Cross of Fire

by Mark Keating

  ‘You had my Mortier.’

  ‘I needed a man of the sea.’

  ‘I do not know this man,’ Levasseur weighed his pistols. ‘You have failed, priest. Failed to resurrect.’

  They both stalled as the pool gulped and the level sank away somewhere else deep inside the island.

  Levasseur stepped to the edge. He observed this every day. But not now, not at this hour. He watched the moss appear, outside the time of the tide.

  O’Neill joined him. Hope lightened his face briefly and he hoped the pirate did not see it.

  ‘He is coming,’ O’Neill said and swallowed the pride in his voice as Levasseur glared at him, his leather eye twitching. ‘He is quite bright. For a pirate. And he is an Irishman. He will work with me.’

  The Buzzard became the buzzard. He put a pistol to a priest’s temple.

  ‘Traitor.’ He did not exclaim. No need. The cave amplified his voice. ‘Baptist’s head. Is that your desire? Your want?’

  The pool gulped again and O’Neill palmed the pistol away from his head.

  ‘He has men, Captain. You have nothing now. The Lord has provided. Your days of seclusion are at an end. Let me go to him. His men are hungry. He will want little.’

  ‘You bring a pirate to steal my gold?’ But this was not a question to be answered. Its answer was in the tension of a fist, of steel springs and pistol locks, a dog-head cocking to end all questions.

  ‘You would dare steal my gold? My gold!’

  And a buzzard fired both its pistols into a priest’s face.

  The muzzles flamed. The head, a veil of red, snapped back and the body stumbled mindlessly over the edge into the sucking pool. Only the powder burns and blood spatter on Levasseur’s hands testified that O’Neill had ever existed.

  Levasseur stood where the body had been and stared at the footprints in the sand. He scrubbed them flat with a foot and pulled himself back to his throne to reload.

  He had already forgotten the voice. He heard only the peaceful dribble of the spring and the chime of gold at his feet as he dragged himself up. These sounds he had heard for months now. They spoke sense to him. Traitors’ tongues clicked like the crickets, like the bones and teeth of dying men as they sputtered their last bubbles of bile. He heard the crows high above squawking about his pistol’s wrath, laughter on the wing drifting in from a world now strange to him.

  From the shore Devlin looked up to the cawing crows flying about the trees and registered the silence of the songbirds who paused in their courtship and wars. The animals had responded to some sound unheard by the men on the island. Peter Sam studied him.

  ‘What is it?’

  Devlin watched the crows return to their perches, listened to the birds begin again their romancing and bickering.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The birds.’ And Peter Sam looked above.

  Devlin waded into the clear sea, picked up another one of the flat rocks.

  The wall was working; Levasseur was truly a man to measure.

  The shore fell off past the beach. The stone started there and a hundred feet of it arced round the rock-face. Even with fifteen men set to the task of rebuilding the dam the tide was still beating them and Devlin knew it would have to be more men and another day.

  He set his rock. Three feet of wall so far and the tide had held back but now it reclaimed, and the mouth of the cave had barely come into view.

  He saw the crows watching them work, daring him with their caws and their preening. Devlin waded towards the cave mouth, waist deep.

  The wall had been destroyed carelessly, hurriedly. What must have taken Levasseur’s men a week to build would cost Devlin only one more day.

  Peter Sam watched him move through the water and then the others stopped their work and turned to look. They saw Devlin make some decision and then he was gone, under. Through the crystal water they could see him swimming to the cave.

  He rose once, at the mouth, his head just a few feet from the sharp rock ceiling that would effortlessly scalp him, and then he was gone entirely.

  The water was not as beautiful below. The salt of life that gave it such clarity also stung his eyes and skin. Ten strokes in and the water had developed an eerie palette of subterranean gloom, and Devlin kicked up for air. He raised his hand to the ceiling to stop his head being split and looked about him.

  He was in the mouth of the cave. He spat out the salt, eyed the opening beyond. The tide rolled over his head – a warning – and he went under again. Just ten more strokes and he would turn back; the silence and adventure were seductive but he knew he was chancing his life against the tide.

  It was even darker now, a twilight; the softness of the water was gone and his arms had to work harder. He came up again and the the ceiling was not so close. Something had opened up.

  The cave yawned, but an edge of panic twitched in Devlin’s chest. It was that taut instinct that keeps men alive, and although he turned and dived his legs did not move and suddenly something travelled with him.

  A weight pulled him back and he kicked against a heavy mass. Even under the water he knew its sense. He ducked his chin to look back and could not help but gulp and lose the air in his lungs as O’Neill’s shattered face rushed up to his.

  Its eyes were peeled in surprise, the gaping mouth widened by shot and split to the ear; but it was still O’Neill, and the priest’s dead hands flailed over Devlin’s arms.

  He struggled, wrestled with the corpse’s weight, his breath frothing and bubbling in O’Neill’s hideous face. They rolled together, the body playing with him, the head flung back as if in laughter.

  He elbowed aside the grotesque leer and the corpse spun like a drunk shoved down a hill. Several of its loosened teeth span away leaving trails of blood and the body was buffeted back with the tide towards the cave.

  Devlin gasped upwards and had to push against the roof which now descended fast, pressing down on his head like the sod on his grave. He regained his arms and legs, steeled himself and aimed for the sunlight.

  They watched him from the beach. The tide and the cave had won and Devlin crawled round the rocks to splutter and gasp next to his men on the shore.

  ‘She comes in quick don’t she?’ Peter Sam hauled him up. ‘Reckon she won’t tide ’til the night now. We’re done for today.’ He saw Devlin’s pale face. ‘What were you about?’

  Devlin held the big man’s arm then bent over and sucked the good air. The cave had been hot. His chest heaved. Then he remembered his men judging him always and he stood up straight. Stood tall.

  ‘Needed to see . . .’ he had no breath. ‘. . . We need more men. Send the boats . . . go in tomorrow.’

  Peter Sam moved to hide him from the men. They could not see him weakened.

  He saw Devlin’s hands shaking. ‘What happened, Patrick?’

  ‘O’Neill,’ Devlin said. ‘Dead.’ He bent again to gasp hard. ‘Shot.’

  Peter Sam slapped Devlin’s back to shake free the water.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Some fighting, then.’ He lowered his voice and spoke to Devlin’s neck. ‘Now stand well,’ he pulled him level, ‘Captain.’

  Devlin nodded, shook his hair like a dog and faced his men.

  ‘The cave opens up,’ he said to their expectant faces. ‘I saw O’Neill dead.’ He pulled off his shirt, ignored the old wound of last year that clawed at his back from his exertions and the salt.

  ‘We’re going in killing. And getting our gold.’

  And the roar and pistol fire set the crows back into the air.

  Always crows, Devlin thought. He watched their slow wings drag themselves from the branches. Always crows. Since the first time. Since The Island. Since the archipelago when he had set his path. They had been there then, when a dying French marine gave up his boots and the map held within.

  Always a murder of crows. The world was their cemetery. Impartial. They will eat both sides alike and laugh. The birds landed calmly again, preened at him and seemed to
await his word.

  ‘We’ll go in,’ he said. ‘Kill. Get our gold. Then back to Bourbon and Dandon. Buy the earth with our riches.’

  He picked up his belt, his weapons. And his men.

  The Buzzard sat on his throne. He had heard the shouts and gunfire echo up from the pool like someone else’s dream. He had reloaded and thought on the other four pistols from his dead. He had powder for them also. He rocked back and forth with the cross against his shoulder.

  His gold. His fortune.

  And he had grapeshot. He had held with the pirate tradition of taking at least one cannon to shore, should it become necessary on a strange island to build a redoubt.

  He tapped the six-pounder beside his throne like a favoured dog.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said to the walls. ‘Tomorrow they will come. And warmly they will come to their end. Et vivement ils viendront a leur fin.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Dutch had abandoned the island of Maurice in 1712 after almost seventy years of occupation. They had built a stone fort with a garrison of fifty and settled forty families at the north-west harbour, which they called ‘The Camp’.

  They cultivated tobacco, and not unsuccessfully. It went so well that the governor decided they should now be permitted to trade not just with their homeland but with any nation and company they pleased. The Dutch India Company thought otherwise and the colonists were swiftly retired to the Cape of Good Hope.

  The second epoch began when the French ship, Chasseur, arrived in 1715 and formally possessed the island in the traditional manner. A boulder brought with them, a possession stone, scratched with the date and the Bourbon flag. The Dutch had only burned their colours into a tree. Presumably the tree could no longer be seen.

  Île de France was born.

  The French had held Bourbon for as long as the Dutch had held Maurice and now they had the sister island and planned to colonise it just as fruitfully.

  But not yet.

  It would be September 1721 when they returned in force. For now, for Coxon’s men in July the same year, the island was as desolate as ever. Some pirates, some Maroons and some bold families from Bourbon had all settled in the island’s south-east harbour, and so the Standard moored in the north.

  Volcanic and as verdure-covered as Bourbon, the enormous island seemed just as inhospitable to those English hearts that had run from the labour of the fields. But the hearts yearned to see those fields roll again, and again hear village bells toll before their knuckles finally knotted. Still, it was a shore; still, they could make some English mark upon it.

  Coxon stood beside Howard as the anchors fell. Howard was a man now but a few inches below his captain and Coxon had known him as a boy and so to him Howard still held that aspect.

  ‘You will escort a bill to shore, Thomas. I want you to see if you can find some example of that Dronte bird. Perhaps we shall rediscover it, eh?’

  Howard smiled but said nothing. Coxon ignored the silence.

  ‘Gather any sort of eggs you can. Birds and reptiles. We will present them as a gift when we return.’

  ‘I shall get some baskets, Captain.’ He tapped his forehead and wheeled away. Coxon flushed at the young man’s brusqueness then dismissed it as anxiety and looked toward the island.

  He had noticed Howard’s change of humour since the pirate had come among them, but no matter; that was not a captain’s worry. He had no doubt of Howard’s discipline or his loyalty and that was all that mattered. The young man could sort his own soul if he had enough pieces to do so. And he would have to if his career were to progress and be a true career and not just the biding of time. Or one of shame and humiliation. Coxon moved away from the gunwale, hearing and approving the excitement of his men and their coarse banter.

  Manvell watched him from the quarterdeck. He knew Coxon to be a common man like himself but Manvell had the mantle of assumed nobility. The man had no wife, no family to raise him and promote him. He had earned everything himself. But what ‘all’? His cloth was old, his shoes worn. He had no wig and his black and grey smooth hair was tied with a bow that might have been found as a marker in a bible. The crew could see it. They laughed with him, a man of the sea like themselves. He had promised them gold.

  Manvell looked over to the volcanic pyramids of the island. They could almost be man-made and just swallowed up by millennia and the dense green forests. One of them looked as if it had a carved obelisk of a woman stood atop it, watching him back. Others had flat tables that could hold hidden villages and the giant extinct creatures of this world and any other.

  They were small men coming to see the ancient races of creation, the pages of Genesis unfolding before them.

  Manvell tapped down the steps to catch Thomas Howard before he went below.

  ‘Mister Howard,’ he called, ‘a word, if you please.’

  Howard stopped. ‘I am on orders, Mister Manvell.’

  Manvell pretended not to hear.

  ‘I spoke with the pirate this morning. Your pirate.’

  ‘He is not my pirate, sir.’ Howard carried on. Manvell fell into step with him.

  ‘I meant no offence, Thomas. An article of speech.’ He plucked Howard’s sleeve. ‘He spoke of you.’

  Howard stopped again. ‘What did he say?’

  Manvell checked the bustling ship for ears about them. ‘He may have “suggested” that you and he have had words. Against the Standard’s orders. That you . . . aided him, somewhat.’

  ‘I gave him some bread and water. Is that not what one does for prisoners?’

  Manvell carried them both on.

  ‘It is the Christian thing, Thomas. Understand that I am not reproaching. More. I am approving.’

  ‘You will not report me?’

  Manvell took a breath. They were over the companion. The boats were away and the deck no longer such a narrow beam without them. Manvell whispered now.

  ‘If I do not report you, Thomas, I would have no choice but to consider myself a conspirator. Alongside you. Would I not?’

  ‘I do not understand, sir?’

  Manvell patted his back.

  ‘Go to your duty. We will talk more on the island.’

  Howard took the stair. He looked up to Manvell framed against the bare poles and the blue expanse of sky.

  ‘We are all ashore?’

  Manvell leaned over the hole.

  ‘Only those of us not privy to torture it seems, Mister Howard.’

  ‘You talk riddles, sir. The pirate is not my friend. You understand? He is a fool to himself. If he would but talk and offer his parole—’

  ‘And would you talk, Thomas? To the enemy? How would you judge yourself then?’

  ‘We are not the enemy.’

  ‘That depends on one’s perspective, Thomas, does it not?’ He tapped his forehead and grinned as Howard ducked his head below.

  Manvell turned on his heel to Coxon glowering at him past the main hatch twenty-feet fore, his hands clasped behind him. Manvell over-extended his grin and salute and went back to the quarterdeck, the indignant stare boring into his back.

  An hour. Every watch would take its turn ashore. Five hours given for the task of hunting, gathering water, fruit. Of building spirit. Manvell and Howard in white shirts and straw hats leading the perspiring midshipmen.

  Doctor Howe and Sailing-Master Jenkins remained on the Standard with a short-handed crew. Jenkins was too earnest in his sails and setting the men to repair to waste time ashore; Howe was too earnest about the claret in the wardroom, and the tropics were not friendly to already-peeling skin. He had yet to find a soap that agreed with sea-air. Every day felt just a variance on sandpaper. He took off his hose and eased his swollen feet on Thomas Howard’s chair.

  John Coxon came down the decks, past one set of guns and then the next. Twenty six-pounders above, twenty twelve-pounders below. On land you measure a gun by its bore, at sea by the weight of its shot, for weight is everything, every ship given its burthen
to the last thimble, worked out with the same science that Flamsteed plotted his almanacs. The larger guns were set below for equilibrium on the water, but the armament was not always so perfectly aligned. Pirates especially could carry a set of guns as motley as their cloth, as rag-tag as their morals, the ship swaying as drunkenly as her crew. But not Devlin’s, Coxon knew.

  He had taught him too well.

  He reached the lower-deck, now above the water for some respite to the man chained and his cattle companions.

  ‘Is it supper already, John?’ Dandon called. ‘I have hardly digested dinner. You are too generous. I should have given myself up years ago.’

  Coxon weaved his way to him.

  ‘Still the whimsy, pirate? I thought that done.’ He came under the overhead and stood beside Dandon. He saw Kennedy on a barrel, his head in his hands and then the dried wound on the pirate’s face.

  Kennedy sprang up.

  ‘It was his fault, Captain!’ he pleaded. ‘He forced me to it!’

  Coxon dismissed him with a shove to send him bowling among the barrels. There was a flutter in his chest but he was not as angered as he would have thought. He lifted Dandon’s chin and met the sly eyes, and examined.

  ‘It is not so bad, pirate. You have fooled Kennedy but not me. I will tell my men that you goaded him. As you did. I will fetch the doctor.’

  ‘You would have to keep Manvell and young Howard from me, John. I would talk else. Say how I have been beaten. Or perhaps you could gag me? That would work well. How fine they would think you then.’

  Coxon pulled the chains, Dandon wincing as the welts on his wrists scraped. Their faces drew close together. Both bared teeth. In pain. In anger.

  ‘You think you are working on them, don’t you? That they care what you feel? Over my command?’

  Dandon wilted, then shook himself back to the arrogance that he was feigning to uphold. His eyes sparked again.

  ‘What you say is what you suspect, John. Try to see what they see. Save yourself. Tonight I will tell Manvell how you risk the ship for your own grievance. Has he met pirates? I will sow him seeds, and he will grow his own oaks. And Thomas Howard will confirm.’ He showed his gold-capped teeth. ‘It’ll be best if you let me go.’