The Triple Goddess (41 page)

‘That’s a nice rod.’

‘There’s a slight set in the tip, unfortunately. I must have stored it badly at some point—you’re not supposed to leave them leaning. Bamboo isn’t as resilient as the graphite that modern rod-makers use. But it doesn’t matter. One of the advantages of having laid in a good supply of Chinese Tonkin cane, before it became virtually unobtainable, is that I have plenty to make more rods with. Though I very much doubt I will ever use them for their designated purpose.’

Now that fishing had been put aside and order restored, they turned to business and the slip. ‘Looks good to me,’ said Carew; ‘well done! Perhaps a little bit too much non-contractual information, but that always goes down well. Leading this will make me feel like Carew Arthur Ralegh again, and not just the nobody son of a famous man. But I was thinking of writing only one per cent, if that’s all right. It’s a matter of principle: I’m not just the lead, I’m family.’

Arbella nodded. ‘Thank you, I was going to suggest the same.’

‘I’ll pencil it for the time being. There.’

‘I have a couple of concerns,’ continued Arbella; ‘first, that Sir Walter might consider some of the language disrespectful; and second, though I don’t mean to mislead anyone, as you can see I…embroidered a few of the facts.’

‘You do seem to have given your imagination free rein, but you’re spot-on in the spirit of the truth, and Father would be out of order to object. It makes the thing more personal, and underwriters should appreciate that.

‘Regarding the cloaks, Good Queen Bess made him go through that charade over and over, a lot more than the eight times he says his capes got spoiled, to entertain the Court and visiting dignitaries. If the weather was dry she had pageboys pour water into the holes where the puddles would be. He said it made him feel like a performing monkey.

‘And you’re right, she never paid him a penny of compensation.

‘Now then, Arbella, I have a proposition for you: although my second Tower-visiting day of the week isn’t until tomorrow, I think we should go and present him with the slip right away. When he isn’t expecting me. It would be good to disrupt his schedule. The idea has obviously greatly intrigued him and, being as impulsive a man as he is, we should follow up with the net while the bee is buzzing loudest in his head.

‘We won’t stay long. Please come...it’s entirely thanks to you that he’s started seeing things in a new light. I am most grateful for that.’

Grammaticus looked flustered when he answered the door, and the model of English Renaissance man could be heard bawling for him from within.

‘Don’t worry,’ Carew assured Arbella, ‘it’s never serious, as I dare say you’ve already surmised. What is it this time, Grammaticus? Good morrow, by the way.’

‘Master Carew, Mistress Arbella…His Nibs cut his finger on a sheet of vellum—bitten by the tool of knowledge, he calls it—and needs ointment and plaster immediately. You’d better let me take care of it before you go in, Master Carew. He’ll not take it well, you being here on an off day.’

As they waited they heard fulminating from within. ‘This is the wrong berlady salve, dull-pate, it is for boils.’

‘If you would bother to read the label, Genius,’ came Grammaticus’s patient but weary voice, ‘you’ll see it says “For Cuts, Contusions and Bruises.” You made it yourself, remember? This morning when you had a headache, I brought your tincture “For Migraines and Pains of the Neck.” I have one of the first right now, and you are the second.

‘For your shivers between breakfast and mid-morning coffee, I brought the embrocation or liniment for “Agues, Palsies and related Tremors.” Last night after dinner you called for a powder for indigestion. At bedtime, fearing an infection from the night air through an open window, you wanted a certain herb and an amulet.

‘I think by now I can be trusted to bring you the right stuff, despite the great diversity of choice; though in my opinion none of it would work were there anything to cure. We’ve not enough storage space for half of it. To say that you enjoy ill health, old man, is to put a premium on misery.’

‘Grammaticus, thou art a very ignorant person. I should have dismissed thee long ago, rather than continue to pay your exorbitant wages.’

‘You, manage without me! And what wages? I’ve never had a groat from you, and have lost count of the times his lordship has tried to hire me away from you…at attractive terms, I might add. Instead of which I’m on a fast track for sainthood. Who else would have stood for your tantrums, not only up to the day you got the chop but for centuries thereafter?’

Carew said, ‘Come on, Arbella, this could go on all day.’

Together they entered the main room.

‘Good morning, Father.’

Sir Walter, whose hand was thickly wrapped in a bandage, regarded the pair evilly. ‘What the devil are you two...’

‘We’ll come straight to the point, Father, since you don’t appear to be in the best of humours. Miss Arbella has drafted a contract that will, we hope, afford you the means to outfit a return expedition to Guiana. She has brought a copy of it with her, which we propose to leave for you to review.

‘You need to understand that it has yet to be subscribed. Even with me sponsoring the venture and Arbella as the broker, it’s going to be a major task for her to complete in light of your unlucky history, by far the most difficult she has ever tackled or ever will.’

‘How dare you, sir. My achievements speak for themselves.’

‘Indeed they do, Father. That being all we have to say on the matter for the time being, we will cut this visit short and leave you in peace to mull the proposition over.’

Arbella gave Carew the slip and he laid it on an occasional table.

After they left, Grammaticus watched as the muscles of Ralegh’s face worked with indecision. ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’

‘Coffee. Bring me coffee, Grammaticus; that is, if you have sufficient strength left after your recent exertions. I have work to do.’

‘Should you not be resting your finger? I could make you a sling.’

‘Fiddle-faddle. I mean thinking work. Do as you are told and then leave me alone.’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘Is this a slip I see before me?’, snapped Goldsack, ‘offering nothing in return for a million spondulicks, cash on the nail. Hardly cause for salivation. I knew that little coup of yours would go to your head, young lady. If I made a habit of writing deals like this I’d soon be panhandling, and not for gold, and living on Skid Row. I’d rather write Pluvius for Noah. That man Carew has lost his marbles. Next!’

Arbella felt the vacuum of surrounding ears sucking the news into the Reuters of market intelligence, that Icarus’s wings were melting. But she did not move.

‘The bloody persistence of the girl! Move aside. Next!’

‘But sir…’

‘But sir! Are we in the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem or Lloyd’s of London? Lloyd’s is filled with madmen, but do you take me for a Bedlamite? Or a fool?’

‘No sir. May I point out, sir, that the premium, undefined as it is, could turn out to be extremely substantial; and that the pledge of the entire profits of the expedition could not be more generous.’

‘Pooh! Unlike everyone else in the Room, I don’t deal in uncertainty. There’s no guarantee that the premium will amount to a penny. As for the profit commission, one hundred per cent of zero is zero, ducky.

‘It is clear that this poseur, this Wally Rally, intends to deliver neither premium nor profit. If he wants to spend the rest of his life lounging on a Bahamian beach being plied with piña coladas by dusky maidens, good luck to him, I’ll rent him mine for a non-refundable deposit. So I suggest you have a whip-round for him amongst Chandlers’ directors, not here at…’

Goldsack paused. ‘When did you say the beggar was alive?’

‘I didn’t but it’s on the slip. From fifteen fifty-four to...following the failure of a non-elective surgical procedure in sixteen eighteen...to the present day. He’s taken a licking but his heart’s still ticking.’

‘Don’t come the raw prawn with me, honey.’ Goldsack took a deep breath. ‘This slip stinks to high heaven,’ he said loudly, for the benefit of the human Towers of Pisa surrounding the box. Then he reached up and, tugging Arbella by the hair, pulled her head down so that he could whisper in her ear. She curbed a yelp.

‘Now look’ee here. I’ll write you twenty-five per cent but only “to finish”. Which, if you don’t know, means I shan’t see you again until you’re at seventy-five per cent. Not seventy-four-point-nine-nine-nine, but seventy-five. Got it, sweetie? Even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter: you won’t be coming back.’

‘Thank you very much, sir,’ she whispered back; ‘you won’t regret it.’

‘Nothin’ to regret, darlin’. Ta ta and have a nice day.’ Bullion Bill released her and leaned back. ‘What, are you still here?’ His voice had risen to its usual pitch. ‘You’re acting very cool and casual for a wet-behind-the-ears graduette with a hundred per cent to go on a hiding-to-nothing risk like that.’

‘Ninety-nine, sir. Mr Carew’s the leader with one per cent.’

Goldsack affected perplexity. ‘Call that a lead? Even with my glasses, wherever they are, I can’t read one per cent lines. If that man wants to be a leader he needs to get some capacity. Bring me his reinsurance and I’ll sort that out for him. If he really wants to get back into the market I could use the income, there’s precious little around these days precious enough to be worth writing. Next!’

Over her shoulder, Arbella said, ‘Mr Carew doesn’t buy reinsurance, sir. His lines to date, both of them, will be retained net.’

‘The more fool him. Next! Are you
deef
back there? Next, I say!’

Where to go next? Upstairs to the non-marine floor, Arbella decided, which she only visited on risks where there were non-marine as well as marine exposures. By the same token non-marine brokers were not strangers downstairs, because in placing their catastrophe contracts with earthquake, volcanic eruption, hurricane, tornado, flood, and tsunami exposures the layered limits were so great that they had dispensation to access the entire market.

As she emerged from the stairwell Arbella walked past Screaming Lord Sutcliffe’s box.

“Screaming Lord Sutcliffe” was a vociferous non-marine entertainer of those who would congregate for the pleasure of seeing him humiliate, bully, and excoriate the broker who was “in” with him; emasculate and disembowel him; tear him limb from limb, and throw the remains to the dogs.

In truth, Sutcliffe’s manner was nothing more than a cowardly means of concealing his latent terror of risk. At home he was still a mummy’s boy, for he was a confirmed bachelor, and afraid of spiders. Although as an underwriter Sutcliffe wrote only the smallest most humdrum type of business, which went under the generic title of Inland Marine, such as stamp collections, pets, and personal articles floaters, he treated every submission as if he were being asked to assume the National Debt.

The brokers’ theory was that the man had an unusually small penis.

But Screaming Lord Sutcliffe was the acknowledged market authority on gerbils: when burrowing rodents of the Muridae family, subfamily Gerbillinae, were the
plat du jour
. there was no way to avoid seeing Sutcliffe first. The same went for guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, mice, parrots, budgerigars, parakeets, canaries, and fish.

A typical interview with Sutters ran as follows:

‘Good morning, sir,’ says the broker cheerfully, knowing that he has nothing to be cheerful about. ‘A shipment of gerbils, sir, from Dungenness to, er, let’s see…just a minute. Er, sorry, sir,’ he falters, riffling through his case; ‘I’m sure I’ve got the slip here somewhere.’

The momentary lapse is enough to trigger Screaming Lord Sutcliffe’s wrath, and he pounces on the gerbil-pedlar like a desert fox. ‘I LIKE THAT,’ he says, his mouth and face contorted into a rictus of scorn as he pans his voice and gaze around the box so that everyone, alerted that the curtain is going up on another performance, stops what he is doing to watch.

Having secured general attention, Sutcliffe smooths his Brylcreemed hair, which is parted in the middle, with both hands. He tugs at his waistcoat and looks behind him, to make sure that the brokers in his queue are aware of what was coming, like the cone geyser Old Faithful erupting with boiling water every ninety minutes or so in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

As soon as he is satisfied of his audience, Sutcliffe proceeds to eviscerate his victim. ‘I like that!’ he repeats caustically, doing another three hundred and sixty degree turn; ‘there was a time when brokers did their homework, and were properly prepared when they went to see an underwriter. But not now, oh no. These days the old professional standards have been replaced with sloppy, slapdash presentations. Nowadays these parasite brokers think they don’t have to do anything to earn their exorbitant fifteen per cent commissions.’

Sutters eyeballs his deputy across the desk, a lanky broken-spirited individual in a grey suit with a hang-dog expression and sagging frame, whom his lordship pays to bolster his ego with Uriah Heep-like subservience and dead-on-cue sniggers—and settles into his tirade. ‘I mean, look at this spotty specimen, this apology for a broker: is this the best we can expect these days?
Pace
Marlowe, is this girly-boy likely to launch a thousand slips during his career? I don’t think so!