“That’s it. That was p’raps what was upsetting her. But she finished with that, with a big shout, and then it was all over. I finished my business, and went to bed. Never heard it mentioned again.”
As the story ends, Horton sits for a good while, ignoring Turner while he thinks about this. Eventually, he stands up and makes his way to the door, not intending to say goodbye, still somehow angry at the man before him, who seems weak and deceitful. But he looks back at Turner, whose head is drooping over his feet and whose shoulders slump in something like dejected surrender.
“Did you tell anyone else this?” Horton asks.
Turner looks up at him, and almost smiles.
“No, mate. No one ever asked,” he says.
JUNE 1668
The two of us stood on the poop watching the sun go down on the South Cays: the little Welsh admiral, and his quartermaster. A small ship was inching its way into the island’s natural harbor. Outside the harbor vicious ocean waves swirled around, strong enough to break a ship’s anchor chain. Inside, the water was calm. This was the ninth vessel to creep into the harbor, and it was the last one we expected.
Admiral Morgan, as he liked to call himself, sighed. By now he was almost formally the Admiral of Jamaica, though such a title was new and not widely recognized. But he was also very much (and very unofficially) Admiral of the Brethren. Morgan always insisted he was no pirate, preferring the word buccaneer. He saw himself as fighting for England and its king, and demanded that ranks on his ships mirrored those of the Royal Navy. He was not, and never would be, a whoreson pirate. By now, after four years of plundering and adventuring, I was very much his lieutenant. Billy Ablass, commonly known among the Brethren as Long Billy, quartermaster.
The Brethren, now. They didn’t care at all whether anyone called them pirates. But they did care about authority, and who held it. They’d evolved a dainty little system of checks and balances, under which the quartermaster held almost the same authority as the captain while the fleet was harbored. During a raid—when the guns were firing and steel was flashing—the men would follow every command of the captain, as obedient as any drilled foot soldier. But once the smoke dispersed and the take was being distributed, the men didn’t want a dictator. They chose a quartermaster to represent them, a piratical tribune to look after the interests of the crew in the face of a cocksure captain who probably thought he was master of the world.
And on this fleet, they’d chosen me. There’d been no election and no hustings, just a fearful midnight visit from a few of them and a hurried plea and a gracious acceptance. The men were as scared of me—more scared, probably—as they were of Morgan, so perhaps I was the obvious choice. Appoint a bastard to watch a bastard, as it were. Morgan, needless to say, had hated the idea.
So tonight, the captain and the quartermaster, the emperor and the tribune, were viewing their fleet. And the captain was worried.
“Only nine,” he muttered. “Why only nine?”
The largest of the ships in the harbor, the Dolphin, only had eight cannon and carried barely sixty men. The majority of the boats were simple single-masted things, barely more than pinnaces. The second-largest ship, the one we were now standing on, had been stolen from the Spanish, and I’d picked a new Anglo-Saxon name for her. She became the Drake. She only had six guns, but she was fast. I loved that ship, and it was upsetting me that just now Morgan was carving something absentmindedly into the sturdy rail with a small, ancient knife which he carried with him everywhere and which fitted in his hand like a sixth finger.
Only English captains remained in the fleet, which was why our strength was so pitiful. There had been a good number of French vessels, but they’d quit us two days before following a disappointing raid on Puerto del Príncipe. Morgan had barely held the fleet together after that; the remaining English and Irish Brethren had muttered their displeasure and watched with some envy as their French comrades headed for a rendezvous with the fearsome L’Ollonais.
L’Ollonais was now the most feared pirate in the Caribbean, a man whose reputation for extreme and calculating violence had, it was said, reached as far as Madrid. The Spaniards had started calling Morgan El Draque, which pleased him immensely, but right now his fame was being eclipsed by L’Ollonais. The Brethren were full of tales about the Frenchman’s spectacular raid on Maracaibo, and his seizure of mythical sums.
Morgan knew (as did I) how close the English Brethren had come to joining the French as they left the fleet. The admiral-captain had turned on the bountiful Welsh charm to bring them around, promising them their own glorious trip to the Spanish Main, painting pictures of riches aplenty, juicy golden fruits waiting to be plucked from ill-defended, opulent branches. It was for this glittering adventure that he was now mustering a fleet here, in the South Cays. But even now crucial elements of the plan—including the planned targets—remained only inside Morgan’s head, if in fact they existed at all.
“You haven’t let on where we’re going,” I said as we watched the final ship join the fleet.
“No, I have not. You miss nothing, quartermaster.”
Morgan spat out the words. Ever since the French had left, citing L’Ollonais, he’d acted like a sulky woman with me.
“Violation of the pirate code, that is.”
“Tell me something I do not know, young William. And need I remind you that we are not pirates?”
“Nor did you tell them about the Spanish fleet.”
A new armada had been dispatched from Spain to stem the tide of English but mainly French piracy, triggered by the rampages of L’Ollonais. It was now patrolling the Caribbean under the notoriously formidable Admiral Alonzo de Campos y Espinosa.
“If we run into Espinosa, he’ll blow this little lot straight to hell.”
“It’s a big sea, young William. That’s rather the point. If your little French friend hadn’t been such a greedy bastard in Maracaibo, perhaps we wouldn’t be forced to play hide and seek with the Spanish.”
“Why are you keeping these things from them?”
“You think they don’t know about the armada?”
“I think it’s possible they don’t.”
The scritch of Morgan’s knife became a little more considered as he finished off his vandalistic carving in the rail of my beautiful ship. His Welsh accent had begun to crack in the Caribbean sun; it was slowly being replaced by something equally mellifluous but also rather odd, a nasal amalgam of London, West Country, African and something else, something new.
“How much money do you have, William?”
“More than I’ve ever had.”
“But not as much as you need.”
“Need?”
“Your eyes give nothing away.”
“I see no ‘need,’ Cap’n.”
“No indeed. No need at all. You just continue on, William Ablass. Like some ship that never loses the wind. Nothing stops you, does it?”
“I . . . endure.”
“But endurance needs money, Billy. That’s why you’re with me. I’ve seen you fight. The violence doesn’t move you in the way it transports the other men. There’s no lust in it. You fight the way an old furniture maker applies varnish: methodically, like you’re not thinking. You look like someone who’s been fighting for a hundred years.”
“I fight because I have to fight. It’s where I find myself.”
“You often say remarkably odd things.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“No pardon needed.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Indeed not. Information is power, William. A captain understands that. These idiots were on the point of scampering off with your sodomizing French friend. The only thing keeping them away from him is me. If I told them everything I know they’d also know what a big chance I’m taking. And if they knew that this whole enterprise would unravel faster than the underthings of our King’s latest mistress.”
Morgan turned toward his cabin, but
then turned back, almost as an afterthought.
“He’s dead, you know.”
“L’Ollonais?”
“The very one.”
“How do you know this?”
“If not now, then very soon. He’s an animal, William, an animal driven by its desires. And animals always get shot in the end. They’ll tear him to pieces. Me, I’ll die fat and gout-ridden on the veranda of a Jamaica plantation. Just watch me. You need to decide what you are.”
And he strutted off to bed, still fuming in that odd little way of his. I glanced down at the rail. It took a moment to decipher Morgan’s carving, but it appeared to be four letters carved over and across each other. P-T-S-I.
That explained things, then.
Potosí. That’s what Morgan’s letters represented. A city, a mountain, but most importantly, a silver mine. A huge upturned rock full of treasure in high Peru, which the Spanish had been hollowing out for more than a hundred years. Madrid was Greater Spain’s brain, but Potosí was its shiny metal heart, pumping silver pieces of eight all the way around the empire.
A direct attack on Potosí was forbiddingly unlikely, although Morgan had attacked cities hundreds of miles inland before. But there was a far easier option. Potosí’s silver flood needed an outlet on the coast, where it could pour onto fleets of ships which would carry it back to Madrid. For several weeks of the year, one particular orifice opened up to the Spanish treasure fleet and acted as a tap for this silver stream: Portobelo. In those weeks, it was said, the silver was piled up in the streets and the town’s mint churned out pieces of eight by the thousand. During the visit of the treasure fleet, the amount of silver waiting in Portobelo was said to be worth more than twice the annual income of England’s king and government.
Morgan was surely not considering raiding Portobelo during the treasure fleet’s visit. That would have been suicidal. But I wagered he was betting that enough of that fabulous wealth stayed, silted up, in Portobelo for the rest of the year to make an approach worthwhile. The stories of the permanent forts surrounding the town suggested there was something there to protect.
Every Brethren officer knew about the defenses of Portobelo: two enormous forts at the estuary, designed to stop ships entering the mouth of the river on which Portobelo stood; numerous sentry houses and lookouts dotted around the shore; and another new fort which was even now being constructed right on top of the harbor itself. Even the coral around the harbor, it was said, was impervious to cannon fire. In the New World, only Cartagena and Havana had stronger defenses than Portobelo.
The risks were enormous, the potential rewards gigantic. For an admiral-captain up against it, Portobelo was a target of great distinction. A successful raid would lead to riches, reputation, respect. All equally important, of course, to a short Welsh captain with his eye on posterity and even the governorship of his beloved Jamaica.
And there was something else, a rich, potent fact which had occurred to me straightaway and which, without doubt, was in the mind of my splendidly insecure admiral-captain. The unspeakable wealth and the chance to singe more Spanish beards were reasons enough to attack Portobelo. But on top of that, down there in the waters off Portobelo, his body dispatched in full armor into the blue waters, dead of dysentery after weeks of hunting down a small fleet of Spanish treasure ships, lay the rotting bones of Morgan’s great precursor, Francis Drake himself.
El Draque, sailing on the Drake, to meet Francis. With Long Billy, who had not seen his old friend for a hundred years. Destiny was twitching her skirts in our direction.
The next day, we left the little South Cays harbor and sailed south to Costa Rica. Still Morgan kept his own counsel, refusing to name the target. It would take all the powers of his Welsh persuasion to bring this crew along with him. But I had known, right away, that I would follow the admiral into the mouth of New Spain.
Soon after reaching Costa Rica Morgan did reveal the target to his officers, to general dismay and outrage. Belowdecks was a frenzy of near-mutiny. A delegation of four New Model Army veterans came to see me immediately, in my official position. As quartermaster, I was entitled to question strategy, and even to refuse the mission, should I have wished to do so, which I most emphatically did not. They were allowed to ask me this. But they overplayed their hand.
There were a number of Cromwell’s old foot soldiers among the Brethren. They still wore their New Model Army red coats with pride. They saw the Brethren fleet as a new model, too: a model for a New Republic. They dreamed of a time when captains would be elected and sovereignty would be vested in the crew. I had heard tell of pirate ships which were already run along these lines, of pirate captains being subject to votes and then being removed when they failed to measure up. I had even heard of constitutions and bills of rights.
These veterans met with me in my cabin, next to Morgan’s, right beneath the aft deck. The five of us barely had room to move. I sat on my bunk. My height made standing impossible, and besides hunching up and squeezing caused the old Florida wound in my side to give me pain. The four old Roundheads were crushed together between my sea chest and the door, which they had closed carefully. This was the nearest approximation to a private conversation that was possible on board ship.
The oldest of the Roundheads, a man called Peter Sharp, spoke first. He was an East Anglian, from the Fens, just outside Cromwell’s old parliamentary constituency at Cambridge. He had the same stolid immovability of the man he’d served, and whom I remembered.
“Quartermaster. We are here as representatives of the crew.”
I smiled at him.
“Indeed? Would you be elected representatives, Sharp? I didn’t hear tell of a ballot.”
Sharp did not respond to this. He waited a second, as if to say no, we won’t be debating like that, before continuing.
“There is great concern among the crew over the captain’s plans for Portobelo.”
He waited again. I did the same. Eventually, Sharp went on.
“The crew is insisting that the captain reconsider. We believe that Portobelo is a dangerous fool’s errand.”
I said nothing again, but relied on something else—a slight widening of the eyes, a near smile, the beginnings of a furrow in the brow at that use of the word fool. I felt a great calmness and a sense that I could make these men do what I wanted, that their fear of me was irresistible. Sharp’s face began to redden, even underneath the Caribbean sunburn. He swallowed before continuing. Before, he had been the very image of Old Ironside, remorseless and implacable. Now, he was suddenly uncertain. I was amazed at the speed of the change.
“We ask that you, quartermaster, intercede on our behalf with the captain.”
“Or?”
I said the little word quietly and then I said nothing else. Sharp considered.
“Or the crew may take destiny in its own hands.”
“Meaning mutiny.”
“Yes, quartermaster. If you choose to use the word, meaning mutiny.”
“Are you sure of yourself, Sharp?”
“Sure of myself, quartermaster?”
“There are four of you in this room with me, Sharp. Four old fools from the war. Not enough to take over a ship.”
“We have general support among the crew.”
“Ah, indeed? ‘General support.’ You are not used to life at sea, I think, Sharp. It’s not like life on the land, even in that great army in which you served. On land men will think of their futures and their families and their rights and will make judgments accordingly. They are operated on by an invisible hand, as it were. They respond to incentives of a particular kind. A rational kind.
“But this is a ship, Sharp. On a ship men seek something else. They seek security. They seek adventure. They seek something which is halfway between family and wealth. Fellowship, perhaps we should call it. A captain who can offer these things is more than your General and Protector ever was. This captain is their father and their mother and their brother and their general. Th
ey might grumble about him, they might shiver like scared women at the audacity of his plans, but get them in front of him, get them to look into his eyes and listen to his words, and all their grumbling and complaining will fall away. They’ll sail over the edge of the world for him. And you’ll be left on your own, the four of you, with nothing between you and the dark licking flames of Satan but me and the captain you betrayed.”
My voice remained quiet throughout this pretty little speech, but I felt a power surging within me, and a sense of right and entitlement. This must be how a king feels, I remember thinking to myself. And after a few seconds, Sharp’s head dropped and he turned to make his way out of the cabin, followed by the three other veterans. They did not look at me, but I spoke to them, looking at the scuffed, dirty ends of my fingers all the while.
“One other thing. It’s rumored that Prince Maurice himself is held captive in Portobelo. Morgan wants to find him and take him back to London and the King. You may have other considerations. Incentives, you see, fellows. The invisible hand.”
I continued to admire my fingers. There was no sound for a moment, not even a whisper, as the Roundhead veterans took in what I had told them. The nephew of a king, within reach of their unforgiving republican hands. Then, the pounding of feet as they trooped out.
21 DECEMBER 1811: EVENING
The King’s Head is in darkness, as one would expect. By this time of the evening, New Gravel Lane is a Bedlam of inebriation, but here, ironically right outside the Williamsons’ alehouse, there is a little oasis of calm. Or perhaps absence.
Charles Horton is pretty drunk, and has not gone home to Abigail. She prefers not to see him than to see him drunk, and she is entirely inured to his nighttime wanderings. Between here and Turner’s room Horton had stopped at the Prospect of Whitby, drawn there both by its reputation and by the opportunities for information it represents. He has traded the little currency he has—stories of dried peas and beans, cotton shirts, Sheerness and pieces of eight—and in return he has learned some things, been disabused of some other things, and been roundly insulted for his pains by many of those he has approached. He asked questions of most of the people in the tavern, and was met either with puzzlement, laughter, or rage (and near violence, on occasion). He poked himself into a patchwork of other people’s business, and he grew increasingly drunk as he bought gin and ale for shady men sitting in shady corners.
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