Sea Witch (3 page)

“Keep firing!” he bellowed at the men in the waist – although only two guns were now intact. “Gunners, forget this mess just keep bloody firing! You other men get aloft and help cut those shrouds free!” Anger stormed in his eyes, despair shrieking in his deep, husky, voice. He paused from his hacking, wiped sweat and grime from his forehead with the back of his sleeve, spreading blood grotesquely across his face.
Mermaid
lay wounded and sluggish, as if along with the broken mast her heart had been torn from her. Their only hope was to keep fighting, for she could not run. Jesamiah closed his eyes, not wanting to witness her agony. She was a good craft, she did not deserve to die so ignobly.

With a cheer of relief and success, the men managed to hack through the last cable and the mast fell away with a plume of spray into the sea. They had a chance now, a slight chance to hold their own when the Dutch Indiaman next fired, when she tacked to run alongside, board and finish the job.

Except she did not. The
Christina Giselle
was contemptuously sailing away as if the
Mermaid
did not exist; her guns were being run in and as Jesamiah continued to watch, stunned, open-mouthed in furious disbelief, her maincourse fell in a billowing cloud of canvas from the yard, and topmen were racing aloft to loosen off the topgallants. Sailing away as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Not bothering to waste her time or effort in finishing off an unworthy opponent.

Jesamiah swore; the sweat trickled down his face, beneath his armpits and the small of his back. He sheathed his cutlass, wincing, clamped his hand over the wound in his arm, watched, incredulous, as sedately returning to her original course the
Christina Giselle
put water between them.

The entire engagement had taken no more than fifteen short minutes.

“Bastard!” he yelled as he stood amid the chaos of broken wreckage, the shattered mast, the dead and the dying. No time just yet to feel for them; that must came later – they all knew the risks of a fight, survive and hope to become rich, or die poor. That was the deal. Death stared them all in the face, whether it was from the raking of a cannon’s shot or the tightening of the hangman’s noose. The close proximity of death was not an easy companion, but while pirates lived, the life was good and the rewards when they came along, worthwhile.

The wounded needed tending, a necessary task that Jesamiah hated but was another of his responsibilities as quartermaster. They needed a surgeon aboard. When they reached Cape Town he would have to remind Malachias about finding one.

Glancing along the shambles of the deck he ran his hand through his hair, unsure where to make a start. Looked again at the departing ship.
Damn you
! he thought.
Damn you to Hell and back
! Then he paused, stared, not believing what he was seeing. Was that a child? A sodding child was standing at the merchant’s taffrail! Had that Dutch captain been so confident he had allowed a passenger to observe the whole debacle? Cocky bastard! Jesamiah narrowed his eyes to see more clearly, but from this distance detail was distorted. All he could see was the shape of a girl with dark hair – a girl for God’s sake!

Annoyed, he glowered, but as he turned away to get on with what he ought to be doing he had the uneasy feeling she was watching him, and him alone. The hairs at the nape of his neck prickled and his spine shivered. Sound faded from his ears; the moans and pleas for help from the wounded, Malachias calling orders – everything blurring in his mind as if nothing else mattered, as if there was nothing else outside the existence of himself and this girl. She was staring at him and he felt naked and vulnerable beneath her gaze, as if she had stripped him of his rough, hard exterior, the necessary façade of a pirate. As if she could see the private hidden person. He found his hands were shaking, had the strangest feeling this girl, whoever she was, knew everything about him. Everything.

Stranger still, he did not mind her knowing his secrets, felt almost relieved that at last he could share them with someone. Her presence was not intrusive but comforting – and suddenly a suppressed memory of the past flooded into his mind, a memory of experiencing something similar to this before!

He had been on his knees spewing his guts into wet earth puddled with his own urine; was distraught, crying and gasping for breath. He was not yet fifteen years old and his brother was behind him carolling vicious and vindictive laughter. And through the shame and fear he had distinctly felt a hand resting between his shoulder blades: a sensation filled with love and protection. And a voice had entered his head, breaking through the utter, bereft and lonely despair.

~ Fight him! ~

Words he was sure, later, he had imagined, for everything that dark night had been tainted with bewildering distress. Yet, squinting across the widening gap of the sea at this girl he questioned his assumption. Had he imagined it?

He felt – how did he feel? Odd, as if someone was standing beside him, smiling. As if a smile was in his head – not words, not thoughts, just a loving, protective smile.

He looked down at the splinter of wood stabbing into his arm, at the blood soaking his shirt. Was this nonsense because of blood loss? Making him light headed? Yet, beyond this stupid idea that someone was standing here with him, there was no disorientation, no confusion.

He had a sudden urge to look at that child properly; spun on his heel and hurried up the companionway steps to the shattered chaos of the quarterdeck, claimed the telescope from beside the ship’s compass, mercifully both still intact. Extending the tube to its full length, was about to raise it to his eye when Malachias, his face covered in blood, called his name and distracted his attention. The spell was broken. Jesamiah turned to answer and when he looked again she was gone; no one stood at the stern of the
Christina Giselle
. There was no girl. He shrugged. Perhaps he had imagined her after all? Perhaps it was the smoke, the noise, the anguished cries of the wounded begging for help – his anger – playing tricks on his mind? He shook his head to clear his senses, set his attention to concentrating on more important things; getting this sliver of wood out of his arm, tending the wounded – there would be amputations to do. The dead to see to, a few words of respect to be spoken over them before the corpses were sent overboard. The
Mermaid
to be salvaged, somehow.

Busy, his mind occupied, he forgot the girl.

As Tiola, with her gift of Craft, had intended him to.

Tethys rippled, annoyed at the fluctuations of sound thumping and echoing, intrusive, through her vast domain of the oceans. She stared upward at the faint glimmer that was the sparkle of the sun on the surface of the sea. Two ships. Men. Stupid, irreverent, irrelevant men. She had no time or patience with the world of humans. The thud of cannon oscillated the water. Was that all they thought about? Killing and maiming each other? She shifted position, her great amorphous mass disturbing the sand, stirring the bones of the dead, her collected trophies, and flushing the fishes into swarms of iridescent panic. Noticed as she went, turning away from the pathetic self-destruction going on high above her, a gleam of gold and a flutter of blue. She halted, intrigued. She liked pretty, shiny things, for there was only limited colour and light down here in the deep.

Tethys looked again, closer, projecting her senses into the confined world of the pirate ship. She heard the moans of the wounded, the shouting, the confusion; smelt the pungent odour of cannon smoke and seared flesh; the sickly-sweet stench of spilt blood. Found the presence of the man with the blue ribbons and scanned deeper, infiltrating and exploring his body and his mind, touching his deliberately concealed loneliness. Her probing, beyond a strong, sudden smell of the sea and the stink of rotting fish, quite undetected.

Assigning him and everything about him to her infinite memory she sank down satisfied, into the gloom of her own timeless existence. A man, a handsome, seductive man of passion and charm. A man of the sea who wore blue ribbons in his hair and a golden acorn, a trinket of the land, that other place, dangling from his ear.

She knew little of the land, it was beyond her interest or care, but her understanding did encompass the life-seed of the oak, a tree of longevity and imposing stature, of dignity, endurance and strength. She knew of oak because ships were made from its wood, and she knew of acorns because the sailors aboard those ships believed they brought luck, protection and fertility.

She quite fancied an acorn for herself. Either one would do. The earring was pretty – but the man would be the better prize.

Four

Early March – 1716

Mermaid
had been heeling slightly, as they rounded the point protecting the natural harbour of Cape Town she steadied on an even keel and then rolled to starboard. With cordage and timber complaining, the wheel was put over.

“Tops’l sheets,” Jesamiah shouted as the ship glided into her destined anchorage to the western edge of the Bay. “Tops’l clew lines…Helm-a-lee!” And
Mermaid
turned into the wind, her sails coming aback, her forward motion ceasing as she eased sedately to a halt.

The lime-whitened walls of buildings with their green shutters and tiled or thatched roofs, sprawled between the sea and the rugged, upward sweep of the flat-topped, aptly named Table Mountain. Flanking the dominant plateau was the smaller cone of Devil’s Peak and the elongated Signal Hill, the lower extension of the Lion’s Head, a mass of rock rearing two thousand feet high that did indeed resemble a crouching lion. Jesamiah found himself staring, awe-struck. The panorama was spectacular.

Driven by the relentless wind howling up from the ice-ridden lands of Antarctica, the Atlantic swept in to spume against tumbled rocks and run against the wide, sweeping curve of sand. Jesamiah had expected Cape Town to be as he imagined all of Africa: impenetrable jungle or empty desert shimmering in a haze of blistering heat. Yes, it was hot, for this was January the southern hemisphere summer, but apart from the bareness of the mountain tops, everything was flushed with a vibrant green.

The famous gardens of the Dutch East India Company, covering all of forty-five acres, were vivid against the backdrop of Table Mountain. The Dutch had planted them specifically: trees and bushes for fruit, and every kind of vegetable that would grow in this climate. The object, to create a trade post for the
Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
, the V.O.C., to provide a convenient place for Dutch ships to make repairs, for sailors to rest and stores to be replenished. The trade post had become a settlement, and the settlement had rapidly expanded into a town of more than one thousand permanent residents. Of the fluid population, there was no count. Probably three times as many again.

The crew, leaning over the rails or hanging from the shrouds were gossiping, excited. Jesamiah ignored the buzz of conversation; there was always this lift of expectation at coming into harbour. He felt the euphoria himself, going ashore was suddenly very appealing. They had been at sea a long time.
Mermaid
desperately needed careening, to be safely beached somewhere for the barnacles, weed and the worm boring into her wooden hull to be scraped clean. A ship that was not careened was a slow ship, and pirate craft by necessity of their trade needed to be fast. It would have to wait a while though, until they sailed on to Madagascar where pirates were welcome and an anchorage was safe. As for the entertainment? Jesamiah grinned, anticipating the delights on offer to a healthy young man who had been at sea for more weeks than he cared to tally.

“Let go!” he yelled, and the fluked anchor, twice the height of a man, splashed down into the water, its cable chuntering busily out through the hawse-hole. They were securely anchored and Jesamiah did not mind admitting he was relieved to be here in more or less one piece. Repairing the
Mermaid
after that tangle with the
Christina Giselle
had been a frustrating, time-consuming delay, but as it turned out, not too much of a nuisance. There had been no need to pretend distress to lure another vessel in, the damage to both ship and men had been real enough.

Fortunately, they had struck lucky with a second Spanish trader homeward bound from the East Indies, full laden and worth waiting for. Hoisting Spanish colours – with Jesamiah being half the breed and able to speak the language fluently, his black hair making him look every inch a Spaniard from Cadiz, they had shouted for aid, claiming they had been attacked by pirates. Had taken the unsuspecting victim without a single shot fired from cannon or pistol. That was the art of piracy, to successfully dupe or threaten; to give the impression of horrors that could be unleashed if there was no immediate surrender. As with the
Christina Giselle
threats did not always work, usually they did – very effectively.

With the two ships made fast to one another they had taken all they required at their leisure: a new rudder, replacement sails; topmast, spars, yards, cordage, blocks – and the ship’s surgeon. He had protested at being forced to work aboard a pirate craft, but once they had made sail again had knuckled down to his job. It was that or starve. He would not be permitted ashore, of course. Surgeons were hard to come by and for the duration of their stay in Cape Town harbour he was shackled and incarcerated in the forward sail locker. Well out of sight and sound of any prying eyes and ears.

For their purpose in Cape Town they had painted out the
Mermaid
’s name, and added subtle disguises; rigging different sails and fixing two more ornate lanterns, procured from the Spaniard, to either side of the single lamp on the stern taffrail. She was now the highly respectable
Mary Anne
, a British trader bound for India, anchoring in harbour to take on essential supplies.

Half an hour later, the ship tidied and made ready for when she was to next sail, and wearing his best, not too faded coat and favoured three-cornered hat, Jesamiah was sauntering along the jetty towards the pentagonal fortress protecting both town and harbour. A prerequisite of all trading ports, especially those dominated by the Dutch, to verify a ship’s papers. Failure to do so could result in being blasted out of the water by the several cannon aimed directly at the hull.

He followed the tree-lined canal that ran down from the gardens to flow into the sea beside the fort. A pleasant stroll, except for what leered behind him at the end of the jetty down on the muddy sand of the shore. The gallows. Empty and forlorn, malevolently waiting for a man, a pirate, to decorate the cross-beam.

Tipping his hat backwards slightly and puffing his cheeks, he halted at the fort’s archway, a dark-shadowed mouth gaping black against the white of lime-washed walls. Above, an impressive bell tower; he peered at a brass plaque announcing the bell had been cast in Amsterdam in 1697. Beneath it, the coat of arms of the V.O.C. All of it intent on making a statement of invincible strength. In the bright sun on the far side of the tunnel stretching beneath the arch, Dutch soldiers were drilling, muskets aslant across their shoulders. There were dungeons inside this fort. Jesamiah took a fortifying breath, straightened his hat, smoothed his moustache and touched his earring. Best get the job done, present the papers to the harbourmaster. That they were false was immaterial, they looked authentic. The task had fallen to Jesamiah because Taylor had been here before, several times. On the last occasion, only by a stroke of good fortune had he avoided an intimate friendship with those gallows.

Garrison quarters, blacksmith, sailmaker, cooper’s bothies. Kitchens, bakery, armoury – the usual cramped bustle of a full-strength fortress. Jesamiah found the harbourmaster’s office tucked two doors along, with Erik Vorst seated behind a desk awash with a glut of papers and documents. A sullen, fat-bellied man with bad breath, and from the way he continuously belched, a martyr to chronic indigestion.

“Where is your captain then?” Vorst asked testily as he squinted at the illegible writing on the two documents Jesamiah handed him. “It is usual for the captain to present these, not his subordinate.”

“As it is usual for the
Mary Anne
’s captain to be drunk in his cot. He will not emerge for another four and twenty hours yet,” Jesamiah answered smoothly, his deep, husky voice losing the clipped pirate accent he used when aboard with the men. Jesamiah was educated, able to read, write, tally numbers and knew the intricacies of navigation. It came in useful to be able to change his speech patterns as necessity demanded.

Vorst belched again and scratched beneath his armpit, releasing a pungent smell of body odour. Drunk?
Ja
, he had heard the same before. “Where are you bound?”

“Bombay, Calcutta. Might cruise on down to Sumatra or Java.” Jesamiah lied as he perched one buttock on the corner of the desk, ignoring the ensuing frown of disapproval. “What I would prefer to do is go on to New Holland – Australia some are calling it now, are they not? Have a go at circumnavigation. Round the world, eh? What an adventure!” He narrowed his eyes and peered into an imaginary distance, enjoying the false embellishment of conversation.

He could think of nothing more dreadful than sailing all the way around the globe. Pitting ship and soul against those monstrous seas off Cape Horn? No thank you! Bravado might suit some, but he had all the excitement he needed in the existence he already had. He sighed, slapped his hands against his thighs and rubbed them along the worn canvas of his breeches. “The
Mary Anne
is not suitably equipped for such a journey, and our captain is not,” he paused smoothed his moustache, his embarrassment apparently genuine. “I was going to say competent, but that sounds disloyal. Intrepid, perhaps?”

Failing to see the lie, shrugging, the harbourmaster rolled the ship’s papers and handed them back to Jesamiah along with the document giving permission to be anchored. “
Dank u
. Hand this in at the gate as you leave, it’ll ensure the guns are stood down. In my opinion for such a venture you either have to be barking mad or an utter bore. We have both lack-lustre qualities residing here in Cape Town at the moment. Captain Woodes Rogers put in two months ago.” He vaguely gestured over his shoulder. “His ships are in harbour, you must have noticed them?
Duke
and
Duchess
. I wish to God he’d stay his mouth, return aboard and clear off back to England. If I hear one more account of how he captured the
Acapulco Galleon
or
Nuestra Señora,
I’ll cut my throat.” Vorst muttered quietly under his breath, “Or his.”

Jesamiah frowned. He had noticed the ships, had taken a careful look at what was anchored as they sailed into harbour to ensure the
Christina Giselle
was not among them. It would not do to be recognised. “Rogers? Never heard of him.”

“Nor do you want to. He seems to have made a profitable job of his privateering commission against Spain and is determined to ensure everyone knows about it. His holds are stuff-packed with Spanish bullion, so he claims. Don’t believe a word of it myself.”

Carefully, Jesamiah schooled his face to remain neutral, although it was difficult to keep the gleam of lust from his eyes. Two rich pickings right here in front of them? Best leave them alone, they would never get past the fort’s battery, not while the
Mermaid
was worm-riddled and encrusted with barnacles. Now, if they had already careened? Ah well.

“Privateer eh?” he said with a shrug. “A British commission to legally plunder anything flying a Spanish ensign? I don’t suppose the Spanish see it that way. They’d say he was nothing but a scamp of a pirate.”

“We don’t hold with pirates in these waters,” Vorst answered huffily, affronted at the offensive word
pirate
.

“Rightly so, but the distinction between privateering and pirating depends on which side the wind is blowing from, does it not?” Jesamiah smiled, friendly, at ease. “If I were Spanish for example, I could blast the shit out of
Duke
and
Duchess
and claim I had every right to do so.”

“Except the heavy artillery of this fort would be blowing you to kingdom come before you could get more than one shot fired.”

Conceding the point, Jesamiah grinned, adding, “Unless the Dutch government decide to change alliance and side with Spain.” At the disapproving glare he thought it prudent to alter tack. “You said one is mad?”

“As one of your English March hares. Dampier. William Dampier. Had too much of the sun boiling his brains if you ask me. Obsessed with detailing every living thing he comes across, always scribbling in his notebook. I saw him flat on his belly down on the beach the other day, wig askew, studying a crab would you believe? I mean, for God’s sake, the things are only fit for eating. What point in drawing the little sods?”

Jesamiah’s eyes had lit up, glowing with excitement. “Dampier? Now him I
have
heard of.”

William Dampier here in Cape Town? The most famous, most successful buccaneer to torment the Spanish – a man who had drawn a very fine line between legitimate privateering and the hanging offence of piracy! He had first rounded Cape Horn and crossed the Pacific to the East Indies in 1680, had circumnavigated the world yet again since then – three occasions if this Woodes Rogers had indeed commanded another successful expedition. Jesamiah’s copy of Dampier’s book, so well read it was dog-eared and falling apart. To meet him? Ah, the questions he would ask! He had no intention of attempting such a venture, but that did not deter Jesamiah’s enthralment of reading about it.

Vorst was weary of the subject. He pushed himself from his chair, his hand holding the bulge of his belly. “Talking of crabs, I would not recommend too many of the blighters. Give you belly ache.” He gestured Jesamiah towards the door. “If you would excuse me, I need to sit on the comfort stool a while. If you are a follower of adventure try presenting yourself at the
Golden Hind
, one of our more respectable taverns. Rogers is billeted there, he will delight in boring the wax out of a fresh ear.”

Sketching a half-hearted salute to the harbourmaster’s disappearing back Jesamiah casually rummaged through the scatter of papers on the desk, found a few documents that might prove useful in the future and stuffed them into his coat’s cavernous inner pocket. Along with a bag of coin and an attractive pocket watch left lying there on the desk for anyone to pick up.

Outside, standing on the civilian side of the arch he considered what to do next. The brothel first or a tavern? He turned up the street, away from the range of buildings that served as slave quarters for inbound wretches. The wealth of South Africa, as with the Caribbean islands of the West Indies and the tobacco and cotton colonies of the Americas, were being built by the captive labour of Irish and British convicts and African blacks. Only on a pirate ship were men treated as equal. The Sweet Trade, where a man could be free of the law and bigotry.