Pirate King (34 page)

“No guilt in his eyebrows.”

“No avoidance of the eyes.”

“
How
did she die?”

I took pity on the man. “We don’t know for certain that she’s dead. The police suspect it.”

“They’re usually wrong,” Holmes commented.

“I wouldn’t say ‘usually,’ Holmes,” I chided.

“Then why the hell did you tell me she was dead?
Accuse
me of killing her?”

“To see your reaction. You smuggled guns, and drugs. If Miss Johns had discovered it, perhaps you’d have killed her.”

“I never!”

“But you did sell the guns and the drugs.”

Now he looked down, kicking at the dust with his boot. “Well, yeah. But it was just … lying there. Hale got all that stuff, for Fflytte. Nothing would do but that we had the real thing, for the camera. Insane, but it’s what he wanted. Only the three of us knew, the others thought it was washing-up powder or something. And then when we moved on to the next project, someone had to tidy after them.”

“And you always resented, just a little, that Fflytte’s name alone was on the credits.”

The Welshman’s face lifted, his eyes bitter and defiant. “Without me, Randolph Fflytte would still be scratching his head over that first camera. So yes, I will admit, I thought that picking up a little extra on the side might make up for it, just a bit. But I never hurt anyone.”

That was, I supposed, debatable. But I for one did not intend to tackle him and truss him for the next boat across the river. “You want to stay here in Morocco?”

“It’s warm. I like the food. The French can’t arrest an Englishman here. There are worse places to retire. And, somebody has to let these boys know how to deal with the actors and directors they’ll be meeting.”

Adam decided we had finished, and said to Holmes in English, “I will return your things by morning.”

Holmes replied in Arabic,
“The ladies will be glad for their clothing, certainly. And do not forget your guards on the roof of the house.”

“Or those in the ground floor of the women’s quarters,”
I added.

“The punishment for the men should be light,”
Holmes suggested.
“They were overcome by the artistry of women, a mistake they will not make again.”

“We are all overcome by women,”
said the young pirate ruefully, and turned to the yellow-curled source of his overcoming (and of his guards’ overcoming, which I was glad he did not know). “Would you stay?” he pleaded. Holmes and I studied the river, although we did not move out of earshot. Neither Adam nor Annie seemed concerned with privacy; why should we be?

“I cannot,” she replied, her voice low with emotion. “Your people, your country, are beautiful, but they are too different from what I know. My heart tells me to try, but my head tells me that in the end, that difference would come between us. And I would not hurt you, not for the world.”

“I will come to you, then. Let me help my people for a few years, and then I will return to you.”

“No,” she said—just the tiniest fraction of a second too quickly. “Your people need you. I see that now, and I rejoice for them, even as I sorrow for myself. I can live with the hole in my heart, knowing that it is for a good cause.”

I couldn’t help giving her a quick glance, then looked away again, astonished: I’d have sworn her eyes welled with unshed tears.

Adam seized her hands, a shocking public demonstration for a Moslem male.

“You are as noble a woman as any man could desire, and I can only say, if your heart aches too much, when you are home, if you wish to return here and become my wife, I will be here.”

“You must not wait for me,” she answered firmly. “You must marry and have sons of your own.”

“Oh, I will. But I will always welcome you as another wife.”

I shot her another glance, but fortunately her head was down, studying their entwined hands, and when she raised her face, any reaction was hidden away.

“I will always remember you,” she told him.

“And I, you,” he said.

And with that she retrieved her hands and walked away, head bent, to the last boat. I got in behind her, with Holmes last. She kept her head down as we crossed the muddy river, and when we climbed out, she kept her rigid spine to the pirate town across the water.

We pressed our way into a noisy crowd made up of British soldiers, French soldiers, film personnel, half-naked bathing children, donkeys, sheep, a camel, some bewildered tourists, and a parrot. A half-naked water carrier with a bulging goatskin slung over his shoulder was selling cups of water to an audience of delighted locals who sat atop the wall, kicking their heels and passing around small baskets of pistachios and dates.

Hale was pointing at the figures on the northern shore and shouting about his camera, his film, his—

Fflytte was in full bore to an uncomprehending
poilu
about the interruption to his schedule, his urgent requirement for a local assistant, someone to help him hire replacement pirates—

Mrs Hatley and Isabel’s mother had set the sails of their bosoms, despite their enveloping
galabiyyas
, and had cornered a British officer to demand that they and the girls be taken to the best hotel in Rabat, that very instant, because heaven only knew what sorts of vermin these costumes had in their folds, and they hadn’t seen a proper tub in days, and—

Bibi, with her customary skill at arranging the scene around her, waited for a camera to appear before she gracefully fainted into the not entirely willing arms of Daniel Marks, who staggered and permitted her to slump to the filthy paving stones, which revived her into a cry of disgust recorded by the camera and—

The parrot decided in the end that we were not where fate had intended him, and flew away across the river in search of his pirate king, shouting all the while, “The people will RULE! Golden daffodils! SEIZE the—”

A perplexed and red-faced Mrs Nunnally was trying to quiet the tear-streaked Edith, who was demonstrating several new additions to her vocabulary and declaring that the instant she turned eighteen she would return, and that she would never wear a frock again, and that she wanted a hair-cut immediately, and that—

With all this going on, I nearly missed the sound Annie made. My first thought, seeing the rhythmic heave of her body, was that she was sobbing at the loss of her one true love. Then she shot a look over her shoulders, back across the river where lingered the newly crowned pirate king of Salé, and I saw the dance of her dry eyes and the quirk of her lips.

And the woman had claimed she wasn’t much of an actress.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

PIRATE KING:
 … with all our faults, we love our Queen.

I
DID NOT
know if Mrs Hatley and Isabel’s mother got their baths that day. I did not know if Edith—Eddie—was granted his hair-cut. I did not discover until some days later whether or not Hale got his film back or if Bibi arranged a more satisfactory news photograph or if Fflytte found a local capable of working the ropes. And some things I never did learn: if Hale knew that June was his child; if the girls found a source of chewing gum in Morocco; if Rosie screeched forever in the air above Salé.

Two things I knew, when I staggered into my own very small, very dim hotel room, very late that night. First, a telegram from Scotland Yard informed us that Lonnie Johns had been found, alive and well, having returned from an illicit holiday in Barbados with a Member of Parliament she’d met in the course of making
Rum Runner
. And second, that I was wearing the same goat dung–coloured robe I’d put on that morning; the itching from the wool (I prayed it was only from the wool) was driving me mad.

I tore it off and threw it into a corner, replacing it with a dressing-gown I had chosen from a heap of cast-off clothing Rabat’s European community had hastily donated to their filmic refugees. The garment might have been designed for Randolph Fflytte, but modesty was not high on my list of concerns. I tied its belt, dropped into the armchair that was wedged between bed and wall, kicked off my boots, tipped back my head, and closed my eyes.

“Just so you know,” I said, “I plan to murder Lestrade when we get home.”

There came a ting of cut-glass carafe against tin mug, then the tap of my drink being set atop the small deal table tastefully decorated with cigarette burns.

“I may be too tired to swallow,” I groaned.

I heard another movement of clothing, then the cup nudged my hand. My fingers wrapped around it: perhaps I was not too tired to swallow, after all.

“A most successful day, Russell. You overcame a band of ruffians with minimal bloodshed, freed thirty-two British captives and a Frenchman, and prevented a war. You oversaw the peaceful change of régime of a criminal gang into the hands of a young man eager to promulgate the noblest sentiments of Victorian England. You made your erstwhile employer—he is, I trust, erstwhile?—happy by finding a source of what might be described as Moroccan actors, and in the process not only salvaged the economic future of the British film industry, but saved King and country from scandal.”

“However,” I told him, “scandal there will be, enough to keep Fflytte Films in the news for some weeks. To begin with Edith keeps trying to sneak across the river. Her mother caught her the first time. The second, she was returned by Benjamin.”

“The pretty pirate?”

“Yes. Who brought her into the dinner where the entire crew was gathered—her mother had thought she was sleeping—and asked M. Dédain for assistance.”

“Asking for asylum?”

“Asking for marriage.”

“Celeste, wasn’t it? Well, at least someone is happy.”

“Celeste is not happy. Oh, she was when she first saw him. But after a short time, the pretty young man contrived to be sitting next to Daniel Marks. Celeste swore she would talk to every newspaper in England.”

“I see.”

“Daniel removed himself to sit with Bibi, which made everything settle down nicely. Although as I came past the hotel tonight, I saw Benjamin going in through the service door. So everyone except Celeste should be happy.”

“And thus is Fflytte Films hauled from the rocks of scandal. In addition—although I do not for a moment suppose such was your intent—you appear single-handedly to have shaped the basis for a future Moroccan tourist industry, by giving the country’s hereditary buccaneers an outlet for their innate drive for plunder.”

“I’ve certainly left Fflytte Films open to plunder, at any rate.” My final duty that evening had been a long and brain-wracking English-and-Arabic, legal-and-criminal conversation with Captain La Rocha in his gaol cell, arranging for the hire—at rates just short of extortion—of the
Harlequin
, which (it turned out) was still registered in his name. It had been my offer to restore to its hull the ship’s previous name, the
Henry Morgan
, that sealed the deal with the former pirate king. “As for my employ, I’ve given Geoffrey Hale notice that he needs a new assistant.” I took another mouthful, relishing the sensation as the young cognac seared its way down my very empty gullet. I looked past the glass at the pair of filthy, blistered feet propped on the bed-covers.

“However, Holmes, I’m afraid there may be a slight delay in our departure.”

My cheeriness gave him pause. After a moment, he ventured, “Yes?”

“It would appear that while Randolph Fflytte does not mind having been taken hostage by his actors, Geoffrey Hale is not so forgiving. He firmly decrees a new set of pirates. And although I don’t imagine there will be a great problem in locating a sufficient number of dark-complexioned gentlemen here in Rabat to fill the rôles of the pirates, it will take some days to teach them their parts. During this time, Fflytte Films will be paying the cast and crew—girls, mothers, Sally, constables, Marks, Maude, and Maurice—simply to lie about in the sun.” While I talked, I had set down the empty mug, and noticed the state of my hands—the morning’s brown paint had mostly worn off, but the edges were quite disgusting. I stood, easing a crick in my back, and limped over to the room’s sole luxury, the cold-water basin in the corner.

“Yes?” The wariness in his voice was stronger; I could feel his narrowed gaze drilling into the back of my head.

“Well, instead of supporting them at their leisure, he proposes to employ them in an interim project. He is, even as we speak, madly penning the script for a new picture, to be filmed while his substitute pirates are in training.”

I looked into the speckled mirror, grimacing at the ravaged face and hair that met my gaze.

“Why does this concern us?” Holmes’ voice now contained outright suspicion. And rightly so.

“Because,” I said, turning on the tap, “we do have a means of lending assistance to the British film industry and to the House of Lords, if not the Palace itself. It seems that Mr Fflytte was inspired by today’s passage through the medina. He envisions a tale weaving together said passage with elements of Byron’s epic poem,
The Corsair
. Particularly the scene in which the pirate, Conrad, is rescued from a sultan’s dungeon. By a woman.”

I lifted my scrubbed face from the now-grubby towel, and met my husband’s eyes.

“He proposes to call the new picture
Pirate Queen
. Starring Mary Russell.”

“When stern duty calls, I must obey.…”