The Privateer

by Josephine Tey

  They talked for a little about the prizes, and how soon they could be sold and the proceeds divided among the needy crews. In the effort to put an end to privateering against Spain, privateers were welcomed into port and no questions were being asked. Communication being slow, it was acknowledged by both sides that a clearing-up could not be the work of a moment, and Henry was to benefit by the general amnesty.

  ‘And your Excellency believes that the Spaniard will suffer a change of heart once our privateers are out of the way?’

  ‘I believe that there is no prosperity for Jamaica as long as this intermittent private war goes on. The Spaniards have done horrible things, but they have been urged to them by a bitter trade rivalry.’

  ‘There is a bitter trade rivalry with the Dutch, I understand; but they don’t murder our men in cold blood, land on unprotected coasts and burn farms, or use innocent prisoners as slave labour on their fortifications until they die in their tracks. Nor do we. What is your Excellency planning to do, for instance, with all the Spanish prisoners that the privateers in harbour have brought in?’

  ‘I am sending them to Cartagena. No, of course we do not do that. We do not even consider an alternative and then choose the kinder course. It quite simply does not occur to us to behave like that. It is a matter of temperament. Spain has lived too long in the sun. Actually and metaphorically. But I think the metaphorical sun is about to desert her.’

  ‘You mean is about to be taken from her. The Spaniards will not give up one cocoa bean of their own accord. Have they offered to give back Santa Catalina to us in return for peace?’

  Modyford paused with his glass at his lips and eyed Henry over the rim of it. ‘My old friend Captain Mansfield has not been wasting time,’ he observed. And Henry relaxed to a smile. It was little use to fight this man; he was always there before one.

  ‘He came aboard the Fortune to welcome me when I came in this morning,’ he said.

  ‘And he said: “That idiot of a Governor will not listen to me, and I have got such a perfect plan, you just wait until I tell you about the beautiful plan for my nice little island!” The old rogue. When I offered him His Majesty’s commission against the Dutch he called me a hired assassin and said that it was wonderful what some men would do for money.’

  ‘It is a very good plan, nevertheless,’ Henry said. ‘No one could say that we have no right to the island of Providence.’

  ‘No,’ agreed the Governor. ‘Our claim to Santa Catalina is uniquely immaculate. But it is also uniquely important to Spain to hold the island.’

  ‘But if Spain happened by mischance to lose it, I take it that your Excellency would not be averse to presenting His Majesty with a piece of recovered territory?’

  ‘Mischance?’ said Modyford gently.

  ‘Misunderstanding, perhaps.’

  ‘There had better be no misunderstanding,’ Modyford said, less gently.

  ‘But you would accept the fait accompli if it did not involve the Government in Jamaica?’

  ‘I should not, but I expect that his Excellency might.’

  ‘What admirable wine your Excellency drinks,’ said Henry.

  6

  The widow of Edward Morgan stood in the shade of the upper veranda and watched Barley Sugar come up the drive with a letter. Barley Sugar’s proper name, as witnessed to by the estate books, was Richard William Baker, but the children, fascinated by his particular shade of brown skin, had long ago changed all that, so that even his mistress, a fanatical pursuer of the proprieties, never referred to him or addressed him as anything but Barley Sugar. Barley Sugar had been sent into Port Royal at the crack of dawn with embroidery silk for matching, but it was conceivable, nay possible, nay probable, that he had come back with something else altogether. Anna Petronilla watched his meandering approach with irritation. Barley Sugar’s method of progression was so haphazard, so vague, so butterfly-like that one was continually surprised that he did arrive at last at any given point.

  A tear of mingled exasperation and self-pity shone in her round blue eye. It was unfair of Edward, poor Edward, to bring her out to this barbaric island and leave her in this ramshackle house in a half-made plantation among a crowd of black slaves away from her friends and her family, with no proper society for the children nor matches for the girls nor education for Rupert nor anything that could be of interest to a well-bred woman and a von Pollnitz. Edward, poor Edward, should have stayed at home and looked after his family, instead of dashing off on military expeditions at his age. How was Rupert to grow up a credit to the Pollnitz side of the family if he had no male control? This morning he had failed to turn up to the lesson about Julius Cæsar she had prepared for him, and she was very much afraid that he had run away to be a pirate, having been excited thereto by the slaves’ gossip that a nephew of Edward’s had turned up at Port Royal with ten prizes and had come ashore dripping with jewels, pistols, doubloons, pieces-of-eight, and similar proceeds of piracy. She hoped that it would occur to him before he went too far that the best way of meeting a pirate was to stay at home and wait for this Morgan nephew of Edward’s to call. It was so like Edward, poor Edward, to have a pirate for a nephew.

  ‘Couba,’ she said, to the shadows behind her, ‘go down and tell Barley Sugar to hurry up.’

  But there was no answer. The moment her back was turned that girl was down below chattering with the other slaves and shrieking with that maniac negro laughter.

  And then the final exasperation was presented to her. Into the distant bright picture that was framed for her by the pillars of the veranda came her daughter Elizabeth on horseback, and neither the distance nor Elizabeth’s voluminous skirts could disguise the fact that she was riding astride. She was indeed riding without any saddle at all, her small feet dangling comfortably in rhythm with the mare’s walk. She was, even more heinous offence, riding without a hat. Out in the full sunlight, ruining her complexion and her chances. What, oh what, had she, Anna Petronilla von Pollnitz, done to deserve a family like this? Why could they not all be like her dear Anna, her eldest, her own second image, her kind blond calm Anna, who had married so well and so early and had a fine estate like Byndloss Place? What estate would come to Elizabeth, who behaved like a stable-boy, or to Johanna Wilhelmina, who spent all her time in front of a mirror being someone out of some play by William Shakespeare? It was unfair of Edward, poor Edward, to leave her with such problems.

  Elizabeth came riding over the grass of the clearing, humming to herself, and went away round to the stables without glancing at the house. So she thinks that I am safe on my bed having my siesta, does she? thought Anna Petronilla.

  ‘Couba,’ she said, as the girl came in with the note that Barley Sugar had delivered, ‘tell Miss Elizabeth that I wish to speak to her immediately.’

  But by the time Elizabeth had presented herself a more immediate interest held her mind. The pirate nephew was coming to call that very afternoon. A most correct letter, it was, on admirable paper. The penmanship a little stiff, she considered, but the sentiment irreproachable. And all the part about Edward, poor Edward, so moving and so full of genuine emotion. Quite unpiratical and a little surprising.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ she said, ‘your cousin Henry, your dear father’s nephew, is coming to pay his respects this afternoon. Please go and put on your green with the violet ribbons, and do your hair again, and rub some cream into your hands and arms, and put a cool cloth on that unbecomingly flushed face. Why were you out without a hat, Elizabeth?’

  ‘It flaps.’

  ‘You will have freckles if you do not take care, and have a face like a bird’s egg. That fair skin that goes with auburn hair always freckles at the least touch of sun. And Elizabeth, you were riding with a leg on either side like a man. Elizabeth, how could you be so indecent!’

  ‘I don’t see anything indecent about it. All women used to ride that way until some silly woman thought of sitting sideways. I expect she could not stay on the other way, if the truth were
known. It is very ugly to sit sideways. The Greek women rode astride their horses.’

  ‘It is what I should expect of them,’ said Anna Petronilla. ‘I absolutely forbid you to go riding again without a proper side-saddle, and I forbid you absolutely to go out without a hat in future. I hope that is clear. Now you will go and make yourself presentable to help me to entertain this cousin of yours. And do not forget the cool cloth on the face.’

  ‘I have not yet had my siesta.’

  ‘If you go riding in the noontime heat you must do without your siesta.’

  ‘And I don’t want to marry a pirate.’

  ‘Marry? Who talks of marry?’

  ‘You do, of course. You hardly ever talk of anything else. There is nothing I do from morning till night, but I must not because it will spoil my chances of marriage. Well, I do not want to get married! I leave marriage to blobs of melted butter like Anna. And I do not like pirates and I do not want to meet my cousin Henry!’

  And with a flounce of her wide skirts Elizabeth ran away to her own room at the other end of the house. The room was all her own at the moment because Johanna was staying with Anna, and she flung herself on her bed and tried to be righteous about the siesta that her mother wanted to deny her, but, being an honest creature by nature, she found this difficult. She had protested too often against the need for siesta to claim an interest in it now. And then she remembered that she had called kind Anna a blob of butter and she laughed a little into her pillow and was sorry. It was not Anna’s fault that her mother was so maddening. But she continued to feel angry and ill-used and antagonistic.

  Then from far away, through the wide-open shutters, came the sound of Rupert’s high treble and a deeper, man’s voice answering his questions. And presently the sound of a horse’s hoofs came up through the afternoon stillness. The aspiring pirate had, it seemed, met a real one and was escorting him home.

  Elizabeth, being in all respects a normal woman, got up instantly from her bed and peeped from behind the shutter. But she was still, of course, unrelievedly antagonistic.

  ‘What a spectacle!’ she said, looking down at her cousin. ‘Wasn’t there anything else he could hang on himself! What a sight!’ And she went resolutely back to her couch.

  ‘But do you think that Julius Cæsar is much of a help to a sailor?’ Rupert said, as they walked up to the front steps.

  ‘Is that what you ran away from?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Yes. I don’t think, you know, that Mother understands Cæsar very well. Perhaps if I was to take your horse round to the stables you would go in first and—and make my peace with Mother?’

  ‘I don’t know that that would be a very good idea.’

  ‘It wouldn’t? Oh.’

  ‘Not very grown-up.’

  ‘Oh. What—what would be a grown-up thing to do?’

  ‘I think it might be courteous to go in and apologise to your mother for running away from Julius Cæsar.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And meanwhile I shall get a servant to take my horse round. And when I come in you will be friends again, and you can present me to your mother.’

  ‘Yes, of course; I can present you! I was the first to know you of us all, wasn’t I?’

  It would be difficult to say which surprised Anna Petronilla more: the elegance of her younger son’s apology to her, or the elegance of her piratical nephew by marriage. It was a somewhat over-dressed elegance, she noted, but she had herself a liking for richness and excess, and was not repelled, as her more austere daughter had been, by a suggestion of flamboyance.

  And nothing could exceed the correctness of his manners, nor the sensitivity of his remembrances of Edward, poor Edward. Anna dabbed her eyes and felt that, however doubtful the credentials of this Morgan might be, it was very comforting to have a male relation in the house again. Moreover, he seemed very knowledgeable about sugar-canes: a crop which Anna Petronilla continued to find exotic and forbidding. Altogether a very intelligent young man. And handsome enough in a dark Celt fashion. She sent Couba to find Elizabeth.

  ‘My little Johanna Wilhelmina is not here at the moment. She is over at Byndloss Place with her sister Anna. But my little Elizabeth is here, and will be anxious to meet her cousin.’

  ‘No!’ said little Elizabeth, banging her fist into the pillow and glaring at the brown girl. ‘No, I say! Tell my mother that I am having my siesta.’

  ‘But, Miss Liz, how will she believe me! Never have you been known to have a siesta!’

  ‘Go away! Go away and leave me in peace. Tell her that I have measles, tell her that I have jaundice, tell her that I am dead, but go away and tell her that I am not coming to be exhibited!’

  ‘Are you staying long in Port Royal?’ Anna Petronilla was asking her visitor.

  ‘Some time, I expect. We are preparing an expedition against the Dutch in Curacao.’

  ‘The Dutch,’ Anna said vaguely. ‘They cut their ham very thin.’ She noted a surprised look in Morgan’s eye, and added, as if it explained everything: ‘In Lippstadt we cut it thick, in good juicy slices.’

  Couba came in to say that Miss Liz was having her siesta.

  The serene brow of Anna Petronilla blackened.

  ‘You tell Miss Liz to come here this instant.’

  ‘Ah, no,’ said Henry, ‘let the child have her sleep out. I can meet her later.’

  ‘She has slept a sufficiency,’ Anna said, very grim. ‘Go and tell her so, Couba.’ And, ignoring the girl’s irresolute departure: ‘You have met the Governor, perhaps? Ah, yes. He was very correct in the matter of poor Edward, very helpful. He is a fine Christian man and very well connected. He is a relation of the Duke of Albemarle. It is a very new creation, of course—the Duke is merely old George Monck—but of good standing and influential. He is a very good friend to have in this barbaric country.’

  ‘Miss Liz,’ said Couba, sidling into the bedroom, ‘she say you got to come. She say this instant.’

  Elizabeth sprang from the bed with such vigour that Couba involuntarily retreated a step as if about to be attacked. But it was to the little washstand that Elizabeth ran. She seized the jug, poured its contents into the basin, snatched the ribbon from her hair and shook it free, and plunged her whole head into the basin of water.

  ‘Now go and tell her,’ she said, standing erect with the dripping locks hanging round her. ‘Tell her that I am washing my hair.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Liz. But I say before that you are having siesta. How—’

  ‘You have told a little lie, now you can tell a great truth,’ Elizabeth said, and began to laugh.

  When Couba came to say that she had not liked to say so before, but that Miss Liz was actually washing her hair, Henry, bored with Anna Petronilla, sprang to his feet and said heartily: ‘Washing her hair, is she? Then suppose her cousin goes along and helps the child to dry it?’

  And before Anna Petronilla could recover from her surprise sufficiently to utter a protest, he had swept Couba out in front of him and was harrying her towards the bedrooms.

  ‘But, sir. But, mister! But, your lordship!’

  ‘Go along, Couba. I want to see Rupert’s little sister, wet hair or no wet hair. It is a long time since I have been domestic.’

  He strode into the bedroom, past a Couba who was making a belated attempt to warn her young mistress, and stopped short.

  Elizabeth was standing in her petticoat, having stripped off the dress that had suffered from the streams of water from her wet hair. She was binding a towel round her head, and she was looking a little cat-like and smug.

  She glanced up at the astounded Morgan, and ceased on the instant to be smug. She blazed. She coruscated. Lightnings flashed about her and danced from her lips. This, she supposed, was pirate manners. This, she supposed, was part of the vanity that walked about at midday hung about with brocade like a woman’s bedstead.

  ‘But—’

  This, she supposed, was what was to be expected of a corrupter of youth, a cadger
of family favours, a half-educated sailor hung about with ill-gotten gains, a Welshman of deplorable habits who probably could not even talk English except on a see-saw, an enjoyer of women who had forgotten that all women were not playthings whose privacy could be invaded as he pleased.

  When she at last paused momentarily to draw breath he broke the fragment of silence with one word.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he said, in wonder. As one making a discovery. Almost as one recognising someone unexpectedly.

  He turned on his heel without another word and walked away, leaving Elizabeth with her mouth open and her second wind unexpended.

  He presented himself before Anna Petronilla again, and interrupted her renewed doubts about piracy and her confused recollections of the Sabine women to say:

  ‘Madam, I have the honour to ask you for your daughter’s hand in marriage.’

  Anna Patronilla gaped even more deplorably than her daughter and wondered if he had been drinking and she not had noticed it until now. He certainly had an intoxicated look, now that she examined him properly; a dazed look about the eyes. Unfocused; like Edward, poor Edward, when he had fallen off his horse that day.

  ‘She does not want to get married,’ she said, because that was what happened to come to her lips.

  ‘I think that I might be able to change her mind,’ Morgan said.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Anna Petronilla, deciding to get Henry Archbould over at the very earliest moment, Henry being her standby in everything from rebellious slaves to insects in the woodwork. ‘We can discuss that later, at more leisure. You will stay and dine with us, yes?’

  Henry not only stayed to dine, he stayed the night.

  And although he continued to look like someone who has fallen from his horse, and to talk much less than was customary for Henry Morgan, he was entirely orthodox in his behaviour. He made his apologies to his cousin and explained that he had taken it for granted that she was of Rupert’s generation; and he continued to meet her stormy eyes across the haze of flies round the dinner-table candles with equanimity.