Buccaneer (14 page)

Aurelia smiled at him, then stood up in the new pearl-grey breeches Mrs Judd had just made for her, a perfect match for a russet jerkin which had been the previous day’s contribution by Mrs Bullock. She bent down and kissed him. “Edouard,” she said, “I wish I would never again hear the word sugar. Anyway, Mrs Judd is going to buy some oxen and boucan them for the voyage.”

“What voyage? What are you talking about?”

Aurelia looked at him innocently. “Surely we are not staying long in Antigua? You said you do not like it or its governor.”

“Well, yes,” Ned said lamely. “But ‘voyage’ is a large word. We shall simply go over to the other islands – why, some are in sight. Montserrat and Redonda. Nevis and St Christopher are only just to the north, and St Bartholomew and St Martin.”

“When do we sail?”

Ned gestured to the
Griffin
, lying hauled over on her side, with men scrubbing at the exposed hull.

“Well, we’ve done one side, and they’ll finish this by tomorrow. But then we have get all the provisions and cargo back on board and stow them, and the guns, powder and shot.”

“I shall be glad to be back on board and anchored away from the shore,” Aurelia said. She looked round at the sacks, casks and boxes, and the cannon which had been placed in a half circle, protecting the ship and her gear and crew from an attack from the land. “This is how I think life must be in the army.”

“Something like it, but unless we protect the bottom of the ship we will get the ship borers eating the planking.”

“I find it hard to believe there are those worms in the water,” Aurelia said.

“You’ll believe it when you see termites destroying furniture and wooden houses. Termites and white ants. Why did you have the legs of your tables and chairs resting in metal dishes of water?”

“Oh yes, Edouard, do not take me too – how do you say, too literally. It is just that as I sleep at night I can imagine the worms chewing the wood and I think of the ship suddenly falling apart and sinking!”

“Have you ever heard of a ship doing that?”

“Well…no.” She slapped at mosquitoes on her wrist. “But I think I shall fall apart from the insect bites.”

She was silent for a few minutes and then said: “You did not say if you liked me in breeches and jerkin.”

“Buccaneers, borers and breeches!” He looked round to make sure no one else was in earshot. “You don’t own a dress to compare with those breeches. Why, now I can see you have legs! You have knees and ankles!” Then, with a touch of bitterness in his voice, he added: “I must be grateful for these hints at the real Aurelia.”

“The ‘real Aurelia’ is not just a body…”

“No, but –”

His reply was interrupted by Saxby, who came bustling up to report: “They’re here!”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“General Venables’ recruiters. They’re marching round the island beating drums and calling for volunteers.”

“They’re not pressing men?”

“No, sir. From what I’ve just heard, the governor’s refused to allow them to send out pressgangs. They can only call for volunteers.”

Suddenly Yorke’s opinion of the governor rose. Last week he had seemed an indecisive man, and had not given the impression of understanding Yorke’s news of the forthcoming expedition. But now he had emphasized the island’s neutrality by limiting the call to volunteers.

“Where is the ship?”

“Round at St John, sir. I’m told they went there because most of the plantations are up that way, along the north coast.”

Yorke gestured at the surrounding ring of steep hills. “Nothing for them here.”

“Except us, if they could send out pressgangs.”

Yorke pointed to the guns. “I doubt if they’d risk those!”

“They could bring their ship round!”

“Yes, but would they, for forty men, risk damage as well? Those guns would be turned on their ship.”

“No, I suppose not, sir,” Saxby said, realizing for the first time that Mr Yorke had worked all that out when the
Griffin
first arrived in the bay.

“Saxby, this may be our only chance of finding out what Penn and Venables intend doing, and when. Those recruiters – I am sure they spend their evenings drinking and wenching in St John. Supposing you and someone else join them tonight for a few hours. Some free rumbullion should loosen some tongues.”

“Aye, I’ll take Bullock and we’ll hire a couple of mules from that fellow in Falmouth village. A bullock going to town on a mule…what if Mrs Bullock wants to come, sir?”

“Let her. She’ll add an air of innocence to the proceedings!”

At dawn next morning, as Yorke supervised the group of men climbing down on to the raft they had made from logs, he heard singing in the distance. He paid no attention as he made sure the men had heavy scrapers and scrubbing brushes, and helped haul on the ropes to position the raft near the bow where they could get at the remaining part to be done. The weed stank after a day’s exposure to the sun; sweet and rotten.

By the time he was on shore again, where a couple of men had fires lit for Mrs Judd and her women to start cooking breakfast, the singing was nearer and louder.

Mrs Judd eyed Yorke, and said disapprovingly: “That Bullock woman is singing bawdy songs!”

He listened a few moments. “All three of them are.”

Aurelia, who was passing and heard his words, said: “Four people are singing.”

Both Yorke and Mrs Judd listened carefully and there was indeed a fourth voice, a man’s and a good baritone.

“If they think they’re going to stagger in here blind drunk and get a meal, they’d better think again,” Mrs Judd declared piously. “Into the water with them: a sea bathe will help sober them up
and
get the dust and sweat off them.”

Yorke went over to a soapberry bush and wrenched off a handful of fruit. He gave them to Mrs Judd. “You can be in charge of the bath-house!”

“A good scrub won’t hurt that Bullock woman. Nor Saxby. Here!” she called to one of the women, “can’t you see that pot’s boiling over?”

Saxby and Bullock were drunk, but the fifteen-mile mule ride from St John had begun to sober them up. Mrs Bullock, however, was clutching a bottle as though it was her most valued possession, and had obviously dosed herself frequently on the journey back.

“Refreshin’ walk over the hill after we gave the man his mules back,” she told Mrs Judd. “An’ you stop lookin’ at my bottle. Good Holland gin that is.”

“Into the water with you,” Mrs Judd growled. “An’ you can take off that fine dress ’cos you’ve tore it round the back. Yer bum is sticking out!”

Mrs Bullock’s eyes widened as her free hand explored behind her. “You’re right! Must ’ave done it when I slid off that mule. No wonder that bloody mule man was laughing.”

Saxby lurched over to Yorke shamefacedly. “Sorry, sir, I’m afraid we overdid it.”

“Not if you can remember what happened.” He pointed to the sea, lapping quietly at the edge of the almost white sand. “Perhaps a bathe…”

“Ah,” Saxby said doubtfully. “We’re a bit overheated this minute. Perhaps in an hour or two, when…”

“Now,” Yorke said. “Don’t worry about those old wives’ tales. You know I’ve swum every morning for four years at Kingsnorth.”

Faced with a direct order, and proof that at least one man had survived daily immersion in the sea, losing all the natural oils from the body, and getting the hair wet, which must be harmful, Saxby lumbered down the beach, unbuttoning his jerkin.

“Perhaps you’d better turn the other way, ma’am,” Mrs Judd said to Aurelia, who laughed and said: “I wish I was swimming, too!”

Mrs Judd nodded approvingly. “Me too, and I’d make a splash, though they do say it’s bad for you.”

Aurelia lowered her voice. “No one ever knew, but every day I swam for half an hour just at dawn. It’s a wonderful feeling!”

“Well, you took no harm,” Mrs Judd commented. “Maybe I’ll start it. What about sharks, though?”

She looked herself over, imagining sharks chewing at her ample body, like dogs attacking a bullock carcase after the butcher had finished with it.

“I never saw one and I never heard of anyone attacked. The men used to wade in with nets to catch fish. They often saw a shark and screamed and ran on shore, but I’m sure they are harmless.”

“Tell me, ma’am, can you actually
swim
?”

Aurelia nodded. “Not very well, but enough.”

“How far, then?”

“I swam a few hundred yards a day. By then it was getting light and I was afraid someone would see me.”

“Is it good exercise?”

“I think so. It always made me feel fresh.”

“Reckon it does a lot for the breasts,” Mrs Judd said with a frankness that made Aurelia blush, “because I ain’t never seen bosoms like yours, beggin’ your pardon. Perfect, they are.”

At that moment Yorke came back from the beach, having seen that Saxby and the Bullocks were in the water.

“What are perfect, Mrs Judd?”

Aurelia turned away in embarrassment, but Mrs Judd said: “I was talkin’ about these eggs I bought in the village.”

She pointed at a wooden bucket filled with eggs, and asked: “Who’s that fellow they brought back?”

“A deserter from the ship that’s arrived to get recruits.”

“Why did he desert?”

“I don’t know yet; none of them are sober enough yet to talk sense.”

After their sea bathe the three men and Mrs Bullock were still drunk; the water was too warm to give them a sharp shock. Instead it made them drowsy, and Yorke told them to sleep in the shade of the bank of sea grape trees separating the band of sand from the land.

Four hours later a shaky Saxby came over to apologize yet again.

“I’m sorry we were so drunk, sir, but we did the job.”

“I hardly expected you to spend the night drinking and stay sober,” Yorke said to reassure the foreman. “What did you find out?”

“Well, sir, they – the general and the admiral – had plenty of trouble in Barbados. It started in England, when the storeships carrying provisions and artillery were due to be loaded in London and the transports for the men at Spithead. Seems the storeships were so delayed joining them that the troops sailed for the West Indies from Spithead without them They were all supposed to meet in Barbados but the storeships still haven’t arrived.”

“So Barbados is having to supply provisions?”

“Much more than that, sir. It’s not just food and water but more than half the muskets, pikes and swords for the army. Half the men have no arms.”

“How many soldiers are there?”

“We were told fifteen hundred, and Cromwell’s commissioners – whoever they are; they include one or two people from Barbados – have to supply another three thousand from the islands.”

“Do they expect to be able to do that?” Yorke asked.

“No sir. Not only that, at least a thousand of the men they brought with them from England are the sweepings from the streets and the rubbish from the jails. The jails were cleared of all men except murderers. Taken straight out to the ships they were, without a minute’s instruction with pike or musket. And now their pikes and muskets are still in the London ships!”

Yorke thought of men who had spent months, perhaps years, in dark, verminous cells suddenly put on board ships and brought out to the tropics. They would bring cholera and typhus; they would meet yellow fever, agues, blackwater…

This was how Cromwell sent a sample of his New Model Army to fight its first foreign war. “Ironsides” he called them, but obviously these were rusty.

“So what is happening in Barbados?”

“Platoons of troops are marching the length and breadth of the island to the beat of drums, calling for volunteers but seizing anyone they can lay their hands on. Ships have gone to Montserrat, St Christopher and here to get men. The smiths in Barbados are working overtime hammering out pikeheads while the carpenters are making staves. The general tried to confiscate all the sporting guns and muskets on the island, but they suddenly vanished, so now he is trying to buy them.”

“When is the expedition to sail?”

“Officially it’s only waiting for the storeships to arrive, but the tavern talk is that it will wait until the end of next month – before then the winds will be too strong along the south coast of Hispaniola.”

Yorke groaned and Saxby nodded. “Yes, sir, any Spanish agent, even if he’s deaf, will know that the landing is planned for the end of March, and Santo Domingo is the target.”

“Half of Venables’ men will have fallen sick by then,” Yorke said bitterly. “Anyway, how many have they found here?”

“Four hundred, most of them disgruntled apprentices, and the rest those who have good reason for leaving the island without too much attention – debtors, bolting husbands, men breaking the terms of transportation. The governor will be glad to be rid of them: in fact he’s emptied the jail.”

“And this man you’ve recruited…”

“John, sir: he’s a sturdy fellow and a good seaman. He was the armourer in one of Admiral Penn’s ships, and the fact is, sir, we need someone like him. Not many of us really understand those big guns.”

“I doubt if we’ll ever have to use them.”

Saxby glanced up at him. “No, sir, I hope not, but we can’t be sure, can we?”

“Did you find out anything about the other islands?”

“Yes, sir, but nothing that helps us. Barbuda, that’s the small island just north of here, is no good for our purposes and has very little water. Dominica is still dangerous with Caribs raiding plantations so a man works with a musket in one hand and a hoe in the other. Montserrat can’t make up its mind whether to back Cromwell or the Prince and anyway it’s mountainous.”

“No news of Nevis and St Christopher?”

“I didn’t talk about them, though I believe they’re the most likely. But –” Saxby broke off, as though nervous of going any further.

“But what? Come on, say what you think.”

“I don’t like to, sir, because…”

“Say it!” Yorke said harshly. “I don’t have to agree with you, but I’ll certainly listen.”

Saxby swallowed and then took a deep breath, as though he was going to dive to a great depth. “Well, sir, we was talking about being rebels and outcasts…”