Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Forty-Seven





Peter Sam




The first strike at Devlin’s throat sliced across the white wall as Devlin fell back, the rapier permanently scoring the masonry, leaving later generations of owners to speculate on its origins.

Devlin gave a small laugh as he drew his shorter cutlass, perhaps out of excitement, perhaps at the absurdity of the snarling creature swinging away, kicking the chairs from the table as he edged towards him.

‘Valentim!’ Devlin’s cutlass clanged against one of the swings of the other’s blade and held it there, pulling Valentim close. The striking of the steel striking off Devlin’s smile. ‘This is not the time for us to fight!’

The pirate could fight, would always fight, but a man like Valentim had been educated to it, had been parrying at court probably before Devlin could read and would surely beat him if the play came down to skill alone. But he had probably also always fought like a gentleman. Devlin shot his left elbow in Valentim’s eye and Valentim reeled back in shock.

Valentim shook the sting away to see Devlin pacing back, swigging from the wine bottle he had snatched from the table. He offered it to Valentim.

‘You should die with wine on your lips.’ It was a statement not a promise. ‘Come, Valentim: am I really your enemy this day?’

Valentim’s sword whistled through the air, his back and thigh muscles set for his strike. Killing is not drawn in the arms. To the properly trained it is in the hips, the feet and the lungs. One breath, one second. Devlin drank again, his eyes watching over the bottle’s neck as Valentim roared.

‘I am the Regulador of Sao Nicolau, pirate! Do not use my name, dog! I have told you such before!’

He sprang forward, half the length he needed to, intending to bring Devlin to parry and open up for the rest of his thrust, but Devlin swept back as Valentim came on, raging. ‘You killed my friend! Killed my men!’ Their swords rattled and chimed again and again as Valentim backed Devlin towards the wall, spitting his anger at every clash. More than a year of waiting for this moment crying from him. ‘You took my ship, and worst of all of these …’ Devlin’s back hit the wall as Valentim’s rapier pricked his ribs and held him there. Blood spotted his shirt and Devlin looked down at the sight, something entirely new to him. The blood of others on him more common.

Valentim raised the dead thing at the end of his left arm. ‘You took my hand! My body! My body!’ He pulled back for his thrust, as if Devlin were just a straw-packed dummy in his fencing class, but this was an error against a man accustomed to fighting in the gutters, and Devlin used the gap that had briefly opened up to swing the wine bottle into Valentim’s skull.

He had not seen it, and registered only the blackness filling his vision as he collapsed and the floor twisted under his feet. A burnt-in instinct made him fall to one knee and focus on his rapier held out before him, but then something swooped into him hard and he heard his sword falling away and over the flagstones as his head cracked against the same.

Then the voice was above him, whispering like a confession, one knee down on his chest, weighting him to the floor, the other on his sword arm, a cutlass across his throat.

‘The bones we have against us may well be due, Valentim,’ Devlin bored into Valentim’s eyes, reading first one then the other, looking for signs of reason. ‘But we are fighting for him, not ourselves.’ Valentim struggled and began to lift the porcelain hand but had it pushed down and the blade pressed colder and deeper against his flesh. ‘Maybe you kill me. Maybe we kill each other. But that’s what he wants, don’t you see? Less of us all. Together we could take down that carrion he keeps. I’m guessing from your looks you ain’t been his guest.’ The body beneath him softened. ‘I’m here for my quartermaster. You’re here for me. Not for him, Valentim. Don’t give this to him. If you want me, try and take me, but what happens after?’ He lifted the blade, a white stripe across Valentim’s neck. ‘What happens after one of us is dead?’ Devlin stood, his sword low, and waited.

Valentim dragged himself to where his sword lay, crawling with added ignominy through the shards of glass and spilled wine. His black glove wrapped itself around the hilt and he used the strength of its blade to heave himself to his feet.

For a moment his back was presented openly for Devlin to run his cutlass through the spine, but the pirate let him rise. Valentim uncoiled upwards, bringing his sword to face his opponent, and he measured the pirate and his words.

‘You are right, pirate,’ he sneered. ‘I will kill you … later.’

Devlin picked up the bamboo tube without his eye leaving the governor of Sao Nicolau. ‘To the garden,’ he nodded to the glass doors. ‘More room to fight.’




Ignatius weighed Devlin’s pistols in his hands. They were carbine-bore Dragoons with twelve-inch barrels and brass escutcheon plates screwed into the wrist to strengthen them. The plates announced they were by Barbar of London no less, and they would be worth maybe sixty or seventy pounds apiece. He marvelled at their handsomeness and tucked them into his belt. How easily the pirate had given them up, he thought. How easy it was to pluck a crow.

‘They are in the garden. Together.’ Hib’s voice drifted over from the doors looking over the walled sanctuary of Magnolia and Azalea. ‘Far corner.’ His hand was already on the brass catch, waiting for Ignatius’s response.

Ignatius swept to the window. ‘What are they doing? They are not fighting?’ His voice was lilting with surprise.

Hib looked out to the men, at the drawn swords, at the gap between them. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Devlin has the letters at his feet.’

Ignatius confirmed the sight before them. ‘They have joined. Interesting.’ His eyes lit up as if he had hoped for and expected such an outcome. He put his hand on Hib’s shoulder and faced the other two men in the office.

‘Teach, I may have need of you.’ He nodded to the chained Peter Sam haunting the room. ‘Bring that to the garden.’

Blackbeard put down the rum bottle and looked at the figure of Peter Sam standing with his shoulders drawn down by the long chains hanging from his wrists. He had known Peter Sam. He did not know the eye of the man who now looked up at him. Edward Teach moved away and for the first time he thought of the men he had left behind at the grounding of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. A shudder rippled across his back as he turned away from Peter Sam.

‘I will not befoul my hand with such, Ignatius. Let his gaoler bring him. I wish to see Devlin for meself.’


Twelve feet high stone walls enclosed the garden, which was twenty feet across with fifty feet of paved walkways and trees, and an iron sundial in the centre that never caught the sun. Ignatius had chosen his property well. The garden could hold many secrets.

Valentim and Devlin watched the three men emerge from the house and the blades twitched in their hands. Devlin looked once at Peter Sam, smaller, paler, but still Peter Sam despite that, he was sure. Blackbeard wore the same crimson coat and the same look of arrogance and Devlin felt a vague crease of his brow at the recollection of the last time he had faced the scourge of the coast.

Valentim caught Devlin’s look, counted the weapons facing them and leant to the man beside him. ‘Do you have a plan, pirate?’

Devlin reached down and picked up the bamboo tube. ‘In London I worked at an anchorsmith’s with a man named Kennedy,’ he announced, prompting a confused look from his companion. ‘’Til I was trained to it I forged cable-chain. I learnt never to mind about the link I had just made, or the link I was going to make, just the one I was working on. Get burnt else.’ He winked to Valentim.

‘I am allied with a madman.’ Valentim balanced himself and held his breath.

Ignatius stood between Hib and Blackbeard, his confidence undiminished. ‘My letters, Captain, if you please.’ He stepped forward, a friendly hand outstretched.

‘My man,’ Devlin said. ‘Bring me Peter Sam.’

Ignatius pointed to the waist-tall sundial in the middle of the grove, circled by stone seats. ‘There,’ he said. ‘We will talk, you and I.’

Ignatius walked calmly forwards, alone, and Devlin went to meet him, casting an eye to Valentim to watch the letters as he placed them back to the ground. He kept his cutlass low.

The sundial was between them, no shadow upon it, as the men faced each other. Ignatius began a speech long thought of, his hands resting sedately on the wrists of Devlin’s pistols.

‘A new war is here, Captain.’ He spoke as if it were his own joyous creation. ‘England and her allies are again at the throat of Spain. Perhaps before the end of the year the Ottoman empire will join also. It will be a good year to be a privateer. It will be a good year to be my acquaintance. Not my enemy.’

‘I brought your letters. Bring me my man.’

Ignatius gently shook his head. ‘Do you not know what those letters are, Captain? Surely you are not as much an Irish imbecile as you appear to be?’

‘I understand what you have told me. The making of porcelain. Cups and pots for kings.’

‘No, Captain. Much more than that. They are the secret of making free trade. A bargaining tool that could cut America loose from England’s apron strings. Which one of your lives do you think is worth more to me than such a power? By the end of the last war I was a phenomenally wealthy man. By the end of this one I will be the mark of avarice itself, and you, Captain, have brought me the means. I may have use for a good privateer in the months to come.’

‘You have Teach,’ Devlin said.

Ignatius stiffened. ‘No, Teach will be dead soon. He knows too much. And he failed to bring me the letters. You have succeeded. I may have a need for you to live.’ He looked fondly at Devlin then remembered where they were. ‘Go get your letters. You may take your man when I have them. I must check their validation first.’

‘You do not trust me, Ignatius?’ Devlin began to turn away.

‘Do you trust me, Captain?’

They retired to their corners.

Valentim’s eyes were now wide with fury. ‘What is happening, pirate? What is said?’

Devlin picked up the tube, his back to the others. ‘I’ll go for the big man. You go for Ignatius.’

‘What of Blackbeard? Who goes for him?’

‘Teach will hold until he sees a coin land. I have the advantage that he may want me for himself.’

‘So I am to go for the man who has two pistols against me? You pirates and your rules of war!’

Devlin grinned. ‘You can trade if you want.’

Valentim silently declined the offer as he watched Hib glowering at them. ‘What of your man? I disbelieve he will assist. He is broken, you understand?’

Devlin turned and considered Peter Sam. ‘No. He won’t help us. But with luck he may yet help himself. Wait until I move, Valentim.’ Together they crossed the path.

Hib leant towards Peter Sam’s ear. ‘Here he comes,’ he whispered, his voice as soft as a lamb’s tongue. ‘Here comes the man who has led you here to me, my boy. Here we are against him, my Peter Sam.’

Peter Sam lifted his head to the familiar face walking towards him.

How many months now? A different coat. Different hat. Might not be him at all. No matter. Little to matter now.

‘Your letters, Ignatius,’ Devlin held out the sleeve of bamboo. ‘From Father d’Entrecolles, to a Father Orry, to Captain William Guinneys, to you, to Black Sam Bellamy, and now me.’

Devlin placed the bamboo tube in Ignatius’s arms and looked Hib’s frame up and down, regretting he had not packed his ebony dagger. Ignatius unbound the cork and string to pull out the volume within.

Valentim Mendes saw only that Ignatius’s hands were occupied. He saw that perhaps together, with this porco dead, himself and the pirate could fell the Scotsman. Perhaps just two strikes from the pair of them. The odds would be in the favour of the Portuguese and those of righteous birth.

He thrust his rapier exactly as he had been taught to.

Devlin shouted something but Valentim would never understand it. He saw Devlin’s cutlass strike down at the Scotsman’s arm as it stabbed towards him but the giant swatted away the pirate; and then Valentim was looking down at the hilt of the Estilete as it stuck out from under his chin and his doublet was soaked with blood.

He touched the warm flow as he stumbled back, mystified by its streaming. He staggered, dropped his sword and pulled out the spike rammed in his throat, a white piece of his spine stuck to its tip like a rough diamond. Valentim croaked a bloody grin at its ghastly beauty that seemed as strange as his exquisite porcelain hand.

He saw nothing else and Hib left him twitching on the grass. Then the Scotsman stomped over to where the pirate lay.

Devlin scrambled to his feet and tried to get away from Hib’s approach. He looked around the garden. Valentim lay dead. Blackbeard was standing fast but his fists were pulling out pistols. Ignatius was white-faced and checking for wounds about him. Peter Sam did nothing. The Scotsman brought a cudgel from behind his back and grimaced happily as he approached Devlin’s outstretched cutlass.

He looks like a farmer, Devlin thought absently. A poor worsted waistcoat and calico breeches and buskins like a Dutchman’s, but a big bastard nonetheless. Go for the head. Slice something off. He’d stop at that.

He looked at the boulder-like hands closing in on him. If he gets inside the blade I’m dead. Think on that. Accept that. Know that in a fight you will get pain so wait for it. Move with that in mind.

Hib kept grinning. He made a playful lunge for Devlin’s coat with his empty hand and the pirate swiped at his head with his curve of metal.

Hib leant away easily and wrapped his fist around Devlin’s falling sword hand, crushing the blade loose. Holding him high and away like a struggling rat and revelling in the pain across the pirate’s face as he hung from his arm, Hib felt Devlin’s bones grind inside his monstrous fist.

The cudgel dove inside at the pirate with enough force to punch straight through his back, and then Hib batted Devlin away with another strike as he laughed at the splash of blood leaving his stick.

Devlin landed whimpering like a boy. Pain wept out of him. Then a boot like a paving stone lifted him clear across the garden.

He rolled painfully; tried to raise himself. Coughing, he searched desperately for his cutlass: Always find your steel. The sight of it gave him strength over his pain.

Devlin clutched his sides and staggered across the grass to where he had seen a glint of metal. The shadow of the Scotsman fell over him, his faint giggle the only sound in the garden.

Ignatius found his voice again, feeling secure rolling the bamboo tube in his hands. Now he could save the pirate or let him live. The Irishman might even be grateful, for Hib could break him as easily as the other.

But Hib had cut once already and would need more. The Regulador of Sao Nicolau was stretched dead and open-eyed but that was not enough. One was never enough. The bowels of Newgate had vomited Hib into Ignatius’s hands after the hangman had lost his position in the fallout of the Jacobite uprisings, but Hib had not lost his taste for murder with the loss of his employ and London had dribbled blood for months afterwards from alleyway to alleyway.

The giggle came again and Ignatius knew what it signified. The pirate was no real loss, after all.

‘Finish him, Hib!’ Ignatius cried. Devlin looked up as Hib’s eyes upon him grew round and white, and Devlin called to the lowered head of his quartermaster.

‘Peter Sam! Stand to!’ Devlin choked out the words, gaining a moment’s respite as Hib looked round at the chained man. Devlin dragged himself away and continued to call. ‘To me, Peter Sam!’ Still coughing he pulled himself to try and stand, finding his vision had cleared enough to see his cutlass a few feet from him. But he couldn’t rise. Nothing worked. Everything wanted to sleep.

Hib twisted his cudgel in his hands, slitted eyes observing the big quartermaster. The head still hung down. The Scotsman switched back to Devlin. He was just flesh and bone like all the rest. He giggled once more as Devlin began to crawl towards his cutlass and still tried to speak to ghosts.

‘Back for you, Peter Sam … Ship waiting for you.’

Hib’s boot tipped him onto his back. He wanted to see Devlin’s face before he died and still the stupid choking voice prattled on.

‘Come back for you, Peter Sam … Come back for my brother.’

The voice came like a dog growling in the night. Hib’s head whisked back to look at Peter Sam. Ignatius watched the chains pull tight as shoulders flexed and a back rose straight. He inched away as the growl whispered across the garden.

‘Get your filthy Scottish arse away from him, you dog!’ And Peter Sam began to move. Hib turned and smiled, slapping his bloody cudgel between his hands.

‘Forget him, Gow!’ Ignatius called. ‘Kill Devlin!’

Obediently Hib spun back to the pirate Devlin who was pulling himself closer to his blade.

Ignatius backed to Teach’s side. ‘Teach! Kill this animal!’

But Blackbeard holstered his pistols. ‘Do something yourself. I think you’ve spoken enough to pirates.’ And he stepped into the shade as Peter Sam lumbered away from them.

Not enough, Peter Sam thought. Nothing in my arms except cabbage water and broth. Not enough strength in my limbs to stop him. His eyes sought for steel, any metal, even wood – and then he saw it.

But enough in my arms still to pick up an iron sundial.

His fists wrapped around its leg and with its heft of iron came the memory and the memory ran hotly through his arms. His strength had been gone but the feel of iron was as strong as meat.

Hib’s prey inched away from him like a worm. He stamped a buskin on the hem of Devlin’s coat. ‘Where do you think you’re going, little man?’

Devlin looked up at the beast and spat his own blood at the boots. He turned a bloodied smile on the Scotsman as the sun hit the garden for the first time. ‘I’m getting out of the way, you fat f*ck!’

‘Hib!’ Ignatius warned, cocking his pistol too late and fatefully causing Hib to turn just as Peter Sam ploughed the sundial’s flat edge across the broken, bent and twisted nose that defined his face.

A staggering flash of agony jolted through Hib and a ferrous odour seemed to explode in his head. For the first time, even after all the laughing boys of Greenock, the taverns and gutters of London and his own father’s terrible fists – never forgotten – Hib Gow fell to his knees, and the great and masterful proboscis that set him apart from all others plopped onto the stone path before his eyes – eyes that were already beginning to swell and close as his body panicked to protect his sight.

Hib tried to mouth some plea to the suddenly monstrous man in leather but only the gurgle of his own black blood dribbled out. His jaw hung loose. He swayed, attempting to grab the man moving behind him, who now stood on his legs, who wrapped chains around his neck, who was pulling the life out of him, whose knees were pushing Hib’s back away from the tightening iron garotte, whose wrists were straining rivulets of blood down the chains as the links coiled and choked him.


‘It’s Hib!’ the hideous crones would cry. ‘Hib’s doing it!’ And the cheers would ring out all around the Tyburn tree because the black mask could not hide the proud ugly nose stretching the cloth sack to its furthest. ‘Hib’s doing it!’ the biddies cheered, and he always gave them a choking to remember. He had been good at that one thing all his life. Knew it now.


Peter Sam felt the last rattle shudder through his arms, and the last of his strength fell away with the huge body as he slumped alongside it in the grass and the gore. Only Peter Sam’s chest rose and fell with his gasped breaths. His arm lay against Hib’s.

Ignatius had witnessed a man who seemed potent for another forty years slaughtered before him. Flies were already playing in Hib’s blood; his protector was gone.

Ignatius’s peaceful garden was now a butcher’s drain hole. He raised the pistol like a man lost in the forest who hears the baying of wolves all around him and aimed at the pirate reaching for his cutlass as he struggled to his feet.

You hold too much faith in steel, pirate.

He laid his sight.

To kill you with your own gun and then your own man with your other gallant pistol. All that you deserve.

He fired.

He had underestimated the pirate. Plucked the wrong crow.

Ignatius let go the pistol, unable to hold it now his thumb and forefinger were no longer part of his hand.

Devlin had given up a pair of rich, fine London pistols, hard for a gentleman to resist, but Devlin had overloaded them with two fists’ worth of powder and iron scrap and plugged them with hemp. On firing, the breech, plates and walnut stock had exploded in Ignatius’s fist.

A laugh burst from Teach as he watched Ignatius buckle and wonder at his hand.

Ignatius dropped the bamboo tube as he grabbed at the blood and stumbled for his rooms. His shoes crunched on his own shattered fingers like the crushing of snails. He needed cloth for staunching, he needed water, he needed help. For the first time in all his years of dining with kings and princes he needed help.

Here be pirates.