Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel

by Mark Keating

  Peter went on. ‘I won’t question thems that don’t question me.’

  Dandon and a giggling Hugh followed.

  Peter gave a nod to the gaol on his right, noting the two small doors either side of the large one. ‘I still say we should just blow that and be done.’

  ‘Aye,’ Dandon dashed ahead. ‘We are all aware of what you say.’

  They crossed Newgate Street to the left, the gaol at their backs, the church railings ahead where Snow Hill began, and heard from some way ahead the strangely discomfiting sounds of song and company from the Saracen’s Head.

  No gate to the porch, only a low wall and railings around the churchyard, a light from the bay window above. They sprang up the wide steps and Dandon lifted the great ring knocker and cracked it on the oak. He straightened himself, shadowed by his companions, and waited.

  Hugh nudged him. ‘Do we not try the door ourselves, Dandon?’

  Dandon closed his eyes. ‘That would imply, Mister Harris, that we were attempting to enter in secret and stealth, would it not?’ Hugh began to argue but the sliding back of the bolt behind the door snapped shut his mouth.

  Dandon began to contort his face into a pleasing mask as an inch of light opened; but Peter’s patience was at an end.

  ‘Enough of this!’ The opportunity of an opening door with someone stood directly behind it was too good to pass up. His boot kicked against the wood as he charged between Dandon and Hugh.

  There was a startled cry and something fell and rattled and cried again, then held its bloody nose as it looked up at the black form stood feet wide apart in its porch, with blazing eyes and terrible red beard.

  Two others followed, one of them pulling pistols and closing the door with a backwards kick.

  Richard Maynard, for that was the warden’s name, began to slide away from the intruders, his magnificent porch now turned fearsome. He kicked along the flagstones, away into the church, hand held out for mercy toward the giant slowly bearing down upon him.

  Blood from his nose soaked his shirt and chilled his chest. There was something clumsy and childish about such a wound; Richard Maynard almost apologised for the drip of his blood onto the fist that pulled him up, as he felt the hot drunken breath in his face.

  ‘The tunnel to the gaol. Where?’ The beast dragged him to his sandalled feet with one heave and Richard was thankful that he had at least the answer to the question.

  His hand trembled to the right-hand aisle and the steps leading down between two tombs that ended at a low door. Peter threw away Richard Maynard and unhooked a lantern from a pillar. ‘Bring him, Dandon,’ he ordered, and Dandon took the terrified warden softly by the hand.

  ‘Perhaps a key, Peter?’ Dandon suggested to the back already at the steps. Hugh Harris’s wicked chuckle filled the church as again Peter applied a powerful boot to its lock and the mortice ripped from the masonry, his lamp already glowing against the white stone beyond as his body vanished below.

  ‘Peter don’t do keys, Dandon,’ Hugh advised, as he followed Peter’s shadow, Dandon pulling a protesting Richard along with them.

  ‘Come, now,’ Dandon coaxed the warden. ‘Better to be witness than victim, sire.’

  A stone stair wound downwards three turns, then an arched coffin of a passage revealed itself, where Peter had to bend some, his lamp the only source of light and even that guttering in the diminished air.

  One hundred and twenty feet long, stretching beneath the street – as long as the Shadow bow to sternpost, though a longer, narrower walk with the damp walls scraping at their clothes, cobwebs pasting them with dust and flakes of stone.

  Squealed alerts ran ahead of them and twisted away from their feet, Hugh stamping and cursing at the sleek, fat bodies that tried to ride on his shoe buckles.

  Then a smaller space emerged as the men who carved out the hole lost interest in its finale. Dandon wondered if it was even possible to turn around as his head went into his neck and they sidestepped along.

  Peter Sam’s grunts echoed his discomfort from the van, while his weapon across his back chipped at the stone overhead. Maybe the final drag had been so designed to force the bellman to carry on, his only option to move forward to the gaol and the condemned, to recite his grisly words outside the cells and recall them to their doom.

  Just as every breath became dust the lantern’s light shrank to a square. It went no further; a wooden door stood before them. Peter passed the light back to Hugh. He reached for the ringbolt handle but he had no room to force this one – his great strength was reduced to useless nothing in the suffocating confines.

  But the iron turned and the door opened like a sea-chest before him, darkness beyond. Richard Maynard’s voice rang out behind Dandon. ‘One presumes the dead have no need for locks, Gentlemen. May I enquire as to what you fellows intend now you have reached the gaol?’

  Dandon was impressed by the man. He had been assaulted and mildly kidnapped, but had piped up like a constable once it was clear that these men had no designs upon his church.

  No light within, the lamp pushed away the dark to reveal another passage. No windows. Still very much below ground. An iron latticed door slowly grew discernible some twenty feet ahead, and four similar doors stretched towards it along their right. The condemned cells were now empty after the day’s events. They awaited Tuesday and fresh company.

  Dandon recalled the plan Adam Cowrie had mapped for them. This passage and its iron door led to another which passed two stairs, one to the wards above, the other to the sessions house beside the gaol. Its principal purpose was that prisoners need not be taken out into the street when summoned, where escape or rescue might occur. Similarly, when condemned, they could be taken directly to the last rooms of Newgate without passing any of their fellow inmates or even a ray of daylight to warm them before their final journey. He took out the crude drawing but cursed as Peter carried away the lantern to scowl at the iron door that mocked him. This one would not move aside so easily.

  ‘Hugh,’ he called behind him, not deigning to whisper. ‘Bag. To me.’ And Hugh shouldered off his satchel with a grin.

  George kicked about the ribs and kidneys as Devlin tried vainly to roll away. George giggled and sweated with every blow.

  Wild yelled above all the moans from the rooms and cellars about them. ‘Your name! Tell me your bloody name!’

  Devlin had heard the giggle before. There had been a giant Scotsman once, a real giant. He had giggled and had wide white eyes as he beat on Devlin in a garden in Charles Town in the Carolinas. Devlin feared nothing now and had taken beatings all his life. And once there had been a giant Scotsman. Once. No more.

  George took a breath and a wipe of spittle and Devlin grabbed the planted foot and then the back of the leg and then George was flying. Wild watched him slap to the wall and floor and pulled Devlin tighter.

  ‘Bastard!’ But he kept back. ‘George!’

  George was up and went for the head, away from the reach. A soft noise, again and again. Devlin covered his head and coiled up as best he could with the chain dragging him round. The cell filled with gasps and blows like a bullring and Devlin began to fade.

  Soon. Be here soon.

  The inmates of Newgate, be their internment short or long, felt the sounds of the night deeper than most. A prison set in a city, rather than excluding those inside from the world, only magnifies the life outside denied.

  The thrum of the music of the streets during the day, the laughter and the curses sifting through the open windows, served more justice than the most boiling and fuming judge could ever pen. But it is at night when the dread most comes and for those of the common and felon wards the withdrawing of the day leaves a loneliness like an ossuary upon men’s hearts, and sounds that no man should hear are commonplace:

  Throats choking on linen, swallowed to end the guilt. Sobs of children hushed by women lamenting their hunger. The drip of blood from necks and wrists of those not wanting to see the dawn.


  Now came a new sound, the clap of an explosion from beneath their feet. Those capable sprang upright from their wooden benches or straw-strewn floors, eyes scouting the dark for some account of its origin. Only the large hall of the Felon and Common ward, arched and cloistered like a church, was privy to the dusty cloud pushing up from the staircase below, heralding two dark shapes cut out from the smoke. These were two men with weapons for hands, outstretched and seeking for heads straining through the smoke. The largest of them was silhouetted with the bulbous bulk of a blunderbuss held out from his hip.

  The constables of the ward were those prisoners chosen for their ability to keep order. Often they were the most violent men whose price for not being hung was to make sure that their ward was kept clean and peaceful. They had their garnish lifted, their punishments forgotten. And they knew there was always someone straining to take their place, so they protected their corners like wolves.

  Bill Dunn owned this hall. He slipped out of his bed, halfway down the wall of the ward, his hardened bull’s pizzle dropping out of his sleeve and into one hand, his gully blade from under his pillow held fast in the other. Dunn felt his stewards and the other prisoners look to him as his eyes locked on the big man with the other smaller one now at his back, pistols swinging left and right as they approached together. Two more came behind them, coughing away the sulphurous smoke.

  Dunn raised himself out of the dark and into their path. Boldly. Drunkenly. This was his ward by right and scars. The devil to those who entered it. He had raped, robbed and cut his way through London for years, but slept peaceful and deeply despite it all. He had a lot to lose and damn any bastard who dared enter his realm.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asked, his weapons dipping. He had too much gin in his head to fear the lead against him. And he was too used to men backing down from his bullying to expect any different.

  Peter Sam was ignorant of Bill Dunn’s power. His weapon bellowed and lit the room as much with its noise as its flash – enough muzzle flare to show Dunn’s insides painting those too close with a red mist. His body landed with a wet slap upon the stone floor, twenty years of evil deeds finally paid for.

  Peter Sam stroked his hot barrel as Hugh Harris at his back ran his pistols around the room to belay the curious. Peter Sam quietened them all with a command to stay in their beds.

  ‘That’s who the fuck I am!’ He glanced behind him. ‘Dandon! Where away?’

  Dandon pushed aside Richard Maynard, who was clinging to his yellow coat. The warden realised his ordeal was over and sank onto a bench in relief.

  ‘I think out of here, Peter, to be the best course.’ He held out Adam Cowrie’s map and walked toward the only other door in the hall, far to their left under coffered arches and past dozens of beds. Pale faces from the walls watched their weapons as the pirates strode along. Dandon pointed upwards and right to the large arched windows. ‘That is the street. Our captain is near the street . . . if he has not been moved, that is.’

  Peter Sam opened one of his apostles of powder, lifted a cartridge from his belly-box and reloaded. Hugh covered him as they followed Dandon’s steps to the door. This one was iron also. Locked also, after nine o’clock, as Adam Cowrie had warned them. The three rescuers were now prisoners by choice.

  Behind them, miscreants who had murdered men, women and children, who had viciously stolen what no man from their streets could afford to buy honestly, lay still in their beds and held their breath until the intruders moved on. Only then did hands in the darkness scurry over Bill Dunn’s body like crabs, to strip his corpse naked.

  Richard Maynard watched the defilement, the bloodied corpse worse now unclothed. He felt his stomach rise into his mouth as he crept away back to his tunnel.

  Peter Sam holstered his weapon on his back and studied the door. It was locked from the outside and another grenadoe was the only way. He went again for the bag but Dandon tapped his shoulder.

  ‘You have had too much of your own way, Peter.’

  Peter scowled. ‘If I had my way this would be done by now, popinjay.’

  Dandon soothed him with a smile. ‘This is not a place I wish to be, amongst this walking dead. Beyond this door is a corridor that will lead to the lodge. A fat turnkey named Thomas Langley has heard an explosion. He has heard the boom of your weapon. He is near and clutching his pitiful club and wondering what goes on. We need only to let him know.’

  Peter Sam’s expression demanded more from Dandon, who merely stepped past him to the door. ‘I believe that the fire that last befell this place is still ingrained in the memory.’

  He banged his fist against the door fast enough and hard enough for the sound to run down the corridor beyond and echo to the floors above and below, bringing others to hurl themselves against their doors as they heard his cries.

  ‘Fire!’ Dandon screamed and hammered. ‘Fire within! Thomas! We burn!’

  Dandon charged the door harder and Hugh joined him until it sounded like a hundred desperate fists pounding the stout iron.

  Five floors of the gaol took up the cry, for although the burning of the gaol was not of their living horror its rebuilding was very much so. They had seen the charred bones carried out in buckets, the skulls locked in screams later sketched for the broadsheets as stone by stone the Newgate hell was raised again.

  Men condemned to die but still fearing judgement and an earlier dispatch by fire, too close to judgement, howled for release. Thomas Langley sped from his lodge to the nearest door. The Common Felons ward. That was where the horrendous clamour that had broken his sleep was coming from.

  He soon had the right key rattling off his apron leathers, his pizzle in his fist. Buckets of sand along the walls stood ready and prisoners to aid him, for they would help to save themselves. The governor would be pleased that he had averted tragedy. With a few of the constables from the wards to assist, the fire would be quelled. There would be no fire on his watch. Why was he so heavy? Damn his feet.

  Shouts for mercy ricocheted about as he scurried along the corridor. He heard his name called again and again from above and below, yet something was not quite right. Certainly there was the smell of smoke but the stench of the sea-coal was always present and screams were nothing new. Whatever niggled him was forgotten as Langley reached the ward. The key turned soundly even though his hand trembled and the faces beyond the open door seemed right – but only for a moment.

  It was the black turnover pistol emptied into his face that told Thomas of his error.

  No fire without smoke.

  Hugh Harris stepped over the body and switched the double barrel to its second load as calmly as winding a watch. Peter Sam and Dandon studied the map.

  Another corridor ran to the left and right of them, this one lit at least. Old lanterns hung from the ceiling, polished horn instead of glass lending a waxy hue to the stone of the walls. The stifled cries above them were merely irritating.

  ‘There is a taphouse soon. The captain is lodged beyond.’ Dandon folded away the map. ‘Then, Peter, we shall leave as you wished to come in. Onto the street.’ He relieved the late Thomas of his loop of bridge ward-keys, almost all of which would open any of the doors of the gaol; the ward-lock was simple and common throughout.

  Dandon locked the door behind them. ‘I don’t think we need any more distractions. Prisoners finding their way out through the church by the tunnel may cover our escape.’ He pocketed the keys. ‘And with these we need not add more violence to our exit.’ He pointed them all southwards and they hurried on, for the cries echoing from all floors would bring query from the streets outside soon enough, and their endeavour would be discovered.

  ‘Hold, George!’ Wild needed a breath himself. The pirate had taken enough. ‘I thinks your name’s Patrick Devlin. I thinks you’re a pirate. A wanted man. Five hundred pounds to me, dead. This can’t go much further. You tell me what the prince wants with scum like you. How much coin to keep you alive? What you got, pirate? Where is it?’ H
e nodded to George for a final kick but Devlin held up his palm.

  Wild was satisfied. All men break. All of them. ‘Let him be, George. Pirate?’ He gave him enough slack to sit up. George clicked his snap at the pirate and stood back.

  Wild purred. ‘What’ll it be? Dead or alive?’

  Devlin looked up and grinned through his blood.

  ‘Can you hear that? That’s your end.’ He wiped his face on his sleeve and tutted at the claret. A Holland shirt wasted. Wild dropped the chain. The two men listened to the walls and heard the cries, faint but growing louder, and Devlin looked at their faces which moments ago had been hard and thoughtless. Devlin would remember the effect of the word ‘Fire!’ on the world.

  Chapter Eight

  The sounds of terror had not been lost on Patrick Devlin. But unlike Wild and George he calmly stood and straightened his clothes.

  Wild sprang to the door, the cries louder there, his ear to the hatch he could not open from his side.

  ‘Fire, Jon?’ George held a nervous pistol on Devlin.

  ‘Langley!’ Wild hammered the door with his wood. ‘Langley!’

  ‘He can’t hear you,’ Devlin said. ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘What’ll we do, Jon?’ George wiped his forehead, already imagining the sweat of a fire.

  ‘Keep him back against the wall. Langley will come for us.’ He banged again, called again, but only the cries of woe responded.

  ‘Justice has found you, Wild. And me.’ Devlin looked at George, the face he had worn that morning back again.

  ‘Shoot him, Jon?’ George hissed.

  Wild backed away from the door. ‘No. We may need that shot.’

  ‘You may need me.’ Devlin shrugged. Then they all heard the key rattling in the lock and Wild grinned back to the pirate. ‘Langley knows where his bread is buttered, scum.’