"The only pirates are we," Dappa had remarked. This had not sat very well with van Hoek, but it had made something of an impression on Elizabeth de Obregon and Edmund de Ath. They had excused themselves early, withdrawn to the taffrail, and had yet another in their seemingly un-ending series of obscure conferences. "They'll be re-writing their damned letters all night long," Jack had predicted.
More conferences, and more re-writing, had followed the next day, as they'd dropped anchor off Maria Madre (the largest of the islands) and used the longboat to ferry Heavy Objects back and forth between Minerva and shore. Elizabeth and Edmund were confined to their cabins the whole time, and the longboat's load was covered with sailcloth whenever it was within view of their windows. The cargo hold was off limits to them. There was no way for them to know what had been done. The obvious interpretation was that part of the quicksilver had been taken ashore and buried, and stones brought out from the island to ballast the ship. But it might just as well have been a mountebank's shell-game: quicksilver-flasks going in to shore and then coming right back out again to be put back in their places in the hold.
The same performance had been repeated two days later on the Cape of Currents itself. Only then had van Hoek given the order they'd all been waiting for: to put that Cape behind them and run before the Virazon, coasting southeast into the country of New Galicia, the northernmost part of the coast that was really settled. The mountains and volcanoes of that country looked empty and barren, but after the sun went down they saw a signal-fire blazing on a high remote summit and knew from this that they had been sighted by the sentinel who was posted there. It meant that a rider was now galloping post-haste towards the City of Mexico, a journey of five hundred miles across terrible mountains, to deliver the news that a great ship had come out of the West. According to Elizabeth de Obregon, the people of Mexico (who were almost all monks and nuns, as the Church owned all of the land in the city) would begin to pray around the clock as soon as they heard that news, and would not stop until letters arrived from other watchers, farther down the coast, confirming that it was indeed the Manila Galleon.
Of course in this case it wasn't, and so the letters would say something else. As the only two survivors of the disaster, Elizabeth and Edmund would perforce be the authors of those letters. Van Hoek would make a report, too, as a courtesy to the Viceroy. Much hinged upon how exactly those letters were worded, and on how Minerva's involvement was explained. The two survivors had spent much of the journey from the Golden Gate to Cabo San Lucas writing and re-writing them, and had continued to make revisions until a few minutes before the documents had been placed on the longboat and despatched toward the shore. Minerva had cruised past the port of Chiamela, which was large and well-sheltered by islands but too shallow for large ships, and continued a few hours down the coast to the deep-water port of Navidad. By then it must have been obvious to the Alcalde of Chiamela, who was pursuing them on horseback the whole way, that this was no Manila Galleon, and that something had gone wrong. But not until Minerva's longboat pulled to within shouting distance of Navidad did anyone who'd not been on the voyage learn of what had happened in the middle of the Pacific. There was a suitable eruption of wailing, cursing, praying, and (eventually) bell-clanging when this bit of intelligence finally sparked across the gap. Moseh winced empathetically and turned his attentions back to Jack.
"Though they were our captives in all but name, Ed and Elsie" (here he used Jack's names for the two passengers) "might have said to us: ‘You men of Minerva are starving, your ship needs repairs, your cargo is valueless save at the mine-heads of New Spain and Peru. Only at the great ports of the King of Spain, such as Acapulco, Panama, and Lima, have you any hope of trading your quicksilver for what you so desperately need. If you are barred from those ports, you shall be exiled to a few wretched pirate-islands, for in your current plight you've scant hope of weathering Cape Horn. A few words on parchment, signed and sealed by us, determine whether you'll be welcomed as heroes or hunted down as scurvy pirates.' "
"They might have said that," Jack agreed. "But they didn't."
"They didn't. If they had, it would have meant we were negotiating, which was best avoided. So before the subject was even broached I went into my Cabbalist act and gave Ed and Elsie to believe that I was naught more than an errand-boy for a legion of wizards and alchemists in the Islands of Solomon. That, and the caches of quicksilver that we might or might not have buried on Maria Madre and Cabo Corrientes, put us in a stronger position than we really deserve."
"Dappa has read their letters," Jack remarked. "He admits that their Latin is high-flown and abstruse, and that he may be overlooking much that is nuanced. But he seems to think that the survivors' accounts depict us in a favorable light."
"At the very least we should avoid summary execution," Moseh allowed.
"There you go again—always the optimist."
The port of Navidad despatched a boat of its own to bring out some provisions. The only cure for scurvy was to go ashore, but since they had arrived at the Golden Gate and begun to eat the fruits of the earth again, teeth had stopped falling out and gums had pinkened. Whatever was on this boat should tide them over to Acapulco. As it turned out, the boat carried not just food, but also tidings from Madrid: King Carlos II, "The Sufferer," had finally died.
Of course hardly anyone on Minerva cared, and in any case it was not much of a surprise, as all of Christendom had been waiting for it to happen for three decades. But as they were in the Spanish Empire now, they tried to look solemn. Edmund de Ath crossed himself. Elizabeth de Obregon covered her face and went into her cabin without saying a word. Jack naïvely supposed she was praying the rosary for her dead monarch. But when he next went to his own cabin for a cat-nap he could hear the scribble, scribble of her quill, inscribing yet more letters.
They sailed for another week along a coast lined with cacao and vanilla plantations, and on the 28th of January came in sight of the first city they'd seen since leaving Manila in July. It was a shoal of mean little shacks that looked in danger of being shrugged into the water by the green mountains rising up behind. They could have sailed right past it, mistaking it for a wretched fishing-village, if not for the fact that a large castle stood in the middle.
The steepness of those mountains suggested a deep-water harbor. This was confirmed by a few large ships that had come in so close to shore that they were tied up to trees! But the passage in to that harbor was winding; the barque de négoce that came out to meet them had to put her three lateen sails through any number of difficult evolutions just to get out into blue water. This barque sported two six-pounders on either side of her high stern as well as a dozen or so swivel-guns distributed around her gunwales. In other words, compared to a Dutch East Indiaman like Minerva she was essentially unarmed. But the gaudy encrustations wrapped around her stern, and the fabulously complex heraldry on her ensign, told them that this barque had been sent out by someone important: according to Elizabeth de Obregon, the castellan, who was the highest authority in Acapulco. The two survivors of the Galleon were welcomed aboard this barque. Minerva was told not to enter the harbor, but to proceed several miles down the coast to a place called Port Marques.
Van Hoek had heard of it; Port Marques was the semi-official smugglers' port, frequented by ships that came up from Peru with pigs of silver and other contraband that it would be unseemly to unload directly beneath the windows of the Castle of Acapulco. So they passed Acapulco by, with no sense of regret, as every building there was either a mud hovel or a monastery, and a few hours later dropped anchor before Port Marques. This was even more ragged and humble, being little more than a camp inhabited by Vagabonds, blacks, mulattoes, and mestizos.