Hunt for White Gold

by Mark Keating

  ‘Help me, Mister Hib, sir,’ the red and grey beard pleaded. ‘Help old Peter, sir. Don’t want to let you down, Mister Gow, sir.’

  Hib absorbed Peter’s words, the power of them, gravy to his meal. Sam’s voice carried the same whimpering note as those fellows at Newgate who thanked him in the morning for the bacon rind and black bread before he swung them from the rope they had helped him make the night before.

  ‘That’s right, Peter,’ Hib glowed kindly as he lifted his keys to the manacles. ‘You don’t want to let old Hib down now do you? Don’t want to make Hib do anything he don’t want to do now, mate?’ Still his hands drifted to the shining dagger stuffed at his belt as he watched Peter Sam tug on his clothes as gladly as if they were a new suit. ‘Remember I don’t get paid if you misbehave, and then what would I have to do? God knows what I would have to do if you let me down.’

  Peter stood, snapped his jerkin into place and rubbed the leather down. Met Hib’s gaze. ‘I won’t let you down, Mister Gow,’ he grinned back and Hib raised an eyebrow at something he wasn’t sure of beneath Peter’s words. ‘I promise I won’t let you down.’

  ‘See that you don’t, Peter,’ he said and then whispered: ‘I’m minding you. And we’ll kill that treacherous captain of yours for what he’s done to you when he gets here won’t we? Together, man.’

  Peter Sam sniffed again at his leather. ‘Aye. Kill him that has done this thing to old Peter Sam.’

  A room for Valentim Mendes. Regulador of Sao Nicolau, the Verde island of the blessed Portuguese. Chained by his wrists and ankles to ringbolts sunk eight inches into the red flock walls of a window-shuttered room. One wrist, the left, was also tied with rope to the chains, the weakness of the porcelain appendage at its join giving some concern to his captors. Valentim had indeed struggled for some hours, pulling down at the screws riveting his flesh to the lifeless hard-paste hand ordered from the Vienna factory of Claudis Du Paquier – the factory built on the stolen secrets of Meissen, secrets that now threatened to flood the world once the letters of the Jesuit Father became widely known. Gold, saffron, diamonds, they were all the scrapings of the earth picked up by beggars. But this was industry like the ships, the iron, the guns, the sugar and the slaves before it. Factories would spring up all over Europe. Saxony would lose its monopoly, China its mystery.

  Villages that had toiled to make bread for the hamlets that surrounded them would now fight to make genteel cups and tapered pots for coffee and chocolate for gentlemen who knew nothing but the craving of admiration for the best service at afternoon coffee, the most exquisite silk, the choicest lace finally available now the wars were over and kings could be kings again.

  And Valentim, noble by birth, but not noble in the right world, his faith a little too papist to be entirely Christian, would be chained and starved until such a moment when he would be worthy to be addressed.

  The door opposite swung open and there Ignatius stood, holding orange-scented linen to his face at the mess around Valentim’s black riding boots.

  ‘Could you not have held on, Governor, until the hour I give you?’ Ignatius choked behind the kerchief. ‘For the sake of others can you not restrain to be a gentleman?’

  Valentim lifted his head. ‘You give me cabbage water and cider vinegar. My suit must now be burnt because of you, Ignatius, and my father will turn in his grave.’ He pulled against his chains and spat his words. ‘And you will die because of your insolence! Your throat will be cut at the hour of my freedom!’ Valentim spoke louder: ‘I am the governor of his majesty’s island of Sao Nicolau and you will—’

  ‘Enough!’ Ignatius waved dismissively and closed the door behind him. ‘I grow tired of your bleating, Valentim.’ He moved across the room, bare of furniture save for a chair and a perfunctory table for Valentim to eat his meagre rations; a lamp upon it lightened the gloom behind the shuttered windows. ‘I have suffered you no physical harm,’ Ignatius remonstrated. ‘I have taken care of you as well as I would expect you to take care of me should the situation ever be reversed. Do unto others, Valentim. Do unto others.’ He paced in front of him. ‘Besides, the worst is over. If I were to expect Devlin or Teach to return it would be imminently, and if they do not … then I will definitely need to think of some … new arrangement.’

  Valentim straightened at the mention of Devlin. ‘I could not allow you to live once I am free, Ignatius, and if you kill me—’

  ‘Please, Valentim! No soul knows you are here. I do not make mistakes. I have been at this game a long time, Valentim. I am a study of Walsingham and a master of espionnage, which in this age has less to do with people like you,’ he pointed a mocking finger, ‘and more and more to do with companies, investors, thieves … and pirates. I have grown wealthy by knowing what others will pay to know. I am not a monster, Valentim. It has become my responsibility to have as little of the world as possible know about these letters. The last time I had them the world beat a path to my door. I sent them north for safety with Bellamy and even that was not enough. Once I have them again all of those who know of them will be eradicated until I can use them to their full value. I would wager that if I informed even your court that I had the arcanum of the true porcelana for their approval, but that it would cost them your life for them to receive it, not an eyelid would blink at the thought.’

  Valentim weighed the words, unable to prevent his eyes growing wide at the notion. Ignatius watched with pleasure and laughed through his words. ‘Do not fear, Valentim. I am sure that will not occur.’

  ‘I do not fear,’ Valentim hissed. ‘I fear nothing from an English porco filho de um whore!’

  ‘I would save your tongue for the pirate when he arrives.’ Valentim’s eyes gleamed, not unseen by Ignatius. ‘I promised you the opportunity for revenge. You may fight to the death the man who maimed you.’ Ignatius placed his hand on his breast. ‘My word as a gentleman. But for my records I must barter with you once more for such a duel.’

  ‘What else is there that you do not have?’ Valentim hung limp in his chains, for noble spines bend as any other.

  Ignatius strolled around the room, casually examining the bars and shutters of the two windows. ‘A year ago, when we began our correspondence, you knew what I did not. You knew where the letters lay after Bellamy’s ship went down. That you knew of the letters at all from that rock you call home was intriguing enough, but I would like to know how you found that which I could not?’ Ignatius paused and waited for the reply.

  Valentim rolled his eyes to focus on Ignatius. ‘Pirates,’ he said. ‘A pirate named Toombs told me of the letters in exchange for his life. I knew of you through the court, the agency of conspiracy. This “porcelain mystery” had value. But I did not value it.’ Hate breathed through him. ‘I have higher ideals that you cannot understand. But you could find Devlin.’

  ‘But the cannon on Providence?’

  Valentim sighed wearily. ‘I told you, English: pirates. It will always be pirates. Palgrave Williams had to take the gun somewhere. It would be a pirate that took him. And pirates will talk … eventually. I know pirates well.’

  ‘Ah,’ Ignatius made to leave. ‘For a moment I thought you had a grasp of facts that may have been of further use to me. Pity. I had not counted on the energy of hate, although I rely on it often. However, I will stand by my word.’ He opened the door, revealing Hib Gow filling the frame, the keys to Valentim’s chains hanging from his fist and the black servant dwarfed beside him with a tray of bread and soup. Every mealtime was the same. Ignatius bowed his leave. ‘If the pirate Devlin returns successfully you may have your play at him, Valentim. It will doubtlessly save me the trouble of what to do with at least one of you.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Three to Charles Town

  Three cabins and the same scene played out three times within. Three captains hunched over tables, the tools of their art before them: brass-hinged sector rule, dividers, compass card, loupe, pencil and log all dancing across charts
of the Bahamas and south-eastern shores of the Americas, all working under the intense application of their magicians and the stifling heat of the noon.

  The Adventure …

  Edward Teach – Blackbeard – was shadowed by Israel Hands and Black Caesar as he crossed a pencil along the soundings. He knew the waters well but still the threes and fours beneath his plotting reassured him that the two frigates could not follow his path. The two men at his shoulders watched the lines draw out, the miles pencilled in effortlessly, excluding the shifting of lateen sails and hard reeving that would make them.

  Aft through the slanting stern windows, a mile off his larboard-quarter swelled the ivory squares of the Milford under full sail, heeling to leeward from the easterly airs, the island of New Providence just a white and blue smear on the horizon far behind.

  Israel Hands looked uneasily to the rippled glass and the three masts inching across the window frame. Teach saw the glance and slammed the desk to bring his quartermaster back to the chart. ‘Pay attention, damn you, man! Those sails will still be there else! We’re shaking him loose!’

  ‘Aye, Cap’n.’ Hands turned back, contrite, and stared down at Teach’s runes upon the chart. ‘We’re to traverse through Abaco and the Grand? Lose the Milford in the shallows?’

  ‘Aye, that be it,’ Teach growled and returned to the chart.

  The Milford and Coxon drew too much water to follow through the white shallows of the passage between the two islands, now in sight already before their bow; and Blackbeard’s Adventure, built for speed, although with a quarter of the canvas could make the passage before the Milford’s sails had dried in the wind. Consequently she would follow Devlin, Teach affirmed.

  Teach’s own passage, from this noon, would be sixty-nine miles nor’west until the 27th parallel and Hobe Sound then course up the coast, no colours, for another four hundred-odd miles to Charles Town. That meant nearly five hundred miles still to roll beneath their keel.

  Teach dragged his log across the map, his calculations pencilled into the margins with his concentrated delicate hand. The Adventure could make seven knots off and on all the way and be in Charles Town in three days, or four with drinking and sleep. At best estimation, a pirate’s odds, his contemporaries upon the sea could make it in five days at full sail if they could wet four knots.

  Teach sat back and let Caesar and Hands congratulate him. The Queen Anne’s Revenge, run aground weeks before, could not have helped them in such a task with her four hundred tons, and they slapped their captain’s back with the measure of it and his wisdom to trade down, sink his lot into one of his smaller tenders, which had trebled their account and would now safely take them back to the inlets and points of the Carolinas.

  Never mind the white crisp sails, diminishing even now from their stern, nor the grey ones of the Shadow to their starboard beam, the Adventure would reach Charles Town and Ignatius first. Without the letters, true, but reaching him first alive far superior in choice than first dead if he chose to stand.

  The Milford …

  John Coxon threw the dividers to the table. His sailing master and Rosher flinched at the outburst.

  ‘Four knots! Four knots! That sloop, Mister Halesworth, Blackbeard’s sloop, is making seven! Devlin is almost ten cables from our bow and you offer me four knots!’

  Halesworth stood his ground, ‘I cannot force the wind, Captain. The Milford has not been cleant since she came from England and these waters are as ugly as a parson’s widow.’

  ‘Then turn her into a brigantine, Mister Halesworth!’ Coxon went back to the chart, his knuckles digging into the table. ‘Rig staysails between the masts, get some boom-irons on and studding sails out. Good hands and carpentry should have it done in three hours.’ He picked up the dividers again and tapped urgently at the chart’s surface as the others looked on. ‘Devlin can’t make it through Abaco and Grand Bahama. It’s forty miles wide but barely knee deep to him and to me. To us. We shall make north-east by north to Eleuthera now, before he turns. Then we’ll see where he runs. By the time you have your new sails we may have the speed to catch the Shadow.’

  ‘That will put the wind to our starboard quarter, Captain,’ Halesworth sighed.

  ‘All the more reason for you to make up staysails between. What we lose to leeward we’ll gain abaft.’

  Halesworth pulled out his book and licked his inch of a pencil, the shake of his head barely perceptible. ‘Aye, aye, Captain.’

  Rosher mopped his brow, leaving beads of greasy sweat smeared across his linen. ‘What of Blackbeard’s sloop, Captain? Are we not to chase him in preference perhaps?’

  The dark look from his captain shrivelled his voice like salt on a slug. ‘Is he not more notorious, I mean … more worthy … to some that is … to others that is?’ He smiled uneasily.

  Coxon went back to his chart. ‘Devlin is already far ahead of him. This Blackbeard is conning for the shallows north, away from us both. They may be cohorts. They may not. They may join up somewhere later, which we will establish once we are further into the Atlantic and in a better position to determine. For the now, and this is not personal, Mister Rosher, the Milford is better suited, both for speed and for power, to chase after the rated ship rather than the sloop, would you not agree?’ Coxon looked calm again and waited for the young man to answer.

  Rosher seized the opportunity to reaffirm his loyalty. ‘Absolutely, Captain. I would advocate no other path.’ He bowed smartly.

  ‘Good,’ Coxon nodded. ‘Then make it so Mister Rosher, Mister Halesworth. Dismissed and about your business.’ Their salutes were disturbed by the sailor in straw hat and slops who lurched breathless into the doorway, remembering just before he spoke to rap urgently on the door.

  ‘’Tis the sloop, Cap’n!’ he blurted. ‘She’s making north! Toward the islands!’ He backed out of the shadow of the cabin to make way for Rosher and Halesworth as they hurried deckwards to confirm his words.

  On paper the islands of the Bahamas were scattered like Dandelion seeds blown from the Gulf of Florida. Skinny strips of land almost too numerous to list. Most sailed round them, their sand bars and shallows too treacherous to navigate. These were grand pirate waters for sloops and xebecs but hazardous to the men in heavier ships that hunted them. Their treacherous and shallow draft was perfect for Teach’s keel to forge ahead. The others would have to make for the deep blue Atlantic.

  At the starboard gunwale they descried the larboard beam of the sloop slowly moving across their bow through their forward rigging and they ducked to maintain the view when the foot of the courses blocked the sight as the bow rolled down.

  Halesworth nodded approvingly. ‘She’s going for the shallows to be sure. Box-hauling. Running away from us.’

  ‘So the captain is right,’ Rosher looked above to the sails on a hard reach. ‘We should stand on. Make for Devlin’s ship as best we can.’

  Halesworth tipped his chin to the dark cabin, the door still open and Coxon still within, for he had no need to follow them in looking after the route of Blackbeard. ‘I don’t think there was ever going to be any other way, Mister Rosher.’ He tapped his hat. ‘I am to my sails. This watch will be a busy one.’ He turned away, leaving Rosher to stare out at the black pirate frigate now maybe eight cable lengths distant, a nautical mile, and alone before them. He wondered, swallowing drily beneath his necktie, at what the pirates made of them at their tail.

  The Shadow …

  ‘I see it, Bill,’ Devlin said, declining the offer of the scope to watch Blackbeard’s sloop cutting away. They stood out on the larboard quarter gallery, where the black-pitched shrouds met the hull at the channels some feet out, giving them an observation platform. The wind played an evil howl through the dead eyes as Devlin leant through the ropes, resting his forearms on the ratlines, and contemplated the Milford’s square courses and gallants shining brightly in the distance, steadfastly encroaching as if the Shadow’s capstan was winding her in.

  ‘Blackb
eard will make to course between the islands and to the Americas, whereas we can only go by way of Eleuthera and the sea. If we can make five knots we’ll be to him in as many days.’

  ‘Aye, with Coxon at our hawser hole all the way,’ Bill noted. ‘And him with you always in mind.’

  Devlin agreed. ‘And he came to me in the gaol in Providence. Offered me a pistol which I didn’t take. Knowing I had something else brewing. I think it was purely the man’s instincts that must’ve kept him alive through the war.’

  ‘Aye. Whether he catches us now or catches us in Charles Town we’ll find out soon enough. Either way we’ve caught us a Tartar.’ The pirate’s reference hearkened back to the savage Asiatics, and meant through ill-luck or bad judgment to come up against a foe that could not be taken nor would quit.

  Again Devlin agreed but now turned his head back to the cabin and to the table where he had plotted the five-hundred-and-fifty-mile course up the coast of America; and to the pile of yellowing parchments that curiosity could not withstand examining – the letters that the whole world seemed to seek, made up of the intricate writings and diagrams of Father d’Entrecolles. Devlin thought again on Dandon’s words concerning the limit of Ignatius’s knowledge.

  He knows our history. But he does not know us.

  Devlin’s customary, almost childish grin began to form again, and Bill saw the warming of the game in his captain’s eyes.