Cross of Fire (16 page)

‘I read something about it, Father.’

‘Ah, then you know of the cross. The
true
cross.’ O’Neill gave the
signum crucis
in the air before him and glared at the pirate when he did nothing but stare right back.

‘The earl, my ancestor, had a gold crucifix about his neck. Inside, protected by the gold, the cross held a piece of Our Lord’s
own
cross.’

Devlin gave the rest.

‘And a storm came up. And O’Neill took the cross and had it dragged behind the ship and the waters calmed.’

O’Neill nodded proudly. ‘Aye. And the waters calmed.’

‘Do you believe all fairy stories, Father?’

O’Neill took his seat.

‘So you wouldn’t believe me if I told you it was the cross that pulled me to Lisboa? That I took it with me to Goa with Our Lord’s cross within on Holy order?’ That I travelled on the king’s command?

Dandon’s eye caught the glitter and silent fall of a star from the window. He had wandered from the conversation and into his bottle, but the star had brought him back.

‘How does a piece of wood get inside a gold cross?’

Devlin snatched the bottle.

‘It doesn’t. It’s a story. Irishmen are raised on songs and stories. That’s why they’re all hungry.’

O’Neill’s voice lowered. ‘You should hear the rest of it, my son.’

‘I’m not your son.’ Devlin sank a drink.

The priest had made him think of home, of being young, of being quiet, of being left. Of watching his father’s back go out a door with coin for his son in his pocket and the boy carrying the memory like a boulder from then on.

The priest saw the pirate’s mind wander. ‘But it is a good story. And you a part of it. That I know.’

Devlin stiffened.

‘How am I a part of it?’

‘The cross went with me to Goa so O’Neill’s cross could be joined with the Flaming Cross. So to preserve the Holy Cross, the True Cross, the relic of Our Lord, forever. And return with it to Lisboa.’ He crossed himself.

‘The True Cross within the gold. The divinity of it, Captain! And you to play a part! A pirate with the Lord’s cross. Your poor life elevated to glory! This is why you have had your tribulations and troubles. The Lord has shaped you to his purpose!’

‘And the pirates took it,’ Devlin said. ‘And you in mourning.’

‘The True Cross is within that cross. It must be returned to the world. If this pirate melts the gold, the True Cross of Our Lord will be lost.’

Devlin had heard enough. He stood and took up his glass. His back to the table, his front to the black outside the stern windows. He spoke to the sea.

‘I come across you who carried this cross from India and had it taken by Levasseur. That is too short. Too thin, Father.’

‘How so, Captain?’

Devlin did not turn. ‘I am after that treasure. How is it I come across you?’

O’Neill stood. In the mirror of the window Devlin saw the strength of him. Formidable for his kind.

‘I am a simple priest. I left a king – though I am sure that means nothing to you – and I told him that I would return with the cross. I told him the Lord would provide.’ He looked down at Dandon.

‘I have faith.’

Devlin came back and held out his hand for Dandon’s bottle. He sank it long and gasped his words.

‘Levasseur took the
Virgin of the Cape
. Left it as a wreck. How did you make it back?’

‘Oh, it was quite a month, Captain, to be sure. But it was on the snow you have now. A friendly ship come for us. Her captain handsomely paid back in Lisboa.’

‘I have sworn to get back the cross. The only truth I knew was that I would find men to help me take it back. What else would I hope for with but six priests? I care not for the treasure, for the rest of it, just the return of the cross.’

Devlin turned.

‘You think I’ll help you? I’ve pirated your ship. I want to empty you, not fill you up.’

‘I can pay, Captain. If that is your only wish.’

‘With what?’

O’Neill rose and went to his sail-cloth packet.

‘When I meditated on my mission, and the king granted me anything to take with me to aid my journey, I asked only for entry to his library.’ He brought three books to the table. One an enormous tome and two smaller. Dandon pushed aside the obvious Bible and picked up the pale hardback of a new copy of Woodall’s
Military and Domestic Surgery.
He leafed through it with a gleaming eye.

‘My word!’ he laughed. ‘I have never seen it complete!’

Devlin was drawn by the large, square, blue book. He lifted the cover.

‘The
Neptune Français.
’ He repeated the title as his hand stroked the colourful plate inside. ‘In English. A Mortier translation.’

Most complete mariners’ charts were French; France, just last year, had been the first country to dedicate an entire government department to hydrography. A seaman would know the French name for an island before he knew his native one.

Dandon peered over from his own study. ‘An atlas?’

Devlin folded out one of the charts as gently as if it was made of gold leaf.

‘It is
the
atlas.’ He thought on his waggoner of charts from different nations, in different scales and varying meridians.

O’Neill took up his Bible.

‘It is yours. These were the books my prayers told me to find. I was to seek a surgeon and a seaman and gift them to aid my mission.’

Devlin closed back the atlas with a slap.

‘It is mine anyways. Along with anything else you have.’

‘But do you not see, Captain?’ He came close to the table and pulled all three books together.

‘The trinity of it. A Holy Trinity! The Bible, the maps, the surgeon’s treatise! All we will need to bring back the cross! It is your destiny! The spirit of St Brendan inside you!’

‘You set out on the sea and guessed you might meet a sailor and a surgeon. Well done. None of this gets you your cross. I do not know where it is.’

‘But
I
do.’

O’Neill let his statement sink deep into both men’s lusts, smiled at the pirate captain’s hunger.

‘Say that again?’

Devlin dropped his hand to his sword hilt as his back bit with its old wound.

‘You know where it is? With the rest . . . the rest of . . .?’

He could not say it.

Treasure is a fragile word. It travels out of open windows and is blown away like smoke. A word to be whispered over candlelight and small round tables in private corners.

The mouthing of it was sacred, for it longed to speed to the ears of others.

‘How know you this, priest?’

Chapter Eleven

Olivier Levasseur had captured the
Virgin of the Cape
, a Portuguese ship full of nobles and priests.

He burned the ship.

She was holed and grounded and he sailed in his caravel,
Victory,
taken with Taylor months before. He left the ship. He had the
Virgin
’s treasure. That would do.

The pirate and his crew delighted in using the priests’ backs to shift his new wealth. Porto Catholics fresh from their inquisitions in India. Let the bastards sweat. With Taylor he discussed the dividing of their haul.

John Taylor, English; Levasseur, French. The Portos would understand French and Spanish so they spoke in English as the captives ferried past with their goods.

‘That is how I know, Captain,’ O’Neill declared. ‘The wretch did not suspect that there was an Irishman within his earshot. I know where he is going.’

‘But not how to find it,’ Devlin said.

O’Neill waved his arms over the books.

‘The trinity. Together we will find it. You your treasure, and I my cross.’

‘And why would I do that?’

‘But why would you not?’ O’Neill displayed himself the priest amongst the rogues, gave the glare that shamed.

‘Would you not see some worth for yourself in being an instrument of the Lord? Is your soul so wretched, my son?’

Devlin said nothing. He took up the bottle and moved around the priest out onto the deck and slammed the door behind him.

O’Neill looked at Dandon who did not appear puzzled at all.

Dandon sighed.

‘He will need to contemplate,’ he offered. His words did not remove the confusion from the priest’s face.

‘There are the men to consider. Patrick is not the master of their fates. Every decision must be agreed. He has lost many good men on the whims and motives of others.’

‘So more the need to gain some redemption.’

Dandon closed his eyes and shook his head.

‘You do not understand. His contemplation is not on whether to help you or not. It is on whether to
cut
from you what you know. Or – and this the more probable – how to convince the crew to not do so.’

O’Neill paled for the first time since he had come into the company of pirates.

Devlin took himself to the gunwale, his bottle hanging over the sea as he leant over to study the black water below. A few men were smoking above, lost in their own memories, and the ship was slumbering at anchor for the night.

A song arose from under his feet but not a great chorus, just one or two with a fiddle and a shared voice, a spoon rapping against a stool; ‘Jack Hall’ the song, a variation of the Kidd ballad that the pirates often sang.

‘
And my neck will pay for all
,’
they sang, and Devlin spat to the sea.

‘
When I die, when I die.
’

‘When I die!’ Devlin drank and laughed into the bottle.

But he pondered as he played the bottle against the wood in time to the song.

If the priest knew the name of the island they could forego having to find Roberts. Go straight for the gold and the ridiculous cross. That would save time. And time was of the moment; the money all of the moment, for the world was poor.

The South Sea collapse had been bad for all. Devlin recalled himself throwing the diamond up and over the heads of Walpole and the Prince of Wales, no less.

It had felt good then but now the trade on the waters had slowed, the ship’s holds were thin, and him with a hundred men to feed, the purse lower every month and a pirate captain’s tenure only as happy as the bellies he filled.