Cross of Fire (4 page)

In front of Bense’s cannon, Tasso Island. Larger, harder to defend, her Dutch fort abandoned for more than a hundred years. It had been foolish for the Dutch to desert such a fertile area, for now Governor Robert Plunkett and his forty-strong garrison processed the most valuable slaves for the New World. By all means let Cape Coast Castle and General Phipps send hands and backs to the Caribbean – any fool can cut cane. Bense fort was built for a superior breed of slave. Bense fort was built for rice: slaves to grow rice for slaves.

The natives had grown the precious crop for thousands of years and now it was the Carolina colonies’ largest export. But whereas white hands had yet to learn to cultivate it well, the slaves from Bense had rice in their blood. Plunkett’s slaves were farmers, a machine for the plantation owners of His Majesty. Chosen men. Valuable men. Their final journey to the Americas would be more survivable than most.

The slaves ate well aboard – better than the crews, whose worth was less, the slave ship being the last rung for a sailor before disease or old age ended him. There was even malt liquor for the males whilst the ‘blackbirders
’
’ officers drank palm wine. In fine weather the prisoners were taken on deck in the morning where they could remain until sunset separated from the crew by a wooden wall athwart. Pipes of tobacco were allotted on Mondays and, most distinctive of all, no chains once at sea.

Aye, Robert Plunkett of Bense island kept his stock well. In 1719 he had defended his small world against Howell Davis, Thomas Cocklyn and Olivier Levasseur –
La Buse
or ‘The Buzzard’ as he had become, one of those rare men to gain a pirate name in his own lifetime.

Against this pirate triumvirate, formidable for even a nation to hold against, Plunkett only surrendered when he ran out of shot and then impressed the pirates so much with the Irishman’s fearless temper and swearing while tied and kidnapped that they let him live.

A year later and even the ‘Great Pirate Roberts’ decided to careen further downstream rather than go against the furious governor. But upstream, in Whiteman’s Bay, the mouth of the river, pirates of a darker breed found a home and the farmers of the tribes found a harsher side to the white man.

Here a former Royal African Company man had himself turned pirate. John Leadstone saw no profit in waiting for the tribes to pawn their unwanted criminals, captured enemies or their own indentured as the companies dictated. An armed gang ‘panyarring’ – kidnapping – from the farms, proved quicker for Leadstone’s turn of coin.

Leadstone found willing trade in the visiting Bristol and Liverpool ‘interlopers’, those ships that had also decided the Crown’s slavers had too much of the business than was good for them.

With smaller sloops and pinks these low men, sunk below the level of honest merchants in a poor world since the South Sea Company’s collapse, needed harsher controls for their violently procured cargoes to prevent mutiny on their short-crewed ships.

First they would identify and dismember the strongest in front of the others. Without them knowing your tongue the captives would understand what would be their punishment should they resist. Any assault against the crew and the assailant’s heart and liver were to be fed to the others; or if a woman was found disrespectful she would be hoisted by her thumbs from a yardarm to be whipped with knives attached to ropes in front of the rest.

‘That’s the way you do it, Cap’n.’ Leadstone, ‘Old Cracker’ his pirate name, pointed his thumbs at the ceiling of his shack, demonstrating to the young captain with the black hair, dressed for cooler climes in his Damask waistcoat and dark twill coat and tricorne, the close heat invisible upon him.

‘They’ll do what you says then, so they will!’ Cracker twirled gleefully, his arms close to his head as he mockingly sobbed and mimicked the screams of the women until he could take it no more and doubled over laughing and drooling. He looked up at the captain who was coolly unimpressed with the pantomime, or indeed the heat. Leadstone sweated like a whore in comparison, a shine of grease matting his clothes to his arms and back. The man had introduced himself as Captain Devlin, and he was in a buying mood.

Leadstone wiped his face, the sweat on his linen just shifting the dirt around. A good Bristol man at one time and somewhere under the grime a friendly face, but drink and easy living had turned it wasted and sallow, and evil never seeks mirrors.

‘Rogues of dignity be the black, Cap’n. Treat ’em as any mutineer, they understand little else. Mind I don’t deal with Kormantine blacks. Those fellows will kill you or themselves once your back’s turned. Be assured, Cap’n, my chattel be willing and true.’

He came from around his counter, nailed crudely from barrels and decking; Devlin noticed the short legs under the normal length body. He had watched a gypsy baiting dogs in St-Malo with the same disproportion, an ugly waddle like an old circus ape.

‘I’m sure you’ll do me well, Cracker.’ Devlin took off his hat, looking for somewhere to place it that wasn’t too filthy. Leadstone’s stone-built quarters and store were scarcely less than a stable. Barrels for tables, milking stools for seats, straw-and-mud floor. Devlin kept hold of his hat.

‘Drink, Cap’n?’ Old Cracker uncorked a green bottle from the sill beside the door. Two windows had been chiselled out from the stone either side of the plank door with just a sackcloth curtain for slowing the biting insects and a lump of tallow to distract them. Cracker slugged a draught; held out the bottle.

Devlin waved away the rum. ‘Let’s to business, Cracker. Ten good rice men I’ll take if you haves them.’

Cracker swigged again, taking Devlin’s round for himself. ‘Ten? Take twenty, Cap’n. Get yourself some Gromettes. Why wipe your own arse with rope? Look at this.’ He weaved back to his counter and grunting as he bent below pulled up a young girl with roughly chopped hair, her eyes wide and white, a calico dress half off her scrawny body.

Gromettas and Gromettes. Male and female servants, paid at least. The females had the worst of it.

‘Not bad once you get past the stench.’ Cracker licked the girl’s neck, she stared straight ahead, not a glance at Devlin. ‘And it likes it well enough once it gets going, Cap’n.’ He slapped the girl’s rump and shoved her back to her straw below.

‘Business is good, Cracker?’

‘Aye, Cap’n. I can sells me fifty a day if I wanted to keep hours. Old Cracker will retire a rich man. Get me an inn in Jamaica I wills, and sell you a drink so I wills.’ He raised his bottle again to his lips.

‘So how much?’

Cracker gave a deep breath, thought long to the ceiling, calculating a special price for the man he had only just met.

‘I say fifty pounds each, Cap’n. Get you a hundred and twenty in Charles Town, that will. Leave you a mark for if some of thems dies.’

Devlin put back on his hat, walked to the window. The
Shadow
sat out in the bay anchored fore and aft. The only ship save for several dories on the shore for victualling the ships that visited. No visible company. Old Cracker’s shack stood the closest to the cliff, three ‘thundermugs’ outside his door for greeting his pirate traders. The thundermugs were miniature cannon, shaped like pewter mugs and pointing skywards, used for testing the quality of powder or as small signal guns. No threat there. Behind the shack stood the barracoon, large enough for a hundred slaves. Scattered around the trees lay some other cattle sheds, now brothels and taverns, good pirate trade but Devlin had seen no other travellers. He turned back.

‘I’ll see them. See what you have. Quality ’fore I pay, Cracker.’

The shack had been cooler. Outside, once the sight of the sea and its breeze had gone and Devlin walked behind to the barracoon, late May hung heavily. The torrential rains would arrive in July but even now the ground was sodden, the air was like walking through a hot cloud, the sky an iron weight about to fall, pushing down on a man’s shoulders. The
Shadow
’s deck needed swabbing twice a day to keep her wood from warping.

Devlin baulked audibly as the barracoon met his senses and his hand involuntarily flew to his nose. Cracker snorted his amusement.

‘Tells you about the smell didn’t I?’ He pulled Devlin along. ‘You gets used to it, Cap’n.’ From about his waist, doubling as a belt, he pulled off his
manatee
strap, a strip of sea-cow hide fashioned into a whip. ‘They needs this,’ he winked at Devlin. ‘You have to get ’em to expect it, see?’

More than ten years ago Devlin had seen such a strap in Don Saltero’s ‘Coffee house of Curiosities’ in Chelsea. He had gone there to see a stuffed crocodile, an Irishman disbelieving that such a creature existed, but the strap had been there as well. He had run his fingers down it. Rough as a bastard file. He had rubbed his scraped fingertips and wondered about the flesh on his back, then moved on to the crocodile with the rest of the crowd and never saw such a thing again until this morning. Like a scent from childhood long forgotten that returns from nowhere making the years and miles fall away, Devlin rubbed his fingertips together and felt the rasp.

The barracoon had no roof save for a shroud of flies. Around it a moat of mud and effluence bubbled, something honey-sweet beneath the stench that made Devlin back away as instinct draws one back from banded spiders and snakes. Cracker snorted again and Devlin was bitter that the man was not carrying a pistol. But at least he could tell everyone afterwards that the beast had been armed.

For five days the
Shadow
had sat west of the bay, had watched ships go in high of the water and come out low. If Black Bill had still been with them, had not died last year in the adventure of the diamond, his head for numbers would have calculated the wealth that Old Cracker had accumulated in just that week.
Think about the coin
, Devlin thought.
I will not look into that tomb.

Old Cracker heard the click of the gun-lock behind him. He would swear that there was silence from the cicadas and the fire-finches as in the first moments of an eclipse; but he swivelled round, braved the pistol’s stare with a grin.

‘Now, now, Cap’n. That’s hardly friendly, like.’

‘Needed to concern myself that you were alone out here, Cracker.’

‘A snatch is it? Do pirates lift their brothers now, is it? Is that what counts for a surprisal for you, Cap’n.’ He weighed his strap.

‘I’ll measure against any. Any on the sea. I don’t know what
you
are. I’m for your tin, Cracker.’ His pistol pointed like a line straight to Cracker’s head.

He could justify that something as evil as John Leadstone deserved to be robbed but still it was not a tale that Devlin would wish transformed into ballad. This was low work even for a pirate and especially for one who had known princes to whisper at his collar and won at cards against nations. But times were hard even for the wicked and robbing this shite of its flies gave him no pride.

Cracker opened his arms, his whip loose. ‘You can’t kill Old Cracker, Cap’n. He got friends all along the coast.’

‘I don’t have to kill you.’

Devlin’s gunshot sent a hundred birds screaming to the sky as the Diana monkeys crashed away and howled to everyone of what they had seen. Old Cracker fell with a squeal, slapping his hands to his shattered shin where the blood soaked and smoked.

Devlin pulled his second pistol.

‘I just have to slow you down so you don’t bother me none.’

As much as two thousand pounds, judging by the sacks hefted by Hugh Harris and John Lawson making their way back to the longboat. Devlin shouldered his own bag. The young negress was emptying John Leadstone’s green bottle down her throat at the counter. Devlin paused, shared one look with the girl, had nothing to say that she would understand, saw nothing in her eyes that he knew. The best he could do was leave the door open behind him.

John Leadstone, ‘Jolly Old Cracker’, was on his knees. His sweat could have been tears now. He rocked, cursed and spat when the black coat came back to meet him.

‘No hard feelings to my coat, Cracker,’ Devlin dropped the sack. ‘I ain’t got time or men for dealing with slaves and I aims to stay around these climes for a while. You should be careful how you make your money when you meet the genuine.’

Cracker heard the sway of leaf behind him, the boots of large men creeping through the grass. The pirate had not heard. Cracker shouted to cover the approach.