Greenbeard (9781935259220)

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C
aptain Sylvestre de Greybagges was growing his beard, which was to say he was idling and drinking rum. If someone should ask him “What are you doing this afternoon?” he would say “I think I shall just sit and grow my beard.” Growing his beard would necessarily involve the drinking of rum, of course. And a fine beard it was, too! Lustrous and as yellow as Spanish gold, it reached nearly to the belt that cinched the black broadcloth of his coat over his hard flat belly. The belt from which hung his heavy cutlass in its black leather scabbard, the wide black belt that had three knives and two flintlock pistols thrust into it, easy to hand, for Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges was a pirate.

In this business of growing his beard, and drinking rum, he was ably assisted by Israel Feet, his First Mate, right-hand man and partner in many a villainy. Bulbous Bill Bucephalus was there too, the porcine sailing-master of Captain Greybagges's ship
Ark de Triomphe
, and Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo, the giant African who was the Master Gunner. The four buccaneers were sitting around a wobbly table in the back room of
Ye Halfe Cannonballe
tavern, which was conveniently close to the quays of Port de Recailles, that nest of sea-wolves whose name would be first in any Baedeker of infamy. The back room was pleasantly cool, whilst the lane outside baked in the heat of the late Caribbean sun and the eponymous half-cannonball hung on its rusty chain with no breeze to make it swing and creak. Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges's beard grew and the rum bottle passed around. Blue Peter lifted his little finger as he sipped his rum delicately, for although his face was decorated by tribal scars - the face so black it seemed blue in certain lights - and his teeth were filed to points, he aspired to be an English gentleman, an ambition which would have caused hilarity among the rough crew of the
Ark de Triomphe
, except that any such merriment would have been instantly fatal. His companions at the table were fellow officers of the ship, and so his equals, and accepted his cravings for refinement as no more than an endearing eccentricity. Blue Peter dabbed at his lips with a fine white lawn handkerchief, then tucked it into his sleeve.

“As Aeolus denies us his zephyrs we may surely take our ease, my friends,” he rumbled, “but we may with profit turn our thoughts to such stratagems and ploys
as the future will surely require. Especially before we purchase another flask of this fine sugarcane distillate.”

“A-who? Zebras?” piped Bulbous Bill, his high-pitched voice incongruous coming from so obese a body.

“Arr! You fat fool! He means there ain't no wind, but we oughter be a-plottin' for when there is. Be. For when wind there be! Arr!” Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges's ambitions were in an opposite direction to those of Blue Peter. He was a man of some education, but yearned to speak as though he had been born in a Dorsetshire hovel and schooled on a bumboat in salty Poole Bay. “Speshly afore we gets blootered. Arr!”

“Har! ‘Ee do have the right of that, and you ‘as me affy-davy on't! Cheerly messmates all, look'ee! Har!” Israel Feet downed the rest of his rum and splashed some more into his tarred leather drinking-jack.

The pirates sat for a moment in silent contemplation, firstly at Israel Feet's effortless grasp of the sea-rovers' argot, for he hardly ever made more than a blurred kind of sense, but then at the implications of Blue Peter's words. They were indeed running low in funds. Plunderable treasure had been scarce in recent times.

Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges, to cool his brain and thus aid ratiocination, removed his black tricorn hat, revealing a shiny pink bald pate, in contrast to his ever-growing yellow beard.

“I could check out my newspaper contacts…” Captain Greybagges mused, adding “Look'ee” as an afterthought. He wrote an occasional gossip column upon piratical affairs for the
Port de Racailles Gleaner
, which was syndicated in the
Tortugas Times
, the
Port Of Spain Plain-Dealer
and even, to his delight, the
Poole Advertiser
, where the infamous Harry Paye would surely read it, or have it read to him at least. The recompense was welcome, of course, the prices of rum, tar, hempen rope, gunpowder and shot being what they were, but the main attraction of the arrangement was not the one-eighth-of-a-
Reale
-per-word but the quantity of scuttlebutt, rumour and chat that came to his ears. It was also pleasant to practise what the tutors of Eton and the Fellows of Cambridge had taught to him in the days of his more-or-less innocent youth. The
scritch
of goose-quill upon vellum had a comforting sound, and the influence of that pen – oh! but the Bard was right! – ensured that even cutthroat villains like Eddie Teach and that bloody
jumped-up Welshman Henry Morgan were at least polite to him.

“Har!” Israel Feet cleared his throat, “There's many that goes to Madame Zonga's for lovesome sport and frolicking, ye'll ken, and there's many of them as'as loose tongues, look'ee, an' damn yer eyes!” The company only wrestled with this for a second, for it was one of Feet's more intelligable utterances. It was also known that Madame Zonga had a soft spot for Israel Feet, since he had been kindly to her in the early years of her career, when she had been merely Dottie Pigge. They nodded their understanding.

“Avast! Methinks we shall visit Madame Zonga's betimes, after a bottle or two and a mortress of beef to settle the vitals. Ye can work your wiles and cozen some secrets out of the old trollop then, Izzie. Blast yer liver and vitals if ye cannot!” Captain Greybagges took a reflective sip of rum from his chased-silver goblet. The four were silent for a moment as each considered, in his own way, a vision of the rat-like first mate working wiles upon the well-upholstered Madame Zonga.

“The plantations of His Majesty's North American colonies are supposed to have enjoyed much prosperity of late,” opined Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo, “and they may be ripe for plunder and rapine. A raid by land would be necessary, but that has not been unknown to gentlemen of fortune such as ourselves, surely?”

“Arr!” said Captain Greybagges, fixing Blue Peter briefly with his grey eyes, and said no more. The first mate and the sailing master sympathised with the African, for he was an escaped slave and regarded slave owners with a natural distaste - and indeed who of the Free Brotherhood of the Coasts did not? – but even with his elegant tact he had still reminded their captain of the celebrated success of Bloody Morgan in taking the City of Panama, a hugely-profitable land operation that Captain Greybagges had refused to take part in, thinking it ill-judged and foolishly risky. He had been proved wrong, and had not shared in the enormous, the almost-unbelievable plunder. But who could have foreseen that the Spaniards would have left Panama's western approaches undefended? A bloody jumped-up Welshman, that was who. They kept their own counsel and avoided Blue Peter's black eyes, their whites yellow and blood-shot, as he looked to them for support.

“Arr!” squeaked Bulbous Bill Bucephalus, eager to change the subject. “I buys me hot peppers from a half-breed cove name of Denzil.” The searing chillied stews that the sailing-master made were much appreciated by the piratical crew
of the
Ark de Triomphe
as a sovereign cure for hangovers. He could not be expected to maintain his vast bulk on an unvarying diet of oatmeal burgoo and salt-horse and pease, after all, so even the ship's cook did not object too much when he was booted out of the galley to let Bulbous Bill perform culinary experiments. It was true that Bulbous Bill's cookery was not always entirely successful – when he had simmered a hyena with pot-herbs, for example, he had made himself a laughingstock – but any additions to the menu were usually welcome. They sensed that there was more yet to come, and waited patiently as Bulbous Bill sipped rum from his
lignum-vitae
beaker and knotted his brows to concentrate his thoughts.

“The man Denzil, ye sees, he gets his hottest peppers from them Spanish Americas. Goes down there in his little boat, a-sailin' an' a-fishin'. One o' them double-ended canoes with a littler canoe on the side on two planks, it be. At the first he got them peppers from Cayenne, of course, but he likes 'em hotter an' hotter, so he sails up and down the coast, and sometimes he wanders inshore a-ways. Looking fer them peppers.” Bulbous Bill took another pull of his rum. “Anyways, being a half-breed, his ole Carib indian mother taught him the Carib lingo. Wasn't the right lingo to talk to them Cayenne indians, ye ken, but it gives him the advantage of not bein' civilised as are the likes of us so he picks up a lot of those Cayenne indians' lingoes fair quickly, and now he speaks their lingoes pretty well.” The pirates were paying close attention now. “Seems to me, iffen we was to be friendly, and axes him nice, and gives him some money, he may keep his ears open for things that may be to our advantage. Them indians hates them Spaniards like poison, so they do. They'd give us the nod outa sheer devilment an' spite, an' be damned pleased with theyselves for doing so.”

“That,” said Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges musingly, “is a very good idea. A very good idea indeed.” He blinked. “Pon me life, ye rascal! A blasted fine piece o' headwork it be, and here's me hand upon't, damn yez!” He roared, pounding the wobbly table so that the pirates all grabbed for their drinks. “A fat fool ye may be, but ye be a fat fool with a headpiece upon yez! Blast me vitals, else!”