Pirate King (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Enter the MAJOR-GENERAL’s daughters led by MABEL, all in white peignoirs and night-caps, and carrying lighted candles.

A
T LEAST
I had the sense not to scream out my husband’s name as I saw him floundering behind us in the dark waters. “Hol—” turned into “Help! Man overboard!” as I ran down the deck, flinging into the night anything that might function as a life-ring.

Sailing ships have no brakes. Thus the rescue of a man overboard becomes a somewhat leisurely event (unless, of course, a shark happens by) that degenerates into a cinematic farce, as if scenes of a man falling out of an aeroplane were interspersed with the calm arrangement of his means of rescue by those on the ground: discussion; the fetching of mattresses; further discussion; many lookers-on; the arrangement of pillows; the substitution of one pillow for another; and all the while the individual is tumbling closer and closer towards solid ground. Or in this case, farther and farther away from solid ship.

Adam immediately began to shout and crank the wheel around, while Jack ran forward along the rapidly tilting deck to throw himself at various bits of rigging. I clung to the rails to keep from following Holmes overboard; before I regained my balance, sailors were pouring onto the deck in a fury of activity, directed first by Adam (who seemed to have tied off the wheel before joining the others) and then by Samuel. Men hauled at ropes; sails beat angrily on their beams; other sails made an abrupt collapse down their lines. In less than two minutes, I could feel our forward drive die away.

In the sudden silence, the first of
Harlequin
’s passengers ventured out, tugging at dressing gown belts, patting at rumpled hair, picking their way through the unbelievable quantities of rope that now littered the decks. Soon, the ship’s entire population was at the rails, all of them with suggestions as to engines, reversing, coming about, and diving in to get our lost Major-General. Edith suggested that we could shoot an arrow with a rope upon it; fortunately for Holmes, no one had a bow.

The experts—that is, Samuel and La Rocha—were in agreement that were we to circle back for him (at least, I believe that is what they were saying) we would do little more than move farther out of his range.

“What about the motor?” Mrs Hartley asked.

“I heard one of them say that they’d broken it altogether,” Annie said. Inevitably, it was Underfoot-Annie who had overheard a conversation.

“What about the oars?” I suggested. They might slow our drift, if not actually reverse it.

Samuel had the same idea, and began shouting orders at the men, who leapt to do his bidding, tripping over the girls, puzzling over how to fit the lengths of wood into the brackets, dropping them overboard, cracking each other’s skulls …

I hauled Annie down the deck to where one of the ship’s boats hung in its davits. I jerked loose the front tie, thrust the rope into her hand, then jumped to loose the other end. “Let it out at the same speed I do,” I ordered.

The men were too occupied to notice what we were doing. In a minute, the boat’s hull kissed the water, and I—knowing enough about small vessels to have a clear image of what would happen if my weight hit in off-centre—scrambled out over the tackles above it. I paused a moment, to be certain the thing had not immediately sunk, then dropped gently into it.

Samuel’s voice rang out, commanding me to stop. But I had the tackles and painter free and managed to shove away from the hull before he could interfere. “I won the school rowing championship when I was fifteen,” I called. “It’ll only take me a few minutes to reach him, you’ll just weigh us down.” I lit the small lamp that dangled from the skiff’s prow, then dropped myself onto the seat and the oars into their rowlocks.

There was a pang I cannot deny as the lights of the only firm place in many miles grew farther and farther away. On the other hand, the man I had nearly killed grew ever closer, letting fly with the occasional splash to keep me on the right path.

Nine minutes later, I shipped the oars and looked over the side at Holmes. “You look like a drowned rat,” I said, and put down a hand to help haul him up.

“I’m grateful that your aim was off, or I’d have gone over the side unconscious.”

“My aim wasn’t off, I changed my mind at the last moment. Here, this blanket should be warmer than the coat.” We peeled away some layers of sodden wool, and I wrapped him in the thick blanket that I had been keeping warm with my backside.

I looked over my shoulder at
Harlequin
. She was alarmingly small and indistinct. I grabbed the oars and got to work.

“All right, Holmes, what the
hell
are you doing here?”

“I’m your new Major-General. I thought it best to stay out of sight until we’d had a chance to talk.”

“Good Lord. Hale said that Mr Scott was taken ill, but—why?”

“Mr Scott was taken ill because I paid him—generously—to exchange a sailing ship for a sleeper train bound for the south of France.”

“You know damned well that is not what I was asking. Talk, and be quick about it—once we reach the ship, we may not have a moment to ourselves until we get to Morocco.”

“The letter you wrote on Saturday very fortunately reached me on Wednesday. It was a test of my brother’s machinery to get me to Lisbon in twenty-four hours.”

“But, why?”

“Because I was beginning in Sussex, and as you will recall—”

“Holmes, I’ll tip you back over the side!” I hissed. “Why. Are. You.
Here?
”

“Because of the scar on your pirate king.”

“La Rocha?”

“A man can have many names, but few men could have that wound.”

“Who is he?”

“A pirate. Among other things.”

I looked over my shoulder at the ship. It was close enough now to see by the swinging lamp-light that most of the others had gone back to their bunks—once they knew who had gone over, and saw the skiff beat the dorsal fins to the swimmer, they’d grown bored and returned to their warm cocoons. Still, we only had a few minutes before our voices would be heard by those remaining.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Holmes. Piracy was squashed two hundred years ago.”

“So long as men sail the seas, there will be pirates. La Rocha comes from a Moroccan family with a history of piracy—the accent is not as strong in his cousin.”

“Cousin? You mean Samuel?”

“His name is Selim, and they may be half-brothers instead of cousins, but yes. Although not all of the men share their linguistic history.”

My hands faltered as the Arabic name trickled down and stirred a memory: Selim. Selim the Grim. Who in 1512 became the Ottoman emperor and promptly set about slaughtering his brothers and nephews, lest they become a threat.…

I bent over the oars again: best to think of something else.

“I thought the men were Portuguese.”

“Oh, Russell, surely you—”

“Holmes!”
This was no time to scold me for a mistake in accent identification.

“La Rocha took that scar in the second year of the War, when a small boat laden with gold and valuables escaped Turkey ahead of the Allied Forces. Nothing could be proved, no evidence was found. No doubt he is aware that the eyes of many agencies have been upon him for all this time, but to all appearances, he lives in peaceful retirement in his new home.”

“By ‘agencies,’ you mean Mycroft?” Damn: I
knew
this had something to do with the man.

“Keep rowing,” he ordered. “We don’t want them to wonder what topic two apparent strangers find so engrossing. Bad enough that it was you who came after me.”

“You’d have drowned, waiting for the others to make up their minds. Mycroft?”

“I’d have made it eventually. Yes, no doubt La Rocha is on Mycroft’s long-term list of interests.”

I thought that Mycroft’s interest was more immediate than “long-term,” but prising an admission out of Holmes—since that admission would also mean that Mycroft was ultimately behind my own presence here—might necessitate rowing in circles around
Harlequin
until the new day dawned, and I wanted my bed. Hammock. I went on as if Holmes had readily confessed an active focus from his brother’s shadowy agency.

“Is this to do with the missing secretary, Lonnie Johns? Has she been found?”

“A shoe very like hers was found at the top of a cliff near Portsmouth. The other was retrieved from a Jack Russell terrier, well chewed. Police theory being that the woman committed suicide, but that her note had been held down by the shoe the dog removed.”

The shadowy boat before me was replaced by images from a screen: pretty young girl; flowered frock that the wind presses against her lithe form; made-up eyes stretched with sadness; a note, tucked under her shoe; with a last woebegone look around her, her figure is replaced by:

I can live no longer, please forgive me!

And then: empty cliff-top; the approach of a small and business-like dog, applying its button nose to the shoe atop the fluttering note … I shook the images from my head. “So what is La Rocha up to?”

“I have no idea.”

“Right.”

“On my honour, Russell, I do not.”

“Then why risk life and limb to race down here? A telegram would have sufficed. Oh, don’t tell me you’re going all protective on me, Holmes?” Granted, our last case had been rather trying, scattering us across half of Europe as we strained to communicate, but still.

“I thought you might be glad of reinforcements.”

We had come into the edges of the light from the ship, just enough that, by leaning forward, I could make out his features. I stared at his expression, then resumed my rowing before he could scold me. “
You
wanted to get away from Mycroft, too!”

“Shh,” he urged. Pulling the edge of the blanket forward so his face was in shadow, he murmured, “Is there any language you are certain is not spoken by any of those on board?”

“I haven’t tried them all, but I’d guess Hindustani.” And before he could scold me about that as well, I added, “Yes, guessing is deplorable, I know.”

The shadowed face seemed to fold into a brief smile, and then he sat upright into the lamp-light and said in normal tones and a Midlands accent, “I have to thank you again, Miss Russell. Quite ridiculous of me to tumble over like that, ought to make the railings tall enough to hold a man instead of tipping him overboard. What if you hadn’t been there to see me go?”

“There was a man on watch,” I loudly reassured our Major-General Stanley. “He tossed you a life-ring, too.”

“Well, I hope you haven’t spoilt your lady-like hands on the oars, you really should have let me take them.”

“I didn’t want to risk having you over again. Catch that line, would you?”

He caught at it, missed it, nearly fell in again, dropped his blanket in the water, and finally got his fist around the line. By dint of my pushing him from below—a tricky manoeuvre, when braced in a skiff—and others pulling from above, we got the Major-General back on deck.

“Take him to galley,” La Rocha ordered Adam, then to his damp passenger, “Warm there, you be dry in no time.”

The young pirate led him away; I did not think Holmes’ shivers were entirely an act.

The boat was made fast, and La Rocha ordered the sails raised. I wished him a good night and headed below, but his voice stopped me.

“Why you on deck?”

“When he fell, you mean? I was enjoying the quiet—I’m not used to sleeping in a room full of people—and he came up and … Well, I thought he was assaulting me, so I … I’m afraid I shoved him, and he went overboard. That’s why I sort of felt I had to go after him. My fault.”

The pirate king stared at me, then stared at me all over. And he laughed. As if a man making advances on Mary Russell was quite the biggest joke he’d heard in years.

Which was more or less what I’d intended. Still, he didn’t have to agree with quite so much gusto. Feeling very cross, I went down the stairs and, instead of going directly to my bunk, went to the galley instead. I thrust my head inside, to find my husband and partner arranging his wet garments over various chair backs. Adam was with him; both men looked up.

“From now on, you keep your hands to yourself!” I stormed. “Next time I’ll use a belaying pin, and let you drown!”

The young man looked startled, but Holmes’ face ran a quick gamut of surprise, disapproval, and distaste, before he pasted on an expression of sheepishness for the benefit of La Rocha’s man.

I’d had to let him know what explanation I’d given for our little adventure. I dimly recognised that saddling him with a reputation for lechery—a reputation he would find repugnant every time he was forced to uphold it—was a displaced revenge on his brother. However, I will admit that the thought of it was a small warm satisfaction, nestled to me as I drifted off in my canvas sling.

Where I slept peacefully, until the screams started.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

MAJOR-GENERAL
: In fact, when I know what is meant by “mamelon” and “ravelin,”
When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin …

I
SHOT UPRIGHT
in my hammock, instantly flipped over, and by dint of hanging on hard to the canvas, managed to describe a complete circuit before crashing dramatically to the floor. The hold seemed to be populated by dangling pupae with startled faces, but everyone else managed to remain in their canvas, and no one appeared to be writhing in agony or fighting off an attack. I snatched my glasses from the nearby shelf and looked again. No: The noise was coming from above.

Grabbing my dressing-gown from the laden row of hooks, I tied the belt while hurrying up the companionway towards the thin dawn light. When I stepped out on the deck, I knew I was still dreaming.

The last time I’d seen Captain La Rocha, near midnight, he’d been dressed in a pair of striped pyjamas and a dark dressing-gown—extraordinary in their unexpected ordinariness. Now …

Either our Captain had decided to immerse himself wholeheartedly in his assigned rôle, or I had knocked myself cold falling from the hammock.

His hat was scarlet. From it danced an emerald ostrich plume the length of my arm. His jacket was brocade, orange and red, over a gold waistcoat, burgundy trousers, and knee-high boots a Musketeer would have killed for, also scarlet. His small earring had doubled in size overnight, and half a dozen fingers bore rings—gold rings, with faceted gems. The henna in his beard gleamed red in the sunlight.

The only missing details were an eye patch, a peg-leg, and a parrot.

“Good-morning, Miss Russell,” his incongruous voice piped. “Meet Rosie.”

He tipped his face upwards. I, too, lifted my eyes to the rigging, then lifted them some more, wondering what female on board the ship would dare to clamber the lines. Surely Edith wouldn’t have—then the scream came again, and I saw its source.

A parrot.

I felt someone beside me and looked over, then down. Randolph Fflytte, who for the first time looked almost nondescript in a violet dressing gown, was rubbing his eyes.

“This is your fault,” I said bitterly.

His eyes caught on La Rocha and went wide. His jaw made a few fish-like motions; at Rosie’s next shriek, it dropped entirely. He stood gaping at the bird, who screamed its challenge at the rising sun, then turned to me. “I never,” he declared.

“You wanted a pirate,” I told him. “You got one.”

“Jaizus” came Will’s voice in my ear, “he’s even put up a pirate flag!”

He was right. A skull and crossbones taller than a man rippled in the bow breeze, flashing its grin at the pirate, the parrot, and those of us along for the ride. The Jolly Roger, a declaration that no quarter would be given. The voice of the Byron-loving Miss Sim seemed to thrill in my ear:
These are our realms, no limits to their sway— / Our flag the scepter all who meet obey
.

“Is that legal?” It was a woman’s voice—Mrs Hatley, sounding disapproving. I had to agree: Surely maritime laws frowned on such frivolities as pirate flags?

The rising sun touched the top of the mast, exciting our avian alarm. It flapped its brilliant wings and shouted something in response.

“What did it say?” someone asked.

“Probably Portuguese,” came an answer.

“Not Portuguese,” said a man—our pirate crew was now awake, too, and clearly as astonished by La Rocha’s antics as the English passengers.

The bird screamed again, and I blinked as the sign-board appeared before my mind’s eye:

“Actions are propaganda!”

I repeated it aloud.

Fflytte said, “What the devil does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what it said.”

“She’s right,” said Will.

Three dozen people in various stages of undress, and one pirate in extraordinary dress, stood agog, awaiting the next pronouncement. The bird gazed down at its audience.

“Destroy the state!” it shouted.

“Those are Anarchist slogans!” I said. “It must have belonged to Anarchists.”

Our necks were growing stiff, but we listened, wrapt, for the next pronouncement. What came was a long garble of apparent nonsense. We looked at each other. “Did you catch that?”

It was Annie who ventured a translation. “ ‘I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree’?”

Followed the sound of forty-some people puzzling.

Clearly, I had knocked myself unconscious.

I waited in vain for an awakening hand on my shoulder, but with reluctance decided that I was not lying stunned. I went below with the others, some of whom attempted a return to sleep, but I had smelt the coffee and got dressed instead, to join the first seating at Maurice’s breakfast, questions at the ready. Annie was there, looking remarkably chipper after a night dangling above the floor, and was already grilling Adam about the newest member of our crew.

The parrot—a scarlet macaw—had been a last-minute addition: La Rocha’s idea, Mr Pessoa’s find. Its cage had been brought on board under heavy shrouds, that the creature might wake to a new day in a new home, undistracted by the call of the land.

Its original owner had been a lady much taken by lyric poetry in the English language—Longfellow proved an avian favourite. When she died, the bird took up residence with her grandson, who had flirted with the attractions of Anarchist doctrine from the comfort of his twenty-room estate on the outskirts of Lisbon until his arrest a few months before, followed by the sale of his house, lands, and possessions. The bird had several Portuguese phrases, and a handful in French, German, and Spanish, but he—and it was a he, despite the name given him by the old lady, who’d thought it inappropriate for a maiden lady to have a male companion—seemed to prefer English.

A few of his Portuguese utterances, to judge by the reactions of the crew, would have condemned him to his cage—if not to Maurice’s pot—had they been in English. When Kate and Linda began to, well, parrot those phrases, I had a word with their mothers.

The political and poetic exhortations would soon become a part of the background noise of the ship, punctuating the sounds of sail and rigging, hull and voice. At least while the bird was talking, it did not emit those blood-curdling screams.

Piecing together this narrative took our allotted breakfast time, was continued on the deck, and was still under way when the second seating began to emerge into open air: Annie’s questions were occasionally pertinent but often most roundabout, and her dual flirtations with Adam and Bert did not speed the flow of information.

The girls came up, dressed now and exclaiming at the prettiness of the morning. The pirates followed, exchanging glances at the prettiness of the girls. Rosie grumbled and recited from her perch at the Captain’s left hand, taking the occasional snap at anyone else who ventured within range.

By the time Fflytte came on deck, the bird was taking a nap, the sail-makers were hard at work, the girls were lounging in the sunny spots, and the pirate crew were busy at various tasks (and shooting the girls looks both admiring and disapproving, as the girls shed clothing and lit cigarettes).

Our diminutive leader rubbed his hands together, then frowned at the vast canvas drapes on all surfaces.

“We need this cleared,” Fflytte declared. When the sail-makers continued their needlework, he turned to the quarterdeck and repeated his demand.

“I’d planned on filming some scenes this morning. We need the decks cleared,” he insisted.

“When sail is up, decks will be clear,” La Rocha countered.

“ ‘Sail on, O Ship of State!’ ”
Rosie urged.

Samuel said nothing.

“When will that be?”

“Braak!”
Rosie answered.

La Rocha and Samuel studied the horizon.

“What are we to do in the meantime?” Even Rosie said nothing. “Captain La Rocha, we had an agreement. We need to do our filming on the way to Morocco.”

“Point camera here,” our pirate chief said, waving a ham-like hand at the quarterdeck. “No canvas.”

Fflytte squinted at the area in question, and turned to Will. “Would this be a good time?”

“We’d only use a few feet of film, if we can’t shoot the deck as well,” the cameraman replied.

“Captain—” Fflytte began, when La Rocha took pity on him.

“Two hours, maybe little more. Go, look around ship, find places to point camera.”

“I really—”

“Mr Fflytte,” I broke in. “That might not be a bad idea. If you haven’t seen all the nooks and crannies, a tour might give you some interesting angles.”

He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Very well, we will take a tour of the ship. Will you lead us?” he asked La Rocha.

Samuel had been frowning at a point among the forest of ropes where Adam and Jack were smearing some disgusting-looking grease into the wooden pulleys and all over themselves. Inadvertently, his elbow ventured into Rosie’s territory. La Rocha’s feathered familiar lunged, but quicker than the eye could follow, the quarterdeck erupted into a flurry of brilliant plumage as Rosie fought the hand wrapped around its throat. La Rocha stepped forward; Samuel let go; Rosie took off. A trail of scarlet and blue feathers traced the outraged bird’s path into the heights.

The two men looked at each other; the wind held its breath; the sail-makers’ needles held the air; waves held back from lapping our wooden sides. Then La Rocha turned on one shiny red heel, and said to Randolph Fflytte, “Your ‘Samuel’ will guide you through ship.”

Samuel’s normally dead-pan face registered a slight flush. He started to speak, but La Rocha cut him off, in Arabic. “
The
whole
ship, Selim.
”

Personally, I would not have turned my back on a man with that expression on his face (
Selim the Grim
) but La Rocha was made of sterner stuff than I. Either that or he knew just how far he could push his second in command.

Samuel’s gaze left the Captain’s hat, played across the passengers standing motionless about the deck, rested on the two grease-spattered lads (who hastily bent to their work), and then flicked briefly towards the presence that perched above us in the rigging.

He gave a brief nod, as if confirming some private idea, and descended from the quarterdeck, saying “Come” as he walked past Fflytte and Hale, leading the way to the bow. They followed Samuel; after a moment, I followed them; Annie and Edith came, too; soon half the ship’s population was gathered to hear Samuel’s voice.

Samuel waited for us to go still—or as still as one can go on a moving deck. Then, with a final dark glance at the quarterdeck, he faced the open sea and pointed. “Bowsprit,” he said. His forefinger went up. “Outer jib.” The finger dropped a few degrees. “Inner jib. Fore stays’l.”

And so he went. We learned what the lashings around the anchors were called (in English, to my surprise and relief) and which neat coil of rope was connected to which sail, and whether it was a halyard or a sheet; where the upper topsail ended and the topgallant began; the various staysails as opposed to the jibs. Or rather, we heard the labels recited. It was as if Samuel had been assigned the job of naming every minute portion of the ship—but naming alone. He would occasionally answer a direct question, if it reached him in a pause between recitations, but for the most part, he was a dictionary rather than an encyclopaedia. When Bibi asked why the sail was called “square” when it was a rectangle (in fact, they were trapezoidal), he simply looked through her and went on.

Most of the others went back to their sunbathing and cigarettes before we progressed twenty feet down the port side. Fflytte and Hale were looking stunned, Will ignored the lecture entirely, Edith developed a dangerous fascination for the knots holding the various lines in place, and Annie most helpfully kept pulling the child’s exploring fingers away from the belaying pins. Daniel Marks and Bibi seemed transfixed by the reflections in Samuel’s black boots.