The Pirate Devlin (5 page)

  Coxon had sailed to Cape Coast as captain of the
Noble,
the twenty-four-gun frigate he had captained for almost a decade. He had watched her sail away without him, watched her escutcheon until he could no longer make out her name.

  There had been delays in waiting for their slaver to be ready to sail and, whilst enjoying the hospitality of the eccentric General Phipps, Coxon had been struck down with the tropics plague of dysentery, or as it was known rather more colloquially, the 'vacuums'.

  He was being paid a handsome twelve-and-a-half per cent commission from the South Sea Company to escort the galley to the colonies, and even with a fifteen per cent death rate on the cargo, he figured he might come away with enough to start an emporium of some kind in Boston or one of the cities of the five major colonies. The ones that at least had paved roads.

  In the wars, life was simpler, but ten years of conflict, of politics against the French and Spanish, had taken his prime years. This year, at forty, he found himself in a world of trade and companies, powdered wigs and ebony canes.

  There was no rich estate or lordly hearth for him to return to - not for him, a clergyman's son - so he had stayed on, taken his peacetime cut in pay. As the navy halved its numbers, he had seen men who had fought beside him now beg for bread in the streets of Portsmouth, and hang around the Crown Inn hoping for a chance meeting with an old, generous officer.

  In peace he had lost most of his officers to the merchant trade, and in his illness he had been forced to leave his ship to the young 'snotty' who was his first lieutenant. He had ordered Thorn to return to England, against his particular articles and orders, rather than attempt the sail to the Indies without him. Thorn had jumped into a dead officer's cot a week before he had transferred to the
Noble,
a second lieutenant of eager if limited ability, judging by his age and date of commission, almost thirty and still unmade. Coxon had followed with a letter explaining his decision and that General Phipps had requisitioned the very next able sloop to convey the slaver, but a fuming Alastair Lewis, the company's navigator, would reach England before the note. The decision would probably lose Coxon his commission from the South Sea Company, but he would rather that than lose the
Noble
to the pirates who had seethed in the Caribbean waters since the end of the war.

  Besides, he had half expected to die.

  The Guinea coast was infamous for the toll of death it exacted on the white man. Most of the soldiers who made up the hundred or so garrison were either dying or permanently diseased. Nearly all were convicted men who had chosen service rather than gaol.

  No one had ever spoken ill to them of Cape Coast Castle, but only because no one ever returned. As one dying clerk managed to write home to warn those contemplating the offer in the cloisters of their cell: 'Rather run a remote hazard of being hanged at home than choose a transfer hither.'

  Coxon had survived. Mostly down to his strength of will and the care bestowed on him by General Phipps's mulatto beauty, who had tended to him with local remedies within decent, clean quarters.

  Phipps himself seemed fat and immune compared to the ghosts that haunted the rest of the castle. Coxon had noted that he serviced himself from the traders with fresh meats and other victuals. He had a vast orchard nearby that furnished him with fresh oranges, lemons, limes, paw-paws and bananas, as well as European crops he had cultivated. Meanwhile the soldiers, Coxon noted, subsisted on soups, biscuits and theft.

  Coxon had been permitted to use Phipps's private walkway, and part of his convalescence had been this daily walk to the ramparts. Often he joined Phipps here, watching the Royal African and South Sea Company ships come in to take out the seemingly endless march of blacks.

  Through Phipps's vellum and sharkskin telescope one could see the Dutch El Mina fort, barely two miles further down the coast, herding their purchases to the waiting cutters for ships bound to the South Americas. The Dutch companies reaping the rewards of the triple alliance against Spain that had granted them the '
asiento
- contract - to transport slaves to their own colonies.

  The innumerable tribes sold to both parties, and it was not uncommon for the tribal chief who sold his wares to the Dutch one week to find himself being shipped out through the door of Cape Coast Castle the next, his noble robes of office torn and burned for fear of lice.

  It was often remarked upon, when looking at both these forts, that no gun faced inland, for any threat would come from a European front, not from an African one. Coxon, like many, wasted no pity on a nation that sold its own people; he only held a handkerchief to his face to stop the stench as they passed through the gates beneath him.

  A voice straight off the docks at Wapping barked from the parade ground behind him. 'Mister Coxon, sir!'

  He turned to see a mockery of a soldier in a sun-bleached, almost pink, tunic, grey breeches and sandals looking up at him.

  'You will address me as Captain, boy!' Coxon was well lit in the sun, his brass buttons shining in the soldier's eyes. He was already moving to the steps.

  'Yes, sir. Captain, sir.' He stood a little straighter, but not much. Coxon was almost upon him now.

  'Don't shout at an officer, man. Approach me and wait for my attention!'

  'Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.'

  Coxon was right at his poxed nose. 'I'm a posted captain, boy, not a sir! I work for my bread! I'll use you for a hawser if you call me that again!'

  'Sorry, sir. I mean, Captain, sir.' The soldier tried to look into the sun rather than at Coxon.

  'Better, boy.' He took a step back to avoid the man's fetid breath. 'Be aware that you stink, man, and find yourself a pair of shoes. The king wears that uniform every day and you disgrace it. Now what do you have for me, boy?'

  The man's head went empty. His mouth motioned something as he avoided the captain's eyes. Then he remembered the smell of bacon and kidneys.

  'General Phipps would like you to join him for breakfast,.. Captain.'

  'Noted.' Good. That meant news. Change. Action. Coxon relaxed. Calmed himself, clasping his hands behind his back. 'Dismiss.'

  The soldier saluted badly, and turned and walked as quickly us he could towards his barracks.

  Phipps had never invited him for breakfast before, though Coxon had often seen the dried remnants of the two-hour feast that ended in a nap, before an afternoon of fervent letter-writing back to England. Phipps never seemed to cease complaining back to Whitehall; mostly about the quality of the men he received, or the clerks sent to aid his governorship, and always again and again about his pitiful funding, for somewhere in his past Phipps had clearly paid attention when some wise soul had winked to him that the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

  As for being invited to breakfast with Phipps, Coxon had learned one thing after numerous dinners: watch your plate.

  Coxon, tricorne in hand, let himself into the private chambers that led straight from the chapel. General Phipps sat at the opposing broadside of a long, slightly warped table, ignorant of the man who had entered as he gorged on mashed potatoes mixed with egg, bacon and cabbage. He had fresh grapefruit juice and coffee in front of him, along with plates of bacon, the smell of which made Coxon's mouth draw tight with anticipation. He strode up to the table.

  'Very kind of you to ask me to breakfast, General.' Coxon dragged a chair out without consent and placed his hat down. All around the table, Phipps's four brown children played, dressed like English princes but wearing bones and shells around their limbs. His concubine, for they were not officially married, floated up to Coxon with a porcelain cup of coffee. She placed the saucer down silently and smiled with antelope's eyes as she rustled backwards in her silks. Coxon permitted himself a moment to take in her jasmine scent as she backed away; then mentally he chided himself.

  'Not at all, sir, not at all,' Phipps answered. 'I have need to speak with you.' A spray of potato as he spoke. Phipps was dressed in a simple white Arabian cotton shirt with the cuffs folded under themselves to prevent them straying into the myriad plates. His shirt was open to his ample, flaccid chest and Coxon spied the leather necklace of charms and bones, one of which also decorated his right wrist. Coxon noticed that, despite the informal attire, Phipps was wearing his powdered wig. He assumed this was a concession to his presence, rather than to hide any baldness.

  'I must apologise to you that I have been rather slow in some of my administrative duties, although my clerks are idle sods in bringing these matters to my attention, sir.'

  Coxon did not follow, and helped himself to some cold toast with his coffee. 'I'm sure you have nothing to apologise for, General.'

  'Nevertheless, sir, I hope you will understand that there was no intention to delay your receipt of any information.'

  'Information, General?' Coxon's heart beat faster.

  'About your ship, man.'

  Coxon pushed a plate of vinegar-soaked bacon away from him. 'Go on, General.'

  'Letter for you, sir.' With one hand Phipps drained a crystal glass of grapefruit juice, and with the other tossed a packet of paper at the captain's place.

  Coxon recognised the cheap waxen paper of the Admiralty at once and slowly opened the folded outer, the seal of which had been brazenly broken by another's hands. The letter would have arrived in a sailcloth packet, now absent.

  Acceptably dated three weeks ago, it would have taken about two weeks to reach the castle. He was expecting orders, and true enough it did contain such, but the main of it had to be re-read, the paper becoming stretched flat, his knuckles whitening with the tension in his hands.

  The
Noble
had been lost. The frigate that was his command throughout the war had been set ablaze by Acting Captain Thorn. Somewhere northwest of Africa she had been attacked by pirates. The South Sea Company's navigator and an unnamed servant had been captured. Fifteen men were dead including 'Captain' Thorn. The rest of the crew had escaped in the boats and had been rescued by a Dutch corvette three days later. They were now all in Gibraltar awaiting orders.

  The room, the stale air, suddenly seemed more temperate. Coxon stood, scraping his chair roughly, and walked to one of the green-shuttered windows. The narrow window was open but no breeze came through. Like most colonial buildings, its design paid no account to the climate in which it sat. A Queen Anne country house had merely descended onto the edge of the jungle, and it, and all its occupants, sweated in the closeted halls. Coxon could just see the ocean beyond the white rocks. She rolled forever towards him and he longed to be poured back into her.

  His ship was gone. Twenty-four twelve-pounders, most of which he had christened himself, their nicknames burned into their trucks, lay somewhere out there, never to fire again. She was his first captaincy. Built in 1670, she had fought in the War of the Grand Alliance and the heat of the Spanish Succession. Only two years ago she had been given almost three acres of new American oak. He turned to face Phipps.

  'I'm to leave on the first passage back to England, sir. When would that be?'

  'Indeed, sir. Indeed.' Phipps wiped his brow as his concubine fanned him. 'But there are all manner of things to consider.'

  Coxon moved back to the table and stood with his left hand touching the letter. 'Such as what, General?'

  'Consider this, sir.' He put down his napkin. 'You will return to the Admiralty as a captain without a ship. A ship, commissioned to sail to the Americas as an escort to the South Sea Company. Such commissions are what keep the navy afloat, sir. You, sir, involuntarily or not, have lost the ship and the commission. The company will not be happy with that, sir.'

  Coxon knew Phipps was right. Somehow the world had gone mad with greed whilst he had spent nights scraping blood off his coat.

  The government and the king relied on the growing spread of companies that were opening up the world for them, plundering lands and enslaving people for a guinea. A coin named after the stolen gold and stolen coast from which it came, a coin that Coxon had never seen but had bundles of promissory notes for. Phipps sat before him swollen and mottled, fattening himself on two thousand pounds a year whilst Coxon, one of the men who had allowed him to sit there, stood before him and had not been paid for two years, his pay-cut deducted in arrears.

  'What would you suggest, General?'

  'It might have occurred to you, Captain, that I have been burdened with a poor quality of men out here. They are wanton and lazy, sir, and it would be worth two hundred pounds a year to me to have a captain of the guard who could control them.' Coxon sat, picked up his papers, and listened.

  'An enquiry may already have been conducted in your absence. Your galley sailed without your escort because you had ordered it home. I myself had to appoint a sloop for her, beyond my duty. Who knows what your situation is back home? But consider that here you could have command, pay, good food and pleasant company.' He smiled at his mistress, standing at his shoulder. 'I could write a commission for you to stay here at my request to fulfil my needs - and believe me, sir, my needs are never questioned in England. Never. What say you, man?'