Read Online Cross of Fire by Mark Keating - Free Book Online

the pirate’s, joined together.
    Coxon’s dream body, a younger, slimmer body, went for his sword, to cut away the paper, to wade through the sea to the laughing pirate sitting far away on an island of gold. But the sword had rusted in its scabbard, his body naked, and the sand sucked him down.
    He struggled to lift his legs free from the silt but only sank deeper. He tried to pull up with his arms against waves thick as mud.
    The tide at his chest now, salt water splashing in his mouth and gold dust dribbling out as he tried to yell the name. The sinking sand around his thighs and then the water over his head in one huge wave, the laughter deafening and then Coxon rolled up awake, sweating and blinking at the cobalt blue of the coming dawn and the unfamiliar shapes of the room shifting back to lucid, friendly forms and hearing the last laughs of the patrons of the inn finally bidding a raucous good-night.
    He wiped a hand down his cold face and took in the room, his chest heaving. He saw the room was empty, the key in the lock, the bed away from the window and clear from clawing hands coming through the glass, he drew back down into the warm blankets, assured that doubt was his only fear. The night, it was only the night after all. Only children fear it.
     
    Confidence comes with daylight, bright June daylight, like the first Day, and suddenly Englishmen forget that they ever had a winter and months of damp clothes and cloying sea-coal fires.
    Joy and a conquering spirit comes with bacon, poached eggs and a mug of hot brandy and milk hippocras, the Ship Inn’s kitchen not stretching to tea or coffee.
    He made his way to Portsmouth harbour, a fair stroll from the Point but a soul-enriching walk for a seaman, poet, or painter as dozens of ships stretched along the walls and even more sat out in the harbour mouth. The giants lay there, the ninety-fours sitting and waiting. Waiting to lumber out again when the Spanish or perennial French thought their cards stacked well enough and Englishmen would yawn and roll up their sleeves and get on with it as always.
    But along the harbour jostled the smaller ships, latent promise in their furled sails, the oak straining at the bit as men tended to the seams and yards with mallet and caulk, slapping tar like whitewash, and over it all a cacophony of whistles and curses in equal measure oft from the same mouth in a single breath.
    Blocks squealed like piglets from the derricks and shrouds and the smaller dories and barges milled around the mother ships like ducklings as goods passed from shoulder to rope, to ship’s hold or deck. Curses and thanks.
    This the best part of the venture, always. The shine of it. The coming home and the pulling out. The happy blushing wives and the shy children of men they had not seen for a year. Some toy made of wood or painted shell pushed into their chubby fingers. The weary returner looking for a still bed, and the laughing voyager about to leave, one month from knowing and wishing better.
    Coxon inhaled it all, the colour of the goods, the noise and the endless tramp of backs and urgent feet. This he had missed. If he could draw it he would, if he could write it down that would be better. But to live it was the keepsake of envy.
    He touched his cockade in reply to a couple of boat-cloaks saluting him. No uniform to ascertain the navy man but he had wet and brushed the dust off his old silk cockade and attached it to his hat with a pin asked from the buxom landlady of the Ship Inn.
    The cockade was more green than black, aged, but perhaps that was to the good. It had aged with him, along with the pitted sword, its gold wire beginning to fray. He should have made to get it repaired. Never mind. A man on board surely had some skill that did not belong at sea. Over the years he had seen men with tremendous gentleness at quite the most delicate arts. They carved monkeys and seal pups, cut silhouettes, collected images of birds and treasured them like