Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (5 page)

Jim thought back to that day his father had returned from his mysterious sea voyage. He remembered the way the former Lord Morgan had greeted each of the servants by name, shaking their hands and smiling. That was the way Jim would do it, he decided. That was the way he would do everything – just like his father. It would be as though Lindsay Morgan had never died.

Jim rehearsed his arrival over and over again until the carriage rounded a bend and the town of Rye came into view. The red sun edged down to where the sea met the sky. The failing light painted the buildings with rust, and blue shadows leaned long into the streets. The carriage rattled down the main street to the edge of town. There the road turned to dirt and wound over a hill, beyond which stood Morgan Manor.

Jim leaned out the window to catch the first glimpse of the north tower beyond the hill. But as he took in a deep breath of evening air, a thick stream of smoke swept into his face, stinging his nose and burning his eyes. Jim heard MacGuffy growl an order to the driver from the top seat, and the carriage picked up speed. A dark haze had settled over the hill, drifting like a black fog toward the edges of town. Like a cold gust of wind on a warm day, a pang of dread caught Jim by surprise. It snatched his breath away and turned his stomach into knots.

“Are we almost there?” George asked in a yawning voice, groaning as he stretched awake from his nap. Lacey, Peter, and Paul all came to as well and looked sleepily at Jim.

“Something’s wrong,” was Jim’s only reply.

A column of black smoke climbed into view like a writhing serpent rising into the evening sky. It snaked its way into the red dusk, blowing out over the sea from the place where the road ended…from
a place Jim knew well. Jim hardly breathed until the carriage crested the hill.

What little air remained within Jim’s chest escaped in a gasp.

“Oh, Jim,” Lacey said quietly, looking out the window at his side. But Jim said nothing. His tongue refused to speak what his heart refused to believe.

Morgan Manor, every brick and every beam, was burned to the ground.

FOUR

im climbed down from the carriage on numb legs. Needling stings crawled over his body. The charred stink of burnt earth stung his nose. A dark fog choked the air over the blackened corpse of Morgan Manor. Tears fell onto Jim’s cheeks. They would have fallen even without the smoke in his eyes.

Jim wandered toward the remains of the building. The Manor was now little more than an ashy heap, robbed of all colors but black and gray. Small flames flickered amongst the piles of burnt stone - where the kitchen once stood and along the stretch that had once been the great hall. Through his bleary vision Jim could still place every tower and every wall where it had once stood. He could remember every room and every hallway, where there now lay only rubble and ruin.

Lacey and MacGuffy called for Jim to come back, but Jim’s legs mechanically carried him through the drifting smoke. He walked until he came to a place where the walls and roof had burned so cleanly away that only the floors remained, covered in ash. Even so, Jim knew this spot and knew it well.

It was the hallway that once led to Lindsay Morgan’s study.

Jim stepped over the ruined wall and walked the length of the corridor’s remains until he reached the place where the great oak doors had once barred the way to his father’s library. He remembered standing in that very place over a year ago, preparing to barge in and give his father a piece of his mind. But the oak door was now gone and Jim stepped directly into the room beyond. The great bookshelves and the voluminous library they once held lay in blackened piles upon the floor. Only the stone fireplace, over which the picture of Lord Morgan and his three friends had once hung, remained whole.

Jim stood there, searching for any piece of the past that survived the flames, until an ashy scrap lying on the fireplace’s brick hearth caught his eye. Jim kicked at it with the tip of his shoe. Beneath a layer of soot he discovered a pair of eyes staring back from the ash. The remains of his father’s painting, edges eaten away by the fire, lay at his feet. Jim picked up the canvas. The likenesses of his father, Dread Steele, Count Cromier, and an unknown, fourth man were still visible, though scorched by the heat.

The ruined painting began to fall apart in Jim’s hand. He turned it over to let the wind take the ashes away, but as he did, Jim found yet one more figure on the back of the canvas. For a moment he thought it was only a trick of the light upon the burnt cloth. But before the painting disintegrated entirely, he was sure that a fifth face had been drawn on the back. It was a painting of a large, black skull, a bolt of lightning gripped in its teeth. Jim saw the face for only a moment before the canvas turned to dust and crumbled to pieces in his fingers.

Jim watched the burnt flakes drift off like black flower petals when a sudden gust from the sea chased away the smoke in the study. Like a ghost in the dark, a man appeared, standing in the place Lindsay
Morgan’s desk once sat. Jim sucked in a startled breath and fell back from the shape. The man’s clothes were so black and his ash laden hair so red in the setting sun that for a moment Jim saw the form of Count Cromier, gloating over the fall of the house of Morgan.

When the man came further into the light, though, old, sad eyes glistened beneath bushy eyebrows on a familiar, wrinkled face.

“Phineus,” Jim said. Soot covered the man from head to toe. The old tutor looked more aged and bent than ever before.

“If you’ve come to loot, young man,” the old tutor shouted with a shaking voice, “Take your time and take what you will. All that remains here is ash and sorrow and forgotten dreams. Steal as much of that as you wish and be gone with you!”

“I’m not here to steal anything, Phineus,” Jim said. He took a step closer to the old man in the failing daylight. “I’ve come home. I didn’t send a letter – it was going to be a surprise.” Phineus stared vacantly at James for what seemed like an age, until slowly, a glimmer of recognition lit his eyes.

“Master James?”

Jim drew closer still. As though not daring to trust his eyes alone, Phineus reached out and touched Jim on the shoulders and face and hair until he finally accepted that the boy he once knew stood before him. The old man fell down on his knees and took Jim in his arms, weeping furiously.

“Oh, Master James! All that was your father’s and his great house has been lost. I’m sorry I was not able to stop this – I’m so sorry, my boy.”

“No, Phineus,” Jim said, fiercely hugging the old man back. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I am sorry.”

After Jim had let poor Phineus shed tears until none remained, the pair of them abandoned the pit of rubble that had once been a great mansion. MacGuffy, the Ratts, and Lacey met them on the grassy hill between the blackened grounds and the white sand beach that stretched to the ocean’s shore. Nothing remained of Morgan Manor
save for one of the stables and the iron gates at the entrance to the main road, the bold letter Ms darkened with soot.

The Ratts stood all in a row, heads held low and hands in their pockets. Even MacGuffy, so full of pirate wisdom and earthy proverbs, had nothing to say. He but stood shaking his head, glaring at the destruction with his one good eye. It was finally Lacey who found the words to speak.

“You must be Phineus,” she said. Her voice was thick, but she managed a polite smile and a curtsy. “Jim told us all about you. He said you were a great teacher, the greatest teacher.”

“Once perhaps I was,” Phineus said. He bowed his old head and did his best to return Lacey’s smile. “And who might be you be, young lady?”

“I’m Lacey. I’m Jim’s friend. And this is George, Peter, and Paul Ratt. They’re Jim’s friends as well, from London, sir.”

“What evil befell this place, Master Teacher?” asked MacGuffy. “In a house as rich and fancee as this’un, there’d of been servants and men aplenty to stamp out any kitchen fire gone out o’ control, I warrant.”

“This was no kitchen fire, sir.” Bitterness seeped into Phineus’s voice. “And yes, in the days of Lindsay Morgan there would have been servants aplenty, had not that witch squandered the wealth and pride of this once great house!”

“A witch did this?” Paul cried in dismay, shivering a little in the cool evening air.

“Not a real witch, Paul.” Jim gritted his teeth and clenched his fists at his sides. “But close enough to one. You mean Aunt Margarita, don’t you, Phineus?”

Phineus nodded. His old lips twisted upon his face.

“She spent every last piece of gold on parties and opulence until hardly a farthing was left. I was the last of the staff to remain, and only that for the memory of Lord Lindsay and Master James, for I thought you too were dead, milord. Madness took hold of her, Master James. When the constable arrived with a letter for the Dame, announcing her reign over this house had finally and mercifully ended, the
madness overwhelmed her completely. She flew into a rage, spouting all manner of strange words - of curses and treasures and storms that would devour the world. First she burned the letter. Then she burned the house. Then she ran away.”

“So it’s all gone, Phineus,” Jim said, staring out over the smoke-drowned hills and ruined gardens. “It’s all been for nothing. Everything my father built and fought and—” Jim’s throat grew suddenly sticky. “—and died for—all of it is gone forever.”

“Perhaps not all, young master.” Phineus cleared his throat and stood up straight, summoning his scholarly dignity once more. “I was able to save but a single item. Your father entrusted it to me long ago. I never trusted it to any safe or cabinet, locked or no. I carried it on my person, always. Now you are the Lord Morgan, and it is yours.” The old tutor reached inside his filthy jacket and withdrew his hand, closed in a fist.

Phineus unfurled his bony fingers one at a time until a bright blue glow shone from his palm in the darkening evening. The brilliant flame all but blinded Jim for a moment. But as the light dimmed he found a glass vial, filled to the stopper with a thick blue liquid, lying in Phineus’s open hand. Lacey gasped. The Ratts and old MacGuffy huddled close to Jim. They craned their necks over his shoulder to see the wonder Phineus had produced. The blue light threw swimming glimmers and curling shadows over their curious faces.

“It’s called moonwater, Master James,” Phineus said. “It is one of the rarest and most precious liquids in the world, worth one hundred times its weight in gold. Now, the night you fled, I believe your father must have given you an old, weathered parchment, perhaps with a note written upon it. Did he do so Jim? For try as I might, I could not find the parchment in the house no matter how long I searched.”

“He did, Phineus!” Jim reached into his pocket for his box. Opening it, he carefully withdrew his father’s letter. “When he was poisoned, father spent his last moments writing me this letter.” Jim held the folded page forth to his former teacher with a trembling hand.

“I thought he might have, for your father was a man of many secrets, Master James. Not all of them did he share with me.” A wise smile stretched over Phineus’s soot and tear-stained face. “He never told me of his secret journey at sea, nor how he came to possess that parchment or this vial of moonwater. Those tales he shared only with Hudson, his faithful valet, God rest that man’s soul. But before he entrusted me with the moonwater, he gave me a hint as to its purpose. Open the letter, young Master.”

Jim unfolded the parchment. As always, the newly rising moon lit the letters of his father’s note fresh upon the page. Though they had seen this before, Lacey and the Ratts caught their breath in awe and George gave a low whistle. This was magic, and it tingled their blood and prickled their skin.

“Your father was wise to hide his words in such enchanted ink,” Phineus continued. “Moonwater is concentrated light of the full moon itself. I believe it has the power to unlock even deeper mysteries still.” Phineus took Jim by the hand and turned the letter over. When the old man held the vial in his bent fingers between the moon and the page, a thin, blue beam lit upon the yellowed parchment. Like light shimmering off water, shapes and letters appeared on the paper, illuminating the dark and flinging their glowing forms on the faces of the small group gathered round. Jim could not be sure, but it seemed to be the faint outline of a map drawn on the aged paper. Phineus passed the light over the parchment from top to bottom then once more curled his fingers over the vial, extinguishing the blue glow and the enchanted glamour on the back of Jim’s letter.