Galleon (20 page)

“Steady,” he murmured, “don’t let the men think we’ve given up hope.”

“I haven’t given up hope of Julio; it’s just that it seems impossible we’ll ever be able to rescue Diana and Thomas, even if they’re still alive.”

“We mustn’t get upset when the Spanish play tricks on us: we play tricks on them. Don’t forget Portobelo.”

She nodded, wiping her eyes. “Ned, I think I’m changing. Once I thought I’d always be content being at sea with you in the
Griffin
, but now we’ve started to build the house…”

“Now we’ve started to build the house,” Ned echoed, “you’ve been thinking that it’s time we settled down and…”

“Well, we’ve enough money to live comfortably,” she said. “For you, buccaneering comes easily; you love leading these men, and you do it well. But for me – well, the worry sends me crazy: I have nightmares in which I see the Spanish garotting you, or a cannonball smashing you into a pulp, or–”

“But I always come back safely, and anyway usually you’re with us.”

“I know, I know,” Aurelia wailed, “but Diana gets the same nightmares about Thomas…”

“So what am I to do, then?” Ned asked, half angry and half wishing to placate her. “Plant sugar-cane, tobacco, and buy ships to collect dyewoods from the Moskito Coast?”

“Ned,” Aurelia said, holding his arm, “both you and Thomas are going to have to accept that Jamaica is secure now: you’ve beaten the Spanish, you’ve provided the big guns for Heffer to put in the batteries to defend Port Royal, you’ve provided enough gold from the Portobelo raid to establish the island’s currency. Now both of you have one enemy left, and you’ve got to be in the island to fight them.”

“Who on earth – ?”

“The government in London! They have no idea of what it’s like out here in the Caribbee islands, and for years to come they’ll be sending out people as stupid as this man Luce and,
quelle
blague
, these
bouffons
will destroy everything you’ve done unless you are there to argue or persuade them. This buffoon – it sounds stronger in English – Luce will never understand that Spain in Europe is one thing, but Spain out here is another. I think the French and the Dutch understand, but they don’t own Jamaica, so–”

Ned pointed, interrupting her.

“Oh,” Aurelia exclaimed, “here they come! Four of them, and the sun is shining on the armour of two of them. Oh, let us pray that he’s managed to find out what’s been happening. Just look at the
Peleus
– she looks so forlorn at anchor, with just that Spanish sentry…”

Ned did not think four men in a boat could take so long to get alongside the
Griffin
and board. Yes, Julio could not rush back because if any Spanish were watching from the shore they would be puzzled (or even suspicious) of such haste. Yes, the sun was scorching and the two men at the oars wearing breastplates and backplates must be as hot as steaming kettles – not that anyone in the Tropics ever saw a boiling kettle steam, unless it was a very cold morning in January… He was thankful that Aurelia was so patient: it was extraordinary how she understood him, a man born without patience.

Finally seamen were at the bulwarks taking the boat’s painter and sternfast and Julio swung over the bulwark, landing on the deck with a thump. Grinning, he gave Ned a salute and then swept off his hat in a deep bow to Aurelia.

“From the silly grin on your face it seems the news is good,” Ned growled, still irritated by the man’s tardiness.

“What little we could find out was good,” Julio said cautiously, obviously put out by Ned’s manner and not understanding its cause.

Ned gestured to the square of canvas rigged up over the afterdeck to provide some shade. “Let’s stand under the awning; it’s so damned hot in this bay: the hills shut off all the breeze.”

The other three Spaniards joined them, the two in armour thankfully undoing the straps and taking off their breast and backplates, revealing the shirts underneath sodden and dark with perspiration. Their hair was matted and flattened by the weight and heat of the helmets: where the edges of the helmets had rested, both had livid red weals across their brows below the hairline.

Julio, as if wanting his three countrymen to share in his report, waited patiently. A diving pelican hit the water with a splash a moment before one of the men dropped his helmet on deck with a clatter, and black-headed gulls circled uttering shrill cries, waiting for the pelican to sit squarely on the sea, water streaming from the bulbous pouch forming his lower beak and letting some small fish accidentally escape to provide a meal for the gulls.

“Well,” said Julio, “we landed on the jetty and there to meet us was the
alcalde
, the
aduana
, the priest and the agent for the man who owns the salt pans behind the mangroves–”

“Come on!” Ned urged, but it was clear to Aurelia that Julio had reached his hour of importance, when he had the complete attention of the Admiral of the Brethren of the Coast, and he was not going to rush anything; a time of glory to be savoured, not gulped, but Ned would not understand that in a thousand years.

“–all very friendly and obviously wondering what they could get out of us. If you want to ship fifty tons of salt to Vieques – that’s an island just off the eastern end of Porto Rico – the agent will pay well.”

“No salt,” Ned said, hoping to speed up Julio’s report.

“Good,” Julio said, “it’s a truly vile cargo: the salt gets into every cut or graze when you’re loading and it hurts, and if it gets wet and a few sacks burst, it makes a mess of the bilges.”

“No salt,” Ned repeated doggedly, fighting back an urge to scream at the man, “we are not salters.”

“Well, I left these two in armour to guard the boat even though they complained of the heat,” Julio said, nodding at the two men, “and Fernando and I went along to the mayor’s house where we all had a mug of wine. Very bad it was,” Julio said, shuddering and screwing up his face, as though expecting sympathy from Ned. “It was a wine that wouldn’t travel ten miles in Spain before turning to vinegar, which is probably why it was shipped out here.

“So we drank and gossiped. I worked the conversation round to the
Peleus
– rather cleverly, I thought, eh Fernando?”

“Very cleverly.”

“The
alcalde
said he thought she might be sold soon: he was waiting to hear from San Germán. I asked – very innocently, you understand – eh Fernando?”

“Very innocently.”

“–if the owner lived in San Germán, because I might be interested in buying the ship. I thought that was a clever approach,” he told Ned, who nodded.

“The
alcalde
laughed in a strange way. ‘You could say so,’ he said, ‘but there’s no need for you to go all the way there: I shall be hearing very soon.’ I thought it best to let them drink more of that terrible wine, tho’ I realized it might have killed them before it loosened their tongues!

“Eventually, the
alcalde
admitted that she was an English ship – it was very cunning, eh Fernando, how I said she seemed to be foreign-built?”

“Very cunning,” Fernando repeated obediently.

“Then, confidentially, he told me that she was English, and how she had sailed in on the seventh of this month and sent a boat to the jetty with a white flag, asking for water. The
aduana
then described how he had galloped to San Germán for soldiers, who rode in just as the priest had roused out the fishermen to have their boats ready. The rest we know – the soldiers caught our seamen on shore with the water casks, and the fishermen then rowed the soldiers out to seize the
Peleus
. Three soldiers were killed.”

“How did that happen?” Ned asked.

“Well, there was a fight on board: Sir Thomas ran one through with his sword: the lady shot one with a pistol and a third was drowned.”

“Drowned?” Ned exclaimed.

“Yes, Sir Thomas threw him over the side and, because he was wearing armour, he sank at once.”

That would be enough, Ned thought. In Spanish eyes, both Thomas and Diana were murderers. It was irrelevant that in English eyes the Spanish had broken their word and were behaving like pirates, and Thomas was quite rightly defending his property against attack. And as murderers they would be tried and sentenced to death. Had the sentence already been carried out? There was no point in hurrying Julio; like a flood or ebb tide, he moved ponderously at his own speed.

“I made it clear how shocked I was at this brutal behaviour by the English,” Julio continued. “I said I hoped the rack and the garotte were doing their job.”

Ned felt himself going cold at the matter-of-fact way that Julio phrased it; but the man was Spanish; to him the rack and the garotte were as familiar a part of life as a donkey and cart.

“The
alcalde
said the man when put on the rack a few days later claimed to have shot one soldier and killed the other with his sword, but other soldiers had seen the woman firing the pistol, so there was no argument.”

“What happened then?” Aurelia asked, knowing she would burst into tears if Julio kept her waiting any longer.

“Death,” said Julio.

Aurelia collapsed on the deck while Ned felt the ship and the bay swirling round him as he tried to go to her help.

***

Julio himself was almost in tears as, once Aurelia had recovered, he began to explain. He had crushed his hat – Ned’s hat, in fact – and screwed the plume into a ball before he could get both Ned and Aurelia, still white-faced and trembling, to listen as he finished his report.

“The
alcalde
was quite definite – wasn’t he Fernando?”

“Quite definite.”

“So that was the sentence of the court after they had heard the evidence and after the torturing,” Julio said.

“That’s enough,” Ned said abruptly, watching Aurelia. “I’ll hear the rest some other time.”

Both Julio and Fernando looked puzzled, and finally Fernando, with a nervous glance at Julio said: “Sir, there’s more to hear.”

“I realize that,” Ned snapped, “but the lady has heard enough. Surely you realize that Sir Thomas and Lady Diana are our closest friends? Were our closest friends,” he corrected himself, but neither Spaniard realized the significance of the change in tense.

“We know they’re your friends, sir,” Fernando persisted, “That’s why you should hear the rest of the report.”

Aurelia said: “Let them finish, Ned: I’ve got over the first shock.”

As Ned nodded, Julio took a deep breath as if to ward off interruptions by sheer staying power. “Well, the court sentenced the two of them to death for murder, and the rest of the men of the
Peleus
, sixty-one of them, were sentenced to death for piracy–”

“Where was the trial held?” Ned interrupted.

“San Germán, on the fifteenth of the month. But the court has to get the approval of the Governor of Porto Rico (who is in San Juan) before carrying out a death sentence, and the Governor insists on having the full minutes – is that the word? A complete report of everything said at the trial? Ah, good, well, he has to have the minutes – in Spanish, of course.

“These are needed to send to Spain. But, of course, Sir Thomas, Lady Diana and the three or four men of the
Peleus
who were questioned gave their evidence in English. Apparently, all this had to be translated for the minutes and the translations – every page of them – marked with a notary’s seal that they are correct.

“The only notary in San Germán died a week before the trial, and the translations took several days, so by the time another notary had been found who could read English – there was one in Mayagüez – many days had passed. So the minutes, properly notarized and also signed and sealed by the president of the court, were sent off to San Juan on the twentieth.”

“So we are just too late,” Aurelia said, numbed.

Julio glanced up suddenly and stared at her. “No,
señora
, I think we might be just in time. Today is the twenty-third.”

“Just in time? But they’re already dead!”

“The three soldiers who boarded the ship, yes,” agreed Julio, “but who cares about them?”

“But you said ‘Death’,” Aurelia forced herself to say, although her voice was faltering, “when we asked what had happened to Sir Thomas and Lady Diana.”

“Ah yes, I did say ‘Death’,” Julio said, and this time Ned caught Aurelia as she fell towards the deck.

“But they’re not dead
yet
!” Julio suddenly screamed, frightened that for the second time he had caused the Admiral’s lady to collapse. “‘Death’ that was the sentence of the court. But alive they still is,” his grammar beginning to collapse under the strain. “Not dead yet, you understand! No one, except the two soldiers and the man in the armour.
Madre de Dios
,” he exclaimed, hurling the remains of Ned’s hat down on the deck, “a few miles from here are they, locked up in the town jail, all of them, and waiting for us to rescue them!”

After a near-sleepless night, when both he and Aurelia had tossed restlessly in their bunk and it was far too hot to hold each other, Ned had tried to work out several mathematical problems.

Somewhere locked up in San Germán were Thomas, Diana and sixty-one men: sixty-three people in all. Here on board the
Griffin
he had fifty-nine men and himself and Aurelia, sixty-one in all. And on board the
Phoenix
were forty-seven men, Saxby and Mrs Judd, forty-nine in all.

So, leaving aside men who would have to be left on board to guard the two ships, and including the two women, he had one hundred and ten people to attempt the rescue of sixty-three. Assuming it was successful, at some point he would be traipsing around the Spanish countryside with more than one hundred and seventy people, some sixty of whom would be unarmed. Twelve miles from Boquerón to San Germán… Spanish cavalry could spit them all without risk or much effort.

The beginning of the rescue depended on more than one hundred buccaneers (and two women) managing to get from Boquerón to San Germán without being spotted. That should not be too difficult – land at night, and keep off the road – track, rather, from what Julio said. The main thing would be to avoid houses, but it was hilly, almost mountainous country in places and in the darkness people could fall down crevasses, stumble into ditches dug out of rock, and break limbs. Goats suddenly starting up with their high-pitched cry would startle men trying to creep silently; the packs of dogs lurking round every village, scratching over the middens, would start up a chorus of barking. The only advantage that Ned could think of was that in two nights’ time there would be a full moon. The light from the moon was even now streaming through the skylight and falling on Aurelia as she lay naked on her back, one arm thrown up above her head on to the pillow, her long hair framing her face, the twin peaks of her breasts crowned with the rose-pink summits of her nipples, the slight curve of her belly merging into the mount of Venus…