Pirate Latitudes Read online

  At all the markets, the grocers and butchers kept bowls of vinegar by their wares. Shoppers dropped coins into the vinegar; no coin was ever passed hand to hand. Everyone made an effort to pay with exact change.

  Amulets, trinkets, potions, and spells were in brisk demand. Anne herself bought a locket that contained some foul-smelling herb, but which was said to ward off the plague. She wore it always.

  And still the deaths continued. Her eldest brother came down with the plague. One day she saw him in the street; his neck was swollen with large lumps and his gums were bleeding. She never saw him again.

  Her other brother suffered a common fate for watchmen. While guarding a house one night, the inhabitants locked inside became crazed by the dementia of the disease. They broke out and killed her brother with a pistol-ball in the course of their escape. She only heard of this; she never saw him.

  Finally, Anne, too, was locked in a house belonging to the family of a Mr. Sewell. She was serving as nurse to the elderly Mrs. Sewell — mother of the owner of the house — when Mr. Sewell came down with the swellings. The house was quarantined. Anne tended to the sick as best she could. One after another, the family died. The bodies were given over to the dead-carts. At last, she was alone in the house, and, by some miracle, still in good health.

  It was then that she stole some articles of gold and the few coins she could find, and made her escape from the second-story window, slipping out over the rooftops of London at night. A constable caught her the next morning, demanding to know where a young girl had found so much gold. He took the gold, and clapped her in Bridewell prison.

  There she languished for some weeks, until Lord Ambritton, a public-spirited gentleman, made a tour of the prison and caught sight of her. Anne had long since learned that gentlemen found her aspect agreeable. Lord Ambritton was no exception. He caused her to be put in his coach, and after some dalliance of the sort he liked, promised her she would be sent to the New World.

  Soon enough she was in Plymouth, and then aboard the Godspeed. During the journey, Captain Morton, being a young and vigorous man, had taken a fancy to her, and because in the privacy of his cabin he gave her fresh meats and other delicacies, she was well pleased to make his acquaintance, which she did almost every night.

  Now she was here, in this new place, where everything was strange and unfamiliar. But she had no fear, for she was certain that the governor liked her, as the other gentlemen had liked her and taken care of her.

  Her bath finished, she was dressed in a dyed woolen dress and a cotton blouse. It was the finest clothing she had worn in more than three months, and it gave her a moment of pleasure to feel the fabric against her skin. The black woman opened the door and motioned for her to follow.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the governor.”

  She was led down a large, wide hallway. The floors were wooden but uneven. She found it strange that a man so important as the governor should live in such a rough house. Many ordinary gentlemen in London had houses more finely built than this.

  The black woman knocked on a door, and a leering Scotsman opened it. Anne saw a bedchamber inside; the governor in a nightshirt was standing by the bed, yawning. The Scotsman nodded for her to enter the room.

  “Ah,” the governor said. “Mistress Sharpe. I must say, your appearance is considerably improved by your ablutions.”

  She did not understand exactly what he was talking about, but if he was pleased then so was she. She curtseyed as she had been taught by her mother.

  “Richards, you may leave us.”

  The Scotsman nodded, and closed the door. She was alone with the governor. She watched his eyes.

  “Don’t be frightened, my dear,” he said in a kindly voice. “There is nothing to fear. Come over here by the window, Anne, where the light is good.”

  She did as she was told.

  He stared at her in silence for some moments. Finally, he said, “You know at your trial you were accused of witchcraft.”

  “Yes, sir. But it is not true, sir.”

  “I’m quite sure it is not, Anne. But it was said that you bear the stigmata of a pact with the devil.”

  “I swear, sir,” she said, feeling agitation for the first time. “I have nothing to do with the devil, sir.”

  “I believe you, Anne,” he said, smiling at her. “But it is my duty to verify the absence of stigmata.”

  “I swear to you, sir.”

  “I believe you,” he said. “But you must take off your clothes.”

  “Now, sir?”

  “Yes, now.”

  She looked around the room a little doubtfully.

  “You can put your clothes on the bed, Anne.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He watched her as she undressed. She noticed what happened to his eyes. She was no longer afraid. The air was warm; she was comfortable without her clothing.

  “You are a beautiful child, Anne.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  She stood, naked, and he moved closer to her. He paused to put his spectacles on, and then he looked at her shoulders.

  “Turn around slowly.”

  She turned for him. He peered at her flesh. “Raise your arms over your head.”

  She raised her arms. He peered at each armpit.

  “The stigmata is normally under the arms or on the breast,” he said. “Or on the pudenda.” He smiled at her. “You don’t know what I am talking about, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Lie on the bed, Anne.”

  She lay on the bed.

  “We will now complete the examination,” he said seriously, and then his fingers were in her hair, and he was peering at her skin with his nose just a few inches from her quim, and even though she feared insulting him she found it funny — it tickled — and she began to laugh.

  He stared angrily at her for a moment, and then he laughed, too, and then he began throwing off his nightshirt. He took her with his spectacles still on his face; she felt the wire frames pressing against her ear. She allowed him to have his way with her. It did not last long, and afterward, he seemed pleased, and so she was also pleased.

  . . .

  AS THEY LAY together in the bed, he asked her about her life, and her experiences in London, and the voyage to Jamaica. She described for him how most of the women amused themselves with each other, or with members of the crew, but she said that she did not — which wasn’t exactly true, but she had only been with Captain Morton, so it was very nearly true. And then she told about the storm that had happened, just as they sighted land in the Indies. And how the storm had buffeted them for two days.

  She could tell that Governor Almont was not paying much attention to her story. His eyes had that funny look in them again. She continued to talk, anyway. She told about how the day after the storm had been clear, and they had sighted land with a harbor and a fortress, and a large Spanish ship in the harbor. And how Captain Morton was very worried about being attacked by the Spanish warship, which had certainly seen the merchantman. But the Spanish ship never came out of the harbor.

  “What?” Governor Almont said, almost shrieking. He leapt out of bed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “A Spanish warship saw you and didn’t attack?”

  “No, sir,” she said. “We were much relieved, sir.”

  “Relieved?” Almont cried. He could not believe his ears. “You were relieved? God in Heaven: how long ago did this happen?”

  She shrugged. “Three or four days past.”

  “And it was a harbor with a fortress, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “On which side was the fortress?”

  She was confused. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well
,” Almont said, throwing on his clothes in haste, “as you looked at the island and the harbor, was this fortress to the right of the harbor, or the left?”

  “To this side,” she said, pointing with her right arm.

  “And the island had a tall peak? A very green island, very small?”

  “Yes, that’s the very one, sir.”

  “God’s blood,” Almont said. “Richards! Richards! Get Hunter!”

  And the governor dashed from the room, leaving her lying there, naked on the bed. Certain that she had displeased him, Anne began to cry.

  Chapter 6

  THERE WAS A knock at the door. Hunter rolled over in the bed; he saw the open window, and sunlight pouring through. “Go away,” he muttered. Alongside him, the girl shifted her position restlessly but did not awake.

  The knock came again.

  “Go away, damn your eyes.”

  The door opened, and Mrs. Denby poked her head around. “Begging your pardon, Captain Hunter, but there’s a messenger here from the Governor’s Mansion. The governor requests your presence at dinner, Captain Hunter. What shall I say?”

  Hunter rubbed his eyes. He blinked sleepily in the daylight. “What is the hour?”

  “Five o’clock, Captain.”

  “Tell the governor I will be there.”

  “Yes, Captain Hunter. And Captain?”

  “What is it?”

  “That Frenchman with the scar is downstairs looking for you.”

  Hunter grunted. “All right, Mrs. Denby.”

  The door closed. Hunter got out of bed. The girl still slept, snoring loudly. He looked around his room, which was small and cramped — a bed, a sea chest with his belongings in one corner, a chamber pot under the bed, a basin of water nearby. He coughed, started to dress, and paused to urinate out of the window onto the street below. A shouted curse drifted up to him. Hunter smiled, and continued to dress, selecting his only good doublet from the sea chest, and his remaining pair of hose that had only a few snags. He finished by putting on his gold belt with the short dagger, and then, as a kind of afterthought, took one pistol, primed it, rammed home the ball with the wadding to hold it in the barrel, and slipped it under his belt.

  This was Captain Charles Hunter’s normal toilet, performed each evening when he arose at sunset. It took only a few minutes, for Hunter was not a fastidious man. Nor, he reflected, was he much of a Puritan; he looked again at the girl in the bed, then closed the door behind her and went down the narrow creaking wood stairs to the main room of Mrs. Denby’s Inn.

  The main room was a broad, low-ceilinged space with a dirt floor and several heavy wooden tables in long rows. Hunter paused. As Mrs. Denby had said, Levasseur was there, sitting in a corner, hunched over a tankard of grog.

  Hunter crossed to the door.

  “Hunter!” Levasseur croaked, in a thick drunken voice.

  Hunter turned, showing apparent surprise. “Why, Levasseur. I didn’t see you.”

  “Hunter, you son of an English mongrel bitch.”

  “Levasseur,” he replied, stepping out of the light, “you son of a French farmer and his favorite sheep, what brings you here?”

  Levasseur stood behind the table. He had picked a dark spot; Hunter could not see him well. But the two men were separated by a distance of perhaps thirty feet — too far for a pistol shot.

  “Hunter, I want my money.”

  “I owe you no money,” Hunter said. And, in truth, he did not. Among the privateers of Port Royal, debts were paid fully and promptly. There was no more damaging reputation a man could have than one who failed to pay his debts, or to divide spoils equally. On a privateering raid, any man who tried to conceal a part of the general booty was always put to death. Hunter himself had shot more than one thieving seaman through the heart and kicked the corpse overboard without a second thought.

  “You cheated me at cards,” Levasseur said.

  “You were too drunk to know the difference.”

  “You cheated me. You took fifty pounds. I want it back.”

  Hunter looked around the room. There were no witnesses, which was unfortunate. He did not want to kill Levasseur without witnesses. He had too many enemies. “How did I cheat you at cards?” he asked. As he spoke, he moved slightly closer to Levasseur.

  “How? Who cares a damn for how? God’s blood, you cheated me.” Levasseur raised the tankard to his lips.

  Hunter chose that moment to lunge. He pushed his palm flat against the upturned tankard, ramming it back against Levasseur’s face, which thudded against the back wall. Levasseur gurgled and collapsed, blood dripping from his mouth. Hunter grabbed the tankard and crashed it down on Levasseur’s skull. The Frenchman lay unconscious.

  Hunter shook his hand free of the wine on his fingers, turned, and walked out of Mrs. Denby’s Inn. He stepped ankle-deep into the mud of the street, but paid no attention. He was thinking of Levasseur’s drunkenness. It was sloppy of him to be so drunk while waiting for someone.

  It was time for another raid, Hunter thought. They were all getting soft. He himself had spent one night too many in his cups, or with the women of the port. They should go to sea again.

  Hunter walked through the mud, smiling and waving to the whores who yelled to him from high windows, and made his way to the Governor’s Mansion.

  . . .

  “ALL HAVE REMARKED upon the comet, seen over London on the eve of the plague,” said Captain Morton, sipping his wine. “There was a comet before the plague of ’56, as well.”

  “So there was,” Almont said. “And what of that? There was a comet in ’59, and no plague that I recall.”

  “An outbreak of the pox in Ireland,” said Mr. Hacklett, “in that very year.”

  “There is always an outbreak of the pox in Ireland,” Almont said. “In every year.”

  Hunter said nothing. Indeed, he had said little during the dinner, which he found as dreary as any he had ever attended at the Governor’s Mansion. For a time, he had been intrigued by the new faces — Morton, the captain of the Godspeed, and Hacklett, the new secretary, a silly pinch-faced prig of a man. And Mrs. Hacklett, who looked to have French blood in her slender darkness, and a certain lascivious animal quality.

  For Hunter, the most interesting moment in the evening had been the arrival of a new serving girl, a delicious pale blond child who came and went from time to time. He kept trying to catch her eye. Hacklett noticed, and gave Hunter a disapproving stare. It was not the first disapproving stare he had given Hunter that evening.

  When the girl came round to refill the glasses, Hacklett said, “Does your taste run to servants, Mr. Hunter?”

  “When they are pretty,” Hunter said casually. “And how does your taste run?”

  “The mutton is excellent,” Hacklett said, coloring deeply, staring at his plate.

  With a grunt, Almont turned the conversation to the Atlantic passage his guests had just made. There was a description of a tropical storm, told in exciting and overwrought detail by Morton, who acted as if he were the first person in human history to face a little white water. Hacklett added a few frightening touches, and Mrs. Hacklett allowed that she had been quite ill.

  Hunter grew increasingly bored. He drained his wineglass.

  “Well then,” Morton continued, “after two days of this most dreadful storm, the third day dawned perfectly clear, a magnificent morning. One could see for miles and the wind was fair from the north. But we did not know our position, having been blown for forty-eight hours. We sighted land to port, and made for it.”

  A mistake, Hunter thought. Obviously Morton was grossly inexperienced. In the Spanish waters, an English vessel never made for land without knowing exactly whose land it was. The odds were, the Don held it.

  “We came round the island, and to our astonishment w
e saw a warship anchored in the harbor. Small island, but there it was, a Spanish warship and no doubt of it. We felt certain it would give chase.”

  “And what happened?” Hunter asked, not very interested.

  “It remained in the harbor,” Morton said, and laughed. “I should like to have a more exciting conclusion to the tale, but the truth is it did not come after us. The warship remained in the harbor.”

  “The Don saw you, of course?” Hunter said, growing more interested.

  “Well, they must have done. We were under full canvas.”

  “How close by were you?”

  “No more than two or three miles offshore. The island wasn’t on our charts, you know. I suppose it was too small to be charted. It had a single harbor, with a fortress to one side. I must say we all felt we had a narrow escape.”

  Hunter turned slowly to look at Almont. Almont was staring at him, with a slight smile.

  “Does the episode amuse you, Captain Hunter?”

  Hunter turned back to Morton. “You say there was a fortress by the harbor?”

  “Indeed, a rather imposing fortress, it seemed.”

  “On the north or south shore of the harbor?”

  “Let me recollect — north shore. Why?”

  “How long ago did you see this ship?” Hunter asked.

  “Three or four days past. Make it three days. As soon as we had our bearings, we ran straight for Port Royal.”

  Hunter drummed his fingers on the table. He frowned at his empty wineglass. There was a short silence.

  Almont cleared his throat. “Captain Hunter, you seem preoccupied by this story.”

  “Intrigued,” Hunter said. “I am sure the governor is equally intrigued.”

  “I believe,” Almont said, “that it is fair to say the interests of the Crown have been aroused.”

  Hacklett sat stiffly in his chair. “Sir James,” he said, “would you edify the rest of us as to the import of all this?”