Greenbeard (9781935259220)

by Bentley, Richard James

  Blue Peter drank the last of his coffee and wiped his lips fastidiously with a linen napkin. “Mr Feet and myself shall keep the crew at their labours, methinks. The futtock-shrouds need serving and parcelling, the harpins are quite poorly catted and there are always cannon-balls that need to be chipped, alas.”

  When his lieutenants had gone about their tasks and Mumblin’ Jake had cleared the remains of their morning repast from the table Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges took out his writing-case from beneath the bunk. The teak writing-case opened along a brass piano-hinge to form a sloped lectern, its green leather surface lifting to reveal sheafs of paper and vellum. An inkwell, sealed with a brass lid, contained blue-black oxgall ink and a compartment held goose-quills. Captain Greybagges was very fond of the writing-case, which had previously belonged to some hoity-toity Austrian aristocrat (whom the Captain had so disliked that he’d been glad when the ransom was quickly paid, as he would have otherwise have killed the stuck-up sod and been out-of-pocket) and he admired it as he whittled a fresh goose-quill into a nib. For the most part of half a dog-watch he composed letters to his informants, the scritch-scratch of quill on parchment audible to his servant polishing the silverware and mumbling in the Captain’s pantry. There was an occasional crash, thud or shouted order from the deck above, but these were the normal sounds of a fighting ship and did not disturb his concentration in the least. He read the letters through again after he had sanded them and the ink was dry, nodded to himself and wrapped them carefully in vellum packets closed with great blobs of red sealing-wax squelched down with the black onyx stone of his ring. He took a small key on a fine gold chain from around his neck, opened a secret compartment in the writing desk and took out a small booklet. With scissors he cut squares from the booklet. Each paper square was printed with an image of a death’s-head blowing a post horn, the horn muted with a bung, and the inscriptions Ten Reales and Postage Paid. He glued the squares to the vellum packets with gum arabic. The Captain seemed a little furtive while he did this, glancing over his shoulder to ensure nobody was looking through the stern windows and keeping an eye on the door. Some of a pirate captain’s secrets are best kept even from his officers and crew, and the Tristero company’s clandestine postal service was surely one of them. He tucked the packets into an inside pocket of his coat and called for Mumblin’ Jake.

  CHAPTER THE SECOND,

  or the Captain’s Great Good Fortune.

  Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges ambled along the quay of Port de Recailles, flanked by two bully-boys armed with oaken cudgels who glared aggressively at anybody within range. The Captain was not unduly worried about being robbed, but the two ugly thugs enhanced his stature in the eyes of the townspeople. Being a pirate captain was about three-quarters public relations, he estimated. That show-off Eddie Teach and his ridiculous trick of tying sputtering fuses in his beard! The Captain shook his head in wonderment; he had once been obliged to hurl a bucket of water over the fellow, before Teach had learned to soak his beard in alum to fireproof it. There was no doubt that the trick had worked, however, and now treasure-laden prizes would heave-to the instant that Teach’s Jolly Roger rose above the horizon rather than risk his wrath by running or giving fight. What a saving in powder, shot and wear-and-tear on the ship and crew that would give. And now the fellow was calling himself Blackbeard! He was fond of Eddie Teach and enjoyed his subtle sense of humour – that night when Eddie had blown his first mate’s kneecap off with a blunderbuss concealed under the table! How they’d laughed! – but he wondered if he might not go too far one day. Teach did not have the benefit of a university education, ruminated the Captain, whereas he himself had taken the Cambridge course-option Ye Art Of Showinge A Fine And Charitable Face To Ye Worlde, One Hundredd And One and so knew the advantages of restraint in self-publicity; nobody would find Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges calling himself Yellow Whiskers!

  The Captain turned up a narrow alleyway and came to a small dingy shop so decrepit, its wooden beams so crooked and its stucco so cracked that it might have levered out of a previous and wider location with pry-bars and pounded into its present space with mauls. The Captain gestured to the bully-boys to stay by the door and entered. A bell jangled as he opened and closed the door. The interior of the shop was dark and crammed with junk. Broken furniture, cracked dishes in stacks, piles of malodorous old clothes, unrecognisable things in tangled heaps. A path between the rubbish led into the interior of the shop, where an ancient pantalooned man in a filthy peruke sat smoking a churchwarden clay pipe. He might have been a corpse except for the occasional wisp of smoke from the pipe.

  “Do you have a waste bin?” asked the Captain. The ancient indicated with a glance of his rheumy eyes to a dark corner. Behind a statue of a blackamoor there was a wooden box with a slot in its lid. It was marked with the symbol of the muted post-horn and the letters W.A.S.T.E in paint so faded that it was barely legible. Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges took the vellum packets from his pocket and slid them into the box. He hadn’t spotted the box at first because the blackamoor in front of it was a new addition to the shop’s contents. He examined it idly. A life-size statue of a Negro holding a tray on an outstretched hand; wealthy people kept them in the foyers of their mansions for visitors to leave their cards on, should the master be absent. With a start the Captain realised that it wasn’t a statue but a real black man, dead, but stuffed and mounted like a hunter’s trophy. He made an involuntary snort of disgust and the ancient man smiled a slow evil smile. Captain Greybagges made to leave. The ancient man reached into the breast of his greasy coat and handed Captain Greybagges a bundle of packets tied together with string. He put them in his pocket and threw the ancient a coin. After he had turned his back on the ancient man the Captain made the horns sign with his fingers to ward off evil.

  In the alleyway outside Captain Greybagges strode quickly away, taking deep breaths to clear the musty air of the shop from his lungs as though it were a poisonous miasma. Tristero’s secret mail was very useful, but its postmasters could be very creepy. The two bully-boys trotted after him.

  Captain Greybagges spent the remainder of the afternoon strolling from tavern to low dive to shebeen in Port de Recailles, meeting friends, acquaintances and informants and drinking coffee and the occasional glass of beer. No useful information had come to him, but he hadn’t entirely wasted his time. When he entered a drinking-house his bully-boys would hold back and follow him only after several seconds, and meanwhile he would surreptitiously watch the other drinkers. Although all his clothes were black and the dives were dimly-lit it was still apparent that he was a wealthy man, so he would watch for men who looked as though they were thinking of jumping him, but who appeared to lose interest when his bullyboys followed, and he would memorise their faces. A pirate captain was always on the lookout for crew, and a fellow who would think immediately of robbing him despite his muscular build was the kind of man he needed. Quick-thinking, not shy and definitely thievish. If they didn’t give up the idea when the bully-boys followed they were too stupid. If they didn’t think of robbing him at all they would never be pirates. Of course, there were some who would conceal their interest, hoping to follow him and ambush him outside later, but he didn’t want fellows who were too wily, either; they could be trouble. Several possible candidates had been noted by him, and he would recruit them as and when it was convenient. He would, of course, point out to them that they’d thought of mugging him, so giving the impression that he could read their thoughts, which would establish him as their superior in quickness of mind and thus their natural leader. A simple trick, but effective. Doctor Quaestifuncula, the Captain’s tutor at Cambridge for Law, had called such things nousology; the science of being clever.

  As Captain Greybagges ambled back along the quay to the Ark de Triomphe he remembered Doctor Quaestifuncula with affection. Law was, of course, absolutely the best training for a pirate, and the good Doctor had been a master of it. Few who had not been up to universi
ty were aware of the sheer viciousness of the infighting amongst academics. Those old fellows in their black gowns and tatty wigs would go at it hammer-and-tongs at High Table, yet to the casual observer they would appear the best of friends as they stuffed themselves with roast baron-of-beef and passed the port around. Battles of intelligence, memory and wit, and Doctor Quaestifuncula was the master. An old bent-backed beanpole with a long nose, thick spectacles and a kindly smile, yet he would have made a fine captain of pirates. He would still plead the occasional case, despite his age, and the Silks and Stuffs would quake as he shuffled into the court with his clerk stumbling along behind him carrying a vast stack of law-books and briefs tied with pink ribbon. The Captain remembered once climbing out of a racing-shell, he and his team glowing with exertion and eager to raise hell in the taverns of the town, when he had overheard Doctor Quaestifuncula as he passed by remark to a colleague “there’s the rowing-eights, getting out of their sculls again.” What a wit the man had! The Captain had been a rowing Blue, and he wondered if that hadn’t been his first step on the way to piracy. From little boats to bigger boats, maybe.

  Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges strode up the gangplank onto the deck of the Ark de Triomphe, his bully-boys huffing after him. He stopped and looked up into the rigging at the crew about their work and for an instant nearly said “Good work! Good work! Keep it up, lads!” but that would never do, so he roared “Ye scurvy knaves! I catches a man slacking and I’ll see the colour of his liver and lights! An’ yez may lay to that, wi’ a wannion!” and was gratified to see them all try to look busy. One day he would find out what a wannion was, he promised himself.

  The thoughts of rowing on the Cam had made him nostalgic, so he threw his coat and hat to Mumblin’ Jake and clambered down the ship’s side into the skiff. With powerful strokes he pulled the light craft across the harbour of Port de Recailles, around the end of the stone-built mole and across Rum Bay to Sruudta Point. There he hove-to, enjoying the sun on his bald head, the skiff bobbing in the slight swell. He reached under his yellow beard and removed his black silk cravat, unbuttoned his shirt and rolled up the sleeves. He folded the cravat carefully, for it was from Saville Row, London, and had cost as much as a case of decent claret. Nobody could see it under his beard, of course, but he knew it was there. He sniffed the air and looked at the little puffy clouds on the horizon. The dead calm would end soon, he was sure.

  He spun the skiff with a single pull of an oar and rowed back to the harbour, slower now, with easy strokes of the oars. He’d seen Calico Jack Rackham in Ye Petty Mountmartree Froggie Wyneshoppe And Grille earlier, and clanked tankards with him. He’d always been plain Jack Rackham before. Was every freebooter adopting a nom de guerre? Perhaps nom de pillage would be more accurate. Jack Rackham had got his nickname from the haberdashery stall he’d used to run in Petticoat Lane market, Captain Greybagges recalled, but he supposed that made it easier to remember, and not many would recall him from those days. It would be a shame if one forgot one’s pseudonym: “Har! Shit yer britches ye weevils, for I am … oh! A pox on’t! What was it now? … Ah! That be it! … For I be Cutthroat Cecil Cholmondleigh!” Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges shook his head and grinned. That ass Billy Bones had tried to call himself The Pirate With No Name, but, never the brightest of buccaneers, he had spoiled it by roaring “Hear my name and shiver, ye swabs! For I be Billy Bones, The Pirate With No Name!” just as he was boarding a prize. The defending crew had been sore a-feared, but when they heard that they’d all howled with laughter and Bones’s boarding-party had retreated in confusion, followed by jeers and hoots. The silly sod had been forced to skewer his quartermaster and two foremast jacks to restore discipline, and by then the prize had made sail and cleared off, of course.

  Mind you, thought the Captain, this fashion for bloodthirsty nicknames might not go away. If it did not he’d have a problem, for one could never buck a well-established trend. He couldn’t call himself Yellowbeard, for that would seem like he was aping Eddie Teach, and he was damned if he’d call himself Yellow Whiskers, as that just sounded silly. And yet his trademark was his long yellow beard, and all the more apparent in contrast to his all-black apparel. He would have to think about this some more, maybe.

  He tied up the skiff and clambered up the tumblehome onto the deck. While rowing back he’d noticed that the ebb and flood of the tide had left the harbour with clean clear blue water, and that the bottom was visible. He was also sweaty from rowing.

  “See yez any sharks?” he shouted to the look-out up in the cross-trees.

  “Nary a one, Cap’n!” The look-out waved his hand from side to side and shook his head to emphasise the absence of sharks. Pirates feared sharks, for they believed that sharks could be spookily possessed by the souls of those they had eaten. Given the number of people who had been fed to sharks by pirates there was a worrying possibility that a possessed shark might well recognise a jolly buccaneer as the one who had encouraged his human incarnation to step out along the plank by jabbing a rapier in his bottom, should they happen to meet whilst swimming in the sea. It was also said by some that sharks would never attack lawyers out of professional courtesy, but Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges had no notion to put that to a practical test. The harbour was clear, though, so the Captain stripped off, clambered onto the rail and dived into the blue water. He swam along the length of the frigate and back, the great tattoo on his back visible to the crew in the rigging; a depiction of Old Nick sitting upon his dark throne, shaded by his black bat’s wings, staring down upon the Earth with a look of resigned distaste on his long face. There was a boom as Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo bombed into the water beside him. “Ye swab!” roared the Captain and splashed him. There was a smaller plosh and Israel Feet slithered underneath them through the clear water trailing bubbles, as agile as an eel. The three freebooters larked about in the salty seawater until Captain Greybagges shouted “Race yez to the harbourmouth!” Although Captain Greybagges was a strong swimmer the small sinewy First Mate had an easy fast crawl and overtook him. They trod water until Blue Peter arrived, swimming a sedate breaststroke. “Arr! Blue Peter shall buy the drinks tonight!” roared Captain Greybagges.

  The three pirates stood upon the deck of the frigate Ark de Triomphe laughing and pouring buckets of cold fresh water over their heads, as naked as jaybirds. There was a murmur of amusement from the crew in the rigging. Captain Greybagges looked up, a scowl on his face.

  “Was I not speakin’ aforetimes about the livers and lights of them as might be slacking!” he roared. There was a sudden stillness among the crew. The Captain grinned. “Har! Har! Har! I caught you out there! Har! Har! Har! I do loves my little jest! Har! Har! Har!” The crew in the rigging and on the decks looked uneasily abashed. “No, me hearties! Yez bin working like riggers, ye has, toiling ‘andsomely like, but too much graft and not enough roistering makes for a mumpish band o’ buccaneers. You may finish up and knock off for the day.” There was a pleased mutter from the crew. “Finish what yez is doing with a will, mind yez all! I will tell quartermaster to broach a cask o’ rum and a couple barrels o’ beer and ye may have yeselves a jolly evening. Let yez hair down. Grow yez beards a bit.” The crew cheered. “BUT!” and the Captain spoke this in a voice of brass, “BUT, I will obliged if yez shall drink matey-like.” He paused and let his grey eyes rove over them. “For there are fresh breezes a-coming as the season o’ storms approaches, and them winds has been known to blow good fortune to gentlemen of fortune such as we. T’would be a great shame and a pity iffen we should miss a handsome bounty because some knavish swab had a sore head and did not attend to his duties in a proper and seamanlike fashion. So ye’ll drink easy-like, and play a hand o’ cards, mebbe, and roll the bones for Crown and Anchor, and play upon the squeeze-box and fiddle, and yez may even sleep late o’ the morning, but I’ll not stand for fighting amongst yeselves, nor drinking yeselves into a stupor! No, I will not! When them winds freshens up we shall go for a little sail, we shall
, an’ we may find what we may find. Now finishes up yer duties, me hearties, with a will.”

  The crew carried on, with a cheerful mutter of voices from the rigging and the deck.

  “T’were a fine piece o’ speechifyin’, Cap’n, damn me, but it was!” said Israel Feet in a low voice. “T’will set the lads up ’andsome-like. That an a few jars o’ ale.”

  “Why thankee, Izzie! That be praise indeed,” said the Captain, wringing water out of his beard.

  Mumblin’ Jake brought the Captain and his two lieutenants towels and stood by holding their clothes. As he stepped into his breeches Captain Greybagges told Mumblin’ Jake to fetch the boatswain and crew of his longboat, who were the largest men in the crew. When the seven hulking sailors came they formed a line on the deck, slid their right feet forward and knuckled their brows respectfully.

  “Bosun, I wishes you and your lads to stay sober tonight.” The bully-boys looked aggrieved. “Here is something to ease yez disappointment.” whispered the captain, winking, and dropped a thick silver coin into each of their hands. “Ye shall roister tomorrow. I needs yez sharp to make sure no silly sod gets hisself fighting-drunk, that no clown lights his pipe in the powder-magazine and that no sly strangers slips onto the ship to do mischief while the jacks are a-quaffing. Ye may let some trollops come aboard, no more than three at a time, mark yez. Nobody else at all. Do yez ken?” The bullyboys nodded, “Aye-aye, Cap’n!” said Loomin’ Len Lummocks the boatswain.

  “How now, me buckos,” said the Captain as the bully boys lumbered away, slipping the Joachimsthal thalers into their pockets. “Is Bulbous Bill come back yet?” His lieutenants shook their heads. “Well then, Izzie, yez takes a wander around the messes and makes sure they all got my meaning. Peter, you do the same with yer lads on the gun-decks. Make sure no sod ‘as skimped his duties to get a-quaffin’ quicker, too.” He buckled on his belt over his black coat. “I shall joins yer in a while. Take a mug o’ grog with ‘em and show me face, like. Then I may grow me beard for a bit up at the Halfe Cannonballe, and you may accompany me and welcome. We’ll leave word for Bill to catch us up.”