“Ramiro put the monkeys in the hold,” Ross said. “Nubby put a shallow pan under each cage, and that’ll do for most of them. But watch the one with the white stripe between his ears. He tends to, uh . . . spray out rather than down.”
“Oh, that’s just smashin’,” Midge replied. “So ’ow much do we need?”
“One barrelful ought to do it.”
“Smashin’, indeed.” Midge turned and trudged down the stairs to the hold.
“You can stop this, Anne,” said Thorne. “He told you the way, didn’t he?”
“No, nooo,” Anne cried. “He didn’t tell me the way! Please stop. Please.” She could barely look upon Padre Dominguez. His back glistened with fresh blood, and the ship’s surgeon continued his work.
“I believe you, Anne,” Thorne said. “Your face tells me the truth.” Thorne knelt to be close to the monk’s face. “Just tell me, Padre, and all the pain will stop.” Padre Dominguez closed his eyes.
“I have used five of my favorite tools already,” said Flagg. “He is a stubborn man.”
“Yes, remarkable strength,” Thorne hissed. “The vows of your order—you would rather die than violate them. I know all about the vows, Dominguez . . . and your beloved order. How noble and pious. But in the end, priest, you all are pirates just like me!”
Padre Dominguez opened his eyes. “Yes,” said Thorne. “You know I speak the truth, don’t you. The treasure on the island was never yours to begin with. You stole it from those who stole it from Constantine. How do you reconcile that with your God?”
“You are wrong,” said Padre Dominguez weakly. “The Brethren are protectors, safekeepers . . .”
“Thieves!” Thorne barked. “You stole the treasure from Constantine!”
“We took the treasure,” Padre Dominguez said with a knowing smile, “but we did not steal it. My order uses it as Emperor Constantine would have wished.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Constantine was the founder of my order.”
Thorne stood and reached for the bleeding stick, but Flagg said, “No, Captain, you will ruin my work. Let me finish.” Flagg reached into his wooden case and produced a pair of shears.
“It is no use,” Thorne said. “The monk cares nothing for his own life.” The moment he spoke the words, his eyes drifted to Anne. “It is time to play my final card.”
Cat had never seen a bow quite like the Bruce’s. The other ships, the brig and the sloop—even though Cat had no specific memory of ever sailing upon them before, the rigging, the sails, the masts and spars—all seemed familiar.
Not the Bruce. For one thing, most ships had a long shaft that pointed out of the bow like a unicorn’s horn. This bowsprit was used to tie off one corner of a large triangular sail used to help the ship maneuver. The Bruce had no bowsprit, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, the foremast was located much closer to the bow, and it had a long spar attached to it with a strange iron collar.
“Fantastic, isn’t it?” Ramiro de Ferro Goncalo asked as he approached.
“Yes,” Cat replied. “I mean, I guess it is. This spar, is it like a bowsprit?”
“Exactly like a bowsprit,” said Ramiro. “With one major improvement. A normal bowsprit is fixed. It doesn’t turn.” Cat looked at the collar and noticed there were holes all the way around the collar and long iron pins in two of the holes—one on either side of the spar.
“Oh!” Cat exclaimed.
“Ah, you see?” Ramiro said. “This collar, which I call a gooseneck, allows us to turn the spar. The pins you see lock the spar in whatever position we want.”
Cat imagined the ship needing to make a quick turn—or even a complete turn—with an enemy behind. To be able to adjust the bowsprit, to quickly change the angle of the sail—that would give them a huge advantage. “That’s brilliant,” Cat muttered.
“Thank you,” said Ramiro. “The Bruce is really one of a kind.
Should we come up against the infamous Raven, I suspect we will not find ourselves outgunned or outmaneuvered.”
“Where shall I begin?” asked Flagg, holding up the shears so that Anne could see them. She lay on her back, strapped down to stone.
They had positioned her so that Padre Dominguez could watch.
“Her pretty face,” said Thorne.
“Excellent choice,” said Flagg ghoulishly. “You will need to hold her head. I wouldn’t want to cut . . . in the wrong place.”
Anne thrashed about. “No! Nooo!” But Thorne held her head still. Tears streaked her face. Flagg pinched the skin at her jawbone and placed the scissor blades there. Anne cried out. Her legs and arms convulsed in the straps.
Padre Dominguez, weak from the ordeal, looked on and began to shake. He watched helplessly as Flagg closed the shears. Anne shrieked, and dark blood appeared on her jaw. “No! Thorne, you demon from hell!” Padre Dominguez screamed.
“Such language, Padre,” Thorne mocked.
“I speak of the place,” Padre Dominguez said. “The place where you will spend eternity. You will not go unpunished!”
“Shall we continue?” Thorne asked. He motioned to Flagg. The ship’s surgeon wiped the blood away from Anne’s chin with a cloth and moved in with the shears.
“NO!!” Padre Dominguez said, and he began to weep. “Stop. I will tell you what you want to know.”
39
GHOSTS AT SEA AND ON LAND
Anne.” Padre Dominguez’s voice drifted through the cell bars.
Anne’s eyes snapped open, and she flew to the bars. “Padre, are you . . . will you live?” she asked, trying to see his back. He turned so that she could not see the blood. “I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have told him . . . not for my sake.”
“Child,” said Padre Dominguez, “bear no guilt for my weakness.
But take this and find courage.” He reached through the bars and handed Anne his small Bible.
“How?” Anne stared. “They took that from me on the Wallace.
How did you get it back?”
“Thorne’s men are superstitious about such things.” Padre Dominguez laughed quietly, but stopped short and winced in pain.
“They searched it to see if I had written any secrets . . . to lead them to the Isle of Swords. When they were convinced that it was just a Bible, they threw it into my cell.”
Anne took the worn leather volume from Padre Dominguez. It looked like it had been kicked around, and the cover was gouged.
“Read the book of Romans,” said Padre Dominguez. “There, you will find the knowledge you need to save your life . . . and perhaps much more.”
Anne hurriedly flipped through the Bible. She had no idea where Romans was within the text, but she stopped when she saw something handwritten on several of the pages. She gasped when she realized the message had been written in blood.
“I’m sorry,” said the monk. “But it was the only ink that I had.”
Suddenly, a door slammed. Anne had no place to hide the Bible, so she shoved it down into her breeches just under the belt and let her shirt hang down over it. Four burly pirates and one older, gray-bearded man came to her cell. They hurriedly unlocked it, and the graybeard said, “Up you go, lass. The fleet has gathered, and Captain Thorne says you’re comin’ along for the ride.”
“No, wait!” Anne said. “He promised to let us go.”
“That’s between you and Captain Thorne,” he said with a snort.
The burly men grabbed Anne and dragged her out of the cell.
Even as she was taken from the room, she called back, “Padre Dominguez . . .”
The graybeard kneeled outside Padre Dominguez’s cell. “Don’t know what ya did to make Thorne hate you so much,” he said.
“He’d run ya through or cut yer throat most times. But not you.
He’s leavin’ ya to bleed . . . leavin’ ya fer the rats.”
Padre Dominguez groaned and turned onto his side. He looked up at the graybeard drowsily but did not speak
. “I’d hate t’ see a man a’ the cloth die like that, so . . . here.” He placed a pistol and a small sack inside Padre Dominguez’s cell. “There’s powder and one shot in that bag. Don’t miss.”
The old pirate left Padre Dominguez alone in the cell room. The door shut, and it became unearthly quiet. The monk closed his eyes and began to pray. Then he heard small scratching sounds from some shadowy corner. He opened his eyes and stared at the pistol.
Anne was ushered out into the night air. She looked out from a wall, and from this place, high on Thorne’s fortress, she had a panoramic view of the entire shipyard. The vision left her frightened and breathless. Moored along the many piers and anchored farther out, there were more tall ships than Anne had ever seen in one place.
Not even the busy port at Edinburgh could boast such traffic. And farther out to sea, like a ghostly curtain on the horizon, there billowed an indistinct wall of gray.
“Fog,” said one of the men who held her wrists. “As thick a bank as I’ve ever seen.”
The bells sounded for the second watch of the night. Men came down from the Bruce’s crow’s-nests. Others climbed up to take their place. The view hadn’t changed much. The fog had not relented. Ross used only two small square sails to keep the speed low. He figured they weren’t too far from Cape Verde. They’d have to swing out wide to starboard very soon, for there were several smaller islands to avoid before they came to the main island where Thorne had built his shipyard.
Shrouds of mist passed around and over the ship. An eerie quiet fell over the men on deck. But the quiet was far from relaxing.
Sailors, better than anyone, knew the dangers of limited visibility. So they sharpened blades, carved pieces of driftwood, or just tapped their feet—anything to release a little nervous energy and help pass the time. Caiman felt the oppressive fear of the fog worse than the others. He paced constantly, at times switching to walking laps around the entire ship. On one of these circuits, he stopped on the port bow near the stern. He thought he had heard something out in the sea. A bell, or at least that’s what it sounded like to him.
Caiman turned and looked up to the crow’s-nest on the rear mast.
Jacques St. Pierre was up there, but he didn’t seem to have heard the sound. Caiman looked up on the quarterdeck. Stede standing over him, Cat had the wheel. Neither seemed interested in anything but steering the ship. Probably a good thing, Caiman thought. Clutching the port rail, he stared out into the fog. Wisps of white and tendrils of gray slipped by, and at times he could see a little farther into the murk than others. And just as he was about to resume his nervous lap around the ship, something appeared out in the fog.
“Aieee!” he cried out. “Ghost ships! Ghost ships in the fog!”
Men from all parts of the ship instantly surrounded Caiman, including Stede. “What did you see?” demanded Ramiro.
Caiman’s eyes were huge as he explained. “I thought I heard something, so I stopped to look. At first there was nothing, but . . . gray shadows emerged—maybe a hundred yards away. Ships . . . they were huge, shadowy ships. Ships full of ghosts!”
“Ghosts?” echoed Stede. “Mon, ya been out in the sun too much!”
“No, listen,” said Ramiro. “I’ve sailed this area before. We can’t be far from the Widowmaker, a reef just outside the Cape Verde islands. That reef has taken down more than its share of ships. The locals claim that ghostly ships sail here in search of a port they will never find.”
“That’s just nonsense,” said Stede, and he walked back to the quarterdeck to join Cat.
“Nonsense?” Ramiro looked at the still-terrified Caiman and then out into the fog. “If it wasn’t ghosts, then what did Caiman see?”
“It was there, Captain,” Jacob Briscoe said, pointing into the fog.
Their ship—a Spanish carrack called Mar de Brujas, or Sea Witch— was the fourteenth ship in Bartholomew Thorne’s caravan.
The ship’s captain, Vittorio Maligno, had joined Jacob at the port rail. “What sort of ship was it?”
“I am not sure,” he replied. “It came out of the fog, and then it was gone. Large, definitely large. A frigate . . . maybe even a ship of the line. Do you think we should tell Thorne?”
Captain Maligno shook his head. “No, not unless you see the entire British fleet would I trouble Thorne.”
Hours later, the Bruce at last escaped the writhing mists. The ship emerged several miles off the coast of the main island of Cape Verde. As they drew near to the docks, Ross’s heart fell. Aside from a few fishing boats and one small frigate, the marina was empty.
“We’re too late,” Ross muttered.
“Ya don’t know that, mon,” Stede said. “There still be lights on in that outrageous building up there.” Stede pointed up the hillside at the dark fortress.
Ross nodded. At the deepest level of his soul, he felt that they were too late to save Anne, but he also knew he had to make sure.
Ross rallied his crew, as well as the forty sailors Ramiro had brought with him from his shipyard. When Stede brought the ship alongside the longest pier, Ross cast all subtlety aside. His men raced down the gangplank and streamed up the hillside.
Stede was one of the last men to leave. He noticed Cat standing at the rail and staring up at the fortress. “Come, lad,” he said. Then he noticed tears forming in Cat’s eyes. “Don’t despair.” Stede patted Cat on the shoulder. “We’ll find her.” Stede raced down the gangplank, jumped onto the marina, and disappeared into the trees on the hillside.
At last, Cat hurried to catch up. His mind swirled like a hurricane. Stede had been wrong. Cat’s tears had nothing to do with Anne. Cat drew his cutlass and charged up the wooded incline. As he sprinted along the familiar path to Thorne’s fortress, Cat wondered how he could ever explain what he feared—especially to Captain Ross.
Red Eye and Caiman spearheaded two rows of crewmen, and they came upon the hapless sentries at the fortress’s gate like an avalanche.
Inside Thorne’s fortress, they found a skeleton detail of guards, many of them slaves impressed into service. Some fought and were overwhelmed by Ross’s frenzied men. Others dropped their weapons and ran away. By Ross’s command, they were not pursued.
Ross began to second-guess this command, for the initial search of the fortress had turned up no sign of Anne or Padre Dominguez.
Red Eye and Caiman returned via the spiral staircase. Their expressions told their tale. They had found no one either. Ross kicked over a table. “There’s got to be something!” he yelled.
“Wait.” Cat emerged from the other crewmen. Unruly shocks of blond hair hid his eyes. He brushed his hair aside and said, “If they are still held in this keep, I think I know where.”
“You remembered something?” Ross asked.
“Not exactly.” Cat looked around nervously, feeling like a thousand pairs of eyes were on him, studying, guessing his thoughts. “I have no specific memory of this place—no faces or events. But, like the path in Dominica, it all feels familiar. I . . . I can’t explain—”
“And you don’t have to,” said Ross, putting a hand on Cat’s shoulder. He handed Cat his torch. “Just lead the way.”
Cat led his captain and much of the crew on a winding journey with a general downward trend. He crossed an open courtyard where the moon cast eerie light on them until they disappeared through a door on the other side. Then down a ramp to a long chamber. There were three doors on the left and a pair of double doors on the right.
Cat paused there, thinking, and then led them through the double doors and down a long set of stairs. “I went this way already, Cat,” said St. Pierre. “Jules and I searched it well. Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Cat replied, but he kept going. Cat picked up the pace, but stopped abruptly after passing a hall on the left. He turned and retraced his steps to the opening and then plunged down the hallway. The crew followed. The hall ended in a capital “T,” and Cat looked to the right, holding up h
is torch. He shook his head. Then he looked to his left. It appeared the hall dead-ended. A tall bureau stood at the end.
“I thought for sure this was the—wait!” Cat held up his torch and advanced. The shadows moved as he approached the end of the hall. And there, barely visible until he was upon it, a narrow passage cut sharply away, left of the bureau. “This way!” he called over his shoulder.
“I didn’t see that,” murmured Jules.
“Neither did I, mon ami!” said St. Pierre. “How did he know?”
No one answered, and they choked down to single file to travel the narrow hall. It led to one last stairway. Cat turned and said, “I think there is a sort of dungeon at the bottom of these stairs. But be careful. The stairs are uneven. You don’t want to skewer the man in front of you. So give each other some—”
Cat and the others froze. There’d been a gunshot from somewhere down below. Ross leaped ahead of Cat and led the way down the stairs. They burst into a subterranean prison and a horrendous smell hit them like a hammer. It was a mixture of decay and sewage, but the crew endured it and began to search. There were ten cells on either side of the room. They found long-rotted human remains in some, and some were empty.
“Declan, over here!” Stede called out. Ross sprinted to him. Cat and the others followed. There, slumped in the corner of a cell, was Padre Dominguez, and a pistol lay in his limp hand.
40
RIDDLES
Why? Why would he . . .” Cat could not finish the question. The answer eluded him, pushed away by the persistent thought that if they’d only found the cells a few moments earlier, Padre Dominguez might still be alive.
“Open the cell,” Ross said quietly. Jules looked around for something to pry open the door, but seeing nothing, reared back and kicked it in.
And, to everyone’s astonishment, Padre Dominguez opened his eyes. “Declan,” he said weakly, “I prayed that you might come.”