Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (25 page)

Still, his Scotsman’s optimism – or obstinacy – led him to feel that something could be done other than flee to the Netherlands or back to England if the pirate should succeed.

But the more the abyssal figures trailed away before his eyes the more difficulty he had in ceasing the trembling of his hands.

The banknotes had been a sound notion. Perfectly sound. When England almost a quarter of a century before had needed to rebuild its navy it had started its own bank, offering notes promising an eight-percent return. So successful was the scheme that England now challenged France for European supremacy, her defeat at Beachy Head forgotten, her navy ruling the waves.

In France the scheme to offer notes for gold and silver had won even greater popularity. The people had embraced the notion that their notes could not be devalued by a king’s whims and the fact that paper was more portable and practical than coin in so vast a realm – particularly so when the ferocity of speculation in the New World companies, of which Law was now head, hit Paris like a hurricane and littered the streets with chits and credit notes as if it were exactly just such a cataclysm.

But John Law,
Monsieur Lass
, had not counted on the lust that sight of such vast profit could create in the regent’s eye and in that of the blue-bloods who had promised to support his ascension in return for livres rather than policies. Somehow, Philippe still carried the people’s admiration but not so for
Lass.
Over the summer, as the price of shares in his companies fell and fell, the people who had once labelled him a genius now sought his hide. He had sent his wife and children to his country estate for safety and for the health of his youngest son who had developed the first signs of the dreaded small-pox, the illness that had plagued Law in his youth. Bravely he had stayed in Paris, albeit under the protection of the regent.
Perhaps indeed his only chance of safety was to run, Walpole’s plan his avenue of escape.

How could this terror have gripped France? America should have been fat, a goose with layers and layers of grease and pregnant with golden eggs to boot. The kingdom of France should have been her master. But America was not the whore of plenty they had banked on.

Swamps, hostile natives, pirates – especially the pirates – stopping a third of the trade like a tax collector wandering up and down the pews of a church with cudgel and sack. And there was no gold.

It was hoped that the northern plains would have the same alluvial abundance as the wealth of New Spain, but that had not transpired. Spain still held civilisation’s purse-strings and laughed at them from its treasure fleets sailing still from Potosi.

Law trembled more with every statement from each department that landed on his desk; they provoked a rising nausea that could only be temporarily quelled with whisky, or permanently by some miracle.

‘There is a baker here to see you, Monsieur Lass.’ He was pulled from his pit by his administrator’s soft voice at his open door. He wearily lifted his head.

‘Hmm?’

‘A baker.’

‘A baker?’

The man pushed his pince-nez back to the bridge of his nose. ‘He says he has the pie you ordered. A “tarte rat” it would seem? He says it is a Scottish dish for yourself.’ The administrator had some knowledge of the vulgar stomach of Scotsmen. Why not a rat pie to add to their repellent list of delicacies?

Law however struggled to recall any such request, and his bemusement did not go unnoticed.

‘He says it is the “backwards” pie of your homeland? That you eat it back to front or some such nonsense?’ Law simply stared at him. ‘I will send him away, Milord,’ said the administrator with a nod.

Law pursed his lips. A rat pie. Eaten backwards. A slap of realisation hit him in the face. He shouted at the back of the man at his door, his hands suddenly no longer trembling.

‘Show him up, Henri! I remember perfectly! It was before my trip – yes, yes, show him up at once! My rat pie! Splendid, man!’

Henri pushed his pince-nez once more back onto his nose and bowed, exiting with French expressions of disgust under his breath.

Law admired the new steadiness of his fingers, his corpse-pile of numbers instantly forgotten. A moment later, hope sauntered into the room, although in a more surprising manner than to Law than when he had first laid eyes on the pirate Devlin.

Devlin wore no cocked hat this time, just a leather sailor’s cap, long on one side, a woollen shirt, a common eighteen-button waistcoat and slop hose. Finishing off his much-changed appearance were wooden shoes that clacked on the bare floor as he came into the room and closed the door behind him.

‘Well met, John,’ Devlin said, not minding his English and sure they were alone. He pulled over his head the thick leather strap by which means the tray of his baked wares was held out before him.

Law watched him place the tray down, unable to stop grinning at the transformation of pirate to pie-man. He sprang to his feet, scampering around his desk and warmly pumped the pirate’s hand.

‘Well met indeed, Captain! Good to see that discretion is your loudest virtue! A rat pie indeed! To eat backwards!
Pie-rat
! Ho,
pirate
! Splendid! But what if I had not known?’

Devlin took away his hand. ‘Then I’d have guessed you wrong,’ he said.

He looked around the plain room. A blackboard on one wall, books lining every other. The blackboard, Devlin assumed, was a symptom of Law’s obsession with mathematics. He took a chair, uninvited, and pulled it to face the desk. Law took his cue and sat back at his place; the pirate was clearly not one for small talk.

Devlin removed his cap, scratched through his hair and checked his nails for whatever stowaways his borrowed fisherman slops carried. ‘What goes on, John, since we parted? What of the diamond?’

Law squared his papers nervously. ‘I’m afraid the pace has run far ahead of our plans.’ He caught then the smell of ammonia and smoke, the pure lanolin waft from the raw wool. It was not an atmosphere that any man should have to grow used to. But the pirate had disguised himself in Law’s aid and he was grateful for the sacrifice. ‘A drink, Captain?’ It was the best sympathy he could offer.

Law sprang from his desk, using the enchanting melody of glasses and pouring liquor to soften his words. ‘It may occasion you to reconsider following Walpole’s original design.’ He passed an eye over the baker’s tray of pies and pastries. Devlin had admirably gone to a lot of effort in his disguise. He stood over the pirate and handed Devlin a glass. ‘That is, I mean, Walpole’s plan to take the diamond from the lapidary Ronde. Surely now our best course?’

Devlin thanked him for the whisky that covered the stench of his outfit.

‘What’s changed?’

Law explained that the regent was to see Ronde at the palace that very afternoon. ‘It is not of my doing. I am as surprised as you.’ Devlin’s face showed none of the surprise Law expected. ‘It hurries things along, Captain, which is all to the good, but now with time against us we shall wait until the diamond is removed.’

Devlin swallowed his glass. ‘Good. Then we will know where the diamond is hidden today. That means we can take it today. I thought we might have to wait for tomorrow. What time?’

Law’s heart staggered. ‘Three o’clock. I will attend, but—’

‘And the duke’s offices are where?’ He pulled out his rough map. Law looked down and indicated the east wing. ‘And that is where you’ll be at three?’ Devlin asked. Law nodded as firmly as he could.

Devlin looked for a clock. ‘Almost three hours.’ As if Law were no longer in the room he placed his glass back on the table, picked up his tray of wares and began to put it back on as he headed for the door.

Law followed him like a toddling infant. ‘You misunderstand. What could you possibly do? I cannot take you in to meet the regent. You cannot manufacture a robbery under the eyes of a castle! It may be Sunday but the palace does not sleep! Captain? There is nothing you can do! How can you be so obtuse?’

Devlin stopped slipping on his baker’s tray and put it down slowly but hard enough that the crack of it on the table made Law flinch.

A silence ensued, the pirate stock still, his head down, some offence clearly riling him. Law rapidly unpicked his thoughts to recall what offence he had uttered.

The head of France’s national bank, one of the most auspicious men in one of the most powerful countries on earth, stammered and wilted at the motionless form. ‘That is . . . I mean to say . . . that it will be impossible to—’

Devlin spun round. He appeared at the blackboard opposite as swiftly as if he had always been standing there. Ridiculous as his clothing was, his voice came as powerfully and exact as if he were draped in ermine and gold.

‘Right. Obtuse.’ He picked up a chalk and began to draw a crude map complete with waves and two ships, each stroke on the slate, in his anger, like a stabbing knife. Law, his pupil now, awaited his lesson.

‘This is an island,’ he drew a smattering of trees and hills across it. ‘Cliffs from which you can see thirty miles all around. Impossible to approach unseen.’ His voice was hurried, impatient with his companion’s ignorance. ‘Here is a fort protected by a barracks. A barracks of French marines.’ His angry strokes chipped pieces of chalk to the floor; his knuckles were just as white.

‘On this island, inside the fort no less, is a chest of gold that weighs the same as four men.
This
,’ he slapped one of the ships, ‘is an English Man of War sent to protect the island.’ He half-turned to let his representation sink in, then rapidly crossed out the ship under a flurry of white.

‘
Beaten
!’ He crossed out the fort, ‘Beaten! Dead! All of them
dead
!’ – an inflection in the last word like a bad taste. ‘Me and Dandon did that and sailed away like kings.’

He did not wait for a response but merely rubbed the story away with his sleeve and immediately began another island.

‘
This
is New Providence. A pirate island, now English. Another fort.
Two
hundred soldiers.
Two
men of war this time,’ he drew the ships vaguely, their presence smaller, his patience at an end.

‘In the fort, Governor Woodes Rogers and
all
the soldiers and a letter that I was sent to fetch – fetch for men like you.’ He scratched out the image with cutlass strokes of white and threw the chalk at Law’s feet.

‘
All
beaten! Done! Dead! Me and Dandon!’ He stood still only to let his stature climb to the ceiling; stood before the tall Scottish man second only to the regent in the kingdom of France. ‘Don’t strive to be a sanctimonious shit like the rest of them, John. Mark me: if you are – if you plan to be – I’m usually the only one that walks away.’

He strode back to his tray, cradling it to his hip and opening the door in the same movement like a skilled waiter. ‘Meet the regent. Keep him there. Stay with him. Then you can tell me where the diamond is . . . so pay attention. Oh—’ his parting shot. ‘And the day before we met I escaped from Newgate. My memory’s still a bit hazy on that one so forgive me if I don’t draw you a picture.’

The door slammed. Law was left staring dumbly at the portal the pirate had flown through. Eventually he turned to the blackboard smeared with thunderclouds of white, the pirate’s past etched beneath them.

‘But . . . I don’t know where . . . ?’ Pointless. Pointless to talk to an empty room. The clock ticked. Weeks of secret correspondence and mad schemes had been reduced to hours. He had pawned his future. Aye, and only a pirate held the redeeming ticket.

Chapter Twenty

A glass of Oporto for Dandon and Albany at the
cabaret
, ‘Image Notre Dame’. The inn was in the sandy Place de Grève beside the Seine, almost right on the river where the square was lapped by its shallow tide. Here they waited, outside, for the inn bulged with bodies. Albany waited impatiently, Dandon ecstatically, mesmerised by the city’s grandeur.

Dandon was a child of the New World. He had known the simplicity of the French forts of Louisiana, little more than log cabins and mud, and the burgeoning replication of English towns that were Charles Town and Bath Town.

London had been a disappointment. A city of kings but made of daub and smoke where abandoned children died in the streets while gold carriages trundled by.