Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Seventeen





Peter Sam poked at the hollows of his cheekbones. For some time now, how long he was unsure, his hands had been free of shackles. He wondered what he looked like now. His beard had stopped growing. His once powerful arms, his slabs of fists, now hung flaccid and weak. His cotton smock was black and reeking. He marked his days by the bowl and the bowel. He could spend hours muttering to himself in the dark, marking his errors, berating the years. Always his sentences trailed off into a beating down by the other Peter Sam, a younger, more handsome Peter Sam, who had a pipe and a good head of red hair, who stood for an hour or so within his shell and paced up and down stabbing indiscriminately, mostly at Spaniards, magistrates or Newfoundland codmen haunting his cell.

The conversations would dwindle until he sat rocking on his haunches as his stomach signalled the approach of the bowl and he craned his ear for the whistle of the Scotsman.

That was now. Late afternoon. His arms were wrapped around his knees, and Peter could feel his stomach feeding on itself, sucking at him for some bread and meat with his cabbage soup, which Hib always promised if he could steal it for him or swipe it from his own plate for his friend.

A different day. A new sound. Peter Sam stopped rocking.

Down the steps came two pairs of footsteps. The soft patter of the Scotsman and the stomp of hard boots mingled with the unmistakable rattle of a scabbard scraping along the stairwell.

The cell became brighter with the prospect of a new voice. Peter stood up, shakily so, then backed away shyly as the footsteps approached the door. He cringed as the key turned and the bolt dragged back, and Peter sought the shadows.

The torchlight from the passage beyond burst into the cell as two men filled the door. The familiar frame of Hib Gow melted into the room and folded back the door for his companion to enter.

Peter Sam held his face in his hands and lifted it slowly to the newcomer. His eyes were drawn straight to the sword. The only steel he had seen was the Spanish knife of his guardian. He had missed the sight of a true blade – and one of such sophistication, whose filigree hilt and double-knuckle bow now filled his sight. A thought passed in him that he would have mocked such fancy not so long ago. Peter would have snapped the artful rapier like a twig. He had tossed lockers’-worths of them overboard as useless pins in his time. What a fool he had been.

Then he looked at the man himself. A purple suit, white lace collar, razor sharp moustache and beard. Black gloved hands. A beneficent countenance framed by a glorious black helmet of hair. The stranger cocked his head at Peter then raised a kerchief to his face as the grating in the floor introduced itself.

Peter lowered his hands as a dim recollection of the stranger began to stir within him. He looked at Hib for reassurance.

Hib sympathised, his vast nostrils flaring, ‘I have brought a friend for you, Peter. This man will take you home. We may have to say goodbye after some supper.’

The stranger moved closer to Peter, keeping himself a sword strike distant, then lowered his kerchief to speak.

‘Such pleasure to see you again … Peter. Do you remember me?’ He spoke as if to a child, his voice softly sinister with a foreign accent stabbing every staccato syllable.

Peter Sam looked into the black eyes. Then his own grew wide as he remembered the island of Sao Nicolau in the Verdes. The signpost for the Indies. The night of Seth Toombs’s passing and Devlin’s rise.

The tree. A man had been tied to a tree. A grenadoe was wrapped in his fist and a fuse lit.

Peter’s eye fell to the left hand of the stranger, its black glove larger than the right.

The stranger followed his eye and lifted his left hand in response. ‘So, you remember? I am so glad. It means much to me that you do.’

Peter Sam’s eyes narrowed. Hib lay his fingers on his dagger hilt as a glint sparked from across the dank room and the weeks melted away as the old scowl returned to Peter’s face.

‘Valentim?’ Peter croaked through his beard. ‘You’re dead. Toombs is dead. Thomas. Dead.’

‘I do not know anyone called Thomas,’ Mendes sighed. ‘I know of Toombs. Seth Toombs I know very well.’ He began to tug and peel the glove from his ungainly left hand, slowly revealing a white wrist. ‘You will come with me, Peter. I will protect you. I will protect you from Devlin and those who cause you harm. It is, after all, because of him that this terrible situation has arisen.’ He paused to watch the face of the quartermaster sink again. ‘He has done much to harm both of us.’

With his final words and a flourish carrying off the glove, Mendes revealed the cold, startling white and blue of his exquisite porcelain appendage.

He waved it in front of Peter, its unmoving fingers crafted to appear pleading, like Adam begging for the apple.

He appreciated the horror his lifeless hand brought to Peter’s eyes then looked down to the stump of his wrist, still scarred white, with the leather stitching sewn to his skin stuffed crudely into the base of the hand. Iron clasps nailed into his wrist bone also bolted him to the porcelain hand.

Mendes pulled his shirt cuff back over the wrist and moved away. ‘We have much to thank Capitao Devlin for, you and I.’

He joined Hib by the door. ‘He is good, yes? He can sail?’

Hib looked at Peter’s huddled form. ‘He is healthy enough, aye.’

Valentim looked back. ‘He is a different man. I almost failed to recognise him. Why the need to change him so?’

Hib bent to Valentim’s ear. ‘You do not know the joy of it. I can make a man knot his own rope and thank me for hanging him. Besides, he was a big one, aye. And me on my own.’

‘He infests the air,’ Mendes grimaced. ‘Wash him some. Then bring him to the ship.’

Hib glowered. ‘I am to be accounted for at some time?’

Mendes snorted. ‘You will be paid, executioner. I employ your employer. It is written. It is marked. Do not worry. Or would you rather go back to hanging the stinking English? Ah, but perhaps that is not a threat? Perhaps you would enjoy that very much, no?’

The slap of feet landing from the stairs spun them both in the direction of the stairwell, and Mendes’ good hand flew to his sword.

‘Enough!’ Andrew Morris yelled, pistol steady, its mouth gaping at both of them. ‘You should both worry now!’

His soft sandals had afforded him a silent entrance and now he stood before them, a vagabond swashbuckler in straw hat and matted beard. ‘Get back! I would see my mate, Peter. Alive, you’d better be hoping. I have one clean pistol. Swan load on top. Enough to warm both of you, I swear.’

Slowly, Hib and Mendes preceded the gun back into the cell.

Andrew Morris stepped forward, his left hand fumbling behind him for the dagger in his belt. He felt suddenly unsettled by the ghostly white, oversized hand of the Porto.

Neither of his opponents were carrying firearms, just Mendes’ deadly espada and Hib’s long-bladed dagger in his waistband. Good, but not that good, for Andrew Morris was but one man and could add no more teeth to himself. No matter, he would have Peter Sam in a moment sure enough.

Keep your head. Take what they have.

‘Drop your weapons, ladies.’ He eyed the giant up close then and saw breast bones like a barrel. Morris had doubts that lead could stop him. A thought came to drop him anyway. Just for looking so dangerous. He was an awkward one to be sure.

He crossed the threshold as the weapons rang on the flagstones and were both kicked to the left wall under the wave of his pistol.

He edged towards Peter Sam, sparing a look at him for one heartbeat. His heart gulped at the sight.

Once Peter Sam’s shoulder had been as large as Andrew Morris’s head and his ruddy arms like other men’s legs. Now there was this pale thing that shrank from Morris’s stare in the weak square of light let in by the narrow window high above, like the grating of a ship’s hold.

The cringing, ragged form and the heavy tainted air reminded Morris of the first sight of a slaver’s lower decks and the fearful shadows rattling in the dark. He had done nothing then. Could do nothing then.

‘Peter?’ His eyes darted back to the two men by the wall as he spoke, his pistol steady. ’Tis me, Peter. Andrew Morris. I’m here with Will Magnes. He’s top-side with the others. Come to get you out of here. Back to Devlin. Back to Lucy, remember? Remember Lucy? And Will?’

‘Lucy?’ Peter’s cracked voice sparked like a fuse at the name. ‘Lucy’s gone. Thomas has gone … Andrew Morris?’

‘Aye, Peter. It’s me,’ his voice began to rise softly like he remembered how Thomas used to lilt. Tenderly coaxing Peter from the corner. ‘Lucy ain’t gone! We went and got her back. That’s where we been all this time. Getting her back for you. Won’t Seth be pleased? And Thomas is waiting for you,’ Andrew hoping that the memory of the moon-faced lad that Peter Sam had favoured could drag him from his stupor. ‘I’ll call Will down and we’ll get going.’

The pale face with the grey and copper beard stepped out and looked to the terrible Scotsman against the wall, his blade gone and his merry whistle silenced under the stare of a pistol.

‘Here, Peter,’ Andrew passed his blade across the square of light and thin fingers lingered over the blade before grasping the bony handle.

Good. Andrew breathed better now. All the teeth were his. His eye never left the huge Scotsman, now raising himself to his full height, almost scraping his head upon the ceiling.

‘Now, Peter Sam. I’ll have my orders. What’ll it be for Andrew Morris, Quartermaster? I’ll take the big man, aye?’

Hib had only to whisper.

‘Drop it, my boy.’ And Andrew heard the chime of the knife against the stone as Peter let it go.

‘Shoot me, Andrew,’ Peter’s crumbling throat begged. ‘Shoot me, I orders.’

Andrew’s gun-arm sank. His quartermaster now pleading with him to shoot and finish him off, his body trembling. The once great and terrible Peter Sam.

It was all Hib needed.

With one stride he crossed the stones to sweep up his blade. A hand clamped onto Andrew’s pistol lock.

Andrew pulled back, kicking at the big man.

The pistol came greasily free, miraculously back under Andrew’s power, the beeswax applied the night before paying its due. They shared a look of surprise for one moment as Andrew held the upper hand. Then the moment had gone as Hib smothered him with his arms and they danced in the square of sun. Somehow Andrew’s thumb cocked the pistol’s lock.

Mendes dived for his sword and sampled the fray before him, looking for a gap to make his mark.

Andrew Morris’s time was short, he could feel it. He was never the best at the game. With Peter by him he had a chance. As it was he knew the saints never paid him much mind so he chose the action that would affect the world most.

As Hib’s blade sunk under his ribs and twisted up into his heart, as the huge left hand pushed down on his shoulder sinking it deeper, and he clasped the giant closer like a lover, Andrew fired his pistol at Valentim Mendes.

The crack of the shot thunder-clapped around the cell. Pellets of swan-grain. Andrew Morris had not lied about that.

Mendes was close enough to die. Instinctively he held out his porcelain hand to the barrel as it swept up at him.




The last thing Andrew Morris saw was Valentim Mendes wiping the powder burns off his hand with the kerchief he tore from the dying pirate’s neck.

‘We will go now.’ Mendes looked down at the corpse, checked himself for wounds.

‘He said there were others?’ Hib wiped his blade.

Mendes scoffed. ‘A pirate lie. They always lie. You will learn this, executioner. Bring the oaf.’


William Magnes sat on the shaded porch of the tumbledown tavern. One eye was on the Jeu Force board that he played with one of the local sots, who never smiled or even spoke, the other nervously cast up and down the dust road seeking his mate. But both men looked up at the carnival rolling down the road to the harbour.

Magnes looked hard at the big man at the head of the horse. A glint of danger about him in his shifting eyes pricked at Magnes’s neck. On the horse, a black-gloved gentleman fanned the flies from his pale noble face and preceded a curtained sedan chair borne by four regretful locals struggling down the hill.

He snorted at the folly of the wealthy and said as much to his silent opponent who ignored or did not understand and simply took two more of Magnes’s pieces from under his nose. William Magnes cursed the toothless old man and fell back to the game, paying no more mind to the colourful display.

Magnes had never seen Valentim Mendes before that day. There was no fault but only pity, as his long restless nights ahead would remind him endlessly, that he chose that moment to concentrate on his two counters snatched from the board by the leathery drunk rather than to question the curious sight trailing down to the ships.