Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  Adolescent girls are a race apart. When I was June’s age, a motor accident had injured and orphaned me: Other than my friendship with Holmes, my early ’teen years were solitary, leaving me ill equipped for light conversation about … well, whatever it is girls that age talk about.

  In any event, I was the wrong age for both sets of females here. I spent several increasingly uncomfortable minutes manufacturing painful topics of conversation (clothing? memorisation of lines? the weather, for pity’s sake?) before a moment of desperation had me hauling out a remark about the pirates Fflytte had hired, and waiting for that to flounder around and die.

  Except it didn’t. All three mothers smiled fondly, one of the girls giggled and turned pink, the other two spoke simultaneously.

  “I’m so glad—”

  “I never expected—”

  They stopped, and leant into each other with shrieks of laughter that rattled the chandelier.

  “Sorry?” I said when my ears had stopped ringing.

  “I was going to say,” said Isabel, “that I’m so glad Mr Fflytte didn’t bring a bunch of spotty boys from England to play our pirates.”

  “Yes,” Kate agreed. “Who’d have thought Portuguese boys could be so good-looking?”

  “Um.” I cast a sideways look at their mothers. “You do realise they’re not exactly boys, don’t you?” Apart from Lawrence, scarcely pubescent, and Jack, who seemed about fourteen, the pirates were in their twenties and thirties, and these girls were … well, they claimed to be at least fourteen, even Fannie, although I had serious doubts about her.

  “Oh, pooh,” said Isabel. “At least it’ll give us something interesting to do on the way to Morocco. I always wanted to go to Arabia!”

  “Morocco isn’t in Arabia.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “It’s on the northwest coast of Africa.”

  “Are you sure?” She seemed disappointed.

  “Unless they’ve moved it.”

  “Well, I s’pose Africa’s all right.”

  “Jungles and tigers,” popped up Fannie.

  “You won’t find too many jungles in Morocco,” I told her. “More likely desert.”

  “Ooh, a desert—so there will be sheiks?” Isabel wanted to know. The mothers looked interested. I sighed, and gave up.

  It was not raining at the moment, so I wrapped up against the chill and went for a walk before dinner. The streets were quiet, with restaurants not yet open and shops closed tight, although I thought I saw one of the taller girls—probably Annie, who seemed to be everywhere—dart into a side-street. When I reached that corner, I looked, but saw no one. In any event, I reminded myself that I was not responsible for every crew member at every moment.

  My feet took me down to the waterfront where, although there was more activity than the rest of the city, the loudest sounds were still the gulls and the slap of water. I wandered east, along the road that kept the tight-knit, almost Medieval Alfama district from spilling its piled boxes out across the modern docklands like a tipped toy-box. Pristine tiles abutted flaking plaster; ornate façades grew out of un-hewn stone; a sleek modern window stood next to one installed when Columbus was venturing into the Atlantic; a stone lion’s head set into a wall dripped water into a faded tin that had once held olive oil. It was nearly dark, and I was entering an area without street-lamps, so I turned to retrace my steps, intending to follow the next lighted thoroughfare.

  Then I saw a pair of men, some distance down the waterfront, coming in my direction. They were too far away to identify with any confidence, but something about their shapes made the back of my mind prickle, and I retreated into the deep shadow of a boarded-up entrance-way. In a couple of minutes, I peered out again. Sure enough: our translator and finder of pirate ships, with our pirate king.

  I faded into the stinking darkness. The men went past, speaking in Portuguese.

  I followed. Of course I followed.

  They took the next entrance into the Alfama, not far from where we had begun our Thursday night search for La Rocha. At the time, Pessoa had known neither the saloon nor La Rocha—it takes a good actor to craft an air of assurance-atop-uncertainty, and I did not think Pessoa a good actor—but it would appear that had changed. And I was not surprised when their goal was that same grubby hole in the wall.

  I was too far behind to hear any exchange of words when they entered the place, but I pulled my scarf up and my hat down, and risked a quick glance through the bottle-thick, salt-scummed window as I passed. Enough to see that in the thirty seconds after they had gone in, they had also gone out.

  Which could only mean that they had gone through the bar proper and into the same back room.

  A room with, as I recalled, a back door—narrow and half-concealed by heavy curtains, but there.

  It took me some time to find the right door amongst the warren of tiny lopsided dwellings jostling shoulder to shoulder beneath the castle walls. None of the streets—streets! one could stretch an arm across some of them—connected at right angles. Half of them came to an end in courtyards; many were enclosed overhead; most were unlit. The houses were occupied—I could hear voices and smell cooking, but it was late (and cold) enough that the children were inside, and the adults, too, were mostly invisible behind shutters. Feeling my way in and out of various brief passages, at last my eye was caught by a narrow line of light at the far end of a tunnel-like lane.

  The thin strip was the only thing I could see, and although I had a torch in my overcoat pocket, I was loath to use it. Instead, I found that if I blocked the actual light with an outstretched hand, its reflection along the stone walk and walls would permit me to creep forward. I crept forward, and heard a voice. A voice I knew.

  Not that I could understand what he was saying, but Fernando Pessoa was talking. And talking. I pressed my ear to the crack, hearing nothing but his voice, going on and on. It sounded like a recitation.

  So I went down on my knees to put my eye near the half-inch gap between door and stone.

  The horizontal slice of room that came into view contained three chairs and a merry fire. There were men in the chairs, and although I could only see their legs, I knew who the room held. La Rocha’s scuffed and elephantine red boots were stretched out to the coals, ankles propped, his right toe pulsing slightly as if keeping the beat of private music. His lieutenant—“Samuel”—sat on the other side of the fire, his own shiny black boots flat on the floorboards; a glass of some brown liquid hung from his fingertips, the arm itself resting out of sight on the chair. The third legs belonged to Pessoa: their knees were crossed with the right toe tucked behind the left calf, an uncomfortable position suggesting intense concentration. I could just see a corner of paper, drooping from his knee. As I watched, he lifted it, rearranged it out of my sight, then laid it back down. He continued reading.

  This was not some report he was conveying to La Rocha and his man, not unless he had set his report in verse (although this being Pessoa, anything was likely). His words had a rhythm that drove La Rocha’s toe, and caused Samuel’s glass to swirl gently.

  Then the rhythm broke off. Pessoa said something in a more normal voice—rather, in the voice he had used the other evening when he wore the monocle, not the deferential intonations of Fernando Pessoa, translator. He seemed to be asking a question, because La Rocha’s squeak answered, then Samuel contributed something. It went on that way for a few minutes, before Pessoa cleared his throat, paused for a swallow from his glass, and set to again.

  I peeled my cheek off the grubby stone and sat upright, thinking, Good heavens, they’re holding a piratical poetry reading!

  This literary salon continued for another quarter hour before Pessoa came to what was clearly, even through a closed door, some kind of conclusion. The other two men did not applaud, but they did make encouraging noises. I placed my eye back to the slit, thinking that they would pour the poet a drink and talk it over, but instead all three of them stood. I positioned my hands for i
nstant flight in the event they decided to use the back entrance, but they did not—and to my surprise, it was not Pessoa who left, but the other two.

  Instead, Pessoa made a circuit of the chairs, stood before the fire for a minute—I could only see to his bagged knees, but I pictured him rolling a cigarette. Then a spent match sailed into the coals, and Pessoa returned to his chair, and his pages.

  Only this time, he read his words in English.

  It was—inevitably—a poem about piracy, beginning with hard, romantic, masculine images of a man’s life at sea:

  To the sea!

  Salt with windblown foam

  My taste for great voyages!

  Thrash with whipping water the flesh of my adventure,

  Douse with the cold depths the bones of my existence,

  But then the harshness slipped sideways, into imagery even a pirate might have found unnerving:

  Make shrouds out of my veins!

  Hawsers out of my muscles!

  Flay my skin and nail it to the keels!

  Was this what he’d been reading to La Rocha and his friend? It was hard to picture those two men receiving these images with such calm attentiveness. No, I decided: The poet must have read them a less inflammatory portion, and set these verses free into the room only after they had left.

  It went on in this vein for some time, the poet asking that his eyes be torn out, bones smashed, blood spilt. I listened in fascination as the pale, thin landsman dreamed into existence a tropical sun that made his taut veins seethe, Patagonian winds that tattooed his imagination. There was a bizarre fascination in overhearing the man’s inner vision, of himself and his people; my cheek went numb against the frigid stone as his maritime ode unfolded. His voice became increasingly caught up in the recitation, gaining in fervency at the erotically charged violence, the fire and the blood, until from deep within booms the savage and insatiable Song of the Great Pirate, sending a chill down the spine of his men:

  Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest

  Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

  The abrupt shift from bloody rapine into children’s adventure story startled a noise out of me, and I slapped a hand over my mouth. The dramatic recitation cut sharply off. I staggered upright and forced my stiff limbs to shamble down the tunnelled lane, clearing the corner only an instant before the bolt rattled and the door spilt light down the stones.

  I was waiting at the front of the tavern when he left a short time later, and followed him long enough to confirm that it was the flamboyant, monocled Álvaro de Campos striding along the deserted streets, not meek, bespectacled Pessoa. I trailed behind him long enough to decide that he was headed to his home, on the city’s other set of hills, and then I turned off towards the hotel, and dinner.

  I will admit, my dreams that night were a touch … confused.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SCENE: A ruined chapel by moonlight.

  THEN CAME MONDAY morning, and everything changed.

  The cast—most of it—was at breakfast when Fflytte swept in, dressed in the most remarkable suit I’d yet seen, a canary yellow twill with a bright orange cravat spotted with green fleurs-de-lis. He stood in the doorway and clapped his hands to gain our attention, gaining that of all the civilians and waiters as well.

  “Good morning, everyone!” He paused, as if expecting a classroom of dutiful replies. Hale loomed behind him in the doorway, looking as if he had not slept well. He might have simply remained where he was, but behind him came Will Currie, who shouldered the yellow twill aside and gestured to a waiter carrying a jug of coffee. Hale took advantage of the opening, as did a couple whose departure had been blocked by the director. Fflytte disregarded them all.

  “Fresh day, fresh week, fresh ideas!” he boomed. “Now, as some of you may have heard, I found a ship yesterday that’s going to transform what we do with this picture. It will take a bit of attention to get it in condition for the cameras, so, rather than delay the rest of the production while we’re doing that, I’m going to divide us up. Now, we’ve done this before,” he cajoled, although I had heard no protests, “and we’re all professionals here. Well, most of us. And the newcomers to the trade are fast learners. Here’s what we’ll do. Team One is composed of me and Mr La Rocha: He and I will get the ship ready to film.” And to limp into the harbour and back without going down, I added by way of silent prayer. “The second team, with Mr Hale, will rehearse the pirates and their fight scenes with the constables. Mr Hale will be in charge of that, assisted by Mr La Rocha’s, er … well, we know him in the part of Samuel. And our translator, Mr Pessoa, will remain with them.” I drew a relieved breath: I could not let the man who’d composed what I overheard the previous evening remain near young girls, but I was not looking forward to telling Hale why. “Team Three will be the girls, with Mr Currie and Miss Russell. Oh, and you, Daniel. Girls, I’m sending you on a little working holiday just near the coast, to film the scenes where Frederic first sees Mabel. I’m told it’s a lovely place, we’ve made arrangements for you to spend the night, the charabanc will be here in an hour. And—”

  Whatever he’d planned on saying next was drowned in a gale of shrieks and exclamations, as a score of females threw down their table napkins and stormed for the door. Amused—he’d done it deliberately, I could tell—Fflytte stood aside to let them race past, then turned to the depleted audience, consisting of the crew, Daniel Marks, and the police constables. Harold Scott—our Major-General—was not there. One rarely saw him before noon.

  “Maude,” Fflytte said to the woman in charge of make-up, “you’ll go with the girls, of course. And, Miss Russell? Will’s assistant, Artie, is a touch, er, under the weather. You don’t mind helping Will with the equipment, do you?”

  I looked at Will, who was grimly stirring sugar into his coffee. He’d known about the plan beforehand—going by his lack of bounce, he’d spent a large part of the night protesting. “Happy to,” I replied.

  Then Fflytte turned to the woman in charge of costuming. “Sally, you’ll stay with me and Mr La Rocha. He tells me there’s going to be a lot of repairs needed to the sails, and—”

  “No!” she and I objected, at the same instant. She didn’t wait for me to cede the floor. “I’ll not ruin my hands on canvas.”

  “You’ve sewn canvas before.”

  “Yes, when you needed a shroud for a burial at sea,” she retorted. “But there’s a world of difference between wrapping a mannequin and producing an acre of canvas sail.”

  “Oh, hardly an acre,” Fflytte cajoled.

  “I’m not doing it!”

  “Mr Fflytte,” I interrupted, “I have to agree. Because if Sally’s not there, any decisions and repairs to the girls’ costumes will be up to me and the girls.”

  He opened his mouth to ask what was wrong with that, then looked at what I was wearing; considered, too, what his actresses would wear if given free choice; and closed his mouth—rather more rapidly than manners would require, I thought: My dirt-coloured woollen trousers and tweed hacking jacket were a lot more practical than his garments. Certainly warmer.

  “Very well, I’m sure La Rocha will know a sail-maker down near the harbour.”

  No doubt La Rocha was well acquainted with all sorts of men willing to garnish their bills and pass him the difference. But I did have one question.

  “Have you consulted La Rocha and Samuel about this division of labour?” Samuel was La Rocha’s shadow; I had never seen the two men apart.

  “They’re fine with the idea,” the director said.

  But when I looked at Hale, I could see that he was not. I had to agree: Fflytte and La Rocha out in the world, unchaperoned, would be a terrifying picture for the man in charge of the cheque book.

  The charabanc might be arriving at the hotel in an hour, but I did not expect that it would leave soon after that. And indeed, two hours later, Will Currie was still in argument with Sally the seamstress as to which set of equipment was the more vulnerable t
o weather. In the end, I bodily hoisted her sewing trunk to the man whose feet were dangling from the roof of the ’bus, told Will he could prop his camera in the seat beside me, and we were away.

  Cintra was, or so I had been told, a picturesque little hilltop town nearer the Atlantic coast, fifteen miles or so from Lisbon. Normally, one would take the train that left from beside the hotel, but Fflytte and Hale had decided that a charabanc would put the equipment at less risk, and (I realised this only later) would make it more difficult for one of the actresses to slip away.

  As soon as we had left the centre of town, I regretted the decision. The road was in the same condition as the charabanc—bad—which would mean that a forty-minute train ride was going to take us two or three hours. We jostled and rattled, raising a cloud of dust through which could be glimpsed olive trees and windmills, cork oaks and a very Roman-looking aqueduct, boulders and an occasional figure—young boy, old man, or mummified scarecrow?—seated on a boulder, watching over a flock of dirty sheep or goats.

  An hour out, the murmur of complaint and discomfort had swollen to a tide. I told the driver to halt at the next likely place. He answered in Portuguese. I tried Spanish, then French, and in that tongue he told me that the next likely place would be Cintra. I replied that he could in that case stop anywhere the girls might stretch their legs without falling off a cliff or being attacked by a pack of dogs.

  Twenty minutes later, I tapped the driver on the shoulder and told him that here would be fine.