PIRATE: Privateer (3 page)

In the faint starlight Hector could make out that she was wearing a loose nightgown of some pale material and that it had slipped to one side, so the shoulder nearest to him was bare. There was
a waft of some sort of musky scent from the perfume she was wearing.

‘What are you going to do with your share of the findings?’ she asked after a long pause.

Hector kept his voice as neutral as possible. ‘I’ve no idea. Depends on how much there is.’

She turned her face towards him, and he was conscious of the shape of the soft mouth, the lips parted. Her hand reached up and caught back a strand of hair that hung loose. The movement was
smooth, seductive. ‘No idea at all?’

He didn’t know how to answer, and she went on. ‘I met that new wife of yours in Tortuga. She’s very attractive. I’m sure you miss her.’

‘Maria is a remarkable woman.’ His reply was cautious.

Anne-Marie gave a throaty chuckle. ‘And an understanding one, I would guess. Most women are when they want to keep their man.’

She shifted position, a slight movement that brought her thigh a fraction closer to him. Perhaps it was his imagination but he felt soft warmth radiating from her. ‘How old are you,
Hector?’ she asked.

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘And how many women have you known?’

He was flustered, stumbling in his reply. ‘A few.’

‘Well before I was your age,’ she said, ‘I had learned to seize the opportunities that came my way. It had become clear to me that life passes by those who hesitate, and I
resolved to conduct my life as I wanted, follow my instincts, and not behave as others would tell me or expect of me.’

‘Is that why on Tortuga they call you “the Tigress”?’ he said boldly.

A soft laugh. ‘Some people find me to be fierce. Others say that I am wilful. I see it as pride in what I am and what I can do.’

The light was strengthening. The sea around them was changing from inky black to a very faint sheen of dark blue. He noticed that she was watching him closely, her eyes in shadow.

She gave a slow, deliberate smile. He read both triumph and invitation. ‘Unless you take the chances that life offers, you do not taste what it is to live fully.’

She leaned towards him and stroked him gently on the bare forearm. He gave an involuntary shiver.

‘Not now, and not here,’ she said, glancing meaningfully towards the stern. Hector could make out the shape of her oldest brother, asleep on deck beside the binnacle.

She stood up, smoothing down the loose gown and hitching it up over the naked shoulder. Despite himself, he felt a surge of desire. He wanted to rise to his feet and put his arms around her, and
press her ripe body close to him. But she bent down and laid a finger on his lips. ‘Perhaps when it is more convenient,’ she said quietly. A moment later she was gone, gliding along the
deck in her bare feet, and ducking in through the low door of the aft cabin.

Hector sat very still. He was uncomfortably aware that from now on he would find it difficult to expunge Anne-Marie Kergonan from his mind.

It was at that moment, with his mind in confusion, that he looked up and saw, very faintly, a tiny speck of white on the distant horizon.

*

J
UAN
G
ARCIA
F
ONSECA
moved about the deck of his urca,
San Gil
, with a dragging limp. Each time he
stepped out with his right foot, he had then to swivel his lower body, heave, and lift his left foot forward. He had been sailing the triangle between Cartagena, Porto Bello and Havana nearly all
his life, and in that time he had been shipwrecked four times and fought off countless attacks from English and Dutch pirates. Once he had nearly lost his ship to a gang of African slaves who had
got free of their chains below deck. Firing a swivel gun down the hatchway had restored order, at the cost of one member of his own crew whom they had taken hostage. With such an eventful career
behind him, it was natural that most observers imagined his pronounced limp was the result of an injury during one of his many near-escapes from disaster. Only those who had known Juan Garcia since
his early childhood in Cartagena knew that his infirmity was in fact an accident of birth. He had been born with a twisted hip. When he reached his teens, he had come to the conclusion that strong
arms and a good grip aboard ship would make up for awkward legs on land, and had persuaded his father, a bookish civil servant, to let him go to sea. He had prospered, saved up enough money to buy
his own vessel, and shown the shipwrights where to fit plenty of handholds within his easy reach. Now, forty years later, he accepted that his urca was outdated in design, notoriously slow through
the water and handled like a pig against the wind. But her broad, old-fashioned hull still provided plenty of cargo space and made her very stable. He had named her after the patron saint of
cripples, and he had no intention of replacing the
San Gil.

Juan Garcia was standing with his son Felipe, watching the swells heap up on the edge of the reef as the urca skirted southward along the Vipers. ‘If you read the signs, you have plenty of
warning,’ Juan Garcia was saying. He never lost a chance to pass on his knowledge. One day, perhaps in a couple of years, Felipe would be taking over as captain.

‘There.’ Juan Garcia pointed to where a sudden smear of white foam showed the presence of a coral head. ‘If the swell comes from a direction different from the wind and is much
bigger than usual, that tells you a hurricane is lurking out to the east.’

He paused and watched the humped back of a swimming turtle appear briefly above the waves. The creature raised its head and gazed briefly at the ship, the bright eyes and hooked beak like a
predatory bird. Then its flippers moved gently and it sank from view.

‘And if the air becomes hot and heavy and the shirt sticks to your back even though the weather is fine and clear, be on your guard.’

Felipe Fonseca had heard his father’s hurricane lecture many times. To provoke him he murmured, ‘Are you not worried that the stars were twinkling so brightly last night?’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ his father demanded, falling into the trap.

‘A sailor in Havana told me that the Philippines people believe that when the stars twinkle very brightly, it means a storm is coming.’

‘Why should they think that?’

‘They claim that there’s a great wind far, far up in the sky. When it blows really strongly, it makes the stars flicker. Then, because it can’t extinguish the stars, the wind
loses its temper. It swoops down on the earth as a gale.’

‘Pure superstition,’ grunted his father. He was feeling guilty that he had lied to his son. He had told him that he would risk the Vipers so early in the season because it was
Felipe’s duty to be back in Cartagena when his son’s young wife gave birth. But the true reason for haste was that Juan Garcia himself was anxious. A clumsy midwife had caused his own
affliction, and he dreaded that his first grandchild would suffer the same mishap. He wanted to be at home to make sure that the midwife was the best that he could hire.

Putting the thought out of his mind, he returned to Felipe’s seafaring education. ‘If you are caught in a hurricane, never run directly before the wind. If you do, you’ll be
swamped or capsize. Instead, watch the way the wind shifts. If it backs, make sail on the starboard tack and run on a broad reach until the wind heads you. Then heave to.’

He was about to go on to say that if the wind veered, the mariner should sail as fast as possible on the same starboard tack but close-hauled. This would offer the best chance of avoiding the
eye of the approaching storm. But he was interrupted.

‘Father, there’s a small boat on the Vipers, fine on the starboard bow.’

Juan Garcia stared where his son pointed. His eyes were not as sharp as they used to be. It was a sign of advancing age. Perhaps he should think about turning the
San Gil
over to Felipe
sooner.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Looks like a small pinnace. Right on the reef.’

Juan Garcia shrugged. ‘Could be anyone. We’ll pass on by.’

Twenty minutes later they heard very faintly the sound of a cannon shot.

‘They’ve fired a windward gun,’ said Felipe.

‘Bring her up two points, no more!’ his father told the helmsman, who was looking at him enquiringly. A windward gun was the recognized signal that a boat wished to communicate. The
unknown pinnace was too small to be a threat, but experience told him to be very wary.

‘I can’t see any sort of flag,’ Felipe said after a while. The pinnace was close enough to make out some figures on deck. There was something untidy about her rig, the mast
slightly at a slant, as if she had run aground on the coral.

More time passed, and then Felipe announced, ‘There’s a boat putting off. They’re rowing out to try to intercept us.’

‘We maintain course,’ his father growled.

Felipe let out a low whistle of surprise. ‘There’s a woman in the skiff. She’s standing in the bows and waving.’

Juan Garcia caught the look of astonishment on the face of his helmsman. The man was bending his knees as he tried to peep under the mainsail and get a good look forward at the approaching
boat.

‘All right then, bring her up to wind,’ he ordered reluctantly. He had a crew of six, without counting himself and Felipe. They were more than enough to beat off any attack from a
skiff. ‘Bring a couple of blunderbusses up from my cabin and make sure the primings are dry.’

*

A
BOARD THE
M
ORVAUT
there had been angry words. Scarcely had Hector warned there was a ship on the horizon than the
Kergovan brothers were on their feet. Roparzh and Yacut ran to the anchor cable and began to haul in the slack. Yannick hastily cleared the halyards, ready to hoist sail and flee. But a few minutes
later their sister emerged from the cabin, took one look at the distant sail and yelled angrily at them. She was shouting in Breton so Hector could only guess that she was cursing them. She looked
formidable. Her skin was flushed with anger, and for a moment Hector thought she was about to walk over to Yannick and slap him across the face.

Jacques and Jezreel were also poised, ready to help retrieve the anchor. She switched to English, ordering them to stop. ‘We wait until we know who they are. They could be French or
English.’

‘They’re Spanish, that’s for sure. No one else in these waters,’ retorted Jacques.

Anne-Marie rounded on him. ‘Use your head. If that boat is indeed a Spanish cruiser, I doubt we can outrun her.’ She turned to face Hector.

‘Hector,’ she snapped. ‘You’ve been exploring the reef. Can you find a channel and pilot
Morvaut
through the Vipers?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Hector dubiously. He was astonished to see the change from the flirtatious woman who had sat beside him less than two hours earlier.

‘Good. But that’s only if things go wrong.’ She rounded on her brothers and reverted to Breton, loosing a stream of orders. Roparzh and Yacut stopped hauling on the anchor
line. Yannick, looking surly, went to slack off the shrouds so that the mast leaned out badly off true.

‘What’s all that about?’ asked Jacques, cocking an eye at the drunken angle of the spar.

‘To make it look as though the
Morvaut
has run aground,’ Hector suggested.

‘That won’t deceive anyone,’ Jacques muttered under his breath.

Hector could see that Anne-Marie was trying to draw the foreign ship closer, but he did not understand why.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to let them sail on past?’ he asked her.

‘And miss the chance to continue fishing the wreck!’ she replied sharply. Eyes narrowed, she was watching the urca. ‘She’s altering course to come a little more towards
us. Definitely a Spaniard, a merchantman. Roparzh, get the skiff ready. You and Yannick come with me. I’m going to talk with that vessel.’

She turned to Hector. ‘How good’s your Spanish?’

‘My mother came from Galicia.’

‘I want you to interpret. We’re going to get ourselves some water and food.’

Hector hesitated. There was something about Anne-Marie’s belligerent confidence that made him uneasy.

‘The
Morvaut
is chartered to fish for wrecks, not for piracy,’ he warned.

She tossed her head dismissively. ‘We’ll pay the Spaniards for what we need. But they’ll only deal with us if they think we have permission from their authorities to be
here.’

She snapped an order at Roparzh, who shambled off and returned with a handful of silver coins that she tucked into a pocket of her loose breeches.

‘Hector, I want you to tell the captain of that boat that we have been sent here from Porto Bello to make a proper chart of the Vipers.’

Hector looked at her in surprise. ‘Why would he believe such a tale?’

‘Show him those sketches of the reef you’ve been making. Flatter him. Ask him if he can add to our information. I speak reasonable Spanish, but not enough to be
convincing.’

Hector glanced across at Jacques, who shrugged. ‘Go ahead, Hector. If it works, we can stay here for a few more days of fishing.’

Roparzh and Yannick had already brought the skiff alongside and were seated at the oars. Satchel in hand, Hector swung over the rail and joined them. Anne-Marie Kergonan stepped into her cabin
and reappeared wearing a broad sash of red silk. Then she jumped into the bows of the tender and the skiff pushed off.

*

A
S THEY APPROACHED
the urca, they could see her crew lining the rail. All of them, including the two men who were pointing blunderbusses in their
direction, were staring in fascination at Anne-Marie. She turned and waved, taking care to reveal her generous figure. ‘
Necesitamos el agua!
’ she called. To Hector she hissed,
‘Tell them that we are surveying the reefs and are willing to pay for food and water.’

Hector translated, and a stocky figure with a thick greying beard called out that the skiff could come alongside but only one person at a time was to climb aboard.