Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel

by Mark Keating

  Devlin bulled his way to the house, his attitude unchallenged as Italian princes shared blows with Dutch earls, and duchesses screeched and pulled at one another’s earrings. Law’s coachman lounged in the doorway, a blunderbuss nestling in his arms. His presence was enough to keep most of the crowd from Law’s office but he jerked up straight as the sailor arrowed towards him.

  He half-cocked the weapon with his palm and let the massive barrel-mouth casually stare out from over his crooked arm. The sailor came on, never even glanced at the weapon and tapped his forehead. ‘John Law expects me.’

  The bold English, the use of the Scottish name over the more familiar Monsieur Lass stuck a needle into the sentry. Without looking behind, his eye still on the crowd, he reached back and opened the door, letting the sailor slip past and close it himself.

  Law was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. His arms welcoming him like family. Devlin declined the embrace.

  ‘I take it all is to the good, John?’ he walked ahead and into Law’s chambers. Law trotted faithfully behind, sealing them from the world with the closing of his door.

  ‘All goes well enough, Captain.’ He went to his window and closed off the roar and bustle below. ‘That’s better.’

  ‘Is it like that often?’ Devlin indicated to the window. ‘Those lunatics?’

  ‘Regretfully,’ Law said and scurried around to his desk. ‘I feel they believe the fury of it means their dealings must be the saving grace of France. For surely only the most important things are violent.’ He sat. ‘I believe at the height of the madness in London some rogue made a fortune selling shares in a company that no-one was permitted to know what it did. Now, to our business. Our speculation.’

  Devlin struck out his hand, his other curled into a white fist.

  ‘Just give me the bloody thing if you have it! I’ve wasted enough time dancing to gentlemen’s tunes! No flourish, no speeches! Just put it up and I’ll be gone!’

  ‘Captain!’ Law squared his shoulders. ‘I do not deserve such an outburst! Last night I committed a crime against my country! I took abjuration against my homeland for this regency. This is not something I take lightly! After my part, after what I have done last night, I think some measure of respect would—’

  His words were cut short by Devlin’s kick to his desk, pushing his chair to the wall. Law grabbed at his flying papers and inkwells.

  ‘What you have done! You’ve picked a pocket! I’m weighing my men for a noose!’ He kicked the wood again, less in anger, more just the frustration clamouring to be uncaged.

  He liked Law, there was nothing of politics or scorn about him, but on the Monday past the pirate had been in Newgate. He could still smell it on his skin over the stench of fish and smoked wool.

  Law slept in palaces, owned country estates and townhouses for the different aspects of the seasons; he belonged to a class that had dozens of pairs of shoes yet never trod the streets, had matching hats and coats but never knew rain or cold. All wolves at lambing time. Devlin still liked him, yet the fool needed to understand. When you steal something you run, run fast and far. Now was not the time to chink glasses and admire; that attitude to their failing business schemes over the summer had brought them to this act and, over all of them, over all their power and position, Devlin would be in charge of his own fate.

  More gently he reached out his hand. ‘Just give me the damned thing.’

  Law pulled open a drawer. He dropped the diamond into the pirate’s palm as if it were a coin begged.

  Without a look Devlin buried the weight into a pocket, the blood of it passed, and he turned on his heels. He stopped by the door.

  ‘You know the next hours of your life will depend on me getting this back to Walpole. If I fail there will be no urgency to grant you clemency in England. No escape when it all falls around you. Do you trust them?’

  Law played at his necktie. ‘I have always been running, Captain. The fate of the South Sea Company hangs – if you forgive the term – on you getting that stone back to London. It will be September in two days. On the eighth the company must declare its assets. Your country has put its faith in its banks and companies. Your country no longer wishes to make and produce when they can get rich on mystery and chance. If you can save the fortune of the largest company in England you will save the others.’

  Devlin tipped him the grin that had been missing for almost a week now.

  ‘Not my country, John. They forget that.’ He vanished through the door, the last Law would ever see of him.

  Law sat back, blew out a breath like a man reprieved, then looked to the blackboard that still wore Devlin’s childish drawings. The fury in their scrapes and symbols was worth considering. He wished Walpole could consider their significance also.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Two days later. September.

  ‘There’s something wrong.’ Devlin stood at the tartane’s bow, his voice somehow carrying back to the others despite it being barely more than an inner thought.

  They were out of the mouth of Le Havre, just part of the flotilla of fishermen and bale-laden ships trying not to run into each other in the early morning.

  ‘What is wrong?’ Dandon came up, ducking under the single lateen sail. He could see what purported to be the Shadow moored maybe only two miles from them. She sat, anchored fore and aft, in soundings deep enough for her three-hundred tons, a pool of other frigates and merchants around her, their boats all plying the waters and ferrying their goods to the harbour, or waiting for victuallers and customs officers to attend.

  Devlin watched the play of activity, of innocent cabotage, of coastal trade. He looked between each of the ships not more than a cable away from their own girl. ‘Nothing,’ he said at last, but called Peter Sam up just the same.

  Nothing suspicious in the Shadow waiting for them – her orders had been plain enough – but Peter confirmed as best he could without spyglass that the ship had some pain about her.

  Her yards looked weak, her rigging limp yet no men tending withal. The gunwale faced them and her starboard side was sheeted in sail-cloth.

  ‘Just drying out new sail maybe,’ Peter suggested.

  ‘Or hiding damage.’

  ‘Perhaps Bill had some trouble. Better to hide it.’

  ‘Aye.’ Devlin saw the blue-and-white merchant flag hanging from the backstay, the white flag on the main declaring a clean ship, a ship free from plague. All was well.

  Half an hour would tell. Raise the sail. Come in slow. All the while Devlin and Peter Sam at the bow looking out for Black Bill’s head. Hugh Harris, sensing his captain’s unease, rifled pointlessly for some teeth amongst the Junot’s furniture. Marlin spikes, knives, wooden hammers. Toys. Fishermen’s tools. Nothing with the heft of even a belaying pin.

  He grimaced and tucked some of the pathetic rusty steel in his belt, then looked up at Albany and eyed his sword enviously as he passed him to confer with Devlin.

  Albany came to Devlin’s side furthest from Peter Sam and hung as heroically as he could from the nearest rope above his head, foot planted against the gunwale.

  ‘So to the ship, Captain. We should drink deep tonight. Get out of these slops. Some proper food. I feel after these cod-bones the last few days I would relish even your “Poor-John”. Is that the phrase?’

  Devlin and Peter Sam looked him up and down. ‘I’ll get you drunk as a lord if it’ll pipe you down, Albany.’ His tone gave away nothing about his wariness of approaching his own ship. He waited for Albany to ask about the diamond, to indicate yet again that he should hold it if they were to return amid pirates, forgetting his own company. But Albany only breathed deep on the refreshing wind, forgiving the sting of it watering his eyes.

  They closed on the Shadow. The waves grew higher and creamier as they reverberated off her bow. The small tartane pulled almost magnetically towards her now.

  Peter Sam went aft to the tiller while Dandon held on to the gunwale as the sea grew more live
ly. Albany stayed beside his partner who had grown darkly silent.

  ‘Are you not pleased, Captain? We have done it have we not?’

  Devlin had been counting the masts amongst the pool of ships. At least two square-rigged and pocked with black. Tainted with battle. The glow of white coats, gleaming off the morning sun, running along their weatherboards. Too many tricornes. But then he heard Black Bill calling from the Shadow. Her freeboard stretched above them now, the final short distance slamming away quickly, the Jacob’s ladder welcoming them home.

  Bill stood at the bulwark nettings. He yelled for a belaying rope for the tartane. He grinned at the sight of Devlin’s return and waved them in. He prayed that Devlin was shrewd enough to note that he smiled rarely, that he would find his exuberance a signal that something was amiss. He struggled to not look down at the French marines crouched beneath the bulwarks aiming their muskets at him and laughed Devlin in like a favoured son.

  Trouin watched him carefully, his pistols drawn and primed. He was crouched low with several of his officers around the mizzen and nodded calmly to reassure the others that ringed the foremast.

  Bide, bide. Time enough for glory.

  Peter Sam took the rope and belayed it with his arms. The tartane pivoted to the Shadow’s hull, Devlin already stretching to the ladder. Bill watched him fight with the ropes like a boy with his first catch in a net. He moved closer to the bulwark, muskets prodding into his side. Trouin waved them down, checked the pans on his pistols once more.

  Bill looked away from Devlin’s scrambling and caught Peter Sam’s eye.

  Eight years he had known Peter Sam. Three years with Devlin, three with Seth Toombs, their captain late of Devlin’s hand. Before that, two as Newfoundland lost souls, cold and dying together. Tens of thousands of miles. Four ships and hundreds of men, some still with them, most gone. Each day different and every tomorrow the same hempen end promised.

  Peter Sam looked up at the red eyes above the tremendous black beard and held the belaying rope tighter across his leather bracers, his strength pulling them closer. After years of living within inches of each other he could identify a new look on Bill’s face.

  Devlin found his purchase and smiled up at Bill, who moved from Peter’s worry to look down with the same strange cocked head as his father had done when he had left through the butcher’s door four guineas richer.

  Bill’s mouth opened to speak, then forever opened as a shot from beneath the gunwale sprayed a red mist out of the side of his skull, almost a powder, almost silently, just a small crack that no-one would recall hearing and Black Bill fell like a beaten horse, his final sound in his ears the screaming of his name from Peter Sam.

  ‘Bill!’

  Trouin flew up. ‘No firing! No firing!’ The death of such a beloved man would cost dear. Already the pirates began to struggle in their ropes where they sat along the gangway, the click of their guards’ muskets only angering them further.

  ‘Up! Up!’ Trouin shouted. ‘To arms!’

  Devlin looked up to the space where Bill’s head had lifted away, now filled with musket mouths pointing down at him. A dozen more paraded along the gunwale, all with a ready eye along their sight, all marked at him, all grinning behind their triggers.

  Numbers would normally be enough to still a single man’s progress but more than one of them looked behind to Trouin when the pirate only ascended faster, as if an army were at his back – and then there was. The soldiers swung their aim to the giant climbing up behind Devlin and howling like a mad bear.

  ‘Do not fire!’ Trouin yelled. ‘He is mine!’

  Devlin dragged himself through the port by yanking down the nearest musket barrel, the bearer pulling his trigger as he held on to the gun, the shot disappearing into the sea. The next had his weapon slammed into his chin, sending him reeling back along the gunwale into his comrades. And now Devlin had space. His feet were back on his deck. His bound crew in the gangway were now trying to rise, their guards beating them back down.

  Someone was shouting orders, French orders, orders not to shoot. Good enough a word for Devlin to stand with only his fists and feet and now the roar behind him, the heat of Peter Sam, always at his back, and any Frenchman who had dared to rush forward now found his head pounded against any convenient fixture or else was flung backwards to the sea where Hugh Harris climbing the ladder found the spirit to giggle as they fell past him.

  Albany drew his sword and stared at the dancing on the ship and the men struggling in the water. Dandon calmly pushed his arm down.

  ‘This is just a venting, Albany. It is over. Devlin’s blood will cool momentarily. I have seen this before.’

  ‘But the diamond!’

  Dandon looked at him almost in awe. ‘Ah, yes, for that’s the concern.’

  Trouin watched, even admired, as two men beat back his force like a scythe through a wheat field. They had plucked muskets as if offered – clamped hands over the locks and rammed the butts into faces of men not used to such a close, snarling fight. Then they swung the guns like clubs, the pair of them now standing protectively over the body of their fallen man.

  But end it must, now, as a third pirate leapt to the deck and sliced blades across eyes and noses, and joined his brothers in guarding the dead body. And this one was laughing. That could not mean anything good, and with his knives, only real harm to his men.

  Trouin signalled to the guards standing over the crew along the gangway. They fired over the heads of the boarding trio, the rattling fire at least enough to stall their blows and switch their anger in a new direction instead – easy pickings now that they faced empty guns. But Devlin blocked Peter and Hugh to a halt as Trouin waved a pistol for his men to race down from the quarterdeck and fo’c’sle. Suddenly thirty men corralled the three pirates around the mainmast. Pikes, muskets and cutlasses trembled over every inch of them.

  The three dropped their stolen muskets and edged around their small territory, testing the courage of the souls hiding behind their steel and lead.

  Hugh Harris ran his knife down one cheek then the other, drawing his own blood. He flashed his fearsome grin at the soldiers staring wide-eyed. Peter Sam spat on his hands then ground out his words to the nearest pale face.

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘Enough!’ Trouin cried in English for his guests. He put his pistols to his sash. His men parted and raised a saluting avenue of muskets for him that led straight to Devlin.

  Over his blood, his fists white, Devlin took in the man and somewhere, from a decade back, in another world, he recognised the man in white and red, though not as one who had taken his ship. The face was older of course, soft jowls where once had been a granite jaw-line, but him nonetheless; it could be no other.

  ‘Trouin,’ Devlin whispered and Trouin smiled and stopped at a sword’s distance.

  ‘You know me, pirate?’

  ‘Enough. Enough to understand how my ship is lost.’

  ‘You flatter me, Captain,’ he began to affect a courteous wave of his hand then his eye fell to the corpse at Devlin’s feet. ‘I am most sorry for the loss of this man, Captain. I assure you I will punish severely the man responsible.’

  Devlin looked around. ‘So will I.’

  Trouin affected not to hear and clicked his fingers to have Bill’s corpse removed from where it unbalanced everything.

  Peter Sam slapped them away like children and the muskets’ barrels rattled to his chest. But Trouin knew the look.

  ‘Let him be,’ he said, and Devlin nodded to Peter Sam who went down on his knee and lifted Bill’s head to his lap.

  Bill weighed fifteen stone at least and the first sight that greeted the soaked marines clambering back up from the sea where Peter had flung them was the big man carrying Bill to the main hatch cover to gently lay him down.

  He covered the face with his own kerchief to shield him from Bill’s dead eyes looking up; Peter Sam knew well that dead eyes lingered open even if you tried to close them. Devlin t
urned away, rounding on Trouin. Then he looked down at himself, his sailor’s slops and clogs.

  I need my coat, he thought, my hat, my boots. I’m not the man I need to be. Trouin saw his shame. Gallantly ignored it.

  ‘You and I should talk, Captain. I will have the last of your men brought up from the boat. Will you confess that you pirated the boat?’

  ‘No man was harmed,’ Devlin said.

  ‘That is of little consequence. You will hang, but first I must discuss your parole if no more of your men are to die this day.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come: you should get changed. I will not take you seriously in this garb. It will degrade my table.’

  Devlin looked over his men held along the gangway. Trouin had kept them above to run the ship and to keep as hostage meat. The others he supposed were either kept below or on Trouin’s ship. He never thought them dead. His men looked back at him. A long expectant look. He walked behind Trouin to the cabin that had once been his castle. He threw one glance back to Peter Sam and Hugh Harris and they held his eye until the cabin door closed behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Devlin, no qualms about dressing in front of Trouin and two of his marines, strode across the cabin that had once been his. From his broad locker seat he took a slow time in changing from the poor sailor back to the bold pirate, a quixotic knight donning his poor but trusted armour. Holland shirt, Damask waistcoat, dark twill coat, all stolen, fitted for other men. His ancient boots. The same he had worn since taking them from a dying Frenchman on an African archipelago three years gone. He stamped them on, looking to the luck in their soles. His favoured left-locked pistol lay patiently. Devlin let her lie. He dumped his slops into the locker, the diamond bundled within, and slammed the lid. He faced Trouin. Devlin was the pirate again.

  Trouin, sat in one of the only two chairs and looked disagreeably about the cabin.

  ‘I notice comfort is something you pirates do not seem to favour, Captain,’ he indicated with a glove the empty room.