Sea Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  “He was good at colour,” she said dispassionately, “perhaps the best of them all.”

  “I used to go to my mother’s room to look at it,” I went on. “She didn’t approve of my doing that, but she didn’t approve of much that I did. In the end she kept the East wing locked to stop what she called my trespassing.”

  “But you could pick the locks?”

  “Indeed I could, Miss Pallavicini, and I frequently did. Does that make me a thief?”

  She did not answer. I suddenly wondered whether she really was ‘Miss’ Pallavicini. She wore no rings.

  She saw my glance at her hands, and seemed amused by it. In turn she examined me. I was sweaty, scarred, suntanned and filthy. I supposed she was a girl who liked her men ponced up with armpit anti-fouling and eau-de-Cologne, which rather spoilt any chance I might have with her. Sitting there I realised that I really did rather want a chance with her, but that could have been mere disappointment at being turned down by the Dutch girl.

  “We checked your story about the boat’s name,” Jennifer said suddenly. “You were telling the truth.”

  “Thank you, your honour.” I mocked her by tugging at a sunbleached forelock.

  She stared quizzically at me. “How do you make a living?”

  “With these.” I held up my hands. “In a month or two I’ll be in waters where there are no boatyards, no chandleries, no sail-lofts, but enough broken yachts to need a slew of skills. I’ll mend engines, tension rigging and rebuild hulls. If I can’t mend it, then it’s probably broken for life.”

  “And those activities support you?” She sounded incredulous.

  “I’ve a little money. I had an Uncle Thomas who shared my views about the rest of the family, so he left me a legacy.” I poured myself another mug of the wine. It was rotgut, but I was used to rotgut. “What is this, Miss Pallavicini? A cross-examination?”

  She stared at me as though she might find a truth hidden behind my eyes. “I wish I knew whether you did steal the painting,” she said after a while.

  “I didn’t. Cross my heart and hope to die, but I didn’t.”

  She paused, as if waiting to see whether I would be struck dead as a result of my childish words. I stayed alive. “If you didn’t steal it,” she asked, “why would those two men think you might know where to find it?”

  “Because they’ve got their wires crossed.” I paused. “I thought that perhaps you or Sir Leon might have sent them.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” She was genuinely astonished at the accusation. “They attacked me too!”

  “A set-up?” I suggested, but not too forcefully, “to make me think you didn’t know them?”

  “You’re an idiot,” she said in utter scorn, but not in her usual hostile manner.

  I shrugged, but said nothing. A gull swooped down to Sunflower’s stern, hovered for a second, then glided away. A fishing boat, high prowed and brightly painted, belched its engine into life to gust a cloud of filthy smoke over the harbour.

  “We need your help, Mr Rossendale,” Jennifer Pallavicini said when the silence between us had stretched too long.

  “I’m sailing south,” I said. “I provisioned today, I’ve done my chart work, and I’m going south. I’ll probably call in at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, because a lot of girls hang about the yacht dock there looking for a lift to nowhere, and after that I’m sailing south to an African river I visited two years ago. The villagers there don’t see yachtsmen from one year’s end to the next and they’re as friendly as hell. The approach to the place is a bit bloody, one rusted buoy ten miles off shore and shoals that shift around like a snake in a sleeping bag, but…”

  “Please,” Jennifer Pallavicini interrupted me.

  “I rebuilt their generator when I was last there” – I ignored her appeal – “and I promised I’d go back to make sure it was still working.”

  Jennifer Pallavicini said nothing. I was as tempted as hell to say I’d help her, but only because she was such a beautiful girl. I applied sound feminist principles and made my decision as if she was as ugly as a baboon’s behind. “The answer’s no,” I said. “I offered you my help last month, and you turned it down.”

  She opened her handbag and took out an envelope. I thought for a second that she was going to offer me Sir Leon Buzzacott’s autograph on a cheque, but instead she took a photograph from the envelope. She held it out to me.

  The photograph showed a pale yellow triangle on a white background. Next to the yellow triangle was a black-and-white measuring stick which told me that each side of the triangle was three inches long. “I’m not really an expert on modern art,” I said, “but if I were you I wouldn’t buy it.”

  She ignored my feeble sarcasm. “It’s a corner of a painted canvas,” Jennifer Pallavicini said pedantically, “and our tests confirm that it was almost certainly cut from the Stowey Sunflowers. A letter came with it, Mr Rossendale, demanding four million pounds for the rest of the painting. The letter was posted two weeks ago. The letter stated that if we don’t pay the ransom by the end of August, then the painting will be burned and we will be sent the ashes.”

  “Then pay the four million,” I said casually. “It seems a fair enough price for a twenty-million-quid painting.”

  “Pay four million pounds to a blackmailer? To a man who will only demand more? Who, once we pay the first monies, will cut a sunflower from the canvas and demand another four million?” She was suddenly and vehemently passionate. “For God’s sake, Mr Rossendale, don’t you understand? The thieves will mutilate it to make their money! They’re barbarians, and they have to be stopped!”

  “Hang on,” I said. “A month ago you thought I was the thief. Now you’ve selected a group of barbarians.”

  “Maybe it’s whoever you sold the painting to,” she said angrily.

  I shrugged and shook my head. “Not guilty.”

  “Or maybe it’s you,” she said. “Maybe you think we’ll ransom the painting, then buy it from you.”

  “Give me a cheque for twenty-four million,” I said flippantly, “and the painting’s yours.”

  “Damn you,” she said angrily, then pushed the photograph back into her handbag.

  Behind me a French sloop was ghosting into the harbour. I turned to watch as it dropped its sails and a girl in a bikini went forward to pick up a mooring. Ulf was doing strenuous calisthenics on his foredeck and I saw him straighten up to eye the deficiencies of the newcomer’s boat. There wasn’t much wrong with the girl, not that I could see. I looked back to Jennifer Pallavicini and decided she too would look very good in a bikini. “Why do you need me?” I asked her. “You must have hired ransom experts? Have you told the police?”

  “Of course we have. The officer who was in charge of the original theft has been assigned to us.”

  “Not Harry Abbott!”

  “Detective Inspector Abbott,” she corrected me. “Yes.”

  “Bloody hell!” I said in disgust. Harry Abbott is someone who lives under a stone along with all the other nasty things that crawl and creep on slimy bellies in the Stygian dark. He had been the policeman who had tried to pin the theft of the Van Gogh on to me in the first place. He had failed then, but I didn’t fancy him trying again. “What does the bastard say you should do?”

  “Persuade you to come home.”

  “I wouldn’t go to Paradise on Harry’s recommendation.”

  “Which doesn’t alter the fact that you should be doing everything in your power to assist us. You are, after all, the legal owner of the painting.”

  “A minute ago,” I pointed out, “you accused me of being the blackmailer.”

  “It’s Inspector Abbott’s belief” – her voice made it clear that she did not entirely share his certainty – “that the blackmailers waited till you sailed away before they made an approach to Sir Leon.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  She shrugged to show that she had no answer. “What I do know,” she said, “
is that we need your authorisation for any attempts we may make to recover it. Otherwise Sir Leon could be accused of accepting stolen goods, so we need your permission to negotiate.”

  That seemed fair enough. “Does that mean,” I asked her, “that if Sir Leon retrieves it, he’ll have to give it back to me?”

  “Of course,” she said defiantly, as though, under those circumstances, she would dare me to take possession.

  I smiled at her. “I wouldn’t want it. Where could I hang it? There might be room on the lavatory bulkhead, but it would probably get in the way of the wet locker.”

  That small joke went down like a cement balloon. I sighed, went below to the cabin, and tore a page out of a notebook. I found a pencil and scribbled a quick message. ‘Sir Leon Buzzacott and his wage-slaves have my full authority to do whatever they think necessary for the safe recovery of one painting by Vincent Van Gogh, commonly known as the Stowey Sunflowers. This authorisation is signed by John Rossendale, Lord Stowey, Earl of Stowey, and Master under God of the good ship Sunflower.’ I dated it, then embellished it with an ornate rubber stamp that has Sunflower’s name, a quasi-Royal crown, and some nonsense numbers. I use the stamp to impress immigration officials in self-important but trivial countries. It doesn’t reduce the bureaucracy, or the scale of the necessary bribes, but it sometimes makes them a trifle more respectful.

  “There you go.” I handed the note to Jennifer Pallavicini. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Pity you flew all the way here to fetch it. You could have asked me nicely and I’d have posted it to you. Still, it’s very good to see you. Would you like an early dinner before I sail? I do a very good Corned Boeuf à la Bourguignonne. I’ve even got some fresh vegetables.”

  She ignored my babbling. Instead she tore my note into shreds which, in defiance of Greenpeace’s valiant endeavours, she scattered into the harbour water. “We need your personal help, my lord.”

  I leaned back on the thwart. “I’m always suspicious when you call me ‘my lord’. What do you plan to do if I return to England? Torture a confession out of me?”

  “If you agree to help us,” she said, “we shall naturally assume your innocence.”

  I feigned grateful astonishment. “Oh, my God! You’re so kind!”

  She had the grace to blush, but continued pressing her case. “We need your knowledge. You can remember what happened four years ago. You know more than I do about those two wretched men. Someone fears what you know, but if you’re lost in the oceans, then they won’t show themselves again. So please come back, my lord, and help us.”

  She had asked very nicely, and she was so very pretty, so I very nearly agreed, but every time I went home I regretted it. I’d been back at sea just long enough to get the taste again, and I was dreaming of those palm-edged rivers and impossibly blue lagoons. “You have my verbal authority,” I said wearily, “to do whatever you want, so go and do it. But leave me alone.”

  She nodded, almost as if she had expected the refusal. “I have some other news for you.”

  I waved a negligent hand as if to suggest that I did not much care whether she revealed the news or not.

  “Your sister, Lady Elizabeth Tredgarth, is initiating proceedings to take your younger sister back to England.”

  She had spoken in a very matter-of-fact voice, a poker-player’s voice. She had also appalled me, as she had doubtless hoped to do. “She’s doing what?” I could not keep the anger from my voice.

  Jennifer Pallavicini shrugged, as if to suggest that none of this was of much importance to her. “It seems there’s a nun who is particularly fond of the Lady Georgina?”

  “Sister Felicity, yes.”

  “The Lady Elizabeth feels that Sister Felicity is too old and too sick to look after Lady Georgina any longer. There’s also a possibility that the convent hospital might be sold, so Lady Elizabeth wants her younger sister brought home.”

  “Home?”

  “To where she lives, of course. In Gloucestershire, isn’t it?”

  I stared in horror at Jennifer Pallavicini. “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Elizabeth can’t stand the sight of Georgina!”

  Jennifer Pallavicini didn’t reply.

  “How the hell do you know all this?” I demanded angrily.

  “Because we take a great deal of interest in your family,” she said equably. “It’s a family that might bring our gallery a great treasure.”

  “You’re making this up,” I said. “You’re telling me this nonsense in the hope that it will bring me back to England!”

  “Your sister didn’t want you to know,” she said. “Indeed, she didn’t institute proceedings until she’d heard you had sailed away. Of course, you don’t have to believe me, but I thought perhaps the news might be of some slight interest to you.”

  The trouble was that I did believe her. Why else had Elizabeth been at the convent? “But we paid for Georgina,” I protested, “for her lifetime!”

  “A large sum of money was put into trust for your younger sister’s care,” Jennifer Pallavicini said pedantically, “but our legal informant tells us that the trustees retain the right to dictate how that money should be spent. If the Lady Elizabeth is confident that she can care for her sister, then there is no reason why the trust fund should not also be given into her care.”

  And how that made sense, brilliant clear lucid sense. Elizabeth, married to her impoverished and useless husband, would get her claws into Georgina’s money, while Georgina could be stuck into a cottage on the Tredgarth farm with some harridan to guard her.

  “The matter hasn’t been decided yet,” Jennifer Pallavicini went on. “The trustees need to be convinced that the Lady Elizabeth can provide a proper home for your younger sister, but there seems little doubt that she will succeed in so convincing them.”

  “Damn you,” I said to Jennifer Pallavicini. “Damn you, damn you, damn you.” The ties of duty, unavoidable duty, were wrapping about me. I could desert Stowey, I could watch my mother die and not shed a tear because of it, but Georgina was different. The only people who had ever been able to pierce that tremulous insanity had been Nanny, myself and Charlie. Now she needed me.

  “Sir Leon” – Jennifer Pallavicini could not resist a small smile as she played her ace – “is willing to guarantee a secure future for the Lady Georgina whether the painting is retrieved or not.”

  I said nothing. I was remembering the spitefulness with which Elizabeth had treated Georgina as a child. It wasn’t a deliberate spitefulness, merely a reflection of Elizabeth’s impatience. But, deliberate or not, it was unthinkable that Georgina should be put into Elizabeth’s care.

  Jennifer Pallavicini watched me, then opened her handbag and took out an air ticket which she laid on the thwart beside me. “If you go to your family’s solicitors, my lord, you can doubtless stop this nonsense instantly.”

  I picked up the ticket. It was for a first-class seat, Azores to Lisbon and Lisbon to London. “When it comes to my family,” I said haughtily to Jennifer Pallavicini, “I don’t need your damned help.” I tore the ticket into shreds, then scattered the scraps into the water. “Goodbye, Miss Pallavicini.”

  I had angered her, but I had also succeeded in surprising her. She took a few seconds to recover, then tried to turn the screw on my guilt. “It will be no good writing to your solicitors, my lord. Your objections to the Lady Georgina’s fate won’t be taken seriously unless you’re in England to take some personal responsibility for her.”

  “I said I don’t need your help to look after my family, Miss Pallavicini. So, goodbye.”

  “You’re not going to help your younger sister?” she asked incredulously.

  I smiled at her. “I’m going to sail away, Jennifer.” I suddenly clicked my fingers as though I had been struck with a brilliant and timely idea. “Would you like to sail with me? You can cook, can’t you?”

  She stood up. “I cannot believe,” she said with a frigid dignity, “that you could be so careless of your
younger sister’s future.” She paused, evidently seeking some final and crushing farewell. “You are undoubtedly the most selfish and unfeeling man I have ever met.”

  “And you’re cluttering up my boat. So if you don’t want to come with me, go away.”

  She went away.

  An hour later, as I was taking off the mainsail cover, I saw her being ferried out to Ulf’s yawl. I assumed she was going to pay her informant his reward, so I wrestled my fibreglass dinghy over the guardrails, took the outboard from the stern locker, and motored over to join the happy party. I ignored Miss Pallavicini, instead I killed the small engine, drifted alongside the yawl, and told Ulf that he was a slime-bag.

  “Johnny, how nice to see you! You know Miss Pallavicini, I think? You would like a drink with us?”

  “I wouldn’t drink your bloody prune juice if I was dying of constipation.” I climbed out of the dinghy, hitched it to one of his shrouds, and walked down his scuppers. “I told you to keep your Swedish mouth shut.”

  Jennifer Pallavicini’s eyes were wide with alarm. She clutched her handbag to her belly, but otherwise seemed unable to move. She doubtless believed that the huge Swede was about to pulverise me, and doubtless, in principle, she approved of that pulverisation, but it’s one thing to want someone beaten up and quite another to see real blood on the deck. I also believed that Ulf would pulverise me, but I was fed up with the bastard and wanted to hit him.

  “It was only a business arrangement,” Ulf said smugly.

  “And this is your profit.” I jumped into his scrubbed cockpit and punched him in the belly. He gasped, but did not hit back, so I smacked him hard across the mouth. The blow jarred his head and brought a fleck of blood to his lips.

  He still wouldn’t fight. “Johnny!” He wiped his mouth. “This is not like you.”

  “That’s because you don’t know me. So listen. If you ever open your mouth about me again, anywhere, to anyone, I’ll find your rotten carcass and I’ll feed it to the bloody fish. Do you understand me?”