Alex and the Ironic Gentleman

by Adrienne Kress

  It was a sight to behold. Gold and jewels glinted in the gleam of the torches, and the faces of the pirates twinkled in the reflected light. The chest was full to the top with doubloons and necklaces, the crowns of kings and the bracelets of mermaids. The wealth in that chest could buy five reasonable countries, and possibly ten unreasonable ones.

  “Incredible,” said Fenelle.

  “No. What’s incredible,” replied Boudicca, still inside the hole, “is that there are four more.”

  Alex looked over the side of the hole and was shocked to see she was right. Five chests full of the same treasure. You could purchase the world with that. There was nothing you couldn’t do, no person you couldn’t buy, thought Alex. She looked down at Steele and could tell she was thinking the same thing.

  The rest of the pirates may have been thinking the same thing, as well. They may also have been thinking, “Ooh shiny!” (In fact I can assure you that that was exactly what at least Jack was thinking.) But the general consensus was pure, unadulterated joy. Some began to decorate themselves in the jewelry, pointing and laughing at each other in glee. Others threw fistfuls of coins up in the air in celebration, taking no time to consider that it might hurt when they fell down again. And they hugged and danced and laughed and everyone was just so beyond happy that I am slightly sickened to describe it if I’m honest.

  Only one person sat almost perfectly still, just the slightest of motions revealed by the shifting glint on the ground from an apple-sized emerald. Alex watched Steele turn the jewel in her hand with such love, such devotion . . . And she asked herself why she, Alex Morningside, treasure seeker, did not share in the excitement of her fellow pirates. Surely this was the moment she had been waiting for all this time. Surely this was the moment she should be happiest.

  But she wasn’t.

  “Okay,” Steele finally said, returning the emerald to its chest. “Okay. Let’s get it back to the ship.”

  And that bit, the getting it back to the ship part, I just don’t much feel like telling you about, because it was a long, tedious process due to the trunks being unbelievably heavy and the forest being unbelievably thick. But let’s just say that they did get it back to the sandy beach where the longboat was waiting. And let’s just say that they camped out there for the night and that they all fell into a deep sleep, exhausted from the day’s events. And let’s just say that when they awoke the next morning, the treasure was gone.

  THE FORTY-SECOND CHAPTER

  In which Alex has a revelation.

  Alex didn’t know the treasure had vanished. Like everyone else, she had been asleep when it had happened. She had been having a very unsettling dream about being tried and convicted as a pirate, then strung up on the gallows, which she supposed had something to do with the fact that her subconscious was not thrilled with her decision-making of late. So it was a great surprise to her when a bucket of water was thrown in her face as a wake-up call.

  “What the . . . ,” she sputtered, sitting up.

  “Where is it!” screamed Steele, lifting Alex onto her feet and then throwing her back down across the sand.

  “What the . . .” repeated Alex, this time trying to spit the sand out of her mouth. She winced, having landed rather painfully on her side.

  Steele approached and towered over her, her long leather jacket blowing in the wind. Alex shielded her eyes and looked into her face. Or rather where her face would have been had it not been eclipsed by the barrel of Steele’s pistol.

  “Captain,” said Alex, holding her hand in front of her, “please, what’s happened?” Her heart was in her throat.

  “What have you done with it?” asked Steele coldly, cocking her gun.

  “What do you mean? I don’t know what you mean,” insisted Alex.

  Steele bent down and grabbed her chin, violently twisting Alex’s head to the side. Alex tried to figure out what it was she was meant to see. As it stood, she was staring down toward where the sand met the water, and beyond, at the softly swaying Ironic Gentleman some leagues off. It must have still been early morning as the air was extremely fresh and the light extremely clear. But what she was supposed to see, in her groggy state, she hadn’t the faintest.

  “I don’t understand,” said Alex meekly, hoping that Steele would relax her grip ever so slightly. It was not to be.

  “Notice anything missing?” asked Steele, squeezing harder, her nails digging into Alex’s skin.

  Her brain, which had up until then still been in the shower, toweled off and joined her on the beach. It whispered a tiny thought to her and then went to dry its hair. “The treasure,” realized Alex. “It’s not there.”

  Steele released her face, and Alex massaged it gently. “Very good. Very good.”

  Alex rubbed her eyes. “The treasure’s gone.” She didn’t understand, she couldn’t believe it. But the horror of the moment had finally dawned on her. Alex kept staring at where the treasure had been so carefully placed, and then she noticed the lifeless body of Boudicca lying nearby.

  “What happened to Boudicca?”

  “She fell asleep on guard duty, she had to be punished,” replied Steele, standing upright again.

  “You mean you did that?” First Whippet, now Boudicca. Alex was seriously reconsidering her decision to become a pirate.

  “And you’ll be next if you don’t tell me what you’ve done with the treasure.”

  Alex stood up carefully and looked Steele in the eye.

  “Why on earth would you think I had it?” she asked.

  “Because I don’t trust you. Because you could very well be working for that Mr. Underwood of yours. Because you want that treasure as much as I do. I saw it in your eyes last night when it was unearthed. Now where is it?”

  “This is absurd!” laughed Alex. “Even if I wanted to steal it from you, look at me. Do you honestly think I could physically move those trunks? And where could I have possibly put them? In my pocket?”

  “That’s what I’ve been asking you!” screamed Steele in her face, spit flying in Alex’s eye. She made a violent gesture, and Alex was grabbed by Jack and carried back to the longboat. “When we get back to the ship, I’ll give you half an hour to think it over. And if at the end you still refuse to cooperate, I will have no choice but to do whatever it takes to pry that information out of you, no matter how unpleasant!”

  They made their way back to the ship at a furious pace, and Alex was thrown back into the hold, somewhere she hadn’t been in a long time. She had quite forgotten how horrible it was.

  Alex was appalled. She stood facing the bars of her cage. Steele wasn’t the only one befuddled by the whole missing treasure thing. Alex couldn’t for the life of her imagine what the heck had happened to it. It couldn’t have floated out to sea; it was far too heavy. It was more of a mystery than finding the treasure in the first place. She also felt a bit like a fool. The romance of being a pirate, the training, the treasure hunting, was starting to fade in the light of the harsh reality of the casual murder she had encountered along with Steele’s white-hot rage. Suddenly Alex realized very clearly that, while it was all well and good to create your own rules and follow those, it was quite another when the rules constantly changed. When the rule-maker was also judge and jury. And executioner. Piracy was a ridiculous, violent option. And she didn’t want to have anything to do with it anymore.

  And then she heard a familiar voice.

  “Alex?”

  She was surprised at how often she was capable of forgetting Mr. Underwood. Surprised and ashamed. What sort of friend was she? The worst kind. She was no better than Coriander.

  “Don’t talk to me,” she said pathetically. She wasn’t worth the effort, she realized. She should just let Steele kill her and get it done with.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said, his voice hoarse and sad.

  “Please don’t. I’m a horrible person. Please don’t.”

  “Alex.”

  “I said, don’t!”

&
nbsp; Her words rang out in the air and there was a long silence. Then Mr. Underwood spoke again.

  “There was a man here for a while,” he said, “named Cumin . . .”

  “Coriander,” replied Alex automatically.

  “That’s it. He wasn’t well, very sick; they were starving him, I think. I’m afraid, well, I’m afraid he died yesterday. But he wanted me to tell you something. He wanted me to tell you that he was sorry. He wouldn’t say what for, only that you would understand and that he hoped someday that you would forgive him.”

  Poor foolish Coriander, thought Alex, poor foolish man. Of course she forgave him; there never was really any question of that. She began to cry. She cried for Coriander. She cried for Whippet and Boudicca. She cried for Giggles and the crew of HMS Valiant. And she cried for her uncle. Oh, how hard she cried for that man with the tiny spectacles and the nicely pressed suits with brown shoes and his long, white beard. She cried harder than she ever had in her short life, and she knew that she would never stop. She would cry forever and ever, until Steele put her out of her misery.

  “Alex,” pleaded Mr. Underwood softly, “Alex, don’t cry, I can’t bear it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for everything. Everything is my fault. I am so sorry, please, please . . . ,” she begged, addressing not Mr. Underwood, but something else, she didn’t know what. “Please, I am so very sorry.” And she collapsed under the weight of her sadness.

  She wept like this for the full half hour Steele had given her, and when the Pirate Captain came, she found Alex curled in a little ball on the floor.

  “Feeling sorry for lying to me?” asked Steele.

  “Leave her alone,” commanded Mr. Underwood softly.

  Steele turned to the dark. “What, in the same way you have?”

  “If you hurt her, I swear . . .”

  But Steele just laughed. “Oh, Mr. Underwood, please. Don’t start trying on some noble mantle. It just looks ridiculous on you.”

  “You will regret it. If you take her to visit that . . .”

  “It’s okay, Mr. Underwood.” Alex looked up and, with a sniff, staggered upright to meet Steele. “I don’t know where the treasure is. Kill me if you have to, but I don’t know where it is.”

  Steele leaned close to Alex and smiled coldly. “Oh, I will.”

  She made a signal and Jack unlocked Alex’s cage. “But first we need to get that information out of you.” And she placed a hand on Alex’s cheek, wiping away a tear with her thumb. Guiding Alex out of her cage, Steele walked her along the dark of the hold. As she handed her over to Jack, she said, “Tell me, Alex, when was the last time you had a doctor’s appointment?”

  THE PENULTIMATE CHAPTER

  In which everything comes to a head.

  Alex had not yet been to the surgery, which was safely hidden in a part of the hold far away from the prison. She didn’t much like what she was looking at. The place was lit by a single lamp dangling above a rough wooden plank covered with a white sheet. Or at least what at one time had been a white sheet, the stains on it masking any evidence of its earlier days. Framing it on three sides were three teetering cabinets full of foul-looking medicines and other, stranger, things, like the ear of a fox and the toenail of a Zamboni driver.

  Jack dropped Alex down on the sheet-covered plank and stepped to her right-hand side, scratching his nose. She lay there obligingly, her sadness weighing her down better than any restraints. She didn’t really know what he was waiting for until she saw the familiar large outline of Dr. Brunswick facing the far wall. What he was doing, she couldn’t tell, but she had a distinct suspicion it wasn’t pleasant.

  “Hello there, Alex,” he said without turning around. He picked up something silver that glinted momentarily in the light of the lamp and then vanished as it fell with a crash to the floor. “Blast!” He picked up the object with a jerk. “Butter-fingers,” he muttered to himself.

  “Butterfingers!” giggled Jack.

  “Shut up! Just shut up!” the doctor yelled at him, before turning to look at Alex. Even though he wore a surgeon’s mask covering both his mouth and nose, Alex could tell by the creases around his eyes that he was smiling apologetically. He approached her left side and looked down at her through his monocle.

  “Being this big, sometimes I don’t always have control over my body. Always falling over things, dropping things. Makes me really mad, so I’m sorry for the outburst. Anyway, I understand you have been rather difficult with the Captain, little Alex,” he said, standing upright. “And it is my job to teach you about sharing. Kids should always know about sharing.” Dr. Brunswick extended his hand over Alex, and Jack passed him a pair of surgical gloves. He deftly put them on, snapping the base of each one on his wrist with a resounding crack. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flashlight. Holding Alex’s face roughly, he examined her eyes, ears, and throat, then turned off the flashlight and placed it back in his pocket.

  “You’re in excellent health, which is important. I hate working with the sick; it’s disgusting.”

  Alex suddenly felt her despair slowly morph into terror as she watched Dr. Brunswick roll over a small table on which sat a dozen or so very unpleasant-looking implements, sort of miniature versions of what they had unearthed the treasure with the night before. She tried to sit up, but Jack pushed her down by her shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dr. Brunswick, “I know this is a pirate ship, but I do keep all my instruments sterilized. You’ll have very little risk of infection.”

  “Dr. Brunswick?” squeaked Alex.

  “Yes?” he said, examining a long blade with serrated edges.

  “What exactly are your intentions?”

  “My intentions? It’s not about my intentions, but yours. Do you intend to tell us the truth?”

  “Of course!”

  “Well then . . . why don’t you start by revealing where you’ve put the treasure?”

  “But I haven’t done anything with the treasure! I haven’t touched the treasure,” Alex insisted.

  “I’m afraid that’s not good enough,” replied Dr. Brunswick. He picked up an instrument that looked like a small trident and nodded. “This will do nicely.”

  He looked carefully at Alex and bent over her, thinking hard and touching the tip of the trident with his forefinger. “I think,” he said, “I think as long as you stay very still . . .” And he lowered it in the general direction of her left eye, his hand shaking.

  There was a blood-curdling scream. Not from Alex. Nor from Dr. Brunswick or even Jack. The scream had come from somewhere on deck. Both of the pirates stood upright and looked at each other. Without pause, Jack raced out of the room, and Dr. Brunswick quickly followed behind, grabbing his sword off the wall and knocking over his table of instruments as he did so.

  The terror from just a few seconds earlier lingered on, and Alex lay still for a few moments watching the lamp sway overhead. She couldn’t believe it. Never in her wildest dreams could she have thought she would ever have been in such a perilous position. She ran through a list of everything she had been through since the day at the house on the hill, and a cold shiver ran up her spine. When she thought about it, it was truly a miracle that she had gotten this far unscathed. And it was nothing but luck that had saved her now, dumb blind luck.

  She finally sat up. The sounds on deck were fierce, but difficult to place. If she had thought it possible, she would have guessed the Valiant had returned and had attacked the Ironic Gentleman. But it didn’t sound like a battle. There was only one way to find out what was going on.

  Alex slid off the table onto her feet and started to move toward the stairs, when she heard a low growl. She took a few steps back into the surgery, and following her into the light was that monster of a dog, Walter, baring his teeth in her direction. Which could only mean one thing. One incredibly terrifying, horrific thing.

  The prospect of being tortured had been truly frightening. To descr
ibe how frightened she had been would only in turn make you, dear reader, equally frightened. Which is why I didn’t. And which is even more why I won’t describe how she felt when she realized she was alone in a small enclosed space with Senseless, something that scared her more than any strange, small, sharp object held in the hand of a clumsy, maniacal doctor.

  “You’ll never guess what’s going on up there,” whispered Senseless as he entered the room.

  Alex slowly tried to inch away from him, but she found herself with the table at her back.

  “Your sixth-grade teacher has decided to take on the entire crew of the Ironic Gentleman.” He slowly approached her, and she could feel Walter drooling on her foot. “Which is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” He paused for a moment and then laughed quietly to himself. “Or not,” he added.

  Alex looked at Senseless. She couldn’t speak for fear.

  “In a matter of minutes, he’ll be dead. The Captain is very unhappy at the moment . . . I doubt she’s in a merciful frame of mind. I must admit I certainly am not.” There was the sound of metal scraping metal, and Alex found herself staring at the tip of his sword. Light from the lamp slid down the true edge.

  With great effort Alex managed the barely audible whisper, “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t like children. I don’t see their purpose. And as far as I’m concerned you’ve more than served yours. Enough with this stalling. Let’s just be rid of you.”

  Alex’s whole body began to shake. She listened intently to the noise upstairs. Was it possible that Mr. Underwood was up there taking on the pirates? It seemed rather unlikely. Nonetheless, the possibility had stoked the flame of hope in her, a flame that had all but burned out.