Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel

by Mark Keating

  ‘The man has something about him to be sure, even in his current straits.’ He watched the weapons being buried about the two men. ‘But a frontal assault would also be an errant choice. We must be prudent.’ Hugh and Peter glared at him.

  ‘First we need to know more about this fortress. I suspect that there would be one amongst us who is familiar with this gaol? The crew are abroad in the inns I take it, Bill?’

  ‘Aye. Gaming and whoring for the most. The Dog and Duck stairs and the Plough. Three days drunk for the lot of ’em.’

  Peter Sam pulled Dandon’s shoulder. ‘But you’ve seen him! You know where he lies!’

  Dandon winced under the bruising grip. ‘And I’m sure Morgan knew where Portobelo lay, Peter, but a map or two no doubt assisted.’ He tugged himself free. Peter Sam’s dark look returned.

  ‘Am I to be sure that you don’t just want more of us to follow you into this gaol, Dandon? Where maybe you’ve taken a pretty coin or two to betray us all, perhaps? Are you sure there is not a squadron of men waiting for us at the inn? How would that sound to your mind, jackal?’

  Dandon went back to his bottle. ‘It is this suspicious mind, Peter, that keeps you lonely in your old age. Come and see for yourself.’

  ‘Oh, I will, popinjay, I will. But mark that you’ll be the first to fall if I smell a trap!’ He stared into Dandon’s face. ‘The first to fall!’ he spat. Dandon reeled away.

  ‘If you can smell anything above you own maleficence, I would be most surprised.’

  Peter’s hand went for some steel at his belt, Black Bill seeing it in time. ‘Enough, Peter! Away with you both! Is this what the captain would want whilst he sits and waits for you! Fight over a shawl in your own time! To the boat, to the inn and find one of us who knows Newgate!’

  Peter Sam glared. Hugh went for the door, taking his sniggering to the deck. Dandon brushed the creases from his coat and followed.

  Bill’s pipe glowed, his voice peaceful again. ‘Go easy, Peter. And bring the captain home.’

  Peter Sam adjusted his baldric beneath the long coat and checked the apostles of powder strung across his chest. He strode out without a word.

  Adam Cowrie was their man. He was in the Plough with at least a dozen of the others who all became humble when Peter Sam ducked under the door.

  The Plough’s regular patrons had all kept to their own corners when the young men in fine but tattered waistcoats and hats had bowled in hours before and slammed their gold onto the counter. The eye of the barkeep held none of their looks and he kept his attention on the coins and the pouring of drinks.

  The old salts of the inn knew well the sort of young men who carried more than a gully blade, and who rattled with coin and steel, and so they stayed less rowdy than usual.

  They knew most pirates were young, most as little as twenty-six when they finally hanged. They were youths who willingly leapt away, while their spirit still remained, from the lash and drudgery of the merchant or slaver that their father had sold them into.

  Why work hard for shillings when you could live easy for gold? The worst of it was just an aversion to choking. And that fear had never filled anyone’s belly.

  Adam Cowrie, twenty-three himself, had been with Devlin on Providence when they had escaped from the fort’s old Spanish gaol, two years ago now.

  He was not a bold one, not a Hugh Harris or a Dan Teague, the finest cut-throats Devlin had. Cowrie, with still enough of the bible worked into him, needed to be madly drunk when a boarding came, so he shrunk more than the others when Peter Sam loomed over their small round table, peculiar in a coat, so used were they to his powerful bare arms.

  ‘So you knows Newgate, Cowrie?’

  Cowrie whispered over his drink. ‘Aye, I knows it. Knows it too well I fears.’ He opened his palm to show the round scar where he had been burnt in the hand for stealing a pair of clogs.

  Dandon appeared behind Peter’s back, pencil and paper in hand. He made himself room at the table. ‘Tell me about your time there, Adam.’

  The notion of escape did not cause any horrific reaction from Adam Cowrie. He had been there in December 1715 when Charles Radcliffe, one of the principals of the Northumberland Jacobites, simply walked out of the door after a party with the departing guests. Eight others had done the same in May. Their escapes made the broadsheets, the whole of London being mad for Jacobite blood, but others, dozens of others, had gone out of Newgate without any hue and cry. At Dandon’s request, Cowrie described that which he knew.

  The gaol was divided up into three distinct parts: the Master side, for debtors that could pay, and the Common side for those who could not. The third part, the Press Yard, was for criminals of state and those others who could pay whatever price the benevolent owner believed you could afford. There one could enjoy its open air and have the freedom to walk within the Yard’s grey enclosure, handsomely paved with Purbeck stone.

  The Master’s Side and the Common Side were each again divided up into three separate wards, although the Master’s Side had several apartments still in the old gateway itself, again – as long as the price was right, of course.

  These wards were all on the ground floor, Cowrie informed Dandon. If Devlin was in the hold near the lodge, he was in the right-hand side, south corner. Cowrie took the paper and sketched the ground floor, loosely shading in the location of the hold. Dandon looked up at Peter Sam and nodded once. The boy knew what he was talking about, for that had been the very corner he had visited.

  ‘Would they have moved him by now, Adam?’ Dandon asked.

  ‘The doors inside are all locked after nine. If he was in the hold then, he’s staying there. As a felon anyways he’d be in the Common Side with the poor souls that can’t pay. His garnish would just be for a bed and drink. He’s in one or the other for sure. But,’ his voice became solemnly slow, ‘if he can’t pay as a felon he’s in hell for sure. You see, the Common Side is divvied up for those wretches. Five more wards. Worse than graves.’ Adam crossed himself for probably the first time since his youth.

  Dandon watched him sketch the whereabouts of these other wards and shrank back when Adam added two words above them.

  Below ground.

  ‘The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked.’ Dandon’s voice was almost inaudible.

  Peter Sam leaned over the paper. ‘What about constables within? How many?’

  Cowrie laughed. ‘There’s only four turnkeys in Newgate, mate! Four! They don’t want to have to pay for any more. The gaol looks after itself!’

  ‘How is that?’ Dandon asked.

  Cowrie began almost to whisper, relishing the feeling of his peers hanging on his words. ‘If you can’t pay for your food and lodgings they makes you a steward. If you’re the last man in you do the scullery and the slopping and the fires, and the man who did it before you gets put up to something better. That can go on for years.’ He paused and his face dropped at some memory. ‘There’s some bastards in there who’ve been at it so long they run the wards now. They keep the order. They have to, else someone might remember they should’ve been hung years ago. Perfect bloody world in there, so it is.’

  Peter Sam scowled. ‘Would they resist?’

  Cowrie shrugged. Answer enough. Dandon thought on the tunnel and the bellman from St Sepulchre tolling his poem down the final cells. ‘Where are the cells for those awaiting execution?’

  Adam went back to his sketch. ‘Along the north side, here, below the streets. The way leads to the sessions house next door to take the condemned straight down. But don’t think you can break into the sessions to get to the captain. You can get out of Newgate eventually. Easy enough. There ain’t no legal way to get in.’

  Dandon folded up the sketch. ‘We do not intend to break into the gaol or the sessions house, young Adam. The Lord will provide our entrance.’ He stood, dwarfed by Peter Sam. Cowrie, sensing his audience was at an end, waved his brothers in closer.

  ‘But listen, lads. I ain’t t
old you of the worst of it.’ He leered at the faces drawing closer, some of the patrons of the Plough forgetting their manners and edging in also. ‘Debtor’s Hall is on the first floor of the Common Side, near the chapel, a ward without beds, which don’t mean much in itself but next to it is a kitchen.’ He paused again and took a drink from his leather mug of buttered ale. ‘Now there’s lots of kitchens in Newgate but this one has a couple more fires and more grates besides. Grates for the draining of fat. This be called ‘‘Jack Ketch’s Kitchen” to be sure.’ He drank again, swallowed hard. The others passed looks around at the traditional title of the man who held the axe or tied the hemp knot.

  ‘What goes on there, Adam?’ a voice piped up at his side. He smiled again but there was pity in the limp attempt. ‘Well, Old Jack there, that be his galley, see? That’s where he boils the quarters of those been had away for treason, see?’ He swivelled his head to the cold faces waiting on him. ‘It costs you sixpence a day for supper in Newgate . . . But thems that can’t pay has to eats as well.’

  Dandon, Peter Sam and Hugh had not heard him. They were already on their way. To the river. To their captain. London just another horizon to cross.

  Chapter Seven

  At Newgate another knock came on Langley’s door. This time he lit up at the sight of the face at the hatch and hurried to unlock the bolts and hasps.

  ‘Jon Wild! General!’ He opened the door wide and Wild stepped in, George following at his heels loyally. Wild sniffed the air, rubbed down his red wool coat and plucked out his cuffs, his silver-capped cudgel under his arm. ‘Good to see you again, Thomas,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if you could afford me some time with that prisoner I brung in this morning. That John Coxon.’

  Langley locked back the door. ‘He’s a popular fellow that one. You be the second to see him tonight.’

  ‘The second? Who else?’

  Langley saw no harm in telling. Wild after all was a court’s man. ‘A secretary from Leicester House so he says. And a dirty fellow in yellow with him.’ He walked past, carrying his keys, towards the hold.

  Wild and George followed, Wild’s face screwed up in thought at the revelation of a man from the Prince of Wales come to see a prisoner of Newgate. There was coin here somewhere.

  Langley spoke on. ‘What is your business with him, General? It’s late now. I could be hung for this.’

  ‘He killed one of mine did he not? Left a widow and four children.’ A lie. ‘I believe our Arthur deserves some instant justice. His wife has beseeched me so.’

  Langley stopped. ‘I can’t have any killing or word against me.’

  Wild patted Langley’s shoulder. ‘No, no. Just want to know if he has anything more to confess, that’s all. That might take a bruise or two, Thomas. You wouldn’t begrudge a widow that.’

  Langley nodded. Right was right. ‘He’s still in the hold. Everywhere else is locked up at nine. Come.’

  Devlin still sat in the dark. He hadn’t bothered to pick up the flint striker bestowed upon him by Thomas Langley to light his lump of candle. It was after eleven now, as rang out by the Charley in the street outside, and despite the imminent arrival of his men there was a gloom within him that the atmosphere of the Lodge made even more seductive to indulge in. He sat against the cold wall, listening to the unsettling mixture of laughter and sobs coming from above and, peculiarly, from below. Perhaps it was just a symptomatic echo from the old stone all about. This was not a quiet place for introspection yet his disposition could not help itself.

  A prison, Devlin thought, was a far more lucrative investment than farm or house or hospital. The disadvantages of piracy loomed larger the more time he spent in the company of ordinary men. The prospects and profit of misery seemed to be its only coin.

  The gloom crept in again. The loneliest man is the prisoner; a man’s self-judgement in the damp darkness is far worse than anything others can tax him with.

  He was a pirate. To his recollection he had killed fewer than ten men. Although he reasoned it was in defence of his own life, he had no desire to form their faces in front of him.

  Half his life ago he held no violence against any man. Butcher’s boy, poacher, servant, fisherman, sailor. Now a pirate. Now murderer and thief.

  But perhaps it had been there all along. Waiting. Waiting for the trigger to release the lock. The primer already in the pan. Only a small spark needed.

  Maybe this was it now. The end. No pirates would come. They had chosen another captain and sailed on. None of them had wanted to answer the call, the promise of pardon, the legitimacy of a Mart to make them privateers. He was where he belonged. Where he would end. He had killed a man that very morning. Aye, Devlin was where he deserved to be. This is what happens to little boys whose mothers leave them. This is what they get.

  He sniffed the thoughts away. It is only the gaol, he agreed with himself. It is the dark and the sorrow of ten thousand souls engraved into the walls and the moans of the poor and guilty. I am only in here, he thought, and reached for the flint and striker. I am not of here.

  He lit the candle and sat back. The light settled like a spell over his mood. And what would I be if not pirate? Still Coxon’s servant? Breaking my back on a merchant ship – or worse, a slaver, and begging for scraps of food from what the slaves did not eat? Or back in some trade befitting my birth and tipping my hat to every silk and master wearing a father’s purse.

  He smiled, softer than his normal rakish grin that preceded someone’s death. A prince has called for my assistance, he thought. Little Patrick Devlin from Kilkenny who never knew his mother or a full belly and whose father sold him for four guineas to be a butcher’s boy. Summoned by the Prince of Wales, by name.

  He looked around the walls glistening in the glow from the faint candle. These walls were fragile now. Transient. Aye. In an hour, maybe less, they would tremble. The candle winked out. He remembered how Blackbeard had cut a similar-sized candle in front of him when Devlin had stared him down. Blackbeard promised to light it when by his own hand he had snuffed out his life, to mark the end of Devlin’s days. Devlin smiled in the dark. He had at least outlived that one. The great and terrible Teach was gone as well, the world getting thinner all the time.

  The lock sounded again. The door swung, the light stretched to Devlin’s boots, and Wild and George bent under the lintel. He knew the rough, wide face of Wild at once and then recognised the other also. The other had been shitting himself when Devlin had last seen him, but his face was different now. Devlin swallowed his instinct to strike. This might mean something.

  ‘Leave us, Thomas,’ Wild watched Devlin as he spoke. ‘Lock us in. I’ll call for you when I’m done.’

  Thomas handed George a lantern from the passage, gave a black-toothed sneer and closed the door.

  George put the lantern to the stone floor between them. Its light crept up their bodies and under their chins, ghoulishly illuminating their faces and casting their shadows on the ceiling so it seemed that giants looked down on them.

  ‘Well, well,’ Wild clapped his cudgel to his palm. ‘Captain John Coxon ain’t it, George?’

  ‘Reckon it is, General Wild, sir. Aye, Cap’n John Coxon.’ George brought out a small turn-off Queen Anne pistol, a gun for shooting under tables or to surprise a man beside you in a carriage who had kissed your mistress. Up close, if you were a step away – in a cell, perhaps – it would be enough.

  ‘What do you want?’ Devlin asked. Nothing in his voice.

  Wild pointed his cudgel at the man. ‘I want you to tell me your name. I want you to tell it and think why I’m here before you say it.’ He rested the weapon on his shoulder and waited.

  Devlin was still. It had been hours now. His doubts were gone. They were coming and right soon.

  ‘It wouldn’t be best to be around me right now, lads.’ He touched his head. ‘I still owe you for this.’

  Wild took a step. ‘Your name. I asked it.’ Wild was used to men going back when he came on. Thi
s one stayed. No mind. He had all the power here. And he had been in Newgate before. He bent down quickly, blurred in the light, and whipped up Devlin’s chain and pulled it high. Devlin slipped to his back as Wild put it over his shoulder and held it there, got comfortable under it. Devlin writhed on the floor; he was nothing more than Wild’s hooked fish now. George was laughing and Wild grimaced, keeping the chain taut, as Devlin struggled, his fettered leg above him. Wild jerked his head and grunted at George and George went to work.

  Peter Sam strode down the centre of Old Bailey, keeping apart from Hugh and Dandon who stuck to the walls and alleys like rats since crossing the canal at Fleet bridge. He did not follow Dandon’s reasoning that the tunnel was their best action. To him, if you wanted anything, if you wanted a town even, you went up to the largest door and shot the man who opened it and it was yours.

  But Dandon had warned of watchmen and riots and guards so that, softly, softly, they would enter and softly, softly, they would leave. Peter Sam thought Dandon did not understand the world. His was linen and silk, Peter’s steel and lead, and Dandon would be grateful for that when the time came. He had walked through London for the first time in his life and seen ten swinging cages above the streets and three scaffolds. Nothing in those sights persuaded him that his world was wrong. Even so, the edifice of the gaol slowed him a little.

  ‘Where is this church?’ he called to Dandon, who put a quietening finger to his lips. The streets were empty, the shops long closed, but the taverns glowing and full.

  ‘It is there,’ he pointed north and joined Peter who then saw the impressive tower framed against the sky, the tallest church tower in London since being rebuilt from the ashes of The Fire. ‘The road widens some at the crossroads here. We should stay to the shadows. The patrons of the inn opposite may become curious of those abroad at such an hour.’