Cross of Fire by Mark Keating Page B

culprit. Devlin’s grin piercing him was always the spur. He blurted an apology.
    ‘But I can say no more on that, gentlemen. Forgive me. But, yes, the part of me that knew him would be foolish to not admire.’
    Thomas Howard had been conspicuously quiet. He cut his meat silently and sipped his wine as Coxon had spoken. He had seen pirates fight. Seen the boarding axes fly with blood, seen the cannon fire two to their one, and the green veil of smoke that heralded their coming from their cauldrons on deck. He shared a glance with Coxon who now sank in his seat.
    Doctor Howe smirked.
    ‘ Admire, sir? You sound positively proud!’
    Coxon tapped his glass on the table.
    ‘And should I not? I taught him everything he knows. Shame and praise me.’
    Silence around the table and the sound of music, an agreeable Cheshire voice and a fiddle, from far below, gentle as whale song. Something about lasses and fairs as always. Coxon picked up the decanter with a chime, poured for Howe and himself then passed it on.
    ‘Shame and praise me. I am the fox and he is the crow.’ He raised his glass to the table. ‘And we are both equally hated.’
     
    Devlin entered the cabin and threw his coat onto a chair; the relief of his men’s acceptance was as heavy as the twill. Dandon watched him from the locker seat, an amber bottle between his legs. He watched him limp to the rope beckets that held back the wine from falling when the deck pitched. Neither of them had sought a light first. Just the liquid. Drinking in the dark and alone was what counted for privacy on a pirate.
    Dandon watched him pour a fist’s worth of wine. He knew Devlin had seen him. He would wait to be acknowledged and listened to the wine rush and bubble into the mug.
    For four years now Dandon had known Patrick Devlin. They had both been near thirty then – old for pirates at even that age. Devlin had once saved Dandon from a drunken Blackbeard’s rage on Providence island, where Dandon had fancied himself a barber-surgeon. In truth he had joined Devlin’s rag-tag crew for the drink and the joy of it and, besides, he had nothing better to do.
    It took little more than that to become an enemy of mankind.
    But Dandon, in yellow wide-brimmed hat and justacorps, asides from the scraping off of arms and thighs what did not belong and cauterising that which he could and offering laudanum when he could not, was not fully of the crew.
    He took no part in boardings and no share and only asked that someone bring him back any powders, draughts or chest of medicines that might aid them. He was Patrick Devlin’s friend, and counted himself rare to be it. Rare to be anything alive around Devlin for long.
    Devlin did not even know Dandon’s real name – one of the ways of the pirate. Sign the articles and be baptised anew. Your name belonged to the old. You were on the account now and born again. The purpose was two-fold: Protect your family and your old crimes, or the past that tied you to a king’s ship and the regular.
    Dandon’s name came from ‘Dandelion’, a mockery of his bright yellow coat and hat worn when he had first arrived on Providence and dreamt of operating a saltern and selling gout pills to fat rich men and romancing their soon-to-be widows. He had ended up a pox-doctor in Mrs Haggins’s brothel, and then Devlin had entered his world.
    He lived amongst murderers and thieves but being secure in himself he never carried pistol or sword. He had no need. The pirate Devlin was his friend. No-one could keep count how many times one had saved the other.
    ‘Are we well, Patrick?’ he enquired when the first sup had been sighed away.
    ‘Aye,’ Devlin said. ‘Well enough. We have a new game.’
    Dandon had not seen him since the hours when he had given the men their needed speech. That time was for the planning of a course, the listing of sailcloth and cordage, the counting of hogsheads and sacks and as ever the bottles of brandy, rum and wine to keep the