Cross of Fire (20 page)

Thomas Howard had not had the dream for many a year but he accepted that it was no coincidence. He was a boy again, a young man, aboard the frigate
Starling
and surrounded by smoke and hot gore. He could see the pistol in his fist, shaking at the sight of a hundred pirates with mouths as big as their heads, their yellow jaws down to their chests and howling like demons as they burst from the cabin. They tore through the paper sailors until they came just for him, towered over the boy that he was.

The boy grew smaller under their foetid breath and they blotted out the blue sky above where the mainmast had been. They raised their axes with a roar that went on and on like wind through a cave. His plea for mercy came out as a mew from a neck-slit calf. He had words but they were just sounds as if his jaw were broken and his mouth were filled with blood.

He knew he was asleep and this was but his treacherous sleeping mouth trying to speak and only mocking him in doing so. It was the sound of torment. He waited for the axes to fall.

If he awoke before this point, as he had done many times, he was convinced that he had died, and it would take moments of patting down his body and gasping like a banked fish before relief would come and he looked about at the dark comfort of his screened world behind a simple door on the lower deck aft. The snores of a whole ship and her protests against the sea echoing all around and lullabying him back to sleep.

But sometimes in the dream, as now, a yellow sleeve came out of the beasts and pulled him close. Arms enfolded him and brought his face to a damp and smoke-reeking waistcoat of yellow damask. A scent never forgotten.

He could hear music far away and knew it was from the pirate ship across that had broken them but it was soothing, as was the voice and gold-toothed smile that looked down at him and brushed his hair from his eyes and spoke to him with a voice tinged with gold.

‘
Good boy
,’ the smile said. ‘
Brave boy
.’ And the axes did not fall.

Howard sprang awake to a hand on his chest and a lantern before his face. It took a moment for his shaken brain to jigsaw the features, half-lit in the amber light, back to the real world and not the other.

Lieutenant Manvell knelt beside his cot and was rousing him awake. He was in his nightshirt and his hair fell long about his shoulders.

‘Quiet now, Mister Howard,’ hushed Manvell, his teeth glinting in the light like those in the dream. ‘You’ll wake the mess to breakfast.’

‘I am sorry, sir,’ Howard wiped his sweating chest. ‘I was dreaming.’

‘A nightmare more like, lad. I thought you dying!’ Manvell’s cot was just across the common corridor of canvas walls, their quarters below Coxon’s cabin. It was hot always, any sleep light, but they were far away from the seats of ease and the manger. A scant privilege. But Manvell was aware of men swaying and snoring in hammocks just feet from them. If an officer had nightmares, and they heard, he would be their sport tomorrow and forever. He would have a nickname by four bells. Their other companions in their domain were old men who took port to bed. They would not hear.

‘I’m sorry, sir. It was an old dream.’ Howard brushed down his tussled sheet.

‘Of what?’

Howard slumped back. He knew Manvell little but the concern was genuine. Manvell was older but they were both men still young enough to remember the promise of summers, the sea still a means to romance and adventure and not a prelude to war. Boyhood seemed still within reach.

‘It was the pirate attack. When I was with the captain before. Devlin’s ship destroyed us.’

He sat up. ‘Not him, you understand. Nor the captain. They were on the island. I was a midshipman, acting-lieutenant for the day. I was sixteen.’

‘And what happened?’ Manvell’s voice hushed.

‘The pirates boarded us.’ He offered no more than that. Manvell would understand what those words meant. ‘I was by the guns. They came out of the cabin. I was to die. They were coming to me.’

Manvell put his lamp to the floor. ‘Is this your dream?’

‘No. This is true, sir. But the next is most important.’

‘What is that?’

‘One of the pirates, sir, had coerced his way aboard.’

‘Coerced?’

Howard yawned, he could not help it but would rather that it had not happened; it lessened his dream.

‘That is not important. The nature of what happened has bothered me ever since.’

Manvell shuffled along the cot, his bones waking. ‘This is intriguing, Mister Howard. What occurred?’

‘He was a man in a yellow coat. We believed him a doctor attached to the island; he spoke French well enough and he had the accent. We thought him a fool. But he was one of them.’

‘And he harmed you?’

Howard had cooled; the dream fled as it always did. These were just words now.

‘No,’ he made the word absolute so Manvell would not mistake. ‘No. He saved me.’

‘I don’t understand?’

Howard wanted sleep now. This story had been part of his life, part of his dreams for too long to be of much interest, and other people’s dreams were always a bore.

‘He covered me, protected me, and stopped them. Nothing more. I lived. Please excuse me, sir, I am on duty soon.’

Manvell felt knees push him off.

‘Of course. Sleep what you can.’ He stood. ‘But mind those dreams, Mister Howard.’

‘I will, sir. It is only the talk of Devlin I am sure. Going back up the coast and all.’

‘Aye,’ Manvell took his lamp past the screen door. ‘But an interesting story, lad. Just be careful that the men don’t hear of it.’

He slipped the door and its tiny catch to, and turned with a start to the captain hanging off the companion stair with his own lamp lighting his face.

‘What goes on, Manvell?’

‘Sir?’ Manvell closed the door and walked closer. Coxon was half-dressed in breeches and shirt. His rabbit-grey hair sweated forward, the chains of the deck chiming behind him in the dark.

‘I was woken by distress. Is Mister Howard fine?’

Manvell imagined the wood above their heads and Coxon’s cot. He would not have awoken to Howard’s howls.

‘A nightmare, nothing more, Captain,’ Manvell’s voice a smiling whisper.

‘Not about our days ahead I hope. We will be on the coast at dawn.’

Manvell had not objected to course back up the coast. Intelligence would be a fine thing to court. His only note for the log was for the black clouds meeting the horizon aft: the monsoon season threatening their passage back.

‘No, sir. It was about your pirate.’ Manvell wished to grab the words back into his mouth but blushed and cleared his throat. Coxon showed no flinch or emotion. ‘I mean he recalled something about your time together.’

‘The one with the yellow coat?’ Coxon nodded through thinned lips.

‘Yes, sir.’ Manvell was intrigued. ‘He was real?’

‘He was a cryptic one. Insidious. If he is still alive I suggest you look out for him. He fooled us all.’

‘It seems he saved young Mister Howard’s life.’

Coxon went for the step, his conversation done.

‘Probably just to bugger him for himself. Pay it no mind.’

Manvell watched the bare feet climb the stair then returned to his cot. He settled and wafted into his own dreams, always aware of the bell to come so only tentatively asleep. Still, there were pirates there. In lucid dreams.

They had grown in number every night.

Chapter Fourteen

Old Cracker, John Leadstone, was beginning to consider himself unfortunate. Devlin had left him almost a fortnight before with the sweaty task of rounding up the stock he had lost. He had a couple of blacks which he kept drunk enough to be tied to him and just enough standing with the tribes to sell him their prisoners of war but he did not expect a British ship to pay him any mind. Plunkett’s stock on Bense island was the limit of their interest. What harm could Old Cracker do to their trade? He did not take rice farmers, just backs and arms – and wasn’t there plenty of those? So why were British muskets tramping up his path and a captain with hands clasped behind judging his dwelling?

Old Cracker wiped his hands on his breeches after laying two pistols below his counter and greeted the man in the three-cornered hat.

The sailor measured the room and drew his nose up accordingly. ‘John Leadstone I am informed? Royal African man were you not?’

Cracker bowed and wiped his nose and shuffled around his counter. ‘That I was, sir. That I was. Long time, long summer. Just working my way through the world, so I am now, Cap’n. Not wishing any harm to nobody, Cap’n.’ He wiped a stool with his sleeve and bid the officer to sit.

John Coxon ignored the offer. ‘I have left my guard outside, John Leadstone. And I take my hat off to you.’ He did so and brushed its trim. ‘Do you know what that might mean?’

Cracker wiped his face of flies. ‘No, Cap’n. Just hope I can be of service.’

Coxon laid his hat to the table cut rough from a tun. ‘Let us say that removing my hat removes the man-of-war from your bay. Removes the king from your trade. Just two men talking. How would that sound to your ears?’

Cracker allowed himself a seat. ‘That would be admirable, Cap’n. But if that be the case – nothing official, like – I should be entitled to a shilling or two if it’s Cracker’s brains you want.’

‘Ah,’ Coxon sighed. ‘You may have misunderstood my implication. The removal of my hat removes myself of any responsibility of what is to follow.’ He went to the door and dragged it open. ‘A captain’s innings, if you would indulge me.’

Walter Kennedy took his cue and steamed into the room, straight for the stocky Cracker, heaved him off his feet and slammed him to the wall where Peter Sam had made a hole weeks before.

‘Ho, Cracker! Remember Kennedy? Davis’s Kennedy? Roberts’s Kennedy? How you been, old son?’ He jabbed a fist to the soft belly and Cracker fell against the arm at his throat, hung off it like a hook. ‘Ain’t you pleased to see me, Cracker?’

‘W . . . Walter . . .’ Cracker choked but that was all he could do as Kennedy pressed harder against his throat.

Kennedy finished his thoughts for him. ‘Oh, I’m alive, Cracker. Walter’s back from the dead! And he’s on the king’s side now, Cracker! What do you think I can do with that!’ He stabbed his fist again, dropping Cracker coughing to his knees.