Pirates!

by Celia Rees

  He was coming at her, low to the ground, cutlass drawn. She threw away her pistol and drew her blade. A cutlass is a clumsy weapon made for slashing, not sword play. My own arms and hands twitched to be fighting for her. I was better with a sword than Minerva, but she was quick on her feet, dancing about Limster, dodging rather than parrying his blows. She was following Pelling's advice, pushing him towards softer sand with her back to the sea, the rising sun on the water making it harder for him to see her clearly. The morning was warming. Limster was coxcomb red, sweating from the heat and exertion, and the rum of the night before. Beads formed on his forehead, dropping into his eyes, making him shake his head like a bull bothered by flies. Minerva kept skipping in and out of his line of vision, keeping him off balance, turning him around and back again.

  'Keep still, damn you!' He was losing his temper. 'Stand and fight like a man!'

  Wait, wait your moment. I mouthed the words. Get under his guard. Wait. Wait.

  He lunged and missed. She leaped away, but he came back at her, sweeping his cutlass in a great arc. The edge caught her shoulder. Blood bloomed, soaking her sleeve in seconds. I could feel the numbness in my own arm.

  'First blood! That's an end to it,' Graham shouted, stepping forward, bag in hand.

  The fight ended with first blood drawn. Limster had won. Those were the rules, but the big man showed no sign of laying his weapon aside. He came at a run, cutlass raised, ready to cleave Minerva in two.

  'I'll kill him!' I was screaming, reaching for my own weapon.

  Graham dropped his bag and reached for his pistol. 'Hold!' he yelled. 'One step more and I'll shoot!'

  Limster was like a bull charging: he had no intention of stopping; but our shouting distracted him and then he stumbled, catching his foot on a root, or piece of driftwood, half hidden in the sand. It was the chance that Minerva wanted. He twisted, trying to save himself, but he was off balance and pitching forward. She lunged, catching him under his raised cutlass arm. Her thrust met his weight falling towards her, pushed the blade up to the hilt, right through to his heart.

  Graham cut Minerva's sodden shirt sleeve away, stanched the blood and cleaned the wound with rum, before stitching the gaping edges together and binding her arm with strips of linen. Minerva did not cry out once. She was carried from the beach between Duffy and one of his crew. Graham gave her a draft of rum, which she choked on, but which seemed to revive her, and she leaned against my shoulder as the oarsmen pulled away from the shore.

  Pirate justice is swift and final. Limster had behaved without honour, so he was left where he lay, his blood seeping into the sand.

  34

  'It's a deep cut. To the bone,' Graham said as we laid Minerva in my cot in the cabin. 'But it's clean and I dare say she'll live. I'll give her opium to make her sleep. If you could help me?' I held her up while he dropped the tincture on to her tongue. 'Now she needs to rest. She does not need you hovering over her. Come.'

  He led me out to the great cabin and bade me sit down there with him.

  'You laid a heavy duty on me today, you and Minerva. How d'you think I would feel if I had to attend either one of you, dead or dying?' He sighed. 'I went to Broom, but even he could do nothing to stop the fight you got yourselves into. This is no life for you. You should not be having to do with scum like Limster. Belonging to nowhere, and to no one. A life of endless wandering that's all risk and no gain, with a rope at the end. What is the point of it?'

  He did not need an answer. He was talking as much about himself as he was about us.

  'I'm thinking of leaving the account,' he went on. 'I'm tired of seeing young men killed and maimed, of patching up torn bodies only to watch the wounds corrupt, knowing there's nothing I can do. I have more than enough now to set up a practice. In London, Edinburgh. Anywhere. Somewhere I can start anew and where no one will know me, or my history. It is only loyalty to Broom that keeps me here. And you.' He turned to me. 'Come back with me, Nancy. You can pass as my daughter.'

  'I cannot. I will not leave without Minerva. Especially not now. She risked her life to save mine. I cannot desert her.'

  'She could come with you.'

  'What as?' I looked at him. 'My slave? My servant? She would not do it, and I will not ask her. You know what life would be for her in England, the slights and insults that she would suffer, the assumptions people would make. I fear we are destined to roam for ever.'

  'I hope not. Truly, I do. What of your young man, William?'

  'After what happened on the Eagle?' I shrugged. 'He thinks me a pirate. I've given up all hope of him.'

  'But he knows the circumstances, the reasons for you taking up this way of life?'

  I nodded.

  'Well, then if he really loves you, that will make no difference.'

  'He might be dead for all I know.'

  'And he might not. Never give up hope, my dear.' Graham leaned forward and put his hand on mine as if he really were my father. 'Never give up hope. I told you that before.'

  'When will you leave?' I asked, wishing to change the subject away from William and me.

  'As soon as I can.'

  'Have you told Broom?'

  'Not yet. But he knows my thinking.'

  I could see Graham's mind was made up, so it would be no good pleading, but I had grown very fond of him and I would sorely miss his company. I was about to tell him as much, hoping to persuade him to stay a little while longer, when Broom came in with Pelling, as out of temper as I'd ever seen him.

  'See this.' He snapped his fingers and Pelling handed him a piece of paper. 'It's a round robin.' He flattened out the folds to show names written down in a circle. 'A craven compass of cowardly conspiracy.' He turned the paper round with his finger. 'I'll have every bastard on it off this ship.'

  He called ship's company and held up the paper to them.

  'This here is a round robin. So designed so none can be found out as leader.' He looked around. 'Well, you can forget all that. Every jack who signed it, every name upon it, can sling his hook. With the exception of him lying dead on yonder shore.'

  'Vote!' a few desperate voices called.

  'Vote! Aye. Let's vote on it!'

  'A vote! A vote! Oh, by all means!' Broom grinned. 'Oh, most certainly! Who votes to keep these scumsters on board?'

  Not a hand was raised.

  'Now! Like I said – haul your gear or, by God, I'll throw the lot of you to the sharks!'

  The men who had put their names to the round robin withdrew. Pelling was all for getting rid of Low's whole crew, but Broom did not agree, and neither did the men. We needed them. Fewer men meant more work for everyone else. Pelling had a particular aversion to the band of musicians who had sailed with Low, and argued that they were the least necessary.

  Their leader, Hack, stood up, much aggrieved. He was a tall, gangling, saturnine man with an easy way about him. He always had his fiddle by him. It was part of him, like an extension of his arm.

  'How fair is that, shipmates?' he asked the company. 'We ain't put our names to no round robin, and who don't like a little entertainment in the evening when the work is over, or a little tune to ease the graft of the day?' Hauling on ropes, turning the capstan, were all done to a rhythm. Music made this kind of labour much easier. Hack plucked the strings of his fiddle, letting the instrument speak for him. Croker, another of the musicians, joined in on a tin whistle which he kept in his top pocket. The duet earned them a round of applause.

  The men voted for the musicians to stay. The ship's company had spoken and the jigs and reels started up in earnest. Pelling muttered that no good would come of it, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  'Business ain't finished!' Broom roared over the ruckus. 'These men can stay, if that's what you want, but there has been enough irregularity on board this ship. You,' he turned to me, 'and Minerva will revert to female attire. Carry out no more duties. And you keep out of the sun. I want you looking like a lady, not a Barbary pirat
e. The rest of you,' he looked them over. 'Smarten up! Officers should look like officers, men like sailors, not harbour scum!'

  'We don't have no officers!' someone shouted.

  'We do now. Mr Halston, Mr Duffy, Mr Phillips, you are now ship's officers. You will all remove to the ward room and keep to the quarterdeck. And that lad there. What's your name?'

  'Tom Andrews, Sir.' He stepped forward. He was in his early twenties, but looked younger, with a cap of bright curly hair and fair skin. Being singled out had brought the colour up into his cheeks.

  'And what's your history?'

  'I'm a navigator, sir. Taken by Low off the Hopewell, an East Indiaman, on my first voyage out for the company.'

  He gave a rueful grin and received a rippling laugh of sympathy. He had been kept by Low for his skills.

  'Well, you'll do,' Broom said. 'At least you look like a gentleman, and we need a young 'un. So you'll join 'em.'

  Eyes went to Pelling. He wasn't named and he was normally quick to feel a slight, but he was standing by mild as milk. It meant that Broom had a plan, another scheme up his sleeve, and Pelling was in on it; but they weren't telling the rest of us yet.

  'Mr Pelling, you will get this floating midden shipshape. 'Look at this!' He kicked at a pile of badly-coiled rope, and scraped a fingernail at the crusted salt of the rail. 'This ship should be clean. Tidy. You should be able to eat off the deck.' He looked us over. 'Anyone want to try it?'

  The planks were sticky with tar and salt, whiskery with caulking popping out from between the planks. No one volunteered.

  'Thought not. I want that deck holystoned until it's as smooth as satin. Get to it as soon as we are rid of these mutinous bastards.'

  The men groaned. Holystones were so called because they were roughly the size of Bibles. They slid on a mix of sand and water and I was suddenly glad that Broom had said I had to be a lady. Scrubbing the decks was hard on the hands, as well as being back breaking work.

  'Aye, aye, Cap'n.' Pelling took his orders as meek as a midshipman. 'What are you going to do with them lot what signed the round robin?'

  'They got a choice. They can go and join their mate on the shore and shift for themselves, or they can join the sharks overboard. It's more choice than they'd have given us. Make no mistake about that. We've wasted enough time on them already. Make sail!'

  All the gold and the silver too, that ever did cross sea...

  35

  Now a respectable merchant ship, we continued along the Guinea coast towards the Bight of Benin. Vincent came aboard for a consultation with Broom and Pelling and to see how Minerva was doing, but after that, we hardly saw him. We could not be seen to be sailing in convoy, so Vincent had been told to keep his distance. We put into several places to trade for supplies and that was a chance for us to meet up again.

  Native traders drove through the surf offering slaves, just as bumboats row out in a harbour to show their wares. Broom was not there to buy slaves, but he did not dismiss the traders out of hand. He questioned them, and he bought one man, a big Kroo called Toby who spoke many languages and knew the shoals and currents of that treacherous coast. He was freed as soon as the trader disappeared and became very close with Broom. They spent much time closeted together, poring over charts and hatching plans.

  Vincent was trading on his own account. Men had been taken from the Swift Return to replace the mutineers on the Fortune, so he had to find a crew. He began to buy from the slave traders. Many on our ship thought he was sun-touched. Most of the blacks had never even seen the sea before; what kind of sailors would they make? It would be better to sell them off to the next slave ship that passed.

  'He'll never teach 'em!' Spall, one of the topmen, summed up the general opinion. 'Easier to teach a monkey!'

  'Oh, I don't know,' Minerva replied smoothly. 'Sailing can't be that hard. You learned, didn't you?'

  Minerva's arm was healing well, helped by our new idleness. We kept to the main cabin and set about making ourselves into women again. I softened my hands with a kind of rich nut butter Toby had bought from a native trader, and Minerva put the pulp of pineapples on my face, a beauty treatment used by black servants to keep their mistresses white in tropical sun. It was strange to wear women's clothes again. Skirts caught round my legs, and when Minerva tightened my corset, I thought I would not be able to breathe. Minerva groomed my hair for hours, combing out knots and tangles, and I did the same for her. My hands softened and my nails grew so that I could shape them.

  The men became used to the new ship's rules. They had all been regular sailors once and remembered how to behave as such. The officers went about their duties, smart and sober. Broom hoisted English colours, and as we sailed on we gradually became what we appeared to be: an honest British trading vessel, out of Bristol, bound for India, but doing some trading along the way.

  We cruised the coast, passing the forts held by different nations to protect their own interests and to act as centres of trade. Slaves were brought there from inland to await collection, along with elephants' teeth, gold dust, gum and spices, the produce of the country. The forts were stuffed full of riches, according to Broom.

  'And gold.' His brown eyes glinted as if he were already seeing it. 'Gold is kept there to pay for goods coming in, goods going out, and everyone using the fort is taxed.'

  His plan was bold and ambitious. With Toby's help, he'd chosen his target carefully: a fort made of mud and brick which lay on an island in the mouth of one of the great rivers that flowed into the Bight of Benin. Toby was well acquainted with the place, having traded slaves there and acted as interpreter, and having been tricked by the governor and sold down the coast as a linguist. He knew the layout of the fort and how many men would be guarding it. He knew the nature of their lives: their fear of the hundreds of slaves kept captive in barracoons, their equal dread of disease that breathed from the tangled mangrove swamps, creeping across to them on cold clammy fogs. Many of the white men sent there were dead within months. The rest tried to fight off malaria and guinea worm by spending their time drinking and seeking the company of native women.

  The fort had changed hands many times, but it presently flew the Union flag. A new governor had been sent by the Royal Africa Company to restore order and prosperity, but seemed intent on trading on his own account and lining his own pockets.

  'It will be clear sailing, gentlemen. And ladies,' Broom grinned at Minerva and me sitting prim in our dresses. 'We will just go in there and take it. The fort is stuffed with gold, according to Toby, and poorly manned. No match for two well-armed pirate ships. Not that we'll be presenting ourselves as such, of course.'

  We sailed into the small harbour, making fast under the fort. Broom ordered most of the crew below. Too many men on deck might proclaim us a pirate. The schooner had passed us in the night and was already at anchor, but no signal went between us. It was important that we seemed strangers to each other.

  Broom ordered out the boat with six men in her, all dressed in ordinary blue jackets. Meanwhile, Halston, Phillips, Duffy and Graham joined the captain on the quarterdeck, all arrayed in their best.

  'Mr Andrews?' Broom called out. 'Care to help my niece down into the boat?'

  Andrews escorted me to the side of the ship. I had put on a fine gown that I had worn in New York and Charlestown, long enough in the sleeve to hide the cutlass scars on my arms. Minerva dressed plain, as a slave. She had agreed to play the part. Just this once, she was clear about that; but to see the fort fleeced of its wealth and all the captives freed, she was prepared to submit to the insult. She would follow behind me, head down, staring rmeekly at the floor. As far as Broom was concerned, the gold was ours already. A woman with the party, a lady, would fool them completely.

  We were met at the landing place by a file of musketeers and escorted to the fort. The governor, Cornelius Thornton, met us with all civility. He bade us sit and share a glass with him. From his complexion I judged that this was not his first of t
he day. He asked us where we were from, and where we were bound, sipped his brandy and listened as Broom rattled off our story.

  'Captain Broom, Sir, out of Bristol. May I present my niece, Miss Danforth? We are bound for India to join my brother. He's setting up in business there, We are doing some trading along the way for gold and gum and elephants' teeth and suchlike things.' Broom regarded the governor in a speculative manner. 'I was wondering, do you have anything of that sort here?'

  Broom can seem the most affable fellow in the world, if not a bit of a fool. Thornton's small colourless eyes narrowed and his pale lips twisted into a thin little smile. He was the kind of man who thinks he knows everything, so he never doubted a word that was said to him. Broom strolled about, gesturing with his hands, talking all the time. The governor stroked his greying beard, his mouth quirking further. He clearly thought that the captain was something of a booby. He asked what wares we had to trade, and Broom told him everything that he thought the fort might be needing. When Thornton asked the price, Broom told him a figure just short of stupid. Thornton nodded and allowed himself a private smirk of triumph, satisfied that he could get what he wanted for as little as possible. He was happy to show us about the fort and did not notice Broom's brown eyes taking in everything, from the number of men on guard, to the weapons on the walls, the wind of the stairs and the disposition of the cannon. He saved the strongroom until last, obviously hoping to awe us with his personal wealth and the fort's importance.

  The vaults were deep under the ground. The air here was cool; draughts flickered the flames of the torches the soldiers held, throwing shadows up the wall. We were close to the trunks, the underground caves that held the slaves, near enough to hear their groans and the clinking of chains. Thornton cocked an ear.

  'That's where the real gold lies. Better than the yellow kind.' He smiled at Broom. 'I've just had a choice consignment from the Congo. They'll fetch an excellent price. I like you, Broom, and I'd be willing to come to an arrangement. Sure I can't tempt you? You wouldn't lose by it.'