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Your Excellency goodbye. If you’ll permit me to misquote from the Faerie Queene – ‘So with courteous congé both did give and take’. Not quite the ‘both’ that Spenser intended, but it must serve.”
    As Luce’s face twisted into the hurt look of the man who could not see what he had done to offend anyone, Heffer leapt up in a sudden spasm, sending his chair flying. “You’re not sailing, gentlemen?”
    “Yes, I have a feeling we shall be happier in Tortuga.”
    “You mean you are taking all your ships? All thirty-three?”
    “Yes, but you’ll have the Convertine to guard you for another week or so.”
    By now Heffer’s alarm warned Luce that something he did not yet understand had gone badly wrong; that adopting the high hand (but, damnation, he was Governor) with these two fellows had perhaps been a mistake.
    “Gentlemen, gentlemen, you must excuse me: this is the first full day of my governorship, so forgive me for not appreciating all the social niceties. Please resume your seats, Sir Thomas and Mr Yorke; we have much to discuss.”
    Thirty-three ships? Luce realized that must mean just about every ship in the anchorage, apart from the Convertine . Did they all belong to this fellow Yorke? That would mean they were all pirates! Jamaica threatened by thirty-three pirate ships, and he had not yet slept two nights here…
    As soon as both men were seated and Heffer had picked up his chair, resuming his place white-faced and flustered, Luce said as amiably as he knew how: “All those ships out in the anchorage, Mr Yorke: they belong to you?”
    “No, Your Excellency. Only two.”
    “Who owns the others, pray?”
    Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Blessed if I can remember. Let me see… Five are Dutch, one is a Spaniard, there are a couple of Portuguese…”
    “Nine are French,” Thomas said.
    “Ah yes. One is Sir Thomas’, of course.”
    “Diana’s,” Thomas corrected.
    “I beg your pardon, Your Excellency. That one belongs to Lady Diana Gilbert-Manners. Sir Thomas is – er, the master.”
    “That makes a total of twenty,” Luce said.
    “Does it, by Jove!” Ned said. “You’ve a sharp mind with figures. Whom have we forgotten, bishop?”
    Thomas scratched his head and then slapped the table. “Damme, we forgot the English! Eight English. So with His Excellency’s twenty, that makes twenty-eight. Then there are the five prizes from Portobelo.”
    “But…but…” An appalled Luce was stammering now, “most of those ships belong to foreign countries; ones which don’t have Jamaica’s welfare at heart…”
    “Oh, don’t worry about that Spaniard, Your Excellency,” Thomas said reassuringly, “he’s a splendid fellow; one of our best captains.”
    “I don’t know what you mean by ‘our’ but Spain is no longer our enemy; a peace has been signed. Obviously the news hasn’t reached you yet.”
    “It hasn’t and won’t make a scrap of difference when it does, Your Excellency,” Ned said quietly. “Not a scrap.”
    Again the ferrety face began to turn purple and Heffer wriggled uncomfortably: this meeting was not proving the success he had hoped.
    Ned turned to Luce, twisting his chair slightly. “Your Excellency – we’d be grateful if you’d bring us up to date with the happenings in England since the Restoration; then perhaps you might confide in us, ah, some indication of your instructions?” And, Ned thought to himself, if you expect more tact than that, you are nearly eighty degrees of longitude too far west.
    Luce nodded judiciously, as though considering what State secrets he could reveal. “Well, you know the most important facts: our gracious King is back on the throne and is relying on the Duke of Albemarle (who was of course General Monck before his ennoblement) to run the country’s affairs. You mentioned Spain – well, I can reassure you on that point: the King has just signed a peace treaty with Spain.”
    “Most encouraging,” Ned said, and reflected