Cross of Fire

by Mark Keating

  The pirate would want to know where the ship was coursing for and from and the nature of her passengers.

  Was she expecting to meet anybody? Was she already a part of a convoy that might lead to more riches? And what was the news of the world as the captain knew it?

  News was paramount. The pirate spent most of his life at sea. He could often be the last to know of a new war. It could be fortuitous to know which kings and queens were at each other’s throats if only to draw new lines of where the best-laden would be sailing.

  ‘I’m a Kilkenny man, Father. But that was too long ago. What’s a Donegal priest doing out here? A snow with six priests coursing against Africa. What’s the game of it?’

  ‘So it’s definitely the pirate I am meeting? Not a chance to let us on our way?’

  Devlin noticed he had cruel black eyes to match his thinning hair and close-cut beard greying on the jowls. A thin face and frame but his gown was tight and showed muscle more than bone.

  An Irish priest shaping a course on the Atlantic showing no fear of the pirate in front of him. Devlin could change that. The look of confidence never lasted long.

  Dandon spotted the next thoughts and interceded as he often did when he could feel the air warming.

  ‘Father,’ he said. ‘It would only be considered as prudent that you avail us of any information. In the first instance – over drink and pleasant company – it would be considered polite. In the second instance it would be simply . . . unwise to not do so.’

  Dandon anticipated the open mouth about to object and raised his hand.

  ‘It has nothing to do with fear. I’m sure your faith in Your Lord is ample enough that you’re little afraid of any villainy. But perhaps consider that it will be better for other souls. That is to say should we come across other ships who might be attached to yourself.’

  O’Neill cocked his chin to Devlin.

  ‘He goes on a bit, this one.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Devlin said coldly. ‘He means that you can’t be out here by yourself. By dawn the others will show themselves. That might go hard for them. Hard for you. If you don’t tell what I want to know.’

  ‘And who says I won’t tell? I’ve been hoping for the opportunity. Waiting for it. You’re just what I was looking for, so you are!’

  ‘And how is that now?’ Devlin watched him stand and pour them all more wine.

  ‘Captain,’ he watched his pour and spoke slowly. ‘I’ve not been back home for a long time. Maybe as long as you, my son. I come from Lisboa with my brothers. Before that, I served in Goa and left that place with my archbishop and the viceroy in January.’

  He sat and looked mournfully into his mug.

  ‘You may have heard something of that, being pirate yourself? A viceroy’s ship taken, that is.’

  Dandon saw Devlin glow and hold his breath, and O’Neill had seen it also.

  ‘Ah, now, so that would be of interest to you?’ He drank long, savouring his power over the cabin.

  ‘Aye. I was on the Virgin of the Cape when the pirates took her. A carrack of gold with the departing viceroy.’ He drank and gasped at the fullness of the wine.

  ‘Would some of that story be the kind of thing you were after?’

  Dom Luiz de Menezes was the departing viceroy, he explained, and it would take almost five months to return to Lisboa from Goa.

  Accompanying him aboard the Nossa Senhora do Cabo was Sebastiao de Pessanha, the archbishop, and several millions in gold, rubies, diamonds and emeralds for their king, for India was the birthplace of gems. But the most precious tribute, the greatest symbol of the Christian over the Hindu, was the solid gold Flaming Cross.

  Crosses of fire represent the Son and the Father. God the Word revealed himself to Moses through a burning bush foretelling his coming incarnation. But the bush was not consumed by the fire. This God, over the old, had no desire to punish man. His power would be to save.

  The bush is not consumed.

  When the Messiah is consumed by the cross the unification of the Father and the Son becomes complete. That was the prophecy of the burning bush.

  See the Son in the cross, in the flames, and see the Father.

  The Flaming Cross of Goa held this tradition. It was from the Se Cathedral of Santa Catarina and destined for the cathedral of the same name in Lisboa.

  Gold mined by slaves and moulded by priests into a seven-foot cross adorned with rubies and mounted on diamonds and emeralds, the rubies emulating the fire of the burning bush, the incorruptible fire. The Cross of Fire.

  Recently removed from the heart of a smaller cross, and placed within its heart as it cooled was a small gold box no larger than a forefinger. It had been brought from Lisboa by a group of priests to be conjoined with the new cross under the blessing of King João of Portugal. Its destiny was to return home to the king, to show the world Portugal’s wealth in India and to demonstrate the conquest of Christian over Hindu.

  It was the incarnation of the Word and the Son, and that part O’Neill hoped Devlin still had soul for.

  ‘You see, Captain, my name is no coincidence. I am descended from the Hugh O’Neill. I am an heir of Tyrone, if you would believe it.’

  Dandon looked to his captain. He knew nothing of the relevance of O’Neill’s words but Devlin was listening and so Dandon would also, but not dry. He reached for the bottle but kept quiet, even polite enough to draw directly from the bottle lest his pouring disturbed the story.

  O’Neill accepted that the bottle would not be returning to him.

  ‘I, in my journey, at least made it to Spain, Captain. I had more luck than Earl O’Neill. And on to Portugal and so to India. A pilgrimage.’

  ‘For what?’ Devlin asked.

  O’Neill took a breath and sent the pirate a look of pity.

  ‘Do you remember your Sunday education, Captain? The Irish kings leaving us to the English. Leaving to raise a Spanish army in 1607, a Catholic army that never arrived. The end of our country?’

  Devlin did not share that his school had been books that servants had stolen from their masters to pay for meat.

  His father had sold him to be a butcher’s boy far from home. His mother had left, for whatever reason. That was done. Him his father’s only child. Guineas for a boy. That all done now. He had shot enough pistols to make peace with it.

  ‘I read something about it, Father.’

  ‘Ah, then you know of the cross. The true cross.’ O’Neill gave the signum crucis in the air before him and glared at the pirate when he did nothing but stare right back.

  ‘The earl, my ancestor, had a gold crucifix about his neck. Inside, protected by the gold, the cross held a piece of Our Lord’s own cross.’

  Devlin gave the rest.

  ‘And a storm came up. And O’Neill took the cross and had it dragged behind the ship and the waters calmed.’

  O’Neill nodded proudly. ‘Aye. And the waters calmed.’

  ‘Do you believe all fairy stories, Father?’

  O’Neill took his seat.

  ‘So you wouldn’t believe me if I told you it was the cross that pulled me to Lisboa? That I took it with me to Goa with Our Lord’s cross within on Holy order?’ That I travelled on the king’s command?

  Dandon’s eye caught the glitter and silent fall of a star from the window. He had wandered from the conversation and into his bottle, but the star had brought him back.

  ‘How does a piece of wood get inside a gold cross?’

  Devlin snatched the bottle.

  ‘It doesn’t. It’s a story. Irishmen are raised on songs and stories. That’s why they’re all hungry.’

  O’Neill’s voice lowered. ‘You should hear the rest of it, my son.’

  ‘I’m not your son.’ Devlin sank a drink.

  The priest had made him think of home, of being young, of being quiet, of being left. Of watching his father’s back go out a door with coin for his son in his pocket and the boy carrying the memory like a boulder from then on. />
  The priest saw the pirate’s mind wander. ‘But it is a good story. And you a part of it. That I know.’

  Devlin stiffened.

  ‘How am I a part of it?’

  ‘The cross went with me to Goa so O’Neill’s cross could be joined with the Flaming Cross. So to preserve the Holy Cross, the True Cross, the relic of Our Lord, forever. And return with it to Lisboa.’ He crossed himself.

  ‘The True Cross within the gold. The divinity of it, Captain! And you to play a part! A pirate with the Lord’s cross. Your poor life elevated to glory! This is why you have had your tribulations and troubles. The Lord has shaped you to his purpose!’

  ‘And the pirates took it,’ Devlin said. ‘And you in mourning.’

  ‘The True Cross is within that cross. It must be returned to the world. If this pirate melts the gold, the True Cross of Our Lord will be lost.’

  Devlin had heard enough. He stood and took up his glass. His back to the table, his front to the black outside the stern windows. He spoke to the sea.

  ‘I come across you who carried this cross from India and had it taken by Levasseur. That is too short. Too thin, Father.’

  ‘How so, Captain?’

  Devlin did not turn. ‘I am after that treasure. How is it I come across you?’

  O’Neill stood. In the mirror of the window Devlin saw the strength of him. Formidable for his kind.

  ‘I am a simple priest. I left a king – though I am sure that means nothing to you – and I told him that I would return with the cross. I told him the Lord would provide.’ He looked down at Dandon.

  ‘I have faith.’

  Devlin came back and held out his hand for Dandon’s bottle. He sank it long and gasped his words.

  ‘Levasseur took the Virgin of the Cape. Left it as a wreck. How did you make it back?’

  ‘Oh, it was quite a month, Captain, to be sure. But it was on the snow you have now. A friendly ship come for us. Her captain handsomely paid back in Lisboa.’

  ‘I have sworn to get back the cross. The only truth I knew was that I would find men to help me take it back. What else would I hope for with but six priests? I care not for the treasure, for the rest of it, just the return of the cross.’

  Devlin turned.

  ‘You think I’ll help you? I’ve pirated your ship. I want to empty you, not fill you up.’

  ‘I can pay, Captain. If that is your only wish.’

  ‘With what?’

  O’Neill rose and went to his sail-cloth packet.

  ‘When I meditated on my mission, and the king granted me anything to take with me to aid my journey, I asked only for entry to his library.’ He brought three books to the table. One an enormous tome and two smaller. Dandon pushed aside the obvious Bible and picked up the pale hardback of a new copy of Woodall’s Military and Domestic Surgery. He leafed through it with a gleaming eye.

  ‘My word!’ he laughed. ‘I have never seen it complete!’

  Devlin was drawn by the large, square, blue book. He lifted the cover.

  ‘The Neptune Français.’ He repeated the title as his hand stroked the colourful plate inside. ‘In English. A Mortier translation.’

  Most complete mariners’ charts were French; France, just last year, had been the first country to dedicate an entire government department to hydrography. A seaman would know the French name for an island before he knew his native one.

  Dandon peered over from his own study. ‘An atlas?’

  Devlin folded out one of the charts as gently as if it was made of gold leaf.

  ‘It is the atlas.’ He thought on his waggoner of charts from different nations, in different scales and varying meridians.

  O’Neill took up his Bible.

  ‘It is yours. These were the books my prayers told me to find. I was to seek a surgeon and a seaman and gift them to aid my mission.’

  Devlin closed back the atlas with a slap.

  ‘It is mine anyways. Along with anything else you have.’

  ‘But do you not see, Captain?’ He came close to the table and pulled all three books together.

  ‘The trinity of it. A Holy Trinity! The Bible, the maps, the surgeon’s treatise! All we will need to bring back the cross! It is your destiny! The spirit of St Brendan inside you!’

  ‘You set out on the sea and guessed you might meet a sailor and a surgeon. Well done. None of this gets you your cross. I do not know where it is.’

  ‘But I do.’

  O’Neill let his statement sink deep into both men’s lusts, smiled at the pirate captain’s hunger.

  ‘Say that again?’

  Devlin dropped his hand to his sword hilt as his back bit with its old wound.

  ‘You know where it is? With the rest . . . the rest of . . .?’

  He could not say it.

  Treasure is a fragile word. It travels out of open windows and is blown away like smoke. A word to be whispered over candlelight and small round tables in private corners.

  The mouthing of it was sacred, for it longed to speed to the ears of others.

  ‘How know you this, priest?’

  Chapter Eleven

  Olivier Levasseur had captured the Virgin of the Cape, a Portuguese ship full of nobles and priests.

  He burned the ship.

  She was holed and grounded and he sailed in his caravel, Victory, taken with Taylor months before. He left the ship. He had the Virgin’s treasure. That would do.

  The pirate and his crew delighted in using the priests’ backs to shift his new wealth. Porto Catholics fresh from their inquisitions in India. Let the bastards sweat. With Taylor he discussed the dividing of their haul.

  John Taylor, English; Levasseur, French. The Portos would understand French and Spanish so they spoke in English as the captives ferried past with their goods.

  ‘That is how I know, Captain,’ O’Neill declared. ‘The wretch did not suspect that there was an Irishman within his earshot. I know where he is going.’

  ‘But not how to find it,’ Devlin said.

  O’Neill waved his arms over the books.

  ‘The trinity. Together we will find it. You your treasure, and I my cross.’

  ‘And why would I do that?’

  ‘But why would you not?’ O’Neill displayed himself the priest amongst the rogues, gave the glare that shamed.

  ‘Would you not see some worth for yourself in being an instrument of the Lord? Is your soul so wretched, my son?’

  Devlin said nothing. He took up the bottle and moved around the priest out onto the deck and slammed the door behind him.

  O’Neill looked at Dandon who did not appear puzzled at all.

  Dandon sighed.

  ‘He will need to contemplate,’ he offered. His words did not remove the confusion from the priest’s face.

  ‘There are the men to consider. Patrick is not the master of their fates. Every decision must be agreed. He has lost many good men on the whims and motives of others.’

  ‘So more the need to gain some redemption.’

  Dandon closed his eyes and shook his head.

  ‘You do not understand. His contemplation is not on whether to help you or not. It is on whether to cut from you what you know. Or – and this the more probable – how to convince the crew to not do so.’

  O’Neill paled for the first time since he had come into the company of pirates.

  Devlin took himself to the gunwale, his bottle hanging over the sea as he leant over to study the black water below. A few men were smoking above, lost in their own memories, and the ship was slumbering at anchor for the night.

  A song arose from under his feet but not a great chorus, just one or two with a fiddle and a shared voice, a spoon rapping against a stool; ‘Jack Hall’ the song, a variation of the Kidd ballad that the pirates often sang.

  ‘And my neck will pay for all,’ they sang, and Devlin spat to the sea.

  ‘When I die, when I die.’

  ‘When I die!’ Devlin drank and laug
hed into the bottle.

  But he pondered as he played the bottle against the wood in time to the song.

  If the priest knew the name of the island they could forego having to find Roberts. Go straight for the gold and the ridiculous cross. That would save time. And time was of the moment; the money all of the moment, for the world was poor.

  The South Sea collapse had been bad for all. Devlin recalled himself throwing the diamond up and over the heads of Walpole and the Prince of Wales, no less.

  It had felt good then but now the trade on the waters had slowed, the ship’s holds were thin, and him with a hundred men to feed, the purse lower every month and a pirate captain’s tenure only as happy as the bellies he filled.

  Their gold was low, their silver already broken into pieces of eight. The years of fat were dwindling down to a scraggy stew.

  He had thought the coin would last but avarice surprises even the richest of men, but the thief and the viscount were both only a bad month or two away from the compter.

  He had met dozens of vagrant pirate captains who had once been gods. He had never seen himself as toothless and tobacco-stained like them, begging rum for their tales of past glories.

  He weighed one hand with the other, not seeing it as palms closing for prayer, and he did not hear Peter Sam come to his side.

  ‘What ails, Captain?’ The rough quartermaster stood with his hands tucked into his broad belt, a pipe drooping from his mouth.

  ‘Nothing,’ Devlin said. ‘The priest has surprised that’s all. How go the rest of them?’

  Peter Sam breathed in the night air.

  ‘They ate. They don’t speak English but it’ll be good to have some holy luck on the ship for a while. The men are pleased about it anyways. The parsons seem mighty calm for captured men.’

  Devlin offered his bottle without a word and Peter Sam swigged short for its liquid was in the last quarter. You can’t drain a man’s last.

  ‘We’re almost broke, Peter,’ Devlin said, taking back the wine. ‘Every ship we come across is thinner than water.’