Cross of Fire (49 page)

He had not seen the guns’ flare, just the wall of water as they again plunged down into the swell, but the rippling crack that echoed off their wood was there as if from the air above their masts.

His men dived to the oak. He watched the balls skim the fat waves and could not help but think of it as beautiful, an extraordinary sight. He flattened against the bulwark to watch the sky and sails above him.

Two hits out of ten. Chain-shot, and it had not met their masts, only their hide. The sea was indeed Devlin’s ally. It was impossible to sight firmly on a rolling target. Just fire and hope. Devlin’s hopes were the better ones.

He stood as his girl shrugged off the iron and Hartley let go his quarterdeck guns just as his first three fired again. That was the way. Keep on. Return a load before a scope could check for damage, keep them down, silence their cheers. But the nine-pounders still fell short.

Devlin congratulated Hartley then felt the lurch rise from his feet and he looked fore. He hung onto the deck-rail as the bow ascended, came to meet him.

And a memory formed in front of him to carry for the rest of his days.

He saw his ship cross a threshold, divided from day into night. A sheet of rain was falling down from the bow like a wall, his men and masts swallowed away, and then over him, pushing his head low.

Into the lion’s cage.

He laughed and could not hear it. His laughter for his foe. He had needed to take away their twelves. Level the play. And that was done.

He looked to starboard, could see nothing past the rail, and then ten candles silently lit and blew out one by one. He grabbed a manrope, hearing nothing but the gods in his ears until the wood exploded around him.

‘You see, Walter?’ Coxon was shouting now, Kennedy sheltering beside him. ‘Devlin supposed we would break. He does not know that I am on him.’

Kennedy, from his crouch, mouthed something but Coxon could not hear. He saw Jenkins struggle to pull himself up the stair.

‘Captain,’ Jenkins huffed. ‘We must close the ports on the long-guns. If we continue we will drown, sir!’

‘Tell Howard close the ports. We are within a thousand yards. The sixes will have some range. As will the pirate. Give Howard my regards for his last barrage and send his crews to the upper. We need to close, Master Jenkins,’ Coxon’s voice was plain.

‘We hit them?’ Jenkins’ face lightened and then dropped as the the word ‘close’ filtered through to him.

‘
Close
? Into the storm?’

Coxon ignored the question.

‘See the ports are closed. See to Manvell and his task. I want those sacks to the deck immediately.’

‘But, Captain—’

Coxon rounded on him.

‘Immediately, Master Jenkins!’ He turned back to the rail, steadfast against the rise and fall of his deck. He took up his scope, pulled up Kennedy to his side.

‘Stand fast now, Walter. I wish Devlin to see us both clear.’

Kennedy was a rag-doll in Coxon’s grip, kept his head low. The quarterdeck was too open a space for his liking. They were alone upon it. The
Standard
had a wheelhouse below, afore the belfry, so there was not even a man at the helm to draw fire. When Devlin’s guns found their range this is where he would train them. Straight for the walk of officers.

‘Stand still, man!’ Coxon berated. ‘I want him to see!’

Kennedy found some voice but not the growl of arrogance he had shown so much.

‘Let me to work, Captain! I can be of use below!’

‘Nonsense. You have nothing to fear. You are dead already.’

Kennedy slipped, was hauled back up as the deck ran from him, and Coxon still standing as if nailed.

‘
Dead
?’ Kennedy held to the lectern, Coxon’s fist on his collar. ‘How dead?’

‘This day—’ Coxon paused for a sheet of spray piling over them. He waved his spyglass to the quarterdeck over, barely discerned, but there. He heard his ship crash through the wall of water, into the storm, and a new hail of rain beat his shoulders.

He dragged Kennedy to his mouth as he watched the bows of the ships pivot towards each other, the cyclone splicing them together.

‘This day!’ He yelled. ‘A man named Walter Kennedy will be hanged at Execution Dock. I have arranged it.’ He relished the sight of Kennedy’s wide mouth suddenly filled with water.

‘It is often done. Take a man who has wife and family. Pay his debts to take your place.’ He pulled Kennedy from the lectern and forced him against the rail.

‘Look pretty for me, Walter. This is not the way I wished it. But it might do.’ He resumed his wave, held Kennedy to his side like a brother.

‘Your soul is mine now, pirate.’

The damage was just to the furniture. Splinters and shavings. The
Shadow
and her captain bore many scars from those foolish enough to attempt to defy them. Her skeletal prow grinned and went on as she had always done, as her captain had always done. Their wood and flesh were marked together.

The storm sea had a pattern to it. Its rise and fall ticked like a watch and the men on the
Shadow
’s
deck could pace their work to it. The wind and rain were unending, but the storm was taking them in its arms. It had its own agenda and what seemed chaos outside became order within. Keep from its eye and the outer rim and it could be ridden.

Devlin looked to the sailor at the helm above. The
Shadow
had no whipstaff under cover for the man and the helm was exposed on the quarterdeck. He might drown standing at his post. Devlin had heard of such things.

He took the stair, crawled it like an infant and pulled himself to the wheel where the Spanish black held his course, shirt about his waist where the torrent had torn it from him. Devlin put his hands over the black ones and together they set the wheel to its centre. Then Devlin prised those rigid, powerful hands from the wheel and lashed it to its course.

‘Go below,’ he said. ‘Get dry awhile.’ He patted the broad back, felt the welts of aged whippings under his fingers and the man understood only the command of the English words. He grinned proudly and struggled away.

Devlin did not know the former slave’s name. He was not Spanish. He had been taken from a Spanish slaver from where he would be sold to a field. A slave. A slave priced to cut cane or pull a plough. This day he had coursed a beleaguered French frigate through a storm under fire from an English warship, his shirt ripped from him, his eyes reddened almost shut.

Devlin was alone now. He felt into his coat’s left pocket. He had cut it so he could keep a spyglass or pistol down inside to the hem. He had a leather strap of Guineas rolling around inside it, a dagger and bag of powder and shot also. A pirate coat. His very cloth was armed. There was a strip of coin sewn inside the spine of his waistcoat also and a dirk clasped to his inside boot-top. Ready for a gaol, ready to be washed up on a beach.

He pulled the three-draw sharkskin and held his breath as he brought it to his eye. He waited until the ship levelled, seconds before she plunged again and he swept it across his foe, sought the quarterdeck to see who had entered the storm with him. The glass brought them hundreds of yards closer together.

Two figures shimmered, the chromatic lens painting an aura around them. One was in hat and cloak and waving his glass above his head. Wanting to know him. The other was hanging off him like a corpse. Trying not to be seen.

The glass misted and Devlin cursed and wiped it clear. He waited again as the ship plummeted and the sea ran around his feet. He rocked with it, wedged the scope between the fold of his elbow and aimed it like a musket as the ship fell before his eye.

The deck good now, the wind served to blow the falling rain away for one second of good sight.

And gave ten years’ perspective.

He lowered the glass in disbelief just as Hartley’s guns fired and he was shrouded in smoke and fury.

The vision had gone.

He coughed down the steps. Hartley yelled something but Devlin brushed him aside. His feet found Peter Sam and he pushed the slab of him round to face him.

Peter had ropes on both his arms, guiding the fighting courses like a kite as if the
Shadow
’s
only hope was his might alone.

Devlin yelled into his face but Peter Sam caught none of it.

‘What?’ he bellowed.

‘Coxon!’ Devlin shouted again. ‘
Coxon
, Peter!’

This time Peter Sam heard, dropped his ropes, wiped the rain from his face.

‘I seen him.’ Devlin leant in. ‘And another.’

The ship pushed them together as Hartley fired his next three. The twelves of their enemy were done now, ports closed, just as Devlin had planned. The pirate’s nine pounders were the only cards in play.

‘Who else now? Who haven’t we killed?’

Devlin could not say. Not here. Not on the Bedlam deck.

They went hand over wood to the cabin doors banging wildly. They could spare a minute. The English warship had followed them into the storm. Their nines were firing, the long-guns of their enemy silenced. They could spare a minute, a sailor’s minute. Hartley and Lawson were holding. Holding against an English man-of-war. A twin-decker. Hundreds of tonnes of wood, iron and hearts of oak. A weatherdeck a man’s height taller than their own, a giant upon them, captained by the last man who had ruled over him. Bearing on him again.

Devlin needed a drink.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

‘Walter Kennedy.’ Devlin spat the cork from his jaw and passed the bottle to his quartermaster as they rolled in the cabin.

‘Who?’ Peter Sam gulped the rum, both hands around the neck against the yaw.

‘You remember me telling you about London? Before. A decade more. An anchorsmith named Kennedy. An Irish family that took me in?’

‘Aye,’ Peter Sam gave back the bottle. ‘You said murder. The son done for him. We don’t have time for this, Pat.’

The doors slammed, the bottles and books shook against their rope beckets, the one lantern throwing their shapes around and around, but Devlin would have his word. He pointed through the wall to the ship beyond. He would have some word to settle what the rum could not.

‘That’s the son. The wretch that killed his father. I ran to France because. Why him here? With Coxon?’

‘We’ll be asking him soon enough when they catch us talking instead of fighting.’

Devlin pulled back the rum. Drank and wiped his mouth, sucked the spill of it from the web of his hand.

‘And Coxon? How him? The world’s not that small.’

Peter Sam had heard enough.

‘Not to chance. So he is sent. So what do we care? And he be pleasured to hear you wondering so.’

He went to the doors, cracked them open and brought back the rain and the wind.

‘So let him come. You’ve taken his long-guns. Good for you. I ain’t got the brains for it and I ain’t Dandon to praise it. You want to know why he’s here?’