Galleon (30 page)

They found Couperin at his house looking tired, unsteady on his feet and with an onion-shaped bottle and a glazed pottery mug on a small table beside his rattan chair.

Once the handshaking was completed, Couperin motioned them to sit down in the other chairs. When Ned commented that he looked pale and hoped he had not picked up a fever, Couperin shook his head. “There’s a lot of work for one man,” he said, and Ned thought there was a curious inflexion in his voice.

“You must leave more of the routine to your deputy,” he said.

Couperin shook his head sadly. “Ah, there’s the tragedy,” he said. “I have no deputy until another is appointed by Paris. My original deputy, the one you met, had an accident this morning. A fatal accident.”

“How distressing,” Ned said. “What happened, pray?”

“Thrown by his horse, poor fellow. The groom brought it round to his door, he stood on the mounting block, and as soon as he was astride the horse, it threw him. Broke his neck.”

“Probably a piece of cactus under the saddle cloth,” Thomas said politely. “It happens, I know. The rider’s sudden weight makes it jab the horse.”

“Yes,” Couperin said, “I’m sure that’s what happened. The funeral is tomorrow.”

“He was Catholic?”

Couperin nodded, and Ned knew that the formalities were now over: the deputy was dead, the funeral was arranged so there was no suspicion of foul play, and it was acknowledged that the buccaneers, being Protestant, need not attend the service.

“The galleon,” Couperin said, looking at Ned hazily and forgetting to offer them drinks. “How are we going to deal with the Spaniards?”

“Ah, first of all I must thank you for the coconuts.”

Couperin’s jaw dropped. “Oh, of course, you are more than welcome. If you want more…”

“Thank you,” Ned said politely, “I know I have only to ask.”

Couperin nodded, took a sip from his mug, and looked up at Ned. “you were going to…” he prompted.

“Ah yes, the Spaniards. That’s what reminded me of the coconuts.” He settled comfortably in his chair, the rattan squeaking in protest, showing it was both old and rarely used. “Well, we’ve seen that the ship has a total of forty-four carriage guns. There’ll be a couple of dozen smaller guns that they mount on the bulwarks. Two hundred men, would you not agree? Ah, yes. Each with a pistol or musket. Well, perhaps not all: say one hundred and fifty. And the same number of swords – daggers, too, I expect.”

Couperin nodded. “Yes. My estimate was higher, for both men and guns, but I had forgotten the smaller guns.”

“And how many men can you muster?”

Couperin shrugged his shoulders. “Given a few days – two or three, anyway – about forty. Thirty, anyway. That includes the fishermen.”

“We can land about two hundred men. They rather outnumber your thirty,” Ned said pointedly, and watched as Couperin divided thirty into two hundred.

The Frenchman realized that Yorke, Saxby and Whetstone were together providing two hundred men. Each captain, he thought, was like a Roman centurion: he had (almost) a century of men. Each captain, that was, except himself, the Governor.

Couperin, thinking of his thirty, was thankful that Yorke had not asked him (yet, anyway) if the men would be armed. There were perhaps twenty muskets and ten pistols in St Martin, and he dreaded to think of the condition of the powder: it would be damp and caking. The slowmatch for the locks…well, better not to think about it.

“And weapons?” Ned asked.

Couperin decided there was no point in prevaricating: Yorke had the kind of eyes that could see through a green-heart plank. “Twenty muskets, ten pistols, poor powder, doubtful slowmatch,” he said. “Swords of course, and we have the three cannon up in the bastion.”

“Three canons equal one bishop,” Ned said and as Saxby and Thomas laughed, Ned explained to a puzzled Couperin: “A complicated sort of joke. A cannon, spelled with two ‘n’s’, is of course a gun. With one ‘n’ it is a religious rank.”

Couperin laughed heartily and then said: “We use only one ‘n’ in French:
droit canon
– that’s what the ecclesiastics call ‘canon law’. Cannon law and canon law – ha, the Spanish will notice the difference! You are a
drôle
fellow,
M’sieur
Yorke. I use the word in the English sense.”

He lifted his mug, still not realizing that the other men had nothing to drink. “I give you a toast – to much
drôlerie
! May it make us rich!”

“Yes, indeed,” Ned said. “Which reminds me. We agreed earlier that if you joined us, you would have a quarter share.”

“Yes, a quarter,” Couperin said, clearly doing his sums again. Thirty men as a proportion of two hundred. Sadly he watched his quarter shrink to a sixth, thought again and then smiled. A sixth of all the treasure in that galleon would still leave him a very rich man, and now there was no deputy to share in it. Just small rewards for the thirty or so men and the fishermen. A sixth of the sixth would keep them quiet.

Couperin felt faint when Ned nodded. “Very well, we agreed on a quarter, even though we expected you to provide more men. Still, it may not matter now. And what I am going to tell you is for your ears only. Do not repeat it to anyone.”

Ned finally jumped down from the breech of the aftermost gun on the
Griffin
’s starboard side, his voice hoarse from having explained for the third time (once to each ship) the plan of attack. Just as his feet hit the deck, Lobb called and pointed towards the western headland forming the bay. Further out to sea, obviously tacking towards Anguilla before tacking in again for Marigot, was a ship.

Ned grabbed the perspective glass which Aurelia had snatched from the binnacle box drawer, pulled out the tube to the ring marking the correct focus for his eyes and examined the vessel.

She was perhaps half the size of the
Phoenix
. Heavy laden – her hull so low in the water that the waves, not particularly high, were occasionally sweeping over her foredeck. Guns – a gun port aft, so perhaps two guns. Just a small trading sloop bound for Marigot with a mixed cargo from somewhere. Then as he was going to take the glass from his eye, he caught sight of a second sail, another vessel on the same course and perhaps half a mile behind the first.

Not so heavily laden, about the same size, and armed with four guns, and neither ship flying any flag. Sailing in company “for mutual protection” – that made sense in these waters where anyone with a ship who was short of money could indulge in piracy. And, the Devil take it, a third sail! Three sloops bound for Marigot. They were not intending to go to Road Harbour, on the north side of Anguilla, because they were hard on the wind, whereas they would ease sheets if they wanted to round Anguilla, at the western end of the island.

He handed the glass to Lobb. “Tell the men to forget what I’ve just said. My throat’s too sore to raise my voice again.”

With that he went down to the cabin, followed by Aurelia.

“What ships are they?”

He realized that apart from his instruction to Lobb, he had not spoken a word. “Nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. “Three small trading vessels bringing cargo to Marigot. Half a dozen men in each of them and they’re heavily laden.”

“What cargoes? Not salt, because they have their own salt pans here.”

Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Potatoes? I haven’t seen any growing here. Cattle, horses, hogs – not much land here for farming.”

“But you told Lobb to tell the men to forget what you’ve just said,” Aurelia reminded him. “Why should the arrival of these three sloops affect your plan?”

“Damned if I know until they get here.” Ned admitted, “but it might mean Couperin has a few more men. They won’t be in for another two hours and by the time they’ve gone on shore and Couperin has enough details to tell us about them, it’ll be much too late for us to do anything tonight. That reminds me, I must send over Thomas and Saxby and tell them of the delay.”

“Don’t forget those Spaniards coming from Cartagena, Ned,” Aurelia said anxiously. “You’ve said you think they’ll send several ships…”

Ned shook his head. “Those chaps aren’t the Dons: we’ve at least three days more before we see them, even if they made a fast passage in Couperin’s ship. The wind has been brisk every day but it falls flat every night. You know what a wretched passage we had from Porto Rico, so you can imagine what a miserable sail it’ll be from Cartagena to here: foul wind, foul current…and no doubt the bottoms of the Spanish ships so foul with barnacles and grass their speed is halved. Three days? More likely another week!”

“Where are you going now?” she asked as Ned buckled on his sword. “If you are going on shore I’m coming too: I need some exercise. And we can collect Diana on the way.”

“I was just going to call on Couperin.”

“M. Couperin is lucky,” she said. “The way he looks at Diana and me, I suspect there are few women on this island, or St Kitts.”

***

Couperin looked startled when he saw Ned, Thomas and the two women approaching his house along the narrow, sandy track. He hurried forward to greet them, kissing the hands of Diana and Aurelia in a way which reminded Ned that Aurelia’s suspicions were obviously correct.

He waited until they were all in the house before asking Ned nervously: “Is there a difficulty? Have you changed the plan?”

Ned gestured towards the harbour. “For tonight, yes. Those three ships coming in – what are they?”

“Oh, just three sloops from St Christophe. Mine would have been with them, if those damnable Spaniards had not stolen her.”

“What are they carrying?”

Couperin shrugged his shoulders. “The usual mixed cargo. They bring items needed here, but their most important job is carrying cargo from here to St Christophe. Hides, salt, some fruit…to be transferred to the next ship going to France. We never know when one will arrive, but we have warehouses in St Christophe where we can store it all.”

“Fruit, for
France
?” Thomas asked.

Couperin laughed. “I’m sorry, I must correct myself. These ships–” he waved seaward, “–bring pitch and casks for the people here to preserve the fruit.”

Aurelia made some comment in French which Ned did not quite understand, but Couperin looked towards Diana and Thomas. “Excuse me, I will explain. In France such fruits as guava, prickly pear and prickly apple are rare delicacies for which some people will pay a very high price. The only way of keeping them on the voyage across the Atlantic is to pick them before they are fully ripe, and then store them in a barrel with pitch. The pitch, it seems, has properties that prevent the fruit from rotting without affecting the taste. Rather like salt preserving meat. Whereas we have our own salt pans – most islands have – we have to bring up the pitch from Trinidad. There’s plenty there but getting it away from the Spaniards is a problem. All of it is smuggled: that’s why pitch is so expensive.”

Aurelia nodded in agreement. “We used to send some fruits to England from Barbados packed with pitch in barrels. Although the pitch is soft out here in this heat, it is brittle by the time it arrives in England and it is easy to break it away without damaging the fruit. If the fruit still isn’t quite ripe, hanging it up in a dark corner is enough.”

“How much pitch will these ships be bringing?” Ned asked.

Couperin shrugged his shoulders. “Twenty barrels each, perhaps. Preserved fruit is a profitable luxury. Here in St Martin they can grow fruit, and they can breed cattle for their hides. And there’s salt. Sugar and tobacco – well, they grow some sugar, but the tobacco smokes with an earthy taste, and the Dutch – who buy all they can – give such a poor price for it that planters here are giving up tobacco altogether, except for their own needs.”

“Hot waters,” Ned said. “Do they make their own rumbullion here in St Martin?”

Couperin shook his head, almost apologetically. “No, they bring it over from St Christophe. The three sloops you saw will be carrying some, I expect.”

“You are sure they’re from St Christophe?” Ned asked casually.

“Oh yes, absolutely certain. As I said, mine should have been among them. They are owned by my friends.”

“And as Governor General, in an emergency you can commandeer the ships?”

“Well, I have the power to,” Couperin admitted reluctantly, “but you understand, they belong to my friends.”

Ned nodded. “Your friends, but not ours. What you don’t commandeer, we can always take. You can always explain it away to your friends as submitting to
force majeure
…”

“Yes, indeed: it would be a more tactful way,” Couperin agreed.

“Just one ship, and part of some of the cargoes,” Ned said. “That would be enough.”

“Ah yes,
force majeure
. I shall have to make a formal protest to you, of course.”

“Of course,” Ned agreed. “In writing. As soon as we know the name of the ships and can read the cargo manifests, we’ll draw up the protest. I’m sure Madame Wilson will make you a fair copy – I would not care to trust my French.”

Ned broke the seal of the letter from Charles Couperin and began reading. Couperin began with the names of the three ships –
Les Deux Sœurs
of Nantes, the
Sans Peur
of Toulon and the
Didon
of Honfleur. They had a total of twenty men on board, and he then listed the main items of their cargo. The
Didon
carried fifty-five barrels of pitch and the
Sans Peur
another twenty. The
Deux Sœurs
had mostly clothing – bundles of jerkins, breeches, stockings, hats, feathers and shirts, along with boots, not all intended for Marigot.

All three had bundles of barrel staves and hoops to be assembled in the island and used for carrying salt. The ships carried casks of rumbullion and one had a quantity of gin (Dutch, Couperin noted – presumably in case any of the English felt nostalgic about what foreigners regarded as the country’s national drink).

Ned folded the letter and put it down, watched by Aurelia from the other side of the table. She gave him the whimsical, questioning smile that regularly made him fall in love with her again. “Well,” she said, examining her finger nails, “what brilliant ideas has the Governor’s letter stirred up in my lord and master?”