Cross of Fire

by Mark Keating

  ‘Shame and praise me. I am the fox and he is the crow.’ He raised his glass to the table. ‘And we are both equally hated.’

  Devlin entered the cabin and threw his coat onto a chair; the relief of his men’s acceptance was as heavy as the twill. Dandon watched him from the locker seat, an amber bottle between his legs. He watched him limp to the rope beckets that held back the wine from falling when the deck pitched. Neither of them had sought a light first. Just the liquid. Drinking in the dark and alone was what counted for privacy on a pirate.

  Dandon watched him pour a fist’s worth of wine. He knew Devlin had seen him. He would wait to be acknowledged and listened to the wine rush and bubble into the mug.

  For four years now Dandon had known Patrick Devlin. They had both been near thirty then – old for pirates at even that age. Devlin had once saved Dandon from a drunken Blackbeard’s rage on Providence island, where Dandon had fancied himself a barber-surgeon. In truth he had joined Devlin’s rag-tag crew for the drink and the joy of it and, besides, he had nothing better to do.

  It took little more than that to become an enemy of mankind.

  But Dandon, in yellow wide-brimmed hat and justacorps, asides from the scraping off of arms and thighs what did not belong and cauterising that which he could and offering laudanum when he could not, was not fully of the crew.

  He took no part in boardings and no share and only asked that someone bring him back any powders, draughts or chest of medicines that might aid them. He was Patrick Devlin’s friend, and counted himself rare to be it. Rare to be anything alive around Devlin for long.

  Devlin did not even know Dandon’s real name – one of the ways of the pirate. Sign the articles and be baptised anew. Your name belonged to the old. You were on the account now and born again. The purpose was two-fold: Protect your family and your old crimes, or the past that tied you to a king’s ship and the regular.

  Dandon’s name came from ‘Dandelion’, a mockery of his bright yellow coat and hat worn when he had first arrived on Providence and dreamt of operating a saltern and selling gout pills to fat rich men and romancing their soon-to-be widows. He had ended up a pox-doctor in Mrs Haggins’s brothel, and then Devlin had entered his world.

  He lived amongst murderers and thieves but being secure in himself he never carried pistol or sword. He had no need. The pirate Devlin was his friend. No-one could keep count how many times one had saved the other.

  ‘Are we well, Patrick?’ he enquired when the first sup had been sighed away.

  ‘Aye,’ Devlin said. ‘Well enough. We have a new game.’

  Dandon had not seen him since the hours when he had given the men their needed speech. That time was for the planning of a course, the listing of sailcloth and cordage, the counting of hogsheads and sacks and as ever the bottles of brandy, rum and wine to keep the men hot, fit for the Devil. Dandon did not belong when those plans and lists were made; that was for Peter Sam, the quartermaster, and for John Lawson, once the bosun and now sailing master since the death of Bill Vernon. That death had come when the ship had been taken by the great René Duguay Trouin.

  But Devlin had taken it back.

  All for the taking of a diamond.

  They had stolen the first magnificent diamond of the world, the great Pitt diamond, originally stolen from the Regent of France himself, to save a kingdom from the collapse of a company that had valued itself more than all the coin in Europe. There was nothing small in Devlin’s world any more. Once his horizon had been brushing shoes and cleaning plates, steward to John Coxon for four years after Coxon had taken him prisoner from a French ship. He had run to France when the murder of old man Kennedy had made London no place for an Irishman to be found near a corpse. He ran for the second time, as first he had run from Kilkenny to London when his poacher’s shot cracked the wrong tooth and a magistrate swore against him.

  But running was not in Devlin’s nature now. That image was all done.

  Dandon saw the drain of enough wine for him to question further.

  ‘What “game” is it now, Patrick?’

  ‘The old one. All the gold in the world.’

  ‘How is that now?’

  Devlin moved to look out of the small window closest to him. Dusk now, the best time to be on the sea. Anchors soon, the smell of hot stew, the last cries of the petrels and then the stars softening the whole world as if nothing evil ever happened or would again. Until the dawn.

  ‘I’m going after Levasseur. He took a Porto carrack in April. Loaded to the gunwales with gold from Goa. The pirate Roberts is also after. He knows the island where he may be but not how to get there. He’s been abandoned by his captains. I reckon he needs a friend.’

  ‘And you feel you can find that which Roberts cannot?’

  ‘Give me a map, a star and a rule and I’ll show you your mother’s belly.’

  Dandon saluted with his bottle.

  Before becoming the pirate, Devlin’s master, Captain John Coxon, had taught him the art and intricacies of navigation. Coxon had hoped to help the young man. After all, he had stepped forward from his captured ship of the Marine Royale to speak for his officers in strange Irish vowels under his French tongue. Saved their lives. Gave information that had made Coxon a post-captain.

  On finding he could read and write Coxon had given the Irishman study and measure. Perhaps an instructor he could be? Or an hydrographer’s assistant? There would be no officer for the Irishman despite his brains. Coxon and the world were both now paying the price for his teaching of the Irish upstart.

  Most of the pirate’s contemporaries were now dead. The Lords of Providence, the Kings of the Caribbean and the Pirate Republic that they dreamt of had been wiped from the earth under King George’s proclamation of Hostis Humani Generis. Enemy of Mankind. Pirates were placed beyond the law as far as fair trial and punishment were concerned. Kill on sight. Devlin was no longer an antagonist.

  He was a survivor.

  Only Roberts seemed able to douse the fuse lit against them. As underestimated as Devlin, a seaman from a slaver, almost forty, a forgotten man until Howell Davis found him and Roberts turned pirate.

  In two years he had taken nigh on four hundred ships. That did not make him a pirate, that did not make him an admiral – that made him Poseidon himself, and the most wanted man on the sea.

  ‘Though every soul will be looking for the treasure. And for Roberts too,’ Devlin said, to the window more than to Dandon.

  ‘And us to swim into the middle of it all. As always.’

  Devlin cocked his head.

  ‘I swear Dandon, sometimes I thinks you want to live forever.’

  A cry from outside snapped them upright like gunfire.

  ‘Sail! Deck there!’

  They both sped outside and straight into the backs of dozens all straining for a glance. Peter Sam stood to Devlin’s side.

  ‘There,’ he pointed off the starboard quarter, and Devlin called for a spyglass.

  He saw a snow through the glass. The smoky blue lens was dark in the falling light as if it too, and not just Devlin’s eye, were squinting . There, under his gaze, two masts and the jibs. Low in the water.

  ‘She be fast,’ Devlin said. ‘And three miles from us.’

  He passed back the scope to the hand that gave it. ‘Lawson!’ he called for the bosun. ‘Close up on that ship before dark. An hour now, John.’ He climbed the five steps to the quarterdeck, Peter following, Dandon gone back to his bottle. No worth for him outside.

  Here be pirates.

  Devlin looked to the coast. They were three miles from land, the snow a further three miles away. If you attacked a vessel within five miles of land it was an act of war not piracy and that would not do. He had enemies enough already.

  ‘She’s ours,’ Devlin said. ‘Stores are low even after taking Cracker’s lot.’ He had a lectern by the helm with a map always out and marked their place now and where an hour would put them at five knots.

  �
�No more than five, John!’ he called to Lawson. ‘She’s making three. But she’ll raise when she sees us coming.’

  ‘Aye, Cap’n!’ and Lawson yelled at his mates to move like apes into the rigging. One more square of sail.

  ‘What you reckon on her?’ Peter Sam asked. No flag, but then ships rarely sailed with colours until they closed for news.

  ‘A snow. Out here. Too small for Spain. Porto, maybe.’

  Devlin pushed Peter Sam to his work.

  ‘We’ll ask them when we catch them.’

  Chapter Nine

  The triangles of white had still not changed. Devlin, no need for a scope, could see few men upon her, but small traders often sailed light.

  ‘More than an hour. She still runs under staysails and jibs. She’s not fleeing. No mainsails.’

  Peter Sam held his hand over his brow as the setting sun lit up the little ship. ‘So she’s a merchant letting us close for words.’

  ‘Then she’ll have it. We’ll ride into her lee. Raise a Porto flag. I’ll gamble that’s what she is. I see no guns other than swivels. Tell the men it’s a surprisal.’

  Peter Sam left the helm, left just Devlin and the timoneer on the higher ground of the quarterdeck.

  This would be the old game. A pirate’s methods of taking a ship varied as much as the ships themselves or as much as that of the pickpocket and highwayman.

  The drunk who bumps into you on the street, apologises and wheels away with your watch and purse. The crippled old man who begs for alms and then pushes a pistol into your belly, or the sweet girl who asks for aid and her lover stoves your head in from behind with a chair leg.

  Disguise and deception were more powerful than arms – until the last minute and the great reveal, the magician’s ‘praestigium’ and the cannons that rip into your world. Another ship springing up from the sea like the dove from the hat.

  For larger ships, for the Shadow, for those rovers who sailed the square-riggers, the tactic was to appear fully laden and slow.

  The chase, the prey, would be ahead, would see you at their stern under full canvas, your courses stretched fat and tight but barely crawling.

  No need for them to make any more sail. Just a fat merchant lolling in their wake.

  What they did not see was the log over your stern trailing a grinding-stone or ‘stop-waters’, a sea-anchor pulling you to a slow crawl.

  When the time was best judged, up would come the stop-waters and your fat merchant would charge under full sail, run over them like a rogue wave as they fumbled to raise even a half sail under the onslaught.

  That would not work today. The ships were on a parallel and the snow was more than capable of running like a deer from the bullish frigate.

  The smaller ship was the more weatherly. Devlin’s angle of sail could only make twelve of the compass’s thirty main points to the wind. The snow with her staysails and flying jibs and narrow beam could almost double them. She could turn and run at forty-five degrees before the Shadow turned a point.

  So the Shadow had to run ahead, the parallel closing. Run a friendly flag and then time the angle to cut off the ship.

  ‘Stand to her forefoot!’ the cry.

  Cut her bows, and as the daylight vanishes that will be your time, for whereas pirates relish the dark to cover their work, were trained to it, the common sailor fears it.

  They will panic, become clumsy, may lay on too much sail, worse as too little for losing a mast.

  If the other captain kept his head, fought against his instincts and, instead of running, slowed, heaved-to and aimed for the pirate’s wake the pirate would overrun and he would wave them away with a sweep of his hat and could drink to his smarts for the rest of his days.

  That too would not work today.

  The snow had taken the bait of the flag and within minutes the square white and red of the Porto came up from the ensign at the snow’s stern. Both ships heaved-to and the earth stopped turning, and they bobbed together like gulls riding the waves.

  ‘We have her,’ Devlin announced to the timoneer. ‘Peter Sam! Men below! Weapons loose!’

  The sun had flattened her edge along the horizon, the men now merely etched out across the deck, barely there.

  Dozens of them crouched below the hammock nettings with pistols slung by lanyard or silken ribbon around their necks. A coil of rope nearby with grenadoes and stinkpots lay ready to throw to the prey’s deck. Each man held a smouldering match fuse safe in a tin in his waistcoat or wrapped around his wrist. They giggled to each other like children.

  The final subterfuge.

  One of the finest weapons of the pirate was the international nature of his crew. Regardless of the captain’s original caste he could within a year have Dutch and Spanish, African and Indian, French or Portuguese on his quarter-bill. The lines of war did not matter. This was a democracy for all.

  ‘Mateo!’ Devlin called, and a shirtless brown youth bounded to the quarterdeck where Devlin passed him the speaking trumpet.

  Devlin’s chest beat hard, his eyes staring wide and not because of the fading light.

  It would be a cutlass to break a bottle-neck by evening’s end instead of just pulling a cork.

  The thrill of trawling your hands through other men’s gold, pulling their rings from their fingers, taking the pistols that they never used, and the pistols grateful for it. The laughter and the dining on fear. New maps to add, log books to check for your name or news of riches yet to be taken in new ports. Hogsheads of meat, ankers of wine. How do you measure your world?

  ‘Hoy, lá. Quais são as notícias do dia, Capitão? De onde você é?’ Mateo called over, and waited with Devlin crouched beside him.

  ‘From the Holy,’ the call came back in English and Mateo did not understand but no matter, the ships were close enough. Devlin stood to the falconet at his rail and Peter Sam stood with him and gave his order to the men low on the deck.

  ‘Sling your hooks!’

  Grappling irons were hurled at the prey’s gunwale and into the rigging, should someone have the mind to wield an axe to cut them.

  The hooks bit, more men ran to the ropes to haul as the snow groaned and Devlin fired the flintlock on his falconet.

  It was only filled with powder, just a startling warning like the stinkpots that flew over now before the ship could react.

  The clay-pots smashed and the fuse crawled over the brimstone, char-cloth and tar inside and a cloud of foulness spread around the deck.

  These were the harmless weapons, less than the ‘fireworks’ to follow with the grenadoes of glass and nails and musket balls. Give them first a chance to surrender. Let them mark the next part.

  Nothing. No boarding pikes or muskets, no shouts or screams. Devlin’s smoke cleared and he looked down onto the deck below.

  Half a dozen men in black robes wiping their streaming eyes, pouring water from the gourds around the mainmast on the ticklish fires from the pots or stamping them out with sandalled feet.

  No weapons met them and Devlin’s men stood up from the nettings and pointed their pistols and musketoons at a deck ignoring their presence.

  They looked back to Peter Sam to direct them. He held his Sibley gun against his hip and watched the robed men mill about as if the fires were grapes to be picked and the pirate ship just a light disagreeable rain. He turned to Devlin, who had pulled his pistol and looked back just as baffled.

  ‘Priests?’ Devlin said. ‘It’s a ship of priests?’

  A bearded tall man span against the rail and shouted up in a scornful Irish voice which instantly took Devlin back to his boyhood.

  ‘Of course we’re bloody priests, you shite! Now come and put out these bloody fires, damn you! Do you not hear a Father when he calls you!’

  Chapter Ten

  Another hour and into darkness. The snow, the Santa Rosa it transpired, now ran consort to the Shadow, a pirate crew upon her.

  The priests walked to the Shadow over boarding planks under pistol a
nd lantern. The pirates were pleased, for although Whitehall would have laughed at the thought, pirates held priests and tracts in high regard. The pirate Roberts even kept the sabbath and others had begged clergymen to join them as they burnt their ship around their feet.

  Perhaps it was still due to the ingrained Bible of their youth and service and the sailor’s wont to respect anything supernatural, knowing how thin the border lay between life and death.

  They swore on the Bible as much as pistols.

  Seeing his men’s joy at them Devlin gave the priests freedom upon the ship. He ordered them to be fed, to have a table made up for them below; but the pirate ship was sparse of furniture. Their attitude was more to remove wood and bulkheads. Remove to clear more space for more men, for lading, for fighting. But the men adapted well for their guests. A couple of hogsheads and boarding planks for a table, some carpenter’s half-barrels for seats.

  Devlin at least had real chairs and a table in his cabin and he invited the Irish priest to join him and Dandon once the heat of the evening had died down.

  The priest carried aboard with him a sailcloth packet and Devlin recognised the shape and the fondness for books and so let them be.

  They would raid the ship in the dawn.

  They broke a bottle together, beginning as all introductions should begin. The priest, to Devlin’s mind, acted uncomfortably too genial for a man who had just lost his ship.

  ‘Hugh O’Neill, Captain,’ he sent out his hand and Devlin took it.

  ‘Ah, I discern that there is still enough of your home in you to recognise that name.’ He swept his hand on to Dandon who reached over and took it warmly; for so long had such a conviviality been absent from his day.

  Devlin let the priest sit and wanted more on the name.

  ‘You take your name from Irish kings, Father?’

  ‘And why not that for a Donegal man, Captain? And where are you back home?’

  The question was the same from all Irishmen who meet for the first time no matter where they have ended up or how dubious their social standing. For Devlin however this was the time for interrogation not banter, Irish or not. He had played the same scene with dozens of captains before this one.