Michael Crichton - Pirate Latitudes

…

LAZUE WAS IN a bawdy house on Lime Road, surrounded by giggling women. Lazue was French; the name was a bastardization of Les Yeux, for this sailor’s eyes were large, and bright, and legendary. Lazue could see better than anyone in the dark of night; many times, Hunter had gotten his ships through reefs and shoal water with the help of Lazue on the forecastle. It was also true that this slender, catlike person was an extraordinary marksman.

“Hunter,” Lazue growled, with an arm around a buxom girl. “Hunter, join us.” The girls giggled and played with their hair.

“A word in private, Lazue.”

“You are so tedious,” Lazue said, and kissed each of the girls in turn. “I shall return, my sweets,” Lazue said, and crossed with Hunter to a far corner. A girl brought them a crock of kill-devil, and each a glass.

Hunter looked at Lazue’s shoulder-length tangled hair and beardless face. “Are you drunk, Lazue?”

“Not too drunk, Captain,” Lazue said, with a raucous laugh. “Speak your mind.”

“I am making a voyage in two days.”

“Yes?” Lazue seemed to become suddenly sober. The large, watchful eyes focused intently on Hunter. “A voyage to what end?”

“Matanceros.”

Lazue laughed, a deep, rumbling growl of a laugh. It was an odd sound to come from so slight a body.

“Matanceros means slaughter, and it is well-named, from all that I hear.”

“Nonetheless,” Hunter said.

“Your reasons must be good.”

“They are.”

Lazue nodded, not expecting to hear more. A clever captain did not reveal much about a raid until the crew was under way.

“Are the reasons as good as the dangers are great?”

“They are.”

Lazue searched Hunter’s face. “You want a woman on this voyage?”

“That is why I am here.”

Lazue laughed again. She scratched her small breasts absently. Though she dressed and acted and fought like a man, Lazue was a woman. Her story was known to few, but Hunter was one.

Lazue was the daughter of a Brittany seaman’s wife. Her husband was at sea when the wife found she was pregnant and subsequently delivered a son. However, the husband never returned - indeed, he was never heard from again - and after some months, the woman found herself pregnant a second time. Fearing scandal, she moved to another village in the province, where she delivered a daughter, Lazue.

A year passed and the son died. Meanwhile, the mother ran out of funds, and found it necessary to return to her native village to live with her parents. To avoid dishonor, she dressed her daughter as her son and the deception was so complete that no one in the village, including the child’s grandparents, ever suspected the truth. Lazue grew up as a boy, and at thirteen was made a coachman for a local nobleman; later she joined the French army, and lived for several years among troops without ever being discovered. Finally - at least as she told the story - she fell in love with a handsome young cavalry officer and revealed her secret to him. They had a passionate affair but he never married her, and when it ended, she chose to come to the West Indies, where she again resumed her masculine role.

In a town like Port Royal, such a secret could not be kept long, and indeed everyone knew that Lazue was a woman. In any case, during privateering raids, she was in the habit of baring her breasts in order to confuse and terrify the enemy. But in the port, she was customarily treated like a man, and no one made any great cause over it.

Now, Lazue laughed. “You are mad, Hunter, to attack Matanceros.”

“Will you come?”

She laughed again. “Only because I have nothing better to do.” And she went back to the giggling whores at the far table.

…

HUNTER FOUND THE Moor, in the early-morning hours, playing a hand of gleek with two Dutch corsairs at a gaming house called The Yellow Scamp.

The Moor, also called Bassa, was a huge man with a giant head, flat slabs of muscle on his shoulders and chest, heavy arms, and thick hands, which curled around the playing cards and made them seem tiny. He was called the Moor for reasons long since forgotten; and even if he were inclined to tell of his origins, he could not do so, for his tongue had been cut out by a Spanish plantation-owner on Hispañola. It was generally agreed that the Moor was not Moorish at all but had come from the region of Africa called Nubia, a desert land along the Nile, populated by enormous black men.

His given name, Bassa, was a port on the Guinea coast, where slavers sometimes stopped, but all agreed that the Moor could not have come from that land, since the natives were sickly and much paler in color.

The fact that the Moor was mute and had to communicate with gestures increased the physical impression that he made. On occasion, newly arrived visitors to the port assumed that Bassa was stupid as well as mute, and as Hunter watched the card game in progress, he suspected that this was happening again. He took a tankard of wine to a side table and sat back to enjoy the spectacle.

The Dutchmen were dandies, elegantly dressed in fine hose and embroidered silk tunics. They were drinking heavily. The Moor did not drink at all; indeed, he never drank. There was a story that he could not tolerate liquor, and that once he had gotten drunk and killed five men with his bare hands before he came to his senses. Whether this was true or not, it was certainly true that the Moor had murdered the plantation owner who had cut out his tongue, then murdered his wife and half the household before making his escape to the pirate ports on the western side of Hispañola, and from there, to Port Royal.

Hunter watched the Dutchmen as they bet. They were gambling recklessly, joking and laughing in high spirits. The Moor sat impassively, with a stack of gold coins in front of him. Gleek was a swift game that did not warrant casual betting, and indeed, as Hunter watched, the Moor drew three cards alike, showed them, and scooped up the Dutchmen’s money.

They stared in silence a moment, and then both shouted “Cheat!” in several languages. The Moor shook his enormous head calmly, and pocketed the money.

The Dutchmen insisted that they play another hand, but in a gesture, the Moor indicated that they had no money left to bet.

At this, the Dutchmen became quarrelsome, shouting and pointing to the Moor. Bassa remained impassive, but a serving boy came over, and he handed the boy a single gold doubloon.

The Dutchmen apparently did not understand that the Moor was paying, in advance, for any damage that he might cause the gaming house. The serving boy took the coin and fled to a safe distance.

The Dutchmen were now standing, and shouting curses at the Moor, who remained seated at the table. His face was bland, but his eyes flicked back and forth from one man to the other. The Dutchmen became more quarrelsome, holding out their hands and demanding the return of their money.

The Moor shook his head.

Then one of the Dutchmen pulled a dagger from his belt, and brandished it in front of the Moor, just inches from his nose. Still the Moor remained impassive. He sat very still, with both hands folded in front of him on the table.

The other Dutchman started to tug a pistol out of his belt, and with that, the Moor sprang into action. His large black hand flicked out, gripped the dagger in the Dutchman’s hand, and swung the blade down, burying it three inches deep in the tabletop. Then he struck the second Dutchman in the stomach; the man dropped his pistol and bent over, coughing. The Moor kicked him in the face and sent him sprawling across the room. He then turned back to the first Dutchman, whose eyes were wide with terror. The Moor picked him up bodily, held him high over his head, walked to the door, and flung the man through the air, out into the street, where he landed spread-eagled on his face in the mud.