Buccaneer (24 page)

Saxby looked astern in time to see the western tip of Aruba drop below the horizon. He picked up the slate and noted the course, then went below to check the time by the watch, which was kept in a drawer, well wrapped up. The sun was setting and he called to the lamp trimmer. It would soon be time to close with the
Peleus
. Sir Thomas had suggested they sail side by side, each with a lantern at the bow and the stern.

Five hundred miles. If the weather stayed reasonable it should take them less than five days. The
Peleus
was smaller but she was faster than the
Griffin
, which was still laden with three quarters of her original sugar cargo and trade goods. “Watch your heading,” he said to the men at the tiller.

Down in the cabin, Aurelia sat sideways on the bunk and combed her hair while Ned swung in the hammaco. The wind had freshened during the night and with the sea on her starboard quarter the
Griffin
was rolling more than she had done since she left Antigua.

“I shall cut my hair short,” Aurelia announced. “It is too much trouble. And the salt air and the spray makes it so sticky. And we do not have enough water for me to wash it daily.”

Ned did not answer, curious to see how many more reasons she could find to wield the scissors. “And anyway I am tired of this fashion. And Diana’s hair looked much nicer, cut short. So practical. She can tuck it into a cap in bad weather. And it makes it easier for her to disguise herself as a man.”

“She has other more obvious things she needs to disguise,” Ned commented.

“Yes, aren’t they splendid,” Aurelia said with a frankness that startled him. “She has a canvas screen on deck so that she can sleep in the sun.”

“That’s all she wears?”

“Behind the screen – yes. I like the tan. It is such a change from all the white faces I see. Do you like it?” she asked innocently.

“It suits her,” Ned said warily. “It means she doesn’t get sunburnt accidentally. That can be very painful.”

“I tan just as easily,” Aurelia said casually, holding up an arm. “I wish I had a tan like that; it is so irritating to cover myself against the sun to stop sunburn.”

“We’ll put up a screen for you. Then you can become tanned all over.”

“Is it good for you, though? Doesn’t the sun dry up all the natural oils so the noxious night vapours can penetrate the body?”

“Diana seemed well enough.”

Aurelia nodded. “She said she had been as brown as that for three years, so I suppose it is all right.”

“Try it,” Ned said. “You can always stop and go back to being pink and white.”

“You sound as though you do not like me pink and white.”

“It’s not a question of ‘not liking’,” Ned said warily. “I’d like you any colour except perhaps purple with orange stripes, but for this sort of life being tanned means you don’t get accidentally burned.”

“‘This sort of life’.” Aurelia took up the phrase and repeated it slowly. “
Mon chéri
, we must be careful not to be the log floating down the river, just drifting where the current takes us.”

“Do you think that’s what is happening now?”

“I am asking
you
the question.”

Ned came over and sat beside her on the bunk. He took away the hair brush and held her hand. “It was happening, yes. But I think it has stopped now.”

“What stopped it? Why are we suddenly controlling our –
comment dit-on
, our destiny?”

“I think meeting Whetstone stopped us just drifting. Probably prevented us making some dangerous mistakes.”

“So you agree with his plan to try Jamaica?”

“Yes – don’t you?” he asked, suddenly alarmed that she might have changed her mind.

“Why should we have any more luck in Jamaica than along the Main?”

“You can’t compare the two. We learned an important lesson from Whetstone –”

“What was that?” she interrupted.

“That because of the Dutch, English ships cannot make a living smuggling along the Main, and that piracy along this coast is finished: like shooting on land which has been poached over for centuries. No game left; the birds have either flown or been killed.”

“Why will Jamaica be any better?”

“Jamaica itself won’t, but we can use it as a base to attack hundreds of miles of the Cuba and Hispaniola coast.”

“So you are quite content to be a pirate for the rest of your life, like Thomas, with Diana following him like – like a faithful dog?”

Ned felt that suddenly, quite unexpectedly, and quite unprovoked, Aurelia had brought their relationship to a crisis. It was a strange time to do it because she could not leave the expedition. Yet in the last few hours his ideas, attitudes, hopes and fears had been slowly settling in his mind; he had found, for example, that he no longer worried about next week or next month. In contrast, at Kingsnorth one planted seed today to harvest in many weeks’ time; there could be no spontaneous activity in conducting a plantation.

This life in the
Griffin
, though, where the next dawn was sure to bring more surprises, needed sudden decisions. It tumbled dangers on them like tiles sliding off a roof and next week was of no more concern than last and happiness was now, not tomorrow. It was the life he wanted. For the past four years at Kingsnorth he had lived a premeditated life of planning and waiting, planting and then harvesting, never doing anything in the morning that had an effect in the afternoon.

In the last few weeks he had changed; he would never return to the old Ned, yet it was the old Ned that Aurelia knew and, he presumed, had loved and agreed to accompany on that confused last day at Kingsnorth.

Now, with the
Griffin
rolling her way to Jamaica, the hammaco swinging, the sea swirling past only inches from their backs as they sat in the bunk, the sunbeams dancing across the cabin as they came through the skylight which let them through one moment and reflected them the next as the ship moved…was this the time to tell her?

Well, they would be in Jamaica in three or four days.

“Yes,” he said tentatively. “We have no choice, and that’s no fault of ours. I am beginning to enjoy the life. If we could get a proper commission in Jamaica and become buccaneers, that would be better, but if not it does not matter. Whatever you call it, we’re fighting the Dons.”

“Robbing them!”

“Yes, we’re robbing them, and they’ll garotte us if they catch us.”

“What will become of me?”

“What will become of Diana?”

“I am not Diana!”

“I am not Whetstone, but all of us have been forced into this life by Cromwell. The Lord Protector’s world is not ours.”

“So you look forward to the life of a robber, a kidnapper, a pirate…?”

He turned and looked her straight in the eyes. “I have two choices. I can return to England a prisoner of State, and probably spend the rest of my life locked in a cell alone and rotting of jail fever, or I can be a buccaneer and fight the Spanish as best I can, and relieve them of enough money so that my people can eat.”

“And me? What about me?”

“If I’m a prisoner of State jailed for the rest of my life, you will never see me again; if I am a buccaneer you can be with me all the time, like Diana and Thomas. Yesterday, when they were on board, I thought you envied them the life they had led, and wanted it for us. Now…now you sound as if you wish you were back in Barbados.”

“Whetstone has cast a spell over you! Diana has bewitched you: you have lewd thoughts about her!”

“I’m sure Thomas has lewd thoughts about you, my dear. Provoking lewd thoughts in men is the sincerest flattery a woman can expect. No woman cares to admit it, of course.”

“Do I provoke lewd thoughts in you?” she asked, looking up at him coquettishly.

“Of course!”

“Just because of Diana?”

“No! From the first time I saw you!”

“You said nothing…”

“You’d have slapped my face if I had. ‘Mrs Wilson, send the servants away and take your clothes off…’ Can you imagine it?”

“I can now, but not then.”

“Aurelia, what is all this about?”

She inspected a handful of her hair.

“I wanted to be sure that buccaneering was the life you wanted, not just the life you had been forced into by the arrival of those horrible men, Penn and Venables.”

“Very well, are you satisfied now?”

“Yes. I think you will make a good buccaneer.”

“And you?” he asked anxiously. “What about you?”

She turned away slightly, as if embarrassed. “It was something Diana told me. She said that in the eyes of God she and Thomas were married, even if not in the eyes of the church, because they knew that tomorrow either of them could be dead. I said that in the eyes of the church I was still married to Wilson.”

“What did she say?”

“She said happiness did not wait on priests; that too many women hesitated and were left mourning dead lovers for the rest of their lives and regretting withheld favours.”

“That is why she lives with Whetstone,” Ned said, “even though they can’t marry. Sensible woman. She realizes there’s no one out here to judge and sneer, and even if there was she would not care.”

Aurelia nodded. “This is not easy to say, Edouard…”

Suddenly Ned felt chilled: now Aurelia was going to end a relationship before it had begun; she would probably ask to be put on board the
Peleus
. She –

“…and you are not helping me say it. But would you –” she began speaking in French “–prefer us to live like Thomas and Diana?”

“Prefer?” Ned exploded happily. “Dearest, for the rest of our lives, even if you make it seem you changed your mind because I have only a week or two to live!”

Soon after daybreak on the fifth day Burton was the first to sight a bluish-grey cloud on the horizon fine on the larboard bow, and after examining it for several minutes with the
Griffin
’s battered telescope Saxby reported that what seemed no bigger than the shadow of a pearl was Jamaica.

“What we can see,” he told an excited Aurelia, “is the eastern end of the mountains that are the island’s backbone.”

Burton was just aiming a musket in the direction of the
Peleus
to attract her attention when in the
Griffin
they saw a small puff of smoke and heard a desultory pop.

“Fire as a reply!” Saxby called to Burton. “Sir Thomas will guess we’ve sighted it and were just about to signal him.”

The master then turned to Yorke and, acknowledging the new name that appeared on the
Griffin
’s certificate of registry as her owner, formally reported: “Mr Kent, sir, Jamaica’s in sight ahead, distant about fifty miles.”

Ned smiled and said: “Thank you, Mr Saxby. Now I say ‘Carry on’, don’t I?”

“That’s it, sir. But, beggin’ your pardon but including Mrs Wilson, I ’ave to deliver a message from the ship’s company h’at this time, the moment we first see Jamaica.”

Curious, Ned looked round for Aurelia who came over and stood beside him, and he held her hand, nodding and saying: “Well, ‘Carry on, Saxby!’”

“The ship’s company of the
Griffin
, sir and madam, that’s to say all of us who came with you from Kingsnorth and Mr and Mrs Bullock, want to take the h’opportunity h’of –” he broke off in confusion, the seriousness of the occasion, with all the ship’s company watching, thrusting too many aitches across his path.

“H’I mean to say, with a new land ahead of us, we want to give you both our best wishes for your new life.”

Ned looked round at all his men and the five women standing near Mrs Judd. “Thank you, and Mrs Wilson and I return those wishes. But I don’t want to underestimate the risks. You must realize, without my telling you, that we don’t know what we are going to find. You know you are the regular ship’s company of the
Griffin
, not former indentured labour or people transported. Mr Saxby will be signing you on as regular members of the crew, just in case anyone wants to examine all our books. I am Mr Kent, the owner; we sailed from Portland and picked up our present cargo in Barbados. If anyone asks more questions – but I doubt if they will – make up a likely story!”

He waited a few moments and then said: “I am not sure what we shall do after we get to Jamaica. I think buccaneering will be our only choice. Buccaneering if we can get a commission from the governor, or whoever is in command; piracy if not.

“However, when you volunteered to come with me at Kingsnorth you thought (as I did) that smuggling would keep us in food. So if buccaneering is not to anyone’s liking they can leave at Jamaica, and I will pay them their wages.”

From the mumbling and throat clearing, Ned realized that few if any of them had contemplated leaving; on the contrary, if Mrs Judd and Mrs Bullock were good representatives, they were looking forward to whatever came along.

The entrance to the enormous harbour was narrow. To starboard was a long, low sandspit running east and west with a small town built on it; ahead to the north-east was the great bulk of the island, ridge upon folded ridge of mountains fading into the distance like swell waves, their lower slopes a rich green; to larboard, westward, the land seemed swampy.

Whetstone was sailing the
Peleus
as though he had been in a dozen times before, bearing away round a cay, bearing up to round a coral reef lurking just below water, yellowish-green, like some enormous flat-topped vegetable growing up from the sea bed.

Ned could see that two men perched high in the
Peleus’
shrouds were waving down from time to time, warning Whetstone of underwater obstacles ahead. Whetstone was easy to recognize: Ned had never seen a bear except in the Vauxhall bear garden, but he imagined that was how a freed one walked. And near him – naturally so, as though she was one of the ship’s officers – Diana stood wearing a wide plaited straw hat like a cone.

“Diana with that hat,” Aurelia said, “she looks like –
comment dit-on, une toupie
.”

“A peg top! Yes, but wait: perhaps Thomas will fetch out a whip of string and start her spinning!”