Isle of Swords (39 page)
“Shall we continue?” Thorne asked. He motioned to Flagg. The ship's surgeon wiped the blood away from Anne's chin with a cloth and moved in with the shears.
“NO!!” Padre Dominguez said, and he began to weep. “Stop. I will tell you what you want to know.”
A
nne.” Padre Dominguez's voice drifted through the cell bars.
Anne's eyes snapped open, and she flew to the bars. “Padre, are you . . . will you live?” she asked, trying to see his back. He turned so that she could not see the blood. “I'm sorry, you shouldn't have told him . . . not for my sake.”
“Child,” said Padre Dominguez, “bear no guilt for my weakness.
But take this and find courage.” He reached through the bars and handed Anne his small Bible.
“How?” Anne stared. “They took that from me on the
Wallace
.
How did you get it back?”
“Thorne's men are superstitious about such things.” Padre Dominguez laughed quietly, but stopped short and winced in pain.
“They searched it to see if I had written any secrets . . . to lead them to the Isle of Swords. When they were convinced that it was just a Bible, they threw it into my cell.”
Anne took the worn leather volume from Padre Dominguez. It looked like it had been kicked around, and the cover was gouged.
“Read the book of Romans,” said Padre Dominguez. “There, you will find the knowledge you need to save your life . . . and perhaps much more.”
Anne hurriedly flipped through the Bible. She had no idea where Romans was within the text, but she stopped when she saw something handwritten on several of the pages. She gasped when she realized the message had been written in blood.
“I'm sorry,” said the monk. “But it was the only ink that I had.”
Suddenly, a door slammed. Anne had no place to hide the Bible, so she shoved it down into her breeches just under the belt and let her shirt hang down over it. Four burly pirates and one older, gray-bearded man came to her cell. They hurriedly unlocked it, and the graybeard said, “Up you go, lass. The fleet has gathered, and Captain Thorne says you're comin' along for the ride.”
“No, wait!” Anne said. “He promised to let us go.”
“That's between you and Captain Thorne,” he said with a snort.
The burly men grabbed Anne and dragged her out of the cell.
Even as she was taken from the room, she called back, “Padre Dominguez . . .”
The graybeard kneeled outside Padre Dominguez's cell. “Don't know what ya did to make Thorne hate you so much,” he said.
“He'd run ya through or cut yer throat most times. But not you.
He's leavin' ya to bleed . . . leavin' ya fer the rats.”
Padre Dominguez groaned and turned onto his side. He looked up at the graybeard drowsily but did not speak. “I'd hate t' see a man a' the cloth die like that, so . . . here.” He placed a pistol and a small sack inside Padre Dominguez's cell. “There's powder and one shot in that bag. Don't miss.”
The old pirate left Padre Dominguez alone in the cell room. The door shut, and it became unearthly quiet. The monk closed his eyes and began to pray. Then he heard small scratching sounds from some shadowy corner. He opened his eyes and stared at the pistol.
Anne was ushered out into the night air. She looked out from a wall, and from this place, high on Thorne's fortress, she had a panoramic view of the entire shipyard. The vision left her frightened and breathless. Moored along the many piers and anchored farther out, there were more tall ships than Anne had ever seen in one place.
Not even the busy port at Edinburgh could boast such traffic. And farther out to sea, like a ghostly curtain on the horizon, there billowed an indistinct wall of gray.
“Fog,” said one of the men who held her wrists. “As thick a bank as I've ever seen.”
The bells sounded for the second watch of the night. Men came down from the
Bruce
's crow's-nests. Others climbed up to take their place. The view hadn't changed much. The fog had not relented. Ross used only two small square sails to keep the speed low. He figured they weren't too far from Cape Verde. They'd have to swing out wide to starboard very soon, for there were several smaller islands to avoid before they came to the main island where Thorne had built his shipyard.
Shrouds of mist passed around and over the ship. An eerie quiet fell over the men on deck. But the quiet was far from relaxing.
Sailors, better than anyone, knew the dangers of limited visibility. So they sharpened blades, carved pieces of driftwood, or just tapped their feetâanything to release a little nervous energy and help pass the time. Caiman felt the oppressive fear of the fog worse than the others. He paced constantly, at times switching to walking laps around the entire ship. On one of these circuits, he stopped on the port bow near the stern. He thought he had heard something out in the sea. A bell, or at least that's what it sounded like to him.
Caiman turned and looked up to the crow's-nest on the rear mast.
Jacques St. Pierre was up there, but he didn't seem to have heard the sound. Caiman looked up on the quarterdeck. Stede standing over him, Cat had the wheel. Neither seemed interested in anything but steering the ship.
Probably a good thing
, Caiman thought. Clutching the port rail, he stared out into the fog. Wisps of white and tendrils of gray slipped by, and at times he could see a little farther into the murk than others. And just as he was about to resume his nervous lap around the ship, something appeared out in the fog.
“Aieee!” he cried out. “Ghost ships! Ghost ships in the fog!”
Men from all parts of the ship instantly surrounded Caiman, including Stede. “What did you see?” demanded Ramiro.
Caiman's eyes were huge as he explained. “I thought I heard something, so I stopped to look. At first there was nothing, but . . . gray shadows emergedâmaybe a hundred yards away. Ships . . . they were huge, shadowy ships. Ships full of ghosts!”
“Ghosts?” echoed Stede. “Mon, ya been out in the sun too much!”
“No, listen,” said Ramiro. “I've sailed this area before. We can't be far from the Widowmaker, a reef just outside the Cape Verde islands. That reef has taken down more than its share of ships. The locals claim that ghostly ships sail here in search of a port they will never find.”
“That's just nonsense,” said Stede, and he walked back to the quarterdeck to join Cat.
“Nonsense?” Ramiro looked at the still-terrified Caiman and then out into the fog. “If it wasn't ghosts, then what did Caiman see?”
“It was there, Captain,” Jacob Briscoe said, pointing into the fog.
Their shipâa Spanish carrack called
Mar de Brujas,
or
Sea Witch
â was the fourteenth ship in Bartholomew Thorne's caravan.
The ship's captain, Vittorio Maligno, had joined Jacob at the port rail. “What sort of ship was it?”
“I am not sure,” he replied. “It came out of the fog, and then it was gone. Large, definitely large. A frigate . . . maybe even a ship of the line. Do you think we should tell Thorne?”
Captain Maligno shook his head. “No, not unless you see the entire British fleet would I trouble Thorne.”
Hours later, the
Bruce
at last escaped the writhing mists. The ship emerged several miles off the coast of the main island of Cape Verde. As they drew near to the docks, Ross's heart fell. Aside from a few fishing boats and one small frigate, the marina was empty.
“We're too late,” Ross muttered.
“Ya don't know that, mon,” Stede said. “There still be lights on in that outrageous building up there.” Stede pointed up the hillside at the dark fortress.
Ross nodded. At the deepest level of his soul, he felt that they were too late to save Anne, but he also knew he had to make sure.
Ross rallied his crew, as well as the forty sailors Ramiro had brought with him from his shipyard. When Stede brought the ship alongside the longest pier, Ross cast all subtlety aside. His men raced down the gangplank and streamed up the hillside.
Stede was one of the last men to leave. He noticed Cat standing at the rail and staring up at the fortress. “Come, lad,” he said. Then he noticed tears forming in Cat's eyes. “Don't despair.” Stede patted Cat on the shoulder. “We'll find her.” Stede raced down the gangplank, jumped onto the marina, and disappeared into the trees on the hillside.