The Pirate Kings

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘But the point is, Rashim … if you had taken charge, you could have ordered the ship to head to the nearest chunk of firm land and weigh anchor. You could have taken back your waistcoat off Teale, and Maddy would have had a fair chance of getting a steady fix on us and bringing us home.’

  Rashim looked at him. ‘There is a lot of supposition right there, Liam. We do not know for certain that the transponder in my waistcoat is still working, or that the signal is clear or strong enough for her to have zeroed in on it.’ He kept his voice low. The nearest men were breaking salt encrustations from the rigging blocks on the deck below, out of earshot, but the fluttering wind could carry an ill-chosen phrase across the decks in a moment of pause and stillness.

  ‘If she lost track of our signals, even for a moment – and, thinking about it, Teale was zigzagging us all over the place in the first few days out from England – for her it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Liam, I made those transponders as something we could use to find each other if we got separated in a crowd, not for tracking someone across world-spanning oceans.’ He stood up straight, adjusted the viewing slit on the horizon vane. ‘I think we have to accept the possibility that we might be on our own.’

  ‘Great.’ Liam sighed. ‘Ah well … not like I haven’t been lost in this kind of mess before.’

  ‘Lost? You mean with no pick-up data? No rendezvous point? No time-stamp?’

  ‘Aye, lost … completely lost in time.’

  ‘One of your missions?’

  ‘Aye. It all started as a simple mistake, overlapping of fields, and Maddy accidentally blasted me and a bunch of other people back to the time of the dinosaurs. Sixty-five million years ago, if memory serves me.’ He tugged at the hank of grey hair at his temple. ‘That’s how I got this. The stress she put me through.’ He laughed drily at that.

  ‘Good God! But … how did you –?’

  ‘How did she find us?’

  Rashim nodded.

  ‘Well now, I had Becks with me. The “Becks” before the one we have now. She was able to calculate when we were.’

  Rashim shook his head. ‘That is not possible. Surely. Not from merely looking around at where you are. Geological time is on a completely different scale. I can’t see how you could identify a precise date, let alone a year.’

  ‘She based her calculation on the rate of tachyon particle decay. And it wasn’t exactly precise. She narrowed it down to the nearest thousand years or so.’

  ‘No, Liam … no, that is precise. In the grand scheme of things … over millions of years … to narrow it down to a particular thousand years. Quite incredible.’ He made a face. ‘If only we had one of those support units with us … ’ He turned to Liam. ‘You sure you cannot do something like that in your mind?’

  Liam cocked an eyebrow. ‘I know I’m not exactly a normal human, but, Jay-zus, I’m not a walkin’ calculator either!’

  ‘Sorry.’ Rashim realized he’d been thoughtless. ‘My apologies, Liam. That was insensitive of me.’

  Liam shrugged it off. ‘Nah … don’t worry about it. I know what I am and I think I’ve dealt with that now.’ He grinned. ‘Mind you, it might’ve been handy if they’d built me with a computer lodged in me head. But I suspect I’m all mushy stuff up top. I suppose I was designed to think like a human, not a machine. That’s Bob’s job, so it is. Mission priorities, databases, picking up signals an’ all that.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Rashim, ‘if somehow Maddy is still tracking the signal, then that waistcoat of mine is on the same boat as us, whether it’s on my shoulders or Teale’s. It is not going anywhere without us.’

  Liam pursed his lips. ‘I just can’t see why, if she is tracking us, she doesn’t have a go at opening a portal.’

  ‘We’re a moving target. Far too dangerous. We’d end up merged with something or turned inside out.’ Rashim smiled. ‘I can happily wait a while.’

  Liam looked down at the rolling deep blue sea, being carved by the sharp prow of the ship. He listened to the slap of waves against her hull, felt the faint spray of water on his cheeks. From above them, they could hear the thrum of taut halyards, the snap and rustle of the sails. ‘I suppose we could be stuck in a far worse place than this, Rashim.’ He breathed deeply. ‘I could get quite used to this.’

  Rashim nodded thoughtfully. ‘I would not return to my time. Not even if I had the choice.’

  ‘It was really that bad?’

  Rashim gave the question some quiet consideration. He gazed out at the foam-flecked sea, the warm turquoise sky. Beautiful unpolluted colours that seemed to belong to another planet entirely.

  ‘I grew up in a world that knew it was counting down time. We all realized we’d passed a point of terminal systemic decline. That all that was left was managing our own end.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘The world was like one big departure lounge for humanity. All of us waiting for the inevitable final collapse.’ He pointed at the water below them. ‘The oceans were blighted with toxins, algal blooms killing all the life below. I recall holopics of the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans; they were a rusty-red, not this lovely blue colour. Red with toxic algae.’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘Do you know, Liam, in my time there was a floating mass of plastic in the Pacific Ocean. I mean, an island, five hundred kilometres across and at least several dozen metres deep of rubbish that had accumulated and been caught in the spiral tidal geysers of the Pacific. At its centre, the rubbish was so deep that people could walk across it. Set up camps on it even. It was a monument to our stupidity. An artificial island, as big as a country, of floating trash – that’s how badly we messed things up.’

  Liam tried to imagine such a thing on the horizon ahead of them: a floating island of fetid rubbish. Most probably buzzing with clouds of seagulls and flies. ‘Nice.’

  ‘I know the past can be a barbaric place. I knew that when we were setting up Project Exodus. We picked Ancient Rome and we knew we were heading for a time that was brutal and violent and primitive. But at least it was a time where there was hope still. Not just then, any century in fact, right up until the twentieth century, before the discovery of oil, the development of mass industry, before the explosion of the world’s population … up until then we still had an unspoiled world with as yet largely untapped resources and endless potential. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in the hands of a smarter species than humans, could have been remarkable. They could have been the two centuries that turned Earth into the home world of a civilization that could have stepped off-world on to others. Perhaps even taken some faltering footsteps beyond this solar system. Instead, we just trashed our planet. Rendered it inhospitable.’

  He sighed. Finally he smiled at Liam. ‘I could get quite used to living in this time too.’

  Chapter 28

  1667, aboard the Clara Jane, the Caribbean Sea

  ‘By my calculations, Captain Teale,’ said Rashim, checking again, walking the dividers carefully across the chart, ‘we are no more than five or six days away from Jamaica.’

  Teale nodded. ‘Fine. Jolly fine work there, Mr Anwar.’

  His words this afternoon weren’t slurred nor did they carry across the chart table along with the pickling stench of rum. In fact he was stone-cold sober. Rashim looked up at him and saw that he also looked extremely agitated.

  ‘Perhaps I can fetch you another bottle from below? There are still a number left.’

  Teale shook his head. ‘I … perhaps later.’ He sat forward in his chair. ‘Rashim?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I … how can I say this?’ Something was clearly on his mind. ‘Is it fair to say we have become good friends?’

  Friends? Rashim wasn’t exactly sure that was the word he’d use. The man was pleasant enough, charming when it counted, and certainly had the charisma of a showman.

  ‘Friends … uh … ’ Rashim offered him a flickering smile. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I believe I can trust you, Rashim …
trust you more than I can those feckless rascals outside. May I share a delicate matter with you?’

  He decided, for the moment, to play along. ‘Of course.’

  ‘A secret. I can trust you with a secret, can’t I?’ Rashim nodded.

  Teale pressed his lips together. ‘I have not been entirely truthful.’

  ‘About?’

  Teale flashed a cavalier smile. ‘About one or two matters.’ He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I … I am not quite as well connected as I may have suggested.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I sense you are as much a free-spirited man as I am. A fellow adventurer. A chancer? Hmm?’ Teale’s comradely chuckle sounded forced. ‘To be sure, is this not a golden time for those minded to seek adventurous opportunities? Is this not a time when a man from humble beginnings can make something of himself?’

  ‘You were saying something about not being quite so well connected?’

  Teale grinned, tapped the edge of the table with his fingers, like a poker player about to reveal a cunning hand full of aces. ‘I have played a rather devilishly clever charade, truth be told. A bold game, Rashim. You see, I am not born of nobility. I admit I have no family link with anyone notable. Not even with the governor of Jamaica.’

  Rashim stared at him.

  ‘The art of ingenious deception, my friend. The bigger, the bolder, the more extravagant the tale, the more an audience is ready to believe in it. Indeed, it was such tale-telling to an audience of gullible merchants in London that provided us with the funding for this ship and her victuals! This whole enterprise!’

  Teale’s smile spread across his face as if he’d revealed the devastatingly funny punchline to a marvellously hilarious tale.

  ‘Hold on. You said … all those things you told me. Fighting for the Royalists as a cavalry commander? Your family background? Your family fortune –’

  ‘Embellishments. Truth be told, my good friend, my craft is the stage.’ He raised the tricorn hat off his head and held it to his chest, as if humbly acknowledging the roaring applause and adulation of an adoring, penny-a-seat audience of theatre-goers.

  ‘I am an actor.’

  Liam cursed under his breath. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Seriously?’

  Rashim nodded. ‘I am quite serious. None of anything he said was true. None of it. The man has been hustling everyone from the very beginning.’

  ‘But … but surely that idiot must have realized as soon as we arrived in Jamaica and he tried to get a licence off the governor …?’

  ‘His plan – for want of a better term – was to hope we got lucky before arriving. He was hoping we’d have some plunder aboard that he could use as a generous bribe to grease all the appropriate palms.’

  ‘Jay-zus … what a completely sleazy, slimy –’

  ‘Basically a conman. A trickster.’

  ‘Aye.’ Liam looked at Rashim, then his face suddenly creased into a smile. He found himself laughing.

  ‘What? What is so damned funny?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s just … I suppose ironic is the word. Of all the people to be press-ganged by, we end up getting press-ganged by a pretend pirate.’ His laugh dwindled to a wry smirk. ‘It just seems to be the story of my life, so it does. One big fat lie after another.’ He wrinkled his nose dismissively and chuckled again. ‘It’s laugh or go quite mad.’

  ‘Hmmm, good to see you are taking this so seriously.’

  ‘Oh, I am, or I will … just give me a moment.’ Liam wiped his bristly chin with the back of his hand as he gazed out across the main deck, as busy in the evening as it was in the day with the crew at work patching and repairing.

  At what point do I wake up and find all this is some bizarre bleedin’ dream? That I really am just a normal lad from Cork … and all this is just the result of eating a bad bit of pork too late at night?

  ‘You know, those fellas are so very much going to want to kill him when they find out,’ said Liam finally. ‘They’re not going to be happy chappies.’

  ‘You are thinking we should tell them?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘If Teale’s no longer of any use to anyone, here’s our chance for you to be voted in as the captain and, of course, for us to get that waistcoat and transponder back.’

  Rashim narrowed his eyes. ‘Yes, that is true. But … if we tell them, I do not want to be responsible for the man’s death.’

  ‘Neither do I. We’ll have to play this very carefully, though. Those fellas’re going to be hopping mad, so they are.’

  Liam was quite right. The men were baying for Teale’s blood.

  ‘Hangin’s too good for that lying scum!’ roared Bartlett.

  The others nodded. Liam had called the meeting down on the cannon deck, in an attempt to be discreet and out of earshot of Teale who, he imagined, was drunk again right now, or more likely fast asleep for the night. But the roar of anger and indignation was surely carrying topside. Perhaps it was covered up by the sound of Cookie banging pots and pans up on deck as he rinsed them in a casket of seawater.

  ‘Lads, lads … ’ Liam raised his hands to hush them. He was a little taken aback at how ready they were to quieten down and listen to him. Like a class of unruly schoolboys, the noise was all bravado and front. Yes, they were angry. But even more so they were unsettled, unhappy … without a leader, a little frightened even. ‘Lads, I think our first business should be to elect a new captain of the ship. Then let whoever that is decide Teale’s fate.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Old Tom. ‘Ship needs a captain or we’re just a rabble at sea.’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Liam.

  ‘In that case, I put meself forward,’ said Henry Bartlett. He looked around at the others. ‘C’mon, boys, who’s with me?’

  A few hands were raised tentatively, a dozen perhaps. Henry scowled at the others. ‘That’s all, is it?’ He spat on the deck. ‘I’ve served in the King’s navy. Been at sea more’n fifteen years. More than most of you lot!’

  ‘How about you, Tom?’ called out one of the men. ‘Will ye put yer name up?’

  Tom laughed and shook his head. ‘I know me way round the deck, but I’m no navigator. Nor am I a businessman. And that’s what we need, boys, someone who knows ’ow to make us money.’ He offered Henry a polite nod. ‘An’ Henry here … good, solid man tho’ he is … I don’t see as the kind that’s gonna make us rich as gentry.’

  He turned to look at Rashim. ‘But this ’ere gent – Mr Anwar – is the one that picked our course across the sea. He may look as soft as unbaked dough, have the hands of a woman, but ’e’s got the knowings of navigation for sure.’

  The men looked uncertainly at Rashim. Old Tom’s endorsement certainly carried some weight, but then they were wary of handing over their command to yet another silky-tongued gentleman who might just as easily turn out to be another inept poseur, like Teale.

  ‘I’ll second Tom’s nomination,’ said Liam quickly. ‘He may not have Henry’s years of experience at sea, but he’s smart, so he is.’ Liam realized he was slipping into using modern language again. Smart. The crew would be looking at Rashim’s – now somewhat grubby – tailored Victorian dress shirt and wondering what the hell that had to do with anything.

  ‘He’s clever. Canny.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Old Tom. ‘Bright as a button.’

  All eyes fell on Rashim and he stirred self-consciously. ‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly –’

  Liam cut him off. ‘Tom’s right.’ This really wasn’t the time for Rashim to get all modest and self-deprecating. The men needed a leader. ‘Rashim got us here. Picked up the skills of navigation in just a few days and got us safely to the Caribbean.’

  Liam knew the skill wasn’t quite the dark art that these mostly illiterate men thought it was. Arithmetic, common sense, a rudimentary knowledge of world geography … and the ability to read and write. That’s all. But they didn’t need to know that.

  ‘I vote for Rashim,’ said Liam.

/>   ‘You’re his indentured servant, ain’t yer?’ said Henry. ‘Much as I likes you, lad … how do we know he ’asn’t put you up to vote for ’im?’

  ‘Liam’s not my servant,’ said Rashim. ‘Never has been. We’re just friends.’

  ‘That’s right. And I’d trust this man with my life.’ Liam looked at him. I would too. Odd that. How long had they known each other in real time? A few months?

  There was silence below decks. The crew gathered round a solitary oil lamp that swung gently from a rafter, the only sound the creaking of the Clara as she swayed on a docile tropical sea, and the clatter of Cookie up on deck.

  ‘So, let’s call the vote,’ said Old Tom finally. ‘For Mr Henry Bartlett … let me see your hands.’

  This time there was even less of a show of hands for him: nine.

  ‘For Mr Rashim Anwar?’

  Liam and Tom both raised their hands, followed tentatively by one or two others. Liam craned his neck to look past those gathered in a knot round the lamp to the rest of the crew crammed in the narrow space all the way down the gun deck. He saw a few more hands raised further back and counted twenty in total. Not all of them. Not a landslide, not by a long way, but more votes for Rashim than Henry. The majority of the men hadn’t voted.

  Still unsure of Rashim.

  ‘Any other names?’ called out Tom. ‘Come on … now’s the time!’

  Silence.

  Tom looked at Liam. ‘Then, as I see it … we have our new captain.’

  Liam grinned and started to clap his hands. But then quickly stopped when the entire crew looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. ‘Ah … I see.’ He lowered his hands and tucked them into his pockets. ‘We … hmmm, I guess we don’t do the hand-clappy thing right now, then? Fine.’

  ‘First business, Skipper,’ said Bartlett. ‘What we gonna do about Teale?’