Pirate Latitudes: A Novel (4 page)

Chapter 6

T
HERE WAS A knock at the door. Hunter rolled over in the bed; he saw the open window, and sunlight pouring through. “Go away,” he muttered. Alongside him, the girl shifted her position restlessly but did not awake.

The knock came again.

“Go away, damn your eyes.”

The door opened, and Mrs. Denby poked her head around. “Begging your pardon, Captain Hunter, but there’s a messenger here from the Governor’s Mansion. The governor requests your presence at dinner, Captain Hunter. What shall I say?”

Hunter rubbed his eyes. He blinked sleepily in the daylight. “What is the hour?”

“Five o’clock, Captain.”

“Tell the governor I will be there.”

“Yes, Captain Hunter. And Captain?”

“What is it?”

“That Frenchman with the scar is downstairs looking for you.”

Hunter grunted. “All right, Mrs. Denby.”

The door closed. Hunter got out of bed. The girl still slept, snoring loudly. He looked around his room, which was small and cramped — a bed, a sea chest with his belongings in one corner, a chamber pot under the bed, a basin of water nearby. He coughed, started to dress, and paused to urinate out of the window onto the street below. A shouted curse drifted up to him. Hunter smiled, and continued to dress, selecting his only good doublet from the sea chest, and his remaining pair of hose that had only a few snags. He finished by putting on his gold belt with the short dagger, and then, as a kind of afterthought, took one pistol, primed it, rammed home the ball with the wadding to hold it in the barrel, and slipped it under his belt.

This was Captain Charles Hunter’s normal toilet, performed each evening when he arose at sunset. It took only a few minutes, for Hunter was not a fastidious man. Nor, he reflected, was he much of a Puritan; he looked again at the girl in the bed, then closed the door behind her and went down the narrow creaking wood stairs to the main room of Mrs. Denby’s Inn.

The main room was a broad, low-ceilinged space with a dirt floor and several heavy wooden tables in long rows. Hunter paused. As Mrs. Denby had said, Levasseur was there, sitting in a corner, hunched over a tankard of grog.

Hunter crossed to the door.

“Hunter!” Levasseur croaked, in a thick drunken voice.

Hunter turned, showing apparent surprise. “Why, Levasseur. I didn’t see you.”

“Hunter, you son of an English mongrel bitch.”

“Levasseur,” he replied, stepping out of the light, “you son of a French farmer and his favorite sheep, what brings you here?”

Levasseur stood behind the table. He had picked a dark spot; Hunter could not see him well. But the two men were separated by a distance of perhaps thirty feet — too far for a pistol shot.

“Hunter, I want my money.”

“I owe you no money,” Hunter said. And, in truth, he did not. Among the privateers of Port Royal, debts were paid fully and promptly. There was no more damaging reputation a man could have than one who failed to pay his debts, or to divide spoils equally. On a privateering raid, any man who tried to conceal a part of the general booty was always put to death. Hunter himself had shot more than one thieving seaman through the heart and kicked the corpse overboard without a second thought.

“You cheated me at cards,” Levasseur said.

“You were too drunk to know the difference.”

“You cheated me. You took fifty pounds. I want it back.”

Hunter looked around the room. There were no witnesses, which was unfortunate. He did not want to kill Levasseur without witnesses. He had too many enemies. “How did I cheat you at cards?” he asked. As he spoke, he moved slightly closer to Levasseur.

“How? Who cares a damn for how? God’s blood, you cheated me.” Levasseur raised the tankard to his lips.

Hunter chose that moment to lunge. He pushed his palm flat against the upturned tankard, ramming it back against Levasseur’s face, which thudded against the back wall. Levasseur gurgled and collapsed, blood dripping from his mouth. Hunter grabbed the tankard and crashed it down on Levasseur’s skull. The Frenchman lay unconscious.

Hunter shook his hand free of the wine on his fingers, turned, and walked out of Mrs. Denby’s Inn. He stepped ankle-deep into the mud of the street, but paid no attention. He was thinking of Levasseur’s drunkenness. It was sloppy of him to be so drunk while waiting for someone.

It was time for another raid, Hunter thought. They were all getting soft. He himself had spent one night too many in his cups, or with the women of the port. They should go to sea again.

Hunter walked through the mud, smiling and waving to the whores who yelled to him from high windows, and made his way to the Governor’s Mansion.

.   .   .

“
ALL HAVE REMARKED
upon the comet, seen over London on the eve of the plague,” said Captain Morton, sipping his wine. “There was a comet before the plague of ’56, as well.”

“So there was,” Almont said. “And what of that? There was a comet in ’59, and no plague that I recall.”

“An outbreak of the pox in Ireland,” said Mr. Hacklett, “in that very year.”

“There is always an outbreak of the pox in Ireland,” Almont said. “In every year.”

Hunter said nothing. Indeed, he had said little during the dinner, which he found as dreary as any he had ever attended at the Governor’s Mansion. For a time, he had been intrigued by the new faces — Morton, the captain of the
Godspeed
, and Hacklett, the new secretary, a silly pinch-faced prig of a man. And Mrs. Hacklett, who looked to have French blood in her slender darkness, and a certain lascivious animal quality.

For Hunter, the most interesting moment in the evening had been the arrival of a new serving girl, a delicious pale blond child who came and went from time to time. He kept trying to catch her eye. Hacklett noticed, and gave Hunter a disapproving stare. It was not the first disapproving stare he had given Hunter that evening.

When the girl came round to refill the glasses, Hacklett said, “Does your taste run to servants, Mr. Hunter?”

“When they are pretty,” Hunter said casually. “And how does your taste run?”

“The mutton is excellent,” Hacklett said, coloring deeply, staring at his plate.

With a grunt, Almont turned the conversation to the Atlantic passage his guests had just made. There was a description of a tropical storm, told in exciting and overwrought detail by Morton, who acted as if he were the first person in human history to face a little white water. Hacklett added a few frightening touches, and Mrs. Hacklett allowed that she had been quite ill.

Hunter grew increasingly bored. He drained his wineglass.

“Well then,” Morton continued, “after two days of this most dreadful storm, the third day dawned perfectly clear, a magnificent morning. One could see for miles and the wind was fair from the north. But we did not know our position, having been blown for forty-eight hours. We sighted land to port, and made for it.”

A mistake, Hunter thought. Obviously Morton was grossly inexperienced. In the Spanish waters, an English vessel never made for land without knowing exactly whose land it was. The odds were, the Don held it.

“We came round the island, and to our astonishment we saw a warship anchored in the harbor. Small island, but there it was, a Spanish warship and no doubt of it. We felt certain it would give chase.”

“And what happened?” Hunter asked, not very interested.

“It remained in the harbor,” Morton said, and laughed. “I should like to have a more exciting conclusion to the tale, but the truth is it did not come after us. The warship remained in the harbor.”

“The Don saw you, of course?” Hunter said, growing more interested.

“Well, they must have done. We were under full canvas.”

“How close by were you?”

“No more than two or three miles offshore. The island wasn’t on our charts, you know. I suppose it was too small to be charted. It had a single harbor, with a fortress to one side. I must say we all felt we had a narrow escape.”

Hunter turned slowly to look at Almont. Almont was staring at him, with a slight smile.

“Does the episode amuse you, Captain Hunter?”

Hunter turned back to Morton. “You say there was a fortress by the harbor?”

“Indeed, a rather imposing fortress, it seemed.”

“On the north or south shore of the harbor?”

“Let me recollect — north shore. Why?”

“How long ago did you see this ship?” Hunter asked.

“Three or four days past. Make it three days. As soon as we had our bearings, we ran straight for Port Royal.”

Hunter drummed his fingers on the table. He frowned at his empty wineglass. There was a short silence.

Almont cleared his throat. “Captain Hunter, you seem preoccupied by this story.”

“Intrigued,” Hunter said. “I am sure the governor is equally intrigued.”

“I believe,” Almont said, “that it is fair to say the interests of the Crown have been aroused.”

Hacklett sat stiffly in his chair. “Sir James,” he said, “would you edify the rest of us as to the import of all this?”

“Just a moment,” Almont said, with an impatient wave of the hand. He was looking fixedly at Hunter. “What terms do you make?”

“Equal division, first,” Hunter said.

“My dear Hunter, equal division is most unattractive to the Crown.”

“My dear Governor, anything less would make the expedition most unattractive to the seamen.”

Almont smiled. “You recognize, of course, that the prize is enormous.”

“Indeed. I also recognize that the island is impregnable. You sent Edmunds with three hundred men against it last year. Only one returned.”

“You yourself have expressed the opinion that Edmunds was not a resourceful man.”

“But Cazalla is certainly resourceful.”

“Indeed. And yet it seems to me that Cazalla is a man you should like to meet.”

“Not unless there was an equal division.”

“But,” Sir James said, smiling in an easy way, “if you expect the Crown to outfit the expedition, that cost must be returned before any division. Fair?”

“Here, now,” Hacklett said. “Sir James, are you bargaining with this man?”

“Not at all. I am coming to a gentleman’s agreement with him.”

“For what purpose?”

“For the purpose of arranging a privateering expedition on the Spanish outpost at Matanceros.”

“Matanceros?” Morton said.

“That is the name of the island you passed, Captain Morton. Matanceros. The Don built a fortress there two years ago, under the command of an unsavory gentleman named Cazalla. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. No? Well, he has a considerable reputation in the Indies. He is said to find the screams of his dying victims restful and relaxing.” Almont looked at the faces of his dinner guests. Mrs. Hacklett was quite pale. “Cazalla commands the fortress of Matanceros, built for the sole purpose of being the farthest eastward outpost of Spanish dominion along the homeward route of the Treasure Fleet.”

There was a long silence. The guests looked uneasy.

“I see you do not comprehend the economics of this region,” Almont said. “Each year, Philip sends a fleet of treasure galleons here from Cádiz. They cross to the Spanish Main, sighting first land to the south, off the coast of New Spain. There the fleet disperses, traveling to various ports — Cartagena, Vera Cruz, Portobello — to collect treasure. The fleet regroups in Havana, then travels east back to Spain. The purpose of traveling together is protection against privateering raids. Am I clear?”

They all nodded.

“Now,” Almont continued, “the Armada sails in late summer, which is the onset of the hurricane season. From time to time, it has happened that ships have been separated from the convoy early in the voyage. The Don wanted a strong harbor to protect such ships. They built Matanceros for this reason alone.”

“Surely that is not sufficient reason,” Hacklett said. “I cannot imagine . . .”

“It is ample reason,” Almont said abruptly. “Now then. As luck would have it, two treasure
naos
were lost in a storm some weeks ago. We know because they were sighted by a privateer vessel, which attacked them unsuccessfully. They were last seen beating southward, making for Matanceros. One was badly damaged. What you, Captain Morton, called a Spanish warship was obviously one of these treasure galleons. If it had been a genuine warship, it would surely have given chase at a two-mile range, and captured you, and even now you would be screaming your lungs out for Cazalla’s amusement. The ship did not give chase because it dared not leave the protection of the harbor.”

“How long will it stay there?” Morton asked.

“It may leave at any time. Or it may wait until the next fleet departs, next year. Or it may wait for a Spanish warship to arrive and escort it home.”

“Can it be captured?” Morton asked.

“One would like to think so. In aggregate, the treasure ship probably contains a fortune worth five hundred thousand pounds.”