Cross of Fire

by Mark Keating

‘A nightmare more like, lad. I thought you dying!’ Manvell’s cot was just across the common corridor of canvas walls, their quarters below Coxon’s cabin. It was hot always, any sleep light, but they were far away from the seats of ease and the manger. A scant privilege. But Manvell was aware of men swaying and snoring in hammocks just feet from them. If an officer had nightmares, and they heard, he would be their sport tomorrow and forever. He would have a nickname by four bells. Their other companions in their domain were old men who took port to bed. They would not hear.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. It was an old dream.’ Howard brushed down his tussled sheet.

  ‘Of what?’

  Howard slumped back. He knew Manvell little but the concern was genuine. Manvell was older but they were both men still young enough to remember the promise of summers, the sea still a means to romance and adventure and not a prelude to war. Boyhood seemed still within reach.

  ‘It was the pirate attack. When I was with the captain before. Devlin’s ship destroyed us.’

  He sat up. ‘Not him, you understand. Nor the captain. They were on the island. I was a midshipman, acting-lieutenant for the day. I was sixteen.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Manvell’s voice hushed.

  ‘The pirates boarded us.’ He offered no more than that. Manvell would understand what those words meant. ‘I was by the guns. They came out of the cabin. I was to die. They were coming to me.’

  Manvell put his lamp to the floor. ‘Is this your dream?’

  ‘No. This is true, sir. But the next is most important.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘One of the pirates, sir, had coerced his way aboard.’

  ‘Coerced?’

  Howard yawned, he could not help it but would rather that it had not happened; it lessened his dream.

  ‘That is not important. The nature of what happened has bothered me ever since.’

  Manvell shuffled along the cot, his bones waking. ‘This is intriguing, Mister Howard. What occurred?’

  ‘He was a man in a yellow coat. We believed him a doctor attached to the island; he spoke French well enough and he had the accent. We thought him a fool. But he was one of them.’

  ‘And he harmed you?’

  Howard had cooled; the dream fled as it always did. These were just words now.

  ‘No,’ he made the word absolute so Manvell would not mistake. ‘No. He saved me.’

  ‘I don’t understand?’

  Howard wanted sleep now. This story had been part of his life, part of his dreams for too long to be of much interest, and other people’s dreams were always a bore.

  ‘He covered me, protected me, and stopped them. Nothing more. I lived. Please excuse me, sir, I am on duty soon.’

  Manvell felt knees push him off.

  ‘Of course. Sleep what you can.’ He stood. ‘But mind those dreams, Mister Howard.’

  ‘I will, sir. It is only the talk of Devlin I am sure. Going back up the coast and all.’

  ‘Aye,’ Manvell took his lamp past the screen door. ‘But an interesting story, lad. Just be careful that the men don’t hear of it.’

  He slipped the door and its tiny catch to, and turned with a start to the captain hanging off the companion stair with his own lamp lighting his face.

  ‘What goes on, Manvell?’

  ‘Sir?’ Manvell closed the door and walked closer. Coxon was half-dressed in breeches and shirt. His rabbit-grey hair sweated forward, the chains of the deck chiming behind him in the dark.

  ‘I was woken by distress. Is Mister Howard fine?’

  Manvell imagined the wood above their heads and Coxon’s cot. He would not have awoken to Howard’s howls.

  ‘A nightmare, nothing more, Captain,’ Manvell’s voice a smiling whisper.

  ‘Not about our days ahead I hope. We will be on the coast at dawn.’

  Manvell had not objected to course back up the coast. Intelligence would be a fine thing to court. His only note for the log was for the black clouds meeting the horizon aft: the monsoon season threatening their passage back.

  ‘No, sir. It was about your pirate.’ Manvell wished to grab the words back into his mouth but blushed and cleared his throat. Coxon showed no flinch or emotion. ‘I mean he recalled something about your time together.’

  ‘The one with the yellow coat?’ Coxon nodded through thinned lips.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Manvell was intrigued. ‘He was real?’

  ‘He was a cryptic one. Insidious. If he is still alive I suggest you look out for him. He fooled us all.’

  ‘It seems he saved young Mister Howard’s life.’

  Coxon went for the step, his conversation done.

  ‘Probably just to bugger him for himself. Pay it no mind.’

  Manvell watched the bare feet climb the stair then returned to his cot. He settled and wafted into his own dreams, always aware of the bell to come so only tentatively asleep. Still, there were pirates there. In lucid dreams.

  They had grown in number every night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Old Cracker, John Leadstone, was beginning to consider himself unfortunate. Devlin had left him almost a fortnight before with the sweaty task of rounding up the stock he had lost. He had a couple of blacks which he kept drunk enough to be tied to him and just enough standing with the tribes to sell him their prisoners of war but he did not expect a British ship to pay him any mind. Plunkett’s stock on Bense island was the limit of their interest. What harm could Old Cracker do to their trade? He did not take rice farmers, just backs and arms – and wasn’t there plenty of those? So why were British muskets tramping up his path and a captain with hands clasped behind judging his dwelling?

  Old Cracker wiped his hands on his breeches after laying two pistols below his counter and greeted the man in the three-cornered hat.

  The sailor measured the room and drew his nose up accordingly. ‘John Leadstone I am informed? Royal African man were you not?’

  Cracker bowed and wiped his nose and shuffled around his counter. ‘That I was, sir. That I was. Long time, long summer. Just working my way through the world, so I am now, Cap’n. Not wishing any harm to nobody, Cap’n.’ He wiped a stool with his sleeve and bid the officer to sit.

  John Coxon ignored the offer. ‘I have left my guard outside, John Leadstone. And I take my hat off to you.’ He did so and brushed its trim. ‘Do you know what that might mean?’

  Cracker wiped his face of flies. ‘No, Cap’n. Just hope I can be of service.’

  Coxon laid his hat to the table cut rough from a tun. ‘Let us say that removing my hat removes the man-of-war from your bay. Removes the king from your trade. Just two men talking. How would that sound to your ears?’

  Cracker allowed himself a seat. ‘That would be admirable, Cap’n. But if that be the case – nothing official, like – I should be entitled to a shilling or two if it’s Cracker’s brains you want.’

  ‘Ah,’ Coxon sighed. ‘You may have misunderstood my implication. The removal of my hat removes myself of any responsibility of what is to follow.’ He went to the door and dragged it open. ‘A captain’s innings, if you would indulge me.’

  Walter Kennedy took his cue and steamed into the room, straight for the stocky Cracker, heaved him off his feet and slammed him to the wall where Peter Sam had made a hole weeks before.

  ‘Ho, Cracker! Remember Kennedy? Davis’s Kennedy? Roberts’s Kennedy? How you been, old son?’ He jabbed a fist to the soft belly and Cracker fell against the arm at his throat, hung off it like a hook. ‘Ain’t you pleased to see me, Cracker?’

  ‘W . . . Walter . . .’ Cracker choked but that was all he could do as Kennedy pressed harder against his throat.

  Kennedy finished his thoughts for him. ‘Oh, I’m alive, Cracker. Walter’s back from the dead! And he’s on the king’s side now, Cracker! What do you think I can do with that!’ He stabbed his fist again, dropping Cracker coughing to his knees.

  Coxon called Kennedy back like a dog, and Ke
nnedy wiped his mouth of the spittle that had frothed and licked it back, his eyes white on the gasping Cracker.

  Coxon came forward and helped him up and to a seat. ‘Don’t fret, John.’ He joined him on a stool and pushed Cracker’s own rum towards him. ‘Walter is excited to be back on the sea. I won’t let him step out of line again.’ He moved his hat further away and dismissed Kennedy to the door. ‘But he has a point.’

  Deliberately, Coxon had brought only Kennedy to Cracker’s shack. When his telescope surveyed the cliff as the Standard sought her sounding he had seen the shack and the ragged landscape, the few outbuildings like the last tombstones at the end of a cemetery.

  He had judged at that time the type of man who had abandoned Company order for such degradation. A man who traded with interlopers and pirates. He had looked down his ship at young Manvell with the astonished eyebrows and Howard who was the stalwart picture of fresh heroism. He would spare them this. Just he and Walter Kennedy. They both knew what was needed to gain respect and intelligence. And he did not want his officers to measure him so soon if the meeting went badly.

  Cracker took just a rinsing of rum. ‘What point does he have, Cap’n?’ he asked, carefully he hoped.

  ‘He does have the king behind him now, in a sense – a strict sense – but further than that it is the Davis and Roberts aspect that is most relevant.’

  ‘Cap’n?’ Cracker’s face twisted in pain, convinced something had burst inside him. He kept an open eye on Walter Kennedy by the door.

  ‘I want to know about Devlin, Cracker.’

  ‘What about him, Cap’n?’

  Coxon had thought this would be harder. ‘So you know him?’

  Cracker scratched his whiskered cheek. ‘Well . . . know of him, know of him. Can’t be sure beyond that. Exactly who I sees and who I remembers are different pages, Cap’n.’

  Coxon flicked a mosquito from his leg and watched it settle on Cracker’s face, where the man ignored it.

  ‘Walter came here with Davis and Roberts. He tells that all the pirates come here. Roberts has certainly been seen and we are hunting him. I would like to know if Devlin is here also.’ He gave Cracker a charitable look as one might bestow to a simpleton at Christmas. ‘Is that too much to ask?’

  Cracker sweated. His eyes shifting from Coxon to Kennedy lounging at the door. ‘No, Cap’n. Not much at all.’

  ‘If it is for fear of betraying those that you consider brethren do not concern yourself. We would have nothing to gain by mentioning it. And besides this is nothing to do with pirates.’

  ‘It’s not?’

  ‘No, Leadstone. We require your assistance in a murder investigation on His Majesty’s request. With due respect to you being a former Royal African Company man.’

  ‘Whose murder?’

  ‘A poor man in London. Killed in his prime and leaving his young son to fend for himself. And the murderer fled. Would you begrudge us to seek such a villain?’

  ‘No, Cap’n. I would not. I have a son myself somewhere.’

  ‘And would you give your pity to that boy if you could meet him now, John Leadstone?’

  ‘I would. As a Christian man.’

  Coxon watched the mosquito sucking on Cracker’s face and then his eye dropped to the buzzing of other wings at Cracker’s shin and a grey bandage wrapped and seeping.

  ‘Walter?’ Coxon called. ‘Introduce yourself to John Leadstone.’

  Kennedy sprang from the door before Cracker could move and slapped Cracker’s slack face.

  ‘That was my father that bastard killed!’ He saw the smudge of blood along Cracker’s cheek and looked at the crushed insect in his palm and wiped it off on Cracker’s hair. ‘Talk, worm!’ He yanked him to his feet. ‘Where be Devlin?’

  ‘More instructively,’ Coxon suggested. ‘When did you see him last and what did you hear?’

  He drew his hat across the table. ‘Your only consideration, Leadstone, is that if I put my hat on I become His Majesty’s Captain again. It would be my duty to take my licence as a protector of the royal companies and push your little enterprise here into the sea.’

  Kennedy, his eyes bulbous, his teeth drawn, pulled the terrified Cracker closer, as Coxon went on.

  ‘Or you take the lesser of that evil and tell the vexed young Kennedy where the man who killed his father might be heading.’

  Kennedy shook Cracker like a doll until Coxon raised his hand.

  ‘And you can start by telling me what happened to your leg.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  They had passed in the night. Coxon and Devlin; Coxon asleep on the Standard, Devlin drinking long into the early hours aboard the Shadow. Behind Devlin sailed the Santa Rosa, the priest’s ship now consort. Sixty-odd nautical miles lay between the freeboards of the pirate and the returned captain. Two of sand on a beach in the sea’s measure, city to city for the two captains. Their only connection had been that their respective ships’ watches had witnessed the passing of the same school of Southern-Right whales making their way to the cape for calving. On each ship one man had been moved enough to try and capture how the moon had shone on their barnacled hides and reflected the solemn eyes of the great creatures who were studying the humans passively. Charcoal and book in calloused hands. The same date scribbled, the same emotion scratched on the page. But if they met on a deck, each man would carve different, violent emotions and never know the majesty they had shared.

  Coxon and the Standard were making for Sierra Leone and Old Cracker’s illegal slave-hole. Devlin and his ships were sailing south to Ascension, to keep from the coast and to careen and gather food and water.

  Ascension island was God’s gift to the mariner south of the equator just as the Verdes was north. From the Verdes you sail west and you will meet the Caribbean; from Ascension sail west and meet Brasil, and sail up the coast for your trade.

  Run east from Ascension for the meat of Africa; or, as Devlin would, like tens of thousands before, set for one hundred and thirty-four degrees and seven hundred miles to Saint Helena and thank the Portuguese and their carracks that had discovered the islands and laid goats, pigs and trees there. Gather more water and fresh meat and set to cleaning.

  Careening and caulking, ‘brooming and breaming’, to take a day. This was the pirate’s advantage over their naval hunters. The warships would careen in port, the pirates on the fly.

  Wood and water. The worms and barnacles were sworn enemies of oak, and the pirates needed to show a pair of clean heels more than most. It would be a generation before copper-bottomed boats cut through the water. Burning and brushing remained the only way to clean. If a safe island were found – and if the ship were small enough – then beach her and fire and scrape away the sluggishness. For larger ships like the Shadow, anchor and weigh all her guns and lading to one side. Her crew put ashore to feast and drink while the gangs allotted to the task keep to the boats, some on one side pulling her gunwales down while the others cleaned what strakes they could as the ship leant clear of the waterline. A clean keel was as fine a weapon as any cannon to a pirate.

  The task done, the final scuttlebutt of water filled at Saint Helena, and one more ink line was turned dramatically up to sixty degrees for the almost fifteen hundred miles to reach the Comoros islands. Thirty-five days for Devlin with his swift girl; just over five thousand miles. Africa to be kept just off the edge of the page to be safe from the coast where the hunters lurked.

  But it had been a hard month. Devlin had awoken on the first Sunday to an Angelus bell and prayer under the sanguineous dawn of an African sun. He slammed out of his cabin, fit to wound those who had woken him, pulling on his shirt only to stall with one arm still naked at the sight of more than half his crew on their knees.

  Their heads looked up to him and he spat as if that had been his only intention and returned to his cabin. O’Neill went back to his incantations as his Porto brethren passed out hard-tack as jury-rigged communion wafers. At least there was plenty of wine
and the pirates willing to accept its holy transformation.

  Devlin closed his door, dressed with coarse mutterings and looked out at the endless horizon from his slanted windows. And the month went so.

  They had used the weeks to refit the Santa Rosa more to their purpose. Gunports cut away, six-pounders added fore and aft, stanchions for swivel-guns mounted on every rail. She had entered the world with six four-pounders and two half-pound falconets; she would dare you to make her leave it after trebling her armament and taking cut-throats for her crew.

  The Shadow too had dressed herself for a bride. Devlin had taken a leaf from Roberts’s book and mounted guns to the fighting-tops. Half-pounders, but from the tops and firing down onto a deck it would be like hot hail to the unfortunates opposing. A rain of lead, cruel even for pirates whose rule book began with all the ways to whittle down a crew before the freeboards scraped.

  And two pirate ships crossed the cape of Africa and entered the Indian Ocean and even the priests had seen it before and kept to their sewing palms and mending of sail and swabbing of wood that never ended.

  So it came to Lieutenant Manvell on the Standard with John Coxon, seven days behind Devlin, to marvel at the new earth.

  Coxon could keep to the coast, no need to shy from fort guns or passing ships. Just over three-thousand miles against Devlin’s five. Three thousand miles. Down to green water and beer and all the fresh meat gone. But now, heading for the Comoros, there was the promise of water, turtles, goats, fish, birds. A garden of Eden. After two days of rain around the Cape, an early July dawn opened for Lieutenant Manvell.

  He climbed to the weather-deck and became blinded by the searing white light. He reached for some wood to steady himself and with his hand over his brow looked about the deck.

  The ship shone, her wood freshly swabbed and holy-stoned, the brightness off her chains and oak dazzling. Before him the men had adapted to the light and heat like moulting a winter coat. White loose shirts, rolled sleeves and pale calico slops. To Manvell they were as angels beneath the greater whiteness of their cloud-like sails. Those who had some position wore straw hats, the common sailor a headscarf if he had it. They looked over to him as they worked and tapped their foreheads to him. Some had daubed black ash under their eyes.