The Pirate Devlin (29 page)

  'On your return from the island, Captain?' Howard skipped past a coil of rope, bringing himself in line with his captain.

  'On my return from loading my pistols, sir.' He smiled at Howard; then Coxon stopped, halting Howard with a backhand to the chest and looked down into the boy's face. Quiedy, he spoke, his voice lowered beneath the cracking of sails and cries of hauling. 'Mind me, Thomas. There is more to fear here than pirates. To your duty and keep a sharp eye, lad. This day may be hard.'

  Howard felt the elbow of his captain offering a gentle nudge of conspiracy, and then he was left in the waist of the ship, his eyes following Coxon's back, his mouth taut and dry.

  Sam Fletcher slung himself down from the shrouds, his bare feet slapping the wet deck with a thud. 'Still no guns run out on the bastard.'

  'We should warn the captain, Sam.' Dan Teague was squatting by the starboard bulwark, switching his gaze tentatively between the
Starling
and his crewmates.

  'What say you, Hugh?' Sam Fletcher asked Hugh Harris, the calmest soul amongst them, all the small crew feeling the lack of Peter Sam and Devlin.

  Hugh moved to the bulwark, placing a foot on the trucks of a gun, his left hand resting on the guard of his cutlass, and looked over to the
Starling.

  Nine gun ports on the weatherdeck. Two more apiece on the quarterdeck and fo'c'sle. Thirteen guns to bear against them. Could not be less than twelve-pounders. Nine-pound chasers, too, no doubt. Even in peace they had to sail with at least ninety souls.

  The
Lucy
was parallel to the shore, rolling slightly in her anchor as they sat against the wind just over four hundred yards from the beach.

  They were safe in the shallows. The frigate could not come in to get them without floundering, but a little closer and she could blow them out of the sea.

  The shallows were the pirates' domain. Again and again the governments sent powerful warships to negate the pirate threat, and all misunderstood that the pirates hugged the islands and rarely took to the sea, fishing the trade channels from their sloops and pinnaces. It was too bold to have a frigate. Too open. Hugh shrugged within himself. That frigate would be Devlin's downfall.

  But for now a British frigate stood off half a league from their starboard quarter, heading close-hauled to the east of the island. On this reach they would have their larboard guns to the
Lucy's
bow within minutes, but no range to reach her. The sands would keep them out.

  He watched the sails being furled as she prepared to close, slow, under topsails. He could even see the dark black shapes of men moving about the shrouds and the flash of a telescope as it swept across his eyes.

  'She could pound us to twigs if she but wished, lads.' He glanced round to his mates, ragged and greasy, all but the five Dutchmen, who still appeared as clean as the day they had come aboard. 'That's a fact not denying. But she may be a-thinking that the gold be on us already. And she wouldn't want to be sending that anywheres now.'

  'How'd they know about the gold?' Dan queried, seeing his dreams of fortune seeping away.

  'They're here, ain't they?' Hugh snapped. 'English ship turning up within hours of us? 'Course they know, you fool!'

  'Where's Peter Sam? Where the bloody hell has he got to?' Sam Morwell cried.

  'Gone no doubt, I say!' Dan sniped. 'Gone with what's left of our account, that's what!' A fly of sorts landed on the back of his hand, its eyes jewelled red, and he swatted it to paste. Even the flies could be traitors now.

  'No. Not Peter.' Hugh shook his head. 'And if so, not whilst Black Bill still lived.'

  Sam Morwell agreed, 'Aye, Bill for sure wouldn't let Peter leave us.' He looked over to the menacing frigate. 'Anyways, we're under a French flag, ain't we? All allies now, ain't we? King George and the boy are proper bedfellows. Why should they go for us, eh?'

  'Fair enough.' Hugh nodded. 'No pipes now, lads. Fletcher? We'll carry on with the captain's plan. Lads, check the breeches. Load the swivel guns. Get some powder and bar up. Look alive. If we are allies, they may send a gig over to chat. If we ain't, no harm in loading what we got.'

  'Aye, Hugh.'

  Fletcher, Dan and Sam Morwell loped away, instinctively keeping their heads low. Hugh turned to the Dutchmen.

  'Now, Dutchy.' Hugh had tried to learn their names, but the effort to recall seemed pointless, for they could all be dead in an hour or so. 'Double-check the bulwark nettings. Stuff them deep. Get an axe ready to the hawser. I don't want to be calling for one if we have to slip cable.'

  '
Ja,
Mister Hugh!' His name was Eduard Decker, and he slapped his fellows into movement. Hugh looked back to the
Starling.
The ship had not fired a signal-gun to greet an ally, and neither had the
Lucy.
Hugh untied the knot of the brown linen cravat round his neck, freed the ends from inside his shirt and then with care began to tie them to the finger-guards of his matched pair of pistols.

  Philippe Ducos had exaggerated. Perhaps in order to value his life more, for which Devlin did not curse him. And, after dragging the chest from beneath the table, inch by inch, which must have weighed twice as much as himself and Dandon together, he was relieved that he had.

  Gold has not the lustre one always believes it has. The fortune they had lusted after was a dull muted yellow, pitted black in the minting and the milled edges, yet in its enormity the mound seemed to boil over the more they gaped at it.

  They sat back on their haunches, enraptured, forgetting the cursing and banging that had preceded as they had cut at and prised off the hinges rather than attempt a worthless assault on the forbidding padlocks.

  Together they suggested a wealth of near ten thousand louis d'ors. Over six thousand pounds, at a time when King George himself drew from his endeavours twenty-five thousand pounds a year.

  '"Weren't not for gold and women there would be no damnation,'"
Dandon quoted, finding no tiring in slapping Devlin's back.

  Devlin leaned forward and cupped a year's wage in his dirty palm. He let the coin run through his fingers like the voluminous tresses of some divine first love, and he laughed at the symphony of it falling.

  Bessette was tied now to his chair, with the ropes from his own bedroom curtains and a foolish grin sloped up his face as he slept royally. Their troupe of ladies remained in the mess, lapping wine and counting the escudos they had lifted from the pockets of the soldiers. The moment had come for Devlin to possess his own life rather than borrow it from others. But it was not done yet.

  'Enough,' Devlin said at last. 'To it. We'll fetch that soul's musket and check the barracks for any fair weapons.'

  He stood and tried to concentrate, his eyes still drawn to the chest of gold.

  'That bell will bring the guards from the cliffs if they are not here already. The
Shadow
will be presenting her feint attack on
Lucy.
No need for that now. Things have gone better than I had planned, Dandon. We need just get to the beach and tell our mates.'

  'And dispatch the remainder of the guards, of course. Assuming there is at least one on either cliff?'

  'We saw two men ordered off the beach. One I'm sure lies out there with the soul from the path. That leaves one, for sure. I would lay to it that there is another on the opposite side.'

  'May all your assumptions be correct, Captain: I prefer the odds.'

  'A handful of coin may persuade them to be less aggressive.' He straightened his waistcoat, tightened his sash, and checked the action on his pistol yet again. The musket outside would be welcome and there might be more pistols in the barracks.

  'Come.' He prised Dandon from the mesmerising sight of the gold, and pulled the outer door inwards.

  The door had opened less than halfway when a shot raked and whistled through the gap, its path actually visible to them through the dust in its wake; Bessette's body jerked as the ball struck him in the eye and exploded out the back of his head.

  Devlin slammed shut the door, his back upon it, holding back the world from his gold.

  Dandon bared his gold teeth, repulsed by the bloody end of Captain Bessette. 'So that's how long it takes to walk from the cliffs. I
had
wondered.'

  Dominic Duphot and Landri Fauche had met and hailed each other almost at the stockade's gate. Landri had been on his winding way from his watch on the eastern cliff when he had heard the bell, followed moments later by the fort's cannon, which had prompted him into a run.

  He had paused at the edge of the trees along the path to load his musket. It had taken two attempts; at first he only succeeded in pouring powder over his hand rather than down the barrel as his nerves rattled.

  Waiting there, lost as to what had occurred, he felt his heart leap on seeing Duphot running to the gate on the opposite path.

  Together they had pushed open the gate, each inch revealing more and more of the lifeless bodies of their comrades in the distance. They exchanged bold looks, drew back the locks on their muskets and stepped over the threshold.

  Duphot was drawn to the leather satchel of Favre Callier, abandoned, some of his sketches littering the ground, lifting weakly in the mild breeze. As they passed the fallen musket they began to hunch down, searching for an attack.

  They could see the door to their mess open and another of their men lying on his back, cutlass still in hand. Then they reached the bodies sprawled before the cannon, their peppered tunics testament to their fate.

  They ducked together and ran behind the barracks on their right, their backs to the wall, their muskets like shields across their chests.

  They whispered fearing enemy ears and eyes upon them, and began to creep along the rear of the barracks, between that and the stockade wall, to the bottom corner. Once there, down on one knee, Duphot could edge his head out and see the door to their captain's quarters past the cannon and, to his left, halfway up the wooden wall, the open mess door. For a moment Duphot imagined he could hear the lilt of a woman's voice; then he was distracted by the sound of Landri's weapon discharging next to his right ear.

  'I got one, Dominic!' Landri yelled. 'The door opened. Did you see?'

  'No, I did not see!
Merde,
and now I cannot hear, you fool!' Duphot readied his gun and trained it on the mess.

  'Ugly bastard sitting at the capitaine's table. Smiling, by God! I got him right in the head!'

  'Quiet! Look!'

  A woman had run to the doorway of the mess, a bottle of wine in her hand, her skirt removed, showing her undergarments, which did not distract Duphot as much as he might have thought it would. Her face was panicked, startled by the shot. Duphot took aim to her belly.

  'Halt! Do not move!'

  She screamed and vanished instantly stage right.

'Merde!
' Duphot lowered his musket. 'Did you see any others, Landri?'

'Non.
Only that bastard, but someone shut the door.'

  'They could be in the mess by now. Looking right at us, plotting against us. Those poor women.'

  'Cover me whilst I reload, Dominic.' Landri dropped back to the wall of the barracks, standing to begin the long fifteen seconds it would take to prime his musket.

  Duphot spied carefully on the gaping door of the mess. The doorway revealed nothing but darkness within. He remained kneeling in a ready pose, the butt of his weapon in the sand, its barrel skyward, the musket nestling into his body as he rested upon it. Nothing moved. The living sounds of the forest came gently over the stockade walls, mocking the tension Duphot felt within; he could not recall the relentless chorus of cicadas ever sounding so urgent and overpowering.

  Landri's heart beat once against his ribs as he slid the rod of his musket back into place, empowered again by the solid feeling of a loaded gun.

  'What shall we do, Dominic?' he asked, instantly promoting Duphot to his immediate commander.

  Dominic wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, momentarily taking his eyes off the doorway of the mess. 'I do not know,' he hissed. 'I am confused. Who is dead? Who is alive?' He returned his fixed stare to the door. 'I only know that I will kill whoever comes from that door.'

  'One is dead. How many are there?' Landri's voice was calmer than he felt.

  Dominic leafed through the short narrative in his head of what he did know. Two men had come to the island. Two men and one whore stood on the beach. An hour or so later he had heard the faint peal of the bell and the flat, sharp report of the nine-pounder.