Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (31 page)

His white door was one he had seen a thousand times, but now it appeared with some disease upon its handle. He watched his hand reach out, then draw back to palm his pistol’s cock. He nodded to one of his men to open the door instead, as if in his mind there was something treacherous in opening it himself. It pushed in, brightness bathing them all, and Philippe went through, his pistol raised.

His hand shielded his eyes to blank out the blinding white light from the laterna magica shining off the far wall. An image of three compromised couples shone from the white plaster wall. The guards at his back gaped at the scene and Philippe, his pistol forgotten, laughed riotously at the fumbling figure of Law adjusting himself hurriedly in a chair beside the machine.

Law stood and his breeches fell as he began to protest at the intrusion. Sparing him his shame, Philippe shooed the guards from the room with his laughter and handed one of them his pistol.

He turned back to face Law as he pulled up his breeches with Scottish curses that needed no translation. Philippe wiped tears from his eyes and steadied himself against a table.

‘Oh, Lass!’ he cried. ‘And here I thought you almost dead!’ He pushed a fist against his mouth as a choking belch caught his throat. ‘What would your wife say, Lass?’ he began to fold over, his guffaws bringing him back up. ‘I thought you disapproved of my magic light!’

Law straightened himself and stood in front of the lantern’s beam, where the men and women now rippled across his blouse. He coughed a hand to his mouth. ‘My wife is away. A man grows lonely, Milord.’

Philippe could barely speak and his voice squeaked awkwardly. ‘Oh, I know, Lass! I know! But have I not invited you upstairs enough?’

‘I do not crave infidelity, Milord.’

Philippe staggered over to his friend, clapped his hands on his shoulders and shook him thankfully. ‘No, Lass. No you do not. You are the better of us all. Especially those who thought ill of you.’ Slowly he lowered the lever that doused the candle inside the machine and the room darkened again, hiding the relief on the regent’s face.

Law checked his buttons once more. ‘Well, with Milord’s permission, I should like to retire back to my apartments. I have humiliated myself enough for one evening, I feel.’

Philippe lovingly patted Law’s shoulder and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. Then his eyes widened in horror at the sight of his chair, that had been pulled back from his desk. His back straightened instantly.

‘One moment, Lass,’ his tone reverted to the man who commanded France. ‘One moment.’ He went around his desk, his hands grasping the shoulders of the gold and green fauteuil chair.

Law turned. ‘Milord?’

Philippe hesitated, stood like a statue beside the chair and his desk, his head lowered. ‘You have forgotten one thing, Lass.’

Law resisted the pull of his feet toward the door. Another two feet and he would have been in the corridor and away to his rooms. But fortune had already blessed him twice: once when he had heard their approach in the hall without, and twice because it was only out of necessity on entering that he had decided to use the brightest light source in the room – the magic lantern. He held his breath as Philippe raised his head and silently prayed for a third stroke of luck.

‘You forget your lamp.’ Philippe indicated Law’s lantern on the corner of the desk. ‘It is dark out there, my friend.’

Law berated his foolishness too theatrically, with a slap to his forehead. He retrieved his lamp. ‘Would you wish to accompany me, Milord?’

Philippe shook his head slowly. ‘I have my guards. Goodnight, Lass.’ He waited until Law had reached the door, watched his hand grip the handle then spoke slowly, painfully.

‘Why, Lass?’ his voice sounded regretful. He repeated the question when Law looked back. ‘Why?’

‘Milord?’ Law raised his lamp as if peering into a mine, half his face illuminated.

Philippe said nothing and ran his hands beneath his chair. He experienced the strangest rush of blood to his head as he felt the bag still resting in its web. His fingers felt the familiar square shape but still he needed to see. He pulled the bag free and rose up with the diamond in his hand, no longer caring if Law saw it or not. Law gasped at the sight of the diamond as naturally as any man.

Philippe caressed the stone, his shame reflecting from its surface. ‘Nothing, Lass. Nothing.’ He ran the stone between his fingers, seeing deep within it as Devlin had done, as all had done; the diamond fed on the soul like a succubus if one looked at it for too long.

‘I begin to feel that sometimes I judge every man by my own woes. Goodnight, my friend.’

The bag swallowed up the stone again and he buried the bag in his robe’s pocket as Law left hurriedly, the guards brushing past him into the room.

‘Leave me!’ Philippe barked and they bowed out again to wait for his word.

The closed door and the absence of Law’s lamp left him alone in the darkened study. He went to a long window and slipped aside the curtain to let some of the lamplight of Paris fall in.

He should not be alone now. He had guests to attend to; the guards were waiting to escort him back. But the diamond and his misjudgement of Law had reminded him of his cursed life since its acquisition.

He pulled from his other pocket the small oil of her, the Duchesse de Berry, his Marie-Louise, Marie-Louise with the little mouth, and let her glow in the soft light.

Upstairs was the empty chair: a place for her always at his
fêtes.
It had been over a year since her death and that of the unborn child. He brushed a tear from the glass surface of the miniature with his cheek and whimpered for her forgiveness, so that it looked as if the crystal might break under his clumsy hands.

He had found the romance of the blood that surrounded the diamond amusing when Law had first told him the tale and had laughed at Pitt’s hiding like a rat until it had been sold.

Those stories had bargained Pitt to a lower price but Philippe himself had found no price higher. The pitch of his sorrow now was unseemly for the Regent of France and the guards in the passage moved away from the door, dutifully refusing to hear the muffled lament. From above drifted down the sounds of squeals and laughter, the string quartet stimulating romance, and these distracted the soldiers enough from the sound of weeping.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Monday

The second week

Devlin made his way back to Law’s office in the Rue de Quincampoix. He walked stiffly; the nights aboard the small ship had him rubbing his bones against each other. Like his men he was weary of it and had begun to long for his cot and cabin. He missed his stern windows that rolled the clouds up and down as he ate, whose glass he could touch and almost predict the next day’s weather. If Law had succeeded, he would be back in his ship’s embrace soon enough.

He had not continued the pretence of the baker and just wore the honest sailor slops. Nobody paid him any mind as he cut through the swathes of Parisians fighting for shares in the streets.

Some investors had worked out a perfect plan to access the plethora of agents. They would line up their carriages like stepping stones from one side to the other and walk between them without ever having to touch the ground, often doubling their money from seat to seat, trading with their acquaintances before the ink had dried.

Devlin kept his head low as he elbowed his way through. Law’s door was invisible against the throng and he had to check the walls and shutters above for some plaque to confirm that he had reached the spot that had been so quiet yesterday.

Fortunate then that Law had been keeping watch for him from his open window and called down to the tanned face so distinctive amidst the white wigs. Devlin looked up, the two of them sharing a friendly recognition out of place with their conspiracy; then they became solemn again as they remembered.

Devlin bulled his way to the house, his attitude unchallenged as Italian princes shared blows with Dutch earls, and duchesses screeched and pulled at one another’s earrings. Law’s coachman lounged in the doorway, a blunderbuss nestling in his arms. His presence was enough to keep most of the crowd from Law’s office but he jerked up straight as the sailor arrowed towards him.

He half-cocked the weapon with his palm and let the massive barrel-mouth casually stare out from over his crooked arm. The sailor came on, never even glanced at the weapon and tapped his forehead. ‘John Law expects me.’

The bold English, the use of the Scottish name over the more familiar Monsieur Lass stuck a needle into the sentry. Without looking behind, his eye still on the crowd, he reached back and opened the door, letting the sailor slip past and close it himself.

Law was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. His arms welcoming him like family. Devlin declined the embrace.

‘I take it all is to the good, John?’ he walked ahead and into Law’s chambers. Law trotted faithfully behind, sealing them from the world with the closing of his door.

‘All goes well enough, Captain.’ He went to his window and closed off the roar and bustle below. ‘That’s better.’

‘Is it like that often?’ Devlin indicated to the window. ‘Those lunatics?’

‘Regretfully,’ Law said and scurried around to his desk. ‘I feel they believe the fury of it means their dealings must be the saving grace of France. For surely only the most important things are violent.’ He sat. ‘I believe at the height of the madness in London some rogue made a fortune selling shares in a company that no-one was permitted to know what it did. Now, to our business.
Our
speculation.’

Devlin struck out his hand, his other curled into a white fist.

‘Just give me the bloody thing if you have it! I’ve wasted enough time dancing to gentlemen’s tunes! No flourish, no speeches! Just put it up and I’ll be gone!’

‘Captain!’ Law squared his shoulders. ‘I do not deserve such an outburst! Last night I committed a crime against my country! I took abjuration against my homeland for this regency. This is not something I take lightly! After my part, after what I have done last night, I think some measure of respect would—’

His words were cut short by Devlin’s kick to his desk, pushing his chair to the wall. Law grabbed at his flying papers and inkwells.

‘What
you
have done! You’ve picked a pocket! I’m weighing my men for a noose!’ He kicked the wood again, less in anger, more just the frustration clamouring to be uncaged.

He liked Law, there was nothing of politics or scorn about him, but on the Monday past the pirate had been in Newgate. He could still smell it on his skin over the stench of fish and smoked wool.

Law slept in palaces, owned country estates and townhouses for the different aspects of the seasons; he belonged to a class that had dozens of pairs of shoes yet never trod the streets, had matching hats and coats but never knew rain or cold. All wolves at lambing time. Devlin still liked him, yet the fool needed to understand. When you steal something you run, run fast and far. Now was not the time to chink glasses and admire; that attitude to their failing business schemes over the summer had brought them to this act and, over all of them, over all their power and position, Devlin would be in charge of his own fate.

More gently he reached out his hand. ‘Just give me the damned thing.’

Law pulled open a drawer. He dropped the diamond into the pirate’s palm as if it were a coin begged.

Without a look Devlin buried the weight into a pocket, the blood of it passed, and he turned on his heels. He stopped by the door.

‘You know the next hours of your life will depend on me getting this back to Walpole. If I fail there will be no urgency to grant you clemency in England. No escape when it all falls around you. Do you trust them?’

Law played at his necktie. ‘I have always been running, Captain. The fate of the South Sea Company hangs – if you forgive the term – on you getting that stone back to London. It will be September in two days. On the eighth the company must declare its assets. Your country has put its faith in its banks and companies. Your country no longer wishes to make and produce when they can get rich on mystery and chance. If you can save the fortune of the largest company in England you will save the others.’

Devlin tipped him the grin that had been missing for almost a week now.