Cross of Fire

by Mark Keating

  Howard took the hand from his shoulder.

  ‘Have you been drinking, sir?’

  ‘How does one board a ship in a storm, Thomas? It is only the pirate’s destruction he seeks. There will be no gold.’

  ‘So we will sink the pirate. That was always our mission.’

  ‘No. He declared it our mission. We were to meet Ogle and Herdman. Hunt Roberts and Devlin. Three king’s ships protecting the waves. There was nothing of gold, nothing of chasing into storms.’

  ‘So how would you have it?’

  Manvell bit his thumb, stroked his wrists.

  ‘I would see it as my duty and privilege to those who cannot speak, to take a ship away from the hurricane. Let the pirate be dashed. What would we gain?’

  ‘A rope. For mutiny.’

  ‘Nonsense. A martial court hangs more paper than men. The storm will be our defence.’ He gripped Howard like a brother.

  ‘We could take the ship, Thomas! It is our right. For our duty and privilege. No mutiny for vanity or glory. For sense!’

  ‘Are you afraid, Christopher?’

  Manvell released him, held the lantern’s sway and steadied their shadows.

  ‘No, Thomas,’ he said ruefully. ‘I am only afraid that when the inquisition comes I would not be able to defend my captain’s actions. Or my own.’

  Thomas broke their coffin of a cabin by spreading open the door, the marine outside waiting, pretending not to have heard as if the thin door opened on another universe.

  ‘We have less than an hour now for you to make these sacks, sir. I have afforded all apprentices and servants to you.’

  Manvell let go the light, watched its wild swing.

  ‘Can I carry my sword, Lieutenant?’

  Howard put his tricorne to his head for the cocks would run the water away from his shoulders.

  ‘I would advise it, Christopher. And I permit.’ He smiled, hoped he saw the same in return, and vanished from the doorway.

  Even within the rising wind and rolling waves over the fo’c’sles, the toll of two ship’s bells could be heard by both crews. They stilled and looked across the swells as if they were only men at their ploughs in the field and the sound were just from the distant church of another village.

  Pirate and king’s man held at their stations to listen. The bell summoning. The bell warning. It marked the hour. Its morose peal came at the same hour on days in port, the same hour on days with white-water at the gunwales. And it might always mark their last hour, so listen well.

  The bell tolled slow and unnatural in their thoughts, its reverberation surely the cause of the tremble in their working hands, and it signalled the edge of the storm spitting at them for daring to enter.

  The rain swiped razors across their sight, slashed from every corner of wood. The courses above were wrestled by enraged spirits, the men at their ropes deceived that they had some control over the wrath of nature, having long forgotten that civilisations before their own revered its fury as a conclave of gods. Nature was too variant and powerful to be the whim of a single malevolent force.

  ‘She’s still coming!’ Peter Sam, amidships, shouted to Devlin on the quarterdeck. ‘Chasing! To our forefoot!’

  Devlin exaggerated a nod to show he had heard.

  His enemy chased to cross them at the nearest distance – across their starboard side. A good move if she had bow chasers, as Devlin would have done, but he could see no guns there.

  She was conning into her three-thousand yard range, jumping like a horse raised for the flats, powering hard but leaning away. Her broadside high, as she wished, her long-guns not threatened by the water. He would have to change that.

  He had a minute to him. Half of that to decide not just his own action but that which was centred in his foe’s mind.

  A bluff. The prow cutting to make him turn away from the storm, helm-a-lee, and run. And some advantage in that, for the Shadow’s stern guns could bite and she would have the wind at her back. The bluffer lines of his girl would gain three knots to his enemy’s hulk.

  But that would be running. And no-one who had ever seen the Shadow had seen her stern.

  Or not a bluff. Coming into range. With the weather gage she would take the wind from the Shadow’s lee, put her helm down and those ports would open and those long-twelves would stare at French strakes again.

  His minute was almost done. He looked fore to the storm, the sea black as the sky. They might catch some warmth from their enemy before they made that maelstrom.

  He went to the ear of the black sailor at the helm.

  ‘Match his two-points. Across his bows.’

  He stepped down.

  ‘Lawson! Any sail to make that storm! Peter Sam! Hartley! Starboard guns. Run ’em out!’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  ‘She’s coming about!’ Jenkins yelled for all, spitting out rain and slapping his face. ‘I see gun crews!’

  ‘She do not have the range,’ Coxon said.

  ‘Maybe “she” do not know that!’

  ‘He’s keeping to the storm. Thinks we won’t follow.’ Coxon went to the rail, gripped the wet wood and looked fore to his bow and the black wall.

  Jenkins slipped his way to join him, the deck already awash before the storm.

  ‘He knows we can’t,’ he said. ‘That’s what it is. If we head east now we can rake his stern as he goes. Bring down something.’

  Coxon said nothing. The veil between the two ships was too opaque, yet he sought the familiar figure about her.

  Spraybows shimmered in the spindrift running off her freeboard, off the tops of the whitecaps bucking them both, a Viking Bifröst bridge between them. He strained his ear over the side, closed his eyes.

  ‘Listen!’ He pulled Jenkins to him. ‘You hear?’

  Jenkins took off his hat and tried to block out the wind and rain from one side. At first he could hear nothing but his complaining ship being shaved by the wind. And then it came, but he did not believe.

  ‘A fiddle! Pipes? Flutes?’

  ‘Two fiddles,’ Coxon said. ‘And fifes. He wants us to think they are enjoying. That they can yawn and afford to play while they fight. If they start to sing then we will know we have them worried.’

  Jenkins put back his hat and gaped up at the black wall stretching above their masts. The sea and the sky formed one monstrous wave bearing down on their eggshell world.

  ‘Get the sergeant,’ Coxon said to the back of Jenkins’ head. ‘Get him to play us a drum. A beat to quarters. Make them hear that. Tell Howard to run out his guns.’

  ‘But not to the storm, Captain?’ He saw that Coxon’s grip was white against the rail, his feet never moving despite the ever-changing camber.

  ‘Let him taste our chain. Then we will load with shot from both decks. See if he likes the storm then.’ He went to the rail above the deck, found a midshipman yet tasked.

  ‘Get below and bring me Kennedy, boy. I’ll have the pirate beside me now!’

  Jenkins watched him parade the rail, no care for the battering rain, hands clasped behind, estranged from the light being sucked from the ship, the fo’c’sle already in darkness, a black line being drawn athwart like the creep of sun on a dial. He dashed to stand by the mainmast, already in shadow, and waved the stout sergeant from his cowering under the quarterdeck.

  Devlin strode behind his guns.

  ‘Quoins out, Hartley!’ he bellowed and Robert Hartley blew a kiss on his smouldering linstock. No more time remained to delay the removal of the aprons from the guns’ vents that protected from the rain; the tampions were already out, the ports raised. Their opponent had the advantage of his guns below deck, no concern about drenching. Hartley had four men to a gun, behind a wall of hammock netting. The quoins away would make slight difference. Even fully raised and with the timing of the great swells’ uproll his nine-pounders were on the last drop of their range. Their shot would become part of the coral and not part of their foe’s supper. Still, like the f
irst smoking pipe and rum of the day, one had to get it over with.

  And just the sound and sight of it might break some nerve over the way.

  Devlin stood at the starboard quarter with Hugh Harris and his quartet plucking merrily and beating their feet. He could hear the urgent drum from over the hills of water. A response to his music to evoke a column of soldiers walking towards them over the waves.

  He watched his guns roll out, their trucks squealing like the scrape of the fiddles. A sound not heard for months, a fine sound. It had eagerness about it, like children at play.

  Nine guns on the weatherdeck and Hartley timed them in three rounds on three uprolls. Seconds between the discharges when men could uncover their ears and set to reloading the first.

  The iron punched, the guns flew back hissing and steaming against the rain and Hartley passed his linstock and picked up another from the bucket to the quarterdeck, passing his captain with a wink. Devlin watched the shot cut and curve high through the downpour.

  Only those suffering the weather on the Standard saw the spikes of flame, those below, by their guns, heard the nine cracks no louder than the distant barks of dogs.

  Coxon saw Jenkins duck by the mainmast and men follow. Coxon stood straight, the privilege of office being to stand on the open quarterdeck, protected only by the bulk of hammocks secured around the rails.

  He watched the shot plunge like black terns into the white waves, hundreds of yards from their wood, and nodded down to the midshipman by the companion to order Howard to fire his twelves. The midshipman vanished and Walter Kennedy appeared in his place, blinking against the rain, and Coxon motioned the pirate to join him.

  Devlin watched his enemy’s strakes lean and run wet as the uproll heaved the behemoth over its back. Still too far, too high a sea to spy the guns. When they went down she was swallowed up to her fighting sail, the sea coming from them to engulf the pirate, and then the Shadow came up and the ship was closer again.

  He had not seen the guns’ flare, just the wall of water as they again plunged down into the swell, but the rippling crack that echoed off their wood was there as if from the air above their masts.

  His men dived to the oak. He watched the balls skim the fat waves and could not help but think of it as beautiful, an extraordinary sight. He flattened against the bulwark to watch the sky and sails above him.

  Two hits out of ten. Chain-shot, and it had not met their masts, only their hide. The sea was indeed Devlin’s ally. It was impossible to sight firmly on a rolling target. Just fire and hope. Devlin’s hopes were the better ones.

  He stood as his girl shrugged off the iron and Hartley let go his quarterdeck guns just as his first three fired again. That was the way. Keep on. Return a load before a scope could check for damage, keep them down, silence their cheers. But the nine-pounders still fell short.

  Devlin congratulated Hartley then felt the lurch rise from his feet and he looked fore. He hung onto the deck-rail as the bow ascended, came to meet him.

  And a memory formed in front of him to carry for the rest of his days.

  He saw his ship cross a threshold, divided from day into night. A sheet of rain was falling down from the bow like a wall, his men and masts swallowed away, and then over him, pushing his head low.

  Into the lion’s cage.

  He laughed and could not hear it. His laughter for his foe. He had needed to take away their twelves. Level the play. And that was done.

  He looked to starboard, could see nothing past the rail, and then ten candles silently lit and blew out one by one. He grabbed a manrope, hearing nothing but the gods in his ears until the wood exploded around him.

  ‘You see, Walter?’ Coxon was shouting now, Kennedy sheltering beside him. ‘Devlin supposed we would break. He does not know that I am on him.’

  Kennedy, from his crouch, mouthed something but Coxon could not hear. He saw Jenkins struggle to pull himself up the stair.

  ‘Captain,’ Jenkins huffed. ‘We must close the ports on the long-guns. If we continue we will drown, sir!’

  ‘Tell Howard close the ports. We are within a thousand yards. The sixes will have some range. As will the pirate. Give Howard my regards for his last barrage and send his crews to the upper. We need to close, Master Jenkins,’ Coxon’s voice was plain.

  ‘We hit them?’ Jenkins’ face lightened and then dropped as the the word ‘close’ filtered through to him.

  ‘Close? Into the storm?’

  Coxon ignored the question.

  ‘See the ports are closed. See to Manvell and his task. I want those sacks to the deck immediately.’

  ‘But, Captain—’

  Coxon rounded on him.

  ‘Immediately, Master Jenkins!’ He turned back to the rail, steadfast against the rise and fall of his deck. He took up his scope, pulled up Kennedy to his side.

  ‘Stand fast now, Walter. I wish Devlin to see us both clear.’

  Kennedy was a rag-doll in Coxon’s grip, kept his head low. The quarterdeck was too open a space for his liking. They were alone upon it. The Standard had a wheelhouse below, afore the belfry, so there was not even a man at the helm to draw fire. When Devlin’s guns found their range this is where he would train them. Straight for the walk of officers.

  ‘Stand still, man!’ Coxon berated. ‘I want him to see!’

  Kennedy found some voice but not the growl of arrogance he had shown so much.

  ‘Let me to work, Captain! I can be of use below!’

  ‘Nonsense. You have nothing to fear. You are dead already.’

  Kennedy slipped, was hauled back up as the deck ran from him, and Coxon still standing as if nailed.

  ‘Dead?’ Kennedy held to the lectern, Coxon’s fist on his collar. ‘How dead?’

  ‘This day—’ Coxon paused for a sheet of spray piling over them. He waved his spyglass to the quarterdeck over, barely discerned, but there. He heard his ship crash through the wall of water, into the storm, and a new hail of rain beat his shoulders.

  He dragged Kennedy to his mouth as he watched the bows of the ships pivot towards each other, the cyclone splicing them together.

  ‘This day!’ He yelled. ‘A man named Walter Kennedy will be hanged at Execution Dock. I have arranged it.’ He relished the sight of Kennedy’s wide mouth suddenly filled with water.

  ‘It is often done. Take a man who has wife and family. Pay his debts to take your place.’ He pulled Kennedy from the lectern and forced him against the rail.

  ‘Look pretty for me, Walter. This is not the way I wished it. But it might do.’ He resumed his wave, held Kennedy to his side like a brother.

  ‘Your soul is mine now, pirate.’

  The damage was just to the furniture. Splinters and shavings. The Shadow and her captain bore many scars from those foolish enough to attempt to defy them. Her skeletal prow grinned and went on as she had always done, as her captain had always done. Their wood and flesh were marked together.

  The storm sea had a pattern to it. Its rise and fall ticked like a watch and the men on the Shadow’s deck could pace their work to it. The wind and rain were unending, but the storm was taking them in its arms. It had its own agenda and what seemed chaos outside became order within. Keep from its eye and the outer rim and it could be ridden.

  Devlin looked to the sailor at the helm above. The Shadow had no whipstaff under cover for the man and the helm was exposed on the quarterdeck. He might drown standing at his post. Devlin had heard of such things.

  He took the stair, crawled it like an infant and pulled himself to the wheel where the Spanish black held his course, shirt about his waist where the torrent had torn it from him. Devlin put his hands over the black ones and together they set the wheel to its centre. Then Devlin prised those rigid, powerful hands from the wheel and lashed it to its course.

  ‘Go below,’ he said. ‘Get dry awhile.’ He patted the broad back, felt the welts of aged whippings under his fingers and the man understood only the command of the E
nglish words. He grinned proudly and struggled away.

  Devlin did not know the former slave’s name. He was not Spanish. He had been taken from a Spanish slaver from where he would be sold to a field. A slave. A slave priced to cut cane or pull a plough. This day he had coursed a beleaguered French frigate through a storm under fire from an English warship, his shirt ripped from him, his eyes reddened almost shut.

  Devlin was alone now. He felt into his coat’s left pocket. He had cut it so he could keep a spyglass or pistol down inside to the hem. He had a leather strap of Guineas rolling around inside it, a dagger and bag of powder and shot also. A pirate coat. His very cloth was armed. There was a strip of coin sewn inside the spine of his waistcoat also and a dirk clasped to his inside boot-top. Ready for a gaol, ready to be washed up on a beach.

  He pulled the three-draw sharkskin and held his breath as he brought it to his eye. He waited until the ship levelled, seconds before she plunged again and he swept it across his foe, sought the quarterdeck to see who had entered the storm with him. The glass brought them hundreds of yards closer together.

  Two figures shimmered, the chromatic lens painting an aura around them. One was in hat and cloak and waving his glass above his head. Wanting to know him. The other was hanging off him like a corpse. Trying not to be seen.

  The glass misted and Devlin cursed and wiped it clear. He waited again as the ship plummeted and the sea ran around his feet. He rocked with it, wedged the scope between the fold of his elbow and aimed it like a musket as the ship fell before his eye.

  The deck good now, the wind served to blow the falling rain away for one second of good sight.

  And gave ten years’ perspective.

  He lowered the glass in disbelief just as Hartley’s guns fired and he was shrouded in smoke and fury.

  The vision had gone.

  He coughed down the steps. Hartley yelled something but Devlin brushed him aside. His feet found Peter Sam and he pushed the slab of him round to face him.

  Peter had ropes on both his arms, guiding the fighting courses like a kite as if the Shadow’s only hope was his might alone.