Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (18 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Wednesday

Sail the English channel on an easterly tack; take no word to another course. The wind, the white-capped waves, as fat as plague corpses rolling off a cart, loll constantly towards you, breaking against your keel like glass and stinging into eyes just the same. Lose abaft every foot you gain abeam. These are cold waters where fishermen earn their keep, a churner of ships. And cold; so cold as tides collide, and hundreds of ships lying dead below, still moving across the seabed as summers pass without calm and the small creatures of the deep make homes in eyeless skulls.

The master of the sloop
Vendeen
,
Jean Minot, studied the ship lying off his larboard quarter. An afternoon of damp and mist, the slab of the sky low and heavy, meeting the sea in a dour curtain of grey that would discourage even the most devoted sailor from his work.

He spied a three-masted ship through his cracked smoky glass, moving slowly under courses. No pennant at her backstay. He followed its line up to her mainmast where a large yellow flag whipped back and forth through a veil of cloud.

The yellow flag. Quarantine.

He held the scope tighter as the channel pushed against his bow and he swept the sharkskin tube up and down across the ship. Surely not a plague ship this far north? Far out to sea the ghoulish sight of skeletal ships bucking and drifting, empty of men at their ropes and sails, had become almost a common sight in the last few months. The yellow flag fluttered on some of them but not all.

This ship was at least alive. A dark figure waved slowly at him from the gunwale. Jean Minot brought down his scope and did not wave back.

The horror of the outbreak at Marseille in the south had almost destroyed one of the largest ports in the world. Since May and the first few cases the disease had spread through the surrounding towns and villages like the wind. Now at the height of August almost a thousand souls a day were dropping in the streets or ending themselves rather than fall to the disease; some even placidly walked into the sea until the waves washed over their heads or laid down in the streets amongst the piles of corpses and simply waited. Whole families sat propped up against the dead.

The regent had sent his own doctors from Montpelier to confirm the disease and, shortly after, the army began work on a two metre-high wall across Provence with guard posts erected all along, and had been ordered to shoot any of the pitiful shuffling creatures trying to leave – and even the healthy who might seek sanctuary.

Marseille was doomed.

Ships from the Levant were ordered into port at the islands off Marseilles and flew the yellow flag until inspected. If clean they could raise a white signal and continue on to trade with the rest of France. If not, either wait and die, or return from where you came.

This black and red ship flew a yellow flag. She was large too. Almost a ship of war, if not a powerful merchant.

And she was coming about.

Figures now ducked beneath the courses fore and aft. The sprit sails began to unfurl, the spanker dropped free and still the figure waved calmly back and forth to Jean Minot as the ship crawled into his lee.

Minot would take no chances. He snapped to his bosun a dozen quick commands and paced along the gangway shouting to his lazy crew and keeping one eye on the black ship and the waving, friendly hand.

His own spanker and jibs came out. With her size and laying in his lee he would steal her wind and race ahead. Perhaps she just closed for news. Perhaps she wanted help. No matter. She would understand and as the
Vendeen
charged away from the closing bow the hand stopped its morose wave. The dark figure retreated from the gunwale like a shadow.

Dandon saluted Devlin with a tip of his bottle as he came back from the gunwale. ‘That worked admirably. That yellow flag is almost as effective as our black.’

The wind prevented Devlin from hearing and he cupped his hands to his mouth to order the bosun, Lawson, to carry on, to take them into shore. The day had brought them into the north sea and south around Folkestone. They crossed the trade lanes that went to Dunkerque, where other ships had avoided them hurriedly, and now crossed the Calais lanes, the long flat coastline of France stretching to infinity off their larboard side. Now the tide was with them. They could come about and sail along the coast to Le Havre.

Peter Sam took Devlin’s arm, bringing him close so the wind would not steal his voice.

‘He summons you.’ He motioned with his head aft to the cabin where Devlin had permitted Albany Holmes to sleep and eat, away from the rabble. Devlin pushed his way through the busy men amidships, fondly slapping the shoulders of some, damning coarsely the slower of them.

He ducked into the outer coach where the first of the
Shadow
’s guns lay beneath the quarter-deck and where Albany slept in a foldaway cot that would double as a coffin.

For the most part Devlin took pleasure in entering the Great Cabin. His cabin. It was the first place on earth he had known where he could close a door that belonged to him. The cabin was for all, but somehow when he slept in his cot or sat on the lockers beneath the stern windows and read alone with a good pipe, a childish warmth came over him that his past life never gave even when his work was done, or even when he was a child and such warmth should have been part of every day. Now he came into the cabin to see Albany sprawled across the wooden locker seat at the windows and leafing through one of Devlin’s books.

‘You called for me, Albany?’ Devlin put his hat on the table and found himself waiting for attention. Albany held up a finger, his eye to his page, finishing his sentence. With a pleased nod of his head he slammed the book shut and swung his legs to the oak floor.

‘Yes, Captain,’ his tone was inflected up as if questioning Devlin’s entrance and title. ‘I could not help but notice that there is some air of animosity about my presence on this ship, although it has only been a night and a morn since I have become company.’

‘What about it?’

‘I gather there was some talk below deck that I was not a party to last night. I wondered if this meeting could explain such.’ He sat back easily. ‘If we are to be partners I would hope that your men would accord me equal respect.’

‘I’m sure it is not your presence that vexes. More this fool path we are on. And as for us being partners, Albany, I wouldn’t swear to that if I were you. Get in my way or my men’s and it’ll only come hard for you.’ He picked up his hat and turned to leave but jumped on Albany’s final words that he sensed were coming. ‘Don’t think I gave you this cabin out of respect or for your privilege. It is for your safety only.’ He squared his hat and went toward the coach, his words spinning back over his shoulder. ‘They might not kill you if they think I like you.’

Outside, the deck ran with water to the scuppers with every pitch and Devlin’s boots were splashing now as Peter Sam loomed over him.

‘Tonight then?’ he asked.

Devlin looked back to the closed cabin door. ‘Aye. If that’s what the men want. After supper. I’ll not have him lord it over me.’ He slapped Peter Sam on his shoulder. ‘Watch our head in these crosswinds.’

Devlin gripped a manrope and swayed with his ship. He watched the grey coast to their larboard creep along with them. The last time he had seen it he had been a Frenchman in white tunic, starved into the Marine Royale. ‘The world turns and revolves us back,’ he thought, and then thought of the darkness ahead.

From across the ship Dandon watched his friend frown at the spray and stare out over the waves as if he could see beyond the horizon and tomorrow. He caught his eye and waved as best he could without losing his balance. Devlin, his mind elsewhere, looked through him and went below.

That evening the
Shadow
sailed with the blue and white stripes of a French merchant from her backstay, and a white flag on the mizzen to indicate freedom from plague. The weather stayed with them, damp and ugly, which was for the good, as every ship would keep to themselves around such an ironbound coast.

Bacon and eggs for those who wanted to help themselves; for the rest, patience and the wait for Dog-Leg Harry’s pots and skillets to be served up. Dog-Leg was the old ship’s cook, formerly of the late Seth Toombs when Devlin had first turned pirate. In the navy old Dog-Leg would have been turned ashore with the wound that had cost him his hand, but here, with the pirate’s rules that made up their narrow view of democracy, he would be compensated in pieces of eight, each limb its own set price, and given an easier day’s work. He was still paid – only a half-share like that of the few black Spanish slaves that had begged to come aboard a year ago, but better than what the rest of the civilised world offered any of them.

So boiled shark, pressed dry, then stewed with peppers and vinegar, with fresh cobbles of bread and olive oil for all the men; for Devlin too, for the captain would eat no better than his men. It was a tradition that the gentler stomach of Albany Holmes had yet to become accustomed to and Devlin and Peter Sam found him knelt on the lockers leaning out of the stern windows of the cabin. His blue face turned weakly to the crash of the cabin door that slammed behind the pirates as they entered the room.

‘What do you want?’ Albany slurred, wiping his chin. He paid no attention to the two-foot long belaying pin in Peter Sam’s hand, the furniture of ships a dull enough topic to Albany’s refined mind.

‘We’ve been a-talking, Albany,’ Devlin said. ‘Close my window: that’s how accidents happen.’

Albany pulled the casement to. He was not bothered about anything except keeping his supper down. ‘Talking about what?’

Devlin stepped from Peter’s side. ‘We want the diamond. No sense in you holding it.’

‘
We
? Oh, yes of course, you all decide “together” don’t you. I take it you refer to the replica, not the prospect of you keeping the real gem for yourself . . . ah, sorry, for
yourselves
I should say.’ He straightened up painfully. ‘I am to hold the diamond until the exchange is made. It is in my keeping. And it is also I who will hold the actual diamond until we return it to London. That is Walpole’s instruction.’

Peter Sam slammed the wooden club against the bulkhead, the crack of the wood enough to make Albany’s bones jump. He twisted the wood in his hands and came closer. ‘We wants the diamond!’ He repeated for his captain.

Devlin put a hand to Peter’s shoulder. ‘There ain’t a choice in the matter, Albany.’

Albany rose unperturbed. ‘I have been entrusted on my country’s and the Company’s oaths, Captain, to safeguard both the diamond and its replica and ensure no deviance from the plan as given. I see no reason for you to possess the replica until the moment of exchange.’

Devlin went to the rack that held his drink. His hands pushed back his coat-tails to rest on his belt and show the massive left-locked pistol at his right hip. Then he turned his back and spoke as he poured.

‘I know that your trust is greater than mine, Albany. But I want the diamond. I want to show it to my men, who will help me take the real one,’ he held out a glass of watery rum. ‘And as you’ll not be coming to Paris with me I see no sense in you holding it.’

He watched Albany’s face pale even further and nodded to him to take the drink offered. Albany found an exigent need to wet his suddenly dry throat.‘I am not to come to Paris? We are partners, Captain. Where you go, where the gem goes, there go I.’ He drank before continuing, the odd compulsion to both know his fate and shrink from the answer overwhelming. ‘Unless you have some other plans for me that is? Aware as you are that I will be obliged to inform Walpole of your actions?’

Devlin raised his own glass and passed the bottle to Peter Sam. ‘I don’t want to cause you harm, Albany.’

He waved them all to the table. Peter Sam tucked his club in his belt, his cold eye set to Albany.

‘Give up the replica to the table, and I’ll tell you what goes on.’

Albany stood his ground. ‘And if I refuse?’

‘
Don’t
.’ Devlin’s voice was level enough to be no more threatening than as if written in a letter. He pulled from inside his shirt his own map of Paris, drawn from the memory of Law’s, and placed it open on the table. It only showed the triangle of the three palaces and the river alongside. The other acres of the city were meaningless. This would be his small world now.