Greenbeard. Richard James Bentley

feet.

      “I’m sorry I’ve been obliged to tell you all this, Peter - ignorance is bliss, indeed! - but I need your help with this, your involved help. And who else could I tell first? I nearly told Bill once or twice, for the navigating has given him a fine head for the arithmetic and the geometry, so the time-and-space stuff might be easier for him. Izzie? He is my oldest shipmate, and before that my articled clerk when I was in chambers, but any notion of six-legged reptiles would drive him straight to the bottom of the nearest rum-bottle. You are the cleverest of us four, Peter, so it had to be you.”

      The Captain pulled the oars. Blue Peter remained silent for a while. The sun was setting against a mauve sky, its orange light dappling the ocean like a fiery path to the horizon.

      “Captain,” he said at last, “what are these lizard-creatures called?”

      “Why, we called them ‘lizards’, or ‘the lizard people’, Peter.”

      “Do they have a name for themselves?”

      “I’m sure they do, but I don’t know it. Anyway, I can’t do bird impressions.”

      They clambered up the side of the Ark de Triomphe in the quick-growing dark. The pirate crew had lit lanterns, casting yellow pools of light in the purple twilight. Some of the pirates were sprawled on the deck, or sitting on bollards or guns, eating their supper. They muttered ‘good evenings’ to the Captain and Blue Peter, intent on their beef-stew, bread and beer.

      “Arr! Bon appetit, shipmates, wi’ a curse!” answered the Captain.

      The rest of the crew would be below, eating their meals between the cannons in the gundeck messes, on boards hung from the deckheads on ropes. When the wooden bowls were scraped clean with hunks of bread and cleared away greasy packs of cards would appear, and draughts-boards made of canvas squares, and sly rum-flasks would pass from hand to hand. Captain Greybagges could smell the aroma of the stew, the smoke from the cook’s charcoal oven, tar, sweat, sawn timber; the frigate’s reassuring fragrance. He turned to Blue Peter.

      “A toddy, Master Gunner?”

      “No, Captain. I find that I am weary, and you’ve given me much to think about. I shall go to my cottage.”

      “I shall set sail tomorrow, on the afternoon tide. We shall be away from Recailles for some months, so make arrangements for your horse. Good night, Peter.” The Captain went down below to the Great Cabin in the stern.

      Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo rode the old Percheron mare up the winding road away from Porte de Recailles, the sky now inky-blue above him, the moon yet to rise. The horse seemed to know its way in the dark, so Blue Peter let it plod, and mused as he rocked gently on its back, looking up at the bright stars. There is Venus, he thought. Are there strange creatures dwelling upon it? Or upon Orion’s belt? All this is madness! Yet there is the indisputable fact of the Captain’s green beard. His account is not without points of reference, either. There are tales of fellows spirited away to the Land of Faerie, returning years later, no older. There are tales of men and women aging overnight; one day young and hale, the next morning ancient, sere and white-haired, and sometimes babbling. The myths of the Greeks, also, full of monsters, ‘tentacles waving about like the Medusa’s snakes’, as the Captain himself had said. Legends of flying chariots, too, and all kinds of supposedly-mythical beasts; daemons, hobgoblins, ogres, kobolds, fetches, lemures, dragons, wyverns, basilisks, yales, golems, bunyips and bugaboos ... The Captain’s teratological narrative provided a possible basis for these fables, an exegesis of their provenance, at least...

      The old horse, sensing Blue Peter’s unease, skittered sideways a trifle. Blue Peter muttered soothingly and patted its neck.

      His account squares with the things he muttered whilst comatose during the flight of the Ark de Triomphe from Nombre Dios Bay, thought Blue Peter, but that is no confirmation. If his wits were addled from his experience, as they undoubtedly were, then he may have entered a state of delusion, or fugue, and his memories would be false, experienced as in a dream yet recalled as though real ... I am a pirate, thought Blue Peter, yet I cannot find a curse-word strong enough to express my frustration and dismay with this. My instincts are at odds with my reason. Still worse, my reason is at odds with my reason, and my instincts at war with my instincts. He rode on up the hill in the darkness, towards his cottage, deep in thought, the bright stars twinkling above him.

      Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges sat at his desk in the Great Cabin, an oil lamp spilling yellow light onto his ledgers and account-books. The abacus went click-clack and his goose-quill pen went scritch-scratch as he worked, a tankard of hot punch and a dish of sweet biscuits at his elbow. When he had finished the accounting and the letter-writing that he had interrupted earlier that day he closed the books and locked them away, rubbed his face with his hands, drained the tankard, changed into a black nightshirt and nightcap and went to bed in the hanging bunk, falling instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

      Blue Peter’s slumbers were racked by nightmares. A six-legged reptile with chameleon eyes cheated him at cards. A daemon with the head of a squid danced a quadrille with the Medusa. Saucers, cups, teapots, plates, chafing-dishes, tureens and porringers whizzed around his head, trailing sparks like thrown grenadoes. In the quiet of the small cottage he twisted and turned, sweating and moaning, the woven ropes of his charpoy-bed creaking.

      He awoke late the following morning, the sun already high, feeling surprisingly clear-headed. He put sticks on the banked-in fire in the kitchen stove, blew on it carefully, and added charcoal when it sputtered back into flame. He filled a copper kettle from the well in the yard, set it upon the stove, then drew another bucket of cold water and washed, shaving with a Spanish blued-steel razor, a small mirror of polished silver placed upon the well-hoist. The kettle whistled in the cottage kitchen and he made coffee, setting the pot on the side of the stove to brew as he dressed. To his very slight surprise, he found that he had dressed himself for battle; loose red cotton shirt, brown moleskin breeches, a green coat with japanned buttons, a sash of multicoloured silk, grey hose and comfortable well-worn buckled shoes with hob-nailed soles. He found that his decision was made; whatever scheme Captain Greybagges was planning he must support it. If the Captain was right, then he would need all the help he could get, but if the Captain was deluded then only as a confederate, as a close confidante and as a friend would he be able to prevent disaster for the Captain, for himself and for the ship and crew. His way lay clear before him, if not exactly obstacle-free. He drank a mug of coffee, then slid the cutlass with the knuckle-duster grip into his sash, and then the cannon-barrelled horse-pistol and the elegant Kentucky pistol. He packed his things into a rectangular wooden sea-chest and a canvas sack, tied them together with rope and slung them over the horse’s hind-quarters. He shuttered and locked the cottage and hid the key in the outhouse, clapped a brown tricorne hat on his head and mounted the old Percheron mare, using the stone horse-trough as a step, and rode away from his cottage without a backward glance.

      At a neighbour’s farm he stopped and, after a little negotiation and the passing of a silver thaler, obtained an agreement that a weather-eye would be kept upon his cottage and that the Percheron mare would be collected from the yard of Ye Halfe-Cannonballe tavern and looked after until his return. Blue Peter considered his neighbour a shifty fellow, but reckoned that the generous payment, his size, his profession and a second or so of eye-contact accompanied by a grin of his filed teeth would be sufficient to prevent curiosity about the contents of his dwelling-place or mistreatment of his horse, unless it became apparent that he would not be returning.

      “Ay-oop! The Blue Boy cometh!” said Jemmy Ducks, “and he has girded himself for war!” He swung himself from the mainmast top onto the rat-lines by the futtock-shrouds. His friend Jack Nastyface followed through the lubber-hole.

      “War? What?” he said, as they clambered down.

      “He be wearing the old green coat,” said Jemmy Ducks.

      “Now you are an authority on gentlemen’s attire,” said Jack Nastyface. “Why are you yourself such a ragamuffin, then?”

      “Green coat he wears so’s he don’t