by Dudley Pope
“Oh,” said Ned, for the lack of any other comment. “You’d better come down to my cabin and tell me all about it.”
The cabin was hot and the lantern smoky. Although Julio’s report – with many appeals to Fernando for confirmation of various points – was long, the facts it contained were not very encouraging. Nevertheless, when Ned sorted them out in his mind after Julio and Fernando had left, he realized that although the idea which had come to him earlier in the day might not work, it offered the only chance of rescuing the people of the Peleus.
Julio’s supper with the alcalde and the garrison commander yielded the fact that the Cabo Rojo garrison originally comprised – in addition to the commander – a lieutenant, one sergeant, two corporals, sixty men and a cook. The total had been lessened by one corporal, whose body, still in its armour, must rest on the sea bed close to the Peleus, and two private soldiers, one shot by Diana and the other spitted by Thomas. Julio noted that the garrison commander, a drunken sot clearly sent to Cabo Rojo as a form of exile, was vastly amused at the way the corporal met his death: the corporal came from Villalba, in the far north of Spain at the foothills of the mountains of Galicia, and his heavy accent and the independent spirit of mountain folk had upset the commander, who came from Jerez de la Frontera, down in the south, and considered himself, as an Andalusian, among the country’s élite.
More important, though, was that only four of the original garrison (a sergeant, two men and a cook) remained in Cabo Rojo: the rest, who had captured the unarmed men of the Peleus as they filled their water casks on land and the few left on board, had to march them to San Germán, and the alcalde there had kept them to act as guards. Three other soldiers had been left on board the Peleus as guards.
So much for Cabo Rojo and its garrison of four (plus the commander). The route to San Germán was very twisty; there were plenty of rolling hills and steep-sided valleys. Apparently San Germán itself, Julio had discovered, had been rebuilt several times in different places after being founded. Originally it was built so close to the coast that it was always being raided from the sea. Now it stood astride several hilltops, bunched together with the church more or less in the middle.
By dawn, Ned had made up his mind about the rescue attempt, and immediately after they had finished their breakfast the Griffin’s crew were busy with sail needles. Fernando was sent back to the Phoenix with orders for Saxby which would also start his men measuring, cutting and stitching.
At ten o’clock, Julio and Fernando were sent on shore again to drink with the alcalde. This time, Julio was told, he should say he wanted to inspect the Peleus, implying that he was more than halfway towards deciding to buy her, once permission came through from San Germán and a reasonable price could be agreed.
The boat came back shortly after noon, the two oarsmen no longer wearing armour: as Julio had explained, the Griffin (under her assumed name of a Spanish saint) was now thoroughly accepted, and there was no need for formality – having one’s boat crew wearing breastplates was just such a formality.
It was Maundy Thursday and, Ned noticed, none of the fishing boats had gone out – because or in spite of the previous day’s blessing? Interesting that neither the alcalde nor the priest (according to Julio) paid much attention to Lent in the privacy of their own homes.
Finally the boat was back alongside and once again Julio scrambled over the bulwark. This time he was not smiling; in fact, Ned saw with something approaching horror, the Spaniard seemed to have aged five years: his face was white and drawn beneath the layer of heavy tan and there was none of the usual spring in his step when he approached Ned. “Could we talk down in your cabin, sir?”
Ned seated him at the table and waved Fernando to sit on the settee beside him. Then he slid over the two mugs that Aurelia, after one look at the men, had put on the table, along with an onion flask of rum.
Julio poured rum into both mugs and drank quickly. “It’s bad, sir,” he began without preamble. “The alcalde has just received the word from San Germán. All of them are to be executed the day after tomorrow, Saturday. They’re slipping it in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.”
Ned felt the familiar cold perspiration soak his body, then suddenly remembered that Aurelia had been standing just behind him. He jumped up and turned to find that she was now sitting on the settee at the other side of the cabin, white-faced, but trying to muster a confident smile for Ned. “At least they’re still alive,” she said. “They could have been executed today. We still have time.”
Ned sat down again, thankful that she was still calm and hopeful.
Julio, wary because his past tactlessness had caused Aurelia to faint on deck, said with forced heartiness: “I was just going to say to Mr Yorke that we have plenty of time to get there for the ceremony.”
Ned jerked upright in his chair. “The ceremony?”
Julio looked significantly at Ned and then glanced at Aurelia, who said quietly: “Ignore me. I want to know everything.”
“Well,” the Spaniard said, “it is going to be a public execution. The Iglesia de Porta Coeli in San Germán is a church built on top of a large mound with a couple of dozen wide steps (thirty or forty feet wide) leading up to the west door. In front of the steps is a large plaza which can hold a crowd of – well, a thousand or more. The steps are like a section of a – in Spanish, an anfiteatro–”
“Almost the same in English,” Ned said. “An amphitheatre, like the Romans used.”
Julio nodded. “All the important people in San Germán will watch from those steps. Sir Thomas and Lady Diana and the mate of the Peleus will be garotted in the plaza in front of the steps; the seamen of the Peleus will all be shot, two at a time, against the wall on the north side. Everyone, alcalde, aristocracia, butcher and baker and salter – and their wives and children – will get a very good view of everything,” he said bitterly.
“Will there be many priests there?” Ned asked casually.
“Every priest for miles around, I suppose,” a startled Julio replied, “with those from the Porta Coeli in the front row. No doubt they’ll offer everyone the Last Sacrament just before the final turn of the garotte or the musket shots. It is all intended as a spectacle to impress the people with how they are being protected from pirates and buccaneers.”
“And the monks?”
“Well, yes, if there are any from that monastery still visiting nearby towns and villages they’ll be there for certain. No one misses a good execution. I doubt if San Germán has ever before seen a mass execution.”
“No, I suppose not. Now listen carefully, and put yourself in the place of people living in San Germán: soldiers, mayor, priests – anyone, even small boys begging, and see what faults you can find in this plan. What might give us away, in other words.”
Next morning the hollow and monotonous tolling of the single church bell at Boquerón woke them and reminded them that it was Good Friday. Lobb listened for a minute or two and then shook his head. “That’s an iron bell,” he said. “Probably had their original bronze one stolen years ago, long before even the Cow Killers started making raids.”
“How are the tailors getting on?” Ned asked.
“Julio and Fernando have inspected them all. Some of the fussier seamen are making last-minute alterations.”
“And pistols and cutlasses?”
“One or other issued to every man and some have taken one of each. I’ve checked matches with each man. All of them have spare ones in their pockets.”
“And the cutlasses?”
Lobb shrugged his shoulders. “No need to put a sharp on any of them – still larded from Port Royal and no sign of rust, and sharp. Just as well. I didn’t want to get the grindstone up and have it screeching away – they’d hear it on shore and might get suspicious.”
“Tell me when Julio gets b
ack from visiting the Peleus.”
“Ah,” Lobb said, “I was going to mention it to you, sir. Those sentries don’t patrol the deck any longer, and since Julio will be able to confirm that there are only three of them, I don’t think we have to bother much. Two or three of our men – from those we’re leaving behind to look after the Griffin – can go over there tonight and deal with them.”
“Good, you seem to have everything ready. I want the men to get some sleep if they can. Twelve miles – say three hours’ walking in the darkness, and dawn is about six o’clock. So we’ll start from here at half past two in the morning. That gives us half an hour to put all our party on shore, and then three hours to get near San Germán. We have to hide until about ten o’clock tomorrow morning so that we then have an hour to make a dignified arrival. The execution is arranged for noon.”
“I doubt if the Dons will be punctual!”
“No, probably not,” Ned agreed. “But we can’t afford to be late…”
Chapter Eleven
The church – a simple whitewashed building with a tiny open-sided belfry perched on top of the roof like an afterthought above the arched west door – seemed poised over the crowded plaza. The bell tolled slowly and because it was small and the noise was quickly dispersed by the wind, it sounded like the call of a muffin man, or some other tradesman, rather than a summons to watch the execution of sixty-three people.
As Julio had predicted, the wide steps leading up to the church were crowded with people, the bright colours of their clothes emphasized by the peeling white west wall of the church high above them. Priests in black robes, thirty or forty women whose silk shawls of gay colours shone in the sun and who wore mostly black mantillas, many men in elaborate hats with bright plumes – the leading citizens, obviously, all as excited as if they were about to watch a bullfight or a play.
At the foot of the steps, five yards away (just far enough from the bottom that the crowd of dignitaries could see them clearly), were three wooden chairs, and seated in them, ropes binding their arms and legs, were Thomas, Diana and the Peleus’ mate, Mitchell, all three slumped, despite the ropes, as though exhausted. On the ground beside each chair was an iron hoop which, apart from a rod projecting outwards, looked as though it belonged to a small barrel.
A soldier holding a musket stood behind each chair, but a whole file of soldiers lined the north side of the plaza, muskets resting on wooden rests, and facing them were all the Peleus’ seamen, legs tied at the ankles and wrists tied behind their backs. Men that Ned recognized as normally clean-shaven had a month’s beard; all of them had the pallor which came only from being shut away in the darkness. Each had sunken cheeks.
Parallel with the wall was a row of young trees planted at four-yard intervals. A seaman was tied to each of the three trees in front of the soldiers, their arms held backwards round the trunks and tied by the wrists: obviously they were intended to be the firing squad’s first target.
To one side of the file of soldiers facing the Peleus men was their officer, a corpulent man in a bright green doublet edged with gold and with white silk facings, the sleeves slashed to reveal more white silk. His breeches, cut very wide in a style which had gone out of fashion in England fifty years earlier, were in a very pale green, but his hose was the same darker green as his doublet. However, his hat was the crowning glory: a dark yellow bird’s nest of a hat had been heavily trimmed with gold, and the single larger plume seemed gilded. How had he done it, Ned wondered: shaken gold dust over it?
His enormous sword, slung from an ornate leather strap that went over his right shoulder and ended in a scabbard on which gold wire was sewn into elaborate patterns, was the most magnificent Ned had ever seen. No doubt it was one of the finer swords wrought in Toledo, and Ned was sure the steel blade was also decorated with the inlaid gold wire work for which Toledo had long been famous.
Many monks in long robes were scattered among the crowd, their cowls thrown back because of the heat, their hands clasped in front of them, their eyes generally fixed on the ground in front of them, as became holy men who had devoted their lives to a particular religious order and whose vows of celibacy made them conscious of the number of plumply provocative women in the crowd.
Two things distinguished this crowd from any other. First, although the people were packed shoulder to shoulder (but kept back from the Peleus men by the line of soldiers) neither they nor the dignitaries on the church steps were chattering noisily: instead everyone seemed to be speaking in hushed voices, as though awaiting the arrival of a famous man rather than the execution of more than a hundred scoundrels.
Second, there was tension. Ned felt it even though his Spanish was far from fluent. He had never seen a bullfight but he had often been told of the tension which gripped the crowd before the first bull was let into the ring: they seemed to be holding their breath and they all sighed when they first saw the bull charging through the open gates and heard its hooves thundering on the sun-baked earth.
Ned stood almost alone between the bottom of the steps and the edge of the crowd in the plaza. Had they raised their heads, Thomas and Diana could have seen but not recognized him. Julio stood beside him, occasionally muttering a comment; indeed, his task was to give Ned a commentary on what was happening, based on his own experience of Spanish life and what people in the crowd were saying.
The sun was scorching and almost directly overhead: Ned looked down and found the shadow he cast was little wider than the brim of a Roundhead’s hat. Perspiration ran down his spine and he had to wipe his brow frequently as it trickled into his eyes.
Suddenly the bell stopped its tolling. The great west door of the church began creaking open and everyone on the steps turned to watch as though this was what they had been expecting all along.
The first man coming out was splendidly dressed; the cloth of his jerkin was a rich wine red and round his neck was what Ned guessed must be if not a king’s at least an archbishop’s ransom in gold chains.
“The alcalde of San Germán,” Julio muttered. Following him, walking ponderously as though carrying a heavy but invisible load, was a corpulent man in cope and mitre, two young boys carrying the train of his long robes.
“A bishop – probably of the province,” whispered Julio.
The next two men wore uniforms similar to the officer already standing in the plaza but even more ornate, and behind them were two younger officers, obviously aides.
“The military governor of the province and his deputy, I should think.”
The people on the top few steps drew to each side, leaving an open space for the newcomers. The bishop stepped forward and everyone in the plaza and on the steps not only stopped whispering but seemed to freeze.
The bishop began talking in a deep, sonorous voice, sentences drawn out and each ending on a sorrowful note.
“He’s talking about the wickedness of pirates, buccaneers, heretics, sinners – just about everyone,” Julio muttered.
“Turning on his friends, eh?”
Julio nodded. “Now he’s congratulating the military governor for capturing so many wicked English pirates, buccaneers, heretics and sinners…”
The bishop waved to the crowd, his arm swinging as though brushing aside a bough, then turned and made way for the military governor, who began speaking to the crowd in a sharp voice, as though giving them orders, but spoke in what Ned recognized as a clear Seville accent which he could understand.
“There,” the commander cried, pointing at Thomas, “we have the leader of the buccaneers, the famous Sir Tomás Witstone, the nephew of the heretical Cromwell, and sitting next to him the infamous woman who has whored the length and breadth of these seas in his company. And over there–” he waved at the seamen standing by the north wall, “–are their minions. All have just been tried before the court, all have been found guil
ty. All–” he turned and bowed respectfully at the bishop, who bowed back, “–have been given the chance of confessing their sins and recanting their heretical beliefs, but they have turned their faces away.”
He paused, seeming to swell like a bullfrog mating, and then bellowed: “All are now to suffer death!” He pointed down at the officer in the plaza, who had now drawn his sword and was holding it pointing horizontally in front of him. “Begin the executions!”
The officer barked out an order and the file of soldiers cocked the locks of their muskets and then bent their heads to sight along the barrels at the three men lashed to the trees. Ned already had counted the file of soldiers. Twenty-one muskets. Seven shots for each man. The officer had allowed for some poor shooting…
The officer, having satisfied himself apparently that all the musketeers were now ready, bowed to the bishop and raised his sword so that it pointed up vertically. In a few seconds it would flash down and the first three seamen would be shot dead.
Ned pulled aside his robe, raised his pistol, and fired. The officer seemed to shrink as his sword clattered to the stone paving, his plumed hat tilted and flew off like a wounded bird, and then the man’s body slewed round and fell to the ground.
At the same moment all the monks in the plaza tore off their robes, producing pistols and cutlasses, and started shouting “Griff-in, Griff-in” at the top of their voices, pushing their way through the startled crowd to the wall to begin slashing the ropes holding the seamen.
Ned and Julio, sharp knives in their hands, ran the few yards to the chairs and cut Thomas, Diana and Mitchell free. Saxby, Lobb and Fernando appeared out of the now frightened crowd, and while Ned lifted up an almost helpless Diana and carried her in his arms into the anonymity of the crowd, the other men helped Thomas and Mitchell to stand. Both were so weak and cramped that they had difficulty in walking, and finally the two Spaniards lifted them over their shoulders and followed Ned.