Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

"That's right. Don Jose pushed his luck too far. He hoped Jaime would come around to see him when we left him alone in the hold. He'd always been able to talk Jaime into just about anything, and this time he'd talk him into cutting him loose. The two of them would sneak up on deck, go over the side, and swim for shore. With luck, they might have been able to lose themselves on the island until we left. Only it didn't work-"

That was when Novia came up and asked when I was coming to bed.

The Secretary of State was on TV tonight. She said flatly that the PCC is losing its grip. I cannot express the joy I feel.

I will see my Novia again, or die trying. I will even the score-no, that is wrong. Vengeance is a sin. I will forgive him, if I can. May God forgive all his cruelty and betrayal. Last night I was shaken by what I had heard. Today I was joyful, whistling and singing under my breath. Old, old chanteys we sang around the capstan, and songs the men used to ask me to sing after we found the guitar on the Castillo Blanco-"Far Aloft," "Ritorna-Me," "Sott'er Cielo de Roma," "Mon Petit Bateau," and on and on.

"Carmela," "La Golondrina," "El Cefiro," and "Flor de Limon." Old Spanish songs the priest in Coruna had taught me or that Novia had taught me. Simple songs we had played in the music class at the monastery. It was all I could do to keep from humming when I said mass. To a congregation of old ladies, I preached on the goodness of God. And was really preaching to myself, and preaching to the choir at that.

What follows will be-must be-summary. I will have time for nothing more. We had a Spanish carpenter on board. I believe I have explained that. I set him to work making more gunports, and before we made Port Royal we had all the guns from the Castillo Blanco in place and ready to fire. It gave us fifteen guns per side, plus the same bow and stern chasers we had on the Castillo Blanco. With five twelve-pounders and five nine-pounders per side, we could stand up to anything short of a galleon.

In Port Royal, where a big crane on a barge made things easy for us, we reshuffled the guns as well, putting the twelve-pounders on the lower deck and our old nines on the upper deck where the twelves had been. I knew it would make the ship a better sailer, which it did.

We repainted, too. And when the repainting was almost complete, we renamed our ship, making her the Santa Sabina de Roma.

We gilded a lot of woodwork on the stern, too. The idea was to make the Sabina look like one of the smaller Spanish galleons. Novia wanted to embroider a cross on the mainsail. That would have taken forever, but she and I laid one out, marking it with charcoal, and painted it in an afternoon.

Port Royal was a very interesting town if you stayed sober and kept your eyes open. There were water hoys all over the place, because the town had no wells. Water had to be fetched across from the Copper River. You could buy a white woman-an indentured servant-there just like you would buy a slave. Novia and I watched it one time, and the best-looking one (she was blond and looked German or maybe Dutch) went for forty doubloons.

The fact of the matter was that there was not much you could not buy there. Prices were the highest you would see anywhere, but whatever it was, somebody had it or would get it.

One of the chores I had there was talking to the merchant-his name was Bowen-who had gotten ransoms for Don Jose and Pilar for us. I had to tell him Don Jose was dead.

"What of the woman, his wife, Captain. You have her still?"

I said yes.

"Very well." He rubbed his hands. "You'll turn her over to me? I'll see that she reaches her friends safely."

"Sure," I said. "You'll be doing me a big favor."

"And myself, Captain. The ransoms were for both. We will return half, less-let me see… Less twenty percent. I will complain that due to the slowness with which the very modest ransom you asked was paid, Don Jose perished in captivity. Would you care for a cigar?"

I said no, and he lit one for himself from a little spirit lamp.

"As the ransoms were for both, we have every right to return the wife to her friends and family, and keep half. I will take my commission of ten percent on that. Twenty percent of the remaining half we will retain for our trouble, and to defray the expense of holding the two for so long, of writing and sending letters and so forth. Of that, I will take half, you the remaining half. Is that agreeable?"

I could have argued that he was entitled to ten percent, not fifty. But if I had, he would have reminded me that it was my fault Don Jose was dead. Which it was.

Could I have gotten ninety percent? Sure. I could have cocked my pistol and cut up rough, and gotten every last doubloon-after which, he would never have worked with me again. Instead, I said half the twenty percent was fine with me and walked out with everything I had coming, in gold. If you do the math, you will find that I got better than fifty-five percent of what I had been hoping for the first time I talked to him. I had gone in there expecting to get nothing. John Bowen could have taken Pilar off my hands and kept everything for himself. He did not, and after that I understood why people had advised me to do business with him. Mrs. Taylor asked whether I would schedule confession sometime. It made me feel as guilty as I ever get, which is not nearly guilty enough in a lot of cases. Fr. Houdek had not really believed in confession, and neither had Fr. Phil. They did not say it, but you could see it from the way they acted. Talking with Mrs. Taylor made me think about the priests at Our Lady of Bethlehem, and how they went into Havana at least once a week to hear confessions. We had confession in the chapel every evening. You did not have to go, but you could.

I told Mrs. Taylor that I would hear confessions every Saturday afternoon from two to four, for as long as I was at Holy Family. If no one came, I would wait for those two hours anyway-it would give me a fine chance to pray.

It will also mean that I will no longer be tempted to go to New Jersey on Saturday, a temptation that has been growing stronger and stronger in the past few weeks. I tell myself that if I do not speak to either of them it can do no harm. That may be true, but can I control the urge to speak to them when I see them?

What if they speak to me?

It would be so easy. Fr. Wahl would be delighted to take my mass. I would buy a monorail ticket, change trains in the city, and arrive in four hours or so. When evening came, I would beg a night's lodging at some rectory. In the morning, I would return.

Very easy-and it might ruin everything. What if my father decided not to go to Cuba to run the casino? What if he did not enroll me in the monastery school because of something I ("that tall priest with the beat-up face," he would call me) happened to say to him? Novia would be lost. Everything would be lost. None of it would ever have happened.

I pray God will put this temptation from me. Have I set down all the important stuff about Port Royal? I think so, and some unimportant stuff, too. With better ships and more men to crew them, we sailed around the island to Long Bay-that's my two ships, Rombeau in Magdelena and Novia and me in Sabina.

There was a sloop there flying the black flag. The captain-as small and active as his ship-asked to come aboard and did. When I had talked to him a little I got Rombeau over, too, and called a meeting.

"He says Captain Burt's gone to Portobello instead of Maracaibo," I told everybody. "I have some questions, and I'll bet you do, too. Let's hear them."

Rombeau grinned. It makes him look like a hungry shark-I have probably said that. "How do we know you speak for Captain Burt? Prove that to me, and I believe you."