The Pirate's Revenge (3 page)

I shook my head. ‘I don't think Mister Black will be pleased to see me.'

‘All will be well,' Hussein assured me. ‘Things have changed since the last time you met.'

‘Are you sure?' asked Jem. He remembered, too.

‘You'll just have to trust me.' I hated it when Hussein said that. It usually meant trouble.

‘What about finding some guns?' asked Moggia.

‘There are guns aplenty, if you know where to look,' said Miller. He winked again.

‘What are you talking about?' I said.

‘And stop that stupid winking,' snapped Moggia.

Miller chuckled. ‘You've forgotten — we already have dozens of guns,' he said. ‘The muskets we stole
from Santa Lucia — they must be still aboard
Gisella
.'

‘Hopefully they've gone to the bottom, with
Gisella
and her damned captain,' I muttered. Those guns had cost me my freedom, and many of my fellow Santa Lucians their lives.

‘I'm not willing to seek out Diablo just to get our hands on those muskets,' said Jem. ‘We're better off out of his wake.'

‘Those guns have been nothing but trouble,' grumbled Moggia. ‘First we had to blow up a whole town just to take a few dozen muskets. Hide them in the Lion Cave, Diablo says, but nobody knows where it is. I nearly broke my back dragging those bedevilled guns all over Santa Lucia. Now they are somewhere on the high seas, and they can stay there for all I care. We will find better guns.'

‘Another Diablo disaster,' said Miller.

‘I'm afraid that was my fault,' I admitted. ‘My mother and brother were hiding in the cave. When you boys nabbed me, I led you clear away in the other direction.'

‘You what?' asked Jem, incredulous. ‘You never owned up to that before.'

Hussein was laughing again. ‘It's probably just as well, Jem. If Lily is anything like her mother, your men wouldn't have stood a chance.'

He stood up, leaning on Brasher for support. ‘It doesn't matter. Those guns are long gone, and I'd rather look elsewhere than have to deal with
Gisella
or her crew.'

He nodded to us. ‘I'll rest now. Call me when you reach the coast. Lily, set a course for Dwejra Bay.'

We made our landfall at night. Dwejra Bay, dead on. A brilliant price of navigation, although nobody noticed but me.

I roused Hussein from the cabin. He was still slow on his feet.

‘Are you sure you're fit to travel?' I asked.

‘Fit as a rooster,' he assured me. ‘You are a fine doctor, after all, even if it was your first surgery.'

I felt myself blushing bright scarlet. ‘Was I that bad?'

‘Not at all. I've suffered much worse.'

He stood up, buckled his sword loosely around his waist, and slid a dagger into the sheath on the right.

‘Lily,' he said. ‘I'm afraid I couldn't deliver your letter to Santa Lucia. The invasion intervened.'

There was nothing I could say. Through all these weeks of waiting, I'd been hoping for only one thing: that my letter had arrived safely; that my mother now knew I was alive and well.

‘But I sent it on with some escapees from the Old City,' he continued. ‘I can only hope it found its way home for you.'

‘I'm sure it has,' I said, unconvinced. ‘Thank you.'

Max tapped on the hatchway and called down to us. ‘Boat's ready.'

Hussein fixed his eyes on me. ‘You remember what to do? Don't deal with anyone but Ebenezer Black. He will make arrangements for future deliveries. But don't mention my name to him. He is dealing with other friends of ours, and need not know of my involvement. Stay alert.'

‘I know,' I assured him. ‘There are spies everywhere.'

‘Not just spies. We are at war now. We have enemies.'

‘I don't,' I said.

‘You'd be surprised.'

He clasped me on the shoulder. ‘Be careful. If you need me, come back to Dwejra, to the Inland Sea. The people here will always be able to find me.'

‘I will.'

Then he was gone. The
Mermaid
sailed on, around the headland and east, towards the towering cliffs of Dingli.

It was a murky, strange day. A sea mist lay heavy on the surface of the water and drifted up over the cliff-tops, which seemed to stretch upwards endlessly. Above the mist, dark clouds were pressing down, thickening the fog. Out to sea, the water and sky blended into one silky grey shadow that carried on forever. The entire French fleet might be anchored offshore, for all we knew, but there was some comfort in the knowledge that the
Mermaid
was also invisible to unseen eyes.

The tops of the trees on shore were wreathed in a slowly swirling fug. Beneath them, Ebenezer Black was waiting for us.

In a tiny cove, no more than a cleft in the cliffs, he stood on the beach with a few men, a team of stout ponies, and a dray. Jem motioned in the direction of the shore.

‘Hussein's word travels fast.'

‘He always seems to be one step ahead of us,' I muttered. ‘How does he do that?'

‘You'd better go talk to Black, like Hussein said.'

‘I'd rather not.'

‘Quick about it,' he said. ‘I'll get things ready here.'

Reluctantly I climbed down into the rowboat, leaving all my weapons on board the
Mermaid
. I didn't trust myself in Black's presence. I wasn't sure if I was scared of him or scared of my own reaction to him. Perhaps I was simply afraid of learning the truth: he had said he would tell me what had happened to my father. Now the time had come, I wasn't certain that I wanted to hear it.

But the boat flew through the water and was beached before I had time to plan what to say. Black walked slowly towards us. Some of his men were armed with pikes and axes.

‘Cyg,' Miller whispered, ‘don't just sit there, get out of the boat.'

I couldn't move. I watched Black's feet sink into the wet sand with each step he took towards us — smart leather shoes with large silver buckles. It seemed to take hours for each foot to lift itself up and splatter
again in the outgoing waves. I didn't want to look into his snarling face. I didn't want to know.

At last he drew close enough to speak. ‘Miss Swann, welcome back.'

He was smiling. What on earth —?

‘Allow me to help you out,' he offered.

‘No, thank you,' I said, jumping to my feet and over the gunwales into the shallows.

‘About bloody time,' Miller muttered.

‘I have ordered a barge around to help with the cargo,' said Black. ‘It will be with us shortly.'

‘Thank God,' said Miller, ‘I had a feeling we'd be here for a week unloading with this wee boat.'

‘Perish the thought,' said Black, smiling again. ‘My men will keep guard.'

‘We need our water casks filled, too, and any stores you can spare,' I said gruffly.

Black bowed in acknowledgement. ‘I'll have someone see to it.'

‘Best get started,' I said. ‘Jem will have the block and tackle rigged and ready by now.'

‘Easy enough for you to say, Cyg,' said Miller. ‘You don't have to lug it all ashore.'

‘I will!'

I felt Ebenezer Black's hand on my arm. ‘On the contrary, Miss Swann, I was hoping you would join my family for lunch. Let the men deal with the cargo.'

‘That'd be bloody right,' Miller teased. ‘Let us men do all the heavy work, while you go off for ham and eggs.'

‘I think we can do better than ham and eggs,' said Black. ‘This way, please.'

As he turned to walk back towards the path, I thumped Miller hard on the shoulder.

‘Hope you have a delightful luncheon, Miss Swann,' he said, mocking, with a nasty pinch on my arm.

‘Hope someone drops a cargo net on you.'

Miller was still chuckling as I trudged through the sand to where Black stood waiting, then followed him up the track to his house on the cliff.

It seemed so different from that night when Jem and I had confronted Black in his study and threatened his life and family, just as he had threatened us. Now the mist had lifted, bright sun was scorching the courtyard, and the chickens sought shade under a shed. An old man bent over a garden bed. From somewhere, the laughter of small children echoed down the hallway.

Black and I had not spoken all the way up the cliff path. He was puffing hard as we reached the house, and leaned against the doorway for a moment to catch his breath.

‘I'm not as young as I was when we built this house,' he said. ‘I hardly ever go down to the shore these days, but this is a special occasion.'

He motioned for me to enter before him. The cool of the house pricked my skin — or perhaps it was the puzzle of Ebenezer Black's hospitality. It must be a trick, I decided. He wants the chalice back. He thinks I'll tell him where it is, but I'm not that daft.

‘Come in, come in,' he was saying, ‘my wife has been looking forward to meeting you.' He smiled again.

Be careful, Hussein had said.
You have enemies. You'd be surprised.

If ever I had an enemy, it would be Ebenezer Black. That would be no surprise at all. How he must hate me, I thought; and then, in a panic: what was Miller thinking, leaving me alone with this man? While the
Mermaid
's men lugged sacks of grain and barrels of oil out of the hold and into the waiting boats, I could be slaughtered. Or trapped. Or at least humiliated.

But Black was simply holding open a door.

‘We'll dine in here. The children will join us, if you don't mind. They are rather eager to see a real pirate princess.'

‘All right then,' I mumbled.

The table was set for eight, with white linen cloths and a huge bowl of fruit and flowers in the centre. Next to the windows, a carved black sideboard stood laden with trays of cold meats, vegetables, and a soup tureen as big as a bucket.

Blast, I thought, I should have washed my hands.

Running footsteps sounded outside the door, and all at once there was a rush of laughter and ruffles and blond hair and racing children and a woman in a long white skirt.

‘Allow me to introduce my family,' Black said, but there were so many of them, and the youngsters looked so similar, that the only thing I remembered was his wife's name: Lily.

‘You're my namesake,' she said, smiling and holding out her hand towards me. ‘I've wanted to meet you for so long.'

I gazed around the room in confusion.

She took pity on me. ‘My husband hasn't welcomed you properly, I see.' Everything about her seemed
pale: her hair, skin, teeth, even her eyes. She took my hand. ‘You sit here beside me.'

The children somehow shouted and shoved themselves into chairs all around the table.

‘She's a pirate!' one screeched.

‘She's too small to be a pirate, silly,' said another.

Their father smiled. ‘That's what I thought when she first appeared in this house,' he said, speaking as if our midnight encounter was a pleasant memory. ‘But I was wrong. Miss Swann is indeed very much a pirate. You've seen her ship in the cove.'

‘What's your ship called?' asked one of the older boys.

‘It's the
Mermaid
,' I mumbled.

‘The
Mermaid
has come to our rescue, loaded with food for the villages,' said Black, ‘so she's a very fine vessel indeed.'

‘There's another on the way,' I said. ‘The
Corfu
. We rendezvous in a few days' time, and then we'll send her on to you to unload, if that's all right.'

I looked at the boy. ‘Of course, she's not as beautiful as the
Mermaid
, but she's a solid old thing.'

‘The more the merrier,' said Black. ‘Would you like some chicken?'

A maid appeared at my elbow with a plate of food. Another filled a goblet with cider. The meal seemed to fly by in a gust of giggles and hands passing plates and kicking under the table and squeals of delight. Everyone spoke and laughed at once, and I sat, eating everything put in front of me, like a child at a puppet show.

There was a fleeting moment of quiet.

‘I heard from someone,' I said, ‘that you would know who to contact if we had to unload more … dangerous goods.'

‘Unload anything you wish here,' said Black airily. ‘I'll make sure it gets to the appropriate people. Your contact can rest assured on that account.'

I nodded. ‘Thank you.'

A peace offering seemed to be in order. ‘I hope I didn't get you into too much trouble after my last visit, sir,' I ventured.

‘Not at all,' said Black. ‘In fact, by the time the Grand Master found out the chalice had been stolen, he had many more problems to occupy his mind.'

He chortled. ‘His entire archipelago had been stolen by then. His own stupid fault, too, the damned fool. Run off to Russia now or some such spineless thing, they say. Bonaparte has sent the rest of the Knights packing. Good riddance, too.'

My astonishment must have been plain on my face.

‘You are surprised, Miss Swann?' he asked, sitting back in his chair and tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. ‘You wonder why I, the loyal secretary, should speak so bitterly of my former masters?'

‘I thought …' Frankly, I didn't know what to think. ‘I understood you were one of them.'

‘Don't get him started, Lily, I warn you,' said Mrs Black.

It was too late. Mr Black leaned forward and grabbed a spoon from the table and brandished it as if it were a mace.

‘I am half-Irish, like you, Miss Swann, but the blood that courses most true through these veins is Maltese. I was born here. My mother's family have lived in the Old City for generations. They first came here to join the Knights of St John, and my family has served the Order well for many decades. We believed in its Holy work, its hospitals, and all its good deeds.'

‘But these Knights —' he almost spat the words. ‘In recent years, they have leeched the islands dry. They have taken everything. They forsake their Orders. Those fish-livered, traitorous, decadent fools —'

‘Darling,' said Mrs Black gently, ‘that's hardly luncheon conversation.'

There was an awkward silence while Mr Black placed his spoon carefully next to his plate and smoothed his cravat.

‘Have you got a sword?' asked the eldest boy.

I gazed around at the pink faces. Every single one of them reminded me of my brother Lucas, with his eager face and sharp eyes, asking for yet another story, wishing for an adventure.

‘I have got the sharpest, most blood-thirsty scimitar in the whole Mediterranean,' I began. ‘It once belonged to Saladin, then to Suleiman the Magnificent, then to a crusader prince, then to a wicked pirate captain, and now it's mine.'

I could almost feel the whoosh as they all breathed in at once.

Mrs Black giggled delightedly and clapped her hands. ‘I'll tell you the rest of the story before bed tonight, my dears,' she said. ‘Now off you run, and see if you can find any pirates in the garden.'

‘But Mama,' the older boy protested, ‘you don't know the whole story.'

She smiled. ‘I know everything about our pirate princess,' she said. ‘Don't worry. Now off you pop, all of you, and leave your father and Miss Swann in peace.'

She swept them all before her out of the room.

I fidgeted nervously with a butter knife while Black poured himself a glass of wine from the decanter.

At last he looked across the table at me. His face was somehow softer than I remembered it.

‘Miss Swann, I believe I promised you that if you ever came back here I would tell you what happened to your father.'

I stared at the tablecloth in front of me.

‘I can't tell you what a surprise it was to see you standing before me in such — let's say — unusual circumstances the last time we met,' he said.

He hunted in his pockets for his pipe and fiddled with it for a few moments. I'm not sure if I held my breath the whole time, but it felt like my ribcage was crushing my lungs and heart.