Soon, everyone was back aboard the ship.
There seemed to be miserably few of them. Only a couple of days ago the Shadeblaze had been crowded and bustling. Now, the creaking of her timbers as she rocked gently in the swell seemed to inhibit people from talking louder than a murmur.
Rustbane, without saying a word to anyone, made his way to the captain’s quarters, those quarters that, of course, Jeopord had inhabited during the fox’s absence. The hushed crew could hear Rustbane swearing sturdily, then there was a crash as the first of the usurper’s possessions was hurled up the wooden steps and onto the deck. It was followed by more. Wordlessly, Cheesefang and Pimplebrains moved over and began pitching the articles over the side into the blackness where the ocean hid.
Nobody said very much. Viola engaged her mother in a long hug. Sylvester realized that, during the past few days, Viola must have become resigned to never seeing her mother again much as Sylvester had long ago had to face the fact that he’d probably never see his father again. Now Sylvester was reunited with his father and Viola was reunited with her mother. It should have felt more like a happy ending.
The company remained mute while Bladderbulge, who to, Sylvester’s unreasonable joy, was among the survivors, waddled off to the galley and began throwing together some vittles for their belated supper. Rasco, who’d earlier been calling high-pitched greetings from the crow’s nest, scrambled down the rigging to rejoin his friends.
“So, tell me,” said Sylvester a long while later as the four lemmings and the mouse gathered around a brazier on the poop deck, “just how was it you managed to save our vulpine friend?”
What never occurred to Sylvester was that of course his father and Daphne Pickleberry had known each other as adults, way back in the long ago. The two had recognized each other at once, and were soon laughing and joshing the way that old, albeit not particularly close, family friends are wont to do.
The subject of Mrs. Pickleberry thinking that Mayor Hairbell might be a suitable spouse for her young daughter had come up and she hotly denied ever favoring the notion. “It was all me ’usband’s idea, the daft old bat.”
Nothing would suit her better, Three Pins insisted, than that Viola should marry a swashbuckling hero of the seas like Sylvester Lemmington had proven himself to be. Indeed, she spoke so unexpectedly fondly of him that Sylvester was concerned Viola’s sentiments might turn against him, but luckily this seemed not to be the case. Mrs. Pickleberry also spoke very fondly of Hortensia, Sylvester’s mother. He’d never known the two were particularly close friends, but perhaps Mrs. Pickleberry’s admiration was born of the fact that the lemmings were half a world away from home, and from Hortensia.
Sylvester wasn’t sure if he liked the new, mellower Mrs. Pickleberry. After a while, he decided he didn’t, but he could tolerate her as a mother-in-law if that was the price he had to pay for having Viola by his side for the rest of his life.
Probably.
“Wot I did was—” began Mrs. Pickleberry.
“What we did,” Rasco corrected politely.
Mrs. Pickleberry drew an impossibly deep sigh. “What we did was, well, we felt we ’ad to save the life of that scoundrelly skipper o’ yourn.”
“Rustbane?”
“Ye catch on fast. See, spratling, I had a fair ol’ hunch the mangy fox’d make sure we got home, one way or the other, just so long’s we didn’t get too far up his nose. After all, ’e’d harf a dozen times told us he was going to kill us or have us flogged, and none o’ the times had he actually done so. Seemed as obvious as the ’air on an old man’s bottom to me that Rustbane had reasons of his own for keepin’ us alive. Jeopord, on the other paw, he was somethin’ different. There was a mean streak down his back that was ’arf a yard wide. Obvious he’d kill us jus’ as soon as he could think up a nasty enough way.”
Sylvester was pretty sure he followed her reasoning.
“So, you and Rasco?” he prompted.
“Rasco and me,” said Mrs. Pickleberry firmly, “we decided that we had to save the skipper, which involved givin’ him a life raft o’ sorts.”
“Unfortunately, we could find only a cork,” Rascoe said.
“A cork?”
“Yes.” The mouse shrugged. “It was the only thing close at paw.”
“So, when you said the cork could be used as a life raft,” he continued, groping his way forward, “you didn’t actually mean it was used as a raft.”
“Not in so many words, no. It was wodjer might call a metaphoricule life raft.”
“Something he could hang on to in a spiritual way?”
“Yes.”
“Something that would give him faith in the future when the dark curtains of pessimism sank down all around barring him from the sunbeams of hope?”
“You do go on a bit, doncher, Sylvester?”
For a second, Sylvester couldn’t think of an appropriate response. Mrs. Pickleberry was accusing him of going on a bit?
“Tell it your own way,” he said at last, yielding the point.
Mrs. Pickleberry drew a whistling breath. She might have mellowed toward her prospective son-in-law, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy her moments of triumph over him. Sylvester made a mental note to make sure he and Viola enjoyed their marital life together as far from his in-laws as he could manage.
“It was lucky for us and our plans,” she said, “that the pirate wot the mutinous ocelot deputed to tie up Rustbane was a pal of yers, Bladderbulge, none uvver.”
Aha! thought Sylvester, comprehension dawning. That explains a lot. The portly badger had been one of the gray fox’s closest allies. Sylvester recalled that odd moment when Bladderbulge had been tying Rustbane up after the mutiny, and the reluctance he had seen in Bladderbulge’s eyes.
“There was so much rope wrapped around that scurrilous fox,” Mrs. Pickleberry was saying, “you couldn’t hardly see where rope ended and fox began. ’E looked like someone had been making a sausage and forgotten to cover the two ends. No one could tell there was more underneath them bonds than just fox.”
“More underneath?” Sylvester asked.
Mrs. Pickleberry rolled her eyes. “Sylvester?”
“Yes?”
“What is Bladderbulge’s job?”
“Er, he is the cook.”
“Very good. What kitchen utensils do cooks usually have at their disposal?”
“Well, er, pots, frying pans, that sort of thing.”
“My, ye’re the fast guesser ain’t ye?” She turned to Viola. “Are ye sure ye want to spend yer life with this dumbskull for a lemming?”
“Mom!”
“Anyways, with the speed of Sylvester’s mind ’ere, we would’a played this guessing game for a week. What Bladderbulge used was a . . . knife!”
“Yes, well, that would’ve been my third guess,” Sylvester said, silently cursing himself for not thinking of the most logical tool to cut a rope with.
“Sure ye would,” said Mrs. Pickleberry heavy with sarcasm. “Now that we got that cleared up . . . The badger laid the knife against the fox’s spine, sharp side outermost, runnin’ from the base of Rustbane’s tail up the middle of his back. Then he – Bladderbulge, that is – began winding around fox and knife alike with his ropes. By the time he’d done you couldn’ tell there was the means of Rustbane’s releasing built into the very bonds that held him, like.”
Sylvester was still having a hard time figuring out the details.
“But what good would that be to Rustbane?” he said. “He couldn’t reach the knife to do anything with it .”
“Yes, Mom,” Viola chipped in. “How would the knife being there help the cap’n?”
Mrs. Pickleberry raised an eyebrow. “Them that say pirates can’t swim – that it’s part of the job description, like – that ain’t strictly true. Not when ye’re Cap’n
Terrigan Rustbane, it ain’t. Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane ain’t come across a rule in his life that he ain’t broken as a matter of principle, and this one ain’t no exception. He can swim like a fish, like two fishes.”
“Even when he’s trussed from neck to toe?” said Viola.
“Sure. ’E can still wiggle, can’t ’e?”
“I suppose so,” murmured Sylvester thoughtfully. “That’s how eels get around in the water. And sea snakes. And otters too, I think. And leeches. And—”
“Soooo.” With a glare, Mrs. Pickleberry overrode him. “So, as I was sayin’, Cap’n Rustbane can swim like an eel when he has to, and this was one o’ the times he was goin’ to be ’avin’ to, if you gets me drift.”
“Even when he’s trussed up like a birthday gift?” said Viola, drawing some of her mother’s irritation away from Sylvester.
“Even then. He’s a talented feller, that Rustbane. ’S a pity he ain’t a lemming, might make a better son-in-law than some I could mentions.”
Oh well, decided Sylvester. So much for the mellow Mrs. Pickleberry. That didn’t last long.
“Where was I?” said Mrs. Pickleberry.
Viola reminded her.
“Well, as I was sayin’ afore I was so rudely interrupted, off his plank Rustbane jumps, and into the water he goes – kerrsplosh – and he sort o’ thrashes around a while to make it look good. Then—”
“But I saw him drifting away from the Shadeblaze,” said Sylvester.
“So you did.” Mrs. Pickleberry reached out and patted him on the side as if to tell him that even numbskulls could get a few things right, like stopped clocks. “There was one more thing Bladderbulge did when ’e was knottin’ up the fox, an’ that was ter leave a loose end o’ rope free. As soon as Rustbane landed in the water, right after him went our little friend here.”
She gestured at Rasco. The little mouse grinned and bowed.
“I landed in the water,” he said, taking up the story, “and, oh, the waves were so high and the water so cold for a diminutive mouse like moi. But I plucked all my courage into a single pluck, and I swam to where the great big fox was splooshing in the sea, and I seized the end of cord Bladderbulge had left and put it between my teeth. With a cry of ‘bon voyage!’ (my little joke, you see) I began to swim—”
“Very little,” said Mrs. Pickleberry firmly.
“—back to the . . . What?”
“’Very little,’ I said.”
“Pardon?”
“Your joke.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Ye said yer joke was little.”
“I did. I know that.”
“I was just saying it was very little.”
“It was. Is that not what I said?”
“No. You just said it was little. Not very little.”
Rasco shrugged and put his paws up as if pleading to the heavens. “Little, very little, what difference does it make?”
“All the difference in the—look, just get on with it.”
“That is what I was trying to do, Three Pins.”
“Din’ look like it to me.” She sniffed.
Rasco looked as if he might be tempted at a moment’s notice to strangle someone, but carried on where he’d left off.
“I swam back to the Shadeblaze with the loose end of rope. As planned, Daphne was hanging a much longer piece of rope from a porthole of her cabin near the water level, and it was the work of a moment to tie the two ends together. Then, once she had pulled me into the cabin alongside her, all we had to do was watch Rustbane fall away behind the stern of the Shadeblaze until everyone else had got bored with the spectacle. As soon as that happened, we began pulling him in, like he was a mighty fish and we were the fisherfolk who’d caught him. It was a hard haul for two creatures so inconsequentially sized as ourselves, but luckily our two friends, Bladderbulge and Cheesefang, soon came to aid us, and before too long the good cap’n was bobbing in the wake below our porthole.
“Then came the part most difficile.”
Rasco looked around him as if, even now, there might be hostile spies listening. Sylvester idly wondered if anyone else had ever called Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane “good” before.
“You see,” said Rasco, “Cap’n Rustbane had to wiggle until—”
“Like a eel,” interposed Mrs. Pickleberry.
“Like an eel,” Rasco conceded. “He had to wriggle like an eel until he was directly against the hull of the Shadeblaze, his back to its timbers, and rub up and down against them, worrying at them so the sharp blade of the knife could cut through the rope.”
“Ahhhhh,” said Jasper. “So that’s how you did it. The edge would never have cut through all the layers of rope but it didn’t have to. Just one piece of rope, so long as it was the right piece of rope.”
“Then,” agreed Rasco, “all the rest would unravel. That was our plan, you see. And the loose coils of rope would drift away in the ocean current under the cover of darkness, so that by morning they’d be long gone and none aboard would be any the wiser.”
“While Rustbane would have crawled in through the porthole and be safely sleeping it off in Daphne’s cabin, so that—”
“Not exactly,” said Rasco with a sidelong glance at Mrs. Pickleberry.
Jasper did a double-take then smiled. “Of course. The porthole might be big enough for you to crawl in and out of, but foxes are much larger animals than mice, and lemmings for that matter, so Rustbane wouldn’t have been able to get through.”
“It wasn’t just that,” said Rasco in a very low, embarrassed voice.
Jasper narrowed his eyes. “Then what was it?”
“My good friend Three Pins here, she—”
“Out with it!”
“There’s the matter of whether it would be seemly to share her cabin with a—”
“With a fox? She’s a lemming, for goodness’ sake!”
Mrs. Pickleberry’s expression was wrought of stone. It was clear she wasn’t going to say nuffink, not nohow.
“She is,” said Rasco, in the tones of one venturing into a maze that might prove to have no exit, “a female lemming.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Jasper.
Viola bridled in defense of her mother. “It’s easy enough for you to say ‘pshaw!’”
Looks like there might be stormy times ahead between Viola and her father-in-law too, mused Sylvester. Perhaps it might be best if my darling and I found a desert island somewhere to settle down.
“You’re right,” said Jasper. “Shall I say it again?”
“My mother was rightly concerned about the … proprieties.”
Rasco cleared his throat, a sound like someone scraping claws along a nail file. A very small nail file.
“It was not Three Pins who was concerned about the, ah, proprieties of sharing a cabin with Cap’n Rustbane. It was, ahem—”
He stopped speaking. Everyone else except Mrs. Pickleberry stopped breathing as the implications sank in.
“Mom?” said Viola at last.
This is nuts, Sylvester decided. A moment ago we were all ready to ridicule Daphne for declining to share her cabin with a fox. Now we’re ready to criticize her because it was the fox who got himself tied up in ridiculous knots.
It is at moments like these that imminent sons-in-law lay the foundations for years of future happy coexistence.
“Well,” he said. “What a stupid damn fox.”
After a long, reflective silence, Rasco somewhat tentatively continued.
“That Cap’n Rustbane, he is the athletic one, no? Even though he’d been in the icy waters for more hours than there are claws on a mouse’s paw, once he’d shed the ropes that bound him, Rustbane wasted no time about scaling the side of the Shadeblaze. He climbed over the taffrail under cover of night, and foun
d his way to the galley, where Bladderbulge hid him until—”
“Until we ran aground near the cannibal island,” concluded Sylvester.
Rasco nodded.
“Even after that, once Jeopord sent us ashore to what the ocelot thought would almost certainly be our gruesome deaths.”
“Gruesome,” said the mouse, nodding again. “Yes. I like that. Gruesome. Deaths? Not so good.”
“It was only once Jeopord and his landing party had got the Shadeblaze afloat and set off for the island themselves, hoping to find that the cannibals had killed us or we’d killed the cannibals – preferably both – that Rustbane came out of hiding.”
“You have hit the nail right on the thumb.” It was an expression Rasco had used before.
“So, Rustbane cared no more than Jeopord did what happened to us?”
A new voice spoke from somewhere in the darkness behind Sylvester.
“Of course I cared. Aren’t you all, all of you, the very jewels of my heart?”
“You’ve been ’ittin’ the grog,” said Mrs. Pickleberry breaking what was, for her, a very long silence. “You’s smashed, Terry, isn’t yer?”
The gray fox, teetering as he ventured into the glow cast by the brazier, thought about this for some while longer than he should have.
“I am,” he concluded, “stone-cold drunk.”
No one spoke.
“It’s rather like being stone-cold sober,” Rustbane said, “only with one very significant difference.”
He looked from face to face, as if expecting somebody to start a guessing game as to what the difference might be.
“Good,” he said, when no one spoke. “I suppose you’ve been wondering what I’m planning to do next?”
“No, in fact,” said Sylvester.
“Then you should have been,” said Rustbane airily. “Always important to be thinking about your skipper’s intentions.”
The Tides of Avarice Page 52
