Greenbeard (9781935259220) (33 page)

The tall man sipped his rum, a thoughtful expression upon his long face. “You may have an insight there, Sylvestre. Master Chumbley is a very stupid man, and all the more stupid because none around him may tell him that he is, except his fat wife, and he pays little attention to her, I'm sure. This witch-finding obsession of his, for an example. He knows nothing about it except for the idiotic opinions of his wife's cousin, and yet he fancies himself a great warrior against ghoulies and ghosties and tommy-knockers and things that go ‘bump' in the night. I have told him before to leave it to experts like me, but he hasn't taken much notice, apparently.”

“How did you become a witch-finder, Sol?”

“Well, as you know, I used to be something of a coffee-house wheeler-dealer.”

“Yes, indeed. Specialising in stocks made of horse-feathers, shares in companies that were incorporated to mine the Moon for green cheese. Getting you off those charges took all my arts as a lawyer.”

“I think this day I have repaid you with interest, Sylvestre!”

“Yes, you have, and I thank you.” The Captain raised his glass in salute.

“Anyway, I felt it might be wise to avoid my usual haunts for a time, so I took a passage here to the colonies. There was little opportunity for selling stocks, for the
bedriegers
of New Amsterdam had the market sewn up tight, catching gullible fools by chalking the prices of their worthless investments up on the wall down by the waterfront. Then there was an outbreak of ghostly manifestations down in Yonkers, accompanied by all sorts of horripilation and collywobbles, so I set myself up as an exorcist! With the last of my money I bought myself a big black bible, a brass hand-bell and a candlestick of German-silver, and set about casting out demons, haints and
grafschenderen
wherever somebody would pay me. It was all great fun, I must say, and I used to put on a good show, rolling my eyes and thundering blood-curdling stuff in Latin, mostly quotations from Caesar's
Commentaries
which I remembered from school. Gave ‘em their money's worth, you may be sure. Then there was the witch-panic down here, and I was so well known by that time that they sent for me in person!”

“You, Solomon, are incorrigible! Have you no shame at all!” laughed Captain
Greybagges.

“You may mock me, Sylvestre, but I did a necessary job. The people of these parts were in a mortal terror, imagining spells and sorcery lurking in every nook and cranny, and I calmed their fears and brought peace and tranquillity back to the land. Not only that, I was able to save a number of harmless old ladies from being burned at the stake by the likes of Master Chumbley, poor white-haired old darlings whose only fault was to have sold love-potions - flasks of sugar-water and pepper mostly - to keep a little food on their tables and a few sticks of firewood in their grates. I am sure that the good Lord will view my activities in a kindly light when the Day of Judgement do come.”

“I am sure that you are a great benefactor to all mankind,” said Captain Greybagges with a grin.

“There is more,” said the tall man quietly. “When I heard reports of monsters lurking in the pine-barrens, I went a-hunting them, light-heartedly thinking I would do a little rough shooting and return with a hair-raising yarn or two, but I
did
find monsters! Monsters resembling giant man-like toads! Luckily I had gone equipped to hunt ducks, with a kind of a long-barrelled great arquebus mounted like a bow-chaser on a shallow-draught punt. It fired about a half-pound of small bird-shot, and it discouraged the toad-men quite efficiently, taking down a swathe of pine-saplings, too, and I was able to escape by paddling furiously through the swampy creeks as fast as I was ever able. At which point things became more serious.”

The Captain had ceased grinning now, and he nodded to indicate that the tall man should continue.

“I returned to the pine-barrens several times, hunting the toad-men, and winged several of them, but they are fearful hard to kill. I was intent on trying to get a skin or a head for a trophy to prove the truth of my tale, and I did not realise that I had become the hunted, and I was caught.”

The Captain held the tall man's gaze. “Little grey men with big black eyes,” he said slowly. The tall man nodded, then dipped his finger in his glass of rum and rubbed his eyebrow. He leaned forward into the candle-light and Captain Greybagges could see that the hair of the eyebrow was green. He suddenly looked afraid and went to rise from his seat.

“No, Sylvestre!” said the tall man. “
She
sent me here!
She
sent me here to
watch your back!”

Captain Greybagges rubbed his face with his hands, exhaling noisily. “For a moment …” he said.

“It nearly was that way. You are not missed yet, but there is a vague suspicion of something awry. They manufactured a copy of me, a copy with a scrambled soul, and sent him to make enquiries among men. I was to be fed to the toad-men, but she somehow had me smuggled onto the transport as well as my copy, and I dogged his steps all the way here. Maybe I would not have found you by myself, for I am a swindler and a liar, not a human bloodhound, as they had made him. He was easy to follow, though, as all I had to ask was ‘has my twin brother been this way?' My twin lies in a shallow grave two miles from here. It gave me a very strange feeling to murder myself and bury my own corpse at midnight, but not a
guilty
feeling at all.” He smiled a grim and unsettling smile, and took a gulp of rum. “He was surprisingly easy to kill. In making him so completely their creature they had erased much of his human cunning and suspicion. Fortunately for me, I must say, for I am no assassin either.”

“How is she?” asked Captain Greybagges earnestly.

“She is well, but she urges you not to delay any more than you must.”

“Why does my beard not detect your eyebrows? I would have thought that it would.”

“She has somehow arranged that such things are muffled, confused. The little grey men are afraid to tell
him
about that, and hope to find out what is wrong before they have to admit their failure, for then his wrath may be awesome. There is still some contact, as you will know, but it is sporadic. They will not notice the demise of their creature, my twin, as I am here in his place and, with luck and the muffling, they will not detect the difference. But tell me, why are
you
here in Salem?”

Captain Greybagges explained about Blue Peter, concluding; “I was surprised to see Master Chumbley. I would have expected to find him, his house and his whole household as smoking ashes. I fear for my friend, and wonder what has befallen him since he has not been seen here, but now I must press on without him. Need we anticipate any repercussions from Master Chumbley?”

“I think not. He is cowed and uncertain now, and I have warned him not to meddle, so he will do nothing tonight. Tomorrow is another matter. He may
recover his courage with the morning's light, and seek to do you harm for his humiliation at my hands. His is stupid, and vindictive in the way of stupid men when thwarted, so we must leave early tomorrow, before dawn. I have had your horse brought here to the stables. I will wake you. Sleep now for a while and refresh your spirits. I will keep a watch at the window this night, with my pistol ready to my hand. Keep your own pistols and cutlass by your cot, just in case.”

 

As the sky lightened with the first flush of dawn Captain Greybagges and tall man came to the signpost at the cross roads. The Captain had pointed out the forest clearing where the witches' sabbath had occurred as they passed it, causing the tall man much amusement.

“It has been a great pleasure to meet you again, Sol,” said the Captain. “You have saved me from the odious Chumbley and from an extramundane copy of yourself, too. I'm glad that I kept you out of the chokey that time, and I forgive you for not paying me my fees for that service.” The tall man laughed. “It's also been pleasant to talk to someone who has shared my experiences of the extramundanes,” continued the Captain. “It is a burden not to be able to talk about it, for fear of being thought stark-mad … but I must
not
tell you any more, especially of my plans.”

“Because of my green eyebrows?”

“Yes. You say that I am still not missed by
him
, or by the little grey buggers, and that you will be mistaken for your manufactured twin in their present confusion, but if they should manage to break through the muffling of their communications they may be able to hear some of your thoughts, so I must tell you nothing, and so we must part company. I would gladly invite you to come along with me, Sol, but I cannot. What will you do now?”

“I will continue with the witch-finding. I find that I have discovered my true vocation, and somebody must prevent Master Chumbley and his ilk from murdering all the harmless old women in these colonies in the name of their malevolent and un-Christian conception of God. I used to swindle people and laugh at their pain and loss, but in many ways that was worse than being a highwayman or a footpad. A man looks so wretched after he has been rooked, for then he must blame his own stupidity and greed, and cannot see himself merely as a victim of bad luck. I may tell a few tall tales these days, it's true, but there
are
monsters and ghouls loose in
the land. So many in the pine-barrens, in fact, that they must be up to something wicked there, and who will stop them if not I? People respect me, too, and I must say I like that! Why, some scribbler even penned a ghastly piece of doggerel in my honour!” The tall man struck a pose and declaimed as follows:

 

“Solomon Pole's Homecoming!

“Stop! Stop!” cried the Captain, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “That was a poem in your
honour
, you say?”

“Well, Sylvestre,” said Solomon Pole, “the scribbler's ode contained a number of egregious errors of fact! He said my birthplace was some horrid little fishing-village in the West Country, and that I had sailed with Hawkins and Grenville, which would make me the oldest man alive and not the clean-limbed laughing lad whom you see before you. It was a humourless glum piece of work, too. He even got my name wrong, the hound! So I composed my own version. Ain't it grand?”

“It is, Sol, it is! I must go now, friend, for time presses greatly upon me!”

“Go! I will delay and misdirect any pursuit by Chumbley's men. May your path be always downhill, and may the good Lord crown your endeavours with success! Adieu, Sylvestre de Greybagges!”

They shook hands, the Captain's large hand almost lost in the grasp of the tall man's huge knobbly fingers, and they parted there at the crossroads.

 

 

Captain Greybagges spurred his horse along the dusty road back to Jamestown, trying to make as much speed as possible without tiring his mount. His horse was eager, the air was crisp on his face, the day bright with a few clouds in a blue sky, but he felt no joy and his worries oppressed him terribly. Extramundane creatures ‘up to something' in the nearby wilderness, Solomon Pole had said, but he could not spare the time to ponder upon that. He had lost his master gunner, and perhaps his sailing-master and First Mate as well, for he had not seen Bulbous Bill Bucephalus or Israel Feet since the night of the witches. That was a catastrophe, and he cursed himself for going ashore and drinking in the tavern called
Wahunsunacock's Mantle
. When he had learned that the Dutchman whom he sought was not yet there he should have gone back out to sea, or he should have anchored in a quiet cove away from the temptations of civilisation, even such poor temptations as Jamestown had to offer. Frank Benjamin would not then have thought of taking shore-leave, and Blue Peter would have seen no opportunity to vent his long-nursed rage upon his erstwhile owner. Captain Greybagges cursed himself again. I relaxed my vigilance, he thought, and firstly I relaxed my vigilance upon myself, and all else that followed grew from that base dereliction. I shall probably find the remainder of my crew laid ashore as drunk as Davy's sow, and
my ship boarded and stolen away by sneering French privateers.

Beset by these dismal speculations he galloped around a bend in the road and let the horse have its head as the road straightened. Ahead in the distance he could see another traveller on a horse. As he came closer he could see the hunched rider was enveloped in a loose brown cloak and a big wide-brimmed floppy hat, so he resembled a large sack of turnips. He pulled his horse to the right to gallop past the slow-moving traveller on the narrow lane, as he did so he caught a glimpse of a dark eye peering at him from under the brim of the hat, and felt an immediate surge of recognition.