Liberty (11 page)

Back at the
Hallowe'en
, Santiago studied the sea serpent map. It was a forgery, he told Captain Kingsley. The fourth, in the hands of Captain Brice of the
Endurance
, was their only hope of finding the original. So, in spite of the late November weather, the
Hallowe'en
set sail across the northern Atlantic, bound for Boston Harbor. Captain Kingsley wanted that fourth map.

March. Crossing the Atlantic, bound for Boston.

Penelope led the crew in an old song: “Oh, fare you well, we're homeward bound. We're homeward bound for Boston Town.”

While the late winter weather was cold, Penelope and Santiago's conversations in their cabin were heated. Santiago told Penelope about Widow Nichols and how hard her life was. “We vowed,” Santiago said, “to help those in need.”

“Yes, but while we're crew members, we have to obey our Captain. There's not much chance of helping others.”

“Not true.” Santiago knelt on the bunk to stare out the tiny porthole. The north wind whipped the waves into white caps; it cut through the wooden hull, making their cabin feel almost Arctic. “I can't tell Captain Kingsley which sea serpent map is the real one without knowing what he plans to do with it.”

Penelope shook her head. “You can't lie.” They were in enough trouble from the lies about how she had secretly bought maps and how he had secretly copied maps.

“But I can't give him the sea serpent map if it means he'll hurt the creatures.”

“We suspect him of lots. But do we really know what he plans?”

Santiago said, “The Captain's collection. You said before that it has something to do with all this.”

Penelope sucked in a breath. She sat beside him on the bunk and whispered, “You want to see inside his secret room.”

“We have to.”

Penelope knew he was right.

They watched and waited for an opportunity. One night, after the Captain's mess, the third mate suggested a game of cards. For the first hour, the Captain won. This put him in such a good mood, he ordered Santiago to find some Spanish chocolate to celebrate; he gave Santiago his ship's keys and told him in which locker to look.

Realizing this was his chance, Santiago quickly found the chocolate. Then he stopped at his cabin and found candle stubs. Most of the keys, he recognized, but there were three he hadn't seen before. He pressed each key into its own bit of candle wax. When they reached Boston, he would find a locksmith and have keys made.

Coming out of his cabin into the dim passageway, Frenchie startled Santiago: “Where ‘ave you been? Zee Captain's waiting.”

“Sorry, sir.” Santiago juggled the tin of chocolate and keys, and dropped the key ring. Leaning over, Santiago saw a bit of wax stuck to one of the keys.

“Give me zat.” Frenchie reached for them.

Santiago juggled everything again, this time dropping the chocolate. While Frenchie picked up the tin, Santiago rubbed the keys against his pants leg, and then held them out for Frenchie. Would the penguin notice the wax?

Frenchie grabbed them and shoved the chocolate tin at Santiago.

“‘Urry up,” Frenchie said.

With shaking hands, Santiago followed him to the Captain's cabin. Though he was short on breath the rest of the evening, Santiago was confident Frenchie hadn't noticed anything. And they had what they needed to get into the secret room.

A
pril
. Ten miles out from Boston.

In spite of spring storms, they made good time crossing the Atlantic. By mid-April, excitement built as they neared Boston; for many of the sailors, it was their homeport. But ten miles out from the harbor, they met a schooner that told them the
Endurance
wasn't in harbor. She had wintered over, they said, in St. George's, Bermuda.

Captain Kingsley refused to put in at Boston; instead, he turned the
Hallowe'en
south.

A
pril
. Heading south for Bermuda.

Penelope had braved the harsh spring winds for six weeks by telling herself she would soon see familiar shores. She focused her telescope on a distant lighthouse and wept as they left the coast of Massachusetts behind. She wanted to see Cricket and eat at the Tea Party Inn and walk on land for days and days.

She loved sailing, but homesickness almost overwhelmed her.

Alone in the stern, she sang softly as land disappeared, “We're homeward bound for Boston Town. Hurrah, my boys, we're homeward bound.”

But there was nothing she could do but turn her face toward the south.

M
ay
. Bermuda.

The fishhook-shaped islands were a tropical paradise: turquoise water, white sands, and exotic flowers blooming everywhere. St. George's was a prosperous city on the most northeasterly island, where waters were deep enough for a good harbor.

As soon as they docked, Captain Kingsley strode around the harbor searching for the
Endurance
. Luckily, it was still in St. George's.

Captain Brice still wore her curly hair short, tucked up under her captain's hat. Her boat was small and slow, but tough like its Captain.

When he stood on the dock, Captain Kingsley was twice her height, but Captain Brice puffed out her chest and refused to back down. “You offered me the
Hallowe'en,
and then took her away. I've no reason to help you. And I don't care if it's a forgery or not.”

Santiago tried to reason with her. “Could I just look at it and compare it with the other three maps? One of them is real, but I don't know which one.”

“Get off my boat,” she roared. “It's my own map, and I'll not let the likes of you look at it.”

Captain Kingsley and Santiago paced the docks in front of the
Endurance
until Penelope offered to try. “But I'll do it my way,” she said.

They agreed.

“Don't take too long,” Captain Kingsley warned darkly. “There are ways to make people cooperate.”

For three nights, Penelope took her Irish harp into the taverns and sang the sea shanties and ballads she had learned in Dublin. On the fourth night, Captain Brice came to listen; on the fifth night, she sang along.

Afterwards, she roared her approval. “To hear a well-played Irish harp—ah, now that's worth a pretty penny.”

She offered to buy drinks for Penelope—a rare thing for Captain Brice who was usually stingy with her copper, much less her silver.

While Penelope was wooing the Irish captain, Santiago located a secretive locksmith; he took the wax impressions and paid the right bribes. A day later, Santiago had three brass keys.

Meanwhile, the unlikely friendship between Captain Brice and Penelope grew. Penelope enjoyed the rough Captain's storytelling, and the Captain listened eagerly to Penelope's songs of Ireland. On the sixth night, Penelope came home with the map.

“She made me pay 50 gold coins for it,” Penelope told Captain Kingsley. “She knew I'd bring it to you and wanted you to pay dearly.”

“Foolish pig! I told you ten, and that's all you'll get.” At a nod from the polar bear, Frenchie disappeared for a few minutes, and then returned with a leather pouch full of coins, which he dropped into her hands.

Penelope glared at Captain Kingsley's and Frenchie's clawed feet, knowing that if she looked up, she would say things she'd regret. Frenchie's claws had an almost reptile texture and were horizontally striped. Captain Kingsley's were just a dark shiny brown which shone in the midst of his yellow-white fur. They were stronger than Penelope and more likely to fight than she. She sighed in anger; she wasn't a ship's captain like Captain Brice, so she couldn't force him to pay the 50 gold coins. It meant she and Santiago would have to sell even more maps to get ahead.

Santiago spread out the four maps. Even at a glance, it was easy to see which map was the original; but he had to decide what to tell Captain Kingsley.

He bought time. “I need to study these with a magnifying glass to be sure. I'll have an answer by morning.”

Captain Kingsley rocked back and forth on his large feet. Obviously, he didn't like this, but he had to trust Santiago's judgment. “By morning, then.”

Santiago took the rolled maps to his cabin. Every inch of wall and ceiling space of fourth mate's cabin was covered with maps. The Talberts' small locker was full of Penelope's journals that held sea serpent stories or sea shanties. Penelope could understand the passion to collect. But what did Captain Kingsley collect?

T
he crew jostled
for positions at the deck railing and called to those passing their ship. A jumble of languages met them as it did in every busy seaport.

“When can we go ashore, Frenchie, sir?” Cactus asked. “It's dusk already.”

Just then, Captain Kingsley appeared in his dress uniform, the brass buttons polished until they glowed in the lantern light.

“Captain on-deck,” Frenchie called and everyone snapped to attention. “Before you go ashore, I need a volunteer to stand zee watch.”

Penelope sighed. She was longing for a stroll on dry ground as much as the others. “Sir, I'll do it. Santiago has to study the maps anyway.”

Frenchie nodded to the crew. “Go. Report back in zee morning.”

With whoops, they clattered down the gangplank and scattered. St. George's offered a variety of entertainment, and the crew—who had been paid that afternoon—had money to spend. Captain Kingsley and Frenchie were the last to disembark; they were invited to dine with the harbormaster that night, and afterwards they would visit a few taverns. Penelope and Santiago pulled up the gangplank, so it would be easier to stand guard.

Santiago rolled out the sea serpent maps on the table in the galley. The tiny room smelled of onions and garlic, the basis of everything Cactus cooked, but it had good lanterns to read by.

He held the magnifying glass over the first map. “I'll just pretend to study this a bit, in case anyone is watching. You can make the rounds of the deck. We won't do anything for a while.”

Penelope walked slowly around the deck. Around the harbor glowed lanterns of other boats; in the dim light, figureheads loomed as giants. It was odd, Penelope thought, that the
Hallowe'en
didn't have a figurehead. Perhaps Captain Kingsley didn't like that old saying: the captain is the part of the ship that does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.

Music, a dancing jig, floated over the water, and again Penelope longed to be off the boat. Well, one more night wouldn't matter.

Clouds drifted in and covered the moon and stars. Sometime before midnight a cool tropical rain drenched the boat. If it ran true to form, it would rain hard for an hour or two, and then blow over. Penelope made the rounds of the deck again, and came back to the galley soaking wet.

“Now. While it's raining,” she whispered. “No one is out at this hour.”

They took the keys from their hiding place under their mattress and tiptoed to Captain Kingsley's cabin. “We're dripping water everywhere,” Penelope complained. “He'll know we were here.”

She found a mop and swabbed the entire corridor, while Santiago changed to dry clothes; he waited while she changed, too.

They opened the door to the Captain's cabin. It was pitch black, with no light coming from the porthole, either. Santiago lit a small candle and quickly covered the round window with a cloth he'd brought. At the light, the Captain's parrot squawked, “Captain, Captain, Captain.” He flew up in a whirr of green.

“Close the door! He can't escape,” Santiago yelled.

Reacting instinctively, Penelope slammed the door. She winced at the noise, which echoed through the empty ship.

The parrot flapped around Penelope's head, trying to peck her. “Captain, Captain, Captain.”

“Get away!”

Santiago grabbed a blanket from Captain Kingsley's bed and threw it over the bird; as the heavy blanket fell, it trapped the parrot. Carefully, Santiago picked up the bird—still wrapped in the blanket—and shoved it into the birdcage. He left the blanket draped over the cage.

Silence. Back in the dark, the parrot was quiet.

Santiago hardly dared breath. He whispered, “Did he hurt you?”

Penelope shook her head.

“Should we check the deck?”

“It's hard to board with the gangplank pulled up,” Penelope whispered back. She cleared her throat; why were they whispering? “No one is out at this hour,” she repeated loudly.

Santiago turned to the ebony door behind the desk. “Oh! I've left the keys in my other clothes. I'll be right back.”

To Penelope, it seemed to take hours before he returned. She paced, three steps in one direction, reverse, three steps back, reverse, three more. “We're taking too much time,” Penelope said, when he finally arrived.

Santiago whispered, “I think I heard something on deck.”

“No,” Penelope said with more assurance than she felt. “Relax. No one will be here until dawn.”

With nerves jangling, they tried the door. The first key—a small, thin one—didn't fit. Feeling the keyhole, Penelope tried the largest key next. Too big. She held up the last key. “It's this or nothing.”

Santiago held the candle close to the lock. The key turned silently: the door swung smoothly outward.

Santiago entered the secret room first, with Penelope right behind. Long and narrow, the room was really just a corridor that ran between shelves, a storage room. Each shelf held labeled glass jars. Penelope held the candle higher. The light fluttered, like Penelope and Santiago's heartbeats. A faint chemical smell lingered in the air. The sharp odor had to be formaldehyde, a colorless chemical liquid used to preserve things.

The thick greenish glass was hard to see through. Penelope moved the candle close enough to read a label and see the contents clearly.

Giant squid: a huge tentacle lay coiled in the jar.

Narwhale: a long horn sat diagonally in the jar.

Peruvian pyricthacanth
: the head of the big-mouthed fish.

Oarfish,
Cadborsaurus
, Hydra, Monster Hagfish,
Morgawr
,
Morag
, Malaysian Dragon—the jars went on and on.

“A trophy hunter,” Penelope croaked.

Captain Kingsley hunted rare marine creatures, and when he found them, he killed them and kept them as a trophy.

Horror held Penelope in its grip as she looked from one jar to the next. When it changed to anger, she walked slowly, touching each jar, making a vow with each touch that this collection wouldn't be tolerated. This was a betrayal of everything it meant to be an intelligent creature. When you treated another creature as a beast, it brought out the beast in yourself.

Of course that impulse—to exalt yourself and treat others as nothing—squirmed within every intelligent creature. The only thing that separated Captain Kingsley and Frenchie from Penelope herself was that they gave in to temptation. Some might deny it was there, but Penelope knew her heart.

Maybe there was something fundamentally different, though. Because Penelope held the fierce conviction that each creature was unique. Each “specimen” in the hideous glass jars had been special while living; dead, treated as just another specimen, they were an abomination. Captain Kingsley's collection wasn't just illegal: it was immoral.

Amidst the shelves, Santiago wept. “I should smash every single jar.”

“Zat would be a mistake.”

The Talberts spun around. In the doorway stood Frenchie.

“I wondered when you'd ‘ave keys made from zee wax impressions you did.” Frenchie tapped a webbed foot. “I wondered if you would ‘ave zee guts to use zee keys.” Excitement exaggerated his French accent.

In anguish, Penelope asked, “Why collect sea creatures like this?”

“We didn't mean to,” Frenchie said. “Did we, Captain?”

The polar bear loomed in the doorway, filling the small corridor with his bulk. Penelope backed into Santiago, and together they backed away from the Captain. Both Frenchie and the Captain were dripping water onto the floor.

Penelope wasn't the only one who would view the collection as immoral, she was sure. If word got out about the collection, it would ruin the Ice King's business. Now that they knew his secret, he wouldn't let them go easily. “You're serpents!” she cried.

“No. We're collectors,” Captain Kingsley said calmly. “It started accidentally when we found the Patagonian treasure.” He lifted a jar down, unscrewed it and pulled out the long narwhale horn. “The unicorn of the sea, they call this. It was in the treasure chest.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “It started everything.”

“First, a narwhale ‘orn. Next, a giant squid tentacle. It just grew,” Frenchie said. He held up his own candle and reached out a wing to touch a jar, as if he were touching something sacred.

“We are very close to having a complete collection,” Captain Kingsley said.

Penelope heard the pride in his voice, heard the threat.

“And you'll help us. We only need one thing to complete our collection,” Captain Kingsley said.

Frenchie stopped at the only empty jar. Reverently, he read the label: “Bermuda Triangle Sea Serpent.”

“A sea serpent won't fit in that!” Penelope objected.

“A baby might. Or just its skull would do, you know,” Captain Kingsley said. He unscrewed the jar, stuck his massive paw inside the wide mouthed jar and made a fist. He pulled his fist out and held it in Penelope's face. “There's room for an adult skull.”

A sudden vision of jars with pigs' feet made her stomach heave. “You're mad!” she cried. “You kill intelligent creatures.”

“Penelope!” Santiago warned. “You're making the Captain and Frenchie angry.”

“No, no,” Frenchie said. “Let me explain. When I was a chick, I was captured and sold to zee Paris Zoo. People came to watch zee trained penguin do ‘is tricks. Zey poked and prodded me; zey zrew me peanuts as a treat. Zey treated me like an animal instead of an intelligent creature. You know what it's like; we all came from places where most animals were just animals. Something set us apart, zough. For some reason, we were born with intelligence zat our brothers and sisters weren't. Zee Captain and I know zee difference between animals and intelligent animals. What we collect are animals.”

“How did you escape from the zoo?” Penelope asked. It was a good idea to keep Frenchie talking.

“I ‘ad ‘hard of zee Wide World from the birds,” Frenchie said, “One day, I just walked out of ze Zoo. It was zat easy. Eventually, I found my way to zee Wide World. It was easy to find in France. At first, all I could zink of was returning to zee Antarctic. I took passage on a ship and went ‘ome. But, zee Guardians wouldn't let me cross back to my ‘ome.”

Penelope understood this. If they went back to the pigsty, they couldn't stand it. They would try to change that world.

“I signed on to zee
Alaska
and met zee Captain. Zee rest you know.”

“And what are we going to do with you now?” Captain Kingsley asked.

“I zink,” Frenchie said slowly, “zey are part of our collection, for now.”

Captain Kingsley gave a short laugh. “Not them. I only collect things that keep me awake at night. We'll have to think of something else.”

Frenchie shrugged. “For now, zey will ‘ave to stay ‘ere.”

Behind Santiago's back, Penelope silently unscrewed two jar lids.

“You're right,” Captain Kingsley said. “They'll have to stay here.”

“No!” With one quick motion, Penelope grabbed the first jar, shoved Santiago's head out of the way, and threw the contents at Captain Kingsley's eyes. Before Frenchie could react, she'd thrown a jarful at his face, too.

Instantly, formaldehyde choked everyone, sending Penelope into a coughing fit.

“Don't breathe,” Penelope yelled at Santiago. They pushed past Frenchie and Captain Kingsley, who were rolling on the floor, clawing at their eyes.

Still coughing, the pigs rushed out of the Captain's cabin.

“This way,” Santiago called. He raced toward their cabin.

“No. The deck is this way. We've got to get away,” Penelope cried.

“I won't leave those maps for the Captain.” Santiago's voice was grim and determined.

Penelope turned back with him. At their cabin, they jammed maps and journals into two duffle bags and, as they were leaving, Penelope caught up her Irish harp. They scurried up to the deck.

Frenchie and Captain Kingsley staggered up the opposite ladder, but they ignored the pigs. Instead, they crawled on all fours to the side of the boat and rolled over, into the water, to wash off the chemicals.

The Talberts shoved out the gangplank and pounded down. They plunged into dark alleys and side streets at random, sprinting away from the harbor. Their duffels banged against their backs, and Penelope got a stitch in her side, but they kept going. Finally, they stopped in the dark shadows of a house.

Penelope waited until she stopped panting. She whispered, “Do you realize what we've done?”

The storm was blowing over by now, and the moon reappeared from behind a lingering cloudbank.

Santiago nodded, “I couldn't give him the maps. Three are forgeries. If you have all of them, though, you can figure out the positions of the sea serpent island. I was exact in moving the island's position in each map. If you chart all three, it makes a triangle, and the island is in the exact center of that triangle. The original would only confirm that.”

“Oh!” Penelope couldn't stand the thought of the Captain finding the island. “He'll kill a sea serpent just for his collection.”

“Yes. And somehow, I don't think he'll leave the rest of them alone. He'll destroy every sea serpent on that island.”

Penelope lifted her arm and smelled her shirt; formaldehyde still clung to her clothes. She shivered. “We can't take the maps back. Where will we go?”

Santiago leaned against the house and slid down to the ground. His head slumped onto his chest in despair. “He'll never stop hunting us. Never.”