Isle of Fire

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  They made eye contact, and Cat nodded. The young monk nodded back. The ship slowed until the Dominguez and the Celestine pulled even with them. Then all three of the Brethren’s ships sailed west of Pine Island into the setting sun.

  “I need a sextant,” Scully said at last. “Otherwise, we may miss the island.”

  Cat went to the helm and brought back the navigational instrument. He held it up for Scully, but Scully did not take it. Nor could he; his hands were bound. “You tell me when to release the clamp,” Cat said with a smirk.

  “For mercy’s sake, will you free my hands?” Scully sighed. “I cannot get a proper reading.”

  “Mister Scully, you don’t believe me to be that gullible, do you?” asked Father Brun. “I may not know the sea like a tall ship captain, but even I know the sextant is accurate in the hands of anyone who knows how to use it. And I assure you, Cat—this ship’s captain—is up to the task.”

  Scully glowered once more—it seemed to be his preferred facial expression of late. Cat sighted the horizon through the sextant’s lens, released the clamp freeing the index bar, and brought the sun down in line with the horizon. He gave the reading to Scully, who nodded. The slightest hint of a smile played at the corner of his mouth. “We’re almost there,” he said. “Look off the port bow. If the tide is right—and I believe it is—you will see a round patch of black with here-and-there ripples of white. Not much different than the sea and its whitecaps . . . only this patch will not be moving.”

  Anne went to the rail first. “I see it!” she said.

  Cat joined her. “That’s amazing . . . it’s black stone,” he said. “We’d have never seen it—”

  “If I hadn’t directed you so accurately,” Scully finished the sentence. “You see . . . I can be trusted.” Scully grinned. He waited for Father Brun to go to the rail. Then he moved a step backward, a few inches closer to Brother Javier and his sharp sword. “Uh, Captain,” Scully said to Cat, “you’ll want the ship to come in from the leeward side.”

  “Right,” said Cat, but he hesitated a moment. Then he called up to Brother Keegan and commanded him to steer the Constantine to the windward side of the island—opposite of Scully’s recommendation. Scully glared at Cat but said nothing. The winds were steady, though not especially powerful. The Dominguez and the Celestine sluiced through the waves on either side.

  Three warships, Cat thought. Won’t the Merchant be surprised when he realizes the might of the Brethren is about to descend upon him? It’s a bit of overkill for one man. The thought had barely traveled its course when several things happened in such quick succession that no one had time to react until it was too late.

  There came a horrible, sharp cracking sound, and the Celestine was suddenly no longer sailing beside them on the right. Cat turned and looked aft. Their sister ship had come to a dead stop in the water, and a gaping black fissure had opened on its bow near the keel. The Celestine seemed stuck, perched at an odd angle, even as water poured into its hull. Someone yelled, “They’ve struck a reef, Captain! Trim the sail and come about!”

  At that moment, Scully jammed his fists back toward Brother Javier. The cutlass blade slid across Scully’s bonds right below the knot, and in a heart’s beat, he was free.

  “Scully, no!” Father Brun yelled, but Scully dove over the rail.

  Cat, Anne, and Father Brun raced to the rail and scanned the waves. “Javier,” Father Brun cried. “Look aft!”

  Javier dropped his sword and sprinted toward up the stairs leading to the poop deck. He strained to see down into the dark water. He looked for a head to pop up amid the whitecaps, but none did. “There’s no sign of him!” he called back.

  “Look here,” Cat said. He had picked up Javier’s sword and held it up for all to see. Dark blood trickled down its blade.

  “The fool,” said Father Brun. “He paid for his freedom with his life.” He was grim and silent for a moment. “Nonetheless, we cannot dwell on this. The Celestine is in need of aid.” Brother Keegan had deftly turned the ship around. The Dominguez had followed suit. They could all see that the Celestine was lower in the water and listing to one side.

  Cat looked from the ailing ship back to the circle of black known as La Isla Desvanecente. “But what about the Merchant?” he asked. “The tide’s coming in. We could lose this chance.”

  “Believe me, Cat,” said Father Brun, “no one would regret the loss of the Merchant more than I would . . . but my brothers are in need. Even now, the tide’s pushing the Celestine’s hull onto that reef—the crew must be rescued.”

  “I understand,” Cat said. “But with Scully gone . . . how will we ever find the island again?”

  “We could just anchor and wait until tomorrow,” said Anne.

  Father Brun noted that the Dominguez had surged ahead and was already nearing the Celestine. Then he turned and looked toward the setting sun. “I wonder about that sail you might have seen,” he said. “If the Merchant does indeed have ships near his disappearing island and they came upon us at night . . .” He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  Cat couldn’t believe it. How had everything gone so horribly wrong? How could they come all this way, get this close, and then just let him go? “So, that’s it?”

  “Either choice is grim,” said Father Brun. “If we go after the Merchant, we neglect the Celestine. The Dominguez may not get the crew to safety in time. And yet, if we go to my brothers’ aid, and we let the Merchant escape us, then how many will perish because of his black influence in the world?”

  “What if . . . ,” said Javier, still wiping blood from his sword, “what if we could do both?” They stared at Javier quizzically. “Ah, I will explain. Some of you sail the Constantine and rescue the men on our wrecked ship. Some of you take a cutter to the little island and find the Merchant.”

  Father Brun’s slow nods accelerated. “Yes . . . yes, that will work! Javier, you are a godsend. Cat?”

  Cat grinned. “I’ll give the order and get my sword.”

  The sun was setting as the cutter made for the black rock island. Father Brun, Cat, and Anne worked the oars in the front. Brothers Diego and Cyprian heaved the oars against the waves in the middle. And Brother Dmitri alone anchored the cutter in the rear. The Constantine was already a hundred yards behind them, joining the Dominguez to rescue sailors from the disabled Celestine.

  “Does the Merchant have guards?” asked Brother Cyprian.

  “Scully did not specify,” said Father Brun. “But I have no doubt he will. You do not ask out of fear . . .”

  “No, Father Brun,” he replied, straining and arching his back. “But if the Merchant is not alone, how will we know which man is he?”

  “I have seen him,” Father Brun whispered.

  “You’ve seen the Merchant?” Cat and Anne asked as one.

  “Only once, and it was a long time ago . . . just after I joined the Brethren.”

  “Why haven’t you told us before?” asked Cat.

  “It is not something I like to remember.” Father Brun winced. “But . . . you are right, you should know. I was studying under a great leader of the Brethren, Father Vincente, in Curaçao. One morning, I left the church on my usual visit to the marketplace. Halfway there, I realized I hadn’t brought my money, so I returned to the church. I was on the steps when I heard Father Vincente groan. I threw open the doors and found a man standing over Father Vincente’s body.”

  “The Merchant?” Anne asked.

  Father Brun nodded. “He fled, but I chased him into the rectory behind the church. I managed to trip him up on a narrow flight of stairs, and that’s when I saw him.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Father Brun replied quietly, “. . . Pale, diseased, cold.”

  There were no more questions.

  The narrow cutter sliced between some waves, crested and slid down the backs of others, and blasted through the rest. It was growing dark, when the cutter reached the stony shore of La Isla
Desvanecente. Brother Dmitri quickly found a curving hunk of coral and tied off the cutter. He gave the knot special attention. The last thing any of them needed was to have the cutter float away while they were inside.

  Father Brun and Brother Cyprian each carried oil lanterns. “The island is much larger than it appeared,” said Father Brun. “Much of it is already under the water. The tide concerns me.”

  “Ah, why the worry?” scoffed Brother Dmitri. “We’re just going after one of the most diabolical madmen in history, chasing him into his own lair which at any moment could be completely submerged beneath the waves.” No one laughed.

  “Here!” Brother Cyprian called. “I found the bulkhead door.” Cat and the others surrounded Brother Cyprian, and they all stared down at a circle of dark iron so crusted over with coral that it was hard to discern as having been a door at all.

  “No sense wasting time,” said Brother Dmitri, and he reached down and grasped an iron bar that protruded like a kind of handle. He gave a mighty pull, but it did not move. He shrugged his shoulders and adjusted his stance to get more leverage. He pulled again. “Ah!” Brother Dmitri jerked back his hand. In the lantern’s light, all could see the blood surging from the gash on his palm. “That coral is razor sharp!” Without another word of complaint, Dmitri reached down and tore a strip of cloth from one leg of his breeches and bound his hand. “That door is shut tight.”

  “Maybe there’s another hatch,” said Anne.

  “Scully mentioned only one,” said Father Brun. “One way in. One way out, he told us.”

  “Scully lied.” Anne called out, “Bring the lantern.”

  They joined her and discovered a dark iron door identical to the first. Cat reached for its handle. “Mind the coral,” said Brother Dmitri.

  Cat threaded his hands onto the metal and gave a tug. The hatch came immediately free, surprising Cat, who fell backward, barely keeping upright in a pool of ankle-deep water. Cat looked behind him and saw nothing but the dark sea. “That was close.”

  “Too close,” said Brother Dmitri. “Be more careful. Now is no time for swimming.”

  Cat joined the others at the now-open hatch. “There’s light,” said Brother Diego. They stared into a five-foot-wide tunnel that plunged straight down into the rock. A seemingly never-ending ladder led down, vanishing and reappearing several times in the pale greenish light that emanated from unseen recesses in the glistening stone.

  “Maybe he’s expecting us,” said Anne.

  “I do not know how that could be,” said Father Brun, and he abruptly closed his eyes in prayer. “Nonetheless we place our lives in the hands of the Almighty. Father, be for us a light in dark places, amen.” Then Father Brun reached into a fold of his cloak and withdrew a short but wickedly sharp dagger. “I will go first.”

  “Are you certain?” the Merchant asked, his dark eyes glistening with interest.

  “As certain as I live,” said a sopping wet Edmund Scully. Blood still seeped from the wound on his forearm, and he clutched it to his chest. “He calls himself Cat, but he is the son of Bartholomew Thorne. There is no mistaking his features: eyes, angle of the brow, and the line of his chin. But to put it beyond all doubt, I overheard him speak of it.”

  “This is . . . an interesting development,” said the Merchant. His tongue slithered like a serpent between his sparse teeth. “Of course, you should never have brought them here, Mister Scully. We had an arrangement.”

  “Yes, of course,” Scully said, trembling from much more than the cold. “But given your new association with Bartholomew Thorne, I thought that you would want, that you could use, his son to—”

  “Be silent.” The Merchant barely whispered those words, but it may as well have been a voice as loud as a cannon blast. “Due to your weakness, I have lost much—the secrecy of my unique lair is forfeit.”

  Scully leaned backward. They sat in a wide oval chamber where many tunnels converged. Scully didn’t know where each tunnel led, but he didn’t like the cold look in the Merchant’s depthless eyes. Scully’s muscles tensed, and he prepared to dart for the nearest tunnel.

  “Still,” said the Merchant with a grotesque, canker-ridden smile, “in your ignorance you may have brought me a prize worth more than my loss.” He rubbed at his pointed chin. “How many ships did the Brethren muster?”

  “Only three,” Scully replied nervously. “And one of them is impaled upon your reef.”

  “The Perdition’s Gate is due to arrive within the hour,” said the Merchant. “The Brethren vessels do not stand a chance.”

  “But two ships against one?”

  “The Brethren are warriors, but their skill stretches very thin on the ocean. My men and my weapons are far superior.” The Merchant stood. “Now, who will venture ashore? Will Thorne’s son . . . Cat, will he—”

  The Merchant became silent, but other voices filled the chamber. “Cat, there’s a wrung missing. Watch your step.”

  “I see it,” a voice answered. “Anne, be careful.”

  “That’s Father Brun,” whispered Scully. “And Cat is with him. But how—? They sound as if they are in the room.”

  “Nay,” said the Merchant. “They descend the west tunnel.”

  “How . . . how do we hear them?”

  “The acoustic nature of my abode,” said the Merchant. “Tubes that formed long, long ago as this molten column cooled in the water of the sea. There is even a place in the center of my lair where I can monitor almost all of these upper chambers. Come, walk with me. I will show you. And, perhaps, you can be of some use yet.”

  Scully stood, pleased that he could repay his mistake. The Merchant led him along a winding corridor until they came to a doorway with a low arch. “You’ll need to duck through here,” said the Merchant, stepping aside.

  “It’s dark,” said Scully. “I can’t see—” It wasn’t much of a push, just enough to cause Scully to lose his balance. Windmilling his arms and clawing at the air, Scully fell into endless dark. Scully’s scream—a shrill, desperate wail—reverberated through the tunnels and then ended quite suddenly.

  Father Brun and the others froze in their various places within the vertical tube. The anguished wail seemed to get farther away until they no longer heard it at all. “The Merchant,” whispered Father Brun. “There can be no doubt that he is here.”

  “If that scream was his,” said Brother Dmitri, “then he is none too pleased with our arrival.” Cat didn’t think the horrible wail came from the Merchant, but he felt certain that somehow the Merchant knew they were coming.

  Slowly, they continued down the vertical passage. Cat had been counting the rungs. There were fifty-seven so far. Each one was barely enough metal to rest a foot on. And they were very slippery too. In fact, Cat noted, the walls of the tunnel were cool and smooth as if eroded by water over many long years.

  Every ten feet or so, a small oil lantern burned in a pocket of stone. This provided intermittent pale light. Near one of the lanterns, Cat found odd markings and indentations—small spirals and segmented lines, as if small sea creatures had once been imbedded within this rock but had perished and rotted away leaving nothing but these marks. Cat had no desire to remain in these blasted tunnels and certainly no desire to perish. The sooner they finished this mission the better. A dozen more rungs and Cat began to feel uncomfortable pressure in his ears. They were deep beneath the surface, Cat felt sure. He held the rung in front of him with one hand, held his nose with his other, and gently blew to clear his ears of the pressure—a little trick he’d learned from the conch divers when the Bruce made port on Aruba. Then he continued down.

  Father Brun dropped down out of the tunnel and found himself in a squat chamber lit by two lanterns recessed into the wall like the ones in the tunnel. Cat and the others arrived in turn, and each drew weapons upon landing. Cat had the cutlass Red Eye had given him long ago. Anne had a sword also, as well as a long dagger in her right boot. Father Brun and the others carried the black fight
ing rods that were the customary weapon of the Brethren warriors. With those simple weapons, they could disarm and disable most foes.

  Anne looked left and right. Passages opened on either side. “Where did the scream come from?” she asked.

  “Impossible to tell,” said Father Brun. “But this passage”—he pointed to the right—“seems to go down. Cat?”

  Cat nodded. Father Brun treated him with respect. As captain of the Constantine, Cat expected to command the ship, but feared that Father Brun would demand authority elsewhere. No, Cat realized, he doesn’t need to demand. Men knew his wisdom. Men knew his faith. Men knew his strength. And yet he often deferred to others. Cat wondered at that. “Down we go,” Cat said.

  “Good,” said the Merchant. He sat in an almost perfectly round room from which only one passage led. But there were dozens of small openings all over the chamber. Some were just big enough for a man’s fist to fit through. Others were wide enough for a person’s head. But all of these openings went deep into the rock, disappearing into shadow. The Merchant knew where each one of them led, and he listened intently. “They come closer and closer to my special den. But I am a patient spider . . . and cunning. I will divide them first and then devour.”

  He listened a moment more and finally heard voices from the leftmost hole in the ceiling. Then he sprang. The Merchant’s right hand shot out of his cloak and grasped a dark iron lever, one of many that protruded from slots in the chamber floor. He pulled back on the lever and heard a deep metallic clang followed by the clicking of wheels turning.

  19

  HACK AND SLASH

  Bellefontaine was an extremely busy port on the northwestern coast of Martinique. But all the sailing traffic in and out of the harbor gave the Banshee and the Robert Bruce a very wide berth. With Bellamy’s attacks, Martinique had become more than a little sensitive to pirates—even those with a more noble reputation.