Captain Tilly was a cunning man with wind and sea, knowing very well how to get the most from his ship, and we went swiftly along the coast to the south, and I never knew when we passed our old shore along the Carolina coast.
The seas grew warmer. We worked often without shirts, and the whiteness disappeared from our bodies, and they grew red, then brown, strongly tanned by tropical suns. Jamaica was a long green shore of a deeper green than found in our northern lands.
We sighted Great Plumb Point and the Pallisadoes, a long neck of land staggered here and there with trees that gave the neck of land its name, for they appeared a long broken wall to keep men out. We held our course along shore to Little Plumb Point and passed between it and Gun Key, then round-ing the point and coming at last to the well-sheltered bay.
Captain Tilly stopped beside me as I stared shoreward. Never had I seen so many houses or stores and drinking places along the waterfront. If there was one, there were at least twenty ships in the harbor, and more seemed to lie deeper within the bight of land.
No other place had I seen but Jamestown, and you could have tucked all of it into a corner of this.
“Be not trusting, lad,” Tilly warned. “They are knaves aboard there and proud of it. They’ll have your money, and if you say the wrong word, you will be killed out of hand. Port Royal is said to be the wickedest city on earth, the Babylon of the west, they call it. They be pirates and those who prey upon them and more jewels and gold than you’ll see ever m London town.”
We dropped our hook close in before the town, and a boat was got over the side. Tilly eyed me as I got into the boat. “To a tailor first, Kin Sackett, for in that outfit of buckskins you’ll stand out like a lone tree on a headland, and every man in town will know where you go. And I’ve just the man for you.”
“I’ve no great sum about me, captain,” I said doubtfully. “Yonder we lived off the country, and while we’ve gold at Shooting Creek, I’d naught with me when we came along to Cape Ann and Shawmut.”
He chuckled. “Ah, lad! Think nothing of it. I’ll be your banker here. This ship was given me by your father, and all I have is by his favor. You’ll be needing money, for nothing speaks but money. Money and a man’s cunning or strength, for they be fighting men here, and strength is respected.”
He glanced at me suddenly. “Can you handle a blade, Kin? You’ll no be wearing more than a pistol in your sash. Here is the cutlass and the knife.”
“Aye,” I said doubtfully. “I’ve been well taught as a boy, for my father was a swordsman and Jeremy Ring as well and in another way Sakim, also. We fenced much as boys, but I’ve never fought for blood with a blade.”
I caught myself at that. “Except with a knife,” I said, “among the Indians. No year passed in those mountains without attacks by Indians, so we’d had our taste of that.”
“Aye. I’ve heard of those attacks on your forts.” He looked at me and shook his head. “Your father gone! ‘Tis hard to believe. He was so strong, so fierce a fighting man, and he seemed like one to live forever.”
He had seemed so to me, as a child. He was a gentle but powerfully muscled man, trained in the arts of war by his father, who had been a professional soldier. He came from the fens, in the country of Hereward the Wake, and many a story did I hear of wars and struggle by land and sea.
“It is a jungle yon,” Tilly warned, “and the men and women are savages. Port Royal is no place for the good or the weak. Killings happen by day and night, rights are many, and rum is the greatest evil of all.”
Captain Tilly, I recalled, was not only a ship’s captain but an ordained minister. It was he who had married my father and mother these many years agone. Yet minister of the gospel or not, I knew well what he spoke of Port Royal was the truth, for many a tale had I heard of the place whilst mingling with the seamen in Jamestown on our rare visits there.
With four stout seamen at the oars, we pulled for shore, Captain Tilly, Henry, and I, and soon were alongside the landing. I was first up the ladder. Beyond the rough planks of the landing was a stone-built dock and beyond that a line of dives, sailors’ “rests,” and the like. A drunken sailor, kerchief tied about his head and gold, diamond-studded rings in his ears, staggered past.
Tilly pointed with his thumb at a narrow street. “Up there,” he said, “there be a tavern that’s clean. It be called the Bristol. Go there, and tell them I sent you, and have something to eat and wait. I shall send a tailor to you.”
Henry looked at me. “If it is well with you, I will be looking about for some of my people.”
The narrow streets were crowded with seamen from the ships, some of them obviously piratical craft, others merchantmen of one variety or another. Looking about, it became apparent that good business could be done here had one the mind for it, for many goods, looted undoubtedly from merchant ships, were going for less than the market price. If a man could buy here, then get away with his cargo without losing it again, he might quickly become a wealthy man.
We found the Bristol, and I entered and spoke for a room, using the name of Captain Tilly; once in the room, I had hot water brought to me and bathed there. Scarcely was I finished when there was a knock at the door. Knife in hand and pants hastily drawn on, I opened the door.
A short, fat florid man with a balding head stood there; behind him was a black slave. “Master Sackett? May I enter?”
Without awaiting my reply, he walked in, followed by the slave. “Measure him,” he said grandly, choosing the best chair in the room. “Measure him carefully!”
He glanced sharply at me, then at my buckskins. “We will have something for you. We work very quickly. I have,” he said proudly, “forty men employed and several women. All slaves, all my own.”
“I came aboard ship very quickly,” I said apologetically. “There was no time to secure proper clothing.”
He shrugged, waving a hand with a gesture of dismissal. “In Port Royal it is often the case. One moment a mere seaman and the next rolling in wealth. We get all kinds here and are surprised at nothing.
“You would be surprised,” he added, “at the number of the gentry we receive here, many in abject poverty. Some have been shipped out as slaves or prisoners to be sold as slaves. Imprisoned for debt, most of them.”
“How about women?” I suggested. “Are any of them sold as indentured servants?”
“Many! Some likely lasses, too! Some of them use themselves wisely and end doing very well for themselves. Most—” He shrugged. “Most do not. Most are mere slatterns, passed on from one to another, ending doing the most menial tasks.”
He went on, chattering away, noting the measurements as the slave chanted them to him. He glanced at me several times, stripped to the waist as I was, and then said, “Have you ever engaged in pugilism? You are obviously an extraordinarily powerful man.”
Then, hastily, he lifted a hand. “I do not mean to offend! Fisticuffs are often staged here and much money wagered. One of the best we had was a gentleman down on his luck. He did very well, you know. Owns a plantation of his own now.”
“I am afraid I know nothing of such things,” I said, “but I am flattered to be considered a fighting man. I have come here”—the idea came to me suddenly—”looking for what may be the least marketable item Port Royal may have. I mean, with so many ships being taken… well, there must have been some books aboard some of them. Books of history, of knowledge.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “It was in my mind to open a school for young gentlemen in Virginia. There is nothing of the kind, and when the chance came to come here, where so many rich prizes are brought—”
He was astonished. “You come to Port Royal for books?” He got quickly to his feet. “I never heard of such a thing! To Port Royal, of all places! Men come here for strange reasons, but certainly none for anything … I am sorry, Master Sackett. It is not easy for me to grasp.”