Hunt for White Gold

by Mark Keating

  ‘Weigh anchor!’ Halesworth yelled in response to Coxon’s nod. ‘Make fighting sail!’

  ‘We’ll meet her in less than an hour, Rosher,’ said Coxon, checking his watch. ‘Away from the lanes. Meet her in the Atlantic. Take her once and for all.’ He noticed a tremor of concern pass across the young man’s face and shooed it away. ‘Come now, Rosher, you are to be congratulated! It is not every day we get the chance for a prize!’

  ‘No, Captain,’ he agreed. ‘But I am glad for your presence also on such a day.’

  Coxon sniffed away the compliment. ‘Lay dead-lights to the cabin windows and prepare for closed-quarters, Mister Rosher, then to your gun-crew.’ He looked over to the Shadow where some activity drew his eye and also Mister Halesworth to his elbow.

  ‘Captain, it appears—’

  ‘I see it, Mister Halesworth: they are raising arming cloths.’

  Along the ship the pirates were stringing ‘fights’, red sheets trimmed in white that would both shield them from accurate targeting and hide their own actions and numbers. The reason for the choice of red was obvious enough and the sheets were pulled up even to the tops until the Shadow looked more like a costumed circus tent than a man-of-war.

  ‘He knows we are on him. Stand to, Mister Halesworth. Putting up his fights shows he is troubled.’

  Halesworth traced a finger out to the Shadow’s stern to the gig being lowered from the counter. Two figures were aboard. Coxon followed Halesworth’s finger to the sight and watched the white flag shimmy up the Shadow’s mainmast from the cover of the arming cloths.

  ‘Troubled indeed, Captain,’ Halesworth raised his eyebrows at the unexpected behaviour of a man he had begun to fear, sure now that one of the dark figures rowing towards them was the pirate Devlin. ‘He wishes a truce of some kind perhaps?’ He looked carefully at his captain who seemed to be studying the boat stoically but whose hand was tight and pale against the gunwale.

  ‘Stay your sails, Mister Halesworth. Let him come to me,’ decided Coxon, then turned his back to Halesworth and walked aft to the Great Cabin. ‘I’ll kill any man who fires against him.’

  Coxon spared one look over the water to the black and red ship. Whatever Devlin had planned to do, whatever fate Charles Town held for him, whatever trickery New Providence had provided, had come to an end. And he wanted to hear what picture the man who had once been his thrall had painted on the world this final time, before his inevitable end.

  Chapter Fifty

  Master and Servant

  The gig slammed between the wind and water of the Milford and was handsomely belayed despite the repute of the men below; there was even a shrill whistle to announce the boots of the tall rake standing on English boards.

  He had not changed his clothes and had not shaved. He looked as worn as a Newfoundland whaler captain but nobody met his eye and judged him. He carried a book and a volume of tied paper beneath one arm. Perhaps he had come to preach to them?

  Halesworth removed his hat, the action not reciprocated, and bid him welcome which greeting was also not returned.

  Devlin spoke carefully, quietly, for Halesworth alone and not the thirty armed men and marines crowding the waist and main hatch, all shifting and vying for a view like bridesmaids craning their heads for a peek at the best man.

  ‘My man, Hugh, will stay below,’ he said and opened his coat to show his belt full of weapons. ‘Would you take my arms?’

  Halesworth searched for a threat in the almost sleepy eyes that he took for an inebriate’s. He thanked him for the offer but declined to reach into the black coat and instead gestured to the cabin with a bow. ‘Captain Coxon will receive you. On your honour, sir.’

  The pirate lowered his head to hide his grin under the brow of his hat. ‘I would like to see John very much,’ he said and walked along the gangway with Halesworth following, shaking his head at the familiarity.

  Coxon had removed his coat and the wax from a bottle of Madeira sack and was drinking a glass of it as the door from his coach opened with a timid knock. A half-cocked pistol rested beside the bottle. There was no need to conceal it; Devlin would expect no less.

  Halesworth gave no introduction and hovered in the doorway as the pirate ducked beneath the overhead and removed his hat. Coxon waved Halesworth away without a word and the coach door clicked shut.

  ‘John,’ Devlin dropped his hat next to the pistol, ‘I have brought you a gift under a flag of truce. A thanks for leaving me to escape from Providence and not hanging me as you saw me. Without you gone I am sure it would not have been so simplified.’

  ‘I will hear of it all from Rogers when I return. No doubt some portion of blame will fall to my quarter. That is I take it, that Rogers still lives?’

  Devlin sat down. ‘He may regret it but I made no offence against him.’ He put his package on the table. ‘A book. From Miguel De Cervantes. I know your fondness for words and I thought you might be interested in the purpose that has brought us together again.’ He rested his arm on the pile of papers and passed over Book II of Don Quixote.

  Coxon took the book and placed it on the chair beside him without a glance. ‘Your purpose is well known to me, Patrick. Whatever nobility you wish to attach to yourself …’ he paused as a trio of yells resounded outside the door chiding slack hands, ‘… you are still only a pirate under the law.’ He poured more Madeira, two more, and offered Devlin a glass. ‘And I out-gun you and out-man you I’m sure, since you hide behind those arming cloths, which is why you come to me under a white flag.’

  ‘I do not come to surrender, John,’ Devlin took the glass. ‘And I hope you will not take advantage of the matter.’

  ‘And you would not take advantage? If I were sat in your cabin?’

  ‘That I cannot say. But I gambled that you were a better man than I.’ He saluted Coxon with his glass and closed his eyes on the warm sweetness in his mouth more delicate than the harsh, brackish rum he had drunk a quart of that morning to steel himself for the meeting with his former master.

  Whatever he had achieved, whatever he had become, John Coxon had been his master for four years. He had beaten him, fed him, owned him. You could never be equal to such a man, until that man were dead. Freedom began at the grave. Coxon undoubtedly knew the same.

  ‘This conversation will end now, Patrick. What was your purpose on Providence?’ He let his right hand lay beside the wrist of his pistol. ‘If not simply for your gold?’

  ‘A man named Ignatius told me that the world is again at war. Is that true, John?’

  ‘It is so. Spain fancies Philip on the throne of France. War rages in Sicily as we speak.’

  ‘So would not this folly in the Bahamas be at an end soon enough? Colonising hell-mouths that struggle to build even churches.’

  ‘It might be ended at that. But it is not for me to say. Perhaps men like Rogers and his kind hold too much faith in this New World. They did not ask my kind for our opinion. Perhaps the answer is in the natives and yourselves. Company men have sent me for their own mercantilist motives. Warranted from the King no less. This age of your rover friends is ended. And I may have been forgotten enough to be asked to fight. My role now is to sweep you and your kind from the profit ledgers.’

  ‘Aye, I reckon one day it will just come down to me and you swearing at each other from across the sea.’

  ‘That could be today, Patrick.’

  Devlin rubbed a weary hand down his face. ‘I would hope not, Captain.’

  Coxon laughed. ‘Thank you, Patrick! Thank you indeed!’

  ‘For what, Captain?’

  ‘For giving me my title at last. I would flog Rosher for less.’

  Coxon poured more Madeira and pulled the tale from Devlin. In spite of all he now was, in spite of the star-shaped white scar on his forearm Devlin was still the servant, still his man. The man that he had seen promise in and even liked, when time and duty had permitted; and in some misbegotten sense that would reflect like filth in Whitehall
, there was even a feeling akin to pride in the brigand that Coxon himself did not fully understand and which no-one else would ever feel. Until the end, still to come.

  For now Devlin told of the taking of his friend and quartermaster by an agent, perhaps of courts, perhaps of governments, perhaps of companies, but not a man of honour.

  ‘Men of honour, John, talk of men such as you and I. And always will. Always. In the singular. They don’t speak of armies and nations but of men’s names. For sword points and lead all end singularly. Learned souls talk of maps and nations, forgetting that it all falls down to limbs and the dead. We sit at a table surrounded by two hundred singular men of honour. We can save some blood today for whatever purpose the others have for them tomorrow. We have virgins and whore-mongers. We have widows’ sons, orphans and thieves. But they are ours, yours and mine. Not theirs yet. Not today. You have my gold on Providence. Buried with Sarah. I’ll leave the end up to you.’

  ‘And what of that fellow, Howell Davis, what did he get to conspire alongside you, Patrick? I surrendered only a thousand pounds of your account to Rogers after we searched the Mumvil.’

  ‘He had some. Needed it to brush off Seth’s bad luck. I bought my way into Providence. Lost my favoured gun because of it. I had to go in naked as I came into the world.’

  Coxon stood, his movement prompting Devlin to hover over his pistol; a sideways look glinted from Coxon at the move but nothing more.

  ‘I got back my own duelling pistols,’ Coxon moved to his cot and turned to Devlin with a sailcloth packet of bulk and familiar shape. ‘And I believe this is yours, Patrick. Left-handed lock. Ugly brute.’ He tossed the packet, amused by Devlin’s pleasure as he unwrapped and stroked the octagonal barrel of his old friend.

  ‘I am indebted to you, Captain. I have missed her so.’

  ‘I note the stock is damaged. You should have it sanded.’

  Devlin secured the gun in his belt. ‘That is the strike of a cutlass. From the man I have just rescued. He was attempting to kill me at the time.’

  Coxon raised an eyebrow and changed the subject back to Howell Davis. ‘He will be a pirate now. Howell, I mean. You spawn like frogs.’

  ‘Hostis humanis generis, George has named us. An enemy to all mankind. The enemy being freedom, I do not doubt. But I have met more dangerous felons these last few months and even some that perhaps I should reconsider what they meant to me. And what I have done to them.’ His hand moved to his glass as he thought of Valentim Mendes and he swallowed away something more than the Madeira sack, the wine now catching in his throat. He shook the thought away with a smile and slapped the pages of parchment he had brought with him. ‘Anyways, Captain John, I have here a secret to bestow upon you. Boons to buy safe passage of my men to wherever we shall roam, and the same to your sons who might suffer else.’

  Coxon resumed his seat and the pouring of wine. ‘Are you sure you can offer me that, Patrick? I have seen the Shadow fight before. And the Milford is much more. Much more. I could break her before sunset.’

  Devlin leant forward and Coxon saw again the dark face from the island the year before. ‘But I will have a hundred pirates upon you before that. Not a running fight of cannon, Captain. Only cutlass and teeth. Can your men stand that? Your fine young men against cannibals and Sodom? I’ll take odds against that judgement.’

  Coxon pointed his glass to the papers, avoiding the wager. ‘What are these?’

  Devlin smiled, accepting the diversion. ‘Death, Captain. Lives whipped away by a rush of falling paper. The arcanum of porcelain. The secret of its making. The reason I have come to you.’

  Coxon sat. He looked at the smile of Devlin and then the hand resting on the papers. ‘Porcelain? The making of porcelain? Take me for a fool now, is it? How would you and your filthy rogues fall on such a secret? Saxony has Europe begging at his door for its exports.’

  ‘Ah, and Saxony has only lucked on the recipe, so I am told, through a decade of concentration, but even that does not compare to the true variety.’ He tapped the pile of paper. ‘The true kilns and clays, firings and fluxes, all the manner of it. All sitting here at my hand. All for easy reading.’

  Devlin let the power of the yellow paper sink in and then pushed them across the table, picking up his Cervantes from the chair under the table and leafing through it as Coxon glanced through the letter.

  ‘It is in French,’ Coxon said and then understood. But still Devlin had much entertaining to do.

  ‘Of course the man who sent me to take the papers did not suppose that a dribbling ignorant gallows dancer such as I could ever interpret his soul’s desire. My ignorance was his security, apparently. Between me and Dandon, who reads better Frog than I, we had five days to Charles Town to make a good copy and provide him with the original, which is in Teach’s hands now – our own bargain – and winds its way to some ill-inclined governors of His Majesty. With just a few alterations to the text of course, just enough to the mix to make it worthless.’ Devlin picked up the Madeira bottle himself, putting down the book, and poured another measure. ‘And I gives these letters unto you, Captain John. Price of passage if you will it. For my men and me to sail where we will.’ He slapped a full glass in front of Coxon. ‘What do you suppose King George will make of such a parcel, Captain?’

  ‘And naturally you have not altered this copy in any manner. Entranced as you are by your King, I’ll wager a wig.’

  ‘That accusation will have to ride on my honour, Captain John.’

  Coxon picked up the worn Cervantes and it fell open to the author’s first page, the preface written after the loss of his left arm while serving in the Spanish navy, the thread of the spine almost broken where it had been read and re-read. He read the page aloud, knowing something in its lines must have weighed on Devlin for him to offer the book as a gift, so much they had shared over the years. His new comrades, for all their worth, were no good for that. Coxon guessed that something in Devlin missed his world, though obviously not enough:

  If my wounds have no beauty to the beholder’s eye, they are, at least, honourable in the estimation of those who know where they were received; for the soldier shows to greater advantage dead in battle than alive in flight.

  ‘Rogers disdains novellas, you know. They are not for Englishmen. I did not know that Cervantes was one-handed. Lost his left arm. That is very interesting. An English copy no less. It must mean something to you, Patrick.’ Coxon thumbed through the pages.

  Devlin lost his politeness, drank high and slammed his empty glass upturned on the table, shaking it and causing Coxon’s glass to spill a little. ‘I have regretted the death of too many, Captain! I will have no more of it if you can find to grant me so. Not this day.’

  Coxon leant back, still reading on, his eyes to the page. ‘Then go, pirate. The price is enough for King George and Rogers I’m sure. Secretary Popple back in Whitehall will have palpitations when Rogers writes home with this. And you have nothing now. No gold, no friendly ports in these lands,’ his eye flicked back up to Devlin’s for an instant. ‘Some guilt finally being assuaged perhaps?’

  Devlin’s face flashed venom for one eye-blink. Coxon knew nothing of Valentim Mendes but he recognised remorse when he saw it.

  ‘Even your pirate lords have become your hunters. When I return to Providence I will be sent straight out after you again. I can give you this day, but what of tomorrow? What will you do then, Patrick?’

  Devlin scraped back his seat, picked himself up and tipped his hat, then flashed the rakish grin that belonged to the crude, stained posters fading above the fireplaces of the inns of the world and warning of his presence.

  ‘Hoy por mi, manana por ti. Today for me, Captain John, tomorrow for thee.’ He pulled open the outer door to thirty pairs of eyes staring into the cabin and cocked his head back to the table. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Captain John.’

  ‘Aye, Patrick,’ he went back to the book, not granting Devlin a parting glance. ‘That I reckon
you will.’

  Epilogue

  Letter from Governor Woodes Rogers to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Whitehall. (Extract)

  Oct 1718.

  Sirs,

  Pursuant to my Instructions I take leave to acquaint your Lordships, I arrived in this port 26th July in company with the men-of-war ordered to assist me. I met with little opposition in coming in, but found a French ship burning in the harbour, which we were told was set on fire to drive out H.M.S. the Rose, by one Charles Vane who commands the pirates, fled away in a sloop wearing the black flag, and fired guns of defiance.

  On the 27th I landed and took possession of the fort, where I read H.M. Commission in the presence of my officers, soldiers and about 300 of the people found here, who received me under arms and readily surrendered, showing then many tokens of joy for the re-introduction of Government.

  We have scarce half of those who have been pirates left, for they soon became weary of living under restraint and are either gone to several parts of North America, or engaged themselves on services at sea, which I was willing to promote, for they are not the people I ought to think will make any land improvements, and I wish they may be faithful at sea.

  What with the pyrates robbing us and the inclination of many of our people to join them, and the Spaniards threatening to attempt these Islands we are continually obliged to keep on our guard. Above 100 men that accepted H.M. Act of Grace in this place are now out pyrating again and except effectual measures are taken the whole trade of America must be soon ruined.