Free Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel by Mark Keating Page A

purse.
    He smiled, softer than his normal rakish grin that preceded someone’s death. A prince has called for my assistance, he thought. Little Patrick Devlin from Kilkenny who never knew his mother or a full belly and whose father sold him for four guineas to be a butcher’s boy. Summoned by the Prince of Wales, by name.
    He looked around the walls glistening in the glow from the faint candle. These walls were fragile now. Transient. Aye. In an hour, maybe less, they would tremble. The candle winked out. He remembered how Blackbeard had cut a similar-sized candle in front of him when Devlin had stared him down. Blackbeard promised to light it when by his own hand he had snuffed out his life, to mark the end of Devlin’s days. Devlin smiled in the dark. He had at least outlived that one. The great and terrible Teach was gone as well, the world getting thinner all the time.
    The lock sounded again. The door swung, the light stretched to Devlin’s boots, and Wild and George bent under the lintel. He knew the rough, wide face of Wild at once and then recognised the other also. The other had been shitting himself when Devlin had last seen him, but his face was different now. Devlin swallowed his instinct to strike. This might mean something.
    ‘Leave us, Thomas,’ Wild watched Devlin as he spoke. ‘Lock us in. I’ll call for you when I’m done.’
    Thomas handed George a lantern from the passage, gave a black-toothed sneer and closed the door.
    George put the lantern to the stone floor between them. Its light crept up their bodies and under their chins, ghoulishly illuminating their faces and casting their shadows on the ceiling so it seemed that giants looked down on them.
    ‘Well, well,’ Wild clapped his cudgel to his palm. ‘Captain John Coxon ain’t it, George?’
    ‘Reckon it is, General Wild, sir. Aye, Cap’n John Coxon.’ George brought out a small turn-off Queen Anne pistol, a gun for shooting under tables or to surprise a man beside you in a carriage who had kissed your mistress. Up close, if you were a step away – in a cell, perhaps – it would be enough.
    ‘What do you want?’ Devlin asked. Nothing in his voice.
    Wild pointed his cudgel at the man. ‘I want you to tell me your name. I want you to tell it and think why I’m here before you say it.’ He rested the weapon on his shoulder and waited.
    Devlin was still. It had been hours now. His doubts were gone. They were coming and right soon.
    ‘It wouldn’t be best to be around me right now, lads.’ He touched his head. ‘I still owe you for this.’
    Wild took a step. ‘Your name. I asked it.’ Wild was used to men going back when he came on. This one stayed. No mind. He had all the power here. And he had been in Newgate before. He bent down quickly, blurred in the light, and whipped up Devlin’s chain and pulled it high. Devlin slipped to his back as Wild put it over his shoulder and held it there, got comfortable under it. Devlin writhed on the floor; he was nothing more than Wild’s hooked fish now. George was laughing and Wild grimaced, keeping the chain taut, as Devlin struggled, his fettered leg above him. Wild jerked his head and grunted at George and George went to work.
     
    Peter Sam strode down the centre of Old Bailey, keeping apart from Hugh and Dandon who stuck to the walls and alleys like rats since crossing the canal at Fleet bridge. He did not follow Dandon’s reasoning that the tunnel was their best action. To him, if you wanted anything, if you wanted a town even, you went up to the largest door and shot the man who opened it and it was yours.
    But Dandon had warned of watchmen and riots and guards so that, softly, softly, they would enter and softly, softly, they would leave. Peter Sam thought Dandon did not understand the world. His was linen and silk, Peter’s steel and lead, and Dandon would be grateful for that when the time came. He had walked through London for the first time in his life and seen ten swinging