Greenbeard (9781935259220) (48 page)

“Thank 'ee, Jake. Have a glass of ale yourself. Oh, is there any mustard? For the pie?” Jake brought a pot of mustard, and then sat under a tree with his ale, mumbling. They ate and drank in silence for a while.

“Anyway, I think that the Glaroon, with his mania for stealing things and people from Earth's past, was creating too many tears and rents in the fabric o' time, and the other Great Old Ones could not allow that. If this time-line of ours had collapsed from too many punctures, then everybody – the Great Old Ones included – would have been
inconvenienced
greatly.”

“Will the damage to time heal itself, Sylvestre?”

“Yes, it will …
in time!
Har-har-har-har! I apologise, Peter! I shan't do that again, for there are far too many opportunities for such levity when one speaks of time
all the time!
Har-har-har! Now I have on a somber face, I promise … where was I? … Yes, the damage caused by the Glaroon's saucer-craft ripping through the fabric o' time will mend itself as a wound will, if it be clean. I have been taking measures to clean the wounds, so to speak. Putting back the things that were taken, that sort o' thing. Means I've had to use the little grey buggers to crew a few saucer-craft, and so create a few small rips myself. In the same way, I suppose, that a wound must sometimes be trimmed with further cuts so as to heal better.
Debriding
, the doctors calls it. When that's done, mind you, there will be no further trips into the past by anybody, not if I have anything to do with it.”

“The little grey buggers flying saucer-craft, Cap'n? Is that wise?”

“I've got the lizard-people keeping a weather-eye upon 'em, and the little grey buggers be the best at flying those things through time. Sideways through time, too, which can be rather
unwholesome
an' dismal. No, if trouble were to come, it would be from the Great Old Ones turnin' the little grey buggers against me, and my feeling is that I am doing pretty much what the Great Old Ones want, and saving them from having to do it themselves, so why should they? The little grey buggers are sharp enough to realise that, so they will obey me to keep the Great Old Ones sweet.”

Captain Greybagges poured himself another glass of ale, drank deeply and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The bowler bowled, with an ungainly side-arm throw. The batsman slashed at the ball, and missed. The wicket-keeper fumbled and dropped it, cursing audibly.

“The healing process is already happening. When we were on the coast o' the Colonies we visited places and they were close together, and now they be far apart, hundreds o' miles. Nobody's noticed the ground shiftin' about, yet there it is. The Glaroon was doing' somethin' nasty around those parts, too. Solomon Pole told me about it when we met in Salem. Sol was shooting toad-men out in the barrens, with a great huge duck-gun on a punt, the sly fellow. That's all gone now. Whatever it was the Glaroon was a-doin', well, it ain't there now. Things are easing back to how they should be. The
disjunctions
, the cleavages, the gaps, the
lacunae
in the skeins of time will soon be of the past. They will be history. Quite literally
history
, too, as it will all hang together so prettily so that pompous old
greybeards in mortar-boards will be able to write boring books about it, an' torture innocent schoolboys into learnin' it by rote as though it were holy writ.”

Captain Greybagges took another pork pie. Blue Peter handed him the mustard-pot.

“Odd thing, Peter. Most of the Mars people - the slaves taken from the past, the Glaroon's historical menagerie – did not choose to go back to the time from whence they came. Oogie the Very Early Man did, but only because it was the only way he could stay sober, and he missed mammoth-steaks, too. A lot of them want to stay on Mars. They've spent their lives there, I suppose, if one discounts the false memories that have been put into their heads to make them think they are whoever it is they are supposed to be. It's their home, as much as anywhere is. Some of ‘em surprised me, though. Aristotle is now running a
taverna
in Athens, down by the Piraeus docks. Says he should have thought o' doin' it years ago. The only proper work for a philosopher is bein' landlord o' a pub, he reckons. Temujin is trading carpets in the
souk
o' Stamboul, where his base cunning and native ferocity can be employed on a daily basis. An' Helen o' Troy …”

“Is an actress here in London, and she now calls herself Nell Gwynne!” laughed Blue Peter.

“Good grief! How come you to know that?”

“I saw her at the theatre, only a couple of days ago. Guess who she was with?”

“I cannot hazard a guess.”

“King Charles!”

“No! You jest! … Well, yes, I can see how that might be. He does have an eye for the ladies, it's said, and Helen is certainly an eyeful.”

“She is playing Florimel in Dryden's
Secret Love, or The Maiden Queen
at the Theater Royal. I took Miriam to see it, and it was a very droll entertainment. Helen, or
Nell
I should say, saw us in the foyer after the curtain came down, and sent for us to come back-stage, and there he was, the king of England. He was
incognito
, so I didn't recognize him – how would I know what the king looks like? – but that went well, as I spoke to him at first as a normal man, and I think he quite liked that. He is not unduly
stuffy
, for a king. Miriam and I are now invited to a royal garden-party next week.”

“Upon my life, Peter! I once jested that you might end up as the king's Steward Of The Stool, but I never thought it might actually come to pass, har-har!”

“I suspect that King Charles wishes to shock his hoity-toity friends by showing us off to them as a blackamoor pirate and his fair Colonial wife –
quelle scandale!
- but I shall forgive him for that if the food and drink are
fit for a king
, and if no fool takes me for a flunky and gives me his cloak and hat to brush.”

“I don't think there be much chance o' that, not if yer grins at the fellow with yer pointed teeth.”

There was another outbreak of clapping, and the cricket-ball bounced over the boundary and rolled to Mumblin' Jake, who threw it to a fielder, who dropped it. Jake mumbled a curse, and drank some ale.

“Tell me about your adventures in Africa, Peter,” said the Captain. “You found your home village, I believe.”

“Indeed I did, and thank you once again for the loan of the good ship
Ark de Triomphe
.”

“Think nothing of it. You and Miriam needed a proper honeymoon, after all the kerfuffle, and what better one than a cruise?”

“I located the place of my birth quite quickly, to my surprise. It's a lot easier to find things if one can look down from the sky. It was pretty much as I had thought. My uncle had substituted his own son for me, the rightful chief of the tribe. My uncle was long dead, though, and my cousin is a decent fellow and an honest and upright leader of his people, so there was nothing for me to do, really. The thirst for revenge went from my heart when I saw how sorry and afraid my cousin was. My return gave him quite a shock, as you may imagine. I gave him some muskets, a keg of powder and a sack of musket-balls to help keep the slave-traders at bay, and we parted on good terms.”

“I am glad of that,” said Captain Greybagges. “To be still intent on settling a grudge would be beneath you, Peter, now that you are one of the wealthiest men in the world, har-har!”

“You vast hypocrite, Sylvestre! You yourself are
the
wealthiest man in the world now, and yet you still yearn to have your vengeance upon the Glaroon!”

“That be an entirely different kettle o' fish, Peter,” said Captain Greybagges loftily. “The vile Glaroon made me wear
a little sailor-suit with ribbons
, and that is an insult not easily borne by a cap'n o' buccaneers. I would have fed him with little sailor-suits! I would've stuffed them down his gob with a cannon's ram-rod until all seven o' his eyeballs bulged like organ-stops, an' you may lay to that, I swears
it wi' a curse, look 'ee!”

Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges and Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo roared with laughter and clinked their ale-glasses together.

“I'm glad everything turned out well,” said Captain Greybagges. “There were moments when I doubted they would, even with Hypatia helpin' me at every turn, and with such a fine crew o' reckless freebooters at my back. T'were touch an' go at times. Now me only worry is the little grey buggers.”

“Why are they a worry, Sylvestre? I thought you had them tamed?”

“It be not so much the little grey buggers, as what they represent. I be tryin' to put things right, and that means healin' the damage caused by travel to the past. I have a deep suspicion, though, that the little grey buggers be from the future, an' that may be harder to fix up an' make ship-shape. The
really
worryin' thing is that they may be people like us, but from millions o' years hence, d'ye see? It may be our destiny to become little grey buggers, and I do not find that a comfortin' thought, for the sods have no sense o' humour. There be not an atom o' fun in any of 'em, the miserable bastards, an' that'd be a terrible fate for mankind.”

Blue Peter considered this in silence. Mumblin' Jake mumbled something, and waved a bony hand. Captain Greybagges looked over his shoulder.

“Ah-harr! Here be the girls! … Arrh! An' a passel o' the lads, too!”

Three four-in-hand coaches were pulled up onto the grass verge of the road behind them. The first coach was a fairytale carriage of pink enamel and gold-leaf with a coachman and postillion in sky-blue uniforms. Mrs Miriam Ceteshwayoo and Hypatia were stepping down from it, dressed in the pastel silks of that spring's Paris fashions, unfolding little lacy parasols against the summer-afternoon sun. Israel Feet and Madame Zonga tumbled from the second coach (a rakish speedy brougham, resplendent in burgundy with yellow pin-striping), both apparently the worse for drink, followed by Bulbous Bill Bucephalous and the chief of the island women, arm-in-arm. The third coach (a rented hack, its scarred panels dimmed by the dust of London's streets, driven by a beaming Mr Benjamin) was entirely full of drunken buccaneers, with drunken buccaneers falling out of the windows, drunken buccaneers on the roof and drunken buccaneers hanging onto the postillion's seat at the rear. They were lustily singing a pirate song, a ribald sea-chaunty of the most astonishing lewdness, which went like this …..

RICHARD JAMES BENTLEY, who happens to look the part of a salty English sea captain, has trodden many paths and worn many hats. From his early work as a dealer in dodgy motorcars, he progressed to being a design engineer on a zeppelin project. Computers then caught his attention and he authored a number of incomprehensible technical manuals before turning to fiction. He has lived in Switzerland and the Netherlands and now spins yarns in the north of England.

Green beard
is his first novel.

Copyright © 2013 by Richard James Bentley

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