Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (37 page)

Trouin thought he had seen a prodigal grin slant across the lowered face, but the light was dim and it might have only been the pain.

Devlin thought of Valentim Mendes, the governor of the Verdes whose ship he had stolen, whose hand he had exploded from his body, who had died beside him when they stood together – the guilt still unassuaged, a guilt that did not belong in a pirate’s slender conscience.

‘Maybe I wanted to do something right. Maybe I wanted to fail.’ He looked at the commodore. ‘I believed you would kill me. And from you that would have been a grand death. I never thought in my life I would have traded words with a man such as you. And now I feel no gratitude in being alive.’

Around them the dark receded, little by little the mile around the
Shadow
again showed the pool of ships around them, Trouin’s two at their stern. Devlin lay anchored between failure and success. A day away from England. He had almost made it.

Trouin took a deep breath, held it, tasting the sea as other men might savour the perfume of their infant’s hair.

‘I have made a decision, pirate. It is not the right decision, but it will do. If you want we could make an agreement like the peasants that they regard us as. For we are not gentlemen as they measure them.’

Devlin straightened. ‘Go on.’

‘Our countries do not need diamonds to save them. They need their people. My final glory should not be the tale of how my men shot my foe in the back to save my skin from a duel
I
had granted. Nor that I killed unarmed men who had given their acquiescence and parole. And have ungrateful lieutenants pleasure themselves on the consequences.’

‘Agreed.’

‘I cannot find peace with such an end. Nor can I give a false king satisfaction who has made it his ambition to bring down my own countrymen with contrived conspiracies. He has executed many Bretons to keep his nobles and his own back safe from questioning. In wronging you I have wronged myself and yet there is not one man in my command who would understand this.’

‘
I
understand.’ Devlin’s heart beat hard. ‘Suppose I offer that none will profit from this diamond? My word on the bodies of my dead.’

‘You could hurt them?’

‘I could take the diamond from them. They only hurt in their purses.’

‘And how do I know that you will keep your word? I could take this diamond myself, throw it to the sea, that would end them all just as surely.’

‘Aye, but where would be the glory in that? Better to see their faces through me. I’ll send it back to the earth in front of them. When it falls even Philippe will hear the crash of it. I promise you that.’ He watched the sun flash its first light over the horizon. ‘And I promise you I will see it in their eyes. And you will hear it fall.’

Trouin watched the rising sun along with him. ‘I should like to hear that sound.’ He laid a finger to the pirate’s chest. ‘But we will agree many things first if I am to give you back your ship.’

Devlin took Trouin’s arm, too pained to stand on his own. ‘You were to show me Albany’s sword.’

Two of his officers watched their commodore hobble the pirate along the gangway and exchanged a look. They would need orders soon but needed first to decide who should stay and breakfast on the pirate’s offal and who should row back to their own hams and coops. Their commodore obviously had chosen the biscuits and rancid gravy of his youth.

Chapter Thirty

Albany was tied to the others below. He had slept awkwardly and now shifted awake to find that his situation had not improved. Their guards rested against their muskets or sat on barrels and grumbled back and forth about how they would be the last to eat.

The morning light came through the main hatch and already the heat began to ferment. Albany’s haunches were asleep and he shuffled against the pirate body beside him. Dan Teague elbowed him off.

Albany elbowed back. Dan’s patience was at an end. He had seen Hugh Harris and Peter Sam ascend and itched to be with them. He could smell the powder from the magazine’s hemp curtain, knew that only feet away were pistols and steel. He could taste it, and these men that dared to lord it over him were already dead. Dead for what they had done to Bill. His cold thoughts were turned aside by Albany still wriggling.

‘Will you stop, ponce!’

‘I cannot! My arse is numb from a night of this. I shall be grateful when we move off for a properly appointed gaol!’

Dan noticed then that the ship had not yet begun to stir. They were still anchored and that was for the good. For days he had been tied with his brothers. They had been led to the head in groups of six, fed in groups of six, and had quickly surmised that their guards had little grasp of English let alone the almost gypsy language that the pirates shared.

A plan of sorts had been made and been made easier once the guards believed that the men had accepted their fate. The soldiers had checked their bonds less often as one day tumbled dully into another and their charges only yelled for food and drink and cursed their mothers more mildly than before.

Dan Teague and the others had only to wait, to bide time until their clever captain and Peter Sam returned. And now that had happened, and Hugh Harris when he had come back aboard had sidled close to his mate Dan Teague and slipped a gully into his shirt.

Dan showed his yellow teeth to one of the moustached guards who returned the grin before remembering his duty and put on his sullen look again. But both of them started as the crack of a gun echoed over the ship and the guards jumped and snapped at their muskets.

‘Oh, and what is this now?’ howled Albany.

‘About
fucking
time!’ Dan threw his loosened bonds free along with six of the others and went for his knife. ‘I’m dying for a piss!’

‘Back!’ Devlin loosed a pistol shot over the heads of the white-coats who had leapt forward as he blazed from the cabin. He held Albany’s sword tight across Trouin’s throat. He dropped the smoking pistol and before it hit the deck his own left-locked brute replaced it. ‘Back, or I’ll slit his throat and shoot you for looking!’

Peter Sam and Hugh Harris were at the foremast. They needed no word. They cracked the noses of the nearest marines and covered the rest with their snatched muskets before anyone could move and even before the bodies had fallen. This was their trade, the thing they did well, and the marines had heard enough bloodstained stories to look aft for more responsible men.

Trouin’s officers cocked pistols and dragged out rapiers, and Trouin saw in their wide eyes that they had decided that the pirate’s desperation would be short-lived. There were only three of them left aboard now. He had advised Devlin as they conspired in the cabin that the others would leave to breakfast with their own men, so that now would be the time to take the ship.

Trouin relieved them of their oaths. ‘Leave him be! He will kill me and his men will kill you!’ They followed his eye-line to Peter Sam and Hugh, their muskets trained across the deck.

Devlin had told Trouin that they would act so but even he did not expect the shouts of a fight coming up from below until the aft companion hatch flew up and Dan Teague appeared with someone else’s blood on him. But he had promised Trouin no blood and he needed to gain control fast – Hugh and Dan would need to be muzzled.

‘To me, Peter Sam!’ he called, knowing the others would follow their quartermaster. Devlin edged along the gangway, keeping Trouin’s body facing the white coats. The marines’ control was vanishing fast as the other pirates came after Dan up the ladder. They had opened the weapon lockers and had their braces of pistols tucked about them or back around their necks on slings and found two men each to push to their knees and freed them of the terrible duty that their muskets gave them. It had taken less than a minute to change their world.

From
La Françoise
, Trouin’s sister ship, Captain Cassard patted away the traces of his fish sauce from the corners of his mouth and thought carefully on the word just given that boats were coming across from the pirate ship. The man standing in his cabin door waited for a more appropriate reaction other than Cassard’s re-examination of his breakfast plate.

‘Is the commodore with them?’ he asked at last.

‘No, Captain.’

‘Then perhaps it is an escort for me. I am ordered back.’ He stood and took up his hat reluctantly. ‘My abeyance is ended.’

He came out of the cabin to where his valet held out his coat. He shook it on, plucked his shirt cuffs free from the sleeves and squinted at the pair of boats slapping urgently through the water. He would castigate them for not maintaining a proper order.

‘
Captain
!’ The marine who had interrupted Cassard’s breakfast waved his arm toward the pirate ship. ‘She is underway!’

‘About time,’ Cassard sniffed, buttoning up half of his plate buttons. There were pirates aloft readying to drop sail. Supper in Brest he consoled himself. He ordered for similar action to be taken and stepped to the entry port to receive his men.

The men in the boats shouted now as they closed under the shade of the ship, some dropping oars to gesture frantically back to the pirate vessel. Only then did Cassard notice the absence of muskets that usually pointed skyward from those not rowing. That was certainly odd and out of sorts, but these had been strange days; nevertheless he called for his officers to attend.

He looked over the noisy boats to the ship beyond. The main and forecourse shimmied free. Could he hear the capstan from here? Not over the pleading of the boats below, every other word a confusing scrap of cursing and terror from excited peasants – but his breakfast shifted upwards as he saw the flash of an axe cut the pirate’s cable free and the hawser fall into the sea with a crash of white water.

And then the
Shadow
began to move, moved like a waking giant, and her gun ports heaved open and the black eyes stared along their freeboard and Cassard felt the touch of his father’s ghost on the back of his neck.

He did not watch the gallants fall or see the jibs run out, he was too busy yelling for stations, for powder and shot. Cassard prayed that
La Patiente
far off their stern quarter had also seen what had just occurred.

The marines clambered aboard. A salute. A piece of paper thrust into Cassard’s hand. He read once, twice, the concise and calm hand of René Duguay-Trouin, and then his own hands began to tremble and the paper to rip within his white grip.

Chapter Thirty-One

Cassard.

The pirate has taken back his ship. I and the remainder of officers to be held against reprisal from
La Françoise and La Patiente
. We are to be set free at the first fetter for Godwin sands. The captain and men from the captured tartane have returned to their ship and I order to escort them into Brest and report. We are unharmed.

I order to refrain from chase that will instigate our execution. I have given my word that you will obey. I will take any other action as mutiny.

Report to Brest then take us up tomorrow and know that I take the pirate captain’s word of honour as strongly as I measure my own. Do not allow me the occasion to measure it against yours, Cassard.

Duguay Trouin. Chef d’Escardre Marine Royale. September 2nd, 1720.