Achtung baby

Accompanying the wily she-devil was a wee lad she had picked up while despoiling the German hinterlands. More plaything than toy-boy, the fellow showed little evidence of wanderlust, largely due to the tight rein she kept on his choke collar (on the occasions he had leave from his cage).

That she had not previously discarded said shackled Saxon was surely due to her exceptional capacity for schadenfreude. Intellectual prowess being her pet hate, the matter of the young buck becoming a distinguished professor prior to the age of majority both got her goat and cooked her goose.

Seeing that he was wise of words but not of the world, that night she began her cruel seduction. And lo, by the time Dawn came with rosy fingers, the giant siren had the young academic, quite literally, in the palm of her hand.

Henceforth, via assorted vile schemes of insidious villainy she began crushing the stripling by slowly rotting his mind, body and soul. Within a week, the starry-eyed boy was a waif on a string.

Time had however mellowed her, and in her more tender moments, she would tease him with Teutonic coochie coos and let him suck the grease from her fingers.



Wiper
Professor Plum
Likes: in the ballroom
Dislikes: in the secret passage

Afeared in Provence

As the starters arrived, so the other mademoiselle stirred from her drunken snooze. Seven-foot high – while seated – she arched over the table to advise her yard-high counterpart of the ongoing dockside unrest. More specifically, said the statuesque rogue, a young ruffian was – as we spoke – slandering the venomous gnome, accusing her of debility, cowardice, treachery – only one of which was technically true. At this, the poison dwarf slammed down her tankard and stomped off to wreak havoc, pausing only to pick her teeth with the hatchet she kept for such ends. Her mischief made, the aforementioned giantess permitted herself a smug snort of satisfaction before digging into the munchkin’s hors d’oeuvres.

It was thus in this manner that we first met Aurélie la Vagabonde, daughter of Gargantua and bane of Marseille. Her feral nature and remarkable guile were the result of a childhood sans role models – as an infant she had been abandoned by wolves and forced to live by her wits alone. While other youngsters were playing hopscotch and kiss-chase, this colossus-to-be would exercise her deviousness and depravity by conning foxes, just to watch the vermin scowl. Like an inferior vin de table, she hadn’t improved with age.


Cherry-picker
Aurélie la Vagabonde
Likes: John Lewis
Dislikes: John Le Carré

French nickers

Engaging as it is to make small-talk with the self-anointed, we figured it prudent to avoid sticking out our necks unnecessarily, and curtsied our well wishes to the hoighty toighty decapitator, moving on with requisite haste.

Next in line to her throne stood a pair of Gallic boat-snatchers, dichotomous in size, but equally rotten to the core. Being so unusually petite, the smaller of the two compensated for her deficient stature with a vicious streak so malign that, given the choice, most men would rather be dragged through briar in a sack of wasps than ask her for the time of day. Her razor-sharp tongue, for example, was the stuff of legend. Indeed, short-lived was the felon who thought he might profit from her reduced reach, for the appendage in question had been replaced with barbed-wire plaits, and she could lick a man to shreds in minutes.

For the time being, however, she chomped distractedly on some brimstone amuses-bouche of her own design. Fearing a tongue-lashing, we pretended to wolf some down before commenting favourably on their acrid flavour and steering the conversation towards such idle banter as the shipping forecast and recent murders and coastal pillaging.


Keelhauler
Bridget the Midget
Likes: the smell of napalm in the morning
Dislikes: the sound of milkmen in the morning

Dutch Courage

The Mediterranean brigand plumped our cushions, beckoned us over and, with inappropriate zeal, begged to relieve us of our coats. Her entreaties fell on deaf ears, however, as her penchant for doublets preceded her and we were fully cognisant of the perfidious manner by which her incomparable collection of jerkins had been amassed. Firmly, but politely, I thus informed her that she’d not be getting her paws on our blousons, boleros and blazers unless she was peeling them from our cold dead bodies. She shrugged in her gallic manner and trotted back to the waterfront to swindle the lame beggars.

Stepping up next was the infamous Royal Dutch, a mariner from the Low Country, well versed in the extensive licentiousness of her homeland. A keen learner, she had studied trafficking at Eindhoven, graduating summa cum laude by her sixteenth birthday. However, her learnèd approach to freebooting was not universally appreciated and it was variously suggested that she was an uppity madam with airs above her station. That said, her critics were generally disinclined to stick their heads above the parapet, largely on account of her habit of removing them with her broadsword and using them for bunting.

Vice Squad

K.L.M. “Royal Dutch” Van Dieman
Likes: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Dislikes: The Waltons

All bound for Mu-Mu land

Outmanned and outgunned we might not have been, but hell hath no fury like a blood-lusty broad with two-foot of freshly sharpened sabre. Thus, discretion being the better part of valour, we tactically withdrew through the fire exit, hotly pursued by the psychotic hatchet-lass. No sooner were our feet back on our trusty planks, we cut and run, abandoning the whirling dervish to her splenetic jig. Even as the quayside was barely visible through our looksticks, there she was, frothing at the mouth and hurling oaths with such frenzy that even the most blackhearted of our own curs did cower.

The mainsail hoist and billowing well, we left these dark lands and progressed with good speed to rendezvous with the brethren court of the East Anglian coast. A jolly bunch of seadogs, uncommonly educated to boot, these hearties represented the crème de la crème of seaborne do-badders and skullduggerers.

Welcoming us to the roundtable came Mu the Merciless, a Catalan rogue whose cruel passion for serving the black flag was matched only by her heinous taste in shanties. Indeed, many an unfortunate soul had buried themselves at sea in order to avoid the prolonged aural assault of her caterwauling.

Soothsayer
Mu the Merciless
Likes: Martini and lemonade
Dislikes: The Mercury Prize

A family practice

In a matter of seconds, the slumped figure of the doc was knocking out Zs, and despite rigorous shaking and shouting, the best we could rouse from the drunken quack was a stale belch. No practitioner of physic was required to see that his rum slumber was not so much catnap as catatonic stupor.

With such debauch epitomising the parlous nature of the modern NHS, the British taxpayer has every right to indignant hand-wringing and outraged correspondence with the Daily Mail. To be sure, times are lamentable indeed.

As professional picaroons, however, our record of tithe payments was not exactly spotless – in truth, mild harrumphing would have wildly exceeded the scope of our entitlement. Thus, in lieu of pique, we played to our strengths and looted the old soak’s desk.

Three rubber bands and a wet dog-end later, we were no closer to early retirement when our efforts were untimely stopped by the screeching yo-ho-ho of a feisty female brigand.

‘If it’s his pieces of eight you’re after, you’ll be tasting a piece of my steel first,’ she grinned craftily, pulling out almost 30 inches of glinting Persian scimitar. ‘And in case you hadn’t guessed,’ she cackled, ‘I fights dirty.’



Payroll
Pinta Gordons
Likes: Curly-Wurlies
Dislikes: proportional representation

The life preserver

With the wench stowed, the mates mooted that shore leave was assuredly in order. A plan was thus formed to fetch back up at Doncaster and join the locals in celebrating the siege of Gibraltar.

With course set and headway good, the order was given to splice the mainbrace. The gunwales, hitherto stuffed with Caribbean firewater, were stripped bare by the grog-lusty crew, and the liquor went down faster than a torpedoed canoe.

Of the resultant ballyhoo the ship’s log says little – the sun was over the yardarm before the crew stirred, each suffering no small degree of alcohol poisoning, and, in the case of the bunting tosser, a broken nose. From what we could ascertain, his senses had been somewhat stirred by Ms Doe’s perfumed business card. His impromptu visit to her quarters, meanwhile, had correspondingly stirred her splendid right hook.

Having reached our port of call, we left her to her nosegays, knick-knacks and knuckledusters and took the misshapen lad to the infirmary, where, through clouds of tobacco smoke, the medic reluctantly viewed the aforementioned injury. He concurred – it was indeed a bloody mess – and retired to his desk for a tug on his flask and some shut-eye.


Resident Medical Officer
Ol' Dirty Kevin
Likes: high rollin'
Dislikes: fish