The Pyrates

by George MacDonald Fraser

  “Dahling!” Acid honey boiled from the darkness. “Does dahling have the teeniest inkling what happens to slaves who dawdle and keep mistress waiting? And od's bobs, hammer and tongs, you've still got your pants on!” Languid accent forgotten, it was the pirate wench spitting blood. “Now, hell rend thy mangy hide—”

  “Sweet mistress!” he protested, contrite but puzzled. “Nay, pardon me, but I came on this … and pondering it, fell into reverie o' disbelief and dismay, for I do not well understand—”

  “I'll dismay you, by thunder! … what's that?” From her tall white form dim-seen on the bed a naked arm shot into the moonlight, fingers snapping. “Give it me! 'Sdeath, 'tis my calorie chart!”

  “I knew it – 'tis guide whereby ladies do adjust their adipose tissues! Ah, but why,” he sighed cunningly, “why should my lovely mistress wish to put on weight?”

  It chopped her anger across the windpipe. “Wish to put on … I? God ha' mercy! Are you mad?”

  “If I am 'tis you have maddened me!” he cried, suddenly fervid, and did a graceful kneel beside the bed. “Yet not so mad I can't tell delectable perfection o' shape when I see it! Aye, call me cheeky, but I say that to add one ounce to thy lissom lusciousness would be heresy! Ah, mistress, burn this trifle!” He twitched away the calorie chart. “Give up this mad idea of gaining half a stone – let other dizzy dames go ballooning around, but please – please stay sweetly slender as thou art!”

  It would have convinced Tessie O'Shea she looked like Twiggy; with the moonlight on his profile and adoring eyes it caused Mistress Anne's wrath to dissolve like an election pledge. Lissom … slender … delectable perfection – she fairly purred. “Why, thou saucy rabbit! Judge my shape, will he? You're sure 'tis … enough?” She suddenly sat upright in the moonlight, vibrating triumphantly, and Captain Avery gulped, gritted his teeth, and tried to think of cold, solemn things, like church bells tolling … great big bells – no! Frosty nights, then, with pale full moons … round, glowing moons – Gad, even worse! Got to get a grip … swiftly he conjured up the wine cup between them, and spoke with an intensity that would have reduced the goddess Kali to molten toffee.

  “If a mere slave may offer to peerless beauty a token of humility and love … why then, get this down you.”

  She took the cup, her green eyes sloppily moist. “Dahling, you shouldn't… a loving cup. Ah, sweet donation! Though y'are a naughty rogue to have kept mistress waiting,” she added playfully as she raised it to her lips, “and if you're not starkers by the time I've drunk this, God help you!”

  And ere he could stir she had gulped it and collared him lustfully, crying “grappling hooks away!”, but even in that moment she went rigid, her eyes rolled, and with a stricken woof she fell back slowly, collapsing chimney-like from the base up, even as Vladimir had predicted. Before she hit the canvas Avery was at the shutters, and the little pawnbroker was tumbling in like a drunk gibbon, croaking: “'Ow's she doin'?”

  “Stiffer than a plank.” Avery was breathing hard. “And not an instant too soon. Right, Groon – do thou frisk the wardrobe and I the dressing-table.”

  They searched swiftly, Avery silent, Vladimir muttering “Gawd, the fings they wear nowadays – disgustin'!'”, and within ten minutes the floor was awash with shoes, dresses, frilly items, odd nylons, back copies of Tortuga 'Teen, bits of wire and pipe left in corners by workmen, used galleon tickets, laundry bills, and a set of embroidered table mats intended as a wedding present for Blackbeard Teach and his seventh wife, touchingly labelled “This time for keeps, eh, mess-mate – lots o' love, Anne and Jack,” but with “Gone away – address not known” blue-pencilled on the outer wrapping. No Madagascar cross, though. Avery bit moulded lip and Vladimir swore.

  “She can't 'ave swallered the bloody thing! Now, where … why, wot's amiss, cap'n?”

  “This is a beastly business!” snapped Avery. “Going through her private effects like this … I don't know, it just seems sneaky, even if she is a bit of a shocker. I mean,” he indicated a scarlet silk corset edged with black lace, “for all we know her mummy may have given her that!”

  “Oddly enough, yer prob'ly right,” said Vladimir, “but we can't afford sentiment! I mean – 'oo's cross is it? An' it's gotta be 'ere – she's bound to keep it by 'er!”

  “What's this?” Avery was examining a parchment which had fallen out of a fashion sea-boot. “Ha, Groon – 'tis a chart! And new-drawn, too! Nay, but of what…? why, 'tis of her bedchamber – this very room!”

  “Once a pirate, always a pirate!” chuckled Vladimir. “Wot's it say, cap'n?”

  “No soundings marked, but latitude and longitude, and all points plotted wi' rare skill.” Avery glanced keenly round the great bedchamber, in which the candles they had lighted made a bright pool, leaving the farthest corners in shadow. “Aye – bed, chest o' drawers, vanitory unit and all, marked fair – and here directions writ! Stand by, Groon, and take course as I read!”

  He began, and Vladimir ploughed off obediently: “East-nor'-east ten paces from ye window, then bear away due west wi' ye bed abeam … West, you idiot!” he rasped, as from dim recess came crash of falling china and a pawnbroker's anguished cry. “Bear up, man, or ye'll be caught in stays!”

  “I am,” whimpered Vladimir. “Them red an' black 'uns of 'er mum's; you should ha' hung 'em up. Right, cap'n!”

  “Now west again, close-hauled …” Vladimir barked his shin and cursed in the gloom “… lest ye bark your shins on the commode, and tacking southerly, go under … what means that? … and so shall come hard by your goal… Groon? Where are you, man?”

  “Under the bed”, came the muffled reply, “bearin' ten degrees from the piss-pot, an' 'asn't bin 'oovered since the Flood!”

  “Nay, 'tis impossible,” muttered Avery, peering into the shadows. “Unless it's under the floor.”

  “Or in 'er mattress above me!” Vladimir's head appeared from under the four-poster. “That's it, cap'n! Where else?”

  Hot on the scent they approached the bed, Avery averting his gaze from the stately nude slumbering rhythmically on the coverlet. Vladimir's eyes came out on stalks. “Gawd!” he gulped. “She's real! Cap'n, you're a gent -or an idjut, I'm not sure which. Anyways, you'll 'ave to lift 'er while I rummage.”

  So Avery gingerly lifted the buxom sleeper, and tried to imagine he was up to his neck in an icy duck-pond while Vladimir hacked and burrowed and raised a blizzard of feathers, gasping stifled progress reports from inside the mattress. Thank goodness they'd soon be out of the clutches of this dreadful woman – imagine really being owned by her! Avery shuddered, and wished he hadn't, for it set up a harmonic motion in his voluptuous burden, and he nearly overbalanced. Not that she was as heavy as he'd imagined; quite svelte, really … and probably a lot better than most slave-owners, if it came to that. She'd been amiable enough, when she wasn't being imperious and … and … awful, and she'd seemed to like him personally. Handsome woman; very like Mistress Gwynn, the actress, with that striking red hair … nice perfume it had. Lilac? Honeysuckle? He bent his face to the Titian head cradled on his shoulder, and inhaled … orange-blossom! Pretty, humorous mouth, too – what was it she'd tasted of again? Some fruit or other … Not orange, or pineapple … mango, of course. He liked mangoes, really delicious taste …

  “Got somefink in 'er eye, 'as she?” said a voice, and in confusion Avery jerked his head up to find Vladimir eyeing him sardonically. Blushing, the captain would have explained, but the words died on his lips as the little shyster raised a hand in which something glowed like a bottle of port – a gigantic ruby, its crimson rays shaming the gilt cross in which it was embedded.

  “Number three!” exclaimed Vladimir triumphantly, but inwardly he was gloating, Number Six, yippee! “I told yer we'd get lucky, didn't I? There it is – so now, if you've finished tryin' to guess Lady Godiva's weight, let's away wi' all speed!”

  With guilty haste Avery replaced the drugged tomato on the ruin of her bed, and spread a
coverlet over her lest she take cold in the dawn chill. For some reason, it seemed the least he could do; he felt a strange reluctance to leave so abruptively furtive; didn't seem polite, somehow.

  “Here, I say, Groon, we've made the most ghastly mess of her quarters,” he frowned. “Oughtn't we to tidy a bit – I mean, what's she going to think when she wakes up?”

  “Why don't we sit on the edge of 'er bed an' wait to find out?” snarled Vladimir, one leg over the sill. “Fer Gawd's sake, cap'n! Wot the 'ell are servants for? Come on!”

  But before Avery could reply, came a sound which froze him where he stood, while Vladimir gibbered and grabbed the shutter. Through the balmy tropic night came the crack of a shot – and then a rattle of musketry, and from far off the clang of a ship's bell and distant voices. Avery was at the window in a flash, and this is what he saw.

  Through a gap in the garden trees the broad inlet between Roatan and Shark Island was clearly visible in the moonlight, and across the moon's bright wake on the water was gliding the black shape of a great ship, her spars stark against the pale night sky. Lights gleamed on her poop, and pinpricks of fire were at her rail – the crackle of reports followed, and now a long boat was pushing off from her towards shore.

  “A ship!” Avery spoke without hesitation. “Who can she be?”

  “Oh, the Mersey ferry, beyond a doubt!” cried Vladimir violently. “She's a bloody pirate, that's wot she is! Quick, cap'n – I got a boat beached! Let's scarper!”

  But Avery's spirits had rocketed up past the hundred mark at this prospect of action. Shots, pirates, chaps in boats – this was more like it, and a sight better than grappling ardent redheads – well, it was a change, anyway. “If pirate she be, good Groon,” quo' he briskly, “then I must know more o' her. Ye have the cross safe? Then haste away and wait for me. Shan't be more than a tick.” He was off, a perfectly co-ordinated shadow gliding through the undergrowth, while Vladimir gnashed and implored and finally, for he was a realist, scuttled away to his boat. Nor, more shame to him, did he tarry; six crosses no waiting, and you can keep the ruddy Caribbean, was how he saw it, and who knows how many salt sea miles 'twill be ere we have the pleasure of his company again?

  Meanwhile Avery was high-stepping stealthily for the shore, aware that up ahead more shots were sounding and voices swearing, and borne on the night-breeze was the sinister echo of rum-sodden music, for Vladimir's right – villainy's afloat again, wi' hanky round beetling brows and cutlass in horny fist, and who is this who comes galumphing through the bushes, fleeing for dear life, blind wi' panic? Whoever it is isn't going any place, for out of the shadows like a jet-propelled Nemesis rockets Fly-half Avery (Oxford U., Royal Navy, and Barbarians) to grass him wi' crunching tackle, and thereafter pin him to earth wi' steely whisper: “Who, sirrah? Whence? Whither? What's your hurry?” The stricken figure wheezed like a despairing air-cushion, subsided, and panted in surrender.

  “I-wasn't-trespassin'-your-honour-an'-strike-me-dumb-if-I-even-saw-a-rabbit-an'-wouldn't-ha'-touched-it-anyways-for-amn't-I-a-landed-gentleman-meself -holy God!” exclaimed Colonel Blood weakly, “it's you!”

  Blood? Here? But he ought to be miles away on the Main with Lardo and Vanity and the rest of the Cohaclgzln Conservation Society, surely? Plainly some matter o' great pitch and moment has occurred, and must be looked to instanter, along with other pressing matters, viz.: if Vladimir has absconded, how is Avery going to get off Shark Island? What will Anne Bonney say when she wakes up and finds her room looking like Hurricane Susie? (These two questions may be not unconnected). And what ship is that, what o' Vanity, Sheba, et al., and whither do we go hence? Let's ask Blood, says you … too late, Avery's 'way ahead of us

  CHAPTER

  THE SEVENTEENTH

  o you mean to say,” demanded Avery bitingly, “that you betrayed a vasty treasure to yon poultice Lardo, simply because he was having you pulled asunder by wild horses? Why, thou … thou …” He groped for words. “Thou twit! have ye no guts?”

  “Happily, yes. I wouldn't have had if—”

  “Faugh! Thou craven! Why, thou'd betray the … the Crown Jewels, I'll bet, if an old woman made faces at thee!”

  “Do you mind?” Colonel Blood winced. “I once had the Crown Jewels, remember? And if some warder's interfering idiot of a son hadn't come home on week-end leave,”* he added bitterly, “I'd have 'em yet. I'll thank ye not to remind me of it.”

  “Oh.” Avery frowned. “Sorry – didn't mean to turn the knife in the wound; just a figure of speech. Sorry, Blood.”

  “Och, forget it. It's just that I've got… feelin's, too.”

  “I know. Dashed thoughtless of me … but hang it, that's not the point!” cried Avery angrily. “Forget the Crown Jewels—”

  “It wasn't me brought up the subject.” Hurt sniff.

  “… the fact is you weaseled to that appalling Dago to save your own skin! Tchah! Pretty poor show, I'd say.”

  And he wrinkled his high-bred nose in disgust, which was lost on Blood, since they were crouched in the pitch-dark interior of a hollow galoopa tree, where they had taken shelter so that Avery could be brought up-to-date, while in the dark undergrowth around their hiding-place buccaneers beat the bushes wi' cutlass blades, flashed gleaming lanterns, swore as they tripped over roots, wiped perspiring brows, and cried: “He'm gone to ground, skipper, belike! Aye, all hid snug an' solitary, d'ye see, burn 'im! C'mout, ye Irish tripehound, we know y're here!”

  Colonel Blood shuddered, and whispered haughtily: “Weasel, nothing! I spoke up for the sake o' the woman I love, so there! To save her from mishandlement – aye, or worse. ‘Lardo, ye great Spanish hog!’ sez I. ‘Ye may do your worst on me, but if ye lay a finger on that sweet saint, or offer to have her put in my place … well, faith, I'll just have to tell ye what ye want to know, bad cess to ye!’ So on his promise to leave her be,” the Colonel sighed, “I talked. Wouldn't you?”

  “The woman you love?” breathed Avery. “Nay, that's different. Ah, Blood, I have wronged thee—”

  “Not the first time.”

  “Nay, comrade, what can I say?” In the dark he sought to squeeze the Colonel's arm reassuringly, got hold of the wrong place, and evoked a muted squeal from his companion. “For thy true love's sake … that's something else. Ah … do I know her?”

  Colonel Blood grunted painfully. “Bejazus, ye near ruined me! The lady …” He coughed deprecatingly. “Why, Lady Vanity, o' course.”

  The searching pirates assumed that it was the cry of some nocturnal creature; in fact it was Avery sounding like a leaky pressure valve. “Vanity?” he gasped. “My betrothed! Why, ye muckrake, wouldst lift defiling eyes to that divinity? Hast thou dared? Ha! Where's thy vile throat, that I may tear it out? Ah, I have it, scoundrel! Now, unsay those lying words, or—”

  “That's my ankle!” snapped Blood. “Shut up, ye fool, or they'll hear ye! And listen – ye can forget Lady Vanity. 'Tis up the spout ye are – and small wonder! D'ye think ye can fool about wi' Donna Meliflua, an' frolic in dungeons and long grasses wi' Black Sheba, an' make sheep's eyes and offer marriage to that be-feathered cooch-dancer at Cohaclgzln – God knows who ye've been hotly a-snog wi' since then,” he added, and misunderstood the captain's guilty start. “Aye, tremble wi' remorse, Faithless Ben Avery! Anyway, Lady Vanity's given ye the door, an' small wonder—”

  “'Tis all vile libel!” hissed our Ben. “A chapter o' sorry misunderstandings, which I shall readily explain—”

  “Dear lad,” murmured the Colonel gently, “even if ye could, 'twouldn't make any odds. Rebounding, she loves another—”

  “You? Don't make me laugh! Why, from the first she regarded thee as dog-meat!”

  “Beglamoured by your outward showing, she did not mark my truth worth, no – at first. But since then I have been constant at her side – fightin' off Happy Dan Pew an' his sex-crazed apache dancers, preservin' her from Lardo, frontin' Indian hordes on her behoof, ever comforting her in her captivity, an' even
now hazarding my poor self for her sweet sake. She knows me now for what I am,” whispered the Colonel complacently, “and it's wedding bells as soon as we get home.”

  “You lie! It cannot be – she loves me, and I her—”

  “The last thing she said to me,” continued Blood remorselessly, “was: ‘Dear paladin’ – her pet name, ye understand – ‘Dear paladin, I am thine now and always, and should ye go down the stank untimely in this thy noblest exploit, then shall I die o' grief, or drag out my weary days a maid.’ Straight up, 'tis what she said.”

  (N.B. – Don't worry – he's lying, the snake. Vanity, tho' racked by jealous doubts anent Sheba, Meliflua, and so on, is true to our hero still. Blood's just trying to discourage the lad – gosh, he's rotten. End of N.B.)

  Avery gave a stricken gurgle. Dear paladin! It rang true, in her dulcet voice – and if she believed all that stuff about Sheba and the girls … Was she indeed lost to him? And to Blood, of all men? Well, the brute had a moustache, of course, and if he'd been championing her through all perils … Anyway, no point brooding. He'd have to see – but if it was true, he'd give her a piece of his mind, the dear little Cheltenham half-wit. Oh, how he loved her! But to business …

  “What happened,” he whispered coldly, “after you weaseled to Lardo about the treasure?”

  “After my reluctant disclosure, made solely to keep Lady Vanity from harm,” said Blood coolly, “Lardo dug up the goodies and sailed wi' his Cartagena squadron for Octopus Rock, there to keep rendezvous wi' his Hispaniola fleet, which I'm told has been giving Tortuga big licks and reducing the Coast Brotherhood to scattered remnants. Thence shall Lardo, wi' full power o' forty galleons and soldiers a-swarm by thousands, sally forth to knock hell out of everybody, and 'stablish King Philip his power throughout the Americas.”