I beg to remain, Señorita, your obedient servant and
Your secret friend.
Turning to the Quartermaster, whose eyes showed clearly that he had no intention of speaking again before being invited to do so, I said, “Mr. Bonaparte, the mystery is not the identity of the enigmatic Duke – I want to find the man who wrote this note. My reason should be obvious – there was no Duke; it was the most blatant trap and I walked into it.
“Begging’ yer pard’n, Ma’am,” he replied, tugging his forelock.
“Yes, Mr. Bonaparte?”
“Beg pard’n, but what if there were a mysterious Duke, he’d be a foreign gentleman, now would he not? Who’s to say there b’ain’t some game afoot, and we’d by right unlucky not to be a-playin’ it, don’t ye say?”
This was Hasdrubal Bonaparte’s way of saying that every endocrine gland in his body was pumping furiously at the faintest hint, however deeply buried in falsehood, of the prospect of loot in the words “immense interest.” I choose not to comment on the irony, given his own incomprehensible parentage, in his use of the phrase “foreign gentleman” and neither should the Reader. One must accept certain prejudices as they arise – to a buccaneer like Bonaparte, or anyone in my crew, for that matter, “foreign” merely meant “not English”. “foreign gentlemen” were almost by definition scheming and untrustworthy, while an Englishman was so hopelessly addicted to fair play he would always come at you, gun-ports open, in broad daylight, with good cause or without it.
“Bonaparte, please, if you have something to say, please say it.”
“Well, Ma’am, d’ye see, methinks we’d better lay off a lee shore and await the Orion. She sails at dawn – one of her midshipmen mentioned it to me while I held a gully knife agin his ear…”
“Whither was she bound?”
“That the boy did not know, Ma’am, of that I’m sure. But once she sets a course, ye may choose whether to stalk her or o’ertake her –Hecate can give her three or four knots an any weather – the choice’ll be your’n.”
“Permission to speak, Ma’am?” Ned O’Sullivan was an infrequent talker; when he had something to say it was generally worth one’s bother to listen.
“Go ahead, Sailing-Master.”
“Ma’am, I think what Mister Bonaparte is like to say, only his words lack a wind, if ye follow me, is that it may make for a happier voyage if we were after some grander prize, as well as vengeance, Ma’am.”
“You insolent, mangy, scurvy, disloyal dogs!” I cried, outraged. “Do you think Hecate sails for the sake of your purses? Is your loyalty so slight I must nail a doubloon to the mast to bring ye with me?” Not that I would, of course, but it’s a cracker of an idea for a sea-story.
“Nay Ma’am, nay, never! You know full well there be not a man among us would not bleed and breathe his last to see you avenged, nor a man will not follow any course ye set, to Hell or worse, if ye but set it. ‘Tis only that ye have not set a proper course – Tortuga, ye called for, and aye, to Tortuga ‘tis we sail now, but Ma’am, to what end? In Tortuga we may find good rum a-plenty, and bad women to help us drink it, and every cut-throat dog in the world if we bide there long enough. What worries Mister Bonaparte and me,” here he paused to look for encouragement from his shipmate, who gave it with a nod, “What worries Mister Bonaparte and me is a certain man on Tortuga who will be more pleased to see ye than is decent, and, begging your pard’n, Ma’am, who…”
“Go on, Ned,” said I, my voice low and as icy as I could make it. Hasdrubal Bonaparte nodded again, sucking his teeth in dread anticipation of my wrath, but determined to ride out the storm he was sure would break.
“Aye, Ned, go on,” he repeated.
“Well, Ma’am, it’s this man, this Cap’n Bonnet. We know your business is your own affair…”
“It is well, O’Sullivan, that you did not choose those words in the contrary order, for the dagger of my wrath hangs over your head by the slenderest thread.”
“Aye, Ma’am, but ye know me well enough these many a year to be sure that to be sayin’ what I’m a-sayin’ is like rowin’ a laden boat upriver ‘gainst a gale. If ye choose to flog me for what I say, I’ll take ev’ry stroke ye give me, and with a light enough heart, but I beg ye but to hear me out.”
“All right, O’Sullivan, but remember, no man knows better than you that I am known for neither leniency nor mercy.” Of course, I knew full well what he would say, and in my heart I knew he was right, but I would as soon fall overboard as let any man know it.
“Ma’am, this Cap’n Bonnet ye spent so much time with at Michaelmas – we cannot blame him for being a rogue and a thief, but Ma’am, he’s nowt but a farmer’s son with a bit o’ genteel blood. I’ve heard tell, Ma’am, that the ship he sailed were not even won in a fight – she were bought, from a broker,” here, O’Sullivan’s lip curled into a murderous scowl of disbelief and his voice lowered by a full octave, “from a broker, for cash.”
In his understanding, not the blackest flag could hide such a stain.
If I learned one thing from my mother, it was to know the difference between wanting a man and needing one. I need no man, but when I want one, he needs neither brains nor breeding – he needs fresh linen, coherent speech, clean fingernails, plenty of stamina and no conscience. Stede Bonnet was perfect, a man with enough wind in his jib to close with me, grapple and board me, but a man I could cast away with the galley-slops when I chose. But if one thing on earth could strike fear into the hearts of my crew, it was the thought that I might become the servant, or slave, of any man. I choose to let that fear dwell in them, for it is no fear of mine. Ned was half-right, of course – Bonnet was no seafarer: he had, I knew, bought himself a command, probably with money he got from his wife, after making a failure at crop-farming in Newfoundland, or some such place. What Ned did not know was that Stede Bonnet had in his possession a scrap of parchment on which was marked one part of a document of greater worth than any treasure in the Spanish Main.
What neither Ned nor Hasdrubal knew was that I had glimpsed the corner of a similar scrap when the Governor of Jamaica opened that mahogany chest he kept by his side.
What none of them knew was that there was a matching scrap hidden in my cabin, and what I did not know was whether Bonnet or His Excellency knew the meaning, or the value, of their scraps of parchment.
“Polly!” I called, “Where are you?” In a moment he appeared, his costume augmented by a magnificent double-starnd pearl necklace and a fathom of gold chain. One hand held a slender Cuban cigar, the other a long rawhide whip. I swear, that young man will die trying to impress me.
“Fetch everything from my bookcase that deals with the ruling houses of Europe,” I ordered, “family trees, treaties, marriages, obituaries, that sort of thing.”
“Past, present, or future?”
“Current.”
“Aye, Ma’am.”
A minute later he returned, with half-a-dozen thick volumes and a wad of loose papers. These we spread about the great table, seeking amongst their tables of genealogy and inheritance, their treaties and marriage-contracts, some clue to the identity of my enemy, my anonymous nemesis.
At this point it would be possible, but not profitable, to bore the Reader with a narrative of significant events which shaped the history of the decades closing the seventeenth century and opening the eighteenth. They were decades of wars won and lost, of alliances made and broken, of royal marriages and royal murders, a tale too convoluted to abridge and too muddled to tell in full. I must ask the Reader to comprehend that for the space of a lifetime the thrones and crowns of Europe were prizes in a game played