The Pirate Devlin (42 page)

  Peter Sam and Bill stood together on the quarterdeck, sharing a spyglass between them. They felt their blood rise as they watched the wave move through the waist of the ship until the madness reached the fo'c'sle, where Davison made a single swift effort to swing a swivel gun from the rails, only to be crushed by the onslaught that filled the deck. They watched the axes and cutlasses beat down again and again.

  Their own crew crammed along the
Shadow'
s bulwark, craning for the sight of gore.

  Then a new roar came over the sea. A victorious howl of raised cutlasses and pistol shot as the last of the
Starling'
s crew laid down and the
Shadow's
brethren rallied to the cry and the howl echoed back.

  Nine marines had died. Nine men had fallen with the yards, broken. Thirteen had been wounded by cannon and timber. Forty-nine others bowed or died to twenty-two pirates.

  Dandon stood up, holding tight the shoulder of Thomas Howard. He threw his hat into the air and crowed once with the shouts of the others, then looked down at the terrified, mottled face.

  'Oh, it'll be a fine day yet, Mister Howard.' He tugged the boy's chin. 'It was the "old game", just like you said it would be.' Then, quieter, 'You just didn't know the rules, lad, that's all.'

Chapter Nineteen

  Do not feel too bad, John.' Devlin slapped Coxon's back.

  'You had no way of knowing that Dandon there was my very own
fidus Achates.'

  Coxon sniffed scornfully. 'Did you steal all my books as well, Patrick?'

  Two hours had passed. The amber sun had begun to spread across the horizon. The pirates sang their bordello chords as they removed the trucks from the
Starling's
guns and rammed nails into their touch-holes. Everything that could be swallowed, fired or rigged had been ferried across to the
Shadow,
Bill's pencil and paper marking it all. The remnants of the
Starling's
crew were now employed to haul their wares over the boards at the fo'c'sle to the
Shadow's
deck, their heads lowered, the songs of the pirates in their ears.

  Peter Sam stepped onto the island from out of the surf, relieved now from the fire and the fury of the afternoon and preparing for the cool of night. He cast an eye to John Coxon, nothing more than a glance to his bloodied forearm, then strode to Devlin, almost with menace. He wrapped his huge right fist round Devlin's fighting arm and pumped it heartily.

  'Cap'n,' he said, as if that was all that needed to be said in summary after weeks of separation. Then he looked beyond to the fat black chest standing on the beach. 'That be it, then?'

  'Aye,' Devlin sighed. 'That be it. And ours.'

  Peter Sam moved on towards the chest. 'Teague.' He nodded to Dan and likewise to Hugh Harris, who tugged a straggling forelock in response. He stopped in front of Gregory and Davies, who struggled to look into the cracked, powerful face of the quartermaster, with his leather rags that might for all their ruddiness be fashioned from human flesh. 'These men be dead, Cap'n?' he barked behind him, his hand already on his cutlass.

  'Not for now, Peter. Let them be,' Devlin called back and walked to Coxon. 'John,' he said, 'we needs to talk now.' He gave no choice, taking Coxon's arm away with him. 'You have been mighty quiet this last act, John. This island was an Eden when the sun came up, I shouldn't wonder. Now it reeks of death. What say you on the matter?'

  Coxon looked ahead as they walked, his voice flat. 'I have given it no thought,' he said. 'What has happened has been because of you. That is all I know. All I need to know.'

  'Oh, it could have ended different now, let's be fair. I could be swinging in the breeze now, and you would have held the rope, and for truth I would not have blamed you.' He stopped them both and checked for earshot from his men, before drawing Coxon closer. 'But think on this,' he hissed. 'Those men of yours made you prisoner too. They came to take that there chest, not to protect it. On orders. And you were not part of their plan. Would you think that you were going back to England with them, or would you be of a mind to think otherwise?'

  Coxon paused, looked to his wounded ship. 'I have thought not of their duty.'

  'What of your duty? What would you do now for your precious board?'

  He looked pitifully to Devlin and spoke like a bishop, 'I don't do it for them,
pirate.
There'll be a day when you'll know that.'

  Devlin swung Coxon back to stroll across their sunken path. 'I will grant you back your ship and you will know that I spared you by my own grace. For it is only fair that someone as noble as yourself tells the court of what happened here, and I am only sorry that I will not see their faces boil as you tell them.' He waved a righteous hand. 'No need to thank me, John, I will hear no word of it. You may be on your way.'

  Coxon's heels dug in and Devlin was pulled back a step. 'You will hear
this
word, Patrick.' He brought his face close. 'Mark me' - the corners of his mouth were white with hate - 'wherever I am in this world, when I hear tidings of your capture, I will make them wait and make you rot until I am there to watch you hang. You may lay to that!'

  'You're welcome, John.' Devlin led him along again.

  Coxon shouted now, for all to hear. 'Mark me! A year at best. That's all you've got! They are coming! There are acts penned every day for you all! For all your kind!'

  'A year you say?' Devlin dropped Coxon's arm and joined his brethren. 'Couple of hours ago I thought I was dead. I have increased my span better than I had hoped!'

  He left Coxon to the shore, contemplating the longboat and the anxious forms of Gregory and Davies. Devlin joined his men, hovering and leering around the chest like flies.

  'Sate yourselves with a pocketful of coin, lads. Louis's face never looked so grand.' He trawled his right hand through the bitter smell of the coin, the music of it widening the pupils of all eyes upon it.

  'What now, Cap'n?' Peter Sam asked.

  Devlin dragged his hand reluctantly free. 'We shall take the ladies back to Providence. The good Navy Board fellows will return to their ship. Tell England and their suckling allies of what has happened to their coffers.'

  'Would we not be killing them all, then?' Hugh Harris voiced a frozen regret.

  'No, lads. I'm of a mind that they will be most surprised to lay eyes on Coxon at all.' He looked back to the man beside the boat. 'Besides, I owes him at least for feeding me all these years.' Then, quietly now, 'My own father only fed me well the night before he sold me.' And he turned to the chest, burying his thoughts in the depths of the gold.

'Shadow
fares well, Cap'n,' Peter Sam proudly remarked. 'Will Magnes has laid oakum and wood to all her holes.' He went on to reel off the goods hoisted from the
Starlings
hold and the small counts of wounded and dead.

  'We should leave now,' Devlin sighed. 'Leave the
Lucy
to her grave. And several more besides. Of which, Hugh, did you do as I made request?'

  'Aye, Cap'n.' Hugh cocked a wink and clicked his tongue. 'All be prepared. Though our colours be rare now.'

  Devlin smiled. He moved back to Coxon and took his bloodied hand.

  'It was fair good to see you again, John,' he said. 'We will take you back to your ship now if you can bear to be borne away with us.'

  'I do not lie, Patrick.' Coxon's voice was soft now, as sable. 'They are coming. There are scores of ships already in the islands. The colonies, the Americas, are the future. Whitehall talks of nothing else but sea rats and Jacobites. This age is at an end.'

  Devlin lowered his eyes. 'That be as it may. And no doubt you will all be of one mind to forget that you taught every man his trade and reaped the benefit when it suited. But today I bested all of you. These men follow me and not because I own them. Be gone now, John, before I change my mind to you.'

  May fell into June. The barque
Bellone
crept into the bay of the uncharted island, the crew still singing, laughing, of the nights spent ashore along the colonial coast.

  Now they had returned to refresh the sentries and relieve the vavasour, Capitaine Bessette, from his laborious days of rest and solitude.

  As the captain had anticipated after so many lazy days of flies and sun, a watch had not checked their passage. They approached the island unheralded. Unwatched.

  His displeasure growing with every sweep of the oars from the gig, the captain followed the uneasy murmurs of his company as they ruminated on the spectre of the brigantine, still fresh, nestling amongst the eggshell coral.

  Their rumblings grew as they stepped over the mosaic of footsteps that littered the path from the beach and still no guard greeted them.

  They pulled their cutlasses at the eerie sight of the open gate of the stockade and the murder of crows that preened themselves along the walls, upon the watchtower, cawing at the approach of the strangers.

  The captain stepped over the threshold, bolstered by the pressure of urgent curiosity behind him. He stepped aside, transfixed, and let the others filter through to share his shuddering dismay.

  Despite the crowd of them, each one stood alone. Each one made his own peace and judgement at the sight before him. The crows cawed as they tore and scraped at the hanging flesh.

  Someone had set ten poles ripped from the stockade walls into the ground beyond the gate. Sitting, straining forward as if still alive, bound by their fraying wrists, the black desiccated forms of what had once been their countrymen were fixed to each stake.

  The tallest of the sitting corpses, still apparelled in a fine blue waistcoat and breeches, hung skeletal and eyeless beneath a black flag.

  The grim design, now seared into their coldest memories, would slouch back, even years from this place, whenever the stench of decay or the gleeful writhing of maggots forced them to recall the grinning skull set in the ring of a compass rose, above the cross of a pair of pistols.

Epilogue

Proclamation of a King

  George R

  Whereas we have received Information, that several Persons, Subjects of Great Britain, have since the twenty-fourth day of June, in the year of our Lord 1715, committed diverse Pyracies and Robberies upon the High Seas, in the West Indies, or adjoining to our Plantations, which hath and may Occasion great Damage to the Merchants of Great Britain, and others trading into those Parts; and tho' we have appointed such a force as we judge sufficient for suppressing the said Pyrates, yet the more effectually to put an End to the same, we have thought fit, by and with the advice of our Privy Council, to Issue this our Royal Proclamation; and we do hereby promise, and declare, that in Case any of the said Pyrates, shall on or before the fifth of September, in the year of our Lord 1718, surrender him or themselves, to one of our Principal Secretaries of State in Great Britain or Ireland, or to any governor or Deputy Governor of any of our Plantations beyond the Seas; every such Pyrate and Pyrates so surrendering him, or themselves, as aforesaid, shall have our gracious Pardon, of and for such, his or their Pyracy, or Pyracies, by him or them committed before the fifth of January next ensuing.

  And we do hereby strictly charge and command all our Admirals,

  Captains, and other Officers at Sea, and all our Governors and Commanders of any Forts, Castles, or other Places in our Plantations, and all our other Officers, Civil and Military, to seize and take such of the Pyrates, who shall refuse or neglect to surrender themselves accordingly.

  Given at our Court, at Hampton Court, the fifth Day of September 1717, in the fourth Year of our Reign. God save the king.

  The Proclamation of Pardon sailed to Providence in a single unrated ship. Both ship and royal-sealed covenant were seized by the pirates that ruled therein and the captain and crew of the English ship were never heard of again.

  In response, the Court and the Privy Council scratched beneath their wigs as to what manner of men scorned pardon and mocked their laws so.

  In their attempt to fathom the depths of depravity and lawlessness that dirtied the waters of the Americas and sullied the reputation of the nation throughout the world, they turned to a man whom they held to be a privateer faithful to the king.

  He had sailed the world several times over. He had journeyed with William Dampier, was an authority on the unknown lands to the south, and courted fame through the astounding story of the marooned Alexander Selkirk, whom he had found and rescued.

  He had raided treasure ships and sent countless enemies to the dark bed of the sea. A pirate in all but name, if it were not for the brown oilskin that contained his letters of marque.