Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (11 page)

He soon had the right key rattling off his apron leathers, his pizzle in his fist. Buckets of sand along the walls stood ready and prisoners to aid him, for they would help to save themselves. The governor would be pleased that he had averted tragedy. With a few of the constables from the wards to assist, the fire would be quelled. There would be no fire on his watch. Why was he so heavy? Damn his feet.

Shouts for mercy ricocheted about as he scurried along the corridor. He heard his name called again and again from above and below, yet something was not quite right. Certainly there was the smell of smoke but the stench of the sea-coal was always present and screams were nothing new. Whatever niggled him was forgotten as Langley reached the ward. The key turned soundly even though his hand trembled and the faces beyond the open door seemed right – but only for a moment.

It was the black turnover pistol emptied into his face that told Thomas of his error.

No fire without smoke.

Hugh Harris stepped over the body and switched the double barrel to its second load as calmly as winding a watch. Peter Sam and Dandon studied the map.

Another corridor ran to the left and right of them, this one lit at least. Old lanterns hung from the ceiling, polished horn instead of glass lending a waxy hue to the stone of the walls. The stifled cries above them were merely irritating.

‘There is a taphouse soon. The captain is lodged beyond.’ Dandon folded away the map. ‘Then, Peter, we shall leave as you wished to come in. Onto the street.’ He relieved the late Thomas of his loop of bridge ward-keys, almost all of which would open any of the doors of the gaol; the ward-lock was simple and common throughout.

Dandon locked the door behind them. ‘I don’t think we need any more distractions. Prisoners finding their way out through the church by the tunnel may cover our escape.’ He pocketed the keys. ‘And with these we need not add more violence to our exit.’ He pointed them all southwards and they hurried on, for the cries echoing from all floors would bring query from the streets outside soon enough, and their endeavour would be discovered.

‘Hold, George!’ Wild needed a breath himself. The pirate had taken enough. ‘I thinks your name’s Patrick Devlin. I thinks you’re a pirate. A wanted man. Five hundred pounds to me, dead. This can’t go much further. You tell me what the prince wants with scum like you. How much coin to keep you alive? What you got, pirate? Where is it?’ He nodded to George for a final kick but Devlin held up his palm.

Wild was satisfied. All men break. All of them. ‘Let him be, George. Pirate?’ He gave him enough slack to sit up. George clicked his snap at the pirate and stood back.

Wild purred. ‘What’ll it be? Dead or alive?’

Devlin looked up and grinned through his blood.

‘Can you hear that? That’s your end.’ He wiped his face on his sleeve and tutted at the claret. A Holland shirt wasted. Wild dropped the chain. The two men listened to the walls and heard the cries, faint but growing louder, and Devlin looked at their faces which moments ago had been hard and thoughtless. Devlin would remember the effect of the word ‘
Fire!
’ on the world.

Chapter Eight

The sounds of terror had not been lost on Patrick Devlin. But unlike Wild and George he calmly stood and straightened his clothes.

Wild sprang to the door, the cries louder there, his ear to the hatch he could not open from his side.

‘Fire, Jon?’ George held a nervous pistol on Devlin.

‘Langley!’ Wild hammered the door with his wood. ‘
Langley
!’

‘He can’t hear you,’ Devlin said. ‘He’s busy.’

‘What’ll we do, Jon?’ George wiped his forehead, already imagining the sweat of a fire.

‘Keep him back against the wall. Langley will come for us.’ He banged again, called again, but only the cries of woe responded.

‘Justice has found you, Wild. And me.’ Devlin looked at George, the face he had worn that morning back again.

‘Shoot him, Jon?’ George hissed.

Wild backed away from the door. ‘No. We may need that shot.’

‘You may need me.’ Devlin shrugged. Then they all heard the key rattling in the lock and Wild grinned back to the pirate. ‘Langley knows where his bread is buttered, scum.’

The door opened again, as it had many times that day, far more than usual. Three men filled the frame, sharing different heights and aspects but just one expression for all. George grabbed Devlin and put his little gun to his head.

‘Keep away! I’ll—’

Hugh Harris shot him in the eye. George’s other eye rolled up and he fell away like a dropped broom. Devlin stepped away and nodded to Hugh.

Peter Sam was now inside the cell and Wild drew back his stick. Brave man: Peter Sam towered above most, but no-one could question that Wild had sand.

Peter Sam crashed the stock of his blunderbuss into Wild’s thick chin and he went back like a hurled sack. His legs held, though, and he staggered up again, only to have the butt repeatedly driven into his face until he stayed down in the corner with his eyes closed.

Dandon came in last and looked to the fallen. ‘You have grown company since last I saw you, Patrick.’

‘You took your time,’ was all Devlin said, as Dandon rifled through the keys on the ring to one that looked suitable to free the chain above his boots.

‘Forgive our tardiness, Captain.’ He grimaced at Devlin’s bloodied face. ‘Although you seem to have been entertained.’ He went to work on the manacle.

‘My gun. My hat, coat and sword,’ Devlin ordered as he shook the iron free.

Peter Sam kicked the lump that was the Thief-Taker General. ‘And him? You want him dead?’

Devlin touched Peter’s shoulder and looked down at Wild’s unconscious form. ‘I think this one’s time will come soon enough. I reckon he owes the whole city justice. We’ll get my things.’

Dandon sympathised but sensed danger. ‘We have a hundred guns and twice as many swords, Captain, on the
Shadow
. We should leave with the greatest expedience, for London is probably gathering outside as we speak and—’ Devlin placed a hand on his shoulder to quiet him.

‘My gun. My hat. My coat and sword. And dagger. They took them from me.’ He stepped out of the cell.

‘He don’t understand, Cap’n.’ Peter Sam held out his hand for the keys and Dandon passed them over with a shake of his head. Hugh Harris jigged an elbow into Dandon’s side. ‘You be wise, Dandon. But you ain’t a pirate.’ Then they followed Devlin and Peter Sam to the hold, Thomas Langley’s guardhouse afore the Lodge where prisoners’ goods were kept. The cell and the bodies within were now just another bottle-neck tale to drink to.

Dandon rued another five minutes in the dank cavern, away from the front door and the freedom of the night; it was another five minutes for Charleys, constables and watchmen to gather in the street outside and wonder at the strange lack of flames.

Outside in Old Bailey and Newgate Street a crowd was indeed gathering. Richard Maynard, the church-warden, had returned to St Sepulchre, too weary to ring the bells but able enough to shout for help in the streets. He was sobbing through his cries. The good book had not prepared him for the actual touch of devils.

Thomas Langley was not the only turnkey that night. Two others regularly attended on the Master Debtor’s side, the gatehouse of old that bestrode Newgate Street and retained its original Roman wall, though hidden now beneath the sprawl of the city.

The turnkeys had joined the throng in the street. At first they had fled from the cries of fire, but were now trying to calm the people who had stumbled out of the nearby inns, informing them there was no fire and to return to their holes. Private firemen appeared, pushing their engines up Bailey and Sepulchre-Without, and checked whose buildings displayed their brass insurance plaques. It was those that had paid for the service that would be watered down first.

The Watch and Ward, their lanterns aloft, their cudgels keeping back the mostly drunken crowd, prayed that the absence of fire would settle the maddened horde. But still from the edifice of the stone gaol the prisoners howled for release and rescue, and the crowd began to push towards the massive double-doors, the aged watchmen unable to reason with or hold back the human tide. The mob was about to break; a riot crouched just a smashed window away.

Then gunshots rang out from the gaol. A collective gasp rushed through the crowd and ceased the cries from the windows of the gaol. The street fell into silence.

One report after another as a world of guns blasted into the great wooden doors and lamplight pierced like arrows through the shot holes. Then nothing. More silence. Behind the doors calm men reloaded for whatever waited outside.

The oak doors crashed open.

Women put their hands to their mouths and ragged children peered excitedly between their fathers’ legs as four unholy figures, framed for a moment in the light from behind them, stepped slowly from Newgate and into Old Bailey. The figures wallowed in the breathless hush that met them; terror their meal.

The firemen pulled back their carts and the watchmen shrank into the crowd as three of the men swept weapons across the circle of eyes frozen upon them.

One spoke. Pointed his sword to his left and the populace covering the street.

‘Clear a way,’ he ordered, and the crowd opened for him as if a tree were toppling down on them. Now their eyes followed his bloodied face as he strode through them.

The others came with him, walking backwards as if well practised in being outnumbered. No uncertainty was on display; their weapons were held steady as stone and just as quiet. All save one, that was, a fellow unarmed, wearing an elaborate yellow justacorps, who tossed to the street a ring of keys and whisked off his flamboyant hat in farewell as his comrades disappeared into the shadows.

‘I am sorry for the gunplay! I could not find the correct key! Goodnight, London!’ He bowed. ‘Regrettably your hospitality is not to our taste!’ Then he too was gone, swallowed up by the narrows of the honeycombed streets. They had appeared for seconds only but would remain in the crowd’s memory forever.

The mob closed together, huddled now, with guesses and rumours shivering around the cross of streets where justice and punishment proudly stood. Whispers and then even laughter arose from those who realised what they had witnessed.

One of the turnkeys picked up the key-ring and tried to lock back the doors to general disapproval from the assembly. He gave up, faced them with a grimace, waved away their catcalls and went inside to bar the door.

Whatever had happened this night, no matter how small his part, the turnkey was certain that a fire could have been no worse. Tomorrow was already regretted.

Chapter Nine

Tuesday

Twice a day the booksellers of Paternoster Row would churn out their broadsheets. London groups of quality, so impatient to learn of what had occurred in the hours just gone by, would gather in the nearby ‘ordinaries’ and were affectionately labelled the ‘Wet Paper Club’.

The narrow street off St Paul’s, almost too narrow for even the most demure
caroche
carriage, had since medieval times been the centre of the printers’ world, although then of a more ecclesiastical nature. The publishing of religious doctrine had long been replaced by the no less important regurgitation of scandal and political fervour.