Ross reached into his coat pocket . . . but came up empty. Then, with more urgency, he patted his other pockets, checked the satchel at his side, and began searching the deck—all to the roaring laughter of the others. “Are you looking for this?” Caiman called from behind. Ross turned and, to his astonishment, his old pocket watch dangled from its chain in Caiman’s hand.
“How did . . . but . . . I know it was in my pocket,” Ross stammered.
“And so it was,” said Caiman. “But, with my fleet fingers, I picked your pocket.”
Ross had been amazed completely. He hadn’t felt the watch being removed when Caiman had run into him. For the entertainment alone, Ross was glad Caiman was aboard. Of course, no one felt too comfortable around his pet, or, as Caiman called it, his “little gatita.”
Three shrill whistles shook Commodore Blake out of his narrow bed. Without his boots or his saber, he raced out of his quarters and up onto the main deck.
“Commodore Blake!” called his bosun, Ezekiel Jordan, a long spyglass in his hand. “Sir, there’s a ship ahead!”
Blake’s heart raced, but he scanned the horizon and saw nothing. “Are you sure?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Give me the glass.” Blake slowly traced the spyglass across the rolling seas. On his second pass he saw it. Just as a distant swell subsided, a dark shape was there. Miles off yet, but definitely there.
“You are quite right, Mister Jordan!” he said. “Sir Nigel, see to it that we double Mister Jordan’s rations at supper this evening.”
“Aye, Commodore.”
Blake continued to stare through the spyglass. “One mast,” he said, and his shoulders sagged. “A galley, maybe a sloop. Alas, I suppose it was too much to hope for.”
“What, sir?” asked Mr. Jordan.
“Declan Ross,” he replied. “But Ross’s ship is a two-masted brig.
Nonetheless, let’s pursue. There may be something of interest.”
“That’s a British ship of the line, first rate,” said Jacques St. Pierre as he looked through the telescope.
“First rate?” Ross exclaimed.
“Three gun decks,” Jacques went on. “Ninety cannons, at least.
First rate is what they call such a vessel.”
“That under a commodore’s command?”
“Commodore Brandon Blake, to be exact,” said Jacques gravely.
“How can ya possibly b’ seeing that from here?” asked Stede.
“I cannot see Commodore Blake himself . . . obviously,” admonished St. Pierre. “But I saw his ship, the HMS Oxford, off the coast of Dominica one time. That is him. Absolument!”
“So what?” Vesa asked. “I run into the British all the time. I might have to part with a case of this or a barrel of that now and then, but the British rarely give me any trouble. You’ll just look like the crew of a merchant mission overseas.”
“We left a rather . . . lasting impression on Commodore Blake,”
Ross explained. “He will recognize Jacques, Red Eye, Midge, Cat, Jules, and me. He’d hang us all here at sea, I’m sure.”
“Ah . . . that bad, eh?” Vesa asked.
“I am afraid so.” Ross took the telescope from Jacques.
“Do we run?” asked Caiman.
Ross shook his head. “We can’t afford the time. Maybe we outrun Blake, but that lets Thorne get farther ahead . . . too far, and then Anne’s gone.”
“But, sir,” said Midge. “If we get cau—”
“It will do us no good to run,” Ross said. “I doubt we could lose him anyway. There are four frigates with him. If we run, they will fan out. We’d be swept up eventually.”
Vesa looked around. “I will hide you.”
“Where?” Red Eye asked. “Are you going to roll the six of us up in a tapestry?”
“Maybe just you,” Vesa shot back. “Now, shut your mouth and let me think.”
Anne had not seen another person since two deck hands came down to remove the bodies. They’d teased her before they left, and with the dead men’s blood still wet on their hands, they’d thrown a long crust of bread into her cell. She’d left the bread where it fell. It wasn’t long before the rats scurried away with it. And then it was quiet . . . until now. She could hear someone on the stairs.
“Annnnnne,” rasped a voice from the shadows. The flicker of the lantern caught his cold blue eyes.
Involuntarily, she backed into the farthest corner of her cell.
“What ever is the matter, my dear?” Thorne asked as he stepped near to the cell’s bars. A large key ring jangled at his waist. “Ah, yes, I know. It is a bit lonely down here. I rarely have a need for prisoners.”
Anne fought to keep herself from trembling, but lost. His very presence seemed to bleed cruelty and death. “Please . . . please leave me alone,” she said.
He ignored her and pushed his face into the gap between the bars. “Little Anne,” he said. “Now all grown up.” Anne felt a prick of cold, like a corpse’s fingernail, run up her back.
“Yes,” he went on. “So much like your mother. I knew her—for a time—before she died. Edinburgh is a marvelous port. I raised my first crew there. Pity your father wouldn’t join me then. If he had, we wouldn’t be in this . . . situation now.”
“I don’t ever remember seeing you,” Anne said, emerging a little from the corner.
“Thirteen years ago,” Thorne said with a sheepish smile. “I imagine you’ve forgotten much that you once knew.”
“What do you mean?”
“Another time, perhaps,” said Thorne, and instantly his demeanor intensified. “Anne, I have no desire to harm you.” He stepped away from the bars, reached the lantern, and turned up its flame. “So long as you tell me what I wish to know.” He removed a long parchment from his coat, unrolled the scroll, and showed her.
Anne recognized it instantly. It was the map to the Isle of Swords.
“What have you done to Padre Dominguez?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” he replied, studying her. “Nothing but heal his wounds after those two idiots flogged him. He is resting . . . for now. And he may fully recover. You have seen the map before. Tell me, what is missing from this section here?” He pointed to the upper right quadrant, where Padre Dominguez’s shoulder had been ruined.
She stared and tried to remember. But the only time she’d seen it was fleeting. Padre Dominguez had been showing it to Stede and her father, but he’d quickly covered his shoulders with the remnants of his robe when Anne entered the captain’s quarters. There had been some sort of triangles or sharp stones, she thought, and something about a serpent, but she couldn’t remember.
“You don’t know, do you?” It was not a question. “I can read it on your face and in your eyes. You have seen the map, but you have not studied it. Pity.” He rolled up the parchment and slid it inside his coat. He turned and strode back toward the stairs, but stopped before disappearing into the shadows. “Your father killed my apprentice and tried to steal from me,” he said. “He has made his life forfeit.”
“No!” Anne flew to the bars. “No, please don’t hurt him!”
“A noble request,” said Thorne without turning. He waited a few moments as if weighing the consequences of his next thought.
“When the monk is well, he will be placed in the cell next to yours.
If you can discover from him the rest of the journey, the way to the Isle of Swords, I promise I will spare your father’s life. In fact, I will leave you safely in Edinburgh with a portion of Constantine’s Treasure. Enough that your father will never have to go to sea as a pirate again. Isn’t that what he’s always wanted?”
Thorne left the deck. The sound of his heavy boots on the stairs was gone. All that remained were the creaks of the ship and the hypnotic feel of the ocean rolling. Anne knew she could not trust Bartholomew Thorne. But in her putrid cell, she could think of few options.
36
VESA’S ARK
Have they ch
anged course?” Blake asked.
“No, sir,” replied Mr. Jordan.
“Done anything evasive?”
“No, sir. I’ve been watching.” The sloop was close enough now that they could observe its movements without a spyglass.
Sir Nigel was at the commodore’s side. “Perhaps we can get a barrel of salted beef for our troubles.”
“We’ll see,” Blake replied. “Or maybe this sloop is captained by some lesser pirate . . . one we can catch.”
“In the sheep pen?!” Midge exclaimed. “Are you mad? That’s quite possibly the worst-smellin’ place on the whole ship!”
“Except for yer mouth, mon,” said Stede. He slapped Midge on the back so hard he nearly fell over.
“Look,” said Vesa. “If they board us—which they will—they’ll search the barrels, the crates, any normal place where items they might be interested in could be kept. You just stay low in the pens, and we’ll cover you with hay.”
“Stay low?” said Midge. “But that means we’ll be in the—”
“That’s enough!” barked Ross. “So be it. We have no more time to waste. In a few minutes Blake will be able to see us on deck. We need to get below now. Vesa, if you’ve an empty crate, have the men put their cutlasses and daggers in it. It will go well if you are a merchant selling weapons abroad, but not if your crew is armed to the teeth.”
“Never in this life has Jacques Saint Pierre been forced into such a demeaning position,” said the Frenchman, now buried in straw with a fresh pile of sheep scat three inches from his nose.
“Aw, Jacques,” said Red Eye. “It could be worse.”
“How?”
“Caiman’s little croc friend could be in here with us.”
“He’s not, is he?” Midge lifted his head up through the straw.
“Get your head down!” Ross hissed. “And Jules, can’t you get any lower? You look like a mountain of straw.”
“I’ll try,” came Jules’s deep voice from a massive pile of straw in the back of the pen. Two of the five remaining sheep stood in front of him, but still, Ross thought it looked strange.
“Quiet!” Ross whispered. “I hear something.”
“Sloop captain,” called a ship’s mate from the prow of the Oxford, “state your business!”
“I am Vesa Turinen from the Caicos. I carry a variety of goods for trade in Portugal.”
“Portugal? A bit late in the year for such a journey.”
“Yes, well, it is my last trip for the season.”
“We are looking for pirates who were rumored to be traveling in these sea lanes.”
“Pirates?” Vesa feigned shock. “Good heavens.”
A little farther back on deck and out of Vesa’s field of vision, Commodore Blake and Sir Nigel listened intently. “What do you think?” asked Blake.
“Sounds dreadfully old,” replied Sir Nigel. “Not likely to be a pirate.”
“Yes, the scoundrels do tend to be short-lived, don’t they?
Despite that, we will board and search the decks.”
“Aye, sir.” Sir Nigel nodded to the ship’s mate.
“Vesa Turinen,” he called, “prepare to be boarded.”
Declan Ross lay very still under the straw. He’d heard the ship’s mate and knew that any moment Commodore Blake and his men would board the sloop. He also knew that if he was to be captured, Anne would most likely die, and Bartholomew Thorne would gain hold of the greatest treasure since the discovery of the New World.
Caiman came down through a forward hatch and shuffled through the crates and barrels until he came to a small crate that was covered with a piece of tarp. “Ah, mi gatita,” he said. He pulled a piece of salted pork out of his pocket and reached under the tarp.
“There you go,” he said. “You must be so lonely locked up in this crate. Sorry, but Vesa made me.” Caiman turned and looked into the sheep pen. “Are we comfortable?” Caiman laughed. He turned and walked away, headed back to the hatch.
Suddenly, every one of Ross’s muscles tensed. An idea took hold of him so powerfully that he could not will it away from his mind.
It was brazen . . . and, he thought, probably stupid. He leaped up, sending straw in all directions amd startling the sheep. Caiman was so surprised by Ross’s appearance, he neglected to secure the crate.
Ross leaped out of the pen, took Caiman by the arm, and explained what he had in mind. Caiman nodded and said, “I can do it, but you better hurry.” They heard a thud from above and then wood scraping against wood.
A gangplank, Ross thought. He looked around anxiously. “My kingdom for pen and paper,” he muttered. He charged up the narrow aisle between crates and ducked through dozens of hammocks slung up in the rafters. Then, in Vesa’s quarters, he found what he was looking for. Ross jammed the quill pen into the half-full ink bottle and scribbled furiously on a small piece of paper.
“Captain, they are on board!” Caiman called from the hold. Ross dipped one more time, knocked over the bottle of ink, and growled.
The ink pooled around a little Bible and rolled down the desk. Ross finished the message, folded the paper, and glanced to the now ink-stained Bible. “Please,” Ross said aloud—but to whom he was not at that moment sure. “He must find this at the right time and while he is in the right place.”
“Captain!”
Ross raced out of Vesa’s quarters and jammed the folded message into Caiman’s hand. They heard voices overhead. Caiman immediately climbed the ladder to the top deck. Ross sprinted across the hold. He banged into a stack of crates. One teetered and fell with a crash just as Ross dove into the sheep pen. He landed in the straw and muck and apparently also on Cat’s hand. “Oww, get off,” Cat said. A sheep bleated at Ross, but there was nothing he could do.
Two British sailors stepped off the ladder into the hold.
“Place is packed tight, now isn’t it?” one of them asked. “Ought to be able to find somethin’ of worth, eh, Johann?”
“Ahg, what is that terrible odor?” Johann scowled. “It smells like me mum’s chicken coop back in Bristol.”
“Don’t know, mate, but it’s not much worse than the bilge water in the Oxford. I’ll look down this end. You take the other.”
“Thanks, Patrick, you’re a bit of all right.”
Johann lifted a lantern off one of the posts and made his way quickly toward Vesa’s quarters. But Patrick took his time examining crates, casks, and barrels. Soon, he discovered the sheep pen.
Several days after her encounter with Bartholomew Thorne, Anne awoke in her cell to the jangle of keys. Several of Thorne’s men moved slowly away from the cell next to Anne’s. She turned and saw that the other cell was no longer empty. The weak lantern’s light revealed the still form of a man who lay on an uneven cot in the cell.
He wore a dirty white tunic and brown breeches that were too short for his legs. Anne recognized him, even without his brown robe.
“Padre Dominguez?” she whispered. “Padre Dominguez?”
“Anne,” he said, and as he turned, she saw that his cheeks were tear-stained. Fresh tears rolled as he spoke. “I am so sorry, Anne.
Sorry that I have gotten you into all this. I was foolish to put you and your father into harm’s way.”
“No, no,” Anne said, reaching through the bars to touch his hand. “Thorne would have come for us anyway . . . after what happened with Chevillard.”
The monk nodded ever so slightly. “Nonetheless, I am sorry.”
Anne didn’t know if she could bring herself to do it, or if she could, how? If you can discover from him the rest of the journey, the way to the Isle of Swords, I promise I will spare your father’s life. A series of phrases came into her mind, a means to an end. And as she spoke the first, it felt like she had just sold her soul. “Padre, there’s something that I don’t understand.”
He stared at her curiously. “What is it, child?”
“The treasure, on the Isle of Swords,” she went on, carefully ch
oosing her words. “It must be very great for Thorne to go to such lengths to get it.”
Never taking his dark eyes off her, he said, “It is. More gold and silver than ten galleons could carry and vaults of jewels. The Emperor Constantine had amassed wealth from every corner of the known world.”
Anne nodded. “But what I don’t understand is, well . . . it’s treasure. Greedy men like Thorne want it. My father even. But why . . . why you? Why the monks of your order? What do you care about such riches?”
The monk’s eyes narrowed. “For hundreds of years, we have used the gold to buy freedom for thousands of slaves, to build monasteries like the one on Saint Celestine across the globe, and to spread the faith.” He was silent for a moment. “To let a devil like Thorne gain such riches . . . this we could not bear. But . . . the Isle of Swords holds something more important to us.”
“Padre, I need to—”
“Tell me, Anne,” he interrupted. “What price did he offer you?”
Anne felt the prick of ten thousand icy needles all over her body.
Her mouth fell open, but she did not speak.
“Your life?” the monk asked. “Your father’s life?”
Anne’s head fell against the bars, and she wept. “Yes . . . yes,” she cried.
“You are forgiven, child,” he said as he reached through the bars and laid a hand upon her head. “But it is better for you not to know.
I alone must bear the burden of the Isle of Swords.”
“Welcome aboard my little sloop,” said Vesa with a slight bow to Commodore Blake and Sir Nigel. “I am Captain Vesa Turinen, and this is my quartermaster, Stede.”
“That’s a fine boat ya b’ gotten there,” Stede said.