Galleon (28 page)

Ned nodded sympathetically. “Yes, you are in a helpless position,” he said, and left the sentence hanging.

Thomas grunted. “Yes, quite helpless. Hopeless, too. I’m glad I’m not you, my dear fellow,” he said sympathetically. “You’re in an impossible situation!”

Aurelia caught Ned’s eye and said in French: “Your Excellency, you are like the grains of wheat caught between the grindstones. What do you propose?”

Couperin sighed and sat down heavily in a rattan chair. He took a square of lace from the capacious pocket in his sleeve and mopped his face. “Madame,” he said fervently, “at the moment I wish I was back in France inspecting my vineyards. As it is, I find myself in St Martin facing two formidable enemies.”

“
Two
, Your Excellency?” Aurelia repeated, as though incredulous. “Why
two
?”

“Well, I have the Spanish threatening on one side, and the Brethren on the other, and whatever I do Marigot will be destroyed.”

Aurelia seemed charmingly puzzled and looked helplessly at Ned. “Surely that isn’t how you see it,
chéri
, is it?”

“Well, I never thought His Excellency would even consider that he had to decide between the Spanish and us, I must admit.” Ned was pleased with his “more in sorrow that anger” tone.

“But he wasn’t actually saying that,
chéri
,” Aurelia said. “I had the impression he was accidentally caught between the two of us, without having any choice about taking sides. Your Excellency,” she said, turning to Couperin, “was that not what you meant?”

“Yes, madame, you are correct: I have no choice.”

Well, Ned thought to himself (and guessing from the expression on Thomas’ face that he too considered it was the right moment), now we throw you a rope. “Your Excellency, you probably don’t know how the Brethren share their purchase. Indeed, I doubt if you know what ‘purchase’ means in the sense we use it.”

“I don’t,” Couperin admitted, “though I have always been curious about the method.”

“Well, each captain owns his own ship, and has to pay for the rigging, repairs, and so on. So the whole purchase is shared out among the Brethren according to an agreed scale. The captains get the largest shares; then come mates, carpenters, surgeons, gunners, right down to seamen. There is an agreed scale for wounds – a man losing say, an eye and a leg, gets so many extra shares, and fewer if only one leg. On this expedition we have three ships and thus three captains, so any purchase would be divided accordingly.”

“Supposing you were joined by another captain,” Couperin asked casually.

He’s testing the bait, Ned thought, just swimming round and round and seeing how it tastes. Gold and silver are for strong stomachs.

“Had another ship of the Brethren come along,” Ned said just as casually, “of course he would have shared equally. At the moment three ships have a third each: had there been a fourth, each would have had a quarter.”

“Supposing it was a small ship?”

“Ah, I didn’t make that clear. Our three ships do not share exactly so that each gets a precise third. No, it depends on the number of men in each ship. The actual size of the ship does not matter except that it usually governs the number of men she carries.”

“Most interesting,” Couperin said. “If I had a ship and enough men I’d ask if I could join you!”

He has nibbled and swallowed the bait, Ned thought to himself. He waited until the silence in the room had the emptiness of an echo.

Ned pretended to be puzzling over something and then finally said: “I’d have to discuss this with the other captains, of course; but if we regarded the French half of St Martin as a ship and you her captain, I can’t see why you should not be entitled to a quarter share. We’d have to agree on how many men you supplied, of course…”

“What good would all that do?” demanded the deputy. “The galleon isn’t captured!”

“Yes,” Ned said as though making an obvious correction. “I was just making a suggestion: after all, His Excellency is worried about damage to Marigot if the Spanish bombard – and of course, his ship.”

“It’s all crazy,” the man muttered to Couperin. “They’ve three little ships and perhaps a dozen guns between them. Any attack they make on the galleon will be like flies landing on a horse – except the Spanish will bombard us.”

“He’s quite right, of course,” Ned told Couperin, “but what our friend obviously does not know is how a fly suddenly stinging a horse in the right place at the right time can cause a stampede. However, it needs more than half an ounce of courage to go after a ton or so of gold!”

“What is your plan, then?” Couperin asked.

Ned stared at him and then looked deliberately at his deputy. “That information is worth the galleon out there and all the bullion on board her,” Ned said quietly. “Just remember, we sacked Portobelo – which the Dons thought was impregnable – and captured enough gold to make pieces of eight the currency in Jamaica. You may have heard of our raid on Santiago de Cuba, too?”

Couperin nodded soberly. “Yes, I’ve heard of them. Who hasn’t! Who led those raids, you or your predecessor, that Dutchman who died?”

“Mr Yorke did,” Thomas said gruffly, “and to be quite honest, I’m damned if I can see what good you or St Martin can be to us. You can’t capture that galleon even though it has been sitting in front of you for weeks like a broken-winded horse. We knew how we’d take her the moment we heard about her back in Jamaica.”

And, Ned thought to himself, if you believe that you’ll believe that highest peak over there, the Pic du Paradis, will suddenly turn upside-down. But Thomas looked so sure of himself that, Ned realized, both the Governor and his deputy believed him. So now was the time to go back out to the ships and let the two Frenchmen make up their minds. And the English, too.

“I almost believed myself,” Thomas chuckled as he poured wine in the
Peleus’
saloon. “D’you think that fellow Couperin believed me, too?”

“Of course.” Ned kept a straight face. “I thought we’d all come on board to hear you explain how we are going to do it.”

Thomas was crestfallen and glanced at Diana, who looked back at Thomas as though she would sooner make love at that moment than make plans. “Thomas’ plan would consist of slapping the
Peleus
alongside the galleon with a crash and boarding in the smoke,” Diana said affectionately. “Thomas is very good at
doing
if you point him in the right direction. As a
planner
he leaves much to be desired; in fact he usually leaves it to you, Ned. I thought you’d have noticed that by now!”

“I thought it was the drink,” Ned said. “That, or…”

“That as well,” Thomas said contentedly. “More wine Saxby? Dear Mrs Judd, wine or rum? I hope you don’t subscribe to these slanders being flung around by my common-law wife?”

“There are as many common-law wives in this cabin as common-law husbands,” Martha said sternly. “If it was left to the wives, we’d soon have that galleon captured and the bullion transferred.”

“Ah,” Thomas winked lewdly, “common-law wives have weapons not available to any sort of husbands. But still, three against so many?”

Mrs Judd shrugged her shoulders and pushed her empty mug across the table. “We have our ways. If the three of us rowed slowly past that galleon, I can guarantee you could come along ten minutes later and find an empty ship.”

“Not Sirens on the Rocks, but sirens in a boat, eh?” Thomas said. “What would you do when the Dons caught up with you?”

Mrs Judd managed to make the whole of her considerable bulk look coy. “Any sacrifice would be worthwhile if it let you get your hands on the bullion.”

“I’m not sure it’d be such a sacrifice in your case,” Saxby growled unexpectedly. “Any ideas, sir?” he asked Ned.

Ned sipped the wine, thinking of what Mrs Judd had just said. Guile, stealth, subterfuge, deception, surprise…all would be needed if they were going to seize the galleon before her guns started bombarding Marigot. The guns were already laid and run out, and the ship was not rolling to affect the aim, so there was no advantage in attacking at night: the Dons would just have to touch their linstocks to guns already loaded and aimed.

Dress the buccaneers in the three ships as voluptuous
houris
and have them follow Mrs Judd, Diana and Aurelia in a parade of trollops through Gallows Bay. Borrow fishing boats from the French… Wait, there is an idea floating about there, shapeless at the moment, but an idea nevertheless. Tell that fellow Couperin that since he has no ship to offer, we’ll settle for a couple of dozen open fishing boats…

He looked up to find Thomas and Saxby both watching him, expecting to receive their orders. “Guile and stealth,” Ned said, adding as much weight to the words as a hanging judge delivering his sentence.

Thomas and Saxby both nodded, but Aurelia glanced at Diana as Ned went on. “We have to decide whether to leave the Dons there for a day or two, until they forget we’re anchored the other side of the hill, or to start worrying them at once: make them nervous, so they don’t guess where the attack will come from.”

“Where
will
it come from, Ned?” Thomas asked enthusiastically.

When Ned said he would give them the details later, Mrs Judd sighed, “He’s going to use my body, I know it!”

“You mean you hope,” Saxby said unsympathetically.

“You don’t understand that there is a lot of woman here to love,” Martha Judd grumbled, cupping her large bosoms in her hands.

Both Diana and Aurelia smiled, knowing that Martha Judd’s sexual appetites frequently left Saxby like a wrung-out mop. Both had seen her naked enough times to know that despite her size there was not an ounce of spare flesh on her body. However Martha took her exercise (both women suspected it was mostly in bed), her body was in good condition.

“For the time being,” Ned said, “let’s concentrate on making the Dons nervous.”

“So you’ve decided to make them jumpy, eh Ned?”

“Nervous people are more likely to make mistakes,” he said portentously and hoped no one would ask what Spanish mistakes would help the buccaneers.

“What had you in mind?”

Ned remembered Couperin and his deputy going out in the garden to sit in the shade of the palms while Ned talked with Thomas and Saxby, and he remembered the gentle thud and emphatic curse as a ripe coconut fell from a tree, apparently just missing His Excellency. Coconuts floated down with the current; even in bright sunshine they could be mistaken for men’s heads in the water, while at night it was impossible to distinguish – as many a buccaneer sentry had found to his embarrassment.

Were there any palm trees on the eastern side of Gallows Bay? No, there were tamarinds on the ridge of hills along the eastern side of the bay, and thick mangroves lined the shore. So floating coconuts were not a regular sight. With a little luck the Spanish sentries might never yet have seen any: raw seamen might not recognize a coconut even if it dropped on their head.

Ned sat upright on the settee and said: “The first thing we must do this afternoon, after giving His Excellency time for his
siesta
, is to make sure he is joining us, and agreeing to our terms.”

“What are they?” Diana asked.

“Two dozen fishing boats and a hundred men, that’s the equivalent of a ship. And two hundred coconuts delivered at night to the eastern shore of Gallows Bay. To windward of the galleon, in other words.”

“Are we going into the bumboat business?” Thomas asked with a grin, “with Martha selling coconuts to the Dons? ‘Sucking the monkey’ the Navy calls it,” he explained. “Some Navy captains won’t allow hot liquors on board their ships, but don’t mind bumboats selling fruit and vegetables. What you do, Martha, is strip the husks off the coconuts, pierce them and drain off the milk, then pour in rum. The sailors pay a good price because their officers don’t mind them drinking coconut milk.”

“‘Sucking the monkey’ indeed,” Martha said scornfully. “If I’m going into trade with the Dons I’ve got more profitable things to sell than coconuts filled with rumbullion!”

“Indeed you have,” Ned said, “but for the moment let’s write down the scale for Couperin. Treat him as the captain of a single ship with a hundred men. That gives him roughly a quarter share.”

“But he’s only got fishing boats!” Thomas protested.

“And if all of them are lost, Couperin has to compensate the fisherman,” Ned pointed out. “I doubt if much suitable wood for boatbuilding grows on this island. Ah,” he looked up as the steward knocked on the door and announced he was ready to serve the first course.

Mosquitoes whined so loudly that they seemed to be right inside each man’s ears. They rose in noisy swarms the moment he touched a bush, and walking along the narrow strip of sand between the mangroves and the sea stirred up sandflies, the tiny insects nicknamed ‘no-see-’ems’, whose bite was like the jab of red hot needles. Among the bushes on the hills behind them, goats and their kids protested at being disturbed in high-pitched bleats that, Thomas swore, could be heard over Anguilla.

Charles Couperin muttered to Ned: “You think we have enough coconuts?”

“Yes, and send your men away with those donkeys. If one of them starts hee-hawing the rest will follow, and we don’t want a ‘Donkey’s Chorus’ just at the moment so the Dons know we’re here.”

The Governor General gave the order and then came back to Ned. “You have a – how do you say, a whimsical attitude,
m’sieur
, And your friend, Sir Thomas.”

Ned remembered Charles Couperin’s sober approach when they proposed he joined the buccaneers on a shares-of-the-purchase basis. The Frenchman seemed to walk round the idea for an hour, inspecting it from every angle, while his deputy walked round the opposite way. As Thomas commented drily afterwards, they wasted sixty minutes making a one-minute decision. “On your deathbed you might have been glad of those fifty-nine minutes,” he told Couperin, who did not laugh.

“Whimsical? Perhaps. I suppose we’d prefer to die laughing than weeping.”

“I prefer to stay alive,” Couperin said, obviously puzzled.