Island of Thieves (10 page)

I nodded to the thugs and sat down opposite my uncle. “Did you sleep well?”

“I had a wonderful night, thank you. Ah! Here's Silvia.”

Silvia was the maid. Somehow he'd learned her name. She giggled at his attempts to speak Spanish and filled the table with good things: freshly squeezed orange juice, a plate of pastries, and a big bowl of fruit salad. It was like being in a hotel. Apart from the thugs, of course, who watched us as we ate.

“Huevos?”
asked the maid.

“That means eggs,” explained my uncle.

“Yes, please,” I said.

We both ordered scrambled. Plus toast. When Silvia had gone inside to talk to the chef, Uncle Harvey leaned back, stretched his arms toward the clear blue sky, and said, “This is the life, huh?”

“It's fabulastic,” I said. “Let's ask Otto if we can stay for a month.”

Uncle Harvey smiled at me. “What an excellent idea.”

After breakfast the thugs escorted us back to the library. We pulled three large maps from a chest at the back of the room and spread them on one of the long tables. They fit together to form the entire coastline of Peru, stretching 1,500 miles from north to south. Then we piled up all the pages, the rejects and the ones that we hadn't even touched yet, and read through them again, searching for anything that would allow us to plot the voyage of the
Golden Hind.

Just as before, Uncle Harvey rushed through the pages, searching for relevant information and discarding whatever wasn't useful. I found myself doing the opposite, going slower and slower, spending more and more time actually reading the words on each page, puzzling out the full story of the manuscript and its author.

All the pages were jumbled up. I wasn't reading them in any order. I'd find a page about the first days of the voyage, plowing past the coast of Spain, then reach for another and find myself in the middle of the ocean, miles from land. But I began to get a sense of the voyage, the strangeness of the experience.

For instance, I read a description of wading ashore on an unfamiliar coast and meeting natives who had never seen a European before, never seen such a big boat. They had spears and shields, but seemed friendly, until something changed—no one knew what—and suddenly they attacked, leaving one of the Englishmen dead on the ground.

On another page there was nothing except descriptions of the speed and direction of the wind. The crew must have been sailing across the Atlantic or the Pacific for day after day, driven crazy by the monotony, the endless unbroken horizon.

I was getting better at deciphering the spidery black handwriting. The spelling still stumped me, but I now knew the way that the writer did particular letters and I could skim through a page fairly easily, searching for interesting information, skipping words that didn't make sense.

Then I found something extraordinary.

It wasn't the page that I was looking for. There was no mention of gold, silver, or the Island of Thieves. But halfway down, I read this:

 

My friend Nycolas Tindal, having been syke for three daies now, cried out last nighte and then dyed. I was sitting with hym. He held my hande and asked me to take a message to his mother in Tavistok. So I shalle. He dyed like a gode Christian man and shall never be forgot. I swear this to be true and signe it now with mine owne name, John Drake. I commend his memorie to the Lord Our God.

 

I read those sentences several times, making sure that I hadn't misunderstood them, and then I smiled.

John Drake.

My couzen, the Captayne.

The pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. Now I knew what I was reading and who had written it. We had found the journal of Francis Drake's cousin, John Drake. I'd never heard of him before. When we did British history, no one mentioned his name. Maybe no one even knew he existed.

I showed my uncle what I'd discovered. I could tell he was impressed, although he didn't show it, not wanting to alert our bodyguards. He said in a quiet voice, “I've never heard of John Drake. Have you?”

“No. But he was the captain's cousin. If you were going on a voyage around the world, you'd want to take people you could trust, wouldn't you? Like your cousin.”

“Or your nephew.”

“Exactly.”

“Wait a minute,” said Uncle Harvey. He pushed back his chair and walked around the walls, looking at the shelves. I waited for him, wondering what he was looking for.

He came back with a single volume of an old edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
On the side it read
DELUSION TO FRENSSEN
. Uncle Harvey opened the book on the table and flicked through the pages till he found the entry on Sir Francis Drake. We read it together, skipping the sections on his early life and concentrating on the voyage of the
Golden Hind.

Midway down a page, we found this:

 

Contemporary accounts mention a cousin, John, born in Tavistock, the second son of Robert and Anna Drake. He was an excellent draughtsman and artist, responsible for recording the voyage in maps and drawings. These documents, along with a journal supposedly penned by John Drake, are assumed to have been presented to Queen Elizabeth when the Golden Hind returned to England. No trace of them has ever been found and historians suggest that they were probably lost in the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698.

 

“That's him,” whispered Uncle Harvey. “That's our man.”

We asked the thugs to summon Otto.
When he arrived we showed him what we had found. We didn't tell him about the
Golden Hind
or either of the Drakes, but we didn't need to. We had enough good stuff without that. Using the journal, the encyclopedia, the maps, and our imaginations, we had pieced together the voyage of a small ship that sailed from England to the other side of the world.

“She had a crew of Englishmen,” explained my uncle. “Who are, as you know, the best and bravest sailors in the world. Or were then, anyway. Most of them had been born in Devon, just like their captain. None of them knew where they were going. He refused to tell them. That was part of the deal. If they didn't like it, they didn't have to come with him. They set sail from Plymouth. I don't suppose you've ever been to Plymouth?”

Otto shook his head. “I never been to your country.”

“You're welcome anytime. How about you, Tom? Been to Plymouth?”

“Don't think so.”

“You should go. Your ancestors were from the West Country. It's your heritage. Anyway, here it is. The lovely town of Plymouth.” Uncle Harvey plonked his finger on the map. “From here they sailed across the Channel. They went round the edge of France, over the top of Spain, and down the whole length of Portugal. Popped across the Gibraltar Straits and got to Morocco.” He traced the route on the map, running his finger down the eastern edge of Europe and touching the bulk of Africa. “Not far from Essaouira, they filled their barrels with fresh water and headed south and west.” Now his finger plunged across the vast emptiness of the Atlantic Ocean. “The monotony of weeks at sea was relieved only by stopping at a few islands. Here, the Canaries. And here, Cape Verde. Finally they reached your own continent. South America. They went down the coast of Brazil. Presumably you've been there?”

“Of course,” said Otto. “Many times.”

“They sailed down its long coast. Past Uruguay. Past Argentina. Round Cape Horn and up the other side. Up the long, long coast of Chile. And here, just into Peru, they moored at a tiny little island. The sailors traded with locals, offering knives and trinkets in exchange for fresh food and water. Midway through their negotiations, the locals made off with their booty without leaving anything in return. They were dirty thieves, said the captain, and he named the place after them.”

“The Island of Thieves,” I explained, in case Otto hadn't gotten the point.

He didn't take any notice of me. All his attention was focused on the map, his eyes scanning for the island's exact location.

“From there they sailed north,” continued Uncle Harvey, his finger creeping slowly up the map. “They were heading for Lima. But things didn't go according to plan. They spotted another ship on the horizon. It was a Spanish galleon, so heavily laden that it couldn't sail fast enough to escape. The Englishmen captured it after a short battle. They went aboard and found that the hold was packed with silver and gold. There was too much treasure to carry on their own small ship. The weight would have sunk them as soon as they hit bad weather. The captain could have abandoned the treasure or tipped it overboard, but he couldn't bring himself to surrender so much delicious booty, so he sailed the galleon and his own ship back to the nearest island. Once they reached the Island of Thieves, the captain took a small crew of trusted men and ordered them to load eight chests onto a little boat. They rowed or sailed to the northern tip of the island and buried the eight chests, letting no one else know the secret of their location. They returned to their own ship and sailed onward. Ten days later, they were in Lima. From there they went north, past Panama and Mexico, and landed on the shores of California, not far from modern San Francisco. They turned west, cut across the Pacific, and headed for home. But that's a different story. Now let's move to the other map.”

We had used two maps, one of the world and the other of Peru. Each of them was dotted with a trail of tiny penciled crosses.

“Do you see these?” said Uncle Harvey.

Otto nodded. “That's the boat, huh?”

“Exactly. That's where it went. Each cross marks a date in the manuscript. A location mentioned by the writer. One of them is the Island of Thieves. That's where we'll find five chests packed with gold and three more with silver.”

“So where is it?” asked Otto impatiently.

“Right here.” Uncle Harvey put his finger on the map. “It's a tiny little place. Barely more than a speck on the map. It does have a name, though, and we wondered if you'd ever heard of it. It appears to be called . . . Isla de la Frontera.”

Otto threw back his head and shouted with laughter.

We both stared at him in amazement.

“What's so funny?” I said.

“You want to know have I heard of Isla de la Frontera?”

“Well, have you?” asked Uncle Harvey.

“Of course! Everyone knows Isla de la Frontera.”

“I don't,” I said.

“Nor do I,” added Uncle Harvey.

“You are not from Peru,” said Otto. “You ask anyone in Peru, he will tell you. Isla de la Frontera, it is the most famous island in our country.”

“What's it famous for?” I asked.

“It is a prison,” said Otto.

“A prison,” I repeated like an idiot.

“You understand what is a prison?”

“Yes. But, um, what sort of prison? For criminals?”

“Of course for criminals. What else is prison for? In truth, I spend a little time there myself. It is the place where I get this.” He touched the tattoo on his neck, the snake's head. “I am there only a few months. Because of politics, you know? Here in Peru, everything is politics.”

For the past few decades, Otto told us, Isla de la Frontera had housed some of the most dangerous men in Peru. The cells were stuffed with terrorists and murderers. High walls and rough seas prevented the prisoners from escaping.

He remembered a little about the security arrangements from his own months of incarceration. The guards had to stay in the prison, away from their families, and the solitude drove them a little crazy. They took out their frustrations on the prisoners and anyone who was unlucky enough to come anywhere near the island. Shoot first, ask questions later—that was their mantra.

The prison was on the east coast, facing the mainland. As far as Otto knew, the rest of the island was empty and uninhabited.

“No one never go to there,” he said, his eyes gleaming with greed and excitement. “Not in a hundred years. Not in four hundred. The gold is there right now. Waiting for us. In my heart, I can feel it.”

Later that afternoon,
we flew south in Otto's little twinpropellered plane. Inside, there were three rows of wide, luxurious seats with big padded cushions. Otto sat in the first row. Then came me and my uncle. Miguel went behind us. I could imagine his eyes fixed on the back of my neck, his large hands twitching, longing to choke me to death.
Don't even try it,
I wanted to say.
Or I'll bop you on the head with another vase.

Before we boarded the plane, I got a chance to talk to my uncle alone, and he told me not to worry, everything was going to be fine. Otto liked us, he said confidently. And trusted us. Which was why we were flying to Isla de la Frontera, rather than languishing in a cellar or staring down the barrel of a gun. I hoped he was right. I couldn't help wondering when Otto would get tired of us, or annoyed with us, and decide it was easier to kill us than keep us alive. When I said this to my uncle, he just laughed and, once again, told me not to worry.

The flight took a couple of hours. As the plane circled before landing at a small airfield near the sea, I stared at the coastline, stretching to the horizon in both directions. Not far from the shore, I could see a couple of islands. From the plane I couldn't tell much about them. They just looked like big lumps of rock dumped in the ocean. One of them must be ours, I decided. I couldn't help grinning. We were so close! A few hours from now, we'd be setting out to sea in a little boat, making our way across the water to the Island of Thieves. I felt a sudden flutter of anticipation in my stomach. I don't know if it was fear or excitement. Probably a bit of both.

Two vehicles were parked on the airstrip; a bright red fire engine and yet another of those big black Toyota Land Cruisers. Otto must have got a discount from the dealership. Or maybe he just stole them.