Hunt for White Gold

by Mark Keating

  A muffled guttural howl from the desk followed by a soft snapping sound and Hornigold’s belly laugh brought him out of his daze.

  Coxon turned to see Rogers’ fist around the cat’s neck, a satisfied leer on his face. He tossed the corpse away and it spun along the floor back into the sun.

  ‘Bloody cats are driving me to lunacy, John. Do something about them, eh?’ Rogers mopped his brow.

  ‘We need something to keep the rats at bay, Governor.’ Coxon replaced his hat and bowed an exit without waiting for his orders, sidestepping around the cat, now peacefully reposed in the sun.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Extract from the journal of George Lee on his Grand Tour. Notes specific to the Islands of Ascension.

  July 1718.

  As of this month, myself and my companion the venerable Albany Holmes have been abandoned on this forsaken rock by the hand of the famed pyrate Devlin. We are assured we will be rescued inevitably within the month, the island being a favoured point for passing ships to pick up fresh meat and turtles that come to lay their eggs in the May month.

  The pyrate Devlin, our notorious Captain, tells how Dampier survived for sixty days on this black land with thanks to the Portuguese who chose to land goats in the hills two hundred years before to provide a continuous larder for mariners using the island as a bearing point.

  We believe, as our captor enlightens, that the island sits almost central between Africa and the Southern Americas and is oft visited by all nations for the purpose.

  We have been given musket, cutlass, and sailcloth for shelter and have a plentiful supply of fresh water from the springs on the island. There is no population save for the birds which I believe to be terns, petrels and boobies which I have spent much of my days depicting with charcoal, which is in abundance.

  The pyrates spent two days hunting goat and tipping turtles. I understand that one turtle feeds fifty men with meat and soup. I am reluctant to partake as the creatures look and smell most unpleasant but I gather are a delicacy to the sailor and his ilk.

  There is much Norfolk pine planted on the island as well as whole forests of bamboo which I gather was introduced as spare wood for the mariners, and for us also if our time here necessitates the construction of a more permanent abode.

  As to the pyrates, my journal may act as a record that they left this place to continue to the Americas. There the pyrate Devlin, I gather, is on some misadventure to secure the safety of one of his brethren. I wish it to be known should I not return to England that I with whole malice and aforethought wish the Governments of whomever shall find my journal to pursue the ending of this rogue and his brood and concur with the proclamation of our parliament that these men surely be hostis humanis generis with whom neither Faith nor Oath is to be kept.

  George Lee. Ascension Island, July 1718.

  August. The bells of the steeples chimed for nine o’clock as the Talefan crept into Charles Town by main course and spanker sail. Under the moon the wharf along Bay Street reflected grey and silent in the still water. Small slatted-wood warehouses stood along the quay, coldly still after the day’s work, whilst the ropes of the stevedore’s cranes swayed restfully in the warm updraught of air from the sea, as if gathering their strength for the morn. It was a walled town. A redbrick front surrounded the whole with bastions anchored at every corner like an English castle. Those that faced the land had a trench dug around, further increasing the castle-like aspect, and a seven-foot barricade of cypress trunks lay beyond this. The Indian wars had turned the town into a fortress.

  The ship regarded the fortress before it, almost a mile long with two jetties acting as bridges into the town. Three triangular points acted as redoubts, guns included, facing seaward. A half-moon-shaped guard tower complete with minions stood between the two bridges. Charles Town seemed as much a fort as the one they had passed coming up from the south, and not to protect against native invasion. These were defences against the Spanish, for this was the King’s most southerly colony, his most precarious line of defence against the forces in the Florida Gulf. But this was a Lords Proprietor’s town not a king’s. Protection came out of their own pockets. And battlements are just walls if there are no soldiers standing at them. Never mind Spain: pirates were Charles Town’s greatest nightmare.

  As the little brig turned her tiller to draw her larboard side and her puny guns to bear, the lamps along the wharf began to light one by one as some unseen soul moved his ladder along.

  Wave by lapping wave the Talefan drew closer with each light until, after finishing his evening’s duty, the lamp-lighter turned to see the brig a stone’s throw from him. The drop of the anchor satisfied him that the hulking black shape had not been there when he had started his chores.

  The harbour sheltered a fleet of sloops and pinks twinkling and bobbing sleepily beneath their sidelights and mast lamps. But the brig had come in dark, almost on the swell, and now sat tugging defiantly on its tether.

  The lamp-lighter shouldered his ladder and turned his back on the brig. He had heard of black ships before and it was best to be some place else when you saw one.

  Then there came the slap of the gig hitting the slate-like water. The Talefan’s arrival after forty days’ hard sailing from Madagascar was announced by the triumphant setting down of the boat. The Shadow perhaps still lay four days behind, perhaps ten. Perhaps she was not there at all.

  Two figures rowed to the stone steps. Once there, one of them scampered up with a rope and tied the gig whilst his companion trudged up the steps and looked about at the tumbledown warehouses and custom-house shacks that made up the East Bay wharf.

  This was how Patrick Devlin first set foot in America. It was fitting therefore, especially to him, that his first sight and sound was as familiar as the reeking alleyways of Wapping and the Pelican Stairs of his briefly adopted London:

  A scream. And the rush of a chase across cobbled stone.

  He took ten fast steps across the flagstones of the wharf, the lick of the sea already leaving his ears and his legs wavering at the feel of land, and cocked his ear to the sound of the footsteps. Dandon too inclined his head to the tip-tap trot of a woman’s feet echoing around the harbour as he joined him.

  She appeared from around a crooked corner of wood in front of Devlin, surprisingly closer than the echo of her buttoned boots had indicated.

  Her head was down, black curls and black shawl flapping, and as Devlin opened his arms and stepped into her path, she ran into him like a startled crow.

  He had her arms and swung her around as she struggled against his grip.

  ‘Easy there, Miss,’ he happily greeted his first local acquaintance. ‘What goes on?’

  She pushed herself away from him, her heels kicking the stone, gin and tobacco wafting from her hair. Dandon merely flashed his gold-capped grin at her pale face and held her fast. Gasping, she looked from Devlin to Dandon and then clasped herself to them as two male figures hurtled around the corner baying like hounds, their howls ceasing the instant they caught sight of the two seamen.

  Devlin turned to the dark newcomers silhouetted by the trail of lamps lining the street. They skidded to a halt, almost sparking the cobbles. Two sloping devils they were, rubbing their chins in dark thought, with scabbards for tails. They split apart, sidestepping across the path.

  Devlin needed no comment, no tale. The story was in the air. The girl’s shrill voice split the night open.

  ‘Them is after me! They be grabbing me off the street! Help me, sirs! I done nothing.’

  The two continued their crab steps, stalking now, outflanking, then moving inward to pincer Devlin. He stood still. Waiting.

  The taller of the two, on the right, broke his silence with a consumptive rasp.

  ‘Let her go, gents. It’s no mind of yours. Just a little game that’s all.’

  ‘I may mind that the lady does not want your game.’ Devlin kept his eye on the one to his left. The one not talking. The movement stopped. T
he three of them now two sword lengths apart.

  ‘Know how it is, mate,’ the talker reasoned with a sociable laugh. ‘We’re here a month gone now. Cap’n Teach leaves us here for courting and wedlock. Don’t you know that, sailor?’

  The other dragged out his hanger with a chuckle, stepping into the range of everything bar teeth.

  ‘Ain’t worth dying for a piece of quim, mate,’ he spat.

  Devlin stepped away and drew back his coat to show the butt of his pistol and the hilt of his hanger. He pulled his hat tighter on his head and grinned at them both.

  ‘A noble sentiment, lads.’ He gave them one moment to drink him in. ‘I’ll shoot the youngest first. I’ll make my guess. The other will lose his face.’ He stepped slowly to his left, blocking Dandon and the girl, framed by the sea and the masts behind. The moon would have helped but the lamplighter’s work gave him enough to work with.

  Unfortunately for their mothers the assailants were too drunk for dancing.

  They swept forward, confident enough, with a roar that never fully rose.

  The one with the drawn sword pulled it back to strike, only to have his face explode in black and red the instant a snap of powder slammed a bolt of lead through his nose. His sword sang on the stone as he dropped to the ground.

  Given the sudden smoke now masking his opponent the other believed his dagger was the way to go.

  He dived in, then felt himself lifted off the floor. Something cold punched through him and out again as he followed through to the cobbles.

  He coughed at the ground and his own blood jumped back into his eyes. He pushed up weakly only to feel an icy spike pressing him back down. He belched blood and sank into its warmth.

  ‘Welcome to America, Patrick,’ Dandon said, letting the girl go.

  She ran from Dandon, kicked the man twitching in his bloody puddle and fell into Devlin’s arms as his blade scraped back into its sheath with a wet sigh. She smelt saltpetre and dampness as she breathed into his chest.

  ‘Oh thank you, sir,’ she cried. ‘Thank you for my honour.’

  Devlin was unsure of her honour and her closeness for that matter. He wheeled her away by her wrist, blood still ringing in his ears. He moved forwards and away, dragging her behind him until his panting ceased and the night became darker again.

  They moved into the street to their right. He saw English three-storey houses; the heady scent of Dogwood and Red Anise.

  Dandon caught up and took her from him without a word. She rubbed her wrist where Devlin had held her. Devlin kept moving, his back heaving as he lumbered up the street.

  Dandon took in the girl’s distress, more than his friend and captain could. She had witnessed something rare.

  ‘Where do you reside, young lady?’ Dandon said soothingly.

  She looked, startled, into his calm eyes. ‘New Church. An inn.’

  ‘Then I will take you home,’ he promised. ‘And speak of nothing of what you have seen. And speak less of what you have not seen and on that point I mean that my dangerous friend and I do not exist. Would that be clear to your young ears?’

  ‘For heavens, sir. You and your …’ she looked at the black figure still stamping up the street, ‘… friend have done me a service untoward. I will hold with my voice, I swear it.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Dandon smoothed his moustache. He looked to Devlin pacing in circles, reloading his pistol. ‘Now, my child, I am a Bath Town resident myself, but know nothing of Charles Town, and we have a house we need to visit. Please understand that we have just arrived and this address is the only place we have to stay. If you would be so kind.’

  Her face lightened. ‘Oh, by all means, sir. Wherever you wish to go. I owe you that much.’

  ‘Thank you, mademoiselle. I am looking for such an abode.’ He opened the bottom part of the letter to her, shielding the rest of its contents from her.

  Her eyes gleamed. ‘My way home. I can take you there in moments. We cut through Union and the alley.’

  Dandon called to Devlin who spun around, twisted from his mire. He again screwed his hat on tighter and flapped his coat about him as if shaking it dry. He fumbled for his pipe as he came across. The captain again.

  ‘All’s well, Captain?’ Dandon queried as gently as he thought appropriate, for he knew that although Devlin had developed a natural talent for death something of an old conscience hovered within him.

  Most of the men Dandon now knew had buried thoughts of virtue and sin in drink and new shores that wiped their souls clean with each sunrise. But Devlin was not naturally cut out for that life. He lived it but was yet to own it. He enjoyed his talent for killing and such realisation did not always hang well with him. Dandon brushed away the notion that he should be wary of Devlin when it did.

  Devlin looked about. The tall spiked gates of the colourful homes contradicting the welcome of their hanging baskets and pastel paintwork. The spikes were a last defence against a slave uprising, their numbers far exceeding the gentle townsfolk. He put the pipe back into his waistcoat, telling himself that it would only serve to slow him down.

  ‘Aye, Dandon,’ he said. ‘All’s well. But those men spoke of Teach.’ He looked down at the girl. ‘By Teach do they mean the Blackbeard Captain Teach?’

  The girl, Lucy as she revealed – a name close to both their hearts, for Lucy had been Seth Toombs’s old ship – screwed up her features at the ignorance of her two saviours.

  She walked with them and told of the terrible May just gone, the month when Charles Town almost bled at the hands of Blackbeard.

  Lucy blushed at her culpability that, pardon her, she did take a drink every now and then, but mostly, and upon her soul, it was due only to the circumstance of the summer that had driven her to it.

  They walked north along deserted Queen Street. Oil lamps lined the walls of the three-storey shops and light also shone from within the rooms above. The notes of a clavichord playing high above them drifted on the air. They turned into narrow Union Street as Lucy told of her town’s recent history.

  The pirate Edward Teach – Blackbeard – had blockaded Charles Town in a week of terror. Nothing came in. Nobody dared venture out. The harbour became a cemetery of wooden hulks, and this only a month after Charles Vane had visited their waters and harried them with all his boldness.

  Lucy stammered as she told them how the pirates walked the streets, immune to threat, ignorant of decency or law.

  Teach arranged the kidnapping of a councillor and his four-year-old son and offered Governor Johnson their heads if his unholy terms were not met.

  ‘What terms, Lucy?’ Devlin touched her arm.

  Lucy caught her breath. The talk had made her parched, the men’s ignorance more so, and she expressed the same.

  Devlin repeated his request as softly as he could.

  ‘The strangest thing. The very strangest. Of all he could have had. Of all he could have wanted.’ She rolled her eyes and pulled her shawl tighter.

  ‘What?’ Devlin asked as she turned right into an alley and they followed single file as the street closed in on them.

  ‘A chest of medicines. That’s all. Even gave the address of where it was to be found. Can you believe it, sirs? A chest of bloody mercury things and whatnot. The devil of it.’

  Devlin and Dandon instantly became hen-house foxes. The events meant nothing to them but their whiskers twitched. So here they were, summoned to Charles Town with elaborate intrigue, only a few reevings shy of Teach himself.

  ‘He left when he had the chest, Lucy?’ Devlin asked as their pace slowed.

  ‘Aye, sir. The very night. A night as black as when he came.’

  They had come out of the alley into New Church. The inn, which stood opposite, was actually a wealthy-looking carriage house with stables attached and glowing windows in the upper storeys. Lucy led them across the wide road with Devlin looking left and right along what must have been the town’s main thoroughfare. To his right he could make out a high red-brick
wall at the end of the road: the end of Charles Town. To his left the road stretched away, pricked by yellow light all along its length.

  Dandon peered through the tobacco-stained window panes of the inn. ‘I would have the firmest imagination that pirates would be most unwelcome in your town after such a defilement.’

  ‘Aye,’ Lucy agreed. ‘Though those sods back there be of such a kind. Lawlessness abounds and the King pays us no help.’

  Devlin looked behind, suddenly aware that morning would dawn on two corpses by the wharf.

  ‘Lucy, those men will be discovered soon enough. I would hate to inconvenience our acquaintance with scandal.’

  Lucy took his arm, her head leaning towards the inn. She winked and said that rats often had a time with drunks by the water and the pair were but pirates after all.

  Now, she went on with a smile, wasn’t it too late to be visiting your friend in the big house? Wouldn’t a little rum be just the thing on so mild a night?

  Devlin bowed, pulling away gently, explaining that they were not too late but must make haste. Dandon tipped his hat to the girl, joined Devlin’s side and asked her again for directions to the house.

  Lucy, disappointed that her handsome rescuer had declined her nubile charms, consoled herself that she at least knew exactly where he would be.

  ‘It’s over there,’ she pointed across the road behind Devlin and Dandon. ‘That blue house. That’s where a fellow never comes out. Just his boy. And the light burns all night long.’

  They turned to look and true enough lamplight from the four tall windows, upstairs and down, shone brightly. The white shutters were flung wide open.

  The house was gated like all the rest. It had a paved garden in which two fine Magnolia trees would offer privacy and shade during the day.

  The only solemnity about their destination, the only point of darkness, was the austere black door. Above it, panes of red glass stared out in a horseshoe arch, shivering from the light of the hall.