The Pyrates

by George MacDonald Fraser

  They looked for a grand spectacle at her trial, and she gave it them, fighting like a spitfire all the way to the dock, raking her warders' faces with her nails, so that they had to chain her to the bar. She spat at the spectators, snarled threats at the jurors, and even screamed filthy abuse at Jeffreys himself. And he, like Lord Foppington, remarked in an aside to his fellow-judges that he would not have missed such a trial for the salvation of mankind. But when he came to pass sentence on her, for piracy, murthers, robberies, slaughters, arson, putting in fear, and operating without a Board of Trade certificate, there was amaze, for he put aside the black cap and said, in that famous dry whisper:

  “Richly though ye ha' merited death a thousand times over, yet for that ye are a woman – as indeed is plain for all to see, heh-heh! (laughter and whistles) – and for that his majesty's plantations are in need of labour, it is the merciful sentence of this court that ye be transported to the East Indies, and there sold in bondage for the rest of your natural life …” (sensation in court, cries of “Fix!” “Boo!” “It's a cut-up!” “We want to see her swing!” and “Good old Jeff!”.)

  It was rumoured that the King himself had intervened, having seen her in Newgate and done a quick double-take before observing that they couldn't hang a female who looked like that, it would be criminal, etc., etc. But as she heard the sentence Black Sheba screamed with rage, and clashed her fetters at the bar.

  “Damn your mercy!” she snarled. “I've been a slave! I'd rather die, you foul shrivelled bastard, you!”

  At which Jeffreys, with commendable restraint, had hurled himself frothing about the bench, bawling at her:

  “Why, so ye shall, ye vile black bitch – so ye shall, in God's good time! And I trust they'll have lashed every inch of hide off your foul carcase first, thou wanton, smelly, perverse slut, thou! Take her down, take her out, take her anywheres so she be away!” And he had thrown his wig at her in his passion, calling her beldame, whore, slattern, harlot and jigaboo, but since Sheba had given him back cuckold, honky, pimp, snake, and faggot, the spectators decided it was a draw, and ought to be replayed. Sheba was dragged back to her cell, and there she was, pacing and snarling, waiting to be haled off to East Indian bondage, while …

  Colonel Blood reluctantly tore his eyes away from the cleavage of the buxom serving-wench who was hanging admiringly over the back of his chair, considered his cards, and glanced, sighing, at the fat, ugly, gloating, richly-dressed gull who sat across the table in the taproom of The Prospect of Whitby. Blood was looking slightly better than when we last saw him, having shaved, found a clean shirt, and apparently spent his last five pence on a shampoo and set. He had also acquired a lace jabot, an embroidered red coat with a sword worn modishly through the pocket, and a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. (Spectacles? What have we here?)

  “Come on, come on, sir!” cried the fat man. “Ya' play, damme!”

  Blood sighed again and played the king of spades; the fat man played the queen and gleefully nudged his crony, another podgy vulgarian. They eyed the pile of guineas on the table; money for jam, they were thinking.

  “Ya' last card, sir! Hey?” cried Fatso. “What, sir? Come, sir! Eh, sir?”

  “Just the seven o' clubs,” said Blood innocently, and faced what is usually the duddest card you can hold at picquet. The fat man and his friend gaped, and swore, and the fat man dashed down his useless king of diamonds. Blood raked in the cash almost apologetically, removed his spectacles and tucked them in his sleeve, rose, kissing the serving-wench lightly on the cheek, and flipped a guinea down her ample frontage.

  “Blast me vitals!” cried the fat chap. “How – how, sir, did ye guess I'd sloughed the ace o' clubs? What? Hey?”

  “Irish instinct, me old joy,” said Blood, winking at the wench. “My mother was frightened by a knave of hearts.”

  “The fiend's own luck!” groaned the fat man.

  “Devil a bit,” said Blood. “All my luck's reserved for love, eh, sweetheart?” And he squeezed the wench again, bade his opponents an affable good day, and sauntered upstairs whistling “Come lasses and lads”, jingling his winnings. There he turned into a bedroom, where a dark and languid lady, slightly past her prime, extended a plump hand to him from the froth of lace which surrounded her as she reclined among the pillows, purring amorously.

  “Dah-ling!” she breathed, and Blood gallantly slipped on to the bed, kissing ardently up her arm to her buxom shoulders and bosom, at which she reproved him coyly, and then began to eat his ear, murmuring hungrily: “I vow ye've been away from me so long, I thought ye had forgot your dear little pigeon,” and she tried to drag him under the sheets.

  “A mere half-hour, ye fascinating houri,” said Blood, and poured his winnings into a purse before her eyes. “A trifle of pin money I've been earning, me heart's darling – forty guineas against our travelling expenses to Gretna.”

  At this the lady cried out fondly: “Why, thou foolish dear fellow, where was the need? Have I not ample funds … and there is all my jewellery.” And she fingered her necklace and stroked his cheek, all of which the Colonel bore with equanimity.

  “Only a vandal,” he murmured, nuzzling the necklace and the soft skin beneath it, “could bear to see it removed from its rightful place – tho' faith, it's dim by comparison with such a lovely setting.”

  He would have been less poetically carefree if he could have seen the serving-wench at that moment, discovering the spectacles which had slipped from his sleeve during his last departing fondle, to hook themselves in her apron-string. She squeaked with surprise, exclaimed: “Ow, look, the gennelman's left 'is glasses!”, giggled, and clapped them on her pert nose for the entertainment of the customers. “Caw, look at me!” she exclaimed, peering affectedly, and then her eyes fell on the cards scattered on the table, and she gasped in genuine dismay.

  “Ow!” she cried. “Caw, bleedin' 'ell! Ow, me! Lookathat! Ow, the rotten cheat!”

  For through the spectacles she could see that on the backs of the cards their identities were clearly marked, and even she, dumb trull that she was, knew that this was irregular. The defeated gamesters gaped, and seized the glasses from her, and peered through them, and observed their cunningly-tinted glass, and with one accord cried: “Burn my bowels! Bubbled, by God! Where is the knave, the sharp, the cut-purse!” and were on the point of making for the stairs, to wreak vengeance, when a stentorian voice thundered at the tap-room door:

  “Landlord! Hither to me! Have you a rakehell black Irishman in your house, hey? A rascal that calls himself Colonel Blood?”

  “Colonel Blood, sir?” spluttered the fat man. “My word, sir, the villain has just made off with my forty guineas!”

  “Damn your guineas, sir!” roared the newcomer, who was huge and masterful and magnificently dressed. “The villain has just made off with my wife!”

  Since no one kept their voices down in Restoration England, it followed that every word of this exchange was audible upstairs. The languid lady, suddenly distraught, shot bolt upright with a violence which pitched Blood on to the floor, clutched her bosom, and cried “My husband!”, followed by a shriek of dismay as she realised that her erstwhile lover, hoisting his breeches with one hand and grabbing his purse with the other, already had one leg over the sill. She stretched out an arm in dramatic entreaty and shrilled: “False heart, will you desert me now? Oh, stay!”

  “Just slipping out for a breath of air, my sweet,” said Blood reassuringly, and vanished, blowing a kiss, for he liked to observe the polite niceties.

  “What shall I do?” cried the lady, wringing her hands like anything, and Blood, who would deny no one advice if it might be helpful, poked his head back in to suggest: “Tell him ye walked in your sleep,” before dropping to the street.

  Now, in any romance of fiction, he would have slipped nimbly up a side-street and hid, grinning rakishly, in a doorway, while the pursuit rushed futilely by. But since this is a highly realistic, moral tale, it has to be reco
rded that he fell slap on to a pile of empty beer-crates, and was thrashing about cursing when the outraged husband and his burly minions (all outraged husbands in those days engaged burly minions, from some Restoration equivalent of Central Casting) emerged to seize him wrist and ankle. And they tore off his fine coat (which was the husband's anyway, having been provided for Blood by his doting leman) and beat the living daylights out of him with stout canes, to the great satisfaction of the cheated gamesters, and the vicarious excitement of the deserted lady, who watched, biting her lips, from her bedroom window. Indeed, she became so emotional that when her lord, after a final cut at the hapless Colonel, strode into the inn, up the stairs, and confronted her with a lowering scowl and a “So-ho, madam!” she flung herself sobbing at his feet, begging forgiveness and pleading, in piteous tones, her youthful folly – she was forty-seven, to be exact, but her contrition was such a change from her customary wilfulness, and she looked so fetching in her dishevelled negligee, that he forgave her on the spot, and taking a leaf out of Marlborough's book, pleasured her (once) in his boots, and they lived happy ever after, or so we may assume.

  A comfortable and loving note on which to end our second chapter. But sterner matters await us. Avery, his hair brushed and his heart pure, is about to set off on his perilous mission to Madagascar – will his path cross that of Black Sheba when they ship her to the Indies? And what o' Blood, caught in the acts of abduction, seduction, marking his cards, and causing malicious damage to beer crates? He is right in it…

  CHAPTER

  THE THIRD

  n the taproom, whither they had dragged him battered and bruised as he was, Colonel Blood fetched his breath while the gamesters reviled him, the wench giggled, one burly minion brushed the stolen coat, and another snarled: “Bide you there, ye muckrake, whiles Oi fetch a constable. 'Tis the Roundhouse for 'ee, aye, an' the gallows therearter, damn 'ee!”

  This seemed a reasonable forecast to Blood, who promptly swooned lower on his bench, gasping “Water! Water!”, at which they reviled him harder than ever, but relaxed their guard, with the result that one minion was suddenly rolling on the floor, clutching his groin and making statements, the other had the fine coat wrenched from his grasp (the Colonel, a realist, knew that you can't get far in your shirt-sleeves) and an iron fist smashed against his jaw, and before the wench could even squeal or the gamesters swear, foxy Tom was off and running.

  Naturally, they pursued, minions, gamesters, landlord, bystanders, and other interested parties – including, eventually, the outraged husband, once he had recovered from his unexpectedly joyous reunion and hurried downstairs. And nip and double as Blood might, his beaten limbs (not improved, of course, by late nights, booze, women, and too much smoking the day before the match) would inevitably have let him down had his headlong flight not carried him suddenly out on to a long cobbled wharf thronged with porters, hawkers, fishwives, seamen, loiterers, and all the motley of the waterfront. In an instant the Colonel was lost in the shifting human tide, which bore him along while he got his breath back, straightened his coat, and regretted that he had no hat to complete the appearance of a genteel saunterer slumming.

  A great ship was making ready for sea, and Blood paused by her gangplank to look round for signs of pursuit. All clear behind, and he was about to stroll on when he saw, dead ahead, the breathless figures of the fat gamester and one of the burly minions moving questingly through the crowds in his general direction. The Colonel wheeled smartly about – only to see emerging, from the alley down which he had run, a constable, the other minion, and in the rear the cuckolded husband, buttoning his weskit askew and inquiring thunderously about a black-avised rascal in a red coat. As heads turned and the two sets of pursuers continued to converge at random, Colonel Blood looked desperately for a bolt-hole. The gangway was before him, and as two seamen staggered on to it under the weight of a furled tarpaulin, he hesitated no longer, but used them as a shield to slip swiftly on to the ship's crowded deck. One quick look back showed him the outraged husband and the fat gamester hailing each other over the heads of the mob; Blood pushed hurriedly past a couple of bare-footed seamen, rounded a pile of casks, and came face to face with a bawling red face in a brass-buttoned coat and cocked hat.

  “Sink an' be damned!” it roared. “An' how in thunder do I know where the swab o' a surgeon should sling his hammock? 'A can sleep i' the scuppers; 'a'll be drunk enough not to notice! How now, sir?” it demanded of Blood. “What make ye here? We're putting to sea, or damme! No, we're not – not while them tarts an' trollops are fouling my ship!” And he rolled furiously past Blood, a bosun at his heels, bawling the odds at the waterfront slatterns who were keeping his men from their work forward; at his instructions the bosun passed among them with a rope's end, belabouring them towards the gangplank, while all around the seamen hurriedly pulled ropes and battened hatches and shouted through cupped hands and spat resoundingly – doing all those things needful, d'ye see, to get a ship under weigh.

  “Avast there! Get in the forrard plank!” yelled the red-faced man. “Yarely, an' be damned, wi' a pox on't!” Plainly he was another Farnol graduate, one of that barnacle-crusted band whose natural ancestor is the bosun in “The Tempest” – the one who is responsible for the greatest stage-direction Shakespeare ever wrote: “Enter mariners, wet.” He rolled about the place, roaring and belaying, and then his eye fell on Blood again, and he bellowed – but with a certain respect for one well-dressed: “Now then, you, sir, blast me bollocks an' by y'r leave! What, sir? What make ye, master? It's go ashore or go to Calicut, or hoist me for a lubber, what?” And his gesture invited the Colonel to the gangplank – at the foot of which the fat gamester was plainly visible, craning his neck as he surveyed the crowded wharf. Colonel Blood had his choice, and took it.

  “But, captain,” said he, with desperate nonchalance, keeping under cover of the casks, “Calicut is where I wish to go. News came this morning … my rich uncle's dead o' the flux or the gout or the fever or somewhat. Shocking sudden, and the plantation going to the devil. I had your direction … and where the devil my man Jenkin is with the dunnage, God knows. Ye can give me passage, I dare swear?”

  “What, sir? Carry ye to Calicut, rot me? Why, sir, now, sir!” The captain rubbed grizzled chin wi' horny paw and considered the appellant – rich lace, good coat, rakehelly genteel, dressed in a hurry … but then, he'd admitted as much. “Why, y'r worship, it might be,” he conceded. “A four-month passage, let's see -I could make room at a pinch, for … forty guineas, now?”

  Above the ship's noise a distant voice could be heard complaining: “… and the dam' gallows-bait had my guineas, too!” Colonel Blood did not hesitate, but pulled the purse from his pocket and tossed it over negligently to the captain. “A bagatelle,” said he, and the roaring skipper promptly knuckled his hat, and beamed, crying “Thank'ee, y'r honour, I'll see ye have a comf'table berth, y'r honour, crisp me liver if I don't! Yardley's the name, sir; Cap'n Yardley. Steward! Hell's bells an' hailstones, will ye lay aft, steward, damn 'ee?”

  The Colonel was too old a hand to regret his lost cash; it had been necessary. The question now was whether to kiss it good-bye and steal ashore later, or to avail himself of this unexpected magic carpet away from London – a place which might be uncomfortably hot for him. India? He had never been there, and had no great desire to go … on the other hand, he was one who had always lived where he'd hung his castor – why not? He'd have four months' board and lodging in the meantime. As he considered, he lurked, and presently saw his baffled pursuers take themselves off; the resolve was forming in his mind … he'd quite enjoy a sea-trip, and the Indies, by all accounts, offered a fruitful field to men of his talents. He allowed himself to be shown his berth, shed his too-conspicuous coat, and sallied forth on deck again to view the orderly bustle of the ship as the final preliminaries to sailing went ahead right handily, with cheery yo-ho and bronzed backs bending to haul, pipes twittering, captain bawling, men hasting alof
t, capstan turning, and that sort of thing, with salty baritones roaring:

  Where is the trader o' Stepney Town?

  Clap it on, slap it on,

  How the hell should I know?

  And up the gangplank, striding tall, came a superbly handsome young man in a naval coat and hat, his buttons glinting keenly at his surroundings; he bore a polished oak box under one arm, and his sea-chest was wheeled behind by an awestruck urchin whom he rewarded with a groat, a kindly word, and a pat on the head. The urchin went off swearing foully at the size of his tip, but the skipper was all over the newcomer, crying welcome aboard, Cap'n Avery, look'ee, here's j'y, or rattle me else! The young man nodded amiably, but looked down his classic nose when the beaming skipper presented him to his fellow-passenger.

  “Blood?” he said, bowing perfunctorily. “I seem to have heard the name,” and his tone didn't imply that it had been in connection with the last Honours List; plainly he was not enchanted with the Colonel (trust Avery to spot a wrong 'un every time). “You are a soldier, sir?”

  “Oh, here and there,” said Blood easily. “You're a sailor?”

  “I am a naval officer,” said Avery coldly.

  “Ah,” said Blood wisely, and wondered: “Don't they sail?”, at which Avery's cuffs stiffened sharply as he favoured the Colonel with that steely glance employed by Heroes on mutinous troops, rioting peasants, and impudent rakehelly villains, who respectively quail, cower, or gnash their teeth when exposed to it. Colonel Blood met it with an amiable smile, and the two of them detested each other from that instant.