Pirate Latitudes Read online

  He found himself facing a young man in his early thirties, who, like the governor, was sweating in a heavy doublet. The young man bowed and said, “Your Excellency.”

  “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Almont asked, with a slight bow. He could no longer bow deeply because of the pain in his leg, and in any case he disliked this pomp and formality.

  “Charles Morton, sir, captain of the merchantman Godspeed, late of Bristol.” He presented his papers.

  Almont did not even glance at them. “What cargoes do you carry?”

  “West Country broadcloths, Your Excellency, and glass from Stourbridge, and iron goods. Your Excellency holds the manifest in his hands.”

  “Have you passengers?” He opened the manifest and realized he had forgotten his spectacles; the listing was a black blur. He examined the manifest with brief impatience, and closed it again.

  “I carry Mr. Robert Hacklett, the new secretary to Your Excellency, and his wife,” Morton said. “I carry eight freeborn commoners as merchants to the Colony. And I carry thirty-seven felon women sent by Lord Ambritton of London to be wives for the colonists.”

  “So good of Lord Ambritton,” Almont said dryly. From time to time, an official in one of the larger cities of England would arrange for convict women to be sent to Jamaica, a simple ruse to avoid the expense of jailing them at home. Sir James had no illusions about what this latest group of women would be like. “And where is Mr. Hacklett?”

  “On board, gathering his belongings with Mrs. Hacklett, Your Excellency.” Captain Morton shifted his feet. “Mrs. Hacklett had a most uncomfortable passage, Your Excellency.”

  “I have no doubt,” Almont said. He was irritated that his new secretary was not on the dock to meet him. “Does Mr. Hacklett carry messages for me?”

  “I believe he may, sir,” Morton said.

  “Be so good as to ask him to join me at Government House at his earliest convenience.”

  “I will, Your Excellency.”

  “You may await the arrival of the purser and Mr. Gower, the customs inspector, who will verify your manifest and supervise the unloading of your cargoes. Have you many deaths to report?”

  “Only two, Your Excellency, both ordinary seamen. One lost overboard and one dead of dropsy. Had it been otherwise, I would not have come to port.”

  Almont hesitated. “How do you mean, not have come to port?”

  “I mean, had anyone died of the plague, Your Excellency.”

  Almont frowned in the morning heat. “The plague?”

  “Your Excellency knows of the plague which has lately infected London and certain of the outlying towns of the land?”

  “I know nothing at all,” Almont said. “There is plague in London?”

  “Indeed, sir, for some months now it has been spreading with great confusion and loss of life. They say it was brought from Amsterdam.”

  Almont sighed. That explained why there had been no ships from England in recent weeks, and no messages from the Court. He remembered the London plague of ten years earlier, and hoped that his sister and niece had had the presence of mind to go to the country house. But he was not unduly disturbed. Governor Almont accepted calamity with equanimity. He himself lived daily in the shadow of dysentery and shaking fever, which carried off several citizens of Port Royal each week.

  “I will hear more of this news,” he said. “Please join me at dinner this evening.”

  “With great pleasure,” Morton said, bowing once more. “Your Excellency honors me.”

  “Save that opinion until you see the table this poor colony provides,” Almont said. “One last thing, Captain,” he said. “I am in need of female servants for the mansion. The last group of blacks, being sickly, have died. I would be most grateful if you would contrive for the convict women to be sent to the mansion as soon as possible. I shall handle their dispersal.”

  “Your Excellency.”

  Almont gave a final, brief nod, and climbed painfully back into his coach. With a sigh of relief, he sank back in the seat and rode to the mansion. “A dismal malodorous day,” Commander Scott commented, and indeed, for a long time afterward, the ghastly smells of the town lingered in the governor’s nostrils and did not dissipate until he took another pinch of snuff.

  Chapter 3

  DRESSED IN LIGHTER clothing, Governor Almont breakfasted alone in the dining hall of the mansion. As was his custom, he ate a light meal of poached fish and a little wine, followed by another of the minor pleasures of his posting, a cup of rich, dark coffee. During his tenure as governor, he had become increasingly fond of coffee, and he delighted in the fact that he had virtually unlimited quantities of this delicacy, so scarce at home.

  While he was finishing his coffee, his aide, John Cruikshank, entered. John was a Puritan, forced to leave Cambridge in some haste when Charles II was restored to the throne. He was a sallow-faced, serious, tedious man, but dutiful enough.

  “The convict women are here, Your Excellency.”

  Almont grimaced at the thought. He wiped his lips. “Send them along. Are they clean, John?”

  “Reasonably clean, sir.”

  “Then send them along.”

  The women entered the dining room noisily. They chattered and stared and pointed to this article and that. An unruly lot, dressed in identical gray fustian, and barefooted. His aide lined them along one wall and Almont pushed away from the table.

  The women fell silent as he walked past them. In fact, the only sound in the room was the scraping of the governor’s painful left foot over the floor, as he walked down the line, looking at each.

  They were as ugly, tangled, and scurrilous a collection as he’d ever seen. He paused before one woman, who was taller than he, a nasty creature with a pocked face and missing teeth. “What’s your name?”

  “Charlotte Bixby, my lord.” She attempted a clumsy sort of curtsey.

  “And your crime?”

  “Faith, my lord, I did no crime, it was all a falsehood that they put to me and—”

  “Murder of her husband, John Bixby,” his aide intoned, reading from a list.

  The woman fell silent. Almont moved on. Each new face was uglier than the last. He stopped at a woman with tangled black hair and a yellow scar running down the side of her neck. Her expression was sullen.

  “Your name?”

  “Laura Peale.”

  “What is your crime?”

  “They said I stole a gentleman’s purse.”

  “Suffocation of her children ages four and seven,” John intoned in a monotonous voice, never raising his eyes from the list.

  Almont scowled at the woman. These females would be quite at home in Port Royal; they were as tough and hard as the hardest privateer. But wives? They would not be wives. He continued down the line of faces, and then stopped before one unusually young.

  The girl could hardly have been more than fourteen or fifteen, with fair hair and a naturally pale complexion. Her eyes were blue and clear, with a certain odd, innocent amiability. She seemed entirely out of place in this churlish group. His voice was soft as he spoke to her. “And your name, child?”

  “Anne Sharpe, my lord.” Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. Her eyes fell demurely.

  “What is your crime?”

  “Theft, my lord.”

  Almont glanced at John; the aide nodded. “Theft of a gentleman’s lodging, Gardiner’s Lane, London.”

  “I see,” Almont said, turning back to the girl. But he could not bring himself to be severe with her. She remained with eyes downcast. “I have need of a womanservant in my household, Mistress Sharpe. I shall employ you here.”

  “Your Excellency,” John interrupted, leaning toward Almont. “A word, if you please.”

  They stepped a short distance
back from the women. The aide appeared agitated. He pointed to the list. “Your Excellency,” he whispered, “it says here that she was accused of witchcraft at her trial.”

  Almont chuckled good-naturedly. “No doubt, no doubt.” Pretty young women were often accused of witchcraft.

  “Your Excellency,” John said, full of tremulous Puritan spirit, “it says here that she bears the stigmata of the devil.”

  Almont looked at the demure, blond young woman. He was not inclined to believe she was a witch. Sir James knew a thing or two about witchcraft. Witches had eyes of strange color. Witches were surrounded by cold draughts. Their flesh was cold as that of a reptile, and they had an extra tit.

  This woman, he was certain, was no witch. “See that she is dressed and bathed,” he said.

  “Your Excellency, may I remind you, the stigmata—”

  “I shall search for the stigmata myself later.”

  John bowed. “As you wish, Your Excellency.”

  For the first time, Anne Sharpe looked up from the floor to face Governor Almont, and she smiled the slightest of smiles.

  Chapter 4

  SPEAKING WITH ALL due respect, Sir James, I must confess that nothing could have prepared me for the shock of my arrival in this port.” Mr. Robert Hacklett, thin, young, and nervous, paced up and down the room as he spoke. His wife, a slender, dark, foreign-looking young woman, sat rigidly in a chair and stared at Almont.

  Sir James sat behind his desk, his bad foot propped on a pillow and throbbing badly. Sir James was trying to be patient.

  “In the capital of His Majesty’s Colony of Jamaica in the New World,” Hacklett continued, “I naturally anticipated some semblance of Christian order and lawful conduct. At the very least, some evidence of constraint upon the vagabonds and ill-mannered louts who act as they please everywhere and openly. Why, as we traveled in open coach through the streets of Port Royal — if they may be called streets — one vulgar fellow hurled drunken imprecations at my wife, upsetting her greatly.”

  “Indeed,” Almont said, with a sigh.

  Emily Hacklett nodded silently. In her own way she was a pretty woman, with the sort of looks that appealed to King Charles. Sir James could guess how Mr. Hacklett had become such a favorite of the Court that he would be given the potentially lucrative posting of Secretary to the Governor of Jamaica. No doubt Emily Hacklett had felt the press of the royal abdomen upon her more than once.

  Sir James sighed.

  “And further,” Hacklett continued, “we were everywhere treated to the spectacle of bawdy women half-naked in the streets and shouting from windows, men drunk and vomiting in the streets, robbers and pirates brawling and disorderly at every turn, and—”

  “Pirates?” Almont said sharply.

  “Indeed, pirates is what I should naturally call those cutthroat seamen.”

  “There are no pirates in Port Royal,” Almont said. His voice was hard. He glared at his new secretary, and cursed the passions of the Merry Monarch that had provided him with this priggish fool for an assistant. Hacklett would obviously be no help to him at all. “There are no pirates in this Colony,” Almont said again. “And should you find evidence that any man here is a pirate, he will be duly tried and hanged. That is the law of the Crown and it is stringently enforced.”

  Hacklett looked incredulous. “Sir James,” he said, “you quibble over a minor question of speech when the truth of the matter is to be seen in every street and dwelling of the town.”

  “The truth of the matter is to be seen at the gallows of High Street,” Almont said, “where even now a pirate may be found hanging in the breeze. Had you disembarked earlier, you might have seen it for yourself.” He sighed again. “Sit down,” he said, “and keep silent before you confirm yourself in my judgment as an even greater idiot than you already appear to be.”

  Mr. Hacklett paled. He was obviously unaccustomed to such plain address. He sat quickly in a chair next to his wife. She touched his hand reassuringly: a heartfelt gesture from one of the king’s many mistresses.

  Sir James Almont stood, grimacing as pain shot up from his foot. He leaned across his desk. “Mr. Hacklett,” he said, “I am charged by the Crown with expanding the Colony of Jamaica and maintaining its welfare. Let me explain to you certain pertinent facts relating to the discharge of that duty. First, we are a small and weak outpost of England in the midst of Spanish territories. I am aware,” he said heavily, “that it is the fashion of the Court to pretend that His Majesty has a strong footing in the New World. But the truth is rather different. Three tiny colonies — St. Kitts, Barbados, and Jamaica — comprise the entire dominion of the Crown. All the rest is Philip’s. This is still the Spanish Main. There are no English warships in these waters. There are no English garrisons on any lands. There are a dozen Spanish first-rate ships of the line and several thousand Spanish troops garrisoned in more than fifteen major settlements. King Charles in his wisdom wishes to retain his colonies but he does not wish to pay the expense of defending them against invasion.”

  Hacklett stared, still pale.

  “I am charged with protecting this Colony. How am I to do that? Clearly, I must acquire fighting men. The adventurers and privateers are the only source available to me, and I am careful to provide them a welcome home here. You may find these elements distasteful but Jamaica would be naked and vulnerable without them.”

  “Sir James—”

  “Be quiet,” Almont said. “Now, I have a second duty, which is to expand the Jamaica Colony. It is fashionable in the Court to propose that we instigate farming and agricultural pursuits here. Yet no farmers have been sent in two years. The land is brackish and infertile. The natives are hostile. How then do I expand the Colony, increasing its numbers and wealth? With commerce. The gold and the goods for a thriving commerce are afforded us by privateering raids upon Spanish shipping and settlements. Ultimately this enriches the coffers of the king, a fact which does not entirely displease His Majesty, according to my best information.”

  “Sir James—”

  “And finally,” Almont said, “finally, I have an unspoken duty, which is to deprive the Court of Philip IV of as much wealth as I am able to manage. This, too, is viewed by His Majesty — privately, privately — as a worthy objective. Particularly since so much of the gold which fails to reach Cádiz turns up in London. Therefore privateering is openly encouraged. But not piracy, Mr. Hacklett. And that is no mere quibble.”

  “But Sir James—”

  “The hard facts of the Colony admit no debate,” Almont said, resuming his seat behind the desk, and propping his foot on the pillow once more. “You may reflect at your leisure on what I have told you, understanding — as I am certain you will understand — that I speak with the wisdom of experience on these matters. Be so kind as to join me at dinner this evening with Captain Morton. In the meanwhile I am sure you have much to do in settling into your quarters here.”

  The interview was clearly at an end. Hacklett and his wife stood. Hacklett bowed slightly, stiffly. “Sir James.”

  “Mr. Hacklett. Mrs. Hacklett.”

  . . .

  THE TWO DEPARTED. The aide closed the door behind them. Almont rubbed his eyes. “God in Heaven,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Do you wish to rest now, Your Excellency?” John asked.

  “Yes,” Almont said. “I wish to rest.” He got up from behind his desk and walked down the corridor to his chambers. As he passed one room, he heard the sound of water splashing in a metal tub, and a feminine giggle. He glanced at John.

  “They are bathing the womanservant,” John said.

  Almont grunted.

  “You wish to examine her later?”

  “Yes, later,” Almont said. He looked at John and felt a moment of amusement. John was evidently still frightened by the witchcraft accusation. Th
e fears of the common people, he thought, were so strong and so foolish.

  Chapter 5

  ANNE SHARPE RELAXED in the warm water of the bathtub, and listened to the prattle of the enormous black woman who bustled around the room. Anne could hardly understand a word the woman was saying, although she seemed to be speaking English; her lilting rhythms and odd pronunciations were utterly strange. The black woman was saying something about what a kind man Governor Almont was. Anne Sharpe had no concern about Governor Almont’s kindness. She had learned at an early age how to deal with men.

  She closed her eyes, and the singsong speech of the black woman was replaced in her mind by the tolling of church bells. She had come to hate that monotonous, ceaseless sound, in London.

  Anne was the youngest of three children, the daughter of a retired seaman turned sailmaker in Wapping. When the plague broke out near Christmastime, her two older brothers had taken work as watchmen. Their jobs were to stand at the doors of infected houses and see that the inhabitants inside did not leave the residence for any reason. Anne herself worked as a sick-nurse for several wealthy families.

  With the passing weeks, the horrors she had seen became merged in her memory. The church bells rang day and night. The cemeteries everywhere became overfilled; soon there were no more individual graves, but the bodies were dumped by the score into deep trenches, and hastily covered over with white lime powder and earth. The dead-carts, piled high with bodies, were hauled through the streets; the sextons paused before each dwelling to call out, “Bring out your dead.” The smell of corrupted air was everywhere.

  So was the fear. She remembered seeing a man fall dead in the street, his fat purse by his side, clinking with money. Crowds passed by the corpse, but none would dare to pick up the purse. Later the body was carted away, but still the purse remained, untouched.