Greenbeard (9781935259220)

by Bentley, Richard James

  “How is it done, then?” said Israel Feet, contemplating the ship in the bottle. “If you knows, Frank, speak plain!”

  Frank Benjamin opened his mouth, but Captain Greybagges put up his hand.

  “Frank is right to keep his council. Alf Docklefar’s art is entertaining for as long as it mystifies, and what is life without a few mysteries? Thus you have a congenial puzzle to charm you as you slip into the arms of Morpheus, Izzy, for now we must all retire. There will be much to do tomorrow.” The Captain drained his tankard. “The mystery I shall take with me to my bunk is how the devil Alf Dockelfar knew I had two pistols and a knife concealed about me! Good night to you, gentlemen!”

  The next morning Captain Sylvestre de Greybags paced the quarterdeck of the pirate frigate Ark de Triomphe, dressed once again as a kapitein van schip, his head freshly shaven and his beard freshly boot-polished. The last few deliveries of stores were awaited, and the crew were preparing to set sail. He paced the deck impatiently, accompanied by Mr Benjamin.

  “Take my advice, Frank. Wait for your sea-water bath until we are actually at sea. Excuse me – belay that there! Yer damn-yer-eyes lubber! Let me sees yuz usin’ a grandma’s knot like that again an I’ll sees the colour of yer liver, yer swab! ’Pon my oath I will! – Sorry, Frank, these young fellows are eager, but sadly ignorant yet. Where was I? Yes, take your bath when we are in the German Ocean, where the water is contaminated only by the sweat of fish. A bath in Thames river-water could easily be fatal to somebody who is not a cockaignie.”

  “I’ve seen the seen the boys swimming off the wharf,” said Mr Benjamin, “but I’ve also seen what floats by at times. You are right, of course. Why are they called cockaignies?”

  “London fellows of the lower orders of society who find themselves in Paris - as some must inevitably do - are observed by the Frenchies to be forever complaining about the food. Why, in Lunnon-town there is roast beef! And roast mutton! And roast capons! And beer! The French populace, much oppressed by their evil king and his greedy aristocrats and so existing upon thin gruel and bread made of sawdust, mock such fellows and say that they must come from cockagne, the fabled land of the fairies where there are fountains of sparkling wine and where meat-pies grow on trees. The lowlifes of London have adopted this cognomen with pride, and so refer to themselves thus.”

  “Would your ships-in-bottles fellow describe himself as a cockaignie?”

  “I should not think so. He craves a degree of respectability, and to call oneself a cockaignie is rather to proudly deny that one has any repectability at all, or indeed any desire for it. It is mostly the young fellows.”

  “He cannot be too respectable, not if he can tell that you are carrying concealed weapons.”

  “Respectability is something to be attained, surely, even when starting from a state of brutish and light-fingered poverty. Since Alf Docklefar’s respectability started when he purchased a pardon from the gallows for piracy he may be assumed to have a keen sense of its monetary value. He has a sharp eye, though, and I dare say his past experience has made him alert to possible trouble. The outline of a pistol against the cloth of a waistcoat is easy to spot if you are looking, I suppose, and very difficult if you do not look, as most people do not look at most things.”

  The Captain and Mr Benjamin talked on about the oddities of perception; examples of legerdemain, the obvious frauds which could ensnare even clever people at times, why mirrors turn one side-to-side but not top-to-bottom. Captain Greybagges would occasionally roar curses and instructions at one of the new crewmen.

  Down below in the dark of the gun-deck Blue Peter and Torvald Coalbiter were patiently explaining the loading, aiming and firing of a cannon to a group of apprentice pirates.

  “Safety must be your watchword!” said Blue Peter in his deep rumbling voice. The young pirates nodded cautious agreement; his size, his scarred blue-black face and his filed teeth did not seem to invite discussion. “The idea is, you see, to blow the other ship to pieces, not this one. The gun-deck is prepared for action by wetting the planking, by hanging wet sacks over doors, by dowsing all lights that are not behind glass and so on, to prevent any spark from entering the powder-magazine. But you yourselves must be prepared for action, too, so that nothing can go amiss with you. You must learn to do your tasks in the right way, tedious though such rote-learning may seem right now. Any questions?”

  “Um, cannot we speak more like pirates, if we want to?” said one of the braver apprentices.

  “Indeed you can, and Mr Feet the First Mate will be giving you lessons in the language of the freebooter,” said Blue Peter, improvising, “but he is presently slightly indisposed from a blow on the head. In the meantime it’s best not to stand upon ceremony, and to speak as we are able, to avoid confusion.”

  Blue Peter was soon sidetracked into an explanation of the First Mate’s wound, an account of the night attack and thereby on to an account of the Captain’s defeat of Ali the Barber by the cunning twisting of words. Torvald Coalbiter fetched the giant razor and showed it to the apprentice pirates as proof of the tale. They were duly impressed.

  “There is much for you to learn about the profession of buccaneering,” said Blue Peter. “It’s not all rum and cutlasses and ‘Arr! Me hearties!’ There’s some of that, of course, but this is a modern pirate-ship, run on progressive principles, so we operate in a more disciplined way than some others, like Captain Blackbeard, for example.” And I hope that accords with what the Captain is planning, thought Peter, whatever it is.

  Torvald Coalbiter took up the lesson in Blue Peter’s silence, and repeated his tale about his name, and the virtues of avoiding trouble if there was no profit in it. Some of the apprentice pirates disagreed mildly on philosophical grounds, pointing out that if piracy were too well-organised it would be the same as serving before the mast on a merchant-vessel.

  “Why, not at all!” said Coalbiter. “it is the spirit of the thing that counts! And all enterprises require a degree of efficiency or they will not work at all! For example, the modern pirate has to be alert to the possibilities arising from the fast transport of information. He must be, or be beached or hanged, else! Even the beserkers, who I have just disparaged for their stupidity, knew full-well the value of an efficient postal system. My uncle Erik Bloodsausage used to recite a poem to us when we were little, just to remind us of this inescapable fact.”

  Torvald Coalbiter drew himself up, and declaimed:“Many years ago, an old Norse berserker,

  told me a stirring tale, a real tear-jerker,

  about how he’d never been a shirker,

  when he was a Scandiwegian postal-worker.

  He said the Vikings never sacked a town,

  Unless first they’d parcelled it up in paper brown,

  sealed with sticky tape well-thumbed down,

  and hempen string knotted all around.

  Up in the North it was often dark and damp,

  but in the temporary sorting-camp,

  each parcel was addressed and stamped,

  by the yellow light of tallow lamps.

  Then the long ships raced under oar and sail,

  with mail-sacks stacked right up to the rail,

  because they must never ever slow or fail,

  nothing stops the Scandiwegian mail!

  When the town was posted-off, except the pub,

  the postmen would sit down for some grub,

  they’d dine on pie-and-chips and syllabub,

  then belch and grab themselves a club.

  The folks of the town they’d gather up,

  then bash each one on the head, just like a seal-pup,

  it was hard graft after such a hearty sup,

  but those carbs helped to keep their blood-sugars up.

  When all the savings accounts were discharged,

  they’d go back to the boats to get undisembarged,

  and with their purses much enlarged,

  they could afford an afternoon snack of brea
d and marge.

  If you ask any Norse postman I betcha most’ll,

  tell you straight, insist that always our boast’ll,

  be that in mailing matters, whether ashore or coastal,

  there’s no one like a beserker for going postal!”

  His words being being proven true at that very moment, as a last packet of post was passed to Captain Greybagges even as the mooring-cables were slipped from the bollards. A small group of apprentice-boys went ashore and disappeared into the crowds on the wharf, and the gangplank was drawn up. Hired boats slowly pulled the Ark de Triomphe out into the stream, turning her to go south-southeast with the current and tide. Captain Sylvestre de Greybags paid them with coins thrown from the quarterdeck rail and an exchange of friendly insults. Bulbous Bill Bucephalus howled at the men in the rigging and the topsails dropped and unfurled to catch the slight breeze, the convenient easterly breeze. Within ten minutes the Ark de Triomphe turned the bend of the river looping back around the Isle of Dogs and was lost from sight.

  A horse rode to the edge of the wharf, and its rider dismounted and looked at the empty quay where the Ark de Triomphe had been. A tall angular man in a long black cloak and a battered black slouch hat, his lower face hidden by a scarf to ward off the dust of the road, his eyes in the shadow of the hat-brim. He asked a nearby idler to confirm the name of the ship so recently set sail, his voice deep and harsh. The idler acknowledged that the ship had indeed been the Groot Ombeschaamheid, a Dutch merchantman out of Rotterdam, then moved away from the stranger as quickly as he could without seeming to hurry, unsettled by the man’s abrupt question and angry manner. The man remounted his horse in one agile movement like an experienced cavalry-trooper, swinging a heavy boot over the horse’s rump, his black cloak flapping. The horse whickered and pranced sideways a few steps, but the black-clad figure mastered it instantly and swung it round so he could stare once more down the river before he turned the horse and rode away. The idler looked back over his shoulder, and as he did a chance ray of the early sun slid under the brim of the black slouch hat and lit the face of the man.

  The idler went into one of the taverns facing onto the wharf and bought a large measure of gin. It must just have been a trick of the light, he told himself as he gulped the gin. Nobody has green eyebrows.

  CHAPTER THE NINTH,

  or The Pool of Life.

  “I do not like these birds,” said Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo. “They resemble the misbegotten offspring of a vulture and a pelican, and they have a malevolent stare. They look like they ought to have teeth in their beaks.” He aimed a kick at one of the birds, which avoided the blow easily with a sideways hop, stared at him malevolently with a yellow eye, croaked ‘awk!’ then flapped away through the cold drizzling rain towards the river, its orange webbed feet dangling.

  “The locals say they are called ‘snappers’, but they are properly called Liver birds,” said Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges. “They are only found around the Liver Pool and nowhere else, so it is a reasonable sort of name. Not a name like ‘warriangle’ or ‘merganser’, which are meaningless. A merganser does not ‘merganse’, does it?”

  “The warriangle is the red shrike, also called the butcher-bird, or the worrier, or the throttler,” said Frank Benjamin, trudging behind them, trying to keep his cloak wrapped around himself against the wind and rain. “Warriangle is but a corruption of wurgengel, which is German for ‘destroying angel’. I do not know why they have such a reputation, for they are an attractive bird. Unlike these ugly things.” He waved a walking-stick at another Liver bird as it skimmed past on the wind, squawking.

  “They sound the same as the damned inhabitants of this God-forsaken place,” said Blue Peter, “as though they have a head-cold, like the Londoners but worse. I had thought London to be a cold and miserable place, but I see it now as fairly tropical. I am surprised palm trees do not grow on Tilbury Dock.”

  The three trudged through the mud. It was unpleasant to be abroad, despite their hats, woollen cloaks and greased sea-boots. A Liver bird hovered above them, its cry mournful and strangely nasal; “Awk! Awk! Awk-la!”

  The muddy path of Pool Lane skirted the eponymous pool, and eventually led to the hump-backed Towsend bridge over the stream that emptied into it. They looked back from the bridge at the town of Liver Pool, a cluster of buildings dark in the last of the daylight. The bulk of the Old Castle in the midst of the houses, the church standing out by virtue of its square tower, the grey expanse of the Mersey estuary beyond it occasionally visible through the curtains of cold rain. They carried on over the bridge.

  “The fellows in the tavern seemed cheerful and friendly enough, but strangely menacing,” said Mr Benjamin. “I didn’t know what to make of them.”

  “It is their way, it seems,” said the Captain. “They distrust strangers, and they are surely not unusual in that, yet must deal with them, and so they attempt to appear both amiable and daunting at one and the same time. In a way it suits my purposes, for they are not overly curious, since they themselves do not welcome scrutiny. I hope my words to them, and my small gifts, will reduce the attempts at burglarising. I do not wish to use stronger measures. Come, we are nearly there, and a glass of rum-grog will cheer us.”

  Captain Greybagges had purchased a boat-builder’s yard on the eastern side of the Liver Pool, away from the town. It had been unused and vacant for several years, almost becoming a ruin, its buildings pillaged by the locals for slate from the roofs and wood. The three squelched down the path at the edge of the Pool in the rain.

  In the boatyard there was shelter, warmth and light. Light shining from the windows of the yardmaster’s house in the increasing gloom, the gleam of lamps visible from workshops and lean-to sheds. Pirates are sailors nevertheless, and are accustomed to making the best of circumstances, and to the continuous frenzy of repair and cleaning that is life at sea. The residence of the master of the boatyard, empty for years, lacking window-glass, window-frames, doors, floorboards and most of its roof, had stood no chance against the nautical repugnance for disorder, and had been made habitable in two days by a busy fury of pirate work-squads, and made neat and painted in a week, the glossy yellow enamel of the front door a bright gesture of contempt to the unremitting rain. They went gratefully in, but Blue Peter excused himself after gulping a glass of grog and walked around the boatyard on an evening tour of inspection.

  A number of wooden huts had been built and the crew had moved ashore. There was light from these huts as the watches were changing. Blue Peter stopped at the huts, talking with the men. A supper of crocks of stew, baskets of bread and jugs of ale was being collected and brought to the huts, each mess going to the kitchen at the house in strict turn, the same as at sea. The men would eat, drink, sing, play at cards and dice, then stow the trestle-tables against the wall and sling their hammocks and sleep the sleep of the just, for the work was unrelenting and hard.

  Blue Peter walked on down to the Ark de Triomphe. Upon her arrival at the boatyard the frigate had been stripped and emptied as it lay moored at the end of the wooden jetty. The frigate’s masts had been unstepped and the guns and ballast unloaded with the aid of a sheer-hulk, a floating contraption of great antiquity. Blue Peter had been surprised by the age of the sheer-hulk; its timbers were a patchwork of scarfings and the overlaps of its clinker planks had been undercut a finger’s width by the soft abrasions of flowing water in some long-forgotten past when its hull had actually plowed the seas and not been merely the pontoon for a crane built of old masts and spars. Opinions of the age of the sheer-hulk’s hull had varied, but the ship’s carpenter had assessed it to be one-and-a-half centuries old at least, maybe two. Blue Peter had found himself strangely impressed by this; who knew that a wooden ship could last that long? The stripped-bare, and much-lightened, hull of the Ark de Triomphe had been dragged ashore by the cunning application of rollers and the Spanish windlass and placed on a stollage of wooden baulks in a rectangular pit, where it now sat.
The vast labour of digging the pit and dragging the hull ashore into it resembled something, mused Blue Peter, but he couldn’t think exactly what. Israelites in the Bible slaving to build pyramids? Did they build pyramids in the Bible? Except that the semi-naked slaves had been slaving in the pouring rain, splattered with freezing brown Mersey mud, not in the hot sun of Egypt on the banks of the sluggish warm Nile. The accomplishment of such a gruelling task had drawn the crew together, though, in a very powerful way. There had been some tensions on the voyage to Liver Pool, the old pirates being short of patience with the apprentice pirates for their lack of seamanship, tending to patronise them by strutting about as they felt men should who had seen bloody actions, while the new pirates had responded in turn by mocking the old pirates for their lack of education and knowledge of things mechanical. The heroic struggle with the hull of the Ark de Triomphe had made them work together, work to each other’s strengths, so now it was ‘the old pirates’ and ‘the new pirates’, and not ‘the pirates’ and ‘the apprentice-boys’.