Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Twenty-Eight





Along the stone-walled harbour of Charles Town, below the bastions long-abandoned after the last of the conflicts with hostile natives, several arched storm holes ran around the sloping wall of the bay; each hole stood no more than five feet tall, no two more than twenty feet apart.

To an approaching ship the arches would give the appearance that she were facing the many windows of a drowning medieval castle. The aged stonework gave the burgeoning city a façade of nobility that even the slaves on Sullivan’s island respected, perhaps relieved that they appeared to have landed in an empire of kings and civilisation.

The night was coming on. Along the flowered streets husbands with their wives perambulated before supper and tipped hats to ladies and raised canes to gentlemen whilst their black maids scrubbed their children like apples.

The working poor clung to the tables of the taverns like limpets at low tide, lubricating their tired muscles with unregulated liquor whilst the even poorer workers in the slave quarters soothed and warmed away the day with horse emollient and prepared for their seven hours rest from the rice fields that provided the body of Charles Town’s income.

The Angelus of ship’s bells rang out the watch across the bay. Sidelights and lanterns were lit and the smell of beef and cabbage drifting on the air was only mildly weaker than the stench of pitch, kelp and damp wood.

Within one of the alcoves of the storm drains Ignatius sat upon a cobbler’s stool, sifting through a book of Dryden, his interest fading as the light dwindled for his lantern was a poor substitute.

He would sit until the bells rang out twice more, an hour to add to the hour he had already waited and two more to add to the dozens of others he had spent over the weeks, his only comfort being the poet, the stool, and the coin for his trouble.

He lifted his head to the splash of a boat being lowered and listened, head cocked like a blind-man, to the path of the oars as they rowed onwards. From the narrow window of the arch he could see a square of the horizon and the bowsprit of some unknown vessel that had kept him company for several days on his nightly vigil.

His ears pricked up and his book slapped shut as the sound of the oars came closer to the sanctity of his storm drain rather than diverting towards the promise of the welcoming harbour.

He brushed off the hour of damp and salt and scraped his fingers through his greying hair as he rose from the stool and brought his light to the mouth of his cave and the cold of the night.

With a sweep of the lantern he lowered a rope ladder and grasped the gloved hand that reached out to him. The purple brocade doublet brushed past the black figure of Ignatius without a word and crouched in the tunnel awaiting his entourage.

The giant struggled up next and Ignatius was almost dragged to the sea by the lump of a hand that steadied itself around his forearm, and the tunnel seemed to shrink as his bulk huddled with them in the dark.

The light from the lantern rose with the breaths of the giant and lit the final face rising past the edge of the storm drain. Ignatius looked down at the pale drawn features with the silver and red beard and dragged the sagging six-foot-plus frame into the drain like a catch of fish.

‘Can he walk?’ Ignatius whispered to the dark, hearing the grey body gasping and sucking at the damp air.

‘He can crawl,’ Valentim Mendes replied and took to his feet along the low tunnel. Ignatius plucked up the lantern and slapped past the grey face paying it no more mind. Hib folded himself like a concertina and hauled the sunken shoulders into the blackness.


Ignatius kicked back the rug over the hatch that led to the harbour. The night was without. Good men had returned to their hearths while the bad plotted in taverns and Ignatius withdrew to his maple commode for liquid comfort before the rattle of manacles drew him back to the party within his study. A sound unwelcome. An iron chink that unsettled the comfort of his sanctum.

‘Are those chains absolutely necessary, Governor Mendes?’ He poured three guildive rums. ‘That sound belongs to the slave quarter.’

Valentim took a seat, lifting his scabbard through the arm and resting his porcelain and gloved hand on the pommel.

‘He feels better that way. Trust me on that.’

Ignatius turned and passed him a goblet. A wet sniff from the putrid head of Peter Sam spoilt the vapours of Ignatius’ crystal glass. ‘I have a room for him, bar-locked and secure. Perhaps it is better for him to retire than listen to our conversation.’

‘Perhaps.’ Valentim raised a hand to Hib Gow without a word and the Scotsman took his eyes from the glass still waiting on the commode to tug at the chain between Peter Sam’s wrists.

Ignatius’s young servant tried not to look at Peter Sam’s eyes as he held open the passage door, but his eyes alighted on the chains as they rattled past and he bowed and followed, closing the door as softly as he could.

‘So, Ignatius,’ Valentim sipped his rum with a grimace. ‘We are alone. Tell me how we progress? What of my revenge?’

Ignatius moved to his desk. ‘You mean what of the letters? The arcanum of porcelain, Governor?’

Valentim shrugged and angled his glass, his eyes lowered to watch the swirling of the cane spirit.

Ignatius sat and bided his time. ‘How do you find Hib’s company, governor? He is quite a find is he not?’

‘He is an animal,’ Valentim said. ‘Even for an executioner. Where did you locate such a foul creature?’

‘One of Tyburn’s best I assure you. Unfortunately he lost favour some years ago. The English were mad for Jacobites, and a Presbyterian Scotsman was not to be trusted. It was most opportune that I could take him off their hands.’ He swallowed his drink. ‘My good fortune. Not so fortunate for some of London that met with the humour of a man used to killing men every day.’

‘If you say it is thus, Señor. I myself believe him to be mad. And a madman does not make a good companion. I have spent months with him. He has a definite ability to break the will of a man. It is a gift. But he takes pleasure in it beyond simple duty.’ He leant forward and placed his rum on the desk. ‘He appals me even more than this slave tafia you choose to serve me. Now,’ he sat back, ‘I have had a tiresome voyage on that barge of a sloop of yours, Ignatius, so tell me only of the pirate.’

Ignatius leafed through his diary letting the pages of the last weeks pile a wall of tension between him and Valentim as they fell one by one.

‘The pace has picked up, Governor,’ he said at last. ‘The pirate Devlin has been dispatched to New Providence to attempt to liberate the letters of Father d’Entrecolles. If he fails he will most likely be hung. If he succeeds he will be back here within the month.’ He looked up to Valentim. ‘And the pair of you can renew your acquaintance.’

Valentim tapped gently on the arm of his chair with his artificial hand. Even through the velvet glove Ignatius could detect the minuscule chime of the porcelain palm.

‘I will look forward to his coming,’ he said, his voice distant. ‘I very much wish him to succeed.’

Ignatius cleared his throat. ‘Much has happened in your absence, Governor, that makes for a very interesting prospect for our plans. Have you heard of “Blackbeard”, Governor? Captain Edward Teach?’

The lifeless face that looked back heralded to Ignatius that he had not.

‘He has enjoyed great infamy along our coastal colonies this last year as a privateer. Although perhaps “privateer” is a mite generous of me,’ he corrected himself with a fleeting smile. ‘He is a pirate with the worst of them.’

Valentim looked idly around the study, his eyes drifting momentarily over the porcelain display upon the commode. ‘What is this to me, Ignatius?’

‘Teach – Blackbeard – blockaded this town recently. Held our Council to ransom. His ransom being the very letters that we seek. His partner was wrongly under the impression that I already had them, hidden in a chest that Palgrave Williams, one of Bellamy’s captains, had brought ashore before the sinking of the Whydah. I admit I thought so too at one point. That perhaps Palgrave had conspired with Bellamy to remove the letters from the Chinese gun in some plan of blackmail against me. I wish you had come to me sooner, Governor, to save me months of hunting for that chest. But now of course I am aware that there are others who will take great risks to possess them.’

Valentim’s interest flicked back. ‘You seek the letters. I have informed you of where they lie. Bringing the pirate to me is what I have engaged you for, Ignatius.’

‘Of course, Governor. But should Devlin fail I will still not have my letters. Grateful as I am for knowing where they finally are, their acquisition remains of the highest importance. It seems that Blackbeard has cultivated close relationships with several governors, who see no harm in allowing some freebooting within their colonies. But the fact that he knew about the letters was most enlightening as to just how entwined he has become with powerful men.’

‘What have this to do with our interests, Ignatius?’

‘A little,’ Ignatius said warmly. ‘I have since engaged Blackbeard to assist me as well as his own gentleman retainer. I will have those letters one way or another. By any means necessary.’

Valentim rose slightly, his black eyes blazing. ‘If this Blackbeard interferes with my plans Ignatius, you will pay dearly for his transgressions I assure you.’

Ignatius waved away Valentim’s words like bothersome insects. ‘No, no, Governor. Not at all. If Blackbeard should encounter Devlin he is instructed to bring him here to face you. I am a man of my word as my reputation attests. It is my intention merely to keep you fully informed, as you requested, on our progress.’ He closed his diary and stood to look out onto his twilight garden. ‘Now that they are truly real, and so near, these letters are provoking an interest that makes my position here potentially … uncomfortable.’ Ignatius’s final word was punctuated by the solid clump of Hib returning to the room and bowing awkwardly before sloping over to the waiting glass on the commode.

Ignatius sniffed and carried on. ‘Normally in such a situation it would be advisable to distance myself from the matter, but that is not possible: I must remain here until it is settled, for this house is where they will come. What I can do, most certainly, is to control the number of people who know about the letters.’

Valentim yawned. ‘And how do you propose to do that?’

Ignatius faced him. ‘Oh, I have already set events in motion and relayed appropriate correspondence to ensure the end of Blackbeard and his liaisons with the governors. Our pirate Devlin is well taken care of, one way or the other.’ He held out a respectful hand to Valentim and then swept it to the huge Scotsman across the room. ‘And Mister Gow …’

Hib straightened at the mention of his name and, wiping some of the rum from the corner of his mouth, placed his glass down gently and looked across obediently at Ignatius.

‘Mister Gow can be trusted as if his blade were my own arm. And I need only to glance at a man,’ Ignatius turned his eyes back to the seated Valentim. ‘And he be … gone.’

The commode shook with Hib’s sudden movement. In two strides he was at Valentim’s chair. It took one heartbeat to clamp him down with the slab of a hand that bit into Valentim’s shoulder and to angle the cold blade of the polished Estilete at his throat.

Valentim felt the pulse in his neck racing against the gentle pressure of the razor edge and his eyes stared wildly back at Ignatius.

‘What madness is this!’ Valentim’s voice slithered out above the blade. ‘I am the Regulador of Sao Nicolau! An ambassador!’

‘And by your own account, Governor, no soul knows that you are here. Except my men that you have sailed with, Hib, and myself.’

‘You swore I was to have Devlin!’ For the next five minutes of his life concern for his neck was less important than facing the pirate again. ‘You betray me, Ignatius!’ Valentim tried to rise but an enormous weight pressed him down with the merest force.

Ignatius pulled open a drawer of his desk, lifting out a pistol and balancing it in his fist. ‘I have done nothing, Governor, save secure the privacy of the arcanum for those who can afford its secrets.’ He gestured to Hib with the pistol to lever Valentim from his chair. ‘And I will honour my word. You will see Devlin again. My reputation insists upon it. Providing of course he succeeds in bringing the letters to me. Providing, that is, he is not hanging from some yardarm by now.’

Valentim cursed as Hib stripped away his weapons like undressing an infant and pulled him from the room away from the smiling Ignatius. Valentim howled around the house as he was dragged up the wooden stair – howled that all English, all the world, were pirata and betrayers and only the Português had honour and how he prayed for the day that the Espanhol would drink their English blood. A minute later his anger could no longer be heard. The good remained at their hearths; the bad still jostled in the taverns and Ignatius returned to his maple commode to pour another drink.

He thought on his audience with Lt Governor Spotswood and Governor Cranston, the Bauta-masked gentlemen who had first called upon him after word of the letters had spread from China to their own shores.

It was always at night, Ignatius thought as he smirked into his drink. Conspirators meet like moths around a candle-flame. During the day they play with their children, flatter their wives and write to Whitehall like good white-wigged citizens. At night they don masks and cloaks, and gather to plot like witches in a coven.

The idea was as old as democracy: You can have no king, for the consequence of kings is war. Spain and inevitably France will always be your enemies as long as you hold to a crown. And one cannot trade with the enemy. Then again, one cannot get rich in times of peace.

Spotswood he trusted. Should Blackbeard survive, Spotswood would be the one to fund a private assault against the pirate. Chalk Blackbeard off of the list of those who knew. Cranston was different. Cranston was governor of Rhode Island. Palgrave Williams’s father had been Attorney General of the Rhode Island plantations. Ignatius did not live by ignoring coincidence. Palgrave Williams had left the Whydah and came ashore at the colony before she sank. Then he had vanished and become the most wanted man in the Americas after the ship went down.

Cranston may know more than he purports to, thought Ignatius, tapping his lips. A question mark beside his name. If Devlin succeeded, returned, then Valentim could have at him. Chalk off one or the other. His calculations were interrupted by the movement of Hib Gow’s return. He saluted his giant with the glass. And chalk off the other one as well, he thought. All achieved without a smirch of blood on Ignatius’s hands. Just the taste of it in the air around him.


Hanging. As concise and definite in meaning to the eighteenth-century mind as crucifixion to a first-century Palestinian. A choking. The hempen jig before the perfection of the snap. Drowning on the end of a rope like a hare struggling overnight against the snare.

A man could escape the punishment of piracy in England by signing up to be a good colonist in the Americas. Better a chance against the savages and diseases than the man in the black hood who reserved the swift plunge for the blue blood but strangled your poor wrong-born throat with a hemp knot that grated like glass. Sometimes they would honour you by allowing you to tie your own knot. They taught it you like a new trade the night before and you cursed at the scuffing of your palms from the rough rope and your mind lingered over the same effect against your more tender throat.

Your trembling hand signed for the Americas in the morning.

But if you were already there, already confined to the promise of the Americas, and chanced your arm against the world? What then for you, my boy? Where do you go when you have already gone to the end of the world? Where do you go?

One place to go. Down. Only the rope and a short hard stop from a sudden drop.

John Coxon drank fast as he heard the slap on the horse’s flanks and the intake of breath from the crowd – mostly made up of women and children.

There was the faint thrashing of heels and the solemn roll of the cart’s wheels but thankfully he could not see the sight in the square from his table beside the stair of the Cat and Fiddle. He sat alone and poured from a crock bottle of rum and lime into a leather mug furred by years of use and listened to the nine necks choking away in the square beyond the stone walls.

A sickness swam within him, caused he considered by the unnatural sweetness of the drink, and he raised his arm and voice for bread and cheese to offer a sour antidote to the sugar coursing through his head.

The pewter plate came. The bread was fresh, the cheese hard, but he swallowed it all the same and thought on his position as he chewed.

July and August were harsh. The fever spread unabated, although the pirates still dwelling there seemed immune, blessed by the devil. Two of the warships, the Shark and the Rose, had sailed on to New York, having no further orders to stay and Rogers having no further power to hold them.

He ripped at the bread. Still the Delicia remained with her forty guns, and his own command, the Milford. Over seventy guns and three hundred men between them. Enough to hold the island in check. Perhaps. Enough to warrant an after-noon’s drinking whilst Rogers enthusiastically conducted his duty outside.

Mrs Haggins turned her bulbous eyes away from him as she drifted down the stair. The sickening waft of what passed as her perfume made the cheese even more unpalatable.

Sitting at his octagonal table on a raised stage behind a rail, Coxon grabbed the remnants of huddled conversation from the mosaic of tables below him. He overheard talk of Blackbeard spied sailing to Bermuda. Of friendly governors in the Carolinas that welcomed free trade. Whispers of Vane and dozens more still holding out, seeking their own independence. Indian attacks weakening the colonies like a plague.

Coxon grinned between gulps of rum. If a pirate could win the Indians to him, he thought with a drunk’s philosophising, he could rule this country. The Indians, he recalled from his luncheons with the ragged captains that had survived a landing, only wanted to kill fathers and sons, to crush the seed that might poison their land. They were few, and they would die. F*ck them. He drank, drowning out the last slap on the horse’s hide from the courtyard and the cheer and gasp that rang out at the spectacle of another fallen pirate. You can’t beat the fall of coin. This world belongs to mad kings and the companies under them. He looked down at the black cup. I am just building a bed to die in, he consoled himself.

The face appeared before him silently, peering anxiously through the rails of the stage for quite a while before Coxon noticed it and pulled his coat tight and hacked the stale air from his throat and brushed the crumbs from his lips.

The marine slapped his chest and snapped to attention when Coxon finally acknowledged him.

‘What is it lad?’ Coxon said and pushed the rum aside.

The marine kept his voice low against the forest of eyes and ears that had followed his path through the mess of tables.

‘Captain Coxon, sir,’ his voice was hushed. ‘You are required at the beach. To come with me if you will, Captain.’

Coxon drizzled small coin onto the table and staggered up. ‘What occurs, sailor?’ He straightened himself, ran a palm over his face and was sober in an instant.

The marine tipped back his tricorne at the prospect of the next half hour of his life. ‘It’s the Mumvil Trader, Captain. She’s back in the bay. A man called Davis brought her in. Escaped from the pirates so he says.’

Coxon stepped down to the sawdust floor. ‘Does Rogers know of this?’

‘Not yet sir. Davis, their captain now, asked for you only. I checked here last, Captain.’

‘You found me last, lad,’ he dragged the man to the door. ‘I’ll bring the governor from his hanging and join you on the beach.’

The marine stayed Coxon’s hand. ‘You best come first, Captain,’ he said. ‘Especially.’

Coxon fixed the man with his eye and waited for the soldier to continue.

‘He has a prisoner, Captain,’ the man began to grin and relished the rising of Coxon’s eyebrows. ‘He has the pirate Devlin with him. Chained. And his men also.’

Coxon’s arm gripped the sailor and the man pulled against the clasp. ‘I say, he has the pirate Devlin on the beach, Captain. Calling for the King’s Act so he is. Captain Davis is calling for you especially.’

Coxon pulled the marine close. ‘Are his hands tied?’

‘Captain?’

‘Are his hands tied, man? Devlin’s hands tied!’

‘He is manacled, Captain. Safe as houses so he is.’

Coxon walked on, pulling the red-coated innocent with him. ‘I fell for that before.’ And the hot bright world was before them as the door of the Cat and Fiddle swung out onto New Providence and John Coxon made his way down to the beach to meet Patrick Devlin again; the star-shaped scar on his forearm itching beneath his shirt.