Now this turned out to be nothing more than a brief annoyance to the animal, and not the show-stopper Jack had been hoping for; but as Jack had demonstrated in diverse settings, sometimes it sufficed to be annoying. It took a few moments for this crocodile to shake the scabbard loose, and in that time Jack divested himself of his clothes. While another crocodile was swallowing those, naked Jack was swimming to the masts. While the two crocodiles were fighting over precedence, Jack was climbing onto the masts and retrieving his sword. A smaller crocodile came towards him with shocking speed, as if it were being towed on a rope behind a fleet ship, and made it halfway up onto the foremast on sheer momentum. Jack nearly took its head off and it fell into the water and became food for other crocodiles. Another stroke of the Janissary-blade severed the rope of the chicken and set the masts adrift again. The raft slowly began to move, and soon eased over the bar and into the harbor, spinning slowly in some vast unseen vortex.
The Queen’s boat was waiting there, and with a couple of throws Jack was able to get the line over to his comrades, who proceeded to reel him and the masts in like a fish.
Jack sensed that he was already badly sunburnt; yet the equatorial sun was a soothing balm compared to the glare of Queen Kottakkal.
“I perceive the wisdom of your tradition, O Queen,” Jack said as his mast-raft was brought alongside the royal barge, “for not one man in a thousand could survive the trial you set for me there. Andas near as I can make out, one in a thousand is the normal proportion of honest men in any group…”
But here Jack’s oration was rudely interrupted by screams from nearly every man on the boat. He turned around to see a giant crocodile, twenty feet long if it was an inch. It was not so much climbing onto the masts as thrusting them below the surface of the water with its weight, and then gliding up over the submerged wood. This meant that it was advancing toward him. But then suddenly it was raining Shaftoes as Jimmy and Danny vaulted down between Jack and the reptile, each gripping a boat-paddle, and began waving these in the animal’s face. It proceeded to chew its way up the wood as if the oars were breadsticks, and was well on its way to having Jimmy and Danny Shaftoe for lunch, and Jack for dessert, when the Nayars up on the boat opened fire with their blunderbusses.
A moment later the Malabar skies were split open by a long rippling train of explosions. Jack looked across the water to see the new ship obscured in a bank of gray smoke, and light jabbing out of it in all directions: The eager crew had misunderstood, and were firing a full salute to their approaching Queen and their ship’s officers. Jack felt the masts bob upwards under his feet, and glanced over to see quite a bit of blood where the crocodile had been.
The guns of Queen Kottakkal’s castle were firing a salute of their own now, and the Queen was ascending to the top of her barge to accept all of these honors. She had been overtaken by events, which happened to all monarchs; but like a good monarch she knew when to accept the strange verdicts handed down by Fortune and by crocodiles.
JACK, IN A BORROWED Nayar loincloth, raised the Champagne-bottle over his head and drew a bead on the ship’s bowsprit. “In the name of whatever passes for sacred in this hell-hole, I christen thee Eli—”
Halfway to its target, the bottle slapped into the suddenly out-thrust palm of Enoch Root.
“Don’t name it after her,” he said.
“Why not? That has always been my plan.”
“Do you really think it will go unnoticed? The lady is in a delicate position…even the figurehead bears a dangerously close resemblance to her.”
“D’you really suppose it’ll matter?”
“This ship is not destined to remain in Malabar forever. One day she will find her way back to some Christian port—and there are very few Christian ports left where Eliza is not, in some sense, embroiled.”
“Well, what the hell should we name it, then? Electress Sophie? Queen Kottakkal?”
“Sometimes it is better to be indirect…then each and every one of those Ladies can suppose that the ship is really named after her.”
“Not a bad idea, Enoch…but what does each of those three Ladies have in common?”
“Wisdom. Wisdom, and a kind of strength—a willingness to put her wisdom into effect.”
“Say no more,” Jack said, “I have seen the very Lady in plays.” Then, turning his attention back to the ship: “I christen thee Minerva.” A moment later French wine was fizzing on his sunburnt flesh, and the cannons were firing all round. Dappa was translating all to Queen Kottakkal, who looked Jack in the eye and smiled.
Book 5
The Juncto
The Thames
FEBRUARY 1696
“A GREAT HEAP OF CORD-WOOD and kindling, saturated with oil, was found on the brink of the cliff at Dover,” asserted Roger Comstock, Marquis of Ravenscar and Chancellor of the Exchequer, “ready to speed the news of his majesty’s assassination across the Channel.” Seated in the (more desirable) forward-facing bench of the boat, he held his head high, and gazed down the Thames as if combing the skies above the Nore for encrypted smoke-signals.
“It speaks well of the Jacobites that they have at last got their signals worked out,” was all Daniel had to say. “They have used up half of France’s wine and firewood celebrating false reports of William’s demise.”