Pirates! (16 page)

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Chapter 23

We took lodgings with a widow woman in a fine big Dutch-gabled house on Pearl Street. Broom needed time to negotiate the sale of the ships he no longer required, he said. Besides, he had business to conduct. Pelling grumbled. Staying in one place made him nervous. I was tired of the play-acting and shared his nervousness. We’d had no word about the Brazilian, and Broom had roundly dismissed my dreams and any threat from him, but I did not share his complacency. He was out there, prowling the coast somewhere, I was sure of it. For all I knew, he could sail into New York any day and tie up in the berth next to ours. And if I was weary of keeping up the pretence, Minerva was nearing mutiny. She hated the stares and whispers she attracted, saying she felt as though she had been taken from a menagerie and was being led about on a chain by me. There were many people of colour, both slave and free, but they were all treated as inferior in New York – as much as in the colonies to the south.

‘I’m tired of this,’ she told me. ‘I could buy this house and everything in it, yet that woman treats me as if I were a servant, although she knows very well that I am not. I’m thinking of going back to the ship.’

She was staring out of our window at the ships moored on the river, concentrating her gaze on the sloop tied up just below us.

‘What will I tell Broom?’

‘Tell him what you like. But that’s what I’m going to do.’ She turned and gave me a brilliant smile, suddenly more cheerful than I’d seen her in a long while.

‘I’ll help you pack.’

‘Don’t need to.’ Her smile broadened. ‘You don’t think I’m going like this, do you?’ She spread the wide silk skirt of her dress. ‘There are plenty of clothes on board. And if I’m in need of finery, then Vincent can lend me some of his.’

Vincent lived on board the sloop. He was captain of the ship in Broom’s absence. She was going to leave me and go back to dressing as a man. I sat down on the bed, feeling suddenly lonely. I’d be on my own for the first time in months.

‘I wish I could come with you.’

‘Well, you can’t. Broom would never allow it. Besides, the landlady might recognise you – we’re moored right outside her parlour window.’

‘What about you?’ I was piqued, and not a little bit jealous.

‘I’m safer than you are. She wouldn’t look twice at another mulatto tar. Don’t look like that!’ She took me in her arms and hugged me to her. ‘Will you miss me?’

‘Of course I will!’

‘Chin up.’ She tipped my chin with her finger. ‘Now smile. That’s better. I’ll miss you, too.’

But if she did, I noticed no signs of it. The next time I saw her she was dressed as a sailor, an old acquaintance of Vincent’s newly met in a tavern, his good friend, Jupiter Jones. They both gave me a wave, blowing kisses up to my window as they went into the port. They were of a height and looked well together, matching stride for easy stride. They both dressed alike and wore gold hoops in their ears, their long curling hair tied back with red ribands. Minerva had borrowed Vincent’s blue coat with the gold shiny buttons and scarlet bars and looked very handsome in it. I watched them go into the town, heads bent together in easy conversation, and I longed to join them.

But I was left behind, as lonely and confined as a princess in a tower. On the deck of the sloop, I could see Charlie, the ship’s boy, gazing after them with brooding devotion, waiting for Vincent’s return like a dog tied up at a rail.

The year was turning. In the day, the heat was oppressive, the stink from street and river all but overwhelming, but the mornings had the breath of winter, mist curling off the river. On the deck of the sloop, Vincent looked chilled, his skin tinged with grey. I went with Broom on one of his daily inspections and we found the mate shivering, hugging his coat around him. He had been on deck half of the night and he was not made for these climes, and nor was Minerva. They were anxious to go back on the account, and I feared they might go off on their own if Broom stayed much longer in New York.

‘You will make a good captain one day, my lad.’ Broom clapped him on the shoulder after his inspection. ‘None better at keeping a ship in order, and none better in a fight. Best marksman I’ve encountered,’ he turned, linking him to Minerva, ‘apart from this lass here. You look after the ship better than I do myself. Loyalty like yours, what captain could ask for more?’

As Vincent looked at Minerva, a wide smile lit his handsome features. I doubted his loyalty was just to his captain. Broom needed to get a crew together as quickly as possible, or he might wake to find his sloop gone.

Broom was sailing close to the wind, according to Pelling. Sooner or later someone would be on to him, but the captain would not move yet. He was acquiring a new schooner, and when he was not at the boat yard, he spent his time in the taverns on Wall Street, drinking rum punch and smoking Long Island tobacco, talking business with various new associates, negotiating to buy land as the town expanded north up Manhattan Island towards Niew Haarlem. He advised us to invest our money, too, or at least to leave our share with a Dutch banker, Fredrick Brandt.

‘No good burying it in the sand like Kidd, or carting it about to be thieved, or it ending up at the bottom of the sea.’

That’s what Broom told me, and I passed the message on to Minerva. Our shares would be deposited together. Broom told Graham to do the same, but the doctor was undecided. He could see the sense of it, but feared being cheated. When he was done with the sea, he wanted to set himself up in practice in Bath, or London, or Edinburgh. I thought he would welcome any scheme that would keep his money safe. I told him that I judged the idea a good one. My father had deposited money with bankers in London, so that he might draw on funds more easily. Banking was an ordinary part of commerce and trade, a way of keeping money secure and enabling funds to be released as and when they were needed through notes and promises to pay.

We resolved to go with Broom to sound out Mr Brandt. In turn, Broom wanted me dressed in my best, to impress the banker, so that he could see that we were wealthy and that I was a lady. Broom said it made him feel more confident. I needed a new dress and bonnet, and went in search of the best that New York could afford. I would have wished for Minerva to help with the choosing, but I could hardly have taken a young sailor lad along with me. When I presented myself to Broom, he was delighted.

‘A picture, my dear. You look a picture. Just put this on and the ensemble is complete.’

He held out the ruby necklace. I took it with reluctance, but I duly obliged.

We met the Dutchman in the private room of a Wall Street inn. He was tall and thin, exquisitely dressed in a dove-grey coat, with matching breeches and high shiny boots only slightly mired by the New York streets. He carried a cane, wore an immaculate, freshly-powdered wig and looked very much the gentleman.

‘Appearances are not everything,’ Graham whispered to me, but I felt inclined to trust the man. He had the cold eye of one who liked collecting coin and counting it.

He had interests all over the world, he said. Offices in London, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Connections with merchants in West Africa at Whydah, in Cape Town, Bombay, Madras and Batavia.

‘You may say my interests are world wide.’ Brandt fixed us with his clear grey gaze. ‘As I think yours may be. Your money will be safe with me. My family has acted as bankers for centuries. We accept money from anyone: kings and dukes, merchants and manufacturers, thieves and corsairs.’ He laughed, as if he thought that there was no difference between any of them. ‘We do not care where it comes from, or how it was acquired.’ He spread his pale hands. ‘It is all money. If you want to leave your funds with me, then I will take good care of them. Are we in agreement?’

‘A moment,’ Broom said.

Brandt left us to our deliberations, but the discussion was swift. What choice did we have? It was either leave our money with this man, or bury it in the sand, as Broom had pointed out. He called the banker back again.

‘Very well, then.’ Brandt extended his hand to each of us in turn. ‘I have the appropriate papers already drawn up. I will protect your interests, for now they are mine, too. To that end, Captain
Abraham
,’ he beckoned to Broom, ‘I would have a private word with you.’

Graham and I waited on the sidewalk.

‘Well, Nancy,’ Broom said when we got back to Pearl Street. ‘Seems I owe you an apology. Brandt tells me that a Brazilian planter and former buccaneer is hot in pursuit of a certain Miss Kington, a pretty young English heiress, late of Jamaica, who has been kidnapped by pirates and is said to be on a ship commanded by a certain Captain Broom.’

‘Here. Have this.’ I removed the necklace and gave it to Broom. The mere mention of the Brazilian had set me shivering, just like the first time when he had fixed the rubies round my neck. I rubbed my arms and began pacing. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘What do we always do? Make sail, my dear. Make sail! We have the money on deposit, our business here is concluded. I think it’s time we left New York.’

Vincent had taken possession of the new schooner and was already making her ready. He had his own news to tell us and it was not good. Charlie had been acting surly and mutinous, refusing to obey orders, and now he was missing. Vincent feared that he had gone to peach us up to the authorities. I was so sure he was right that I half expected to hear the tramp of militia along the dockside. Even if we got away, our secret was out. Broom was captain of a pirate ship with women on board. We were known to be on the account. The knowledge would spread up and down the seaboard, wherever ships came into port.

We left on the very next tide, and only just in time. There was a dark ship just off Sandy Hook on the Jersey shore. She was waiting for the tide to turn in her favour so that she could enter Manhattan harbour. We spied her at a distance, as we slipped by fast in our new schooner. If she marked our passing, she showed no sign of it, but it was his ship. I knew it. The ship was black. That was why I could not see her in my dreams.

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Chapter 24

I was now very glad that Broom had swapped the three-masted ship for the schooner. She was not known to anyone, and she was fast through the water. Pelling, however, had not approved of the exchange. A schooner was too small, he said, with too few guns and not enough room for either men or supplies to sustain a long cruise. Now he had to eat his words. The new ship’s sleek lines suggested some powerful fish, and she was made for the water. Broom had been very proud of her right from the start. The hull was American oak with two masts of white pine, each fashioned from a single tall forest tree, to give strength and flexibility. Now he had been proved right in his choice, which pleased him immensely. No one could believe the speed of her. He called her the
Swift Return
.

‘These ships are going to be the thing, Pelling. You mark my words. And worth every penny of any man’s money.’ He beamed as he strode her gleaming deck. ‘Just you wait and see. This is perfect. Especially now. Let them come after us! Nothing will catch her in open sea.’

We had some new crew members, hired on by Vincent, who had been collecting men even before Brandt’s news and Charlie’s desertion. He had done the rounds of the dockside taverns, sweeping up those he could find from the old hands and signing up more. Not all of them knew we were pirates. Broom elected not to tell them until we were well under way. Any who did not want to sign to the Articles would be put ashore at our first port of call. In the end, they all signed. Vincent had chosen well.

Different watches kept us apart, but I had slung my hammock next to Minerva’s as before. I’d sorely missed her companionship when I was left on shore in New York. On our first night off watch together, we talked long into the night about the lucky escape that we’d had, and all that had happened in New York during the time that we had spent apart. Broom was setting a course for the West Indies and Minerva was glad of that, declaring the climate would suit her better, that it was too cold in the north.

We finally exhausted our store of conversation. We had spoken of many things, but I lay in the darkness, listening to the creaking of the timbers, the sound of the water on the hull, thinking that we’d said nothing at all. I longed to ask her about Vincent and what they had done together on their jaunts into the port. Things between them had changed, I could see that. They were very close now. As close as sister and brother. Closer. Exactly how close, I wanted to know, but hesitated to ask her. There were no walls between us and the rest of the ship, just a flimsy sheet. It was impossible to know who might be listening on the other side of it. Besides, she might not tell me. She seldom revealed her feelings to anybody. I spent too long deliberating. Her even breathing told me that she was asleep. Or else she was feigning, guessing what was in my mind. I turned away from her and tried to get some sleep myself. I would be on watch in a few hours.

We were in the Straits of Florida, Cuba to our south, the weather set fair. Broom had still not declared exactly where he intended cruising, not even to Vincent. The mate was worried. The hurricane season was nearly upon us and that was not the best time to embark on a cruise. Great storms swept out of the ocean, accompanied by winds that could level a forest, rain that could wash away mountains, leaving the land wasted, as though touched by an angry god. I had seen where hurricanes had struck Jamaica. I could not imagine what such a force of nature would be like at sea. There were those on board who talked in hushed dread of bright day turned to darkest night, of waves so high that they looked like green glass mountains, of white water spread from one horizon to the other, of great spouts and towers sucked from one element into another. Any ship caught in open water would be pounded to splinters or swamped like a cockleshell. Whole fleets and convoys had disappeared altogether, with no trace ever found.

I shared the morning watch with Vincent and observed his growing unease. The dawn came clear, promising a fair day, but Vincent stood up at the prow moving from larboard to starboard, studying the water as it disappeared under the bow. The sea was deep green tinged with purple and moved with an odd motion, in great oily slow-building swells that made the ship lurch and judder.

‘I don’t like this,’ he said, looking first at the sky and then at the sails to check the wind direction.

The wind was brisk, nothing out of the ordinary, but it seemed at odds with the direction of the waves.

‘Look up there.’ Vincent focused his spyglass upon a flock of birds, flying so high we could not hear their cries. They flecked the sky, wheeling and turning in random confusion, like ash whirling up from a fire.

‘We are not far from land,’ I pointed out. ‘To east or west or south of us ... ’

He shook his head with impatience. ‘They are not sea birds. They are birds of passage. Something has disturbed them from their normal course.’ He collapsed the spyglass and ordered: ‘Away aloft! Shorten topsail! Bring in sail fore and aft.’

Sailors jumped to, scurrying up the rat lines into the rigging, hurrying to roll up canvas, manning the ropes to haul in the yards so there was less sail for the wind to catch. This slowed the ship considerably and brought Broom from his cabin demanding to know what the devil was going on.

‘Storm coming, Captain,’ Vincent replied.

Broom scowled his disbelief, but before he had time to speak the wind veered and freshened.

‘By God. I think you might be right!’

‘Look there, Cap’n!’ One of the topmen shouted from the main topmast yard-arm. As he spoke, his hat blew off, scudding over the rising waves like a bird. He shouted again, the wind snatching his words, scattering them around us in meaningless syllables. The wind was strengthening by the second, whining and moaning through the rigging like some malevolent spirit. The men aloft clung to the yard-arm and pointed to a long black bank looming on the southern horizon, like a great mass of land where no land should be.

‘Topmen!’ Broom roared above the rising voice of the storm. ‘Shorten sail! You men bring in the yards! Look lively!’ He leaned over the quarterdeck as all hands jumped to. ‘We’ll outrun this. Helmsman! Fine on the starboard bow! Pray to any gods you know, boys. We will see what she can do!’

Broom was to prove his seamanship that day. He might have had his faults, but he knew how to sail. The men might quibble and grumble, but none doubted him. The crew worked with unfailing strength and unquestioning obedience. He would pit himself, and us, against the weather with the same daring and dissembling swagger that marked him out as a pirate, but the storm that threatened was beyond common experience, almost beyond human capacity to survive.

The wind was coming from the south, pushing us like a huge hand. We battled to take in sail, all hauling together.

‘Cap’n is heading for the Bahamas,’ Vincent shouted in my ear. ‘Going for the shelter of the islands.’

I nodded to show that I’d heard. I did not want to waste effort on words. The wind was screaming as if all the demons from hell were loosed upon us and the sky was black as night above us now. The sea was being whipped to a frothing mass of white breaking water, the air about us full of spray. Flashes of lightning illuminated a world turned upside-down. The deck fell away as we mounted one vertiginous wave after another. At the top of each, the great ship seemed to skim, flying like flotsam on the breaking spume, only to be cast down into such a tremendous gulf that our own element was lost from us. We were surrounded on all sides by great cliffs of black shining water, as if we were being thrown into some pit of the deep never to see sky again. Overwhelmed by the elements and paralysing terror, I clung on to the cordage, unable to do anything. It felt as if I were drowning. The very air was sucked away, taken by huge waves that then broke over me in torrents of frothing water. The crowded deck was suddenly empty, scoured of everything that had not been tied down. Full barrels and heavy crates were dislodged and tossed over the side as if they weighed no more than buckets and bird cages.

The strength of the wind and waves bent the huge masts like bows, threatening to snap them in two or rend them from their footings. Minerva was with the men who had been sent aloft to work on yards as slick as glass and ropes as twisting and slippery as live snakes. The ship bucked and plunged under her as she fought with the others to furl sails made many times heavier with water; all the while being torn at by winds which threatened to pluck her from her perch and cast her into the churning maelstrom, never to be seen again. Down on deck, we could not see how she or any of them fared; we could not even hear the cries of any flung down into the deep. She is nimble, she is strong, and she will come back to me. I chanted it in my mind like a litany, praying for her safety and that of the others aloft.

The ship was suddenly hit by a tremendous wave from starboard, which sent her yawing sideways, as if she had been cuffed by some giant paw. I found myself clinging on for my life as the deck fell away from under my feet, and became vertical beneath me. All thought left me as I saw the opposite rail dip beneath the waves. She was going beam-ends. She would be swamped, all would be lost. My heart stopped within me, then slowly, very slowly, she began to right herself. With a great sucking sound the sea released her and she bobbed back as if made of cork.

I waited with dread for the next great wave to tip us over, but although the ship leaned heavily, her side did not touch the water. The storm went raging on, but gradually its grip on us began to slacken, each buffet less powerful than the one before. The ship still pitched and plummeted, but she was riding the waves; even the constant screaming of the wind became less insistent, until it was possible to hear human shouts and cries through the roar.

The men came limping down from the rigging, falling the last couple of feet on to the deck. With them was Minerva. I ran to her, but Vincent was there before me. He helped her to her feet. Her legs buckled and he caught her, holding her in his arms, cradling her head against his shoulder. He wiped the water and spray from her face, pushing back the hair that had escaped her cap. He looked down at her, smiling his relief that she was safe, and I thought for a second that he would kiss her, but he did not. Perhaps he thought that it was not the best moment, surrounded as they were by sailors and crew. He held her away from him, clasping her by the shoulders, gazing at her as if she were some fragile thing delivered back to him unbroken. She looked up at him and my questions of the night before were answered in that one glance. He murmured to her and she nodded. It was as if the world about them were not there any more. The chaos wrought by the storm, the torn sails, the broken spars, the exhausted and injured men, did not exist for them.

‘Mr Crosby!’ They were roused by Broom’s shout from the quarterdeck. ‘A moment of your time, sir! The ship’s been through a little difficulty. There’s work to do. Miss Kington! Perhaps you could assist Miss Sharpe there!’

Vincent and Minerva looked about them as if they were waking from a dream. Their discomfort raised a weak laugh from the crew around them and I went to help Minerva down below decks.

I took her to our quarters, for we were both soaked to the skin and weak with exhaustion. We were glad of the darkness and privacy that below decks afforded, for neither of us could keep from shaking and we clung to each other, weeping most unpiratical tears of relief and joy to have survived and both be alive. She had been as terrified as I, but had not been able to show her fear, or even acknowledge it. A failure of nerve on the topyards means death. It all came flooding out now. I held her, sobbing in my arms, and scolded myself for feeling jealous, excluded by the closeness that had grown between her and Vincent.

Broom ordered stoves lit below decks to dry bedding and clothing. The men were allowed to rest. Minerva slept. I watched her sleeping face and thought about her and Vincent. That they might be lovers served to remind me of how alone I was, and made me long for William. I had convinced myself that if I could only explain to him how and why I had fallen into this way of life, then he would surely believe me and most certainly forgive me, and probably love me better than he had before. Deep in my heart, I was not at all sure that this was true; he might just as easily reject me. I brooded on that as we sailed to quieter waters. Abe Reynolds went the rounds with measures of rum to warm and hearten the men. I sipped my tot as I lay in my hammock. Even thinking of being with William, telling him all the things that had happened to me, made me love him more.

We were between Andros Island and Grand Bahama. The men threw back their rum and any who wanted it was given another, but all celebration was postponed until we reached port. The wind had slackened in the lee of the land, but the sky to the west was still ominous: ragged streamers flew out from black banking cloud, like riders trailing banners. If the wind veered, the storm would turn our way again. We had to make safe harbour or we would be caught and driven on to the islands whose shelter we sought.

The nearest safe anchorage was Nassau, on New Providence.

No pirate would normally set a course for Nassau. The port had been a pirate haven, but Woodes Rogers had cleared it out. Wholesale arrests and mass hangings made it a graveyard for those on the account, but we had no choice but to go there. The American schooner had repaid Broom’s faith during the storm. Even Pelling had to concede that. Anything older, or heavier in the water, would have gone down. Nonetheless, one of the masts was damaged. Sails were torn and wanted patching. There was a leak below the water line, so the ship needed constant pumping, and the men were in need of respite. If another tempest hit us, we would not survive.