Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

the cold-water basin in the corner.

“Yes?” The wariness in his voice was stronger; I could feel his narrowed gaze drilling into the back of my head.

“Well, instead of supporting them at their leisure, he proposes to employ them in an interim project. He is, even as we speak, madly penning the script for a new picture, to be filmed while his substitute pirates are in training.”

I looked into the speckled mirror, grimacing at the ravaged face and hair that met my gaze.

“Why does this concern us?” Holmes’ voice now contained outright suspicion. And rightly so.

“Because,” I said, turning on the tap, “we do have a means of lending assistance to the British film industry and to the House of Lords, if not the Palace itself. It seems that Mr Fflytte was inspired by today’s passage through the medina. He envisions a tale weaving together said passage with elements of Byron’s epic poem, The Corsair. Particularly the scene in which the pirate, Conrad, is rescued from a sultan’s dungeon. By a woman.”

I lifted my scrubbed face from the now-grubby towel, and met my husband’s eyes.

“He proposes to call the new picture Pirate Queen. Starring Mary Russell.”

“When stern duty calls, I must obey.…”

This one’s for Gabe:

Welcome to the madness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Fernando Pessoa, beneath his seventy-five or eighty heteronyms, was a real person: famous though nearly unpublished during his life; a reluctant traveller whose imagination wandered the globe; author of an “autobiography” rich in content (and pages) yet so formless, readers may shape it as they like. I am grateful for the work of Richard Zenith, tireless editor, translator, and commentator on the Pessoa manuscripts – of which more than 25,000 loose pages were left to entertain posterity. Any person travelling through Lisbon must by all means visit the Pessoa museum, where his variations on one single poem cover all the walls.

With thanks to Nina Mazzo, who donated to the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and the 826 Valencia writing project during BoucherCon 2010, and to Lonnie Johns-Brown, who gave to Heifer International’s Team LRK during the spring of 2010. The generosity of both ladies won them (or in Nina’s case, her mother) namesakes in this book.

I am grateful for the guidance of Mark Willenbrock (madaboutmorocco.com), whose unique view of his adoptive home brought a whole new dimension to Morocco. (May I underscore here Miss Russell’s own assertion, that this story should be regarded as a work of fiction? One will in fact find the country of Morocco, and its city of Sale, warm and welcoming, being neither xenophobic nor infested with pirates – filmic, Muslim, or otherwise.) And thanks again to Louisa Pittman, whose skill in the rigging is only excelled by her willingness to give countless hours to help a landlubber writer.

The chapter headings are from The Pirates of Penzance, by W. S. Gilbert, except for chapter 14. “I need truth, and some aspirin” is the sentiment of Alvaro de Campos, one of the faces of Fernando Pessoa, in an untitled poem dated 14 March 1931, found in the collection edited and translated by Richard Zenith, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe. The lines from Pessoa’s “Maritime Ode” in chapter 19 also come from Zenith’s translation.

The good folk at the Hollywood Heritage Museum, along with Shelly Stamp, professor of film and media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, helped me get the cameras turning. Although thus far we have not been able to unearth a copy of that great lost film of the silent era, Pirate King.