by Mark Keating
The Pirate Devlin
Mark Keating
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* * *
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
1
Copyright © Mark Keating 2010
The right of Mark Keating to be identified as the Author
of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious or are historical figures
whose words and actions are fictitious. Any other resemblance to real persons,
living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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For John Roberts and James Montgomerie,
who always wanted to read on.
* * *
Pride, envy and avarice
Are the three sparks
That have set on fire
The hearts of man.
Dante Alighieri,
The Divine Comedy, 'Inferno': VI, 74-5
* * *
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Author's Note
* * *
Prologue
The West Coast of Africa, April 1717
The Frenchman's boots were filling with blood as he cracked his way through the wet coarseness of the undergrowth. As daylight faded into bladed shadows, the jungle pulled him deeper into its crushing green.
His breaths rasped through the heavy heat, stretching the pain along his side. The pounding of his heart engulfed his body.
Bereft of sword or pistol, his only hope was to push himself ever on, spurred by the shouts of the pirates echoing from the beach.
Desperately he dodged across the uneven ground. Stumbling upwards in one step, falling the next, grasping for purchase, the wet jungle slapping his face with every cursing breath.
Without a glance behind, he arrowed away from the triumphant yell that signalled the first sighting of his bloody trail spotting amongst the waist-tall fronds; his pace slowed with the strange coldness of his own blood seeping down his leg.
Away from the sand and the mud now, he found himself wading through lush boot-high grass and shadowy palms.
Enough of the green flaying him weaker. Enough beating him back. He crouched to draw breath, to slow the beat of his heart pushing his life from the hole above his hip and staining wine-black the worsted blue of his Marine Royale doublet.
The sweating forest was reminiscent in his near delirium of a mansion house back home in Orly, a maze of corridors and echoes.
Now, passageways of mossy trunks, instead of green flocked halls, opened up into insect-humming, fern-filled rooms, each one sealed off from the other until he broke through its emerald door.
He crouched in one of these dark chambers, his insides cramping, his own will trying to pull him down into the soft, welcoming grass. Sleep awhile and hope his pursuers would pass him by, give up, return to the boat.
When the longboat had landed, and all had jumped into the surf to drag her in, he too had leaped clear and seized the moment of the struggle against the tide to back away and then bolt free, pounding up the beach, clumsy against the sand underfoot.
He had stumbled the short distance to the breach of the wild mass of twisted white branches protecting the jungle, when one of them had got off a lucky pistol shot that had slammed into his hip, and he found a powerful desire to keep running from the wicked laugh that followed it.
Now, as he sucked at the moist air, he heard no noise around him save for the chattering of black beetles, the endless chirrup of the cicadas. The mocking calls and whistles had faded, he was sure. He reached up to a friendly branch and heaved himself along as quietly as the jungle would allow in its pity.
Staggering through the swathes of enormous leaves fanning his brow, he came into another clearing, as polished as a bowling green, as peaceful as the hour after mass. In the centre of the dell, disturbed in his foraging by the interloper, a lone crow bobbed, glistening black against the vitality of the green. There was a moment of judgement as the bird cocked his head to the sweating Frenchman. He cawed once, softy, to question the intrusion.
The Frenchman hissed to his companion for silence, but the black bird merely chuckled at his impudence then, as punishment, sprang into the air, with his laughing war cry pealing around the trees like a plague bell. A dozen of his brothers followed with their admonishment, breaking through the roof of the trees to form a black cloud over his sanctuary.
The shouts of the pirates rose with the cries of the birds, and the jungle danced with the crash of their approach.
The Frenchman pitched forward, drunkenly pliant. The imminence of his own demise gave at least some promise of rest. He collapsed gratefully into the coolness of the damp grass as the seven brutes came through the green curtains into his world.
'Well, well, Froggy,' panted the quartermaster, Peter Sam, standing over him, sweat running off his shaven head, filtering through his red beard. 'That's quite a run you gave us there, boy.' Throwing his cutlass aside, he joined Philippe Ducos, the unfortunate young man from the Marine Royale, and sat in the grass, his chest heaving.
The other half-dozen gathered round their prisoner, who stared straight up, gasping his last breaths to the blue sky breaking through the lacy canopy of trees.
Hugh Harris gave a swift kick that belied the daintiness of the red and white silk shoes he had taken from the French sloop only the week before, now soaked and salt-stained.
'So, there's no pig farm on this island, then? Eh, Froggy?' Another kick to the black wound.
'What'll we do with him, Peter?' William Magnes, the old man of their group at forty-five, put his hanger away, never willing to be the killer.
'We'll do for him sure enough.' Peter reached for his cutlass, stood up and wiped his head with a dirty kerchief. 'Makes no sense to take him back. But we'
ll not go back empty.' He snapped his fingers to a young pock-faced lad. 'Davies, go with Hugh and Will. Back to the boat. Get the muskets. See if you can scout down some goat. The ground's right for pigs at leasts.'
'Aye, Peter.' The lad and the old standers went off with slaps and swearing.
'You two.' He pointed to Patrick Devlin and Sam Fletcher, who were new hands, weeks new, a couple of navy 'waisters' still learning the sweet trade. 'Go through the Frog's pockets for yourselves, lads, then end him. I'm going to scour for fruit. I wants his jacket as a sack. Gets it off him, then come and gets me with it.' He grabbed the arm of the remaining pirate, a young, black-haired, moon-faced lad. 'Thomas, come with me.'
Devlin, Fletcher and the Frenchman were now alone in the gloom.
Philippe Ducos's eyes were closed. He had been drifting away to Peter's growling voice. Now he jumped awake as he felt the quick hands of the pirates running through the pockets of the blue tunic his wife had lined two years before.
'Stop squirming, Frog!' Fletcher cackled. 'Aye, Pat? Don't it make more sense to shoot him first then relieve him?'
'Maybe,' Devlin murmured, his face lowered to avoid the pleading eyes of Philippe Ducos.
Fletcher had been a deserter, had leaped into his pirate life with glee a month before Patrick Devlin had been dragged aboard.
To Devlin, who had spent years amongst the king's ships, manservant to Captain John Coxon, the pirate ship was but a passing inconvenience. He had signed their articles without protest and kept his distance from the ones he had beaten back and striped with blade when they had chanced upon the Noble in the North African straits.
Of all the officers and sailors of the Noble, the pirates marvelled how it was the tall, black-haired servant who had carved a circle of defiance in front of the cabin as the others ran and the deck burned.
They had laughed as he stood before them in his shabby, ill-fitting suit and danced, against Peter Sam no less, who had strode forward and twisted the sword from Devlin's hand as if plucking it from a child.
He would bide his time. Keep low. He did not mind the men themselves, for some of his old days amongst the fishermen of St Malo had fringed along the blade of the 'ecumeur des mers, skimming off the surface of the sea rather than underneath it. But this was not his life. Merry enough, but too short for his liking.
From Ducos's pockets they pulled out an empty tobacco tin, a small flint wrapped in a strip of white leather, a thimble, a handkerchief and just the bowl piece of a clay pipe.
The Frenchman resisted more as he realised that death was closing. He began to struggle. Garbling French at them. His little English useless now as panic crept over him.
More words, pleading words, came babbling from him. At some hushed sound Devlin stopped and listened hard as the soft accent repeated itself.
Devlin's hands clamped against the Frenchman's shoulders. Their eyes locked as he grabbed the Frenchman's shirt, pulling him up, Sam Fletcher flung aside.
The Frenchman met his stare and almost smiled as he knew that this one at least understood his promise. Philippe Ducos nodded desperately to the serious, dark face and swore to God.
Fletcher watched, perplexed, at the two almost embracing in some confidence. His simple grasp of humanity had noted that an oath of some kind had passed between the two, and all Fletcher knew of oaths was that the very next words from the desk would be '… and that will be half a guinea.'
But the babbling Frog was still going on, and Peter had asked for the jacket, and Peter had asked for the death, and that bloody Frog was still going on and on and Patrick was listening to it, for Christ's sake. Enough.
Fletcher stood back just far enough to pull his pistol clear and fire into the side of the Frenchman's skull, all three of them reeling from the shock of fire and blood, but only the Frenchman falling.
The crows took to the air again, laughing over the wicked court of men, as the explosion ripped away Ducos s final pleas.
Fletcher spat at the trembling corpse, the Frenchman still lisping some pointless utterance.
Devlin could taste the bitter blood of the man on his lips from the spatter. Fletcher laughed as the Irishman wiped the blood away with the dead man's linen.
He started to pull off the jacket, still maniacally chuckling at Devlin's bloodied face. Devlin cursed him as he knelt down and started to pull at the Frenchman's brown leather boots. The boots were old, probably the man's father's before him, but they were good.
'What you doing, Pat?'
'This Frog might have feet as big as mine, for a change. My shoes have had it. These'll do.'
'Aye. Perhaps the stench will be better and all. What was all that Frog-talk he was jawing about? You get any of that, Pat?' Fletcher had freed the coat from the limp body and then fingered through the scant effects, not listening for an answer and missing entirely the slow movement Devlin had made to lay his hand to his pistol butt. He touched it, brushed the lock with his palm, then went back to hauling off the boots.
'No. Just thought I might try. Seemed like he had something to say.'
'Aye, well, teaches him for being a Frog, don't it? I'm having the tobacco tin. Peter said we could takes what we wants.' Then he added, 'But don't tell him, mate. You know what he's like. He'll have it himself and leave me the thimble.' Fletcher carried up the tunic and skipped away, burying the tin in his waistcoat.
Sitting down, Devlin had put one boot on, and indeed they were as if made for him, despite the dampness of the blood that his stocking was soaking up.
Pulling the other over his calf, he inched his eyes around the circle of trees. Fletcher had gone. He was alone with the dead.
He felt into the leather. Sure enough, there was a folded parchment inside, just as Philippe Ducos had said there would be. Devlin allowed one finger to brush the paper, then pulled the rest of the boot on. He made a throwing motion, as if tossing a small pebble he had found inside. The only one to watch the act was the dead Philippe Ducos.
Devlin stood and looked down at the Frenchman, who had sat huddled below deck with them for the past week. His shy separation from the crew had mirrored Devlin's own first days aboard. He thought of old man Kennedy, long dead now, telling him when he had first escaped to London from a foaming-mouthed magistrate in Ireland, never to give away too much about yourself, not for pride's sake: 'But for lest someone finds a reason to hang you for it, Patrick.'
There had never been a reason to tell his new companions that he spoke French like a corsaire, after the murder of Kennedy had put him to his feet again and to the forts and coasts of Brittany to barely survive as a fisherman. Forced to learn from his coarse fellows, who laughed at his clumsy Irish vowels, then donning the Marine Roy ale tunic himself for a short time, before the protective wing of Captain Coxon had swept over him.
Devlin absently checked the flint in his pistol, screwing it tighter, as he turned to take the long walk back to the shore.
Philippe Ducos lay dead, his blood already matting hard on the grass and being inspected by tropical ants. Mosquitoes flew in and out of the crack in his head like escaping dreams.
The book that was his short military life had closed with the snap of a pistol from a man who could not write his own name.
The last of the crew of a French sloop that had delivered a fortune of the king's own gold to a secret island in the Caribbean now grew cold in the afternoon heat. The location of the gold remained nestled roughly in the boots that were now calmly striding away. The only sound in the small glade was from the busily curious insects gathering on the fallen Frenchman.
* * *
Chapter One
Stepping from the damp closeness of the jungle to the blinding brightness of the beach took a moment of adjustment. Devlin shielded his eyes from the glare of the sand. He had been given no order other than to assure the death of the Frenchman, so he took the time to ponder the significance of the parchment hidden in the dead man's boots.
He moved down to a rocky vanta
ge along the edge of the jungle, every step reminding him of the folded secret rubbing against his calf.
He sat on the volcanic outcrop and squinted out to sea. They had landed on the east of the island, which had provided them the best sounding, and now, as Devlin stared out, he could just make out the coast of Africa herself, stretching like a line of black ink drawn across the horizon, an enormous blanket of thunderous dark clouds threatening to swallow her. The archipelago the Frenchman had led them to was more than thirty leagues distant, yet as far as Devlin's gaze panned, his view was the dark shore of an enormous other world. He had never walked upon the land of nightmarish beasts and black backs that shouldered the wealth of the New World, but had seen the remnants of men who had found disease Africa's only promise. Still, what point a sailor, if home were all he craved?
In the offing, the Lucy sat. A black-and-white two-mast brigantine. Square-rigged on the foremast, gaff-rigged on the main, with a full set of jibs and staysails for speed and agility. A young ship, fourteen years out of Chatham, although most of her spars and yards had been cannibalised from older souls. She had the extravagance of both capstan over windlass and wheel over tiller, and a quarterdeck that made every sloop of war look twice upon her.
Eighty feet long with only eight six-pounders, she was a baby compared to the French and English frigates that Devlin was used to, but she could move as swiftly as running your finger across a map.
Stern and bow, the pirates' stanchion mounted three pairs of swivel guns along the rails. These half-pound falconets, loaded with grape, could devastate an opposing crew, peppering the shrouds and decks, pulling at flesh like fish hooks. Two further six-pounders, one placed as a chaser, the other aft, peeped out of the Lucy's hull through crudely cut ports, but by far the pirates' most deadly weapons were the men themselves.
Fully armed, weapons kept immaculately clean and dry through wax and tallow strip, each man was formidable with a musket; even Devlin, a poacher in his youth, an old matchlock his bedside companion, was denied a musket until he came up to their standard.