Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Fifteen





Dandon slapped down the description of the gun upon the small round table, shaking the jug and pewter mugs. ‘Nine feet long and bronze!’ he jeered. ‘It will take three men to lift it. It is our curse that everything grand we liberate weighs more than we do!’ His voice was almost a bellow to make himself heard over the rolling din of the hostelry. Their table and stools sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by more small tables not much larger than the brim of Dandon’s hat.

They did not lower their voices, did not care if the whole town – all of which seemed present with them that night – heard them.

Apart from the girl, Lucy, now rosy of face and glassy of eye, who rested her buttocks pertly upon Dandon’s knee and nibbled at blackened chicken like a squirrel, the inn heaved with sailors. Some partook of a nefarious history judging by their proliferation of weaponry, noted by Dandon and Devlin as too great in value for any honest mariner.

Also present, and the loudest, were one or two overseers from the rice plantations which produced Charles Town’s richest trading good. They had no songs about Cape Cod girls, unlike the seamen in their rolled shirts and head-scarves. Their loud tirades were concerned with the weakness of the slaves coming in from Sullivan’s island and the prevalence of lice that seemed to outwit their latest powders.

Amongst such society Devlin and Dandon felt no need to be subtle. Besides, they would be gone before anyone there could remember they had seen the two dank and miserable-looking fellows.

Devlin sat tall, drawing hard on his pipe as it threatened to go out. ‘Never mind the weight of the gun. It is only the letters inside the gun that we need,’ he reminded Dandon. ‘Now, what do we know?’

‘I do not know anything,’ Dandon slurred. The tensions of the day and the lure of the comforts of an American town had seduced him into drunkenness. His thoughts still lingered on what a stranger knew about him and something else he could not quite put his finger on. Something faint but intrinsic and just out of reach. More rum would help. ‘Perhaps, Captain, you could enlighten me more on this Valentim Mendes and his part in all of this. If I am to die for your past, that is.’

Devlin bit his pipe and touched his mug as if some comfort could be found by it. ‘There is not much to tell that I suspect you have not already heard, Dandon.’

‘I have heard little of the matter from yourself, Patrick. And that would be the most important word to me.’

Suitably the inn grew momentarily quiet as Devlin lowered his voice and Dandon and the girl Lucy leant in.

‘Valentim Mendes was the governor of St Nick, a good pirate stop in the Verdes. As are all the Verdes.’ He lifted his cup as if saluting ghosts around the table. ‘Seth Toombs had a mind to take him for ransom,’ recalled Devlin, and drank as if swallowing the qualms he had felt as he had run from the house that night, leaving dead brothers behind. ‘Valentim had better plans. Seth was killed. I took his place. Took his ship and his men. Took Valentim’s ship. His Shadow, not mine. Only left him shame.’ Pouring another measure, he gave out his next words carefully, not wishing to offend the delicate nature of their female company. ‘In revenge for killing Seth and some of the other lads we staked him to a tree. Wrapped a grenadoe in his fist. Gave him an axe to free himself or be blown to chum. I would guess that he cut the grenadoe free.’

Lucy pursed her lips, a puzzled eye half closed. ‘Cut the grenadoe free?’

Devlin drained his mug with a sigh. ‘Aye. One arm free. One arm strapped. If he has survived, as now I know he has, it is not as a whole man.’ He poured again, including a drink for Dandon this time.

‘I suppose that gentleman would not be too enamoured by your continued presence in this world.’ Dandon rang his mug against his friend’s.

Devlin cast an eye around the crowd. ‘I am wondering exactly who is enamoured of me of late.’

Dandon leant back, ‘Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me.’ He sunk his rum. Somewhere in the bottom of the chased and pitted pewter something leapt to him as if an angel had briefly touched his shoulder before moving on to worthier causes. His cup slammed down on the table. ‘I have it!’ he snapped his fingers. ‘That’s the rub of it, Patrick!’

The girl jumped at his cry, adjusted herself again on his lap and went for her mug to calm her nerves. Devlin had seen Dandon’s wild exclamations often enough to remain composed. ‘What is the rub of it?’

‘It was there all the time!’

Devlin sat back. ‘What do you jaw about now, Dandon?’

Dandon, trying to break Devlin’s melancholy with a higher pitch of his voice, pulled Lucy closer to his lap. ‘Now tell me, Lucy, did Blackbeard actually step abroad in your fair town?’

Lucy confirmed, as far as she could, that the rogue had not tramped up and down their streets. His men had, but the man himself had stayed on board the Jacobite-sounding Queen Anne’s Revenge – three hundred tons of French Guineaman, bastardised to the teeth to wallow under the weight of forty guns. Lucy whispered that the harbour fell into shadow when the Revenge rolled in.

Dandon nodded, ruminating on a chicken leg. The knuckle snapped satisfyingly in his mouth, but that brief pleasure was eclipsed by the dark face of Devlin looking to the bottom of his black rum.

‘Did you hear that, Patrick?’ Dandon tossed the bone to the table. ‘The Queen Anne’s Revenge he calls it! Forty guns and probably more in fowlers and falconets. And Lucy says he never came ashore. What do you make of that?’ Dandon, now much familiar with the black moods that his captain presented of late, ever since Peter Sam had vanished, felt that a levity of conversation brought more relief than the sinking of liquor.

Devlin raised his eyes, ‘What do I care if Teach never came ashore?’ His rumbling voice was almost challenging.

‘Now, Patrick,’ Dandon ignored the ill-humour. ‘Did not that there fellow, Ignatius, take pride in informing us that he had Teach in his very company? In that same room?’

‘So he lies. They all lie. Else the girl is wrong.’ Devlin sank his drink while his eyes roved the room for prying faces over the rim of his mug. He caught a few surveying him between puffs of tobacco or the filling of mugs. Discovered, they turned away from him, finding more to interest them in a lamp or the sawdust floor. Devlin slopped more rum into his mug, four fingers’ worth. ‘Who cares? What differs anyways?’

Dandon leant towards him, lowering his voice. ‘What ails thee, Patrick? Do we not have an adventure afore us after months of idling in Madagascar? Peter Sam to rescue. Capture awaiting us in Providence. What more could men ask for?’

Devlin swirled the liquid in his cup, absorbed in its depths. ‘I should have held him to the wall,’ he murmured. ‘Stuck a blade to his throat and told him his future. Not bow and tip my hat.’

‘I don’t follow?’ Dandon sat back, stroking Lucy’s hip.

Devlin curled a lip and continued, ‘I have come so far to be free, only to find there is no such thing. I am still commanded by those that were born in better beds.’ He clasped a fist to his chest. ‘Even those I thought bested pull at me from the shadows.’

Dandon took a small drink, choosing his words with care. ‘You could still do nothing,’ he sighed. ‘We could sail away, meet up with the Shadow and Bill and forget it all. Even go back into that house and slit that cochon’s throat. You can do anything you want, Patrick, that is the difference. But a man of your world has been taken into theirs. His well-fought-for freedom taken from him. What would become of you if you did nothing to bring him back to the path? And, at this point, whoever is involved in our conspiracy, we know more than they think we do.’ Dandon drank tall, letting his cryptic words ferment in Devlin’s ears.

‘What do we know, Dandon?’ Devlin’s left hand was beneath the table, his fist opening and closing on the antler hilt of his hanger.

‘We are now aware that Peter Sam is not here: Ignatius informed us that Peter is on his way. Ergo, he is not in our presence.’ Dandon tugged on his goatee. ‘He sent agents to find us, so there is, probably, only one or two men holding Peter. And we have Will Magnes and a stout band to find him on Madagascar. In all fact he is most likely drunk with them as we sup here.’

‘Aye,’ Devlin leant in. ‘That may be. Peter could be with Will by now. Ignatius would know no more than us.’

Devlin’s eyes narrowed, the rakish grin returning. Dandon saw the change, almost heard the capstan turning with the prospect of cannon fire and pistol shot in the days ahead.

‘There is more, and this you shall like,’ he winked at Devlin’s curiosity then brought the bleary Lucy back into the conversation.

‘Confirm for me Lucy, if you will my girl,’ he squeezed her closer. ‘You said that the man in that house yonder never goes out. Is that common knowledge? Is that solemnly true?’

Lucy dipped her head slowly several times, ‘Aye sir. He been here a year now, renting the house from the governor his-self. Only ever see his boy and the trade coming and going. Asks anybody. And the lights are on all through the night.’

Devlin shifted himself on his stool, eyeing the room again, now looking for trouble from any eye that might meet his and waiting for Dandon’s expatiation to conclude. ‘And what of it, Dandon? What difference if Ignatius goes out or not?’

Devlin’s patience was exhausted. ‘We leave. Back to the ship.’ He scraped back his stool. ‘We sail in the morning.’ He dropped some silver upon the pewter charger, paying for the hen and the rum, the clatter drawing glances from every dark corner of the room, not least from behind the bar where the aproned host counted the rattling coins as they fell.

Dandon looked up quite crestfallen to his mate then began to slide himself up from under Lucy, expertly managing to slip her onto his stool in his place with her barely aware of it. He plucked his captain’s shoulder, drawing his cheek close to his mouth.

‘I merely wished to allude to the fact, Patrick – and your failure to observe such tells often concerns me – that for a man who never goes out Ignatius makes a fine mess of puddles in his home.’

Devlin paused. He tapped out his pipe upon the table and listened to his friend.

‘His feet were wet, Captain. Every step he took. The only damp I have seen around is by the wharf is it not? And Blackbeard never came ashore, but sat in that same room?’ Dandon’s eyes gleamed ochre as his liver tightened its grip on him, almost stifling the joy of his revelation. ‘And such a beautiful rug upon the floor did you not think?’

‘I’ll take your word on the water. I did not notice. Agreed, if you are suggesting that he has a tunnel to his home from the harbour. I’m sure in a town where a slave revolt and Indian attacks are an everyday concern such contrivances are common. Now let’s go. Say goodbye to the girl.’ Devlin turned and snaked his way through the mess of tables to the door.

He did not need to hear any more. There was a time for posturing – Devlin enjoyed it as much as any man – but bile had begun to rise in him. He stood outside on the street and looked across to the glowing red arch above the black door opposite, the four windows still flickering from oil lamps within. Those lamps would burn the place up well if one should fall, perhaps knocked by a bold and inquisitive rat. Aye maybe that would do it. Show this Ignatius what a pirate affronted can do. Burn him in his bed for his arrogance. See how smug he is charred.

But what of Peter if he did such a thing? What then for his quartermaster? All told, it was just the rum steaming his anger and Devlin shook the thought away. How would his men look upon him if he abandoned their oldest hand? And how better their regard if he rescued him?

A captain’s choice should never be his own.

He looked down the street as Dandon stumbled out behind him. It was maybe a quarter of a mile down to the wharf. Not a long walk, nor either a tedious creep down a tunnel.

He smacked Dandon’s chest with the back of his hand, ‘Come. We’ll talk of this aboard. I think you may be right, mate. Knowing that Ignatius has a hidden passage from the house to the wharf could give us a sure advantage.’

‘I am glad you agree,’ Dandon hiccoughed at the suddenness of the cool air.

‘But remember, he seems to know us well. Knows more about you than I do.’

Dandon tutted his disapproval. ‘Ah, no. He knows the history of us. He does not know us. He looked down at us about ourselves. Patronised us about France and faïence. He is like all the well-born and wealthy, believing ignorance to be the common man’s contribution to the world.’

‘Aye. But now the measure of it …’ Devlin looked about the broad street taking in the warm night, the laughter and glow from the inn, the quiet dark houses. The murderous chill in his bones was at odds with it all. ‘Providence will be our destination, as cold to us now as England, and Coxon there to boot. Blackbeard has been set to the same task and Valentim Mendes, hate-filled enough to traverse the ocean, seeks to find me. My page is marked, and all for the recipe for cups and saucers for Sodomites.

‘And the rescue of dear Peter Sam of course. Our lost companion.’

‘Aye and that and all. That’s all I came for. To save him who came back for me.’

He began to walk away, back towards the wharf, his grin briefly returning. ‘All I need now is for Seth Toombs to return from the dead.’