Pirate Freedom (20 page)

Jarden woke me to go on watch. He said, "I did not wish to disturb you, Captain, but there is a large ship to starboard."

"Spanish?"

He shrugged. "Who can say?"

I went up onto the quarterdeck and had a look. It was not as big as the galleon and showed no lights. That was enough to spook me or anybody, and it started bothering me that I had nothing to fight with except my dagger. Then the man at the wheel said, "She has been closing with us since I came on, Captain."

That did it. I grabbed Cicatrice and told him to find all the stuff the Spanish had taken from us. "I want my cutlass," I told him, "and any spare pistols you can round up. Give the rest back to the men who lost them."

After that, I sent men aloft to let out sail. The other ship did the same, and did it so fast I knew the watch there had not been asleep on deck.

It was quiet, too. If anybody had been yelling at those sailors, I would have heard it. Faint, sure, but it would have been there. And it was not.

There was something else that bothered me, too. I scratched my head
and rubbed my eyes, but after that it still bothered me. When I ordered the watch to load the guns, they told me they were already loaded. The Spanish prize crew had done it before they went to sleep, it seemed like—loaded them, but not run them out.

I stationed men with slow matches at every gun on the starboard side, and told the watch they had to be ready to run them out any minute. Five little four-pounders that was, and one of the men located a swivel gun and stuck the swivel in the quarterdeck rail. By then the other ship was about half as far as it had been when I came on deck.

The sea was calm, with just enough wind to fill our sails. So I jumped up on the quarterdeck rail myself, next to the gun, waved, and yelled in English, "Ahoy the
Weald
! Captain Burt on deck there?"

"
THE SPANIARDS KNOCKED
off the mainmast," I told Capt. Burt when we sat in his cabin, "and cut away the wreckage after they took the ship. All that's left is the stump. I'd say she's making two knots with the foremast and the mizzen. If the wind freshens a bit she might make two and a half."

He was whetting his dirk and gave it a couple of good whisks across the stone before he spoke. "Rig a jury mast, eh?"

"With the men we've got now, we'll be in Port Royal before it's ready."

"I've a hundred and nine aboard. Suppose I lend you a dozen?"

"If they're good seamen, sure. Why not?"

"Ever done it before, Chris?"

I shook my head.

"Pity. I have, and there can be complications. Stick with it, though, and you'll get through. Port Royal, you said?"

"Sure, that was where we were going to sell the
Rosa
."

"And this other ship of yours, the
Magdelena
? Bound for Port Royal as well, is she?"

I had to think about that one. "She was, Captain. Our idea was to sell
Rosa
and get the men some pay. Without the
Rosa
to sell… I don't know. I can't guess what Rombeau might do."

"Your guess'll beat mine, Chris. You know him and I don't. Will he try to retake
Rosa
?"

I considered it. "You know, he might. He might do exactly that, or try to."

Capt. Burt wiped the blade and tested the edge with his thumb. "Loyal to you?"

"I think so. Of course, if the men would elect him… They'll want to get the
Rosa
back, though. They were counting on the money. Some of them will have friends on board, I'm sure."

"Then they'll try. We can be sure of it from what you say. If this Rombeau won't do it, they'll vote him out and put in some chap who will." Capt. Burt stood to get a map from the cabinet at his elbow. The captain's cabin on the
Weald
was a small room by shore standards, but a big one to sailors, a low room of varnished oak with wide windows. In movies, the pirates hold their maps open by pinning them to the table with their knives. Capt. Burt and I held down the far end of his with a brass inkstand.

"Here's our present position, Chris. Here's Jamaica, there's the Spanish Main, and right here's the Yucatan Channel. They're watchin' for me there, as it happens."

"The Spanish?"

"None other. Been up to my old tricks, eh? Gulf of Campeche. That's where the money is these days, never doubt it. Gold out of Peru, eh? Up the Pacific Coast, then overland to the mint at Veracruz. Galleons to pick it up. Three at least. Split up the gold between 'em. Treasure fleet, eh? What's troublin' you?"

I pointed. "Look at this port here, Captain. Panama. They could unload here and cross where the land is so much narrower."

He chuckled. "They could, but I doubt they've been thick enough. On the other side, eh? Can you read that? I'll get you a glass."

I did not need one. "The Gulf of Mosquitoes."

"See any ports there?"

I shook my head. "No, I don't, Captain."

" 'Cause there ain't any. Not a one, eh? Nothin' closer than Portobello, and it's a hellhole. If you went west of there, you'd soon come flash—no safe anchorages, and the most fever-ridden coast on earth. Not to mention the bloody mosquitoes. So the treasure ships put out from Callao and sail north to Panama, which is decent enough. The gold's loaded onto mules at Panama and sent overland to New Spain's capital—Mexico's its name—or straight to Veracruz."

Capt. Burt paused, looking up from the map; slowly and deliberately he said, "Three hundred pounds, Chris. That's a decent load for a Spanish mule. Three hundred pounds of gold. Rum quiddies, eh?"

I could not imagine that much gold. I suppose it showed.

Capt. Burt fished in a pocket of his blue coat, and dropped a bright gold coin on the table. "Here's a guinea. Ever see one before?"

I shook my head.

"Worth a bit, that is. Slap it down in an inn and they'll treat you like a gentleman. Twenty-one silver shillin's, that's what it's worth, and there's many a good man in London who don't earn a shillin' a day. How much would you say your guinea weighs?"

"It isn't mine," I said. "It's yours, Captain."

"I'm givin' it. Pick it up and get the feel of it. How much?"

I thanked him and tossed it in my hand. "It's not as heavy as a musket ball. Half that, or less."

"How much?" Capt. Burt repeated.

"Well, we get fifteen balls from a pound of lead, so they're around one ounce. That would make this a little less than half an ounce."

"Not bad." Smiling, Capt. Burt went back to his whetstone. "I've weighed a few guineas, and they're a quarter of an ounce or a trifle over. Sixteen ounces to the pound for us, eh? Won't bother with Troy. So sixty-four guineas struck from a pound of gold. Let's call it sixty."

I am not terribly good at mental math, but I am better than some people. "Six thousand guineas from each hundred pounds of gold, eighteen thousand guineas from every mule-load. How many mules?"

He shrugged. "Varies. Thirty, sometimes. Sometimes a hundred. Like a spot of sherry?"

I nodded, and he fetched a decanter and poured for both of us. "Crew's got to be paid, eh? Custom of the Coast. Ten shares for you, as captain. Think your ten would come to six thousand guineas?"

I thought about it. "Say that we had a hundred shares, with ten for me and extra shares for mates and so on."

"Ten for me, too, Chris."

"Right. But say a hundred in all. If there were thirty mules, that's nine thousand pounds of gold. One share would be ninety pounds of gold…"

"Go on."

I had not touched my sherry, but I swallowed. "It comes to five thousand four hundred guineas, Captain. One share comes to that."

"Buy a manor in England for that much, Chris." Capt. Burt sipped. "Bit of land with it, too, and change to the bargain. Collect your rents, put the change in the Funds. Should fetch five percent or better. Set for life, eh?"

I nodded.

"That's one share. You'd have ten, Chris. So'd I. You're from Jersey? You told me so once, if my memory's not playin' tricks."

I nodded again.

"Thought so. So's George Carteret. He's got a place in the forties. New Jersey, he calls it. A thousand guineas might take the whole colony. Wouldn't be surprised."

I felt my heart jump. It seemed like a long time before I could say, "You've been there?"

"Aye. While I was still Navy, eh? Not much there—small farms and so on. Now looky here, Chris." Capt. Burt leaned back, his hands forming a steeple. "I want that gold. So do you, and there's three ways a man might get it before it's safe in Spain." He held up his index finger. "First way. Take the galleons. With force enough it might be done."

"Not by me," I said. "Not even if I had
Magdelena
back."

"Nor by me," Capt. Burt acknowledged. "I've five besides this
Weald
, and I still couldn't do it. Nor by both of us together."

He raised his middle finger. "Second way. Take Veracruz. They coin some gold there before they ship it home, eh? All the better so. Mules come in—under heavy guard, of course—and the gold's put in the treasure house there. Minted, it goes back there. Most secure place, eh? Take out a few bars, mint 'em, put the doubloons back in the treasure house. So take Veracruz, break into the treasure house, and off with the gold before the galleons put out from Spain."

I said, "I suppose that might be workable."

Capt. Burt nodded. "I've been thinkin' 'bout it for a year now, Chris. Five
hundred men might do it, if we took 'em by surprise. Trouble is, we can't. They're on to me. Strengthenin' the forts, eh? More men and more guns. Dago men-of-war patrollin' the Gulf of Campeche. So no. That's out, for a few years at least."

He raised his ring finger. It had a ring on it, a wide band of bright gold. "Third way. Take the ships after they put out from Callao. Drake sailed 'round the world, Chris. Almost a hundred years ago, that was, in the
Golden Hind
."

TIME IS GETTING
short, and I have been thinking about all this and why I am writing it. I did not write anything yesterday, because of my interview with His Excellence. I had seen him before, but this was the first time I ever sat down with him and talked man-to-man. He looked older than I remembered. There was something bare and cheerless about his cluttered study, although it took me ten minutes or more to put my finger on it: there was no comfort there. The lamps were for reading and writing. The books were such as a bishop might require—no novels or travel books, no biographies that I could see, save for those of a couple of popes. The chairs were dark wood carved with the arms of the diocese, without cushions. A crucifix on the wall, but no pictures.

We shook hands well before I began these speculations, of course. He greeted me, sat, and invited me to sit as well. "I receive only good reports of you, Father."

I said, "Thank you, Bishop Scully. They must be very different from those I give myself."

"I'm sure they are. How old were you when you were ordained?"

"There were two priests in my class who were older than I, Bishop Scully. Much older. I was twenty-six. I'm twenty-eight now."

"Tempus fugit, Father. Those older classmates of yours were widowers, both of them. Men in their fifties who have lost their helpmates and nobly chosen to devote the rest of their lives to God. It's not quite the same for a man of twenty-six, is it? Or twenty-eight."

"I have no direct experience of it, Bishop Scully, but it seems to me you must be right."

"You were married, too, Father. Your wife is dead?"

I nodded, and did not say that she had surely been dead now for hundreds of years.

"All young men feel the temptations of the flesh, Father. I did myself at your age."

"They are among the least of mine, Bishop Scully."

We watched each other then, and at last I let my gaze wander the room.

"We have seven deadly sins, Father." The bishop's voice was hardly a whisper. "Lust is one of the worst, but not the worst. Pride is worse, the worst of all. No doubt you are troubled by it."

I shrugged. "No doubt I am, Bishop Scully. I am not sensible of it, but that may mean its grip is tighter."