Cross of Fire

by Mark Keating

  Coxon joined them.

  ‘Serpent’s apples, Christopher?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Manvell said. ‘I need some air. It is like being in a barrel down here.’

  ‘I had not noticed,’ Dandon said.

  Coxon led them all away from the prisoner.

  ‘Kennedy, watch him. Entertain him with stories of how Devlin killed your father.’ He took Manvell to the stair and called back over his shoulder. ‘Think on talking, pirate. We will fetch fresh water at Île de France. Fresh water. Then we will be on our way. You have one more day.’

  Manvell followed him up the stair.

  ‘One more day? And then, sir?’

  ‘We must be on. And our only need for him will be as bait.’ He paused to wait for Manvell to join him. ‘I do not mean as shark-bait, Christopher. It has to do with the letter I sent you with to the priests. I know how to stir Devlin’s pot.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  They went on up the next companionway.

  ‘Call me John when we are not in company, Christopher. I shall prefer it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Coxon stopped again.

  ‘I mean, thank you, John.’

  And they ascended.

  Walter Kennedy was alone with Dandon, and he let Dandon know just how alone.

  ‘We be in at one of the Frenchy islands soon, my boy.’ He ran a waxed knotted lanyard through his hands, just short enough to be mistaken for a watch-chain, long enough to sting when swiped across flesh without too much marking. ‘Everyone will be going ashore. Just be you and me and old Coxon. What you reckon to that, boy?’

  ‘Less of the boy,’ Dandon snapped out a kick to Kennedy’s shin and Kennedy howled at the bite. ‘I’m older than you, dog.’

  Kennedy kicked back, harder, just under a knee, and Dandon closed his eyes but made no sound.

  ‘One more day.’ Kennedy brandished his rope at Dandon’s face. ‘If you don’t talk Coxon’ll be done with you. I don’t care if you talk. I ain’t in no hurry or hurrah to meet Devlin.’ He moved his face close to Dandon’s ear, his sweat dripping into it.

  ‘And I did kill my father, scum,’ he hissed. ‘Stabbed through his ribs. I can hear it still. I was a real pirate. With Davis and Roberts. A captain with my own ship and men. Devlin is nothing compared to me.’

  Dandon winced from the sweat and the breath.

  ‘I assure you, Mister Kennedy. Patrick Devlin has never once compared himself to you.’ He tossed his head to the manger. ‘Or to any other goat shit.’

  Kennedy cursed, leaned back and swung, flaying his rope into Dandon’s eyes. Still the pirate made no sound.

  ‘I killed my father!’ he yelled and then remembered the ceiling above and the bodies that might hear. He lowered his voice for Dandon’s ears only.

  ‘Think what I’ll do to you when we’ve done with you tomorrow!’

  He pushed Dandon to let him swing in his chains and settled himself to his whittling and mumbling.

  Dandon slumped forward. Forget Kennedy, he thought. There were not enough brains to work on. Howard and Manvell would be the way. They were closed but not locked doors. He had enough to spring their latches. Besides, there would be a day soon enough when he would sit down again at a table with Devlin. He had to have some story to tell, and it would not be one where he just sat and rotted by the manger until Devlin picked him up like an infant.

  Devlin had left him for a reason even if neither of them had seen it at the time. He soothed his eyes against his sleeve. Aye, they’d both missed it at the time. And he would not let Devlin down.

  He laughed, and Kennedy looked up and threatened to throw his knife. Dandon dared it and Kennedy went back to shaping wood and Dandon laughed harder. This time Kennedy came forward, his knife in one hand, knotted rope in the other.

  ‘What you laughing at, dog?’ He was sharp enough to put his blade in his belt.

  ‘Can’t you hear him coming?’ Dandon sighed now. ‘It is written. The whole ship sweats with storms brewing. And you will die, Walter. I’ll make sure of that.’

  Walter striped him again with the rope, and this time Dandon turned his head for the knots to strike his temple and its veins, and the blood came like a trail of syrup in one fat and glorious line.

  ‘Damn!’ Kennedy wiped the rope through his hand and then looked horrified at his palm. ‘Damn you!’ And he ran for the manger and a bucket.

  Dandon’s head went back and he laughed even harder. That would do, he thought. Soon Manvell would talk to Howard over what he had said in their whispers. Howard would come again to feed his conscience. Howard would see his wounds. And Dandon would have his story to drink to. And he and Patrick Devlin would chime their glasses. And then that image faded, Devlin’s face gone. Instead Dandon would die on this ship with welts on his wrists, stinking of iron, and with piss on his breeches.

  He scraped his chains against the cool wound to rip it further and felt the blood trickle down his neck. Head wounds were the best to be sure. They bled well.

  He watched Kennedy stomp the deck, pull his hair and curse his Irish temper. Then Dandon settled back to weakness, the gifted pebble of Thomas Howard rolling in his mouth.

  But slowly the weakness was becoming less play. Truly dying now.

  He thought on that.

  And it was like reminiscence.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Thirty men he had taken from the Shadow, and all her boats. They rowed round, left their girl where she was, should they be observed.

  They waited for the tide to withdraw and for the strewn rocks to show themselves. A boat beyond the tide was set to signal when the cave revealed its mouth, and Devlin and Peter Sam set them all to building the stones atop the horseshoe-shaped foundations of the dam that remained. But it would not be a single day’s labour. It was slow work. Levasseur must have used his whole ship’s company.

  ‘See it, Peter,’ Devlin waved his arm across the bay they were creating. ‘Levasseur has a ship. A hundred men or more. He builds a wall to hold back the tide. To reveal a cave that a hundred men can walk a treasure into . . . and then he floods it. Why?’

  Peter Sam watched the thirty men build, all of them happy in the heat, or greedy in the heat, for it was the gold that raised their ardour and labour.

  ‘I don’t know, Cap’n.’ He knew when Devlin was tuning his fiddle.

  Devlin set a foot against a rock, leant on a knee.

  ‘To flood the cave again. To leave the haul hidden. Come back another year.’

  ‘Or?’ Peter Sam mirrored Devlin’s stance.

  Devlin looked confused and then read down the same page as Peter Sam.

  ‘Say his men trapped him there. Turned against. As you might do to me. In my madness, that is.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘O’Neill only cares for the cross,’ Devlin spoke carefully, shaping his thoughts. ‘He’s brought us here just to get back to Levasseur. The Buzzard is still here. Not just the treasure. The man himself. Why else would O’Neill deceive us? He couldn’t get the cross on his own. He has men here.’

  Peter Sam loaded his pipe.

  ‘Aye. That’ll be it. The Buzzard and the gold are here. And we’re going in. There could be a line of shot waiting for us.’

  Devlin went back to his thinking pose.

  ‘Maybe we should just go.’ Peter Sam lit and drew his tobacco into life. ‘Think how the men will feel if we find an empty cave?’

  Devlin waited long enough to hear a round of land and sea birds back and forth, conflicting, fighting, celebrating. Enough time to see the white spume receding from the shore.

  ‘It ain’t empty, Peter.’ He decided and rolled his breeches to help his men. ‘I can smell it. I’ve known it before. I don’t know the story, but the gold’s here.’

  He stood beside the big man and slapped his shoulder. ‘Else I’ll give the Shadow up to you. With willing.’

  He walked down to help his men. Peter Sam cupped a ha
nd to his mouth to shout at Devlin’s back.

  ‘You’re supposed to ask me if I wants it first!’

  Devlin pretended not to hear.

  ‘Dulcinea, Peter Sam!’ he yelled back. ‘Dulcinea! We have become men of La Mancha!’

  He came down to the beach. The tide was sucking out now. It would take two tides for the cave to be revealed. Once the dam did its work the water would drain elsewhere, for the erosion of the cave would have created another channel out. And then they would be the first ones since Levasseur to see the black-mouthed entrance.

  ‘What has happened?’ O’Neill asked. He had picked his way through the bodies, fearful of Levasseur but drawn towards the only living thing. He sought life.

  The Buzzard stopped him with a pistol’s click.

  ‘Hold, priest.’ The pistol arm stretched to O’Neill’s head. ‘You have a ship for Levasseur?’

  O’Neill raised his palms and took in the man before him. Lean and sea-worn as he ever was. Fine clothes now worn by the habit of waiting, of patience, his limbs as wiry as smoke.

  The priest and the pirate. And the priest had better talk well. The floor attested to that.

  ‘I have a ship, Captain. I have brought a pirate. They do not know where I am. I took them to the other island. But, Captain? Are you well?’

  ‘Do you have any tobacco?’ Levasseur lowered the gun. Hugged his cross.

  ‘No,’ O’Neill came closer. ‘But the pirates have all. Food and wine. Tobacco and meat.’

  ‘Good. I am sick to my lungs of fruit.’ He leant forward conspiratorially.

  ‘Come, priest. Let me tell you how I died.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The blow-hole into the cave had been the lifeline for The Buzzard and those who had stayed with him. They could scramble out, they could roll down food from the bounty of the island to grabbing hands. Water was given by a spring trickling into the cave. Birds could be shot – strangled, for they had no fear of men – their nests and the lizards’ nests pillaged. But the gold remained sealed.

  It had happened quickly. Violence faster than the swiftest hand could inscribe.

  Levasseur had taken his Victory and his snow, the Santa Rosa, to an island given up as worthless. No stone sat engraved on the shore to claim it for another country. That had been in April. He had split the treasure with John Taylor and the Englishman had gone his own way, to the South Americas the taverns said. But Levasseur felt that if he were to settle down with his share the French encroachment on the Indian Ocean would be the best passage. He was richer than God. But even God had to buy legitimacy in this new age. He would appeal to his Crown – with a sufferance of gold, naturally.

  He had lost his eye in youth from his love of rock-climbing. He had been a man scarred by the cliff-face. He had ventured into sea-caves as a young man as others had stumbled in and out of taverns. The earth was his friend. He had no fear of caves or doubts about his mastery over the waters.

  Levasseur had sniffed out the cave, and the crew of the Victory had built the dam. By the time it had served its purpose his pirate crew had been living with the gold for over a week. And not just gold but diamonds, rubies and emeralds. The gold proved to be the ruined part of the great treasure, for much of it was not in coin, which would have fit easily into pirate pockets.

  There were idols, ceremonial plates, chains, and an untold number of crosses – the golden adulation a king expects, but which pirate teeth found hard to bend to their more practical uses.

  Dragged into the sea-cave, piled up, and yet once amassed against the rocks and the sand, the wealth seemed too mountainous for one captain to preside over.

  In chests, in sacks, there could be order, fair division. But a hundred pirates staring at a cascading harvest of gold . . .? And they wanted more, of course. And they had chanced on the wealth easily, after all.

  If they had spilled their blood over it, shared a painful victory, that might have counted for something. Instead they looked at their captain as just a lucky devil. And luck costs nothing. Luck deserves only a tip of a hat. Nothing has been earned or deserved.

  Levasseur’s men wiped grins from their faces, unhooked pistols from their belts, and climbed towards him up a hill of gold.

  Four were loyal, but against the whole that was just a stand of bravado and cursing. The mutineers carried off the bulk of the gold, leaving some out of respect, but even that remainder fabulous enough: ten lifetimes’ fortunes.

  And they left the cross.

  To them it seemed likely the cross had sunk the first ship that tried to carry it and now the pirates could blame their revolt on its bad luck. The cross had willed them to it. No doubt its gold had been hewn from the earth by heathen slaves for Catholic masters and was cursed by those who gouged it, and cursed by Satan, for it was Catholics that bid it done. The Devil’s cross.

  And let him to it.

  They destroyed the dam on leaving to cut off the Devil, and their captain’s voice. But Levasseur did not howl out at their betrayal. They would not hear his woe. The pirates broke down the sea-wall, took the Victory and sailed away, vanishing into legend. It was the right time. Rich men were now aboard and rich men slip away easily. History is full of such empty pages, and no-one ever hears of successful pirates, after all. Only those that swung.

  The Buzzard now became prey instead of predator. At every tide the waters rose over the treasure to fill the pool that had always been there, and left its captives to stare like Tantalus at their unattainable fortune.

  The fruit was unreachable, the water undrinkable.

  Twice a day the tide withdrew just enough, but for less than an hour. Armful by armful the pirates and the priests removed the hoard to the higher slope, to a new chamber, and O’Neill presented a plan to Levasseur.

  They had discovered the blow-hole and that through it they could get out, and they soon discovered that the mutineers had abandoned the Santa Rosa. But the captain and the pirates would not leave the life that the treasure promised and that they had dreamt of all their lives – or at least since that day they had crossed the boards of one life into another.

  O’Neill had pleaded that they could all be saved, that they might fill their pockets with what they could and be free.

  ‘You do not understand freedom, priest,’ Levasseur had replied. ‘And what of your cross? Would you leave that to this hole?’

  ‘Then we get out and rebuild the dam,’ O’Neill insisted.

  ‘We do not have the men to do it before the tide. Each day the sea will push us back, destroy our work. And then there are the storms due to come. I know these waters.’

  O’Neill argued that the men could take the ingots, the rubies and the diamonds, count their blessings in that, still be rich men.

  ‘And leave my soul. And your soul?’

  O’Neill lowered his head. His brothers had already set the cross against a wall, braced by stones; already they had returned to ritual.

  ‘Then let me go,’ he said. ‘I will take some coin and six of my brothers and buy us a ship of men to rebuild the wall.’

  ‘Share my gold again?’ Levasseur brought his face close. ‘Not again.’

  ‘No. I will find good men. Hire them to the task only. I only ask the cross for my church. No more.’

  Levasseur walked the cave, watched the pool rising, watched his four loyal men sweat and study him faithfully. He came back to the tall priest and scratched the scar beneath his eye-patch as if an answer lay behind the leather.

  ‘Then go, priest,’ he said at last. ‘But do not bring them until you have met me again. If I am not satisfied . . . you and I will both die here.’

  ‘We were robbed,’ O’Neill explained. ‘We went to Bourbon, with difficulty. South you said, but it was not easy.’

  ‘You lost the gold?’ Levasseur dragged himself from his throne.

  O’Neill stepped back, away from the dead, and the undead coming on.

  ‘Pirates,’ O’Neill said, without a
pology. ‘I tried to get back to Lisboa. Hoped to appeal to my king for a ship, and then the Lord intervened for both our souls, Captain. That is why I have been gone so long.’

  ‘Two months and more, priest.’ He was upon him now, his pistol still cocked and waiting. ‘We are dead.’

  ‘But I have a ship! And great men.’ O’Neill backed to the pool. ‘Enough to build the dam again!’

  ‘You lost your gold. How will you pay them?’

  O’Neill looked over the pirate’s shoulder to the golden carpet.

  ‘A share, perhaps? I have told about the cross but he expects treasure. I have not told him of you, Captain. I thought a truce. To rescue our men and the gold . . . but I did not expect . . . what you have done.’

  ‘Done?’ Levasseur stopped. ‘I have done nothing! They wished to leave. They forced my hand. They wished my gold for themselves. It is your fault to be gone so long. To riddle them with doubt.’

  ‘My brothers would stay. They would hold their faith.’ O’Neill crossed himself. ‘You had no right, Captain.’

  Levasseur pulled another pistol.

  ‘Right? You all want my gold! Mine!’ He levelled both pistol mouths to the priest.

  ‘You shall have the same weight in lead! Damn you!’

  O’Neill raised his palms again.

  ‘But I have a ship! It is done now. I have done as agreed!’

  Levasseur moved with his pistols outstretched, aimed at ghosts.

  ‘You test me, priest. You bring a ship and men. But it is Levasseur who rules here. I am your life and death.’

  ‘It is a pirate I bring. A brother for you . . . to replace those you have lost. He is a reasonable man.’

  Levasseur hid his face, his back turned. ‘A pirate? He would have to be a prince to talk to Levasseur. Who, say you?’

  ‘Devlin.’ O’Neill hoped the name carried some weight. ‘Patrick Devlin. And nigh a hundred men. I needed him to shape back here.’