The Battle for the Castle (11 page)

When she turned toward him, she was changed. There was a wild look in her eyes that shocked him. It was as if some animal were peering out at him through her face.

“We have to burn it,” she said. “We have to come back tonight and burn it.”

“Let's go tell your uncle about it,” William suggested. “He'll know what to do.”

“He'll do nothing,” muttered Gudrin. “He wouldn't listen to my grandmother. That's why he let them lock her up in that convent. He won't listen to you or me either. If we show him the ship, he'll just wring his hands and worry. Or have it towed out to sea again. And it will return. I know that now. We have to destroy it.”

She yanked Sorrel's head out of the grass and wheeled the horse around. William reined Mandrake in and let her gallop ahead of them down the path. It was no use killing themselves getting back to the castle, he thought, as he let his horse take her time going down.

They rode most of the way in silence. When the castle loomed into view, she looked at William.

“Are you with me?” she asked.

When he didn't answer right away, she pulled Sorrel
to a stop in the middle of the path. William trotted on for a short distance and then circled back to her.

“It doesn't matter to me,” she said. “If I have to, I'll do it alone.”

“We're just kids, you know. We shouldn't have to do things like this,” he said, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back. They sounded pathetic.

“I'm with you,” he said at last.

“What about Jason?” she asked.

“What about him?”

“Can we trust him to help us?”

“First you're saying you can do this alone and you don't need us!” he exploded. “Now you want a torching party.”

She stared at him calmly like a teacher waiting for the answer to a question.

“Of course we can trust him. He'd love it.” William threw up his hands. “Burning boats at midnight. One of his favorite occupations.”

“Good. Tell him to bring the bicycle. We'll need his panniers to carry the torches and he can be an extra pair of hands in the dory.”

William watched as she urged Sorrel into a canter. He should have refused, he thought. He should have let her just try and burn up that boat by herself. She'd see.

In the dead-still night, every noise seemed magnified to William. The loading of the long wooden torches into a fisherman's dory, Gudrin's whispered instructions to the boys to push it into the water, the scrape of the oars against the oarlocks. William pulled on one oar and Jason on the other while Gudrin sat in the bow directing them. They had given her the flashlight from William's backpack, and for a while, she played with the strange object, flicking the switch on and off and making light circles in the inky sky above them. Finally she settled down and concentrated on getting them in striking distance of the ship.

William had to keep lifting his oar and waiting for Jason to catch up. Jason had great biking muscles in his legs but William had more strength in his arms from all those years of floor exercises.

“We almost there?” Jason called to Gudrin.

She didn't bother to answer.

“Shh,” William said for about the tenth time.

“Why do we have to be so quiet?” Jason whispered back. “After all, there's nothing out here but a pile of bones.”

“You didn't see them,” William said with a shiver. “Even from a distance, they looked pretty creepy.”

“Well, they're not going to jump off that ship and grab us, are they?” Jason said. “You can't hear us anymore can you, old boys?” he called out, cupping his hand around his mouth. I bet he's just as scared as I am, William thought. Jason always shows off when he's nervous.

“We're pulling to the right again,” Gudrin called softly from the bow. “Straighten out, the ship's in sight.”

William let his oar rest on the surface of the water to give Jason time to swing them around. He cocked his head and listened and knew suddenly what was missing. When he was eight, his parents had taken him sailing for three days. At night, when he lay in his bunk, he heard the slap of the halyard against the mast, the splash of the waves along the hull, and the creak of metal rings rubbing one another. The fittings of this ghostly ship made no sound because the sea and the wind had no hold on it. The currents did not move it, the breeze did not lift the shredded sails, the waves did
not rock it back and forth. They might as well have been rowing toward a black hole in the ocean for all the noise it made.

“We'll head up above the ship and let the current take us down toward it,” Gudrin said. “Then the wind will be at our backs when we throw the torches. Start pulling again, William. And please try to keep it even this time.”

“Pushy lady,” Jason whispered under his breath. “What I don't understand is this. We're breaking our backs rowing against the current to get to this stupid ship. Why isn't it floating toward us?”

So Jason had noticed it too. William shrugged. He didn't want to waste his breath trying to explain. He was using all of it to row.

They eased their way around the stern and swung upward into the wind which had picked up in the last few minutes.

“Keep going, row away from it a little more,” Gudrin said. She had to lift her voice above the sudden breeze. “We need some extra time to get the torches ready.”

They did as she ordered, happy to put some distance between themselves and the heavy dark shadow of the ship. They held the dory into the wind while Gudrin pulled out the long wooden torches and lined them up against the gunwales. Then when she signaled that she was ready, they shipped their oars, and the three of
them leaned together to make a shelter against the wind so the matches could catch. Good thing I brought these, William thought, but he didn't say anything. As the oil-soaked rags caught fire, Gudrin handed them out. By the time the dory drifted back down with the current, each of them held two burning torches.

In the sudden dancing light, William glanced at Gudrin. Her skin shone and her hair floated in a wild tangle above her head. Her eyes were fixed on the ship, and in a sudden graceful movement, she rose to her feet and hurled the first torch with her left hand and then the second with her right. The first hit the edge of the forecastle and plummeted into the sea with a sizzle. The second arched high into the sky and landed squarely in the middle of the deck.

“Throw yours,” she cried, her voice suddenly frantic. “Go on, hurry.”

Jason looked at William. “We've got to stand together,” he said. “Otherwise the boat will capsize. Sit down, Gudrin,” he called, and she melted into her seat without a word.

“One, two, three,” William said, as they stood and tossed in unison, with their right hands and then their left. Jason's first torch sailed over the ship and landed in the sea on the other side, but the other three torches hit the deck. The trail of flames lit up the night sky like a Fourth of July celebration.

Water was slopping over the gunwales of the dory
but Gudrin didn't seem to notice. Up in the bow, she was fiddling with the matches, trying to light another three torches. “Help me with these stupid things!” she screamed at William, shaking the matchbox.

He glanced at her and then over the bow again. The wind had carried them down to within a few feet of the death ship. They were going to ram it.

William pulled Jason down into the boat. “Start rowing again, fast!” William yelled. “We're too close to throw anything.”

He and Jason bent over the oars, and just before their own little boat crashed into the massive dark hull, they managed to ease the bow around so that it cut through the swells. Slowly they began to make some headway, but with the rise and fall of each wave, Gudrin was getting drenched. She didn't pay any attention.

“Look,” she cried, pointing up at the deck of the boat. “They're not catching. We've got to light more.”

“Watch the box of matches,” Jason shouted at her. “Keep them dry if you can. And the torches too.”

Crouched over his oar, William wondered if the two of them had gone mad. He didn't care anymore about burning the ship, he just wanted to get as far away from it as possible. When they had first come out here, the sea had been calm as a pond on a hot summer
afternoon. Now it felt angry, stirred up, dangerous.

“We're getting too far from shore,” he yelled in Jason's ear. “Let's turn. The current will take us around the bow, and we can toss the torches from there.”

Jason nodded and lifted his oar. The dory spun as if caught in a whirlpool, and William was hit full in the face with the next wave. Gudrin leapt to her feet and screamed against the noise of the wind, “It caught, it caught.”

“Sit down,” Jason yelled, and he reached behind and tugged at her thick burlap skirt. The dory was going over. William scrambled to the stern to try and right the boat, but he was too late. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. As he slid into the water, William looked up one more time. Gudrin was right, he thought. The last thing he saw before the waves closed over his head were long skinny flames dancing up the mast and licking the sails.

The water was bone-chilling, the kind of cold that makes your chest tighten and close up. With clumsy, sodden strokes, William fought his way to the surface. When he broke through and took in those first precious gulps of air, the sky was lit up so brightly that for a moment he thought he had spent the night underwater and a new day had dawned. But of course it was the fire. The flames shot up into the sky, and as he
watched, the top of the mast tipped slowly sideways and plummeted into the sea like a flaming rocket.

“We did it, Gudrin,” he cried. “You were right. We did it.”

Gudrin. Where was she? She couldn't swim. And with those heavy skirts . . .

“Gudrin!” he screamed again. He shoved aside the debris from the dory that was floating upside down near him and paddled madly in one direction.

“JASON,” he cried. “Where are you? Where's Gudrin?”

From the other side of the dory, William heard an answering call.

“I'm here,” Jason cried. “But I can't find her.”

William swam up to the bow where she had been sitting, and began to dive down, over and over again, his hands reaching out in the cold murky water for any sign of her. Please, let us find her, please, don't let her die, please, please, please. Up he came for another gulp of air and then down again. Just when he knew he didn't have enough strength for one more dive, his left hand touched something, a sodden mass of rough clothing. He grabbed and pulled the whole weight of it upward, fighting the pressure of the water against him. He burst through the surface, filled his aching lungs with air, and with a last spurt of energy, he dragged her body up onto the edge of the dory. Behind him the fire
raged on, and he was stunned by the roaring noise it made. The orange flames lit up Gudrin's face. Her eyes were closed and she wasn't breathing.

“Jason, I found her,” he called. “Over on this side.”

Every time he let go of Gudrin's waist to pound her between the shoulder blades, her body began to slide down the steep hull of the dory, back into the sea. Then, suddenly, he got mad. She had gotten them into this mess. He was not going to let her go and die on them.

“Breathe, Gudrin, blast you,” he yelled. “Your stupid ship is burning. Wake up and watch it.” He pounded her once more on the back. This time the slap was so hard that her head shook.

“Hey, old buddy, go easy,” Jason said from Gudrin's other side. “You're going to kill her.”

William didn't answer because Gudrin's mouth had opened and a torrent of water was pouring out of it. She choked and coughed and spat, and another bucketful spewed forth. At last her eyes opened and she stared at William without moving. She looked like a baby taking a nap, with the slimy planking of the dory as her pillow.

“Are you all right?” William called.

A wave splashed over her face.

“Help me hold on to her,” he yelled at Jason.

Jason grabbed her around the waist. It took all their strength to keep her from sliding underwater again. She stared blankly at William.

“I think she's in some kind of shock,” William said. “Start kicking toward shore. As long as we hold on to the dory, we should be all right.”

Jason nodded, and wearily they began to move their legs back and forth. The current had carried them slightly downwind of the ship, but they were close enough to feel the heat of the fire. The pitch that had been used to caulk the hull was burning, and a noxious black smoke billowed up above the flames and floated over their heads.

Suddenly William heard strange plops in the water all around them.

“What's that?” Jason called. “What's falling out of the sky?”

William twisted and turned, and in among the chunks of charred wood and barrels and old ropes, he saw small moving bodies, black shapes, paddling for shore alongside them. More and more were raining down around them all the time.

“Rats,” he mouthed as one of the creatures scrambled up on the hull of the dory. It soon lost its footing on the wet surface and began sliding toward Gudrin's motionless head. William let go of her so he could sweep it away with his hand. The sleek oily body
disappeared for a moment under the water and then surfaced again, just to the left of them.

“Kick,” Jason screamed. “Splash. Make noise. Anything to keep them away.”

The thought of the creatures brushing past them gave the boys new life and energy. Gudrin lifted her head briefly and then sank into her previous position, her glazed eyes resting on William. Her look chilled him. It seemed as if she had given all her power over to him, as if she no longer cared what happened to her now that she had put him in charge.