Cross of Fire (57 page)

The Levasseur that I use is as accurate as I found it to be but it is his connection with the treasure for which he is famous that I wish to elaborate on.

Firstly we have to imagine the circumstances for French pirates at the time of the story. Like their British counterparts the French
forbans
were offered amnesty if they turned themselves in and were allowed to ‘buy’ their way into comfortable positions and even settle down with land and homes, if they were – ahem – able to afford it. But added to this was the fact that the great René Duguay Trouin was sent out to the Indian Ocean to hunt them down. That was certainly a more persuasive argument and French piracy on the African and Indian seas all but disappeared. Levasseur certainly seems to have taken this opportunity to retire and is known to have been the captain of a pilot for merchants entering the ports of Madagascar. The mystery is that although Levasseur would have bought his amnesty to become French once again he doesn’t appear to have done so with millions of pounds worth of gold and jewels, but then again why would he? Pirate remember.

And so we come to Levasseur’s buried treasure and the tantalising cryptogram thrown to the crowd. If you don’t know the story look it up, I’m just going to settle a few myths on it.

Throwing his secret into the crowd at his hanging.

An
Olivier Levasseur was executed as a pirate on July 17th (not the 7th as is often reported) 1730 on Reunion (Bourbon) island. The letters of the governor at the time record this but there is no account of such dramatic an event as the prisoner declaring his treasure for those who are smart enough to find it and flinging a code to the crowd.* I think that would have deserved a couple of words. Any mention otherwise outside the records of Governor Pierre Benoit Dumas is just as apocryphal as the gold cross and again purely seems to exist in the early 20th century.

What is the most confusing thing about Levasseur is the vast amount of non-information about him. Even his grave which many people cite as evidence is a fiction. The cemetery in St Paul, Reunion, was not created until 1788. Only the swinging sign next to the grave attributes it to Olivier Levasseur, La Buse, and since when did authorities bury pirates? The tradition on the islands was to dispose of them at sea. This grave has the trappings of a tourist creation (especially as you are encouraged to put coins on it for luck). There
is
a pirate cemetery, on St Marie, but this is for those that died naturally and were buried by their own kind.

Putting on my detective hat for a moment I (and others) conclude two circumstantial possibilities. The cryptogram that appeared in the 20th century is either a hoax, as it is not mentioned by the governor who hanged Levasseur or any eyewitness account or it is a confusion with a genuine series of cryptograms by a French naval officer, and bit of a pirate himself, called Bernadin Nageon de L’Estang.

L’Estang died forty-five years after Levasseur, on Mauritius (Île de France) and left in his will to his two nephews and his brother several cryptograms indicating caves where he had buried (or had known to be buried) treasure from English and Spanish ships, scattered throughout the islands.**

L’Estang’s story is mostly forgotten as it doesn’t have the glamour of the pirate attached to it and at least two of the treasures, mostly consisting of goblets and coins have been found.*** Nothing is as romantic as undiscovered treasure from a pirate treasure map so Levasseur’s story rings louder. I find that having two stories involving codes and treasure within fifty years of each other too much of a coincidence and perhaps the two stories have converged with the distinct plausibility that the cryptogram supposedly attributed to Levasseur is actually one of L’Estang’s.

Either way there would certainly be a case to suggest that somewhere in the Seychelles or the islands of Madagascar there is a considerable pirate treasure waiting to be found, and waiting for nearly three hundred years. Certainly there have been, and still are, several treasure hunters who are convinced that there is, as are the Seychelles’ governments themselves. The islands have a Treasure Act due to the enormous pirate activity in their history. This act states that any treasure found is subject to a fifty-percent levy unless the period of three hundred years has passed since its ‘burial’. I believe that the hunters out there now know where the treasure is (you might be able to piece the most likely location together yourself from some of the clues I have put in the book) and they are just waiting for the period to pass. That happens in 2021. Wait and see.

It is a modern cynicism that people scoff that pirates even buried treasure despite the fact that two of the most infamous pirates, Kidd and Blackbeard both claimed to have done so. They believe it belongs to
Treasure Island
and Hollywood, yet they seem willing to accept that after the Romans left Britain many people buried their gold and silver in fear of being robbed without Roman rule as we read from time to time when it’s dug up by some boy with a trowel and a magnet. I have a standard argument for this pirate scoffing:

‘Do you carry all your money around with you?’

‘No.’

‘Where do you keep it?’

‘In a bank.’

‘And if you couldn’t keep it in a bank? Would you carry it in your car? What if you had an accident? Would you keep it in your house? What if you didn’t have a house?’ (You see where I’m going with this.) By the end of the questioning I have them in the garden with a spade and a torch.

The irony is that it is the very real treasure of the islands themselves that might mean that the haul of Levasseur and many pirates will never be found. Almost every desolate area where pirates might have buried their booty in the islands is now protected by worldwide treaty and I don’t mean protected by signs I mean by full-on machine-gun-armed sea and air patrols. The only Shell in the Seychelles is the . . . er . . . shells, and for the sake of all our children we should make sure it stays so. The survival of the Earth will depend on her undamaged lungs. But please, if this is your first hearing of Olivier Levasseur, Oliver La Bouche, La Buse, La Buze, or the other half-dozen assortment of names attached to the man, check out the story for yourself and if it doesn’t stir something of the child in you and make you consider, just for a moment, of jacking it all in and buying a shovel and a connecting flight then you should check your pulse.

The pirate Walter Kennedy finally makes an appearance in this book, although he is hinted at in all the other books. A highly unpleasant character, even for a pirate, and I have changed history in order for him to have an equally unpleasant end, but I hope someone will appreciate that I did plot and time this adventure so that when Coxon reveals that he has arranged for someone else to be hung in his place it was on the actual date. Thank you. I do find a certain sadness in his final fate and something that often sums up the very heart of being a pirate. A young man who had seen half the world and had participated in the sacking of forts and towns from one side of the ocean to the other and sailed with some of the greatest pirates of the age ends up being hanged a few streets from where he was raised.

And so to Devlin. Over the course of the books I hope you have noticed that Patrick Devlin has been getting darker. He’s still the same crow and even if crows don’t moult, this one has, and his rougher plume is growing out. What becomes of that is down to him and, hopefully, his loyal partners. But we’re moving into 1722 now and I’ve made mention of the Great Pirate Roberts (we don’t say Black Bart in the 1700s) so that might indicate where we are going.

I’ve killed John Coxon and I hope that is one of the marks of a Devlin tale. When you open it you’re never sure who’ll still be alive when you close it. But I’ll promise you this:

‘Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.’

(1) ‘A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates’ 1724.

*There are also issues that condemned men would usually have their hands tied (though not necessarily behind their backs) and in the islands it was customary to do so with a 2lb weight tied around the wrists. Not easy to pull off a necklace and throw something into the crowd, but, granted, not impossible.

**It is also possible of course that L’Estang got hold of Levasseur’s cryptogram thus further clouding the issue.

***Not all treasure found gets declared. Almost every noble or well-to-do family in the islands has a rumour about how they got their money and there are a few stories of ambassadors and governors suddenly quitting their posts and returning to their countries with suspiciously good fortunes.

Mark Keating, November 2012.

About the Author

Mark Keating was born in North London and has spent most of his life working around the South East selling everything from comic-books to champagne. He now lives in Pembrokeshire with his wife and sons and is currently looking at the sea.

Also by Mark Keating and published by Hodder & Stoughton

THE PIRATE DEVLIN

HUNT FOR WHITE GOLD

BLOOD DIAMOND