Bertilak moved two shelves. Behind them, a large doorway was barred by a plank of heavy wood. Bertilak slid the board across to the left and opened the right side. Hinges creaked as he pushed it inward, revealing a long descending passageway, lit only by torches.
With my dream still fresh in my mind, I followed my host down the staircase and into the dungeon. We walked past two cells before coming to the main chamber. To our left, the stone wall opened to face the waterfall, which misted against the rusted iron bars and made the already dark dungeon humid and dank.
“A view of freedom?” I asked.
“The false promise of one,” Bertilak said.
“Do you always lead your guests to the dungeons?”
“Only those who I trust or punish,” the knight said. “Which are you, Captain?”
I tensed. “You should know that answer by now.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” a voice said from within one of the cells. Gabriel stepped out into the corridor, holding a small bowl.
A hundred words spilled to the edge of my tongue, but caught there. I readied myself to flee up the stairway.
“She relayed every detail, Captain,” the knight said. “Every word of your honorable decline of her advances. I told her that you’d be too clever to fail that final test.”
“Never should I have doubted you,” Gabriel said to him, then looked at me and stepped back into the cell.
Bertilak then motioned for me to follow him. I stepped up to the third cell, but stopped just short of the doorway. At the end of the hall, only four steps further, stood a bolted wood and steel door. I stared at it for a moment, then joined my hosts.
When I saw what was inside, something deep within me cringed and my stomach turned inside out.
The boy knelt against the stone wall. He was dirty and bleeding. Three chains held him off of the floor. Two shackled the boy’s wrists and the third bit at his neck like a collar. There was a slow rise and fall in the boy’s chest. Struggled breaths gurgled in his throat. His flesh was waxy and gray, save for the welts that bloomed on his face. His head hung loosely and a thin line of red spittle pooled on the floor.
Bertilak kicked the boy awake with a thud. The hit lifted the boy against the wall. He then yanked the chain latched to the boy’s neck until he stood.
“Come now, child,” the knight said. “Time for your medicine.”
Gabriel brushed the boy’s hair away from his face and examined the bruises that shut his eyes. She rubbed the paste into her palms, coating her hands front and back.
She then touched the boy’s twisted jaw and he screamed. She pulled her hands back and rubbed the bruises that shut his eyes. Soon his eyes opened, unmarked. The boy looked at her and recognition washed over his face. Tears welled in his eyes as she worked the inside of his jaw and down the side of his neck. She dabbed a bit of paste on the upper part of his arm. There was a crack and the boy yelled.
She took a pinch of the paste and put it into his mouth.
“Swallow this,” she said.
He did and a fleshy-pink tone flushed his face. The dull distance in his eyes sharpened and the boy sobbed quietly.
Gabriel handed the bowl to Bertilak and turned to the door. I didn’t watch her leave.
The boy stood as far forward as his chains allowed, rattling them in a chorus of steel and stone. The veins in his neck pulsed as his muscles strained against his shackles.
Without a word, Bertilak drove a fist into the boy’s midsection. I heard a loud snap and the boy collapsed in a heap on the floor. He coughed and held his side.
“We’ll be having enough of that,” Bertilak said.
“You broke his rib,” I said.
“Call to him,” Bertilak said to the boy.
“He’s coming for me,” the boy wheezed.
“You said that before,” Bertilak said. “So where is he?” The knight waved his hand and the boy followed his movements, as if doing so would produce a savior.
“He’ll come and when he does he’ll make short work of you,” the boy spat. The same accent dripped from the boy’s words, but there was a difference in his voice. Bertilak grabbed the chain from around the boy’s neck and yanked him back to his feet. A flicker from the knight’s candle lit up the boy’s thicker brow and sterner jaw. In that one instant, I saw how little hope this boy had.
“Pan isn’t coming for this one,” I said.
The boy’s eyes grew wide and angry. He started to speak, but Bertilak cut him off.
“What do you mean?”
“Pan’s forgotten him.”
“He’s been here a day.”
“A day is as good as a year or a century,” I said. “How do you not know this?”
A stillness descended on us.
“By all the saints!” Bertilak cursed. “He’s no good to me.” The knight gripped the back of the boy’s hair and pulled his head back. He drew a knife from his belt and brought it to the boy’s throat.
“Wait,” I said. In a flash, I caught the knife’s edge with my hook. We strained against each other for a moment. “Maybe you have been asking the wrong questions. Pan and the boys have to live somewhere and he has to know where that is.”
“I tried that last night and he lied,” Bertilak said, inching the knife closer to the boy. I shifted my weight back on my heels, but the knight still pulled me.
“We live high up in a hollow tree deep in the forest,” the boy said. The knight relaxed and he lowered his knife.
“Good,” Bertilak said. He unlatched the boy from the wall and wrapped the chain around his hand. He tugged hard and the boy winced, clutching his ribs. “This time you are coming with me.”
“You aren’t healing him first?” I asked.
“Why waste it?”
“He will never survive the trip.”
“That is true either way,” Bertilak said.
“He is not the problem,” I said.
“What is this sympathy you have for these boys?” Bertilak asked. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders with a chuckle. “Fine, Captain, it will be done your way.” Bertilak turned to the boy and yanked again at the chain around his neck. “Understand me well, boy. You will lead us to Peter Pan or you will die in the woods.”
The boy nodded.
“You should come, too, Captain,” Bertilak said. “We can end this together, just the two of us. Quick, private, and personal.”
I stood in silence for a few moments, then took in a breath of stale air and steeled myself from head to heart.
“Let’s go.”
Chapter Eleven
I hurried up the staircase. Behind me, chains rattled. There was a crash of steel against stone, then two dull thuds. I continued looking forward.
The light of the main hall stung my eyes. I looked to the floor until my sight adjusted, then over to Bertilak as he dragged the boy up the staircase. The knight and his captive stepped into the light and I saw the boy’s fresh bruises.
“He will need to be able walk to show us where Peter Pan is,” I said.
“He walks fine,” Bertilak said. The knight held the chain for the boy’s collar up so high that the boy was nearly on his toes. The boy’s face flushed red, then purple, before Bertilak released him to stand on his own. The boy slumped forward, but caught himself before falling.
The three of us walked in silence out of the main hall. Not one pirate, servant, or maiden stirred as we passed through the doors of the keep and the inner wall. Bertilak stopped just past the outer gate and jerked the boy closer.
“Now, where are we going?”
The boy didn’t talk. Instead, he pointed into the Crescent Wood.
Bertilak gripped the boy’s arm and shook him. The boy clutched at the knight’s thick fingers and tried to pry them off of him.
“You have until the next sunset to get me there,” Bertilak told him. As he said this, the sun raced across the clouds in staggered leaps. The boy could have had hours or minutes until dusk.
The boy bowed his head and led us into the forest.
We traveled a road west of the castle, along the river made by the mountain’s waterfall. It was south of where I traveled with my crew before the storm and worlds different. The smallest trees here were taller than the Jolly Roger and had trunks four men thick. Their wide, outstretched branches shaded us and our intentions.
The path shook a thought loose from deep in my mind. When I was six, I fell while running in the woods after William and Emily. The two of them jumped across a shallow stream by leaping from rock to rock. I followed, but my blood condition made me light-headed and I slipped. Something hard hit my side. William ran for help and Emily sat by me until my father arrived. When he did, there was no scolding or panic. He calmly lifted me out of the water and carried me on his shoulders the whole way home. All of this I remembered with vivid clarity until a voice broke me away.
“What is it, Captain?” Bertilak asked.
“Nothing,” I said. I relayed the details to myself word for word, but when I tried seeing the image again, it became fuzzy and remote as though I were trying to picture a story told to me by someone else.
Barely five hundred yards from the castle, the boy stopped in a grassy field no more than six yards in diameter. He stretched his arm forward and pointed to a twisted, double-wide trunk at the far end that I suspected was actually two trees intertwined into one. Several large holes cut into the trunk like doorways above stoops made of broad branches.
“In this tree?” Bertilak asked. “I have passed here a thousand times.”
“We know,” the boy said.
The knight snorted and shoved the boy aside. “Peter Pan!”
Tense moments passed in silence.
Again Bertilak yelled for the flying boy.
Again nothing.
“This is not the place.” Bertilak reached behind his back and drew his single-bladed axe in one fluid movement. He turned to the boy and raised his weapon in the air.
“Stop,” I yelled. I darted between them and pointed Bertilak’s attention to a hole above a high branch. “Look.”
The knight craned his head up to the hole, where a small face retreated too slowly into the darkness. Bertilak smiled and walked to the tree.
“Chopping the tree down?” I asked pointedly.
“Better,” the knight sneered. He dug through one of the pouches on his belt and pulled out a small clay ball. He then unraveled a damp rag and wrapped it around the ball. The rag began to smoke and the smell hit me with instant recognition. Sulfur and oil.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Have you ever heard of Greek Fire, Captain?”
Bertilak pitched the cloth-wrapped clay ball.
In the moment I lunged for Bertilak’s throwing arm, I remembered reading about the fire that burns on water. A passage in one of my father’s old books on warfare told of its use in the Crusades, spilled from copper cannons to burn down ships, castles, and men. Perhaps my thoughts made me hesitate. Perhaps I was simply slower than Bertilak. Either way, I was too late.
The clay grenade crashed and liquid fire spat all over the tree and the grass around it. Black smoke climbed high up the twisted trunk. Flames chased after it, encircling the tree in a wreath of fire and ash.
Fear gripped my chest. Thick blood pounded in my ears so loud that I heard nothing except the beating of my heart and the crackling of dry bark. Fire crept up the tree until smoke blocked out the knotted holes above the first branches. In seconds, the branches were alight as well.
The dark boy at Bertilak’s feet cried in horror. He darted first at the tree then away from the flames, tugging at his chain both times.
“Indeed, I had nearly forgotten about you,” Bertilak said. “You spoke the truth after all.” The knight wrapped the chain around his forearm, drawing the boy closer. He then hoisted him to eye level and leaned in until his beard scraped against the boy’s face. “Where is Peter Pan?”
The boy shook in Bertilak’s grip.
“He’s not here,” I said. There was a relief in my voice that I didn’t quite understand.
Wood splintered high above my head. I looked up in time to see three Lost Boys perch at the end of a limb and beat back the flames with rags that were once their shirts. Their excited movement shook the branch, forcing the first loud snap. The limb dropped ten degrees and the boys bellied down to hold on. One lost his balance and he dangled before the leaves ripped out in his grip.
The boy crashed onto the grass. He was plump like a sausage and flames scorched his clothes and skin. The boy’s hair was burnt and he patted himself with panicked hands as he screamed. I tried to make out who the boy was or if I remembered him from all those years ago.
Bertilak dropped the chained boy, turned, and swung his axe high. He brought it down on the boy who fell from the tree, cleaving his chest. The weapon crunched through bone and dug into the dirt underneath him. The boy yelped, then made no further sound.
“I cannot stand their mewling,” Bertilak said. He put a foot on the boy’s body and two hands on his axe. He pulled hard and it came out of the ground, crackling more bones as it worked free. He looked at me and smiled. “The next one is yours, promise.”
“I don’t want the next one,” I said. My every muscle tensed. Above us, a half dozen boys ran out onto different branches. “And you said you would let them go.”
“That oath was for this one only,” Bertilak said as he yanked on the chained boy’s collar. “And only if he led us to Peter Pan. Do you see Peter Pan, Captain?”
One by one, Lost Boys fell from the tree like overripe fruit.
Heat rose from within me, starting at my heart. It pulsed outward from my chest to my legs and arms. It flushed my face with its warmth. “We are here for Peter Pan, not these boys.”
“Killing them will get his attention.”
“Peter Pan doesn’t care about them,” I said. “He will just get more.”
“Let him, then.” Bertilak turned and kicked the chained boy to the ground. The knight swung his axe behind him in a wide arc. It gained speed as he brought it up over his head and clasped it with both hands. He bent his back in century-honed technique and drove the weapon with a force that cut the air into a whistle.
There was a clash of steel as I drew my sword and deflected the knight’s axe into the dirt. I stepped on the axe handle and held the blade of my sword to Bertilak’s throat. “No more boys die.”
The knight looked at his axe for a moment before meeting my eyes. Disappointment crept across his face, creasing it deeply.
“And you would kill me to save them?” Bertilak asked. He waited for an answer that I didn’t give, then lifted his axe out of the dirt with my weight still on it.
I backed up between Bertilak and the boy, my sword at the ready.
“It seems as though we have a disagreement,” Bertilak said.
His eyes flashed red as he attacked.
The knight swung his axe right and I thrust for his head. Bertilak swiped it away and used the momentum of the parry to swing across my midsection. I jumped in time to avoid and regroup.
“I expected more out of you, Captain,” Bertilak said.
“I am still hoping to resolve this with only Pan’s blood on my sword.”
“I meant your form.”
“My form?” I asked. “I am not even trying yet.”
“And what does you trying look like?”
Bertilak swung his axe high. I jabbed my sword into the dirt and rolled underneath the strike. I rose, pulled a pistol from my belt, and shot. The bullet ripped into the knight’s chest and his eyes widened with surprise. I dropped the pistol and charged. I grasped my sword, raised it, stepped hard with my lead foot, and thrust the blade through Bertilak’s throat.
Bertilak dropped his axe as he choked on the blood that spilled from his mouth. Disbelief flashed across his face. I pulled my sword from the man’s neck and let him slump to the grass with dignity.
“That is my form,” I said, at the moment not caring whether it was good form or bad.
Bertilak crawled on the grass and gurgled. More blood spilled over his green and gold tunic. He gasped and moved his lips to form words. I turned to the boy and gave up trying to interpret what the knight was trying to say. Seconds later, I didn’t need to interpret at all.
“Now, Captain,” the voice rasped. Bertilak removed his hand from his neck and I saw a web of veins intertwine like tiny writhing fingers. “I shall show you the terror of Arthur’s table.” Thin lines of green wormed under the knight’s skin, shifting the tint of his hue to a sallow pale. Bertilak laughed as his clothes stretched and tore. Shock froze my every movement as deep corners of my mind nudged thoughts forward. The sense of awkward familiarity rose in me again. Images and memories flashed back to me, not of my life, but of lives I read about long before I was born. Legends.
Wood splintered above us and a limb split the trunk in half as it fell.
Two boys clung to the branch and screamed as their home collapsed under them. I grabbed the shackled boy and dove to the side, covering him from the raining fire. The limb fell on Bertilak with a crash of smoke and dirt. Ash kicked up all around us and I covered my face with a sleeve. The smoke burned my eyes, but I squinted through the pain. The two Lost Boys who fell with the branch scrambled like rats into the forest, their hair and clothes alight.
Everything else was a curtain of black.
“Stay here,” I ordered. The boy nodded between coughs.
I navigated the fire, hoping to get a look at the knight’s body. With each step, waves of heat washed over me. I approached where he was, but flames surged and licked my face. I worked around the side, then ducked under one branch and into an opening between limbs. The smoke grew thicker with each second and I had to back off.
I fell to my knees by the boy and coughed the smoke out of my lungs. The tightness in my chest lessened and I wiped my eyes.
I drew a deep breath and darted for the nearest tree. I snared the lowest branch with my hook and used the knot as a foothold. With a jump and a lift, I grabbed the next highest branch and pulled myself high enough to see over the fire. A burning limb bisected the scorched grass. Nothing more. I searched through the smoke for several seconds before giving up.
Captain James Hook and the Siege of Neverland Page 8