Greenbeard. Richard James Bentley

marked with the symbol of the muted post-horn and the letters W.A.S.T.E in paint so faded that it was barely legible. Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges took the vellum packets from his pocket and slid them into the box. He hadn’t spotted the box at first because the blackamoor in front of it was a new addition to the shop’s contents. He examined it idly. A life-size statue of a Negro holding a tray on an outstretched hand; wealthy people kept them in the foyers of their mansions for visitors to leave their cards on, should the master be absent. With a start the Captain realised that it wasn’t a statue but a real black man, dead, but stuffed and mounted like a hunter’s trophy. He made an involuntary snort of disgust and the ancient man smiled a slow evil smile. Captain Greybagges made to leave. The ancient man reached into the breast of his greasy coat and handed Captain Greybagges a bundle of packets tied together with string. He put them in his pocket and threw the ancient a coin. After he had turned his back on the ancient man the Captain made the horns sign with his fingers to ward off evil.

      In the alleyway outside Captain Greybagges strode quickly away, taking deep breaths to clear the musty air of the shop from his lungs as though it were a poisonous miasma. Tristero’s secret mail was very useful, but its postmasters could be very creepy. The two bully-boys trotted after him.

      Captain Greybagges spent the remainder of the afternoon strolling from tavern to low dive to shebeen in Port de Recailles, meeting friends, acquaintances and informants and drinking coffee and the occasional glass of beer. No useful information had come to him, but he hadn’t entirely wasted his time. When he entered a drinking-house his bully-boys would hold back and follow him only after several seconds, and meanwhile he would surreptitiously watch the other drinkers. Although all his clothes were black and the dives were dimly-lit it was still apparent that he was a wealthy man, so he would watch for men who looked as though they were thinking of jumping him, but who appeared to lose interest when his bullyboys followed, and he would memorise their faces. A pirate captain was always on the lookout for crew, and a fellow who would think immediately of robbing him despite his muscular build was the kind of man he needed. Quick-thinking, not shy and definitely thievish. If they didn’t give up the idea when the bully-boys followed they were too stupid. If they didn’t think of robbing him at all they would never be pirates. Of course, there were some who would conceal their interest, hoping to follow him and ambush him outside later, but he didn’t want fellows who were too wily, either; they could be trouble. Several possible candidates had been noted by him, and he would recruit them as and when it was convenient. He would, of course, point out to them that they’d thought of mugging him, so giving the impression that he could read their thoughts, which would establish him as their superior in quickness of mind and thus their natural leader. A simple trick, but effective. Doctor Quaestifuncula, the Captain’s tutor at Cambridge for Law, had called such things nousology; the science of being clever.

      As Captain Greybagges ambled back along the quay to the Ark de Triomphe he remembered Doctor Quaestifuncula with affection. Law was, of course, absolutely the best training for a pirate, and the good Doctor had been a master of it. Few who had not been up to university were aware of the sheer viciousness of the infighting amongst academics. Those old fellows in their black gowns and tatty wigs would go at it hammer-and-tongs at High Table, yet to the casual observer they would appear the best of friends as they stuffed themselves with roast baron-of-beef and passed the port around. Battles of intelligence, memory and wit, and Doctor Quaestifuncula was the master. An old bent-backed beanpole with a long nose, thick spectacles and a kindly smile, yet he would have made a fine captain of pirates. He would still plead the occasional case, despite his age, and the Silks and Stuffs would quake as he shuffled into the court with his clerk stumbling along behind him carrying a vast stack of law-books and briefs tied with pink ribbon. The Captain remembered once climbing out of a racing-shell, he and his team glowing with exertion and eager to raise hell in the taverns of the town, when he had overheard Doctor Quaestifuncula as he passed by remark to a colleague “there’s the rowing-eights, getting out of their sculls again.” What a wit the man had! The Captain had been a rowing Blue, and he wondered if that hadn’t been his first step on the way to piracy. From little boats to bigger boats, maybe.

      Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges strode up the gangplank onto the deck of the Ark de Triomphe, his bully-boys huffing after him. He stopped and looked up into the rigging at the crew about their work and for an instant nearly said “Good work! Good work! Keep it up, lads!” but that would never do, so he roared “Ye scurvy knaves! I catches a man slacking and I’ll see the colour of his liver and lights! An’ yez may lay to that, wi’ a wannion!” and was gratified to see them all try to look busy. One day he would find out what a wannion was, he promised himself.

      The thoughts of rowing on the Cam had made him nostalgic, so he threw his coat and hat to Mumblin’ Jake and clambered down the ship’s side into the skiff. With powerful strokes he pulled the light craft across the harbour of Port de Recailles, around the end of the stone-built mole and across Rum Bay to Sruudta Point. There he hove-to, enjoying the sun on his bald head, the skiff bobbing in the slight swell. He reached under his yellow beard and removed his black silk cravat, unbuttoned his shirt and rolled up the sleeves. He folded the cravat carefully, for it was from Saville Row, London, and had cost as much as a case of decent claret. Nobody could see it under his beard, of course, but he knew it was there. He sniffed the air and looked at the little puffy clouds on the horizon. The dead calm would end soon, he was sure.

      He spun the skiff with a single pull of an oar and rowed back to the harbour, slower now, with easy strokes of the oars. He’d seen Calico Jack Rackham in Ye Petty Mountmartree Froggie Wyneshoppe And Grille earlier, and clanked tankards with him. He’d always been plain Jack Rackham before. Was every freebooter adopting a nom de guerre? Perhaps nom de pillage would be more accurate. Jack Rackham had got his nickname from the haberdashery stall he’d used to run in Petticoat Lane market, Captain Greybagges recalled, but he supposed that made it easier to remember, and not many would recall him from those days. It would be a shame if one forgot one’s pseudonym: “Har! Shit yer britches ye weevils, for I am … oh! A pox on’t! What was it now? … Ah! That be it! … For I be Cutthroat Cecil Cholmondleigh!” Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges shook his head and grinned. That ass Billy Bones had tried to call himself The Pirate With No Name, but, never the brightest of buccaneers, he had spoiled it by roaring “Hear my name and shiver, ye swabs! For I be Billy Bones, The Pirate With No Name!” just as he was boarding a prize. The defending crew had been sore a-feared, but when they heard that they’d all howled with laughter and Bones’s boarding-party had retreated in confusion, followed by jeers and hoots. The silly sod had been forced to skewer his quartermaster and two foremast jacks to restore discipline, and by then the prize had made sail and cleared off, of course.

      Mind you, thought the Captain, this fashion for bloodthirsty nicknames might not go away. If it did not he’d have a problem, for one could never buck a well-established trend. He couldn’t call himself Yellowbeard, for that would seem like he was aping Eddie Teach, and he was damned if he’d call himself Yellow Whiskers, as that just sounded silly. And yet his trademark was his long yellow beard, and all the more apparent in contrast to his all-black apparel. He would have to think about this some more, maybe.

      He tied up the skiff and clambered up the tumblehome onto the deck. While rowing back he’d noticed that the ebb and flood of the tide had left the harbour with clean clear blue water, and that the bottom was visible. He was also sweaty from rowing.

      “See yez any sharks?” he shouted to the look-out up in the cross-trees.

      “Nary a one, Cap’n!” The look-out waved his hand from side to side and shook his head to emphasise the absence of sharks. Pirates feared sharks, for they believed that sharks could be spookily possessed by the souls of those they had eaten. Given the number of people who had been fed to sharks by pirates there was a worrying possibility that a possessed shark might well recognise a jolly buccaneer as the one who had encouraged his human incarnation to step out along the plank by jabbing a rapier in his bottom, should they happen to meet whilst swimming in the sea. It was also said by some that sharks would never attack lawyers out of professional courtesy, but Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges had no notion to put that to a practical test. The harbour was clear, though, so the Captain stripped off, clambered onto the rail and dived