Chapter Fifteen
He was a pirate, after all.
The traveling game of chance was purely a side business, but over the years, King Dagda’s main source of income was, in fact, that game of chance.
It was always done in secret and usually at a tavern in a larger town, and there was a network of them all throughout Cornwall, Somerset, and Dorset.
He mostly stayed to the southwest area of England because he knew every inch of the coastline, every cove, and every cliff.
He knew where he could hide and he knew where he could run.
The problem was that there were many pirates in the western portion of England, Wales, and Scotland.
It tended to make for crowded seas at times.
Given that he was from Scotland, the English and the Irish pirates had a particular hate for him, so it was challenging to do business in the southwest of England at all.
When it came to the western coast of Cornwall, he had to pay tribute to a band of nasty pirates who controlled that area known as Triton’s Hellions.
They took his money and looked the other way when he docked his ships along that stretch of coastline.
Some of the pirates from Triton’s Hellions even joined in his game of chance if they had the inclination to.
King Dagda welcomed them all because he didn’t discriminate when it came to money.
As long as it was valid and he could hoard it or spend it, he was a happy man.
The journey to his ships at Saint Thomas Head had taken longer than he had anticipated.
Rain had moved in periodically, making the roads nearly impassable in some places, so he and his seven men had been forced to ride through muddy meadows, over farmers’ fields, and any other way they could to keep their forward momentum going.
He hadn’t even made it to the coast by the seventh day, as he had told Ciaran, so he hoped the man wouldn’t move too quickly in anticipation of The Guardians being removed from their post. Ciaran was the nervous sort, so King Dagda wouldn’t have been surprised if the man had simply gone on with his plan to enter Aphrodite’s Feast in spite of the fact that The Guardians were still there.
King Dagda was starting to think that this entire undertaking was foolish.
He and his men had stayed in a small village the night before his anticipated arrival to the cove at St. Thomas Head.
The town itself was seedy, populated by seamen looking for jobs, pirates, and other outlaws looking for victims. No decent person would visit the village that sometimes went by the name Yatton, or Yattey.
King Dagda and his men had two small chambers between them at the tavern that was missing half its roof.
Fortunately, they were in the roofed section.
But it was raining again, or at least misty, on that night as a weather system moved through.
King Dagda was in a chamber with his second-in-command, a man who called himself Neith, sharing a pitcher of cheap wine between them.
King Dagda’s real name was Finnegan MacGann, but no one would be fearful of anyone named Finnegan. Hence the name King Dagda.
He even made his mother call him that.
“Are we truly going to lay siege to a castle?” Neith asked, swirling his cup and watching the dregs settle by candlelight. “We’ve only got one war engine and I’m not sure it’ll be stable on deck. It hasn’t been in the past.”
King Dagda knew what he was talking about. “We have the cannon we took from the Portuguese,” he said. “We simply need to balance the wheels better. But we only have two cannonballs and I’m not entirely sure we would not kill ourselves trying to launch them.”
Neith grinned. “The last time we did it, it nearly blew half the crew over the side of the boat.”
King Dagda snorted. “True. I’m not sure how we can lay siege to a castle without a reliable cannon,” he said, his smile fading. “It is not as if we have a large army, and the outpost at Portbury has a few hundred men guarding it. In fact, I’ve been thinking.”
“What about?”
“About the fact that I’ve lost my patience with Ciaran le Daire.”
Neith nodded in agreement. “I was wondering how long it was going to take,” he said. “You must face facts—he’s been trying to put us off ever since we first went to his home to collect the debt. He’s put you off again and again and you’ve let him.”
King Dagda grunted. “I know it,” he said. “But this plan with his daughter and Aphrodite’s Feast… It will never work. The more I think on it, the more I realize that Ciaran simply said those things to delay the inevitable.”
“Then what will you do?”
King Dagda waggled his eyebrows in resignation.
“Go back to Ridlaw and take it from him,” he said.
“The man has the property, the only thing he has of value. We take it from him and throw him out to the mercy of the elements. He has no army to defend the manse, so I will take it in payment for the debt.”
Neith liked that idea. “You could sell it.”
“And I shall,” King Dagda said. “Mayhap. I might like a base here in England. We can make Ridlaw the permanent place for the game of chance.”
“A gambling hall!”
“Exactly.”
Neith clapped his hands together. “We will make more money than ever before if the game has a permanent residence,” he said. “Men will come from all over England.”
“And Wales.”
“And Wales!”
King Dagda chuckled at Neith’s enthusiasm. “Mayhap we can bring in some women to please our guests,” he said. “Ridlaw will be lawless with decadence.”
Neith poured them more wine. That was a plan he could get behind. Now they had a scheme to secure repayment for le Daire’s debt once and for all that didn’t involve Portbury Castle or Aphrodite’s Feast. King Dagda was, if nothing else, a realist.
He was going to get his money.
At least, he planned to, but fate had something else in mind for him.
Sometimes, the best laid plans of men were circumvented by things beyond their control.
In the case of King Dagda and his men, providence was about to intervene.
The next morning, as the mist hung low to the ground and the land was damp with moisture and salt, King Dagda’s group set out for the short ride to St. Thomas Head, where his two ships were moored.
They felt a great deal of comfort as the ships became clear in the mist, looking strong and fearsome.
Home, King Dagda thought. He was finally home. Nothing seemed amiss until he boarded.
Then chaos reigned.
During King Dagda’s absence, it seemed, a group of French pirates, who raided the coast of Cornwall and Devon from time to time, had attacked the two Scottish cogs.
Since there were twice as many of them as there were of the Scottish crew, they made short work of the lads from Glasgow.
When King Dagda returned, they made short work of him, too.
Over the side he went, into the churning water, with his throat cut as the French stole the ships and headed off into the fog.
And that was the end of Finnegan MacGann.
As simple as that, King Dagda the pirate was no more.