Cross of Fire (36 page)

He had lost his eye in youth from his love of rock-climbing. He had been a man scarred by the cliff-face. He had ventured into sea-caves as a young man as others had stumbled in and out of taverns. The earth was his friend. He had no fear of caves or doubts about his mastery over the waters.

Levasseur had sniffed out the cave, and the crew of the
Victory
had built the dam. By the time it had served its purpose his pirate crew had been living with the gold for over a week. And not just gold but diamonds, rubies and emeralds. The gold proved to be the ruined part of the great treasure, for much of it was not in coin, which would have fit easily into pirate pockets.

There were idols, ceremonial plates, chains, and an untold number of crosses – the golden adulation a king expects, but which pirate teeth found hard to bend to their more practical uses.

Dragged into the sea-cave, piled up, and yet once amassed against the rocks and the sand, the wealth seemed too mountainous for one captain to preside over.

In chests, in sacks, there could be order, fair division. But a hundred pirates staring at a cascading harvest of gold . . .? And they wanted more, of course. And they had chanced on the wealth easily, after all.

If they had spilled their blood over it, shared a painful victory, that might have counted for something. Instead they looked at their captain as just a lucky devil. And luck costs nothing. Luck deserves only a tip of a hat. Nothing has been earned or deserved.

Levasseur’s men wiped grins from their faces, unhooked pistols from their belts, and climbed towards him up a hill of gold.

Four were loyal, but against the whole that was just a stand of bravado and cursing. The mutineers carried off the bulk of the gold, leaving some out of respect, but even that remainder fabulous enough: ten lifetimes’ fortunes.

And they left the cross.

To them it seemed likely the cross had sunk the first ship that tried to carry it and now the pirates could blame their revolt on its bad luck. The cross had willed them to it. No doubt its gold had been hewn from the earth by heathen slaves for Catholic masters and was cursed by those who gouged it, and cursed by Satan, for it was Catholics that bid it done. The Devil’s cross.

And let him to it.

They destroyed the dam on leaving to cut off the Devil, and their captain’s voice. But Levasseur did not howl out at their betrayal. They would not hear his woe. The pirates broke down the sea-wall, took the
Victory
and sailed away, vanishing into legend. It was the right time. Rich men were now aboard and rich men slip away easily. History is full of such empty pages, and no-one ever hears of successful pirates, after all. Only those that swung.

The Buzzard now became prey instead of predator. At every tide the waters rose over the treasure to fill the pool that had always been there, and left its captives to stare like Tantalus at their unattainable fortune.

The fruit was unreachable, the water undrinkable.

Twice a day the tide withdrew just enough, but for less than an hour. Armful by armful the pirates and the priests removed the hoard to the higher slope, to a new chamber, and O’Neill presented a plan to Levasseur.

They had discovered the blow-hole and that through it they could get out, and they soon discovered that the mutineers had abandoned the
Santa Rosa.
But the captain and the pirates would not leave the life that the treasure promised and that they had dreamt of all their lives – or at least since that day they had crossed the boards of one life into another.

O’Neill had pleaded that they could all be saved, that they might fill their pockets with what they could and be free.

‘You do not understand freedom, priest,’ Levasseur had replied. ‘And what of your cross? Would you leave that to this hole?’

‘Then we get out and rebuild the dam,’ O’Neill insisted.

‘We do not have the men to do it before the tide. Each day the sea will push us back, destroy our work. And then there are the storms due to come. I know these waters.’

O’Neill argued that the men could take the ingots, the rubies and the diamonds, count their blessings in that, still be rich men.

‘And leave my soul. And your soul?’

O’Neill lowered his head. His brothers had already set the cross against a wall, braced by stones; already they had returned to ritual.

‘Then let me go,’ he said. ‘I will take some coin and six of my brothers and buy us a ship of men to rebuild the wall.’

‘Share my gold again?’ Levasseur brought his face close. ‘Not again.’

‘No. I will find good men. Hire them to the task only. I only ask the cross for my church. No more.’

Levasseur walked the cave, watched the pool rising, watched his four loyal men sweat and study him faithfully. He came back to the tall priest and scratched the scar beneath his eye-patch as if an answer lay behind the leather.

‘Then go, priest,’ he said at last. ‘But do not bring them until you have met me again. If I am not satisfied . . . you and I will both die here.’

‘We were robbed,’ O’Neill explained. ‘We went to Bourbon, with difficulty. South you said, but it was not easy.’

‘You lost the gold?’ Levasseur dragged himself from his throne.

O’Neill stepped back, away from the dead, and the undead coming on.

‘Pirates,’ O’Neill said, without apology. ‘I tried to get back to Lisboa. Hoped to appeal to my king for a ship, and then the Lord intervened for both our souls, Captain. That is why I have been gone so long.’

‘Two months and more, priest.’ He was upon him now, his pistol still cocked and waiting. ‘We are dead.’

‘But I have a ship! And great men.’ O’Neill backed to the pool. ‘Enough to build the dam again!’

‘You lost your gold. How will you pay them?’

O’Neill looked over the pirate’s shoulder to the golden carpet.

‘A share, perhaps? I have told about the cross but he expects treasure. I have not told him of you, Captain. I thought a truce. To rescue our men and the gold . . . but I did not expect . . . what you have done.’

‘
Done
?’ Levasseur stopped. ‘I have done nothing! They wished to leave. They forced my hand. They wished my gold for themselves. It is your fault to be gone so long. To riddle them with doubt.’

‘My brothers would stay. They would hold their faith.’ O’Neill crossed himself. ‘You had no right, Captain.’

Levasseur pulled another pistol.

‘
Right
? You all want
my
gold!
Mine
!’ He levelled both pistol mouths to the priest.

‘You shall have the same weight in lead!
Damn you
!’

O’Neill raised his palms again.

‘But I have a ship! It is done now. I have done as agreed!’

Levasseur moved with his pistols outstretched, aimed at ghosts.

‘You test me, priest. You bring a ship and men. But it is Levasseur who rules here. I am your life and death.’

‘It is a pirate I bring. A brother for you . . . to replace those you have lost. He is a reasonable man.’

Levasseur hid his face, his back turned. ‘A pirate? He would have to be a prince to talk to Levasseur. Who, say you?’

‘Devlin.’ O’Neill hoped the name carried some weight. ‘Patrick Devlin. And nigh a hundred men. I needed him to shape back here.’

‘You had my Mortier.’

‘I needed a man of the sea.’

‘I do not know this man,’ Levasseur weighed his pistols. ‘You have failed, priest. Failed to resurrect.’

They both stalled as the pool gulped and the level sank away somewhere else deep inside the island.

Levasseur stepped to the edge. He observed this every day. But not now, not at this hour. He watched the moss appear, outside the time of the tide.

O’Neill joined him. Hope lightened his face briefly and he hoped the pirate did not see it.

‘He is coming,’ O’Neill said and swallowed the pride in his voice as Levasseur glared at him, his leather eye twitching. ‘He is quite bright. For a pirate. And he is an Irishman. He will work with me.’

The Buzzard became the buzzard. He put a pistol to a priest’s temple.

‘Traitor.’ He did not exclaim. No need. The cave amplified his voice. ‘Baptist’s head. Is that your desire? Your want?’

The pool gulped again and O’Neill palmed the pistol away from his head.

‘He has men, Captain. You have nothing now. The Lord has provided. Your days of seclusion are at an end. Let me go to him. His men are hungry. He will want little.’

‘You bring a pirate to steal my gold?’ But this was not a question to be answered. Its answer was in the tension of a fist, of steel springs and pistol locks, a dog-head cocking to end all questions.

‘You would dare steal my gold?
My gold
!’

And a buzzard fired both its pistols into a priest’s face.

The muzzles flamed. The head, a veil of red, snapped back and the body stumbled mindlessly over the edge into the sucking pool. Only the powder burns and blood spatter on Levasseur’s hands testified that O’Neill had ever existed.

Levasseur stood where the body had been and stared at the footprints in the sand. He scrubbed them flat with a foot and pulled himself back to his throne to reload.

He had already forgotten the voice. He heard only the peaceful dribble of the spring and the chime of gold at his feet as he dragged himself up. These sounds he had heard for months now. They spoke sense to him. Traitors’ tongues clicked like the crickets, like the bones and teeth of dying men as they sputtered their last bubbles of bile. He heard the crows high above squawking about his pistol’s wrath, laughter on the wing drifting in from a world now strange to him.

From the shore Devlin looked up to the cawing crows flying about the trees and registered the silence of the songbirds who paused in their courtship and wars. The animals had responded to some sound unheard by the men on the island. Peter Sam studied him.

‘What is it?’

Devlin watched the crows return to their perches, listened to the birds begin again their romancing and bickering.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The birds.’ And Peter Sam looked above.

Devlin waded into the clear sea, picked up another one of the flat rocks.

The wall was working; Levasseur was truly a man to measure.

The shore fell off past the beach. The stone started there and a hundred feet of it arced round the rock-face. Even with fifteen men set to the task of rebuilding the dam the tide was still beating them and Devlin knew it would have to be more men and another day.

He set his rock. Three feet of wall so far and the tide had held back but now it reclaimed, and the mouth of the cave had barely come into view.

He saw the crows watching them work, daring him with their caws and their preening. Devlin waded towards the cave mouth, waist deep.

The wall had been destroyed carelessly, hurriedly. What must have taken Levasseur’s men a week to build would cost Devlin only one more day.

Peter Sam watched him move through the water and then the others stopped their work and turned to look. They saw Devlin make some decision and then he was gone, under. Through the crystal water they could see him swimming to the cave.

He rose once, at the mouth, his head just a few feet from the sharp rock ceiling that would effortlessly scalp him, and then he was gone entirely.

The water was not as beautiful below. The salt of life that gave it such clarity also stung his eyes and skin. Ten strokes in and the water had developed an eerie palette of subterranean gloom, and Devlin kicked up for air. He raised his hand to the ceiling to stop his head being split and looked about him.