Carasquerra
Pietro, Luis, Rui and the others look at the fisher boat not far from them.
The fishermen look at them in the dilapidated brigantin, looking like counting the number of people to maneouver that ship made to harass little commercial boats and escort merchant ships...
Joao took the occasion to salute the fishermen with a wide smile on his taned face by years of seafaring, agitated his hands like a newborn calf
On the fishermen boat, people were talking about the fact that those guys probably survive some sort of tragedy, and waved their hand when they saw Joao saluting them.
Maybe the shipcrew natural friendship ?
At that moment, Rui put one of the case.
" hey guys, i want to let it in the sun again ! Opening the case of silver ingots, that began to shine in the sun.
The others laughed lightly, some continue to manoeuver the ship to arrive safely at their decided location of assembly, while the rest goes around Rui to look at the ingots.
There is something magical to look at your loot, but rarely to that extent.
All in all, they began their voayge of piratery and trade 5 years ago. Somehow when he turned 19, Joao became the captian, of the original crew, of 11 that left portugalwith Joao, there's only Luis and Rui that have survive. Some got killed during battle exchanges in the malacca's straight, other from illness, one of those illness that you would find only in the east.
5 years, and 18 months ago, while they all thought it would take them 10 years to achieve their goal to buy land in brazil, thay made it in 4 years.
Sure they batle, but their luck became better after Joao became the captain, by election at that, at 19 ! Their last year doing go and return from cochin to malacca to pirate, and back, they encountered a jonk ( chinese boats) convoy, full of jewelry, spices of all sort, they made it load load load..... they had accumulated what they needed to buy land in brazil.
Curiously, to them : they traveled the world, they know ot was only half the world, they could return with all their loot and live a peacefull life.
None of them got interested, they wanted more, and that was, for a few of them their goal since the beginning: conquer brazil.
That poor piece of land, difficult to strive in, constantly attacked by natives, contested with powers like netherlands, ,sometimes france, , maybe spain, they left, portugal was already at war with spain for independance, and they are still at it.
From their perpspective portugal had no chances of winning against spain in a direct military conflict.
Except Joao, they all thought that, they would have been enrolled if not for that brigantine Joao arrived with that fateful day.
And now, they were rich. Really rich. Enough to buy a fleet of galions, with frigates as their escorts.
When they arrived, the fisher port, and the few cahuts around it, and the field far from the shores, and some charets are waiting for them.
Joao said "First we ahve to decide Who will carry the loot ?"
He asked loud enough to be heard by everyone, and his question was met with some loud laughters.
They still had some spare change, but the couldn't use the loot as such, and they all knew it.
When they began that : they tought they would at most have half of the arrival of the silver ingots from the spaniards, but they took it all.
They already decided to buy noble titles and land in brazil... around: all the supposed loot they would do with that operation : 20 million reals.
And now they have around 40 millions, or so they estimate.
The problems :
Those ingot are really refined, almost 100% silver per ingot. The maximum.
They have a mark that stipulate their origin.
Not even sure that the nobles would not simply kill them for that loot and give it back to the spaniards. They may consider that robbery, I mean redistribution from the rich to the poor, as an offense for all the nobles, considering their social interaction with pirates, ahem i mean, honest traders that sometimes plunder boat that get ghostly abandoned....
What luck for those pirates, ahem i mean honest traders.
So they have to "justify" those funds.
They thought of many possibilities, but all are in earnest for now.
They landed on the beach, and began working to pull and train the cases full of their loot out of the brigantine.
That's when they constated, that the brigantine would not have been able to sail anymore anyways.... Joao laugh out loud realizing that : a few more hours at sea and they would have had to swim to the shores, while the loot would have touch the seabed.
Most people don't know to swim, even veteran sailors, but all of them do. Joao insisted, in fact Joao would have been considered a difficult to deal with captain, and maybe, if not for the luck that seem to always be with him, like walking around him, they would have probably changed captain.
Well talking about luck, when he is not in luck that's all the crew that is not in luck. That tempest, a few days of sailing, a few weeks at most, and they would have arrived rich! Some would have bought their noble ttles and land in brazil and others do their things their own way. That tempest left a scar on all those survivors.
Frankly speaking , it was like at that moment, everything, the world itself turned against them, not one of those usual tempest, like god personnally took pleasqure in torturing them, drowing them, maybe they should go protestant ?
Why stay cathilic if god is pursuing the catholics ?
Like joao said: i don' tlike muslims.
Most of the crew didn't understand him, it was a notable statement , especially in the malacca's straight, but he explained after that : resignation and submission, he doesn't like that, at least in his crew.
Who would become pirate by soumission to mother nature ? Or anything related ? Almost None. Joao, Rui talked about it with Pietro, that they met in Goa, a little before Joao got elected captain at 19, said that , most people don't care about the meaning of the words the use, especially concerning religion, and so he despise islam.
Considering that portugal and spain ended the reconquista only 150 years ealier after so much struggle, almost 1000 years.... there 's nothing to be surprised about that.
All in all, joao has almost always taught the way of determinaiton and knowledge to his crew, more like the captain decided, not that much hiw crew, than the crew decded the captain, the pirate way of doing thing is not a hierarchy like a tower, but more like a band of wolves that elect their alpha for the moment coordination is needed.
Not the other way around : the captain malaxing the crew to coordinate the crew.... like sheeps ....like you can found in any royal navy.
The crew walked from the ship to the "fort" and back again and again, till they had food , wood, water, wine, spices, and almost secire the cases.
At the "fort" , they found the clothes they let there before departing one year ago, nothing has change there, there's more dust, but noone should have visited that house during their more than a year operation.
The "Fort" was not that attractive, it was made voluntarily, to avoid visitors during their raid.
The wind was blowing in the grass in the early evening, the "fort" has a large cellar, large enough to store the loot, and many other items of usefulness for the crew.
The "fort" from the outside looks like a fisherman's hut that has been abandoned for years.
Large enough to accommodate one or two people. Joao, Luis, Rui, Pietro and others began to set up the tents to camp near the hut.
They prepared a fire and each theirsoblets for the spiced wine.
If they had had sugar, it would have been their favorite drink.
The songs began, the jokes and anecdotes, and above all, the details of their latest adventures.
All they lacked was the women that night, and a little sugar.
Everything they were going to have to do to take full advantage of the silver bars was going to be discussed in a few days, after they had visited Lisboa, in order to stay informed of the background noises of what they had been doing in Seville a few days before.
In 1652, news travels much faster than it did a few hundred years ago. What would have taken Portugal to learn what happened in Spain a year at the time would now takes a few days, at the very least a few weeks, especially since the invention of printing.
______
20 mars 1652, Lisboa.
Joao and Luis are the only ones to have made the trip, the others stayed at the camp to watch the after the loot.
Joao and Luis did not have to consult each other for long, when they passed a house of reputation, and looked at each other and entered.
_____
March 21, 1652.
After spending a little more time than expected in this sordid and endearing place, as much as it is disgusting
The rising sun illuminated the red-tiled roofs and whitewashed facades of the buildings, while the bells of the many churches—including the grandiose Sé Cathedral—sounded the call for morning masses. The aroma of freshly caught fish mingled with the scents of exotic spices: pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg, landed from the East Indies.
In the Praça do Comércio, lined with elegant arcades, merchants in colorful clothes were bitterly discussing prices with middlemen. The sound of horses' hooves echoed, while carts carried Brazilian wood or sacks of sugar, key goods of the Portuguese empire.
They went to a large tavern, and ordered a few glasses of liqor: rhum, a novelty that warms under a blazing sun.
There they also learned that they had becomereknown – if they had been a little more attentive they would have learned it the evening before or in the night, or when they woke up, but they had other problems to solve.
In fact, some have called it the scandal of the century!
Here is the official story: after arresting the culprits of the Seville larceny:
The culprits of the fire of Seville, of the theft of money, were caught by evil guards, who killed them and, to make good deals, simply took the booty, before being caught, rebuked and corrected by kind guards, before benefiting from all the care of their lord, who had them executed in the public square to, appease the angry crowd.
Of course, no one told this story like that, but Joao always tended to find shortcuts where there were any.
The small troupe has thus reached, in fact, a level of rekown never equalled: The stars who have shamed the spaniards so much that the spaniards prentended they soved it all, with perfectly dead culprits.
Ahem, No, with all these stories, all is well that end well in the best of all worlds, a very beautiful story, wonderful, typical of stories told to the children of justice and also every Sunday at Mass, except that there is only one who does come out alive by the power of the resurrection.
Joao sometimes talks about it to his teammates, but it has never interested them much, in any case, if the Jesuists understood the stories they are telling, they could easily realize the implications.
The rest of the information concerns the fact that half of the city of Seville succumbed to the fire, with many victims, and tumults in the port, which relocated some of the boats to other ports, including some to Lisboa in order to unload their cargoes and leave for the east or west.
Luis was puzzled for a few seconds before laughing, and laughing again while Joao took it much more seriously: "They claim they still have the money?" They are not going to stop at this story.
In addition, a small Spanish troop faced a small Portuguese troop in a small battle and lost, as if the Spanish had taken 2 slaps in a few days. But the main conflicts seem to have taken place in the colonies, and especially at sea.
After talking a bit with other users, and taking a step back from the events, Joao began to make a plan.
The first step is to buy a boat. The second was to go to France to buy a fleet and recruit crews.
To make it more precise, the region of brest.
Luis said that the Republic of England would be an excellent place to build boats, to which Joao retorted that anti-Catholicism in England republic, directed by Oliver Cromwell did not promise a warm welcome to the Portuguese, let alone Portugueses with 5 tons of silver.
How to buy that first boat, a used boat should do the trick.
The only question that remains is how to exchange a bar for reals*?
( *money mostly used in portugal around 1650 )
Joao already had his answer, but he waited for Luis to make his proposal.
"We could rent a forge, and melt down an ingot, it will remove the zacatecas mark, on the other hand, we will lose the guarantee of the silver content of the bar to exchange it at a changer or some merchant association"
"Undeniably... We'll try like this. On the other hand, you have to prepare, as much for the forge to melt an ingot it's not risky"; As much as for the bank we need a small one, where we can kill everyone without being caught as soon as some people would have the idea of simply steal them from us"
"hahahaa, they don't have the thieves' code!!!"
"What's so funny?" asked Joao
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" luis adds "the thief's code, or the pirate's code, or the looter's code"
"What??? Haha.... You have to put limits to the: before I was captain the guy found an area where a lot of boats passed and then we looted them all, as if waiting patiently for the pirate hunters to chase us, it's ridiculous"
"hahahaha!! yes the hacker's code!!! Not looting too much in this place, but going to another place, in short moving what..."
"Yes!!! Exwcatement !!!" Joao exasperated
"HAHAHAHAHAH you are chewing your words now"
"....."
Thus began the search for a blacksmith.
Given their antecedents and reputation in the East Indies, whatever their possession, the 11 cronies can quite easily explain the origin of their fortune, and therefore, the people cannot despoil them in any easy way.
From what Joao has read about this kind of patient, they have a kind of code.
A bit like it is not good for man to remain alone: and so man must find a woman, a bit like taking on a burden like the Abraham, continuing to load Isaac even after Abraham's ascent, when he wanted to climb so high, that he charged Isaac so much that he wanted to kill him, and then said: that it wasn't Abraham, it was the fear of dying, his Lord who told him to do all these things.... Joao had tried to speak about it ro a Jesuit, but it had fallen on deaf ears, the guy rebuked him and corrected him in order to put him on a straight path, that of the Jesuits. Which Joao did not do. And in a few ways, and a little luck, this Jesuit brother was kicked out of his place where Joao thought he was a little too enthroned.
Ha!!!!!
Luis looked at Joao in an intrigued and suspicious way
"What's happening to you?"
"Ha! One of those bible things..."
"That story about Father Marao again?"
"No," Joao replied abruptly, "I was thinking of the storm: it's as if, all eleven of us were as if charged by the world to do like the world, otherwise, watch out for the bath....!! rebuke and chastise, the world wants its share of the world... like an old man who charges his only son for fear of dying"
"yes .." replies Luis a little unconcerned: "well now we're going to the new world"
"Hahaahhaa" Joao laughed, "yes.. In the New World, maybe the New World won't be afraid to die and won't shove a storm in our faces when we finally get close to the goal.
Luis gets a little annoyed: "yes, I've still had nightmares since the storm too, but frankly you seemed braver and detached when it happened"
"..." before Luis resumes by interrupting him
"I know what you're going to say!!"
"And what am I going to say?"
"That it's not during the difficulties that we can afford to crack, but after, in any case, never during the diffculties."
"I don't make you say it and you said it"
"Always your humor at two gold coins !"
"hehehe"
"More seriously," Luis continued, "I can't understand the difference, we melt the ingots, we exchange them and that's it, the transactiosn we had in Cochin are enough to explain such a fortune."
"It's not the problem of the origin of the money, that the content of the said money: we have silver bars, not precious stones, that's the first problem,
the second: instead of 500 we are only 11. It still makes a difference: $20 million divided into 500 equal shares, and $40 million divided into 11 equal parts.
The third problem: this money is probably sought by the Spaniards, and therefore, we can't do what we want with it in any way.
Fourth problem: to guarantee our property, we must have guarantors, for whom we will also be guarantors: basically we will have to let go of a part, whether it is for the church, or a specific group linked to the church, among the nobles, bankers etc. In short, like we used to do in the East Indies, but more difficult, because we are much less known here"
"Oh yes you had already explained it while we were digging this tunnel, I had forgotten"
"Me too anyway ... "
The discussion continued until they arrived in front of a Blcksmith with few customers.
Joao came to the workshop directly, surprising a few people and being rebuffed.
The college of apprentice blacksmiths consulted when the master arrived and looked at the two newcomers.
______
The master blacksmith, a burly man with gray hair tied in a catogan, looked up from his anvil. His hands, blackened by years of work, still held the hammer he had used to forge a sword, but his gaze, piercing like a steel point, fell on the two men who had just entered his workshop and turned around surrounded by his apprentices
They were sailors, there was no doubt about it. Their clothes faded by the salt and the sun betrayed months spent sailing, Their loose linen shirts were open at the collar, revealing skins tanned by the elements. What caught the blacksmith's attention, however, was the unusual detail: none of them wore the traditional earrings that were often found among seafarers. Instead, an electrum necklace adorned each of their necks, twinkling slightly in the dim light of the workshop. The pendant they wore was engraved with a Christian symbol, simple but striking, almost austere in its devotion.
The blacksmith put down his hammer and wiped his hands on a coarse cloth. He evaluated them with an experienced eye. These men were no ordinary sailors: they did not speak, their eyes fixed on the apprentices. One, younger, had hard features, as if shaped by the sea winds, and the other, slightly older, wore in his eyes a gravity that contrasted with the apparent casualness of his movements.
"Are you looking for something specific, gentlemen?" asked the blacksmith gruffly, though a spark of curiosity flashed through his eyes.
The two men exchanged a quick glance, a silent language that they seemed to master.
The youngest threw a 30-kilogram ingot from under his cloak and dropped it on the ground.
The blacksmith looked at the fallen ingot, before looking at the symbol on their necklaces, as if he sensed a certain correlation.
The disciples looked attentively at the ingot as if seized by a silent fever admiring this ingot.
The master blacksmith looked at Joao, the younger of the two, what surprised him the most was that this young man could carry 30 kilos without having a single flaw in his gait, nor in his attitude, as if this weight was almost nothing for him.