by Mark Keating
‘It cannot be, Your Majesty,’ the men in red robes or cloaks and blue sashes insisted. ‘We cannot make a captain of a corsair, of a despicable.’ Even the heroic Forbin, who Trouin had rescued from the English, could not see beyond his aristocratic blinkers.
‘He is not of the blood. He is a lucky merchant sailing under his father’s purse.’ A pension instead. A thousand livres. But stay from our court. No uniform.
But Trouin did not falter, did not bow. His king knew merit but although he commanded gentlemen in white, had squadrons of ships, still they kept closed their court until it could be kept closed no more – his triumphs, his name written in more English captains’ log books than any other Frenchman. When he petitioned to lead a force to capture Rio de Janeiro from the Portuguese, the Minister of Marine withheld sanction. Privateers did not capture cities despite what English pirates had achieved. The English did not understand nobility. They knighted farmers who had turned pirate.
Trouin backed the mission himself with funds from merchants in Brittany and went himself to Versailles. Eventually, reluctantly, the Minister of Marine gave unique sanction to a commoner.
Rio fell as all fell before Trouin and he filled the king’s pockets to overflowing. And finally he was ennobled. No more pretty swords: uniform and title. But it would take until the king’s dying breaths to bestow it permanently.
But this sword was his. Not a decoration. He balanced it at the full length of his arm, feeling a small ache along his forearm that had not been there years ago – but no mind. He slashed it once, twice, three times through the air back and forth as boys in the streets of St Malo still did with wooden epées, pretending to be him. The ache had soon gone.
The breath came from him in satisfied gasps and he ran the cutlass to his sash. Forget the filigree limpness of his commodore’s sword and frog. This is how a corsair fights.
He stood in his window looking over the sea, his fists planted on his hips. A pirate. Yes, that would do, that would serve for the end of summer. He pictured the pirate, a toothless drunkard in beard and rags preying on witless merchants; a bully with a hundred men drowning weaker numbers. If he could remember the name he would speak it now, and then speak it once more when the pirate was dead. And then no soul would whisper it again, except when recounting the glorious deeds of René Duguay-Trouin and the manner in which the pirate had met his end.
Chapter Fifteen
‘So, this is it?’ Dandon held the stone between finger and thumb, turning it curiously. ‘So much hanging on such a small object. It is a strange world we find ourselves in, Patrick.’
They sat out on deck on a Persian arabesque-patterned carpet to keep the damp wood from their clothes. The gem had travelled around the ship, as promised, for each man to have a sight of the thing that had brought them to shiver in these rolling waters rather than their glorious Caribbean. Devlin had spared them the tale of the diamond’s grim history – pirates being as superstitious as any other sailor – for they would not care that this stone was only its twin.
‘An incredible replica, I agree, Captain,’ said Dandon as he plopped it back into Devlin’s hand and filled his own with a bottle instead.
‘Took two years to make it and five thousand pounds, I’m told. It should be good enough.’
Dandon flinched at the value of the object that he had briefly held. ‘How can such chicanery afford so much?’
Devlin looked deep within, helplessly drawn to it, like all of them. Somewhere, twisting inside its facets, his father’s spade-like hands blurred, swinging him along the road to Kilkenny town to be left at a butcher’s for four guineas.
His father had sung all the way. Tried to carry him on his shoulders. But the boy – skinny as he was – had been too heavy and he had laughed at his father’s attempt, and they went hand in hand instead.
To Kilkenny for a toy, for his father had told him it was his birthday and the boy had faith that such days existed. Another turn of the gem and flash of light and his mother’s voice seemed to rise from its surface, swiftly blazed away by the melodic tones of his aunt’s singing – one person at least whose features he could still recall. The beauty of the stone reminded him of how far he had travelled to have outrun the bad little boy he must have been to be left so.
Devlin shrugged. ‘The water of the diamond is the same. No white one exists of such parallel.’
‘But you believe that this lapidary will know the difference if it is switched after it reaches him?’
Devlin held the diamond up into the dying twilight sky, scrying some future from it. ‘I don’t care. I only wish this matter done. It’s not safe in these waters.’
The Shadow suddenly dipped. Deeper water beneath her keel off the ironbound coast. A call from the tops lifted their heads.
‘Deck there! Sail ho!’ The speaking trumpet dropped by its lanyard and the hand shot out. ‘Three points off larboard bow!’
Devlin stood and followed the hand from above. A tartane bobbed lazily on the horizon, naught but a splinter of wood against the grey sea and sky and Devlin’s shoulders soon became crowded by Peter Sam and Black Bill as if from nowhere. Dandon was pushed back from the gunwale. This was not his place.
‘That’s her,’ Devlin said almost beneath his breath.
‘Aye,’ Peter Sam growled and went to his work, dragging Bill away with him.
Dandon pressed forward, straining a view to the little craft. ‘That’s who? That’s what?’
Devlin spun back, brushing past his yellow-coated friend – there was no time for friendship now.
‘Ours!’ Devlin’s solitary answer.
The game was upon him, and Dandon recognised the old brusqueness as a way to protect him, not to give offence.
Devlin swept aft to the cabin for weapons and to drop his manner to the depths that were necessary for the acts yet to come.
Dandon was left alone now, despite the dozen-or-so pirates milling around him and shifting sails to meet the tartane. He was alone and thinking on his friend.
The early evening had descended, a good time for ships to exchange news or trade goods. The Shadow would close, fall into the other ship’s lee, away from her wind to not slow her, the correct approach for a friendly vessel, though the normal path was for the weaker vessel to take the lee. The curious courtesy of the larger ship volunteering so would hopefully have the desired effect on the Junot’s master: that he might suspect that the ship was in distress or had some serious news to impart.
Then the rest of it, Dandon thought.
He hoped for no blood.
He had known Patrick Devlin for three years now, longer than anybody in his life, but the man the rest of the world knew as The Pirate Devlin had changed in that time.
No, not changed; but he differed now from the young man with the rakish grin who had saved Dandon’s life when they first met, saved him from Blackbeard’s enmity in a tavern on Providence. He had joined Devlin as ship’s doctor after that. There was adventure, food, drink and a notion that Dandon had found his place in the world. Then had come the agent and the porcelain conspiracy and Devlin had ascended to another plane. Now governments watched them, governments used them, and this pursuit would either spiral down to the depths or Devlin would have his portrait on a wall someday and a governorship like some of his kind.
But Devlin was also less now the man jumping from the peg-hole he was born in. Now he was relishing his freedom upon the sea and growing more the bloody pirate, inevitably falling deeper and darker in deed.
He had seen him in Charles Town, two years ago now, kill two guttersnipes like brushing dust from his shoulders, and more since then; each killing was easier and easier to do, but each was taking more and more drink to swallow away.
Something had changed that same year, after the death in Charles Town of Valentim Mendes, the Porto governor of St Nicolas who had travelled across the Atlantic to exact revenge against the pirate who had taken more than just his hand and ship. That had been th
e last adventure that had taken them from out of their pirate round. The hunt for the secret of the ‘white gold’, the porcelain mystery that the world craved and they had given. They had been beckoned by powerful men on pain of death to fill their pockets, not his. And now it was happening again. Devlin’s smiling days of drinking and gaming and ‘honest’ pirating had been torn away from him by more black-suited men in wigs who seemed to spawn like frogs in an ever more degenerate world.
Dandon smoothed his moustache, tutting to himself that he had forgotten to remove it yet again. Devlin’s mood, he was sure, had slunk back to the days after Valentim’s death when Dandon saw more of his friend’s face through the bottom of a wine glass lifted high than from promenading on deck. There was a guilt perhaps, some chipping of his soul that the man he had wronged had died, that Valentim had been slaughtered not in the noble pursuit of vengeance but in actually fighting at Devlin’s side. What man could splice the two ends of such a rope?
At their late table, or on nights on deck, the drunken laughter of his mates and crew were lost on the sullen face of their captain who sat with a bottle and his dagger, whittling away at the table or deck of the ship of the man he had stolen it from; the same man who had stood in a garden in Charles Town by Devlin’s shoulder and had bled his noble life away in the grass.
Dandon hoped still for his friend. Hoped still to see that Irish grin return when he trumped everyone. And hoped, as the tartane grew broader in his sight, there would not be too much blood to come.
Romantic novellas would have English schoolboys and swooning virgins believe that the raucous bloody days of pirates were filled with gold and jewels, swinging cutlasses and roaring broadsides, and the sacking of great colonial cities full of fat Spaniards quaking in their boots and sweating like pigs before the English buccaneers.
In truth pirates lived mostly by trade. A merchant ship would be spied, closed upon under friendly guise and then a single salvo of powder from a gun would sound and a black or red flag run up.
Surrender.
A boat sent across.
Two captains meet and exchange that which one needs with that which one does not.
To be fair, the pirate would gain the most under the wave of his pistols: two barrels of molasses for all your sail and brandy – but the principle was there.
To sell their surplus the pirates would sail to a welcoming shore, of which the Americas afforded many, willing as the colonials were to buy goods for which they did not have to pay a British tax.
Only wealthy vessels would suffer the worst. Then the officers would be robbed of all their wares, the ship of all its charts and medicines, the passengers of their fine clothes and portable valuables. These occasions often led to comical reports of pirates dressed in motley as harlequins, with several years of fashionable silk and velvet on their back, gold and diamond necklaces about their necks but barefoot and black as a hearth.
To most merchants the prospect of being pirated was an inevitable consequence of being at sea and putting up a fight was pointless. The insurance against the same was as old as pirating itself.
The worst came, however, if it was your ship the pirate wanted. Then you could find yourself on a sinking vessel with no food or water and watch your own fine ship sail off into the distance. If you were lucky you might live to make your report, which would lie with the thousands of others browning in some file. If you were unlucky the crabs and lobsters would be the only ones to know your fate.
But pirates in the Channel were rare. The waters heaved with trade but also with the naval might of the world. The Dutch, the British and the French sailed the ‘sleeve’ daily. There were no pirates here. That would be madness.
So why not allow the flush frigate flying a French merchant flag to sail in close? Why not lower sail, call over and hear a French voice call back for news? La Manche is a friendly sea. Here we are all brothers under sail.
The tartane was a swift, single-masted ship able to lift both a lateen sail to catch all and a foresail from the same mast, as well as rig jibs along her bowsprit. From a distance, the landsman’s vantage, the Junot was a giant lateen sail coursing along as if pulled through the water, more cloth than wood. A small boat, and like all small boats she needed big men upon her; but big men with families still shrink from black pistols waved at their chests by grinning rogues.
There should be no need for weapons other than personal arms, for who would harry a harmless fishing boat eking a living along the coast?
Even so, Devlin had sent Hugh Harris and Dan Teague to head the boarding party to the little boat. Men he might have set against Panama herself for their expertise in killing. Their morals were as slim and contrary as the faces and backs of cards, and with as much space between to judge who should die and who not.
Dandon had noted the choice. ‘What will you do, Patrick?’ he asked quietly, half fearing the answer. Devlin stood by his side at the gunwale.
‘We’ll keep our distance. She can see our guns. Knows it’s over. If we board we’ll pull too much attention.’ Now both had anchored only a hundred feet or less lay between their freeboards. It was a normal shouting distance and row towards that should not draw suspicion from any passing observer.
‘And for her crew?’ Dandon asked. ‘What for them?’
Devlin walked away, his eyes keen all along the ship over the way, watching the black shapes for any sudden action. ‘I’ll leave that to them.’
Dandon noted then that Devlin had sent Englishmen to a French ship. He had not requested a French speaker, had not gone himself or sent Dandon, who could speak the better French of the two. No, he had sent Hugh Harris and Dan Teague, the bloodiest of them all, and now Devlin was ordering the lowering of the second boat from its home between the masts. A chill came over Dandon that had nothing to do with the flick of the wind at his face.
He sprinted to Devlin, stood with Peter Sam in close debate. ‘Patrick!’ he very nearly yelled the name. ‘I will go across with the boat. I will mediate between our different souls. With Hugh and Dan, these fishermen may have short prospects.’ He swallowed at Peter Sam’s scowl. ‘Unless that is you wish them to have short prospects?’
Devlin put his arm across Dandon’s shoulders. ‘What are you thinking of me, Dandon?’ He walked them away from the boat swinging over their heads. ‘You think me a monster now, is it?’ His voice was laden with charm.
‘No, my friend, not a monster. Colossus perhaps. I thought I may help with any misunderstandings, Patrick, that is all.’
Devlin nodded toward the far ship. ‘They will know the game. If I send English pirates they will not attempt to reason. No point in arguing with a man who does not understand you. And Hugh knows enough French curses to let them know how he feels. I intend to bring the men over to us. Let their master know that we mean them no harm.’
Dandon was relieved. So fifteen men would join them for a spell, their only loss to be their ship to Devlin’s cause. But what of after?
‘And when you return from your task, Captain? What then for them?’
Devlin slapped Dandon’s back. ‘I shouldn’t worry. You and I may be dead ourselves by then, mon frère!’
Dandon’s body leaned away in surprise. ‘I am coming with to Paris? This is a danger I did not account for, Patrick. It should be considered judiciously. Particularly by myself.’
Devlin reeled him back in. ‘I don’t think I could succeed without you.’ Then he pushed Dandon away, laughing. ‘I think that will always be the way I’ll have it.’
A boat came across. Just six men, the captain of the Junot observed. Six to share news. He had no concern with his stout fourteen men behind him. A rope from below, belayed by pin and closer now, looking down into the boat, just ragged fishermen, no swords or even knives, and bringing a bundled up black cloth with them, a gift perhaps.
Hugh Harris and Dan Teague scampered up the Jacob’s ladder flung down to them. They swung over the gunwale as they had done dozens of times befo
re on dozens of ships: all smiles and empty hands, just the black cloth thrown to the deck where it rolled out as the others clambered up behind.
The cloth spread. A white grinning skull rolled free, two crossed pistols beneath, and the Junot’s crew stared down riveted to it, missing the pistols being pulled from behind the backs of their guests.
Hugh Harris grinned like the death’s head at his feet. ‘Hold now, lads!’ he warned. ‘You be pirated! Forban! Drop any steel to the flag for your forgiveness!’ The rest of his words were English swearing, his pistols bolstering his skinny frame against the big Frenchmen.
Dan Teague echoed him. No violence, Devlin had said. These men should report nothing against them except the taking of their little ship. But this stepping on a foreign deck was a pirate’s breakfast. There had to be some sport or why get up at all?
Pistol followed pistol and pistols were rare for the common. If these pirates carried them it would be right to assume they had taken them from resisting gentlemen. So raise your hands and smile and bow.
‘Stand easy now,’ Hugh snarled, and they used their pistols as shepherds use their crooks and waved their sheep to one quarter where a dozen pistols could cover every head.
‘Hugh?’ Dan asked. ‘Is this all we’re to do?’ Dan Teague was of the old standers with Hugh. From before Devlin, when Seth Toombs had been their captain. But unlike Hugh, who had been scraped from London walls, Dan was a Norfolk man and broad and big. He could have tilled as much as sailed and lived a quiet life arm-wrestling on a Saturday night in any inn five miles from where he was born. But the Spanish war had bought him for a shilling and he had been taught to furl and pull, splice and haul, where he would have hoed and picked all his life. He had fired a musketoon into a Spaniard and had liked the sound and the red again and again. He had split a Frenchman’s skull with a mallet and seen his pink brains. Then the navy had signed papers with those they had paid him to kill and no-one had thanked him for his talent. He had come into a world of iron and hoped to live in a world of gold as his queen had promised. It was inevitable that he would meet Hugh, meet Peter Sam, meet others betrayed the same. Pirates do not write invites. The world draws them together. And on this deck, men shivering before him, two stolen pistols in his fists drawing their eyes, this was indeed his breakfast; and the only fear was that one dawn, somewhere, his head would become a stranger to his neck.