The Pirate Devlin

by Mark Keating

  'It was a day out of the Verdes,' Devlin began. 'We had taken the Shadow from the Portuguese. Like an apple from a tree. All hands were to the punch, mourning the loss of Seth Toombs.'

  'This Seth Toombs was the previous commander. I have gathered this of late,' Dandon stated.

  'Aye. Fellow not much missed, save by Peter Sam I reckon.' He shuffled to have his back to the table and the chest. 'The call went round for a vote, you see. And I was just as drunk as anyone else and on the Shadow meself. They launched one of the gigs on a cable from Lucy. Then a round robin came aboard. You know what that is?' Dandon shook his head. 'It's a message, a decision of the crew, with all names signed in a circle round the plan. In a circle, so you can't tell who started it. Anyways, Hugh brings the round robin aboard with my name in the centre and all the principal officers signed round it. Then Hugh was staggering in front of me, telling me I was captain. Told me I was captain.' He arched his head round to Dandon and grinned as rakishly as he could given he was half beneath a table, his wrists tied. 'Seemed like a fine notion on the day.'

  The deafening sound of Guinneys' leather sole stoving in the door made even Bessette's corpse jump. The room filled with sunlight, the dust swirling in it as thick as ash.

  Guinneys, pistols drawn, sidestepped into the room and backed to the left wall, darting his eyes between Dandon and Devlin. A weapon on each. Lieutenant Scott followed and took a cautious pose to the right of the door, making way for John Coxon to enter with Landri Fauche at his shoulder.

  Coxon's feet echoed twice on the rough wooden floor as he stepped towards the man looking up at him. Coxon's face was impassive, unmoved, as he took in the sight of Devlin at his feet.

  'Hello, Patrick.' Coxon heard his voice crack with drought, and he swallowed hard. 'Tell me all about this pirate business now then, eh?'

  * * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  'I believed you dead, Captain,' was all Devlin could say. He sighed a laugh of genuine irony.

  'I was having doubts myself, Patrick.' Coxon chose to avoid looking at his man, now tanned and bedraggled and far from the shining pale valet he had cultivated. He surveyed the room. The dead Bessette dominated, his head lolled back, dry blood smeared over his face, a peppering of red on the wall some feet behind him.

  'Your handiwork, Patrick?' he asked, his head darting around the room like a bird of prey's.

  'An accident, Captain Coxon. Not of my doing.' Devlin smiled, his eyes taking in Guinneys and Scott in turn. Landri Fauche had crept into the suddenly crowded room to stand between the open door and the group of sailors inching their heads into the room.

  'Cole!' Coxon turned to the door. 'Secure the gate. Get one man into that tower.'

  'Aye, Captain!' Cole knuckled his forehead and vanished.

  Coxon spoke to Landri as he walked round Bessette, casually examining the black gap in the back of his skull. 'This man' - he flapped a hand to Dandon - 'he is the doctor you spoke of, monsieur?'

  Landri's understanding was poor but he gathered enough. 'Oui, Capitaine.'

  'Sir' - he looked straight at the nervous Dandon - 'put your pistol away; this is a place for accidents. I am in charge here now.' Then, with more candour, 'Do you understand?'

  'Oui.' Dandon smiled and tucked away the pistol, his accent impeccable over his anxiety. 'My English is good, Capitaine. I will help as much as I can. Now you have rescued us.' He nodded nervously to Guinneys, whose pistol still stared at Dandon's chest. Guinneys scowled back, his second pistol barrel trembling slightly as it covered Devlin.

  Coxon put his hands behind him, revealing the brassed pommels of his pistols and the cutlass at his side. 'Good. Although you seem to have all in hand, Doctor. Reveal to me what has occurred here today.'

  'I should like, Capitaine, to be assured that your presence here is honourable. Under our circumstance, you understand?'

  Coxon's jaw tightened. 'I have orders, sir, to secure this post on behalf of the French court. There is the matter of a gold deposit that is my chief concern, but I will repeat that I wish to know what has occurred here this day.'

  Dandon did not flinch at the mention of the gold. He removed his hat, slowly, as if it might waken, then stepped out of his corner and to the back of the table. Guinneys' pistol followed his steps as Dandon laid his hat upon the green velvet tablecloth.

  'Pirates, Capitaine.' His voice wavered as if he might break into tears. 'We were beset by pirates. They duped the soldiers with whores. I was forced to drug them! Although they wished me to kill them, I succeeded in only dosing them gently. They will wake shortly.' He paused to wipe some linen across his forehead.

  'Capitaine Bessette was killed, truthfully in accident, when the soldiers discovered the pirates' true motives. A fight ensued.

  Deaths, as you see, have happened. Gunfire was everywhere. It was a miracle that myself and the brave Caporal-Chef Fauche endured. That was all this morning. Once they had the gold, their guard relaxed and-'

  Coxon interjected, 'They have the gold? Where? When?'

  'They took it from Capitaine Bessette's bedchamber.' He indicated the room behind Coxon. 'It took four of them to carry it, Capitaine.' He pointed to the back of Devlin's head. 'This one and two others remained. But his pirate fellows fled when we… Landri and myself… managed to overcome him. It has been that way for two hours now. We kept him alive for our own safe need, waiting for the rest of them to return. And then, mercy of Mary, you and your gallant officers appeared. Praise you, Capitaine! Praise be, your mercies!'

  Coxon had stopped listening as Dandon collapsed onto one of the green fauteuils, head in hands. He passed a casual hand and eye over the chest that held Dandon's plethora of bottles and curious paper parcels as he stepped within earshot of Guinneys, who had lowered his pistols. Scott still covered the room nervously.

  'The gold must be on that brigantine,' he whispered to Guinneys.

  'Then why do they wait?' Guinneys hissed.

  Devlin laughed.

  Coxon's head pivoted round to glare at the man on the floor. 'What is so amusing, Patrick?'

  'Ah, come now, Captain.' Devlin looked to the whitewashed ceiling. 'Do we not have more absorbing matters to talk on?'

  Captain Coxon bent on a knee to face Devlin, his sword scraping behind him and almost touching Lieutenant Scott's buckled shoe.

  'You and I will talk, Patrick. Of many things, be assured. I have come here a long way from where I left you and it is a compulsion within to shoot you where you sit. I am betrayed by you, Patrick Devlin. How little you realise the finality of your acts.'

  'Oh, spare me, Captain,' Devlin spat. 'All I have done is my own will. I'll listen to none of your damnings! My soul's my own!'

  Coxon lowered his eyes. 'You own nothing, Patrick. And soon you will own even less. Mark me now, lad.'

  Guinneys' voice barked, drawing all eyes to him. 'Enough, Captain! What of the gold? How many men aboard that slut, peasant? Tell us now!' His gun wavered at the end of his grip.

  'There are only eight sons of mine on that there ship, pup.' Devlin grinned back. 'And drunk or sober, they'd hang your guts around your neck. You may lay to that!' He met Coxon's steadfast stare. 'I'm for most times scared of them myself.'

  'Are they waiting for you, Patrick?' Coxon asked. 'Has the frigate left you?'

  The room breathed in.

  'They wait for me. I have not seen that frigate for weeks, Captain. And that be the truth of the Lord. But I have that gold.'

  'Not for long, Patrick.' Coxon stood and courted the assembly once more, his hands swept behind his back again.

  Dandon raised a tearful head in despair. 'Will someone, please, for all the saints, remove this horror from my presence!'

  'Quiet, dog!' Guinneys' voice cracked, almost panicked, as his gun stabbed towards Dandon's head.

  'Guinneys!'

  Coxon's voice could have carried from the crosstrees to the cockpit. 'Behold yourself, man!'

  He swung round to Scott. 'H
old this room with Corporal Fauche. Do not take your pistol off this pirate. Guinneys? Come outside with me, Lieutenant.'

  Guinneys lowered his guns and truculently followed his captain out into the scorched yard, leaving the door wide open behind them. Both stepped to the redoubt, eyeing the gun in its small carriage. Puny in comparison to the Starlings twelve-pounders.

  Coxon's eye swept along the iron barrel to where his small band of men were guarding the gate. He looked above to the sapphire sky as he spoke.

  'William? Losing your temper will serve no good.'

  'My apologies, Captain. My blood has been rising since we landed. It will not happen again.'

  Coxon nodded. 'Now, what to do.' He walked between the huts, stepping past the drugged and the dead. Guinneys followed as if tethered.

  'The gold is with that brigantine. Now we are here, those men will no doubt sail despite their captain.'

  'They are pirates after all, sir.'

  'And they will run from English guns. Our best approach is to let them sail and to cut them off.'

  'She can outrun us, sir.'

  Coxon turned and they walked back. 'She can't outrun our guns. We'll tear her rigging apart. A shell of a crew. They'll fold at our first cannon, mark me.'

  'Undoubtedly, sir.'

  'We shall take Devlin back to the ship. Under their gaze.'

  'They may be landing now. They saw us come ashore.'

  'And we are in a fort, are we not? Armed to the braces.' Coxon sighed, rapping his hand against the coarse wooden wall of the mess hall.

  'There are only a few things that I cannot answer for which I beg your opinion, William.'

  'What would they be, Captain?'

  Coxon stopped at the mess door, idly looking in to the slumbering soldiers. 'There was a boat on the shore. If the gold is on the ship, hauled up, who rowed back to shore to fetch Devlin?'

  'I do not follow, Captain.' Guinneys uncocked his pistols with expert ease and placed them smoothly in his belt beneath his coat.

  'Picture it, William: men rowed to the ship with the gold whilst Devlin and a couple of others stayed here.' He added gently, 'If we are to believe that corporal and that French doctor, supposedly the others fled when Devlin was captured. Why is there still a boat on the shore? Would they not be aboard by now? If not, then they are hiding somewhere.'

  'Perhaps two boats came in? One is left for Devlin?'

  'Perhaps. I'll give you the gig may have been used to ferry the gold, although why when there is the larger one ready on the beach? And, if so, what boat did the pirates who fled use? Do you not see, William?' Coxon was pleased with the confused look on Guinneys' face.

  'I have to admit that I do not, sir.' Guinneys removed his hat and began to fan himself.

  'They are still here! In numbers. Watching us even now. Waiting to free Devlin.'

  Guinneys could not help but look around the walls of the stockade, his head swivelling slowly.

  'Don't look, you fool!' Coxon's whisper bristled. 'We are protected by ignorance only. Besides there is one other matter that nags at me.'

  'And what is that, Captain?' Guinneys placed his hat back squarely, and snapped his vest tight. A habit now.

  'I cannot discuss it even with you, William, until I know one thing more.'

  Guinneys paid no attention to Coxon drawing one of his pistols as innocently as pulling out a handkerchief.

  'To what is that, sir?'

  'Edward Talton was murdered, William. To what extent and why was your hand involved?' Cards down. Play or fold. No bluff to play. Point or play.

  'Sir?' Guinneys smirked, his eyes drawn to the neat hole of the muzzle pointed at his chest from Coxon's hip.

  'Answer how you may. I will not judge you, lad.' Coxon smiled as a warmth of control swept through him, again generous in his patronage.

  'I did not kill Talton, Captain. Why would I? Have you gone mad, sir?' Guinneys giggled slightly. Nervous and surprised.

  'We will go forward from this point on your honour, William. I ask only that. Why did Talton die?'

  Guinneys' face lost the good humour that had been its customary setting for the weeks that Coxon had known him. From somewhere else came the look Coxon suspected appeared at the end of the hunt, flecked with mud and blood.

  'If you must know, Captain, it was not in my interests to allow an employee of John Company to have any knowledge of my intentions for that gold. I also believed that he would not be a willing party to your undoing. Sir.'

  Coxon did not move, nor did his face alter from its stoicism, as if he heard such notions every day. 'My undoing?' he calmly asked.

  'I am sorry, Captain. In truth I genuinely am. More goes on here than you may be permitted to know.'

  'Permitted? You dog! I have orders from Whitehall! You dare allude to a mutiny while I stand behind them? The very gall of you, sir!'

  'Oh, hush now, John, 'tis not a mutiny. I have my own orders, don't you know.' Guinneys' smiling face returned and he stepped back and crowed to the sailors, 'Cole! Williams! To me, now!'

  Clay pipes disappeared as if they were never in the mouths at the gate. Straw hats were held tight to their heads with one hand, their musketoons in the other as the two sailors rushed to Guinneys.

  Coxon felt the unsettling nausea run through him once more. His face cold in the heat. The pistol heavy in his hand.

  'Yes, sir?' Cole spoke to Guinneys, yet nodded to Coxon.

  'Cole,' Guinneys said, pulling out a tight wrap of papers from his vest. 'I have orders here that I wish you to witness that relieve Captain Coxon of his position under certain articles of deposition. Will you confirm them for me, Cole?'

  Cole looked to both men in confusion. 'Sir?'

  'Cole!' Coxon ordered. 'Relieve Lieutenant Guinneys of his weapons, if you please, and place him under arrest without parole at once. By my command, Cole.'

  Cole and Williams passed a slow, curious glance to each other. The honourable pair took in the pistol of their new captain and the yellow parchment tied with black ribbon in the hand of their former master, the man who had travelled with them back and forth from Guangzhou and the Indian factories for the last two years. Both men rested their weapons' stocks upon the ground, the barrels between their legs.

  Cole held a polite hand for the square wad of paper with soft words to Coxon. 'Begging your pardon, Cap'n.' He pulled off the ribbon at the corners rather than untying the neat bow and moved his head as he painfully began to read.

  Guinneys' left hand, now empty of the papers, lowered for Coxon's pistol to be proffered voluntarily. 'Your weapon, Captain. If you please.'

  'Cole!' Coxon's voice commanded. 'Those papers to me, now!'

  Again, Cole spoke gently with his rumbling voice, 'Begging your pardon, Cap'n,' and returned to his page.

  'You may read them, John,' Guinneys deigned magnanimously. 'After you offer me freely your arms.'

  Coxon switched his focus from Guinneys to the labours of Cole deciphering the language of commissioners, then back again to the smiling Guinneys. He begged inwardly for a deck beneath his feet, not this French dust with its uncertainty dragging him down like quicksand.

  'Whatever you have forged, young man, I have my orders to secure this island and this gold. This madness ends now. You will be detained under my instruction.' Even so, Coxon put away his pistol.

  'The ship is mine, John.' And he repeated mockingly the words Coxon had said gallantly to him moments before: 'Understand that much, on your honour, and we will move forward from this point.' His hand came out more forcibly. 'Your arms, please, John.'

  The sound of Cole closing the paper in its fold filled the air between them. He began to pass it back to Guinneys, who fanned his open hand graciously to Coxon. Cole moved the paper to Coxon.

  'Seems in order, Captain,' he said, his head bowing swiftly, then rising with a grimace as Coxon took the paper.

  Coxon swept his eyes to the bottom of the page. The names, scratched with pride, were unf
amiliar. Aylmer and the

  Third Earl of Berkeley were named elaborately as commissioners for exercising the office of Lord High Admiral of the Kingdom of Great Britain.

  Coxon recalled the second earl. The father. But he had been away so long. These men would only know him as a name on a list, and a short name at that, with a dead clergyman as parent.

  He reverted to the order itself. A jigsaw of compliments and phrases that made no sense.

  On reaching and securing the island, command was to revert to Guinneys. The arrest of Count Gyllenborg, the Swedish ambassador who had attended a function at which Coxon and Devlin had been present, had cast doubt on Coxon's loyalty to the new king. The Jacobite threat was too powerful. The gold, for its own security, needed to be safeguarded by the British Crown, in the interests of the French, naturally. Coxon's undoubted knowledge of the Indies and his knowledge of the pirate Devlin were invaluable to the endeavour.

  Once achieved, however, his value is unclear and must be assumed threatening and disadvantageous, the value and unknown extent of which to be determined by Captain William Guinneys to whom the Board grants full warrant.'

  'I am suspected of some Jacobite tendency? From what insanity does this notion spring?' Coxon asked.

  'Oh, John.' Guinneys took back the paper. 'From nothing, most probably. Gold is gold. George loves horses, don't you know? Don't take it personally.' Guinneys secreted the paper back in his vest. 'More important is the stink this will make in that confounded Parliament. Jacobite pirates have a vast gold investment to fund a restoration through Spain. Do you want to remain on half-pay forever, for I don't!'

  Coxon half turned, removing Cole and Williams from his vision, his thoughts racking up like bridge pegs. Guinneys' orders were different from his own, their significance beyond his reasoning. The gold was to be taken. Taken for English coffers and blamed on the pirates. And Guinneys to help himself to a slice of it, no doubt.

  The Jacobite dross was convenient. Convenient enough to remove the embarrassment that Coxon had obviously become.

  Gold. Gilded blood-red. And Guinneys? What was his part? What promise had he been given? Why was Talton dead? Coxon pressed the point, for Cole and Williams to hear.