The Privateer

by Josephine Tey

  ‘The Governor!’

  ‘Yes, the Governor. And I had such a nice little plan for him. Something that needs to be done and would be of enormous advantage to England, and would cost very little money and practically no lives at all, and what does he do? Nothing! He rebukes me. He will not listen to me.’

  ‘Perhaps he will listen to me,’ said Henry.

  ‘To you?’

  ‘He happens to be my uncle.’

  ‘Your uncle! Holy Saint Michael! is not that a miracle? And you are going ashore to see him now? And you will put my little plan to him—after due interval for rejoicing and rememberings and what not, of course—you will put my little plan to him?’

  ‘If you tell me what the little plan is, Captain.’

  Mansfield’s eye swept round the cabin for the chart-rack. He got up, and after a little search brought a map to the table. He spread it out with his short, square hands and patted it as a man lingers over a favourite possession. Then his stubby forefinger came to rest in the middle of the wide expanse of blue that was the unoccupied ocean. Here, among the cartographer’s decoration of curling dolphins, was a small, lonely island, the only considerable piece of earth between the great half-circle of the Islands and the American mainland.

  ‘Here,’ he said, presenting it as one responsible for its existence, ‘is Santa Catalina. It is a nice little island, quite fertile and good to be lived on. And it was the English who made it like that. It was the English who cleared the trees and planted the fields. Planted the corn and the sweet potatoes and the tobacco. The first white men in all the world to come to the island to live there were the English. And they called it Providence. Puritans, they were; very full of conscience and hard work. But of course the Spaniards did not like that at all. The Spaniards came and flung them out, and it is now a fortified place. A garrison.’ He patted the map again, lovingly. ‘But it is not so fortified as all that. With five hundred men it could be taken—and garrisoned with a hundred. And this time it would not be a few Puritans growing corn. The island, I mean. It would be a pistol pointed at the heart of the Spanish mainland. There it sits, my nice little island, on all the routes across the Caribbean; on all the routes from Central America to Spain. It would be a very great nuisance to Spain not to own my nice little island any longer.’

  ‘And this is the plan you put to my uncle, sir?’

  This is the plan. Captain Morgan, my dear young taker-of-prizes!’

  ‘And he would not entertain the idea?’

  ‘He would have none of it. And you know, strictly between you and me and the backstay, I understand why he says no. He is very new in his great office. He does not want to offend the little men who sit at desks at home in England and make policy and write out orders. But when you go ashore and have seen him and made your greetings and talked over old times, then perhaps you will remember about the nice little island that could be such a very great nuisance to Spain, ‘m?’

  Henry said that indeed he would remember. And the Captain must not judge the Governor by this sole incident. The Governor was no mere pen-and-ink man. He had done many brave things in his time.

  ‘He fought for King Charles until the last hope was gone.’

  ‘So I have heard, so I have heard,’ agreed Mansfield. ‘He is a very fine man, and I am apt to be hasty. I admit it. At my age one does not dawdle when there is much to do. I have lived a long life in the Islands—I know them the way a woman knows the carrot and parsley rows of her kitchen garden—and I have seen Spain make a bloody nonsense of all honest dealing in the Islands. And I would be very happy to see Spain put in her place before I die. Do you know Maracaibo? On the mainland? Maracaibo! Now there is a place where we could hurt them. It is the port of El Dorado, it is—’ He stopped abruptly and cast them an embarrassed sidelong smile, like a child who has been too forward and indiscreet about his own affairs. ‘There I am,’ he said, ‘talking. I have so many schemes that it itches me with annoyance every day of my life that I cannot live for five hundred years.’

  Since this was an echo of Henry’s own attitude to life, he looked on the old man with affection and replenished his glass.

  ‘You have a follower, sir,’ he said.

  ‘I am gratified. Captain Morgan,’ Mansfield said, lifting his glass. ‘I am gratified.’

  He drank, and then said: ‘You have much to do, Captain, and you will be anxious to go ashore. I am grateful to you for sparing the time to entertain me and for listening to an old man so patiently.’

  He waited while Morgan supplied the expected disclaimers as to his decrepitude, and then, collecting Exmeling as one collects an inanimate object, he made his way to the deck and to his boat with the alert vigour that belied his years. When Henry came to know Exmeling better he was to learn that this was the normal reaction of everyone to the existence of little Henrik. Unless someone wanted a wound dressed or a horoscope plotted, no one ever noticed that Exmeling was there. And if anyone had suggested that it would be advisable to pay court now and then to this long-nosed little scribbler who was ‘not very good in a boat’, Henry would have laughed aloud.

  Now, when he had seen Mansfield off to his own ship, he went below to indulge in the delicious business of getting ready to call on Uncle Edward. He was still short of ready cash, and would be until his prizes had been sold after having passed the Court of Admiralty, but he had no less than three suits of clothes to choose from. All made by a London tailor, moreover. The London tailor was very badly wanted by the Law for arson, having, in the heightened exasperation of drink, set fire one night to a rival’s shop. In the sober morning he had fled aboard a sloop and gone down-river with the tide to a new life altogether. He was now sail-maker on the Seville, having been recruited by Jack Morris with the rest of the fresh crew in the South Cays. And so Henry’s new clothes, made out of cloth from the second of his prizes, were fashioned with art by a man in love with his job; a man delighted to be using a fine pair of scissors and delicate thread again.

  Henry tried all the three coats on yet once more before finally deciding on the brocade. He felt in his bones that it was more suitable, perhaps, for an evening party, for an ‘occasion’, than for making a midday call, but he looked so well in it, and it was such beautiful stuff, and so obviously rich, that he could not pass it by for either the snuff-brown cloth or the dark-blue cord. He was debating whether it would be a little showy to wear a jewel in his hat as well as in his scarf, when the Port authorities arrived, and the debate went on in three-quarters of his mind while he dealt with the harbour people in the remaining quarter. The important thing was not what the harbour people thought of his arrival, but what Uncle Edward would think of this Morgan nephew of his; though he did notice in a gratified detachment that the Port people were very polite and respectful.

  In the end practically the whole ship was called in to decide this matter of decoration, including Jack Morris, who had come over from the Seville to talk to Morgan before he went ashore. For it was typical of Henry, who in any matter involving action was so confident that he took no one’s advice and never thought of asking it, that he should swither like a woman over a social detail. In the end he took Jack Morris’s advice and went without any jewel at all, although it almost broke his heart.

  ‘Spanish trinkets!’ Jack said. ‘What would a good English sailor-man want with that sort of thing?’

  So he was rowed ashore, in the dull-green brocade, with his hair freshly curled and scented, and a dashing felt hat with a feather but no jewel. And he was pleasantly conscious of the interest occasioned by his arrival at the steps and of the glances that followed him as he crossed the wharf to the town. The trollops of the port leaned out of their upper windows and greeted him with open approval.

  ‘Ah there, beautiful señor with the green coat!’ they said. ‘Whither away, carissimo? Come up and rest in the cool, chéri.’

  And as he went on without a glance, as befitted a Governor’s nephew: ‘Drop in on your way back, sweet
heart,’ they said.

  He asked a loafer where he could find the Governor, and was told ‘at Kingshouse’. It was no distance at all, but Henry had sighted a notice which said: ‘Equipages For Hire’, and had decided on the instant that to arrive on foot would be unbefitting his new dignity, so he went to inspect the equipages. There were three of them in the little back-yard: a light chaise affair that was too frivolous and feminine for the occasion, a country conveyance with wooden benches, and a coach. The proprietor removed the protecting layers of old sail-cloth from this relic as one exhibiting a piece of the True Cross. From what vanished glories it had come to this distant island, this dusty little Caribbean back-yard, one could not tell; but it was, in spite of the scratched and faded paint and its worn green velvet lining, indubitably a coach. Henry engaged it. The proprietor, impressed by the brocade coat and by the indolence of a gentleman who would not walk or ride as far as the Governor’s house, hurried himself into coachman’s clothes, harnessed a pair of surprised-looking horses, and drove Henry out of the back-yard in style. The loafers of the town touched their hats automatically to the coach, and Henry felt that this was as it should be.

  At Kingshouse a negro ran down the steps to open the coach door, and Henry noticed his fine livery with approval. It was no mean establishment that was kept by the Governor of Jamaica, it seemed.

  ‘I have come to see the Governor,’ he said.

  It would soon be dinner-time, and he saw the man look doubtful.

  ‘I am Colonel Morgan’s nephew,’ he said. ‘Captain Morgan.’

  A smile split the black worried face. ‘Ah, welcome, suh, welcome. The Governor will be delighted. Come in, suh, come in. You wait here one moment, suh, and I will tell his Excellency. Just one little moment, suh. The Governor, he will be so happy.’

  Henry waited in the gloom of the hall, forgetful, now that he was on the threshold, of his fine green coat and his stylish arrival, and aware only that after bitter years he was going to see one of his family again; here at the other side of the world.

  ‘Come, please,’ said the negro’s voice at his elbow. ‘His Excellency so very pleased.’

  The Uncle Edward he had known would have run out to embrace him, he thought; but reminded himself that the King’s representative in Jamaica could hardly do that.

  The servant opened the door of a long, cool room and said: ‘Captain Morgan, your Excellency.’

  Henry walked forward in a strange sudden turmoil, half eager, half afraid. How did one greet an uncle who was also the King’s proxy?

  But the elegant back of the man who was busy at a wall table had no resemblance to the solid rear of stocky, plump Uncle Edward. No resemblance at all.

  The man was pouring wine, but now he turned and came down the room to meet Henry.

  It was Modyford.

  ‘Captain Morgan,’ he said, putting out his hand and taking Henry’s in a warm clasp, ‘I am delighted to see you. Delighted. I had no idea that—’ He paused, and then said in a concerned way: ‘Are you ill, Captain Morgan?’

  ‘No. No, I—. No, thank you, I am not ill.’

  ‘Perhaps it is that you have only now learned of your uncle’s death?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, only now.’

  ‘Come. Come and sit down. I have poured some wine for you. I understand very well how you feel. I have loved few men in my time as much as I loved your uncle. And he did such good work as my deputy—’

  ‘Your deputy?’

  ‘He was Lieutenant-Governor of the island, you know. We worked in such harmony that I cannot face the immediate prospect of having to deal with anyone less sympathetic, and have asked the Government to let the appointment lie vacant for a little. It is not a very necessary appointment, in any case; but that, of course, would not prevent someone from making themselves a highly unnecessary nuisance in it. Have we met before somewhere?’

  ‘I came to you in Barbados to ask for a letter-of-marque against the Spaniards.’

  ‘You are that boy?’ Modyford rose and took a step sideways so that he could see Henry in a better light. ‘But you look much older.’

  ‘I am much older.’

  ‘But why did you not tell me that you were the nephew of your uncle! Of your two uncles, indeed. If you did not think the Royalist one would interest me, there was always Thomas, wasn’t there? Why did you not use that darling of the Commonwealth to enlist my benevolence?’

  ‘I am not very proud of my Uncle Thomas,’ Henry said. ‘Besides, your Excellency had no more proof that I was a Morgan of Llanrhymny than that my prisoners were safe on Tortuga with Elias Watts.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Very true. Your Elias, by the way, is continuing the education of his family in New England.’

  ‘New England will suit Elias very well.’

  ‘Tortuga, it seems, missed the domesticity of his régime. When the French took over, the buccaneers complained so bitterly of the lack of any softening society that d’Ogéron sent for a boatload of women from the houses in France, and housekeeping is now general on the island, I understand.’

  ‘Did my uncle have his family here in Jamaica?’

  ‘Indeed, yes. He had meant to settle here for life. He might be alive now if I had not let him lead the expedition against the Dutch in St Eustatia. But he was so very anxious to go. Soldiering was his métier and his passion. He died of a stroke during the landing, poor kind old man.’

  ‘And his family?’

  ‘He had bought an estate on the island, and they live out there. His widow and the children. The eldest daughter has married a neighbouring estate-owner. A very charming and talented young man, who is a member of the Assembly and commandant, besides, of Fort Charles. Robert Byndloss is his name. The two boys are still young: Charles is at school in England, and little Rupert lives with his mother and the two remaining girls. There were other children, as I suppose you know, but they died of fever during the voyage out. I am afraid that the family have been left in somewhat straitened circumstances, but when Charles comes out from England we shall find him a local appointment, and the girls will no doubt make good marriages. Charming women are scarce in the islands.’

  With the half of his mind that was not engaged with this information Henry was thinking: ‘Uncle Edward spent years in exile on the Continent, and lost his fortune, for King Charles; and he gets a deputy governorship. This man makes a good thing of the Commonwealth, and now lives secure and wealthy as Governor of Jamaica!’

  He became aware that the pleasant voice had ceased and that Sir Thomas was looking at him with a half-quizzical sympathy, and he pulled himself together and got to his feet.

  ‘It was very kind of your Excellency to receive me,’ he said, ‘and to give me the information I wanted about my family. I will not detain you longer.’

  ‘But you will stay and dine with me, of course.’

  ‘Thank you, but I am anxious to see my cousins.’

  ‘You will have too much to do to go out there today.’

  ‘Much to do?’

  ‘A man who brings three prizes into port has a multitude of things to see to.’

  Is there anything that this man does not know? wondered Henry.

  ‘Nevertheless—’ he began.

  ‘You will not find it in your heart to be less generous than your King, I hope, Captain Morgan.’

  ‘Generous?’

  ‘In that little matter of “oblivion”. You have heard of the Act that makes an honest man of me? Indemnity and oblivion are the words. Gratifyingly comprehensive—but not always capable of being put into practice. One can offer a person indemnity, but oblivion sticks its toes in and refuses the fence.’ The cool grey eyes considered him. ‘If I were in your place I don’t know which would stick more uncomfortably in my throat: my refusal of the letter-of-marque, or my present position. Nothing I can say about the letter-of-marque would serve to endear me to you, I am afraid. But it may perhaps please you to know that I am Governor of Jamaica not because anyone at home has any g
reat love for me, but because I know more about the islands than any man alive. Because I made a success of Barbados, and can make the same success of Jamaica. They don’t like the tool in their hands, but it is a very good tool.’

  ‘I think “tool” is an inappropriate term, your Excellency.’

  ‘Dinner is served, your Excellency,’ said the servant’s voice behind them.

  ‘I said that oblivion came hard,’ Modyford said, smiling a little. ‘But unless you utterly refuse to eat my salt—we will not count the wine, since you were so obviously in need of it—unless you refuse point blank to break bread with me, I hope that you will stay and dine. I am alone these days, because my wife has not yet come back from England. I sent my eldest son, John, for her; but unfortunately he sailed in the Griffin. And so there is further delay.’

  And suddenly the hot, hard lump that had been in Henry’s chest melted and something like awe took its place. He felt small and inadequate. He remembered Modyford’s face as he had looked at his son that first day at the Dolphin. His face had softened, had been almost illuminated, in his son’s company. And now he could say: ‘And so there is further delay.’ As if it were a matter of a lost rudder. The Griffin had been lost in the Florida channel on her way home. She had disappeared without trace, but it was freely rumoured in the islands that the Spaniards had sunk her. Indeed, Henry had met men who professed to know all the details of her battered end. And ‘my eldest son John’ had gone into oblivion with her, and Modyford dined alone because there was ‘further delay’.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Henry, ‘I shall be pleased to dine with your Excellency.’

  ‘Good,’ said Modyford quietly. ‘Good.’

  And he led the way into dinner, talking serenely in that dispassionate voice of his.

  And presently a new thought seeped into the awe that held Henry in thrall. If the Spaniards had indeed killed Modyford’s much-loved son, then the ingredient that had been lacking in Modyford’s attitude to Spain was now supplied: the personal element. That might alter a great many things. Tack and sail-trim as he might, a man carried his heart about with him.