Pirate Freedom (27 page)

First, however, I saw to our prisoners and to Novia. Capt. Ojeda and his crew I simply freed, giving Ojeda a little money, shaking his hand and wishing him well. I thought I had seen the last of him when I did that.

I let Don José write three letters explaining his fix and asking friends and relatives to ransom him. I read them before I mailed them, and made sure that he had told each of the men he had written to that the money was to be sent to me in care of a ship chandler in Port Royal we were buying supplies from. He had promised to handle the money end of the deal for us for ten percent. There were others who would do it cheaper—seven for one and five for the other—but I was not sure they were honest. This guy would take his ten percent and hand over the rest, and there would be no trouble about it.

After that was all set, I knocked on Novia's cabin door and told her I needed to see her. She came into my cabin half an hour later and gave me quite a surprise. No calico gown this time, and no makeup. She was dressed the way she had been when I had first seen her on the
Magdelena
—sailor's white canvas pants, boobs tied in and hidden under a loose blue shirt, and her hair in a long braid down her back.

I told her I was going to give her enough money to pay her passage back to Spain.

"I must walk unescorted in this Port Royal of yours. It is a bad place, you have told me."

I nodded.

"I wish a favor, Crisóforo. You owe me none, I know. Already you do me a favor, giving me money so that I may go home. I ask another. I would recharge my pistols? May I do so if I swear I will not shoot you? Please?"

I said sure, and handed her the box with the powder flasks and so forth. That was when the carpenters came to tear out the wall and the secret compartment, and cut new gunports in the gunwale. I got busy with them, and when I looked for Novia again, she was gone. The beautiful wooden case that her pistols had come in was still there on the table, with the ramrod, the bag of bullets, and the other stuff still inside. But no Novia, and no little brass pistols. Not crying can be hard sometimes. Not often for me, but sometimes. That time I tried not to, but I did not make it.

Of course, I still had my worst problem—what to do with Estrellita. There were complications. Here I am supposed to advise other people about their problems, and they just about always have complications, too. So I will list mine here. I do not want to, but it will be good for me, and I have never done enough penance. The last one was the big one.

1. She had no money and nobody to take care of her except Don José and Pilar, and they were not going to be loose any time soon. If we kept her until they could look out for her, we might have her for a year. Two prisoners was bad enough.

2. She had been cheating with Don José. If I handed her over to him, I would be aiding and abetting. I had met Pilar, and I did not want to do that.

3. Sooner or later Don José would cut her loose, probably with nothing. She might be worse off then than she was now, and in fact it seemed pretty likely.

4. He might do something unpleasant with Pilar so he could have Estrellita all the time. I thought there was a good chance he had killed Jaime Guzman. If Don José wanted Pilar out of the way, she just might have some sort of accident. My father would have said, "It's been known to happen."

5. I had wanted her more than anything for so long. Now she looked like something the cat dragged in, dirty and chained with her hair all messed up and her eyes red from crying. Pretty soon she was going to look worse, and I was not sure I could keep from getting her chains taken off, giving her a square meal and a chance to clean up, and after that so on and so forth. From what I had learned about her, and what I had seen of her since I had grabbed her in the dark, that would be a big, big mistake.

I do not know now just how long I worried about her, walking up and down the little quarterdeck of the
Castillo Blanco
and watching the carpenters. By the time they were ready to knock off, I had made my mind up. I got Antonio to come over and keep an eye on the ship and went ashore.

I had thought it was going to be tough to find Ojeda, but it was not. Finding Vanderhorst on Virgin Gorda had been a lot harder. Spaniards hardly ever
came to Port Royal, and everybody had noticed them. He and Alvarez were splitting a room in a private house, and my guess is that they were paying through the nose for it.

"I need your help, Captain, and I'm willing to pay for it." I got out a couple of doubloons and showed them to him. "You'll leave soon for Spain?"

"Sí." His beard and mustache were nice and neat now, and his face told me he wanted the money but was going to be darned careful not to say too much.

"You've found a ship that will carry you?"

"To Spain?" He shook his head.

"To New Spain, then."

"From here there are no ships, Capitán. One must take passage to your island of heresy. At times, our ships come to trade." He was watching the doubloons.

"An expensive journey, no doubt." I tried to look sympathetic. "What I ask will increase the cost. Thus I offer these." I made them chime softly in my hand. There is nothing else exactly like the mellow chink of gold. "Maybe you remember Señora Guzman?"

He nodded, his face tighter than ever.

"I'm holding Señor de Santiago and his wife. A matter of business. A man's got to live."

"I comprehend. He has friends, Capitán."

"But Señora Guzman?" I shrugged. "What am I to do with her? Her husband was ruined, and he's dead now. She hasn't a brass cuarto. I could kill her, but Rombeau objects. His honor is involved. You know how that is."

"Sí."

"You can help me here, Captain. You can take her back to Spain. These will pay her fare."

He did not actually kiss me, but I could see he wanted to. We went to the
Magdelena
together, and I got her chain off and turned her over to him. They were holding hands before they were out of sight.

Could I have done it without the two doubloons? Heck, yes. He would have paid me for her if I had pitched it that way. The thing was, I got a lot more fun out of my money than the guys who spent theirs guzzling kill-devil or hiring women nobody in his right mind would want. Also, I still had that soft spot for Estrellita. A little one, but it was there. I did not want her for myself, but I did not want her to suffer, either. With two doubloons, she and
Ojeda would be able to skip Jamaica for sure, and that was what I wanted. I felt good about the whole thing. I still do.

After that I chewed things over with Dubec awhile. He had spent more time on the
Magdelena
than I had, and I wanted to know what he thought of her sailing qualities. He thought she should be carrying a little more weight astern. He had told Rombeau, and they had agreed to try it. We planned to buy a lot more ammunition for the big guns, round shot, grape, canister, and maybe even some chain shot. They would load it aft and see what it did.

He thought most of the men would be back, which interested me. There were a few, he said, who planned to take what I had paid out already— money from de Santiago and Guzman, mostly—and head home to France. Because I knew it had been French before America got it, I asked about New Orleans. Dubec had never heard of it. There was a place called Acadia, he said, way, way up north. He did not think any of our men would go there. I thought for a while that might be another name for Louisiana, but the way he talked about it, it sounded like it was north of the North Pole.

What he said got me to worrying about manning my ships (what Bishop Scully would call staffing) although I could not do much about it. We would have two ships instead of three, which meant that Jarden, Antonio, and some of the other
Rosa
men would be on the
Magdelena
or the
Castillo Blanco
. That would be good. But we would lose men in Port Royal, too, and not just those who went home. We would lose them, and there was not one darn thing I could do about it, beyond paying out what everybody had coming when we sold the
Rosa
and telling each man, individually, how much I wanted him back.

I thought all that over while I was shooting the breeze with Dubec, and later when Antonio and I were checking out the new gunports and the other carpenter-work. I told him about the wall between the cabins I wanted ripped out, and the little compartment inside, and we went into the one that had been the Guzmans' and had a look at it. The carpenters had taken the doors off both cabins that day and started changing the frame over to make one big door, like I had told them. I stood there looking at it, and wondered why I was doing it, now that Novia was gone. The back cabin would have been plenty big enough for me, and I could have let Bouton have the other one. I told myself that I would get another woman someday—you can imagine all that I said. But I did not believe me, no matter how often I said it in my mind.

I would have a big cabin with three windows, a nice one too low for me to stand up in, and that is where I would sleep at night, stretched out on two blankets on the floor, unless I decided to sleep on deck. That night it was going to be hard to get to sleep no matter where I slept, and I knew it.

Just to change the subject, I said, "We're going back to Hispaniola, Antonio. You ever been there?"

"No, Captain. I have not. There is gold there?"

I thought, Only what they took from me, but I did not say that. "There may be men there, buccaneers. The Spanish will have driven some of them out, maybe all of them. Only I don't think so. My guess is there'll be quite a few left, and I want them. They're good shots, but they won't be sailors. Somebody will have to teach them, and on the
Magdelena
that will be— What is it?"

"We can get more here, I think, Captain. Perhaps not enough, but two came while you were away." He rubbed his chin.

"Wanting to sign on? I wish you had taken them. We could use them."

"I tried, Captain. We had difficulty understanding each other, the small one and I. The larger understood still less. So it seemed to me."

"Well, maybe they'll come back. How's Jarden coming with navigation?"

Antonio said it had been going as well as could be expected, that the quartermaster was teaching Jarden his numbers and that he could use the backstaff but still had trouble reading charts.

"He knows how to use the lead?"

"Oh, yes, Captain. He knew that already. He can count, you understand. And add and subtract, which surprised me. It is the written number that must be taught. Now we teach Captain Rombeau as well. It is easier there, because he can multiply and divide, and read and write."

"What about the quartermaster?" I asked. "He must be learning, too."

"He is, Captain. He can navigate now. Not well, you understand. But better—"

Somebody shouted, "Ahoy the white ship! Cap'n Chris aboard?" It was in English, and I just about broke my neck looking around.

There were two men on the pier, both waving. They seemed about the same size to me—medium height and husky—but I told Antonio, "Here are those guys you talked to."

He shook his head, but I hardly noticed. I bawled out, "I'm Chris! Come aboard."

We had one lantern lit already, and Antonio lit another from it while they were coming up the gangplank. Even so, it took a second or two for me to place them: Ben Benson and Red Jack. We yelled and shook hands and all that, and I introduced Antonio. They could not talk because he knew no English, and that was the only language they could speak, but everybody smiled and shook hands again. If they had been French, we would have hugged, too. They were not. Now, when I hug the kids here at the Youth Center sometimes, it seems a pity.

Capt. Burt had made Lesage captain of the
Windward
, they said. They had not liked him much and had decided to look elsewhere. I asked whether she was still in port, because I wanted to look at her again and talk to Lesage about Valentin if I could. They said she had been gone for about a week. I figured that what had really happened was that they had missed the sailing, probably because they were still drunk, maybe just because they still had money. Even so, I was glad to have them. They were sailors, both of them, and good ones.

I showed them around the
Castillo Blanco
, everything except the two little cabins under the quarterdeck. I did not say anything about Estrellita, though— that was none of their business—and I did not even think about the curse. Maybe if I had said something then, it would have been different later. It could be, but I do not really think that.

Antonio had gone over to the
Magdelena
while I had been showing them the ship, and had fetched back a bottle of rum. While the four of us killed it, I told them a bit about my plans—Hispaniola if we needed men when we left Port Royal, then raiding south down the Spanish Main. We would leave the Portuguese alone, I said. There were more Spanish south of them, in the silver country, but I doubted we would go that far. When I said it they looked a little disappointed, which was what I wanted.

And after that, there was nothing for it but to go to bed. Red and Ben went into the forecastle to sling their hammocks, Antonio and I said good night, and he went back to the
Magdelena
. When Bouton showed up to take the watch, I briefed him and went into the captain's cabin, not quite as steady as I would have liked.