Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (24 page)

‘In the morning I have called Ronde, the jeweller, to attend to discuss the setting of the diamond.’

Law’s heart jumped. The piss-boy glanced at Law’s flushed face then switched his gaze back to the window.

‘Tomorrow, Milord?’

‘At eleven. And I wish you to be there. I have little time for the man. He is such . . .’ he paused, and emitted a grunt of satisfaction as the weight of his stream became quite pleasurable ‘. . . a bore, you know.’

Dubois brushed past Law to take advantage of the piss-boy’s second pail, the sound of the regent’s relief too much of a temptation for his nervous bladder.

‘But I will tolerate him. I feel the longer I hold onto that stone the worse everything becomes around me.’ He grunted through the last three forced squirts and shook himself off. ‘At least it cannot get any more deplorable.’

Law thought quickly. Tomorrow morning was too soon. The diamond would be on its way to join the crown and the pirate was not yet at his door. ‘The crown is ready for the stone?’

The duke wiped his hand down his banyan and tugged at his nose. ‘No. The fool says it will take almost two years to complete. I wish to survey his design. Concur that it matches my own desires for the Regent.’ Philippe had christened the diamond after himself and his court had grown accustomed to the gem’s third-person title.

He fixed Law with an eye. ‘I want the Regent set in the foremost of the crown. So all that see it will know that it is
I
above the king’s head, and
I
am watching them all.’

Law could not afford to seem agitated but he could allow himself to appear as disgusted at the prospect of Ronde as the duke, or by Dubois’s hissing imprecations toward the man holding the bucket.

‘We will need an armed escort if the diamond is to leave tomorrow. It would be unsuitable for Ronde to walk out with such a fortune in just his pocket. It will take time to choose appropriately discreet men.’

The duke walked on in silence. Law could feel his blood pounding in his veins and wondered if the duke could also feel it.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I only wish to force my hand in his design. He will not have the Regent.’ He smiled up at his Scottish friend, the sound of Dubois’s stream behind them making tension impossible. ‘You must miss the glory of the diamond, Lass, there is such a tremor in your voice!’

Law dipped his head. ‘I am anxious for it, Milord. I was responsible for its acquisition from Pitt. There is relation there. But I wonder if we could delay until the afternoon, Milord? I am tired after my journey and have much to catch up on.’ Maybe that would give Devlin time to appear. They walked on, leaving Dubois to painfully shake out his final syrupy brown drops.

The Parisian shrug
surfaced again. ‘Very well, no matter. At three then, yes? Now, good evening, Lass. Get your rest, old man!’ He slapped Law’s back and spun off toward one of the smaller cloistered dining rooms above that deliberately did not have windows. Law’s chambers were near the regent’s in the western side of the palace, far away from the debauchery to come, and he wandered there slowly.

Time had shortened now, like a candle burning down, its wick a fuse.

The pirate had to come tomorrow – and early – or all was lost. Law halted. But then perhaps tomorrow would force the pirate to follow Walpole’s original plan, to take the diamond from the lapidary instead? Aye, that might be the safer path. The pirate could not design a scheme to overcome the walls of the palace. When he saw the palace tomorrow he would surely understand and swallow his pride.

Law would make his way to his offices in the Rue Quincampoix, a fifteen-minute stroll, and wait for the pirate to meet him there or not at all. The man was no doubt drunk beyond diligence. He laughed and clapped his hand to his mouth, his gallows merriment resonating all along the corridor as he ascended to his rooms. Devlin would fit perfectly in such a Paris as this.

Dubois heard the faraway laugh. Perhaps it was some joke he had missed between the regent and the financier. No matter. He tucked himself away while looking at the man with the pails, daring him to meet his eye or at least look down to his steaming buckets. Nothing. Just tight-jawed and staring straight ahead.

Dubois stroked the man’s cheek with his purple velvet. ‘Are you perchance from Mirebalais, young man?’

Unaware of any address that did not earn punishment the man stayed silent.

‘The ladies upstairs do so love a man from Mirebalais. Still I suppose carrying buckets of piss has purpose in life. Perhaps the police is your destiny?’ The waxwork before him was irresistible now that the regent had ignored him.

‘You know, the English, they did wrong when they removed their king the last time.’ He moved closer with his hot breath. ‘They killed the revolutionary principals but they sent the smaller ones to their colonies as slaves. That was a mistake. Revolution is carried in the blood. I have urged often the death of dissenters. And I am proved right. If they breed, the children will carry the thought in their blood. The English king will lose the colonies because he sends his haters away to breed. And we do the same by filling Louisiana with hate.’

The nostrils of the bucket bearer widened; his arms were beginning to tremble, his buckets filled with hours of waste by every wanderer within the walls.

‘I, boy, have condemned hundreds. Those Bretons seeking republic. Foreign Catholics seeking home. If you do not kill them their children’s children will return.’ He patted the man’s cheek with emerald- and ruby-banded fingers. ‘
You
will punish us if we allow you to breed . . .
malheureusement
.’

He wheeled away, scuffing his shoulder against the wall as he spun back to face the unmoving sentinel. ‘I did not break
conspiracies
! I cut blood for the sake of the divine!’ Then, his finger waggling foolishly, ‘I can hear
you
! I can hear you
all
!’ He moved away to seek the drink and the flesh, his voice heavy. ‘I am glad that I will be too long dead to meet you when you come.’

Chapter Nineteen

Sunday morning

‘They’re still coming,’ Dan Teague said, and passed the glass to Bill. They stood on the
Shadow
’s shallow quarterdeck watching the square towers of sail roll over the horizon. No deck was visible so the ships were still a ways off yet.

Two ships. The dawn had brought them, the sun presenting them to the
Shadow
’s
anchored stern, the working day of the pirate some hours off yet. Dan Teague and Bill were late in greeting the sails.

Bill spoke his mind aloud. ‘She’d turned by now if making for Malo or the coast. They ain’t in too much of a hurry leastways: they have royals if they would but use them.’

The
Shadow
had cruised under her French merchant flag almost out of the Channel and into the wide welcoming arms of the Atlantic, her passage marked by the
Îles d’la Manche
to larboard and the Lizard to their starboard bow. Then came the Scilly archipelago and at last they left the rough white-capped waters between France and England. Now, though, two ships of the line from the east seemingly dogged them, matching them knot for knot. It was more like a drag than a hunt.

Bill lowered the glass. ‘We should raise English colours. If they’re Frogs we ain’t the heads to fool them, not with the captain and Dandon gone.’

‘We could make closed waters. Round to Bristol,’ Dan suggested.

‘Aye,’ Bill agreed. If the ships were French they had no business within the three miles of Mare Clausum, that territory around England’s coast that had been hard fought for and whose measure was defined by the range of a cliff-top cannon – or an Englishman’s hate. ‘But we’re to make for the Verdes and back again for the captain. Back in three days. Can’t leave him lolling in that tartane. Besides, Dan, it ain’t a chase yet.’

Others had joined them, shielding their eyes from the morning sun to watch the white pillars suddenly grow taller and wider still as the royals fell and studding sails struck out like wings. The course of the twin ships stayed as faithful as if the
Shadow
had laid them a towing hawser.

Dan did not need the scope to see it, and made sure Bill had. ‘Ain’t it a chase, Bill? Looks one to me now. Time to hauls it, I says!’

Bill showed nothing, not with the crowd around him. His was the rule now, as Devlin had passed it, for whatever it was worth. He made a slow swallow beneath his beard which none could see. ‘Know your scripture, Dan,’ he whispered, then moved round for them all to hear.

‘
Be not afraid
. Three hundred and sixty-six times the Bible says that! That’s a blessing for every day of the year, and one for the leap!’

Already he had begun to think of powder, but not out loud to them, not yet. ‘I’ll have mine today, lads! Be not afraid now. Sunday after all. Who fights on a Sunday, save for us!

Trouin left the scoping of the horizon to his officer pups brimming over the fo’c’sle. No need for him to lay sight of his fox. A black and red frigate rigged to the gallants, not intelligent enough to change her grey sails from those as described years past. The faint plume that detailed a hearth on the weather-deck where men ate above rather than below – a sure mark of a pirate biting against convention. Closer and he would know; see her French-built strakes that overlapped, clinker-built for outer hull strength. If so that would confirm she was the
Shadow
,
‘
a Sombra
’, as surely as the wax seal from the governor of the Verdes that bought her, whatever masked escutcheon she was sailing under.

It was
him
. The pirate that had two royal warrants against him and more from every ally. Too far for his eager officers to perceive a flag but close enough for Trouin to feel, the hair rising on his skin, that this was the ship that the merchant had told him of three days ago.

He had given no margin for error or ingenuity from the pirate. Like fool’s chess the brigand would sail into his trap.
La Françoise
would stand to the pirate’s forefoot, feinting to lure her to the treacherous Scilly rocks of the aptly named Hell Mouth – a sailor’s graveyard. The weaker
La Patiente
, Trouin’s command, would give her leeway, allow her a gap to run, and when she took it . . .

There was no need for signals or orders shouted through trumpets. Captain Cassard on
La Françoise
had his orders to follow like calculus. One only needed to mark time until the distance between them closed. A fine Sunday morning in August that some artist would soon immortalise in oil. Trouin would choose the artist himself, not out of vanity – no vanity in glory – but to ensure that the painter had the right sanguinary spirit for the task.

The sea pulled. The bow dipped. Everything ran in his favour just as it always had. Pity those against him on the sea. His sea.

The
Shadow
unfurled her sail slowly in the distance and moved on. The game was afoot. His game.

‘
La chasse est ouverte
!’ he cried out over the sea rather than to the horde behind him who cheered raucously in response. He presented no expression of pride, made no flourish with his hat. Already, coolly, thoughts of his chicken supper seemed more important: René Duguay-Trouin at his table. But he had told none of them of his innermost thoughts, the pricking at his skin and instinct.

A pirate had come into his waters, famous and bold, but had ignored the fat merchant ships in his sight, and instead had veiled himself as a plague ship. Why?

There was more game here than just a
forban
rat.

John Law sat at his desk in his company’s offices in the Rue de Quincampoix, a small white-panelled upstairs room with one shuttered window and the yellow light of candles dwindling away the hours. At least Sunday provided peace from the maniacs selling and buying stocks in the streets below. Even those fools needed mass or bread eventually.

He mused over the papers that had been waiting for his return. He was a formidable mathematician, perhaps greater than the finest astronomers of Greenwich, and if he had turned his skill to the Longitude instead of the gaming tables of Europe, Halley and Flamsteed may have slept more. Now he lifted each page as if it were ballast, despairing over his figures as if they counted plague victims.