Galleon by Dudley Pope

wrong?” Diana asked.
    “Would you give anyone such an assurance?”
    “No, I suppose not. What happens now, Ned? Do we all depart for Tortuga and forget we are just starting to build ourselves houses and clear land for planting after finding guns and gold for this island?”
    Thomas sat down with a thump, his fingers beginning to curl the ends of his beard. “Thanks to the Portobelo purchase, none of us has to worry about money, and this fellow Loosely or whatever his name is can’t avoid confirming Heffer’s land grants to us, so we can go ahead and build the houses and clear the land, but…”
    “Exactly,” Aurelia said. “That ‘but’…the island will have no Army, except for 550 pathetic buffoons spaced round the beaches, and no ships to protect it because the buccaneers will get bored and go after purchase: the Restoration of Charles II doesn’t make the Dutch, French and Portuguese buccaneers suddenly love Spain. But you two men are going to enjoy clearing land and building houses and dressing up to attend council meetings whenever this buffoon Luce decides to call them. Quelle blague ,” she said disgustedly. “Do any of the buccaneer captains want a cook?”
    “There’s no holding a French lady once she gets going,” Diana said laughingly. “Can I say my Catechism now?”
    “Go ahead,” Ned said ruefully. “You’ll have to say ‘ quelle blague ’ in English, and anyway, the Spaniards won’t be here before Michaelmas!”
    “Thank you, kind sir, for that reassurance. First, if you two leave the island now for Tortuga, it means that Luce blunders along with the help of a few misguided tradesmen as councillors. Poor old Heffer – who at last has learned a few lessons from you – will be left with no allies.”
    “Good point,” Thomas grunted, “but do we really care what happens to the island now? Hasn’t London cast us off by giving us back to Spain?”
    “ Going to give,” Aurelia said. “They haven’t done it yet.”
    “It’s the anchorage, not the island,” Diana said. “But anyway, I’m not going to waste all that work we’ve done pegging out the foundations for our house. We have at least six months before we need worry about the Spanish. Five months, perhaps four – how many? Anything can happen by then.”
    Ned shrugged his shoulders. “The Dons haven’t the ships over here to do us much harm – yet. But what’s going on in Madrid? If they feel strongly about Jamaica, then they’ve got to dig the money out of their treasury and fit out enough ships to send a fleet to deal with us here. And collect the silver and gold and gems that have been piling up in Cartagena and Vera Cruz for shipment to pay Spain’s debts. The Spanish King will soon be defaulting on his loans from the Fuggers and the other bankers in Europe. So sending out a fleet (if he can afford it) would serve two purposes.”
    “I doubt he can borrow the money to fit out a fleet,” Thomas said.
    Ned disagreed. “He might be able to borrow more because the bankers know they won’t get a dollar more of interest or principal for years unless the Dons get at least one plate fleet from the Main. The last was years ago, from Vera Cruz. The Spaniards’ treasury is really in the silver mines out here, which means the King can’t spend a dollar of it until he ships it home.”
    “What you mean,” Thomas said, “is that the bankers will have to risk more money to get their original loans back.”
    “Yes. Risk throwing good money after bad. Bankers hate that.”
    Diana smiled and held her hands palm uppermost. “Then we need to be more frightened of the bankers than the Spaniards!”
    Ned nodded. “For many years Spain has been using her money to try to force converts to her religion, but I begin to think that bankers must be shaking their heads now over a new loan which might end up bringing Spain to its knees faster than an invading army!”
    “None of which,” Diana reminded them, “helps us