Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (12 page)

Street signs had long been banned in London – so severely did the over-hanging signs interfere with the traverse of carriages – and consequently, ingeniously, the traders alighted on the idea of models and wood-carved figurines to announce their trade and compete against the hawking of the street vendor.

With no street numbers and with so many of the common populace illiterate, these symbols and statues were signposts as clear to the Londoner as milestones to the rural bumpkin. The pawnbrokers in Cheapside, sir? Certainly, that be Mr Mainwaring where the three golden balls hang. The hosiery in Whitechapel? The golden leg of Joseph Barnes will be your destination. And so Paternoster Row adopted the same.

To your right the Black Boy, no sir, not a tobacco purveyor, but the premises of Mr Taylor where you may still purchase that most famed work of Mr Defoe’s,
Robinson Crusoe
, published last year. And here be The Ship to your left and The Globe and all manner of colourful filigree – so that the whole street glistened and shone like a toyshop with its tiny dolls and models.

Prince George knew none of this and cared less. Secretary Timms had sent a boy out early, as he did every morning, to purchase the morning editions for His Highness. He dried the sheets personally in front of the kitchen fire at Leicester House and presented them, pristine, on the prince’s reading table at his breakfast; his ten o’clock breakfast of ham and beef joints and not the earlier awakening of bread, milk and honey that he took in his rooms.

The prince, still in his night-robes and cap, chewed determinedly as he glanced over the morning sheets. He nodded his dismissal to Timms but called him back with a spluttering of beef as he choked on the morning headline.

‘Your Highness?’ Timms returned to his master’s side as George wiped his mouth and aided his recovery with a sip of brandy and water. Then Timms’s eyes fell to the crisp sheet of print upon the desk. The prince coughed through his linen. The servants in the room studied the prince’s exasperation from the doors and corners but would never move without being summoned.

The headline Timms saw was typically garish. ‘MURDER’. A murder in Wapping, he read. A timely apprehension by the brave and competent Thief-Taker General, Mr Jonathan Wild. But alas to no avail as the villain’s accomplices had aided the escape of the murderer identified as one John Coxon of unknown origin. Escape from Newgate no less. Murder of the unfortunate Mr Thomas Langley and another of Mr Wild’s assistants added to the villain’s toll as did the suspected murder of one of the inmates also.

Timms shivered at the repetition of ‘murder’. Four deaths in less than a day. Four killings that could all be marked by one man’s hand. Walpole was insane to bring such a man to aid them.

Last night the prince had been assuaged by Timms’s inference that if Devlin could escape from Newgate it would bode well for their far more dangerous intentions for the pirate. But this? An inconceivable disaster. The prince’s anger was most certainly justified.

Timms lowered his eyes. ‘My apologies, Your Highness. I will inform Walpole immediately that we should consider an alternative arrangement.’

Timms was not expecting the riotous laugh.

The prince slapped his thigh, his face redder than usual. ‘No, no, Timms! This is perfect! Stupendous!
Capriccio
!’ He re-read the broadsheet, his head shaking in disbelief and joy. ‘I look forward to meeting this fellow for myself, Timms! I am envious that you have been so privileged before me!’ He forked some more of the beef. ‘If anything he has no other recourse than to assist us!’ Again he almost choked on his humour. ‘He has probably made himself the most wanted man in London, by God!’

Timms forced a smile. He kept sheltered his own distaste at considering the services of a murderer to be beneficial. Walpole’s insanity, he decided, was clearly infectious. The afternoon would settle it. The pirate had still yet to appear, after all.

Leicester House sat on the north end of a public landscaped square in what had once been St Martin’s field. The public gardens, now known since the building of the house as Leicester Field, were a left-over from the old ‘common-lammas’ where cattle-men could graze their stock freely and without reproach. Now it served for Sunday strolls and coy ‘meetings’.

At one time the house had stood almost alone, with a southerly slope of fields cascading all the way down to Charing Cross. Now it was surrounded by shops and taverns as much as any part of the city. Still, the house was one of the grandest in all of London and had proved a suitable dwelling for the Prince of Wales for the last two years, since he had fallen out of favour with his father. And since then it had also become the unofficial hub of the King’s opposing government. The prince could think of no better circumstance to annoy than to patronise the politicians that his father distrusted the most. This afternoon, however, it was Whigs that ate and drank their way through his stores.

Devlin approached. The wide thoroughfare that edged the square was divided by bollards the shape of sugar-loaves with pyramid tops, to separate the pedestrians from the carriages, and he used the throng of people as cover to snake towards the open gate of the mansion.

He stopped by the Standard Inn, built almost connecting to the front wall of the house, and loaded his pipe to study the palace – for palace it surely was.

He counted from basement to attic four floors, and glass that outdid every other house in the square. Five hundred pounds a year was the prince’s rent, and it showed.

There were two entrances. One for trade and servants with a single wooden gate and one of iron with Tuscany square pillars, lanterns atop, almost as tall as a man, which would not have looked out of place on the stern of a Spanish hundred-gunner. Devlin halted a passer-by for a light he did not need just to spy over the fellow’s shoulder on the two manned sentry-boxes athwart the gate. Shako-wearing lobsters stood scratching themselves. He thanked the Samaritan for his tinder box. The man tipped his hat at the clean shaven young man who, although he did not wear wig or queue to keep his black hair from about his shoulders, had some manner to him judging by his silken black coat, damask waistcoat and fifty-guinea sword – chosen by Devlin as more elegant than the face-cutter he normally wore. The man’s brown leather boots had seen better days, however, and his face was bruised in a way that only comes from drunken fighting; thus observed, the gentleman sniffed hautily and went on his way.

Almost two o’clock now. Devlin rapped out his pipe against the wall of the inn. He had agreed to come alone and so took off his hat, fanning his face in the August sun. His three watchful companions, Peter Sam, Hugh Harris and Dan Teague, keeping their distance, saw the signal and manned their posts at every other entrance of the square, watching Devlin approach the sentries.

The lobsters’ buckles and brass rattled as he came towards them but they relaxed when they saw no pistol hanging from the tall man’s belt. They gave him the dead eye as Devlin passed his letter to the one who at least looked like he might be able to read. Their manner changed at the sight of the royal seal and they let him through immediately.

Patrick Devlin. Butcher’s boy, poacher, sailor, servant and pirate, declined to hand over his hat and was escorted to the staterooms on the first floor. He had to pull down with one hand his spreading smirk and entered looking as serious as he could manage.

Chapter Ten

The prince and the pirate.

Of everything in the room the first thing Devlin noticed was the gigantic fireplace in black and white marble. Large enough for four men to stand in its hearth, it dominated the spacious first-floor hall. Four ceiling-high casement windows drew down the afternoon sun as if those needed it to bask like reptiles, and its heat was such that Devlin could not help but remove his hat, required or not. The circular oak dining table in the centre of the room, and the five men seated around it who turned their heads to him, stopped his reckoning of the room. Cards in hand, their game froze as if posing for a portrait, while they took in the figure of the pirate.

One was corpulent and flushed, even beneath his white-powdered cheeks. His colourful clothes accentuated his shoulders, padded to give him a warrior’s profile, but his drawn-in doublet could not hide his paunch. His hair, without a wig, was grey and tufted like a squirrel’s brush. Still, Devlin put him at under forty. That man, Devlin thought, is the prince.

Two others were as corpulent but wore subtle natural wigs and more muted clothes. They weighed Devlin with their eyes. A brief wince at his freshly beaten face was noticed by the pirate. The last two, were lean and handsome, their clothes as neat as pins. One Devlin knew, but did not betray his recognition. The man hid his own expression behind a thoughtful palm and studied the new arrival.

Devlin waited for an introduction but the servant who had led him upstairs had already backed, bowing, out of the room, and locked the door behind him.

Five pairs of eyes held him rooted to the spot where he stood. The opening duel was important and Devlin would not feel awkward. He knew this was how these men ran their lives in houses of servants and slaves. It was how they commanded ships and serfs, how one percent of the population controlled ninety-five percent of the nation’s wealth. Their sneering arrogance was really all they had. Every drawn lip and disdainful eye he had ever seen was seated in that room before him.

Devlin did not run his hat through his hands. He did not scrape his forehead or shift his feet. He gave his rakish sneer and made for a bowl of grapes on a pedestal set near the round of men. He slung his hat on a chair against a wall and plucked several of the grapes, rolling them like dice in his hand as he motioned to the cards.

‘A game of Ombre is it, gentlemen? Full table, so I make it is a five-hand game.’ There was no sixth place, nor any chair, available for their guest.

A friendly voice came from behind the hand of the familiar face. ‘It is Primero, Captain. And I am not doing well at it I am sorry to say.’

Devlin chewed on a grape without looking in the direction of the voice. A cough from one of the black-clothed men at last opened proceedings. ‘Forgive our manners, Captain Devlin. Would you allow me to introduce our company, grateful as I am that you have afforded to join us.’ This was Walpole, in charge of the room.

Devlin spat his pip to the floor. ‘If you would. I’ve come a long way.’

Walpole drew a breath, and began to gesture toward the first of the men around the table, but the prince waved him down.

‘Wait, wait, Robert,’ George turned his chair square to the pirate; put down his cards. ‘This man’s insolence beguiles me!’ Devlin was genuinely surprised by the English from the Hanoverian-born prince. Unlike his father, who ruled Britain with barely a word of it, the son sounded as if he spoke it well enough for the worst whore’s bedroom instructions. The prince pointed to the elegant sword at Devlin’s waist. ‘Whereabouts did you acquire that gold-hilted blade, sir? I’ll wager it at least a hundred guineas by its shine yet you appear to wear quite possibly the dirtiest waistcoat I have ever seen and boots that not even a hangman would put on.’

Devlin looked down at his boots, the same boots he had taken off a dying Frenchman three years previously. These were the boots that had bequeathed him the map that had set his destiny. There was luck in their soles.

‘These boots are Cordova leather. A cordwainer’s masterpiece. Older than you or I, easy to suppose. The stitching is entwined with animal skin; it shrinks tight when wet. The heels are elm and the sole is buffalo hide. I’d be buried in them. As for my sword—’ He scraped it free, prompting a moment of epilepsy around the table save for the prince and the man still smirking behind his hand. ‘I wore it for your company and for the street. Fine for a parade but not much else. You can rest easy on that score.’ He ran it back; cracked more grapes in his mouth. ‘And, if you want to hear the word, I stole it from another man.’ His gaze roamed over all their eyes. ‘That’s what I’m doing here is it not?’

George grinned and slapped the table. ‘Just so! And I suppose the arrogance of a thief is exactly what we do so indeed require!’ Devlin briefly detected a trace of accent behind the ‘so’s and the ‘r’s.

Walpole riffled through his papers and hemmed. The prince’s amusement could never be subdued but to allow Devlin too much brevity at this time, in all probability the only conversation they would ever have on the matter, was not his plan. This would be it. Tomorrow Devlin would be gone to his task. This would be ten minutes that would affect the fate of the world and, if he had to, Walpole would speak over his prince.