Admiral (11 page)

Diana joined them from the galley with the news that “a dinner worth eating” would be ready in half an hour, and Thomas put carafes and bottles on the table.

“Rumbullion or wine, Ned? Aurelia m’dear, I recommend this white wine. One of my last few dozen of French, but today seems a pleasantly sinful occasion for you and Ned to ignore your quaint prohibition on drinking before the sun has sunk to the horizon.”

He poured for both of them and glanced at Diana, who said: “Wine, please; rumbullion is making my skin leathery. Look at Aurelia’s wonderful complexion, and she drinks only wine.”

“Perhaps it will do something for mine,” Thomas said, rasping the side of his beard with his hand. “Now, Leclerc and his friends want to leave for Tortuga tomorrow. We have the question of your wedding. Do we leave for Tortuga before or after the wedding?”

Aurelia said, without even glancing at Ned: “Don’t worry about that, Thomas; we will have the ceremony at a suitable time and at a suitable church. Ned is being silly. The church here is a depressing affair built by Heffer from old planks and bits of jetsam. It looks as squalid as the watchman’s shelter in the meat market. I refuse to be married there.”

“I agree with you,” Diana said, looking at Ned. “A wedding is the most special day in a woman’s life. We must find you a good church. The Catholic one in St Jago de Vega is no good, although I must admit it’s impressive. Heffer’s little monstrosity ought to be destroyed, but the site is splendid, overlooking the Palisades north and south. When we have a really big purchase and Heffer’s gone, we might be able to afford to build a proper church there in stone. We need bells, gentlemen. Remember that when we raid a town.”

“Very well,” Thomas said briskly, after raising his glass in a silent toast, “if the bride is not impatient to rush to the altar because of the lack of a church, let’s consider the problem raised by the guardian of our morals, General Teffler.”

Diana groaned.”Why spoil good wine and a good dinner by thinking about that sheep’s carcass?”

“My dear, that man is making a problem for us.”

“I don’t see why,” Diana said acidly. “For his wife, perhaps; but he is not bothering me.”

“Think, woman,” Thomas said impatiently. “The buccaneers have elected Ned their admiral – we just have to visit Tortuga to confirm it. We have enough information to plan a most fantastic attack on Portobelo that will make us rich beyond the dreams of even a king of Spain. Now all we want is a good base. We’ve found this place, but if that fool Teffler insists on running it like a monastery, we’ll never get the Brethren here and we’ll have to find another. Use Tortuga, perhaps.”

“Forget Portobelo for the moment,” Diana said.”What about all those Spanish troops arriving at the island of Providencia, and collecting the garrison for an attack on Jamaica?”

Thomas drained his glass and reached for the onion-shaped bottle of rumbullion. The dark-green glass made the liquid inside seem black, and Thomas pulled out the cork with care. “We’re getting short of cork,” he told Diana. “We must find a sheet of it and have the men cut out some more bungs.”

“What about those Spanish troops attacking Jamaica,” Diana repeated, ignoring talk of corks.

Thomas shook his head. “They’re no concern of ours. If we can’t use Port Royal as a base, then it’s none of our affair. We have Tortuga, or we can make a rendezvous where we want: the Isle of Pines, the Queen’s Gardens, Ile de Vache…” He named the island at the southwestern corner of Cuba, the scattering of cays on the south side of central Cuba, and an island off the southwestern side of Hispaniola. “Or wherever you will: just name a place!”

“Don’t bother to drink any more,” Diana said. “Already you talk and think like a drunken man. Tortuga is a bad anchorage and depresses me. Ned, say something!”

Ned grinned at Diana’s exasperation with Thomas and then glanced across at Aurelia, to see if she was still irritated with him. She smiled and the cloud over his head slid away. “What do you think about it all?” she asked.

“Yes, come on, Ned,” Diana said, “tell us before dinner is served, because you’ll eat and drink so much you’ll want to doze afterwards.”

“‘Well’, as General Teffler would say, I’m prepared to lead the Brethren, if they’ll have me, but we have to move fast. Very fast. Not just the seven ships here, but all the buccaneer fleet.”

“What’s the hurry, Ned?” Thomas twiddled his beard and went cross-eyed looking down at it.”There won’t be a plate fleet out here until next year at the earliest. The Dons aren’t going to carry all those ingots back to Panama; obviously they think it’s safe enough where it is.”

“We need to hurry for two reasons, perhaps more. Let me jump ahead for a moment. We’ll have Port Royal as our base eventually – as soon as Heffer gets really frightened, he’ll agree to make Port Royal less of a monastery.

“But the main reasons we need to hurry are that first, as soon as the buccaneers have a real success under my leadership, they’ll do whatever I tell ’em, which means that the Brethren are united and strong. (Although they won’t realize it they’ll then be in a much more powerful position to bargain with people like Heffer, and infinitely stronger when they demand ransom from the Spanish.)”

Aurelia said proudly: “
Chéri
, you sound like Machiavelli! Do you think you can mould those scoundrels? Because they are scoundrels, you know: brave scoundrels and good-natured ones, but how do you say, feckless, and with no loyalty except to the man who finds them the biggest purchase!”

Ned shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “Do you seek loyalty in a shopkeeper? He’s trying to sell you the least quantity of the lowest quality for the most money. You’re loyal to him only as long as you can’t find a shopkeeper who sells cheaper!”

Aurelia laughed and agreed. “Now let’s hear your second reason.”

“The second is very obvious. We’ve more chance of attacking Portobelo successfully if we do it while most of its garrison is away. It’s unlucky for Heffer that they’ll be attempting to recapture Jamaica, but I don’t think he has much to fear. Anyway at Portobelo we shall give the Dons a terrible fright. We could perhaps seize the island of Providencia, if its garrison has been taken away: who knows, Providencia – I prefer the proper name, Old Providence – might make us better base than Port Royal. I haven’t seen it, but the chart shows it’s half the distance from Jamaica to the Main and Isthmus.”

“Aye, it is,” Thomas said. “You know, Ned, it’s a long time since I heard anyone talking such sense. How about that dinner, girl? Can’t you hustle them in the galley?”

Thomas and Diana stood with Ned and Aurelia on the quarterdeck of the
Griffin
as she made the last tack up the Chenal de Tortuga which would bring them into Cayona, which was no more than a hamlet on the edge of the bay forming one of the two anchorages of the island.

“You can see how it got its Spanish name,
Tortuga de mar
,” Thomas said.

Aurelia laughed excitedly. “Yes, when we first saw the island it looked in the distance just like a turtle sleeping on the water. I half expected it to dive and swim away!”

The mainland of Haiti, forming the south side of the channel, was covered in thick jungle, a green mat right down to the coast where occasional strips of sand, dazzling now in the sunlight, showed the beaches between outcrops of rock.

Tortuga, oval-shaped and lying five miles away along the coast like a large marrow, stretched between West Point, which they had just passed to larboard, and East Point. The southwestern corner had a remarkable red cliff, like a scar, and Ned and Aurelia could see that the south side of the island justified the name given to the anchorage off Cayona,
Rada de Tierra Baja
, because the land was low but like a vast wedge it sloped up rocky and heavily forested to the north coast facing the Atlantic, which Thomas said was a mass of cliffs and rocks. There were only two main peaks. The island was like so many others in the Greater and Lesser Antilles: a layer of soil spread thinly on rocky hills and just supporting knee-high, dark-green bushes and occasional banks of trees.

Even from this distance Ned could see dozens of the small trees which the French called
chandelle anglaise,
the branches of which burned like a candle and because of their steady flame were used by the fisherman when trying their luck at night. Its dark-grey bark helped treat fevers, though not as well as cinchona. He could see plenty of aloes growing, too, the West Indies’ most popular herb. According to many, if the aloe leaf, used as a dressing or boiled or soaked to prepare an infusion, would not cure the ill, then the sick person was doomed. Another tree which grew freely here, twenty or thirty feet high with a dense but drooping crown, was
lignum sanctum
. Almost alone the blue-flowered tree could account for Tortuga’s popularity among the buccaneers; an extract from it was used by physicians and witch doctors alike for treating venereal diseases, as well as ordinary fevers – it was famous for bringing on the sweat.

“The buccaneers,” Thomas said, gesturing to many masts looking like rushes on the far side of a pond and now coming into sight. “Looks as though most of the ships are here.”

“And no doubt hurriedly getting ready for action,” Diana commented. “They won’t have recognized the
Griffin
, although–” she looked astern “–by now they might be able to see the
Perdrix
and the other three, which they know well enough.”

“There’s the fort,” Thomas said, pointing above the anchorage. “Built by a mad genius!”

It was perched high on a hill and surrounded by almost perpendicular rocks, as though a giant had put a completed fort down on top of a steep hill beyond the ability of even a wild boar to climb. The fort had only two guns, but they covered the anchorage, which was simply a dent in the coast almost completely closed off by a reef running alongside it, a low and wide brown wall of coral over which waves broke like waving sheets as the wind swept them westward through the channel.

“There’s a strong current,” Thomas explained. “One entrance through the reef is at this end” – he pointed over the
Griffin
’s bow as she thrashed northeastward – “but the deepest channel is at the other end. Anyway, you can’t get trapped here: if an enemy appears at one end of the anchorage, you simply bolt out the other!”

Four or five boats were already leaving some of the anchored vessels and pulling towards the reef. “The welcoming party,” Diana said. “Once they hear how much purchase Leclerc and his friends brought back from Santiago, they’ll settle down to a few days’ drinking: Leclerc bought up all the rumbullion he could in Jamaica!”

Ned nodded but said: “Before they start drinking we need them to vote for me leading them. I want to be making plans for our next expedition once we know how many men we have and while they are sleeping off their celebration…”

Thomas shrugged his shoulders, unwilling to commit himself to their sobriety. “Shall I help Lobb with the pilotage? I’ve been in here a couple of times, and with your draught you’ll have to use the eastern entrance and anchor as soon as maybe once you get inside.”

By now the
Griffin
was the leader of a long snake of ships: this last tack up to the entrance to Cayona had now been copied by the rest of the little flotilla as the entrances to the reef opened up. The
Perdrix
was now immediately astern of the
Griffin
; then came the
Peleus
, the Dutchman Gottlieb’s
Dolphyn
, Charles Coles’
Argonauta
, Edward Brace’s
Mercury
and finally Saxby with the
Phoenix
.

Ned watched as Lobb gave orders to drop the big and baggy jib, using only the mainsail to get the
Griffin
through
the eastern entrance, which was simply a gap in the line of the coral reef which grew up within a few inches of the surface like staghorns, flat-topped and brown under the water.

The buccaneers’ vessels anchored behind the reef were small: he was surprised to see that none was as big as Leclerc’s
Perdrix
, The
Griffin
was by far the largest vessel present, followed by the
Peleus
and then the
Phoenix
. He recognized three or four of the hulls as Spanish: like Coles’
Argonauta
they must be prizes. Like Ned Yorke’s
Phoenix
, he reminded himself, which until recently was the
Nuestra Señora del Carmen
… There were two Dutchmen, apple-cheeked bows and beamy, probably shallow-draughted and built for the shoal waters of the Netherlands coast.

Then the
Griffin
was inside the reef, the water calm, although there was nothing to shelter Cayona or the anchored ships from the wind, and a sudden popping and booming startled Ned until he realized that the men in the boats were firing muskets and several of the ships were letting off cannon to greet the
Perdrix
as she came through the reef. Soon he heard the honking of men blowing horns made from conch shells.

“They waste a lot of powder and breath, but they mean well!” Thomas grinned, watching the
Griffin
’s seamen let go the anchor as the ship turned head to wind and lost her way. “It’s good to be back among these scoundrels!”

Diana wagged a warning finger. “Whetstone – watch the rumbillian and mobbie. Especially the mobbie!”

Aurelia turned to her. “How do they
keep
mobbie?”

“They don’t; it doesn’t get a chance of being kept, even if it could be, if you know what I mean! No, they boil their potatoes into a mash early in morning, strain through a bag with a little water and drink it before nightfall, so it doesn’t have time to ferment. It’s ruined by midnight.”

Ned sat on the barrel of the
Perdrix
’s windlass and looked at the men round him. All the captains of buccaneer ships, including Saxby, were sitting or standing on the French vessel’s fo’c’sle, while Thomas perched beside him. Even without Thomas it would be hard to find twenty-six more contrasting men. Each was tanned; few looked as though they had seen, let alone been attended by, a barber for several years. Even the two English captains he already knew could not be more unalike: Brace of the
Mercury
was thin and angular, his red beard and red hair carefully combed; Cole of the
Argonauta
was stocky with blond hair, cheerful blue eyes and a hearty manner. He looked around him with the air of a man trying to find an excuse for a celebration. The single Spanish captain, Secco, although black-haired and with a sallow, almost swarthy skin, was as neat as Brace: his beard was trimmed to a point, his hair held back by a band of red cloth.