Calmly, with practiced care, Burleigh raised his pistol, adjusted his angle, and pulled the trigger. The pistol kicked back with a reassuring clap and the ball sped to its mark. A sailor high in the rigging dropped his weapon and made a futile grab for the rope; then, one hand clutching his chest, the other flailing wildly, he dropped like a stone released from the rigging. His two comrades skittered down the webbing to safety. Burleigh saw his victim plummet, but no more, for the earl, ignoring the fire in his leg, was already running to Farrell’s aid.
“What are you doing here?” shouted the captain. “Get back to the bow gun!”
“You need help,” answered Burleigh, and began striking at the thick rope with quick slashing blows of the cutlass. The braided hemp resisted his first attempts, but then the sharp blade bit, fraying a little more with every strike. Again and again the blades rose and fell as the two men struggled to free the hook—and were about to succeed when out from behind the hatch housing came five enemy sailors, yelling, waving sabres and cutlasses. Burleigh gave a last swipe at the hawser and then turned his attention to the attackers as the first came scrambling up, his voice and cutlass raised.
The Frenchman leapt forward, leaning out over the rail across the gap separating the two ships, slashing wildly—not so much to wound as to keep Farrell and Burleigh away from the heavy grappling rope. Burleigh met the thrust of his assailant’s broad blade with a sharp, downward parry, knocking the weapon aside. Two more blades instantly took its place as more sailors swarmed the rail, each one stretching, thrusting, jabbing in a frenzied effort to reach the lone defenders.
“Get you down, Captain!” shouted Henderson from the stern.
“Down!” shouted Farrell, pulling Burleigh to the deck beside him. “Cover your head.”
The earl had time only to throw his free arm over his head when the stern gun gave out its strident clap. Bits of wood and rope showered over them. Farrell jumped to his feet. The attacking sailors were gone, and so was the grappling hook. “We’re free!” he shouted. “Now the bow hook!”
Burleigh pushed himself up on his hands and knees and with some difficulty got his good leg under him. The captain, already dashing for the bow, glanced back and, seeing the earl struggling to stand, ran to take his arm and bear him to his feet. “You’re wounded. Sit you down.”
“It is nothing. Go! I am behind you.”
Just as they reached the bow, enemy sailors came swarming across the deck of the schooner; several had pistols and fired across the rail at the running men. Farrell and Burleigh hit the deck and hid below the gunwale as shot peppered the deck and hatch housing around them. Thoms at the bow gun returned fire.
The pirates scattered and Thoms reloaded. Burleigh and the captain dived for the grappling hook secured to the bow rail and commenced hacking at the rope with their blades. Gunfire resumed. Shot spattered around them, and once more they ducked below the gunwale to wait for the shooters to reload.
Thoms hit the deck too, but an errant ball caught him on the way down. “Ah!” he cried as he fell. “I am shot!”
Farrell swam on his belly across the deck to the stricken gunner. Thoms, clutching his side, squirmed in pain.
“Easy, now,” Farrell told him. “Let me see it.” He pulled the seaman’s bloody hands from the wound and lifted his shirt. “You’re creased bad, Mr. Thoms,” he announced. “We’ll get you below as soon as we’ve cleared the bow line.” Whirling around, he shouted to Burleigh, “See to the grapple, sir! I will man the gun.”
The captain leapt up and primed the cannon as Burleigh hacked at the heavy rope once more. The strands gave way with maddening reluctance, but the captain kept the enemy sailors at bay by waving the bow cannon at them whenever they showed their heads above the rail.
Chopping like a lumberjack, the cutlass gripped in both hands, his arm rising and falling until his muscles burned, Burleigh at last succeeded in sawing his way through the hawser. “It is free!” he shouted. “The grapple is clear!”
“Well done!” cried Farrell. “Take over the gun!”
As Burleigh joined him at the cannon, the captain cried to his crewmen, “I need a gunhand here!”
“I’ll do it,” said Burleigh.
“You know how to charge a gun?”
“I have seen it done,” replied Burleigh, limping to the swivel.
“Those go in first and get rammed down hard.” The captain pointed to the powder charges. “The ball goes in after. Aim high as the ball falls off sharp.” He thrust a hand at the sail. “I’ll get the sail up and see if I can give us some distance.”
As Farrell darted off, an explosion rocked the Percheron, causing the deck to bounce and almost throwing Burleigh off his feet. He grabbed the rail and held on. Smoke billowed up from the hull in front of him. It was impossible to tell what had happened, but he heard shouting and the cries of wounded men.
Suddenly smoke was everywhere, boiling up out of the hatch behind him—and also from the forward hatch of the schooner. There were more shouts . . . followed by screams. Enemy seamen appeared on the schooner’s deck, boiling up from the companionway, trailing smoke. One seaman’s trouser leg was on fire, and he wailed in panic until one of his mates knocked him to the deck and threw sand from a canvas bucket over the flames. The others, waving sabres and cutlasses, stormed the bow where the ships were still close, shouting as they came; two of them climbed onto the rail and assayed a leap across the gap separating the two ships.
Burleigh fired the bow cannon. He missed the men but struck the webbing and brought down a tangle of rope and several blocks. He swivelled the gun and fell to reloading.
“Haul mainsail!” shouted Captain Farrell from the wheelhouse. Two crewmen ran to the capstan and began pulling the rope; the slack sail grew taut, caught the wind, rippled, and filled. The Percheron dipped a little and slowly began to move.
By the time the earl had the gun recharged and loaded, the gap separating the ships had grown to a dozen metres. The sails swelled and the prow bit into the oncoming waves as the captain brought the bow around. The distance between the two ships yawned and widened, and soon it was clear they were leaving the enemy vessel behind. Sporadic gunfire still rang from the schooner. Burleigh aimed a last shot at the schooner’s helm and watched as the ball struck the deck, bounced, and caromed into a stack of barrels.
The Percheron gained speed, and the schooner receded. Smoke still hung in wispy tatters over the deck and in the rigging of the pirate ship, and some of the sailors stood at the rail watching their prize slip away. Burleigh raised his fist and shook it in their faces, then abandoned his gun and turned to help the wounded Thoms, who had dragged himself across the deck and was sitting against the forward hatch housing, his face blanched white as the sail canvas above his head.
The earl shouted for help, then fell back onto the deck, exhausted, his leg throbbing with pain.
It was almost dark by the time they entered the harbour mouth at Cape Trafalgar. Captain Farrell had run up the distress signal to enable swift passage and get help for Burleigh, Thoms, and O’Brien—another sailor injured by flying shrapnel when a lucky shot ignited the schooner’s powder magazine. As the ship made its way into the bay, the high bluffs blushed with a ruddy purple glow. Never had Burleigh been so glad to see land, nor was he alone. Several of the men cheered when the harbourmaster sent out a launch to meet them and take the wounded to the port infirmary.
Burleigh, his own wound cleaned and bandaged, refused to leave the ship until he had spoken to the harbourmaster. “That was well done, Mr. Farrell,” Burleigh said, watching the sailors being carried down the gangplank. “I salute you, Captain, and I intend to make a full report of the day’s events to the authorities. Your bravery and that of your crew is exemplary and will not go unrewarded.”
“All in a day’s work, sir,” replied the captain. “As a wise man once said—all’s well that ends well. But we may be some time delayed, for it is my opinion that we must lay up here for re
pairs. It is a fair port and well-provisioned town. We might make Tarquinia in any case, but I think it best to see the ship right and give the wounded a chance to get back on their sea legs.”
“I yield to your counsel, Mr. Farrell. Take all the time you need.” Burleigh considered the generous harbour and the prosperous town rising on the hills above the bay and added, “I might as well tell you now—we are not going to Tarquinia, or Ostia.”
“No, sir?” The captain turned, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Where then, if I may be so bold?”
“China, Mr. Farrell,” Burleigh told him. “We must prepare for a lengthy voyage, for we are bound for the South China Sea.”
PART FOUR
The Harrowing
CHAPTER 22
In Which Exploding Stars Are Harnessed
Oh, come on!” protested Kit. “It is plain as paint what happened here—Haven has stolen the book and absconded.”
“And Giles?” wondered Mina. “What about him?”
“She took him with her, of course,” insisted Kit. “Who knows what she told him—some lie or other to get him to help her and keep it quiet.”
“How would she even know where to look?”
“She searched the room, obviously.” He thrust an accusatory finger at the chest standing open at the foot of his bed. His few items of clothing were tossed and rumpled—as if they had been rummaged through and then carelessly put back. “It wasn’t difficult, was it—I mean, it’s not as if there is a ton of stuff in here.”
They were standing at the doorway to the upper room Kit and Gianni shared in the Grand Imperial. Kit had returned from a cruise around the marketplace to find the wooden chest where he kept his few belongings ransacked. He glanced at Gianni standing in the doorway, and then at Wilhelmina beside him, willing them to believe the evidence before their eyes. “The book was there, and now it isn’t. Haven was here, and now she’s gone. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” allowed Mina. “I just don’t want to rush to any hasty conclusions. Let’s wait and see.”
“Fine. Whatever. But the fact remains—the book is gone. So what are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t see anything we can do about it.”
“This book,” interrupted Gianni. “It is the same one you showed us, yes? You believe it may contain the key to the map. How did you come to possess this book? Explain, please.”
“As I mentioned before, it is Sir Henry Fayth’s personal journal,” sighed Kit. “In its pages, Sir Henry recorded all his thoughts, speculations, and discoveries concerning ley lines and ley travel. Haven and I found the book in his study when he and Cosimo went missing. I’ve read it a couple times, or tried to, and to tell the truth I didn’t understand most of it. But I think now that it might contain the information we need to help decipher the map. I was hoping that by putting the book and map together we could—” Kit broke off as a sudden thought occurred to him. He turned to Wilhelmina. “You do still have the map? Tell me you have it.”
“Don’t worry.”
“I think we should check just to be sure,” Kit insisted. “Haven is a devious, two-faced schemer, and if she’s got her claws into that map—”
“Kit, it is safe. Relax.”
“Go check.”
“I have it under lock and key.”
“I want to see the map right now.”
“Oh, all right,” Mina relented, “if it’ll shut you up.”
“We’ll all go. Where is it?”
“If I showed you where it was, it wouldn’t be secret anymore, would it?” she countered. “You two wait here—I’ll be right back.”
Wilhelmina scurried off down the corridor, and Kit returned to his survey of what he now considered the scene of the crime. “I know Haven took the green book,” Kit said, returning to his current preoccupation. “She resented me having it in the first place.”
“Why would she take it and run away?” asked Gianni. “Why not simply ask you for it?”
“Her ladyship is a law unto herself,” replied Kit, bitterness creeping into his tone. “She does what she does for her own reasons and without regard for anyone else.”
Gianni offered a sympathetic nod. “The world is only too full of such people.”
Mina reappeared a few moments later with reassurances that, yes, their portion of the Skin Map was still safe and secure, along with the copy they had made. “Everything’s okay,” she told Kit. “All right? I’ve got a shop to run, so why don’t you two go find something to do for now, and we’ll all sit down later and discuss what to do about this.”
“Are you trying to get rid of us?” asked Kit.
Mina was already moving through the door. “Something like that.”
“I can tell when I’m not wanted,” muttered Kit. “Come on, Gianni. Let’s go grab a cup of coffee. We need to talk about our expedition to the Stone Age and what to do about that tree when we get there.”
The priest demurred. “Nothing would delight me more—however, I must go see the potter before the market ends.”
Kit, already royally cheesed off, rolled his eyes in disbelief. “Am I the only one anxious to get back to the chase?”
“Very sorry,” said Gianni. “But today is the only day when the potter comes to market. I have made arrangements to meet him.”
“Right. On your bike, then,” replied Kit. “See you later.” They parted company and Kit stuffed his belongings back into the chest, closed it, and kicked it back into place. Then he wandered downstairs to the main dining room of the coffeehouse. There were a few black-coated, bushy-bearded businessmen lining the benches against the back wall; they spoke in low tones and sipped their coffee from their own personal mugs, which Wilhelmina reserved for them. Three stately matrons with elaborately curled hair and satin dresses in green and blue occupied a table beneath the windows where the light was better and where they were sure to notice, and be noticed by, the passing foot traffic.
The afternoon trade had dwindled and the early evening crowd had yet to arrive, so the shop was relatively quiet—save for the clatter of pans and trays that emanated from the kitchen where Etzel and his helpers laboured to fill the void created in their stock of pastries by discerning palates. Dismissing the coffee idea, Kit decided instead to go see how Cass was getting along with the testing.
Leaving the Grand Imperial, he struck out across the market square. The buying and bartering were still in full cry, the square thronging with merchants in their stalls and shoppers cramming the narrow aisles. Wilhelmina had arranged for Cass to stay in a rented room above the Apoteke. Kit entered and called a greeting to Anya, the apothecary, a substantial widow who had worked the shop alone since the death of her husband years ago. “Guten Tag!” he chimed, raising a finger skyward. She nodded and he made his way upstairs.
Cass had set up a rudimentary lab on a cleared table she had moved to the bright space beneath the only window in the room. She was at work, humming to herself. The sight of her cheered him unexpectedly, and the sound of her soft, throaty singing charmed him. Pausing in the doorway, he allowed himself a second or two to savour the moment before knocking on the doorframe.
“Hey there!” he called. “How goes the battle?”
“Oh, hi, Kit,” she replied, glancing quickly over her shoulder with a smile before turning back to the table. “Come on in and see for yourself.”
In an effort to determine the identity of the mystery material that animated the shadow lamps, Cassandra had cracked open the shell of Kit’s ruined device. “You can tell a lot about composition from the residue left behind when things burn out,” she explained. “Ashes of all kinds have a chemical signature.”
Kit nodded appreciatively. “What can you tell from this?” he asked, peering over her shoulder at what looked like an open clam-shell made of brass.
“Nothing much yet. My equipment is not exactly state-of-the-art.”
Cass had spread a clean whit
e handkerchief on the table where the halves of the defunct ley lamp revealed a fairly simple internal mechanism—surprisingly simple, in fact. The guts of the gizmo seemed to consist almost entirely of a single large chamber containing the activating substance with smaller individual channels radiating out to the holes in the carapace from which the lights emanated. There were two or three other, much smaller compartments—it was difficult to say exactly because of the melting that had occurred during the power surge—as well as the remnants of a mechanism containing a spring, some baffles and channels, and what looked like a tiny bellows or diaphragm.
“Tell me again how this meltdown happened,” said Cass. Using a large, curved upholstery needle with a flattened point, she carefully picked at a globule of molten stuff in the main chamber, scraping the charred, black remains into a neat little pile.
“We were in the Stone Age land I was telling you about,” began Kit. “I wanted to show Mina and Brother Lazarus the Bone House, but instead—”
“The Bone House,” murmured Cass, craning her neck to see him. “It sounds so . . . so Palaeolithic. Describe it for me.”
“Well, it was the middle of winter. One day some of the younger men of River City Clan invited me to go out with them into the forest where they were building this amazing little hut—sort of like an igloo, but made entirely out of the bones of all these creatures—bison and rhinos and mammoths and elks, everything. The bones were gathered from a heap at the bottom of a cliff—”
“A kill zone,” surmised Cass. “Some native tribes were known to do the same thing—chase animals off a cliff. It’s a very efficient way to get meat.”
Kit nodded. “So we pulled all these bones and antlers and skulls and things from the pile and dragged them to a clearing deep in the woods. I didn’t know it then, but they were constructing this little hut right on top of a ley portal. The Old One—surely I mentioned him, didn’t I? The clan chief ? En-Ul was his name, and when the Bone House was finished, he crawled in and went into some kind of sleeping trance, or deep meditation, or I don’t know what. Dreaming Time, he called it.”
The Shadow Lamp Page 19
