Hunt for White Gold

by Mark Keating

  Amongst the fines for unescorted slaves and failure to prove ownership of a vessel were the waxed and dog-eared black-rimmed warnings that served to dissuade any of the populace from pursuing a life a-roving on the sea. They were the faded ‘Wanted’ posters for the pirates known to ravage the Carolinas now that the Bahamas no longer welcomed them.

  Blackbeard, Vane, Bonnet: all had hit Charles Town and hit it hard and Charles Town would show them no mercy if they returned. But for now, that afternoon, a small black youth in white wig, bright red coat and gold epaulettes walked two strangers from the harbour and through the dogwood trees lining the streets.

  Only one of them had his name printed on the bills on the walls. It had been there over a year now and lay beneath the fresher names of younger men inspired to follow, now dead and gibbeted or rotting beneath three tides waiting to be so.

  A short life and a merry one had been perhaps too inspiring a motto.

  The strangers paused when they reached the inn, where ages ago it seemed they had bade goodnight to the girl, Lucy, and where they now looked about them for some inkling of a trap, ignoring the impatience of the youth waving them to follow him to the powder-blue house opposite.

  The taller of the two drew dark looks from the passers-by, not just from his stillness amongst their urgency or for his bow-less black hair straggling over his shoulders, but for the deadly cutlass hanging across his body, over his black coat, which hinted at a man more accustomed to pulling out the steel than pulling off the coat. The more observant noted the pommels of twinned pistols nudging the coat aside and ducked their eyes away from him.

  The other wore a dirty Dandelion-coloured justacorps and matching wide-brimmed hat, but appeared harmless because he carried no weapons, only a thick bamboo tube, and bowed and dipped to every passing unescorted woman, who grimaced at his gold-capped teeth. He paid no mind to their disgust, using as he was every bow to check every corner and doorway for any observer beyond the naturally curious – the ones that might harbour darker thoughts and cling to the shadows. Some sign of satisfaction was exchanged, a look between the two with no word spoken, and they followed the pristine servant across the street.

  It was Ignatius himself who opened the door before they had taken the final step to the threshold. He appeared to them clad in his pious pilgrim black and raised white collar, just as they left him, as if he had sat waiting for them frozen and inanimate whilst Devlin wore the weeks upon his clothes and unshaven face.

  ‘Captain Devlin,’ Ignatius looked at the pirate fondly, snubbing Dandon on the step behind. ‘I am so glad that you have returned safely. I trust your journey was a pleasant one. Please, do come in.’ He stood aside and gestured down the long red passage. ‘I have a guest who has been dying to see you again.’ He halted Devlin with an arm. ‘However, I must insist that you hand over your pistols to my servant boy.’ Then added generously, ‘You may keep your sword.’

  Devlin said nothing and slipped out the pistols to lay heavy in the boy’s crossed arms like firewood. Ignatius’s attention fell to Dandon. ‘Your man, Captain, can wait outside.’

  Devlin looked back at Dandon. ‘He is unarmed. He has the letters only.’

  Ignatius reached for the bamboo. ‘May I?’ his voice purred beguilingly under his malevolent eyes.

  Dandon tossed the tube to Devlin and flourished his hat. ‘No need, sir.’ He smiled, front teeth shining. ‘Captain, I will take no offence by not being permitted to enter. I can pass my time. I believe the Pink House worthy of my attention.’ The famed whorehouse of Charles Town was not lost on Dandon in his researches.

  ‘Back to the harbour, Dandon,’ Devlin said, and looked coldly at Ignatius. ‘Me and Peter Sam won’t be long.’

  Ignatius pushed closed the door.

  ‘Then good day and good luck to you both!’ Dandon called as the door swung to before his nose.

  ‘Filthy fellow,’ Ignatius shook his head and joined Devlin’s side. ‘Now, Captain, shall we begin with some refreshment after your journey?’ He placed a soft palm to Devlin’s back then flinched in shock as Devlin slapped it away and slammed him to the wall by his neck.

  ‘Enough of your shite! Bring me Peter Sam!’

  For forty-nine years Ignatius had led a life that had skirted death, a life that relied constantly on dangerous men, both to protect him and to be subjugated to him, yet it had never occasioned for anyone to stick their hands around his white lavender-powdered neck until their fingernails drew the first pink scrapings of blood.

  It seemed so obvious to him now how differently his life could have been if, in the first days, someone had not bowed and done exactly as he said but had begun instead to choke the life out of him, their grip powered purely by hate. What a terrible wasted life that would have been.

  How fortunate then that he did indeed lead a life that relied on dangerous men, and his eyes slid along the passage to where Hib Gow darkened the corridor.

  Devlin loosed his grip as he followed Ignatius’s eyes and understood, his hand creeping towards his blade, how it was Peter Sam had been taken from them.

  Hib had maybe nine inches on Devlin, but Devlin had faced big men before. Yet something in the still frame bracing the walls, the solid assurance like the great oak door of a castle and the bony, sharp face with the gnarled giant nose that told of a thousand battles, declared to Devlin that the sword held no fear for the man.

  Devlin checked the boy holding his pistols who instantly ran behind the giant and then devoted his hands to simply embracing the bamboo tube. It was perhaps his only defence, and even that growing weaker all the time.

  Ignatius coughed and levered himself off the wall, soothing his neck with his hand. Straightening his clothes he made the introductions. ‘Captain Devlin, this is Mister Hib Gow, my confidant and aide. He was once a hangman, you know? At Tyburn, no less. Who knows? You two might have met in the future if destiny had not sent you both to me.’ He coughed again while the marks on his neck from Devlin’s fingers still lingered. ‘Shall we?’ he said and waved Devlin down the corridor.

  Hib glared down at the pirate as he passed by and followed faithfully at Ignatius’s back with the gilded servant close behind.

  ‘I trust that you have looked inside the tube that you have brought me, Captain? It would have been difficult I imagine to resist.’ They turned one corner, approaching what Devlin supposed was the dining room of a gentleman by the double door ahead.

  ‘Aye, I looked at them.’

  ‘Of little use to you, no doubt, being as the entire volume is in French. Ignorance is often the best security.’ The party stopped at the door and Ignatius lifted a key from a silk ribbon at his side.

  ‘I will fetch your quartermaster for you. You may keep the letters until then. I wish you no harm, Captain, despite your violence upon me.’ He unlocked the door and ushered Devlin in. ‘Wait here, Captain. A few minutes at most, if you please. You can cool some of that blood that boils within you.’

  Devlin stepped into the room, bright and cheery from the glass panelled doors that led to the garden standing at the far end. A figure sat at the head of the dining table in front of the doors, as if beatified in the afternoon Charles Town sun. The door was locked.

  He had known what to expect. He had thought long on it during the voyage from New Providence and indeed ever since Ignatius had given him the packet with the white raven’s feather, inside this very house. Still it came as some surprise to see the purple-doubleted and black-gloved form sitting at the long oak refectory table. The long smooth black hair and beard were not as well groomed as Devlin remembered but the eyes looked just as hate-filled as the last time.

  Devlin took off his hat and slung it with the bamboo package on the table. He noted the bottle of wine in the centre that Valentim was already working through. ‘Well met, Valentim,’ Devlin grinned and held out his hand for a welcoming shake as if they were old friends, then pulled it back in jest and winked at Valentim’s out-sized left hand. ‘I
almost forgot, Valentim: I must beg your pardon.’

  Ignatius listened to the sound of crashing glass and the scrape of steel over the shouted Portuguese curses, then stepped away with Hib to leave the intimacy of the room to those that deserved it. He was a man of his word and had promised Valentim Mendes his moment with the pirate Devlin.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Peter Sam

  The first strike at Devlin’s throat sliced across the white wall as Devlin fell back, the rapier permanently scoring the masonry, leaving later generations of owners to speculate on its origins.

  Devlin gave a small laugh as he drew his shorter cutlass, perhaps out of excitement, perhaps at the absurdity of the snarling creature swinging away, kicking the chairs from the table as he edged towards him.

  ‘Valentim!’ Devlin’s cutlass clanged against one of the swings of the other’s blade and held it there, pulling Valentim close. The striking of the steel striking off Devlin’s smile. ‘This is not the time for us to fight!’

  The pirate could fight, would always fight, but a man like Valentim had been educated to it, had been parrying at court probably before Devlin could read and would surely beat him if the play came down to skill alone. But he had probably also always fought like a gentleman. Devlin shot his left elbow in Valentim’s eye and Valentim reeled back in shock.

  Valentim shook the sting away to see Devlin pacing back, swigging from the wine bottle he had snatched from the table. He offered it to Valentim.

  ‘You should die with wine on your lips.’ It was a statement not a promise. ‘Come, Valentim: am I really your enemy this day?’

  Valentim’s sword whistled through the air, his back and thigh muscles set for his strike. Killing is not drawn in the arms. To the properly trained it is in the hips, the feet and the lungs. One breath, one second. Devlin drank again, his eyes watching over the bottle’s neck as Valentim roared.

  ‘I am the Regulador of Sao Nicolau, pirate! Do not use my name, dog! I have told you such before!’

  He sprang forward, half the length he needed to, intending to bring Devlin to parry and open up for the rest of his thrust, but Devlin swept back as Valentim came on, raging. ‘You killed my friend! Killed my men!’ Their swords rattled and chimed again and again as Valentim backed Devlin towards the wall, spitting his anger at every clash. More than a year of waiting for this moment crying from him. ‘You took my ship, and worst of all of these …’ Devlin’s back hit the wall as Valentim’s rapier pricked his ribs and held him there. Blood spotted his shirt and Devlin looked down at the sight, something entirely new to him. The blood of others on him more common.

  Valentim raised the dead thing at the end of his left arm. ‘You took my hand! My body! My body!’ He pulled back for his thrust, as if Devlin were just a straw-packed dummy in his fencing class, but this was an error against a man accustomed to fighting in the gutters, and Devlin used the gap that had briefly opened up to swing the wine bottle into Valentim’s skull.

  He had not seen it, and registered only the blackness filling his vision as he collapsed and the floor twisted under his feet. A burnt-in instinct made him fall to one knee and focus on his rapier held out before him, but then something swooped into him hard and he heard his sword falling away and over the flagstones as his head cracked against the same.

  Then the voice was above him, whispering like a confession, one knee down on his chest, weighting him to the floor, the other on his sword arm, a cutlass across his throat.

  ‘The bones we have against us may well be due, Valentim,’ Devlin bored into Valentim’s eyes, reading first one then the other, looking for signs of reason. ‘But we are fighting for him, not ourselves.’ Valentim struggled and began to lift the porcelain hand but had it pushed down and the blade pressed colder and deeper against his flesh. ‘Maybe you kill me. Maybe we kill each other. But that’s what he wants, don’t you see? Less of us all. Together we could take down that carrion he keeps. I’m guessing from your looks you ain’t been his guest.’ The body beneath him softened. ‘I’m here for my quartermaster. You’re here for me. Not for him, Valentim. Don’t give this to him. If you want me, try and take me, but what happens after?’ He lifted the blade, a white stripe across Valentim’s neck. ‘What happens after one of us is dead?’ Devlin stood, his sword low, and waited.

  Valentim dragged himself to where his sword lay, crawling with added ignominy through the shards of glass and spilled wine. His black glove wrapped itself around the hilt and he used the strength of its blade to heave himself to his feet.

  For a moment his back was presented openly for Devlin to run his cutlass through the spine, but the pirate let him rise. Valentim uncoiled upwards, bringing his sword to face his opponent, and he measured the pirate and his words.

  ‘You are right, pirate,’ he sneered. ‘I will kill you … later.’

  Devlin picked up the bamboo tube without his eye leaving the governor of Sao Nicolau. ‘To the garden,’ he nodded to the glass doors. ‘More room to fight.’

  Ignatius weighed Devlin’s pistols in his hands. They were carbine-bore Dragoons with twelve-inch barrels and brass escutcheon plates screwed into the wrist to strengthen them. The plates announced they were by Barbar of London no less, and they would be worth maybe sixty or seventy pounds apiece. He marvelled at their handsomeness and tucked them into his belt. How easily the pirate had given them up, he thought. How easy it was to pluck a crow.

  ‘They are in the garden. Together.’ Hib’s voice drifted over from the doors looking over the walled sanctuary of Magnolia and Azalea. ‘Far corner.’ His hand was already on the brass catch, waiting for Ignatius’s response.

  Ignatius swept to the window. ‘What are they doing? They are not fighting?’ His voice was lilting with surprise.

  Hib looked out to the men, at the drawn swords, at the gap between them. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Devlin has the letters at his feet.’

  Ignatius confirmed the sight before them. ‘They have joined. Interesting.’ His eyes lit up as if he had hoped for and expected such an outcome. He put his hand on Hib’s shoulder and faced the other two men in the office.

  ‘Teach, I may have need of you.’ He nodded to the chained Peter Sam haunting the room. ‘Bring that to the garden.’

  Blackbeard put down the rum bottle and looked at the figure of Peter Sam standing with his shoulders drawn down by the long chains hanging from his wrists. He had known Peter Sam. He did not know the eye of the man who now looked up at him. Edward Teach moved away and for the first time he thought of the men he had left behind at the grounding of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. A shudder rippled across his back as he turned away from Peter Sam.

  ‘I will not befoul my hand with such, Ignatius. Let his gaoler bring him. I wish to see Devlin for meself.’

  Twelve feet high stone walls enclosed the garden, which was twenty feet across with fifty feet of paved walkways and trees, and an iron sundial in the centre that never caught the sun. Ignatius had chosen his property well. The garden could hold many secrets.

  Valentim and Devlin watched the three men emerge from the house and the blades twitched in their hands. Devlin looked once at Peter Sam, smaller, paler, but still Peter Sam despite that, he was sure. Blackbeard wore the same crimson coat and the same look of arrogance and Devlin felt a vague crease of his brow at the recollection of the last time he had faced the scourge of the coast.

  Valentim caught Devlin’s look, counted the weapons facing them and leant to the man beside him. ‘Do you have a plan, pirate?’

  Devlin reached down and picked up the bamboo tube. ‘In London I worked at an anchorsmith’s with a man named Kennedy,’ he announced, prompting a confused look from his companion. ‘’Til I was trained to it I forged cable-chain. I learnt never to mind about the link I had just made, or the link I was going to make, just the one I was working on. Get burnt else.’ He winked to Valentim.

  ‘I am allied with a madman.’ Valentim balanced himself and held his breath.
>
  Ignatius stood between Hib and Blackbeard, his confidence undiminished. ‘My letters, Captain, if you please.’ He stepped forward, a friendly hand outstretched.

  ‘My man,’ Devlin said. ‘Bring me Peter Sam.’

  Ignatius pointed to the waist-tall sundial in the middle of the grove, circled by stone seats. ‘There,’ he said. ‘We will talk, you and I.’

  Ignatius walked calmly forwards, alone, and Devlin went to meet him, casting an eye to Valentim to watch the letters as he placed them back to the ground. He kept his cutlass low.

  The sundial was between them, no shadow upon it, as the men faced each other. Ignatius began a speech long thought of, his hands resting sedately on the wrists of Devlin’s pistols.

  ‘A new war is here, Captain.’ He spoke as if it were his own joyous creation. ‘England and her allies are again at the throat of Spain. Perhaps before the end of the year the Ottoman empire will join also. It will be a good year to be a privateer. It will be a good year to be my acquaintance. Not my enemy.’

  ‘I brought your letters. Bring me my man.’

  Ignatius gently shook his head. ‘Do you not know what those letters are, Captain? Surely you are not as much an Irish imbecile as you appear to be?’

  ‘I understand what you have told me. The making of porcelain. Cups and pots for kings.’

  ‘No, Captain. Much more than that. They are the secret of making free trade. A bargaining tool that could cut America loose from England’s apron strings. Which one of your lives do you think is worth more to me than such a power? By the end of the last war I was a phenomenally wealthy man. By the end of this one I will be the mark of avarice itself, and you, Captain, have brought me the means. I may have use for a good privateer in the months to come.’

  ‘You have Teach,’ Devlin said.