Isle of Fire

by Wayne Thomas Batson

“It is near three o’clock,” Blake said, returning his watch to its pocket home. “We can search another hour and a half.”

  “I’m beginning to doubt that there ever were any other journals.” Dolphin sighed. “I thought sure this would be the place to find them. My father would often write in this very room.”

  “Let’s just stay here while we’re in London,” Blake replied. “We’ll come back tonight and search, after our visit with His Majesty.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “It could be just a waste of time.”

  “You do own this house,” he said with a wink. “And, as I said before, it is no waste to pursue that which is meaningful to you. Come now, while we search the other rooms, tell me about your family and what you remember of this place.”

  “Lady Dolphin,” said Hopper timidly. He had in his hand a thick book with a dusty, dark blue cover. “Would it be all right with you if I stayed here a bit longer?”

  “Can you . . . can you read?” she asked.

  “I should say so,” he replied. “Me mum taught me when I was just four.”

  “Well, then,” said Blake, “I think you should stay here and read it.”

  Hopper grinned, ran over to the center of the room, and plopped down in a large padded chair. This sent a cloud of dust swirling into the air, and after Commodore Blake and Lady Dolphin left the library, they could hear Hopper sneezing even from far down the hall.

  The chair Hopper had originally sat in was not comfortable at all. Neither were the other chairs in the center of the library nor the couch, for that matter . . . to say nothing of the explosive layers of dust. And then there were the paintings: at least one on every wall, all depicting dour, gray-haired people in a variety of stiff poses. And they’re all looking right at me, Hopper thought. He’d moved several times to avoid them, but turning his back to one spooky face meant facing another. He’d tried to become engulfed by the story he was reading, but every time Hopper lowered the book, he’d see dark eyes staring down at him from the wall.

  At last he found one spot where the ghouls couldn’t get at him: a small slanted desk facing the wall in the corner of the room closest to the fireplace. Oh, the paintings could stare at his back all they wanted so long as Hopper didn’t have to see their eyes. He spent several triumphant minutes enjoying his book, that is, until Hopper realized the wide desktop had hinges on the back of it. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Had they looked inside the desk? Had they even known it opened?

  Hopper closed the book and placed it beside his chair. Then he carefully grasped the corners of the desktop and lifted. No, Commodore Blake and Lady Dolphin certainly had not looked inside the desk. The cobwebs stretching between the lifting desktop and the large storage compartment attested to this desk not being opened in a long time. Hopper saw a tarnished brass rod inside and thought it might be used to prop up the desktop. But no sooner had he reached for the rod than a large brownish spider ran across his hand, up his arm, and then off to skitter on the floor. Hopper jumped back with a yelp, and the desktop crashed down, sending more plumes of dust scattering.

  Any minute he expected someone to rush into the room and scold him. But no one did. Besides, Hopper thought, Commodore Blake and Lady Dolphin won’t be mad when I show them the missing journals. Hopper felt sure they were in the desk. They had to be. He just hoped there weren’t any more spiders in there with them.

  So again, he lifted the desktop. And this time, he was actually able to prop the desk open with the brass rod. Inside, besides more dust, Hopper found many things: quill pens, several inkwells, a few coins, a pair of slightly misshapen spectacles, and a couple of thin leather volumes. Hopper had high hopes for these until he opened them and realized they were filled with numbers, figures, and computations. Hopper knew that what Lady Dolphin was looking for was more like a diary or a memoir rather than ledger.

  There was one other item of interest: a little black leather pouch. It made a clicking noise as he picked it up, and for a moment, Hopper was afraid the satchel held more spiders or something worse. He closed the desktop and then let the contents of the satchel spill out onto the desk. And spill they did. Nine marbles rolled down the desktop and then across the floor. Hopper loved marbles. His father had given him a similar set several years earlier, but those were made of polished stone. These appeared to be made of heavy glass.

  Hopper immediately went to the floor, gathered up the marbles, and proceeded to set them up for a little game of King’s Foil. Then Hopper crouched down to the floor. In King’s Foil, he was the archer, and he prepared to knuckle the blue marble for his first shot. The red marble, the king, lay just a few feet away. But it was guarded by the seven other marbles—his knights—who were set up strategically in three rows between the king and the archer. The goal was to strike the king within seven shots without knocking one of the knights into the king or into other knights.

  Hopper tried and failed several times—he was a bit rusty. But on the very next round, he had brilliantly cleared a path through the knights. He readied his marble and prepared to absolutely smack the king with his blue marble. He unleashed a potent shot that screamed through the baffled knights, sailed right by the king, and rolled under the footboard of the desk. Hopper crawled over to the desk and began to feel around under the footboard. His fingers hit the marble once, but caused it to roll away. He jammed his arm farther in and hit the wall behind the desk. But when he did this, he felt a draft of cold air on the top of his hand.

  Hopper pulled out his hand, stood up, and stared at the desk. Where had the cold air come from? Then he glanced back over his shoulder at the entrance to the library. If he needed help, he could call out. Commodore Blake and Lady Dolphin were not far away. But neither were the paintings. He shook that thought away and went to the desk. He wanted to see what was behind it, so he grabbed two corners and began to push. It scraped the floor, but moved more easily than Hopper thought it would. Once the desk was far enough away from the wall, Hopper could see where the cool air had come from. A rectangular section of the wall had been pushed in. There was a dark cavity of some kind behind this strange panel.

  Hopper retrieved the oil lantern, placed it on the floor by the open panel, and then lay down to look inside. He had a brief image of a spider as big as a cat crawling out and grabbing him and swallowed as he pushed the panel farther in. With the light of the lantern, Hopper saw webs aplenty, wafting in the steady invisible current of cool air, but fortunately there were no gargantuan spiders. About six feet in, past the billowing, gossamer webs, there was a square bundle. It was a stack of some kind, wrapped in dark material and tied up with a bow of thick string.

  “Commodore Blake!” Hopper called. “Lady Dolphin, come quick! I’ve found something!”

  13

  A SLIPPERY CATCH

  In a shadowy cantina on the southern coast of Inagua, Cat and Anne sat on one side of a wide table with Father Brun. Dutch Bennett, the captain of the Brethren ship called the Dominguez, and Brother Alejandro Cascade, captain of the Celestine, sat on the other side of the table along with Brother Gale Waverly, the Brethren’s spy who had sailed with Scully for some time. Weary conversations passed between them.

  “It’s hopeless,” Cat mumbled. He’d meant for only Anne to hear, but Father Brun stopped talking and turned to Cat. Now that it was out there, Cat figured he might as well say what was on his mind. “We’ve been after Scully for weeks, scouring Saint Vincent and now here. And what have we got?”

  “No sign of him yet, true,” said Brother Waverly. “But there is still Jamaica.”

  “Jamaica?” Cat shouted. “I still say we should go back to Saint Vincent. There was a tavern on the west side of the island, a perfect place for a rat like Scully. Why won’t you listen to me?”

  The table was silent. Anne stared at Cat, concern etched on her face. Finally Father Brun spoke. “This group serves together. We—”

  “But we always do what you want, Father Brun,�
� Cat interrupted. “You told me I’d command the Constantine, but all I do—all any of us do—is what YOU want!”

  “Cat!” Anne cautioned him.

  If Father Brun had taken offense, he did not show it. “Cat, Scully rarely found refuge in Saint Vincent—especially the western side of the island where he has enemies. Brother Waverly informed us that Scully spent more time on Jamaica than anywhere else.”

  “That’s an awful big island,” said Cat with more spite than he intended.

  “And so we will search every inch of it if we need to,” answered Father Brun sternly. “Tell me, Cat . . . in the time we have spent searching, what have you lost?”

  Cat felt his anger boil up, but he forced it down and spoke evenly. “Time is exactly what I’ve lost.”

  “I for one am eager to go where Father Brun commands,” said Dutch Bennett. It was the first time anyone at the table had seen the jovial seaman from Aruba without a smile. “If it weren’t for him, I’d still be sailing a smelly fishing schooner. But, Cat, I am curious about what you say. And I wonder what time you regret losing . . . time for what?”

  Cat was silent for a moment. He did not speak the first thought that entered his mind. Time to go back to the island where I was found. Time to go back to Dominica too. Time to find out who . . . I was. But when Cat spoke, he said, “We could be out there like Captain Ross, knocking out pirates all over the Caribbean and the Spanish Main. Then at least we could make a difference.”

  With his heavy Spanish accent, Brother Cascade was difficult to understand, but on this occasion, his message could not have been clearer. “We will do no thing that matters if we no listen to the Almighty.”

  “We will sail to Jamaica,” said Father Brun. “And I believe we will find the man we are searching for.”

  “But what if we don’t?” asked Cat.

  Father Brun ignored the question. “We must return to our ships. It is clear that we all need rest.”

  There was a soft knock at Cat’s cabin door. “Come in,” Cat said, his voice thin and dry. “I’m awake.”

  Carrying an oil lantern, Anne came in and shut the door behind her. The Constantine had hit a patch of heavily rolling sea, and she steadied herself on the edge of Cat’s desk. “Oh . . . uh, hello, Anne.” Cat sat up in his hammock and swayed. “You couldn’t sleep either?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I may have nodded off for a few minutes,” she replied. “But no, not really.”

  It was quiet, dark, and awkward. Anne hung the oil lantern on a hook above the desk. She smiled at Cat. “You know what my father used to tell me if I couldn’t fall asleep?”

  Cat shrugged.

  “He used to say . . .” Anne lowered her voice imitating her father’s husky manner. “‘Anne, my dear, if you can’t sleep . . . you best stay awake.’”

  They laughed, but Cat stopped first. Anne sat in the chair by the desk and fixed him with her penetrating hazel eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asked abruptly.

  Cat looked up, looked quickly away from her, and took a sudden interest in the stars outside the cabin window. “Nothing’s wrong,” he mumbled.

  “Cat, I know you better than that,” she said. “You’ve been snapping at people, you don’t seem to be able to sleep, and you’ve been forgetting things.”

  “I have amnesia, Anne,” Cat replied curtly.

  “I’m not talking about that. But you seem to go blank on things I know you know.”

  “So why aren’t you asleep?” Cat replied, trying to change the subject.

  “Because I’m worried about you,” she said. She got up and went toward him. She tried to take his hand, but he pulled it away. Anne tilted her head, and her brow knotted up with concern. “You . . . you haven’t been yourself lately.”

  Cat looked up, his face a mask of disbelief and frustration. “I haven’t been myself?” he echoed her. “Now that’s a funny thing to say. What do you mean by ‘I haven’t been myself’?”

  “I wasn’t trying to . . . I didn’t mean—”

  “How do you know I haven’t been myself? Do you know me that well, Anne? Do you really know me?” Cat dropped down from the hammock and stepped ominously close to her. Anne backed up a step, and Cat went on. “Bits and pieces of most of my life—that’s all I know. How can you know any more than that?”

  “I’ve known you almost two years,” Anne countered. “And all you’ve done is save the lives of everyone I care about. You . . . you saved my life.”

  “But what about before? I was raised by not just a pirate—but a killer! What if I did unspeakable things . . . like my father? Anne, how do you know who I was before you found me on that island?”

  Anne had heard enough. She poked Cat so hard in the chest that he fell backward and nearly flipped over the hammock. “You know what, Cat?” she asked. “I don’t care who you were! Whatever happened in the past, leave it there.” She softened her tone a bit. “I’m sorry for your memory loss. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to guess at the past, and I know it must be very hard. But from the moment you woke up and looked at me on the William Wallace, I knew you were a good man.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not finished,” she said. “You want to know what I think happened in your past? I think your father tried to raise you to be a monster like he was. I think he did everything he could to teach you that the lives of others meant nothing so long as you got what you wanted out of them. But I bet you wouldn’t do it. I bet you wouldn’t turn. I think he couldn’t stand that his own son wouldn’t follow in his footsteps. And in the end, I think he meant to kill you, Cat. You were a failure to him because you were good. That’s what I think.”

  Cat blinked. He felt like he’d just been hit by a hurricane. But when he looked up at Anne again, she was crying. Tears washed down her face like channels on an inlet. Cat wanted to reach out to her, or at least part of him did. The other part was still thinking about what she’d said. “There’s more to it,” he whispered. “You know Brother Dmitri?”

  She nodded and wiped her face on her sleeve. “He works mostly on the gun deck, but he’s hard to miss.”

  “We sparred back on Saba, and . . . and I almost killed him.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Father Brun stepped in. He stopped me.”

  “It was the heat of battle,” Anne said. “You would have stopped yourself. Why, I’ve seen Red Eye get so mad he—”

  “No,” Cat interrupted. He grasped his temples as if trying to keep his head from exploding. “I would have done it. I was so angry . . . out of control. This murderous rage billowed up in me. It’s happened again since. I get these ideas. I don’t ask for them to come, but they’re there. I . . . I’m afraid of what I might do.”

  Anne swallowed. “Look, Cat,” she said, “you’re talking to the queen of stupid ideas. I once thought being a pirate like my father would be fun—even though he tried desperately to tell me I was wrong. I didn’t listen. For crying out loud, Cat, one of my brilliant schemes almost got us both hanged. Everyone has dumb ideas. Everyone gets angry.”

  “Not like this.”

  Anne exhaled loudly and turned to leave. “You’re the captain of this ship,” she said, opening the door. “And you need to get your head on straight because your crew needs you. I . . . need you.” She was nearly out the door when she said, “And this Merchant, he’s not going to care who you were.”

  The three ships of the Brethren docked in Montego Bay, and over the next several days, Father Brun, Cat, Anne, and the other senior crewmen vigilantly watched three of the four taverns that Scully liked to frequent in Jamaica. The last one was a small, twisting lump of stone at the top of a wooded hill on the edge of town. A very steep and very narrow path led up the hill to the establishment’s arched double doors. Two men with tankards milled about outside. It was Dutch Bennett and Brother Cascade, who looked a little strange dressed like a pirate rather than in his brown robes. Inside, there was room for about
fifteen people. Cat sat at a small table next to a window. He rested his arm near a tankard of water the tavern keeper had brought over. “Aren’t you going to drink that?” Anne asked.

  Cat looked ruefully into the mug. “If I die on this journey, it’ll be at the edge of a sword—not from drinking some vermin-infested water.”

  Anne laughed but stopped short. “Here comes another group.”

  Cat brushed the hair out of his face, saw four men pass by the window, and then turned to watch Father Brun and Brother Waverly, who sat facing the entrance on the other side of the tavern. The four men entered, went straight to the tavern keeper, and began talking noisily. Cat didn’t think Scully would draw so much attention to himself as these buffoons, but he glanced over to Waverly anyway. The monk slightly lifted two fingers from the table and waved them side to side. It wasn’t Scully.

  Cat turned back to the window, and suddenly a face was there. A man stood just outside the tavern and appeared content to stand outside looking in. He had long hair that fell in unruly curls over one side of his face. He had no moustache and only a little spider-shaped patch of whiskers under his bottom lip. The man scratched the side of his chin and glanced at Cat. Cat could feel the man’s stare linger on him for longer than was comfortable. The group of loud men had clumped right in front of Father Brun and Brother Waverly, so Cat couldn’t get a signal as to whether the man in the window was the man they were after.

  Anne noticed Cat’s tense expression, saw the man at the window, and wondered. The man began to walk away from the window, and Cat followed him with his eyes. The hair on Cat’s forearm stood up. He blinked, and his mind filled with a vision of a cobble stone alley lit by a full moon’s light. Two men stood talking. One was Bartholomew Thorne. The other . . .

  “It’s him!” Cat whispered urgently, knocking over the putrid water. Anne shot up out of her chair, but Father Brun and Brother Waverly had not seen. Cat and Anne burst through the group of men, sending tankards flying. “Dutch, Alejandro!” Cat called to the men outside as he stumbled over a fallen stool. “That man, it’s Scully!”