The Pirate Kings

by Alex Scarrow

  He’d always suspected this day would finally come. The Republic of Pandora had become too much of a thorn in the sides of the English and the Spanish. Their fleet of ships had intercepted too much Spanish gold. Their small nation’s constitutional promise of freedom and equality for every citizen had caused far too many slaves to abandon their plantations.

  This day was always going to happen. Sooner or later.

  Perhaps the surprise was that it had taken the new English king, James II, so long to negotiate an alliance with King Philip IV and his successor King Charles II of Spain and coordinate an expeditionary force between them to invade Pandora and squash this tiny upstart republic.

  Liam wiped dust from his cheek – and a tear.

  They’d managed to make a special place right here on this island. He and Rashim, and many of the old crew, now old friends, from their ship the Pandora. They’d arrived here in this thrown-together shanty port that was lawless and brutal and dangerous, and turned it into an oasis of freedom, fairness, enlightenment and stability. Which in turn, over the years, had attracted hundreds of merchants and craftsmen and traders as well as many thousands of slaves seeking a new beginning.

  Given another twenty years, perhaps other islands in the Caribbean might have followed their example and formed a loose coalition of island states with the same values. Safety in numbers.

  Liam faintly recalled there’d been another goal. A hope that their actions would echo through history and those girls he now barely remembered might step through time and come back for them. Perhaps even join them and live here in this roughly hewn piece of Heaven. But that goal had increasingly become secondary, receded and eventually been almost completely forgotten as the day-to-day shared running of their small nation had occupied every waking hour.

  Liam’s horse took him past the new marketplace, past the old Catholic church and the recently built All Faith church. Past the wooden palisade of Fort Bob and up the gentle slope of Foster’s Ridge to where defence works were being hastily erected.

  Among the hundreds of men, civilians and militia alike, working shirtless in the cloying morning heat to dig out trenches and build up earthworks, he spotted Rashim and colonel of the militia, William Hope.

  Rashim had not weathered twenty years quite so well. Too much good living had ended up as a thick belt of fat around his waist. His once lean jaw now carried jowls beneath his dark beard. To call him a round man now would be unfair. Stout would be a little kinder.

  Liam reined his horse in, climbed down and joined them.

  ‘Good morning, Will,’ he said.

  The young man saluted him. ‘Morning, sir.’ That small motherless boy had grown into a fine and capable young man.

  ‘How goes the work, Will?’

  ‘As you will see, our artillery battery is well protected on three sides by the earth walls.’ He pointed at shallow trenches either side of it that stretched along the modest ridge overlooking Port au Vikram. ‘We also have splendid firing positions for Pasquinel’s company of sharpshooters.’ William grinned. ‘We will make them pay heavily for their approach, sir.’

  Liam nodded, shaded his eyes from the sun and studied the distant encampment of the combined British and Spanish expeditionary force. He could just about make out rows of canvas tents, the fluttering of regimental flags. His eyes had once been far better.

  ‘Liam, here … use this.’ Rashim handed him a spyglass. ‘You might not like what you see, though,’ he added quietly.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Through the lens he could make out much more detail. The army was breaking camp. Across the intervening mile of scrub, bushes and rock, through a lightly shimmering heat haze, he could see lines of English deep crimson tunics and Spanish sky-blue coloured tunics forming up into regiments. He could see General Pullinger had also rather shrewdly thought to bring along a number of artillery pieces.

  Liam made a rough estimate of their strength. Five, maybe six thousand troops and so far he’d counted six pieces of artillery being hooked up to teams of mules.

  He lowered the spyglass and noted Rashim was looking at him with an expression that communicated what Liam already knew to be true.

  We’re not going to hold this position for long.

  ‘What’s the news from the French, Liam?’

  Liam reached into his pocket for the note, pulled it out and passed it to him. ‘I’m afraid there will be no assistance from them.’

  There had been a hope, the promise of some very late, eleventh-hour help.

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘The despatch states their ships were blockaded by the Spanish.’

  Rashim rolled up his dirt-smudged shirtsleeves then wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘Swines! They chickened out on us, that’s what happened.’

  William Hope looked at both Lord Governors. ‘We’re on our own?’

  Liam nodded. ‘Rather looks that way, Will.’

  Across the open ground, they heard the distant rattle of regimental drums starting up and the faint trill of flutes and piccolos.

  Chapter 68

  1889, London

  ‘The siege of Port au Vikram in May 1687 by General Sir Edward Pullinger was a spectacular victory for the combined British and Spanish expeditionary force,’ read Maddy. She held in her hands a thick hardback book entitled London Illustrated: Famous British Military Campaigns.

  She had taken a trip to the British Museum’s library. It was the book an excitable young man interested in all things military – and, quite possibly, Maddy too – had eagerly recommended to her: a large, heavy tome full of line illustrations of various battles and maps and patriotic portraits of national heroes like Lord Nelson, Wellington, Chelmsford and Pullinger.

  ‘The forces under General Edward Pullinger secretly landed on the east end of the self-proclaimed Republic of Pandora,’ she continued, ‘and marched the length of the island through jungles and swamps in less than a week, catching the disorganized army of rebels by surprise. The rebel army – a motley assortment of cut-throats, pirates, criminals, but predominantly runaway slaves under the command of their self-appointed leader “Lord Governor Anwar” – had little time to prepare for the landward attack of their home port.

  ‘General Pullinger camped and rested his men overnight outside the island’s main settlement, Port au Vikram and, on the morning of June the fifth, advanced his army up towards a hilltop overlooking the port where the rebel army had hastily erected crude defence works.

  ‘The battle commenced just after midday and was won by the heroic and disciplined English troops within the hour. An eyewitness among General Pullinger’s general staff reported that, “the slave army, easily outnumbering our modest force of advancing troops, took one look at the ordered redcoats advancing uphill on them and abandoned their posts like crows scattering from a field of corn”.

  ‘Pullinger’s men took the ridge overlooking the port and observed the swarms of rebels descending down the far side of the slope, casting their weapons aside and fleeing into the labyrinth of ramshackle buildings of Port au Vikram and into the jungle surrounding it. Heartened by the early success of taking the ridge, General Pullinger boldly led his men down into the port … ’ Maddy looked up at Sal. ‘I suspect this is not exactly an impartial account of events, by the way … ’

  Sal nodded at her to read on.

  ‘ … where they finally located the notorious rebel leader, Rashim “Blackbeard” Anwar cowering in the lavish rooms of his stately mansion, behind a gathered human wall of servants.’

  ‘What about Liam?’ asked Sal. ‘Is there not any mention of Liam?’

  Maddy ran her finger down the page until she found something. ‘Anwar’s lesser partner and second-in-command, the other half of the notorious “Pirate Kings of the Caribbean”, was an Irish ex-sailor called Lionel O’Connor. O’Connor was caught attempting to flee the British soldiers in a pinnace that was being rowed out to the last remaining ship of their pirate fleet still moored in th
e bay, the Madelaine, a thirty-gun frigate formerly known as HMS Reliance, a Royal Navy ship of the line captured by “Blackbeard” Anwar’s pirate fleet several years earlier.’

  ‘Lionel O’Connor? They got his name wrong!’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘I guess that’s a handwriting or typo error.’ She carried on. ‘An officer among the soldiers that arrested Lionel O’Connor reported that, “the Irish fellow screamed, cried and pleaded as he was manhandled, like a scolded child”. He claimed that “he was forced by Blackbeard to commit all his crimes upon fear of death by him”.’

  Sal shook her head firmly. ‘That’s not like Liam. He wouldn’t say that.’

  Maddy sighed. ‘Come on. You know what they say about history? That it’s always written by the victors, right?’ She turned the page. ‘So, I guess we can assume there’s a little creative licence going on here.’

  Sal shook her head indignantly. ‘Liam wouldn’t scream and cry,’ she muttered angrily. ‘Not our Liam.’

  ‘Forget that,’ said Maddy. ‘The important point is, Sal, they lost this battle … ’

  Chapter 69

  1687, Port au Vikram, Republic of Pandora

  Liam took advantage of the lull in the fighting to recover his breath. The slope leading up towards their defensive trench was littered with the splayed and squirming bodies of redcoats in the long, dry grass.

  Three times that afternoon they’d made an attempt to take the ridge – three unsuccessful times. However, their last attempt had come within a whisker of succeeding. They’d been almost upon them and the fighting had become the vicious business of hand-to-hand mêlée. But the withering fire of Pasquinel’s platoon of sharpshooters and the disciplined volley-fire of the First Company of the Pandora Republican Guard – drawn quickly back from the hand-to-hand fight and assembled in three lines – had whittled the English troops down until they began to break and retreat down the hill.

  Liam looked at the lengthening shadows. Not much was left of the day. They’d done far better than either he or Rashim could have hoped. The advance on their modest ‘capital city’ had been stalled for the entire day. And that had bought invaluable time for the port’s citizens to flee for their lives. He looked back down at Port au Vikram and saw that a few figures were still moving frantically through the narrow streets, dragging carts behind them, but that many of the ships and boats that normally filled her busy wharf and shallow bay had hours ago weighed anchor and departed.

  He hoped the majority of them would manage to evade the English and Spanish ships combing the seas out there, perhaps to find refuge in Tortuga, or on one of the other many small islands nearby.

  He caught the eyes of one of Pasquinel’s sharpshooters, the platoon sergeant, scraping the inside of his barrel clean of sooty build-up with a ramrod.

  John Shoe.

  Liam smiled wearily, walked over and squatted down beside him. ‘How’re you doing there, John?’

  ‘S’fine, sir.’ He grinned. His dark face was smudged with dirt and dried blood. ‘We show ’em proper soldiers we fight as good?’

  He patted Shoe’s shoulder. ‘You and your lads are the proper soldiers here, John. That’s the truth of it.’ Liam noticed that John was carefully holding three musket balls in his hand. ‘How much shot do we have left?’

  John’s defiant grin faded. ‘No good. Little. Three, mebbe four volley-fire left.’

  Then the very next charge, they’ll take the ridge from us.

  He looked along the line of men crouching in the shallow trench, a mixture of the dark green of the sharpshooters’ uniforms, less than a dozen of them left, and the deep blue tunics of the Guard, perhaps a hundred able-bodied men in all. Among the bodies tangled with the dead English soldiers, he recognized Kwami’s huge frame. He’d caught a glimpse of the man not five minutes ago, in the thick of it, roaring defiantly above the din of the fighting. Liam spotted the whippet-thin frame of Pasquinel, his red woollen coureur de bois cap lying in the dirt beside him.

  And there lay William, a shot to the temple and he was done. The closest Liam had come to feeling like a father was caring for the small boy. Watching him grow into this brave young man. Liam clamped his jaw and screwed down hard on the grief that threatened to spill out.

  Good men, all of them, friends even: friends he’d known well for the last twenty years, ever since their short, notorious and very successful career as privateers.

  ‘Well, to be honest, there’s not much left for us to put up a fight with,’ said Rashim quietly.

  Liam looked up at him, relieved to have the distraction of his friend at his side. ‘Exactly what I was thinking.’

  Rashim hunkered down beside him, equally exhausted, muddied and bloodied. His long, wiry grey hair had worked loose from its ribbon. Liam was so used to seeing him immaculately tailored and impeccably tidy. Now he looked wild and unkempt.

  ‘Look at you,’ Liam tutted. ‘You’ve really let yourself go.’

  Rashim laughed breathlessly. ‘You look hardly any better, my friend.’

  They silently watched General Pullinger regrouping his troops, moving a fresh regiment of foot soldiers in to replace the last routed regiment. A new untarnished line of crimson tunics, bone-white breeches and glinting bayonets. Men ready and eager to get into the fight at this late stage.

  Liam tapped Rashim’s arm. ‘A quiet word.’ He got to his feet and Rashim followed him. They took a few steps away from the trench and their men readying their guns for the next assault. The final assault.

  ‘I think it’s time, Rashim.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘To call a halt to this.’

  ‘Surrender?’

  ‘Aye.’ Liam glanced back over his shoulder at the near-empty bay and the all but deserted streets below. ‘We bought them the day. Which is more than we hoped for. From what I can see it looks like most of them have managed to get away.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Rashim nodded. ‘The wharf is empty.’ Anchored alongside a protruding spit of land was one last ship. ‘The Madelaine is still there, though.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ Liam grinned. ‘Don’t tell me you fancy returning to the sea and resuming your career as a notorious pirate captain?’

  ‘Too old for that sort of mischief now.’ Rashim slapped his thick torso.

  Liam looked at their men, all of them preparing for a fight that they must surely know they were going to lose. They were all going to die. That or be taken prisoner. And if they surrendered, their fate would be no better. A final warning letter had arrived from King James II himself some weeks ago declaring that if arms were taken up against General Pullinger’s expeditionary force the penalties would be most severe. Any white man taken alive would be tried and hanged for sedition and piracy. Any black man taken alive would almost certainly be returned to a life of slavery.

  The sun was approaching the horizon now and soon it was going to be dark. They had another hour at best until the sun breached the horizon and a quick twilight blended into night. By the look of what was going on downhill among the English lines, it seemed Pullinger was acutely aware of that and keen to take this ridge and finish the battle before dark.

  An hour? Liam figured they’d be lucky to last another ten minutes once the fight began in earnest again. If the remaining men of John Shoe’s platoon of sharpshooters, and the rest of the Guard were down to three volleys left, it would be over almost before it started. Perhaps there was a way he could buy these last few score men a chance to get away. They deserved that: a chance to escape under cover of dark. Some of them, he knew, had families anxiously waiting for them down in the town: women and children who wouldn’t leave the island without their men.

  ‘Rashim? What do you think?’

  He turned to look and saw that Rashim was already pulling his unruly, wiry hair back into its ribbon, doing the best he could to tidy himself up. ‘I am damned if I will surrender myself to them looking like a complete tramp.’

  Chapter 70

  1687, Newg
ate Prison, London

  And have I regrets? I suppose I must have. But I wouldn’t change any part of my life. I know that I have filled my – what? thirty-seven? thirty-eight? – mortal years with more memories than any man who has ever lived. Now that’s not a bad thing to be able to say.

  I look back on this last dawn and realize I’m lucky to have lived two lives. This one as a privateer, a pirate, a self-made king. I’ve two decades of proud memories in my head. And it’s memories that are ultimately the currency we end up trading in, not money.

  Rashim and I very nearly created a small piece of Heaven in the Caribbean. A place in which there was fairness and equality. A place with values a century ahead of those that will be written down by a bunch of founding fathers in Philadelphia.

  We can both be proud of that.

  I have heard since our deportation here to London and the very public show trial that was held last month, our beloved port has become known as Port James. The island itself – our Republic of Pandora – is henceforth to be known as New Dominion by order of an act of Parliament. It seems a number of our citizens were rounded up on the island and, true to King James’s word, the white ones were hanged then and there, the black ones enslaved. I also have heard that the entire island of New Dominion is almost entirely owned by Lord Pullinger and the Member of Parliament who championed for the support and royal sponsorship for this invasion, Lord Thomas Modyford.

  There it is. So much for hopes and dreams.

  Liam O’Connor, 17th November 1687

  ‘Bloody c-cold this morning,’ whispered Rashim, as they left Newgate Prison. He was wearing both a loose white cotton shirt and a dark felt morning coat over the top, but still shivering.

  Liam looked up at the overcast grey sky. A fresh breeze nipped across the Thames, coaxing white crests from the muddy water.