Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel

by Mark Keating

  ‘All beaten! Done! Dead! Me and Dandon!’ He stood still only to let his stature climb to the ceiling; stood before the tall Scottish man second only to the regent in the kingdom of France. ‘Don’t strive to be a sanctimonious shit like the rest of them, John. Mark me: if you are – if you plan to be – I’m usually the only one that walks away.’

  He strode back to his tray, cradling it to his hip and opening the door in the same movement like a skilled waiter. ‘Meet the regent. Keep him there. Stay with him. Then you can tell me where the diamond is . . . so pay attention. Oh—’ his parting shot. ‘And the day before we met I escaped from Newgate. My memory’s still a bit hazy on that one so forgive me if I don’t draw you a picture.’

  The door slammed. Law was left staring dumbly at the portal the pirate had flown through. Eventually he turned to the blackboard smeared with thunderclouds of white, the pirate’s past etched beneath them.

  ‘But . . . I don’t know where . . . ?’ Pointless. Pointless to talk to an empty room. The clock ticked. Weeks of secret correspondence and mad schemes had been reduced to hours. He had pawned his future. Aye, and only a pirate held the redeeming ticket.

  Chapter Twenty

  A glass of Oporto for Dandon and Albany at the cabaret, ‘Image Notre Dame’. The inn was in the sandy Place de Grève beside the Seine, almost right on the river where the square was lapped by its shallow tide. Here they waited, outside, for the inn bulged with bodies. Albany waited impatiently, Dandon ecstatically, mesmerised by the city’s grandeur.

  Dandon was a child of the New World. He had known the simplicity of the French forts of Louisiana, little more than log cabins and mud, and the burgeoning replication of English towns that were Charles Town and Bath Town.

  London had been a disappointment. A city of kings but made of daub and smoke where abandoned children died in the streets while gold carriages trundled by.

  But here was a city. It had its cruelty and brutality – the pillory and gibbet in the wide square said enough – but the magnificence, the pride . . . It was enough for Dandon to be convinced that this was Europe’s jewel. No great fire had eaten its soul and with its wide streets, squares and gardens, Dandon doubted that one ever could.

  He turned to every side, looking upward to take in the gabled towers of the shops and houses, his admiration inevitably always ending at the palatial Hôtel de Ville, its golden stone and blue slate rooftops more welcoming fairytale castle than the dusty bureaus of the city’s civil administrators, the cold heart of Paris.

  Dandon raised his glass to Albany as the young noble lingered on the steps of the inn, toying with the elaborate sword hilt that clashed with his peasant’s clothing. Dandon swayed over. He had removed his coat, setting it over his own tray of baker’s fare near the steps of the inn where the occasional half-starved dog sniffed and wagged its tale entreatingly before being dispatched by Albany’s boot.

  Dandon, in a white blouse, slop-hose swinging with his gait, wineglass safe to his chest, still carried a handsome confidence that brought fans to the blushing cheeks of amenable women sauntering along the strand. He met all of them with a flash of gold-capped teeth and a pinching of the moustache he had still yet to preen. Albany hated the very bones of him.

  In fact, Albany belonged to the set that dropped coin for women in the bagnio-lined streets or had to pursue with his purse those of better breed, casting dresses and deerskin gloves before them until they showed their petticoats.

  Dandon belonged to a school of libertine that did not need a purse or a father’s estate to grease his pole and the pirate showed he knew it with every delivery of his raised eyebrow and jaunty bow. Albany’s schoolboy envy was that of one pupil’s for another’s bigger bag of marbles. He anticipated the yellow popinjay’s address with his own.

  ‘We have spent our morning purchasing trays of pastries. Do you think our gallant “leader” will return to enlighten us as to their purpose?’

  Dandon said nothing, his eyes smiling over his glass’s rim. That morning they had rowed into the Seine and past its islands, Louvier and Saint-Louis, the former for farmland and livestock – Paris’s own larder – the latter a city of its own with grand houses for the elite, linked to both the left and right banks by bridge.

  The tartane had earlier slipped under Pont Marie, a smaller double of London Bridge, with its dingy houses and smut-faced children leaning perilously out of the windows either to wave them through or drop pebbles and carrot-tops on the cursing wherrymen. Then, rising from the mist, almost floating out of the sky towards them, approached the monstrous presence of Pont Notre Dame, her arches littered with boats and wherries duelling for trade. Houses and shops towered five storeys tall all across, their chimney-smoke blackening the sky, linked with wooden walkways on the outside above the water, and the people bustling in their business all about her like maggots writhing through a corpse. The water, and those that worked it between the two bridges, lay almost black in shadow.

  Here they left Peter Sam and Hugh Harris and walked into the Place de Grève, Devlin planting them at the inn. He knew the working alleyways of the quarter, and it was better to go alone.

  After half an hour of waiting for the cabaretier to serve them – their peasant attire hardly hastening him – Devlin returned with two muslin-covered trays and two small pepper pots.

  ‘I am gone to see Law. Don’t touch anything,’ he said, and pointed. ‘Especially the pepper. Wait for me.’ He took up one of the trays and vanished into the smart Sunday crowds. And now here they were, awaiting his return. Albany, bruised by Devlin’s secrecy, nagged at the only source of information that he had. Dandon’s ears were soon bruised.

  ‘If he believes he is protecting us by leaving us in ignorance he would do better to let me in on his intentions at least. I am not some brainless sot with no thoughts of my own. He has estimated me too much with his usual company.’

  ‘In that case,’ Dandon leaned into his ear, ‘would not a wiser gentleman lower his very English voice?’

  He leaned away again before Albany could send a riposte. He looked over the water to the exquisite prettiness of the red wooden bridge that crossed from Saint-Louis to Île de la Cité where the Gothic might of the Notre Dame cathedral preached over the whole city.

  How could anyone leave such a place for the sweat and rusticality of the Americas? He had to restrain himself from exclaiming such a mystery to the nearest passer-by, then remembered from the day before the impressed colonists being herded onto barges.

  A hand on his shoulder jerked him from his deliberations on the marvellous canvas before him.

  ‘You look like you’re in love, Dandon,’ Devlin smirked.

  Dandon, too overjoyed to see his captain to blush, excused himself and almost paraded him over to Albany on the inn’s steps. Albany tugged his cap, pleased at least that Devlin had returned. He indicated the tray that Devlin still carried about his chest.

  ‘So are these pâtissier’s fancies part of your master plan? Or is this simply a more honest trade you are taking up?’

  Devlin came to the railings below Albany’s step. The square was noisy enough to cover any intimate talk. ‘We have a couple of hours to spare. But no drinking. Some food and small beer.’ He moved in closer. ‘Law is meeting the regent today. That’s our chance. I can feel it. I thought tomorrow but perhaps Sunday may be better – quieter, I’m sure.’

  Albany descended to him. ‘Today? But how?’

  ‘Consider yourself lucky that you don’t speak enough French to be of use to me.’ He pushed them both up the steps then picked up Dandon’s tray with the pepper pots and whispered to the sky.

  ‘At least one of us alive. Someone to tell Walpole how I died anyways.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Black Bill had thrown the Shadow into a ‘cocked hat’. He knew this by the latitude of the Lizard, now disappearing off their starboard quarter in a grey mist, by the longitude of London an hour away across his chart, and by teles
cope, comparing where Jupiter should be and the day-moon was. The resulting pencil lines intersecting on his chart and the small triangle where they differed was the so-called cocked hat. A tricorne margin of error into which mariners tossed their luck, and possible defeat, and coined a phrase for even landlubbers to adopt. By dead reckoning and maintaining a speed, a good captain could, without the mythical good longitude, plot a course as safe as able. Steady as she goes and I’ll be here in the world tomorrow without needing to see land.

  But, now, this morning, to maintain a speed while being chased for battle was out of the question.

  A splat of sweat from his brow fell to the linen paper and marked at least one of the ships closing to their bow. He looked up and tried to imagine the spirit of Devlin across the table. Like his own trigonometry Devlin’s was learnt in practice, for survival, not at school. Maybe if students were told, ‘Learn this well, or you’ll die,’ fewer ships would go down with half-learnt schoolboys fumbling their way.

  Devlin’s ghost was dumb before him. If he had but one member of the Shadow’s crew that could bolster his confidence. No. Not his to think like that.

  Devlin’s spectre melted away. He had no need of the Irishman through all the years sailing from Trepassey to New Spain and no need of him now to navigate this pond. His brain had grown flabby with Devlin’s ability to hand, but he was still Black Bill, still the sailing master who had followed sea-birds and clouds above as much as the waves.

  From Devlin he had learnt the skill of quadrants, backstaff, traverse board and walking dividers stepping over the leagues. Devlin had gleaned his own art from his master, John Coxon, and that skill had won him the role of Seth Toombs’s artist-navigator. But Bill had learnt his runes in an aversion to hunger and thirst.

  He drew a line along his rule from his cocked hat to the Verdes and threw down his pencil. There I am. There I be, and damn him that says otherwise.

  He swept out onto the deck past all the expectant eyes upon him, past all the wood and rope, and there was the sight of the white squares of top gallants encroaching over the stern. He felt a strong reluctance to climb to the quarterdeck and see their decks.

  The pirates had raised English colours but that had done nothing to slow the two French frigates. Two, by God. What could even Devlin do against two? No, don’t think like that. That’s counting down the end to be sure.

  The one to starboard, the twenty-four gunner, had come up when they had changed course to the Scilly rocks, cutting them clean, and Bill had lost leagues turning away only for the other to slow and open a door for him to sail west and away, inviting him to escape or meet.

  Bill chose to run – a red rag to a bull that the Shadow was hiding something. Satisfied now by her show of clean heels, René Duguay-Trouin laid on sail and an hour had brought him here.

  The Shadow was still running, and two men of war closed on her like sand falling in an hourglass.

  ‘Bill?’ A quiet voice escaped out of the crowd. Other echoes followed. Orders were needed.

  Run to the Verdes and back again, the captain had ordered, but he could not have foreseen this hour, when two warships lay intent on breaking the Shadow’s guise, to see if she buckled, waiting for her to slow or run.

  Bill loped to the starboard gunwale to where the larger ship filled their quarter, her rigging and white sail now visible, passing through the cobwebs of the Shadow’s rigging.

  He could see men now. White coats running to and fro, shadowy shapes in the rigging. He could hear her breathing. The chinking of iron, the strain of cordage and the chatter of French voices as if just from another room. White water rushing between them, petrels and gulls screeching over the ships’ cross-trees, waiting for fish to be churned to the surface.

  An honest ship would have slowed long ago. An honest ship would have waited for a speaking trumpet to share news. But when she had cut them the Shadow had turned, edged away, only to have her follow. An honest ship does not turn from an ally. Bill looked down to the gun by his thigh then moved away to watch the bowsprit and foresail of the smaller ship now coming off the opposite quarter. Coming fast.

  And then it came. The slow creak of chain again and again, hauled by dozens of hands as gunports flew open from both ships. He spun behind to the larger ship again, twelve black eyes patiently staring back along her, water running off the open ports.

  ‘Bill?’ Again the soft voices all around him, feet above his head coming down the rigging knowing they had a better use now than being aloft.

  ‘Bill?’

  He walked amidships, shoulders all around him. Nothing else to do now. Without calling, Robert Hartley, Gunner Captain, loomed in front of him. Nothing else to do now. But one thing first. The proper thing. Their finest weapon.

  From his fo’c’sle René Duguay-Trouin lifted his hand for his officers to observe the lowering of the United Kingdom flag. ‘Here they come.’ His young men looked at each other on hearing the strange announcement and missed the first sight of the other, darker, flag rising. ‘Here they come,’ Trouin repeated, this time with a tighter lip.

  A black and calico-white cloth. A grinning skull set in a compass rose. A pair of crossed pistols beneath. It whipped as it rose, as if the eyes of the skull were looking at first one and then the other of its foes, its billowing mouth snarling as the cloth flapped in the wind. The design was exactly as the orders of 1717 described. Trouin stood on his heels, satisfied with his instinct.

  Behind him bustled the urgency of gun crews, the solid calls of their captains, the rapid hoisting away of the boats to be cast over the side – for their wood could kill when shattered by shot.

  Calmly he detailed their time and position to the boy at his elbow and watched the lad’s shaking hand badly scratch the words. Trouin patted his head and sent him to join the other boys at the magazine carrying up the serge canisters of powder. He held out and studied his own steady hand.

  It had been three years since a pirate staked out ten dead Frenchmen to dry in the fort they had sworn to protect and had stolen a chest of the late king’s gold, embarrassing the nation before her allies. All that shame was ended now, and it had been as easy as pulling at a loose thread. How had Devlin eluded justice for so long?

  Two hours, maybe less, and he would look into the eyes of the pirate and tell him who he was: René Duguay-Trouin. The one who had finally brought him to heel, his end long overdue.

  ‘Patrick?’ Dandon had felt the body slow beside him then stop dead in the narrow alleyway some feet behind him. ‘Tout va bien?’ French only now as they got closer to the palace.

  Devlin stalled, a clockwork automaton unwound. Dandon moved back to him. ‘Patrick?’ he repeated. ‘What ails?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’ He looked down at the goose-flesh on the back of his hand. ‘A miasma of the street. It felt like someone had walked over my grave. Come on.’ He elbowed Dandon along and they joined the Sunday afternoon amblers once more.

  Almost three now. The Rue Saint-Honoré was an easier walk, the street wide and sided, it seemed to Dandon, with buildings that were palaces in their own right. Rising storeys of glass and great stones, lined with shops and taverns as much as London, but at almost every corner and place the trickling sound of running water. Paris, he had decided, was a city of fountains; not just for decoration and beauty but to bless the people with drinking water that had not come from the river but been carried via aqueduct from the countryside. More than once they had to back to a wall to allow passage to a mass of water-porters who earned their living selling water around the quarter.

  Londoners drank from the Thames and left their water to sit for a day until the filth sank; or they settled for gin and beer that at least was purer.

  On. Past the imposing beauty of the pillared front of the Palais Royale. That would not be their entrance. Minutes later they turned into the Rue de Richelieu and the first meeting with white-jacketed soldiers. Here, at the corner, was the trade and civilian ent
rance to the palace. Just two soldiers stood guard over the tempting sunshine of the courtyard just beyond.

  If nerves trembled the two men did not show it. They had no weapons, and no other hope if they did not make it through this first barrier. But having nothing to lose was part of their daily life. Let other men fear consequences: this was the work they drank to.

  Neither of the soldiers straightened at the approach of the two peasants, although their eyes widened expectantly at the trays.

  Three years ago Devlin had approached an island fortress that had orders to accept no ship at its shores. He sailed in with a ship of whores and was welcomed with open arms. The world over, common soldiers – who took naturally to the career, being too indolent or drunk for anything else – had only three appetites: lust, thirst and hunger.

  Devlin and Dandon, common as any of them, knew how to carve cogs that could turn the world.

  ‘Well met, soldier!’ Devlin greeted them with a slur in his voice that only faintly alluded to wine. His French, like Dandon’s, who had learnt the tongue at the Mobile fort from the heavy hand of his surgeon master, was of the curt gutter. It would not have carried them into any court but it fitted their current cloth seamlessly. The soldiers eyed them lazily and sucked on empty clay pipes.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Devlin continued merrily. ‘My daughter this day has married a good soldier from the Faubourg quarter. In celebration I bring some fine remnants from my pâtisserie in Les Halles. Free of charge for you and your gallant watch.’ He shrugged then, as if doing them no real favour. ‘I will only throw them away or sell them for dust tomorrow. Help yourself.’

  They pored over the trays. Fruit pastries, small meat pies, some glazed tarts. The greedier of the two spied the largest and poked its crust. ‘What is that one? Duck?’

  Devlin shook his head. ‘Strange tastes from my new son-in-law’s family. I should not have brought it, but you never know,’ another of the shrugs that passed for a hundred comments. ‘Perhaps you have a friend inside you should like to jape, eh?’