The Pirate Devlin (23 page)

  Devlin raked his fingers through the carcass of the fowl, now cold and skeletal. With some success he found one of the bird's oysters still intact and popped it in his mouth with satisfaction.

  'To hell with Teach, then, Mister Teague.'

  'Aye, most probably, Cap'n.'

  'Now, Mister Teague' - Devlin leaned forward - 'do you have any French speech in that broken old head of yours?'

  'No, Cap'n.' Dan sounded bemused. 'Reckon I don't.'

  'No bother. Drag out Peter Sam from wherever he be and tell him I need boulting cloth, coloured silks and such. Enough to festoon the
Lucy.
That old widow will be the place.'

  'What for, Cap'n?'

'Lucy's
going to open her legs to the French and I needs her to look pretty, like.' He picked up the pistol and waved it loosely to Dandon. 'And you, sir? Doctor Dandon? Can you speak French?'

'Non,
monsieur.' Dandon raised his hands against the pistol, perceiving it to be still cocked. 'At least the threat of arms diminishes my ability to do so. If you'd be so kind as to remove the teeth from your hound, I may be inclined to extend my tale to the intimacy that my former master was a Fort Louis de la Louisiane man before the floods. I can pray and curse with the worst of them, if you would only lower your weapon, Captain Devlin.'

  'This?' Devlin raised the weapon to the ceiling with a flourish and pulled the trigger. The empty pistol fired into the air with a flat snap and silent spark. He slapped it down again upon the table, shaking his head to the young doctor. 'You don't takes a loaded pistol into a whore's chamber, Dandon. I'd have thought you'd have known that.'

  From behind them, the fiddlers began again, slower this time. A long, whining dirge. One of them started out with a low hum until he found his tone. When the pitch was his, he began in a high, Scottish drone:

Oh me name is Captain Kidd as I sailed, as I sailed.

Oh me name is Captain Kidd as I sailed.

Oh me name is Captain Kidd and God's laws I did forbid.

And most wickedly I did

As I sailed.

  'Why do we have shortened sail, Mister Guinneys?' Coxon's head and shoulders appeared, rising to the quarterdeck. 'I thought we were to carry on?' His manner was polite, querying, with deference to his officer as former captain. Coxon had broken from a rare nap before dinner during Guinneys' evening watch. It was after seven, the sun had set and the sky was a duck-egg blue.

  'Standard setting, Captain, for unknown reef waters.' Guinneys smiled back. 'Soundings by mark three. Leather, sir.' He referred to the lead sounding of rope that fathomed the depth of the waters.

  They were passing through the Windward Passage of the Greater Antilles. Off the larboard quarter, the island of Hispaniola veered away from them, smothered in mist. To starboard, to the northwest, there was the white outline across the horizon of Cuba, and before dawn the pleasing blue mountains of Jamaica would come towards them, signalling them to change course NNW to the Caymans.

  'Make sail, Mister Guinneys,' Coxon ordered. 'I could sail our gallant king's mistress through these waters. They are not unknown to me.'

  'Aye, aye, sir,' Guinneys rapped.

  'Remember, Mister Guinneys, that we are trying to reach this island before the gold is lost. If sail is shortened we will delay our passage. I have sailed these waters for many years. The course is good.'

  'Was that with your pirate acquaintance, Captain?' Guinneys' eyes broadened.

  Coxon allowed the smirk that flashed upon Guinneys' face and just as rapidly vanished. He had not seen it, or at least he had not seen it enough to bother him.

  'Carry on, Mister Guinneys. You will not leave your watch till the sails are set.'

  'Aye, aye, Captain.' Guinneys bowed, turned to the deck, shouting for a midshipman of the watch to carry out his orders.

  Coxon looked up to the early stars breaking through the firmament, which suddenly began to sway before his eyes. Silently, he stepped backwards, putting a hand behind to the rail to steady himself. He stared anxiously across the ship. Guinneys' back was turned. No one had seen. He swallowed the lake of saliva that had suddenly filled his mouth. His eyes swung up to a bearded fellow in a Monmouth cap standing in the crosstrees of the mainmast. The man studied his captain for a moment, then turned his back and disappeared down the ratlines like an ape.

  Coxon watched the unsteady form of Oscar Hodge, his new valet, coming up the stair with a small pewter tray, a single cup of coffee sitting nervously upon it. Thanking Hodge for the coffee, he sipped slowly, the bitter roast sharpening his mind almost instantly. He politely asked Hodge to prepare fresh clothes for the morning, to brush his hat and coat before he retired. Hodge murmured agreement and removed himself, leaving Coxon to dwell on the new career of his previous servant.

  Rightly or wrongly, he knew that the young gentlemen who were his officers felt that he was partly to blame for the creation of the pirate, that without his presence on board they would be swanning around parties in London by now, writing secret messages on the fans of blushing ladies and buying new horses for the season.

  Once, a few days past, a dizzy spell had caused him to miss a step on the companion to the quarterdeck, whereupon Guinneys and Scott had bitten laughs with the backs of their hands. He had recovered his footing and they had tugged their forelocks as if nothing had happened.

  Still, Coxon felt that they merely tolerated their new captain, that there was almost something temporary about him, and in truth when it was all over this would not be his ship, not be his men. But it could all be in his own doubtful mind.

  Perhaps it was merely a nostrum of his own, built out of his weakened state. These men were half his age. They were indestructible.

  Conflict would settle it. Finding Devlin, his hands dipped in gold, bedecked in jewels, then watching him quake before his guns and submit to his master.

  Aye, he thought, that was it. They all blamed him for Devlin. All of them. Whitehall and his officers. His redemption could only come from Devlin's destruction. If his actions had lost the
Noble,
then this was his olive branch, and it would come sticking out of the bloodied chest of his butcher's boy.

  Three days. That was all it would take. Three days to reach him. To reach him and break him. Three more morning watches. He drained his coffee, his thoughts now passing to the slow weatherly progress of the
Starling
amongst the shouts and calls of the crew. The certainty of Patrick Devlin's death ebbed its way towards him.

  He tossed the small porcelain cup over the taffrail and watched it boil in the effervescence of the
Starling's
wake for a moment before it disappeared forever. One porcelain coffee cup from Guinneys' own tableware. Worth at least three guineas. He snapped his hat and returned below, nodding admiringly to the man at the helm.

Chapter Eleven

The Island

  Favre Callier enjoyed the time alone on the cliff top. From the small calico tent that was his sentry post on the west of the island he could see for twenty miles all around him. The wind whipped at the sides of the tent but it was warm and always dry under the blue skies. He spent the hours of his watch with charcoal and paper, refining the multitude of sketches that he kept in his leather satchel.

  He had painstakingly drawn, over the last few weeks, all the foliage that the small world outside the tent offered; now he drafted portraits of his comrades, their barracks and any ships that appeared in the offing.

  For occasional inspiration and relief from the monotony of his forenoon watch, he walked the short distance to the edge of the cliff and cautiously watched the breakers and white catspaws licking the rocks below, silent and gentle from this height.

  From his vantage, two hundred feet high, he could see the crescent sand bar spreading for miles around, only broken by the savage dagger-points of black volcanic rock, threatening to rip the hull of any ship foolish enough to approach.

  He sat cross-legged on the sandy, straw-like grass in the mouth of his tent and perused his sketches.

  He disliked his rendition of the
Cressy,
the sloop that had brought them to the island. It was lifeless, dark and morose, yet he recalled it as a happy ship. The nineteen men on board had enjoyed an easy passage to the island. Nine had remained on the island under Captain Bessette; the remainder sailed the little sloop back home.

  Three months ago the responsibility had seemed immense. Now they had fallen into a dull routine of watches and manual labour. Soldiering had been replaced by gardening and landscaping the area around the fort. Men planted individual vegetable patches, cleared rocks and trees to give a wide field of defence should any lucky soul stumble upon their outpost.

  The small fort he had caught well. Once home, when their duty would be relieved next month, he would try to paint it, as a memory for his children yet-to-be, as a testament to the duty that he had done for his king.

  Two L-shaped buildings, large enough for twenty men. One was their barracks, a log cabin with six single shuttered windows with gunloops crossed upon them. The other housed Captain Bessette's quarters and their mess room. Ah, and there was the scowling portrait of Bessette himself. Strange how he scowled all those months ago as well. Now it seemed impossible to imagine him any other way, for it was almost a month since his jaw had begun to fester and pulse, sending him into spasms of agony. It would be June before any relief would come. Bessette would probably shoot himself before then. Callier was content at the thought. A
cochon
of a man turned into a
sanglier.

  Only one reminder of the solemnity of their purpose met them every morning as they crossed from their barracks to the mess, and in Callier's sketch the small nine-pounder behind a sand redoubt could barely be seen. It aimed directly at the wooden gates, straight down the middle of the two buildings, sited to decimate an assault breaking through the gates.

  Callier riffled through his rough papers with familiarity, finally resting his eyes on the elegant features of Lieutenant Philippe Ducos. Ducos was staring out at him from beneath the corner of the great chest of gold, borne on the shoulders of five other marines stepping out of the sea.

  The likeness pleased Favre, and he held it out in admiration until something pricked his attention from the blanket of sea and he looked over the top of the paper with an artist's eye.

  The endless line of the horizon was broken by the hint of a grey shape, miles distant. Calmly he placed down his sketches and picked up his two-draw telescope and brought the vessel closer to him. Through the smoky, rippled lens he saw the three masts under full sail moving south. South and safely past the island towards the Caymans or Jamaica.

  His study was broken by the crunch of urgent footsteps on the shingle behind him. He turned to the sweating approach of Dominic Duphot, his messmate, pounding up the cliff towards him, the brim of his wide hat bouncing as he ran.

  Callier called out, 'Ho, Duphot! Why so happy to relieve me?' He slammed the tube closed and moved towards his comrade, who had eased his pace and was adjusting his cross- belt and dragging a sleeve across his brow. 'What occurs, brother?' Callier asked.

  Gasping, swallowing the air like water, Dominic Duphot steadied himself. 'Whores, Favre… A ship of whores is in the bay… Everyone is on the beach. Come!'

  Favre Callier swept into his small tent, grabbed his hat, satchel and cutlass, and trotted down the steep path riven through the cliff, jostling his laughing comrade.

  Behind them, over the sea, the dark ship crept silently along, seemingly smaller now, in fact only two masts visible, as the
Shadow's
bow pointed towards the island.

  The trip had taken the
Lucy
just over six days. Devlin passed command of the
Shadow
to Peter Sam and they parted company ten miles west of Cabo San Antonio, off Cuba's west coast. The
Shadow
was to sail SSE until she hit the Twenty- First Parallel, then head due east until the water became almost white and the devilfish swam in the cream of the
Shadow's
wake.

Lucy
traversed ESE directly for almost four hundred miles on a close reach. It was a difficult sail for Devlin and the nine others he had chosen to man her. But they were all old hands, the winds were fair and Dandon kept the songs French and bawdy.

  A watch had been maintained since noon on the third day as they passed San Antonio, and - almost to the hour that the black cross had been marked by Devlin on the map - at six, in the morning watch of the sixth day, Sam Morwell gave the cry of 'Land ho!' from the topsail.