Buccaneer (17 page)

La Grenade was just dropping below the horizon astern when he and Saxby sat aft on one of the guns to have a final discussion about the simple but disturbing question asked by Aurelia. “Fact is,” Saxby said, “we don’t seem to ’ave much choice. It’s like having one keg of rumbullion: when you drink that up, you go thirsty.”

“Not quite,” Ned pointed out. “More like the tavern keeper selling his last keg of rumbullion in mugsful. At the end of it he has an empty keg – but he has the money he charged for the drink.”

“True…true… But what good is money? I never thought I’d live to hear myself ask that, but a man adrift in a boat could starve and die of thirst while sitting on five hundredweight of gold bullion.”

“He’d be dying in style,” Ned commented and waited while Saxby excused himself and bellowed an order to trim the mainsail better. The
Griffin
was sailing much faster with a clean bottom, but as Saxby had said within an hour or two of them leaving Kingsnorth, she was designed as a floating box that would carry the most cargo for the least taxes and dues, which were calculated on her various dimensions.

Once Saxby was sitting on the gun again, Ned said: “I think the Dutch merchants have two prices for their goods. Those who only trade among the islands have a comparatively low one because they take few risks, while those smuggling to the Main charge the Dons a high price because of the danger they run of being caught by
guardas costas
or betrayed by their ‘customers’.”

“That makes sense,” Saxby said, “but I think they’ll charge the high price in Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba too, because it’s just as dangerous up there.”

“Yes, by ‘the islands’ I meant these islands.” He turned and gestured astern.

“So what you’re thinking, sir, is that once we’ve got our money from the Dons we sail north again, find some Dutchmen, and buy more goods at the low price, and go south again to the Main and sell it.”

“It seemed a better idea when I thought of it,” Ned admitted. “Now you put it into words it doesn’t sound so good.”

“It’s the margin of profit, sir, as you well know. Can we make enough profit buying from the Dutch at the low price and selling to the Dons at the high price? That profit has to feed us, keep the ship in good repair, and pay for the next consignment from the Dutch.”

“If only we knew the difference between the high and the low price…”

“I don’t reckon it’ll be enough for us to live on, sir,” Saxby said bluntly. “And I’ll tell yer fer why. Like you say, the Dutch traders have got two alternatives, but I think it ain’t just danger. Trading among the islands is selling a few pots and yards of cloth here an’ a few pots and yards of cloth there, visiting p’raps six islands and three dozen anchorages. On the Main (no further to sail really, coming direct from ‘Olland) they can probably sell a whole cargo in one town, unload in a night, collect their money or goods and sail straight back to ‘Olland. There’s a risk, for sure, but against that is the speed.”

“So we are back with Mrs Wilson’s question.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Wait a moment. What about that Dutch island just off the Main, five or six hundred miles along the coast. Curaçao, that’s it. I wonder what they use it for.”

“You mean, if we could buy goods there?”

“Yes.”

Saxby shook his head. “They might have goods, but they wouldn’t sell to us, and even if they did the price would be outrageous. After all, the goods have been shipped there from ’Olland in the first place, and Curaçao isn’t above fifty miles from the Main. Dutch smugglers may stock up there, though I can’t see there being too much profit even for them. Curaçao must be full o’ middlemen, quarrelling with each other as they buy from the ships coming from ’Olland, and sell to them smuggling to the Main. That’s assuming the ships from ’Olland don’t go to the Main and do the actual smuggling – and the more I think about it the less I think they do: they’d be big; too much draught to creep into narrow and shallow bays and inlets on a dark night.”

“Then we’re wasting our time. We just sell the goods we have, and then hope something turns up.”

“Like piracy,” Saxby said.

“Seriously, would you be prepared to take up piracy?” Ned was startled at Saxby’s matter-of-fact voice.

“Of course, sir. We all would – the crew, I mean, and the women. Mrs Judd, for sure. Can’t speak for Mrs Wilson, o’ course, but I reckon she’ll feel the same way as the rest of us.”

“Which is?”

“That with every man’s hand turned against us in our own country, we’ve got to make a living as best we can.”

Yorke stood up and walked back and forth across the deck half a dozen times while Saxby took the new clay pipe he had been holding and began filling it with tobacco.

Piracy! Only three months – four, rather – had passed since the
William and Mary
had arrived in Bridgetown with a letter from his father warning him that the Kent estates were lost to the Roundheads at last and that Kingsnorth would be sequestrated. Four months since the same letter warned him that Parliament was also intending to have him arrested as soon as a fleet arrived under the command of Admiral Penn.

Yet within hours of reading the letter he had collected Aurelia, loaded his people on board the
Griffin
, and sailed. Fled, to be exact. Then only a few days ago he had accepted the fact that the only way for them to make a living was to smuggle to the Main. Now a closer examination of the word “smuggling” showed that it would eventually be spelled “piracy”, although admittedly against an enemy of Britain.

There was only one person he wanted to talk with at this stage, and that was Aurelia. Other men might laugh and say he ran to the petticoats the moment he faced a problem, but apart from the fact that she now regularly wore breeches, Aurelia so far had proved shrewder than any of them.

He found her swinging in the hammock which they had rigged for her in the cabin after she complained that at sea sleeping in a bunk was like being a pebble shaken in a box.

She looked up at him and smiled impishly. “You and Saxby talk a lot but decide little, eh?”

Ned sat on the edge of the bunk and tried to look innocent. “What on earth could make you think that?”

“You talk together for an hour, and then I hear you walk back and forth, back and forth across the deck, like a dog on a rope. You forget it is just here –” she pointed to the deckhead above her hammaco. “Men with a contented mind do not walk thus.”

“Why should I not have a contented mind? I have you with me, the ship, a good crew…”

“
Mon chéri
, unless you can eat me, or sell me, we both know we all have a limited time together… That was what you were discussing with Saxby.”

“Yes,” Ned admitted. “He and I have dodged the subject for a few days. I suppose each of us hoped the other would think of something.”

“But neither of you did.”

Ned shook his head ruefully. “No, not really.”

“There is only one answer,” she said calmly, much as she might announce they would have to eat white meat for dinner because there was no red meat left, and was apologizing that they were reduced to servants’ fare.

“I know,” he said. “At least,” he qualified it warily, “we thought only of one. What had you in mind?”

“
Parbleu!
Piracy, my darling. If only you had a commission or letter of marque from the governor of Antigua, or someone like that, you could call it buccaneering and not feel guilty, but because you do not have such a letter you cannot legally be a privateer. So be a pirate. You had no other choice from the moment you sailed from Kingsnorth!”

“Did you realize that
then
, or are you saying it now just to tease me – or make me angry?”

“No, I realized it. I thought I might be wrong because perhaps there were things I did not understand about ships, but I was fairly sure.”

Ned stared at her with admiration, love and awe tumbling over each other. “You knew that, yet you still came?”

“You mean, that I came, knowing that I might end up a pirate’s mistress?”

“Well – yes. Although so far,” he could not resist adding, “‘a pirate’s housekeeper’ might be a more accurate description.”

“Come and kiss your housekeeper.”

He stood up and walked over to her, having to brace himself and hold the hammaco against the ship’s roll. As he bent his head she whispered mischievously: “Do all pirates have housekeepers?”

He kissed her and then said with mock ferocity: “No, they have mistresses!”

“They are the successful ones who can afford to dress them in ropes of pearls and gold bracelets!”

“As soon as I can afford it, I will dress
you
in ropes of pearls and gold bracelets. And nothing else!”

She blushed and looked away. “So you have an added incentive to be successful!”

The chart drawn and coloured by William Wagstaffe, chartmaker, gave very little detail of the coast of the Spanish Main: from Trinidad at the eastern end it showed a few islands lying offshore and belonging to Spain, then came Bonaire, Curaçao and Aruba, claimed by Holland, and then a huge gulf which turned into the Lake of Maracaibo. Saxby had been wise in choosing Carúpano as their first port of call. The islands of Los Testigos were a scattering of rocks and islands, some 800 feet high, forty miles short of the coast. Once the
Griffin
had passed Los Testigos, she had forty miles to run to reach the mainland, steering for the twin peaks inland of Carúpano.

Yorke examined the chart once again. Yes, if they managed to sell, say, a quarter of their cargo at Carúpano, then another seventy-five miles westward was Puerto la Cruz, with Barcelona five or ten miles beyond. All far enough from Cumaná, likely as not, to be free of
guardas costas
.

There was a knock at the door and Ned looked at Aurelia, who was lying back in her hammock embroidering. She shook her head: she was not expecting anyone.

The door swung open in answer to Ned’s call and Saxby came in, squinting as he came out of the bright sunshine.

“They’re the Los Testigos islands all right, sir,” he reported, “and the visibility’s clear enough that we’ll pick up those peaks on the horizon afore it’s dark.”

“No sails in sight?”

“Nothing, sir. Our guns are ready to be loaded and run out, but I’m not too sure about our gunners…”

“Well, we’ve done our best with them – you have and Burton has, rather. I wonder how many ships come up to this coast with their guns manned by sugarcane cutters, coopers, boilerhousemen, carpenters, muledrivers and masons?”

“For our sakes, let’s hope all of them! Still, they’ve improved with pistols and muskets. A couple of hours a day at drill was worth it. Still, I wish we had more handguns – twenty pistols and twenty-five muskets for a ship, a launch and three canoes…”

“Don’t put much faith in pistols: accidentally leave these wheel-locks spanned overnight and next morning the mainspring is so strained it won’t spin the wheel fast enough to make the flint give a spark.”

“Aye,” Saxby agreed, “but if the men don’t start off with them wound, they’ll lose the spanning key, so the wheel won’t make a spark anyway. And matchlocks are no good for this sort of work: the match goes out, or it pours with rain, or spray comes on board…”

“Which is why they’re better off relying on their cutlasses,” Ned said. “They’ve used them long enough cutting cane that the blade is all of a piece with their arm. And with a cane cutlass, if you miss the first time you can strike again and again. With a pistol you can miss only once.”

Aurelia looked up from her embroidery. “You sound as if you intend to conquer the Main, not bargain with the Spaniards.”

Saxby grinned and said: “We’ve nothing to lose by not trusting ’em, ma’am. When you’re supping with the Devil y’know, you take a long spoon. And we’re almost in sight of the supper table at Carúpano.”

No one paid the
Griffin
the slightest attention as she sailed into the Bahia Carúpano with the last of the daylight. Saxby anchored her a mile to the eastward of the town.

Aurelia, who had found the mountains of first Antigua and then Montserrat a welcome change from the flatness of Barbados, was delighted with this stretch of the Main, where long sandy beaches alternated with sharp cliffs, rounded hills beyond and tall mountains in the distance.

She stood with Ned after the
Griffin
had anchored and the men furled the mainsail neatly, but careful to leave the gaskets so that they could be thrown off in a hurry if they had to escape.

She stood close to him and held his arm, and whispered: “You are not going with the canoes, are you?”

It was a statement or a plea rather than a question.

“I must, dearest. No one speaks Spanish. I have a few words, and some French. I’ll probably end up with Latin,” he said, hoping to make a joke of it.

“I speak Spanish,” Aurelia said. “I will come with you. I shall be the translator.”

“No you won’t!” Ned said firmly. “You will stay on board here with Saxby.”

“But you need someone to speak Spanish. The whole thing is absurd if you go to bargain and cannot speak to them.”

“We’ll manage.”

“All right
mon chéri
, as you wish.”

Ned had been expecting a long argument and was thankful that she accepted that going on the preliminary of a smuggling expedition was work for men.

“If we manage to sell them a quantity of goods and they agree we unload in daylight, then you can come ashore to have a walk and look round.”

“Thank you,
chéri
.”

“But you’ll have to dress in men’s clothes and wear a big hat.”

“I’ll grow a moustache, too,” she said teasingly. “No, I will stay on board like the dutiful housekeeper.”

Lights were appearing among the houses which formed the small town of Carúpano, far enough away to seem like fireflies. The wind had dropped with the sun and at this low latitude, only ten degrees north of the Equator, the darkness came suddenly.

Aurelia stood back as she saw Saxby coming up to Ned.