The Pirate Devlin (15 page)

  All along it was there: in their food, their drink, their work, their loyalty to one another. They were equal. They were free.

  For weeks Devlin had wanted to return to the servitude and drudgery that had been his whole life, living from hand to mouth and day to day, like everybody else. Hanging out of the pocket of another man. For what purpose?

  Now men who would have ordered or pitied him would lie dead at his feet. His pockets would hang heavy with what they owned or had taken from the sweat of others.

  He watched the terrified Portuguese sailors secure the anchor to the cathead under the watchful eyes of Peter Sam, who next pushed them to lower the longboat and the gig in order to warp the ship to the
Lucy.
The morning would have them signed on to the crew, six more men gone from whatever life they had before to wind up their sheet either rich or dead.

  The approaching dawn would also bring the prospect of the French gold ever closer. On seeing the
Shadow,
it had rekindled the flame of the idea within him. The folded parchment had provided him with a chance of greatness. The possibility of a wealth he and his kind should never know, only marvel at in tales of Tew and Avery and their fabled riches pirated from sultans and treasure ships. But just like them, he could not gain it alone.

  He drew long and hard on the meerschaum pipe, standing alone on the fo'c'sle and listening to the splash of the oars as the six Portos began the effort of warping the behemoth away. He would need these ships. He would need these men.

  'Opportunity makes a thief.' He recalled the words from some page somewhere far behind in another world, and he glowed from the sense of it and from the warmth of his pipe.

  Come the dawn, nothing could stop him.

Chapter Seven

  Letter from Father Carlos Barrios, Ribeira Brava, São Nicolau, Nossa Senhora Da Luz to General Phipps, Cape Coast Castle

  April 1717

For the great interest of all who hear or read the presents herein, Greeting,

It is with a low heart that I must report attack upon our home by pirata vessel so benevolently warned upon us by your generous self. I must inform you of detail passed on me by the governor His Grace Valentim Mendes that assault has resulted in theft of ship Sombra of twenty-four cannon by the pirata Devlin and the death of Capitão. Mota of Sombra and several crew and guard of Sombra and São Nicolau.

It is with much horror that I must also inform you of the grave injury caused upon His Grace by the pirata Devlin which unable him to write directly to yourself

By all intervention I request on His Grace behalf to enable all communication between all our ally to require apprehension of the man the pirata Devlin.

I draft letter to Lisbon in companion. I give herein blessed silk thread for your prayers.

Father Carlos Barrios, Ribeira Brava

  May 1717, Portsmouth. The familiar sounds of hammer against wood, of hauling and singing came wafting across the harbour as the gangs worked away at the veritable garden of ships that nestled around the quay. The two-week sail from Africa to England was ending now with the promise of a beautiful day ahead, with the skies clear enough to make out the green shoulder of the Isle of Wight in the distance. Coxon, from almost a mile away, could observe through the clarity the colourful actions of drays, coaches and stevedores' cranes loading and unloading the gently bobbing barges along the quay.

  Without turning to the sound, he heard the patter of Captain William Guinneys' soft, elegant shoes joining him at the starboard bulwark. The young man with the ever- present grin and the long brown queue, without the neatness of a bag, just a single black bow, stepped into Coxon's peripheral vision.

  Guinneys breathed in deeply, tapping his knuckles on the rail as if entering his mistress's chambers. Behind them the calls and whistles of the bosun and the subsequent hue and cry of the men forced Guinneys to raise his voice unnaturally.

  'Fine day to arrive back home, wouldn't you say, there, Captain?' Then, 'Makes one wonder why we ever leaves.'

  'I was not aware that we do
leave,'
Coxon corrected. 'I have always been
sent,
Captain.'

  'Quite so, sir. Quite so.' Guinneys grinned the implacable white smile that had ground on Coxon from the moment he had been piped aboard the
Starling.

  He had spent an insufferable fortnight with Guinneys and his young lieutenants, with their crude humour mixed with questionable discipline. He had surmised that months of journeying between England, Guangzhou and the India stations had softened them all. Had bred too much familiarity between decks.

  Coxon looked round to the smartly dressed crew running thither like mice in a galley. Two weeks ago he had barely listened to the lieutenants' and the midshipmen's names as he walked the line of introductions, rather he looked for the leather-necked, cracked, ruddy faces and grey sideburns of old hands rough as oakum. Instead he saw sinewy young men, blacks, even Indians, all of them shiny and bright.

  He recalled times when he had ruefully accepted invitations to ladies' parties and, before his cloak had been removed by his man, he would be scanning the hall for faces he knew: captains and post-captains, rear admirals, blushing lieutenants. Every year of the war the rooms grew thinner. The faces changed. Now he longed to see an old seaman's face. Just some old man knuckling a lined forehead and rushing past him, someone who might have tasted the same air of powder and smoke. Not these pups, these company men of saddle wax and silk.

  'Mister Howard!' Guinneys yelled to the fo'c'sle. 'What see you there?'

  Thomas Howard, sixteen, midshipman, a clergyman's son like Coxon, stood on the fo'c'sle deck, with the glass, surveying the port.

  'Yellow flag, Captain!' he yelled back. Guinneys and Coxon exchanged looks, broken only by the sudden approach of the dark-suited and somewhat short form of Edward Talton, the designated representative of the East India Company joining the group at the bulwark.

  'A yellow flag?' Talton's voice bounced between the two men. 'Yellow flag? What does it mean, gentlemen?' Fidgeting in his pockets, he took out his watch and brushed the moisture from its crystal surface.

  'Good morning, Mister Talton.' Guinneys beamed, looking down at the diminutive fellow. 'We're very well, thank you, sir.'

  'Pardon, Mister Guinneys? No, sir, you misheard me. What does the flag mean, sir?'

  Guinneys moved towards the fo'c'sle, stepping effortlessly around coils of ropes and the waisters amidships, his hands behind his back. Coxon and Talton followed.

  'Surely any sailor knows the significance of a yellow flag, sir? Or is it perhaps, like myself, that you appreciate the significance of very little before noon?'

  'I believe, Captain' - Talton rose almost a third of an inch - 'that it means quarantine. I was merely questioning whether it had some other meaning that I was not aware of.'

  'No, Mister Talton.' Guinneys stepped up to the deck. 'There is nothing I am aware of that is quite akin to your unawareness.' And he winked back to Coxon.

  Thomas Howard moved aside for the three men to look out over the rails. The telescope was unnecessary; the square yellow flag was ominously evident.

  'Does it refer to us, Captain?' Talton asked.

  'We shall see, Mister Talton.' Guinneys turned to Thomas Howard. 'Mister Howard, it is your watch. Would you be so kind as to lower the fore topgallant?'

  'Aye, Captain.' Thomas Howard ran off to summon the bosun. The lowering signal of the sail would warrant a response from the shore to confirm if the flag referred to the
Starling,
although Coxon and Guinneys were both silently agreed.

  Quarantine. Stay where you are. Await further orders.

  Five minutes later a single cannon blast from the port responded to the lowered sail, confirming the order related to the
Starling.

  'That's that, then,' Guinneys affirmed. 'We're to wait. Damn shame.'

  Coxon looked across to the steely gaze of the crew. They also recognised the significance of the yellow flag and their hands slowed in their duty.

  'How long have your men been aboard, Captain Guinneys?' he asked.

  'No one's been ashore since Bengal, sir.'

  Coxon straightened, placed his hands on the rail and began to almost pull it from its nails. 'Drill your marines. In full view of the men. Loaded muskets.'

  'You may have a point there, indeed you may, Post-Captain, sir. What do you suppose the flag's about?'

  'It's about us not going ashore. The lads won't be happy. Muskets being rammed will quiet them. An hour or two will tell.'

  Guinneys nodded. He screwed his tricorne upon his head and strode down to order the stoic marines to drill and call his company to order. Coxon watched.

  'You fear mutiny, Captain Coxon?' Edward Talton asked.

  'I would probably not be alive today if I had never, Mister Talton. But mutiny is a little strong for the time of day. I would say nothing more than… discord,' Coxon said enigmatically, and followed Guinneys, leaving Talton on his own staring to the shore, his glasses misting.

  Coxon was not alone in disliking the prevalence of the Honourable John Company on board peacetime ships. Although the company had its own merchantmen, in peace it proved more economical to hire struggling naval vessels to pursue its dominance in the Indian continent. Now that the Mughal emperor had granted the company free trade, with the profitable exemption of any custom duties in Bengal, the sailings had increased, and Guinneys and his lieutenants had benefited from their own personal trade to all ports between China and Africa.

  The company turned a blind eye to individual captains' enterprises, as long as the tea, the saltpetre and the silks kept coming home, whilst the Dutch, the Portuguese and the pirates were kept at bay.

  Guinneys by his own account, after a third of port of an evening, had attested to his familiarity with the Hongs along the Chinese coast who had made returning to England more a curse than a blessing. An inconvenience to his private enterprises.

  Five bells brought Coxon and Guinneys to the quarterdeck, watching the longboat rowing towards them. Sailors at the oars, stern and bow, a selection of white wigs amid. Stiff and uncomfortable, holding on to the sides, weak at the thought that they had no power over the waves lapping at the vulnerable boat, they could be heard taking out their nerves with curses and chidings on the men who rowed them to the
Starling
and kept their eyes down.

  Coxon and Guinneys took the time of the approach to brush their salt-soaked coats and hats. Lieutenants Anderson and Scott readied the Great Cabin.

  The consensus on board was that they would not be going ashore but straight out again. The grumbling of the crew was audible. Men had families waiting for them, wages to spend, trinkets to sell.

  The display of the dozen marines, drilling to the drum of the small boy, resplendent in his toy-soldier perfection, reminded the crew of their position and the consequence of grievance. Yesterday, the officers smiled at the hands, familiar after months at sea. Today, their hats shadowed over their eyes; they barked the men's names.

  Before another bell had chimed from the belfry, a long two- tone whistle indicated that the first traverse of the bosun's chair was swinging aboard.

  Coxon looked on, amused as much as the whole watch, as the glowing white-stockinged legs of James Whitlock, Member of Parliament, swayed in an undignified arc over the deck.

  Coxon stood with Guinneys and his lieutenants. They watched the grey-wigged, red-faced man descend as gracefully as he could.

  'Two Whigs, I reckon.' Guinneys nodded to Coxon. 'Rear Admiral Land of the Blue is there as well, and some other fellow. Looks French to me. Bloody wine's going to be short, I know that much.'

  Coxon observed the leather satchel Whitlock carried, as the chair descended over the bulwark again. No doubt it held papers fresh from Whitehall. In order for these two Whigs to appear they must have been expecting the
Starling.
They had probably been down here for a few days. Rear Admiral Land was based in Portsmouth. Coxon had only met him once and he seemed a sound enough fellow.

  He watched the last of them remove himself from the chair, generalising from the elongated cuffs, the extravagant doublet and enormous plumed hat that he was indeed a French nobleman. At the sharp whistle, dismissing the chair and clearing the deck for space, Guinneys and Coxon stepped forward for the reception.

  James Whitlock was joined by his fellow parliamentary member Samuel Taylor-Woode. Both men bowed their heads at the line of officers with tight-lipped severity. Sir Clive Land, tall and gracious, was less solemn, but he seemed to take no pleasure in introducing the pale, brightly dressed French ambassador, Geffroi Cayeux.