The Perilous Journey (17 page)

“Don’t look so dismayed,” Cannonball said, bending to set a platter of toast and jam on the floor. “I’m still going to accompany you myself. The captain’s told me everything about your situation, and I’m sorry about your friends — really and truly sorry. But just you wait. We’ll get them back safe and —”

“Captain Noland said both of you were coming,” Reynie interrupted. “Why has he changed his mind?”

If Cannonball noticed the hint of accusation in Reynie’s tone, he gave no indication. “It’s that bullfrog Pressius again. We were
supposed
to have a few days of festivities and celebrations in Lisbon. The captain intended to skip these and go with you. But now Pressius has informed the captain that he wants the
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to return to sea at once — just to sail around for a couple days.”

“Why on earth would he want that?” Kate asked, moving the toast before Constance, who was rolling sleepily out of her bunk, could step on it.

“Those ridiculous diamonds,” said Cannonball with a roll of his eyes. “Pressius is convinced that someone means to rob him. Once we’re in the harbor, he’s going to make a big show of opening the chest of decoys in front of all the reporters and crew members. He’ll announce that the chest is being delivered to a private vault in England. In fact he’s taking the
real
diamonds with him on the train to wherever he’s going. That’s why he insisted on all the extra security — this way he can send some guards along with the decoys to make his story seem authentic. Evidently it’s been his plan all along. He just didn’t see fit to tell the captain.”

“And of course Captain Noland can’t refuse him,” Reynie said. What he really wanted to say was that the captain
wouldn’t
refuse Mr. Pressius. For a man who believed he owed Mr. Benedict his life, Captain Noland certainly seemed unwilling to take many risks on his behalf.

“So what’s next?” Sticky asked.

“We’ll slip away while the ship’s being unloaded, before the ceremonies begin,” Cannonball said. “I’ll have a radio with me. The captain wants us to stay in close touch. He still intends to help — he’ll just have to do it from the ship.”

Reynie bit his tongue and looked away.

“What about Madge?” Kate asked. “Can someone keep her for me? It wouldn’t be for long, you know, only a couple of days…” She trailed off, suddenly solemn, for a couple of days
wasn’t
long, and it was all they had to save their friends.

“I’ve already made the arrangements,” said Cannonball kindly. “Don’t you worry. Madge will keep my cabin, and she’ll be treated like a queen.”

The
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was not due in port until late in the afternoon, which allowed the children plenty of time to bathe — an activity that had never seemed quite the luxury it did now. They’d gone a long time without changing clothes or even brushing their teeth, and their general dirtiness had begun to depress them, to say nothing of offending one another’s noses. Cannonball had no fresh clothes to offer, but he could provide towels and soap, and he gave them his own half-flattened tube of toothpaste. So the children were able to get rid of the grime, at least, and they brushed their teeth with their fingers.

Afterward they took turns looking out the cabin’s porthole. For most of the trip they had seen nothing but endless water and sky. But now, with the Portuguese mainland in the distance, they were able once again to appreciate the great speed of the
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The land seemed to transform from a hazy, indeterminate blur on the horizon to a full-fledged coastline in a matter of seconds.

“It won’t be long now,” Sticky said, stepping down from Kate’s bucket. “The port is just a few miles inland on the Tagus River. There’s sufficient depth there for —” He stopped himself with a frown — he’d been about to launch into a long and technical speech — and simply said again, “It won’t be long now.”

When at last Cannonball came for them, he was carrying a shovel and was dressed in “civilian” clothes, or at least he seemed to think so. He wore Bermuda shorts, sandals, and a loud floral-print shirt, and he had smeared his well-tanned face with sunscreen in an effort to make himself look like a tourist. Unfortunately the shirt, which he had borrowed from a shipmate, was no match for his barrel chest. No sooner had he entered the room than a button popped loose and skittered under Constance’s bunk.

“I’ll get it for you,” said Constance, with a readiness that took the other children by surprise. But then, her voice had quavered when she spoke, and when she emerged from beneath the bunk her expression was unmistakably anxious. She was trying to occupy herself however she could, for now that they’d arrived at this next stage of their journey, she found herself growing frightened.

Cannonball knelt beside her. “You know what I like about buttons?” he said, taking the button from Constance and gazing at it admiringly. “They’re very small things that hold bigger things together. Awfully important, buttons — little but strong.” He winked and stood up again, leaving Constance with a calmer expression on her face, and having strengthened the good opinion the other children already had of him.

“Now here’s the official stuff,” said Cannonball, unfolding a typed document stamped with all sorts of government seals. Reproduced on the back of it was a photograph of the children taken the year before. “Mr. Benedict sent this to the captain to give to you. It’s like a passport, apparently, only better. You’ll want to keep it secure.”

Kate took the document without thinking and slipped it into her bucket. Her friends didn’t argue, for not only did Kate’s bucket seem the safest place, the photograph was positively horrible of all of them, and no one cared to see it any longer than necessary.

“Only a minute now,” Cannonball said, holding his head in an attitude of careful attention. He was listening to the ship’s engines and looking out the porthole at the docks below. The children could hear a brass band playing just beyond the bulkhead. “There,” he said. “Now we’ll just scoot along.”

Cannonball and the children made their way up into brilliant sunlight, a warm breeze, and a shocking confusion of sound. The ship’s deck and the docks below were in utter turmoil — throngs of people were cheering, music was playing, and streamers and confetti drifted everywhere on the breeze. All of Lisbon, it seemed, had come down to greet the record-setting cargo ship. The place looked like a carnival set upon the bank of the river.

By the energetic application of his elbows Cannonball got the children to their taxi, and shutting their doors against the clamor, they were all whisked away toward St. George’s Castle. The cobbled streets wound sharply back and forth, maze-like, as the taxi passed through an old fishery district and rose higher and higher up the steep hill upon which the castle sat. With every other turn of the road the castle came into view again, larger each time, until at last they drew near the gated entrance to the grounds. Beyond the stone wall encircling the grounds the castle loomed impressively — but it was the wall that mattered to the children.

The taxi driver stopped the car and spoke to his passengers in accented English. “Listen, I warn to you,” he said, turning in his seat. “I do not know your plans, but they will not let you to dig here. I see the bucket and the shovel. But the castle is public grounds. The guards will — how do you say? — they will
throw you up.
”

“Throw us out?” Reynie suggested.

“Yes!” said the taxi driver, smiling. “That is it! Throw you out!”

“Thanks for the warning,” said Cannonball. He paid the driver and asked him to wait.

For no good reason, Reynie had been imagining an abandoned ruin of a castle with no one around, but St. George’s Castle was the exact opposite — a popular tourist site, with people streaming in and out. When he and the others had crossed the street and passed through the open gate, they found quite a lot of visitors milling about the castle grounds, which did resemble a lovely park, as Captain Noland had said. Tourists strolled through little thickets of shrubs, sat on benches, and paged through guide books, chattering and pointing at architectural features on the castle. A street musician played guitar and sang near a grove of olive trees. And surrounding everything was the stone wall, in some places low enough to sit on, in others high enough to cast long shadows over those walking below.

“We need to find the westernmost part, right?” Constance said. “So which way is west?”

“That way,” Reynie said, pointing toward the late afternoon sun.

“Constance!” Sticky said in a reproving tone. “Don’t you know that the sun —”

Luckily Sticky’s comment, which surely would have provoked a squabble, was interrupted by a garbled voice blaring from Cannonball’s radio. Signaling the children to wait, the young sailor walked off to a quieter spot and spoke into his radio. When he came back he was clearly distressed.

“That was Captain Noland,” Cannonball said. “The crowds have caused big problems with unloading the containers, and he needs my help sorting things out. Now please don’t worry. It’s a very quick business once it gets going, and I’m only needed at the start. I should be back within an hour — two at the most.”

“But what if you aren’t?” Kate asked. “We have to hurry, Cannonball! Our friends need us!”

“I know that,” Cannonball said gravely. “I’m truly sorry, and so is Captain Noland. He said he begs your forgiveness.” He handed Kate his radio and the shovel. “Start without me, all right? With luck I’ll be back before you’re even finished digging. Just radio the captain if you run into trouble, and I’ll be back as quick as I can!”

With that Cannonball dashed away, but not before Reynie saw the expression on his face. He obviously felt horrible to abandon them and would never have done so had he not been following orders. Reynie shook his head and turned away. Kate put the radio inside her bucket, and with Constance riding piggyback the children set out for the westernmost part of the wall, which lay on the other side of the castle.

Weaving among scattered clusters of sightseers and picnickers, they hurried up a series of steps, crossed a narrow stone plaza, and followed a winding path through a shrub thicket, where their footsteps flushed several peafowl out from under the shrubs. The startled birds darted here and there among the children’s feet, clucking and flapping with great agitation before fleeing back to the very shrubs from which they’d emerged.

“Silly, clumsy lot of birds,” muttered Kate, who had nearly tripped over two of them. “Madge would have a field day here.”

Beyond the thicket the path led the children to the corner of the castle, and just as they turned the corner they all drew up short, blinking in dismay. The westernmost wall lay a short distance from where they stood — but that was the only short thing about it. Indeed, it seemed to stretch on and on forever. Worse, there were people everywhere: people sitting on the wall gazing out over the city and the river below; people admiring the old black cannons set into the wall at regular intervals; people wandering about taking pictures on the grassy lawn between the wall and the castle. And not only were there people everywhere, there seemed to be olive trees everywhere, too. All of a sudden, Mr. Benedict’s directions seemed hopelessly difficult. Kate took out the paper to read them again:

Castle of Sticky’s namesake

Against westernmost wall

Not visible

Need tool

Olive trees nearby

No cork or pine for two meters

“Well,
that’s
not very helpful,” Kate said. “There are olive trees ‘nearby’ the whole wall, and hardly a pine tree in sight. Which ones are the cork trees, Sticky? I haven’t the faintest.”

Sticky pointed. “There, that’s a cork tree. And there and there. Only those few that I can see.”

“That makes for an odd clue, then,” said Reynie. “Why mention ‘olive trees nearby’ and ‘no cork or pine for two meters’ when that can be said of almost the entire wall? It doesn’t narrow down the location a bit. Let me see that, will you, Kate?”

As Reynie studied the letter with furrowed brow, Kate shrugged and said, “Maybe we should just start walking along the wall and see what we find. If Captain Noland’s right, it’ll be easy to spot where something’s just been buried.” She looked around again at all the people. “The hard part will be digging without getting noticed. If we had time to wait we could sneak back in at night. Maybe that’s what Mr. Benedict thought we’d do. Otherwise I can’t see how he expected us to pull this off without getting in trouble.”

“Neither can I,” said Reynie, still studying the letter. “Which is why I’m wondering —”

“Get back, everyone!” Constance said. She grabbed Kate’s ponytail and jerked on it as if pulling on the reins of a runaway horse. “Back! Back around the corner! It’s Jackson! He’s here!”

“What are you talking about?” Kate snapped, trying to pry Constance’s fingers from her hair. “That
hurts,
Con —”

“Do what she says, Kate!” said Reynie, grabbing her arm. “Step back!”

Puzzled and irritated, Kate stepped back around the corner of the castle. She set Constance on the ground — none too gently — and said, “This had better be good.”

Constance ignored her, instead looking up at Reynie with searching eyes. “Why do you think he’s here, Reynie? Do you think he knew we were coming? What should we do?”

Reynie put his hands on her shoulders. “Just stay calm and tell me what happened. Did you
see
Jackson? Or did you, you know —”

“I just suddenly knew. I could just tell.”

“Are you two talking about Jackson the
Executive
?” Sticky asked.

“The one and only,” said Reynie. He peered around the corner of the castle, studying all the people on the wall, near the cannons, on the grassy lawn… And then there he was, a swaggering young man stepping out of the shade of an olive tree. Jackson. Their old tormentor, one of Mr. Curtain’s trusted Executives. He’d seemed unfamiliar at first — he wasn’t wearing the tunic and sash he’d always worn at the Institute — but it was him, all right. That sharp, knife-like nose, the strutting walk, the stocky build and bright red hair. Reynie could feel his heartbeat picking up speed. “She’s right. I see him.”