Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

Novia and I were on the quarterdeck of the Vincente looking back at the Castillo Blanco. She had been a sort of resort hotel for us. I almost said a honeymoon hotel, and maybe I should have. Neither of us was ever going to forget her, and both of us knew that. We were holding hands and wishing things had gone differently, when we saw the first flames. That was when the fire burned through the hatch cover.

Novia looked at me and said, "Crisoforo…?"

"No," I said. "Absolutely not. Did you do it?"

She just shook her head. Later she said she thought one of the crew must have done it before he got into the longboat.

The fire got bigger, and all of a sudden there was somebody standing on the quarterdeck. Novia screamed and pointed.

I said, "Is that him?," and she stared for a second or two, then asked for my glass.

She must have looked at him through it for a minute or more. Finally she took it down, slid the brass sections together again, and gave it back to me. I did not say anything more, but the question was still there, if you know what I mean.

Finally, she said, "Yes." There were tears in her eyes.

Rombeau came over and asked who it was, but neither of us told him anything right then. We were watching Jaime. I figured he would dive overboard any minute and start swimming, but he did not. He did not hold the wheel, or climb the rigging to get away from the fire, or in fact do anything. He just stood there. There was a big puff of flame and a roar we could hear just fine over where we were.

When the flames died down a little, he was gone. What happened, I am pretty sure, is that the fire had burned through the quarterdeck. That was the roar we heard, and the puff of flame. When it did he fell, and it must have been like falling into a furnace.

"I am a single woman now," Novia said, and went below. I knew she wanted to be alone, and I told myself right then that I should stay away from the cabin until pretty late.

The first thing I did after I left was explain things to Bouton. "There are only two or three things I'm sure of," I said. "The rest is guesses. If you've got better guesses, I'd like to hear them."

He nodded, "You will, Captain, if they find any faith with me."

"There was a secret compartment in that ship. I showed it to you the night we got Estrellita to come out of it. There was another one, too, one we never found. One I couldn't find even when I knew I was looking for a secret compartment."

"For what purpose?"

I shrugged. "Smuggling, maybe. Have you got a better idea?"

"I have no idea at all, Captain. What would be smuggled?"

"Gold, silver, whatever would show a profit. The gold and silver the mines produce belong to the Crown, because the king owns the mines. It can't be spent until it's been minted. Suppose a smart Spaniard could get hold of some of it before it left New Spain. What could he do?"

Bouton leaned against the rail and pulled at his nose. "What we would do, I suppose."

I shook my head. "We'd take it to Port Royal or some French colony, or a Dutch or Danish one, and sell it for whatever we could get. If a Spaniard went to one of those places, don't you think his government would notice?"

"Yes, if they knew."

"They'd know, because his crew would talk about it when they got back to New Spain."

Something struck Bouton as funny, and he roared.

When he finally quieted down, I asked what it had been.

"They would not get there, Captain. Not to Port Royal, certainly. What chance would a Spanish ship have there?"

He had a point, and I said, "You're right, but that's just another arm of the argument I'm making. Anyway, look at this. A rich man, a big landowner, has a beautiful little ship he uses for pleasure trips and so on. By and by he loses his wife. There's a lot of disease, and who knows? He marries again and uses his ship to take his new bride to Spain, then on a nice cruise to Italy and France. Maybe all around the Mediterranean. What's wrong with that?"

Bouton rubbed his jaw. "Nothing, I suppose, if he can dodge the corsairs."

"They stop at Naples or wherever, and he gives his crew leave, except for one or two men he can trust-the captain and the mate, maybe. When they sail out of the Bay of Naples, the ship's a bit lighter. But who's going to notice?"

"Low," Bouton told me. "This secret place for gold will be very near the keel."

I nodded. "I think so, too. But I couldn't find it without tearing the ship apart. The thing is, Jaime did. Maybe Don Jose showed it to him-I don't know. When he found out Estrellita had been cheating on him with Don Jose, he went down there. My guess is that he just wanted to be alone for a while to think things out. He did, and it drove him a little crazy. Sabina was his wife. I know you know that."

"I comprehend."

"He beat her because he thought she'd fallen for me. He'd beaten her before, but this time he really laid into her, and a few days later he did it again. One day he came home and she was gone, and she never came back. It must have hurt him a lot."

"Any man would be hurt, Captain." Bouton was nothing like handsome. Looking at him in the watery light of a lantern somebody had run up the mizzen, I wondered whether any woman had ever loved him, and whether any woman ever would.

"So Jaime took up with his housemaid, Estrellita. It would be a cinch to blame her for that, but I'll skip it. If she had played it straight, she'd probably have ended up with the second son of a grocer. Jaime was big and strong, and rich. A lot of women have done worse things."

Bouton nodded.

"Only Don Jose was richer and a lot smoother. She probably thought Jaime might dump her when they got to New Spain, and it would be smart to have somebody to fall back on. Only Jaime found out, and when he did he got a little crazy."

"Yet he did not leap into the sea as Don Jose recounted," Bouton put in.

"Right. My guess is that Don Jose really thought he had, though, at least at first. The secret compartment down in the hold can't be very big. About the size of a coffin, if I had to guess. Don Jose probably thought Jaime wouldn't get in there, and he might have thought Jaime couldn't. Later he must have found out he was wrong."

"His crew suffered, Captain. Not ours alone."

"Exactly. What would you have done?"

Bouton drew his finger across his throat.

"Sure. It would have been easy to kill him. Let's say he could shoot through the wood and into that secret compartment. Then he drags the body up on deck. There's an officer on watch who's awake, and a man at the wheel, even if the rest of the watch is asleep."

"The shots would awaken many," Bouton said.

"I think so, too. They make port in New Spain, somebody talks, and Don Jose gets busted."

"I am in agreement," Bouton said. "He will not do this. He will take his captain and perhaps one other man. They will open the compartment. If this Jaime fights, they will kill him."

"Swell. Only now Ojeda and the other man know where the compartment is and how it works. Besides, what if they don't kill him? Suppose he just gives up. Or suppose Don Jose shoots him, but he doesn't die? He was Don Jose's partner. My guess is that he was originally supposed to be their Spanish connection. He'll talk."

I shook my head. "Don Jose played it smart. He let Jaime alone. There was a good chance somebody in the crew he tried to jump would kill him. There was also a real good chance he would try to jump Don Jose. If he did that, Don Jose would be ready. He'd have weapons, probably a knife and couple of pocket pistols, and everybody would call him a hero. He'd have to act before they made port, sure. But until they did, the smart move was to watch and wait and hope for the best. Which is what he did."

We were quiet for a while after that. Finally Bouton said, "He killed him, Captain. This Jaime who was the husband of Senora Sabina. He strangled Don Jose. It was shortly after we dropped anchor at Ile a Vache, was it not?"