The Nine Pound Hammer (18 page)

“You don’t understand who we are,” Ray said. Her hand withdrew the pistol, and several of the pirates nearby scattered as the hammer cocked back.

“We’re Ramblers,” Ray added firmly.

With the pistol leveled at Ray’s mouth, she said, “You’re not Ramblers. Do you think I’m an idiot? The Ramblers are gone. Heard the last died not two months back, at the mouth of the Gog’s Hound.”

“We’ll prove it,” Ray said. “I can give you what you most want.”

The deck had grown quiet. The pirates no longer heaved and shouted and pulled upon the grappling cables. They all listened, some chuckling at what Ray could only credit to their anticipation at seeing a good murder, but most genuinely fearful at the way the stupid boy was provoking their captain.

“Kid, when you lay down your cards, you’re going to come up short. You have no idea what I most—”

“But I do,” Ray said, with a jut of his chin. “And I’ll give it to you. Then we’ll get your boat back into the water. We can lead you out of this swamp, too. But I want you to promise that you’ll set us free.”

The Pirate Queen’s face was hard as granite, and several taut moments passed. Rosie nestled up against the queen’s leg.

“Then let’s see your hoodoo,” she said at last.

Ray closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what he should look like if he was supposed to be conjuring, but he decided to take the least dramatic route. After mumbling to himself, he opened his eyes. “Cut my ropes.”

The Pirate Queen, her pistol still outstretched toward Ray, motioned to Piglet. The girl’s bare feet slapped across the deck as she ran over to the crane and cut Ray’s rope with a rusty knife.

Ray stood slowly, one hand still behind his back. The Pirate Queen never lowered her pistol, but her face betrayed a curious anticipation.

Ray held up the Pirate Queen’s silver dagger. The deck exploded in gasps, cries, and dumbfounded exclamations. The Pirate Queen’s eyes popped as she reached out to snatch back her lost dagger.

“W-where … h-how … you got it?” she stammered. Turning to Piglet, “Did you check their pockets before they were tied?”

“Of course. Aye, my lady,” Piglet lied nervously. “Hadn’t a thing on them but some food.”

The Pirate Queen holstered the pistol and lovingly ran her fingers along the knife’s blade. Without another moment’s hesitation, she jerked a fresh cigar from her breast pocket and sliced the tip with sigh of relief. Mister
Lamprey rushed up with a match and held it cupped in his hand as the Pirate Queen took several deep puffs to draw the flame to the pungent tobacco. Her mouth relaxed in a smile, smoke drifting in thick summertime clouds from her lips.

“I’ll need my friends untied,” Ray said, “so we can get your boat off the shoal and out of this marsh.”

The tall Pirate Queen looked down at Ray, her expression coarse and poisonous again. “Cut the prisoners loose!” she shouted. “Let’s see if these Ramblers can get us back to open water.”

T
HE PIRATES CLEARED IN A SEMICIRCLE AROUND THE STERN
. Ray huddled with Conker and Si, discussing his plan. “Conker, all you have to do is pull the boat off the shoal,” Ray urged.

“You gone squirrelly! You know I can’t do that!” Conker exclaimed.

“You’re John Henry’s son!” Ray smiled. “Of course you can.”

“Ray, you saw that big fellow. How you expect that I could if he can’t?”

Ray argued in a low voice, “He can’t be as strong as you, Conker. I know it. I’ve seen what you can lift. That Big Jimmie just got a lucky punch in on you is all.”

“You’ve got to learn how to take a punch better,” Si agreed. But then she turned to Ray. “Conker’s right. They
had twenty men pulling those cables before you all came,” she said. “And they couldn’t budge it a foot. When we can’t get it free, she’s going to slit our throats!”

“But he will—” Before Ray could continue, Piglet and the old pirate Joshua came over.

“You ready?” she asked.

Conker looked anxiously at Ray.

“Even if you get the boat off,” Piglet said, “we en’t going to find our way back to the river. Near true a maze out here. Shallow and full of shoals at every turn. Can’t believe we got this far deep.”

“Why’d you come up here?” Ray asked.

“We’s chased,” Piglet said. Joshua nodded wordlessly and chewed at something in his toothless mouth. “Met one of the Gog’s ships in the river and they fired on us. Thought we’d lose ’em up in this marsh.”

Ray exchanged a wide-eyed look with Conker and Si.

“Quit stalling,” Mister Lamprey called from the Pirate Queen’s side. They stood in the center of the pirates, who were all watching impatiently. “Joshua, Piglet, get back over here.”

Ray turned to Conker. “Just try.”

Conker sighed as he wrapped strips of burlap around his wrists to keep the cables from cutting him. As Si walked back with Joshua and Piglet, Ray paused, looking at the odd expression that was coming over Conker’s face. “Is it that feeling again?” Ray asked.

Conker nodded, wincing slightly. “Strangest thing …”

Ray cocked a brow curiously. “Good! Pull that boat, Conker.” He slipped back to the others.

The pirates had thrown six grappling irons off the stern, each attached with a hard cable to cypress knees and roots. Conker twisted the cables together and looped them around the base of the crane to use its heavy foundation as a pulley. Then he wound the mass of cables around his wrists over the burlap strips.

He pulled back slowly, letting the cables tighten. His feet were braced against wooden slats nailed to the deck. He took a step back and the cables grew taut from his hands to the crane and from the crane back over the transom, to where the grappling irons were sunk in the mud fifty feet off the stern. The sky had begun to clear, and a thin witchy moon danced in the fast-moving clouds overhead.

Conker took another step and a groan emerged from somewhere deep in the belly of the
Snapdragon
. He leaned back and all watching from the deck felt the tension as a hundred tons of hull sucked against marshy shoal. Conker’s neck swelled with veins and strings of muscles. His shirt grew dark and wet as every pore burst with perspiration. A grunt began at his gritted teeth, and his body visibly trembled under the tremendous strain.

Conker suddenly howled, beastlike, and the
Snapdragon
lurched, throwing several pirates to the deck. The braces at his feet began to splinter, and Big Jimmie ran forward. Throwing his arms around Conker’s waist, the
pirate kept the giant from sliding. Others ran forward, and soon there was a mass of stinking pirates all holding Conker steady. Conker worked his hands one over the other, inching the cable in as if reeling in a whale. The
Snapdragon
whined and tilted as it slid across the shoal. Conker and the crew fell back in a heap as the pirate steamer finally broke free and settled into the channel.

Shouts and cheers rang out as they got to their feet. A few pirates fired off pistols in celebration. Ray and Si ran to Conker, who was flat on his back, gasping for breath. Si fell at his side, kissing his brow and cheeks and wiping the sweat from his face.

“Conker!” she cried. “Are you alive? Say something!”

He smiled weakly. “I must be dead if you’re kissing on me.”

“You scared me!” She gave him a light slug in the arm, and he winced, laughing.

“I can’t believe I did it,” Conker panted. “I was
stronger
somehow, but where the strength came from I can’t figure.”

The pirates that were gathered about Conker parted. The Pirate Queen’s clanking boots announced her arrival. From around her back the fish-eyed Mister Lamprey whispered, “You think he is, my lady?”

“No time to find out now.” She looked from Conker to Ray. “You promised you could lead us out of this morass. Does that still hold true? I don’t think you realize where we are. This steamer’s meant for open water, not this
shallow swamp. It was ill luck that got us this far from the river’s free flow in the first place.”

Ray rose to his feet. “I can’t, but she can,” he said, pulling Si up by the elbow.

Si turned to glare at Ray, her expression full of venom.

“Come with me,” the Pirate Queen ordered, turning sharply to climb the steps to the pilothouse.

Si pushed Ray ahead of her. “You’re not leaving me alone up there with her.” Ray cast one look back at Conker, who was now able to sit up and drink from the bucket of water that Big Jimmie held. The pirate crew surrounded Conker admiringly. Reaching the top step to the pilothouse, Ray was amazed to see Rosie the alligator climbing the steps behind him.

The pilothouse was the highest cabin in the steamer. Only the smokestacks and the davits rose higher. From that moonlit vantage, Ray could see the full extent of where they were. The marsh around them extended like a prairie, cut through with only the narrowest network of waterways. There were a thousand choices of where to go, and surely nine hundred ninety-nine of them would prove too shallow to pass.

The Pirate Queen began adjusting levers and valves, revving the steam engine to life. There was a large wooden wheel mounted at the helm, like in an old-fashioned clipper ship. To its side was the binnacle, the glass surface of the compass illuminated by an oil lamp fixed into the casing. It would do little good in this situation.

“Well?” the Pirate Queen snapped to Si. Si scowled and ground her teeth. “You speak English, I assume.”

“Course I do!” Si said.

“Then where to? Does that tattooed hand of yours get you out of more than just knots and brigs?”

Si held up her hand. Ray watched from the back wall of the pilothouse. Against the black of the window, it looked for a moment as if she had no hand at all, the color so perfectly matched the night. But then shapes began to glow on the surface of her skin. It took Ray a closer look to the sky beyond and then back at Si’s hand to realize that the designs upon her skin mirrored the positions of the stars in the sky. Within the celestial points of illuminated ink, other shapes arranged themselves as well. Ray could not tell what these were or what they meant, but Si seemed to be able to read them and pointed to the starboard side of the
Snapdragon
.

“That way. The channel that makes an S shape. Follow it.”

“I wouldn’t call these channels,” the Pirate Queen grumbled. “More like ditches.” The Pirate Queen rolled the wheel and pushed a lever slowly. The steamer answered from deep in its belly, unleashing a gasp of black smoke and silver puffs of steam. The
Snapdragon
cautiously maneuvered through the marsh.

“Now turn left,” Si said.

“Port at the first bend?” the Pirate Queen asked.

“No, not that one, the bigger channel,” Si answered, her voice a little shaky.

Ray watched with fixed anticipation. If Si made one mistake, if the
Snapdragon
again grounded …

Ray hardly noticed as Rosie rubbed her snout against his leg. As he’d done a hundred times with friendly dogs, Ray stuck his hand down to pat her nose. It was not until he saw the Pirate Queen’s mouth agape that he realized what he was doing.

“Watch the marsh!” Si cried, and the Pirate Queen’s attention jerked back to the window as she whirled the wheel to the right.

Behind them Mister Lamprey lumbered into the pilothouse, breathing heavily. “My lady?” he murmured.

Not taking her eyes from the course, she blurted, “What is it, Lamprey?”

“If I may mention, the Gog might still be out there waiting for us in the main channel. What then? We en’t got the armaments to fend them off again.”

She chewed nervously on her now-extinguished cigar. “Not much we can do about that, Lamprey.”

“But, my lady,” he said tentatively. “There might be … someone who can go … scout out where they are.”

She bit down hard enough to burst the seams of the cigar, spilling strands of tobacco onto her chin.

“That thief in the brig is scheduled for execution!”

“But … my lady. I don’t mean to be insubordinate,
but … wouldn’t it seem that he didn’t commit the crime for which we got him locked up? After all, the boy here found your silver dagger. En’t that proof he didn’t steal it?”

“We all know he stole it!” she growled. “But you’re right, he could prove useful one last time. Unlock him and send him out to scout for the Gog’s ship.”

“Aye, my lady,” Mister Lamprey said before skipping down the steps.

The Pirate Queen called to him, “And, Lamprey, bring me the music box.”

“But, my lady …”

“Get it!” she shouted, sending Lamprey stumbling down the stairs.

As Si continued to guide the Pirate Queen, she spat the remnants of her cigar onto the helm and spoke from the corner of her mouth. “I know you three can’t be Ramblers, but somehow you’ve managed to do everything you’ve said.”

“You’re going to let us go, aren’t you?” Ray asked, adding, “You promised.”

“Yes, of course. Rambler or not, you know some hoodoo. What I want to know is where you got my silver dagger.”

Ray tried to suppress the smile on his face. “The Lost Wood, ma’am.”

The Pirate Queen’s eyes narrowed but then relaxed with acceptance. Their attention was drawn to the deck below, where a perplexed Peter Hobnob peered about as if
he hadn’t had fresh air for some time. Mister Lamprey seemed to be explaining the situation, and as he spoke, old Joshua came forward with the dandelion hat. Lamprey grabbed Hobnob by the collar of his shirt, and Ray guessed he was explaining what would happen to him if he didn’t return. From Hobnob’s expression, it seemed he understood completely.