Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

I said sure, and handed her the box with the powder flasks and so forth. That was when the carpenters came to tear out the wall and the secret compartment, and cut new gunports in the gunwale. I got busy with them, and when I looked for Novia again, she was gone. The beautiful wooden case that her pistols had come in was still there on the table, with the ramrod, the bag of bullets, and the other stuff still inside. But no Novia, and no little brass pistols. Not crying can be hard sometimes. Not often for me, but sometimes. That time I tried not to, but I did not make it.

Of course, I still had my worst problem-what to do with Estrellita. There were complications. Here I am supposed to advise other people about their problems, and they just about always have complications, too. So I will list mine here. I do not want to, but it will be good for me, and I have never done enough penance. The last one was the big one. 1. She had no money and nobody to take care of her except Don Jose and Pilar, and they were not going to be loose any time soon. If we kept her until they could look out for her, we might have her for a year. Two prisoners was bad enough. 2. She had been cheating with Don Jose. If I handed her over to him, I would be aiding and abetting. I had met Pilar, and I did not want to do that. 3. Sooner or later Don Jose would cut her loose, probably with nothing. She might be worse off then than she was now, and in fact it seemed pretty likely. 4. He might do something unpleasant with Pilar so he could have Estrellita all the time. I thought there was a good chance he had killed Jaime Guzman. If Don Jose wanted Pilar out of the way, she just might have some sort of accident. My father would have said, "It's been known to happen." 5. I had wanted her more than anything for so long. Now she looked like something the cat dragged in, dirty and chained with her hair all messed up and her eyes red from crying. Pretty soon she was going to look worse, and I was not sure I could keep from getting her chains taken off, giving her a square meal and a chance to clean up, and after that so on and so forth. From what I had learned about her, and what I had seen of her since I had grabbed her in the dark, that would be a big, big mistake.

I do not know now just how long I worried about her, walking up and down the little quarterdeck of the Castillo Blanco and watching the carpenters. By the time they were ready to knock off, I had made my mind up. I got Antonio to come over and keep an eye on the ship and went ashore.

I had thought it was going to be tough to find Ojeda, but it was not. Finding Vanderhorst on Virgin Gorda had been a lot harder. Spaniards hardly ever came to Port Royal, and everybody had noticed them. He and Alvarez were splitting a room in a private house, and my guess is that they were paying through the nose for it.

"I need your help, Captain, and I'm willing to pay for it." I got out a couple of doubloons and showed them to him. "You'll leave soon for Spain?"

"Si." His beard and mustache were nice and neat now, and his face told me he wanted the money but was going to be darned careful not to say too much.

"You've found a ship that will carry you?"

"To Spain?" He shook his head.

"To New Spain, then."

"From here there are no ships, Capitan. One must take passage to your island of heresy. At times, our ships come to trade." He was watching the doubloons.

"An expensive journey, no doubt." I tried to look sympathetic. "What I ask will increase the cost. Thus I offer these." I made them chime softly in my hand. There is nothing else exactly like the mellow chink of gold. "Maybe you remember Senora Guzman?"

He nodded, his face tighter than ever.

"I'm holding Senor de Santiago and his wife. A matter of business. A man's got to live."

"I comprehend. He has friends, Capitan."

"But Senora Guzman?" I shrugged. "What am I to do with her? Her husband was ruined, and he's dead now. She hasn't a brass cuarto. I could kill her, but Rombeau objects. His honor is involved. You know how that is."

"Si."

"You can help me here, Captain. You can take her back to Spain. These will pay her fare."

He did not actually kiss me, but I could see he wanted to. We went to the Magdelena together, and I got her chain off and turned her over to him. They were holding hands before they were out of sight.

Could I have done it without the two doubloons? Heck, yes. He would have paid me for her if I had pitched it that way. The thing was, I got a lot more fun out of my money than the guys who spent theirs guzzling kill-devil or hiring women nobody in his right mind would want. Also, I still had that soft spot for Estrellita. A little one, but it was there. I did not want her for myself, but I did not want her to suffer, either. With two doubloons, she and Ojeda would be able to skip Jamaica for sure, and that was what I wanted. I felt good about the whole thing. I still do.

After that I chewed things over with Dubec awhile. He had spent more time on the Magdelena than I had, and I wanted to know what he thought of her sailing qualities. He thought she should be carrying a little more weight astern. He had told Rombeau, and they had agreed to try it. We planned to buy a lot more ammunition for the big guns, round shot, grape, canister, and maybe even some chain shot. They would load it aft and see what it did.

He thought most of the men would be back, which interested me. There were a few, he said, who planned to take what I had paid out already- money from de Santiago and Guzman, mostly-and head home to France. Because I knew it had been French before America got it, I asked about New Orleans. Dubec had never heard of it. There was a place called Acadia, he said, way, way up north. He did not think any of our men would go there. I thought for a while that might be another name for Louisiana, but the way he talked about it, it sounded like it was north of the North Pole.

What he said got me to worrying about manning my ships (what Bishop Scully would call staffing) although I could not do much about it. We would have two ships instead of three, which meant that Jarden, Antonio, and some of the other Rosa men would be on the Magdelena or the Castillo Blanco. That would be good. But we would lose men in Port Royal, too, and not just those who went home. We would lose them, and there was not one darn thing I could do about it, beyond paying out what everybody had coming when we sold the Rosa and telling each man, individually, how much I wanted him back.

I thought all that over while I was shooting the breeze with Dubec, and later when Antonio and I were checking out the new gunports and the other carpenter-work. I told him about the wall between the cabins I wanted ripped out, and the little compartment inside, and we went into the one that had been the Guzmans' and had a look at it. The carpenters had taken the doors off both cabins that day and started changing the frame over to make one big door, like I had told them. I stood there looking at it, and wondered why I was doing it, now that Novia was gone. The back cabin would have been plenty big enough for me, and I could have let Bouton have the other one. I told myself that I would get another woman someday-you can imagine all that I said. But I did not believe me, no matter how often I said it in my mind.

I would have a big cabin with three windows, a nice one too low for me to stand up in, and that is where I would sleep at night, stretched out on two blankets on the floor, unless I decided to sleep on deck. That night it was going to be hard to get to sleep no matter where I slept, and I knew it.

Just to change the subject, I said, "We're going back to Hispaniola, Antonio. You ever been there?"

"No, Captain. I have not. There is gold there?"

I thought, Only what they took from me, but I did not say that. "There may be men there, buccaneers. The Spanish will have driven some of them out, maybe all of them. Only I don't think so. My guess is there'll be quite a few left, and I want them. They're good shots, but they won't be sailors. Somebody will have to teach them, and on the Magdelena that will be- What is it?"