The Pirate Kings

by Alex Scarrow

  He sat forward and reached for a grapefruit.

  ‘What I need is to be cautious to whom I grant a licence. Port Royal must not appear to King Charles to be a haven for criminals, a den of lawlessness. It cannot seem that the situation here is … out of control. It is a matter of some delicacy.’

  Liam understood what he was getting at. ‘You need gentlemen … not roving bands of bloodthirsty crooks.’

  Modyford scowled at Liam’s unsolicited contribution. But after a moment he nodded. ‘Indeed. Privateering, gentlemen, is what keeps this colony going. It is a thorn in Spain’s side and an awkward embarrassment to our King. But provided it is not excessive, provided there are no glaring atrocities that force King Charles to have to step in and put an end to it … then I have some degree of latitude.’

  ‘Which is why we have brought this gentleman with us,’ said Rashim. He turned and gestured to the man to step forward. ‘This is Señor Juan Lopez Marcos, captain of the vessel we … uh … we salvaged.’

  The Spaniard stepped forward and bowed formally. ‘Greetings, Your Excellency.’

  Modyford nodded politely back. He turned to Rashim. ‘And why have you brought him here?’

  Rashim was about to explain, but the Spanish captain spoke first. ‘My ship, San Isidro, was raided by these men, Your Excellency. But … I must report, they demonstrated clemency and chivalry.’

  Modyford pursed his lips. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, Your Excellency. This man –’ he nodded towards Liam – ‘risked his life to protect my lady passengers’ safety. He killed a crewman … one who threatened to … ’ He struggled to find the appropriate, palatable word.

  Modyford silenced him with a wave of his hand. ‘I understand.’ He regarded Liam approvingly. ‘Good man.’ Then he turned to Rashim. ‘And you have firm control of your crew?’

  ‘Yes. They all signed on to crew the ship, provided their activities remained on the right side of English maritime law. They do not wish to be branded as pirates, Your Excellency.’

  ‘Hmm … that definition is a somewhat flexible one.’

  ‘They are good men. Reliable men.’

  ‘You understand you and your crew have taken a rather foolhardy risk presenting yourselves to me like this? Your raiding of this captain’s ship, without licence, was clearly an act of piracy. I am obliged to enforce our King’s policy, when presented with such an undeniably clear case of wrong-doing … which you have both admitted to in the presence of witnesses. You understand this?’

  Rashim and Liam both nodded.

  Modyford steepled his fingers beneath his ample chin as he gave the matter several moments of silent consideration. Finally he spoke. ‘Señor Marcos, you and your ladies will be my guests until we can arrange passage for you on the next ship back to Spain.’ He pushed his chair back, stood up and turned to the servant behind him. ‘Show them out. They must be hungry … arrange some food for them.’

  The servant nodded and came round the table to escort them out.

  ‘Your Excellency,’ said Marcos, ‘I humbly ask you to show these men mercy as they did to us.’

  ‘It is under due consideration,’ said the governor drily and he nodded at his servant to lead the Spaniards out.

  Alone at last, Modyford looked at Liam and Rashim. ‘Well now … what am I going to do with you?’

  ‘We … did mention to the officer who brought us up that your time would be … ’ Liam bit his lip, cautiously feeling his way. ‘How exactly did we phrase it, Rashim?’

  ‘I think the phrase was … richly rewarded?’

  Sir Thomas Modyford’s stern expression seemed to darken and Liam wondered whether they’d just made a gross miscalculation. Perhaps their none-too-subtle suggestion of a bribe had condemned them.

  But the slightest curl of Modyford’s lip suggested otherwise. ‘Hmm … well now, that certainly might help.’

  Chapter 35

  1667, Port Royal, Jamaica

  Liam sucked in a lungful of air and savoured the distinctive odours of the port all around him. The rich tang of tar as men worked up and down the wharf to caulk the hulls of their ships, an ongoing and never-ending process that ensured a watertight bond between hull planks. The all-pervasive undertone of salt in the air that seemed to cling to everything ship-borne. The odour of woodsmoke curling out of chimneys across Port Royal. The slightly less appealing stench of ripening meat from the market down the way as the mid-morning sun worked on the last unsold carcasses left hanging on butchers’ hooks.

  He remembered this sensation from a moment that felt like a whole lifetime ago: a sense of belonging in the right place, belonging to the right time. And, with a smile now, he had the very same thought as he’d had when gazing out across the rooftops of the city of Nottingham.

  This’ll do me.

  ‘Hoy! Mr O’Connor, sir!’ It was ‘Gunny’ – James Gunn and, coincidentally, the ship’s head gunner and only properly trained gun-master – hanging from a sling alongside the prow of their ship. ‘How’s she looking?’

  Liam looked up from the dockside at the man holding a caulking brush in one hand and a small bucket of white paint in the other. The name Clara Jane had been painted over and replaced by the new name for their ship: Pandora.

  He shaded his eyes from the sun and admired the perfectly formed swirls of the letters. ‘It looks perfect, Gunny. Splendid job!’

  The man knuckled his forehead and grinned. Liam watched him as he energetically hauled himself back up to the ship’s rail and pulled himself over on to the deck.

  The temper of their crew was markedly different. These last few days, since Sir Thomas had cautiously issued Rashim a letter of marque, the men had been ready and willing to accept orders from not only Rashim, their elected skipper, but Liam too, now commonly acknowledged among the men as ‘co-skipper’ – a term none of them had heard of before but were happy to use.

  The letter of marque had, of course, made all the difference to the crew’s morale. There had been a number of conditions written into the issued licence, however. For one, should Sir Thomas issue a call to arms to defend the port from a Spanish incursion, they were duty-bound to drop whatever they were doing and muster to defend it. Another condition was that, while the manner with which they raided Dutch and French ships was entirely their own business, certain minimum standards of conduct were to be maintained when raiding Spanish ships. Mercy was to be given to crews who willingly hove to and surrendered. After the ship’s cargo was ‘confiscated’, the ship and crew should be allowed to proceed on their way. (This courtesy, of course, did not extend to any Negroes, either crew or ‘cargo’. As far as Sir Thomas Modyford was concerned, they were legitimate booty from which he expected his cut.) And that was the other condition: a third of their haul was to be paid to him as a ‘safe haven tax’. A standard condition, he assured them, applied to all the licensed privateers operating out of Port Royal.

  The carrack they had brought in was already in Sir Thomas’s possession and being repaired by shipwrights and carpenters ready to be added to his small fleet of merchant ships that carried a steady supply of cocoa beans back to London from his plantations. The carrack was their goodwill gesture to him. Their down payment of his ‘tax’. The word ‘bribe’ was never mentioned.

  The carrack’s cargo of wines and cloths, spices and several cases of silver coin, on the other hand, was theirs. They’d managed to sell most of it off to a merchant at a scandalously low price: they discovered, hours after shaking on the deal, that they could have made half as much money again from another merchant, conducting his business in a tavern next door. Nonetheless, the deal made, the haul had netted them enough money to give their lads a long-awaited payday, and enough left over to resupply and re-equip the Pandora. Which was the very business that Rashim was looking into right now, having mentioned something about the rifling of barrels and ‘finning’ of cannonballs.

  Meanwhile, Liam had his own tasks to attend to. A dozen of their cre
w had opted to take their share of the money and cut free. There were plenty of other ships in port to try their luck with, and word was spreading among the taverns that a privateer captain by the name of Henry Morgan was looking to try his luck over on the Spanish Main – what Liam realized would, centuries down the line, be a number of different nations: Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Nicaragua. There were rumours the raid was likely to be a lucrative one. And, in any case, most of the men that left had been part of Henry Bartlett’s cluster of malcontents. They’d be better off without them.

  So, Liam had places to fill, crew members to recruit, sign up to their ship’s charter, and Old Tom to help him with that.

  Rashim looked up at the sign swinging from a hook above a narrow doorway, flanked on either side by the premises of a cordwainer and on the other by a pipemaker. He checked the address scrawled on a scrap of parchment. This was it: SCHWARZMANN’S – THE GUNSMITH. He pushed the door open, kicked sand off his boots outside then stepped into the gloomy interior.

  ‘Hello? Anyone here?’

  Ahead of him was a narrow passageway between two wooden-slat walls, and a low ceiling of thick cross-beams and floorboards. He made his way down the passageway and finally emerged into an open courtyard at the end, half of it in the deep shade of an awning of wooden shingles, the other half baking in the hot mid-morning sun. Rashim could taste the acrid odour of burning coals at the back of his throat. He could smell cordite and a number of other unpleasant chemical taints. A curl of smoke spun from the embers of a fire within a forge. It looked like the place was open for trade, going about its business, except for the fact it appeared to be entirely deserted.

  ‘Is there a Mr Pieter Schwarzmann here?’

  ‘Hello,’ a deep throaty voice replied from beneath the shadow of the awning. A thickset man with bushy, ginger-coloured sideburns and wearing a blacksmith’s leather apron waddled out into the sunlight, shading his eyes to get a look at Rashim.

  ‘I am Pieter Schwarzmann,’ he replied with a thick German accent, efficiently clipped down to little more than a collection of consonants and over-pronounced sibilants. ‘And who iss this I am speaking to?’

  ‘Rashim Anwar.’ He took off his tricorn hat. ‘Uh … that is, Captain Rashim Anwar.’

  ‘Captain, iss it?’ He weighed that up. ‘Seems every man out here calls himself a Captain This, Captain That.’

  Rashim met him in the sunlight and offered his hand. ‘I have a ship, if that makes any difference.’

  Schwarzmann’s shoulders shook as he laughed. ‘Of course you do!’ He grasped Rashim’s hand and squeezed it like a vice. Rashim winced.

  ‘Ach … look, you have a lady hand! Iss smooth as a baby’s bottom.’

  Rashim pulled free and rubbed his crushed knuckles. ‘Your name was recommended to me.’

  ‘Of course! Best gunsmith on this island. Now vhat iss it I can do for you, Captain Anvar?’

  ‘Anwar actually.’

  Schwarzmann frowned. ‘Iss vhat I just said.’

  ‘Uh … right. Yes, of course. I thought you … it’s the accent, I suppose –’

  ‘Vhat accent? I speak perfect good English!’

  Rashim looked around the courtyard. ‘So … is it just yourself here?’

  ‘Ja. Today, iss just me. My boy iss vorking on another job.’

  ‘Good. That’s good … because, you see, I wish to discuss a contract with you. In confidence, that is.’

  ‘Confidence?’

  ‘In secret. I want to employ you to do some work for me, but the details of it need to be kept between you and me. Do you understand?’

  Schwarzmann shrugged. ‘You the customer. Come … ’ He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. ‘Iss very hot out here. We go sit down.’ He led Rashim over to the shade where he pulled a stool out beside a workbench and sat down heavily in a rocking-chair on the far side.

  ‘Now, ve talk. Vhat iss this secret business of yours?’

  ‘I want to extend the range and accuracy of my ship’s cannons.’

  Schwarzmann looked intrigued.

  ‘I am not sure of … ’ He was going to say I am not sure of my history, but decided this German already seemed to regard him as enough of an oddity already. But, the fact was, his historical knowledge of anything before the twenty-first century was schoolboy knowledge at best. He wasn’t sure whether the technique he was thinking of employing was in use yet.

  ‘Mr Schwarzmann, I am not sure if you have heard of a technique called rifling?’

  The man nodded. ‘Ja, of course. Back home in Stuttgart I have done this many times for a Jäger.’

  ‘Jäger?’

  ‘Gentlemen who like to hunt. Huntsmen. Men with much money and very nicely made muskets who want a flintlock fitted also.’

  The process of rifling involved cutting several spiral grooves down the inside of a gun’s barrel. The grooves applied a spin to the musket ball which increased both its range and accuracy.

  ‘Ah, right. You’ve done this with muskets. What about cannons?’

  Schwarzmann shook his head. ‘This, nein. You have muskets on your ship and I can rifle all of them for you. But a cannon?’ He smiled. ‘For this you would need a large foundry.’

  Rashim nodded. ‘I suspected that. But what about applying some sort of curved fins to a cannonball?’

  Schwarzmann was about to chuckle dismissively at that, but then narrowed his eyes as he gave it a moment’s consideration. ‘Hmm, like the fletching on a crossbow bolt?’

  ‘Yes. But offset slightly, so the air resistance in flight would set it spinning.’

  The gunsmith stroked his fleshy chin thoughtfully. ‘These … fins … would need to be part of the ball’s mould. Not attached, but part of the ball. They would –’

  ‘Break off, yes, that’s what I thought. But the cannonball would also need to be a different shape. Not round but elongated, like a bullet.’

  ‘Bullet?’

  Rashim pulled his scrap of parchment out. On the reverse side of the address he had sketched a design. He spread the parchment out on the workbench. The sketch looked like a stubby rocket: one end a cone, the other end with fins.

  ‘This … iss … really … interesting,’ said Schwarzmann as he studied it, stroking his fleshy chin. ‘Hmm, this shape … this would travel well, I think.’

  Rashim sat forward. ‘Could you mould projectiles this shape?’

  The gunsmith nodded slowly. ‘It iss possible. Ja. But I would need exact measurements of the bore of your cannons.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Rashim did not have access to anything as precise as a simple ruler. Instead, what he had done was hold the parchment against the end of several of the cannons and marked their diameter on the paper. ‘These cross-marks indicate the bore of our cannons. Could you work with that?’

  ‘And these marks are accurate?’

  Rashim nodded. ‘I have also done some calculations on the length of the projectile and the required ratio length of the fins. See?’ In one corner of the page, he’d jotted down dimensions in inches.

  A smile spread across Schwarzmann’s face. ‘Ja, I can make this.’

  Chapter 36

  1667, Port Royal, Jamaica

  ‘Next!’

  Liam looked at the list of names he’d scribbled down: seven men so far who Old Tom had agreed seemed to have enough experience to be worthwhile additions to their crew. To Liam’s eye, they all looked convincing and scary enough: a procession of broad-shouldered men with deeply tanned faces, framed by scruffy beards and hair tangled into long, greasy coils. Each of them happy to make their mark on the Pandora’s charter – a list of terms and conditions that Liam had patiently read aloud to each man, since none of them seemed to be able to read a single word of it.

  ‘Mister?’

  Liam looked up at the next man in the queue. His gaze rose up a wall of rippling muscle barely contained within taut and frayed shreds of clothing, mended and re-mended with coarse stitching. His eyes fin
ally rose to the top of this tower of gleaming flesh to fall upon a face as black as gunpowder.

  My God, he’s bleedin’ enormous. Almost – but not quite – as large as Bob but, by God, almost.

  ‘Uh … ’ Liam cleared his throat. ‘And your name is …?’

  ‘Ma name?’

  ‘Aye, please.’

  ‘Ah gots two of ’em, mister.’

  Liam smiled politely. ‘Well now, we’ve all got two.’

  ‘Ma owner give me the name James Dawson.’

  ‘I’m Liam O’Connor and this is Tom.’

  Tom nudged Liam. ‘This one’s no good, sir. He’s a slave.’

  The black man looked at Tom. ‘Ain’t slave no more, mister.’

  ‘You a runaway?’

  The man hesitated a little too long. ‘Yup,’ Tom nodded. ‘He is. You don’t want to take on a runaway. That’s trouble right there, that is.’

  ‘Ah’m a good worker, mister. Work hard. An’ ah’m strong.’

  Liam grinned. ‘I can see that all right.’ He turned to Tom. ‘Why would he be trouble?’

  ‘He’s someone’s property. Plantation owner more’n likely. Yer sign him up aboard the Pandora and his owner gets to finding out … you’ll be done for stealin’ his slave.’

  ‘Well, it’s not like he’ll be my property. So, it’s not exactly theft, is it?’

  ‘Don’t matter. They don’t take it light here. Runaway slaves. Catch ’em and they hobble ’em. An’ them they see as helping ’em out is just as likely to end up in the clinker.’

  Liam had noticed one or two dark-skinned men among the crews coming ashore, frequenting the taverns. Men who appeared to be treated – more or less – as equals, men who appeared to be free to move from ship to ship, to offer their services to whomever they wanted. He didn’t see how this one might not pass as one of them, provided he was dressed in more than rags. But perhaps Tom was right: taking him on was inviting trouble they didn’t need.