The Pirate's Revenge (8 page)

Carmella had to help me get the shirt over my bandaged arm and lace up the sandals. She tied my sore arm in a sling around my neck. I gazed at her in wonder. ‘Where did you get all these?'

‘Don't ask me, Miss. It was Madame. She must have had them stashed away somewhere, but she's been awake sewing all night getting them the right size for you.'

‘Please thank her for me.'

Carmella looked abashed. ‘Uh-oh. I just
remembered, I wasn't supposed to say where the clothes came from. She told me it was a secret.'

I threw her a wink. ‘Don't worry. I'll thank her myself then.'

But I never got a chance.

After breakfast, as I was sitting in the sun by an open window, breathing in the orange blossom scent from the courtyard, there was a knock on the door.

‘Cygno,' called Carlo. ‘Are you receiving visitors?'

‘Don't be silly, Carlo, you are always welcome.'

I turned my face to greet him. Shuffling into the room behind him, hats off, were the Vella brothers.

‘Ricardo!' I cried. ‘Francesco! Where have you been?'

They were a sorry but welcome sight. Francesco wore a black eye, the bruise now turning a nasty yellow, while his brother had a ragged gash across his forehead. They stood together, elbows touching, just inside the doorway.

They had both somehow scavenged old uniforms from the Knights' galley fleet — shirts flapping open at the neck, striped trousers held up by wide waistbands. Ricardo had a heavy blue jacket with silver buttons hanging from his shoulders, and his feet were crammed into shoes far too small for him. It was almost reassuring to see Francesco's grubby toes flexing and wriggling on the cold marble floor.

‘Cygno, you are wounded,' Francesco whispered.

‘Only a little,' I said. ‘You've been in a fight, too, by the looks. Don't your uniforms look splendid? Come in, come in.'

‘We cannot come in,' said Ricardo. ‘There is no time.'

‘We have come to fetch you,' said Francesco.

I stood up slowly. ‘Has the
Mermaid
come back?'

‘
Iva
, she awaits you. We have a cart outside. We must leave now.'

Francesco cleared his throat. ‘The men of the
Mermaid
have voted. We have decided. It is time to take you home.'

Home?

I looked around me: at the white drapes that shimmered like sails in the breeze; at the huge bed piled high with pillows; at the cool paved floor, the tiled washstand, the tall windows, and the gilt edging on the fireplace. My family's whole house was smaller than this one room, and yet I did not fit here. I was the wrong shape.

I picked up my sword from its stand beside the bed, and slung the baldric over my shoulder.

Carlo took a few tentative steps forward. ‘Please stay here, Cygno,' he said. ‘You are part of our family now.'

‘Thank you, my friend,' I said, gently, ‘but I cannot. I will see you again, soon.'

He put out his hand, and I shook it firmly. ‘Farewell.'

‘How do you say it in Malta?'

‘We say
sa
a
.'

‘
Sa
a
, Carlo,' I said. ‘Please thank your family for being so kind to me, especially your mother.'

He nodded.

‘Tell her,' I said, my voice wavering, ‘please tell her it's time for me to go home.'

On board the
Mermaid
, everything seemed just the same, except that now I was going home.

As we rowed out to the ship, I admired her lines. She sat so beautifully in the water, so fine, as if she were a noble white horse or a gull sweeping on the wind. The boys greeted us with a cheer, and we set sail in the dusk. I was still too weak to help much, so I sat on the hatch and threw my head back to watch as the headsail filled and the mainsail was hauled and made fast. The
Mermaid
glowed in the yellowing sunset, her canvas tight and rounded, her ropes quivering as the breeze quickened.

After so long on shore, I laughed to feel the wind on my skin and the rhythm of the sea. A sudden wind puckered the water and rocked the ship, dragging on the canvas, then passed on to fade out somewhere towards Africa. My body moved with the swell, all my muscles and bones rolling with the waves, as if I were part of the ship and all the world's oceans.

We headed out to sea to skirt the coast. There was no need for me to set a course. The boys all knew where they were, and where we were headed: to
Dwejra to unload another cargo for Hussein, then on to Santa Lucia to unload me.

In my little cabin, everything was just as I'd left it. I hung my sword on its hook, and sat down to write the missing days into the logbook. Ever since we'd been aboard, I'd marked our position, every noon and every night, in the captain's log. What a story it could tell. In the logbook, you were supposed to note down sightings of ships and coasts, weather conditions, wind direction, quartermaster's store records. But every night, I'd wanted to scribble down all the marvellous things I'd seen; all the strange things we'd done, the boys and I; and how it felt to be out here, day after day, with the sea birds and the porpoises, with the ship as our home.

Other navigators on other ships wrote about discovering new worlds or exploring unknown coastlines. I wanted to write about the lines of stubby trees beneath the cliffs, the gullies that snaked up onto the plateau, and cliffs of crumbly limestone, pockmarked with caves.

I wanted to write how I'd watched our wake fade behind us, bubbling and creamy as fresh milk or clouds in a summer sky. Or how the sea spray had flung itself into our faces like a handful of pearls, then vanished as if it were smoke. The water was so different every day: a new colour, a new depth and mood. One morning there'd be a nasty black chop, then later a deep swell topped with sudden green peaks, and the wind would scythe the top off every wave. The next day you'd see veins and spatters of white across bright blue.

Way out to sea, the water rippled and buckled under its skin, and in the afternoon glare it was glazed in sheets of silver. Close to shore, it coiled around the rocks, spat and gurgled through the rock-pools. In the evening there'd be layers of cloud, oyster grey, then pale as a gull's wing, building up a storm; the
Mermaid
would fly downwind, and we'd sing on deck as we worked, the boys laughing aloud. I wished I could write it all down.

Instead, every evening, I sat down at the chart table and noted our position and the wind direction and any ships we'd seen and whether our stores were running low. That night was no different. I quizzed the boys on their route to pick up this last cargo from Sicily, and filled in the missing entries, day by day, feeling the pull of the tight scar on my arm. I noted our destination for tomorrow, and the day after.

I'm going home!
I wanted to scribble it right across the page. Instead I wrote, in my best lettering:
Santa Lucia. Course SSW from Dwejra.

Jem knocked gently at the door. ‘How goes it, Cyg? How's the arm?'

‘Tired, but well.' I would miss him so much. I knew I would miss them all.

He stood awkwardly, head bowed beneath the low ceiling. ‘I have a favour to ask of you.'

‘What is it?' I asked.

‘It's just …' His voice was hushed. ‘I want to send a letter.'

‘Shall I write it down for you?'

‘It'd be much appreciated.' He cleared his throat.
‘I got it all in my head. I just need someone to take it down.'

‘Of course,' I said. I took out some fresh ink and sharpened the nib of a pen, while he waited nervously, still standing just inside the door.

‘I'm ready,' I said, pen poised. Writing hurt my arm, but there was no way I'd admit it. Jem had never asked me for anything before.

‘Right then. It's to Alice McGuire, Topping Lane, Cheapside. That's just across from the baker's.'

I nodded. ‘Is she your mother, Jem?'

He chuckled. ‘Hardly. She's my missus.'

All these months I'd known him, I'd never guessed he had a wife back in London. I suppose I'd never asked, never even wondered.

‘Go on.'

‘You won't tell no-one what I say?' he said.

‘I promise.'

He coughed again. ‘Here goes.'

He spoke each word carefully, as though he'd redrafted and rehearsed the letter a hundred times in his head.

He waited for me to finish writing the last few words. ‘Does that sound all right?'

‘It's perfect,' I said softly. I blotted the paper dry and handed it to him. He folded it carefully.

‘How old is your son, Jem?'

‘Going on five, now.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I didn't know.'

‘Haven't seen him since he was a babe in arms,' he said wistfully.

‘But you could go home any time you wanted.'

‘Oh aye?' he said. ‘How?'

‘Just … sail.'

‘That easy, eh?' He tucked his thumbs into his belt, and narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Let me tell you something, Cyg. We all want to go home — you're not the only one.'

I bowed my head.

‘It's been three years since Diablo took my ship,' he went on. ‘I wasn't sailing master then, mind, just a bosun's mate. He attacked us just off Sardinia. Horrible fight it was, too. Most of us slaughtered. But he needed crew, so after the battle the living got a choice — sign on with him, or hang.'

He shrugged. ‘Here I am to this day, same as you, same as Moggia or Max. Only now we got our own ship. No fear of hanging. We just need to turn a
little profit, and most of us would vanish off home — wherever home may be — faster than flying-fish, and no fear.'

I looked up at him at last. ‘How often do you send letters home?'

‘Whenever I'm in port and can find a scribe.'

‘Does she ever write back?' I asked.

‘She might, I suppose, but I've never been in one place long enough for a letter to find me.'

‘So many years.' My mind wandered, as always, to my own father, wherever he was.

‘Jem?' I asked. ‘You are oceans away from your family, and yet you send them word. Don't you think, if my father was alive, he'd have written to say so? Somehow, surely, he would have found a way. You do.'

‘I can't tell what lies in another man's mind, Cyg. But I do think, if your father was anywhere about, he ought to have made himself known to you.'

‘Maybe he doesn't know where I am, either.'

‘You're getting to be famous in these waters, you know,' he teased. ‘All of Sicily seems to have heard of the maid on the
Mermaid
. Last week the harbour master came aboard especially to have a peek at you, and kicked up a hell of a fuss when he discovered you were still in Malta. That's really why we came back to get you.'

I tried to smile.

‘Listen to me,' he said, bending down to hold my face in his hands. ‘If your father is truly alive, he'll find you somehow, I'm sure of it.'

‘And if he's not?'

‘Then his blood is on Diablo's hands, like so many others. But enough of this.' He straightened up and hit his head on the ceiling. ‘Hell!'

‘Watch your head.' It was one of our running jokes.

‘Aye,' he smiled. ‘It's late, and you're weary.'

‘Don't go yet,' I pleaded. ‘There's something I want to show you.'

He watched carefully as I prised my old money-pouch out of its hiding hole behind the bulkhead.

‘What have you got there?'

‘Hold out your hand,' I whispered.

Very carefully, very slowly, I poured into his palm the pearls from the Golden Grotto. His breath quickened as he saw the first few, but he gasped aloud as they all rolled into his hands.

‘By Drake's beard!' he said. ‘Where on earth did you steal these?'

‘I found them,' I said. ‘There's one for each of us, but there are more, many more, in the Grotto.'

He gazed at me, then down again at the treasure in his hands. A slow-lit fuse of a smile spread across his face until he flushed crimson. He closed his fingers around them and chuckled.

‘So there was something precious in that black hole after all?'

‘I didn't think Diablo deserved them,' I said.

‘Damn right! But don't that make them all the more precious?'

‘I only found them because he stranded me there.'

At this he threw his head right back and laughed fit to burst. ‘Oh, how I wish he knew!'

‘You mustn't tell,' I whispered.

‘No fear,' he assured me. ‘But I do wish I could see his face if he ever found out.'

He held out his hands to me.

‘Put them away, Cyg. Don't you tell anyone else for now — they'll only go silly.'

I held the edges of the pouch as he carefully tipped the pearls back inside, listening to the quiet little clicks as they fell.

‘We'll go back, all of us, one day,' he said. ‘We go there together, or not at all.'

‘Aye,' I said. ‘We'll collect all the pearls in the secret cave, and then you can be captain of your own ship, and your family can sail with you everywhere, and I can buy my mother a big white house with a garden.'

He touched me gently on the shoulder. ‘That's right, Cyg. That's what we'll do. We can sail for the fun of it, then, eh? We'll sail to the New World and back again, in the
Mermaid
.'

I felt like crying with relief. He must have known, for he waved me towards the hammock.

‘That's enough working for one night, now. Get some sleep.'

I bid him goodnight, and as I blew out my candle I held in my mind the wish I made every night: clear skies, good sailing, and home at last.

I should have known. The next day broke stormy and with a sharp chop on the water that made the
Mermaid
prance about under a tight rein. The waters outside Dwejra Bay swirled and splattered under our hull, and the wind blew off the water.

‘What do you say, Jem?' I asked when I came up on deck.

He pulled a face, squinting up at the canvas. ‘Not so flash here. We'll never get out of the bay once we get in, not until the wind comes around.'

‘That's not bloody likely,' said Miller, struggling at the helm. ‘Feels like it's settled in for the day.'

‘We will have to go into the Inland Sea to unload,' Francesco suggested.

Jem rubbed his stubbly chin. ‘I suppose so, but it's a hell of a haul with all this grain.'

‘The villagers are used to it,' said Francesco. ‘They have special muscles in their arms from rowing against the current their whole lives. That is what they say in Gozo — never wrestle an Inlander.'

‘Thank you for the advice,' said Jem. ‘I'll remember that.'

‘Do they say the same about the womenfolk?' Miller teased.

‘May you never be in a position to find out,' said Francesco.

‘We'll have to heave to,' Jem shouted down the deck, waving an arm to the north. ‘We'll find Hussein, and then hunt for somewhere else to unload the cargo. It's not worth the risk.'

The men nodded.

It was spectacular coast, fissured and pockmarked with caves and fingers of rock pointing out to sea and up to the sky. An archway of solid stone, carved by the weather and as high as one of those Roman aqueducts I'd seen in books, braced itself against the force of the sea. Behind the rock pools, an old stone
tower stood watch, deserted now by the Knights who had guarded it for hundreds of years. But it was a treacherous coastline in this weather, and Jem knew as well as the rest of us that the smugglers in the villages were only too happy to pick the beaches clean of flotsam from ships that strayed too close to the rocks.

‘Watcher on the cliff,' called Miller.

I peered through the sea spray. Sure enough, high on the cliff-top was a single man on horseback, watching our progress as we battled swell and wind to get the ship around. I spied through the telescope, but he was too far off to see clearly. Miller was worried, I could tell, and he rarely worried without good cause.

‘Not too many peasants ride horses around here,' he said. ‘That means it's probably someone who's waiting especially for us.'

‘Maybe Hussein sent him,' I suggested.

‘Maybe,' he said, unconvinced. ‘But is he friend or foe? That's the question.'

Whoever the stranger was, we had to press on. It was a struggle making our way back around the headland, staying far enough from land to keep the sails under control, but close enough to find the entrance to the Inland Sea.

Ricardo pointed it out with a shout from the bow. It was not much more than one of many great cracks in the cliff, but on the other side, so they said, was a lagoon and village that was a haven for smugglers and fishermen alike. Jem nodded and we sailed right past, so we could circle back.