PIRATE: Privateer (2 page)

Now she advanced across the deck towards Hector with the same easy-going barefoot tread of her sailor brothers.

‘What’s all the excitement about?’ she asked. Her English was spoken with a husky, attractive accent. Jacques held up the candelabrum, and she took one glance at it before
taking her place beside Hector at the rail, leaning forward and looking down at Dan in the water.

Hector was conscious that Anne-Marie had allowed the front of her shirt to fall open enough for him to appreciate the view.

‘Dan thinks there should be more salvage in that direction,’ he said.

‘Then we should lose no more time. We’ve waited long enough for something to happen,’ said Anne-Marie. She turned towards Hector and treated him to a lingering glance that left
little doubt of its message.

‘Give a hand here, Lynch!’ her brother Yannick interrupted sharply. He would have to be blind not to notice his sister’s behaviour, and clearly he did not approve. ‘And
get that big lubber on his feet! We’ll have to put out the kedge anchor and haul across.’

The Breton was already heaving in on the painter attached to the bow of the
Morvaut
’s tender at the stern of the pinnace.

‘Jezreel!’ called Hector. ‘We’re moving. Time to get up.’

What looked like a heap of old sails on the foredeck stirred. A large hand emerged and threw aside the makeshift bedding, and a man sat up and scratched his head. The span of arms as he
stretched and yawned gave an idea of what a goliath he was. Jezreel was huge. A nose broken several times and patterns of scars on his scalp were clues to his former occupation as a prize-fighter
using his fists or a backsword. Years ago he had accidentally killed a man in the ring and been forced to flee, taking his chances as a logwood cutter on the Campeche coast where Hector had first
met him.

‘What needs doing?’ he mumbled. He had been on anchor watch the previous night and, to catch up on his sleep, had been napping on the open deck on one of the few places where there
was enough space for him to lie down.

‘We have to move the
Morvaut
. Dan’s found some salvage,’ Hector explained. ‘There’s not enough wind to put up sail, so we’ll kedge across on the
anchor.’

Jezreel got slowly to his feet and went to join the second of Anne-Marie’s brothers, Roparzh. He was struggling to hoist the pinnace’s spare anchor from its stowage in the shallow
hold.

‘Here, let me take that,’ rumbled Jezreel. He took the anchor with one hand and carried it effortlessly to where Yannick had brought the tender alongside.

‘Watch what you’re doing!’ snapped the Breton. ‘If you drop that, it’ll smash straight through the bottom.’

Jezreel treated him to a scornful glance. He leaned out over the rail and laid the anchor gently in the bow of the tender. ‘Get me a pair of oars,’ he said, ‘Hector and I can
do the rest.’

Grateful to escape from Anne-Marie, Hector made his way aft.
Morvaut
’s tender was unusually large for her mother ship. Too big to be carried on deck, the skiff was always towed
astern on a harness. Hector suspected that the Kergonans normally used the skiff to ferry goods ashore on smuggling trips.

He stepped down into the tender, and Yannick passed him a coil of anchor line. Away to his left, Dan had already set the float that marked the spot where he had found the silver candelabrum.
Jezreel settled himself on the central thwart, gave a couple of powerful strokes with the oars, and the tender began to move. From the stern Hector paid out the anchor line while, on the pinnace,
Yannick secured the loose end of the heavy rope.

‘The Tigress, that’s what they call her,’ commented Jezreel cryptically as soon as they were out of earshot of Yannick and his brother. ‘She’s said to be a
man-eater.’ Hector made no comment.

‘Takes after her mother, if the tales are true,’ Jezreel continued.

Hector was aware of the Kergonan family’s notorious history. Their mother was among the group of fifty harlots the French government had shipped out to Tortuga a generation ago. The theory
was that their offspring would establish a more permanent population in the fledgling French colony. Naturally the arrival of a shipload of loose women had caused a sensation. They had been dumped
on the beach, and the settlers – a lawless gang of half-wild hunters and part-time pirates – had been encouraged to take their pick.

‘I can take care of myself,’ said Hector.

Jezreel gave another grunt as he tugged again on the oars and sent the tender surging.

Hector knew what his friend was implying. ‘I talked it over with Maria. There was no other choice,’ he said and tried to keep himself from sounding apologetic. ‘You saw for
yourself. It takes money, lots of money to survive in Tortuga. They grow nothing there. Everything must be imported.’

‘No place to leave a woman,’ muttered Jezreel darkly.

‘I promised Maria that I would never return to piracy. Fishing wrecks was the only alternative.’

‘Much the same result if you are caught at it,’ commented Jezreel pointedly.

Hector’s thoughts went back to happier times when he and his friends had sailed the Pacific so that he could reach Maria, the woman he loved, and ask her to share his life. To his delight
she had agreed, even though he was at risk of being taken up for piracy. For Maria, who was Spanish-born, it had meant deserting her employer, an important colonial official who was likely to be
vindictive. Together they had chosen to come to remote Tortuga, hoping to find a safe haven beyond the reach of normal laws, a place where they could live together quietly. But Tortuga had been a
cruel disappointment. The fort which had once defied foreign navies and given the place its semi-independence was in ruins. Most of the population had moved away, preferring the French colonies at
Petit Goâve and Saint-Domingue. Those who stayed were the dregs. They passed their time in sordid drinking dens, spending the last of their booty. The settlement was reduced to little more
than a cluster of squalid huts and muddy lanes where wild forest pigs roamed freely.

Hector turned in his seat and looked back at the
Morvaut
. Little about the vessel gave him confidence. She was a small boat of thirty tons with a single mast, shabby, and with only one
tiny cannon. That meant she was virtually unarmed. A hostile ship of force would overwhelm her in minutes.

Yet Maria had insisted that he use the last of the money they had brought back from the Pacific to charter the
Morvaut
to go fishing the wreck of a Spanish galleon that was rumoured to be
lying on the Vipers.

‘We must try something,’ she had said. They had been standing at the door of the two-room shack that was all they had been able to afford to rent. ‘Otherwise we’ll be
trapped in this wretched place, living miserably. Dan and the others will agree to go fishing the Vipers. They are getting bored.’

‘But you and I will be apart, maybe for months.’

‘I waited three years for you to come and find me. I can endure a few more weeks’ absence.’

‘What if we can’t find the wreck, or a gale catches us on the reef while we are searching? We ourselves could be cast away.’

She had laid a hand on his arm, looked into his eyes and said firmly, ‘Hector, I’ve seen your skill with charts. You can bring a vessel safely through those reefs. That’s what
you excel at, just as Dan can dive, or Jacques can cook, and Jezreel can wield a backsword.’

He had still been doubtful. ‘The Kergonans own the only vessel available. And they are demanding advance payment of the charter, plus a half share in anything we recover. They’re a
bunch of grasping crooks.’

She had leaned up and kissed him. ‘Yesterday I happened to meet Anne-Marie Kergonan on the foreshore. She told me that you had been discussing the charter with her. She was very friendly.
She told me that
morvaut
is the Breton word for a cormorant. Hector, take it as an omen – it’s a greedy bird but one that gorges on its catch.’

Hector was wakened from his reverie by a slight lurch. The skiff had reached Dan’s marker buoy and Jezreel was unshipping his oars. The big man picked up the kedge anchor lying on the
bottom boards. ‘Ready?’ he asked. Hector checked that the coil of anchor line was free and nodded.

Jezreel dropped the anchor overboard, and the last few fathoms of cable ran out with a thrumming sound. As soon as the anchor had settled on the seabed, the big man waved to the pinnace. The
Kergonan brothers, helped by Jacques, began taking in the slack. The
Morvaut
was too small to carry a windlass so they were hauling by hand. The pinnace slowly began to take up position over
the spoil ground.

*

W
ITHIN AN HOUR
they knew they had struck lucky. Dan came across a pile of more than a hundred pieces of eight on the sea floor where a canvas bag had
rotted and burst. In the next three dives he brought up a rich haul of tableware – jugs, spoons, bowls, forks and goblets, all in massive silver.

‘I wonder if any of the galleon’s crew survived the wreck?’ Hector asked Roparzh Kergonan. He was on the pinnace’s deck, trying to divide the spoil into two equal piles,
one for the Bretons, and one for himself and his friends. Roparzh was hovering over him, making sure that Hector was not cheating. Hector could smell the rum on the man’s breath.

‘Someone usually lives,’ grunted Roparzh. ‘Clings to flotsam and is washed ashore or gets clear in a ship’s boat.’

Hector turned his attention to a large silver dish. Dan had found it wedged in a crevice in the coral. The dish was engraved with an ornate coat of arms, and Hector guessed that it had been the
property of an officer on the galleon, someone from a noble family.

‘How do we divide this item fairly?’ he asked the Breton.

‘Hack it up with an axe and weigh out the scraps,’ came the blunt reply.

Hector winced inwardly at the thought. ‘It is a match with the other pieces. They’ll be worth more as a set.’

‘And the first person we try to fence it to will recognize the mark and guess how we got our hands on it. Might even know the family.’

‘Only if that person is familiar with the crests and emblems of Spanish families.’

Roparzh was looking at him as if he was simple-minded.

‘You mean the Spaniards buy goods stolen out of their own wrecks?’ Hector said.

‘There’s more goes on than either Madrid or London knows about.’

The Breton decided that he had said enough. He shovelled up his share of the coins and put them in a pouch. Without asking, he took the silver dish out of Hector’s hand and slouched away
with it. Hector decided that it was not worth making an issue of the matter and went to help Dan as he climbed out of the water.

The Miskito was exhausted. He flopped down on the deck and leaned back against the bulwarks to rest. His eyes were closed, and the water ran off his body, making dark patterns across the deck.
He looked utterly spent. After a minute or two, he opened his eyes. They were red-rimmed from the time spent underwater.

‘We have to watch our backs now,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Hector asked.

Dan’s eyes flicked to the stern where the Kergonan brothers were huddled together. They were double-checking their haul of coins and silverware. ‘One dark night when we are asleep,
they may take the chance to be rid of us.’

He lifted one hand and made a cutting motion across his throat.

T
HE DISCOVERY OF THE
candelabrum was the start of their reward. In the next five days of diving on the wreck Dan brought up nearly two hundred more
coins. They were mostly cobs, misshaped slugs of metal that scarcely looked like money. Yet each one bore an assayer’s monogram that proved it was genuine silver. He also retrieved
twenty-three gold doubloons and an assortment of tableware and jewellery – pendants, bracelets and necklaces. Under the mistrustful gaze of the Kergonans everything was sorted and divided. As
the value of the haul increased, so too did the tension on board. It boiled over on the afternoon Dan brought up a leather purse from the sea floor. Jacques slit open the soggy purse and tipped a
dozen emeralds out on to the deck. A drunken Roparzh Kergonan gave a great whoop of triumph and reached forward to grab the spoil. But Jacques beat him to it. The Frenchman quietly picked up one of
the jewels and held it up to the sunlight. He had worked with a Paris fence and knew how to spot a fake. Without hesitation he declared that the ‘emeralds’ were nothing more than chunks
of coloured glass. It was as if he had blatantly swindled the Breton. Roparzh leaped on him and seized him by the throat and would have strangled him if Jezreel had not intervened.

That night was Hector’s turn to be on anchor watch. Seated on the foredeck in the pre-dawn darkness, he knew that the salvage operation had to end very soon. Even if the Kergonans could be
kept under control, less than half a barrel of drinking water remained. With no fresh water on the two nearby islands, they would soon be forced to leave the wreck site and head for home. As he was
idly speculating how much his share of the salvage would be worth, he became aware of someone creeping stealthily towards him. He was about to call out a challenge when a low voice said, ‘I
thought I’d join you.’ A moment later Anne-Marie Kergonan sat down beside him. ‘It’s too hot to sleep,’ she said, looking along the length of the silent ship.