THE PIRATE'S GOSPEL
CHAPTER IX
Only one painting hung in the study. The portrait was the work of an obscure French artist whose impressive talent stemmed from his ability to commit every detail of his subjects so completely to his memory that he could reproduce an exact likeness following the briefest of encounters. While his talent had been exceptional, his poverty and alcoholism were commonplace among those sharing his profession.
Noble patrons were unlikely to be found in the waterfront taverns of a port city and like so many of his other creations the haunting portrait of the spice merchant's niece had been commissioned out of desperation to preserve a memory and the portrait's price haggled over like any other commercial transaction. The artist had abandoned his pride long before the afternoon he stumbled down the narrow streets of Istanbul beckoned by the tall sailor in the fine hat.
While the Frenchman spent only a few minutes studying her at a distance, his finished work suggested he had known her for a lifetime. Although immortalized on an average day in her youth, the bold young woman in the somber black dress smiled slyly. Her arms were folded casually across her chest and her clothing simple, but the glint in her eyes seemed to suggest that she knew the moment had been frozen in time. Astounded by the finished portrait, the patron paid the artist double the amount agreed upon and in gratitude the artist presented him with miniature version of his creation. Whereas the portrait had been shipped straight to England and enshrined in the study of the house on Queen's Square, but miniature would travel to the gates of Hell and back.
The portrait arrived in Bristol a year before she did and her first visit to see her father-in-law brought her face to face with the moment in time the artist stole from her. Betraying no surprise, she tilted her head and crossed her arms as she studied the same gestures captured on the canvas. After a few moments passed, she laughed and walked away without further comment. In the decade that followed, she sat for two additional portraits with sober Dutch artists visiting Curacao. Flat by comparison, the other portraits failed to please her. As it would be madness to tempt the sea with the likeness of a drowned woman, the other two portraits remained with the closed up house in Willemstad imprisoned with the silverware and furniture from another life.
.
A few hours earlier, one of the maids threw open the window sash and had made a point of being noisy without success. However when Charlotte finally woke up at half past noon, her headache rivaled her throbbing nose and the sunlight that bathed the room caused her to swear. She vaguely remembered a drinking contest at the Llandoger Trow and from the hangover she woke up with, she wondered if she had won. It took more than an hour for her to get dressed and stumble downstairs. The house was oddly quiet, except for the rhythmic scraping of a whetstone against metal. Charlotte doubted she would have found the noise tolerable on a good day and in her present condition it was agonizing.
Cringing she followed the noise to her grandfather's study at the back of the house where she found her father sharpening the blade of a wicked looking old cutlass. Two other similar weapons rested on the side table.
"I know that you're doing that on purpose and it is really quite cruel." She grumbled as she started for the sofa.
Barbossa regarded her coolly. "Shall I whisper as well?" He did not lower his voice.
"Wholly unnecessary for I fear that it is not the volume for your voice so much as it your assault on the English language that I find so painful."
"Be still me heart, such a charming creature," he flipped the whetstone over to use its coarser edge, "and if ye didn't look so much like me, no one would guess that such a refined lady were indeed me own daughter."
She tried to snarl, but the pain in her nose prevented it, so she kicked him in the shin as she sat down. "I believe that you have to be nice to me, since I vandalized a church in your honor last night."
"Oh do I?"
"Yes."
"Well, if you be putting it that way. Might I also express my deepest gratitude to ye for not painting this room pink."
She shrugged. "Quite honestly, it has not been used since the last time you were home. Aunt Amelia always kept it locked."
Barbossa stopped sharpening the blade. "I'm then to believe you had a copy of me will in ye hands and you weren't curious about what be in me strongbox?"
"No, I was a bit too upset that my father was dead to go poking through his effects."
"Well, I was a bit upset to be dead me self." He chuckled as he surmised the evenness of the razor sharp blade.
Her curiosity was piqued. "And what's in the box?"
"You should have had your looksee when ye were an heiress. As it is, I figure I have at least another twenty-five years in me."
"That's not fair."
"Fair? But for a mere moment ago you were distraught over my mistaken death, ye be as fickle as a…" he stopped abruptly.
Charlotte grew impatient. "Fickle as what?"
"Rightly, I don't have anything that would work there that doesn't use a whore as a point of reference. I reckon in the interests of propriety we should leave it at 'fickle' and move forward." He shrugged.
"You would not have asked whether I had taken a look, if there wasn't a reason for me to do so." She winced from the pain in her head. "What's in the box that you wanted me to find?"
He dropped the cutlass onto the side table and leaned forward. "Not so much what I wanted ye to find as to what I hoped ye wouldn't." He noted her confusion and offered further explanation. "Firstly, there be a spring-loaded blade on the door that will slice ye head clean through, if it's triggered. Secondly, there be five false lock faces similarly secured. Once that door is opened there be yet another interior panel and if you grab the handle to the second door incorrectly you'll be losing ye fingers along with triggering the other spring-loaded blade at gut level."
In spite of her hangover, Charlotte sat up straight and glared at him. "What? Are there instructions for this? Do you have a list of instructions hidden around here?" Charlotte was glad that she had not attempted to open the strongbox that was located somewhere in the room.
"Allow me to show you." Barbossa got up and hobbled over to the large antique cabinet behind his desk. He reached up with his left hand and triggered the latch at the top of the door. "There are three catches. Make sure you press the middle release on the left hand side. That be the easy one."
Bewildered Charlotte watched as her father opened the elegantly designed oriental armoire. "I thought that was a liquor cabinet."
"That would have been a mistake," he replied with a sheepish smile. Both doors opened to reveal an intricately designed lacquered door with five ornate locks arranged vertically down the center. Charlotte checked over her shoulder nervously and moved closer to her father.
"So where's the key?" she whispered.
"Not one and that be the beauty of it." He winked. "Like I said there be five false lock faces. This is what you do." He took her left hand and pressed her thumb against the bolt under the center lock then reached around her to show where to press another hidden button on the false hinge. The door opened to reveal the riveted interior panel with a simple padlock attached to a plain latch. "Fourteen down and seven over." He told her the location of the copper rivet that triggered the door. The door, hinged from the opposite side, swung open freely. The armoire's interior consisted of several rows of lacquered trays and drawers of various sizes. The bottom selves contained bound folios.
Charlotte stared blankly at the treasure in front of her.
"If you're wondering, but too polite to ask, compared to this ye little fortune be just that—little."
Charlotte looked over her shoulder again to make certain that they were alone. "Are the drawers triggered?" she continued to whisper.
"Open one," he suggested slyly.
Carefully, Charlotte pulled open the narrow drawer directly in front of her. The glint of a large green stone caught her eye and soon she was staring down at an emerald the size of her fist. "My god," she exhaled.
Barbossa opened the adjacent drawer to reveal another similarly sized stone. "There were three, but the third built this house." He opened one of the elongated drawers to reveal several rows of narrow silver bars. "There's about £15,000 worth of silver, unmarked for a reason and to be used only in an emergency to buy time." He snapped the drawer shut. "While there be a lot of swag and shine here, these are more valuable than the lot of it—seven generations of our charts." He pulled out a black leather book embossed with VII and dropped it onto the large desk behind them.
However, Charlotte's attention remained focused on the cabinet in front of her. Amused by her wide-eyed wonder, Barbossa slid out one of the larger drawers to right of his daughter. It contained at least a dozen small journals of various designs and several large bundles of old letters. He retrieved a simple ebony box hidden under the stack of journals and placed it on the foldout tray attached to the armoire. The box contained a modest, but impressive, collection of jewelry.
He lowered his voice. "As you've been well behaved and kept ye fingers out of the other drawers. You may have one piece of ye mother's jewels."
Charlotte had forgotten about the beautiful jewelry her mother always wore, but as she looked over the pieces the memories returned. She recognized the ruby pendants, the jade bangles, the emeralds and pearls. The pearls were tempting, but she doubted that she could wear them with the same elegance that her mother had. Instead, Charlotte selected a square cut sapphire set into a heavy yellow gold band. "May I have this one?"
"It be all yours." His smile faded and he took a deep breath to steel his composure. "You should know that ye mother hated that ring. She said wanted a stone the color of the Caribbean, but I wasn't going to let her wear a topaz. That be a near flawless sapphire there," he slipped the ring onto Charlotte's finger, "but she said it wasn't what she wanted because it was the color of the Atlantic. She wasn't impressed with it." He gently closed the box. "I doubt she ever wore it."
Charlotte looked at the beautiful ring. She did not want to disagree with her father, but she knew she had seen her mother wearing the ring many times. "And did you buy her a topaz then?"
"Aye, but I never got the chance to give it to her." The catch in his voice brought tears to Charlotte's eyes. He started to close the drawer.
Charlotte's memories of her mother were sketchy, but she knew her father's were more detailed than any chart he'd ever drawn. Josephina Zacuto Barbossa's name had become so sacred that it was never mentioned and the old pirate was fiercely protective of his memories of her. As Charlotte grew older she had wanted to know more about her mother, but her father remained so heartbroken over his loss that he could not talk about her. "Wait, are those my mother's diaries and letters?" Barbossa pushed her hand out of the way and slid the drawer shut.
"Yes," he said dismissively as he turned around to the desk behind them and opened the chart book.
"I'd like to read them."
"For that ye can wait until I'm dead and buried."
"Why?"
Her questions had begun to irritate him. "Your mother had a way with words. She wrote about everything," he then repeated for emphasis, "everything."
A devilish smile crossed Charlotte's lips. "I take it they're particularly interesting from the early years of your relationship?"
Barbossa rolled his eyes. "Change the names and ye could sell it in France, but you'll be waiting until I'm dead before you take a gander."
Charlotte started to say something else, but his glare silenced her.
As he flipped through the detailed collection of charts contained in the bound volume, Charlotte caught glimpses of exotic sounding places like Dead Man's Sound along with more commonplace locales such as the Severn Estuary and Bay of Biscay. The level of detail on all of them was astounding. After Barbossa found the page for which he was looking, he moved aside to let Charlotte have a better view.
The chart outlined the navigable approaches to the Hooghly River with the seasonal tidal variations marked along with copious annotations concerning the location of sand bars and other obstacles that might impede deeper draft ships. Barbossa unscrewed the clasp to release the chart from the binding and set it aside. He closed the book, returned it to its shelf and showed Charlotte how to close the safe. Unlike the process to open the deadly armoire, closing it only required shutting the doors.
Turning around to the desk once more, Barbossa gestured to the chart. "These be ye real inheritance, each page of each one of those volumes be just about priceless to the right person. This be the sort of thing capable of bending heads of state to your will." He smoothed out the chart. "A copy, though, as all the originals are locked away in the vaults of the Livraria Montesinos. The family retains the rights to them until 1967 and till then the only ones allowed to see the originals be the direct descendants of their creators." He seemed unusually serious. "Charlotte, you ought to remember that some day you'll be the only one alive with access to all seven."
Charlotte tried to appear interested, but she doubted that she would ever need an archaic chart. "And what is this one?" She studied the highly detailed coastline, but did not recognize it.
"This gem be one of me own," he straightened the corner of the paper, "and even if ye don't think it looks like much, it's something. See, the Hooghly River connects Calcutta to the Bay of Bengal," he traced his finger across the map, "and the 120 miles from the Sandheads to the anchorage at the Port of Calcutta be one of the world's most treacherous stretches of waterway to navigate. The local pilots don't share their secrets too willingly. And to those unfamiliar with the Hooghly, its tides be unpredictable and its soundings damn near illogical—some call it a cursed river." He paused. "Which is why, this piece of paper could be the key to the expansion of the British Empire in India. You see, the little chart takes a sharp blade to venerable artery linking Calcutta to the sea and I intend to offer it up to the Lords of the Admiralty." A greedy smile settled on his lips. "India will become the jewel in the British Crown within a generation or two, just so that I can send Edward Teach to the devil."
"Before you do that," Charlotte became suddenly more appreciative of the value of the chart, "I thought that's what you wanted Thomas to do?"
Barbossa noted her interest. "Aye, that nitwit can get me a political pardon, but I require a ship of the line to go with it and that comes from the gents at the Admiralty who aren't yet swayed by the whims of the House of Hanover."
"Why sacrifice this just yet? There's plenty of capital to buy any ship you want."
"This be but a trinket compared to some of me others." He distracted her long enough to slip the map out from under her fingers. "Charlotte, ships are earned not bought and I've never risked me own ship on a venture likely to end with it at the bottom of the sea." He refolded the chart. "There also be a principle at the heart of how Edward Teach needs to die."
Charlotte groaned. "Seriously, you don't need justification—he sank the Pearl. Set Pascal on him and he'll slit his throat in his sleep. Think about what we can accomplish together. Let's sell it to the highest bidder. Set the French and English—"
"I don't need justification for me own vengeance, but I'm not the only one with a stake in the reckoning. Ain't no doubt about it, Teach be answering for the Pearl to me, but he's also going to know that by my hand he's answering for all the others just the same." Barbossa sat down on the edge of the desk and looked into his daughter's eyes. "A part of me is to blame for him getting as far along as he has. When I figured out what he was, I should have finished him, but I didn't." He took a deep breath. "This all started right here in Bristol, round the turn of the century. He showed up one day; don't know from where or why. And he was nothing more than an angry little bastard and, by me soul, the only thing he wanted out of life was to push someone up to a fight. Didn't matter if he won or lost or if the fight was a match or not. No, Eddie Teach would follow you around hanging in the shadows until he latched on something he could say to make you take that swing." He rested his palms on his knees. "The year he showed up, me and Seamus was both thirteen. Teach was about the same, but bigger. Now that said, me and Seamus knew how to fight—we'd been throwing punches at each other since we could walk—we didn't back down from anyone excepting our mothers. Before the year was over, I probably laid Teach out fifteen times on the corner at King at Welsh Back and, yet, he kept coming back." He shook his head at the memory. "What kind of person starts a fight they can't win? While I be a right affable fellow most of the time, I'm wasn't going to stand idly and let some git walk up calling me mother an Irish whore. But, that be just what he did time again."
Charlotte tried to understand. "Was he an imbecile or self styled bully?"
"It might have made sense had he been a fool, but he had all of his faculties. He wasn't a bully either, as he didn't keep his fists to those he could best. Teach was something else, but I never could lay me finger on what it was until he took after this little fellow who wasn't even nine years old." His voice softened. "See, Paul's mother really was a whore and from the time we was seven he hung around us like a dog looking for scraps. He was a likeable kid and no one had any problem with having him in tow. We took turns making sure Paul had something to eat and kept an eye out for him. One afternoon Edward Teach caught him over by the quays on the Frome and beat the hell out of him. Right almost killed him." The memory haunted him. "He went after that sorry little boy with the same cruelty he showed in drowning Mrs. Kemple's cats. It made me sick to look at Paul, so I went looking for Teach. Of course, he was nowhere to be found whilst I was looking, but later that afternoon the arrogant bastard shows up in the middle of King Street for all the world to see. I came pretty damn close to killing him—I actually broke my hand on his face." He looked down at the scarred arthritic knuckles of his left hand. "Had Gaspar not pulled me off him when he did, I would have killed him. World would have been a better place without him." He met her gaze. "Edward Teach needs no reason for doing what he does, simple as it be, he is and always has been evil."
It seemed like an eternity passed before Charlotte knew what to say. "And what became of Paul? Did he recover?"
Barbossa laughed and nodded. "I ain't likely to ever forget the day that Paul Pintel caught up to me in the Caribbean with his sister's orphan in tow. Showed up out of the blue, right about thirty years ago. They had been pressed into the Royal Navy and jumped ship because they didn't like the food and kept getting beat for not knowing the left from right. The pair of them both sailed with me to the very end this spring when I lost the Pearl."
"Mr. Clam and Mr. Noodle!" Charlotte exclaimed as the memory became clear. She added an explanation, "Ragetti sounds like spaghetti, hence Mr. Noodle and Pintel sounds like seashell, so Mr. Clam." The unspoken confirmation of their deaths eroded her happiness. "I loved them, they were so kind to me."
"Masters Pintel and Ragetti were some of the best men I knew. I owe them justice." He exhaled. "Kept me sane, they did. Aye, the crossing that brought you back here after ye mother died was the longest three months of me life—I've not been able to sleep through the night since—but, had it not been for them two, I'd lost me mind. I was terrified."
Charlotte had never imagined her father afraid of anything. "Of what?"
"Of having my nine year old daughter on a ship with a large number of violent criminals in the middle of the Atlantic. I had five men on that crew I didn't trust any further than I could spit, but I couldn't put them all off as we were still below the line on the agreed upon take. I couldn't make straight for Bristol until we picked up two more Spanish ships. Mind you, they were all good pirates, but I signed them on before your mother died, so a few might well have been good pirates, but were horrible people. Before leaving Curacao, I offered Paul and his nephew an extra half each share from me profits to keep an eye on you."
"I remember they were always with me."
"And I'm still indebted to them. When we docked—just over here," he gestured to the quays on Welsh Back, "they both refused to let me pay them the share extra for keeping you. They thought the world of you, Charlotte, and didn't think it right to accept coin for something they'd done regardless." He took her hands in his and looked at the sapphire ring. "It be a humbling thing to realize that someone else would be willing to die protecting something you hold so close to ye own heart." He suddenly seemed embarrassed by his sentimentality and dropped her hands as he got off the edge of the desk and walked over to a more imposing cabinet than the booby-trapped Chinese armoire. Nonchalantly, he opened the doors and removed a decanter of brandy.
"I'll remember that is liquor cabinet." She followed him. "Is that a painting of the Cobra or Venture Lepre?" Charlotte pointed to the framed sketch of a ship on the shelf behind the decanters.
Barbossa passed the brandy to her as he retrieved the little sketch. "The Venture Lepre was the first ship I owned outright. I'd been sailing with Woodes Rogers since I was a fifteen-year-old brat and that old bastard had such a way of making enemies he truly appreciated the few friends he had. Never another like Rogers, he made it about as far as a pirate masquerading as a privateer might go—bloody governor of the Bahamas. He was a rich man for a time and forwarded me the money to buy the canvas, but I had to duel with a pompous Spaniard to get the rest of the ship. I wasn't twenty five old." He laughed. "First, thing I did was went and liberated Seamus from a colonial jail in the Carolinas—charge leveled against him be vagrancy not piracy—and for the rest of the bloody year we ran the skinniest unpaid crew around and we chased naught until we were the fastest ship in the Caribbean and I'd sorted out every sandbar and shoal I could think to use to our advantage." His faded blue eyes lit up at the memory. "Those years were the stuff legends are spun from."
Charlotte returned the heavy decanter to the shelf. "Perhaps, but how did you come up with that dreadful name?"
"Pure accident. An illiterate carpenter patched up the stern from the damage caused by Rogers' bow chaser when we took it. Was nearly a year later that I looked at the letters and noticed they'd been nailed back on in the wrong order. Her proper name, rather ironically, was the Ventrue Perle or Bulging Pearl. When I realized we be sailing in a ship rechristened, in part, after a social disease, I sure as hell wasn't about to tempt fate and switch me luck by changing the name back to something more respectable."
Charlotte did not care that it hurt her nose to smile. She could not help but laugh. "I don't think that I would have underwritten a ship with that name."
"On its bones alone neither would I, but a ship be more than her masts and keel or what she's carrying in her hold. Her real quality can't be measured in knots or promised fiscal return. A ship be only as sound as her crew and that's what you ought to be investing in. You'd truly know whether or not to underwrite one if ye'd spend a minute looking at the feet and hands on the men responsible for the canvas, check if the undercarriages on the guns are clean, walk through the galley midmorning, put your hands on the joist work under the main deck and even read through the middle pages in the log. It be more than a little frightening when you think about it, but a good crew under a good captain can float a leaky barrel across the Atlantic with nary a problem; whereas, just the opposite will sink a first rate ship of the line on her virgin voyage into the English Channel. You be gambling too much when you put your money on timber anytime ye real investment relies on flesh and blood."
"I'll have you note that the only ships I've lost have been thanks to you."
"Too late in the day to venture back into those stagnant waters, Charlotte. However, I'll have ye know that the Pearl had a cracked mizzen ye could see from the dock and every other one of the stanchions on the gun deck needed to be replaced." He set the sketch back on the little shelf. "You don't have the years on ye to know everything, my dearest," he chuckled, "but if ye be inclined to take a walk down to the quay with your old father, I'll teach ye a few tricks on how to size up a ship properly." He offered her his arm. "And the air will take the edge off your hangover."