Free Pirate King by Laurie R. King Page B

set of mirrors comes up and the play-pirates become true pirates, doing battle with their own natures in the person of Frederic, who is at one and the same time an outsider and a true pirate.”
    All this talk about pirates had made Mr Pessoa’s gaze go far away. Two lengths of ash had dropped unnoticed as his monologue unfurled. Then he looked at me, as if in expectation of an answer, to a question I could not begin to recall. I felt an absurd urge to lay my head down on the table and go to sleep. Or to weep.
    “Mr Pessoa, I do not know. Could you tell me, what are the plans for this evening?”
    He was greatly disappointed, that I had not leapt to my feet and declared my undying love for buccaneers and corsairs—perhaps I ought to have brought Miss Sim along, they could have recited Byron at each other. He brushed off his coat, emptied his glass, and assembled his thoughts. “As I mentioned, Mr Fflytte’s desire for actors who look like pirates drew to mind a local  … character , I suppose one would call him.” As opposed to Senhor Pessoa, an everyday Lisboan with multiple personas? “A … colourful man I met some years ago. It may take a little time to locate him precisely; however, the evening shall not be wasted. I shall be your  … cicerone to one of the most picturesque sections of Lisbon, where we are sure to find him.”
    The optimism of my note to Holmes began to shrink.
    I asked Pessoa about Lisbon’s literary community, which diverted him until Fflytte bounced into the lobby, followed by his tall shadow, some twenty minutes late. Pessoa eyed the director’s dramatic hat and white fur coat, but merely tamped out his third cigarette and led us to the door.

    The evening air smelt of coming rain. We made to step from the hotel’s forecourt onto the pavement proper, then Pessoa’s arm shot out, a barricade to progress. Three armed police trotted by, intent on something up the road, and I became aware of a crowd noise from the Rossio, the wide rectangular plaza that formed the centre of the town.
    Pessoa seemed unconcerned, once the intent constables had passed, and set off in the direction from which they had come. I glanced over my shoulder, and decided that if a riot erupted, we were as well off in the town’s outskirts as in the central hotel.
    Our path took us along gently sloping cobbled pavements through a district of expensive shops and white-linened restaurants discreetly scattered with banks—not for nothing was the street named Rua do Ouro , or Gold Street. Fflytte’s head turned continuously, scanning alleys and the buildings’ heights for potentially scenic shots, paying no attention to Pessoa’s scrupulous narration. At the bottom of the street (“This triumphal arch displays Glory crowning Genius and Valour.”) another vast plaza spread out, this one perfectly square and lined on three sides by what could only be municipal buildings. A tall bronze equestrian statue stood in the centre. As he led us across the space, Pessoa’s running commentary told us that this was the Praça do Comércio , known as Black Horse Square to Englishmen; that the gent on the horse was King José; and that the statue had been put up to mark the rebuilding of Lisbon after it was more or less levelled by an earthquake in 1755 (an earthquake that was felt throughout Europe and caused a major tidal wave along the English coastline).
    Which served to remind me that we were not only in a city where police-attended riots were commonplace, it was also liable at any minute to be reduced to rubble.
    Across the square, we followed the river east for a few minutes before veering uphill, into a dark jumble of buildings. Pessoa’s narration never faltered, although the pace he set kept Fflytte at a near-jog, and even Hale and I had to move briskly. This, Pessoa’s trailing voice informed us, was the most ancient part of Lisbon, the Alfama, which oddly enough was spared much of the 1755 destruction. Oddly