Cross of Fire (12 page)

But then a pirate comes along.

Despite the best efforts of the Just, the stories swab below deck. Common men had become rich as sultans overnight with the flash of a pistol’s frizzen.

Why work for bread when meat is a mere blow of a fist away? Honesty was a rich man’s sentiment. True honesty is knowing what your arms are for, why God gave you strength and will.

And then a pirate comes along. To it all he says ‘No’. The smallest word. The most powerful word, the word of the Lord himself at the temple when he throws the merchants aside.

‘Gentlemen!’ Devlin’s arms spread wide. These were different men to Coxon’s band of sailors marked by their petticoat slops.

Long hair throughout, worn so because to cut it meant the first mark of the slave. Gentlemen had long hair but lice favoured them the same.

They cut mine to cut my place. Pride has long hair. I am filth and they love to cut it from me.

No uniform clothes.

I wear the waistcoat and shirt of a gentleman. I took them from him when he shat himself in front of me.

My trouser is silk and washed in Chamberlye. An Italian duke bequeathed them me when I didn’t cut his throat.

Pistols about their waists.

I hang them from silk took from a Maccaroni epicene ponce. I earned them when I swung across to his merchant or spied the ship first from the tops.

Pistols not bought.

I own them because I took them. And despite his blood and right he could not keep me off. I earned them. He only bought them from a man who simpered and bowed at his purse.

Pirates did not take from the poor, for what would be the point of risk for nothing. And their mark was their ports, the places that they took for their own where good ships learnt to shy from. The islands where their names are written forever were the lands of the dispossessed and the slave; their cemeteries, in corners barely trod, told a measure of success.

You did not catch me. I did not bow my head once nor choke for your pleasure and indenture.

The shame of nations was piracy. England was hated throughout the world, for wherever she spread her coats the pirate was the flea riding on her back.

They had almost lost the Caribbean and now the East Indies lay under the same threat from the same men who had nearly buried America – Devlin one of them. Aware that his captaincy, elected as it was – a mad democracy that further showed the pirate’s deviance – hung on the morrow more than his past.

Where do we sail? What prize can you bring me before I am cut down, still in my youth?
Enough pirate captains had been marooned for lack of heart, or compassion on the wrong side.

He had opened his mouth on that June midday wide-armed with the word ‘Gentlemen’.

That would be his last use of the word.

Beforehand he had taken a drink, and that had not been unusual for he was addressing a hundred killers that followed him. The unusual was after the rum and lime. He had craved tea, of all things. A porcelain cup of black tea that you could stand in. And there was a man with one hand who brought these things to him, a remnant of a man who never fought in their boardings but received the same share as all. He was probably richer than all of them together but he never asked to be put ashore. On land he would be a crippled sailor wanting even for a cup to beg with. Here he had a worthy place.

Devlin had stood in front of his stern windows and sipped. He opened a pane, breathed in the blue sky, listened to the tide pushing against the anchored ship, watched the insects dive and hum about the stern, the gig below chinking against her chains as the water ebbed.

The unusual came then.

Something content settled over him. Not happiness, that was wrong, but something. He closed the window to stop the moment forming in his memory as he did when he unloaded his pistol into a man’s face and concentrated on the reload and moved past the body. Bite, pour, click, snap, click, pour, ram. Gone.

Now he would tell the hundred what they were about to risk all for.
Again
. Again and again. Four years now. Too long to chance your arm. He winced as his right leg reminded him of the bullet and the sword from last year, the most recent chancing of his luck. Too long to chance. Always strange that he had been shot on the left of his back yet the right leg had the memory, and always in the damn morning, nagging like a whore outstaying her coin. A small limp now, but he would rather be a dead man than allow it to be seen.

‘We’re to the Indies, lads.’ He spoke as if standing among them all, no need to shout or bully his words.

‘Back to Madagascar and then some. We made out poor last year and lost good men. But that was then.’ He moved along the rail, scanning for resentment, finding none.

1720 had been a bad year for all and not just those with their breeches stocked into the South Sea failure. Devlin had come away from the year with nothing but lead in his back.

He had risked his ship, and his crew, for the promise of amnesty from the Crown, and the Crown and black-clothed ministers had wanted a king’s diamond that could save the world. But Devlin had lost men in its getting.

Black Bill Vernon, one of the old-standers, one of a handful of the originals, him missed most of all. Devlin and Dandon bloodied and scarred, limping still and stretching their white scars awake every morning. Devlin had sent the greatest diamond of the age back to the earth. Lost as they had lost. He had been called to London and Paris, blackmailed, threatened – as ever the recourse of the appointed over the oppressed. And the pirate had proved too depraved to be swayed by notions of honour or duty. Some coin, the promise of pardon, that would be the limit of his understanding. But that was then, as he had said; last year. Now it was June on the African side of the Atlantic, the season of typhoons and monsoons; but there was work to be done if a quiet winter in the Spanish Main was a prospect or, as Old Cracker had sworn, to become rich again.

That part was important. The crash of the South Sea Company had been a glorious revenge for his men that had died, but now the seeds that he sowed were not even worth reaping. Ships rotted in harbours, companies were unable to trade, goods were not sailing. Bad news for a pirate. The
Shadow
’s coffers were almost spent and not for want of trying – simply for want of lading. Almost any man is one or two bad months from the compter. The threat of bad debt was a strong motivator in the normal world, and how the mighty conspire to keep the lowly in their power. And when all pockets are empty charity dwindles and crime increases. Crime becomes work and those who lived by it before must work harder for their piece.

Aye, work to be done, and murderers and thieves the tools of Patrick Devlin’s trade.

‘We’re after La Buse – “The Buzzard”, as he has it. Though I’m minding that’s for the mark of the beak on his face than for a talent for prey!’ A welcome laugh. The opening of the pocket. Pick them up and place them in – but careful now. The purpose of the narrator on the stage is to pull the audience into trust, assure them that the play about to start is the best entertainment to be had for their penny.

‘The Buzzard took the
Virgin of the Cape
in April. We’ve all heard it. The inns are full of little else. A gold bounty that no man can measure.’ He watched the crowd anticipate his next words. ‘But we can measure a lot. Don’t we always?’

Whispers now from the deck, a scowl from Peter Sam not enough to quiet them, but Devlin knew what word went round.

La Buse had vanished. He could be anywhere.

‘I have good word he has taken his spoils to the Amirantes. And there is the pirate Roberts after a partner to relieve La Buse of his wealth.’

A doubtful voice hidden by the wall of men chirped up.

‘How did this “good word” come to thee, Cap’n?’

Peter Sam broke from his lounging against the gunwale to seek the head that spoke, a path opening up before him, but no need: Devlin had been a poacher since childhood and more than once something of those days had saved him and others.

The shot thudded between the man’s bare feet into the deck, now split apart. The sailor jumped away from the splintered hole as if the spent ball might still leap up and bite him.

‘That’s how I got it, George Leary!’ Devlin shoved the smoking pistol back to his belt. In his mind’s eye a fat fox with Devlin’s rabbit in its jaws winked at the fourteen-year-old butcher’s boy. ‘
You’d best get better at this, fool,
’ its tail flapped at him before loping away into the dawn. Hunger and beatings had trained his ears as much as his eyes.

The ship cheered at George Leary’s impudence but questioning the captain was a pirate’s right. It might mean death for the common sailor on merchant or king’s ship but Leary had his entitled answer. Devlin’s speech carried on as if he had only pointed out Leary from the crowd.

‘What’s to happen? An easy cruise. Until the end of it. But an eternity of wealth waiting. Roberts knows where La Buse might be but he don’t know the Amirantes.’

Another voice, and why not now after Leary had his heard? A shot between Leary’s feet made him special. Questioning was now a badge of honour.

‘
Might
be? Where Buse
might
be? And how do we know the Amirantes, Cap’n?

Devlin arrowed a finger at the accusing head, which ducked as if the pirate could smash it with a lightning bolt.

‘Sam Morwell! You
know
I could find you in hell and steer you to the saints. Ain’t I kept your raggedy hide alive all these years?’

More laughter. Rum and laughter as good as the wind to a pirate ship’s sails. Keep them hot. Damn hot.

‘The Buzzard won’t give it up easy, mind. ’Course, we could head back to the Carolinas then up to Trepassey for the summer. Then winter in the Caribbee or Maracaibo. Back here in the spring. The same pirate round as ever. Or would you like one last hunt? And when we’re dull and fat, with grease on our chins and virgins at our feet shall we pity what other men do with their lives? Or shall we go? Summer in Newfoundland? What say you?’

This was the hardest part, the thinnest thread. The pirate captain might have the plan but it was the ship that decided.

There were fishermen near the shore, their rafts bound with strips of bark, no hemp or tar to hold the loose wood together, just trust in the father who had taught them. Their teeth were sharpened and their faces painted red and the most golden-bowed missionary riding his chariot of fire would have found it hard not to sweat and shirk in their presence.

They ducked at the joyous roar and the pistol-fire from the black and red ship in the offing and chattered and panicked like birds; they pushed their poles to the coral and away from the ship that was about to rise up and swallow them whole with the great mouth that had made such a fury.

Aye, thought Devlin, that’ll do.

Away we go.

Chapter Eight

Supper on the
Standard.
Eight bells. Early, but Coxon retired at ten and he would need the hours to prise from his officers their pasts and any futures that differed from his own. He started lightly, over tongue and potatoes greased with a salty gravy the consistency of pitch, making comment on how he wasn’t sure whether to eat it or brush it on the shrouds. Monday a banyan day for the men, no meat; not so for the captain’s table. His company chortled through the gravy. Pease, potatoes and bread for those below. He lulled the table more, caused snorts into their wine, as he described his last steward, Oscar Hodge.