Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

"Smart girl."

Novia laughed. "She is a fool. Even I know that. I know her far better than either of you."

"She was sure a fool to start fooling around on the voyage," I said, "so you've got a point. Besides, she wasn't smart enough to remember in all the excitement that she'd left her jewelry on top of that chest. When things quieted down, she was fool enough to sneak back out and get it."

"Holy God!" Bouton had seen the light.

"That's the goods. It's what tipped me off to start with. Me and Novia had looked all over the ship for the missing woman. After we gave up, it hit me that it wasn't just the woman who was missing anymore. Now her jewelry was missing, too, even though it had been locked in. The simple explanation was that she'd popped out and taken it. That meant she was hiding in the cabin where it was, which had always been the logical place-she wouldn't have known her way around the ship."

Novia said, "In a better world, you would be an admiral, Crisoforo." She sounded as if she meant it.

I said, "Thanks, Sabina."

Bouton said, "But she would not have known about the place unless that man who owned this ship had shown it to her. I see."

"You've got it. There were blankets and a pillow in there. Two wineglasses, not just one."

Estrellita whispered, "You did not have to tell that, Crees."

I felt pretty bad right then. I have felt pretty bad quite a few times in my life, but I have always gotten over it. I said, "I didn't have to tell Bouton and I sure as heck didn't have to tell Sabina here. But I had to tell me. I need to understand what it would be like if you and I got together the way I wanted to once, and the only way I'll ever understand it is to say it out loud. Say it a lot."

Estrellita said, "I confess to you the truth. Jose surprised me in the dark. I was asleep. Jaime was still on deck but I think he has come back to our room. We kiss, we make love. Then he reveal himself. He is not Jaime. He is Jose. After that, I must do as he ask, or he will tell Jaime."

Novia made a noise that sounded like I felt.

I said, "Sure. To you, one man's just like another in the dark. I got it."

I translated for Bouton, then I said, "So as long as Jaime was around, they used the space between the cabins. She just hated it, but she lay down in there with Don Jose and had a little wine and ate some dried apricots every couple of days. Then Jaime jumped-I can guess why-and after that they didn't have to. They had nobody to fool but Pilar, so they could use the Guzmans' cabin and-"

Novia cut me off. "Two ideas you say, Crisoforo. One I know. What is the other?"

"It's pretty obvious, isn't it? Jaime didn't jump. De Santiago killed him. He wanted the money, and he wanted Estrellita. Jaime had them both."

Bouton said, "He would have to get rid of his wife, wouldn't he, Captain?"

I shook my head. "He might want to, but he probably wouldn't. He'd set Estrellita here up in a cute little house someplace, with enough money to keep her happy. He had Jaime's money, and he'd tell her he was keeping it for her, and give it to her in dibs and dabs. She'd keep hoping to get it all, and she'd know that if she left him she'd never see another real of it. You haven't seen much of Don Jose and Pilar, but Sabina and I have. He'd have about as much trouble managing Pilar as you'd have managing a cabin boy."

We said a lot more, but there is not a lot of point in writing it all out. After that, sleeping arrangements were the problem. Novia and Estrellita wanted to sleep with me, although Novia was too proud to say it. Estrellita just about begged.

I did not want to sleep with either of them-but I did not want to get them raped either. On top of all that, I was worried about what Novia might say or do if I left her with somebody like Rombeau or Jarden. She was a good-looking girl, and I knew by then how smart she was. I ended up tying Estrellita's hands and sending her over to Rombeau to be held with the other prisoners, and locking Novia in the Guzmans' cabin. From inside, it was not hard to jam her trick cabinet's latch so she could not open it. That was what I did, and I never unjammed it. That night I drank most of a bottle of wine trying to get to sleep. Eventually, it worked.

And when we got to Port Royal, those cabinets went, along with the whole fake wall. I cannot tell you how much I hated that whole deal by then.

There is just one other thing I ought to say before I wrap up for tonight. The next day I was on the quarterdeck trying to forget my headache, which was about like trying to forget that somebody had just whacked off your thumb. Boucher came up and said that one of the men had seen something funny.

It had been a man. Nothing fancy, just a man. Only this guy had seen him, and felt like he was not one of our crew but somebody he had never seen before. He had yelled at him, and then he was gone.

Boucher said this guy had seen his own shadow, and Bouton thought he might be having hallucinations. I told everybody about it just the same, knowing they would find out anyhow, and told them to keep an eye out. I think it was a day out of Port Royal.

Yesterday I talked to a lady who has come to the U.S. from Jamaica. I asked whether she had lived in Port Royal, and she laughed and said she had been born and raised in Kingston. I said I knew it had been a bad town a few hundred years ago. That was gone, she said. It had been destroyed by an earthquake, and a new Port Royal built near the same site.

Yet I know that it is not gone. It is back there, where she is, where the hurricanes blow and lean, hard ships snap at the edges of the Spanish Main like wolves around a sheepfold.

Before I went to bed, I spent an hour or more just studying those maps. When I was at sea, I was crazy about maps. Give me a map, and I wanted no other book. I knew that many details were wrong or at least inaccurate. I committed them to memory just the same, knowing that it was better to know them than not, yet knowing that we would have to proceed cautiously always.

That was how I proceeded when we brought the Rosa and the Castillo Blanco there, getting the best price I could for Rosa, and making sure that the carpenters I hired to alter the Castillo Blanco knew their business.

First, however, I saw to our prisoners and to Novia. Capt. Ojeda and his crew I simply freed, giving Ojeda a little money, shaking his hand and wishing him well. I thought I had seen the last of him when I did that.

I let Don Jose write three letters explaining his fix and asking friends and relatives to ransom him. I read them before I mailed them, and made sure that he had told each of the men he had written to that the money was to be sent to me in care of a ship chandler in Port Royal we were buying supplies from. He had promised to handle the money end of the deal for us for ten percent. There were others who would do it cheaper-seven for one and five for the other-but I was not sure they were honest. This guy would take his ten percent and hand over the rest, and there would be no trouble about it.

After that was all set, I knocked on Novia's cabin door and told her I needed to see her. She came into my cabin half an hour later and gave me quite a surprise. No calico gown this time, and no makeup. She was dressed the way she had been when I had first seen her on the Magdelena-sailor's white canvas pants, boobs tied in and hidden under a loose blue shirt, and her hair in a long braid down her back.

I told her I was going to give her enough money to pay her passage back to Spain.

"I must walk unescorted in this Port Royal of yours. It is a bad place, you have told me."

I nodded.

"I wish a favor, Crisoforo. You owe me none, I know. Already you do me a favor, giving me money so that I may go home. I ask another. I would recharge my pistols? May I do so if I swear I will not shoot you? Please?"