“You heard this foreigner!” he shouted at them. I thrust my hands into the galabiyya to grab my knife in one hand and the revolver in the other. Holmes pushed forward, and a sudden caterpillar of motion from the rear suggested that Annie and Bert had done the same. “My father is dead. My uncle is in the hands of the French. Who will deny that I step into my father’s boots? Any?”
The lad’s fury brought the others up short, stopped me in my place, made Holmes raise one hand to keep those at his back from shoving into an uncertain but clearly perilous situation. The pirates looked at one another. Jack wormed his way around to take up a position at his brother’s side. Benjamin stared, first at them, then at Mr Gröhe, and finally craned to look into the foreign faces, but Celeste was not to be seen. He shifted, looking as if he were about to move away – when a scream rent the air.
Everyone ducked. A gun went off, although the shutter it destroyed was a good ten feet from the bright visitor that swooped through this urban canyon, beating its wings to perch upon a frayed clothes-line strung between buildings. “She is MINE!” the bird screeched.
The street blinked, and began to breathe again. Benjamin lowered his eyes to the two brothers and, as if Rosie’s words had been meant for him alone, stepped forward to side with Adam. The remaining members of the crew exchanged another round of speechless consultation; their weapons stayed up, but their shoulders lost a degree of belligerence.
Adam kept his chin raised, as haughty as if the question of succession had never been in doubt. “You take me as leader?” he demanded. “You agree that I am my father, in your eyes?”
No one openly denied it; in fact, a general shrug of acceptance ran through them as if to say, Well, why not?
I shot Holmes a glance, warning him, and then Annie at the back – because, in truth, whether it be Samuel or his son giving the orders, our position had changed little. We had to fight here, or risk abduction into the distant inland, never to return.
Should I attack first, before Adam could give the order? The confusion that followed would free the others for a panicked flight-some of them might find their way to safety. I eyed the young man’s back, tightening my fingers on the knife in my sleeve. If I go in under his ribs with a sharp push to the right, my knife will clear as he falls into Benjamin and that big fellow, after which-
“Then I say, we let them go!”
– my right hand is clear to shoot the Swedish accountant and … Wait. What?
The pirate crew were looking every bit as puzzled as I.
“No!” one of them finally said, although the word grew elongated and ended in a distinct question mark.
“Yes!” Adam shouted. “You said you would follow me. And I will lead you, and I will provide for you and for your families. This I vow. But I will not have you living off the takings of a wicked act. I will not feed my men off the suffering of women.”
Good God: The subversive sentiments of W. S. Gilbert had converted this hereditary Moroccan cut-throat into a Frederic of morality. I had never before thought of the Savoy operas as a tool of Anarchic philosophy.
“Noble lad!” Holmes murmured.
But the pirates were not convinced. Indeed, judging by the spreading grumble of dissatisfaction, if something was not done quickly, this would be the briefest reign in Salé’s history.
I raised my voice. “I know you men were looking forward to your share of the ransom monies, but there remains much money to be had, and without the disruption of British cannonballs or the inconvenience of French gaol.”
That caught their attention.
“The small man, in our company – Randolph Fflytte? He is a man who lives for the privilege of giving money to others. He points his camera, and it makes a man wealthy. And he may be small in stature, but in my country, he is huge in authority. If he says ‘Come,’ many will follow – all of whom will have busy cameras and equally large purses, and an equal desire to share their wealth. Think for yourselves, O men of Salé: A single payment”-(What the hell was the Arabic for ransom?)-“now, followed by years of grief with your families huddling in the far mountains? Or a moment of generosity that opens the doors to long years of gentle thievery? The choice is yours.”
The men knew all about Fflytte; even those who had not received his money personally had heard that he could certainly throw it around. It was not a far reach to believe that he might cause a tap of gold to flow. They thought about it, and the weapons in their hands sagged a fraction.
“Your pride is your country,” I persisted in a gentle voice. “You can conquer the world from within.”
None of which actually meant anything: I was merely offering a stall and a distraction, desperately gambling that their blood might cool and dilute their single-minded intent.
Adam stepped forward. “My friends, the days that my uncle and my father were trying to remake are gone. The wind has shifted. If we deny this, if we shake our fists at the sky and tell ourselves that the wind is still at our backs, we will end up wrecked upon the shore, or worse, becalmed. If, however, we trim our sails and run with that new wind, who knows where it will take us? Us, and our sons and grandsons, bearing the blood of our noble ancestors.
“The pirate way gives all an equal voice and an equal share. The pirate way demands that the king be chosen. I ask that you trust my father’s blood, and follow me.”
When he ended, I half expected the film crew to burst into applause – then remembered that they did not understood Arabic, and in any event, had their hands full with knives. Adam’s followers, more inured perhaps to flights of Arab rhetoric, were not so instantly convinced, but they could not deny that a boy who could talk like this might be just the fellow to deal with the French authorities.
Gröhe felt the shift in the metaphorical rigging first, and gratefully worked the unaccustomed blade back into its scabbard. One by one, others did the same. Three men at the far end looked at each other, looked at the guns they carried, and put them up.
Adam nodded, and gave a brief command that I did not hear, but that sent one of his men off at a run. When he faced us again, he was no longer a boy.
“Come,” he said.
We came. Through the medina we passed, the streets gone silent as word spread like a fire through dry grassland. Donkeys miraculously vanished, heaps of merchandise no longer filled the way, and I pushed the hood from my robe, allowing my European hair to shine out. When I glanced back, I could see the others doing the same.
Full points to Adam, the new pirate king of Salé, parading his foreign captives through the streets of his realm.
He led us, not to the closest gate in the walled city, but to the river entrance we had come by, half a lifetime before. Boats were already waiting, summoned by the new king’s runner. By the time the first of the boats had crossed the Bou Regreg – laden with the younger girls and their mothers, despite Edith’s furious protestations that she wanted to stay behind, to be a pirate, with Jack – a crowd had begun to gather on the Rabat side.
Finally, a small knot of us remained: Holmes, Annie, Will, and I, talking to Adam as we waited for the last boat to come back for us.
Or so I thought.
“I’ll send the film over with the luggage,” Will said.