by Mark Keating
Devlin picked up his glass and swallowed the dregs before holding it out for more. Law obliged as Pitt checked the measure, concerned he would be left short.
Devlin waited for his glass to brim, his eyes lost in thought. He drank for one moment. Then he began.
‘The diamond is in the Palais Royale under the regent’s protection,’ his voice rang out as if reading a purser’s list of victuals and recounting them to his own. ‘You tell me the only chance to take it is when it is removed to the jeweller. That is a fair enough assumption. But not wise. It is more probable that once it is removed it will be more protected. At present only the duke knows where it is,’ he laid down his glass.
‘That is only one man to trick it from. If this jeweller sees the gem and then the replica he will know it’s been cuckolded. This is his craft. But if he is given the replica and only the replica he will know no different. I agree that he would not check that which was handed to him by his master. I believed it real myself and I’ve used diamonds for coin.’
Law began to protest but the tone that controlled a hundred men brushed him aside.
‘You wish to take me into Paris as your aide. Wait for the diamond to be taken to the jeweller. Replace it. And then take it back to England. What of you, Law? Are you to come also?’
‘No. I will wait until my bank and company fall – as surely as they will – and then flee to Belgium, where I am granted passage to England.’
‘So your position will be to remain after the theft. And do you suppose nobody will question that your trusted aide has suddenly disappeared? Would it not raise some suspicion?’
Walpole began to hide a smile with his hand and leaned back, confident now that he had chosen well. In a different life, one in which he had been better born, this lean young man could have been an asset. He had outlived most of his kind and had bested the finest set against him, as every report that Walpole had studied in several languages attested. It would be a crime if he had to die. He stood in front of the head of the Bank of France, the First Minister and a lord, had pulled a pistol on the Prince of Wales and had only removed his hat to wipe his brow. Terrible indeed if he had to die.
Devlin finished wiping his brow. ‘It occurs to me that you gentlemen have never stolen anything in your lives. Nothing that Law has said will happen: I’ll be dead else. I’ll meet you in Paris, Mister Law. That’ll take three days. Take the diamond from the regent himself and make the change there.’ He touched his hat to Walpole. ‘Then I’m after bringing it back to you. Eight days and I can get back to the sea. With all my crimes forgotten.’
Walpole closed his eyes and nodded.
Law found his voice. ‘No, Captain! I have stressed that I do not know where the regent keeps the diamond and—’
Devlin cut him with a look. ‘You do not know where he keeps the diamond. Don’t judge me by your own ignorance. I’ll not put my life into the hands of men I don’t know and who don’t know theft from gaming. I’ll find you when I’m in Paris.’
Law jumped up. ‘The diamond cannot be taken from the palace!’ He gestured to the map, rapped his finger upon the trio of buildings. ‘Look at it! Look! That map is true! Fifty guards patrol day and night! More than three hundred servants and twice more in ministers! It is not a ship upon open waters, it is a fortress!’ He went to grab Devlin’s coat then lowered his hand wisely. ‘The plan is good, Captain. Come with me to Paris and follow it and we will all live to tell the tale. I beg of you.’
Devlin patted Law’s shoulder. ‘Don’t beg of me. Paris. Three days. Wait for my word.’ He turned to Walpole. ‘Minister, I’m going. Come and tell me what else I need to know.’ He was already at the door.
Pitt expected no farewell and got none. The door closed leaving himself and Law alone.
‘Bloody bogtrotter,’ he scoffed. ‘You’ll be lucky if he even makes it to Paris, Law.’
Law sat and folded away his map. ‘I feel, Londonderry, that I shall be most unlucky if he does.’
Riding in the coach back to Leicester House, Walpole had given up trying to spot Devlin’s escorts during their slow progress. He brought his head back inside. ‘They hide well, if they followed us at all.’
‘You may have want of such skill,’ Devlin said.
‘You more so, Captain. I chose you because you seemed discreet of your kind. Our lives almost touched when you dealt with that gentleman in Charles Town two summers ago. I had tried to kill him several times myself. That is how I knew I had found my man.’
‘Don’t call me that. That won’t help you. How am I to France?’
‘There is a plague in Marseille, come from Cyprus. Naturally northern France and Paris would not appreciate this plague reaching them. My design is that you portray yourself to be a plague ship. That should deter any curious patrols. The problem will be that since you refuse to accompany Law, how will you get to Paris?’
‘That’ll be my problem.’
‘I would not propose that you conduct yourself as you have done in London. You cannot sail a pirate up the Seine.’
‘I know that. What happens when I bring the diamond back?’
‘You will go to Falmouth. Where you should have come to London. I will set a fellow to meet you there as of next week. No names. He will spot you. There is an inn on the quay, a shipwrights’ inn, alongside the customs house and prison – make of that what you will. You must be there by September fourth. My man will leave on the fifth. We must present some promise of the diamonds by the eighth or all is lost. However, we will insist on a party to attend you. To attend that our interests are being adhered to, naturally.’
‘A chaperone! Aye, for why trust me else.’
‘A logical precaution. No personal discrimination. Our man shall be in charge of the replica until the exchange is made and you return with the diamond. This is not a mark of distrust against you, Captain. Your men may have other plans for the diamond. They may question your loyalties if they know it is in your hands.’ Walpole lowered his voice.
‘And you will not bring your ship of brigands back into this city. Your reward will be waiting for just you. Am I clear?’
‘As diamond, Minister. So who’s to wet-nurse me through my voyage?’
Albany Holmes was a good choice. Devlin may have been able to sway or intimidate someone else. Someone who had no bones against him. As Walpole had put it: ‘He has no interest in befriending you and more than enough interest in ensuring the success of your task, without having any attachment to the government.’
Devlin had abandoned Albany at Ascension Island, after taking the ship he was on. That had been on the adventure of the porcelain letters when the man Ignatius had taken Peter Sam. Devlin had taken a brig, the Talefan, from Madagascar, and Albany and his companion had been his ruse. The manner of his marooning, together with the disrespect and stealing of his goods would grate with Albany; maybe even a little revenge was heating him. There would be some sport ahead, no doubt, with Albany at his side.
Devlin waited outside the trade entrance of Leicester House. His men would be catching up somewhere about. He needed to get back to them, back to his ship. All these people moved too fast, talked too much. He was used to being the one who walked against the crowd but this was just a lost feeling, like a wild animal cowering not from the hunter but from his shouts and spear rattling.
The carriage wheels, the clomp of horses and rushing feet, the hawkers, the handcarts, the blur of faces. For what? What truly was the rush? Had these people not seen the sea? He looked up at the towering stone all around. No. Perhaps not. They could not even see the sun.
Albany Holmes rounded a corner of the house. Boat-cloak almost to the floor, leather portmanteau slowing him down, the solemn face of the man did little to remove the mirth from Devlin’s face. Aye, there would be sport enough to be had with Albany Holmes.
His wig had gone and there was just short brown hair beneath a simple tricorne, a sword at his side, silk hose and buckled shoes. He looked lik
e a young man now, without his wig, but just as arrogant as the day Devlin had met him in a filthy tavern in the hills of Madagascar.
‘You do not carry your sword-cane any more then, Albany?’ Devlin asked as the man fell in beside him.
Albany ignored the remark. The cane had been thieved when he had fallen in with the pirates. ‘Am I to take it, pirate, that you are to address me informally during our companionship?’
‘Want to challenge my tone, Albany?’
Albany walked on.
Entering the square, Albany sought a carriage from the few that always loitered around the entrance to the house. He spied a large bald man with red beard and greatcoat striding towards them and took the approach as an offer. He held up his bag to push it into the man’s chest.
‘Here, fellow. Careful with it now.’
The giant elbowed him aside as he passed and Albany stumbled backwards, struggling to regain his balance like a newborn foal. He saw the pumping of hands between Devlin and the brute.
‘Cap’n,’ was all the giant said.
Albany had never seen Peter Sam. At the time of his passage with Devlin the big man had been taken from the pirates, held hostage in the Americas and ransomed for the price of a porcelain cup. Devlin had sailed across the ocean to bring his quartermaster back into the fold. In the handshake Albany saw nothing but crude men attempting manners. He did not see the past where one man had tried to kill the other, where both had wiped blood from their mouths. Devlin’s pistol was forever scarred with the stripe of Peter Sam’s cutlass. They had rescued each other in two long adventures that had cost both of them many friends.
Albany saw none of this in the touch of hands and slapping of shoulders. The two pirates saw everything but in a moment it was gone and the hard faces returned.
‘Who be this streak of piss, Cap’n?’ Peter Sam judged Albany up and down.
‘He is back to the ship with us, Peter. Now, Albany,’ Devlin bid Albany to walk with them. ‘This be Peter Sam, my quartermaster and second, but you’d be wise to listen to what he tells you more than me.’
The black look from Peter Sam confirmed the advice. Albany adjusted his bag and walked on. As they moved silently up the left side of the square, Albany became aware that others had joined them as if they had sprung out of the ground beside him. They were now five abreast and London stepped aside to let them through. To his shame Albany found the power of the street parting before them stirred his blood easily as much as any hunt.
He found his voice again. ‘So . . . Captain . . .We are to all be squeezed together again on that little brig of yours. The Talefan was it not?’
Devlin laughed. ‘Ho, Albany! That would explain how little you think of me to be sure! Wait ’til you see what I have to show you, then measure me so!’
From the casement windows above, the prince and Walpole watched the ragged party leave the square. Stanhope and Townshend were still at the table, nodding at each other’s affirmations of undoubted success, pulling their watches at the same time, late for their clubs.
‘You are sure the diamond will be enough, Walpole?’ the prince asked as he watched Devlin’s back turn the corner and disappear.
‘Just enough for the tide, Your Highness. Law has worked it out to the utmost. He has a head for figures that is almost uncanny. Uncut the stone is worth almost half a million. Cleaved, its children can be insured for company assets three times that. The company will become great diamond merchants overnight. The stock will rise. France will fall thanks to Law’s paper money that he has convinced the regent to back. The South Sea Company will be second only to The East India Company and shall gain time to rebuild. The Americas will come good. We are at least not running out of slaves.’
‘But if he fails? How so us then, Walpole?’
‘Then you may well become king sooner than you had hoped, Your Highness. Only you will be king atop of the largest dunghill in Europe.’
The prince sighed. ‘I trust in a pirate.’
Walpole gave half a smile to his prince. ‘We have all become pirates now, Your Highness.’
Chapter Thirteen
Wednesday
Sail the English channel on an easterly tack; take no word to another course. The wind, the white-capped waves, as fat as plague corpses rolling off a cart, loll constantly towards you, breaking against your keel like glass and stinging into eyes just the same. Lose abaft every foot you gain abeam. These are cold waters where fishermen earn their keep, a churner of ships. And cold; so cold as tides collide, and hundreds of ships lying dead below, still moving across the seabed as summers pass without calm and the small creatures of the deep make homes in eyeless skulls.
The master of the sloop Vendeen, Jean Minot, studied the ship lying off his larboard quarter. An afternoon of damp and mist, the slab of the sky low and heavy, meeting the sea in a dour curtain of grey that would discourage even the most devoted sailor from his work.
He spied a three-masted ship through his cracked smoky glass, moving slowly under courses. No pennant at her backstay. He followed its line up to her mainmast where a large yellow flag whipped back and forth through a veil of cloud.
The yellow flag. Quarantine.
He held the scope tighter as the channel pushed against his bow and he swept the sharkskin tube up and down across the ship. Surely not a plague ship this far north? Far out to sea the ghoulish sight of skeletal ships bucking and drifting, empty of men at their ropes and sails, had become almost a common sight in the last few months. The yellow flag fluttered on some of them but not all.
This ship was at least alive. A dark figure waved slowly at him from the gunwale. Jean Minot brought down his scope and did not wave back.
The horror of the outbreak at Marseille in the south had almost destroyed one of the largest ports in the world. Since May and the first few cases the disease had spread through the surrounding towns and villages like the wind. Now at the height of August almost a thousand souls a day were dropping in the streets or ending themselves rather than fall to the disease; some even placidly walked into the sea until the waves washed over their heads or laid down in the streets amongst the piles of corpses and simply waited. Whole families sat propped up against the dead.
The regent had sent his own doctors from Montpelier to confirm the disease and, shortly after, the army began work on a two metre-high wall across Provence with guard posts erected all along, and had been ordered to shoot any of the pitiful shuffling creatures trying to leave – and even the healthy who might seek sanctuary.
Marseille was doomed.
Ships from the Levant were ordered into port at the islands off Marseilles and flew the yellow flag until inspected. If clean they could raise a white signal and continue on to trade with the rest of France. If not, either wait and die, or return from where you came.
This black and red ship flew a yellow flag. She was large too. Almost a ship of war, if not a powerful merchant.
And she was coming about.
Figures now ducked beneath the courses fore and aft. The sprit sails began to unfurl, the spanker dropped free and still the figure waved calmly back and forth to Jean Minot as the ship crawled into his lee.
Minot would take no chances. He snapped to his bosun a dozen quick commands and paced along the gangway shouting to his lazy crew and keeping one eye on the black ship and the waving, friendly hand.
His own spanker and jibs came out. With her size and laying in his lee he would steal her wind and race ahead. Perhaps she just closed for news. Perhaps she wanted help. No matter. She would understand and as the Vendeen charged away from the closing bow the hand stopped its morose wave. The dark figure retreated from the gunwale like a shadow.
Dandon saluted Devlin with a tip of his bottle as he came back from the gunwale. ‘That worked admirably. That yellow flag is almost as effective as our black.’
The wind prevented Devlin from hearing and he cupped his hands to his mouth to order the bosun, Lawson, to carry on, to take
them into shore. The day had brought them into the north sea and south around Folkestone. They crossed the trade lanes that went to Dunkerque, where other ships had avoided them hurriedly, and now crossed the Calais lanes, the long flat coastline of France stretching to infinity off their larboard side. Now the tide was with them. They could come about and sail along the coast to Le Havre.
Peter Sam took Devlin’s arm, bringing him close so the wind would not steal his voice.
‘He summons you.’ He motioned with his head aft to the cabin where Devlin had permitted Albany Holmes to sleep and eat, away from the rabble. Devlin pushed his way through the busy men amidships, fondly slapping the shoulders of some, damning coarsely the slower of them.
He ducked into the outer coach where the first of the Shadow’s guns lay beneath the quarter-deck and where Albany slept in a foldaway cot that would double as a coffin.
For the most part Devlin took pleasure in entering the Great Cabin. His cabin. It was the first place on earth he had known where he could close a door that belonged to him. The cabin was for all, but somehow when he slept in his cot or sat on the lockers beneath the stern windows and read alone with a good pipe, a childish warmth came over him that his past life never gave even when his work was done, or even when he was a child and such warmth should have been part of every day. Now he came into the cabin to see Albany sprawled across the wooden locker seat at the windows and leafing through one of Devlin’s books.
‘You called for me, Albany?’ Devlin put his hat on the table and found himself waiting for attention. Albany held up a finger, his eye to his page, finishing his sentence. With a pleased nod of his head he slammed the book shut and swung his legs to the oak floor.
‘Yes, Captain,’ his tone was inflected up as if questioning Devlin’s entrance and title. ‘I could not help but notice that there is some air of animosity about my presence on this ship, although it has only been a night and a morn since I have become company.’
