‘You were supposed to wait!’ returned de Graaf, continuing his stride while his men flocked round the grill like vultures. They took meat while Brook’s men handed them drink and threw more meat on the boucan.
‘Monsieur,’ intervened Jacob as the Dutchman came by him. ‘Please, put a stop to this man’s murderous folly. The town is won . . .’
‘Take the man away, before I stop his yap!’ hurled Captain Brook. Then he raised his axe with both hands and slammed the bloody steel blade into the blood-drenched earth by the side of the praying Spaniard.
The bosun again took the doctor by the arm, but to Ducamp’s alarm, Jacob shook it free and continued: ‘The town is won—’
Ducamp had no choice but to place his thick forearm around the doctor’s neck. The man had already made his point. Now he was tempting the devil.
‘Sun’s turned ’is bloody brain, don’t know his arse from his elbow!’ said Brook.
De Graaf stopped and held up a hand. ‘Let him speak,’ he said.
Ducamp released his hold. Jacob put his hand to his throat where the bosun’s arm had pressed against his larynx. He said, ‘There is no need for callous killing. I beseech you, stop this torture. The town is won!’
Before the Dutchman could answer, Brook growled: ‘We didn’t come here for the bloody town, you soft prick!’
Then he turned to the Dutchman, who could now see the carnage. ‘You know the score, Laurencillo. It’s for the good of us all. Sacrifice a few of the bastards, and the rest will jabber, right?’
Meeting Brook head-on, the Dutchman said, ‘Ned, I told you before, man, no bloody torture!’
Brook knew de Graaf’s rage, and his short fuse for a fight. He was a big bastard too. Besides, the passion for butchery had left him; he had got his fill of killing for now. Any more would spoil the special pleasure it brought. So he just grunted his discontent.
‘Apart from that, you’ve done a good job,’ continued de Graaf, remaining pragmatic. ‘Now leave the talking to me, and we’ll be out of here in two days with enough coin to sink a bloody galleon!’
Without waiting for an answer, de Graaf lifted up the Spaniard by the arm. In fluent Spanish, he told the man to take him to the mayor.
‘El alcalde is there, Señor,’ said the Spaniard, pointing to the body parts of the first sacrificial corpse.
De Graaf looked back at Ned Brook with disgust and annoyance. Now, instead of one leader, he knew he would have to deal with several of the regidores.
‘For crying out loud, man, you’ve blown the head off the bloody mayor!’ said the Dutchman. Captain Brook simply scratched the top of his head.
De Graaf marched the prisoner over to the other councillors waiting in line. So that Brook could understand, he said each sentence in English, then translated it into Spanish to make sure the Spaniards also understood. He said, ‘Tell your people to bring us their money and valuables. We want one hundred thousand pesos by nightfall tomorrow. Or we will burn the town and everyone in it down to the ground. We also want fifty cows and all the barrels of wine, tobacco, and cocoa in your storehouse. Be off!’
Jacob, who had followed in the Dutchman’s wake, was wondering if burning a whole population alive was any better than Brook’s methodical sacrifice of a few leading citizens. However, at least de Graaf’s way gave the poor wretches a chance to come out of the raid with their lives and all their limbs attached.
The Dutchman turned back to Brook. ‘Ned, man,’ he said, ‘I want you to string up the bodies so everyone can see the consequences of their stupidity. The mayor’ll help his villagers see reason yet. We stumbled on soldiers along the way, got ’em all, but you can never be sure. We need to be in and out quick, man.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Hundreds of thousands of flies swarmed over the battlefield where the caballeros had fallen. Birds, dogs, and even hens were digging into the broken flesh. And now, with the evening temperature, mosquitoes began siphoning blood from the living. Except for the two bodies strung up on display, the town square became deserted as the buccaneers took refuge inside houses or at the mayor’s residence.
The drunken orgy had resumed in the salons and bedrooms, where the most pragmatic women accepted that they would do better to lead the game rather than be taken by force. At least this way, they were able to choose their partners, and avoid the ones disfigured by syphilis.
But this separation of mind and body was beyond many of the womenfolk. This was the case for one young lady who found herself being carried off to a room by a bull of a partner, much larger than herself. In his frenzied desire, he flipped her petite body over and bore down on her from behind, clutching her hips, her shoulders, and ultimately, her neck. ‘Come on, woman. It’s like shaggin’ a sack o’ beans,’ protested the thick-necked sailor before letting her fall, inert and heavy onto the bed. The man, who was no stranger to such an occurrence, headed off for some refreshment, leaving the girl for dead.
*
Jacob had taken possession of the doctor’s house. All the injured mates and their partners had left the premises except one. The young man, a cobbler’s son from Bristol, lay dying of his wound on a mattress thrown down in the room that must have been where the doctor practised his surgery. There were medical instruments neatly laid out, and jars and ointments on shelves. The patient had been delirious, then chatty, and now he was unconscious again. Jacob did not think he would last the night; his buddy had also died, so no one was there to comfort him. Jacob had bound up his open belly. There was nothing more he could do.
He wondered if the battlefield tactic of putting the mortally wounded out of their misery was not so cruel after all. However, at least this way, the man had time to repent for his sins and commit his soul to God.
The battle had made Jacob see the fragility of life, and its futility without hope of life after death. All those men were born to parents who had no doubt shed tears of joy on the day of their birth. They were all born with fair souls as children of God. But then they had become corrupt and conditioned by hatred. Did not fate have a hand in that corruption, for no one chooses their birthplace or their station? There again, every man who had been taught Christian values was responsible for his life choices, be he born a Spaniard, a Dutchman, a Catholic, a Protestant. But Jacob pushed these thoughts to the back of his mind. He did not want to go into an inner dialogue about the fairness of faith, not while he was still in the void after so many deaths.
The house was comfortable. He entered the study, which was filled with medical books and collections of animals and insects that reminded him of his own father’s house. He wondered what had become of his mother and sister. He only knew that they had fled Montauban before the soldiers had entered his beloved hometown. But he did not want to think about it.
He opened a cabinet and started sifting through drawings and personal papers of births and deaths and suchlike. It took him back to his own house. He also kept his wife and children’s birth certificates in a walnut cabinet. But he did not want to dwell on those memories either, preferring to take refuge in the present.
Suddenly he felt a presence. He turned his head from the sketch he was perusing to see a dishevelled-looking young lady appear on the threshold. She must have entered the house from the rear. The cabinet was on the same wall as the door, so she did not see him immediately. She looked dazed, her clothes were torn, and her neck was red and blue. She was pretty, though, and Jacob knew where she had come from. He dared not think what went on at the mayor’s residence but still felt shameful for it. Then she saw Jacob’s reflexion in the glass on the wall opposite. She turned to him with a gasp of surprise, though no sound came out of her mouth. Her expression turned to indignation, as if to ask what he was doing there.
‘I was admiring the drawings,’ said Jacob. ‘Is this your house?’
She had been abducted and raped; she cared not who this stranger was. She only cared that he would not hurt her. He did not look as if he would. She was dying to sit
down, to forget. But she remained standing, clenching the knife she had taken from the kitchen.
‘My father’s,’ she said in Spanish. Jacob, who had studied Latin, found that he could understand Spanish fairly well.
There came loud voices from the street, drawing closer.
‘And the melons, all soft and bulging like pigeons,’ said a deep and joyful voice outside the closed shutters that led onto the street. ‘You’ve gotta give it a go, man.’
‘If we find her,’ said a more fluty voice.
‘She can’t have got far . . .’
Jacob quickly crossed the study and opened the door that led to the surgery room. He nodded to her to enter quickly. She was unsure whether she could trust this man or not, but she had no choice. Moments later, there were footsteps in the hallway. Then two men staggered wildly into the brightly lit room.
‘Oh, sorry, Doctor.’
‘What do you want, Mr Griffiths?’
‘Looking for a tart,’ said a big fellow whom Jacob deduced to be one of Cox’s crew.
‘Right tasty ’n’ all,’ said the chirpy man called Griffiths.
‘Well, you won’t find a “tart” in this house. Only Mr Barret.’
Jacob prayed his patient would not wake up and give the girl away. In fact, he hoped he was dead.
‘Oh, right. How is he then?’ said Griffiths.
The doctor did not answer. He just left an awkward silence.
‘Well, give ’im our regards, eh, Doctor?’ said the big fellow. Then he turned to his mate. ‘Come on.’
The men backed out of the room and left the house.
A few minutes later, Jacob opened the surgery room door. The young lady stepped out, still gripping her knife. She looked at Jacob with her big brown eyes, then said, ‘My father is a doctor.’
‘Yes,’ said Jacob, ‘I have used some of his instruments.’
‘He was,’ she said, correcting herself, ‘he was a doctor, until someone put an axe through his heart.’
She crossed herself, then moved toward the hallway. At the door, she said, ‘Your patient is dead,’ and she went upstairs.
*
Señorita Ana rose at first light, the cleanest time of the day. The drunks and thieves would all be asleep. She had slept with her door locked, a chair wedged under the doorknob, her knife under her pillow, though she remained covered in her rapist’s smell the whole night through. At last she was able to fetch some water up to her room and wash the sweat and scum from her body.
It was still early morning, and all was calm when she ventured out to find her mother, sisters, and brother, whom she knew to be locked inside the church.
The township was built according to the Laws of the Indies, which meant a rectilinear grid of streets was built around the plaza mayor. Ana now crept catlike under windows and wrought iron balconies that resounded with snorts and snoring of drunken raiders; now she darted like a gazelle across open spaces, until she came to the north side of San Salvador church. She scratched with a stone at the wooden door that was locked shut. At last someone scratched back on the other side, and she slid her note under the door. She wrote to her mother only that she had escaped. She made no mention of the horrible fate of her father, whose body she had encountered the night before as she crossed the square, after escaping through the window of the mayor’s residence. In the darkness, she had been drawn to two figures, each ligatured on a cartwheel between two torches. Then she saw him full on, with a cleft in the middle of his chest. In a bid for her sanity, she had kept her mind busy with prayer.
Now she was desperate to know if her mother, young sisters, and brother were well. If they were dead, then there was no point praying for their safety. If they were alive, she would pray to the Virgin Mary and all the saints of the calendar to keep them safe.
In the torment of the night, wrapped in the smell of her ravisher, she had clenched hold of that hope of being in the bosom of her mother and siblings again. It was what kept her from thrusting her knife into her heart. Her youngest brother was only eight, her sisters three, six, and eleven. She realised she would not be able to face living again if anything had happened to them. She was their big sister; she loved them with all her heart, like a little mother. If they were gone, her life would no longer have any sense at all.
There was another scratch at the door. Then she heard a hushed voice that said: ‘We are here, Ana.’
‘Mother!’
‘Are you well?’
‘Yes, Mother . . .’
‘And your father, have you any news of him?’
She could not lie to her mother, but she could not tell her that he was killed. He, who had settled his family in Bayamo because it was far enough from the coast to be a haven from rovers and foreign armies; he, who had wanted a refuge so his children could focus on their intellectual understanding of God’s world; he, whose altruism, love, and knowledge were unremitting; he, destroyed by men who smelt like goats and cared for nothing but their own sordid gratification.
‘The men are locked in the warehouses, Mother. And you, how are you?’
The silence lasted two beats too long, and Ana knew her mother suspected the worst. Her voice was on the verge of breaking as she said, ‘We are bearing up, my dear Ana, but the heat yesterday was unbearable for many of us, especially the old and the toddlers. I fear for your sister. We have hardly any water left. I pray to God the raiders leave soon. I do not know how we can go through another day in here.’
*
Ana decided there and then to live for something greater than herself. Now that growing into a woman had lost all its value, she was prepared to be taken again to protect her cause, for she could not lose her virginity twice. She suddenly became aware of the power of the charms of her carnal envelope, of her smooth and shapely curves, of her plump breasts that had grown so quickly during the past year, and which even in ordinary times men could not keep from ogling. She could now understand those women at the residence who had spoken to her of setting aside her body from her soul. The Lord would not abandon her in sin. Did He not forgive Mary Magdalene?
Yes, her mind was made up: she would be a whore to save the children. But she needed to do it with one of the men who could open the doors of the church.
A little later, she redressed in her mother’s bedroom. As she passed her hand lightly over her soft breasts, she prayed to the Virgin Mary, who would understand. Then she knelt and prayed to God that He would help her in the name of His son.
‘O God, please be there,’ she said to herself as she left her room. ‘Please be there!’
*
Jacob did not sleep easily on the couch in the study. He had slept with one eye open, wondering where he could bury Barret and the others, then wondering about the girl. Was she all right? Should he go to her door? But how would it be interpreted? Would she be vengeful, stab him while he slept? Then his interrogations and fretting had followed into scenes of horror, scenes of butchery and slaughter, of the face of the lad he had stabbed, of himself paralysed, unable to raise so much as a finger, or call out, impuissant to prevent the slaughter of innocent people. Then he saw a knife, the girl. He awoke.
She was standing over him. She was clean, her dark hair was soft and silky and held back with red ribbon, she smelt of perfume, and she was wearing a dress that made her look like a woman. She was truly beautiful, as Spanish girls often are when young, and she offered a shy smile. But what did she want?
‘You were shouting,’ she said softly in Spanish, with a motion of the hand.
‘Oh. Yes,’ said Jacob.
‘I want to thank you for last night.’
It took him a moment to clear his mind of slumber, to translate the words. After she said it again, he realised she was talking about the sailors who had come looking for her.
‘I am sorry about your padre,’ said Jacob solemnly and slowly in French, slipping in any Spanish words he knew. ‘I am equally sorry for the alcalde, and for all this killing.’
‘The mayor was not such a good man. My father was, though.’
‘I am sure,’ he said, getting to a sitting position.
Ana sat down on the edge of the armchair opposite, poised and arching her back. She was determined to get this doctor to act for her. But how did you go about seducing a man? She had seen some women do it during events in Havana, where her father once had his practice. They smiled, empathised, laughed merrily at stupid jokes, and gave looks. It was an art that she had no time to learn. So how did you get a man to just lie with you?
‘Can I do anything for you, Doctor?’ she said.
She immediately regretted saying Doctor; it made her offer sound medical.
But Jacob had been a man about town when young. The olive-skinned girl was very attractive, and he knew she was after something.
‘You are safe here. There is no need for you to act, my girl.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, slightly embarrassed. But a girl, she was not, and she kept up her pose, which was not without some effect.
Jacob noted her fleeting frown of disappointment, but he could see too that she was resolute to get what she wanted. Did she want protection?
‘Yes, you can help me,’ he said, nodding toward the surgery room where Barret’s body still lay. ‘Is there a place where I can bury our dead, los muertos?’
‘The churchyard?’ she said.
‘He is not Catholic,’ said Jacob, who was suddenly aware how absurd it was to mention the man’s religious denomination.
Ana realised that there was no point keeping up her charade; she would fare better talking straight. She knew not this man’s intentions, but she was ready to risk all. Relaxing her posture, she said, ‘There is a special place. I can help you, if you help me.’
As the pain returned around her pelvis, her hips, and her neck, she desperately told Jacob about the plight of the women and children locked inside the church.
Jacob listened attentively as the girl returned to her natural self, a serious, obliging, and beautiful young lady.
Voyage of Malice Page 22