by Dudley Pope
No, the trumpeter was not sounding an alarm: he had stopped at what was the end of a tune and was not blowing again. Obviously an alarm would be repeated and picked up and passed on by the other forts.
Now Secco had disappeared from sight round the eastern side of Triana and Ned remembered the Spaniard saying that the path was narrow there and the men hauling the guns would have to be careful not to get wheels mired in the swamp which began on the landward side. Now he saw the last of the men in armour…now the first team was hauling the leading falcon…now the second… That was Saxby on the swamp side of the track making sure that the guns were being hauled along as fast as the men.
Ned waited, knowing that the rest of the buccaneers were crouching behind him on the side of the track away from Portobelo, out of sight of anyone just below. Thomas whispered: “Secco will soon have the ladies rushing out with mugs of wine for him!”
And, Ned prayed, as the idea came to him, no one will notice me walking behind the troops and in front of the guns. Aurelia and Diana must be only a few miles short of the entrance to Portobelo; Jensen and his boats will be hiding just down there.
He had to be ready, in fact, to take command the moment everything went dreadfully wrong and San Gerónimo’s garrison discovered that the newly arrived “Spanish” troops who they must assume were a partial replacement for the men sent to Jamaica were in fact buccaneers in search of the bullion they guarded.
“Take command here!” he told Thomas and before the startled man had time to protest, Ned was striding along the track, his throat rasping from the dust. Soon he was looking up at the great walls of Triana, black against the sky which was now merging from grey into a very pale blue.
It was difficult not to break into a run. If anything was going to go wrong, he wanted the great guns on the battlements of Triana and San Gerónimo and the Iron Fort firing as soon as possible to warn Aurelia, giving the ships a chance to get out.
Once again he could see the last of the men in armour. Their back plates, smooth and shiny, moving in unison, made them look in the distance like an iguana as Secco led them in a curve towards the enormous square black cavern that was San Gerónimo’s gate. No, the gates were not open, but there was a small door on one side. Just what one would expect, in fact.
Secco had reached it – and stopped. Now he took a step backward and something metallic flared in the poor light. Now another man was standing in front of him, a man who had come through the door. A sentry? Yes, and the man’s stance was of someone being servile: Secco, plume waving in his helmet, would be acting the arrogant hidalgo, stamping a booted foot and demanding to know why the castle gate was shut against him.
Chapter Fifteen
“Orders?” Secco snapped at the sleepy sentry. “Whose orders? You are expecting us, so – what are you mumbling? Murcia – you come from there? What an atrocious accent it is.”
“Orders, sir?” the sentry stammered. “I’ve had no orders to open the gate. In fact, my orders are to keep them locked and barred!”
“Fetch your commanding officer!” Secco said coldly. “This is an insult. An important reinforcement for the garrison and we are kept waiting outside the castle like…like beggars seeking a crust!”
Again the man mumbled. “He’s not here?” Secco repeated, pretending disbelief. “Where is he? Oh, he went to Jamaica too, did he? Well, who is in command? How many men are there here?”
While the sentry paused, obviously trying to sort the questions out, Ned ambled along the column of men as though he was an idle onlooker, and stopped within earshot of Secco.
“The sergeant is in command of the guard, sir,” the sentry said carefully, and Ned appreciated Secco’s comment about the man’s accent.
“Well, who is in command of the castle?”
“There’s no one superior to the sergeant, sir, more is the pity: he is a Madrileno and behaves like a general. Like the Viceroy,” he amended.
“How many men are you, then, under this miserable sergeant?”
“Twenty-five sir. The sergeant, two corporals and twenty-two men sir. The captain is in Triana; he’s got his quarters and his office there and refused to move over here when the rest sailed for Jamaica.”
Secco swore violently, as though at last his patience was exhausted. “Come on now, get these gates open and turn out the guard: you know the respect due to an officer!”
Secco knew he had just taken a big gamble. Would this fool of a sentry obey the two orders in the sequence they were given, to open the gates and then turn out the guard, or would he first run for the sergeant, who – well, there was no point in speculating!
The man, bewildered, paused just long enough for Secco to exclaim impatiently: “The gates, man, the gates!”
The soldier ran back through the small door and a moment later there was a thudding as heavy wooden beams were removed, then the metallic clank of bars. Finally, groaning as though it was in agony, one of the great gates began to swing outwards, the condition of the hinges revealing that it was opened perhaps thrice a year. Then, with Secco thumping the scabbard of his sword impatiently against his left boot, the other gate swung back.
Secco noted that the guardroom was on the right-hand side of the gateway, and immediately gave the order for his men to march, effectively cutting off the sentry from the guardroom until all the troops and the guns had passed into the large courtyard round which the high walls of San Gerónimo were built.
The puzzled sentry, barred from his sergeant, who must be sleeping soundly, helped no doubt by a mug of rumbullion, stood to attention and saluted. Secco returned the salute and six minutes later the men in armour and the guns were all inside the castle. By then a dozen men led by Secco were forcing the sentry to lead the way into the guardroom.
Then suddenly Thomas was leading the buccaneers into the castle, the flamboyant chief of a band of beggars.
“Shut and bar the gates!” Ned ordered, and the two massive structures creaked closed again. San Gerónimo was enormous, and Ned realized that as far as the buccaneers were concerned the only way in was indeed the one they had just taken: through the gates. The walls must be fifteen or twenty feet thick, carefully carved interlocking stone, the work of masons, not a crude affair flung up by slaves.
A bellow in Spanish from a door beside the guardroom had Ned and Thomas wheeling round and drawing their swords. A moment later a large plump man with enormously long, curving moustaches, a sword in one hand and a main-gauche in the other, wearing only breeches, his chest bare and curiously hairless in contrast to his moustaches, barefooted and without hose, rushed out and came to an abrupt stop as he stared first at the muzzle of a pistol being levelled at him from a yard away by a buccaneer then at the column of cannon standing in the courtyard with men in Spanish armour moving round them. Then he saw the group of buccaneers.
Guessing that this must be the sergeant, who had probably been occupying an officer’s room during its owner’s absence in Jamaica, and knowing that Secco and his heavily-armed men would be securing the rest of the guard, Ned watched him. The buccaneer with the pistol was grinning, enjoying the near stalemate and baiting the sergeant with French obscenities.
The sergeant seemed to be growing smaller, deflating like a bladder with a tiny hole. His moustaches looked as though they were wilting. Then Ned realized they were protected by moustache cups fitting over the bristles like horns slipped over thinner horns, and secured by a line from the tip of each going round the back of the neck. The sergeant’s wrath and then fear had somehow made the line slip, so that the unsupported cups now gave the moustaches – normally waxed when on parade – a defeated droop. The sergeant’s behaviour reminded Ned of a large dog that began barking fiercely and growling but ended up wagging its tail and seeking a pat on the head.
There was yelling from the guardhouse: several voices were shouting in agitate
d Spanish. Suddenly there was silence and Secco strolled out, saw Ned and Thomas watching the buccaneer and the sergeant, and said: “All the guard are secured except this one, the sergeant.”
“Send half a dozen men aloft to the top of the walls to keep a look-out – your men, in armour. Let them be seen. Keep the rest here as a reserve. Saxby!”
He had bellowed the name, but the Phoenix’s captain and the former foreman of the Kingsnorth estate was standing just behind him, obviously waiting for orders.
“Ah, round up your men and be ready to follow us. Secco, persuade that sergeant that we need the key to the cells, or dungeon, whatever he calls it. Calabozo, isn’t it? In fact make him collect the key and show us the way down.”
Thomas chuckled happily. “I can hear those ingots dropping with a nice thud on to our decks and the coins, pieces of eight in canvas bags, will make a satisfying clink…”
“We haven’t found them yet!”
“We will, though. Most of the men have already spent their share of the purchase – in their imaginations, anyway!”
Secco was prodding the sergeant with a main-gauche and speaking to him with a quietness that contradicted the movement. It was almost completely light now and Ned could see the absurd line holding the moustache cups. One cup had just slipped off, leaving the other still in place so that one side of the sergeant looked startled and the other sad. He now lurched rather than walked to the door of his quarters, with Secco following him. A minute later both came out again, the sergeant holding a large key.
“This way,” Secco told Ned, gesturing to a door across the courtyard.
The trumpet blaring out high above them on the battlements again took them by surprise but there was no mistaking the call: it was an alarm, a call to arms, which would reach Triana and San Fernando and, on a morning like this, probably the Iron Fort at the harbour entrance.
The Griffin! Aurelia, and the Peleus and Diana!
For a few seconds Ned froze. As soon as the garrison in the Iron Fort heard San Gerónimo’s trumpeter sound the alarm, they would look seaward: a minute or two later even the most stupid or panic-stricken of them, seeing twenty-eight ships sailing up to the entrance, would start loading the cannon.
Two of Secco’s Spaniards with drawn swords were already running up the stone stairs leading from the courtyard to the battlements, while to Ned the trumpet became louder, its urgent notes seeming to bounce back from the mountains, race round the rooftops of Portobelo and echo the length of the anchorage so that the very walls of the forts trembled: how could a trumpet be so loud? Then it died away in mid-note, the last air in the trumpeter’s lungs turning into a scream of pain. A man shouted down from the battlements, waving a bloodstained sword, and Secco translated. The trumpeter had apparently just sighted the buccaneers down in the courtyard and sounded the alarm without waiting for orders – a piece of initiative, Secco commented, that had ended his life on a sour note.
Jensen would hear and recognize the warning, and he and his boats would stay hidden. But the ships… The thought of Aurelia was paralysing: if she was early and leading the squadron into the anchorage this very minute, too far off to have heard the trumpet…
Now, damnation, there was a thundering at the side door which was set in the gates. “Saxby, take twenty men and that sergeant and search the dungeons for the bullion! Secco, I need your Spanish – who is that hammering at the door? Thomas – up on the battlements. If you see any of our ships coming round the headland, start firing cannon: the women will know what that means. Take some powder from the falcons. And no damned slow-match lit – oh,” he exclaimed, noticing the thin wisp of smoke rising in the almost windless air beside Thomas. “When did you light that?”
“While you were marching after Secco. Remember, the three golden rules, Ned: keep your powder dry, a slow-match lit and your women well fed and ill clothed. I’m off!”
With that Thomas ran for the stairway, calling to a dozen of his men to follow and sending others for powder.
Now Secco was standing there. “The captain, a sergeant and three men from Triana are at the side door asking what the alarm is.”
Ned thought carefully. At the moment he controlled San Gerónimo. Three more forts to go. The idea had worked so far. Now for a new one. If Thomas could keep the ships out of the anchorage, it might succeed. Quickly he gave his orders to Secco, who grinned and nodded and hurried back to the door, beckoning to half a dozen of his men.
He flung the door open with an extravagant gesture, invited the men outside to come in. They stepped through, the captain carefully, so that the tip of his ornate sword scabbard did not clang on the sill of the doorway, the others lowering their halberds.
Once they were all inside the courtyard, looking round and obviously bewildered, Secco spoke rapidly and the captain looked behind him to find that four wheel-lock pistols were indeed aimed at them from a range of about six feet, held by soldiers – Spanish soldiers, apparently – who had been hidden behind the door when it was open.
While the new prisoners were being disarmed, Secco spoke quickly to Ramirez, who nodded a couple of times, asked a single question and as soon as it was answered pulled open the door and vanished outside. Secco looked round again and waved to Sanchez, who hurried over, was given more orders, and followed Ramirez out of the door.
Secco came over to Ned. “That’s a start, sir,” he said, and the Spaniard realized that it was the first time he had called a man “sir”, or its equivalent in any language, for many years.
“Find out from that captain how many men there are in each of the forts.”
“I have. Fifteen in Triana, twenty in San Fernando, and thirty-five in the Iron Fort, counting everyone except the whores.”
“Thirty-five in the Iron Fort, eh. Allowing five to a gun, they could have seven guns turned on our ships…”
Ned admitted to himself that the thought was disloyal to the Brethren of the Coast, who had so recently elected him their admiral, but at this moment he would trade all the treasure of the Indies for the safety of Aurelia and Diana, and Mrs Judd in the Phoenix.
The Iron Fort: how did one capture a powerful fort at the other end of the harbour? One and a quarter miles away… Only one thing would travel that distance, he thought bitterly, and that’s bluff. And it might work, too! “Yes?”
It was Saxby, pale-faced and perspiring, his hands trembling. Ned had never seen him in this condition. Was Thomas dead, killed by that trumpeter? No, that could not be.
Thomas was up on the battlements while Saxby had been down to the dungeons.
“Pull yourself together man! What’s the matter?”
“It’s all down there, sir,” Saxby said shakily. “Great blocks of silver, bags and bags of pieces of eight, sacks of doubloons… It’s what we’re looking for, sir. Oh my Gawd, it’s the riches of El Dorado!”
Ned ignored the man’s excitement and asked crisply: “Have you left a guard on it? Those men have locked the dungeons again?”
“There’s just one lock, large. Yes, locked it and nineteen of them are down there guarding the key!”
“Five should be enough for that: tell them to stay down there with the key. I need the others up here as guards.”
With the colour coming back into his cheeks, Saxby hurried down to the dungeon again. Ned signalled to Secco and talked with him for three or four minutes, but even before they had finished there was a banging at the door and muffled shouts. As Secco signalled to his men to open the door, he explained quickly: “The rest of the Triana men!”
The door flung open and more than a dozen men rushed in, paused as they looked round, and then stood rigid as Secco snapped an order. They turned their heads slowly as the door closed to confirm they were indeed covered by pistols, and quickly dropped pikes and pulled swords from scabbards and threw them to one side.
Two of the buccaneers collected up the weapons and Secco said: “We need somewhere to lock up the prisoners: there’s hardly any more room in the guardhouse, and…”
“Quite. Well, let’s lock them in the dungeon along with the bullion: they can’t destroy it!”
Secco started laughing. “No better place!”
“Very well, have some men march them down, but keep the guards at the door because –”
He broke off as shouting outside and bangings on the side door announced new arrivals. Once again Secco gave the signal and waited while the San Fernando garrison rushed in, responding to an urgent call said to be from the garrison commander of San Gerónimo and relayed by Ramirez, who had explained that he was part of the reinforcements just arrived from Panama during the night. The garrison were wildly excited over the trumpet call and disappointed that Ramirez had not known exactly what the emergency was.
The door shut quickly behind them as they looked round, finally fixing their gaze on the black-bearded captain in armour who was standing in front of them. The captain said something and then repeated it, and like the others they looked over their shoulders into the muzzles of pistols, dropped their pikes, threw aside their swords and stood very still.
“I’ll have these taken to the dungeon first,” Secco said.
“Saxby’s down there bringing all but five of his men up. You’d better tell him to leave all his men down there as guards. Twenty – that should be enough.”
“I’ll look at the lock, sir,” Secco said, giving a string of orders to the men who had been opening and closing the door and covering the prisoners with pistols.
Just then Ned saw Thomas coming down the steps and he told Secco to wait.
“No sign of the ships, and no sign of life at the Iron Fort,” Thomas reported. “I saw a couple of our men going to visit our nearest neighbours, and then the neighbours came to call.” He waved at the prisoners. “We’re getting quite a collection!”