolen from the Spanish,” Luce sneered.

Ned, who was walking towards the door, swung round. “Stolen goods, eh? Well, be careful we don’t repent and take the gold back,” he said coldly. “You told us you’ve brought out money from England to start a Treasury. My captains may decide that the Spanish gold and silver was just a loan…”

All the buccaneer captains, gathered on the
Griffin’s
deck, listened to their Admiral’s brief speech. Ned told them that the new Governor so far was simply carrying out instructions he had received before leaving London. “Not surprisingly, the people in London have little idea what is happening out here. They firmly believe that the new treaty with Spain means that the Spanish out here are our friends.

“The new Governor was even told to start a trade with the Main, and he is puzzled why he was laughed at in the first meeting of the executive council. I want you all to understand that the Governor means well; he just has to get a great deal more experience to help him decide what to do when things not covered in his orders from London start happening. So now listen to what Secco has to say, and after him Firman.”

After both men had reported on what they had learned about the Spanish ships, Ned asked the captains: “Any questions?”

There were several. Was the Governor now going to give back the commissions, so that the buccaneers could attack the Spanish – try to sink or capture those ships before they even reached Cartagena? Well, no, Ned said. Did the Governor really believe the reports of Secco and Firman? Ned had to shake his head. Was the Governor still going to pay off the Army and disband it, even though he had now heard the reports about the Spaniards? Again Ned had to report that the Governor was. When one of the captains asked if the Governor still expected the buccaneers to defend Jamaica and Ned reluctantly shook his head, there were shouts of “Tortuga! Tortue!”

The shouts increased until it seemed to Ned that all the captains were calling the island’s name in English, French or Spanish. He looked round at Thomas, who muttered the single word: “Vote!”

Ned held up his hand for silence, and the shouting stopped. “Very well, some of you want to change our base. Remember, on the one hand we have here provisions and we can buy chandlery for our ships, but we have an English Governor. At Tortuga we are free of any interference, but we can’t get provisions or chandlery. So we will vote. All in favour of moving to Tortuga?”

Many hands shot into the air, and Ned said: “Now, those in favour of staying here?”

Only three captains indicated they wanted to remain in Jamaica, one of them shouting angrily at the others: “You fools! There are no women in Tortuga! You’ll just get drunk and because you can’t have a woman, you’ll start quarrelling.”

Secco stepped forward, removed his hat with a flourish and turned to face his fellow captains. “Women? Where is the difficulty? Many of us carry half a dozen women on board. That way the food gets cooked, the clothes mended, and…”

“And…?” echoed several captains amid laughter.

“Very well, that’s decided,” Ned said. “You’d all better get back to your ships and attend to provisioning and watering, and whatever else you need.”

Slapping each other on the back like a group of boisterous schoolboys let out of class, they made their way over the
Griffin’s
bulwarks and down into their boats. Ned turned to Thomas.

“Well, my lord bishop, are we doing the right thing?”

Thomas shrugged his massive shoulders. “Depends whether or not we decide the safety of Jamaica is our problem or Loosely’s.”

“With old Heffer blundering around in the past it’s become a habit, I suppose,” Ned said, “even though Heffer now admits that but for us he’d have had nothing to hand over to Loosely.”

“Diana’s not going to like it,” Thomas commented gloomily, “nor is Aurelia. They both want to finish the houses. Yesterday they were having long conferences about the sort of furniture they are going to have made. They’ve already decided both houses have the same, so the carpenters make duplicates.”

“I’m staying here for a while,” Ned said. “I’d like to get the house finished, too. And Tortuga is such a depressing place.”

“Good,” said Thomas. “That means I can stay with a clear conscience, and that means Diana will be in a good mood. But let’s agree to keep away from the Governor: he’s more stupid than I believed possible. He’s bound to get a barony – unless the Dons get him first with a garotte.”

Two hours later while the four of them were sitting in the
Griffin’s
hot saloon talking of the problems of building houses, Saxby knocked at the door and looked in to report. “Secco’s coming over in a boat with that Dutchman, Firman. From the number of boats visiting Secco’s ship, the captains have been having a meeting. I wasn’t invited.”

Saxby had been foreman of Ned’s plantation in Barbados, and commanded the
Griffin
when she was needed to carry cargoes for the plantation. When the Roundheads were about to seize the plantation and Ned decided to flee with Aurelia and those of the plantation staff who wanted to come, Saxby had sailed the
Griffin
with the Roundheads shooting at them. Now he commanded the
Phoenix
, which had been the
Griffin’s
first prize. Saxby was a quiet, competent man who kept to himself – not, Ned knew, because he scorned the friendship of others but because he was a private man. Private except for his Mistress, Martha Judd.

A Lincolnshire man, stockily built with a stentorian voice, Saxby had a curious past. Both he and his father had been farm labourers and were pressed into the Navy at the same time. Saxby had a great appetite for women and a dislike of hot liquors, so service at sea deprived him of his one pleasure and tried to pour down his throat the spirits he hated. After several years at sea (during which time he lost sight of his father) Saxby finally deserted, returned to his Lincolnshire village, and was still working there when the Civil War began. He was taken prisoner by the Roundheads and transported to Barbados.

Ned, recalling the story of the couple, remembered that Mrs Judd, wide-hipped, big-breasted, a woman with an enormous zest for life and for finding a man who could satisfy her and keep her respect, had been working as a housekeeper for a landowner at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, when the Civil War started. What, Ned had always wondered, had happened to Mr Judd? He never appeared in any of the stories (usually slightly bawdy) that Mrs Judd delighted in telling.

Anyway, as the Royalists were finally defeated the Banbury landowner had to flee, leaving his wife and children in Mrs Judd’s care. Within days the house was attacked by Roundhead looters, who were also busy breaking the stained-glass windows in the local churches, whereupon an enraged Mrs Judd had set about them with two kitchen knives, changing them for a billhook as soon as she could get to the potting shed. Fortunately for Mrs Judd (and eventually Saxby) she failed to decapitate any of the Roundheads, who took her prisoner and ordered her to be transported to Barbados. On board the ship taking her to what she had anticipated would be a harsh, hot and loveless exile, she met Saxby, and both of them had ended up working on Ned’s plantation. As Mrs Judd had once confided to Aurelia, instead of starting what she had expected to be the life of an overworked nun, she had become an overworked mistress, the wink at the end of the story indicating to Aurelia that it was not only in the kitchen that Mrs Judd worked hard.

Bawdy, lively, only too ready and certainly quite capable of taking charge in any situation, Mrs Judd had taken charge of Saxby, whose red complexion glistened, even if his blue eyes were often red-rimmed when he started work of a morning on the plantation.

If anyone was responsible for the transformation of Saxby from a seaman who had deserted and become a plantation foreman into the captain of a buccaneer ship and the equal of any of the other captains, it was Mrs Judd. Ned was not sure if the man’s new confidence had come from his Lincolnshire forebears or from being clasped to Mrs Judd’s ample bosom and eager thighs, but what mattered was that it had come at the right time.

Saxby returned to the saloon to report. “Secco and the Dutchman are coming alongside now. D’you want to see ’em on deck or down ’ere, sir?” he asked Ned.

“We’ll come on deck,” Ned said.

“You can’t expect them to accept old Loosely’s decisions,” Thomas said as he stood up. “We don’t even agree with them ourselves!”

“I don’t, and I don’t forget that most of the buccaneers are French, or Dutch, or even Spanish. But when we’re here in Jamaica we have to accept whatever the Governor says – providing,” Ned added, “we know that he’s acting on government instructions. We might find ourselves defying him if he gets hysterical and starts issuing his own orders…”

Diana said: “Ned’s right. Anyway, he’ll soon run through his list of orders from London. Then the executive council can make sure he doesn’t do anything too silly.”

“He’s got to
call
a council meeting first,” Thomas pointed out, “and there’s nothing to stop him leaving the executive council supping rum punch while that fancy private secretary, Hamilton, nails up decrees on the front door.”

“You don’t have to go up to the door and read them,” Aurelia said.

“A town crier, that’ll be the next appointment he makes,” Thomas grumbled. “‘Oyez, oyez, now hear ye, the Governor has decreed…’ I can just hear it.”

“I can hear the town crier’s yells as the shopkeepers pitch him in the lobster crawl,” Ned said, “and I can see the Governor’s decree floating away as the town crier splashes his way back to the shore.”

He led the way to the door.

Since both Secco and Firman seemed embarrassed, each waiting for the other to start, Ned asked amiably: “So what have you all decided to do?”

Secco looked relieved. The buccaneers were simply a group of privateersmen (former privateersmen, now that Luce had withdrawn their commissions) who had elected a leader whom they respected enough to follow and called him their Admiral. Nothing was written down: no orders were ever written. The only agreement – and that only an understanding between them all – was that when the Admiral led them, they obeyed him. There was nothing to stop any one – or indeed all – of the Brethren of the Coast, as they called themselves, refusing to follow.

“We…er, we did not like the Governor’s decision…”

“Nor did we,” Ned said, to help the man.

“And like you we do not like Tortuga. And we know what the Spaniards are doing…”

Thomas clapped his hands and laughed. “And the idea of all those ships sailing round to Cartagena was irresistible!”