Buccaneer Read Online Free

thought quickly. ‘Not since I was a boy. Sir Thomas is my father’s oldest brother. My father, Stephen Lynch, died when I was sixteen and afterwards my mother moved away and kept in touch only with an occasional letter.’ At least part of that statement was true, he thought to himself. Hector’s father, of minor Anglo-Irish gentry, had died while Hector was in his teens, and his mother, originally from Galicia in Spain, could well have returned to her own people. He did not know what had happened to her since he had been locked away on the Barbary coast. But one thing was sure: his father had never referred to anyone called Sir Thomas Lynch, and he was certain that Sir Thomas was nothing whatever to do with his family.
    ‘Rumour has it that Sir Thomas is seeking to be reappointed as governor. Do you know anything about that?’ said Coxon. He had begun scratching again, this time at his waistband.
    ‘I haven’t heard. I’ve been away from home too long to keep up with family news,’ Hector reminded him.
    ‘Well, even if he was already back on the island you wouldn’t find him at Llanrumney . . .’ – again the strange name. ‘He and Sir Henry never saw eye to eye on anything.’
    Hector seized his opportunity to learn more. ‘Sir Henry . . . ? Whom do you mean?’
    Coxon gave him a sharp glance. There was mistrust in his look. ‘You’ve not heard of Sir Henry Morgan?’
    Hector did not answer.
    ‘I was with him when he captured Panama in seventy-one. We needed nearly two hundred mules to carry away what we took,’ Coxon said. He sounded boastful. ‘Panama silver bought him Llanrumney, though he fell out with your uncle who accused him of false accounting of the spoils. Had him sent as a prisoner for trial in England, but the old fox had powerful friends in London, and he’s back here now as lieutenant governor.’
    The buccaneer captain stooped down and removed a shoe. There was a patch of blood on the heel of his stocking. A blister must have burst.
    ‘So it will be in your best interests to be discreet until we know his mood and what is our own situation,’ he added darkly.
    It was another several hours of hot and weary walking before Coxon announced that they were almost at their destination. By then the captain was limping badly, and they were making frequent stops so that he could attend to his oozing blisters. A journey he had predicted would last four hours had taken nearly six, and it was almost nightfall before they finally emerged from a patch of woodland and into an area of cultivation. The native vegetation had been cleared back here and, in its place, field after field had been laid out and thickly sewn with tall green plants like giant stalks of grass. It was Hector’s first sight of a sugar plantation.
    ‘There’s Llanrumney,’ said Coxon, nodding towards a substantial one-storey building situated on the far slope so that it looked out over the cane fields. Off to one side were various large sheds and outbuildings which Hector took to be workshops for the estate. ‘Named it after his home place in Wales.’
    They found their way along a cart track cut through the cane fields, seeing no one until they were close to the house. Coxon seemed cautious, almost furtive, as though he wished to conceal his arrival. Eventually a white man, apparently a servant for he was dressed in a simple livery of a red jacket and white pantaloons, stopped them. He looked at them doubtfully, the buccaneer captain in his sweat-stained garments, Hector barefoot and wearing the same loose cotton shirt and trousers he had worn aboard ship. ‘Do you have invitations?’ he asked.
    ‘Tell your master that Captain John Coxon wishes to speak with him privately,’ the buccaneer told him curtly.
    ‘Privately will not be possible,’ answered the servant, hesitantly. ‘Today’s his day for Christmas entertainment.’
    ‘I have come a long way to see your master,’ snapped Coxon. ‘I’m an acquaintance of