'Who do you represent?' he asked rudely. 'Your last captain's head was paraded around Arica on a pole.' Hector supposed that he was referring to Watling whose body they'd had to leave behind.
'I am here on behalf of Captain Bartholomew Sharpe and his company,' Hector began. 'I have been sent to arrange terms for the release of the Santo Rosario and Dona Juana who is, I believe, your wife.'
Immediately the Alcalde bridled. 'The identity of the passengers is of no immediate concern. What is evident is that you are guilty of piracy in seizing the vessel.'
'With respect, your excellency. I have come here in good faith to arrange the return of the vessel, her passengers and crew, unharmed.'
'Unharmed!' The Alcalde thrust his head forward angrily. 'I am told that Captain Lopez was shot down, killed in cold blood.'
'He mistook our vessel's approach as aggressive,' said Hector. Maria must have already been interviewed.
'He was callously murdered, and the crime will be punished,' the Alcalde retorted.
'If it pleases your honour,' Hector said carefully, 'I should like to state the message that I was charged to deliver.'
'Then do so!' The Alcalde leaned back in his chair and began to drum thick stubby fingers on the desk.
'Captain Sharpe is willing to deliver up the Santo Rosario, her illustrious passenger and crew in exchange for the services of a pilot competent to navigate his vessel southward, and a store of seagoing supplies.'
Hector paused, allowing the Alcalde a moment in which to appreciate that he was being offered a way of ridding himself of the pirate menace.
'If His Excellency agrees to these terms, I have been instructed to guide the pilot to the place where the exchange will take place. Captain Sharpe gives his word that the lady, Dona Juana, will be released unharmed. Afterwards he and his vessel will depart the South Sea.'
The Alcalde looked at Hector with pure scorn. 'What happens to your bandit comrades is not for me to decide. Were that so, I would see to it that Captain Sharpe and all his crew hang from the mastheads of our Armada del Sur. Unfortunately there has to be a due process.' He looked towards the sergeant. 'Take him away, and keep him locked up until further notice.'
The sergeant grasped Hector by the arm and was about to wheel him about. There was just enough time for the young man to add, 'With respect, Your Excellency. Captain Sharpe instructed me to say that if I do not return within a week, he will steer south, without a pilot, and take Senora Juana with him.'
The Alcalde slammed his hand down on the desk. 'Not another word!' he barked.
Back in his cell, Hector watched the daylight fade through the small window in the wall, and thought of how much he depended on Maria. Only her evidence would persuade the Alcalde and his fellow officials that Dona Juana had not been harmed. Also, they were sure to question her about everything she had seen while a prisoner. They would want to know about Trinity, her condition and armament, the morale and number of her crew, and whether Bartholomew Sharpe was capable of carrying out his threat and sailing off if his seven-day deadline was not met, and if he could be trusted to honour an exchange. For a second time in twenty-four hours Hector found himself reassessing Maria's qualities. On the fishing boat she had shown herself to be thoughtful and level-headed, and in the presence of the angry crowd she had kept cool. He told himself that she would not allow herself to be browbeaten by the Alcalde into giving false evidence or understating her case. And knowing her affection for Dona Juana, he was sure that Maria would do everything in her power to convince the Alcalde that he should agree to an exchange.
With that reassuring thought Hector stretched himself out on the narrow bench and closed his eyes. The image that once again floated into his mind just before he fell asleep was of Maria on the fishing boat earlier that morning as she stood up and faced into the wind. She had looked so composed and at ease. He allowed himself a moment's optimism which had nothing to do with his mission to the Alcalde: he speculated that perhaps Maria had been pleased to be starting the day in his company.
A voice speaking English woke him. For a moment he thought he was back on Trinity. Then the rancid smell of mouldering straw rather than Stockholm tar reminded him that he was in a cell. 'Well, Lynch, haven't seen you since Arica,' said the voice again. Hector swung his legs off the bench and sat up, conscious that he was very hungry, also that he was sore and stiff from sleeping on the hard surface of the bench.
The door to the cell stood open. Leaning against the jamb was a figure that stirred a hazy, vaguely disagreeable memory. Even seen against the light it was evident that the man in the doorway was well turned out. He was dressed in knee breeches and good stockings and a well-tailored dark blue vest with gilt buttons over a fresh white shirt. He wore expensive-looking buckled shoes and had tied his hair back in a neat queue. Everything about him spoke of prosperity and the contentment of a man of means. It took Hector, still slightly groggy, a moment to identify his visitor. He was one of Trinity's surgeons whom he had last seen blind drunk in the squalor of the desecrated church in Arica. Then the man had scarcely been able to stand, his speech slurred with alcohol, and he had been wearing soiled and sea-stained rags. Now it was as if he had just emerged freshly washed and shaved from a barber shop, ready to take a stroll through a fashionable part of town.
The surgeon's name, Hector now remembered, was James Fawcett.
'I hear that conniving swindler Sharpe is back in command, and that he intends to run for home with his tail between his legs. But I doubt he'll make it with his skin intact,' Fawcett observed. His tone was casual, almost smug.
Hector's mind was in a whirl. He looked searchingly at his visitor. Fawcett was in his late thirties, a lantern-jawed raw-boned man whom Hector remembered from as far back as Golden Island when Fawcett had gone ashore with Cook's company. On the march through the jungle Fawcett had struck up a friendship with Hector's own mentor, Basil Smeeton. The two had often compared medical notes and talked together of the new techniques in surgery. When Smeeton turned back after the disappointment of Santa Maria and its phantom gold mine, Fawcett had borrowed some scalpels from Smeeton and had continued on with the expedition. Later Hector had seen him firing a musket against the Spanish flotilla in the sea battle before Panama. So it was all the more extraordinary that Fawcett should now be loafing about a Spanish courthouse looking like a respectable member of Paita's professional community. It would have been more understandable if he had been half-naked, shackled in chains and awaiting the garotte.
'Don't look so surprised, Lynch. The last time we met I seem to remember telling you that people like ourselves are too valuable to be slaughtered uselessly.'
Hector swallowed. His throat was dry. 'Could you ask someone to bring me some water to drink, and perhaps a little food. I haven't eaten for the past thirty-six hours,' he said.
'Of course.' Fawcett spoke over his shoulder to someone in the corridor behind him. His Spanish was slow but accurate. Then he turned back to face the young man.
'There's no need for you to continue to be cooped up in this disgusting hole. The Alcalde can arrange for you to be transferred to more comfortable accommodation. I've persuaded him that you are halfway to having a full medical qualification. Smeeton always said that you showed great promise, and there's such a shortage of surgeons here that you'll be able to set up your own practice almost anywhere in Peru even without formal credentials.'
Hector was scarcely listening, his attention distracted by his recollection of what had happened in the church at Arica, the charnel house of the makeshift hospital, the wounded men lying groaning on the flagstones of the church floor.