She brandished a cutlass. “My first thought was to drown the creature in the water barrel. I thought you’d like that, brats, a little extra flavor to your drinking water. But that death would be too quick.”
None too gently, Peaglum poked the cat out of her cage with a pole.
“Now, walk the plank!” ordered Miss Uish.
“Throwing the ship’s cat overboard is guaranteed to bring on a storm!” Teo spoke desperately and fast.
“Do you think a fine British lady like me would lower herself to believe in such murky feline superstitions?” cried Miss Uish. “Queen Victoria and her Empire are utterly and irreproachably rational!”
Sofonisba looked around at the sailors. Her triangular face was tight with fear. Her eyes filmed over with what looked like tears. Her flanks trembled. Yet even in extremis, Sofonisba refused to talk in front of her enemy. Alfredo reached toward her, and Miss Uish cracked her whip once, sharply. Shrieking with pain, the boy tucked his hands under his armpits.
The cat nodded sadly. Alfredo was the only boy she half tolerated. But it was clear that she did not want any more children hurt on her behalf. Slowly, Sofonisba walked along the plank until she reached the very tip. Her weight made the plank vibrate slightly. For a moment, she rocked there. She gave one final long look back, a look that broke the heart of every sailor on the deck; then she lifted her head proudly, stepped off the end of the plank and was seen no more.
There was not even a splash.
“Sofonisba,” wept Teo, not caring who saw her.
“Extra scrubbing duty for the crybaby Nestle Tripe,” shouted Miss Uish.
The sailors braced themselves for the expected storm. Instead, the sky waxed a deadened gray, with no more wind than would stir a sigh in the sails.
In the absence of Sofonisba, the rat population quickly trebled. The rats scorned cod sponge and mock fish soup. Instead, they took to gnawing on the oakum and the woodwork, apparently finding it tastier than the boys’ rations. While the others pitched and sealed, it was full-time work for Rosato and Sebastiano just baiting and emptying the rat-traps. All the rats they dropped overboard disappeared instantly, as if being sucked below by powerful currents.
Other jobs were more mysterious. Why, for example, were the sailors required to spend the next evening blowing on their frozen fingers while they sewed flags of every nation in Europe?
And why was Miss Uish so fretful at their lack of speed, constantly and bitterly bemoaning the lack of wind? They crumbled the increasingly greenish bread for their watery gruel, which, in that pale, sinister light, looked like liquefied ghost strained into a bowl. They snatched sleep in their damp quarters, which stank of hot tar, swampy bilge water, boiled bones and unwashed bodies. And the next day they rose before dawn and did the same again.
It was oppressive, often painful and dismally dull. On their starvation diet, the sailors began to grow vague and dreamy. They had visions of roast beef and sausages, except Teo, who saw chocolate cake and pea risotto. Once, in her delirium, as she plunged a red-hot loggerhead into a bucket of tar, Teo even thought she saw, through the hissing steam, a cat just like poor Sofonisba. Mysteriously, this phantom cat was dashing down the companionway with a pear in its mouth.
She shook herself, whispering, “Hallucinations! Isn’t that how the Half-Dead disease starts?”
Miss Uish rapped, “Full assembly at five bells and there shall be no more sulky faces. Cookie, you should mark this on your calendar! January 15, 1901, a red-letter day!”
At five bells, the sailors gathered nervously on deck, to find Miss Uish nailing a large notice on the wall of the forecastle.
“Welcome to your Swearing-in Ceremony, brats!” She showed them her sharp white teeth and pointed to the notice.
It was entitled CODE OF CONDUCT.
“Read it and weep,” said Miss Uish cheerfully. The sailors crowded around the forecastle and peered at the words.
1. The crew shall heed the captain’s commands without exception. When so ordered, they shall board other ships, take spoils and capture prisoners.
2. No female, excepting the captain and certain hostages selected by her, shall be permitted on the vessel, on pain of certain, painful and lingering death.
3. Shares of the spoils: the crew shall be entitled to precisely none.
4. Punishment for stealing food: to be marooned on the nearest island.
5. Punishment for insubordination: infinite, at the discretion of the captain.
6. Punishment for attempted mutiny: to have the nose and ears split with a silver dagger, followed by death.
Teo scanned the list, feeling increasingly weak at the knees, especially at the sight of item 2. Renzo finished reading while everyone except Teo was still on the first clause. He exclaimed, “This isn’t a Code of Conduct. This is a pirate charter! Pirates are murderous cowards. They attack unarmed vessels. They rob! That is completely un-Venetian! And completely un-British, by the way! I’m not swearing to this!”
Miss Uish looked down at him with her impish smile. “I rather think you are,” she cooed.
Peaglum had set out a black flag and a human skull on a small table. He himself was ceremonially attired in a black frock coat and an eye patch. A row of medals, quite obviously stolen, and a dilapidated black parrot on his shoulder completed his outfit.
“One by one, step forward,” ordered Miss Uish, shrugging on a red smock and a feathered hat, and fastening a cutlass at her waist. A silver pistol glinted in a holster at her hip. “Take the skull in your left hand, and place your right hand on your heart, and repeat after me, as I direct you.”
No one stepped forward. No one even breathed.
“I see that I shall have to choose a volunteer,” observed Miss Uish. “Renzo, were you not the little lord who said he didn’t care to sign? What fun! Step forward.”
Renzo did so. She boxed his ears smartly. “I said step forward. I don’t recall saying ‘quiver like a jelly.’ And now—some amusing playacting! We are going to perform a mock trial, British Admiralty–style, to show what would happen to any crew members foolish enough to disobey my orders, or so stupid as to get captured.”
Peaglum now produced a canvas swag of accessories—a London policeman’s bulbous hat, a truncheon, a shabby lawyer’s wig, a judge’s gavel.
“Have you heard of Newgate Prison, whelp?”
Renzo nodded wordlessly. His father had told him of its grim gates and grimmer history.
“It’s the last place most criminals see before they are hanged. Fine high and spiked walls it has too. It’s a stinking, brooding, windowless place. If the Londoners were not so supremely rational, they would say it was haunted. So many dreadful deaths there!” Miss Uish smiled sweetly.
One by one, Peaglum played the roles of policeman, Newgate Prison jailer, lawyer, judge and hangman. Renzo was arrested for piracy and carried off to Newgate (Peaglum struck a stanchion with a belaying-pin to convey the dread sound of those fearsome gates clanging shut). He was then tried, convicted and “carried out”—right to the point where his head was thrust in a noose.
“So, brats, the purpose of this pantomime has been to show you what will happen if you are caught by … shall we say … the Forces of Order.”
Teo protested, “You said you were a representative of Her Majesty Queen Victoria! Why should the Forces of Order want to punish us if we’re in your care?” Belatedly, she added, “Ma’am.”
“And indeed I did say something of the sort, I believe,” Miss Uish remarked. “But that was when I was still in Venice and needed to persuade the foolish Venetians to let me take over this ship and her mangy crew. Now I sail under a different flag. Time to show our true colors. Malfeasance!”
Peaglum drew on the flag-rope and unfurled a great smoky-black skull-and-crossbones. Then he moved to the nearest shrouded crate, slit the rope, lifted the canvas and opened a sliding door. Inside crouched a black cannon with an ugly wide snout and a stack of crude gray metal balls.
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Massimo asked disbelievingly, “We made the holes in the sides for cannons?”
“That boy’s powers of deduction are sharp as a dagger,” said Miss Uish. “So sharp he might cut himself. If someone doesn’t do it for him first.”
Although she already knew the answer, Teo couldn’t help asking, “What if we don’t want to be pirates?”
“Do you think anyone remotely cares what you want?”
“So we shall be punished if we don’t obey you, and yet we may also be executed by the Forces of Order if we do?” asked Renzo slowly.
“Precisely. And in the meantime, you’ve nowhere to run to, unless you fancy hanging up your hammock on the ocean floor.”
Miss Uish unfurled another flag, this one bloodred with a black skull grinning on it. Renzo paled. “That’s the jolie rouge,” he whispered.
“Yes, isn’t it a pretty red? What a studious brat this one is!” Miss Uish giggled. “And does the clever boy know what it means?”
Teo’s and Renzo’s eyes met. Why was she using the word “studious”?
“It means no quarter,” replied Renzo. “It means that the crew of this ship intend to kill all whom they capture.”
“Indeed. And in the meantime we’ll be making use of your needlework.”
“The flags we sewed, of all nations?” Massimo’s voice was eager. His own, in Portuguese colors, had been a masterpiece.
“Nothing to be happy about!” hissed Renzo. “Every time we approach the ship of any nation, she’ll make us fly their flag. Until they’re close enough to attack.”
“And then we put up the jolie rouge? That’s dishonorable!” cried Teo.
“Utterly,” exulted Miss Uish. “And the beauty of it is, we’ll not lose a day’s progress. We’ll just be arriving … a little richer.”
They took their first ship in the early hours of the next morning. Their victim was French, easily identified by the jib-sails. Spanish and English vessels had one; French boats two.
All through the night, while they stalked the graceful boat, the sailors were kept busy oiling the cannons, learning to maneuver them silently out of their enclosures, and how to load and fire. Teo let go at the wrong moment, nearly losing a leg as the great gun careered into the taffrail. The stanchion creaked, then cracked, and the cannon dropped into the sea.
The sailors stood in silence, gazing at the black waves. They dared not turn around when brisk, furious footsteps bore down on them.
“You weakened that stanchion with your careless holes!” shrilled Miss Uish, holding a lantern over the damage. “Sabotage me, would you?”
The punishment was a promise of “ducks’ breakfast”—cold water and nothing to eat the next day. Set to mending the broken stanchion, they were distracted by their painfully empty bellies; Miss Uish, however, had eyes only for the French boat.
Finally, just before dawn, Miss Uish steered the Scilla within close range. A fading moon showed the name carved on its escutcheon: the Rose la Touche.
“Don’t use up all the ammunition, curs!” she warned. “We can’t just go to the nearest chandler’s shop and buy more! Cutlasses will be of more use to you.”
Peaglum laid out an array of curved swords on the deck, sneering, “Choose your toys, babies.”
“I will not kill anyone!” insisted Teo. “I am a vegetarian.”
“Just as well,” said Miss Uish. “I need a hostage.”
She jerked her head at Peaglum, who swiftly bound Teo’s hands behind her back. Then he drew a noose around her neck, having moistened the rope first by dipping it in the water barrel. He tied the ends of the rope to a hook on the deck.
“You see that noose, offal?” rapped Miss Uish. “As the sun rises, the rope will start to dry. As it dries, it will contract and tighten. Unless you little cowards board the Rose la Touche and take her before the sun’s fully up—well, your Nestle-Triping little friend will choke to death.”
Then she shouted, “Massimo, time to take down that amusing French flag and raise the pretty jolie rouge.”
While the other boys helped Massimo hoist the flag, Renzo quietly broke a handful of ice from the water barrel and slipped over to Teo. He spread the ice over Teo’s noose.
“Ooh!” she protested.
“It will melt slowly; give you more time before the rope shrinks,” he whispered. She tried to nod, but the noose was already too tight.
The Rose la Touche was sleeping peacefully. Even the second mate dozed at the wheel. No one saw the Scilla counter-brace, come to and tie up alongside, or the boys jump the narrow gap between the two decks. They were followed by Miss Uish and Peaglum, who were dressed in hooded black suits that obscured all but their eyes.
The first thing the poor crew heard was Peaglum shouting, “Strike amain!”
Miss Uish herself slit the second mate’s throat.
The boys cried out in horror. Alfredo retched.
Peaglum roped the other French mariners together and bound their mouths. Rosato and Emilio were ordered to gather the crew’s rifles. At gunpoint, Peaglum marched the Rose’s captain and first mate over to the Scilla, and then noosed them like Teo, kicking them alongside her.
Teo stared at them. Morning was starting to glimmer in the sky, and the rope was perceptibly tightening around her neck. The French hostages stared back and then up at the jolie rouge in silent understanding.
Nimbly, Peaglum rejoined the Rose. He hollered belowdecks to all the ship’s company, “Anyone want to see a French first mate dance on a rope?”
The Rose’s passengers shuffled onto the deck, bleary-eyed and dressed only in their nightshirts. At the sight of the second mate’s limp body, the women began to weep. The men looked at Miss Uish and Peaglum, and at the Venetian boys cowering behind them. Miss Uish pushed Renzo in front of her.
“Take a good look at him,” she told the Rose’s passengers. “He may be small, but I assure you this one’s as bloodthirsty a pirate as you’ll ever see. Any attempt to resist, and this savage boy shall make sure that your crewmen over on our boat will go the same way as their second mate before one of you can point a gun. Without them, you landlubbers are dead as nails in these seas. Search the vessel. Alfredo, Giovanni—abaft! The others, afore!”
The boys crept through the cabins and staterooms, rifling shamefacedly through jewelry boxes and travel desks. Each brought his haul up on deck and dropped it at Miss Uish’s feet. As the pile of gems, fans, snuffboxes and jeweled daggers mounted, she grew almost delirious with delight, raking through the emeralds, amethysts, rubies and opals with her fur-booted foot.
“How he will love me for these!” she murmured fondly.
“Carry the spoils to our boat, offal!” she shouted. “And quickly. Look at the sun rising! Think of your friend, the Nestle Tripe.”
When all the loot was safely stored on the Scilla, Miss Uish and Peaglum pushed their French hostages overboard. The Scilla sailed smoothly away. Renzo rushed to cut Teo’s noose with his ferro penknife.
“That was fun, wasn’t it, brats?” said Miss Uish. “I’m sure you’re already looking forward to the next time. Now let’s take advantage of that breeze!”
All the seafaring and sailoring they’d learned under Professor Marìn was now used to prey on innocent vessels.
Over the next three days, Miss Uish taught the Scilla’s sailors new talents that would have shocked and grieved the professor. Miss Uish set Renzo to carving sharp bone-jacks in the shape of crows’ feet. These were lobbed onto the decks of the ships they preyed upon, causing the poor barefoot sailors terrible wounds, as they ran about in confusion while Peaglum catapulted grenades of burning tar among them.
The gunholes of the Scilla were plugged with pieces of wood so as to be invisible to their victims until it was too late. And then Miss Uish had Teo dress up as a girl in a gown pirated from the Rose la Touche. A wig of blond curls was crammed onto her shaven head, under a frilly bonnet, and she was forced to parade up and down with a parasol, in full v
iew of any spyglass that might be trained on the Scilla from the ships they stalked.
Nothing could seem more innocent than a little girl in a white dress strolling the deck in the shade of a lacy parasol. Miss Uish even had Cookie serve Teo an elegant repast on a bone-china tea set. Of course, the cakes were made of soap and the tea of dishwater.
“Why me?” Teo tried to keep her voice low and boyish. Had Miss Uish guessed her secret?
“You’re the smallest and the skinniest, Nestle Tripe. You look harmless from a distance. What a sweet girlie you make! They’d never guess you are a nasty, dirty little boy. If you spill anything on that pretty dress, I’ll slap you fore and aft.”
Miss Uish thrust her beautiful wild face close to Teo’s and laughed. Then she shouted at Giovanni, “Bring me a fresh parrot!”
For Miss Uish had found a way to extract even hidden treasure from the boats they attacked. She took prisoners for ransom. The Scilla would be moored a short distance from the defeated vessel, while Giovanni was set to training parrots to recite ransom notes complete with terrible threats.
Everyone took the parrots seriously when they perfectly imitated the voice of the hostage crying “Help! Don’t! Please don’t!” followed by a scream. The families and friends tucked the ransom money into pouches, which the parrots wore around their necks. After she’d counted the money, Miss Uish pushed her victims into the sea, where they invariably disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as the dead rats.
The sailors soon learned to dread the sight of a sail on the horizon. Lateen-sailed poleacres, Danish schooners, Dutch galliots: Miss Uish did not seem to care, as long as they could be taken quickly and relieved of their coins and jewels. For Miss Uish begrudged every hour not spent surging ahead at full speed.
And she always pushed Renzo forward, displaying him to the passengers of every ship they took.