Almost-Doctor Alistair Florence Virgil Villienne never set out to be the sole representative of the British Empire on an obscure Caribbean island. Actually, if anyone on the island had bothered to ask him, he might have explained that his great ambition in life was to be a famous poet, or barring that, a scientist.
Of the most popular poet and heartthrob of the age, Lord Byron, it was said, “He is mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Of the completely unknown poet and aspiring explosives chemist Almost-Doctor Alistair Florence Virgil Villienne, it was said, “Who? Villi … what now?” — if anything was said at all.
Despite this, Long John, in his lifelong mission to know something about everyone who inhabited his island, had discovered a few things about the new British magistrate’s life prior to his arrival in Smuggler’s Bay that he found quite fascinating. Then again, there was usually something in everybody’s life that the garrulous captain found fascinating. It was part of the reason he enjoyed talking to people so much. And as luck would have it, of all the people who enjoyed good talk in Smuggler’s Bay, Villienne, long starved for intelligent conversation, proved to be nearly as unstoppable a talker as Long John himself.
Villienne quickly explained to the attentive pirate that he had been born to an old land-owning family in England’s Lake District. Unfortunately, this old land-owning family no longer actually owned any land thanks to one uncle’s poor decision to sell the family estate in order to corner the market in Belgian cuckoo clocks. Sadly, as anyone familiar with the great Belgian cuckoo clock bubble of ’73 is surely aware, such speculations swiftly met with disaster.
Thus, the youthful Villienne was, unlike most young men of his rank, forced to deal with the bothersome matter of selecting a respectable profession to earn his bread. With his budding interest in natural science, his parents thought he might do well as a physician, and sent him off to medical school in Edinburgh. Unfortunately, a medical career did not take, and young Villienne soon found himself in a London flat shared with three other young men and a mouldy wheel of cheese they named Harolde. Alistair Florence Virgil Villienne proceeded to earn money by tutoring indifferent young scholars. All his remaining time he spent busily writing reams of verse and stories that no one wanted to read.
Although this manner of existence might have horrified many a poor man of noble name, it did not trouble Villienne: nourishment, shelter, ink, and paper being all he thought he required.
But to craft a child from ink and paper is no easy task, and to send one’s paper children out into the wide world is more difficult still. Week after week he would kiss them on their inky little heads with all the love and hope in his desperate poet’s soul. And week after week he would discover that his poems had been put to use as a client’s birdcage lining or water-closet paper. It began to try even his most patient of spirits.
Slowly, he came to realize that he could not live a life shut up in his room simply churning out verse. He was starting to repeat the same words over and over. Worse yet, he was growing increasingly obsessed with finding a word to rhyme with orange.
His parents suggested the diplomatic service and Villienne realized that a journey to foreign lands might be exactly what he needed to rekindle his imagination. He dreamed of splendid new people and landscapes to write about, things no poet before had ever put to pen. Success was sure to be his! He could already hear the ink-stained masses crying out for more.
Exactly where Villienne’s plan went awry he could not precisely say. Perhaps, he lamented, he lacked the proper Romantic temperament for such adventure. Then again, maybe it was the adventure itself that was lacking. Smuggler’s Bay was a nice enough island, to be sure, but one could hardly describe people who named their favourite native cuisine as fish and chips as exotic.
The magistrate’s mansion was a residence in the traditional Spanish style. To Villienne, who had spent the past few years living in one-third of a poorly ventilated apartment above a seedy Earl’s Court chip house, using Harolde the cheese wheel as both window insulation and the occasional meal supplement, it was a palace.
In London, Villienne had slept in the same blanket for four years without once washing it. Now he had servants whose sole employment was to keep him in fresh linens and frown critically over his ink-splattered shirt sleeves, chemical-stained hands, and threadbare clothes. It was all rather disconcerting. He spent his first few weeks as magistrate cowering in his mansion, worrying someone would realize what a fraud he was and escort him away.
Dovecoat, the old magistrate, dead thirteen years by then, had been popular among the citizens of Smuggler’s Bay. A rotund gentleman and regular patron of the Spyglass, Dovecoat could always be counted on to supply good English sweets to all the island children and to forget to collect the taxes.
Now there was a man, the islanders said, who, despite his vices, knew enough to leave all important matters concerning what was best for Smuggler’s Bay in the capable hands of its true leaders — the captains of the Pieces of Eight.
Shortly after the beloved Dovecoat’s death, the people of Smuggler’s Bay were promised a new magistrate by the British government. Unfortunately, the matter took a little longer than expected, what with the wars going on in Europe utilizing all available ships. By the time some bigwig in London remembered pokey little Smuggler’s Bay and a ship was cleared to drop off the first of the many new magistrates, the islanders had grown perfectly happy with governing themselves, making their own rules and ignoring taxes.
Of all the people who should have most minded the imposition of Villienne as magistrate, Long John, the unofficial president of the island, should have been foremost. Yet Long John actually felt a certain fondness for Villienne. He wondered if he was the only one who noticed how much the poor man looked the little boy lost.
Sometimes, from his perch up on the porch of the Spyglass, Long John watched Villienne wandering the streets of town as if searching for some recognizable London landmark, a man nearly as skinny as his own shadow, with straw-coloured hair and a furtive pink face, cautiously trying to suggest an improvement here, a possible adjustment there. He seemed genuinely shamed by the stony silence that invariably met his hopeful suggestions that the people pay one or two taxes, if they maybe felt like it, not today, say, but perhaps tomorrow, or maybe next week. Idly, Long John wondered how much longer Villienne would soldier on. He couldn’t help but pity a fellow who appeared so out of his natural element.
Of course, pity was the last thing a man in Villienne’s position wanted. Obedience? Yes. Respect? Certainly. Fear? Acceptable. But this demented politeness depressed him. At least if the people were angry with me, Villienne reasoned, it would mean my existence was of some consequence to their lives. But the rogues at the Spyglass just ignored him, which was ever so much worse.
Sometimes he fantasized about kicking all the pirates out and repopulating the island afresh with some solid, law-abiding stock, Puritans perhaps, or some other group with an inordinate fondness for monochromatic clothing and silly hats.
Realistically, though, he couldn’t banish the pirates. He had no army at his disposal — only his disapproving servants and Dovecoat’s former mistress and her two daughters. Besides, in one way or another, every job on Smuggler’s Bay was connected to piracy. To make war on the buccaneers would be to incite revolt and destroy the tiny island’s even tinier economy.
And as much as he hated to admit it, he’d miss the stories at the Spyglass.
So things stayed as they were. The islanders grumbled to Long John and Bonnie Mary about Villienne, and Villienne complained to his superiors in his letters, but nothing much changed.
That night,