Cross of Fire (26 page)

‘Aye,’ agreed the pirate. ‘But you won’t mind if I slice something.’ The pirate squinted with the sun over Manvell’s shoulders, and then snarled his way into Manvell’s reach.

Coxon came out from the door shielding his brow from the sudden whiteness of the square and beheld the cockpit before him.

No longer did Manvell seem to be the gangly, clumsy lieutenant who dropped instruments and apologised for his slipping shoes. For a moment Coxon could see the fortitude that had suffered a dead child. The constancy in him was about to be exampled and the anger discharged through his debole.

Manvell, motionless, recalled his Capoferro:

If you have an encounter with a bestial man, that is, one without measure and tempo, who throws many blows at you with great impetus, there are two things that you can do: first, adopting the play of mezzo tempo, you will strike him during his throwing of a thrust or a cut, alternately allow him to go into empty space, evading backwards with your body, then immediately give him a thrust in the face or chest.

But there would have to be subtlety here. Only a scene not a final act, so perhaps Liancour for a touch.

Capoferro and Liancour: the treatises his father made him read after every failed
prima stretta
,
and which Manvell then borrowed to memorise when his father was not looking. As a boy he had never questioned why a Deal publican had insisted on such a practice for his son. He thought it natural for all children. Manvell was pale and thin, not tall or impressive in any aspect. As a boy he had cut a feminine and sickly shape. But he feared nothing and had never lost a fight in his life. He bumped into every door and tripped on every stair. But with a blade placed in his hand he could only be merciful. The dead would pile up else. A Deal publican had wanted his beloved son to survive.

He turned his breast to the pirate, opened his sword arm. The pirate grunted and lunged at his offered prize.

Manvell appeared to do nothing, yet the pirate’s cutlass became trapped under Manvell’s left arm and his wrist wrapped around the pirate’s as if it had always been.

Cutlass and man in a vice. The surprised face Manvell’s reward.

He moved then.

His rapier dashed and sliced across the pirate’s dagger and severed the webbed flesh between thumb and palm which opened to drop the blade. The pirate gaped at his treacherous hand.

Then the rapier up, across and behind the cutlass’s guard before the dagger hit the ground, and he had dragged and disengaged the cutlass from the other hand.

Manvell swept back, the cutlass now his. He held both weapons high. Became the statue again.

The crowd’s cheers for their brother still rolled, the action too fast for drunken eyes to catch.

Then the lull as their brother stood naked of any blade and bled, and the gentleman somehow had two pieces of steel. ‘First blood,’ Manvell said.

The pirate looked to his hand, to the statue, to his dropped dagger and lost cutlass. He clutched his hand and shuffled to the shelter of the crowd where laughing hands pushed him away.

Manvell stuck the cutlass into the dirt and bowed to his combatant and the crowd. Whores applauded, pirates belly-laughed and John Coxon reappraised his lieutenant.

This was good work, he thought. Manvell had shown his honour and ability in a manner that suited the pirates’ temperaments and virtues. No real harm done. The pirate’s wound? A paper-cut in his trade and he would be mocked if he complained otherwise. Manvell had done well. The tavern would listen to them now. He nodded to Manvell across the shoulders of the gathering and Manvell returned the nod and scraped back his sword.

The crowd began to filter back to the tavern, an equal number set around Manvell and the embarrassed pirate, congratulating one, building up the other. Coxon began to turn back with them. He sought the heads that had been around the table and wherever Kennedy had got to.

He stalled at a flash of yellow.

Across the square a dandy was fanning himself with his wide hat and flashing his gold capped teeth as he bent to a priest’s ear. The years melted away from John Coxon’s life.

Dandon
,
he thought. Dandon from The Island. The pox-doctor that gamed to be French.

Devlin’s man.

His hand went to his pistol, slowly, as if the angels were watching him and might shriek a warning.

‘That was most impressive,’ Dandon put back his hat. ‘But has little to do with me I’m sure.’

‘Not your man?’ the priest asked.

‘No,’ Dandon said. ‘But at least I am come to where I can partake.’

The priest still held onto a portion of Dandon’s cloth and plucked his attention.

‘But the redcoats? We are in trouble, no?’

Dandon stiffened as the unmistakeable jolt of a pistol in his back reminded him of his wound from last year; a good square of flesh carved out by one Albany Holmes, its inflicter dead now but still it woke him every morning.

The voice that came with the pistol he had thought forgotten.

‘Dandon is it not?’ it said, and the pistol jabbed. ‘Don’t move.’

‘I am unarmed Captain . . .
Coxon
?’ Dandon raised open palms in supplication.

‘You were unarmed when you took my ship, pirate.’

He grabbed Dandon’s collar and jerked it to his face.

‘Your priest friend can come with. We have years to catch up on and I’m sure he would like to hear your confession!’

Chapter Nineteen

Dandon had first met John Coxon a few weeks after his introduction to Patrick Devlin. At the time he thought Devlin a creature of his own making, fresh and new. Then came The Island, the French gold, and John Coxon, bitter and vengeful.

Another year, and the hunt for the letters of the Jesuit priest – the porcelain adventure – and Coxon had been there also. And it became apparent that Devlin had not cleared all his past as Dandon had assumed. Then came the diamond and the South Sea débâcle less than a year gone. Coxon’s pistol in his back hardly seemed a coincidence.

When you meet a smiling soul, a devil-may-care fellow, you hope this is how they are, that they are genuinely free from mortal pains. And then they become too drunk or too sober and you discover they carry the blight of chains and stones that all men drag behind them. Did the Lord really die at thirty-three? What use that to any man? A ministry of youth? Or is it that after that age only suffering is to be expected.

Never mind. Dandon was far too sober to appreciate any of it. A pistol in the back. Go only with what that entails.

He sat with his tied hands across the back of a chair, painful to his old injury. The priest had been given the respect to be allowed to stand. They were in the wine room of the tavern, their privacy bought with Coxon’s purse. Dandon eyed the barrels, even the splashes, in a sweat. He could not help it; this was the measure of his days when Devlin was not around.

‘Captain Coxon,’ he said. ‘It has so been a while. Perhaps a drink to reacquaint?’

Coxon said nothing. He surveyed the man that he only knew as Devlin’s barber-surgeon. His presence meant something. And a priest? That meant something too.

Coxon went straight for the throat.

‘Where is your captain, Dandon?’

‘Devlin you mean, sir?’ Dandon sat up straight. ‘Say it as so. Or can you not find the heart to say the name?’

‘Devlin, then,’ Coxon said. ‘Where is he?’

Dandon looked between the men. Kennedy he did not know but he knew pirates when he saw them. The young man with the able sword was obviously attached to Coxon, but the pirate? Dandon would question as much as Coxon.

‘Your adjutants look a little rough these days, Captain. Have standards slipped since we last met?’

‘Kennedy,’ Coxon put his hand out to Dandon. ‘Introduce yourself.’

The pirate checked once to Coxon and got the eye he was looking for. He strode to Dandon and sent the back of his hand sharp across his face.

‘Walter Kennedy,’ he said, and the hand came back harder this time. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

Dandon shook away the blow, his eyes smarting. He had heard the name before and most certainly from Devlin, but the context evaded him. The pirate remained standing over him. Dandon would not satisfy him with a look up into his face.

The priest ran to Dandon, behind him, his hands on his shoulders.

‘Please!’ he cried. ‘Do not do this!’

Manvell watched Coxon’s hands clasp and unclasp as he spoke.

‘I will get to you, Father. I want to hear this man first.’

Manvell saw the change on Kennedy’s face. The sheen of ecstasy that he might be given a chance to vent something on a priest.

The scene was unpleasant for Manvell, the setting itself bad enough. The squalor of the storeroom, the heat and flies, and the sordid backdrop of the island, a nest of villainy and eastern savagery. Yet Coxon’s current manner lay far beneath all of them.

‘Captain,’ he said. ‘Who is this man to be beaten so?’

Dandon looked around Kennedy to the pale swordsman. His escape had just begun. He tasted rum already rinsing away his blood.

Coxon scowled.

‘You remember our lieutenant’s dream, Manvell? This
thing
is the measure of his nightmares. A friend to the pirate Devlin. Hold onto this one and Devlin will follow.’

Dandon piped up. ‘Are you sure you should wish that on this fellow, Captain?’

Coxon nodded to Kennedy again who wiped his mouth and the smirk off Dandon’s.

Back and across, back and across, and the priest had to catch the chair from falling.

Coxon took a step towards, let Dandon take a breath.

‘Where is he? Or would you rather I allow Walter a go on the priest?’

Manvell had heard enough.

‘
Captain
! I insist to protest!’

Coxon, hands still behind his back, watched Dandon leer through his bloodied lip then turned and put his shoulder against Manvell’s and spoke quietly to the wall.

‘Manvell, do not think that any of this is an art that I wish to employ. Or that I hold any familiarity with this fellow above my orders or position. But it is imperative—’ he felt Manvell’s shoulder shift and he pushed into it harder, ‘—
imperative
, sir, that no division is shown before these types!’

‘We condone torture, Captain?’

‘Mister Manvell. You should think more on what I have achieved for my orders. For
our
orders. Ogle and Herdman are still waiting on word for Roberts. Fattening themselves and buying dresses for their mistresses. Where are we? Where shall we be tomorrow? Everything I have done has brought only the pirate towards, furthering our cause and orders. We will be back in Portsmouth with Roberts and Devlin while Ogle is scratching for crumbs. How would your father-in-law measure you then?’