Well, her French was not a whole lot worse than mine, but her Dutch was not much better than mine, either, and I did not know even a little bit. We finally got our point across, though: we wanted to buy tar and oakum, and did Vanderhorst have any?
Yes, it was in town in his warehouse. Did I maybe also want to buy Azuka?
Nope, I said, I have no interest in that. She looked like she was about to cry when I said it, which made me feel bad. Novia held me tighter, though, and that felt good.
I wanted to find out what had happened to her-why she was on Fat Virgin Island working in this guy's kitchen-so I kept on talking about her, with her interpreting to him. I said we were hard up for money, and I knew a fine girl like Azuka would cost a lot, and so forth.
That was too bad, he said. He had three men slaves, another woman, and Azuka, and he was going to auction them on Saturday, but meantime he had them working around his farm, and Azuka had been helping his wife. He got auction across to us by pretending to be an auctioneer with a hammer. There was a bunch of stuff like that, but I am not going to write it.
Well, I said, I have hardly any money and we have to buy the tar and oakum, but it might be fun to watch your auction just the same. What time?
Azuka smiled big enough to light up the room when I said that, so I was not fooling her for a minute. To tell the truth, I do not really think I was fooling Vanderhorst, either. I was going to buy her if I could, after I got the stuff we had to have.
Azuka and his wife fixed a swell dinner for us. There was chicken pie with a yam crust, which I had never had before, fried bananas that made me think of the monastery, homemade bread with butter and three kinds of cheese, and a lot of other stuff. When we had eaten we went back to town and bought a new jolly boat and as much tar and oakum as we needed. The quartermaster wanted me to buy more, so we would have some on the ship, but I said no. The Spanish captain's money was about gone, and by then I had the feeling I was going to need what was left on Saturday.
When we got back to the Magdelena, I had to tell Novia all about Azuka. You bet I did! I explained over and over that she had belonged to Lesage, nobody else could so much as touch her, and I had not wanted to anyway. Novia tagged me a couple times before I got her knife away from her. After that I showed her I could break her arms easy if I wanted to. Then I kissed her, and once we got the bleeding stopped we went on from there, trying a few new positions. I have never thought she really wanted to hurt me. I would have been cut a lot worse if she had. It was just her way of showing me that she was dead serious when she said she loved me. In a way, she was right. I never had exactly believed her. Not all of it. I mean, who would love a guy like me? But after that I did. WITH THE NEW tar and the new oakum, I had been hoping the ship would be ready by Saturday. When I remembered that we were going to have to put the guns back, I knew it would not. It would have been nice to figure out some way to postpone the auction. I worked on it, but none of my ideas seemed like good ones, even to me.
All our men had muskets already, and we had a pretty fair number of Spanish cutlasses, too. When we went back to town Saturday morning, I wore the Spanish captain's sword, a long one with a fancy silver hilt, and his boots. With two pairs of stockings on and some thick wool we had cut out in the shape of a footprint, they were a pretty good fit. (After that I wore the sword and the boots just about any time I needed to impress people.)
'Crisoforo, darling, look at these.'
It was a fancy case we had taken off the ship with the other stuff from the cabin. Inside it was a pair of little brass pistols, right hand and left hand. There were powder flasks, bullets, and so on in the case, too. I had found them myself when we first took the ship, but I had not paid much attention to them. I had a good pair of iron pistols, big long-barreled pistols that would really get somebody's attention.
'May I have them, Crisoforo? I need them much more than do you.'
I said sure, and taught her how to load them. After that, I took her away from the beach half a mile or so, and let her shoot each of them a couple times. That may have been the first time they were ever fired-they looked that new. I checked the flints, and they were in real good shape.
Those pistols had belt hooks, so when we went back to town for the auction, she had them hooked in her belt. I had my pistols, too, but mine were in canvas slings I hung off my shoulders. Every man in the longboat's crew had his musket and a cutlass. I had left the crew with the boat the first time, and I had made sure they would stay there. This time it was the other way. I left the quartermaster to watch the boat, and led the rest to the square. We tramped through that little town like an army, and you could hear the shutters closing and locking as we went by. The auction had not begun when we got there, which gave me plenty of time to get my men into position and make sure they understood their orders.
This was not Port Royal by a long shot. There were only five slaves- three men, another woman, and Azuka. I went up to the auctioneer and told him to take Azuka first. He did, and announced a minimum bid of one guinea.
I yelled 'A guinea!' and drew my pistols.
In the silence that came after that, I could hear the musket hammers going from half cock to full cock. There was no other bidder.
I was supposed to pay Vanderhorst then and get a signed paper saying I was Azuka's new owner. I admitted that I did not have a guinea and gave him a gold Spanish doubloon instead. He did not like that, but I pointed out that I had been a good customer already and promised to trade more with him the next time we got to Fat Virgin.
He still would not do it, so I said, 'Sign it. Sign it now. That will save a lot of bloodshed.' It was in French and he did not understand it, but Azuka interpreted for us like she had before and pulled her finger across her neck. When she did that, he signed.
I borrowed his pen and wrote across the bottom of the paper that as Azuka's new owner I freed her. I wrote that in French, signed it, and read it to her.
'I am free?'
I said, 'You sure are,' and handed her the paper.
'But where will I go, Captain? What will I do?'
'You're a free woman,' I told her. 'You can do whatever you want to, and go wherever you want to.'
'Then I go with you,' she said, and took my arm.
I yelled, 'Estrellita, don't!,' because she was pulling one of the little brass pistols off her belt. I do not believe just yelling would have stopped her, but I caught hold of her pistol and that did.
'What are you going to do now?' she yelled. 'Flog me?'
I kissed her instead, and took my time about it.
Pretty soon after that all of us walked back to the longboat. I got everybody together and explained that Azuka had been in the crew of a ship I had before, and was one of our crew now. Anything she did willingly with any of them was between him and her, and I made sure everyone understood that. Then I explained that if anybody forced her, the rest of us were going to be very, very unhappy about it.
'We're all one family,' I said, 'the Brothers of the Coast.'
That got nods and yells.
'We're brothers, and I'm the capo, the head of our family. Part of my job is seeing to it that my brothers treat each other the way brothers ought to, that nobody gets cheated and nobody gets picked on. I'm going to do that, and it would be good for everybody to remember it. It doesn't just protect Azuka here, it protects every person on board our ship.'
Nobody wanted to argue, but Griz wanted to know what she was going to do.
'She'll be working with Estrellita,' I told him, 'and that means the two of them will do whatever I tell them to- fight, cook, make sail, nurse the wounded. Whatever I say.'
Simoneau said women could not fight, and both those little brass pistols were pointed at him a lot faster than one had been pointed at me.
I yelled, 'Hold it! We can't start fighting among ourselves like this. We're toast as soon as it starts. You know how I fought Yancy. If you two want to fight like that, we'll find you a little island-there's a hundred of them around here.'
When I said that, Simoneau muttered something about not fighting a woman and turned away, and the whole thing blew over.
