Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (22 page)

‘You, Albany,’ Devlin rounded to face him. ‘
You
trouble me.’

Albany seemed happily bemused. ‘Why? You have no fear of me.’

Devlin turned his back from the wind to be heard clearer; side by side with Albany.

‘Why are you here? What hold does Walpole have over you that you swap silk for wool? Why put up with my gall, for one?’

Albany crossed his arms and looked to Peter Sam at the tiller, who always seemed to be glowering at him. ‘I am here to protect the diamond. Myself and George Lee have interest in its safe passage.’

‘You mean its theft. Say it as it is. This is a dangerous path. This could be your end.’

Albany snorted. ‘I am no fop, Captain, as much as you would like to paint me so. I have duels to my credit. I boxed and fenced for Eton. You will not find fear an attribute in a gentleman.’

Devlin tacked harder. ‘Do you know what life is, Albany? What real life is? It is waiting for suffering. Days of life but always waiting for the sword to fall. If you’re lucky it is only small things, the inevitable things, the death of loved ones, disease and pain. But it can be more.’

‘Do you always talk with such profoundness, Captain? I thought pirates such jolly souls?’

‘Everybody owes someone, Albany. Kings, princes, dukes and drunkards. As soon as a man feels his first coin he owes another. Only the dead and children owe nothing. I want to know what it is that you owe that you stand with us.’

Albany stiffened. ‘Yes I owe. Debt is being a man, a gentleman, a rich man. But I understand more than you. A rich man can owe millions and it matters nothing for there are millions of the ordinary folk keeping us afloat. But if
they
should collapse all is lost. The top is supported by the ballast beneath. If the ballast cannot pay . . .’ he shook his head. ‘And that is the circumstance we face.
We
,
the better of the world, have land and houses, companies and titles. But if the common man cannot pay his taxes or borrow from our banks because he has no work or the bank has no coin . . . it all goes away. A page of paper crushed into a fist.’ He demonstrated, holding his palm out and clenching it dramatically. ‘And thrown away.’ He tossed his imaginary paper to the sea. ‘But we can unravel it. We can spread it out and return it to itself. With only the creases still remaining.

Devlin listened. He knew the ‘we’ did not refer to him.

‘And what is it that you owe, Captain? Why are you here?’

Devlin held his voice in thought and provoked a sneer from Albany.

‘I owe my men. I do this and they can be free. I could be free.’

‘And would you take it?’

Devlin pulled off his wool cap that itched like fleas and probably was. He shivered a hand through his black hair then studied the poor cap, the symbol of a working man made and worn by peasants. It was utterly unlike the beaver lap and silken tricornes that milled around the fine streets of the world. He had many hats but none made for him and this woollen one fitted too well.

Albany repeated his question. ‘Would you take it? The chance to join the regular? What will you do if we succeed?’

Devlin wedged the cap back on and gave Albany his finest face. ‘I don’t know: I’m making this up as I go along. I’m a new whore.’

He twisted away, pulled himself along the ship, hand to halyard, to rail and wood, to the fore of the ship. To the fore to savour the slow pleasure of meeting a river after the rolling of the keel over the fervent birthing of the Atlantic that was in the Channel, that was La Manche.

All was quiet now as night came. They ate cod mash and drank brandy courtesy of the poor men they took the ship from, who themselves were no doubt wolfing their way through salt-horse and port wine from the
Shadow
’s stores. Devlin’s instruction had been to feed them like the king’s dogs.

Paris soon. Paris and the diamond. No sea to run to, no ship to protect them; literally a handful of men relying on him to bring them back. And he had only one plan and that worried him; and its foolishness made him keep it to himself, trusting not even Dandon to it.

Maybe this was it. Maybe this was where he failed. The guilt of Valentim Mendes’ death and the dozens of others over the scant years, spiralling into a deserved end.

He knew that murderers and thieves often thanked their captors with the relief that it was finally over, and that a thief steals more and more until it is impossible that he is not caught. He had spared Jon Wild in Newgate so that eventually he might meet better justice. But in that scoundrel crumpled on the floor of Newgate’s hold Devlin had looked down at himself. And had not the last years seen hundreds of pirates meet their end? Even Blackbeard was gone now, two years gone, dead a mere month after they had stood together, his head cut from his body and paraded into harbour on a bowsprit, the skull boiled clean, silvered and used as a drinking cup. He had known too much to live.

What was it John Coxon, his former master, had said on The Island years past when Devlin had bested them all? In his first days as a pirate when the world seemed huge?

‘
They are coming. This age is at an end.
’

He looked back to Albany still steadying himself against the gunwale. This world belonged to them.

But if
they
found Patrick Devlin, if
they
found The Pirate Devlin, cornered and breathless, alone and desperate . . . it would only be written down by one who was not there, for no-one present would live to tell the tale. A second-hand, whispered story only.

He would make sure of that.

Chapter Seventeen

Under Louis XIV, France had enjoyed peace for just seventeen years of his astounding seventy-two-year reign. For two generations of Frenchmen that averaged one year in four free of international warfare over the duration of the Sun King’s time.

And so no more.

Blessed with genius, the giants of French engineering and warfare – men who had cut their teeth in conflict with the enemy constantly at their gates – had fortified their coast and political boundaries to make the entire kingdom a castle.

Men such as Sebastien La Preste de Vauban, infamous enough to be recalled only as Vauban, built, or helped build, hundreds of citadels and fortresses across the land. France’s principal points of defence becoming walled cities forming a ‘hexagon’ of battlements that even the greatest siege could not demolish.

Like a constellation of stars the hexagon stretched from Dunkerque down through Brest to Bayonne, on to Perpignan and Nice, then back north even to Strasbourg. And between these ‘citadels’ dozens of further fortresses were strung like beads around and against the necks of the enemy which, to the French, was now nothing less than the whole world.

The citadels were an engine of defence that changed warfare, designed as much for offence as holding out against an invader. And Vauban, not content with changing the art of war for sieges, left another legacy that would forever change the field of battle.

He invented the bayonet, and war got dirty fast.

For René Duguay-Trouin, Calais was not one of the great citadels. Even Vauban, who had merely restored its medieval defences rather than build new ones, described its fort Risban as simply ‘a home for owls and a place to spend the Sabbath’.

A lesser man would have been insulted that for all his prowess and achievement he was not given the magnificence of Brest – the shipbuilding port and gateway for the French trade to the Americas – to defend. But at least he had something.

This new regime had a hatred for any man of power who was not born to it, who had succeeded and progressed through ability and not privilege; and if that man were a Breton then so much more so, for those proud peasants believed themselves nobles.

Trouin fortunately had been summoned by the king on his deathbed and in gratitude had his position secured. An official nobility had been bestowed. All the same they could bury him in the provinces where he could do no harm. But now? Now after a few days’ sport and he would bring to their bigoted court an enemy of France, undeterred by their allies and boldly pirating under their haughty noses. That would be a feat worth a trip to Paris.

So
La Françoise
and
La Patiente
, forty-two nine-pounders between them, sailed out from Calais. They were more than a match for a rag-tag
forban.
A real pirate who had abandoned the Caribbean.

Trouin hoped they had not fled. Please let them still be near, he prayed.

He had launched at dawn. His frigates had been warped out of the harbour by their sailors in their boats like mice pulling a carriage. Then they had unfolded like swans, white canvas spreading across the cross-trees as the whistles blew, the wind at their backs, a rare portent that nature was with them.

Trouin paraded the quarterdeck, not as commodore but a captain to one hundred and sixty men who would give up every limb they had just to say they stood near him once, as crippled beggars in St Malo still declared on their placards.

Already, at the sight of his standard, merchants and navy patrols began to raise sail to slow themselves and be demure in his presence.

He breathed in the future that the waves brought into his lungs. The promise. The fury. Two ships, but the real weapon the coast itself. For decades success had come from the rocks and reefs that ran from England’s Lizard to Brittany and Trouin knew them like the knuckles on his hands. This Caribbean pirate would not. He would drown him. He would crush him. And the regent would give him Brest as just reward, closer to his beloved Brittany home.

He ordered music to cheer his men and the morning this late day in August, the sun lightening his deck, his captains huddling close to him like hens. They were young and knew of him only from instructions he had written. Rumours of a Spanish war only months away had invigorated them and if he, Trouin, were to return to the flagships of his youth this would be a fine test to choose those worthy to be with him.

There was scant pity for the pirate.

Deep in the mouth of Le Havre Devlin and Dandon puzzled over the wealth of cutters seemingly crammed with men, women and children making their way to the galleys waiting along the shore. It fell to Albany to come between them and explain.

‘Colonists, Captain.’ He nodded at their curiosity. ‘The regent has a city now.
La Nouvelle Orleans
. He names the diamond after himself so why not his lands in Louisiana? They do not volunteer of course. They are crimped from the people. The vagrants, the peasants. They are married
en masse
to comply with the king’s doctrine that only Christian families are to enrich his Americas.’

‘They marry strangers to each other?’

‘If they had wives before they have new ones now and a brass ring to prove it. They even abduct children to send with them. They use toys to lure them off the streets!’ Albany found this detail entertaining and slapped their backs as he meandered away.

Dandon shuddered. ‘I wish me back to the Caribbean,
mon frère
. I was born in the colonies. This is a colder world and not just its inclemency,’ he brushed his jacket hatefully, ‘or for what passes as fashion.’

Devlin watched the boats. ‘Nothing has changed, Dandon. Over ten years I’ve been out of this. I hope the New World will really be such. Else we are the last free men.’ He backed away to the sack by the mast. ‘I need a drink.’

Dandon tugged him back. ‘And yet you will take
their
freedom as offered. Is this what you want? Their definition is as mysterious as their religion.’

Devlin leaned down to pull a bottle. ‘There’s a reason the Lord turned water into wine.’ He plucked the brandy cork with his teeth. ‘I’ll wait ’til I have the diamond, then decide.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t decide for us. Now if you excuse me; I think I am going to be sick.’ Dandon weaved away leaving Devlin to gaze over the bow.

Paris lay a full day away; thirteen bridges had to be passed along the meandering vein of France; the
Junot
’s tabernacle mast would need to be lowered on its pivot to whisper under them. The bridges were the reason they had to leave the S
hadow
, leave their strength behind. The tartane’s mast could lower like a yacht’s, and then raise again, so they might sail right into Paris. Instead of lines of latitude, bridge after bridge marked the miles. Devlin had done the journey before as a fisherman but had not expected to do so again, and this time for a prince and a government that would have hung him on any other day. To the regent, get the diamond, carry it back to London. Freedom from persecution his reward. But if he failed he would surely die and those who had come with him also.