Admiral (8 page)

There was a considerable difference between the two men. Thomas was hale and hearty, a drinker and trencherman, a lusty man who never brooded, never said more or less than he thought, who was quite incapable of sulking or being tactful or behaving deceitfully. Thomas would argue with her, bellow, lose his temper, and, occasionally, hit her in sheer exasperation. But he was always so amorously repentant afterwards that she enjoyed his lapses.

Ned, however, was different. He was almost the opposite of Thomas in every way: she had never seen Ned slap a man on the back, lift a tankard of rumbullion with the relish of Thomas, or attack a meal with Thomas’ gusto. But it was clear, from Aurelia’s radiant expression, that Ned’s feelings were no less strong for being controlled; that Aurelia could release those feelings, though Diana was not so sure that the French girl could control them as well as she could Thomas’.

It was much more important that the two men worked well together, and almost a miracle that together they were an extraordinarily powerful combination. Aurelia had once said that one of them was the pistol while the other was the powder and ball; that together they were lethal but apart they were comparatively useless. A shrewd assessment, Diana realized.

Now Leclerc was looking at Ned with raised eyebrows. “Has M’sieur Yorke…?”

Ned stood up and looked round at the four buccaneers. “I have a question to ask, before finally deciding.”

“Then ask it,” Coles said bluntly.

“We don’t beat around the bush, y’know.”

Ned nodded, as if to make clear he was not implying any evasiveness. “You mentioned yesterday that if I became your leader, you had plans for an expedition against the Spanish ‘the like of which the West Indies had never seen before’.”

“That is correct,” Leclerc said. “We have.”

“Will you tell me what it is?”

“If you are going to be our admiral, yes; if not, no,” Leclerc said without hesitation or a glance at his fellow buccaneers. “It is not that we do not trust you,” he added quickly, “but if you knew and then fell into Spanish hands, they have means of making you reveal secrets…”

Ned nodded and glanced across at Aurelia who, dressed in white cotton, her hair hanging in spiral ringlets, looked more like an aristocrat’s demure bride than the young woman who had stood on the
Griffin
’s deck as she sailed into Santiago.

“You see,” Ned said, “I am expected to be their leader and at once lead them on such an expedition…”

If he was expecting sympathy from Aurelia he was unlucky. “They’d be mad to tell you if you then decide not to lead them,” she said. “Why should they? Why do you want to know?”

“I would like some idea of the first job that I’m expected to undertake.” Ned said mildly.

“This next expedition might be one ‘the like of which the West Indies has never seen before’,” Aurelia said, equally mildly, though Diana was not deceived, “but with respect to Captain Leclerc, I trust the one after that will be bigger, and the third greater than that. Otherwise, if each successive expedition is smaller, then eventually the buccaneers will starve.”

“She’s right, yer naw,” Coles said in his deep North Country accent. “Bigger’n better, that’s what we want. A
thinking
man is what we need – beggin’ yer pardon ma’am, it’s as clear as fresh brewed ale that you’re a thinking lady.”

Gottlieb slapped his knee in agreement. “Coles and Mrs Wilson are right. Planning, that’s the secret; we don’t need someone to cheer us on and wave a sword as he leads us through the breach in a castle wall; we want someone who
plots
: who says: ‘No, we do not raid
this
place because it will alert the Spanish and spoil our chances for a much more important expedition against
that
place’.”

There was a sudden silence and everyone’s eyes were on Ned. Diana realized that his whole decision, on which depended their future as well as that of all the buccaneers, was at that moment balanced on a knife edge. The wrong word, the wrong gesture, would make him refuse.

“Come on, Ned,” Thomas said gruffly, “we need you.”

And then suddenly Ned was nodding his head, and saying: “Yes, all right then,” and the buccaneers were crowding round him to shake his hand and Aurelia had stood up and moved towards him.

The men stood back the moment they realized she was there. Leclerc bowed to her. “Kiss him,” he said, “because we cannot, and then we kiss the hand of the admiral’s wife.”

Finally, with the congratulations completed, Ned turned to Leclerc, “So far, four of you have elected me the admiral. What about the rest of the Brethren?”

“It will be unanimous,” Leclerc said. “You will see. Our old admiral died some weeks before we left Tortuga, and we all knew there was no one else suitable.”

“What about this great expedition, then?”

“We all decided we could not start it without a proper leader. As Coles says, a
thinking
man. This great expedition needs much thought.”

“When do I hear about it?”

“You are our leader, and Sir Thomas is joining us?”

“I’ve already joined,” Thomas growled. “As from yesterday, so I have twenty-four hours’ seniority over Ned.”

“And the ladies…”

Ned eyed Leclerc. “It is a question of the ladies trusting the buccaneers, not the other way around. Don’t forget, you came with us to Santiago; we didn’t go with you!”

Coles gave a great bellow of laughter, in which Gottlieb and Brace joined. “Tell ’im about it, Jean-Pierre, because ’e’s right, yer naw,” Coles said, “they took us on trust, and look what a purchase we got – and not a buccaneer’s life lost nor a ship damaged.”

Leclerc looked at the other buccaneers, who nodded in agreement. “
Alors
,” Leclerc said, “for you, M. Yorke, I hope this is the beginning of a long voyage.”

Ned was surprised to hear how many buccaneers, taken prisoner by the Spaniards along the Main, managed over the years to escape and eventually get back to Tortuga. It seemed that once the priests had finished with the heretics among them, the prisoners were handed over to the army to work at quarrying stone for repairing or building fortifications. If the particular fortifications were finally completed or brought into good condition, the army simply locked the prisoners in cells. However, the army was not as zealous as the Inquisition, and unless the prisoners were chained to the walls (as was often the case), many managed to escape.

The main problem in escaping from an inland prison, Thomas said, speaking from experience, was getting to the sea through tangled jungle or waterless desert: thirst or sickness frequently struck down a man before he reached the coast. The more fortunate found a fisherman’s dugout canoe in some creek well inland, and simply paddled to freedom, staying hidden on the coast until he saw a smuggling ship hovering, waiting for darkness to fall.

Several buccaneers had escaped in the past three months from places as widely spaced as Riohacha and Chagres, and reported two things. The first was that the government in Spain – the king, in other words – was in such financial straits that there was no money to fit out in Spain the annual two plate fleets (already much reduced in size in the last decade). For the second year running there would be no galleons arriving at Cartagena or Portobelo, and no
flota
visiting Vera Cruz in Mexico. This in turn meant that once again the Spanish merchants along the Main would not receive goods from Spain (their main complaint was the shortage of wine and olive oil, cloth and mundane things like cooking pots, needles and thread) and could not ship out goods for sale in Spain, mainly leather and dyewoods.

The second report by the escaped buccaneers, obvious when you thought about it but hard to confirm, was that the bullion and gems were piling up, waiting for shipment to Spain – ingots of silver, ingots of gold, all stamped with the royal arms of Spain and numbered, all recorded in the great assay registers, all desperately needed by the Spanish king, who was being pressed by the bankers of Italy, Austria and France, who wanted either the interest due on their loans, or the capital repaid… And the Spanish king was going bankrupt in Spain because he could not afford to equip a fleet to sail across the Atlantic to collect his bullion…

Thomas chortled as Leclerc outlined the story. “It’s like a rich man starving because he’s lost the key to his treasure chest!” he exclaimed.

Diana and Aurelia had both watched Ned as the Frenchman gave the facts he knew. Ned’s expression did not change, but both women sensed that he was no longer in the cabin: he was darting along the coast, looking into Riohacha, spotting an escaping buccaneer paddling his canoe among the tortured mangrove roots almost blocking a creek like rheumatic fingers; watching the Spanish king trying to avoid seeing the representatives of the Fuggers or the Welsers or the Strozzi, the bankers, and making desperate promises like any of his bankrupt subjects, that he would cut back expenditure – but all the time the Spanish army in the Netherlands was eating up money…

Aurelia wondered whether the Spanish kings ever used the enormous wealth they were digging from the ground over here to build in Europe great cathedrals or galleries or found universities, commission artists, sculptors or musicians, encourage writers and poets; or if they used all the money to harass the Protestants…

“Where is the bullion being stored?” Ned asked.

Leclerc’s face lit up. “Ah, now we approach the heart of the matter. This is like an artichoke; one peels off a leaf at a time, savouring each piece but knowing that as one approaches the centre the next piece will be even tastier.”

Ned sat motionless, his eyes on Leclerc although Aurelia knew he was not seeing him.

“I must paint in some of the background,” Leclerc said. “First, whence comes the bullion with which we are concerned. The Spaniards long ago took all the gold, silver and gems from the natives here in the big islands of Hispaniola and Cuba: now they have to mine. Most of the silver is coming from a place called Potosi, up in the mountains along the west coast. They carry the ingots down to the port of Arica and then ship it about two thousand miles north to Panama.

“It is cast into cones – like sugar loaves – each weighing about seventy pounds; or into wedges of usually about ten pounds; or cakes or discs, of a pound or two. All these castings are of the purest silver, stamped with the royal arms.

“Coins are minted usually at Potosi or Lima, most of them as pieces of eight, or dollars, but some are doubloons. And of course there are ‘cobs’ as you English call them, from the Spanish
cabo de barra
, ‘cut from the bar’. They look crude coins – some have only half the royal arms stamped on them – because they’re made by a hammer and die. Still, the silver is the right quality and weight, which is what matters.”

Ned held up a hand to interrupt Leclerc. “Have we any idea how much silver is usually shipped to Spain each year?”

“Silver – yes, but not gold, which goes out by way of Mexico. The only figures I have are for 1640, when they shipped out a registered consignment worth 256,114,000 pesos.”

“Pesos, pieces of eight, ducats, escudos, reals,” Diana grumbled, “we have enough sorts of money in the West Indies, and I don’t understand any of them!”

Coles laughed and pointed to Leclerc. “You’ve picked the right man: cross between a banker and a counting house clerk he is. Come on, Jean-Pierre!”

Leclerc gestured modestly, dismissing Coles’ description, but Thomas said: “Come on, tell the ladies!”

“Well, let’s begin with one English pound. That is roughly equal to one Spanish doubloon or one French pistole. Now, take an English crown, four to the pound or five shillings. That is worth a French crown or a little more than a Spanish piece of eight, whether minted in Potosi, Mexico or Seville.”

Diana said, “You were talking of pesos…”

“Ah, yes, with the Spanish one might be talking in Spanish or Portuguese terms. The smallest coin is usually the maravedi. Three hundred and fifty of them are worth an escudo and three hundred and seventy-five will get you a ducat.

“But let’s think in terms of reals, pesos and pieces of eight. The real is worth – well, between sixpence and sevenpence in English money. If you have eight reals, you have a ‘piece of eight’, which is worth – well, four or five shillings in English money. A ‘piece of eight’ is also a dollar and also a peso!”

Aurelia was frowning. “The amount registered – what does ‘registered’ mean?”

“‘Registered’ is the amount shipped by private individuals – don’t forget the king does not own the mines; he simply levies a royalty, ‘the royal fifth’. That year there was a total of 256,114,000 pesos registered – which, with a peso valued at five shillings, comes to about sixty-four million pounds…”

Ned nodded as the Frenchman worked out the figures. “I can hardly visualise even a sum like the royalties. The registered amount is quite beyond me – sixty-four million pounds… Are there that many people in the world?”

“Aye,” Coles said slowly, “now you see why we wanted to choose an admiral with a brain in ’is ’ead.”

“Is there any indication that last year’s consignment is anywhere as large as 1640’s? That’s a quarter of a century ago.”

“It’s less,” Leclerc said. “We hear the consignment gets less each year. Apart from anything else, the mines need quicksilver to extract the silver from the ore – don’t ask me why, or how it is used, but they do. The quicksilver comes from Spain in jars. Or it should do.”

Ned sighed so deeply that everyone looked at him and Aurelia said questioningly: “
Chéri
?”

“I was thinking that His Most Catholic Majesty really is in a mess. Unless he can find the money to fit out a fleet, he can’t send the galleons to Portobelo and the
flota
to Vera Cruz to collect the bullion to pay his debts. But soon unless he can send out quicksilver there will be no silver mined for him to collect when he gets enough money to fit out a fleet…and so on!”

“Thomas knows the feeling,” Diana said.