Cross of Fire

by Mark Keating

  Coxon did not get the name he was expecting.

  ‘The Pirate Roberts! The “Great” Pirate Roberts as he would have it no less, would you believe! The Admiral of the Leeward Islands, he has penned himself to our governors! You know of him?’

  Coxon had obviously become the font of all knowledge where pirates were concerned and some of that had to be conceded. He had found Walter Kennedy, after all.

  ‘Something, My Lord. My first inclination when I returned was to try and gain some leverage over the pirate Devlin – other than using myself – to which end I withdrew from my memory some members of his past from our time spent together.’ He put his hand back to bring Kennedy to their attention.

  ‘May I present Walter again? This time as one of Roberts’s former captains. Former acquaintance of the pirate Devlin. A young man who left Providence under the wing of the late pirate Howell Davis who, after his death, was supplanted in power by Roberts.’

  The men in the white wigs exchanged looks, studied the young man. Chetwynd put down his pen.

  ‘He is known to Devlin and Roberts?’

  ‘That he is, sir. He has been gaoled. I have had him removed under my property. In exchange for a sentence other than the noose he is willing to aid me in the capture of Devlin. We will draw him out, sir. We may draw out Roberts as well.’

  Kennedy knew nothing else to do except tug his hair down in salute to the table.

  Chetwynd leaned back.

  ‘How “draw” him out? What does that mean?’

  Coxon thought carefully. So much of this was private to him. So much of this could be perceived as madness and that would be the end of it. Softly now. He had the papers previously conferred on him to back him up. One of the masks he had met probably sat before him now. Testing him.

  ‘Walter, and myself – now that we have discussed it – believe that it was Patrick Devlin that murdered Walter’s father. Before he was the pirate. Before he was with me. When he ran from his criminal life in Ireland. They all lived together here in London. The father was killed one night and Devlin ran. Devlin told me this story also – naturally not implicating himself – which is how I knew of Walter. Before I came here to attend Your Lordships I reviewed some recent records to see if I could discover any member of Devlin’s crew who may have been facing trial or death. A piece to play that I could use against him like a lodestone. Draw him out, as I say. Fortunately I came across the name Walter Kennedy . . . and here we are.’

  Sir Charles raised himself in his chair.

  ‘And where are we?’

  The air in the room almost crackled as Walter Kennedy found some nerve that came from his old life. A low growl.

  ‘He killed my father. I know pirates. He’d have to face me to settle that. If his crew know their captain wants for a backbone he won’t be a captain no more. Mark me on that, Your Honours. And if it’s Roberts you wants then I’m your man. I betrayed him and he’d swim to find me. I reckon some of that might be worth more than just a rope about me neck, sirs.’ He tapped his forehead again and took a step back. The faces on the paintings seemed to look down on him with more disdain now the names of pirates soiled their brush-strokes.

  Coxon could have done no better. He brushed his hat as he waited for the table to speak.

  Sir Charles looked to his colleagues. ‘Well . . . I suppose that shapes as a plan of sorts, gentlemen.’ He scratched at the paper with his quill before continuing.

  ‘Captain Coxon, our information is that since the pirates are no longer welcome in the Caribbean they seem intent on turning Madagascar and her islands into a new Bahamas. Do you concur?’

  ‘It would be my first drag, My Lord.’

  ‘Drag? Is that what we are calling such actions now?’

  ‘No, My Lord. I mean that the best place to find sea-scum is in the netting when you fish. I intend to fish for pirates. My bait will be myself. And Kennedy here.’

  Sir Charles sniffed deeply.

  ‘As you may, Captain. Viscount Chetwynd? Orders if you please for our . . . “fisherman”.’

  Chetwynd opened a folded sail-cloth packet, pulled his head back to read the blurry script and summarised as best he could.

  The pirate Roberts had become England’s new priority. Along with the other pirates who had found the Caribbean too warm for them he had made for Africa, his black flag first being seen off Senegal according to French reports. Now he targeted Royal African ships and was costing tens of thousands in trade. Two warships had been sent to intercept him, were out there now, sweeping the Bight of Biafra. If they should have no luck in his capture then at least Roberts would know that the navy was more intent on protecting the African trade than in its lacklustre performance around the Caribbean, where the pirates had almost ruled.

  Coxon’s orders were to sail to the Cape Coast Castle, the Royal African Company’s slave fort on the Guinea coast. Both warships, the Swallow and the Weymouth, had ported there. Any word the ships had of Roberts would now be with General Phipps, the castle’s governor. Coxon was to take any information and act accordingly then meet up with the Swallow and Weymouth, join forces with captains Ogle and Herdman. Full warrant.

  On the arm of his chair, as Chetwynd went on, Coxon had found his thumbnail irresistibly drawn to an imperfection in the wood. He raked at the splinter trying to smooth it back down. Perhaps a decade of this filing would solve the problem. The act served no further purpose, as did Chetwynd’s wind, and he looked up.

  ‘Pardon me, My Lords,’ he twisted his hat on his lap, fingered the trim to distract him from the irresistible chasm in the arm of the chair. Chetwynd paused.

  ‘Yes, John?’

  ‘Well, I am confused, My Lords; yes, that I am.’

  Chetwynd smiled. The first smile of the room.

  ‘How so, John?’

  ‘Well, I have traversed thousands of miles, requested in particular so I was to believe, to hunt down the man who has caused grave embarrassment to His Majesty’s ministers and that of our allies. Yet – sitting here – I am chasing the wake of other men after this . . . this Roberts that you all hold in such high regard.’ He stopped, took in their unmoved expressions.

  ‘Devlin is who I am here for, am I not?’

  Sir Charles folded back his ledger, the scriveners’ pens hovered in the air above their pages.

  ‘If you would be patient, Captain, you would understand more.’

  Coxon scratched his hair again, combed and spliced his fringe with his thumbnail. Chetwynd put down the orders and went for a more personal approach.

  ‘The secondary part of your orders, John, is that after you establish from General Phipps the current circumstances of the Swallow and the Weymouth you are to proceed down the coast. If Roberts is aware that there are three men-of-war on his tail he may run for Madagascar and the Amirantes. We shall corner him there, and if not him then we will certainly bag some game.’

  ‘And what of Devlin, sir? What about the notion that it was him to be most removed?’

  Sir Charles tapped the table to draw Coxon’s eye.

  ‘That has not changed, Captain. You will hunt for him as much as you will join the hunt for Roberts. I’m sure you will invest as much time in engaging for news at our forts and from passing ships as you will spend drilling your men. You should also think on the opportunity that you have of ingratiating yourself back among the African Company’s good books.’

  A small dig at Coxon’s ribs from the Sea Lord. Four years ago Coxon was to escort a blackbirder of the Royal African Company to America from Cape Castle. While victualling he had become ill, indisposed with dysentery, the ‘vacuums’ as the sailors put it, the curse of the white man in Africa. He had sent his ship home rather than sail to the Americas without him. His ship. His ship that in peacetime might as well have been the property of the companies that profited from the peace that men like Coxon had given them.

  Without a war the Navy kept afloat by loaning out their men and their ships to the
royal-warranted companies. Coxon’s blackbirder waited expensive weeks for a new escort. His own ship was taken and burnt by pirates. His own man, Devlin, now one of them. That was how it began. Coxon’s first taste of shame.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘A hunt it is. From where do I sail? What ship have you for me?’

  Chetwynd picked up the packet and held out the orders for Coxon to stand and take. The appointment was settled. All the detail therein for an evening’s study. Coxon obliged swiftly, remembering to click his heels as he tucked the packet under his arm and placed his hat back on his grey hair.

  ‘My Lords,’ he bowed and turned, Kennedy ducking out before him.

  Sir Charles’s voice lilted from behind.

  ‘And John?’

  Coxon paused. ‘Yes, My Lord?’

  ‘Welcome back, John.’ His tone carried the inflection of a man meeting a trouserless friend in the street and enquiring if he is well. ‘Good luck.’

  Coxon dipped his brow. ‘Yes, My Lord.’

  He took back his old sword, carried it rather than try to attach it back to its frog, his hands trembling too violently to attempt it.

  The first step had been taken on a journey that would end in blood.

  Blood at last.

  Chapter Four

  Old Cracker was calmer now, seated in his shack with Devlin and Peter Sam. His girl gone, he poured his own rum into his blackjack leather mug. His stock had run off and the night would be a sleepless one with pistols primed to prop up eyelids lest revenge be in the minds of the negroes.

  However, for now, his company as dark in humour if not in skin, Cracker would have to come up with a fair old tale to live even to see the night. Peter Sam was especially distrustful of every word that any man said.

  Peter Sam, a terror in brown goat-leather jerkin and breeches, a scowl for even when his captain spoke to him. Six foot and more and broad as a door, his grizzled red beard hid both snarl and smirk. Old Cracker felt easier looking away and to the calmer aspect of the man who had broken his shin with lead. Cracker searched for charity in that face.

  Ten years Devlin had been at sea. If he stood still the whole world continued to move. His shoulder-length black hair tied in a bow showed some sun bleaching at the sides. Cracker put him at no more than thirty-five, his face still ready to slope into an Irish grin at any time but his eyes slipping from confidence to guilt almost each time he spoke, and every breath of wind and creak of wood in the shack made the eyes snap hard as flint, every inch of him constantly ready. Cracker saw he didn’t have the drunken sheen of a pirate but instead, with his voice and clean-shaven manners, something of the naval officer about him.

  ‘You said rich, Cracker,’ Devlin said. ‘Mind that you and I may have different measures of that.’

  ‘Aye, Cap’n. Reckon so. I knows all about you and your gold. Four years now ain’t it? The French island and the gold. Four years and I suppose that’s all gone and dust now ain’t it, Cap’n?’

  ‘I do just fine, Cracker. Now tell me why I saved your hide.’

  Cracker watched the flint eyes fall, then they were gone, back to intelligent and warm. The desire to keep that look on the pirate’s face was deeply encouraging.

  ‘Well, Cap’n, what I say will make that island look like beggar’s pockets, so it will. If you’ve come this far, I’d dare say you heard of Captain Roberts?’

  No need for Devlin to answer. Bartholomew Roberts had become a pirate of infinite success. He had taken over Howell Davis’s crew almost two years since and, after exacting bloody revenge on the Portos that had killed him, he had treated the Caribbean and the Spanish Main like his own garden. It was rumoured he had taken four hundred vessels in those two years. He had now come to Africa, like the rest of them, except for Roberts it was more home than climate of death and disease. He had been on a slaver before being pressed into piracy, knew the coast well, and his constitution matched the baneful tropic.

  ‘What of Roberts?’ Devlin put his pistol down heavily on the table. The rum and mugs jumped, as did Cracker at the closeness of it. A Bohemian pistol with a left-sided lock and octagonal barrel, at least a half-inch bore. Its shot had almost split Cracker’s shin and the pain of it came back upon him like sympathetic magic of a voodoo poppet at the sight of the gun.

  ‘Nice pistol, Cap’n.’

  Devlin placed his hand over the stock, his finger tapped the guard. ‘No it isn’t. Talk.’

  Cracker looked between the two, sure that what he had was worth his life, not so sure that he would be allowed to keep it after he had spilled his guts – and hoping that the phrase was just a metaphor.

  ‘Well, I sees Roberts only last week, Cap’n. And he’s in a fury. He’s on his own, see? Just the one ship. His mate, Anstis, makes off with his consort in the night on his own account, and this after last year and his other captain, Walter Kennedy, doing just the same.’ A flash on Devlin’s face at the name Kennedy but Cracker was animated now, his forehead glowing, paying no mind to the flies dancing on him.

  ‘Now, turns out Roberts needed Anstis because old Bart Roberts has never dropped anchor in the East Indies and Anstis was an old hand and—’

  His voice was cut by the flying away of Peter Sam’s stool and the click of the Sibley’s lock as the giant towered over him, the blunderbuss filling his vision.

  Cracker could see the paper wad down the gaping barrel, holding back the shot.

  ‘Enough! You’re wasting! Tell, you bastard!’ Peter’s arms shook.

  Devlin saw that Cracker’s life would end and he had been foolish to forget why the big man had become so.

  Three years ago Peter Sam had been held by chain, his freedom taken, his great body thinned and broken, a world of darkness and beatings until he felt that he deserved them and even liked the man that hurt him when he did not punish him.

  All was reconciled now, but Devlin had not realised the power of the sound of chains.

  Devlin rose, used the voice he had found in the garden in Charles Town that had brought Peter back from his abyss.

  ‘Easy there, Peter. I need this man for a while, mate. Easy, brother.’

  Peter Sam’s fist tensed on the gun. Cracker closed his eyes, couldn’t remember a single word of prayer. He blathered out some plea, Peter Sam was clearly a softer man than he looked when it came to the slave.

  ‘They be pawned by their own kind some of ’em! They’re proud to wear the chains for their family’s debts, I swear!’

  The shot blew the stale air from the room like a bellows.

  Part of Cracker’s wooden wall behind his head vanished in splinters and the green shone in through the gap as a new window lit them all.

  ‘A million!’ Cracker screamed. ‘A million! At least! Roberts is going after The Buzzard!’

  Devlin gripped Peter Sam’s arm, pulling him back from the cringing Cracker.

  ‘Levasseur? Olivier Levasseur? Roberts knows where La Buse is?’

  ‘Aye,’ Cracker shivered. ‘The Buzzard. The treasure of the Virgin. A million and more!’

  The Virgem do Gabo. In almost two months the haul had already become legend. The largest prize ever taken on any sea.

  Ever taken.

  Large words for a pirate, and all without a single shot. And all of it gone silent. No trace of it in the whispers around the taverns. Levasseur and Taylor the pirates who had done it, and them gone too.

  ‘Tell. Make sure I believe.’ Devlin let go of Peter Sam and sat back down. Cracker watched Peter Sam slowly reload, and desperately gave all that he had.

  Olivier Levasseur, one of the pirates at Providence when Woodes Rogers arrived with the king’s proclamation of amnesty. Dyed to be a pirate, not one who saw its drunkenness and easy living as the reason for the life. He was just a captain without a war, too frayed a coat for the Marine Royale. A Calais privateer in the wars, on the right side of the world as long as the cannon was hot and the English and Spanish needed cold steel to cool their blood.

 
; His father had been an administrator in the court of Louis XIV and had garnered for his son a privateer’s commission so that he might make the family rich from the wealth flowing through the Mediterranean. He had been a learned young man of formidable strength and without fear; one of his more rugged interests as a youth was to descend rockfaces into valleys and climb back up again. Alone. A climbing accident had damaged his right eye but not his lust for pitting himself against mountains.

  But like the hundreds of captains who found not even the shake of a hand in gratitude after the peace of Utrecht and only unemployment their future, Levasseur saw some sense in the Devil’s lot.

  Levasseur. La Bouche, La Buse, la Buze. The Mouth, The Buzzard, The Nozzle. Whatever the name, he had been a pirate of moderate success under the flag with Ben Hornigold’s rogues until the new ownership of Providence sent him to Africa and the Indian Ocean with the rest. By then the injury to his eye had festered and forced its removal. An eye-patch did not harm his standing amongst his brothers even though the manner of its gaining would have impressed them less.

  For a time he joined up with Howell Davis and Thomas Cocklyn and that could have been the end of the world with the terror that three pirate crews, a force of over six hundred men, could have blasted upon the bastions. But, as ever when pirates combine, the enterprise went the way of argument and braggadocio.

  Levasseur coursed to try his luck in the East Indies with Edward England and John Taylor and that may have been history’s last call for Levasseur, if not for one Portuguese carrack anchored off of Bourbon after becoming holed east of Madagascar.

  Levasseur was now single partner with Taylor after marooning Captain England on Île de France, the former Dutch colony of Maurice where two failed attempts of patronage had only resulted in the extinction of an indigenous flightless large bird and gave the world a phrase that would come to exemplify anything dead and gone. The pirates were now almost living up to the legend themselves as the world grew smaller around them.