Our translator, Mr Pessoa, seemed mightily pleased with his rôle in introducing Fflytte to this decrepit ship, Harlequin. He does not yet grasp the amount of turmoil this introduction will entail, and I have no doubt that it will come as a surprise and a great disappointment to Pessoa (not only financially but personally, since the translator clearly relishes his involvement with piracy, even fictional piracy) when Hale invents good cause to fire him.
The necessary work of my position has made it difficult to move the investigation along at the speed I might wish – and then today’s potential snooping-time was given over to sight-seeing and mooning over a glorified fishing boat. It will not be possible to break into rooms until tomorrow, when rehearsals recommence, but I can see what little knots of actors are gathered here in the hotel, and see what golden titbits of gossip they can contribute to my hoard.
More later,
– R.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
FREDERIC: How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
IT WAS STILL too early for dinner, but I found three of the younger girls and their mothers settled in before a substantial afternoon tea. Our interactions up to now had largely been professional rather than social, since the crew tended to sit at tables apart from the actors (a pattern of segregation for which I had been grateful). When I joined them now, the mothers exchanged looks of puzzlement verging on shock, as if the maid had helped herself to a breakfast buffet and sat down among the guests. Still, short of being ill-mannered before their girls, they couldn’t very well drive me off.
Adolescent girls are a race apart. When I was June’s age, a motor accident had injured and orphaned me: Other than my friendship with Holmes, my early ’teen years were solitary, leaving me ill equipped for light conversation about … well, whatever it is girls that age talk about.
In any event, I was the wrong age for both sets of females here. I spent several increasingly uncomfortable minutes manufacturing painful topics of conversation (clothing? memorisation of lines? the weather, for pity’s sake?) before a moment of desperation had me hauling out a remark about the pirates Fflytte had hired, and waiting for that to flounder around and die.
Except it didn’t. All three mothers smiled fondly, one of the girls giggled and turned pink, the other two spoke simultaneously.
“I’m so glad-”
“I never expected-”
They stopped, and leant into each other with shrieks of laughter that rattled the chandelier.
“Sorry?” I said when my ears had stopped ringing.
“I was going to say,” said Isabel, “that I’m so glad Mr Fflytte didn’t bring a bunch of spotty boys from England to play our pirates.”
“Yes,” Kate agreed. “Who’d have thought Portuguese boys could be so good-looking?”
“Um.” I cast a sideways look at their mothers. “You do realise they’re not exactly boys, don’t you?” Apart from Lawrence, scarcely pubescent, and Jack, who seemed about fourteen, the pirates were in their twenties and thirties, and these girls were … well, they claimed to be at least fourteen, even Fannie, although I had serious doubts about her.
“Oh, pooh,” said Isabel. “At least it’ll give us something interesting to do on the way to Morocco. I always wanted to go to Arabia!”
“Morocco isn’t in Arabia.”
“It isn’t?”
“It’s on the northwest coast of Africa.”
“Are you sure?” She seemed disappointed.
“Unless they’ve moved it.”
“Well, I s’pose Africa’s all right.”
“Jungles and tigers,” popped up Fannie.
“You won’t find too many jungles in Morocco,” I told her. “More likely desert.”
“Ooh, a desert – so there will be sheiks?” Isabel wanted to know. The mothers looked interested. I sighed, and gave up.
* * *
It was not raining at the moment, so I wrapped up against the chill and went for a walk before dinner. The streets were quiet, with restaurants not yet open and shops closed tight, although I thought I saw one of the taller girls – probably Annie, who seemed to be everywhere – dart into a side-street. When I reached that corner, I looked, but saw no one. In any event, I reminded myself that I was not responsible for every crew member at every moment.
My feet took me down to the waterfront where, although there was more activity than the rest of the city, the loudest sounds were still the gulls and the slap of water. I wandered east, along the road that kept the tight-knit, almost Medieval Alfama district from spilling its piled boxes out across the modern docklands like a tipped toy-box. Pristine tiles abutted flaking plaster; ornate façades grew out of un-hewn stone; a sleek modern window stood next to one installed when Columbus was venturing into the Atlantic; a stone lion’s head set into a wall dripped water into a faded tin that had once held olive oil. It was nearly dark, and I was entering an area without street-lamps, so I turned to retrace my steps, intending to follow the next lighted thoroughfare.
Then I saw a pair of men, some distance down the waterfront, coming in my direction. They were too far away to identify with any confidence, but something about their shapes made the back of my mind prickle, and I retreated into the deep shadow of a boarded-up entrance-way. In a couple of minutes, I peered out again. Sure enough: our translator and finder of pirate ships, with our pirate king.
I faded into the stinking darkness. The men went past, speaking in Portuguese.
I followed. Of course I followed.
They took the next entrance into the Alfama, not far from where we had begun our Thursday night search for La Rocha. At the time, Pessoa had known neither the saloon nor La Rocha – it takes a good actor to craft an air of assurance-atop-uncertainty, and I did not think Pessoa a good actor – but it would appear that had changed. And I was not surprised when their goal was that same grubby hole in the wall.
I was too far behind to hear any exchange of words when they entered the place, but I pulled my scarf up and my hat down, and risked a quick glance through the bottle-thick, salt-scummed window as I passed. Enough to see that in the thirty seconds after they had gone in, they had also gone out.
Which could only mean that they had gone through the bar proper and into the same back room.
A room with, as I recalled, a back door – narrow and half-concealed by heavy curtains, but there.
It took me some time to find the right door amongst the warren of tiny lopsided dwellings jostling shoulder to shoulder beneath the castle walls. None of the streets – streets! one could stretch an arm across some of them – connected at right angles. Half of them came to an end in courtyards; many were enclosed overhead; most were unlit. The houses were occupied – I could hear voices and smell cooking, but it was late (and cold) enough that the children were inside, and the adults, too, were mostly invisible behind shutters. Feeling my way in and out of various brief passages, at last my eye was caught by a narrow line of light at the far end of a tunnel-like lane.
The thin strip was the only thing I could see, and although I had a torch in my overcoat pocket, I was loath to use it. Instead, I found that if I blocked the actual light with an outstretched hand, its reflection along the stone walk and walls would permit me to creep forward. I crept forward, and heard a voice. A voice I knew.