The Black Joke

by David Bramhall

  Chapter 13

  They go to and fro in the evening: they grin like a dog, and run about the city. Behold, they belch out with their mouth (Psalm 59)

  The following day after school Pert and the White brothers took Fenestra home and then ran down to the quay to look at the pirate ship.

  “There was a fight last night, in the Ring o' Bells, between some of the fishers and some of the pirates!” said Seth. “Only their captain showed up and put a stop to it.”

  “What was it about?” asked Pert.

  “Nothing, really. Just the fishers don't like the way they're hanging about and taking all the best seats, and that.”

  “And have you seen Spotty Bunt and his mates?” put in Solomon, “parading round the town with scarves round their heads and big knives in their belts, trying to look like pirates themselves? Real

  silly, they look!”

  As it happened they were just passing the Drop o' Dew, and there on a bench outside, sitting in the sun and stretching out their big seaboots, were the same three pirates Pert had met before. As he approached the one with the scar got up to meet him.

  “Well, Master Potts as wants to know so much, where be you off to this sunny afternoon? 'Ave you come to see us poor seamen restin' from our labours?” he said, and put his arm round Pert's shoulders. “'Ave you brought your little friends to see our pretty ship, per'aps? You should 'a brought that pretty sister o' yourn, too!” The other two waved at Pert, and raised their glasses.

  "Sit down, why don't you, an' tell us about yer dear departed daddy,” urged the man, steering Pert towards the inn. His arm was heavy, and Pert ducked under it and pulled away.

  “Thank you,” he said politely, “but I don't think I'm old enough, if it's all the same to you. We've just come to look. My friends haven't seen the ship close up.”

  “Well, feel free, young master, feel free!” the man waved airily. “But you watch out fer the Capting. He's got 'is spit ready!” The man walked back to join his friends. He said something to them in a low voice as he sat down, and they laughed. Pert ran to catch up Solomon and Seth. Seth looked at him with awe.

  “I didn't know you were friends with the pirates,” he said.

  “I'm not really,” replied Pert. “I just talked to them once. They seem to know a lot about my family.”

  “Everyone knows a lot about your family,” said Seth.

  They made their way along the breakwater until they reached the side of the ship, and Pert explained what all the sails and spars were. He pointed out the captain's cabin with its great windows across the stern, and the name “Black Joke” in gold lettering beneath.

  He was about to show them the hunched shape under the tarpaulin which he thought might be a gun, when a dark figure loomed in front of them on the breakwater, blocking their path. Pert recognised Captain Teague. He looked smaller in daylight, but still threatening. His face was pale and lined, and his hat threw his eyes in shadow.

  “So, Pertinacious Potts, I believe?” the Captain said politely. Pert felt strange. It was odd how everyone seemed to know who he was.

  “Please, yes. I'm showing my friends your ship.”

  “Quite right too. A boy should be interested in ships. He should be interested in travel, and adventures, and stories of treasure, and triumphant returns and all that sort of thing, should he not? That's what boys are for, is it not?”

  “Er, yes, I suppose so. Are you having a triumphant return, sir? Is that why you've come back?” Pert felt very daring, and took comfort from the two companions at his back who stood staring in awe at this terrible man.

  Teague looked at Pert for a long time. “So you know who I am? That's remarkably perspicacious of you. And no, I am not yet enjoying a triumphant return. A return, certainly, but the triumph will come later, when I have recovered that which is mine.”

  He turned, and motioned the boys to walk with him. “You might be able to help me with that,” he said conversationally. “What can you tell me about your father, honest man that he was?”

  “Not much, sir,” said Pert. “Only what my mother told me. One day he was there, the next day he was gone. That was all she said.”

  “Is that all? That's all, is it? I wonder, dear boy, if I should not pay a visit to your mother one of these afternoons. To pay my respects, as it were, and offer my condolences for her loss. I understand it's not just her husband that she lost?”

  “No sir. My sister went off too.”

  “That would be your older sister? Not the little one with the over-active imagination?”

  “No, my older sister Vernilia. She went away with a seafaring man.”

  “As many do, sad to say. It must have been a sad trial for your poor mother. I shall definitely call. But what of you, young Master Potts?” He put a hand on Pert's shoulder and steered him towards the side of the ship and away from his friends. “What of you? What do you like to get up to, at night, perhaps, when the streets are silent and the naughty men creep in the shadows?” He leaned down and looked in Pert's eyes. His own were black and deep and without feeling.

  “Why, nothing,” Pert faltered, “I don't ... I have to stay at home and look after my sister ...”

  “And you don't go skulking, at all? Skulking down alleys and outside windows, skulking and listening and poking in business that isn't yours?”

  “Sir, no sir.”

  The Captain straightened up. “Yes, I'm sure you don't, nor ever would,” he said. “Skulking's a risky business, and not for upright young men with sisters to protect.”

  He turned to Seth and Solomon. “So, young masters, would you like to come aboard my vessel?”

  They nodded in unison. Pert could see the thoughts flooding through their heads. To board a pirate ship and talk with a pirate captain ... this was the stuff of dreams. What price Mr.Merridew now? The captain led them up the gang plank and showed them the decks and the masts and the spars.

  “What's that?” asked Pert, greatly daring. “What's that under the tarpaulin? Is it a gun?”

  “Ah, I can see I shall have to get up early in the morning to put one over on you!” said the Captain. “Poor sailors need to protect themselves, now, or don't they? Eh? They must protect themselves when wicked privateers roam the sea and harass honest mariners, or mustn't they?”

  He strode to the mound and whipped the tarpaulin off with a flourish. There sat a heavy cannon, black and pitted, mounted on a swivel so that it could be turned and point in any direction. It looked squat and menacing.

  “Wow!” said Solomon. “Do you ever use it?”

  “Use it, young master? We practise with it once in a while, when we're far out at sea, so we know what to do when the time comes. So yes, we use it.”

  “Wow!” Solomon said again. “Where are the bullets?”

  “Balls, young master. This is a cannon, and it shoots cannon balls. They're by your feet.”

  They looked down. In a triangular wooden frame rested seven round cannon balls made of rusty iron. The Captain seized the end of the gun and pulled it round till it pointed at the town.

  “You see the Harbourmaster's office, there, at the end of the quay?” he said. “I could put a ball right through that window and land it right on the Harbourmaster's desk, if I chose. Or ... where's your house, Master Potts? Up there on the hill, is it not? To the left of the tall chimney and beyond the church tower? I wonder if I could reach that far? Perhaps not ...”

  Pert felt a chill. That had sounded almost like a threat, however innocently phrased. The Captain began to cover the gun up again, and got Seth and Solomon to help him. Then while the boys ran up to the focs'le and looked at the bowsprit and down at the great anchor slung below the bow, he took Pert and leaned with him over the ship's rail.

  “You must come and visit us whenever you like, young Master Potts,” he said conspiratorily. “There's no love lost between the townsfolk and my crew. Splendid fellows though they are in every way, some of my men don't have the knack of m
aking themselves popular. Rough diamonds, they are, in a manner of speaking, and they do rub gentle people against the grain, as it were. You can put in a good word here and there. Diplomacy, cooperation, that's the ticket!

  He leaned closer. “And speaking of cooperation, I should very much like to see your father again. I remember him well. A fine, upstanding man and honest as the day. I should like to speak with him and remember old times ...”

  You can't be serious, Pert thought. My father was only a little boy when you left the town. You couldn't have known him.

  “Sir, we don't know where he is,” he said aloud. “He disappeared when I was three years old, and no one's heard of him since.”

  “Well, if you hear anything, let me know. Perhaps I'll call on your lovely mother one afternoon, and meet the rest of your family. It would be an honour and a privilege. And if you do ever hear anything about your dad ...” he took Pert's hand and pressed something into his palm, “... you won't find me ungrateful. Now, I think your little friends have finished their tour of inspection, so I'll bid you farewell!”

  The Captain strode off to the stern, and Pert followed Seth and Solomon down the gang plank. At the root of the breakwater they stopped, and Pert looked in his hand. The boys crowded round to see.

  “Gosh!” said Seth. “Is that gold?”

  It was a small coin only the size of a farthing but heavy for its size, with faint embossings on the face of it and little ridges round the edge. It glistened when he turned it to catch the sun. He rubbed it with his thumbnail to take some of the dirt off. It was indeed gold. He looked around and slipped it into his pocket. He felt guilty, somehow. And he knew Seth and Solomon. They were good lads and pleasant company, but it was not in their nature to be discreet. He knew that by the morning everyone they knew would have heard that Pertinacious Potts was in the pay of the pirates.

  They walked back past the Drop o' Dew and the three pirates were still in the same place. One of them appeared to be the worse for drink. As Pert approached he called out “Where's yer daddy, then?” and laughed uproariously.

  The spokesman got up and stood in their path. “Don' mind my friend,” he said. “So, you see the Capting?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Pert. “He showed us round the ship and showed us the cannon.”

  “Oh, did he now? So yer getting' friendly like, with the Capting? No 'arm in that, no 'arm at all.”

  He sat down again. “Walter Sabbage is my name, young master,” the man said, and held out his hand. Pert shook it.

  “Sabbage by name and Sabbage by nature,” said the man next to him. The third man looked bleerily into his empty glass and seemed to be swaying over the table. “Cabbage!” he muttered, “Cabbage by nature!” and he giggled to himself.

  It seemed only a casual flick, but Walter Sabbage's hand flashed in the drunk man's face and knocked his head sideways, leaving a streak of blood at the corner of his mouth.

  “Why, you ...” he growled, and made to get up, but seeing Sabbage's hand hovering over the handle of the knife at his belt, he shrugged and fell back in his seat, mumbling to himself. Sabbage poured him another measure of rum from the jug.

  “There, yer useless drunken sot, get that down you an' stop tryin' to be witty, 'cause you ain't got it in yer!” he said. “Afore you go, young sir, you'll allow me to introduce my friends, formal like. On my left, Matthew Shattock, and on my right is Squance, what believes 'e's a wit, which 'e ain't. 'E don't 'ave no Christian name, on account of 'e ain't no Christian. Also it's yer parents wot gives yer a Christian name, an' 'e never 'ad no parents, did yer, Squancy?”

  Squance spat on the cobbles. “Oh very funny, Wally Sabbage, your playful sense o' humour enlivens my days, I don' fink!”

  Pert said “Surely everyone has parents, don't they? I mean, you can't be born without parents?”

  “Not Squancy. 'E was found as a baby in a lobster pot in Bideford 'arbour, weren't you, Squancy?” Sabbage leaned closer, and whispered loudly “'E also 'as very unpleasant personal 'abits, wot we don't like to mention, young sir.”

  Squance stuck his finger in one ear, wiggled it about and inspected the result. “Well, they're my 'abits, an' I likes 'em well enough,” he muttered.

  The boys took their leave. At the corner of the street where it turned away from the quay and went up towards the Market Square slouched Will Durridge, George and Spotty Bunt, and the fourth man Pert didn't know. They looked truculently at the boys who walked in the gutter to avoid them. Will and Spotty wore tattered old scarves round their heads, and George had an ancient three-cornered hat he had found somewhere. It was dented and crushed, but he had added a bright feather of an unlikely colour no bird ever wore. The fourth man had no hat, but sported sloppy seaboots. All had thick leather belts with knives thrust in them. They looked more like pirates than the real pirates did, but not so dangerous. They were too fat for that, and not drunk enough.

  One of the men said something to the others, and they all turned and watched Pert as he went by.

  At the Market Square Seth and Solomon said they'd see him in school the next day, and ran home for their suppers. Pert lingered in the market for a while, kicking at the rubbish on the cobbles and looking at the wares on sale. He wondered how much his gold piece would buy. He didn't think he dared show it to any of the stall holders, though, except perhaps Mrs.Toogood and she wouldn't have enough change. He patted his pocket to make sure it was still there. He would keep it in his chest until he knew what to do with it.

  He felt a small hand curl into his, and looked down. It was the tiniest of the Prettyfeet, looking up at him with a big smile. She tugged at his hand and he bent down to see what she wanted.

  “I know you,” she whispered. “You're the one my sister likes!” and she turned and trotted away, slipping between the legs of the shoppers, and was lost to view.

  Pert walked home in a turmoil. Pirates, Church Councils, gold pieces, cannon, crypts and now this. His life was a mess, and getting more and more unlikely. Which sister had the little tot been talking about? She had four sisters, some not much bigger than she was. Come on, Pert, he told himself sternly, you're being soppy. You can't take seriously anything a five-year-old tells you.