Free Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel by Mark Keating

his arm. ‘Good to see you again, Thomas,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if you could afford me some time with that prisoner I brung in this morning. That John Coxon.’
    Langley locked back the door. ‘He’s a popular fellow that one. You be the second to see him tonight.’
    ‘The second? Who else?’
    Langley saw no harm in telling. Wild after all was a court’s man. ‘A secretary from Leicester House so he says. And a dirty fellow in yellow with him.’ He walked past, carrying his keys, towards the hold.
    Wild and George followed, Wild’s face screwed up in thought at the revelation of a man from the Prince of Wales come to see a prisoner of Newgate. There was coin here somewhere.
    Langley spoke on. ‘What is your business with him, General? It’s late now. I could be hung for this.’
    ‘He killed one of mine did he not? Left a widow and four children.’ A lie. ‘I believe our Arthur deserves some instant justice. His wife has beseeched me so.’
    Langley stopped. ‘I can’t have any killing or word against me.’
    Wild patted Langley’s shoulder. ‘No, no. Just want to know if he has anything more to confess, that’s all. That might take a bruise or two, Thomas. You wouldn’t begrudge a widow that.’
    Langley nodded. Right was right. ‘He’s still in the hold. Everywhere else is locked up at nine. Come.’
     
    Devlin still sat in the dark. He hadn’t bothered to pick up the flint striker bestowed upon him by Thomas Langley to light his lump of candle. It was after eleven now, as rang out by the Charley in the street outside, and despite the imminent arrival of his men there was a gloom within him that the atmosphere of the Lodge made even more seductive to indulge in. He sat against the cold wall, listening to the unsettling mixture of laughter and sobs coming from above and, peculiarly, from below. Perhaps it was just a symptomatic echo from the old stone all about. This was not a quiet place for introspection yet his disposition could not help itself.
    A prison, Devlin thought, was a far more lucrative investment than farm or house or hospital. The disadvantages of piracy loomed larger the more time he spent in the company of ordinary men. The prospects and profit of misery seemed to be its only coin.
    The gloom crept in again. The loneliest man is the prisoner; a man’s self-judgement in the damp darkness is far worse than anything others can tax him with.
    He was a pirate. To his recollection he had killed fewer than ten men. Although he reasoned it was in defence of his own life, he had no desire to form their faces in front of him.
    Half his life ago he held no violence against any man. Butcher’s boy, poacher, servant, fisherman, sailor. Now a pirate. Now murderer and thief.
    But perhaps it had been there all along. Waiting. Waiting for the trigger to release the lock. The primer already in the pan. Only a small spark needed.
    Maybe this was it now. The end. No pirates would come. They had chosen another captain and sailed on. None of them had wanted to answer the call, the promise of pardon, the legitimacy of a Mart to make them privateers. He was where he belonged. Where he would end. He had killed a man that very morning. Aye, Devlin was where he deserved to be. This is what happens to little boys whose mothers leave them. This is what they get.
    He sniffed the thoughts away. It is only the gaol, he agreed with himself. It is the dark and the sorrow of ten thousand souls engraved into the walls and the moans of the poor and guilty. I am only in here, he thought, and reached for the flint and striker. I am not of here.
    He lit the candle and sat back. The light settled like a spell over his mood. And what would I be if not pirate? Still Coxon’s servant? Breaking my back on a merchant ship – or worse, a slaver, and begging for scraps of food from what the slaves did not eat? Or back in some trade befitting my birth and tipping my hat to every silk and master wearing a father’s