Cross of Fire

by Mark Keating

  No. Ride the edge of it, as they were. Coxon had come in after them. Plainly he was not set for leaving.

  He yelled for Lawson.

  ‘Raise the courses! Make the staysails! We’ll ride the lee. Ride the storm. A running fight. Conn for the reefs. We can still outrun her. She can’t make the shallows.’

  Lawson sprinted away, Hartley back to his guns. Only Peter Sam not moving.

  ‘A running fight. Against her iron?’

  ‘We can’t move to close, Peter. We ain’t got the wind of it. We can ride it out. Wait for him to make a mistake.’

  ‘He don’t seem to favour many of those.’

  Devlin minded the sea. Watched the other ship come about, white water over her bow thrown off like a cloak. The wind was now Coxon’s mistress, easing him round with a gentle palm.

  He saw the ropes trailing along from her sides like baiting lines but still did not comprehend the benefit. His own guns broke him from his study and he waited for the roar to drown.

  Less than a thousand yards now, fighting range, but his guns would be over their bow at best. The cloud cleared. He took up his glass.

  Some holes punched through the headsails, sparse falling wood, spliced sheets flailing. Even through the downpour some cries carried but not in pain; just for work. Some good had been done but that would be the last of the Shadow’s starboard broadsides.

  And Coxon’s starboard was coming about.

  A game of bowls; the Shadow the Jack, the Standard playing at them calm and orderly like Drake on Plymouth Ho. The starboard barrage only ten minutes since the larboard and the Shadow wailed, pieces of her calved painfully to the sea.

  Hartley on the uproll gave again, determined to return fire before the Standard’s could pat each other on the back.

  He caught her final quarters with his chain, all his nines within every inch of her span, and even Coxon was forced to duck as wood plashed around his deck. He waved Kennedy over from where he cringed beneath the taffrail.

  ‘Come, Kennedy! Not dead yet, boy! You should watch this.’

  Kennedy crawled. A whine and snap of wood and a sheet and tackle swung before his face to barely miss his skull. He scurried to Coxon’s side, surely the safest place.

  ‘He ain’t for giving up, Captain.’ Kennedy saw the guns of the Shadow angled to bear on their quarters. Coxon pointed. ‘Our long-guns will catch them between the wind and water,’ his voice rose fondly to the pirate. ‘One more round of chain from the sixes and it will be grape I shall send across his stern. Clear his deck of bravery. Razors to his neck.’

  Kennedy directed Coxon’s gaze to the men in the tops of the Shadow, the masts leaning away from them, the men’s backs over the sea.

  ‘They got guns aloft. They’ll bite back.’

  ‘It will be his chasers and quarterdeck guns that will concern if we get within.’ Coxon’s voice lowered. ‘But not much.’ Through the rain he could make out a figure with long-coat and spyglass. A brain behind it no doubt fevered by battle and fervidly clouded by Coxon’s companionship with creatures from his past.

  Kennedy blew out a breath. ‘As long as we don’t get too close, Captain.’

  Coxon took strange pleasure that the pirate had always called him ‘captain’. No contracted version or the umbrage-laced ‘sir’. But Kennedy had fancied himself one of Roberts’s captains. He must have had some respect for the title he had collared so briefly. Perhaps he should purpose to keep him alive. After this he may be some use for cornering Roberts. See how the next quarter-hour went.

  ‘No, Walter,’ he waited for the cataclysm of his guns before he finished. ‘I intend to get very close indeed.’

  The music over the way had ceased. His sergeant’s drum came now the only sound.

  No rapid response arrived from Hartley’s guns this time. The fog of sawdust played about their faces with the cover of the rain like smoke from a hay-fire.

  The puddings and chain about the sails had kept the pirate’s masts and yards good but Coxon’s sixes were firing at a man’s height and the Shadow showed fresh wood where the iron had swiped her skin and bone like an axe.

  Devlin and Peter Sam held at the fo’c’sle. They watched the larger ship pass across their starboard shrouds, her guns pulled in. Reloading. All twenty of them.

  The Shadow was still reeling from the momentum lost as she absorbed the cannonade. Hartley was already going below for the stern chasers, the gun-crews diving into the cabin for more bags of charge where it was kept dry from the rain. Devlin looked up to the topmen on the main and mizzen. They had set their swivels, firing down onto the passing ship with their smoke and flame. The topmen were tied to their masts. He could see their mouths gasping for air against the punishing downpour as they reloaded with their match burning in their calloused fists to keep it dry.

  Hugh Harris had taken his minstrels below to the carpenter, to pump the well where the scuppers could not cope with the holes they had taken from the twelve-pounders. This was a ship’s end.

  Peter Sam ran to aid Lawson and his mates to free the hanging sheets that their enemy’s chain had made.

  Devlin walked slow from the fo’c’sle. He had ordered nothing. His men had all gone to action as a single thought. A portion of them had been at sea longer than him – the advantage in the democracy of the pirate. Work as want required. No need for command. Every man for each other and for himself, for it was his gold in the hold, his account. And it would be in another’s pocket if he did not work and fight for it when the trumpets played.

  He could see Coxon plainly now, hundreds of yards still between them, maybe two ship’s lengths, but the man-of-war towered above them. His only defence was the narrowness of his beam. Half Coxon’s guns would rake across their stern, churn into his cabin, his home, maybe hit the powder that sat there. The twelves would be at Hartley’s level, two nine-pounders against five twelves and Hartley would have to be the devil not to die and their rudder would surely be shot away.

  Coxon’s sixes would hold grape, would pepper his deck with five hundred musket balls and his men would lie on their bellies and hope not to burn.

  The Shadow was not able to close – too much leeway. But to head-to, to close, that would be the way. Send pirate against sailor. That might do. Common man against common man but his the better suited. The sailors would have the pirate’s legends. If any of them had been at sea before they would all have some myth. But he could not board if he could not move, and Coxon was on his stern.

  No decision now. Only instinct. He walked alone through the chaos amidships. He had one weapon not used, one play still to draw. He walked to his quarterdeck.

  He climbed the stair and saw the great wood rising above his taffrail, Coxon’s two gundecks’ ports running with rain, the strange smooth water around the hull that he had given up considering. This man had been his master. He needed no other consideration.

  He took the hailing-trumpet from its rope-housing around the wheel. One weapon not used, one play still to draw.

  Himself.

  And John Coxon.

  Two ships, two crews, but under the sky, over it all, not much more than two boys on hands and knees pushing their toy ships around and around the grass until one stands up, brushes the stains from his knees and has to go home to supper. Just them.

  ‘Captain John!’ Devlin called through the brassed cone, his eyes over it on the black figure standing beside Walter Kennedy.

  ‘You want me! Face me! Spare your men!’

  Devlin lowered the trumpet and held the wheel for support. Waited.

  Coxon slammed close his scope.

  ‘Finally!’

  He walked to the deck rail and called the midshipman at the companion.

  ‘Tell Manvell and Howard hold fire!’ He sent his next command to Jenkins.

  ‘Bring her to!’

  Devlin heard, unlashed the wheel and faced his deck.

  ‘Heave to! Helm-a-lee!’ And he pushed the wheel down to his kne
e. To come about. Broadside to broadside.

  And the rain eased as if to gratify.

  And the storm was worn of enough of herself to spare to listen.

  Chapter Forty

  Manvell and Howard climbed to the deck under the rain curtain over the companionway, their shirts steaming, but there was little respite in the open from the stifling decks below. The air heavy all around. They looked over to the pirate under a hundred yards from their own gunwale. The length of their decks was similar but the other a good jump down. They stood for a moment. Apart from the five marines with their muskets ready the deck was without animosity. The guns below waited. Manvell looked up to the tops of the pirate where black shapes stood behind falconets and waited. And then his eyes passed down to the bobbing quarterdeck and he chilled. He saw Patrick Devlin for the first time. And his captain was hailing.

  ‘Patrick!’ Coxon disliked the trumpet, a foolish-looking tool, but its power through the sleeting rain had use. ‘I know of the gold! I know of the priests! And the island!’ He paused for the words to fall in Devlin’s ears, for him to weigh them. And then he took a breath.

  ‘You are outgunned! You will not prevail! It is only you, only your head that is required for your king!’ He lowered the trumpet and found Manvell beside him.

  ‘Captain!’ Manvell pulled Coxon’s cloak to him. ‘What goes on here?’

  Coxon shrugged Manvell from him.

  ‘I am at my duty, Manvell. Petitioning the pirate’s surrender. Would that not be better suited for your temperament?’ He turned his shoulder. ‘And don’t touch me again in front of him.’

  Manvell stepped back and glared away Kennedy’s grin. He looked down at Howard’s confusion.

  Bide, his eyes said. Bide.

  Peter Sam joined Devlin. He had seen the officer grab Coxon and declined to do the same in front of the enemy.

  ‘Devlin! What plan is this?’

  Devlin’s eyes remained fixed on Coxon as he spoke.

  ‘He says he knows of the gold. Knows all. That might serve.’

  ‘We don’t have the gold.’

  ‘But he don’t know that.’

  He moved away, to lean over the rail without the trumpet. He cupped his hands across his mouth.

  ‘What gold, John?’

  Coxon looked back, ignoring the roll of the deck.

  ‘He thinks me a fool.’ The words only to himself. He raised the trumpet.

  ‘You remember Kennedy?’ He shouted across so Devlin’s men might hear. ‘He has joined to bring you to justice for the murder of his father. I tell your men I have been to Sierra Leone. I have heard all! It is over!’

  Peter Sam raised his head at the accusation of murder.

  He had believed his captain when he had told the tale. He believed him still. But a king’s ship had brought a young man a long way to tell a lie. He looked at Devlin’s back.

  There had been a young lad favoured by Peter Sam. Black, black hair, and skin with the luminosity of the moon. There had been Seth Toombs. There had been that night on St Nick, the Verdes, where Devlin had been the only one to return alive. He had believed that tale also.

  A long way to bring a boy for a lie.

  ‘So it is murder you want of me, John! Murder I did not do. Gold I do not have!’

  The storm rolled them, furious that both ships had decided to sit her out for conversation. She had done listening.

  ‘Do your men know how much you lie, Patrick? That is how I found you! How I always find you!’

  Devlin climbed to the gunwale, climbed to the shrouds.

  ‘Then come find me!’

  Coxon did not pause. He dropped the trumpet, threw off his cloak and pulled himself to his own rail, ignored the press of his belly against his ribs.

  ‘Lower your black rag,’ he called. ‘Give up yourself. I’ll spare your men.’

  Devlin pushed back his coat. To show the pirate, to show the pistol, the cutlass.

  ‘Not this year!’

  Manvell had heard enough. He gripped Howard.

  ‘Go to the twelves. Fire. I’ll form the men to board.’

  Coxon had ears long used to hear the words of officers in any weather. He turned against the shrouds to Manvell.

  ‘No!’

  Manvell and Howard looked up to their captain in the rigging.

  ‘Lines!’ he ordered. ‘Haul us to them!’ He nodded to Jenkins to follow the order if Manvell did not.

  ‘I will go aboard.’

  Chapter Forty-One

  The water, churning like milk, gave too much movement for boarding planks, the Shadow’s weatherdeck too low besides. There was no room to launch a boat between but maybe they could derrick one across with a party aboard.

  But that was not swift enough for their captain nor the pirate.

  They stared across as the grapples were away from them both, the ships hauled together.

  Coxon ordered a hook to the Shadow’s rigging, in front of his crew rising from the decks below with cutlass and pistol. Manvell darted to grab him back then remembered the command not to touch.

  ‘Captain! This is lunacy!’ he bellowed through the rain against his face, cascading now from the two ships’ yards like gabled roofs as the wood met.

  ‘We have the advantage! He will hold you to ransom his escape!’

  ‘Then you will be captain sooner than you might have hoped, Christopher.’

  Manvell climbed up.

  ‘Let me, Captain. My sword is the greater. Allow me the chance to restore my honour!’

  Coxon kicked him back.

  ‘You have a wife, Christopher. Children to come. A future.’ The wind dropped for his last words. ‘This is mine.’

  Coxon took his rope, walked the ratlines, his coat whipping about his legs. He paused to look through the grid of the shrouds to Thomas Howard holding out a pistol butt to him. He reached through and brushed the weapon aside, his hand left out for the other to take. Howard reached, shook it.

  Coxon nodded.

  ‘There are sealed papers in my desk, Thomas. Should I not return, Lieutenant, they are yours. You may understand my recklessness then.’

  He climbed one more step as his back hung over the water, he held for it to come back again and turned to Devlin grinning at him from his own rigging.

  ‘No pistol, John?’

  Coxon pushed off, swung to the Shadow and landed on his feet like he had done this all his life.

  Like a pirate.

  ‘There is not a world yet,’ he let go the rope and drew his cutlass, ‘where a master needs a pistol against his servant.’

  Devlin dropped to the deck to join him. His blade scraped out. A final sound.

  Never had he done this frivolously. Never once for show.

  It stayed unsheathed until done.

  Howard and Manvell watched their captain and the pirate and felt the men pressing at their backs, all eyes on the ragged long-haired brigands staring them down. They stumbled as the storm began to turn the two lashed ships and they took hold of each other’s forearms as if dancing.

  ‘Thomas!’ Manvell yelled. ‘I suggest that is you who is in command now! What order you?’

  Howard steadied himself against the mizzen and pulled Manvell to its shelter.

  ‘I think the oil will not work for much longer. The storm will wreck us both if we stay together,’ he pointed upwards to the spars fencing against each other. ‘She will take us down I fear. The pirate is taking too much water. I think he knows it.’

  ‘So he will want the Standard, will he not? That is why he has brought us to close. To board and take us. The twelves will end it. We could fire. Cut free and run!’

  Howard pushed Manvell’s arm from his own.

  ‘We will still have all of that for a time yet. And we still have the captain, sir.’ He wiped his face, hoped Manvell could read it better now.

  ‘You were not there, sir. I was. You do not want to give them reason to board. There is something between the capt
ain and this man that even I do not understand.’ He looked down to Coxon and Devlin circling around each other’s cutlass lengths.

  ‘I think the storm will grant them a minute or two.’ He looked at the heads crowding about.

  ‘Manvell!’ He pushed the bodies away from him, his voice urgent. ‘Where is Kennedy?’

  Coxon was on a pirate ship and the woe of that circumstance surrounded him in all its motley-clothed discord. He ignored them save for the sight of the ones he knew.

  The leather waistcoat, huge body and red beard of Peter Sam; the lean, scarred one who had owned his pistols for a time – that one had been on The Island and on Providence. He had been alive for a long while. Mark him. Some other younger faces that seemed familiar from the cells on Providence also. It was shameful that he knew them, shameful that he knew the man before him. He had been fighting that shame for too long.

  ‘Patrick,’ he paused in his carefully-paced walk. ‘Would you not want to know how I know of the gold?’

  Devlin checked to Peter Sam then to Hugh, put his blade to his side, tapped it against his boot where the tip dripped water to the deck. The hilt sat dry in his palm.

  ‘Hugh,’ he ordered. ‘Back below. Wood and water.’

  Hugh rubbed the wrists of his pistols and slipped away.

  ‘There is no gold, John,’ Devlin said. ‘Trust me. You find me empty.’

  Coxon lowered his own cutlass.

  ‘That is not how Dandon had it.’

  Devlin’s sword turned in his hand and Coxon savoured the enmity from across the oak boards.

  ‘He held out long. Kennedy worked it out of him. Eventually. The Porto islands where you have been. The Buzzard. The gold cross.’

  Devlin’s head went down, his hat covering his face, the water streaming through the cocks.

  ‘Where is he?’

  Coxon pulled his blade through the elbow of his shirt to rinse the rain. ‘He is my prisoner. He gave up all that he had.’

  Peter Sam cursed and Devlin raised his head to cut him down. Coxon saw the look, dived on it.