The Pirate's Revenge (10 page)

Hussein came to his senses in the dark, with a groan and a whimper.

‘Get up,' I barked.

‘What the hell?' he asked, groggily.

‘The pirate's revenge, I think it's called.'

He scrambled to his knees, shaking his head. Even in the dark I could see his face was covered in dried blood.

He looked around him slowly. There was nothing to see but the ribs of the rowboat and an endless moving darkness that was the ocean.

‘Oh no, Lily,' he whispered. He plunged his face into his hands with an almighty howl. ‘No!'

I sat still while he sobbed like a toddler. Hussein Reis. Captain of the Turkish fleet. Slave trader and killer. Sook. He snuffled and snorted into the sleeve of his robe.

Eventually I sighed impatiently. ‘Untie me, for God's sake.'

He peered at me through the thinning night. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘Just hurry up. I've lost all feeling in my arms.'

He still had his dagger. As he cut the ropes away he mumbled over and over, ‘I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.'

‘What are you so sorry for?' I snapped. ‘Don't be such a cry-baby.'

He was silent.

‘Do something useful and feel around the boat,' I said. ‘Is there any food or a water bottle? I'm thirsty as a herring already.'

‘There won't be,' he said mournfully.

‘Try it anyway. I still can't feel my hands.'

He fell on his knees and moved slowly over every inch of the boat. I waited in silence.

‘No, there's nothing,' he said at last. ‘Diablo didn't even do us the honour of providing a pistol.'

‘He's not a man of honour. But I can't blame him, really. It's my fault this happened. I can never keep my mouth shut.'

I heard a strange noise, a kind of shimmering in the air. It was Hussein laughing quietly to himself. ‘Ah dear,' he said, struggling to keep his composure, ‘you certainly cursed him from here to Hades.'

‘He deserved it.' I couldn't see the humour in it.

‘Indeed he did, to be sure.'

He was still laughing as he moved carefully to the bow of the boat and washed his face and head in the stinging salt water. He tore a strip from his robe and dabbed carefully at the gash on his head. I left him to it, and curled up on the wooden seat to sleep.

I woke as the sun rose on an empty sea. There was no sign of the
Mermaid
or
Gisella
. There was no sign of anything.

Hussein sat in the bows watching me. ‘It's funny,'
he said softly, ‘sometimes I forget you are not yet an adult, and yet you sleep just like a child, coiled up and peaceful.'

‘Don't tell me — but as soon as I open my mouth, the spell is broken.'

He laughed. ‘You cast your spells in the daytime too, Lily.'

‘Where do you think we are?' I asked.

‘About the worst place we could be,' he answered. ‘We were well outside Maltese waters when we met
Gisella
, and I fear we've drifted further south overnight. But it's hard to tell.'

‘There are no birds.' I gazed around. ‘No seaweed.'

He shook his head. ‘We are out of reach of land, I'm afraid.'

‘We have rope.'

‘Aye,' he said, ‘so at least we can hang ourselves.'

‘We could make a sail, perhaps, from our clothes.'

‘Then we'd die of sunstroke.'

‘You're not much help, are you?' I snapped.

He shrugged. ‘I've already asked myself all these questions, that's all.'

We sat and stared at each other, at the horizon, at ourselves as the sun climbed up into the sky. It was blisteringly hot, of course. No chance of a rain cloud or a sudden squall to bring fresh water.

My head ached from the thirst, a sharp knife-edge of pain behind my eyebrows. No doubt Hussein's bashed head felt worse. I licked my lips from time to time, but soon there was no moisture on my tongue.

All day we bobbed up and down on the waves like
manic seagulls, two castaways in one boat, our minds in separate worlds. I drank the sweat that beaded on my forearms. There was nothing we could do.

I stared at my hands and let my thoughts ramble across the past few months. Even the horrible moments seemed precious now. I had lost everything: my pouch of gold pieces, my beautiful sword, my share of the
Mermaid
and her prizes — all were back in Diablo's vile grasp. My friends. My ship. He had won.

‘Hussein? I didn't tell you about the pearls.'

‘Don't talk too much now, Lily. Conserve your strength.'

‘What for?'

‘You never know.'

‘No,' I said firmly. ‘I do know.'

‘Don't despair. Men cast adrift have been rescued, or drifted near to land, many a time.'

How could he know what I was thinking? Perhaps his thoughts were the same.

‘It's not that, so much,' I said, my cracked lips stinging with every word. ‘It's an awful way to die, but I'm not afraid. I was thinking of my father. This happened to him. I always dreamed I would find him, but now I never will. Now I know how he died. But he was all alone. That would be much worse.'

‘Your father —'

‘He's dead, the same as I will be in a few hours, maybe a day or so. It all seems so pointless.'

The words ran out.

I swallowed again, the dried spit in my throat just a torture now. Hussein rubbed his eyes with the
palm of one hand. There were tears on his face.

‘Don't you start crying again,' I said. ‘You're supposed to be a pitiless pirate.'

He smiled weakly. ‘I'm no such thing, Lily. Surely you know that.'

‘I don't know who you are,' I admitted, ‘and I've given up trying to work it out.'

His sigh shook his whole body, and he drew himself up against the side of the boat so he could look into my face.

‘I am your father.'

I snorted. ‘Shut up.'

‘It's true,' he exclaimed.

‘You're just saying that to make me feel better about dying out here like a frog in a puddle. Don't bother.'

We were silent for a very long moment. I stared sullenly out to sea. The enigma that was Hussein Reis would elude me to the end, I decided. But then he started speaking, ever so softly, and in such a resolute tone I could not interrupt.

‘This is the second time Diablo has set me adrift, although he's too stupid to realise I am the same man. He likes this form of punishment. He goes to sleep at night relishing the long agonising deaths he has inflicted on his fellow pirates.' His face was grim, and pale under the sunburn, his eyes wrinkled in a squint into the glare.

‘Well, I've cheated Diablo of a slow death before, and it could happen again. The last time, I was found by a British naval patrol. They dragged me aboard as if I were a drowned cat, and just in time, too. It was months before I could get word to your mother, and
by then I knew the Navy would never let me come home to you.'

He stopped. The words made no sense to me, as if they were arranging and rearranging themselves in front of my eyes.

‘My mother?' I whispered.

‘I know it's hard to understand —' he began, but I cut him off.

‘She thinks you're dead!' I shouted. The pain was so intense I could hardly let myself feel it all. All those years. All that anguish.

‘But you're not?' It made no sense, even my anger made no sense, but I was filled with a steaming fury that seemed about to explode. ‘You've been alive all the time?'

‘Your mother knows, Lily.'

‘Don't be ridiculous!' It was almost a scream, from deep down in my throat. ‘How dare you tell me this now? You're lying, Hussein.'

But all of a sudden I knew it was true. I knew his eyes were my father's eyes. I knew my mother's grief was not that of a widow, but of a woman waiting, a woman with a secret.

‘I'm sorry,' he whispered. ‘I should have saved you from this.'

I turned away from him and huddled as best I could out of the sun. It seemed an age before either of us spoke again.

‘Tell me everything,' I said, but there was a bitterness in my voice that I hardly recognised. So many times I had wished for this moment, when I looked into my father's face for the first time in years, but
it was nothing like my dreams. Instead we floated, dying together, on an endless sea, in a rotten little boat filled with betrayal and pain.

So he told me. How he'd started out as a boy on a merchant trader out of Galway Bay, just part of the crew, and worked his way up to bosun. How he'd jumped ship in Valletta and joined the Knights and their pirate fleet. Of the times they'd sailed against the Moors, against the galleys of Barbary, and won mighty victories. He spoke in a whisper of the first time he had sailed his own schooner, the
Black Swan
, out of the Grand Harbour and seen a girl with dark hair waving from the deck of a British frigate. He blushed when he told of their wedding, and I pretended not to see.

I let him talk on. It was as if I was trapped with someone I'd never met before, as if all his tales were nothing to do with me, and yet every so often his tone or a name or a tiny detail would shock me to the gizzards. This is my father talking, I told myself, but I wasn't listening properly — not to him, not to myself.

He simply went on as if I cared. About the early years in Malta, and how he had moved my mother to Santa Lucia before I was born so nobody would know she was the wife of a corsair. How he'd come back to Valletta from many months at sea, anchor the
Black Swan
in the harbour, then walk across the island to his sister's house on the cliff, where he'd turn himself into a simple fisherman, set sail in the little
Cygnet
and come home to us again. How he'd watched me grow up, taught me to sail; how fast I'd learned.

I didn't stir, didn't look at him. I just wrapped my arms even more tightly around myself and stared hard at the ribs of the boat and the dregs of water sloshing about.

All those years were a lie, then. Those long sun-drenched days of sailing and fishing and picnics — I remembered them, now — my parents lying in each other's arms in wildflower meadows while Lucas and I tumbled and laughed.

‘All that time,' I said at last, ‘and you were no better than Diablo. Just a pirate.'

‘I was a corsair, Lily — a legal pirate, at least in these waters. The Knights tolerated me if I paid them enough gold. Other navies would not have been so generous. I hope I'm a better man than Diablo: perhaps not quite so bloodthirsty, perhaps not quite so cruel.'

‘But then you abandoned your family.'

‘Not of my own free will. I admit I have put many men to the sword, but I have never condemned a man to die as Diablo has condemned me, twice.'

‘So the last time, the Navy rescued you?'

‘Yes. The
Bellerophon
, bless her holystones.'

‘But you didn't come home,' I said, accusingly.

‘The Navy has never let me go, Lily. I am a slave to the Admiralty as surely as those poor farmers press-ganged below decks. I've been sailing with the Ottoman fleet, for sure, but it's the English Navy that pays your mother's rent and puts food on your table, meagre though it may be.'

‘You have a ship,' I said. ‘You could have come to see us any time you liked.'

‘It's not that simple.'

I sat up. ‘We have all the time in the world, so why don't you just tell me the truth, for once in your rotten deceitful life!'

He looked as if I had hit him. Good. The fury bubbled up between my teeth. I wanted to hit him with more than my words.

‘You say you're a better man than Diablo. But you kill people. You're famous for it.'

‘Not I.'

‘You're saying the stories of the dreaded Hussein Reis are all made up? What is it then? Another of your mysterious games?'

‘No,' he said, trying to calm me. ‘Those stories are true. But Hussein Reis was captured a year ago and is in irons somewhere in the darkest dungeons of Gibraltar. I am merely a ghost of the man, genuine enough to those who have never seen the real thing, or are too greedy to question what they see before them.'

‘Like Diablo, you mean?' I asked.

‘Exactly.' He nodded slowly. ‘A man like Diablo sees what he wants to see, and he's not too bright at the best of times. Besides, all Irishmen look alike to him.'

My mind was racing, retracing every word, every action of the last few months.

‘Does Jem know?'

‘He knows I am not who I say I am. He suspects Rafe Swann is alive. That's all. I don't know what else he may have guessed. De Santiago is the only man outside the Admiralty who knows the truth.'

‘Why him?'

‘He is the source of both funds and inspiration for the fight against the French. He has for many years kept us informed about the machinations of the Knights of Malta and more recently about the movements of French troops and ships.'

It made perfect sense. No wonder he and Hussein were constantly plotting. I understood now why the Duke tried so hard to keep Carlo out of danger.

‘That's why his family were so kind to me.'

‘Not at all,' said Hussein. ‘They were kind because you deserved it. You saved their son's life.'

‘I would have done it for anyone.'

‘Perhaps,' he said. ‘But climbing the tower was Carlo's moment of honour, and you protected him, even if he didn't understand that at the time. It is a blood debt, and the Maltese take such things very seriously.'

I shrugged. I even shrugged like my father. I wondered what else we had in common. A feel for the sea. A strong sword-arm. But he was a loner, and I was surrounded by friends.

‘Jem knows,' I said. ‘I think he tried to tell me the other night before we picked you up.'

‘He would want to protect you. He only trusts me because you trust me.'