Greenbeard (9781935259220) (26 page)

In the kitchen of the boatyard house there was coffee and oatmeal burgoo with brown sugar and yellow cream. Blue Peter ate at the dining-room table, hearing the tramp of feet outside the door and muttered salutations and insults as pirates came to the kitchen to collect tubs of burgoo and cans of coffee for their messes' breakfasts. It had started raining again so he put on a boat-cloak and clapped on a wide-brimmed hat before going on a morning inspection of the boatyard.

Now that the work on the
Ark de Triomphe
was coming to an end the pirates were clearing the boatyard and some of the wooden huts had been dismantled as the pirates moved back aboard. Captain Greybagges had decided to keep the boatyard, which would be staffed by retired pirates and suitable candidates from Liver Pool. Blue Peter found this an encouraging development, as it showed that the Captain's plans did not include a suicide mission. Trust your heart, Blue Peter thought, I suppose I must do just that. It's good advice, even if it did come from a shape-shifting leopardess in a peculiar dream.

Mr Benjamin was standing naked on top of the foundry building, his arms spread and his face tilted upwards to the rain.

“Good morning, Frank,” called Blue Peter. “Don't get washed away.”

“And a fine morning it is! The wind and the water are a sovereign tonic, you should try it, Peter!”

“I had a bath under the pump earlier. That was cold enough and wet enough for me.”

Blue Peter plodded back to the boatyard house for a second breakfast, thinking about his work for the day. The new cannons were installed in the gun-decks
and he was almost satisfied with their carriages, but he wanted to reinforce the eye-bolts on the recoiling-tackles. Torvald Coalbiter had a notion to increase the width of the forward gun-ports so that the two forwardmost cannons could be slewed if required to be more useful in a chase. Blue Peter wasn't sure about this, but Torvald made a good case. He would have to make a decision this afternoon, as the carpentry would take at least three days and time was beginning to press.

 

 

In fact widening the two ports took two days, but reinforcing the eye-bolts took longer than planned. The ship and crew were now very close to being ready for the oceans. A contingent of retired pirates had arrived in the tubs to work in the boatyard, and the boatyard's affairs were in a fit state for the Captain to hand over day-to-day control to Mavis O'Bacon, the chief of the women in the drawing section. He had worried about this, but none of the retired pirates could manage a business, excellent hands though they were at carpentry, caulking and rigging. Handing control to any of the men of Liver Pool would be to invite them to strip the boatyard to its bare bones, for that was the way their minds worked; they would the loot the boatyard even though more profit could be made by operating is as an honest venture. The widow O'Bacon, though, would defend the boatyard because she would be running it herself and opportunities like that did not come often to womenfolk, so she had every reason to wish it to prosper and to continue. She was a red-haired dragon with a fiery temper and a tongue that could lash like a bull-whip, too, so she stood a reasonable chance of keeping the workforce in a state of productive fear. All the drawing-section women would be staying on, too, and the widow O'Bacon was their acknowledged queen, so any attempts at peculation by the Liver Pool men would face daunting opposition.

Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges sat in his Great Cabin enjoying the return of peace now that Mr Benjamin and his boys had finished installing the deciheptaxial mechanism. Mr Benjamin was testing and adjusting it now, but that was a comparatively quiet labour, carried out in hushed whispers with only the occasional tap of a hammer, the squeak of a screw being tightened, to be heard through the oak of the cabin door. The Captain sipped coffee and wrote letters with a new goose quill and fine black ox-gall ink,
scritch-scratch
.

Jack Nastyface, Torvald Coalbiter and a Yorkshireman called Jake Thackeray were sitting on the maintop cross-trees, smoking pipes, yarning and taking their ease. Jack had seemingly grown two inches taller and put on muscle with the labours of the winter, labours which he had not minded for the hard work had eased the loneliness he felt from the departure of his great friend Jemmy Ducks. He had lately been assisting Torvald on the gun-deck, and had made himself so useful that he had been given Jake as an assistant to take over some of his kitchen duties. Jake Thackeray was a tall, skinny youth with a long gloomy face, hooded eyes and a down-turned mouth. His lugubrious mien concealed a sharp wit, and he was known for composing comical songs lampooning his shipmates, a talent that was greatly valued ‘tween decks. He was supposed to be a cabinet-maker, but he had little skill with wood and preferred kitchen duties, even being so confident as to question Bulbous Bill Bucephalus's sacred recipe for hot chilli, feeling that it had insufficient garlic. He was lucky that Bill was not very agile in the rigging, and so he had eluded chastisement for this blasphemy. Torvald Coalbiter, being a gunner and not a foremast-jack, was not entirely at ease perched in the crosstrees, but an invitation to a morning smoke had to be accepted out of courtesy to a shipmate.

“So, even Mr Benjamin don't know what the clockworks are for?” said Jake.

“The Captain does, though,” said Jack, “and that's good enough for me.”

“He told Blue Peter that it would become clear soonish,” said Torvald.

“He is a deep old file, our Captain,” said Jake, “and no mistake on that, but I am still curious, thou knows.”

“When we had the run-in with the corsairs down off the coast o' Barbary he saw off that mad bugger Ali the Barber just by twisting words around,” said Torvald. “I think he often sees further than most men, but to explain himself would take too long, so he doesn't bother.”

They had been watching one of the tubs manoeuvring in the sluggish slack-water river to come alongside the
Ark de Triomphe
where she lay at the jetty, and now it did with a slight bump, and a burst of shouting and curses as pirates put bumpers between the hulls and tied-off the ropes.

“And what be this now?” said Jake, peering down.

“It looks like the top half of a big barrel,” said Jack, examining the cargo on the deck of the tub, “with iron shackles on its head.”

“More alike to an upturned bucket for a giant. They are going to lift it onto the barky,” said Torvald, seeing pirates laying down wooden slabs on the frigate's deck for the huge half-barrel to rest upon. “Here is yet another mystery for you to ponder, young Jake. Let's get down, they'll want to rig the steadying-tackles from up here and we will be in their way.”

Torvald Coalbiter crawled carefully through the lubber's hole and climbed slowly down the rat-lines; the younger men slid down the back-stay.

The giant upturned bucket was settled between the foremast and mainmast, lashed down with ropes to iron staples in the deck, and covered in a black tarpaulin. The crew were mystified, and wrangled a little over what it might be, The enigmatic nature of the large piece of coopering only added to a sense of expectation; it seemed they were off on an adventure, the meanings of such things would be revealed in time, and the crew were eager to get to sea, wherever it was that the ship was headed.

Of all the pirates, Bulbous Bill Bucephalus had the clearest perception of what the deciheptaxial mechanism was for, even though he wouldn't like to try to spell the word. Through the study of navigation he had acquired a good knowledge of mathematics and an excellent grasp of spherical geometry, that bane of midshipmen. Through the study of navigation he had also acquired a good knowledge of astronomy and an excellent understanding of the motions of the planets as they sail on their orbits through the heavens. These two separate, but related, subjects were suggesting possibilities to him. Three and one-half variables is also three and one-half axes of a graph or, looked at another way, three and one-half dimensions. Could the one-half dimension be …? No, he shook his head, it was daft enough to be right, but he could not be sure. He would think about it some more, perhaps after supper. He had no opinion of the bucket on the foredeck, except in that it would raise the centre-of-gravity of the frigate just a whisker, as it had heavy cast-iron weights around its lower rim, he had noticed.

Israel Feet did not have any perception of what the deciheptaxial mechanism was for, nor did he have any idea what the purpose of the upturned bucket was, what he did have was a headache. The headaches were coming less often and with diminishing severity, but the hoisting, levering and lashing-down a vast great thing of oak staves and iron hoops and iron this-and-that was a sure way to get a head-splitter. After supper he would ask Mr Benjamin for a small piece of opium, and
sling his hammock in a quiet corner and sleep.

Blue Peter had put aside the mysteries of mechanisms and giant buckets as mere codicils to the larger mystery of Captain Greybagges's plan, which would unfold whether he worried about it or not. Another enigma intrigued him, though; could ships have souls? He posited this question to the Captain, Bill and Mr Benjamin over the remains of their supper seated at the table in the Great Cabin, telling them of the leopardess in the dream, but not of her message.

“I have not had a dream such as yours,” said the Captain, “but then I hardly ever dream, or remember dreams, which is much the same thing. Ships do seem to have a spirit, or why else would we put a figurehead on them.”

“Ha! The figurehead is there because most sailors cannot read. That is, for the same reason that inns have signs,” said Mr Benjamin. “If both ships and taverns were not so readily identified the average matelot would not be able to find his way between them, and then international trade, the navies of the world and even - I hesitate to say it! – piracy itself would wither away and die of despondency!” He poured himself some rum, and winked at them over his eyeglasses.

“You are right, Frank, which is why I have arranged for a
boucan
upon the day afore we leave,” said the Captain. “Oxen, sheep and pigs to be roasted over coals. Barrels of ale and cider, and some port wine and rum-grog for later. Let us kick up our heels before we get about our business, grow our beards a little. I think that ships do have a sort of a spirit, though, if not the sort of full-blown immortal soul that a theologist would give his approval to.”

“The French fellow, René Descartes, would say not,” avowed Mr Benjamin with a mock-serious expression, “rather he would say that
mentality
is a nonphysical substance, from which he deduces the doctrine of duality. He says ‘I think, therefore I am' and he would say ‘the ship cannot think, therefore it aren't'. I feel he may have a point there, although he confesses himself to be puzzled by insects, being unable to decide whether they think or merely act in the fashion of a machine, without will or consciousness.”

“That be true,” said Bill. “It be in his book
The Passions Of The Soul
, which I has in my sea-chest.”

“Ho-ho! Did you purchase it under the misapprehension that it was salacious, Bill?” laughed Blue Peter.

“I did a deal wiv a book-seller when we was in London, for all the books
he had by Descartes, an got ‘em a good price, too. All I knew was that he were a mathematician, like. I haven't read much o' it, but I remember the bit about insects.” Bill selected an apple and munched it, a glint of amusement in his piggy eyes.

“Why did you want to read Descartes' mathematical musings?” asked Mr Benjamin, looking taken aback.

“He has some notions about this and that. Summa them very canny. His ideas of
ordination
, fr'instance, might lead me to say that three and one-half quantities is three and one-half dimensions, which is length, breadth, width and the half-dimension of time.”

The Captain stared at him, mouth slightly open.

“Why is time a half of a dimension?” said Blue Peter, not noticing the Captain's surprise.

“Because it only goes in one direction. The other three can go back-and-forth, so to speak,” said Bill.

“I confess myself humbled, Bill,” said the Captain. “I was sure that nobody would spot that, I even dubbed the thing ‘deciheptaxial', smugly content that the name was obscure enough for safety.”

“I would not have smoked it iffen I had not just been reading
Mon-sewer
Descartes, Cap'n, so I was fortunate there.”

“Well, all of you, please do not breathe a word of these notions outside this cabin for now,” said Captain Greybagges earnestly. “We only have another few days here, and then we are away. All will become clear, I hope, and trying to explain now is, well, too difficult. It's easier if you just bear with me for now. Here! I have an amusement for you!”

The Captain got up and lifted a square wooden box onto the table.

“I ordered this in London, and it was delivered today.”

He took away the box lid and lifted out a spherical glass bottle the size of a pumpkin.

“Alf Docklefar made it for me. It is our frigate
Ark de Triomphe
in miniature.”

The Captain moved the oil lamp close to the round bottle and his three officers leaned forward to peer inside.

It was indeed the frigate
Ark de Triomphe
, the length of a hand-span and beautifully modelled. The black hull ploughed a choppy sea of blue-tinted plaster
set in the bottom of the bottle, with whitecaps painted on the crests of the waves. The sails were made of fine silk stiffened with glue-size so that they appeared as if full-drawn by a stiff breeze, the little black skull-and-bones flag flying at the masthead was of stiffened silk, too, as though frozen mid-flap. Every stay, halliard, ratline, hawser and cable was represented in its correct place by silken threads and cords. The tiny muzzles of the cannons peeked from the open gun-ports,