“Ye're sure ye could guarantee it? Maybe we's past pardon—”
“There's a man at my elbow who once stole the King's crown,” cried Avery. “If he can get a pardon, and a royal handshake, anyone can!”
“Just hold on a minute!” protested Blood. “I'd have ye know—”
“Much good it's done him, too,” scoffed Bilbo. “Look at him!”
“Pardon's the least of it, don't you see?” cried Avery. “What, for the men who'll have saved the Indies? Morgan got knighted for less than that!” He noticed Bilbo blink, suddenly thoughtful. “And look here, chaps – I know the King, and my future wife draws gallons of water with the Establishment; her old man's an admiral (whom you've met, actually). Why, ye'll be made men! I pledge my oath I'll get commands for you, Rackham, and you, Bilbo! For Firebeard … oh, gosh, we'll think of something, you'll see!” He paused. “And don't worry – I can take Lardo like a cup of tea. And you'll have saved your camarado Sheba at Octopus Rock.”
Bilbo snarled and sneered, and Firebeard just lay there wheezing, but Rackham's shaven chin was rapidly developing grooves. Suddenly he kicked Firebeard upright, beckoned Bilbo, and the three went into a huddle. Fierce whispers and doubtful growls were heard, and once Firebeard roared: “I don't trust him – he'll shop us to the Maltese police, didn't ye hear?” At last they broke up, Firebeard scratching uneasily, Bilbo pale and fierce-eyed, Rackham grim. He stood arms akimbo before Avery, and looked him in the eye.
“Free pardon for all, includin' Sheba? An' your best endeavours for our fortunes?”
I'll be damned, thought Blood, for I don't believe it. Either I'm dreaming, or roguery's changed since I was a lad. And yet… while he wouldn't have trusted Bilbo or Firebeard a foot, he couldn't see Calico Jack as a breaker of articles. Avery, of course, would trust anybody, and gave his word on the spot. Rackham received nods from Bilbo and Firebeard, gave Avery another searching glance, and then held out his hand.
“Done,” he said curtly, and glanced north again, where the cannonade on Roatan was slackening. “Best be away. The Frantic Frog's yours, Long Ben … camarado.”
While the others hastened down to the beach, Avery in the lead shouting crisp commands in a perfect Sorbonne accent, Calico Jack strode up to the house to collect Anne Bonney – and was took flat aback, d'ye see, when she calmly informed him she wasn't coming.
“Dahling, you know one cannot abide ocean travel these days; one simply can't. Reek o' bilge and tar are for the young and active, and all that hearty yo-ho-hoing …” She reclined wearily and selected a violet cream. “One just couldn't survive—”
“An' ye'll survive here? Wi' Spanish fiends afoot to pillage, burn, an' rape—”
“They're hardly going to pillage or burn this charming mansion, dahling, are they? No, one imagines Don Toro – that is the Misconcepcion out there making all that noise, is't not? – aye, well, Don Toro, being discriminating hidalgo o' Castile, will surely appoint this his personal quarters -Onslow's taking down the Brotherhood group pictures and that repulsive likeness of L'Ollonois, and we'll have King Philip his portrait i' the hall, the Pope in the drawing room, and that gold crucifix we looted from La Hacha—”
“But thyself, mad wench! Hast thought o' thy fate at the hands o' these pitiless ravishers?”
“Well, actually,” smiled Mistress Bonney dreamily, “yes. Come, dahling, if you were Don Toro, striding in here all booted and dusty after a hard day's sack, in need o' refreshment and relaxation, well …” She stretched and pouted wantonly. “You wouldn't cast one out to the common herd – would you, now? After all, someone's got to sit at the other end of the dining-table … and that sort of thing …”
“But… you an' me, Annie lass! It's been twenty year together, fair an' foul – an' there be other islands, farther on—”
“And the Brotherhood's broke at last, Calico lad, and each must look to his own fortune, in his own way.” She smiled up at him, and sighed, and held out a soft white hand. “We'll go no more a-roving, Jack. I'm home from sea, and too plumply idle to stir forth again – or to be carried off,” she added, as he took a step towards the couch. “Nay, all courses part to westward; so kiss me, sweetheart – and let me hear ye laugh as ye go.”
There was a long silence, while the big man all in white looked down at her, and remembered, and took her hand, smiling a little sad.
“A long time since ye called yourself ‘me’ and ‘I’,” he said softly, and stooped to kiss her and stroke the dark red hair.
“A long time since we broke the boom at Providence and stood out for Caicos Bank,” she whispered, and kissed him again.
“And … ye're sure ye can deal… wi' the Dons?”
Mistress Bonney chuckled, purring. “When could one not?”
He went, laughing, calling back “Adios, bella camarado!” and so they parted as lightly as they had met so long ago. For a few moments she lay pensive, and at last heaved a little sigh, and summoned her butler and maid.
“Olives and sweet candies o' Peru in dainty silver dishes, Onslow, and a decanter of Madeira with the Murano cups; likewise candles o' scented wax, such as the Romish churches use, so shall our Spanish guest feel at ease.” She waved languid dismissal. “Hebe, lay out the green brocade – la, wench, to be sure 'tis too tight, that's the purpose on't! Ah, yes – and a small stiletto for one's garter, in case one is expected to play hard to get. These macho Dagoes do so love to think they're taking one by storm. Heigh-ho …”
And settling back contentedly on her couch, Mistress Anne reached for another violet cream.
If only the guzzling nympho doesn't overdo the chocs, she could keep Don Toro dallying till the week-end – which wouldn't do our Ben and the boys any harm when it comes to the big show-down. You always knew they were going to get together, didn't you? O' course we did, sez you – aye, but can Avery trust the blighters, sez I? If it comes to that, can the blighters trust Avery? Oh, come on, really! What a question, at this stage of the story – can you see our hero doing Bilbo out of a knighthood? More to the point, will his scratch force stand a prayer 'gainst the vast might o' Lardo? Can he snatch Vanity, Meliflua, and Sheba unscathed from the Viceroy's loathsome clutches? Incidentally – where the hell is Vladimir? Did he catch the sloop shuttle out of Roatan before the Dons attacked? What o' – but we'll soon know, for here it comes, wi' a curse -the answer to all questions, the payment o'all scores, as we lay aloft, wear round, fall over, stagger up, and plunge manfully into …
CHAPTER
THE LAST
loom hung in dank folds o'er the spectral castle on lonely Octopus Rock, gloom so thick, d'ye see, that it seemed to ooze through the battlements and drip down the sheer walls like treacle. No moon peeped through the lowering cloud-wrack, no faintest glimmer relieved the inky dark, save for the lanterns on the score of galleons riding in the rock-bound harbour, the guard-room lamp beaming above the grim castle gateway, the rays from a dozen crenellated windows in the massive keep, the flare of a match as a sentry had a crafty smoke, the whoof! of a chip-pan fire i' the cookhouse – oh, all right, the place was positively ablaze with light, and when the moon suddenly came out you could see for miles! Satisfied? It was still pretty dark in the corners, anyway.
Aye, but 'twas stilly night, wi'out wind (save in the great banqueting hall where Enchillada the chamberlain was making a right pig of himself on chilli con carne). No breeze ruffled the foetid waters o' the octopus pool beneath the great iron cage in which Black Sheba lay captive, nor whiffled the pale candle-flame by which Lady Vanity was gamely trying to pick the ponderous lock of her tower prison with a bent hair-clip, nor cooled the perspiration on Hattie McDaniel's brow as she ministered to yet another of Meliflua's screaming tantrums, nor rippled the black velvet waters far out to sea where – unless we're imagining it – dim shadows loom in the mirk, as of some dark presence drawing nearer, wi' faintest creak o' cord on timber, and on the air the thinnest whisper of that wild sea-march of long ago … no, it may
be fancy, fading into silence over the face of empty ocean …
Aye, so haste we back to gloomy banquet-chamber, where Enchillada is on to the cheese and tacos, stuffing uneasily with piggy-eyed furtive glances at the table-head, where, throned in his great chair, sat the hideous Don Lardo, a nightmare figure in crimson silk which matched the ribbon round the scaly neck of the Gila monster purring on his lap. Enchillada didn't fancy the broody way the Viceroy was stroking his ghastly pet and rolling his dentures in awful contemplation, nor was he crazy about Lardo's occasional habit of crushing a priceless wineglass in his hairy paw, heedless o' the wine, blood, and broken glass which fell into his trifle. (Heedless, too, incidentally, of the matched sets of glasses which he and other seventeenth-century villains were forever breaking up in moments of crisis; snapped stems, broken bowls, shattered goblets, crockery all over the floor, they didn't give a damn, and never a thought for the butlers who had to clear up and order replacements.)
But crisis was there now, for suddenly the Viceroy broke the silence with a great blare of crazy laughter, swept the Gila monster aside, and sprang to his feet bawling:
“I'm getting married in the morning!”
“Deeng-dong!” yelped Enchillada sycophantically, stifling a guilty burp. “Terreefeec eemeetation, boss! Eef I'd 'ad my eyeses closed I'd 'ave sworn eet was 'Olloway! You wan' I should get Cugat an' thee boys for a seeng-song—”
“Silence, filth!” roared Don Lardo. “I'm proclaiming my nuptials, thou bloated worm! Tomorrow I wed Donna Meliflua – I'm fed up waiting, and what better way to beguile the time than by honeymooning with that sweet, innocent, tender bloom of maidenhood in these charming surroundings?” He flung out a huge hand at the funereal walls where smoky torches flared, and slobbered crazily, his teeth popping out to bean the bewildered Gila monster. “Well, congratulate yourself, you lucky piece of putrefaction – you're going to be best man!”
“Gosh, Excellencee, I'm speechless weeth joy an' grateetude!” babbled the greaseball, grovelling at Lardo's feet. “Eet's great news, an' I'm so happee for yoo! Eet couldn't 'appen to a nicer tyrant!” He peeped up, hesitant. “Yoo … er … deecided not to wait until after we drench thee Caribbean in 'ereteec blood, huh?”
“Do I detect a reproach – a contradiction, even?” screamed the Viceroy, looming horribly. “Perhaps you'd care to repeat it to my Gila monster, when I've starved him for a week and sewn you up in a sack together, munch-munch-munch?” Then, as Enchillada gibbered and cringed, Lardo plucked him up by his fat neck, glared round as though for eavesdroppers, and grew frighteningly confidential. “Between ourselves, Enchillada – as Viceroy to rat – I burn with dark desires; the amount of unavailable nubile talent in this place is driving me crazy! Not only Meliflua, but that sleek spade in the cage and the luscious English peach upstairs!” He whimpered pathetically, his pale eyes gleaming. “It's not fair, I tell you – I daren't molest the captives before the wedding, or Meliflua might write whining to Daddy, and he'd cancel the match! Think of his fortune – lost to me!” He began to weep, mopping his cheeks with the chamberlain's scrubby head. “After we're married, it'll be different – I can go bananas with all three of them, and who cares? Anyway,” he leered into Enchillada's sweating face, “dear child though Meliflua is, she needs a lesson such as only a wedding-night with me can teach her – criticise my snakes and spiders, will she? Wait till she looks under our marriage-bed!”
“Alleegators, huh, boss? Genius!” cried the terrified creep. “Say, does the luckee lady know that tomorrow's thee beeg day?”
“I told her before dinner!” cackled Lardo. “She swooned with joy, the sweet ecstatic little pigeon! Oh, I can't wait… ceremony in the main dungeon, all hung in black crepe … wedding breakfast… auto-da-fé in the afternoon … tea, cream cakes, and crisps … feed the garrison defaulters into the octopus pool in the evening … light buffet supper – and then!” He swung the chamberlain round his head in mad frenzy. “The bridal suite in an oubliette! Next to the torture chamber! Mustn't neglect our work, even on honeymoon, must we …?”
Quick, let's leave Lardo's jolly stag night and plunge down castle wall and cliff to the octopus pool, where Sheba's grim iron cage swings creaking o'er murky waters a-swirl wi' tentacled crawlies just waiting for the bolts in the cage-floor to be slipped so that the occupant can drop in on them for dinner. For a fortnight they've had nothing but the odd bit of banana peel falling through the bars, and can't wait to sink their beaks in the human dainty so tantalisingly close above them – for these are man-eating monsters long since extinct except in sensational fiction. But they're patient – like Sheba.
For two weeks the dusky demon has endured hell o' blazing sun and lashing storm, sustained only by bananas and rain water, enduring the make-up jars absent-mindedly dropped by Meliflua from Vanity's window, and the ribaldries of brutal guards who ogled her undress and occasionally tried to get fresh through the bars. Now she lies feigning sleep, with every nerve alert, for she has caught the drift of that distant sea-march on the night air, and instinct tells her it's now or never, as through slitted eyes she watches the solitary sentry lounging on the ledge beside which her cage swings, drowsing as he puffs on his surreptitious cigarillo.
“Got a smoke for a nice girl, amigo?”
The sentry started at the throaty drawl. Two great amber eyes gleamed at him in the moonlight, and a shapely black form pressed ardently against the bars. “I'd do anything for a couple of drags!” she hissed. “You can even have my autograph for your kid sister! Mmh?” And she pursed her lips kiss-wise at him.
Caramba, thought the sentry, they don't build them like that in Barcelona … was this the wild hell-cat who had driven off his lewd advances with raking nails? He leaned forward to paw cautiously, but Sheba writhed back, purring, “Ah-ah, naughty – no smokee, no touchee!” and winked wickedly.
Well, we could have told him to pack in the nicotine habit on the spot, and holler for the guard, but being mere dumb peasant he reasoned that iron bars were protection enough, and held out his cigarillo, panting eagerly. Sheba caressed it from his fingers, inhaled luxuriously, bazoomed up against the bars again, he lunged leering -and fingers of black steel clamped on his throat, dragging him from the ledge to kick helplessly at empty air, her free hand plucked out his rapier, and grinning wolfishly into his empurpled face she slowly thrust forward. The sentry shuddered grotesquely, and with a hissed: “Come and get it, 'pussies!” she let him drop into the pool below. Splash, swirl o' blood-stained water, deep octopodal belch – and silence. That was the easy bit, thought Sheba.
The tricky part was to slip the floor-bolts while clinging to the side-bars with the rapier in her teeth, and then, when the floor swung down on its hinges, deluging the pool with used banana peel and leaving Sheba with nothing between her and the octopus-infested depths, to lower herself out of the cage at full stretch of her arms, feet cringing just above the water as she felt in horrid imagination the slimy touch of tentacles on her skin -then to swing out and up, snatching at the bars from the outside, clutching, slipping, clinging for her life, and then scrambling up the cage side to the safety of the roof. For a minute she lay panting and shivering, thinking six out of six for technical merit, but not more than four for presentation.
She gazed eagerly seaward, across the rock-bound bay where the Spanish galleons rode, but nothing moved on the dim water. Had she been wrong – no, she could feel it out yonder, and the sea-march was whispering in her ears. Wow, she thought, suppose it's – him, in person, hasting to my side! Or to the side of that blonde cream-puff up there who's been slathering herself wi' Helena Rubinstein like there's no tomorrow! Nay, it must not be! The sable sea-queen ground pearly teeth, her eyes blazed tawny sparks, and it took another digestive rumble from the depths of the octopus pool to recall her to her perilous situation. Time to get under cover – and where better than her own boudoir two hundred feet above, at the other end of the rusty, creaking chain from which the cage hung suspende
d? Little had she ever dreamed, in the carefree days when she had leaned from her casement, dropping debris, insults, and poisoned snacks on her own caged captives, that a time would come when she would have to climb up that dizzy height starkers, with her mouth full of rapier. With a wistful sigh the swart Aphrodite clenched the blade in her teeth, took a deep breath, flexed her lovely nostrils, and started up the chain, hand over hand …
With a startled squeak Lady Vanity jerked her bent hair-clip from the-keyhole and sprang back. Someone was unlocking the door! For a wild moment she wondered if it was Meliflua, intent on a midnight feast – for since Blood's escape the dainty hidalga had been a frequent visitor, drawn despite her jealous rivalry by that sisterhood which links deb to deb, and many a snack o' sardines and cocoa had they shared, in giggling gossip, Meliflua discoursing of high jinks in the convent dorm, and Vanity describing how she had bundled the Roedean goalkeeper into the net, ball and all, in the last minute with the scores tied. They had also played Leviathan, Master Hobbes's fore-runner of Monopolie.
But it couldn't be Meliflua – there had been no sound of drugged sentries crashing to the floor of the passage. Who then? Blue orbs wide, rose lips parted, our heroine clasped her filmy robe about her, glanced in the mirror, adjusted a curl, flipped the betraying hair-clip deftly into a flower-pot, and recoiled as the door opened to reveal – Enchillada! And not just Enchillada, but Enchillada panic-stricken, with a proposition so bizarre that Vanity did a fluttering double-take.
“Me? A bridesmaid? I? Art surely loco, sir chamberlain, or legless quite! Why, whose nuptials – oh!” she gasped, discerning. “You don't mean Lardo is going to make Meliflua jump off the dock? Oh, the poor little twerp! How grisly!”
“You better believe eet, señorita!” chattered the plump chamberlain. “'Ees excellence 'as commanded full rehearsal weetheen the hour, weeth you as bridesmaid an' me as bes' man – an' everytheeng's goeeng haywires! I 'ave no reeng, thee boss's weddeeng teeth are nowhaire to be foun', the Eenqueeseetion choir don't know thee words of ‘Apple Blossom Time’, and I theenk,” he burst into tears, “thee Gila monstaire ees goeeng to 'ave pups! Oh, what shall I doo? Eef you fail me, I shall be blame', an' 'e weel fleeng me to the octopoodles!”