It was odd, even disturbing, to hear such words from so young a girl.
‘Lucila, you’ve swum nearly a mile to my ship. What does this mean?’ It was not only the sheer distance, but when she’d reached Tyger she’d had to scrabble along the side of the hull to find some means of getting aboard.
‘Sir, I will be open with you. The French have Santander in their grip and they hold Bilbao as well. The people are frightened but they cannot act against them. Sir, if you help us we will strike against the French, give them hurt that they’ll pursue us into the mountains where there are many who lie in wait to slay them. Capitan Kydd, I beg you will help us!’
Help them? In the regular order of things a man-o’-war wasn’t fitted to join in an open-ended war, unless it was well planned and equipped. Now he was being asked in some way to be part of a force of irregulars on an ill-defined uprising that had no clear objective.
‘Miss Ochoa. I greatly sympathise with your cause but I’m at a loss to know how I can help. A man-o’-war is not fitted for army operations. I have very few men I can land to help you.’ All he had on board was Clinton and some two dozen or so marines, intended as a quickly deployable landing force, not to set before a French army of thousands.
‘Oh, no, sir! We do not ask for your soldiers but only to give us the means to do the work ourselves. Guns – muskets, powder, flints, shot! These we will use to bring vengeance down on the heads of the foe, to drive them back over the mountains until they’re entirely gone.’ Tears glistened. ‘If you could see what we’ve suffered, you’d understand, sir!’
Kydd softened, but it didn’t alter the fact that he had no spare muskets and therefore could do nothing for her. But what if he returned to Lisbon and arranged for a vessel to deliver arms from the depot there? It could certainly be justified, for here was a small band with the potential to tie down whole battalions of the French.
Before he put this before the army quartermaster or whoever, though, he would need numbers. He would look a prize looby if they turned out to be a dozen or two wretched peasants – or, on the other hand, if he seriously underestimated what turned out to be a great band’s military needs.
‘I do understand, please believe me,’ he told her. ‘But first I wish to see for myself your forces, meet your commander. Would this be possible?’
‘Of course! Of course!’ she said, clapping her hands in excitement. ‘General Uribe will adore to see you, Capitan.’
Chapter 60
It was arranged: in the morning he would go ashore and she would take him to their stronghold in the hills. He was assured that the nearest French were in Santona, over the water, and long since had given up troubling them in their mountain fastness.
Just he and Dillon would be all that were needed: if there was trouble the handful in a landing party would make no difference and, in any case, that would suggest their hosts could not be trusted to look after them.
‘Should be aboard by nightfall,’ Kydd told a distrustful Bray, and set off ashore.
At the end of a long beach there was a twist of rock and in its lee a stone jetty where they disembarked.
‘Stand down the boat’s crew – remain within hail,’ he ordered. The men, blank-faced, complied. For them it would be a lazy day under the sunshine away from ship’s discipline, a valued perquisite of being captain’s boat’s crew. Kydd smiled to himself, remembering with a pang that when he had been a seaman he’d never been fortunate enough to claim a place in the captain’s boat.
They walked down the jetty until they reached the two pillars at its landward end. Noiselessly two men appeared from behind them and stood arrogantly in their path.
Swarthy, moustachioed and with glittering dark eyes, they snapped at Lucila, who shot back a rejoinder that had them tamely standing aside.
These were no soldiers that Kydd could recognise. They were not in uniform, simply a rough coatee, russet breeches and homespun cloak. A shapeless cap proudly bore a red riband and they carried their carbines with a lithe familiarity.
‘We go to the camp,’ Lucila said firmly. After a quick exchange, horses were found and they picked their way up a stony track into the mountains. Before the woods closed in, Kydd kept his bearings of the sea, comforted by knowing this.
Lucila smiled encouragingly at him but Kydd was unused to the strange saddle so, stiff and sore, he was glad to smell wood-smoke on the air and sight the rock-strewn clearing in the forest, men and women moving about the huts and tents that must be their destination.
Shouts of welcome sounded and a giant of a man strode forward to greet them.
Kydd swung down and straightened painfully.
‘This is Supreme General Koldo Uribe, Capitan,’ Lucila said shyly, and explained something to the man. ‘I tell him why you are here and he’s very pleased you come.’
The big man beamed.
‘I say that you’ve come from the English frigate, which he saw sail in three days ago.’ She pointed at the edge of the clearing, and Kydd detected a small building at the top of a ridge, presumably with a view of the sea.
‘He said how he swore I couldn’t swim to you, but I love to swim. It was not so hard,’ she said, with a toss of her head.
Uribe gave a friendly bellow, slapping Kydd on the back and sending his cocked hat askew, then moved off to the yellow-stone building on the ridge. As they followed, Dillon whispered nervously, ‘They’re all speaking a species of Vizcaya, the Basque, and I can’t understand a word they’re saying.’
‘Then we’d better hope that Miss Lucila keeps station on us,’ Kydd muttered. It was the last thing he wanted, to lose communication, but as they stepped into the building he was comforted by seeing Tyger at anchor far below, as neat and beautiful as an elaborate model.
Inside it was small, nothing much more than a habitation for hermits set into the rock. They went inside the largest room, its only window a high slit, and sat down at a plain table on a beaten-earth floor.
Refreshments were brought, sheep’s cheese and sausage, cider; rough but satisfying.
‘Please ask the general how many soldiers he has.’
‘He begs to say he has more than five hundred under arms.’ This was extraordinary – Kydd had seen a few score about the camp but surely not that many.
Lucila explained that this naturally included the outriders on guard, those out on forage duty, more in the adjacent valley and, counted among their fiercest warriors, the women.
‘Including you?’
‘Of course,’ she said, affronted.
‘I would like to address them all, to convey His Majesty’s sincere admiration at your remarkable bravery in standing up to the invaders.’ This, of course, would have them in one place at the same time, proof of numbers.
‘The general would rather you give them muskets.’
‘We’ll discuss that afterwards,’ Kydd said firmly, and arrangements were put in place.
Kydd could see that Uribe had not lied. Close to twice the number of Tyger’s entire ship’s company were packed into the area, a mass of individually dressed figures with sashes, embroidered jackets and pouches. Only a few had fire-locks; most carried pikes, long knives and other blades.
‘The general says to behold his magnificent guerrilleros, those he calls the Corso Terrestre – the Corsairs of the Land!’
Kydd was satisfied. This band, living up here in their ever-shifting camp, leaving their homes to eke out a dangerous and hard life for a cause to which they had dedicated their lives – the least he could do was acknowledge it without wild promises.
‘Fighters for the motherland!’ he began; if it was a fatherland Lucila would have the sense to change it. ‘We two peoples, so long in misunderstanding, now march forward together, arm in arm against the foe!’