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 Desdemona and the Tiger



   Our tale begins on a quiet night in late August.  All day, London had
sweltered under clear skies and blazing sun.  The heat had made the city
stink more than usual.  The gentry had fled, moving up river to Kew or down
river to Greenwich.  Her Majesty, Elizabeth, the first of that name, had
removed the court to Nonesuch Palace, in the county of Surrey.  London was
left to the poor - and the ubiquitous merchants.

   There were precisely four customers in the Goat tavern, a particularly
scrofulous establishment in a seedy unnamed alley at the back of Cheapside.
The serving wench was an ancient harridan with a face that would curdle
milk - while still in the udder.  The Landlord was a whey-faced cockney; at
least, he would have been whey-faced if anyone had been able to see beneath
the layer of encrusted grime.  Taken all together, the 'Goat' was not the
sort of inn to which one would repair for fine ales, good food and
congenial company.

   One customer lay face down in a puddle of small beer.  Another sat
slumped in a corner.  He had a marked twitch and would periodically mumble
unintelligibly.  There was a slightly manic look about him so he was
ignored by everyone else.  The taproom was silent, save only for the odd
bellow of protest carrying from the streets outside as another hapless
pedestrian received the contents of a resident's slop-bucket.

   "Good fing it ain't morning," the Landlord remarked at one particularly
voluble burst of outrage, "that's when they empties the chamber pots." No
one bothered to reply.

   The two remaining customers were as different as they could be.  They
sat at adjacent tables, nursing jugs of ale and gazing into space.  One
man, the older by many years, was obviously a seaman.  His skin was like
gnarled, ancient oak and a black patch covered one eye.  He wore a canvas
smock, much stained, and patched calico reach-me-downs tucked into
sea-boots.  The adjacent younger man had the look of a down-at-heel clerk.
His doublet was worn and had been made for a much larger man.  His hose
were faded and neatly darned; that spoke of a woman's hand.  He had
thinning brown hair and large spaniel eyes.  He looked thoroughly
miserable.

   "Down on your luck, matey?"

   The younger man jumped as if he had been suddenly awakened.

   "Are you addressing me, sirrah?"

   "Wot?"

   The young man gave an exasperated sigh.

   "I said, are you talking to me?"

   "No you didn't you said, 'are you addressing me sirrah?' I know one of
me glims is shot but there ain't nuffink wrong with me lugs, matey."

   "Glims?  Lugs?"

   "Glims is eyes, see; and lugs, well, they're me ear 'oles of course. 
Don't you know nuffink?"

   "I see, glims and lugs, hmm.  Yes, well I suppose I did prevaricate a
little.  I just made it shorter in the second edition."

   "Wot?"

   "I capitulate, cousin, what did you ask me?"

   "I said, is you down on your luck, matey?"

   "Perchance, 'tis so.  I am an actor without a stage."

   "Will you stop talking like some pox doctor's clerk and speak the
Queen's fuckin' English?  To hear you go on you'd think all the world's a
fuckin stage.  I'm a simple sailorman.  I don't hold no truck with them
jaw-cracking words o' yorn.  Can't yell, 'perchance, would you be so good
as to reinforce that cross timber, cousin, not when the wind's blowing fit
to crack its cheeks.  No.  You must bellow 'brace the yard, ye knave!' so
the swab knows what to do, like."

   "Fascinating."

   "No cause to ride your high horse, matey.  It's just the way of things
at sea.  Now, I knew a cove once as was just like you.  Spoke all educated,
like.  'Cept of course when he was screaming orders at us swabs.  Aha, then
he could curse like a good'un, I can tell you."

   "Really?"

   "Yes, you toffee-nosed little beggar, really.  You've heard tell of
Frankie Drake, Hawkins and Walt Raleigh, I suppose?"

   "Of course, who hasn't?"

   "I'll lay you a guinea to a pinch of shit you ain't heard of Sir
Jonathon Trelawney, have you now?"

   "Can't say that I have."

   "Jon Trelawney, the Tiger.  I sailed with 'im for twenty years."

   "And is this Trelawney a privateer such as Drake and Hawkins?"

   "Not exactly.  Not what you'd call a privateer, now.  Well, he sort of
anticipated 'er Majesty handing out letters of marque by a few years.  Nah!
The Tiger, he's more of your pirate."

   "A pirate!  God's wounds, man.  Are you telling me you were a pirate
too?"

   "Well, supposing I was, young master, wouldn't the tale be worth a jug
of ale, between friends?"

   "Mayhap, if 'tis a good tale and nobly told."

   "What's your name, Lad?"

   "Will."

   "Right, Master Will.  I be Rueben.  Black Rueben they used to call me,
in days gone by.  Here's a little wager for ye.  I tell my tale.  If'n you
like it, you pays for the jug and if'n you don't, I pays, what could be
fairer than that?"

   "Well, 'twill pass the time for the nonce."

   The old sailor bellowed for another jug and settled back in his chair.
The harridan shuffled over with ill grace and scowled at him.  He waved her
away once she had set the jug upon the stained tabletop.

   "Later, woman.  Now, young Master Will, it fell out this way..."

   Sir Jonathon Trelawney wasn't always a pirate.  He tried his hand as a
courtier, a country squire and finally a merchant venturer.  He had two
weaknesses that always seemed to undo him: his savage temper and his eye
for a pretty woman.  If he believed a man had crossed him he could fly into
a great rage.  The choleric humours were strong in his blood, as they say.
And as for the other, well, the sight of a snowy bosom or a sparkling eye
could lead him off track like a dog after a bitch in heat.  So, 'twas no
great surprise that he failed at all he turned his hand to.  He barely
escaped with his head from King Henry's court for making eyes at Mistress
Boleyn, killed a man in an argument over grazing rights and lost his money
when the ship he fitted out for trading was lost.  The slings and arrows of
fortune, eh?  It left him mad as a cornered rat, and no better company.

   So there he was, at the age of four and twenty, without a brass farthing
to scratch his arse with.  In the heat of his anger, he decided to go to
sea and leave the taint o' the land behind him.  He swore a great oath that
he would board the first ship leaving Plymouth town and would never set a
foot back in England 'til he was rich as Croesus.  As luck would have it,
the only outbound vessel that day was the caravel 'Dainty Lass.' That were
Mad Dog Wheeler's ship and most honest sailormen would give her a wide
berth.  It so turned out that Mad Dog was short of a mate.  For reasons
only he could tell, Mad Dog took a liking to Jon Trelawney; liked the cut
of his jib, you might say.  That of itself was a wonder, as men do say that
Mad Dog was the biggest curmudgeon ever to sail the seven seas.

   They prospered over the next few years.  Not rich, you understand, but
they enjoyed a sufficiency.  Whenever the 'Dainty Lass' looked set to make
a landfall in England, Trelawney, mindful of his oath, would have the
skipper set him down at Calais or someplace and fetch him up again when
they was outbound once more.  So it happened that I was down on me luck and
on the beach in Rotterdam when I run into Jon Trelawney.  He offered me a
berth as bosun's mate, I took it like a flash before the worthy burghers
decided I was just another beggar-man and threw me in the gaol.

   I'll say this for old Mad Dog; he knew his 'p's and q's.' Every 'i' had
to be dotted and every 't' crossed before he was satisfied.  A hard
taskmaster and no mistake, he ran a tight ship.  So there we all was, bound
for the coast of Coromandel.  I can tell you, we saw some wonders on that
voyage!  Giant turtles, Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow below
their shoulders, Master Will!  And I ain't try to cozen you, just because
you're a landlubber, neither.  Our First Mate, Mr Jordan his name was, he
grew too fond of the grog and kept hallucinating, seeing ships under the
water and the like.  Mad Dog put him ashore in Zanzibar and I heard tell he
prospered after a fashion, running a sailors' tavern and drinking the
profits.  That put Trelawney up to First Mate, and in the nick o' time, you
might say.

   It so happened that Mad Dog fell in with this here Indian Princess and
decided to swallow the anchor.  He just packed up his dunnage and jumped
ship; made a gift of the 'Dainty Lass' to Trelawney on the spot.  He said
his rather spend the rest of his days swiving than buggering about the
seven seas.  He's still there in the far Indies; if'n he hasn't swived
himself to death, that is.

   Well, I reckon that crafty bastard Trelawney had a plan all along.  No
sooner have we seen Mad Dog over the side when the order comes to sling our
hook and we're off to the Middle Sea.  It's Cap'n Trelawney, now, you see,
so we jump to it with a will.  He gave us this great speech about fat
galleons and how they were there for the taking.  So it was we turned
pirate.  And that's when things really got interesting!  It was about that
time that he started calling hisself 'the Tiger.' He dressed only in black
and gold and he had the ship painted in the same colours.  Looked more like
a fuckin' wasp than a tiger, if you asked me, but nobody did.

   Desdemona was the only child of Cesare D'Lorca, ambassador to his most
Catholic Majesty Phillip o' Spain from the Republic of Venice.  There's no
denying that she was a handsome lass, hair like a raven's wing that hung
down her back to her trim waist.  Not much in the way of top-hamper, if you
get my drift, matey, but eyes like pools a man could drown in.  Not really
to my taste, the skinny ones.  I like a bit o' meat on the bones, I do. 
Let me have women about me that are fat, Master Will.  Yon Desdemona had
the lean and hungry look; such women are dangerous, take my word.

   Well, o' course, we weren't the only pirates abroad in the Middle Sea.
From the Pillars of Hercules to the Illyrian coast the waters were swarming
with the vermin.  Most were Blackamoors from the Barbary Coast.  The Caliph
o' Tangier gave 'em shelter.  They was mostly after slaves, especially
women for the harems.  Our caravel was more'n a match for their galleys,
but they could row to windward and had easy pickings among the fat
merchantmen.  They carried one cannon as a bow-chaser; too narrow-gutted
for a broadside, see?  The oars was pulled by slaves and a miserable time
they had of it, I can tell you.

   It just so happened that young Miss Desdemona had taken passage in a
Frenchie Barque from Cadiz, I think it was.  You know, where Frankie Drake
singed the King o' Spain's beard.  I tell you what, if'n it had been our
Tiger, it would've been the Queen o' Spain's minge!  But that's by the by.
The lass was being sent back home to prepare for her marriage.  Her
intended was some high-up in the Venetian Republic, name o' Scipio or
somesuch, any road, he was someone important.  He wrote her these really
long letters, two hundred thousand words a time!  About six days' out of
Cadiz, the Frenchie sights a parcel of Barbary galleys, coming up on him
against the wind.  Well, straight away they knew it was pirates and they
knew they was well and truly buggered, seeing how they couldn't run away
and there were too many of the heathens to fight.

   You know how the Frenchies are, Master Will, always an eye out for
themselves and devil take the rest.  Their skipper decides he'll hand over
his passengers in exchange for safe passage, just like that!  Miss
Desdemona let him have it hot and strong, I can tell you.  She was up that
quarterdeck like a rat up a hawse pipe; her and that old dragon of a duenna
she had with her.  I tell you, the old girl was absolutely crimson with
outrage.  She told the Frenchie exactly what she thought of his day's work
and pulled no punches.

   It so happened that we was bearing down on the same Frenchie, having
seen his tops'ls.  The Tiger says to me:

   "To board or not to board, that's the question."

   "I dunno, skipper."

   "I didn't expect an answer you, bilge rat, I was musing aloud."

   " Oh, Right you are, Cap'n.  I'll let you muse away, then.  Doesn't do
to interrupt a man's muse."

   It was then we saw the galleys and the Cap'n was shouting orders and
screaming like a mad man.  We crammed on all sail and ran out the guns. 
The decks rang with the pounding of horny feet.  Well, we had been at sea
for quite a while and it's only natural, ain't it?  "We'll take the galleys
first,' shouts our Tiger and then goes below to get dressed in his best
doublet.  We heard him cursing and yelling and calling on all the saints to
be his witness and then he rushes back on deck.

   "Reuben, can I borrow your best ruff?  I haven't got one clean," he
says.

   "My old Granny always told me, 'neither a borrower or a lender be,'
Cap'n.  Something always ends up broken or you forgets to give it back. 
You've still got my buff jerkin."

   "What the pox can I do with a buff jerkin?  I need a ruff to look
smooth!"

   So I gave him my best ruff, him being the Cap'n and all and he calmed
down a bit.  We fell upon them galleys like a ravening wolf.  The air
turned blue from the curses or maybe it was the powder smoke.  The cannon
balls smashed into the Barbary ships and we made a great slaughter of them.
Their scuppers ran red with blood, matey.  The skipper, he was overjoyed,
and capered like a lunatic.

   "See 'em, six of the bastards, all sunk and two more running.  Was there
ever such a victory?"

   "Um, Cap'n, the Frenchie's getting away.  Ain't it time we got after
him?"

   "Quite right, Reuben, quite right, all hands to wear ship!"

   We chased after the Frenchie who hove to when we put a shot across his
bows.  I asked the skipper if we was going to board or not, seeing as he'd
been in at least two minds and out of his own.

   "Certes," he says, "lower the thingummy and we'll be on board in a
trice."

   "Which thingummy would that be, Cap'n?  The one goes in the water is a
called a longboat and the one that shouldn't normally go in the water is a
gangplank."

   "Rueben, you can be a right pain in the whatnot, you know.  What's in a
name?  Call a rose a turd and it would smell just as sweet.  Now lower the
fucking boat."

   "Aye aye, Cap'n."

   We pulled across to the Frenchie and the Tiger bounded aboard.  He swept
off his hat with a great flourish and made a knee to Miss Desdemona.  She
dimpled prettily and gave him a flashing smile.  The dragon looked at me
and sniffed pointedly.  I have to admit she was more to my taste.  Nice and
well covered even if she did have a bit of a beard.  Still, I can forgive a
little touch of hairy in the night, all cats are grey in the dark, they
say. I gave her my most dashing smile - the one where I don't show my
tooth.

   Course, they soon realised they'd swapped one set of pirates for
another, but at least we wasn't heathens.  Miss Desdemona made a great show
of reluctance as the Cap'n threw her over his shoulder and took her to the
longboat.  He spanked her well-rounded bottom a couple of times and she
seemed to brighten up a bit.  I wasn't about to try the same with the
dragon but I didn't need to.  She made it clear she was going where Miss
Desdemona went, come what may.  We ransacked the Frenchie's hold and found
a pretty cargo of spices, wine and brandy.  He also had a strongbox in the
great cabin crammed with doubloons.  The wind died off to nothing but a
gentle zephyr.  We set fire to the Frenchie when we heard about his plan to
sell his passengers to the Blackamoors, and then set sail for Naples, to
sell our new 'cargo.'

   I had the dogwatch that night and all I could hear was Miss Desdemona
and the Tiger fightin' like two cats in a sack.  There weren't no peace all
the night, I can tell you.  Did I mention he was a handsome devil, our
Tiger?  His main trouble was his impatience, though.  He always wanted
things to happen in a hurry and Miss Desdemona, well, she weren't that kind
o' girl.  She wanted a bit of wooing and smooth seduction, like, something
to make her go all swoony.  The old Tiger, now, he just wants to dip his
wick.  I tell you, Master Will, Hell hath no fury like the Tiger spurned.
So none of us got no peace for hours.

   The Cap'n was hopping mad.  Ain't never seen nothing like it.  It didn't
ease matters much when she mocked his manhood.  I reckon he was flashing
his todger at her, 'coz I heard her say, "is this a dagger I see before me
or a bodkin?" There was some other stuff too and it all got very heated. 
Eventually she made her exit, pursued by a bare Tiger, onto the
quarterdeck. I finished me watch and went to find the dragon.  I invited
her, artful like, to come with me to the poop.  What?  No, Master Will,
it's a deck at the back o' the ship.  Where was I?  Oh yes, the dragon.  I
told you she was a bit on the plump side.  You couldn't have thrown a
girdle round her girth in sixty minutes!  We was cuddling up together, nice
and cosy and I could tell that she was up for it.  It jus' needed a few
well-chosen words to get her in the mood.  I said something like:

   "Shall I compare thee to a summer's roll in the hay?  You're really
quite a hot old mare."

   And she says, "Well I ain't usually, but you talked me into it."

   And we was soon at it like a couple o' demented stoats.  Meanwhile, The
Tiger was still chasing Miss Desdemona round and round the mainmast.  He
was purple in the face and cursin' fit to bust and she was skipping about
like a fairy, laughing at him.  I got the feeling that she wasn't objecting
too much.  You see, what it was, well, she had this idea about a romantic
rescuer and all she got was the Cap'n on heat.  It ain't fair on a girl! 
The old Cap'n he's a-bellowing:

   "Oh Mistress mine, why are you running?"

   And she just keeps going, round and round on the same damned spot.  It
was making us giddy to watch it.  That's the sort of thing that gives
pirates a bad name.  I mean, we're supposed to be bloodthirsty, rapacious
cutthroats, ain't we?  Well eventually, the Tiger got tired and took
hisself to sulk in his cabin.  Me and the dragon finished up what we was
doing to the satisfaction o' both parties, so to speak, and went down to
join Miss Desdemona on the main deck.  She was flushed from all the runnin'
about and her hair was wild.  She looked a picture, Master Will, and I
don't mind admitting it.  She was the stuff that dreams are made on - you
know, the sticky kind o' dream that you gets when...  you know!

   "Is he always like that?"

   "I'm affeared so, Miss."

   "What a temper!  And his dress-sense, well!  I swear if I told him to go
cross-gartered, he would."

   "In his present state o' randiness, Miss, he'd go cross-eyed if you
asked him."

   She laughed at that and I have to confess I was more than a little taken
with her.  She didn't have a spare pound o' flesh anywhere and even though
that ain't usually to my taste, she did look a rare treat.  Then she and
the dragon had their heads together and they was giggling and whispering. I
caught words like 'needle dick' and knew they wasn't talking about me, I'm
hung like a small horse, even if I says so myself.  I figured it must be
the Cap'n they was discussing.  He was hung like a seahorse.

   Things didn't get much better over the next few days.  Well, they
weren't bad for me.  I had an understanding with the dragon and she gave me
rave reviews; though she did say I was sometimes a bit weak on the
technical side, so to speak.  The Tiger stayed in his cabin pretty much all
the time.  Miss Desdemona would sometimes stop and yell at him through the
deadlight.  She would tell him that he didn't know how to treat a lady and
how she had always dreamed of having a romantic adventure and that he'd
spoiled it for her.  Pretty soon the old Tiger couldn't wait for the voyage
to end.  I could hear him muttering that he'd give a kingdom for a whore,
so he must have been in a bad way.

   As soon as we got to Naples he put Miss Desdemona and the dragon ashore
-didn't even demand no ransom.  We sold the cargo, victualed the ship and
then it was off to the Spanish Main.  He'd had enough of the Middle Sea, I
can tell you.  He were a changed man after that voyage.  He grew morose and
surly, more and more like a proper pirate should be.  Fifteen years we
raided and pillaged and raped our way around the Islands.  I lost one of me
glims in a sea fight and decided to retire.  The Tiger was a rich man by
then but it didn't give him no pleasure.  I think he lost his heart in the
Middle Sea and he ain't never come home, that I know of.



   "So there's my tale, Master Will.  Is that worth a jug of ale or no?"

   "Aye, 'twill serve.  But, prithee, what happened to Miss Desdemona?"

   "They do say she took up with a blackamoor, Otto?  Othello?  Something
of that sort.  I then heard that she caught him an embarrassing liaison
with a sheep and killed him in a fit of passion.  Or it could have been the
sheep she killed, I couldn't rightly say."

   "'Tis passing strange, Master Rueben.  And the Tiger?  What of him.  You
say he's a pirate still?"

   "Bless you, Master Will, did I not say?  He swallowed the anchor a year
or two gone and now pens tales of high adventure, lust and debauchery. 
Still, all's well that ends well, I always say.  The hour grows late and I
must take the flood.  Once more unto the beach, my friend!  I give you my
adieus."

   The old seadog stomped off and left young Will Shakespeare to pay for
the ale.  Still, thought Will, he did give me the germ of an idea, or
two...



   (c)2003 Smilodon
   With apologies to all concerned, especially Wm Shakespeare, Esq.