Suddenly, the whole building shook. Light flashed again through the window, and there came a roar like a roll of thunder.
“Captain Thorne!” a man yelled from the window. “Terrible black smoke is billowin’ out of the volcano! The sky is growin’ black!”
Thorne growled. He’d planned to have time to savor this victory, but he didn’t like the signals the mountain was sending. “Did Skellick bring the Raven round? Have all the ships come back?”
The man answered, “They have, sir! Moored offshore, ready and waitin’!”
Thorne turned and faced the sanctuary. “You men!” he yelled to a group milling by the right-hand door. “Light torches, all of you!
Get down there and make ready the longboats!” The men by the door scattered.
Thorne continued barking orders. “Get those full sleds out of here!” He looked at the massive vaults that weren’t quite empty.
“And the rest of you, faster! Get all of it, ALL, do you hear?!”
Thorne turned back to the wooden chest. He felt around the sides for a place to insert the cross. There seemed to be no indentation or slot. He held up Cat’s cross to the design on the wooden case’s lid. They were an exact match. He pressed the cross lightly onto the lid. There was a clicking sound, and the cross dropped down below the surface of the wood. Another sound, this time metal sliding against metal, and the chest’s lid began to rise.
Thorne’s mind had conjured all sorts of images of what might be inside the chest. The true treasure, the monk had called it. What would it be? A scepter held by the emperor Constantine himself ? A gigantic jewel?
But as the lid continued to rise, revealing the contents of the chest, Thorne’s eyes narrowed. What was this? Within the chest was a kind of three-tiered rack of gold. Three identical holes were cut into each level of the rack, and three dark gray nails pierced through all three tiers. Nails?
Thorne lifted the golden case out of the chest and held it at eye level. His face twisted in a sickening scowl. Enraged, he slammed the case against the floor. The case snapped in pieces, and two nails scattered across the ground. One came to rest in a pool of Ross’s blood, and all at once, every man in the sanctuary felt his heart skip a beat. Men gasped as if to catch a breath that had been stolen.
Thorne stood stock-still, knowing with eerie certainty that something had gone horribly wrong.
47
TRIAL BY FIRE
A blinding flash lit the entire sanctuary, and a sound that was not so much of a boom as a wave of pressure slammed into the holy keep. Beams in the rafters cracked, one of the balconies collapsed, and all manner of dust and debris rained down.
The pirates who had been busy loading the last of the treasure onto the sleds all fell to the ground and covered their heads. Even Bartholomew Thorne found himself on the floor. A horrible wind began to howl down upon the keep. Everyone in the sanctuary listened as things began to creak and crackle above. The rafters groaned. All turned to the window as something red and orange careened by. Suddenly, a piece of the roof collapsed, and a flaming piece of rock slammed into the pews. Two of Thorne’s men were crushed beneath it. The fire spread quickly.
Still stunned, Thorne’s crews looked to their captain. Thorne had pulled himself to his feet and yelled to them, “To the ship! Take what you can carry!”
But his pirates—so entranced by the shining riches—paid no heed and continued to fill satchels with the remaining jewels, gold, and silver. More flaming projectiles struck the roof, and patches of the ceiling burned.
Stede and several men ran out of one of the adjoining rooms.
Thorne motioned for Stede to draw near. “Help me!” he commanded, trying to lift the wooden chest.
Stede took one side of the chest and Thorne the other. They pulled with all their might, but there was no give. The monks had somehow secured the chest so that it could not come free. Thorne growled and gave up. The entire building began to shake. Thorne shoved Stede down off the platform and rasped, “The lava! If it reaches the tunnel entrance, we’ll be trapped.”
“What was in there?” Stede asked as they stomped away.
Thorne stopped and pointed to the floor. “Nails, bah!”
Stede saw one nail that had slid half under a broken pew.
Another was still stuck in the golden tiers from the case. A third lay in a puddle of blood near Ross’s feet. The moment Thorne turned his back, Stede kicked the bloody nail. His aim was perfect. The nail slid and bounced as it struck the pillar where Cat was tied.
Stede raced out the entrance. Thorne shut the heavy door and locked it. “There will be no escape for the Sea Wolf this time,”
Thorne rasped.
Far below the clifftop castle, Thorne’s men continued loading their longboats with treasure from the sleds. Much had been lost as they raced through the forest and the tunnels, but less than might have been. The pale creatures that had assaulted Thorne’s men when they traveled the tunnels the first time did not attack on the return trip. Grimly figured the eruption and the ensuing quake had a lot to do with it. He didn’t really care why; he was just glad to get through without being bitten again. Another explosion from above. Grimly looked back over his shoulder as a great spray of fire and ash spewed into the sky.
“Shove off, ya louts!” he roared at them. “We don’t have much time!”
“We’ve still more to load!” a sailor hollered back.
“We’ll put the rest in a different boat, ya fool! Shove off, I say, or you’ll capsize!”
Grimly looked back up at the black mouth of the tunnel. Where was Thorne? It was Grimly’s job to hold one last longboat for his captain. But where was he? What if he never showed up? The thought made Grimly grin. Captain Grimly, he thought. Has a nice ring to—”
“Mister Grimly!”
He turned and saw his captain and the other man loping down the hill.
“Cat,” a female voice yelled. “Cat!” Louder now, higher pitched.
“Cat, grab the nail!”
Cat opened his eyes, blinked. And there was Anne. She was bound to a pillar, he realized, just as he was. Blood streaked down her left temple and her face was swollen with bruises, but her eyes were clear. Planks and bits of the roof lay burning all around. The air was half filled with choking smoke.
“What happened?” he asked pitifully.
“The volcano’s erupting. Oh, Cat, listen to me!”
“What . . . ?” he asked, still disoriented.
“Grab that nail, Cat!”
He looked frantically, right and then left. And there on the stone was an eight-inch nail, half coated in crimson. Cat looked up to the altar, saw the open chest, and gasped. “Anne, this nail . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Can you reach it, Cat?”
“Ahgg.” Cat dropped his shoulders as much as he could and stretched out his left hand. “Got it!” he yelled. The keep shook again.
“Can you pick apart the knot?” Anne asked. “From here it looks like a hitch. I—I’m not sure.”
A tremendous crack sounded overhead. They both looked up. A huge portion of the roof had begun to cave. The fire continued to lick all over it, and the sky was an angry black. Then they heard a groan.
“Da!” Anne screamed. Cat turned his head and saw Declan Ross tied to the column nearest the altar. Ross opened his eyes, but his head swayed.
“Anne,” he said. “You’re alive.”
“Yes, Da,” she said, and tears spilled down her cheeks.
“You haven’t called me that since Edinburgh, since . . .”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“You put a gun to my head,” said Cat.
Ross swayed his head to look at him. “I was bluffing.”
“Cat, the knot!” Anne yelled.
Cat went to work on the knot. He poked and prodded it with the nail, but nothing pulled loose. At last he found a place that the nail could pierce through. He slid the nail in and lifted. He felt the pressur
e of a strand of rope and angled his hand enough so that he could pull. It came free. Cat grabbed the strand with his right hand and pulled like mad. The knot unraveled, and the ropes that bound his arms and shoulders loosened. In a moment, Cat was free.
He had Anne and her father untied a few moments later. He inspected Ross’s wound. “This doesn’t look good,” Cat whispered.
The sanctuary shook. Cat and Anne steadied themselves on a pillar.
“I’ll live,” said Ross, but his eyes looked weak.
“Okay, we’ll carry you.”
“Wait,” said Anne. “I think Thorne locked the door to the keep.
I heard it slam when he left.”
“I’ll check,” Cat said, and, jumping over fires and broken pews, he raced out of the sanctuary. He returned quickly. “You were right.
It’s locked. There’s no latch on this side, no way to open it.”
“How do we get out?” Anne looked around.
“Lay your father down. We’ll check all the rooms. There’s got to be another passage or door or something.”
Listening to the howling wind and intermittent rumbles from the mountain, Cat and Anne darted in and out of the small rooms on both sides of the sanctuary. They found the stairs leading to the second level and more rooms. But not one had an exterior door or a window.
They raced down to find Declan crawling across the floor.
“Father, what are you doing?” Anne cried. “Lie still!”
“Rope,” Ross said with a pained cough. “Like the treasure.”
“What?” Cat asked. But as he looked at the rope, he began to understand.
“Ah, he’s right!” Cat ran to the window. He saw the last of Thorne’s ships exiting the shards, and, down below, he saw the Robert Bruce, waiting. “We’ll lower your father down to the ship in one of the treasure baskets!” he yelled, and ran to the first basket.
Next, he combed through the pews and found a massive coil of rope. Realizing he still had the nail in his left hand, he dropped it into his pocket.
“Here!” he cried, and tossed one end of the rope and the basket to Anne. “Tie this end to the basket hoops!” He took the other end and ran to the pillar closest to the window. Around and over, back and through—twice more—and then he put a foot up on the column and pulled the end of the rope with all his might.
“Okay,” he said, “give me the basket!”
Cat ran to the window and tossed the basket out. He watched it plummet. Down it went, until, finally, the rope went taut. “NO!!”
Cat yelled. “It’s not long enough—not near long enough!”
“Oh no, Cat, what can . . . wait, what about these other pieces?”
She pointed to the pieces that Thorne’s men had used to tie them up. “Can we tie them to each other?”
“We could try,” Cat said doubtfully. “But rope this thick . . . it could slip, and then we’d all be dead.”
A large piece of rafter fell, crushing a pew beneath it. “We’ve got to do something!” Anne yelled.
Cat ran about the room looking for something, anything he could use to connect the strands of rope. He saw so many familiar faces among the fallen as he ran. Midge had been shot from behind by the look of it. And Caiman was half-buried in debris. Cat had to stay focused.
Anne fished up the basket. She untied the end from the basket loops and grabbed another section of the rope. It may not work, she thought, but she was surely going to try.
Cat looked into all the vaults. There were a few small daggers in one of them, but weapons were not what they needed. He charged up the altar and looked all around it. A tapestry on the wall might help. No, that would slip just like the rope. There was nothing he could use. He turned too quickly and slipped in the blood, almost falling. He looked down and saw one of the other nails, the one still stuck in the golden section of the rack. An image flooded into his mind. The Bruce that night in the crosscurrents. There was Ramiro barking orders. Enrique and Claudio shifting the bowsprit in the gooseneck. The gooseneck! As if in another life, Cat saw himself grabbing the tack pin off the deck and shoving it into the thread holes on the gooseneck. That’s when he knew what to do.
“Anne, I’ve got it!” he yelled. “Get me all the pieces of rope! Tie off the last piece to the treasure basket.”
Cat reached for the other nail, let it slide out into his pocket.
Then he banged the broken three-tiered rack against the side of one of the treasure vaults. That left him with three rectangular pieces of gold, each with three holes in it.
“Where’s the other nail?” he yelled.
“There,” Ross said. He pointed. Cat saw it half-buried in the debris of a broken pew. He grabbed the third nail and put it in his pocket as well. He took the gold tiers to the edge of one of the vaults and held half on the edge as he pushed down on the other half. The gold bent easily against the pressure, giving Cat a U-shaped piece of metal with a hole on the top and the bottom.
“Please, let this work,” he said. He found a piece of broken stone from one of the crushed treasure vaults. He grabbed one end of the rope, took out a nail, and aimed it in the center of the thick rope, far above its cut end. He slammed the stone down like a hammer and pierced the rope through. He yanked out the nail and did the same to one of the other pieces of rope. One last step, he thought.
He lined up the holes in the two pieces of rope with the guide holes in one of the bent pieces of gold, and hammered the nail through them all. Then he slammed the rock-hammer down on the end of the nail until it bent at a right angle. He gave a yank on the two rope ends, and it held.
With Anne’s help, he repeated the process twice more. At last, they had the rope reattached and at its longest possible reach. Cat ran with the basket to the window and slowly lowered it down.
The roof partially caved in. Anne shrieked. The fire spread across the floor. “Help me, Cat!” she screamed. “My father!”
Cat let the basket fall the rest of the way, not sure if it reached the Bruce or not. He helped Anne move Declan closer to the window, but the fire threatened to hem them in. Cat ran to the window and looked down. There was someone on the deck waving what looked like a flag. Cat hoisted up the long rope and found the old banner of the William Wallace, Ross’s beloved claymore and prowling wolf.
“It’s long enough!” Cat yelled. “It reaches the ship!” Cat touched the flag and smiled.
They carefully eased Declan Ross into the basket, but before they lowered him down, Cat ran up onto the altar. He wasn’t sure why he did it, but he grabbed the leather book that lay next to the wooden chest. Its cover was singed, but it looked mostly intact. He laid the volume on Declan’s chest and crossed the captain’s arms over the book.
Ever so slowly, they lowered Declan Ross back to his ship.
“You’re next,” he said to Anne. She might have once argued, but not now. She knew that Cat could climb the ropes better than she could. She would ride in the basket.
Cat held the basket tight near the window so that Anne could get in. “Ready?” he asked.
“Not yet,” she said. And shocking him completely, Anne leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Not bad for a pirate,” she said with a wink. Cat almost let go of the rope, but caught it just in time.
He winked back and lowered her down.
Once she was on the deck, Cat took a deep breath and began to slide over the side. “Wait!” came a voice from behind. From behind one of the columns walked a pale figure with wild, somewhat-singed hair.
“Jacques!” Cat yelled, and ran to the Frenchman.
“Oui,” he said, falling into Cat’s arms. “But I am not well.”
Cat pulled up the rope one last time. His arms burned as he lowered Jacques down to the deck. Then, with the roof caving in behind him, Cat climbed over the side, grabbed the rope, and began his descent. Cat slid down the rope a few yards and ducked as small pieces of debris came hurtling down. He waited a few beats and continued down the rope.
His arms ached, and each time the rope blew across the rockface, he had to brace himself to keep from slamming into the cliff. He passed the first nail joint, and then the second. He reached the third and stopped.
He looked at the nail joining the two pieces of rope. If it had not been for this nail and the other two, Cat knew he, Anne, and Captain Ross all would have died in the fires raging above. The rope, joined with these long nails, was a lifeline. But it was more than that. Cat thought about how the three nails had once been used for a completely different purpose.
Cat climbed back above the third nail-joint and wrapped his right arm in the rope. He began tugging on the nail-joint. He yanked at it with his left hand. Then he shoved it between his knees and tried to use his entire torso to separate the joint.
“What is he doing?” Nubby asked. “Is he stuck?”
“I don’t know,” said Anne. “Ramiro, keep the ship steady.”
“I’m trying, young miss. I’m trying. But the wind might have something to say about it.”
They watched Cat struggling on the rope. Then, to their horror, the entire rope fell. Cat plummeted toward the deck of the ship.
Anne closed her eyes. They heard a splash. Ramiro, Nubby, and Anne flew to the rail.
“Is someone going to help me up?” Cat asked. He floated in the midst of what looked like a mile of swirling rope.
48
THE SECOND MUTINY
Stede was now aboard the Raven, and they had sailed with all speed away from the shards. Thorne had given Stede plenty of work to do on deck. “Fix the jib sail! Tack that rope down! Fix the rail on the quarterdeck!” But Thorne hadn’t once let Stede out of his sight. Stede had heard the Raven’s quartermaster, Skellick, calling out distances. They were now just a dozen miles from the crosscurrents and the maelstrom of waves and sucking chasms. When we b’ getting to those outrageous waves, Stede thought bitterly, I b’ fixing this ship, all right.
Red Eye, who was on board one of Thorne’s galleons, and Jules, who was on a two-masted sloop, had the same idea.