Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (35 page)

‘And the diamond?’ Albany asked.

‘Fuck the diamond and fuck you. Beg for your own hide if you wish. Your schemes are done. He has the diamond and its luck.’ He turned in time for Hugh to plant the back-sword in his fist.

‘Old,’ Hugh said. ‘But Welsh steel, Cap’n,’ as if the pitted blade were Caledfwlch itself.

Devlin thanked him and joined every eye on the ship in watching Trouin cut his quarter, measuring his space in the world within the reach of a thirty-inch blade. His feet were learning the map of every coaming, every bitt and fairlead that might trip them; his blade-point every hanging sheet and halyard. Trouin was placing them all rigidly in a sixth-sense instinct that had taken him alive through a hundred boardings.

When he was captain of a squadron of ships he had commissioned aboard a fencing master to ensure that his officers would learn how to quart and tierce in a space shrunk to inches on a ship. Deck fights were
corps-a-corps
, body to body, fists and pummelling as much as assault with the sword itself.

He faced the butcher-boy standing awkwardly afore the mast with his inelegant sword limp at his side. Trouin flexed his cutlass between his fingers, appraised the strength of the tang in his fist. A glass of wine came from one of his officers. He snarled and slapped the glass from the young man’s hand to the sea, splashing the deck with red spatters. The startled white-coat skipped back along the gangway.

Gentleman pups. Young nobles who knew nothing. He would show them. Show them how a Breton fights.

The butcher-boy, the poacher, the guttersnipe, stepped away from his brothers, twitched his blade, measured nothing. Already Trouin’s men began to climb the shrouds for a better view, to empty the deck. The chained pirates were forced to the fo’c’sle in silence and Trouin’s officers to the quarterdeck; the
Shadow
was now displaying more oak than she ever had as the two men came closer.

A sword-fight falls down to a world of threes. The average contest lasts no more than thirty seconds using probably thirty inches of blade, of which only three inches are needed for a kill to the throat or chest, by one of three forms of assault: the strike, the cut and the thrust. And finally your fate depends on mastering the holy trinity of the blade – the point, the edge and the hilt, for that
will
overcome.

Trouin had known a sword longer than he had known women and now he held this one to his face in salute. Waiting now. Half a minute to glory.

The butcher’s boy had first wielded a sword three years ago fighting off the men who now stood behind him, beating them from his master’s cabin door. But he could fight, had fought all his life one way or another, and even if this combat were to be his last it was for something worth more than just a square of table in a tavern or for other men’s gold.

Trouin stepped forward easily. The
salle d’armes
may have been no more than twelve feet of oak but there was an entire arena of confidence around him. ‘Are you sure this is what you want, pirate?’ He rapped his sword against his leg. ‘You will die.’

Devlin followed his movements like a mirror. ‘Then you will be a hero. As you should.’

Trouin bowed his chin. ‘And your men? They will follow what you say?’

‘Do you remember when men did that for you, René? The feel of it in your chest?’

Trouin cast no look at the young officers whose faith belonged to a new order, a regency of operas and lapsed virtues. But this could still be his world, still being of service to France. To bring back the diamond for the new king. To have Paris in his debt again.

‘I do remember. And that will do for me.’

Devlin stopped circling and broke the false friendship as he swung and rang his sword off a chain hanging from the mizzen, the crash of it snapping the air.

‘Come on then,’ he beckoned with his sword. ‘You swear before this deck. You surrender and my ship goes free. You have me and the diamond.’

‘And all of you, and you dead when I beat you. An easy oath.’ Trouin counted his steps. Seven. Seven feet. All recorded. All the space he would need and keep to, just as he had been taught as a boy. ‘You will die and I take all. A page of my story.’

Devlin balanced his sword. ‘Just know, René: this is a better end than I had ever hoped for.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The first pass was a testing of forte, to hear the strength in the steel, to see how their thirty inches of death compared. And then another back again, to counter, to see if the first strike had shocked enough to slow down the other’s hand, and determine if his mettle matched his steel.

Devlin felt the power of a forearm honed for decades sing up his arm and he jumped back, which only pulled the corsair at him, at his throat, shaving his neck, the steel palpable as the smell of it whisked back with its master.

The pirate appeared to be already on his back-foot, and Trouin’s men began to cheer from the shrouds as the two passed across the stage. The pirates remained still, but had dark looks for the Frenchmen above them, each of them picking a man to chill with their solemn stares.

Watch the shoulder and the eyes, Devlin, not the sword. Dead amateurs and Shakespeare players clash at swords. Treat the sword as your fist in a brawl. Go for flesh.

Trouin saw Devlin’s thought, his eyes giving him away, pointing to where he would strike.

Poor boy. And Trouin countered before Devlin moved.

Yet the body was not there when he came, and instead the pirate’s edge sliced to his head.

Trouin weaved as if dodging an eye-level branch in a woodland stroll, the slice missing by a thumb’s width.

Very good, pirate. But how is this?

A
passeta sotto.
Trouin’s left side almost to the deck, the fulcrum of his body thrusting his tip to Devlin’s guts. Twenty men had died in the first three seconds from such a touch. Years and years of them swept away – but again the body was no longer there and again the sword came for his head.

Trouin reeled back as the steel cut into empty air before his eyes. He saluted again to acknowledge to his opponent and to assure him he would not underestimate him again. That mistake had passed.

A bead of sweat formed on Trouin’s lip, and he blinked rapidly to clear his vision of moisture. Devlin saw it. The deck was always a warm place but now it was scorching in the sun. They both took a breath. Almost twenty years lay between the two. Every second Devlin stayed alive those years would count more, would wear on the older man. His only chance. But the lion came on again.

Once, twice, across and past the younger man and a strike to his back without a glance. Peter Sam closed his eyes at the sight of the edge cutting across Devlin’s spine and already Trouin had turned and lunged.

Devlin spun as the point came. He landed against the mizzen, its oak at his back, a cold stripe of blood running down his back, Death’s scythe tasting blood.

Trouin would not thrust at a man with a tree to his back. Perhaps this was how the pirate had survived before? A witless officer diving forward only to find his blade stuck into oak. But a cut would not get so pig-stuck and he swept across the butcher-boy’s side.

Not enough fat on him to hit. Devlin leapt aside, his blade still there and catching the forte of the cutlass like a vice with his own, the peal of it causing his men to jeer.

Trouin’s forehead began truly to drip; a swift left hand to his brow as they gathered again. Devlin pushed him back through the last inch of blade and dared him on.

Trouin thrust forward again, knowing a coil of rope lay behind the butcher-boy’s heels – he was well taught to use the area around him as a weapon.

But a pirate had no teacher, no rules. Devlin grabbed the arm as the thrust came by and whirled him away, and the chef d’escardre of the Marine Royale stumbled and fell to the deck.

Trouin had no recall of the last time he felt his back on any floor, never mind the deck of a ship he had taken. The pirates’ laughter from the fo’c’sle reddened his face as he pushed himself to his feet, sword out, chest pumping beneath his shirt.

Devlin saw the shirt heave and Trouin tasted sweat. He sucked deep the close September afternoon but the fight still showed cool on the butcher-boy’s face. But Trouin had drawn blood. That would count.

Pity the boy had not remained in the Marine Royale. Pity he did not have this man for his own. Double pity he must end him.

Now the old lessons. The ones the pirate did not know.
Prise de Fer
, bind,
croise
. Treat his blade with the contempt of a riverside reed, use it against him, show him how a Breton fights.

As he came on the pirates began to stamp their feet slowly, all of them, Albany looking around nervously as the marines cocked their muskets and the whole deck shook. Trouin’s own men no longer cheering.

Trouin found the old count again, his feet stepping with the cut of his sword. One, two, three, four, five. Each count a step and a strike, trying to break the man backing away, break him with sheer power. Five strikes enough to weaken anybody.
Anybody
, damn him! He will open, he will parry wrong, he does not know, he knows nothing.

I am René Duguay-Trouin.
Break
, damn you!

He beat Devlin to the gunwale, every blow blocked with the fine Welsh back-sword, the sound echoing the anvils and hammers of both their steels’ births, the sword-smiths knowing that their hard work through the night would count for one man, for one day.

The gunwale bit into the wound across Devlin’s spine and he reacted as the pirate he was. His fist slammed into Trouin’s jaw, and felt sick for it as he saw the great man fly away once more to the deck.

The whole ship gasped as Trouin’s sword jumped out of his hand. The pirates no longer thumped the deck, the French officers stared agape at the sword and their commodore scrabbling for his footing; the lesser of them lowered their heads.

Devlin had Trouin’s back to him. His hide and all its glorious blood-letting organs were open to his point. His recalled a similar sight, of Valentim Mendes crawling ignominiously to his sword in that house in Charles Town two years ago. The nobleman whose hand he had taken, whose ship he had taken, whose life he had taken . . . Still a guilt unpaid for, a victory outweighed. He let Trouin find his sword and rise and wipe the wet from his head with a limp cuff.

Trouin’s white shirt ran with perspiration but the pirate had not broken a sweat. Trouin had mistaken one thing only. He had judged the butcher-boy as a pirate. He had forgotten the one thing that the boy had given pride for:

He had been a Breton once.

‘What is this worth?’ he breathed across the deck. ‘Our fighting?’

Devlin lowered his sword. ‘A diamond. Saving nobles who know how to feast and fornicate and have forgotten what a kingdom means.’

Trouin brushed white foam from the corner of his mouth. ‘Is that worth dying for?’

Devlin brought up his sword. ‘You tell me. I fight for my men.’

Trouin raised his blade, set his feet solid through aching thighs. ‘Then you may be better than me.’

But his officers had seen enough.

One raised look and a nod to the shrouds was given as the combatants scraped their swords and backed off for perhaps one final assault. Devlin to die or Trouin to surrender according to their terms, although that thought did not exist within the heart of the old corsair. This would be a fine end; let someone else write his memoirs.

But a musket levelled down at the pirate from above and only Dandon saw the movement from the corner of his eye. He saw the butt to the shoulder and followed the path down to his friend. He still stood by the foremast with Peter Sam, Hugh Harris and Albany – but only Albany saw Dandon’s head tilt upwards, only Albany heard him take a breath to yell out.

Albany’s sword held one secret, a fine folly built hidden within it, not unusual for a gentleman when pistol swords and drinking vials in the hollowed hilt were talking points at gaming tables. The pommel of his sword unscrewed and out slipped a blue steel dagger.

Dandon’s warning to his captain never came. Instead his eyes widened as the dagger plunged and ground sideways into the meat of his back, and then it was gone away into the sword again before he slumped to the deck. Albany’s arms helped him down while he cursed the French soldiers all around.