Pirate Freedom (30 page)

I added, "We need them badly, you see."

"Again?" He cupped his ear. "Say it again? I did not understand you."

I repeated what I had said.

"Well, well. It is simple enough, isn't it? You need men. I have it now. Need men. And supplies? Food? Rum? Sailcloth? Rope?"

We nodded.

"I see." He picked up a beautiful china inkstand and stared at it as if he had never seen it before. "Why, look there! It has a tower with a lot of roofs. More roofs all the time!" The quill fell out, and he bent to pick it up, grunting. I thought sure he would spill the ink, but he did not.

He straightened up and put the quill behind his ear. "Monsieurs, I have sad, sad news for you." He gave us the idiot stare. "Are you bound for China? There are fortunes made in the China trade every year."

We said no.

"Silk for the ladies. Tea? Scores of other things. You must go! But there are no honest sailors here—none! I myself have never visited China. Never been there! I am but a poor man, a man exiled from his homeland and his poor old mother, Monsieurs."

I said, "We're poor men, too, Your Excellency. Poorer than you are, I'm sure."

"English sailors? You would not want English sailors, I know. They are pigs, those English."

"Any kind, Your Excellency. We would soon teach them French, as Captain Rombeau says."

M. d'Ogeron shook his head. "They cannot be trusted. You are French, Monsieur?"

I said I was.

"Odd. Odd? Well, well, well! Each time you speak—well, it doesn't matter, does it?" He stared, nodding to himself. "Are we not all children of Adam, Monsieurs? I know I am. My poor mother often explained it. I myself, Monsieurs, am the partner of an English merchant." He nodded again, took the quill from behind his ear, stared accusingly at it as though it had tickled him, and dropped it on the floor.

I said, "I hope your partnership profits you, Your Excellency."

He sighed. If the quill had been on his desk, I think he would have blown it off. "It is not my ship, Monsieur. Only my partner's, and he cheats me. Cheats me abominably! And yet … And yet he brings me a little gold from time to time."

I said, "That's good."

"It is, Monsieur. Perhaps you know him, being English yourself?"

"No doubt I might know him, Your Excellency, if I were English."

"Captain …" He stared at me again, staring for so long it was hard not to say anything. "Burt? My partner and dear friend Captain Burt?"

I smiled. "Why, yes, Your Excellency. As it happens I have the honor of knowing a Captain Burt. An honest man and a good sailor, just like me."

"I see." D'Ogeron scratched his head. "I am forever dropping things, Monsieur. My, um, crayon. That feather thing. You are not troubled in that way, Monsieur?"

"I am," I said. "Why, I dropped two pistols only this morning." A pistole is a Spanish gold coin, and I figured he would know it.

He smiled. "It is fortunate they were not loaded. Mon Dieu! They might have killed you."

Rombeau said, "Yes, Your Excellency. Or somebody else." "You have Spaniards on your ship, Monsieur?"

Rombeau looked at me, and I knew he was thinking of Don José and Pilar. I said, "He has only a few, Your Excellency."

"That is well, but there should be more to stop the bullets."

I said, "Oh, I would not wish any harm to the Spanish, Your Excellency. We intend to trade down the Spanish Main, south of Maracaibo."

He smiled again. "I wish you well in it, Monsieurs. But you must be careful they do you no harm either, you adventurous young captains. Fear has its uses! It was a favorite saying of my late mother's, Monsieurs. The braver the mice, the fatter the cats. You are not cats? Un chat regarde bien un évêque."

Rombeau said, "Only now and then, Your Excellency." I do not believe he
understood what either of us were talking about, and when we were leaving, he tried to get me to look at the little leather bag I had dropped. I had to grab his arm and hustle him along.

BASEBALL TONIGHT
. Fr. Phil does not care about it, so he took the Youth Center for me so that Fr. Houdek would have some company while he watched the game. Pittsburgh is in town, so I cheered for them while Fr. Houdek took our team.

We bet—the winner had to say the seven o'clock next morning. Pittsburgh won by one run, which was probably the way it should be. "Une série vaut bien une masse," I told Father. He must have thought I had gone flatout crazy.

WE BOUGHT POWDER
and shot in Tortuga, filling the magazine again. Watered, of course, and bought a dozen other things. No trouble with the merchants, and before we left I found that d'Ogeron's man had been going around to them, telling them to treat us fairly. Or else. D'Ogeron was an honest politician—when you bought him, he stayed bought.

A clerk told me how he had been threatening the merchants, after swearing me to secrecy. What harm he thought it would do for the matter to become known, I cannot imagine. But I swore and have kept my oath until now.

When we had everything on my list, I bought one thing more: a piragua. We had the longboat—not as big as the
Magdelena
's—and the jolly, but I had a feeling we might need something more. From what some of the men had told me, Capt. Burt took fishermen's boats sometimes. Maybe I could have done that, too, but I would never have felt right about it. We stowed my piragua under the longboat.

From what I had learned on Tortuga, the Spanish had been pushed back, and the French controlled the whole east end of Hispaniola again. I was told that it was a good market for slaves, too, because the supply of indentured servants was drying up. I suppose that was because too many of them were coming back to France and telling people what it was like. I kept the slave thing in the back of my mind, thinking we might catch a Spanish slave ship again. But it did not happen.

We did not have to cruise far along the north coast before we spotted buccaneers on the beach, waving rags on sticks and wanting to sell us dried meat. We put in, both ships, and bought all they had.

When I had handed over the money and everything was nice and friendly, I said, "I used to know a man in your business. He was a good shot, and I'd like to talk him into joining us, if I can. His name was Valentin. Anybody know him?"

All of them laughed, and one said, "You would like to earn the reward, Captain. Who would not? We do not have him, and if we did we could not be cozened out of him so easily as that."

Of course I said I didn't know there was a reward, and how much was it? Was it d'Ogeron who'd offered it?

"One hundred pieces of eight, Captain, dead or alive. Another captain has offered it—no mean offer, as I think you will agree."

He had forgotten the captain's name, but another guy remembered it. It was Capt. Lesage. I wanted to know if this Lesage was captain of the sloop
Windward
. They said no, he had a three-master, the
Bretagne
.

After that I took Jalibert and Pat the Rat and went inland to look for Valentin. I knew where he liked to hunt and where he liked to hang out, and we went to all those places. He was not in any of them, and there was no sign we could see that he had been there recently. We found some ashes where Valentin used to dry meat, but they were cold and had been rained on—once anyhow, and probably more than once.

After three days, I decided we would go up to the cave. It would at least tell me whether he had ever gotten the musket and so forth I had left there for him, and after that we would go back to the ship.

That was where I found him, and Francine, too. Dead. They were not just bones, like all the Native Americans who had been killed in there, but their bodies were pretty dry. They had been shot once, both of them, him through the head. The musket I had gotten for him was there, empty, and he may have killed Francine and himself. It could be. I do not know. It could also be that somebody found them there and shot them both. Two men might have done it, or one man with a musket and a pistol.

I left them where they had fallen, and we closed the mouth of the cave with stones, a lot of them. I do not know whether it has ever been found. I hope not.

Tomorrow I move to Holy Family. Fr. Wahl will come for me. I am all
packed, except for this. New people and new duties, and farms and farm animals, which I know I will like. Yet tonight I find I cannot think about much of anything except Valentin and Francine, and the time I spent with them on Hispaniola.

Valentin and Francine, dead in the cave.

When we got back to the ship, Bouton had signed up three buccaneers and was proud of himself. I congratulated him like you have to do. Then I went into my cabin and sat looking out the window without seeing anything. When Novia tried to talk to me, I told her to go away, and by and by we put out without any orders from me.

I sat there drinking rum for most of the night, I think. Not chugging it, just sipping it now and then. The long nine at my elbow was all the company I had, and all I wanted. When I had drunk half the bottle, I threw the rest into the sea and went to bed. I will not do anything like that tonight, although a lot of priests are hard drinkers, and Fr. Houdek hits the bottle now and then.

But I feel like it.

Is Holy Family any closer? I hope so. I have my plan worked out. Every detail. Soon—within a year, I think—the government will change.

IT WAS NOT
time for us to meet up with Capt. Burt yet, so I told Rombeau we would split up and meet at Île à Vache. (It means Cow Island.) I had heard it was a good place to careen a ship, and I wanted to have a look at the bottom of the
Castillo Blanco
, because there was one time when we scraped the bottom a little running from the
Santa Lucía
. A merchant at Tortuga had told me it would be a good place to sign up new men, too. There were quite a few buccaneers there, and the cattle had been shot over so much nobody could make much hunting them anymore.

Rombeau and I flipped to see who would get the wind, and he won. He would head west and go around the Spanish end of Hispaniola, looking for prizes. I would head east and check out the western end of Cuba before going to Île à Vache. To tell the truth I was glad I had lost, because I wanted to see Cuba again. I would have liked to go back to Habana if I could, but that was too far.

That was a pleasant cruise in some ways, although it was not a lucky one. We stopped fishermen a few times. It was mostly to ask for information, but I always bought from them when they had anything, just to break the ice and show we were not out to rob them. That got us some nice fish and crabs, and especially turtles. There is no eating like a green turtle, in my experience. English sailors like Red Jack will not eat fish, but our Frenchmen had more sense, and we were mostly French. I had made Mahu our cook, and he and Ned pitched in like they had been born to it. Mahu said hippo was the best meat in the world, but I got him to admit that green turtle was almost as good.

I have gone off writing about food tonight for two reasons. The first is that I am pastor of Holy Family now, and everybody around here grows food or raises it or both, so everybody is always talking about it—pigs, hams, home-cured bacon, chicken, tomatoes, preserves, and everything else. People bring pies and cookies to the rectory. It is nice of them, but there is too much. Fr. Wahl and I wish there was some way we could share it with poor families.

The other is that it was right after a great dinner that somebody found the second body. I am just about sure it was the day we bought rock lobsters from a fisherman. Mahu had boiled them alive the way you have to, and we had cracked them for ourselves and doused them with salt butter and lime juice.

We were just finishing up, when a guy who had gone down to get more butter came running back. The dead man was French, and that is all I remember about him now. He must have been one of the men we signed in Port Royal. I am almost certain that is right.

It was after sundown, so there was no use carrying him up on deck, but I got more lanterns and had Pete come down and look at him. Novia came, too. Pete said the dead man had been strangled like the other.

"Neck's broke, too, Cap'n. Neat job, that is. I hope the man that does for me does it equal good."

Novia said, "How did he do that, Pete?"