Isle of Swords Read online

  “It’s not that,” Cat replied. He slumped to the ground and put his head in his hands. “It’s this place. It’s all of it. I feel like years of my life have been stolen away. Years, ha! I don’t even know how many.”

  Anne knelt beside him. “I know this isn’t the same,” she said.

  She found it hard to meet his gaze, so she stared at the ground.

  “But I know how it feels to have life stolen away from you. When my mother died, my father changed—at least he did toward me. He stopped treating me like a daughter, stopped letting me play and explore. Now, he keeps me on a leash.” Anne wondered what he was thinking—if he thought she was crazy or mean. She’d wished before that he could remember his identity so she could be rid of him. Now she wished only to comfort him. “I can’t make you remember,” she said. “But I’ll help you any way that I can. And I guess, I just want you to know . . . that you aren’t alone.”

  As Cat started to turn his gaze toward her, he spotted the side of the strange building they had just left. There, illuminated in the grass by the last rays of the afternoon sun, was a pair of storm doors.

  He was on his feet and at the doors in a heartbeat. Anne stood beside him.

  “This place . . . it . . .” Cat clutched his head. An echo of a desperate scream, long and shrill, burst into his memory. The scream grew louder, more desperate, and then vanished. “I’ve been here.”

  That was all Anne needed to hear. In spite of the fear that lurked in the corners of her mind, in spite of the smell of decay that permeated the area, Anne grabbed the handles and threw open both storm doors. A cloud of flies swarmed out, and the smell of decay became so intense that Cat and Anne gagged. The swarm had gone, and they could see into the basement room.

  Anne caught her breath, and they both staggered backward. They ran recklessly into the street—and sprinted past building after building. They came at last to the foot of a stair before a two-story house. Cat dropped to his knees and wept. Anne dashed into a patch of tall grass and vomited.

  16

  GLT

  What they had seen in that basement room did not bring back any memories for Cat. In fact, both he and Anne wished many times afterward that they both could forget what they had seen.

  “Who would . . . who would do that?” Cat asked moments later as they sat on the warped steps of a boarded-up cottage.

  Anne bowed her head. “Pirates,” she whispered.

  Cat looked across the road. His left hand wandered over the scars on his back. He turned back to Anne. “Why?”

  Anne shrugged. “Maybe they were stowaways . . . or mutineers. I don’t know.”

  “But why would pirates bring them inland just to torture the—”

  “I said I don’t know!”

  “Your father wouldn’t do that.”

  “My father is no monster,” Anne said. “He has his vices—but unlike so many others in the sweet trade, Declan Ross grants quarter when quarter is justly requested. When he conquers a ship, he does all that he can to spare the lives of the crew and passengers. What we saw . . . that kind of horrible torture . . . is the work of a soulless villain . . . someone like Edmund Bellamy, Thierry Chevillard, or Bartholomew Thorne.”

  Cat shook his head. There was nothing he could do to rid his mind of the images he’d seen in that basement. Hanging inverted, visible through the bars of their iron cages, were more than a dozen bodies. The sun’s light had mercilessly revealed flesh, torn and rotting; skeletal limbs; and grinning skulls. Anne and Cat had stumbled onto a chamber of horrors. And worst of all for Cat were the echoes of screams he’d heard. Had they come from the victims left to rot in that dank basement? And if those screams came from a memory of his past, what did that mean?

  “Come on,” Anne said. “Get up. We need to get out of here.”

  “But I haven’t seen the rest of the town.”

  “Haven’t you seen enough?” The question hung in the air.

  Cat stood. “Something drew me here. You said it yourself, it was as if I’d run that path a hundred times.” Anne wasn’t sure she wanted to see any more, but she nodded . . . for his sake.

  The sun had at last dipped behind the mountain, and a gray twilight fell over the abandoned town. In the shadows, Cat and Anne missed a turn in an alley and wound up in a part of the town they had not seen before. The buildings were taller and seemed to be in better repair. Cat spied a large house up ahead.

  It was two stories, and, with its small belfry on top, it almost looked like a church. At that moment, a strange sound came out of the forest behind the row of houses. It was a thin, rising bird’s call, but the bird could not be seen. Cat stopped walking and stared. The air grew cold. Keeee-wic, keeee-wic, keee wic, wic, wic.

  The call came again.

  “That’s a black ani,” Cat whispered.

  “What?”

  Cat’s skin prickled. He squinted. He could hear a woman’s voice echoing within his head. It was as if she were calling from up ahead.

  Come inside. Leave the birds alone. And all at once, it all became familiar: the bird’s call, the alley, the silhouette of the two-story building. Cat flew up the alley.

  “Cat!” Anne, a step behind, called. “Cat, not again!”

  It’s getting late, came the woman’s voice. Come inside this instant or I’ll fetch a switch! Cat’s mind flooded with images: a porch swing, a steep narrow stair, a curving room at the end of a hall, and a ladder. And suddenly, he was there—at the two-story house. It had a wide porch with a rail. The porch swing was gone, but two chains dangled from the ceiling where it might have been. Cat threw open the front door and raced up the narrow stair. There were three rooms upstairs, but Cat ignored the first two and went straight for the room at the end of the hall.

  Leery of what she might find, Anne followed Cat into the building. He was already gone up the stairs when she entered. She glanced left and right and then climbed the stairs as well. Anne searched the first two rooms and found nothing. “Cat?” she called as she approached the room at the end of the hall. The last room seemed to be empty as well. “Cat?” she called again.

  “Up here!”

  Anne found that the room’s outer wall curved to the right, creating a small alcove. On its far wall, a ladder dropped down from a square opening in the ceiling. Anne scaled it quickly and emerged in the belfry tower overlooking the dusk-shrouded town.

  “Look,” Cat said. He pointed to a beam that extended horizontally from one post to another like a kind of safety rail. There was something carved into the beam. At first she could not tell exactly what, but she came closer and stooped.

  “GLT?” Anne traced her finger across the coarse lettering.

  “I carved them,” Cat said excitedly. “I must have. I heard a voice calling me from this house.”

  “A voice?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but several times since we made port in Dominica, I’ve heard a woman’s voice in my mind. And I’ve caught glimpses of images—like when I saw the path and the face on the rock wall. I somehow knew this house the same way—I saw the porch, the stair, this room, and the ladder. And I knew I’d find something up here.”

  “Initials . . . ,” Anne said quietly, thinking. “Your initials? What do they stand for?”

  Cat shook his head sadly. “I don’t know.” Despair crept over his face.

  “No, Cat, this is incredible!” Anne said, standing and taking his hand. “GLT . . . you could be a George, a Gabriel . . . a Gregory!”

  Cat looked out over the shadowy town, and hope began to bubble up inside. At last he had something more to go on. Not much— mere letters—but they were letters to a name . . . his name. All he needed to do was consider the possibilities. How many “G” first names could there be?

  The smile disappeared from Cat’s face and he stood stock-still, staring out over the town. “What?” Anne asked, suddenly alarmed.

  “Shhh!” Cat urged. “Look.” He pointed into the massive dark forest p
ast the far end of town. Here and there, tiny orange lights flickered.

  “Torches,” said Anne.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.” Anne watched more and more tiny torchlights appear. She turned and started down the ladder. “We’ve got to get out of here—get back to the Wallace.”

  “Wait!” Cat grabbed her shoulder. “Look there.” The torch-lights were now no longer confined to one area. Cat and Anne turned and looked from one side of the town to the other. Everywhere in the woods, torchlights shone. Hundreds, maybe thousands. It was as if the little abandoned town were surrounded by a swarm of angry orange stars. And the stars were closing in.

  “What do we do?” Cat asked. “They’re everywhere!”

  “I don’t know. Hide, maybe.”

  “What if it’s the pirates, the ones who—”

  “Don’t say that!” But as quickly as they appeared, the torchlights began to blink out. The forest around them was once again dark.

  But there was a heavy feeling in the air. They both knew the danger had not passed.

  “Get down!” Anne hissed. She pulled Cat’s sleeve. He stooped down near her, peering just above the rail. From every forest wall surrounding the town, dark figures emerged. Dozens and dozens of them scurried out, disappearing for a moment at one building and then dashing silently to the next. Anne turned and saw more of them emerge from the forest just a hundred yards behind the building in which they stood. So many, too many to count, they closed in from every angle.

  “We’ve got to hide!” she whispered urgently. Cat started down the ladder, but Anne stopped him. “Too late. Pull up the ladder.

  Close the trapdoor.”

  Cat did as she suggested, wrenching the ladder up and leaning it against the rail. He and Anne lifted the heavy door on its rusty hinge. Trying desperately to keep it silent, they lowered the trapdoor gently into place. Then they turned and waited. A slice of the moon had risen. The rooftops and alleys were bathed in gray blue.

  Suddenly, they heard soft footsteps. Many footsteps. Anne and Cat hunched down as low as they could, but each peeked above the rail.

  “Soldiers,” Cat whispered.

  Anne nodded. In the moon’s light, they saw dozens of pale faces beneath dark hats. They clutched long, dark objects in their white hands—muskets. Their razor-sharp bayonets gleamed. The alley below filled silently with soldiers. Cat and Anne held their collective breath and slumped down, their backs to the wall. Anne turned to Cat. “We’re trapped.”

  17

  ROOFTOP HOPPING

  Commodore Blake, we’ve searched every building,” came a heavily accented voice from below. “The town is empty.”

  “British,” whispered Anne.

  “It would seem that our information was a bit . . . dated,” said another voice. This one only lightly accented, but deep and rich with confidence. “Perhaps a little light will see us through. Kindle the torches and search every building from top to bottom. If there is anything, anything at all that could tell us where they’ve gone, we must find it. And, Mister Kent?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take a brigade back to Tarou Point. Bring word to Commodore Ainsworth to mobilize a third of the fleet to scour the southern ports, especially Roseau and Soufriere. Our quarry may have departed long ago, but if any have lingered, we will snare them at night when they are sleeping—or drunk!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Anne clutched Cat’s hand. “Roseau!” she whispered. “The Wallace is moored just up the river from there. We’ll be cut off.

  We’ve got to get to the ship.”

  “What about your father . . . the landing party, are they even back from Misson yet?”

  “I don’t know,” Anne replied. “But it doesn’t matter. If the British take Roseau, we’re all done for.”

  Cat reached for the iron ring of the trapdoor. “No, wait!” Anne exclaimed. They both fell silent when they heard movement in the room beneath their feet. “They’re down there.” She looked frantically around the belfry. There was nothing. No rope, no tools, no escape.

  “The roof,” Cat whispered. Anne looked over the rail. “We could climb over the rail and creep along the roof. Then we can leap across to that little cottage. If we can drop down somewhere behind the troops, we can disappear into the forest and make our way back to the river.”

  “Are you crazy?” Anne looked away. “That’s ten feet across if it’s an inch!”

  “Yes, but we’re leaping down. We could make it.”

  “And break our legs!” Anne complained.

  “No, just roll when you hit the other roof—that’ll spread out the blow.”

  “How do you know that—oh, never mind! Even if we make it unharmed, the whole British navy will hear us.”

  “You have a better plan?” Cat asked.

  “No.”

  Before she could think of one, Cat stealthily slipped over the rail and onto the roof. Anne gritted her teeth and followed. They crept along the rooftop until they came to within a yard of the edge. The gap between buildings wasn’t quite ten feet, but it was close.

  “Come on!” Cat urged. He backed up a step and was about to run for it.

  “No way,” Anne said. “I’m going first.”

  “No, we go together,” he replied, the moonlight glinting fiercely in his eyes. “If we go one at a time, and the troops hear us, someone is going to be left behind. We have a better chance if we leap together.”

  Anne looked at Cat with new respect. “So what do we do when we hit the roof down there—that is, of course, if we don’t kill ourselves in the fall?!”

  “We run,” said Cat. “Run behind the chimney in case they start shooting. Once we’re there, leap again to the next building. But keep up with me and head toward the woods. I think that’s our only way.” Anne nodded.

  “Ready?” They both sped to the edge of the roof and leaped.

  The night air whooshed by, and they tumbled to the cottage’s rooftop. They landed with an enormous thud but rolled. To Anne’s amazement, they both survived unharmed. But a great commotion arose in the alleys below.

  “What was that?!” a voice yelled.

  “There!” came another. “Up on the roof!”

  “Fire!”

  Cat and Anne heard the sharp reports of rifles being fired. They ducked behind the chimney just in time. Musket balls smacked into the roof, sending shattered shingles flying in all directions.

  Another blast hit the chimney near Cat’s elbow. “Ow! We can’t wait here!”

  He tugged Anne behind him, and they leaped straight across to the next building. They landed awkwardly this time, stumbled, but were not hurt. Alert to the shouted commands below and the musket balls whizzing by them in all directions, Cat and Anne raced from rooftop to rooftop. Finally they came to the last building before the woods.

  Anne looked down. It was a decent height. “How do we . . .”

  “Watch me,” Cat said. He agilely spun round, dropped to his stomach, and slid over the edge. He hung by the strength of his hands and arms and dropped lightly to the ground. Anne shook her head and attempted to do the same. But when she slid over the edge, she could not hold her grip, and she fell backward.

  Cat was there to break her fall, but Anne didn’t even have time for a thank-you. He took her hand and yanked her into the woods.

  They had barely gone ten yards into the forest when they smacked right into dark blue uniforms. They fell backward, stunned.

  Anne rose to her feet first and drew her cutlass. Cat rose and did the same.

  “Drop your weapons!” one of the soldiers commanded. Cat and Anne looked around. There were a dozen men, each leveling a rifle in their direction. More soldiers poured in behind them.

  Reluctantly, Cat and Anne lowered their swords and let them fall from their hands. The troops moved in.

  Cat and Anne were led roughly back up the alleys and out into the main street. They were shoved to the ground before a tall
man. He wore black boots, dark blue breeches, and a breasted white vest under a blue frock coat. Gold was embroidered upon his lapels, and he wore a wide black tricorn hat trimmed in silver.

  “Lieutenant Crowley,” said the man, stooping and taking Anne’s hand. “Are you in the habit of manhandling a lady?” He gently lifted Anne to her feet and bowed slightly to her, all the while glaring at his subordinate.

  “No, sir, Commodore,” he replied. “But . . . she’s a pirate!”

  “Really?” the commodore asked. “Has she a sign upon her back?”

  The other soldiers laughed. Crowley went red in the face. “Well . . . no, but she has that look about her. They both do. Why, they’ve got to be—”

  “Of course they are pirates!” The commodore became suddenly fierce. “This town is a pirate stronghold! Nonetheless, she is still a lady. And under my command, we will treat her civilly, do you understand?”

  Crowley winced and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  The commodore fixed his gaze upon Anne. “I am Commodore Brandon Blake, of the British Royal Navy,” he began. “I apologize for your treatment, but you must understand, we are in pursuit of as ruthless a band of killers as the seas have ever known. If you cooperate with us, tell us where they’ve gone, I have the power to pardon your offenses. And that goes for your friend here as well.”

  Cat stood and brushed himself off. Anne said nothing. She was confused, angry, and acutely aware that the seconds were ticking away.

  If the British navy cordoned Roseau, the Wallace would be trapped.

  “I shall ask you again,” said the commodore. His green eyes were fierce, penetrating. “Where have they all gone?” Still, Anne did not answer. “Come now, you cannot have much loyalty to that villain. After all, you’ve been left behind.”

  “Commodore!” a man called. “Commodore Blake!” He ran up and spoke in breathless huffs. “We found something . . . there’s a basement . . . fifteen corpses. Sir, they were tortured, left hanging upside down. It’s a bloody mess down there, sir.”

  The commodore stared hard at Anne and then Cat. There was a power in his gaze that made them both feel like he could see right through them. The commodore continued to stare but said, “Mister Beckett, how long have the bodies been there?”