Micha coughed to cover something Thomas was sure had to be amusement, tore the top leaf from his sketchbook, and displayed it to the room.Wanted,it said,for treacherie ypon the high seas, piracie, iniquitie and sundrie other villanies too vyle to mentioune.And then a picture of Hope, delineated in heavy black lines to look like a poor-quality woodcut.
“Hope,” said Thomas, with another anxious glance at Sheba. “This is my brother George.”
“Known in these parts,” added George quickly, “as Blackhearted George.”
Hope eyed him appraisingly. “Anyone could beknownas Blackhearted George.”
“No they couldn’t.” George dropped to his knees on the rug beside her. “Because it is a name earned through black deeds, and I would gut like a rabid cur any who crossed me.”
Hope looked impressed. “Oh. Tell me of your black deeds. Thomas will not allow me to commit any. I have been a pirate since December, and not a single prisoner has walked the plank.”
“Then I say we keelhaul the lubber, strike the Jolly Roger, and begin plundering the Spanish Main at once.”
Sheba sent Thomas a small, private smile and went back to her book. “Ousted by my own brother,” he said, reassured and laughing a little. “How very typical.”
“Do you mind terribly?” asked Hope.
“Not at all, I don’t think I was cut out for piracy.”
“You can be the local governor,” she offered, magnanimously.
“Why, thank you.”
“And then we shall capture you and hold you for ransom.”
“Ah.” Thomas’s face fell. “Must you?”
“Yes, I am sure you are deeply corrupt.”
Thomas looked to his brother for help, but George was busy turning over the coffee table and dragging it into the centre of the room. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Later, old boy, later. The tide waits for no man. And bring grog!” He lowered his voice. “Or tea, as I believe some people foolishly call it.” George, Thomas realised with sudden joy, was looking far better than the last few times he had seen him. His face was still marked by weariness and dissipation, but his eyes were clear. “And hardtack.”
“You mean . . . biscuits?”
“Aye!”
Thomas surrendered with good grace and nodded at his housekeeper, patiently standing nearby. “As you wish, but please be nice to poor Mrs. Allen. She is not to be menaced by pirates.”
Poor Mrs. Allen told them, in no uncertain terms, she thought they all belonged in Bedlam, and that they were not to break anything.
They broke a few things, a vase, a chair, and a table leg, but George dismissed these as inevitable casualties of the pirate life. They terrorised the high seas for most of the afternoon and a good part of the evening, captured the Spanish silver train, unearthed buried treasure, thwarted a mutiny, overthrew Thomas, and turned Port Royal into a republic and pirate haven.
Micha, who had watched the adventures unfold from his window seat, his pencil long stilled over his paper, at last threw his sketchbook aside, joined the navy, rose through the ranks sufficiently to claim command of the HMSDining Room Table, and came to Thomas’s rescue. Thomas, who had been sitting quite contentedly in the bilge, writing Sunday’s sermon, found himself the subject of several hairsbreadth ’scapes and sudden reversals of fortune, and came very close to being forced to walk the plank over shark-infested waters on no less than six separate occasions. Following a pitched sea battle with an entire pirate fleet, ably led by Captain Nancy Blood and her loyal minion, Blackhearted George, Commodore Dashwood and Governor Mandeville found themselves marooned on a desert island, and the saga came to its natural end.
“What happens after?” asked Hope, pink-cheeked from the exertions and dramas of piracy. “Do you expire slowly of privation and tropical disease?”
“Of course not,” said Micha. “I build us a cabin, of wood and leaves and ... things. Like Robinson Crusoe.”
“I learn to catch fish and hunt wild game,” added Thomas.
“We eat mangoes that taste of dusty sunlight.”
“Drink from mountain streams as clear as glass.”
Hope glanced between them, her expression a little bit quizzical. “You could be rescued?”
Micha laughed, lost in the moment, and Thomas, heedless, was laughing too. “We don’t need to be rescued. We live happily ever after.”
