Hunt for White Gold

by Mark Keating

  Valentim tapped gently on the arm of his chair with his artificial hand. Even through the velvet glove Ignatius could detect the minuscule chime of the porcelain palm.

  ‘I will look forward to his coming,’ he said, his voice distant. ‘I very much wish him to succeed.’

  Ignatius cleared his throat. ‘Much has happened in your absence, Governor, that makes for a very interesting prospect for our plans. Have you heard of “Blackbeard”, Governor? Captain Edward Teach?’

  The lifeless face that looked back heralded to Ignatius that he had not.

  ‘He has enjoyed great infamy along our coastal colonies this last year as a privateer. Although perhaps “privateer” is a mite generous of me,’ he corrected himself with a fleeting smile. ‘He is a pirate with the worst of them.’

  Valentim looked idly around the study, his eyes drifting momentarily over the porcelain display upon the commode. ‘What is this to me, Ignatius?’

  ‘Teach – Blackbeard – blockaded this town recently. Held our Council to ransom. His ransom being the very letters that we seek. His partner was wrongly under the impression that I already had them, hidden in a chest that Palgrave Williams, one of Bellamy’s captains, had brought ashore before the sinking of the Whydah. I admit I thought so too at one point. That perhaps Palgrave had conspired with Bellamy to remove the letters from the Chinese gun in some plan of blackmail against me. I wish you had come to me sooner, Governor, to save me months of hunting for that chest. But now of course I am aware that there are others who will take great risks to possess them.’

  Valentim’s interest flicked back. ‘You seek the letters. I have informed you of where they lie. Bringing the pirate to me is what I have engaged you for, Ignatius.’

  ‘Of course, Governor. But should Devlin fail I will still not have my letters. Grateful as I am for knowing where they finally are, their acquisition remains of the highest importance. It seems that Blackbeard has cultivated close relationships with several governors, who see no harm in allowing some freebooting within their colonies. But the fact that he knew about the letters was most enlightening as to just how entwined he has become with powerful men.’

  ‘What have this to do with our interests, Ignatius?’

  ‘A little,’ Ignatius said warmly. ‘I have since engaged Blackbeard to assist me as well as his own gentleman retainer. I will have those letters one way or another. By any means necessary.’

  Valentim rose slightly, his black eyes blazing. ‘If this Blackbeard interferes with my plans Ignatius, you will pay dearly for his transgressions I assure you.’

  Ignatius waved away Valentim’s words like bothersome insects. ‘No, no, Governor. Not at all. If Blackbeard should encounter Devlin he is instructed to bring him here to face you. I am a man of my word as my reputation attests. It is my intention merely to keep you fully informed, as you requested, on our progress.’ He closed his diary and stood to look out onto his twilight garden. ‘Now that they are truly real, and so near, these letters are provoking an interest that makes my position here potentially … uncomfortable.’ Ignatius’s final word was punctuated by the solid clump of Hib returning to the room and bowing awkwardly before sloping over to the waiting glass on the commode.

  Ignatius sniffed and carried on. ‘Normally in such a situation it would be advisable to distance myself from the matter, but that is not possible: I must remain here until it is settled, for this house is where they will come. What I can do, most certainly, is to control the number of people who know about the letters.’

  Valentim yawned. ‘And how do you propose to do that?’

  Ignatius faced him. ‘Oh, I have already set events in motion and relayed appropriate correspondence to ensure the end of Blackbeard and his liaisons with the governors. Our pirate Devlin is well taken care of, one way or the other.’ He held out a respectful hand to Valentim and then swept it to the huge Scotsman across the room. ‘And Mister Gow …’

  Hib straightened at the mention of his name and, wiping some of the rum from the corner of his mouth, placed his glass down gently and looked across obediently at Ignatius.

  ‘Mister Gow can be trusted as if his blade were my own arm. And I need only to glance at a man,’ Ignatius turned his eyes back to the seated Valentim. ‘And he be … gone.’

  The commode shook with Hib’s sudden movement. In two strides he was at Valentim’s chair. It took one heartbeat to clamp him down with the slab of a hand that bit into Valentim’s shoulder and to angle the cold blade of the polished Estilete at his throat.

  Valentim felt the pulse in his neck racing against the gentle pressure of the razor edge and his eyes stared wildly back at Ignatius.

  ‘What madness is this!’ Valentim’s voice slithered out above the blade. ‘I am the Regulador of Sao Nicolau! An ambassador!’

  ‘And by your own account, Governor, no soul knows that you are here. Except my men that you have sailed with, Hib, and myself.’

  ‘You swore I was to have Devlin!’ For the next five minutes of his life concern for his neck was less important than facing the pirate again. ‘You betray me, Ignatius!’ Valentim tried to rise but an enormous weight pressed him down with the merest force.

  Ignatius pulled open a drawer of his desk, lifting out a pistol and balancing it in his fist. ‘I have done nothing, Governor, save secure the privacy of the arcanum for those who can afford its secrets.’ He gestured to Hib with the pistol to lever Valentim from his chair. ‘And I will honour my word. You will see Devlin again. My reputation insists upon it. Providing of course he succeeds in bringing the letters to me. Providing, that is, he is not hanging from some yardarm by now.’

  Valentim cursed as Hib stripped away his weapons like undressing an infant and pulled him from the room away from the smiling Ignatius. Valentim howled around the house as he was dragged up the wooden stair – howled that all English, all the world, were pirata and betrayers and only the Português had honour and how he prayed for the day that the Espanhol would drink their English blood. A minute later his anger could no longer be heard. The good remained at their hearths; the bad still jostled in the taverns and Ignatius returned to his maple commode to pour another drink.

  He thought on his audience with Lt Governor Spotswood and Governor Cranston, the Bauta-masked gentlemen who had first called upon him after word of the letters had spread from China to their own shores.

  It was always at night, Ignatius thought as he smirked into his drink. Conspirators meet like moths around a candle-flame. During the day they play with their children, flatter their wives and write to Whitehall like good white-wigged citizens. At night they don masks and cloaks, and gather to plot like witches in a coven.

  The idea was as old as democracy: You can have no king, for the consequence of kings is war. Spain and inevitably France will always be your enemies as long as you hold to a crown. And one cannot trade with the enemy. Then again, one cannot get rich in times of peace.

  Spotswood he trusted. Should Blackbeard survive, Spotswood would be the one to fund a private assault against the pirate. Chalk Blackbeard off of the list of those who knew. Cranston was different. Cranston was governor of Rhode Island. Palgrave Williams’s father had been Attorney General of the Rhode Island plantations. Ignatius did not live by ignoring coincidence. Palgrave Williams had left the Whydah and came ashore at the colony before she sank. Then he had vanished and become the most wanted man in the Americas after the ship went down.

  Cranston may know more than he purports to, thought Ignatius, tapping his lips. A question mark beside his name. If Devlin succeeded, returned, then Valentim could have at him. Chalk off one or the other. His calculations were interrupted by the movement of Hib Gow’s return. He saluted his giant with the glass. And chalk off the other one as well, he thought. All achieved without a smirch of blood on Ignatius’s hands. Just the taste of it in the air around him.

  Hanging. As concise and definite in meaning to the eighteenth-century mind as crucifixion to a first-cen
tury Palestinian. A choking. The hempen jig before the perfection of the snap. Drowning on the end of a rope like a hare struggling overnight against the snare.

  A man could escape the punishment of piracy in England by signing up to be a good colonist in the Americas. Better a chance against the savages and diseases than the man in the black hood who reserved the swift plunge for the blue blood but strangled your poor wrong-born throat with a hemp knot that grated like glass. Sometimes they would honour you by allowing you to tie your own knot. They taught it you like a new trade the night before and you cursed at the scuffing of your palms from the rough rope and your mind lingered over the same effect against your more tender throat.

  Your trembling hand signed for the Americas in the morning.

  But if you were already there, already confined to the promise of the Americas, and chanced your arm against the world? What then for you, my boy? Where do you go when you have already gone to the end of the world? Where do you go?

  One place to go. Down. Only the rope and a short hard stop from a sudden drop.

  John Coxon drank fast as he heard the slap on the horse’s flanks and the intake of breath from the crowd – mostly made up of women and children.

  There was the faint thrashing of heels and the solemn roll of the cart’s wheels but thankfully he could not see the sight in the square from his table beside the stair of the Cat and Fiddle. He sat alone and poured from a crock bottle of rum and lime into a leather mug furred by years of use and listened to the nine necks choking away in the square beyond the stone walls.

  A sickness swam within him, caused he considered by the unnatural sweetness of the drink, and he raised his arm and voice for bread and cheese to offer a sour antidote to the sugar coursing through his head.

  The pewter plate came. The bread was fresh, the cheese hard, but he swallowed it all the same and thought on his position as he chewed.

  July and August were harsh. The fever spread unabated, although the pirates still dwelling there seemed immune, blessed by the devil. Two of the warships, the Shark and the Rose, had sailed on to New York, having no further orders to stay and Rogers having no further power to hold them.

  He ripped at the bread. Still the Delicia remained with her forty guns, and his own command, the Milford. Over seventy guns and three hundred men between them. Enough to hold the island in check. Perhaps. Enough to warrant an after-noon’s drinking whilst Rogers enthusiastically conducted his duty outside.

  Mrs Haggins turned her bulbous eyes away from him as she drifted down the stair. The sickening waft of what passed as her perfume made the cheese even more unpalatable.

  Sitting at his octagonal table on a raised stage behind a rail, Coxon grabbed the remnants of huddled conversation from the mosaic of tables below him. He overheard talk of Blackbeard spied sailing to Bermuda. Of friendly governors in the Carolinas that welcomed free trade. Whispers of Vane and dozens more still holding out, seeking their own independence. Indian attacks weakening the colonies like a plague.

  Coxon grinned between gulps of rum. If a pirate could win the Indians to him, he thought with a drunk’s philosophising, he could rule this country. The Indians, he recalled from his luncheons with the ragged captains that had survived a landing, only wanted to kill fathers and sons, to crush the seed that might poison their land. They were few, and they would die. Fuck them. He drank, drowning out the last slap on the horse’s hide from the courtyard and the cheer and gasp that rang out at the spectacle of another fallen pirate. You can’t beat the fall of coin. This world belongs to mad kings and the companies under them. He looked down at the black cup. I am just building a bed to die in, he consoled himself.

  The face appeared before him silently, peering anxiously through the rails of the stage for quite a while before Coxon noticed it and pulled his coat tight and hacked the stale air from his throat and brushed the crumbs from his lips.

  The marine slapped his chest and snapped to attention when Coxon finally acknowledged him.

  ‘What is it lad?’ Coxon said and pushed the rum aside.

  The marine kept his voice low against the forest of eyes and ears that had followed his path through the mess of tables.

  ‘Captain Coxon, sir,’ his voice was hushed. ‘You are required at the beach. To come with me if you will, Captain.’

  Coxon drizzled small coin onto the table and staggered up. ‘What occurs, sailor?’ He straightened himself, ran a palm over his face and was sober in an instant.

  The marine tipped back his tricorne at the prospect of the next half hour of his life. ‘It’s the Mumvil Trader, Captain. She’s back in the bay. A man called Davis brought her in. Escaped from the pirates so he says.’

  Coxon stepped down to the sawdust floor. ‘Does Rogers know of this?’

  ‘Not yet sir. Davis, their captain now, asked for you only. I checked here last, Captain.’

  ‘You found me last, lad,’ he dragged the man to the door. ‘I’ll bring the governor from his hanging and join you on the beach.’

  The marine stayed Coxon’s hand. ‘You best come first, Captain,’ he said. ‘Especially.’

  Coxon fixed the man with his eye and waited for the soldier to continue.

  ‘He has a prisoner, Captain,’ the man began to grin and relished the rising of Coxon’s eyebrows. ‘He has the pirate Devlin with him. Chained. And his men also.’

  Coxon’s arm gripped the sailor and the man pulled against the clasp. ‘I say, he has the pirate Devlin on the beach, Captain. Calling for the King’s Act so he is. Captain Davis is calling for you especially.’

  Coxon pulled the marine close. ‘Are his hands tied?’

  ‘Captain?’

  ‘Are his hands tied, man? Devlin’s hands tied!’

  ‘He is manacled, Captain. Safe as houses so he is.’

  Coxon walked on, pulling the red-coated innocent with him. ‘I fell for that before.’ And the hot bright world was before them as the door of the Cat and Fiddle swung out onto New Providence and John Coxon made his way down to the beach to meet Patrick Devlin again; the star-shaped scar on his forearm itching beneath his shirt.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was always the Portuguese. Wherever and whenever a man first licked his thumb and placed it on the edge of a map and questioned what lay beyond he did it upon the rocking deck of a carrack out of Lisbon. So it was that in the early sixteenth century the first of many dropped their anchors in Guangzhou harbour and began there also to drop silver, returning with the first batches of the mysterious Chinese hard-paste porcelain for the royal tabletops of Europe.

  One hundred years later the Dutch discovered the fabled route, but rather than trade with the Chinese they preferred to pirate the Portuguese vessels to such an extent that even James I and Henry IV travelled to Holland to bid for the stolen wares.

  Once the Portuguese route was known to all, the Dutch and English East India companies began to ship as much porcelain as the factories could produce and the Hongs would allow. It was only a matter of time, and greed, before Europe demanded the secret for themselves. Black Sam Bellamy’s Whydah carried the letters of the priest, the wad of papers corked in a bamboo tube and sealed within the bronze cannon, the same cannon that Captain William Guinneys had purchased for the purpose of smuggling the letters out of China under the noses of the Hongs and all the East India companies.

  The cannon was carried to Charles Town and to Ignatius, then ferried north by Bellamy for safety, once word went abroad following Guinneys’ wake. Then the gun drowned along with Bellamy and his pirate crew in April 1717. Thus the arcanum was lost to the West again.

  The ship had capsized in shallow waters off Cape Cod, making the hold tantalisingly accessible, and the wreck brought treasure hunters from as far as the Bahamas. The salvagers had found negresses particularly adept at the art of diving, their body fat a better insulator in the deeper, colder water – as the Spanish had discovered after they had exhausted their supplies of the local Caribs and Lu
cayans in scavenging sunken wrecks.

  The teredo worm had feasted well on the Whydah’s keel and she was punched in easily by the slaves’ fists, which opened a hole large enough to swim through.

  Hours were spent plumbing the depths, with respite for the women found in the caulked wooden diving-bells floating around the wreck like giant jellyfish. There, some hot air could be gasped and the divers could fill the leather bags hanging inside with gold and silver coins salvaged from the Whydah’s hold.

  Randomly their masters would slit open the belly of one of the returning women to check for precious stones and coins and deter the other divers from stealing.

  For the local council the looting of the Whydah had become a circus. Locals and ‘moon-cussers’ set up stalls along the shore, gleefully selling rings still sitting on swollen fingers cut from the washed-up bodies that piled along the shoreline with each dawn.

  In light of this, William Tailer, the governor of Massachusetts, commissioned the revered cartographer and captain, Cyprian Southack, to officially salvage the pirate ship on the crown’s behalf. Southack sailed back to Boston a week later with nothing more than: ‘two anchors, some junk … and two great guns.’

  Much of the gold and silver, the ivory, even the bulk of the indigo blocks had been already liberated. Captain Southack’s official haul was auctioned within the month. The crown remarked little on the paltry tribute. The only significant sale was the one of the guns, a curious anonymous purchase of fourteen hundred pounds for an antique minion, a small bore Chinese gun, its barrel blocked by crustaceans and clay. Its only possible value was as bronze scrap for smelting.

  Palgrave Williams’s wagon drove the gun out of Heston’s auction house in May 1717 and Palgrave vanished from the earth. He had been Black Sam Bellamy’s partner and had left his wife and children, also his business as a goldsmith, and had blackened the good name of his father to become a pirate. Five warships now cruised the New England coast seeking him. Warrants were posted even to the natives for the apprehension of the pirate who had become the Americas’ most wanted man. And he had sat with his hands crossed upon his lap in the front row of Heston’s auction and waited for his moment.