Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mr-11

by Laurie R. King

  Translation, then Kermit spoke up, followed by Pessoa: “He wants to know if he can fight Irving. I think the two boys both have eyes for one of the girls. That is my comment, not what the boy says.”

  “Tell him- Oh hell, this is going to make me crazy. Mr Pessoa, your English is really quite good. Do you think you might just try to keep up a running translation rather than pausing to say ‘He says’ and ‘He wants to know’?”

  “I will try,” Pessoa said, and after that he did. At first he was slow and scrupulous, but within the hour he was caught up in the rhythm of it and even took to duplicating the inflections of the speaker.

  It made things much easier.

  The first scene took place in the pirate stronghold. Fflytte had marked the script with “pirates clown about,” which suited Hale as a starting place, since clowning was a good way both to break the ice and see what his amateur actors could do in the way of physical emoting.

  “Now,” he told them, “I want you to remember that your audience won’t be able to hear your words. You have to tell them everything by your gestures, the expressions on your face, how you stand and move. Imagine that your audience on this stage is made up of deaf people. You-”

  “Do you want us to shout louder?” Lawrence, the smallest and youngest, asked.

  “No, they don’t hear at all. Surely you’ve all seen a moving picture?” All the heads nodded. “The only thing you hear is the music, isn’t it? Now, imagine that the cinema is filled with all those pretty girls, the sisters. They won’t be able to hear your words, will they? You have to impress them by how you act. You have to tell them your story without using words.”

  The heads nodded again. Encouraged, Hale went on.

  “Your first scene takes place in the pirate stronghold. You’re gathered there to celebrate the end of Frederic’s apprenticeship, since he has turned twenty-one.” The plot had been laboriously explained to them already, but reviews, Hale had found, were essential when amateurs were involved. “It’s a party, there’s drinking – although no, we’re not breaking out the rum today for the rehearsal-” (Hale was pleased when this brought groans and jokes from his pirates.) “-and there’s a lot of clowning around and … sorry, Mr Pessoa? Oh, clowning around is jokes, merry-making, games. It’s a celebration. So let’s pretend for a minute that you’re all at this party. I’ll play the part of Frederic, since he’s off with the sisters filming in Cintra. Raise your glasses – yes, just pretend – and … what would you do? Dancing? How about some dancing?”

  He began to clap loudly, and Adam followed by Francis gave themselves over to the spirit of it and jumped about. Some of the others joined in, singing and leaping, and then two of them started a wrestling match and in moments the birthday party had disintegrated into a free-for-all of arms and legs and happy shouts. Hale waded in to separate the nearest pair of combatants, and a fist came out of the melee, sending him reeling.

  For the second time, the pirate lieutenant’s voice sliced through the air, freezing a stageful of men in their places. Samuel moved fast, sending one lad flying and hauling another upright and off the boards in a single jerk.

  “Stop!” Hale managed to wheeze. Samuel paused, looking over his shoulder. Hale coughed and said, “I’m Frederic, remember?”

  The lieutenant studied him, then lowered the lad he had been holding – Earnest, looking very frightened indeed – gently to the floor. He brushed the boy off, bent to pick up a couple of hats and restore them to their respective heads, and stepped back to the side of the stage.

  So much for clowning. Still, it suggested some additions to the scene, and when Hale had his breath back, he began to run through them: Several of the lads could perform cart-wheels (Lawrence took care to button his pet white mouse into its pocket first); middle-aged Gerald had a quite impressive squatting dance move, almost like a Russian folk-dance; Irving had a face like rubber; Benjamin had a dark intensity that would play well next to fair-headed Frederic.

  And so it went.

  Still, before long they ran up against the limitations of using a stage to practice scenes that took place out of doors. And other than the initial party, that included all of the scenes. Time and again, Hale would have to exhort a man to imagine that there was a tree there, or water behind him, or a boulder behind which he could hide. Each time he did so, a string of questions came trailing across the stage: How big a tree? (It doesn’t matter.) What kind of water? (Salt, with small waves.) Why is there a solitary boulder there? (Because I put it there.)

  It did not take too many of these diversions before Hale felt like beating one of the less-imaginative pirates over the head with an invisible chair. He looked at his watch, and put out one hand, calling a halt and sending them all to lunch.

  “And I want you sober when you come back!” he shouted at their backs. He sighed, gingerly prodded his bruised stomach, and retrieved the jacket he had shed in the heat of frustration. Pessoa, halfway down the aisle, paused to look back at the stage.

  “Would it make a difference if you were to practice in the out of doors?” the translator asked with diffidence.

  “Not in the manicured little parks you have around here, they’d be no better than the stage.”

  “I was thinking, perhaps, the botanical gardens?”

  Hale considered the suggestion, and told himself that not all of the translator’s suggestions would be as fraught as the Harlequin. He finished straightening his neck-tie. “Show me?”

  The gardens, right adjacent to the theatre grounds, proved ideal. Particularly as it wasn’t actively raining when the men – more or less sober – came back from their luncheon. And Pessoa knew the man in charge, who let them in at a special rate for the group. There were trees and a little water and even a few diminutive boulders, and Samuel’s crew responded to the setting with the relief of men coming home after a confusing time abroad.

  Originally, Hale had intended to bring the police constables in for the scenes, but after seeing the enthusiasm with which the pirates had thrown themselves into the party melee, he was glad he had decided to wait a day. Or two.

  He explained that the scene he needed them to think about was when the police came-“The police are coming? Here?” “Only in the picture, Charles.”-when the pretend police came, because the pirates had taken the Major-General’s daughters captive-“I’ll take them captive, yes!” “I can have two?” “Harriet is mine!” “No, she is mine!” at which point Pessoa’s translation bogged down. Since there was little need for translation Hale merely raised his voice and went on. “-taken the girls captive, but freed them to return to their father. The Major-General then sends the police – yes, the pretend police – and that is when you fight them.”

  As he talked, he had taken off his jacket and worked his way into a special, heavily padded waistcoat he’d asked Sally to fashion after the knives came out on Saturday. She’d had to cannibalise other garments – none of the costume corsets had whalebone now – but it ended up a garment that might protect his more vital organs from any stray non-collapsing blades.

  “All right, first thing is to give your own knives to Samuel, here.” When none of them moved, Hale said, “You’ll get them back at the end of the day, and it saves you from worrying about pulling the wrong blade.” When still none of them moved, he added, “If I end up in hospital, it’s going to slow the production down considerably.”

  Samuel’s hand went out, and one by one, the pirates filed past and divested themselves of their arms. Fourteen men: Hale stopped counting at twenty-three weapons.

  He felt somewhat more confident when they began lining up to practise stabbing him.

  * * *

  That night, while Hale was attempting to dress for dinner, his cousin let himself in. Fflytte stopped dead.

  “Christ, Geoffrey, what happened to you?”

  “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  “Looks like the time just before the War when that bloody mare tossed you into the stream. Wha
t was the creature’s name?”

  “Thumper.” Hale prodded a small patch of his torso that was not black or blue, and winced: even that hurt. “So long as you’re here, help me with the plasters? I don’t want to bleed all over another shirt.”

  Fflytte took the packet of plasters and began to cover the open wounds Hale had trouble reaching – all minor, although an alarming number of them. As he worked, he asked, “Have you decided how we should pair up the constables?”

  Unlike the girls and the pirates, who would be matched up by their respective heights, the smaller number of constables required a more deliberate pairing to get the full effect of the fight scenes. And where the girls were for beauty and the pirates for masculinity, the constables (with their tall, thin Sergeant) had been chosen for humour. Short, bald-headed “Clarence” in his brass-buttoned uniform would be perfect battling Samuel, as sixty-year-old Frank with his protruding ears and missing teeth was going to look absurd facing handsome young Benjamin. Trying to ignore his cousin’s none-too-gentle ministrations, Hale ran over his pairings. “-and the Sergeant with Lawrence, who comes up to his belt-buckle. The only one I’m none too sure about – ow, watch it! – is Bert.”

  “Which one’s Bert?”

  “The dark Cockney.”

  “The pretty one. Yes, I meant to ask about that: I thought we were going for odd with the constables?”

  “I wouldn’t say he’s pretty. Not exactly. Though I’ll admit, he’s prettier than I remembered.”

  Fflytte made no comment, which was comment enough. Hale opened his mouth to defend himself against the unspoken charge of a personal interest, but decided there wasn’t much he could say. He didn’t recall hiring an actor with good looks – indeed, if anything, he vaguely remembered a runt with a twisted nose. But he had been rushed at the time, and then the problem with Lonnie came up, and in any event, here was Bert, with nothing particularly odd about him. And if he wasn’t pretty, exactly, his looks were interesting enough that his attentions to Annie were reassuring.

  Hale was abruptly called back to himself by a prod in a tender zone. “Was there something you wanted, Randolph?”

  “Oh yes – it’s about the ship.”

  Hale stood, watching in the big cheval glass as Fflytte slapped on plasters while waxing lyrical about Harlequin. However, he’d known two things the moment his cousin came in the door. First, that whatever the director had in mind, Hale wasn’t going to like it (and Fflytte knew that Hale wasn’t going to like it). And second, Randolph had already made up his mind.

  Eventually, Fflytte ran out of wounds and Hale retrieved the sticking plasters before he ended up bound head to toe. “Let me look at the papers before you sign anything,” he said sternly.

  With a look of pleased surprise, that the job of convincing Hale had not been harder, Fflytte dropped a distressingly thin envelope onto the table.

  Hale stifled a sigh. “I’ll read it, and be down for dinner shortly.”

  Fflytte bounced out. Hale finished his drink, painfully threaded his arms into a formal shirt, and picked up the day’s suit-jacket, intending to hang it in the wardrobe. However, when he held it to the light, the lovely wool had a lace-like quality that would have given its tailor the vapours. He quietly dropped it into the dust-bin, and poured himself another drink.

  Tuesday they spent at the Botanical Gardens, learning how to stab, pummel, bash, and impale a man for the camera.

  On Wednesday, cursing as he extricated himself from his bed, Hale decided that his pirates could now be trusted to avoid committing manslaughter. That morning, he brought in his six police constables and their sergeant, a Paris-born, Irish-accented Englishman named Vincent Paul. The previous day’s ease went instantly stiff-legged, with both sides bristling at each other far too convincingly. After separating one pair – Edward-the-Constable and Earnest-the-Pirate – for the third time, Hale ran his hand through his hair and contemplated cancelling the entire project: Fflytte Films really did not need a homicide on its hands. That headline might not be so easy to shake.

  “They need to eat together.”

  Hale was startled, not having noticed the cat-like Samuel at his side. “Oh, a great idea – let them sink the cutlery into each other’s throats.”

  “They are boys. Boys wrestle, then become friends.”

  “They’re grown men.”

  “Not in their hearts.”

  “You can’t guarantee me that your … boys wouldn’t lose control.”

  “I can.”

  Hale looked at the big man, and after a moment admitted, “You probably could. Well, if you want to try, I’ll have a talk with my men. Maybe I can convince them that if they get into a serious fight, they’ll never work for Fflytte Films again.”

  So they broke for lunch and trooped in two separate groups to a nearby restaurant. The men sat at opposite sides. Once they were seated, Samuel went around and lifted every other man up by his collar, pirates and constables alike, rearranging them until the tables were mixed. While the diners glared at each other with hackles raised, he went to the back of the restaurant, and returned with a waiter carrying a large tray covered with bottles of beer.

  “Hey,” protested Hale, but Samuel just held up a hand and went through the tables, placing a bottle before each man.

  One bottle, each.

  They ate, in silence. The cutlery remained in the vicinity of the plates.

  When they left, they resumed their separate groups. Hale, following behind, could not decide if the additional degree of relaxation was a good thing.

  Apparently, neither could Samuel, because when they got back to the grove where they had been practising, he lined up the men and walked along, hand held out to every third or fourth one – and not just the pirates. The first few turned innocent faces on him, but when his great forefinger pointed to a pocket, an ankle, or in one case the back of a collar, the man would sheepishly retrieve the weapon he had kept back and hand it over.

  Nine more knives.

  Then he turned them loose.

  Ten minutes later, Hale was sure it was a severe miscalculation. Five minutes after that, his heart climbed into his throat, and he pulled two flailing men off of each other. Three minutes more, and a dogfight erupted. A tangle of enraged males threw themselves body and soul into the struggle, roaring and cursing in many languages – only to break apart when tall, handsome Adam, contorted into such a furious knot with the gargoyle-faced Donald that it was impossible to tell which leg was linked to which arm, gave a shout of laughter. In seconds, a dozen separate struggles-to-the-death broke apart, leaving the men filthy and dotted with scrapes, bruises, and future black eyes, but also leaning back on their hands, laughing until the tears came.

  Samuel looked sideways at Hale. “Boys.”

  Not one of them needed to be carted off to the morgue, or even the hospital. And after that, they were indeed like lads who had tried each other’s muscles and found friendship.

  On Thursday, with Will stuck in Cintra because of a flower-loving goat, Fflytte tore himself away from his ship long enough to help Hale and Artie film the pirate-constable battle scenes. The pirates and the police had no need for Maude-the-Make-up, although their groans may have been due more to the drinking they’d done together during the night than from the previous day’s brawl. Fflytte sat in his folding chair. Artie, bursting with pride, turned his hat-brim back and cranked the second-best camera. Hale did everything else: checking the costumes and adjusting the reflectors and reminding the director of what the men had rehearsed.

  The practised motions of the fighters intertwined perfectly. La Rocha and Samuel stood and scowled and gestured photogenically. Pessoa translated excitedly. And at the end of the day, no actual blood had been spilt – or, so little it hardly mattered.

  Once the scenes were finished, Fflytte and La Rocha hurried away to check on the day’s progress down at the docks, leaving behind a sense of anticlimax after this, the first day of actual filming. Hal
e watched the mismatched pair scurry off, and muttered to Pessoa, “Fflytte’s Folly.”

  “Sorry?” the poet asked.

  “Oh, nothing. Just, the ship.”

  “I begin to regret my part, in introducing Mr Fflytte to the vessel.”

  Little late for that, Hale thought. “Call the men together, would you?”

  He watched Pessoa move over to the tired actors. Over the past week, the translator had become his shadow. Standing at his side and effortlessly mouthing his words in Portuguese, then the pirates’ responses in English, Pessoa was gratifyingly invisible. Despite his earlier irritation, Hale was sorry the fellow had chosen not to come to Morocco with them.

  When the men were gathered around, Hale climbed onto a stump and gave them the most paternal smile he could muster.

  “I have to say, what you’ve done is remarkable. You men work together marvellously. If you can do half as well before the cameras in Morocco as you’ve done here, you’ll all be film stars, and Hollywood will be fighting over you.”

  As always, the response came in two pulses – one among those who understood his English, the other a beat later when Pessoa had finished. Hale started to say that their week’s pay would be distributed early, in the event they wanted to spend some of it here before they left, but broke off to let Pessoa finish his translation of a remark from young Jack.

  “-doesn’t matter if we’re not going to be actually ma-”

  Out of nowhere, Samuel’s fist smashed Jack to the ground. Pessoa stuttered to a halt; Artie gave a girlish squeal; Adam took one angry step forward and then stopped; all the other men, pirates and police alike, reared back, looking as stunned as the lad in the dirt.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” Hale demanded.

  Samuel watched the boy climb to his feet, rubbing the back of his head and shooting Adam a quick glance before turning his gaze to the ground. “Do not interrupt Mr Hale,” the big man growled.

  “Jesus Christ, you didn’t have to hit the boy,” Hale protested.

  Samuel’s gaze drilled into Jack until the lad’s eyes came up. The two looked at each other for a long minute, and when Jack dropped his eyes again, Hale was left with the impression that a whole lot had been said, of which he’d understood not a word.