Greenbeard (9781935259220) by Richard James Bentley Page B

silent as they loaded the skiff and pushed it into the sea, small waves lapping around their bare feet.
    â€œI’m sorry I’ve been obliged to tell you all this, Peter - ignorance is bliss, indeed! - but I need your help with this, your involved help. And who else could I tell first? I nearly told Bill once or twice, for the navigating has given him a fine head for the arithmetic and the geometry, so the time-and-space stuff might be easier
for him. Izzie? He is my oldest shipmate, and before that my articled clerk when I was in chambers, but any notion of six-legged reptiles would drive him straight to the bottom of the nearest rum-bottle. You are the cleverest of us four, Peter, so it had to be you.”
    The Captain pulled the oars. Blue Peter remained silent for a while. The sun was setting against a mauve sky, its orange light dappling the ocean like a fiery path to the horizon.
    â€œCaptain,” he said at last, “what are these lizard-creatures called?”
    â€œWhy, we called them ‘lizards’, or ‘the lizard people’, Peter.”
    â€œDo they have a name for themselves?”
    â€œI’m sure they do, but I don’t know it. Anyway, I can’t do bird impressions.”
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    They clambered up the side of the Ark de Triomphe in the quick-growing dark. The pirate crew had lit lanterns, casting yellow pools of light in the purple twilight. Some of the pirates were sprawled on the deck, or sitting on bollards or guns, eating their supper. They muttered ‘good evenings’ to the Captain and Blue Peter, intent on their beef-stew, bread and beer.
    â€œArr! Bon appetit , shipmates, wi’ a curse!” answered the Captain.
    The rest of the crew would be below, eating their meals between the cannons in the gundeck messes, on boards hung from the deckheads on ropes. When the wooden bowls were scraped clean with hunks of bread and cleared away greasy packs of cards would appear, and draughts-boards made of canvas squares, and sly rum-flasks would pass from hand to hand. Captain Greybagges could smell the aroma of the stew, the smoke from the cook’s charcoal oven, tar, sweat, sawn timber; the frigate’s reassuring fragrance. He turned to Blue Peter.
    â€œA toddy, Master Gunner?”
    â€œNo, Captain. I find that I am weary, and you’ve given me much to think about. I shall go to my cottage.”
    â€œI shall set sail tomorrow, on the afternoon tide. We shall be away from Recailles for some months, so make arrangements for your horse. Good night, Peter.” The Captain went down below to the Great Cabin in the stern.
    Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo rode the old Percheron mare up the winding road away from Porte de Recailles, the sky now inky-blue above him, the moon yet to
rise. The horse seemed to know its way in the dark, so Blue Peter let it plod, and mused as he rocked gently on its back, looking up at the bright stars. There is Venus, he thought. Are there strange creatures dwelling upon it? Or upon Orion’s belt? All this is madness! Yet there is the indisputable fact of the Captain’s green beard. His account is not without points of reference, either. There are tales of fellows spirited away to the Land of Faerie, returning years later, no older. There are tales of men and women aging overnight; one day young and hale, the next morning ancient, sere and white-haired, and sometimes babbling. The myths of the Greeks, also, full of monsters, ‘tentacles waving about like the Medusa’s snakes’, as the Captain himself had said. Legends of flying chariots, too, and all kinds of supposedly-mythical beasts; daemons, hobgoblins, ogres, kobolds, fetches, lemures, dragons, wyverns, basilisks, yales, golems, bunyips and bugaboos ... The Captain’s teratological narrative provided a possible basis for these fables, an exegesis of their provenance, at least...
    The old horse, sensing Blue Peter’s unease, skittered sideways a