Buccaneer

by Dudley Pope

  The sun’s height and heat told him it was about ten o’clock. Wilson would stay roistering in Bridgetown until sunset and probably later, because today’s news would be the best he had ever had; the steel that sharpened his greed.

  Very well, he told himself, his father had sent him a warning about Penn’s fleet and told him to quit; John Alston confirmed that it was due at any moment. If Edward Yorke was going to quit (flee, he corrected himself) the island in his sloop the Griffin for a completely unknown destination he needed her laden with provisions, and as much sugar and rum as possible to use as currency.

  He went to the door and called his foreman, a stocky Lincolnshire man called Saxby. His name certainly was not Saxby, but he answered to no other. (Was it his surname or his Christian name? Ned had never asked.) As far as Ned knew he had deserted from the Navy many years ago, served in privateers along the coast of Brazil and the Main, and then come on shore when lameness made him, as he expressed it, “pitch and roll”. Red of complexion and blue-eyed, his hair sprinkled with grey, he was famous for three qualities: a stentorian voice, a dislike of hot liquors (which made him one of the few men on the island who did not drink rumbullion or mobbie), and a great appetite for women, which the women indentured servants seemed quite happy to fulfil, even if pregnancy extended their indentures by two years and the father’s (if he could be traced) by three.

  It seemed that Saxby was out working in the field along the coast by Six Men Fort. Ned sent a lad to fetch him and took down the canvas-bound stock books from their shelves. They had nearly sixty tons of sugar in stock. He reflected over the current prices. A good horse fetched 3,000 pounds of sugar here in Barbados, more in the other islands. An anker of brandy was worth 300 pounds of sugar, a pair of shoes sixteen pounds, a yard of good white linen six pounds. The Dutch were selling sugar at the rate of a penny for a pound, and sugar was the currency of the Caribbee islands and the Main.

  He nodded to himself satisfied. It was said a Dutch trading vessel with 100 guilders of commodities made 2,000 pounds of sugar, so the Griffin’s cargo could keep her crew for a long time.

  He uncorked a bottle of ink, sharpened a fresh quill, took an empty page from the back of an account book and began writing.

  “To stow in the Griffin.

  Powder – all we have, 15 barrels.

  Bullets – all we have, 12 barrels for pistols, 14 barrels for

  muskets.

  Muskets – all we have, five matchlock, twenty wheel-lock.

  Pistols – 10 wheel-lock, 10 matchlock.

  Guns – those in the Griffin, viz:

  six minions of iron

  four minions of brass

  four three-pounders of brass

  all the shot for them.

  Armour – 5 backs, 5 breasts, and 5 headpieces, from the

  saddleroom, with spare leather, needles, thread and

  sewing palms.

  Sugar – all that she can stow, say 50 tons.

  Horses – six, and their forage and harness.

  Water – twelve casks.

  Brandy – the ten ankers in the cellar.

  Wine – the two barrels of madeira in the cellar.

  Provisions – for ? people, to be arranged by Mr Saxby.

  Include fruit for juice, vegetables.”

  He wiped the pen and corked the ink. Provisions for how many people? There were Saxby and his assistant Simpson, forty male indentured servants and six female, and nine time-expired servants who after finishing their four years of indentured labour had asked to be allowed to stay on, even though paid their five pounds lump sum. Few plantations had such workers; John Alston’s was the only other one he knew of. Most plantations, where servants were ill-treated, were plagued with them running away. The arrival of a Dutch trading sloop was usually the signal for such young men to try to board her – either as crew, to escape to another island or to join the cattle-killers. However, some plantations had good reputations and Kingsnorth was one of them.

  How about those guns? He knew nothing of guns or gunnery and tried to remember what he had been told. A minion fired a shot weighing four pounds, about the size of a large orange. The gun itself was about seven feet long and the range was what? He seemed to remember a ‘random range’ of 1,500 paces. Anyway, Saxby would know.

  A clatter of hooves and a bellowed “Saxby here, sorr!” told him the foreman had arrived. Apart from his other merits, Saxby could read, the only employee on the estate with that ability, and he could cast up accounts, and woe betide any tallyman who accidentally cut too many or too few notches on his tally stick.

  Saxby came to the door and Yorke called him into the room. Seeing the stock books open on the table the foreman assumed there were questions to answer and put his broad-brimmed, high-crowned beaver hat on a chair and pulled open the top of his jerkin, hoping to cool off after his ride.

  “You didn’t go to town then, sorr.”

  “No, but Mr Alston called in with the post on his way back, and brought the news.”

  Saxby glanced up at the intonation Yorke gave the word “news”. He had already seen an opened letter (and thought he recognized the handwriting) and noticed the page torn from the accounts book and covered with what, even viewed upside-down, was obviously a list. He also knew that no ship came from England with good news for Royalists. Worse still, from a plantation’s point of view, the Dutch, becoming wary, were putting up their prices in retaliation for Cromwell’s Navigation Act. Saxby had bargained with Arabs in the bazaars of North Africa and with Levantines at the far end of the Mediterranean; he had haggled in the raucous markets of Bombay and Calcutta, but he had to admit a Dutchman drove the hardest bargain. Yet although the Hollander was clever enough to beat down a price and take every advantage of changing circumstances, he was too full of his own importance (and his own gin) to establish the trust that made him welcome back. Hollanders rarely had old and regular customers, merely new victims.

  Saxby waited for Mr Yorke to speak. The youngster was under some terrible strain, that much was certain, and Saxby, more than twice and nearly three times his age, always thought of him with the same affection he would have for a favourite nephew.

  Although an inch or two taller than himself, Saxby did not rate Mr Yorke as a tall man. He had wide shoulders, shown off to advantage by the jerkin, and his narrow hips were emphasized by the new fashion eagerly adopted out here in the tropics (and not new by now, Saxby realized) for breeches that were not padded.

  The face was thin; Mrs Judd, the cook, always complained that the master did not eat enough and looked half-starved. The high cheekbones emphasized the thinness, of course, and the nose had very little flesh on it, so that the bone was prominent, like a bird’s beak. Not a song bird, Saxby joked to himself; rather the beak of an osprey. The swarthy skin was a great help; it meant the sun turned him a deep golden brown, instead of the half-roasted beef that was the curse of Saxby’s life, with the constant peeling and the nose as red as a pepper.

  Then there was the hair, which any woman might envy: black and curly, though worn shorter than most other young Cavaliers, who liked it to brush their shoulders. Not as short as the Roundheads, though, who looked as though they were wearing basins on their heads – which, of course, was why they were called Roundheads. Pudden heads, it should be!

  As Mrs Judd said, Mr Yorke was a man who walked alone without being lonely. He could be talkative in company and had a quick wit – that alone made him unpopular when he let fly at these dreary Puritans, who regarded laughter as a sin. But he lived out here in the big house and ran this great plantation for his father without apparently needing company of his own class – a cousin, say, or another young gentleman wanting to learn how to manage an estate. The exception was Mr Alston, who must have his own similar troubles.

  Mrs Judd said the master should retu
rn to England for a season and bring back a young wife. Well, she’d stopped going on about that, what with the troubles, and she and Saxby now knew that the solution to it all – well, perhaps not the solution, but certainly the reason – was not above five miles away, in the next parish.

  Saxby stopped scratching his head, a habit he had when thinking hard, as though his brains needed the stimulation of fingernails, and looked attentive as Yorke suddenly unfolded the letter on the table in front of him.

  “What I am going to say, Saxby, is for your ears alone. My father has written. He has finally refused to compound with Parliament, so our two estates in Kent have been forfeited. There’s a third one, smaller, in Sussex, and that will have gone, too. So he and my brother have fled to France, for their own safety.”

  “Aye,” Saxby said, “they’d have had their blood, one way or t’other.”

  “And he warns me that Cromwell is sending out a fleet to attack Spanish possessions, but it will call here first to strip us of men to make up an army for them. How they’ll train them, I don’t know, but we’ll lose our labour. And they’ll ‘detain’ me. Mr Alston’s news is that this fleet, commanded by Admiral Penn, is likely to arrive within a few days, carrying the army of General Venables.”

  Saxby could picture the fleet. Many years had passed since he deserted from the Navy, but he had spent just as many years at sea until that fateful day.

  “How many men do you think will volunteer to serve with General Venables?”

  Saxby did not have to think twice. “Five hundred scoundrels. The lazy rascals always trying to stow away in the Dutch sloops. But if the Assembly agrees to press men – well, I suppose there are three thousand servants available, now the Dutch are increasing the supply of negroes.”

  “Do you think many of our men will volunteer?”

  “No, sir; don’t forget Cromwell shipped ’em out as little more than slaves. They hate the Roundheads. Those that desert from other plantations do so because they are wild men; even in England they would not want regular work.”

  “So, if we don’t want to be swept away by Cromwell’s pressgangs, we must sail by tomorrow night,” Yorke said, as though talking to himself. He slid the page from the stock book across to Saxby. “Can we have the Griffin loaded in time?”

  “Providing the servants don’t bolt.”

  “Do you think they will?”

  Saxby scratched his head. “Some might. It depends.”

  “Depends on what?” Yorke asked irritably.

  “Depends on them knowing why they’re doing whatever it is, sir, and what the alternatives are.”

  Yorke suddenly realized that although he knew most things about every man, woman and boy indentured to him, as well as those who had stayed on after their indentures had expired, he had no real idea of their politics. Most men must regard Cromwell as the devil, because he had had them transported to the Caribbee islands after taking them prisoner in battles where they fought for the King. But a long time had passed since then, and did life in Barbados seem any better? The King for whom they had fought had been beheaded by this same Cromwell; the son who succeeded was said to be in France, paying too much court to the Papists, and apparently never likely to be powerful enough to overthrow Cromwell and his New Model Army. Could any of these indentured servants ever return to England, except as Parliament’s reward for helping it?

  Yorke looked out of the door and saw from the sun’s shadow that it must be about eleven o’clock. “Have every person on the estate assemble by the well as soon as possible. Ring the bell, Saxby; this is as bad as a fire or an attack by the Spanish!”

  They came hurrying from all parts of the estate, still holding hoes and shovels, faces shiny with perspiration and streaked with dust. Mrs Judd and her women from the kitchens still wore wide pinafores, their hair covered with scarves. All they knew was that the bell was an alarm; that when it tolled they were to assemble at the well (if one of the buildings was on fire) or otherwise at the main house. This time there was no fire, but Saxby’s raucous voice called them to the well.

  The well was surrounded by a four-foot-high circular wall made from red bricks the Griffin had brought out as ballast, and as soon as Saxby had counted heads and reported all the employees present, Ned scrambled on to the wall and told them all to gather round.

  Then, speaking slowly and choosing his words with care, he explained that a Parliamentary fleet seeking troops was due to arrive at any moment, and that because it also had orders to arrest him, he intended to leave the island in the Griffin to seek somewhere else to live that was free of politics, pressgangs, and the words of Cavalier or Roundhead.

  At the mention of the words one of the youngsters called out: “Two sucking pigs, sir!” and Yorke laughed with the crowd.

  “To be eaten in the company of the people who heard the words,” Yorke pointed out. “Which leads me to the next point. Forty-six of you are indentured to me, and your indentures do not say where you have to serve your time. I could take you to El Dorado or the empire of the Great Khan.”

  He waited for the laughter to die down. “However, you did not sign indentures to serve as sailors. The Griffin might be going on a voyage to one of the other islands; it might be longer. So I am giving you a choice, and I think a fair one. Either you can sail in the Griffin and take your chance with me – and obviously I can promise nothing – or you can stay here on the island, take your chance with the pressgangs, and I will pay each of you a part of the lump sum in proportion to the time you have served.

  “You nine time-expired men who are on wages; you’ll still be paid if you sail with me but if you stay in Barbados – well, you’ve received your lump sums and it will be up to you to find other jobs.”

  “What about us women, sir?” Mrs Judd called out. “Me an’ six of the best!”

  The men whistled and jeered good-naturedly. “Serve you right if we leaves you behind to poison the Roundheads with your cooking,” Saxby growled.

  “Dunno what a glutton like you would do without us!” Mrs Judd answered, and the other women giggled and blushed, well aware of the double meaning.

  Yorke said: “The same offer is open to you women: be paid off a proportion or sail with me.”

  “What, all of us women?” demanded Mrs Judd.

  “All seven of you – but you’ll be responsible for their good behaviour!”

  “Verree wise, sorr,” Saxby commented loudly. “Let Martha keep them smart on parade.”

  The sun was blazing down on them by now and the wind had dropped. Yorke felt his jerkin slowly sticking to him, and his feet throbbed from the heat of the brick wall striking up through the soles of his shoes. The divi-divi trees pointed like signposts – to the westward, he noted, thinking of the significance, bent by the constant Trade wind blowing from the east. Westward – an omen, perhaps?

  Yorke pulled down the brim of his hat and looked round. Fifty-six pairs of eyes were watching him.

  “The decision is up to each of you, man or woman, and whatever you decide there will be no hard feelings. Mr Saxby will have your money ready by this evening for those deciding to stay. Now, those of us going in the Griffin have a lot to do. So, there’s a divi-divi tree over there–” he pointed to the big shrub to the northwards, “–and another there, to the south. Will all of you who want to stay on the island go to that bush, the one to the north; those coming with me in the Griffin should go to the southerly one. And do it now.”

  With a loud “Humph!” Mrs Judd marched for the southern bush, head down, arms akimbo, striding with as long a step as her dress and petticoats would allow. The other six women giggled, hands to their mouths, chattering among themselves, and followed her.

  For a few moments the seven women were the only ones to move and Yorke had a nightmarish picture of the Griffin sailing with himself, Saxby and a crew of wo
men.

  The men were far less sure. For a moment none moved to the northern tree but instead they stood talking with each other. Saxby and his tallow-haired assistant Simpson joined Mrs Judd and the women, and Saxby gave her a playful slap on the rump.

  Finally the oldest of the nine time-expired men went to the southern tree, and a minute or two later his eight comrades joined him, although they all asked Saxby some question he obviously could not answer, so he came back to the well.

  “The time-expired men, sorr: they’re worried about their money, which they’ve hidden in various places. Would you look after it for them?”

  “Yes, of course, and give them receipts.”

  “I reckoned as much, sorr; I’ll tell ’em.”

  Three men were now walking towards the northern divi-divi, and Yorke saw they were a trio from the ship that arrived before the William and Mary; bad bargains, Saxby had called them, even by the standards of the Bridewell, which as far as jails went had London’s finest selection of thieves, rogues, vagabonds and murderers, and which had been the men’s home for some time before Cromwell’s net swept them out to the West Indies.

  Two more men followed, keeping a few yards behind them, as though indicating that although they had elected to stay, they were not associates of the trio. Five for Cromwell, Yorke noted. And two more – an unpopular pair, judging from the shrill abuse from two of the women.

  Five men were walking towards Saxby and one of them made a rude gesture to Martha Judd and grinned. That made twenty-three for the Griffin, of whom seven were women. Twenty-six still had to make up their minds.

  Three more left to join the northern group and Yorke realized they were being roundly abused by the twenty-three remaining, who had obviously been trying to persuade them to join the Griffin group. But when they saw they had failed, they all walked towards Saxby, talking among themselves.

  So ten were staying and forty-six were coming in the Griffin. He had a larger ship’s company than he expected, enough to handle sails and weigh the anchor, but none too many when they started clearing a new plantation in some distant island.