Cross of Fire (52 page)

And the rain eased as if to gratify.

And the storm was worn of enough of herself to spare to listen.

Chapter Forty

Manvell and Howard climbed to the deck under the rain curtain over the companionway, their shirts steaming, but there was little respite in the open from the stifling decks below. The air heavy all around. They looked over to the pirate under a hundred yards from their own gunwale. The length of their decks was similar but the other a good jump down. They stood for a moment. Apart from the five marines with their muskets ready the deck was without animosity. The guns below waited. Manvell looked up to the tops of the pirate where black shapes stood behind falconets and waited. And then his eyes passed down to the bobbing quarterdeck and he chilled. He saw Patrick Devlin for the first time. And his captain was hailing.

‘
Patrick
!’ Coxon disliked the trumpet, a foolish-looking tool, but its power through the sleeting rain had use. ‘I know of the gold! I know of the priests! And the island!’ He paused for the words to fall in Devlin’s ears, for him to weigh them. And then he took a breath.

‘You are outgunned! You will not prevail! It is only you, only your head that is required for your king!’ He lowered the trumpet and found Manvell beside him.

‘Captain!’ Manvell pulled Coxon’s cloak to him. ‘What goes on here?’

Coxon shrugged Manvell from him.

‘I am at my duty, Manvell. Petitioning the pirate’s surrender. Would that not be better suited for your temperament?’ He turned his shoulder. ‘And don’t touch me again in front of him.’

Manvell stepped back and glared away Kennedy’s grin. He looked down at Howard’s confusion.

Bide, his eyes said. Bide.

Peter Sam joined Devlin. He had seen the officer grab Coxon and declined to do the same in front of the enemy.

‘Devlin! What plan is this?’

Devlin’s eyes remained fixed on Coxon as he spoke.

‘He says he knows of the gold. Knows all. That might serve.’

‘We don’t have the gold.’

‘But he don’t know that.’

He moved away, to lean over the rail without the trumpet. He cupped his hands across his mouth.

‘What gold, John?’

Coxon looked back, ignoring the roll of the deck.

‘He thinks me a fool.’ The words only to himself. He raised the trumpet.

‘You remember Kennedy?’ He shouted across so Devlin’s men might hear. ‘He has joined to bring you to justice for the murder of his father. I tell your men I have been to Sierra Leone. I have heard all! It is over!’

Peter Sam raised his head at the accusation of murder.

He had believed his captain when he had told the tale. He believed him still. But a king’s ship had brought a young man a long way to tell a lie. He looked at Devlin’s back.

There had been a young lad favoured by Peter Sam. Black, black hair, and skin with the luminosity of the moon. There had been Seth Toombs. There had been that night on St Nick, the Verdes, where Devlin had been the only one to return alive. He had believed that tale also.

A long way to bring a boy for a lie.

‘So it is murder you want of me, John! Murder I did not do. Gold I do not have!’

The storm rolled them, furious that both ships had decided to sit her out for conversation. She had done listening.

‘Do your men know how much you lie, Patrick? That is how I found you! How I always find you!’

Devlin climbed to the gunwale, climbed to the shrouds.

‘Then come find me!’

Coxon did not pause. He dropped the trumpet, threw off his cloak and pulled himself to his own rail, ignored the press of his belly against his ribs.

‘Lower your black rag,’ he called. ‘Give up yourself. I’ll spare your men.’

Devlin pushed back his coat. To show the pirate, to show the pistol, the cutlass.

‘Not this year!’

Manvell had heard enough. He gripped Howard.

‘Go to the twelves. Fire. I’ll form the men to board.’

Coxon had ears long used to hear the words of officers in any weather. He turned against the shrouds to Manvell.

‘No!’

Manvell and Howard looked up to their captain in the rigging.

‘Lines!’ he ordered. ‘Haul us to them!’ He nodded to Jenkins to follow the order if Manvell did not.

‘I will go aboard.’

Chapter Forty-One

The water, churning like milk, gave too much movement for boarding planks, the
Shadow
’s weatherdeck too low besides. There was no room to launch a boat between but maybe they could derrick one across with a party aboard.

But that was not swift enough for their captain nor the pirate.

They stared across as the grapples were away from them both, the ships hauled together.

Coxon ordered a hook to the
Shadow
’s rigging, in front of his crew rising from the decks below with cutlass and pistol. Manvell darted to grab him back then remembered the command not to touch.

‘
Captain
! This is lunacy!’ he bellowed through the rain against his face, cascading now from the two ships’ yards like gabled roofs as the wood met.

‘We have the advantage! He will hold you to ransom his escape!’

‘Then you will be captain sooner than you might have hoped, Christopher.’

Manvell climbed up.

‘Let me, Captain. My sword is the greater. Allow me the chance to restore my honour!’

Coxon kicked him back.

‘You have a wife, Christopher. Children to come. A future.’ The wind dropped for his last words. ‘This is mine.’

Coxon took his rope, walked the ratlines, his coat whipping about his legs. He paused to look through the grid of the shrouds to Thomas Howard holding out a pistol butt to him. He reached through and brushed the weapon aside, his hand left out for the other to take. Howard reached, shook it.

Coxon nodded.

‘There are sealed papers in my desk, Thomas. Should I not return, Lieutenant, they are yours. You may understand my recklessness then.’

He climbed one more step as his back hung over the water, he held for it to come back again and turned to Devlin grinning at him from his own rigging.

‘No pistol, John?’

Coxon pushed off, swung to the
Shadow
and landed on his feet like he had done this all his life.

Like a pirate.

‘There is not a world yet,’ he let go the rope and drew his cutlass, ‘where a master needs a pistol against his servant.’

Devlin dropped to the deck to join him. His blade scraped out. A final sound.

Never had he done this frivolously. Never once for show.

It stayed unsheathed until done.

Howard and Manvell watched their captain and the pirate and felt the men pressing at their backs, all eyes on the ragged long-haired brigands staring them down. They stumbled as the storm began to turn the two lashed ships and they took hold of each other’s forearms as if dancing.

‘Thomas!’ Manvell yelled. ‘I suggest that is you who is in command now! What order you?’

Howard steadied himself against the mizzen and pulled Manvell to its shelter.

‘I think the oil will not work for much longer. The storm will wreck us both if we stay together,’ he pointed upwards to the spars fencing against each other. ‘She will take us down I fear. The pirate is taking too much water. I think he knows it.’

‘So he will want the
Standard
, will he not? That is why he has brought us to close. To board and take us. The twelves will end it. We could fire. Cut free and run!’

Howard pushed Manvell’s arm from his own.

‘We will still have all of that for a time yet. And we still have the captain, sir.’ He wiped his face, hoped Manvell could read it better now.

‘You were not
there
, sir. I was. You do not want to give them reason to board. There is something between the captain and this man that even I do not understand.’ He looked down to Coxon and Devlin circling around each other’s cutlass lengths.

‘I think the storm will grant them a minute or two.’ He looked at the heads crowding about.

‘Manvell!’ He pushed the bodies away from him, his voice urgent. ‘Where is Kennedy?’

Coxon was on a pirate ship and the woe of that circumstance surrounded him in all its motley-clothed discord. He ignored them save for the sight of the ones he knew.

The leather waistcoat, huge body and red beard of Peter Sam; the lean, scarred one who had owned his pistols for a time – that one had been on The Island and on Providence. He had been alive for a long while. Mark him. Some other younger faces that seemed familiar from the cells on Providence also. It was shameful that he knew them, shameful that he knew the man before him. He had been fighting that shame for too long.

‘Patrick,’ he paused in his carefully-paced walk. ‘Would you not want to know how I know of the gold?’

Devlin checked to Peter Sam then to Hugh, put his blade to his side, tapped it against his boot where the tip dripped water to the deck. The hilt sat dry in his palm.

‘Hugh,’ he ordered. ‘Back below. Wood and water.’

Hugh rubbed the wrists of his pistols and slipped away.

‘There is no gold, John,’ Devlin said. ‘Trust me. You find me empty.’

Coxon lowered his own cutlass.

‘That is not how Dandon had it.’

Devlin’s sword turned in his hand and Coxon savoured the enmity from across the oak boards.

‘He held out long. Kennedy worked it out of him. Eventually. The Porto islands where you have been. The Buzzard. The gold cross.’

Devlin’s head went down, his hat covering his face, the water streaming through the cocks.