Cross of Fire (25 page)

The stench of roasting fat, the boucan kitchen, tobacco and stale beer mixed the colour and taste of the hanging air and Manvell coughed, put back the door and put out the day. The shutters were closed, the room vague by lamplight and candles. Coxon and Kennedy already stood at a crowded table. Manvell weaved through the raucousness and kept to Coxon’s back.

Kennedy whispered into ears, slapped backs and cocked his thumb to Coxon who stared down all the eyes studying him without a word.

Kennedy had deftly become separate from them. In seconds he was no longer Coxon’s prisoner. Manvell was unsure exactly what he was, but sure that word of the naval men was spreading around the room and surer that Coxon would have to do something to stop their mission ending here and now.

Coxon had read his mind.

‘Two jugs here!’ he grabbed the arm of a Creole girl with a jug on her hip. ‘The best you have. And a hen and wine as soon as you can for this table.’ He put a guinea in her palm, making sure that the table saw the gold.

He pulled a stool, flapped aside his coat to sit, revealed his sword and pistol.

‘Is there not a local drink of some sort of mead? Would you fellows prefer?’ There was no preference given, a couple of salutes was all, and Coxon shuffled his stool closer to the table and did not waste time.

‘I’m looking for word on the pirate Devlin. Any word.’ The table shared lowered looks.

‘I don’t expect it without cost. I reward information. With brandy and gold. And I’m not saying that any of you gentlemen know anything. Just pass the word that I’m paying for any word on Devlin. Any word that I don’t already know.’

‘And what do you know?’ A young face, too young to be halfway across the world.

The rum came – came with a lascivious look and one mug for Coxon. The others filled their blackjacks and listened hard over the row all around them.

‘I know that Taylor and Levasseur took the
Virgin of the Cape
in April off these shores. Taylor has gone to Panama, Levasseur is in these waters. Roberts and Devlin are seeking Levasseur, hunting his treasure. I’m after Devlin.’ He took a drink. ‘For nothing more than that we have scores to settle. I hold no interest in any other man of fortune.’

The oldest of them, the blackest of them, with hands and face as gnarled as bark sucked at his rum through a bamboo straw.

‘And what does Cap’n Kennedy have to say of this? Him of Cap’n Roberts’s lot. Helping the king?’

Kennedy put his hand on Coxon’s shoulder.

‘The good Captain Coxon here comes and gets me out of a hanging to have my revenge.’

‘What revenge?’ Another voice.

‘Against Devlin,’ he borrowed Coxon’s mug for a drag as Coxon shifted from under Kennedy’s hand.

‘That dog killed my old man back in London. Lived together so we did. Like brothers we were. My father his father. And kill him so he did, in his gratitude. That’s revenge to me.’

Coxon’s lips thinned at the exaggeration and doubted the table took in any of it. It was possible that Devlin could have done the deed. Kennedy and he had lived together. Every dog is capable of biting. But a man knows his own dog.

‘I freed Walter from the noose,’ he said. ‘I have that power. I’m after a murderer not a pirate.’

The older one sat back.

‘Ain’t no pirates here anyways that I know of, Cap’n.’

‘Nor I,’ said another.

A finger pointed out from the edge of their conclave to the tailored Manvell.

‘And who’s this ponce keeping an eye?’

The finger belonged to a fellow in waistcoat over bare flesh, a skeleton of a man, impossible to judge the age of him but not his humour.

It was a long pause before Manvell noticed he had been brought into play. Coxon raised his hand.

‘He’s with me,’ he said. ‘My man.’

‘He has a disapproving stance about.’ The pirate whistled at Manvell. ‘Too good to sit with us, lad?’

‘Me, sir?’ Manvell squeaked. ‘Not at all. No, sir. There is no room to take a seat. That’s the only ounce of it.’

The young one threw his bait.

‘He looks like he’d enjoy sitting on your lap, Samuel!’

Samuel’s teeth showed.

‘Would that be right, lad? Would you be wanting to take a rest on my lap, is it?’

Coxon rapped the table.

‘My business, gentlemen?’ The hen and wine slapped down in front of him. ‘Eat. And see if you can remember something I can use.’

‘Your business can wait, Cap’n,’ the pirate winked and began to rise.

Coxon watched the amusement grow around his company. This was tavern sport. It went ever only two ways. It would be up to Manvell to decide which and then it would be Coxon’s turn to be tested. He expected something like this. He moved his wrist to rest on the pistol in his belt, assured that the rest of them saw.

Manvell stepped back as the pirate drew a dagger slow, and a cutlass slower.

‘You think my arse for quim, lad? Sodomy your curse?’

None of what he heard made sense to Manvell – he was unsure even if he was hearing English – but there was steel. That he understood, and his captain still sitting.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, convinced that the music of lute and fife had addled his senses.

The pirate came on.

‘You having any of it?’

Manvell was not familiar with the appropriate response. He imagined this was how children experienced torment when outnumbered and cornered in London’s streets by bullies for a handful of marbles. There was no rationale to any of it.

‘Captain?’ he said.

Coxon half-turned.

‘Well, Manvell?’ he said. ‘
Are
you having any of it?’

Manvell set his mouth, ignored the grinning Kennedy and his complicit captain. He turned on his heel, the door directly in front of him, the bright day beyond cutting through its frame. He marched towards it.

The pirate exploded with laughter and the room followed, as even those who had not seen the altercation saw a smart back walking away from a brother’s pitted cutlass and guessed what had transpired.

Coxon made a white fist beneath the table. He took some rum to cover his disgust as the table and Kennedy roared and even the musicians lost their detachment.

Coxon, above all the jeers, could hear the door open and close – a coffin lid slammed.

The pirate put back his cutlass, stabbed a breast of the hen with his dagger.

‘Fine men you have there, Cap’n!’ He slipped the greasy white flesh into his mouth as he sat. ‘What Roberts will make of them will be a horror!’

The door opened again. The bows slid off the fiddles with a whine and the room stilled in mid-pour, and suddenly the only sound was the urgency of the rats inside the walls.

Manvell stood in the doorway, sans hat and coat, his hand on the door.

‘Perhaps I am misunderstood?’ His voice thrown across the room to hit one face.

‘In my association a gentleman settles his reputation outside, sir.’ He put out his hand and beckoned.

‘I will of course accept an apology if you wish to reconsider.’

Coxon did not turn but raised his mug to his lips again. His smile remained hidden as the pirate cursed and pushed himself up from the table.

Dandon pulled on his boots, then leant back for several breaths to let the blood drain from his head. He sat on a fragile cot in the white rooms of the cathedral of Bourbon. He scratched his face where his short beard had once been. He had removed it months ago but still mused by working on a beard that was not there.

It had taken two days to sleep well, the ship still swimming in his head, but now it was if he had never left bed and land. He woke late every morning, and at night found the chirrup of the insects comforting despite the lack of drink from the priests, which made him question their vocation.

Dandon’s days had been dry. He had little rattling coin to slake a thirst which was also his hunger. He had lived with Patrick Devlin for four years and summed up that living as corks thrown to the sea and hens picked clean. Maybe he had lived beneficially on his friend and it seemed just so now that his own purse came short.

He stood and looked in the mirror over his basin. It had been one year to the next since he had looked in a mirror and he combed his hair with his fingernails and questioned why his beard had not grown back.

‘’Tis the drink,’ he declared aloud, and examined his gold teeth in the smoky glass and picked the unleavened bread out of their corners.

‘And it is not the drink,’ he said and put his wide hat on and brushed down his eyebrows. He looked at his purse by his pillow. No need to weigh it any more than he had done for the last week. Not enough for a bottle, but why not just a coin or two for some relief? Four or five Dutch tin won’t buy a house or a week’s food so why not let it serve some purpose every day?

He heard footsteps coming down the long stone corridor and sighed.

The priests. The damned priests.

Five days Devlin had left him here with O’Neill’s Porto brethren and the
Santa Rosa.
Five days of cornmeal and honey-wine.

Devlin had abandoned him it seemed, and when he thought deeper on it there were many ‘occasions’ when Dandon had not been present at the culmination of Devlin’s plans. No matter. If Devlin felt him too inclined to drink, too useless for conflict, disliked his notion to go unarmed, so be it. Maybe the one had outgrown the other. Dandon would only add that to the list of things to drink to and for.

The footsteps towards his door were running now and Dandon steadied himself for the blast that was about to burst into his room. The door flew. A priest skidded in, his breath rasping.

‘What is it?’ Dandon said. ‘The captain has returned?’

‘Señor . . .’ he waved Dandon to follow. ‘A fight . . . there is a fight at the inn about to begin!’

Dandon crossed the room unimpressed.

‘Is there not a fight every hour?’

‘There are English there. And soldiers too.’

‘. . . Soldiers?’

‘Redcoats. And smart men with smart clothes.’ He sped ahead. ‘Come. Hurry, señor.’

Dandon followed. Redcoats? And smart, orderly clothes on Bourbon? That meant naval men and none of it could be to the good.

Dandon straightened his coat and plucked his shirt-cuffs to his knuckles, confident now that this was why Devlin had left an unarmed, drunken loblolly boy behind. Dandon went always unarmed save for his head and his tongue. Dandon was trusted to do the wisest thing. Trusted. Aye, that was it. Trusted. Not left behind at all. And that would do until the end of days.

Dandon looked through the shoulders of the crowd at the scene. A young man stood in shirt and waistcoat. A rapier-point to the ground, right foot behind, left arm across the small of his back and his left side angled to the figure opposite. The other hunched, cutlass flinching, dagger loose in his second fist. They were given a wide circle. Empty mugs held wagers, full mugs pointed and laughed at the prim statue of the gentleman.

‘That is not one of my companions,’ Dandon informed the priest. ‘Do we all look alike to you?’

The priest pulled Dandon’s sleeve and stabbed a finger to the two marines and the pirate’s opponent.

‘See!’ he whispered. ‘Englishmen! They come for Devlin!’

Dandon studied the young man with the rapier and the marines leaning on their muskets holding the young man’s coat and hat.

‘Not necessarily, Father. Even priests can’t be that unlucky.’

Just two marines. No fear in two marines. A ship come for victualling, nothing more.

The pirates jeered both duellists, their fight slow to start and mugs already empty and the sun too hot. Manvell cleared his throat.

‘First blood?’ he offered, loud enough for the crowd to hear. ‘That will satisfy me.’