Princess of the Blood. Roxana Malaventura

craven cur that he is, with pathetic apologies muttered through gritted teeth, like a thrashed mongrel, he slithered to the gang-plank, and away onto the wharf.

      I later learned, Milord, that he managed to crawl back to his squalid dwelling, there to be nursed by the evil crone he calls his wife. They say she healed him, not out of kindness, for her flint-like heart would admit no such sentiment, but to prolong the exercise of her remorseless and lingering vengeance.

      I am told that his wound was to organs which were vital not to its owner, but to his hope of offspring. My shot had destroyed those fleshy orbs which are at once the origin of life and the seat of the very urge that had propelled him to assault me.

      After this adventure, Milord, I resolved henceforth to wear a man’s boots when aboard, and to practise my marksmanship.

      His Excellency the Governor of Jamaica sat opposite me at an immense table. Withdrawing from his sleeve a spotless white handkerchief, he sat for a full minute polishing his lorgnette in silence.

      Behind him King George peered over us from a coronation portrait, looking distinctly uncomfortable, perched in his Garter robes on the edge of an over-large chair. His majesty was not a handsome man and he seemed to my eye to be a poor copy of a rather pedestrian original.

      At last, when the Governor decided that he had sufficiently digested my narrative or that his lorgnette was sufficiently clean, he opened a mahogany writing-case whence he produced some papers.

      “Signorita Malaventura,” he began, “I have here two documents. The first is your confession, which you will sign, and which I shall retain as surety against treachery. The second is a Letter of Marque, over His Majesty’s own seal, by which you, your ship and your crew are commissioned to the King’s service as privateers, to prey upon the ships, ports and plantations of the French and Spanish with neither let nor hindrance. How do you say?”

      “Does Your Excellency have a particular objective in mind?”

      “Young Lady,” he replied, leaving his seat and crossing to a credenza made in the style and proportions of a Grecian temple, “there is, as it happens, a certain vessel. She flies no flag, and neither her name nor her captain’s is known, though rumours abound. What I can tell you”– here the Governor poured two glasses of sack and lowered his voice to a growl –“is that this ship arrived in these waters without warning; no man who has laid eyes on her has lived to tell of it, except a few lunatic ravings, and her captain is a bloodthirsty rogue who leaves behind him only a trail of blasted hulks and rotting corpses. Will you take this warrant or not?”

      “Should I refuse?’

      “Then you shall hang.”

      “And if I require a few days to consider your proposal?”

      “You shall spend them in my prison, where a great many of your bitterest enemies are housed. Regrettably, as His Majesty’s resources provide no separate accommodation for prisoners of the fair sex, I can neither offer you privacy nor guarantee you safety.”

      “How may I know you are to be trusted?” I asked.

      “Young Lady,” the Governor replied, placing a wine-glass beside me and puffing his chest, “my family has sat in the House of Lords since the battle of Bosworth Field and no stain upon my name or honour has ever gone unanswered. My word is my bond.” While uttering these words, His Excellency returned to his chair, dipped a quill into an ivory inkstand, and offered it across the table.

      “What of provisions?” I asked, “I am a poor woman and Hecate ’s larders are empty, her cordage rotten and her magazine bare. Will this warrant fill them? With what coin may I engage a crew to sail her?”

      Withdrawing a small key from within the folds of lace encircling his throat, the Governor opened a brass-bound chest that sat beside his chair. From within it he produced a purse, and, up-ending it upon his desk, poured forth a glittering pile of silver. “With this,” he said, “you may empty half the brothels in Tortuga and thereby procure a crew as good as any in these waters, with plenty left to victual and arm that little vessel of yours, fit to sail against the King’s enemies. Now sign.”

      With what resource I know not, I took the proffered quill in an untrembling hand, and perused the list of my supposed crimes – the most conspicuous were whoredom, heresy, lechery, piracy, apostasy, murder (conspired at, attempted, and accomplished), pillage and arson. I knew at once that this document was my death-warrant a dozen times over, but at its foot I signed my name. By some spark of bravado I even gave the pen a ladylike flourish and handed the page back across his desk.

      Taking the confession, folding and sealing it with black wax, the Governor handed me, as though it were an invitation to his box at the opera, my Letter of Marque, as it is called – a Royal Warrant. Raising his glass and leering salaciously over its rim, His Excellency proposed a toast – to ‘success’. A glimpse into his open writing-case teased my eye, and rising, replied, “To the King!”

      His annoyance almost audible, the Governor rose, turned to face the monarchical portrait and raised his glass obediently while I leaned across the table for a better view of the contents of his writing-case.

      Turning back to face me, His Excellency again raised his glass and, with his eyebrows set at an angle he may have imagined to be alluring, asked whether I desired anything further of him. I replaced my glass upon the table untouched (I detest sack and didn’t much fancy the King), made a curtsey and departed.

      Having entered his study a pirate and a fugitive, I left it a Privateer in His Majesty’s service.

      II Of My State and Person

      Decency forbids narration of the events leading to the interview I have just described, while common sense demands a description of the circumstances enfolding it. But, dear Reader, you are first owed an explanation of my state and person, for if you have taken the trouble to follow this story, even up to this point, you must surely wonder whom you have allowed into your library. If you can bear the company of a person, a subject (though, it must be admitted, seldom a loyal one) of King George the First, a condemned traitress and pirate, then sign on and sail the Spanish Main with me, for I am Captain Roxana Malaventura, scourge of the Spanish Main. If you cannot, cast this book aside and return to your humdrum life, for I am Roxana Malaventura just the same, and my adventure will continue just as well without you.

      Tortuga is an island, too small for the English, the French, the Dutch or the Spanish to fight hard for, but too well situated for any of ‘em to leave in the others’ hands. It lies off the coast of Hispaniola, was discovered by Christopher Columbus, or Cristoforo Colón, or Chaim Cohen (he introduced himself under whatever name he seemed to think best suited his company) and started its journey through history with a population of well-fed and contented cannibals. In their good-natured way they helped Columbus build a small colony, one of the very first in the New World (though he still believed he was in India), where dysentery soon broke out. Within years this and other European innovations brought the native people to the brink of extinction, in which awkward position they remain.

      For a century and-a-half, Tortuga roughly managed to support a population, ebbing and flowing like the tide, of European settlers. United only by being generally fugitives from their own countries, immigrants from every sea-port in Europe came to try their luck. Decimation of the indigenous workforce was swiftly rectified by the importation of kidnapped Africans, and soon there bloomed healthy crops of sugar-cane, tobacco, slaves and pirates. The island’s ownership fluctuated according to the fortunes of war – the Thirty Years’ War, the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the Spanish Succession, and so-on down to the War of the Reunions and the Barretinas’ Revolt. For much of the seventeenth century the distractions of their own Civil War kept the English at home, while the French and Spanish busied themselves colouring-in maps of the Known World. Poor little Tortuga was always on the margin, so a succession of Spanish Governors evicted a succession of French settlers, and vice-versa, for decades. At one stage the English got involved; they tried to break the sequence by hanging the Governor’s chain around the neck of someone (I forget his name) who was actually