The Pirate Devlin (26 page)

  'Why do you dislike me so, William?' Coxon stared straight at him, masticating violently against the almost wooden beef. The question was meant to shock, a shot across Guinneys' bows to aggravate and draw out an honest response. He had expected Guinneys to reply with a denial, a simpering, snorting retort. Instead Guinneys placed down his glass with a chime of crystal.

  'I suppose it may be because you are not a gentleman, Captain,' he said.

  'Explain?' Coxon spoke through his beef, strangely satisfied by the answer.

  'Well, you have the rolling gait of a sailor, not the strut of an officer born. You do not hunt, which I'm afraid I do not understand at all. But mostly it is because you are a post- captain. And since you are not a gentleman, that means you must have done some great deed of war whilst I must now rot in peacetime whoring myself to these damned company men waiting for you, or someone like you, to die off.'

  His glass fairly flew to his mouth; he closed his eyes as he drained it, putting it down with a grimace. 'Damn! St James, my arse! Where do they dredge this stuff from?'

  'Thank you, William. I hope you do not get your wish.'

  'What wish is that, sir?' Guinneys wiped his mouth, genuinely enquiring with wide eyes, as if he had missed something.

  For the second time that day, Coxon's door swept open unannounced and, without apology or doffing of hat, the sixteen-year-old midshipman Thomas Howard scuffed into the room skidding like a dog on a marble floor.

  'Surgeon sent me, sir!' he squealed and, not waiting for reproach from the two angry faces, bravely dropped his tone to declare, 'It's Mister Talton, Captain. He's dead, sir!'

  Coxon had spent almost a fortnight in the rear quarters of the lower deck on the way from Cape Coast Castle with Edward Talton. They shared a common narrow corridor, divided by wooden and hemp walls. Doors almost as thin as gaming cards separated him from Talton and Midshipman Howard. Coxon welcomed the closeness of the windowless cubbyholes, the flimsy folds. Here was solitude.

  Talton had now found his own solitude.

  Surgeon Richard Wood sat on the narrow cot that doubled as a locker, mopping his brow fervently. The heat was stifling, the air like sawdust. Coxon filled the door frame, Guinneys' head strained a view over his shoulder. Midshipman Howard fidgeted behind them, both wanting to see and afraid to do so again.

  Talton sat in his shirt at the fold-down desk that clipped out of the wall, his cuffs tucked under, pen still in his right hand, his head hanging to his chest.

  The tortoiseshell lamp was swinging with the sea, giving his shadow an eerie animation in the gloom, back and forth across the paper.

  'Who found him?' Coxon asked in a whisper.

  'Midshipman Howard. Not ten minutes ago, Captain.'

  Surgeon Wood sighed the words in his lowland, melancholy Scots. He was the archetypal image of a navy surgeon too old to be at sea, too old to be successful on land. With a shiny bald pate above a distinguished set of gold pince-nez, he dressed like a farmer going to church and cut men like a tailor getting paid by the yard.

  Coxon had turned round to look at Howard, and spoke softly to him. The boy was visibly shaken. His hat was slanted, his freckled face red and swollen.

  'How did you come to find him, Thomas?'

  Thomas Howard gathered himself instantly at his captain's voice. He explained that he had been late on watch, that Lieutenant Anderson had punished him by having him pick oakum all morning. His hands and wrists cramped like hell and, begging your pardon, sir, he had gone to his cabin to pity himself somewhat.

  Talton's door had been ajar but the noise of the pen that filled his days was absent and Howard had cadged a peek, to his horror. No more keyholes for Thomas Howard after that lesson, Captain. No, sir.

  Lieutenant Scott stumbled into the corridor; news had swabbed the deck faster than forty hands. Coxon shifted back to the door and almost stepped through Guinneys, who stayed silent and watchful.

  'What killed him, Mister Wood?' Coxon asked.

  'He wasn't killed, Captain. He just died.' Wood rose with tired difficulty.

  'Of what, would you say?'

  'I don't know.' He sighed mournfully, removing his half- framed spectacles and pinching his bridge. 'A failure of some kind. He's not marked. No injury. He just died.'

  Guinneys shook his head. 'To think I heard him scribbling away not more than an hour ago. Before lunch. I was taking of some water from the scuttle-butt for that poxed vegetation in my hole that I'm damned if I can get to do anything but wilt.' He tutted at his lack of horticultural ability. 'It must be the lack of light. Perhaps I should cloister it next to the coop. Out of the way.'

  Coxon looked around the room absently. Guinneys' prattling was barely audible, or worth attention. He had not liked Talton. No one had. And damn him now. Hours away from retribution and a company man dies in his lap.

  'No burial until tomorrow, Doctor. Too much to do today.'

  'Aye, Captain.'

  Surveying the cramped room, he looked over Talton's shoulder. A pile of letters by his left hand. His large effeminate hand plainly readable. A letter to a Mrs Williams.

  Was Bath still as nice as he remembered? Were her daughters married yet? And were there any new dogs that he did not know about? And on and on, and then Coxon froze.

  His eyes had travelled from the papers on the left to the hand that wrote them on the right, lying pale upon a fresh blank page. The blood ran cold to his feet. Without hesitation he swung round to the scant hook that held Talton's short black velvet coat.

  'Best rule out if Mister Howard's hands are as wandering as his eyes.' His arm had reached the coat before he had finished speaking. 'Purse present. Tobacco present…' He tentatively picked his way through the pockets. 'No offence, Mister Howard. Back to your watch.'

  'Thank you, Captain.' Howard gratefully walked out of the corridor, shuffling past Scott and Guinneys; then the sound of his feet went rattling up the companion ladder as fast as hail.

  Coxon smiled at Guinneys and Scott. 'We were all sixteen once, eh, lads? Doctor, would you like to attend to some men to remove this body, if you please?'

  'Aye, Captain.' The two men stepped into the corridor.

  'William' - Coxon laid his palm on Guinneys' shoulder - 'would you secure this room once Mister Talton has been sequestered below?'

  'Of course, Captain.' Guinneys tapped his head.

  'I will be in my cabin, sorrowfully recording this event. Gentlemen, if you please.' Coxon was already climbing to the upper deck before he had finished speaking. He was greeted with the traditional flurry of activity whenever the captain's head appeared, but instead of continuing to his coach he stayed by the companion hatch and looked about him.

  He had felt the instinctive swell of the water, the keel rising a little more than previously, and he tramped up to the quarterdeck, nodding to the timoneer at the helm, saluting the midshipmen and Sailing Master Dawson before expectantly looking up to the topmast with a shielded hand at the man aloft. No cry came, and he hoped the distraction would ease the thought that was rising uncomfortably in his mind. He leaned over the rail and looked fore to the bow, carving through the waves like a carpenter's plane, curling out spirals of sea along the strakes like wood shavings. He stared until his eyes could no longer take the peppering of salt-spray spitting up from below and the thought could no longer be ignored.

  He moved amidships, ignoring the salutes that greeted almost every step, the bodies making themselves both busy and invisible before him. He clasped his hands behind him to hide the tremble that rattled through them.

'The door had been ajar.
' Thomas Howard's words had flown past him at first, only returning when he spied the broken crow quill that Talton had shown him not an hour earlier perched in his dead right hand.

  The exclusive swan pen was still nestling in Talton's coat. Coxon had felt the tip of the fletch and glimpsed a flash of white.
Yet Guinneys had heard him writing.

  He tried to imagine the act of Talton removing his coat and ignoring the elegant pen his captain had bestowed upon him and then sitting at his writing place and picking up a broken nib and musing on the variety of ink blots he was about to create.
Yet Guinneys had heard him writing.

  The
Starling
hit a rogue wave. His thoughts were broken by the sudden rise of the deck, the clutching of lifelines by barefooted men, the sway of the horizon as the
Starling
regained her hold upon the water like a horse on turf after the gate.

  All ears filled with the cries of the bosun hailing out to the watch to regain their point of wind as the leeway shifted through everyone's feet; then came a cry from the topsail reverberating through the caller's speaking trumpet, the cry Coxon knew was imminent when he'd felt the keel rise beneath him as tides met.

  'Land ho! Two points to larboard bow!'

  Coxon sprinted back to the quarterdeck. Drawing the telescope from its becket at the binnacle, he trained it in the direction of the arm of the man aloft, instantly lowering it with a curse to wipe the condensation from the front before slapping it to his eye again.

  There she was. A grey growth swelling out of the sea, a white trim marking her on the horizon. Fifteen miles. Slow now to four knots. Less than three hours, for sure. He had long given up celebrating the accuracy of his sail, but afforded the men their cheers.

  He passed on the order to shorten sail to Mister Anderson and stepped down to the deck, his eye falling on the closed conversation between Guinneys and Scott by the foremast stays.

  No time now. No time at all. Too much to do. Have to ignore that bristling on the back of the neck; all hands would be needed. Keep Guinneys close. Wear him like a coat. Keep him, at hand and dependable. There would be time enough after the island was secured. Time enough to question why he had murdered Edward Talton.

Chapter Twelve

  The plan
had
been bolder. Devlin, Dandon and the women would disembark and bring themselves into favour with the island's inhabitants. A few hours later the
Shadow
would arrive, raining furious anger down on the poor
Lucy.
The frigate could not come in due to the shallows, but she could lay warmly to the
Lucy
with hot iron from almost a mile away.

  After which, with much pleading and exemplification of the hearts of his small crew, Devlin's men would be allowed to row ashore to escape the black flag bearing down on them. The same ploy that had worked against
Ter Meer-would
work again. Without a blow, without a shot, Devlin's band of cut-throats would be almost welcomed into overthrowing the marines.

  Now, Devlin followed Dandon's lead. A man come amongst them less than a week before. A man who gave up nothing, whose only path was upwards from the gutter. A man like them all. It did not seem particularly surprising to trust a man who had nothing to lose. From a finer place, one day, it might seem unwise, but for now these were the only men whom Devlin did trust.

  They had walked through the stockade, each with a handle between them, swinging the chest now. Devlin cast an eye to the wooden tower in the corner where a musketeer sat, otiose and sullen, although he brightened when the parasols were tipped and the painted faces smiled up at him.

  Two L-shaped barracks. Open-shuttered windows facing the gate. A frontal assault on the stockade would be met with muskets jutting from those facing windows, echoed by the nine-pounder with its deadly eye trained on the gate; the same gate that now closed wearily behind them, bringing up a cloud of dust from the dry earth.

  Men now followed the women like sheep. They did not need to speak. They smiled as if from a painting and they strolled as if in a park.

  Only Bessette remained aloof to the women, his hand pressed permanently against his jaw, looking for all the world like a housemaid striving to remember a list of chores.

  Xavier borrowed his captain's ear again as they reached the well-trodden dust between the barracks. Bernadette and Annie stayed close to Devlin and Dandon; the others, with the soft pad of silken shoes and giggles into their chests, were cajoled into the soldiers' mess, the longest part of the left-hand wooden building.

  With no words, Devlin, Dandon and the two women were led by Bessette and Xavier to the lower half of the same building, turning a corner past the gun, and passing through Bessette's private door.

  Inside was a comfortable drawing room, far removed from the crude exterior. A good-sized dining table dominated the room, a green velvet brocade tablecloth draped across it running to the floor, its drop obscuring even the legs.

  To the right of the door as they entered, along the wooden wall hidden by tapestries and unpainted plaster, were the matching green high-backed fauteuils, eight in all. The far wall displayed a superb bow-fronted tiger-maple commode, sporting lozenge-framed portraits of the goddess Diana on its front. A Bible box sat on top of the commode. Devlin eliminated both as the place to secure a hundred thousand louis of gold. A small carriage clock upon the commode brought the room alive with its pleasing movement.