Pirate Freedom

by Gene Wolfe

  Both men and women wore nose rings, and the status of the wearer could be judged by them. The rings of the poor ones were silver and narrow. Wealthier ones wore wider silver rings. For still richer Kunas, the ring was gold. The ring of chief was gold, and so wide he had to lift it with one hand to eat and drink.

  There were a number of white women Kunas, blonder women than any American I ever saw. Their eyes were blue, and their hair hardly yellower than ivory. Capt. Cox, who knew the Kuna better, I think, than anyone else, told me once that these white Native Americans could see better in the dark than by day, like owls. They were of all ranks, as far as I could see, some having narrow silver rings, and a few broad gold ones. The women who were better off, both the blondes and the black-haired women, wore necklaces and bracelets of beads.

  We gave the chief a good many gifts, which he parceled out among his people. When I heard there was to be an exchange of gifts, I expected junk jewelry, but we did not have any. We gave him steel axes, hatchets, knives and needles, as well as some copper pots that had been polished bright. In return we got gifts of fresh meat, fruit, and cornmeal. That may not sound like much, but you should have seen us eat.

  This chief was a tall man, elderly but still strong-looking. He wore a crown of rushes bound with a gold band. We called him the king and said "Your Majesty" when we talked to him. His robe was a loose smock of cotton hardly thicker than cheesecloth that I would think must originally have been a woman's retiring gown. It had been embroidered just about everywhere with red and black thread. The designs were probably significant to him and his people, but to me they were only meaningless shapes of various colors, except for a big red-and-black cross.

  He had many wives and what seemed like at least two dozen daughters. Seeing these, Novia informed me in no uncertain terms that she was sticking close to me when we marched. I countered by ordering her to remain on the Sabina, and swore that I would flog her if she disobeyed. She said that I could beat her if I liked-she could not prevent me-but she would come no matter how cruelly I punished the love she bore me.

  I countered, of course, by saying that if she truly loved me she would trust me with the chief's daughters or any other woman on earth.

  She replied to that one by threatening to kill herself if I left her behind. And so it went.

  The next day the chief asked that she be undressed for his inspection, as he had never seen "English woman." That decided me.

  I took her back to the ship and chained her in our cabin by an ankle, giving the key to Bouton. "Turn her loose three days after we march," I told him. "For as long as she's chained up, you're in command. When you unchain her, she is."

  "And she will sail home!" Novia screamed. "Never, never will she lay the eye on you again!" After that she cried. I waited until she had finished crying and would talk sensibly before I left her.

  I had expected us to march the next day, but it was spent on plans, preparations, and more eating. Half of each ship's crew was to remain on board. Four days would be enough for us to get behind Portobello. On the fifth, the ships would fake an attack on the fort, drawing any troops that might be in the town to it. We would take the town from the landward side, loot it, and carry our gains east along the coast far enough that they could be loaded onto the ships beyond the range of the Spanish batteries. LAST NIGHT I dreamed it was all happening again. I was back in the jungle and trying to load my lupara before they rushed us, then wandering drenched with sweat and half blinded by bugs through a battle that never ended, looking for my father and knowing that if I did not find him first we would kill each other.

  I do not suppose I dream more often than other men, or that my dreams are more lifelike than theirs. But that dream shook me about as deeply as I can be shaken, and left me so slowly that I wondered whether it would leave me at all. I had eaten lunch and gone out visiting the sick before I was entirely free of it. (If I really am now. It will not be easy to sleep tonight.)

  The dream was clearly due to writing about our attack on Portobello. Writing it woke a bunch of memories-the mosquitoes, the screaming of the birds, the big crocodiles with devil eyes, and Paddy Quilligan getting bitten by a snake and dying almost before anybody could ask what was wrong. Tonight I found a Web site that has quotations. I looked for dreams, and this one is so much like mine (and like what we went through) that for a moment I wondered whether Shakespeare could have been along with us. He was not, and yet he might have been. That, I think, must be why so many people say he is so great. Here it is. Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of healths five fadom deep: and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frightd swears a prayer or two…

  We marched under flags by ship's companies, but all the flags were black. So that each might know his own, differing objects were hung from the flagpoles. Capt. Burt, I remember, used the green bough of some flowering tree, Capt. Cox a Turk's head tied in a rope about thick enough for a halyard, and Capt. Dobkin a dried hand. His men said it was his own hand, that had been cut off when he sailed with Mansveldt. Maybe it was.

  I have never been good at thinking up things like that and knew it would have to be something light, so as not to tire the man who carried the pole. I asked Novia, and she said she had colored ribbons for trimming gowns, and I could have some of those. She was still chained in our cabin, so I said I would unchain her if she would swear with God as her witness that she would not try to go with us. She said she could not keep it, and it was better to be chained than to break a promise made to God. So she stayed chained, and I went off with the ribbons feeling a lot worse than she did.

  Just a minute ago I wrote that there were not really any drums. Then I remembered that there had been, and I had to cross it out. The drums belonged to the Kuna, and three old men beat them. They stayed in the village and drummed for us while we marched out.

  We had almost two hundred Kuna with us, and the king's son to lead them. Each of his men had a spear, a bow, arrows, and a steel knife. I know that there were almost two hundred because I tried to count them. The number kept changing, because one or two would run off or come in. But it was almost two hundred, so call it a hundred and ninety.

  I never really counted our pirates, because there were a lot more. But we had eight ships, and half the crew of each of the eight. Weald, Sabina, and Magdelena were all pretty big, but most of the others were smaller, the two-stick sloops that people who write about Blackbeard and Capt. Kidd call schooners. I am going to take a guess and say the average for each ship was a hundred men. That is fifty men from each ship, or four hundred men in all. I had sixty-seven men under me, and Rombeau and his seventy-two. I would say Capt. Cox had less than forty, and that may have been the smallest. It was probably better than four hundred-four hundred and twenty, or something like that.

  Before we left, Capt. Burt made a little speech. I do not think I remember it well enough to quote it for this record, but one of the things he said was that we did not want any man who did not want to be with us. Any man who wanted to could go back to the ships at any time. Nobody would interfere with him.

  Another thing was that those who could not keep up would be left behind. Nobody would blame them, but nobody would carry them either. They could go back to the ships or try to catch up. That was up to them.

  After the first day, we lost some men both ways.

  The main things I remember about the march are how hot it was and how bad the bugs were. I had been down in the lowland jungles of Hispaniola. I have already written all about that. When I was there, I thought that had to be the worst place in the world for bugs. Darien was every bit as bad, and it seemed to me like Darien was a lot hotter. We greased ourselves to keep them off, and we sweated off the grease and got bitten anyhow. (The Kuna greased themselves just like we did, but they never seemed to sweat as much.) There were big snakes, some of them poison and some not. There were places where you could drink the water, and pl
aces where you could not. The Kuna told us which water was safe, but some of the men drank bad water. It gave them diarrhea. After a while the diarrhea would make them too weak to march.

  Here I ought to say that the Kuna marched in front and we followed them. Capt. Cox marched next, because they knew him better than any of the rest of us, and he knew more of their language than we did. After him, Capt. Burt. And after Capt. Burt, me and the Sabina gang, with Rombeau and his Magdelena gang right behind us. I had given Rombeau some of the ribbons I got from Novia. His were yellow and white, mine red, white, and blue. They reminded me of home, and after a while I remembered that America had fought Spain once and freed Cuba. It made me feel better about what we were doing.

  As far back as I was, it was the third day before I realized the Kuna had women with them. The way I found it out was that when they had found something they thought we ought to know about, good water for example, or a lot of fruit that was good to eat, the chief's son would send a runner back to tell us. This time the news was that they had a Native American from another tribe who had been a slave in Portobello and run away. Only this time the runner was one of the white Native American girls. She spoke enough English, and was good enough with signs, for me to understand that there was somebody new up front the captains might want to talk to.

  I told her she was going to get hurt going to war like this, and she said she was as brave as any man, thumping her chest above her breasts and pretending to draw a bow. It might even have been true. I told her good luck and gave her Paddy Quilligan's little gold cross. (One of the men had taken it off his body before we buried him. We had kept his weapons, but we had not searched his body and I did not think it was right to do it. When I found out that Marais had his cross, I said we did not loot our own dead and took it away from him. It had been too late then to give it back to Paddy.)

  I had only started up the column when one of Capt. Burt's men came. He said I had to come, and I told him I was coming already.

  The thing was that this was a Moskito Native American and the Moskitos did not speak the same language as the Kunas. So he was trying to make himself understood to the chief 's son, and the chief 's son to Capt. Cox, who told Capt. Burt. But he had picked up quite a bit of Spanish while he had been a slave, so Capt. Burt wanted me.

  This Moskito was a tough-looking man without an ounce of fat on him. Capt. Burt had what they called a barber-surgeon with his gang, and this doctor was putting soldier salve on the Moskito's ankle, which looked just awful.

  The first thing he asked me was whether I was Spanish. I said no, English, but I had lived in Cuba awhile. It was the sort of lie that is not a sin, because I was not trying to deceive him, just trying to make it clear where we stood.

  He told me there were many soldiers in Portobello. They stayed mostly at the fort, but now they would send some out to look for him because he had run. I said how many, and he held up five fingers. Capt. Burt and the other captains all agreed that did not sound too bad.

  After that, I asked him about the other soldiers who were not at the fort. Where were they? There was a "wall of logs," he said, to watch the road. They were in there. Many soldiers. He opened and closed his hands to show how many, and if he was right about that it was about fifty. He had gone around this stockade through the jungle. He would show us the way.

  Of course I asked about other defenses, and he said there were not any. The big questions, naturally, were whether the townspeople would fight? And how hard? There were going to be more of them than us, and if they had guns and were willing to use them, we would have a tough time of it. We were counting on their running when we beat the soldiers.

  I talked to Capt. Burt then, mentioning that we could go around the stockade. He said we would have to take it. If we did not, they could hit us from in back when we were looting the town. I said, "Let's leave a couple of dozen men to watch it and shoot at anybody who opens the gate. They won't know how many there are, and I'll bet doubloons to shillings they'll stay in there."

  He shook his head. "We can't risk it. They might fight their way out, or our men might run off to get in on the looting." Which I suppose was right.

  After that I asked the Moskito how he had escaped. He showed me his ankle, which I had seen already. To keep him from running, his owner had kept him chained to a log he had to drag around. After years of that, his ankle had gotten so bad his owner had taken the chain off to put medicine on it. When he did, the Moskito had knocked him down and run, bad ankle and all. If I could write down how bad I felt about Novia when I saw his ankle, I would. I felt like I was the lowest thing on earth, even though I chained her up because I did not want her to get killed.

  To get back to the Moskito, he had seen that some of our men had axes, and he said that if we would lend him an ax he would cut a club and help us kill the Spanish. I told him to come with me and I would give him something a lot better than a club.

  There was a lot more talking before we got moving again, but I will not try to give it all. The important thing was that nobody was sure how far we were from the stockade. It was less than a day's march, but still a pretty good way. We talked about it a lot, and asked questions of the Native Americans, but in the end that was all we really knew. We probably would not get there today, but we might. If we did not get there, we might be pretty close by the time we camped. It bothered me.

  Before I say more about that-I took the Moskito back with me and gave him Paddy's cutlass. He was crazy about it, and we parted about as friendly as a white and a Native American can ever get.

  We camped and ate a little, and lay down hoping the bugs would bother somebody else. I was swatting some and swearing under my breath when it hit me that I was not going to get much sleep anyhow, and it might be better to have a look and see where the stockade was.

  I got up as quietly as I could, told Boucher that Rombeau was in charge while I was gone, and off I went. The Kuna stopped me like I knew they would. When I told them what I was doing, the chief 's son said he would send a man with me. I said no, let them get some sleep. I would not go far, and I would be right back.

  After that I was alone. There were certain animals that were dangerous, and you could always step on a snake that had fallen asleep, but the worst danger was getting lost, and I knew it. I went slowly and carefully, trying to notice bends in the path and trees that might help me on the way back. I kept hoping for a clearing that would let me look up and take my direction from the North Star, but no luck with that.

  When I felt a hand on my shoulder, I about jumped out of my clothes and spun around ready to kill somebody. It was the white Kuna girl I had given Paddy's cross. She sort of flattened herself against me the way girls will sometimes. "Happy see me?"

  I should have said it was too dark to see anything, but I said yes instead.

  "Me show. Keep safe. Come me."

  I swear we crossed the same little creek three times before we got to the Spanish road. After that, we did not have to worry about losing our way anymore because it was too plain for that. The worry was that they would see us before we saw them.

  That did not happen either. We got to the stockade and crept all the way around it. Twice I saw sentries behind the pointed logs. I could have shot one pretty easily, too, and I was tempted to. But it would have been the worst thing I could do. We did not want them to know we were anywhere in their neighborhood until we rushed them.

  I counted my steps when we went back. It was seven thousand two hundred and something. The blond Kuna girl and I kissed twice because she wanted it. She would not tell me her name, saying I had to give her an English name. I said all right, your name is Pinkie.

  I swear, that was all we did.

  26

  Portobello and Santa Maria

  One of my jobs here is to teach religion in the school-I have been doing it to the best of my ability. Perhaps I have mentioned those classes before, but I may not have: the basis of Christian faith is well known, and all the co
ncepts I have taught our children are quite elementary. Their many questions are usually easy and predictable.

  Today we discussed the nature of saints. I emphasized that while all those the Church names as saints are indeed saints, there are many, many others who are saints, too.

  "Saints," I said, "are the friends of God. Everyone who gets to Heaven is a saint. Whose grandparents are dead? Anybody?"

  Several hands went up.

  "If your grandparents are in Heaven-it's quite possible they are-they are saints."

  Tim waved his book. "I don't understand, Father. It talks about Saint John here and what he did. He wasn't in Heaven when he did those things."

  Peggy said, "He was a saint afterward, so they call him that."

  I held up my hand. "What did I say a saint was?"

  Several voices: "God's friend."

  "Exactly. I did not say a friend in Heaven. Anyone who is truly God's friend is a saint. He may not know it-that doesn't matter. If he or she is God's friend, that's all it takes." After that I talked about some saints, the Saint John who baptized Jesus, Saint Lucy, Saint Ignatius Loyola (always a favorite of mine), and Saint Catharine of Alexandria.

  Donald wanted to argue. "If I was to be a saint, Father Chris, would God do stuff for me? Miracles?"

  "He might, but He probably wouldn't."

  "I'd be doing stuff for Him, so why wouldn't He do stuff for me?"

  I said, "He's already brought you into being, Donald. He maintains you in being, and has given you free will. That means He made you free in a profound way that this desk of mine is not, and in a way that no animal can be. He died for you."

  I paused. "Perhaps He might consider that He has already done enough."

  Of course I was asked then whether I was God's friend. I explained that I try to be-and often fail. When I go back to Cuba, will they think that I was not God's friend after all? That is what Bishop Scully will think, I know. Let it not be what I think.