Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (43 page)

Dandon swayed himself slowly upright, his eye on the hitches of rope that held the amber and brown bottles. Their pull was stronger than his pain. ‘Oh, I’m sure the Lord has his hands full with those souls. The Devil has us and appreciates us more I’m sure. And now – in light of what we have done – where do we stand?’

Devlin stood to join him, and picked a spiced rum for noon. ‘No pardon. No letter. The whole of the Earth against us.’ He picked up a clay cup for each of them and poured deep. Both men placed a palm to their wounds and grimaced like arthritic old men.

Dandon tapped his cup against his captain’s. ‘Aye, as ever it shall be! None to stop us, all to fear us!’

‘But never back to England,’ Devlin tapped the cups again. ‘I’ve known whores care less about coin.’

Leicester House, the evening of Sunday eighth. A circle of men around a table, the same table as before when first the pirate and the diamond were tasked, and only two absent: the aforementioned rogue and Albany Holmes, the one sent to chaperone the devil.

James Stanhope, Charles Townshend, Robert Walpole. Secretaries of State, Chief Ministers, Lords of the Treasury, muttered into their chests and wine like the husbands of unfaithful wives. Bitter and hurt, angered and embarrassed, all the more motive to sink a whole case of Medoc.

Only the prince, dressed for the opera and not the funeral that his companions seemed late returned from, showed any signs of
c’est la vie
. He smoked contentedly and watched each man’s vehemence flush his cheeks like a slap. Donating his wine was a small price for such amusement.

‘And what now, Robert?’ Stanhope hissed. ‘The Company is lost. It is only days before the share falls further!’

‘The meeting was good enough, James,’ Walpole filled his glass. ‘Forestalled. We must convene the Commons. Have the Bank promise to shore up the Company’s shortfalls.’

Townshend slammed the table. ‘
Again
? Brother, the people are not that naïve, the Bank is not that naïve!’

Walpole snarled back. ‘The people will do what I say is best for them! They would have the directors’ heads if we do not assure something! We will make promise to secure funds from those who have profited and run! That will quiet them!’

Townshend huffed and crossed his arms. ‘The whole country owes! I have coachmen who dreamed to have their own coachman! The Company gave credit to those who could not afford and who will still be paying in their graves for a debt that has a negative value! It does not take a doctor to detect the madness!’

Walpole softened his voice, as if bribing children with honey. ‘Gentlemen. We are removing ourselves from the point with wasteful extremes. What is done is done. We should be grateful that those of us privy enough to the Company’s fate sold our stock at its highest.’

The prince interrupted with a haze of blue smoke. ‘Ah! Sold to some poor wretch who is now blowing his brains out no doubt!’

Walpole bowed, smiling all the way to his canines. ‘I hope not, Your Highness. Nevertheless, we will swear to extract every dishonest farthing from every stock-jobber and goldsmith. I will not have their bodies swinging in the streets.’

‘Oh, no,’ The prince leaned back. ‘You Englishmen, we say, are like starlings around a barn. You shoot at them and they fly away only to return to the same spot a moment later. You will find that the public will rely on you to save them, only to shoot at them later on, never going for the farmer and his gun or for a different spot.’

Walpole did not smile this time. ‘Your Highness has a most eloquent mind.’

Townshend took off his wig, threw it to the table like a dead rabbit, grabbed the carafe and poured only for himself.

‘Enough of this!’ He almost ate his glass. ‘It is the pirate who has damned us! The diamond could have shown the Company had promise! He has cost all! Where is
his
head? The goldsmiths can wait!’

Walpole hated him from across the table; his sister’s choice of husband still baffled him. ‘Do not suppose, brother, that any thought will distract me from that particular personage.’

The prince crossed his legs and breathed out another cloud of Brazilian smoke. ‘And what, pray, will you do about the beast? He is gone like a Jew with the philosopher’s stone. His task immaculately completed, even if the ending is sour.’ He leaned forward. ‘He beat you all. Robbed you like infants. It would be a splendid anecdote should I be vain to use it and able to remove my own complicity.’

Walpole pushed himself up in his chair. ‘The man in question is already an enemy to all mankind, as His Majesty declared of them all. Those pirates that did not take the amnesty afforded to them by Act have almost been wiped from the earth.’ He reached to drag back the carafe from Townshend, poured to the brim of his glass and looked deep into the blood-like liquid.

‘There will be no satisfaction in the course of the coming months. We will find some solace if we can tar the corpse of . . .’ his throat caught on the name, stifling a chill that would take a good bed and hot lemon to dispel his hour on the river. ‘I will tar the corpse of that man. I will give it one hour of every day to find him and bring him to me.’

Townshend scoffed with a snort. ‘
Find him
? For we will have his address!’

‘I may not have that, brother, but I know men.’

The prince’s nose sniffed a fox. ‘You know where he is?’

‘When incarcerated the pirate gave a name. Not his own. Secretary Timms thought it merely prudent but I supposed it to be much more. It meant something to the man. A name more than just a name. It took only one afternoon to find what it meant.’

Townshend dropped his air of parody. ‘What name? He has an enemy? A man who will betray him?’

Walpole drummed his fingers on the table. ‘An ex-officer of His Majesty’s navy who may own more culpability than even he supposes. He found Devlin twice before and I’m sure hides an immeasurable desire to do so again. The pirate was once his servant. He now hides his shame in the colonies but he was most able in his day. He had a good record, too – at least until his servant turned against the world.’

The prince giggled at the conspiracy and held his fingers to his mouth to cover his delight. ‘Oh, say you have something against this man! That he will charge across oceans to have his revenge! That he will die for his honour!’

Walpole blushed. ‘Something in that manner, Your Highness. It will cost us naught at least save a ship and some men I am sure.’

Townshend sat straighter. ‘How long will this take? It took months to find the pirate before?’

‘Not so long, brother, I assure you. Their world shrinks every day. And, once I have the right man, it will no longer exist at all.’

Epilogue

Boston. The Province of Massachusetts Bay.

January 1721.

From Long Wharf, where the countless brimful ships laden with oxen, wood, fish and furs titled Boston as the trading capital of New England, it is a stroll along King Street to Merchant’s Row where the finest importers and chandlers sell from proper shop-fronts to the citizens of God’s own city on the hill.

Dominating the row at its end is the wooden triangular warehouse where the Dutch India Company smuggles and sells tea for a third less than the British India and furnishes parcels of fine negroes in the summer.

Initially starting in trade as a sea chandler for rope and instruments to pick oakum or chart the stars, John Coxon had now passed into the purveying of general goods as the needs of his customers demanded. So it was that on a freezing January morning, former Post-Captain John Coxon RN helped Mrs Keyne decide between a blue or green toile roll for a spring dress.

‘I don’t know, Mr Coxon. I think I should prefer something in Madder Red if that was available?’

Coxon shoved back the green roll to its rack. ‘I have nothing in Madder, Mrs Keyne. I have what I have.’

Mrs Keyne was no matriarch with extravagant silk and bustle. She was of puritan stock through and through. A bonnet for modesty; black wool dress and Irish linen. A spring fancy was an important determination. She smiled gently. She liked John Coxon. He had good parson manners. A former sea-captain by rumour and gait but kept himself to himself – more’s the pity, for those families seeking a match that a striking lean gentleman in his forties would make for a good daughter. After all, there was certainly something of a lonely aspect about a man who spent his walks by the wharves, wistfully staring out to sea. Perhaps a tragedy there, a lost love. How wonderful that would be.

Mrs Keyne lowered her chin coyly. John Coxon was no simple shopkeeper. No apron, always smartly pressed in sombre cloth, but a man of means and guile she was sure, an experienced intelligence behind his eyes. ‘What about some other fabric, Mr Coxon? Something that might have only just come in and you haven’t had time to put out yet?’

Coxon pushed back the blue roll as well. ‘Madam?’

Mrs Keyne looked over her shoulder at the empty shop. ‘Maybe some “pirate” cotton, Mr Coxon? Just a few yards?’

Coxon’s lips thinned. ‘Indian cotton is illegal, Mrs Keyne. The crown wishes we support domestic textiles.’

‘Oh, I know, but I hear it shall be grown here soon enough and I have heard that there is trade of it along the post-road aways. Pirates do so love the Carolinas, don’t you know? And I’m sure I have seen some ladies hereabout with a dress or two, haven’t I?’

The bell rang above the door. Two gentlemen, heads low, shut back the door quietly and began to browse: they wore long black coats and white perukes under sharp dark tricornes. Coxon checked them once then looked back to the diminutive lady who wished to trade with pirates.

‘Not from my stock, Mrs Keyne. I’ll have no truck with pirates.’ He looked up as across the room one of the gentlemen began to toy with his brass scales. He picked up a price-list and handed it to Mrs Keyne. ‘If you’ll observe I have a fair bill for silk and calico if the toile is not of service. I’ll allow you a few moments to peruse whilst I serve these two gentlemen.’ He bowed and moved his way around the counter, his approach not turning the backs of the two black stripes of men.

‘Can I assist, Gentlemen?’

They swivelled round. ‘Captain Coxon?’ the taller of them questioned, his face expecting no denial. Mrs Keyne looked back at them demurely over her shoulder.

‘I am,’ Coxon did not even blink. ‘Who might you be to know me?’

A chin dipped respectfully. ‘We are from the Navy Board. Mr Duke and Mr King. We should like a private word.’ A smiling eye to Mrs Keyne.

Coxon spun on his heel but Mrs Keyne was already leaving, excusing herself with the list which she promised to return tomorrow once she had made up her mind and told everybody she knew of what she had just seen. Coxon locked the door behind her.

‘Mr
Duke
and Mr
King
? Is that what passes for imagination at the Board these days?’

The taller, Mr King, walked to the rear as he spoke, appraising the store, nodding in admiration. ‘You have done well, Captain Coxon. A fine business I’m sure. Impressive for a pension of say . . . thirty, forty pounds a year?’

Mr Duke agreed. ‘Started cheap no doubt. Worked your way up. Like the old days.’

Coxon looked from one to the other. King’s Letter boys. Officers at no more than sixteen, volunteered from families of better quality. Earls’ and knights’ offspring not a rector’s son like himself, shipped with an apple and a bible. Their kind was always envious of those who had earned their captaincy the hard way and, despite their purse, they would have to wait for men like him to die.

So, then, they should remember their place and not waste a captain’s time, however it was he had begun and ended.

‘Your business, Gentlemen? For any longer of your talk will start to impede on mine.’

‘You left New Providence almost two years ago now, Captain. Gave up your commission.’

‘I have papers to prove, if that is what you query.’

Mr King tapped at some crock jars, then left his study of the shelves. ‘No, no. That is all well. But your king would like for you to consider a few months’ service again.’

Coxon felt himself relax, unaware that he had been tense. ‘I am retired, sirs. I was well convinced I was never to make admiral I assure you.’ He went back behind his counter where his raised stage put him above them both. ‘You may thank His Majesty for me but I should like to decline.’