In an instant, Admiral Bridgewater was back on his feet, blunderbuss in hand — aimed once again at Fidelia, who still blocked Merrick from the admiral’s fire, though her knees were shaking.
“Last chance to move,” Admiral Bridgewater growled at her. “Merrick is mine.”
“After … all this time,” Merrick rasped between coughs, “you’ll let … the great treasure go … just so you can … be the one … to pull my trigger?”
Trickles of yellow spit flowed down the admiral’s chin as he spoke. “I have been waiting ten years to kill you,” he said. “Ten years of chasing you so I could have this moment.” His whole body quivered. “And to think, you almost stole it from me.” The admiral shoved around Fidelia, pushing her to the floor, and placed the flared barrel of his weapon directly on Merrick’s bare chest.
Merrick pointed at himself with a hardened, purpled thumb. “Pirate,” he breathed with a grin.
An infuriating grin to the admiral, Fidelia knew — and she tried to match Merrick’s complacency, even as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. Death for Merrick, at last.
Admiral Bridgewater reached into his pouch for powder and shot, and found nothing.
The admiral was out of shot.
Merrick chuckled — an awful drowning sound.
“All that gold,” the great pirate sputtered, “all those gems … All the wealth from the stories … and you’re about to let it go … back into the hands of pirates.”
Somewhere above the din of the growing storm, a whistle blew. Admiral Bridgewater tilted his head like an old bulldog — the sound of men, now, shouting from the harbor.
The Mother Dog was under siege.
The Molvanian pirates were fighting for the treasure, everything that had been down in that cave.
Fidelia, Aunt Julia, the pirates — they all watched Admiral Bridgewater survey Merrick with fury, then disgust, then mere annoyance.
“Rot in hell,” he said, and spat on Merrick. He ran out of the sweets shop, chasing after his treasure.
Along the boardwalk, a bell rang — the constables had been alerted. Any second they would cruise down the canal in their patrol boats and investigate.
“Captain.” Cheapshot Charlie’s deep voice trembled. He and Bloody Elle took a step — a step toward the door.
Fidelia swallowed. If the constables found them here, they’d be jailed and hanged. They had to get out now.
“Go,” Merrick commanded. Just as he had on the Jewel, back in the tropics.
“But —” Bloody Elle started, and Merrick coughed in her direction, cutting her off.
“No good-byes,” he said. “You’ve saved … me enough times… . Let me … save you.” He reached for breath and managed to choke out, “Best … mates,” and Fidelia felt her chest bulge, threatening to split.
Bloody Elle opened her mouth, but whatever she was going to say stayed a secret. Instead the two pirates placed their hands on their hearts, turned, and slipped out of BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop and into the night.
Fidelia looked around her. The candy store was a devastation of sugar and sprinkles and fallen shelves. Aunt Julia huddled in a corner, arms wrapped around her middle as if to keep from falling apart.
Merrick pulled himself to standing, his breath rattling, and walked right to Aunt Julia. He seized the librarian’s face with both his vein-riddled hands.
Just as Fidelia cried out, ready to rush to her aunt’s side, Merrick kissed her.
Then he collapsed.
BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop was silent but for the crash of the waves in the bay, and the splatter of rain, and the wind’s mourning through the broken glass of the front window — and Merrick’s pocket watch, spilling from his trouser pocket, its ticks the loudest sound to Fidelia as she stared, unblinking.
Merrick’s body lay in a crumpled heap beneath Aunt Julia. He coughed; blood sprayed from his mouth and onto the black and white tiles. A morbid red rain.
Then he was still.
“Merrick,” Aunt Julia said softly, falling to her knees. Fidelia held her breath.
For an uncomfortably long time, there was quiet.
But Merrick stirred, and twisted his body around so he lie flat on his back. He coughed. “Jewel,” he said.
Jewel. Fidelia’s heart thumped so hard, she thought it might jet out of her chest and onto the floor next to the captain. “You … you know him?” she said to her aunt.
“I know him,” Aunt Julia said. “I know him very well.” She pulled Merrick’s head onto her lap, running a hand along his grimy black hair. “Is it true? Is it the red daisies?”
“It’s … death,” Merrick growled. “Not so pretty … is it?”
Aunt Julia took off her chiffon scarf and used it to wipe the blood around his mouth. Her jellyfish scar, the one on her neck, was an iridescent lilac in the storm’s light.
Suddenly, Fidelia felt things click into place — a radar’s scan, complete: “The library book back at Medusa’s.” She looked at Aunt Julia. “That was yours.”
“You took her to the grotto?” Aunt Julia balked.
Merrick opened his mouth to speak, then burst into coughs, and they rolled out of him without mercy, one right after another. Wave after wave, unrelenting peaks.
Over Aunt Julia’s shoulder, Fidelia stared. Merrick’s face was white, his mismatched eyes both retreating into his skull. The black-and-red eye was raw, bloated, a full blood moon, its shiny film the only thing holding it together. He sucked in air with his colorless lips, which were shriveled like dried bait worms.
“It’s done, Jewel,” he grunted. “I’m … open market … on the maggot buffet.”
With each breath Merrick took, his lungs squeezed, the air rattling. It took him forever between inhales, but he somehow summoned the strength to keep breathing … and to open his hand.
There, resting on his palm, like it had always been there, was the tarnished pewter brooch.
Aunt Julia’s pale-gray eyes grew. For a woman whose livelihood was words, she seemed to struggle to find any. “But I threw this into the cave,” she finally said. “This was supposed to be gone forever.”
Merrick smoothed the brooch with the tip of his thumb, skimming the scalloped edge. “Now it’s back.”
“How did you —? How on earth did you —?” Again, Aunt Julia fished for words, turning the brooch over and over until the realization washed over her. “Oh, Merrick. No.” She removed her peach glasses, which were beginning to fog. “You went into the cave to get this back for me.”
The wind blew sideways, sending a drizzle of chilly rain through the broken store window. Merrick coughed, then took Aunt Julia’s hand. “I would do … anything for you … Jewel.”
Jewel. The word pulsed in Fidelia’s ears.
The names carved into Medusa’s grotto, the ones on the wall. Merrick + Jewel.
Merrick loved Julia so much, he named his ship after her.
“That’s not true.” Aunt Julia narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t stop your pirating.” She considered their interlaced fingers, her nostrils flaring with some old rage. “Nothing could have convinced you to give it up. Not the law. Not death. Not even me.”
“We are … who we are… . Haven’t your books … taught you … as much?”
Aunt Julia sniffled. “If we are who we are,” she said, “then you’re a damn fool.”
The pirate coughed. “I gave up … my life … when I gave up you… . I wanted … you to know that … before it was … too late.” He shook his head. “You’re right … I am a fool … who never stopped … loving you.”
A sound came out of Aunt Julia’s throat, visceral, a howl. “And I never stopped loving you.”
Merrick lifted his pocket watch from his pocket, and the three of them listened to its ticks, the clicks of time passing.
Aunt Julia kissed his cheek, kissed his forehead, kissed the sharpness of his jaw. She combed her fingers through his hair, her tears falling onto his head like anointm
ents. He nestled into her lap and closed his blue eye, content to spend his last ticking seconds here, just touching her, breathing the same air as her.
Fidelia knew she should look away, give Merrick and her aunt privacy during this intimate moment, but she couldn’t. She watched this outlawed pirate’s every second until, finally, horribly, he stiffened, gasping.
“This … is it,” Merrick whispered, every word a labor. “I can … feel it. I’m — I’m — out of time… .”
Aunt Julia kissed him again, clutching the brooch to her heart. “I will never forget you,” she whispered, and gently leaned his head back.
Merrick’s blue eye flooded white. He flailed, disoriented. “Jewel …” He coughed one last time. And then Merrick the Monstrous, the terror of the nine seas, was done.
The words were there, on the tip of Fidelia’s tongue: I’m sorry … The words that everyone says in moments like this. But she held them back, swallowed them down, and cleared her throat.
With a shudder, she sang the three notes of Cheapshot Charlie’s mourning song, the one he had crooned when the Jewel had passed the Coral of the Damned.
Aunt Julia, with Merrick’s head on her lap, turned to her niece with watery, red-rimmed eyes, and listened.
Fidelia was no singer — but she warbled out the three notes, and she concentrated on making them as strong and clear as Charlie’s had been on the ship. She sang for Merrick, and she sang for Julia, and she sang for her parents.
She sang for herself, this simple three-tone dirge the only thing that brought her peace.
The rain dried. Night lifted from black to a hazy blue as the Undertow melted away. A few stars winked.
Through it all, Fidelia still sang those three droning notes, until her voice croaked and gave out and Aunt Julia ran out of tears. And Merrick’s pocket watch still ticked, in time to the waves. The tide rushed in, the tide rushed out, and Arborley Bay was calm.
Until the next storm.
Julia sat on the boardwalk, a book propped open in her lap. She turned the page and closed her eyes, letting the thin sunshine warm her face. The heady exhale of the blush-pink apple blossoms mixed with the salty scent of the sea — the smells of springtime. A strand of hair fell from her tight bun; she let it dance across her cheek, tickling her skin.
Behind her, the pub was a symphony of noise and laughter and music. Before her, Stony Beach was also alive — families picnicking, children huddling around the tide pools, dogs paddling joyously in the chilly surf.
But Julia had a book in her hands, and so she didn’t notice anything else. Nothing but the words on the page and the sun on her skin.
A new batch of books was due any hour — a set of almanacs that had to be stamped, bound, cataloged, and shelved. She was here to watch for the Jolly Dodger, the merchant ship that delivered library goods from the mainland.
It had been a particularly long winter. The Undertow made hostages of all the islanders, but spring had finally begun its slow crawl to consciousness after its long hibernation. To Julia’s eyes, the sky had never been so perfectly blue.
Ships sailed into the harbor, their crews leaping onto the docks to tie them off. All of them familiar vessels, familiar beams, familiar banners flapping from the masts… . Julia barely glanced up from her book to watch them arrive … until a lone ship anchored in the shallows of the bay caught her attention.
A strange ship.
She straightened her glasses, straining to see the ship’s name, but its stern was clean of script. A no-name ship.
She frowned. The ship wasn’t flying a flag, either.
A movement near the ship’s waterline — the ship’s longboat was rowing ashore. A tall bald man with dark skin and thick arms pulled the oars, and a second man knelt at the boat’s bow.
A man with a sharp jaw and black hair absorbing the sunlight like cinders.
Even with the distance, Julia could feel the eyes of the black-haired man on her. She blushed, finding the loose lock of her hair and tucking it safely back. Her book slid down her lap, her fingers losing her spot in its pages.
As the longboat drifted closer, she could distinguish the man’s face — young, with oiled sideburns and a pair of moonstone eyes, sunken and piercing as the spring’s rays. The back of her neck prickled. She tried to breathe in the sweet smell of the apple blossoms to clear her mind but found it difficult to operate her lungs.
Then the man winked at her, and her heart suddenly galloped.
She strode away from the railing, then slipped through the welcoming door of the candy store.
Once inside BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop, her heart tamed itself back to a nice, even pace. She tucked her book under her arm and walked straight to the chocolate aisle. She’d stay in here for a few minutes, give the man in the longboat time to dock and vanish into the port, and then she’d go back to the library and wait for her shipment there. There was plenty to do until the almanacs arrived — plenty of work.
Bells jangled as the door to the sweets shop opened and closed. She chose a brick of black chocolate and inspected its label.
“‘Will have you swooning at first bite,’” someone behind her read aloud. “‘The darkest chocolate available in Her Majesty’s Kingdom. Made from pure grade cocoa beans, the blackest on the island.’”
She knew, the way she could often predict the endings in her books, that it was him.
Yes, when she turned around it was the man from the longboat, and she had to remind herself to stay standing, keep breathing, keep living. Up close she could see the details of his face — skin that had been battered by wind, burned by sun, chilled by arctic air. The skin of a sailor. A garden of whiskers grew along that knife of a jawline, and his blue eyes twinkled, as if concealing a secret.
He took the brick of chocolate from her, one of his calloused fingers brushing her pinky. “‘The salt-spiked, bitter taste of this bar is an exotic, sensuous experience.’” His eyebrows danced. “You’re a fan?”
Once, Julia had read a book about a mermaid who was brought onto dry land during a full moon and melted into a puddle of seawater on a fisherman’s kitchen floor. If only.
“Hardly.” She adjusted her glasses and jutted her nose into the air — the librarian’s signal that all conversation should cease.
“Is that you, Miss Julia?” The elderly owner of BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop stopped arranging a bouquet of buttery carnations and leaned over the counter. “Why, weren’t you just here to stock up yesterday —?”
“No!” Her response came out a bit louder than she wanted, then resounded in her now hollow mind, sounding more and more ridiculous with every echo.
The man grinned — was he laughing at her? “Julia, is it?”
She didn’t move.
“Merrick Von Mourne,” he said, offering his hand.
“Merrick of the good ship … ?” she prompted.
“Ah, well, we’re all still getting acquainted with our ship,” he said. “This is her inaugural voyage.”
“Well. Nothing’s more suspicious than an unnamed ship,” Julia said. “Except maybe a ship with no flag.”
“Then I’d better have my men pick up a flag at the warehouse,” Merrick said. “We wouldn’t want to attract the wrong sort of attention.” He pointed at the book under her arm. “So, work or pleasure?”
Julia held the spine so he could see the title: Library Trends and Research.
He raised his eyebrows. “So, pleasure,” he said.
“I’m staff librarian at Arborley Library,” she clarified.
“Well,” he said, “then perhaps you can help me.” He finally broke eye contact with her and scanned the racks of candy around them. “We’ve just stopped at the chandler’s to pick up a few things — tar and line and such. Then we hit the cocoa route, along with every other sea dog in the kingdom. It’d be nice to bring something aboard besides jerky and eggs. So what would you recommend, as an expert researcher? Besides the sensuous chocolate, I mean.”
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nbsp; Julia straightened, willing her face not to turn pink. This man, she surmised, had decided she was the butt of some joke and likely wouldn’t let her alone until she’d provided the punchline. She led him through the aisles, stacking the sweets into his open arms: apple crantruffles, kaleidorainbow figs, astrobloomers, and, for good measure, a bar of the sensuous black chocolate.
“There,” she said when they reached the counter. “A sampling of Arborley’s finest.”
No sooner had she finished her words than someone outside shouted, “Pirates! At the warehouse!”
A line of constables ran past the window of BonBon Voyage Sweets Shop, their black trench coats streaming behind them. Cries of “Call the navy!” could be tracked all the way down the boardwalk to the chandler’s warehouse.
“Pirates,” Julia muttered. “They should all be hanged.”
“Indeed,” Merrick said, rustling through his pockets for green notes to pay for his sweets.
The sweets shop door jangled. A huge dark man popped his head in the doorway, a bead of sweat rolling from the top of his bald head down the length of his face. The man from the longboat — the man who had rowed Merrick ashore.
“Time to go, Captain,” he said, panting. “They’re calling reinforcements.”
Julia’s stomach twisted. She suddenly noticed the piercing in the bald man’s nose, the scars across his knuckles, the pistol at his belt, visible through the rips in his tunic.
Pirates.
She gazed at the raven-haired man next to her with new alarm. A pirate, and she had been chattering with him as if he were just another library patron.
“I’ll meet you at the gate,” Merrick said to the man. “Get her ready.”
The bald man left, and Merrick counted out exact change for his pile of sweets.
“Why bother paying for it?” Julia was surprised by her own boldness — certainly Merrick had his own pistol beneath his overcoat, and wouldn’t hesitate to punish her for her lip. But something about the man made a flame flicker in her chest, made her words spill out without thinking.
Race to the Bottom of the Sea Page 24