Call of the Wraith

by Kevin Sands

  “Two inches and you’d be dead.”

  I didn’t think I wanted to know any more.

  Tom, as usual, fared the best of us. Though his ankle swelled so badly it was two days before he could put any weight on it, none of his bones were broken, so in a couple of weeks, he’d be fully healed.

  Fortunately, we wouldn’t have to walk anywhere for a while. With the English children returned to their families, we’d be leaving Seaton, once again on the conscripted Manticore. The plan was to sail to Southampton; from there, Lord Ashcombe would send the Dutch children on to the Netherlands, while we rode in a carriage back to Oxford. The day we left, Robert and Wise came to see us off.

  “Thank you,” I said, “Thank you both. Robert, you took me in and kept me safe. And Wise . . .”

  He waved away my thanks.

  “No,” I said. “I know how scared you were. To face down Barbary pirates, after what they did to you . . . not many men would have had that kind of courage. You saved us. You saved the children. I’ll always be grateful.”

  Wise touched his hand to his heart, then held it out to me.

  “He says—” Robert began.

  “I know,” I said, and I hugged them both. “I understand every word.”

  • • •

  The night before we left, I didn’t sleep. I didn’t want to. I was afraid.

  Everyone had paid for their crimes: the Darcys by their own hands; the pirates by ours. The White Lady, Sybil as a witch, Sir Edmund as witchfinder . . . all had been exposed as lies. Fear had ruled these hills—had ruled me, too. Fear, played upon and used, a weapon for the wicked to corrupt the truth. It made me wonder: What other things, too, might be false?

  The storm. Was it really the work of evil, or just a storm? My memories. Had they fallen prey to the Raven’s hand, or were they simply taken by an illness?

  My master had never taught me of such an affliction. Yet he had taught me that, just because I’ve never seen a thing, doesn’t mean it cannot be.

  And my dreams. Was the Raven really visiting me, or were they just dreams?

  Just dreams, I told myself.

  So why was I so afraid to sleep?

  I closed my eyes, and in my mind I stood frozen in the icy plain, the hollow black bird above me.

  I know you, I said. I know you now. You are nothing but a dream.

  The Raven turned to look at me. His eyes glittered, pulling me inside his malevolent mind. And there I heard his voice—not in my dreams, but awake.

  DO YOU THINK THAT WILL SAVE YOU

  ?

  I opened my eyes, trembling. The fire burned low in the hearth, and its flickering shadows looked like wings. I was awake. I had to be awake. But I could still hear that terrible voice. It taunted me, corrupting my master’s words.

  I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS

  it said.

  “Go away,” I whispered

  and I sat alone in my bed. Tom lay asleep by the fire, Katrijn curled, dozing, on his back.

  My friends. Tom. Sally. Even little Katrijn. They’d stood by me when I’d thought I’d lost everything. They’d nearly died because of me.

  “It’ll be safer,” I whispered, “if I leave. Then the Raven won’t come after you. Then he might leave you alone.”

  Tom spoke, startling me. “I found you once,” he said quietly. “I can do it again.”

  I guess he was awake after all. “If you stay with me,” I said, “you’ll die.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. I told you: We’re friends forever.” He paused. “It’s easy to be brave in a nice warm room, isn’t it?”

  “Tom—”

  “Go to sleep, Christopher.”

  But I couldn’t. My friends had already been taken from me once. This time, I got them back. The next time, if the Raven came for them, there wouldn’t be any return.

  I couldn’t let that happen. If we were going to stop him, we needed to do what he didn’t expect: Take the fight to him. And we couldn’t do that by ourselves. We needed the help of everyone we knew.

  No more hiding, no more secrets. It was time for the truth.

  I waited until Tom was asleep—really asleep, this time—then crept from my room. I went down the hall, to where two of the King’s Men stood guard. Though the hour was late, Lord Ashcombe was still awake, poring over reports at his desk in the candlelight.

  He looked up as I closed the door behind me. If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t say so. He just regarded me for a moment. Then he motioned to the chair by the fire.

  I took it. He waited. And we sat there, in silence, until I spoke.

  “I need to tell you a story,” I said.

  • • •

  We rode the waves back to Southampton, Bridget flying overhead. I had all my memories now, including the terrifying moment I’d been thrown into the sea. That fear returned as the boat bobbed on the water.

  I was tired, so tired, of being afraid. So I forced myself to stand at the prow, next to the figurehead of the manticore. I trembled, hands gripping the rail, sweat running down my face, but there I stood, and there I remained. I won’t let you rule me, I said to the sea, and I thought I could see Master Benedict smile.

  Tom, Sally, and Katrijn, all fighting their own fears, stood with me. We felt the salty chill of the water’s spray.

  “Oh, look,” a voice grumbled. “It’s the source of my misery.”

  We turned. Captain Haddock lumbered toward us, looking dreadfully unhappy.

  “What’s the matter, Captain?” I said.

  “Do you know what your grandfather ordered? He’s making me take the children back to the Netherlands.”

  “Surely you wouldn’t want them abandoned?” Sally said.

  “Of course not. But why does it have to be me? Does the marquess not know what I do for a living?”

  “He already sent a message to their king,” I said. “Their navy has orders not to attack you.”

  “That’s not the point. I take things from the Dutch. I don’t return them.” He looked at me sorrowfully. “Your grandfather’s a hard man.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Probably not,” he admitted.

  I told him anyway. “Lord Ashcombe’s not really my grandfather. I’m not even a baron. My name is Christopher Rowe, and I’m an apothecary’s apprentice. I only pretended to be an Ashcombe so people would help me.”

  He stared at me. “By Neptune’s crusted . . . you tricked me!”

  “Sorry.”

  “You deceitful . . . little . . .” He thought about it. “Do you want a job?”

  “Me? On the Manticore? As a pirate?”

  “I’m a privateer,” he said testily. “And I could use an apothecary. Especially one that lies so well.”

  I shuddered at the thought. “Thank you, Captain, but no. I don’t think the sea life is for me.”

  “How can anyone not want to live out here?”

  “The ocean tried to drown me,” I pointed out.

  “That’s just her way of saying she loves you.”

  I shook my head. “I already have Bridget. If I need any more love, I’ll get a dog.”

  • • •

  We disembarked at Southampton. Captain Haddock looked at us forlornly, hoping Lord Ashcombe would change his mind about sending him to the Netherlands. He didn’t. The captain’s eyes did light up, though, as his men carried a fresh crate of rum up the gangplank.

  Tom and Katrijn clung to each other, until the Manticore could wait no longer. They spoke in quiet voices, and I supposed it didn’t matter that they couldn’t understand each other’s language. Sometimes, the words themselves are the least important things to say.

  We stayed on the dock, watched the Manticore sail away. The children waved at us from the rail—except for Katrijn. She just watched Tom, and he watched her back, until the ship disappeared beyond the waves.

  I stood by his side. “Are you
all right?”

  “Can we go home now?” he said. “I think I’d like to go home.”

  I slung my arm around him and walked him to the carriage.

  A FEW MATTERS OF HISTORICAL NOTE

  The 1600s were the peak of witchcraft hysteria. Starting with the very first witch trial (in Ireland, in 1324), the next five centuries would see an estimated 100,000 people across Europe tried for malevolent sorcery.

  Our stereotypical image of a witch is a woman living in isolated poverty, and there is some reason for this: the poor were far more likely to be convicted, and the majority of the accused were female. In truth, however, anyone could have been charged. One-quarter of all accused witches were male, and in countries such as France, Russia, Finland, Iceland, and Estonia, the majority of the defendants were men. Age was no barrier, either; in the Salem, Massachusetts, witch trials of 1692, four-year-old Dorothy Good was arrested and imprisoned for nearly nine months.

  The trials themselves were terrible affairs, full of fear, confusion, and sometimes outright lies. Around half of all trials ended in execution (strangulation was the most common punishment in England, not burning, as is commonly believed). Even at the time, however, there were protests against the unfairness of the trials, and by the 1700s witch hunting was viewed with deep skepticism. In England, the Witchcraft Act of 1735 put an end to legal witch trials for good.

  Superstitions die hard, however, and there remain places in the world today where being accused of witchcraft remains a death sentence. In Tanzania, for example, between 2005 and 2011, an estimated three thousand suspected witches were lynched by angry mobs.

  If the seventeenth century was the age of witchcraft, so, too, was it the golden age of piracy. The discovery of the New World and the expansion of global commerce meant there was a great deal of money to be made on the seas—and where some chose trade, others chose murder and theft. No pirates were more feared than those from the Barbary Coast.

  Though the Barbary pirates’ main targets were in the Mediterranean, they raided nearly every coastal country in Europe, attacking as far away as Iceland. In addition to the countless lives lost, between 1530 and 1780 corsairs kidnapped and sold into slavery as many as 1.25 million Europeans. The southwest of England was a favorite target, and would remain so until Charles II finally built up his navy and drove them from English waters, some ten years or so after Christopher was shipwrecked in Devon.

  Even then, the threat of the Barbary pirates remained. Their actions were so damaging to the fledgling United States of America that, in 1794, the United States Navy was founded, specifically to deal with corsairs. After two wars, the first started when President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay tribute to the Barbary nations, the pirates were defeated. Their threat would end for good when France finally conquered Algiers in 1830.

  Yet, just as with accusations of witchcraft, on the high seas pirates still remain. As of this writing, around two hundred pirate attacks occur each year, the majority around Indonesia and Africa, costing shippers an estimated 4 to 8 billion dollars—to say nothing of those poor souls lost at sea.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It’s my privilege to have so many talented folks helping put these books together. I’d like to say thank you to the following:

  To Liesa Abrams, Tricia Lin, and Suri Rosen, all of whom offered insights that made this story immeasurably better.

  To Mara Anastas, Chriscynethia Floyd, Jon Anderson, Katherine Devendorf, Karin Paprocki, Julie Doebler, Jodie Hockensmith, Christina Pecorale, Caitlin Sweeny, Anna Jarzab, Michelle Leo, Greg Stadnyk, Hilary Zarycky, Laura Lyn DiSiena, Victor Iannone, Gary Urda, and Stephanie Voros at Aladdin.

  To Kevin Hanson, Felicia Quon, Sheila Haidon, Jacquelynne Lennard, and Rita Silva at Simon & Schuster Canada.

  To Dan Lazar, Cecilia de la Campa, Torie Doherty-Munro, and James Munro at Writers House.

  To the publishers around the world who have embraced the Blackthorn Key series.

  To Ingrid van der Mooren, to Terry Bailey, and to Alma, for their assistance with translation. Any errors remaining are my own.

  And, as always, to you, dear reader: Thank you for joining Christopher on this adventure. While the Raven remains at large, more are sure to come. . . .

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Author photo by Thomas Zitnansky

  Since escaping from university with a pair of degrees in theoretical physics, KEVIN SANDS has worked as a researcher, a business consultant, and a teacher. He lives in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of the award-winning and bestselling Blackthorn Key series.

  ALADDIN

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  Also by Kevin Sands

  The Blackthorn Key

  Mark of the Plague

  The Assassin’s Curse

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Aladdin hardcover edition September 2018

  Text copyright © 2018 by Kevin Sands

  Interior illustrations on pages 41, 61, 79 copyright © 2018 by Jim Madsen

  Interior illustrations on pages 13, 26, 47, 374, 378 by Greg Stadnyk copyright © 2018 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Interior images on pages 201, 204, 212, 250 from Dictionnaire infernal, ou Bibliothèque universelle by Collin de Plancy, courtesy of  Wikipedia.com

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2018 by James Fraser

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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  Interior designed by Karin Paprocki

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sands, Kevin, author.

  Title: Call of the wraith / by Kevin Sands.

  Description: First Simon Pulse hardcover edition. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2018. | Series: The Blackthorn key ; 4 | Summary: Christopher Rowe is shipwrecked in Devonshire, where children are disappearing and a ghost is suspected, but even Tom and Sally’s arrival may not cure his amnesia in time to help.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018012451 (print) | LCCN 2018018884 (eBook) | ISBN 9781534428478 (hc) | ISBN 9781534428492 (eBook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Amnesia—Fiction. | Missing children—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Secret societies—Fiction. | Devon (England)—Fiction. | Great Britain—History—Charles II, 1660-1685—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories. |

  BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Mysteries & Detective Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / General.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S26 (eBook) | LCC PZ7.1.S26 Cal 2018 (print) |

  DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012451

 

 

 
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