Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Eighteen





John Coxon did not normally frequent the lascivious upstairs quarters of The Porker’s End. He had passed only once before under its swinging sign depicting the startling sight of a Great White flinging himself at a mutton-chopped sailor stoutly fending off the fish with a marlin spike.

Backs turned from him as he cut through the benches, his path guided by the smiling young Portuguese who had led him there weeks previously, only to be disappointed by the confirmation that Devlin was most probably on the other side of the world.

Upstairs was intolerably warm, dubious justification for the swift removal of clothes from most of the usual patrons.

Coxon removed only his hat as he ducked into the room where Sarah Wood made her billet. The Porto sailor stayed on the landing.

The room was cloudy and dark. Petticoats draped loosely about the tiny window kept the white light out but not the dancing flies that welcomed the stranger.

Coxon looked down at the girl on the giant bed that reached up to his waist. She was a broken doll within it, slipping away from life now, the fever outside her as well as in. She was falling into whatever grace she was destined for.

Her jaundiced skin glowed with a greasy layer of almost effervescent sweat. Her open eyes were as dry and surprised as yesterday’s smoked fish.

Still, she made the strained effort to rise when she heard the captain’s voice.

‘Sarah,’ Coxon said impatiently. ‘You called for me?’

Her voice lilted weakly through white flecked lips. ‘Captain John. You came!’

‘I cannot stay long. The boy said you had some word for me?’ He wanted to keep the appointment brief. Sweat had already begun to bead around his necktie.

‘So good for you to come, Captain John.’ She dragged herself up to the headboard, swallowing hard. Her breast shivering. ‘Patrick slept in this very bed you know? Seems so long ago, don’t it?’ Her voice faintly carried some of her Carolina origins.

Coxon ran his tricorne through his hands, feeling a fool that some delirious whore had pricked his wound craftily enough with the damnable name to drag him up here just for companionship.

On his arrival on New Providence, as the ropes were thrown over the gibbet, the young Porto had approached him with the name. Devlin’s name. ‘Captain’ Devlin. And Coxon had dragged the Porto into Nassau to take him to the woman who knew its whereabouts.

They had sailed east she had said. East to spend their coin and seek sanctuary. Gone from the Bahamas. The certainty of her belief that Devlin had flown brought some small measure of absolution to Coxon. He could focus on the colony as Rogers dictated, on his duty of assuring that the pineapple trees took hold and flourished.

Now she had called him back. Only by now the creep of the putrescent fever had found her.

‘What do you want, Sarah? You have already told me that Devlin sailed. Is there something else I need to know?’

Sarah sank inches down, too weak to hold herself up for long. Her eyes looked through Coxon, trying to recall something from beyond him, long ago, before she knew of his name.

‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘There was something, Captain John. Something about them both …’

‘Both? Who?’

An angry knock shuddered the thin door, then it was pushed open, ushering Mrs Haggins’ white powdered face into the chamber.

Haggins looked down at Sarah who pulled the sheet to her neck. Then she twisted her gaze to Coxon.

‘What goes on here, Cap’n Coxon?’ Haggins demanded, her vexation causing Sarah to clasp a hand to her head. ‘Guv’nor Woodes don’t allow no officers in my rooms! I’d be thrown out! You must leave at once. I insist on it I do, Cap’n! Out, I insist!’

Coxon pulled back his shoulders. ‘Mrs Haggins! I will insist that you await me downstairs or I will insist that Governor Rogers permits me to throw you off this colony!’ He paused for her outrage to recede. ‘Now Madam! Now!’

Haggins gasped, almost properly shocked, although she no longer knew the sense of the word, and bundled out of the room with fuming recriminations smothered by her bulk. The Porto sailor tugged his hair to Coxon as he leant in and pulled the door to again.

Sarah shifted beneath the grubby bedclothes, her breath coming in shallow drafts. Coxon looked around for some water. Finding none he pressed her regardless.

‘Who were you going to tell about, Sarah? Go on, my girl. I won’t let her bother you again.’

She looked up at him softly, smiled at some kindness that hundreds of others did not see, that no other woman had ever seen.

‘I recall it, Captain John. I recall it now. I have a mind to tell you that Patrick and Dandelion will be back. Back real soon.’

Coxon sighed, lowered his head. The risk of fever had not been worth the revelation that at some point, some day months from now, Devlin might possibly decide to set his course to Providence. Hallelujah.

‘Is that it? Devlin is coming back? He fumbled with his hat, finding it difficult to locate the front-cock as he squared it on his head again.

Sarah looked hurt, dismayed, as if she had imparted a mighty secret upon the officer and he had not heard.

‘Why, he’ll have to come back. He’ll be back for this, won’t he? He asked me to hold it for him. I’m the only girl that stayed, see.’

Coxon looked up as Sarah tried to lean over her bed, her delicate hands reaching beneath the frame, but failing as a rasping cough sent her flat.

‘Is under there. I can’t gets it no more,’ she hacked.

Coxon knelt to the bed, prostrating himself as if praying in a mosque to see what the girl could no longer grasp, and then he saw it.

From out of nowhere, amongst the old dolls and half-finished sketches in a whore’s bedroom in a fever-ridden pox-hole at the rat-end of Christendom, there it lay: the black chest. The chest.

It lay innocently beneath Sarah Wood’s bed and winked at him. Why, hullo there, John. Very pleased to see you again. How you doing this fine day?

His forearm ached. Just his leaning on it stressed the weakened bone. He pushed himself back up, somewhat in awe of Sarah Wood as she lay retching on the bed.

‘That’s the gold. That’s the chest from The Island. He left it here? With you?’ His voice sounded incredulous, but then again why sail with your gold? There was always the risk of capture and defeat at sea. And why carry the evidence of your crimes with you to be taken by the first lucky soul that chances across you? Pirates usually buried their troves on spits of land. The whole world knew that. Every small boy in England knew that. It lit their dreams. So, contrarily, why not leave it on a pirate fortress with a bruised little girl who believed she loved you?

‘They were always so nice to me,’ she coughed. ‘I told you they’d be back you see? Oh, it ain’t all there. Just the might of it.’

Coxon felt oddly cold. His legs had turned weak. ‘Why have you told me this, Sarah?’

‘They won’t be back before I die,’ Sarah smiled, ‘I know that. I didn’t want her to have a hand on it, Captain John. No one knows, save you.’

‘Sarah, why would you entrust me with this?’ He tapped the box lightly with his foot, confirming its reality to his disbelieving senses.

Again she looked hurt that the officer did not understand her reasons.

‘You were nice to me too, Captain John. Gentlemanly. I remember it. And I needed someone to have it who was there. Who’d know it. Who even bled a little for it. Don’t that make sense?’

Coxon took his hat off again. Loosened his necktie.

‘Yes, Sarah.’ He noticed the goose-pimples on his wrist despite the heat. ‘Now that you say it. And I thank you. You have done your King a great service.’

‘Oh, I hope not, Captain John.’ She sank lower. ‘I hope not. Don’t let him hate me for giving it up. I’m sure it ain’t lost with you.’


He met Haggins again at the top of the stair. Her own syrupy aroma mingled with the stale beer from the tavern below. Her bosom halted his descent. Followed by the Porto sailor, he offered his disrespect by not doffing his hat as he delivered his orders.

‘Bring her some water and brandy. I will fetch a doctor. And a guard.’

‘A guard? What guard? What for? What doctor? There’s been no doctor here since Dandelion left on the account.’

‘I will send for my surgeon. No one is to enter that room. She has the fever. I want it contained.’ He barged past. The Porto grinned at her and followed.

‘I can’t have a soldier cluttering up my stairs. Putting good folks off. I shall lose me business!’ Haggins screeched.

Coxon turned back to her, ‘Perhaps you’d prefer it if I closed the whole place? Just in case. Would that suffice?’

He did not wait for a reply. He had already spied Seth Toombs idling his arm on the final baluster and sneering up at him.

Seth managed the extraordinary facial feat of beginning to wink then freezing it as he remembered Coxon had an intense dislike of such familiarity. He knuckled his burgundy hat instead.

‘I hadn’t favoured you as the visiting type, Cap’n.’

Coxon ignored Seth’s jibe. ‘Do you want my attention, sailor?’ he snapped as he walked to the door. Seth pursued him, shadowed by the Porto sailor.

‘Aye, Cap’n,’ Seth chirped as the door swung open to a different, colourful world outside. ‘I was of a mind to enquire about the sloop-trading? I gather we be going to market somewhere south of here. Via and vis the Buck and the Mumvil Trader?’

‘I am on my way to Governor Rogers, Toombs. Speak your mind.’ Coxon’s pace increased as his mind raced ahead. A cacophony of questions spun his sensibility into a gyre.

‘I was only wishing to make an annotation of the matter, Cap’n, that I have sailed with the Mumvil afore. And I would be much inclined to offer my capable knowledge on her manners, Cap’n. If it might be of use.’

Coxon wheeled round to face him. ‘When did you sail on her?’ He squinted in the sun at the lank and dirty sailor. Seth’s scarred cheek was not the only aspect of the man that unsettled Coxon. There was something of a mask about him wholly, as if he was a reflection of someone else. There seemed to be pretence even in his salutes and leers.

Seth scratched his eyebrow evasively. ‘Oh, time ago, time ago. Labrador. Cod to Bristol. Captain Snow – good man. Hard days.’

Coxon nodded. ‘No doubt.’ He looked at his Porto entourage, contemplating how much English the man might know. What inkling he had of the scene that had transpired in Sarah’s room? Perhaps minimising the ranks of avarice would be a sound action. And Toombs with his gallows countenance, the itch of the sea-rover all over him. A mistake waiting to happen.

‘A man familiar would be of use. Sign yourself up with the master. She sails to Hispaniola. And take this good man with you. He has taken the Act of Grace, being formerly acquainted with the pirate Devlin.’

Seth rolled his head to the diminutive Porto. ‘Oh is that so? Devlin is it now?’ He touched the boy’s shoulder. ‘What tales you must have, young man!’

The boy’s chin bounced eagerly.

Coxon sniffed. ‘He knows little English I feel, Toombs.’ He moved on.

Toombs hailed after him, ‘Thank you kindly, Cap’n. I’ll lade myself with his well-being.’

Coxon turned. ‘One provision, Toombs: there are to be no personal arms aboard the ships so stow any you have with the master. Each man will be only permitted a gully to eat with.’

Seth dipped his head. ‘No concern, Cap’n. A gully will do me just fine. Good day to you now, Sir!’

Coxon watched him bow, but he turned and left before Seth rose again, attempting to erase the scarred sneer from his mind’s eye.

He came to the staggered path that led to the old Spanish fort, Woodes Rogers’ residence. It overlooked the east of the harbour and most of the old town, and was a reminder of better days. The guns that had kept even Morgan’s tiller hard to larboard; thirty-two pounders of Spanish bronze sat on the cliff-top parapet staring out of their embrasures as if waiting for glory to come again.

Coxon was standing stock still. Without noticing he had been looking up at the yawning windows of Rogers’ rooms long enough for some children to begin a game around his statue.

He could not hear their rhymes as they skipped at his feet. The only sound in his head was his own voice stumbling through a report before the board. He was again listening to the grey wigs cough uncomfortably as he listed the miseries of his failure a year ago.

By rights, by duty, he should break the circle of hands that whirled around him. He should immediately inform Rogers about Sarah Woods and her silent bed partner.

But Rogers had commissioned two sloops to trade with the Spanish. Had hung pirates like clothes pegs. Had been a privateer in the war. Had drowned natives reluctant to kneel. Stripped Spanish Ladies for their secreted jewels. Coxon politely lifted apart the chain of arms around him and turned away.

No, Rogers could remain oblivious for a moment. It was better Coxon summoned his surgeon for Sarah Woods, and a guard for her door. The fever would suffice as validation. He would enjoy dwelling on consequences yet to come.

He had found the chest. And Devlin would find him holding it.