Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel

by Mark Keating

  Now he had the law on his side.

  A few years past, the gentlemen of justice, so exhausted and exasperated by the prolificness of crime in the city, had passed a law to make the receiving and selling of stolen wares a crime in itself.

  This single enactment had ruined the daily trade of many a housebreaker and pawnbroker in the narrows and districts and it was in starvation that Wild had alighted on his plan.

  Maybe if it had only been for his own good nothing may have come of it; but he rallied his darkest minions around him and gave out his scheme. Those whose bellies were hollow and filled only with clay biscuits, who looked only towards the compter for relief, saw their future again, Jon Wild their master.

  If the buying and selling of stolen candelabras and watches were illegal then why not simply sell them back to the ones they had been liberated from?

  ‘How?’ his brothers cried.

  ‘Simple, I tells you!’ Jon Wild stood on the stage of an inn down Cock Alley at Cripplegate before a crowd of beggars.

  ‘I set up shop that I can find anything for anybody. I tells it to the constables and marshals and magistrates, bold as brass, for ain’t I a thief myself and knows them criminals all?’

  For a price, dependent on the value of the items, Jon Wild appeals to the victim to give him a few days to scratch around. He swears he has a parade of rappers, quick-talking informants who will spill their guts for a penny. Something will turn up, he tells them. The trick is that Wild already knows the whereabouts of the article, for the man who’d taken it has shown the shiny thing to him, of course.

  A split of the ransom means the gentleman has his precious articles returned, and Wild is smart enough to have no stolen goods on his premises as searches by more suspicious authorities are made. And if the thief demands more coin for his trouble?

  ‘Why, look sir, not only do I have your goods again but here is the man that took it. We’ll hang him together. Of course he would say I was in on it with him, sir. He’s trying to switch my neck for his.’

  And, as is reasonable, Wild would keep good records of those who came to him in their woe. Records that could be used to map London. A volunteered map of who had the choicest property.

  Wild was shrewd. It had not gone unnoticed to him that London had begun to put more stock in paper than weight and glitter and it was far easier to lift a gentleman’s pocket-book than his furniture.

  Pieces of paper could hold a man’s entire fortune. Nowadays, when the quality turned up at his offices, they did not bemoan their wife’s sobbing over some lost stones. Instead they sweated and begged and paid handsomely to get back their precious paper. The madness of the South Sea stock, where the fortune could change in hours, made his customers even more desperate. Jon Wild capitalised, and the fees for his services for finding certificates went far above that of a sedan chair or diamond necklace.

  The genius of the man was to not deny his station or past. He had been there. He was one of them. He knew all the dregs and could wring them dry, and to keep them in his pocket he would occasionally take one of them before the beak and see him hung, and his children orphaned, just to show those who had elected him to his purpose the power he held over their very lives.

  Puzzled by the sudden increase in highway robbery and house-breaking, the courts asked Wild what could be done. He motioned that the fee for finding the stolen goods needed to be increased as his rappers had gotten greedy now his enterprise was successful. They failed to connect that his success rate had increased along with the burglaries. They nodded and quadrupled his fees. After all, he did deliver them so many villains.

  That very morning, for instance, he had brought into Newgate a thief and murderer no less. One John Coxon who had killed one of Wild’s own assistants when they had tried to take him. Wild had already been to Paternoster to report it – the power of the press one of his most useful tools.

  He sat at his table, in his doorway afore his stairs, his door always generously open to the street so his people could see him and doff their hats as they passed. There he counted the sailor’s money in full view. He could leave his purse on the doorstep overnight if he wished.

  The leather bag was a strange mixture of coin from every realm, cast in gold and silver, the waft of sand and rum on some of it, some broken into small change. He weighed it in his hand. This was either all a man possessed or a taste of what he promised.

  He sat back and thought on the body now lying in the hold across the street in Newgate at the corner alongside the sessions house. He did not notice his assistant George Wattle bounding towards him.

  ‘Jon! Jon!’ He blocked Wild’s sight of the grim prison stones. George had been at the taking of the sailor, had pulled a knife, seen his partner killed. They had not spoken of Arthur since.

  While Wild divvied up their coin George had been sent to the sessions house to see if there were any warrants against their latest taking, or at least any that could fit. Nailed to a wooden board inside the entrance were the reward notices for highwaymen and those notorious pirates who had not taken the king’s grace and therefore defied pardon. George waved one such black framed bill at Wild.

  ‘It’s him, Jon, look! That sailor!’

  ‘What you rattling, George?’ He took the page. On it was the visage of a young man with black hair and no beard. His height, known ships, known familiars and known crimes. A long list. ‘Could be anyone.’

  ‘See there though, Jon! Says he was the ungrateful boy of Cap’n John Coxon! He called himself Cap’n Coxon!’

  That was there, sure enough. It would make sense that the pirate might assume a name and the description duly fitted better in Wild’s eyes.

  ‘Patrick Devlin, eh? The Pirate Devlin.’ He jiggled the bag in his hand.

  All a man possessed or a taste of what he promised.

  ‘What’s a pirate doing in my city, George?’

  ‘I don’t know about that but he has five hundred pounds on his head! Five hundred, John!’

  Wild had not looked at the price.

  ‘Bah! That’s what makes you, you, George, and me, me. I say again. What’s a pirate doing in my city? Lot of risk for him here. Take an awful deep purse to bring him in for something. And this here bag is nothing compared to what he might have. In mind or in box.’

  ‘But five hundred, Jon!’

  Wild leaned back and watched his street, passing an eye up to the prison. ‘We’ll go see him after dark, when it’s quiet. See what he has to say. And if nothing else we still got five hundred on him.’ He stretched out, saw a rosier future ahead. ‘If he dies tonight or next week I’ll still be a hero. Fetch us up a pie, George. And some beer. I got business to think on.’

  To be belayed and hammered unconscious is not a perfect slumber by any measure. A few minutes at most of blackness and the rest, particularly if one is dragged along and has the noise and smells of Wapping as a background, is a grey watery world of dreaming and pain as reality forces itself back.

  Voices jumble, sounds clang like bells, and all the victim feels is a sleep that promises to come but will not, and the gnawing of his toecaps and ankles dragging on cobblestones as the crowd filtering past takes sport in his sorrow.

  It is even some comfort, then, to be dropped onto a bed of straw over oak planks, for some sleep must surely arrive now. But the pain galloping around the head like a dancing Pan pricks the tormented awake to enjoy his painful tune.

  Devlin eased up on an elbow and surveyed the last corners of the damned.

  A stone room laid with planks for a floor, studded with ringbolts to tether ankles. One barred window, high in the wall and narrow as a post-hole, lets in August and the fading twilight. The walls are made up of blocks of stone like the last room gladiators see before the arena; and perhaps in truth the chains that fastened men to the floor had been wrought by the same hands, for the gaol made up the last Roman remnant of the city’s east wall. It was the bailey of old that once ringed Londinium and gave the st
reet alongside the gaol its name. God had burnt it down once already but the Devil still had his need and Newgate rose again.

  Charles II had the gaol rebuilt as a priority after plague and fire heralded the end of the world, when prisoners had lain like fat flies upon the carts.

  Sir Richard Whittington and his cat saluted the inmates, with the pious figures of Liberty, Peace, Security and Plenty bowing to justice at his feet. The session house stood next door. Newgate, Old Bailey and Giltspur spread like the points of the cross, with Tyburn anchoring it three miles away to the west. Eight hundred turns of the cartwheel to the rural setting of the hangman’s tree.

  Devlin looked about. Grey, green and black, an etching of doom. A dark smell of the butcher’s apron and effluence strange to a man now used to the brilliant vermillions and blues of the Caribbean and the wash of light, fresh-born every morning, that removed the stain of tobacco and rum from one’s lungs. That air full of salt, boucan allspice smoke, fruit and promise.

  This was grey. A grey sketched by the suicidal artist. This was stone and damp and death. This was London. He had left it once, the pores of its burnt walls reeking of gin and rotten oranges, fish and filth. He tugged at the manacles around his ankles. Fettered to the floor. This was not a London that Devlin wished to see. It was the London of his past, the one he had run from when he was skinny and poor with murder hanging over his head. No, not good for an Irishman to be found with a dead body. That had been old man Kennedy. Ten years ago. A long ten years but still remembered somewhere, for sure, somewhere an Irishman could still be hung just for his voice and of that he was certain. There was the son, Walter Kennedy, whom Devlin had shared lodgings with, alongside the father. Walter favoured house-robbing over the work that Devlin and the father shared at an anchorsmith’s. The house had not been peaceful. Devlin returned one night to find the old man laid on the table with a dirk standing in his chest. He had only a few seconds to run with what he could gather. Just as bad to report a death as be caught with the knife in your hand. All that a world away now.

  He lay in the Lodge, the area on the south side where prisoners were divided into debtors or felons and within those two groups again divided into who could pay for their stay and ‘garnish’ and who could not.

  There were 150 prisons within the city, some of which could hold no more than a couple of prisoners at a time, and this number did not include the many sponging-houses where a gentleman debtor might lay his head for a time in more comfortable surroundings, usually the bailiff’s own home. Sponging-houses – so named because the Turks or Jews that lowered themselves to become bailiffs would sponge the debtor dry of everything but his name – at least kept his body out of the gaol.

  One hundred and fifty prisons, just over 350 crimes settled by hempen rope, and still every gaol full; for the promise of death had never been a deterrent for the criminal as long as the noose awaited even for the burglary of a couple of silver spoons. Best to take the householder’s life as well, then, to deprive the law of a witness.

  Devlin patted himself down. Everything about him, everything that was him, had been taken save his clothes, and even of them he was short his hat and coat, and those small things mattered. Without them he was less. He was poor again, to the outsider’s eye at least. Until he got his hands on pistol and sword. They would be welcome to judge him then.

  He found he could stand and his manacles afforded him a wide circle of movement. He gingerly felt the tender swelling of his head. Thankfully the blow had been expertly administered and he was grateful to Jonathan Wild for that much. Just a little dried blood remained where the silver cap of the bludgeon had cracked into him.

  He looked up to the only hole of light in the room. Night was settling. August night. The trundle of carriages and the cries of street hawkers still carried on, giving hope that life was not too far away. But he had missed his appointment with the prince, and perhaps that would be his ticket out.

  Just to let someone know and hope that Dandon was not too drunk to not be missing him also. He thought of Dandon, who would be back to the Shadow and Peter Sam, and he thought of the ship whispering up the Thames, black flag fluttering and her guns ready to prey on the city like Drake at Panama whilst someone tried to remember how to load the Tower’s minions against a pirate.

  Aye, there was confidence at the thought of his hundred men or so at Deptford and its assurance made him stride to the door and bang loudly to announce just who he was.

  He hammered three times, shouting for some soul to come to the trap in the door. He waited, he listened, his anger growing. He could hear the sounds of a tavern nearby and guessed he was immured near the taproom where prisoners could purchase brandy, wine and tobacco with not too great a profit to the institution, as one might expect given the circumstances of the clientèle. Small beer also available courtesy of Mr Willcox, whose store was set up at the Newgate Street traders’ entrance where prisoners could likewise purchase their chandler’s wares, or ‘garnish’.

  Newgate may have been a gaol but like all gaols it was a private concern and even those with death at their shoulders held that an Englishman had the right to drink to his king if he so wished; and London still turned on the pull of a horse, a knife and a cork. The whole business dependent on the prisoner.

  A dog barked at Devlin’s hammering and was ‘whist’d’ with a kick. Prisoners had long been permitted to bring in their dogs, pigs, birds, even their wives and children. The families would hang around waiting for their men to pay their debts either to the king or ‘Jack Ketch’ – whoever came first to claim their due.

  Devlin banged again and the weary bulk of Thomas Langley, sub-turnkey, scraped itself from its stool and tankard to waddle to the trap in the door of the hold.

  Mrs Spurling, purveyor of watery brandy, called after him.

  ‘Thomas! Be leaving him whoever he is. You be done for the day!’

  He waved her down with a flap of his hand. ‘No bones, woman. I’m sub-, day and night. I’ll quiet him down anyways.’

  Devlin heard and stepped back from the small wooden hatch lest a hardened bull’s pizzle greet him with a stab to his eye. The door slid aside; Thomas Langley’s slothful face filled the gap and squinted at the figure in white shirt, now almost blue in the evening light.

  ‘Cease prisoner! What ails?’

  Devlin could see nothing but the pale unshaven face and the small eyes shaded by the fur of eyebrows that even covered Thomas’s eyelids.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You are in Newgate’s lodge, squire. Until such time as your disposition is assessed and your garnish paid.’

  ‘Garnish?’

  Thomas sighed deeply. ‘Your garnish. Payment for candles, rent, food. Don’t be thinking you’re staying in Newgate without dues. But I gathers that Jon Wild brought you in with no coin so you best be hoping that some soul be trotting along tomorrow to garnish you himself.’

  ‘That man, Wild, stole my coin.’

  ‘Aye, maybe so, but what does that matter if you killed one of his? Reckon that’s a poor purse for a man’s life and I reckon the Justice tomorrow will see it the same, don’t you?’

  Devlin saw Thomas’s eyes glint, and imagined that his unseen fist was tightening around his bludgeon.

  ‘And what if I can’t pay?’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘You ain’t no debtor. Murder’s for felons. So it’s the Common Side for you. And if you can’t pay no garnish for the Common Side . . . ain’t no hope for you in Newgate, squire.’ He began to close the partition then paused with a happier tone. ‘You’re lucky it’s Monday. Hanging’s already done. You’ve got a week to live at least. Though it be a long one!’

  Devlin came close to the door, his hard eyes staying Thomas’s hand to keep the small gap open a while longer.

  ‘Who determines my ability to pay, Turnkey? Who rules this place?’

  ‘That be Mister Rowse and Mister Perry. The principals. As I said, hangings is today and they ain’t bac
k yet. You’ll see them tomorrow, afore the Justice.’ Again he went to slam the wood back but Devlin came closer still and his hands pushed against the door so hard that Thomas saw the dust shake from the hinges. Thomas raised his weapon in his fist despite the wooden and iron door between them, which his malice penetrated as Devlin’s voice blew hot on his face.

  ‘I’m warning, Turnkey: no good will come from keeping me here. If your principals return tonight it will be best for you if you send them to me.’ He repeated the crucial aspect.

  ‘Best for you.’

  He turned away and let the words hang in the air – appropriate for such surroundings.

  ‘Bring me water, food, and some light, or I will let it be known I was neglected.’ The panel began to slide shut, Devlin timing his last words to the movement. ‘You may leave, Turnkey.’ And then Devlin began to walk, a thinking, rattling circle around his cell that barely faded as Thomas went back to his beer, at first with a sneer and then thoughtful, pondering on the cut of the prisoner’s damask waistcoat and Holland-tailored shirt.

  But those brown bucket boots were old and worn. As old as a conquistador’s. And that tanned face belonged to no sitting gentleman but a man of the sea or field. Thomas drank with a snort. ‘“You may leave, Turnkey!”’ he mocked through his beer but thought on, slower, his eyes back to the door and his ears to the scraping of the chain as it dragged around the cell.

  He lifted a finger to old Mrs Spurling. ‘Fetch us some wine and broth, Missus. Stump of candle.’

  Mrs Spurling gave him a disparaging glance and stopped pouring a half-quart of brandy for the Earl standing at the bar.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be good for it,’ he answered her look and went back to his beer. ‘I’ve seen his kind before.’

  The further east Dandon trotted the newer and tighter the city became. Here and there were memories of older buildings, the medieval heart of the city with ancient stone and Roman gods weeping down at the thoroughfares. Most of her churches were still miraculously standing, although with blackened marks where The Fire had bitten into them, curiously like a shark, before moving on to far more palatable wooden delicacies.