Buccaneer (21 page)

Yorke nodded. “Very well, we’ll go to Curaçao, but I don’t expect the Dutch to reveal any of their secrets to us.” He thought for a few moments, and then added: “I’m not sure there
are
any secrets. I think we went into Carúpano in the normal way. The Spaniards seemed to know what to do, especially the mayor. Had we been Dutch I don’t think he would have betrayed us. Somehow he guessed we were English.”

“Or French – from my accent,” Aurelia said.

“Possibly, but it does not matter. The Dutch probably have the smuggling monopoly – or perhaps they will take goods in exchange, instead of insisting on money, as we did. The traders in Carúpano might have had warehouses full of hides.”

Ned tapped the bunkboard with his fingers. “Yes, that’s what we have to learn about smuggling: when to take cash and when to take goods in exchange.”

Aurelia gave her hammaco a violent push. “You men!” she exclaimed crossly. “You should leave all this to Mrs Judd, Mrs Bullock and myself. You keep on talking about learning about smuggling, but you forget that even if you were the most skilful smugglers on the Main, you have only one cargo to smuggle and nowhere else to buy more goods. Let me put it into simple language that a man can understand. You have an anker of brandy and you own a tavern, as I’ve told you before. You sell the brandy mug by mug, and put the money in your pocket. Soon the anker is empty of brandy but your pocket is full of money. What do you do then?”

She gave the hammaco another angry push. “You cannot buy more brandy because there is none to buy. You can use the money in your pocket to buy so much food, but after a month you have eaten it and you have no more money.

“Now,
mes gars
, what do you do? If you were in England you would end up in the debtors’ prison. The Marshalsea,
non
? Well, you are in the Caribbee Sea, not the Marshalsea, but the problem is the same.

Saxby chuckled and said: “That was an old joke – a man pretending he was a seaman was said to have cruised the Marshalsea.”

“Mr Saxby,” Aurelia said sternly, “Mrs Judd, Mrs Bullock, myself and the other three women are determined to stay out of the Marshalsea or any Spanish, Dutch or French equivalent, so will you apply yourself to the problem.”

“My apologies, ma’am, I ramble on, and certainly we do –”

“Mr Saxby!”

“Curaçao, ma’am!” the master said harshly. “To see what we can find out.”

“I agree,” Burton said hurriedly, alarmed at his first sight of Mrs Wilson being both French and determined.

“Me, too,” said Ned. “So we are all agreed.”

“Oh no!” Aurelia said. “You are thinking of Curaçao as a confessional! You go in, explain your problem, the Dutch priest tells you to say six prayers and pay a fine, and off you go. But
where
do you go? To the Marshalsea! There is nothing, nothing,
nothing
that the Dutch can tell you that will avoid that.”

She sat up in the hammaco her legs out over the side and glared at Ned. She pointed a finger at him as though it was a pistol, her aim, Ned noticed, constant despite the rolling of the ship making the hammaco swing.

“You have the ecstasy of the bankrupt or the repentant sinner!”

“The what?” asked a startled Ned.

“Oh, I have seen it so often. The sinner goes to confession, gets forgiven, and walks down the road with a smile on his face and his heart full of fine intentions. The bankrupt is freed by a friend’s charity, walks away from the debtors’ jail with a smile on his face, the slam of the door music in his heart, which is equally full of fine intentions. The fine intentions disappear with the setting sun…”

Ned wondered how often she had forgiven Wilson for some vileness, heard him express “fine intentions” and seen them vanish at sunset. “Which are we, sinners or bankrupts?” he asked ironically.

“You have the sheepish look of both,” she said, relenting slightly, “but you are bankrupts. You are bankrupt of ideas. If you had any ideas, you would be sinners – and that is something we would welcome!”

Ned looked at the other two men and shrugged his shoulders. “Apart from piracy, when we have improved our gunnery and shiphandling, I have no ideas.”

“Nor me,” said Saxby. “We need to drink some ale with these Dutchmen and see what we can learn.”

Burton nodded, obviously relieved that Mrs Wilson was raising no objection.

Saxby and Burton were just leaving the cabin when an excited yell of “Sail ho!” came from aloft and the master pushed Burton aside as he pounded up the companionway, bellowing up at the masthead lookout: “Where away?”

Yorke arrived on deck to find Saxby staring over the larboard bow and then telling the lookout to shout down a description because the ship was not in sight yet from the deck.

Fifteen minutes later, most of which Burton had spent up the mast, it was established that the ship now coming into sight was a sloop perhaps half the size of the
Griffin
and probably making for Curaçao from the Main.

Saxby was taking no risks this time: the guns were loaded, the arms chests containing the muskets and pistols brought up from below, and Burton watched carefully as they were loaded and made sure each man had a spanning key to wind up the mainspring.

The strange sail was obviously behaving warily, careful to get across the
Griffin
’s bow so that she could not be cut off from Curaçao. Then she dropped her jib and partly brailed her mainsail, obviously waiting for the
Griffin
to come up to her, but ready in an instant to hoist her jib and let fall the mainsail and escape should the
Griffin
prove to be an enemy.

“We’ll stay on this course,” Saxby announced. “She’s scared of us but curious. There’s something about the shape of the hull that makes me think she was built in England. And that being so, I reckon she’ll be thinking the same about us.”

“Or could have been captured by the Spanish,” Yorke said.

“Mebbe, but yon ship has paint on it. You don’t see paint on a Don – leastways, not a little sloop like that, nor even a bigger one like this.”

The two ships, sails furled, drifted westward half a mile from each other, slowly turning like a pair of ospreys playing in the air currents over a headland. The boat from the
Pearl
was streamed by her painter from the
Griffin
’s stern and the five men and one woman who had rowed across in her were sitting or standing round on the
Griffin
’s low poop talking to Yorke, Saxby, Aurelia and Burton. Mrs Judd and Mrs Bullock made sure they stayed within earshot by busying themselves with various mugs of rumbullion and limejuice, though no one seemed to be very thirsty.

Yorke had stood back and let Saxby greet the visitors, while Burton had a dozen men below with muskets and pistols, waiting for his shout, but very ostentatiously no one was near the
Griffin
’s great guns. There was no hint that they were loaded.

The visitors were English and had accepted Saxby as the master, Burton as the mate, Simpson as another mate, and obviously did not know what to make of Yorke and Aurelia, whom Saxby had simply introduced as “Mr Yorke” and “Mrs Wilson”.

When the four men and women had been introduced by their leader, Yorke was struck by the idea that the woman’s role on board the
Pearl
might bear comparison with Aurelia’s in the
Griffin
: she was English and, at a guess, came from somewhere no farther east than Hampshire and no farther west than Dorset. Like the leader who introduced her, she spoke clearly; meeting her in an English town one would assume she was the lady of the manor. Black-haired with deep brown eyes, she had wide sensuous lips that smiled easily, a tiny nose, a slim body that could become plump and a way of moving that missed being graceful because she moved too quickly. She was dressed in what could in London become a striking new fashion, Ned thought: her skirt had been slit vertically front and back and the edge of each half had been sewn together to make two tubes. It meant she could swing her legs over the bulwarks and thwarts, or scramble up a rope ladder (as she had done before the Griffins realized she was a woman). On her, the divided skirt looked thoroughly womanly. What Ned found disconcerting was the upper part of her body: she wore a man’s jerkin made of fine cloth, and there was nothing beneath it except herself, and she had the most prominent nipples that Ned had ever seen.

He was covertly looking at them when the leader repeated a question and Ned turned with a polite: “I beg your pardon?”

“I didn’t hear your name when the master introduced us. My name’s Whetstone.”

“Yorke. Edward Yorke.”

The man’s eyes lowered a moment, as though searching his memory. “I knew a George Yorke once. About your age.”

Were the waters of the Spanish Main a place to exchange confidences? Ned decided to wait.

“I’ve heard of a Thomas Whetstone, too.”

The men laughed and the woman smiled, saying: “The scapegrace nephew of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, regicide, warrior – and so on.”

Whetstone, who Yorke now realized was Sir Thomas Whetstone, one of London’s more notorious gamblers before the Revolution, smiled and, holding the woman’s arm, said formally: “Miss Diana Gilbert-Manners, whom I have to introduce as my mistress because my wife is still alive in England and quite devoted to her uncle-by-marriage.”

Aurelia had heard the introduction and Ned said: “Mrs Wilson – Aurelia – is French. Or rather was born in France. She sailed with us from Barbados.”

At once he could have bitten his tongue: Whetstone nodded and said: “Now I place you! The Kingsnorth plantation. Your father is Ilex. Two estates in Kent. Your brother George is the heir.”

“Thomas, be tactful,” Diana said. She had a deep, rich voice compared with Aurelia’s lighter and more musical tones, and she turned to Ned. “In these days, Mr Yorke, it’s wiser to consider politics more carefully than armorial bearings. Mrs Wilson is obviously that wretched man Wilson’s wife. He’s a Parliamentarian. Are you?”

The question was direct but not threatening; obviously she wanted to get politics to one side so they could talk freely. Whetstone made no secret that he was Cromwell’s nephew and Ned now remembered having heard that he left England because of debts but could not recall if that was before or after the Revolution. Anyway, it was more relevant now that, inexperienced as the Griffins were, the
Pearl
was too small to harm her.

“No, I’m not,” Ned said quietly, and decided to tell them a little more so that Whetstone could be forced to reveal more about himself. “In fact my father refused to compound and he and my brother have gone to France, and an expedition sent out here under Admiral Penn and General Venables was supposed to sequestrate Kingsnorth and arrest me. So I left Barbados with those of my people who wanted to come.”

“And Mrs Wilson?” Diana Gilbert-Manners obviously wanted to make no mistakes. “Pardon my bluntness, but we live in strange times.”

Whetstone gave a dry laugh, gesturing at his mistress’ skirt and Aurelia’s breeches.

Aurelia answered while Ned was still thinking what to say.

“I loved Edouard from the time I met him, three years ago. I hated my husband from a few hours after the wedding ceremony.”

The other woman nodded. “I understand. Some men become brutes when marriage vows make them masters. That is why I have Thomas under control!”

Whetstone looked impishly at Aurelia. “Mrs Wilson will not make the same mistake again!”

Aurelia shook her head. “I have not made the mistake, but I am still married…”

Whetstone’s jaw dropped and Diana Gilbert-Manners looked startled. “My dear,” she said, dropping her voice, “do you mean that you and Mr Yorke – er, don’t…er, aren’t…?”

“No. Not until I can obtain a divorce.”

“Or your husband dies,” Whetstone said grimly. “I respect your scruples, but you wreck two lives, you know; your own and Yorke’s.”

Aurelia turned away. “Please,” she said. “It is hard enough now…”

“Of course, of course,” Whetstone said. “None of our business, but remember, dear lady, the Caribbee is not England; here we are our own lawmakers, judges – and executioners. Life can be cut very short. Hurricanes, the Dons, the gallows, the rack, rocks, drunken brawls: few men die of old age out here beyond the Line, madam. Seize happiness when it smiles at you, that’s my motto.”

Diana Gilbert-Manners had the glowing mixture of health and happiness that showed she both agreed with and benefited from Whetstone’s philosophy. Whetstone, Ned realized as he watched the man talking, was a handsome man. A thick and roughly-trimmed square black beard and flowing moustaches certainly obscured his face but his mouth was generous, his brown eyes deepset with wrinkles at the corners which revealed a good sense of humour, and long black curly hair that was so neatly dressed that Ned guessed it was his mistress’ pleasure to comb it.

He wore a loose jerkin but instead of breeches and hose he wore the short frock, or circular apron, which had been popular with seamen half a century ago. His legs were bare from the knees down, heavily tanned like his arms and face. And that, Ned realized, was what was so fascinating about Whetstone’s mistress: unlike the white women of gentle birth who lived in the tropics, she was deeply tanned: her face, neck and shoulders. And, because he could not see any white line starting, Ned suspected the rest of her body too; certainly her breasts.

Aurelia was beginning a slight tan; the sun reflecting up from the sea came under the brim of her hat, and despite Ned’s suggestion that she let the sun tan her face naturally, she had all the upper-class attitude towards tan: only servants were tanned because they worked in the fields.

However, as Whetstone had just said, out here the old rules did not apply, but it was going to take Aurelia a long time to accept that. It was a pity that Diana Gilbert-Manners and Whetstone would not be around to help start her re-education.

Whetstone coughed, a well-modulated cough that indicated that what he was about to say came outside the boundary of normal polite conversation but that he knew it and Ned was not obliged to answer.