Isle of Fire (23 page)
“YOU must take your seat!” commanded Vogler. “How dare you interrupt the king's word.”
Vogler looked questioningly over his shoulder to the king. King George nodded and Vogler went on. “As for the matter of Commodore Blake . . . until such time as a thorough investigation of your actions can be completed, you will resign your commission as commodore in the royal navy and relinquish your command of the
Oxford
. Due to your distinguished serviceâin the pastâyou will be allowed your freedom. But do not leave England. This is the will of the king.”
Cheers and shouts filled the chamber, but this time the soldiers did not restrain them. Clamoring, red-faced men left their seats and filled the aisles. Guards came and forcibly took Commodore Blake away from the throne, pushing him through the crowd toward the chamber doors. “Brand!” a thin woman's voice cut through the uproar.
“Dolphin!” Blake called, scanning over the heads of so many. There! He saw her red hair aflame in a bland sea. Bless her, she was knocking people aside to get to him. With Hopper right behind her, Dolphin drew near and stood in front of one of the guards.
“Stand aside, my lady,” the soldier commanded. “Mister Blake must leave the king's chamber.”
“I am not your lady!” growled Dolphin. “COMMODORE Blake is my husband. Now shoot me if you must or allow us the dignity of departing without an escort!” The guard's eyes widened, and he stepped back a pace to let Dolphin pass.
Blake embraced her, but Dolphin quickly drew back. He looked at her, his expression questioning. “Thorne lives,” she said.
“What?” Blake could not believe he'd heard her correctly.
“Hopper saw him escape,” Dolphin explained. And Blake noted for the first time that Hopper was right behind his wife. “It was Nigel, my darling, Nigel released Thorne, and they escaped New Providence just before the wave hit.”
Blake's thoughts swam. “How . . . how can this . . . ?”
“It's true, sir,” yelled Hopper, his voice shrill. “I was at the fort that night, I was. Well, I know I wasn't supposed to be there, but I wanted to see the pirate before he was hanged. First time I'd climbed the bell tower too. I was just on me way back down when I heard somefin'. I watched from above as this man came to the pirate Thorne's cell. And lo, he opens the door and lets Thorne out. I thought then he was takin' the pirate for a last meal or some such. But I never saw them come back.”
“How can you be sure it was Wetherby?” Blake asked.
“I saw him full in the face, I did!” Hopper frowned.
“And did he look just like the man over there?” Blake pointed to Commodore Nigel Wetherby, who was talking with Vogler off to the side of the throne.
Hopper nodded repeatedly. “'Cept he had a dark beard and his hair was longer . . . a little more scraggly.”
Blake felt a chill. It all made sense now. That's how he did it. Blake recalled the meeting with Ross and his senior crew that night in New Providence. He remembered Commodore Wetherby excusing himself just after dinnerânot more than an hour before the wave hit. And now, Nigel was back in England manipulating the king's mind to think against the Wolf fleet.
Dolphin took her husband's hand. He looked down at her, saw her pained expression, and said, “There's more, isn't there?”
She did not answer him directly. “It must wait,” she said. “Go, do what you need to do.” Blake hesitated a moment more and then whisked Hopper off the floor and charged through the crowd toward the throne.
“Sir!” called one of the guards, trying to catch up to Blake. “Sir, you must leave!
“Your Majesty, Master Vogler!” Blake cried out. But at first, the crowd's clamor drowned out his voice. “Please, I must be heard!!”
The people nearest Blake began to quiet, and they turned to look. Blake yelled, “Your Majesty, grant me an audience one last time!” But the king had already turned and was walking away. Vogler and Wetherby were still deep in conversation.
Blake banged into several dignitaries. White wigs flew, and spitting mad faces turned to Blake. But the commodore paid them no mind. His rage, fueled by betrayal, gave him the volume he needed. “I MUST BE HEARD!!!”
Silence spiraled out from Blake, and the chamber became as still as a forest moments before a storm. Even the guards stood still, wondering what to do. The king turned around and walked slowly back to the step before the throne. He looked at Vogler. Vogler looked at Blake.
“What is the meaning of this?” Vogler asked, his eyes flitting between Blake and the peculiar bald child in his arms.
Blake placed Hopper by his side. Blake looked at the king and said, “What did Nigel tell you? Did he tell you that the pirate threat was diminished now . . . that Bartholomew Thorne was dead?”
Nigel started to speak, but Blake pointed at his former second-in-command and said, “Close your mouth, snake! You have loosed enough of your poison here.” Nigel's face burned, his cheeks near burgundy, but he dared not speak.
“I have sure evidence that Bartholomew Thorne is alive!” Blake said. The words went off like a grenade. The crowds murmured. “This young man was there,” Blake said, putting his arm around Hopper's shoulders. “He was at the fort on New Providence the night of the great wave. And he saw a man come to Bartholomew Thorne's cell and take him out just before the waters came. Hopper saw the man who set Thorne free. It was Nigel Wetherby.”
The color in Nigel's face drained. Blake went on. “Why would Nigel do this? He is a traitor . . . that is why, a bitter, reprehensible man. And now he is in London to see the end of the Wolf fleet. I am sure this is none other than Bartholomew Thorne's scheme, a scheme to weaken England.”
Nigel looked away from Blake and nodded ever so slightly to Vogler. Vogler hurriedly translated for the king. The chamber stirred, but all eyes were on the king, who listened intently to Vogler. In spite of the new evidence, the king seemed strangely unmoved. Without changing expression even once, the king replied to his translator.
Vogler spoke up. “The king is used to desperate pleas, Mister Blake. Desperate pleas from desperate men. Do not think for one moment that you can bring someâchildâinto this room and make such claims. How far you have fallen to resort to this. Guards, take Mister Blake from this chamber at once. And see to it that he does not enter into it again unbidden.”
“You will regret this!” Blake yelled even as the guards took his arms and pulled him backward. “Thorne has no love for England! Mark my words!”
The carriage passed a gated cemetery. The dusky sun painted the white headstones lavender and red. Blake stared at the markers solemnly and wondered how many men had died because of Wetherby's treachery. He wondered, too, how he could have been fooled for so long. How long? How long had Wetherby been Thorne's spy?
So many times, Thorne had seemed within England's grasp only to slip away. Ross would want to know. But how? The
Oxford
was no longer Blake's to command. Blake shook his head and gazed at the graveyard. The ride back to Dolphin's family estate had been silent until this point. Even Hopper, who chattered like a squirrel most times, was quiet. But then Blake felt Dolphin shudder, and he remembered.
“My darling,” he said, taking her hand, “I am terribly sorry. You have something to tell me. Is it about Wetherby, about Thorne . . .”
Dolphin shook her head. “No.” She took her hand back from her husband and clutched one of her father's journals in her lap. She squeezed it so hard her knuckles whitened. “While those irate Scotsmen appeared before the king, I delved deeper into my father's writing.” He looked at her quizzically.
“I now understand why my father never wrote of me as a baby,” she said, her body quaking. “I now know why he never wrote of my mother being pregnant with me.”
Blake felt heat radiating from his wife, and his heart wrenched for her.
“My mother,” she whispered, “was barren. She died of malaria having never given birth to a child of her own. I was an orphan.”
“Like me,” said Hopper quietly. Dolphin smiled sadly and put a hand on his knee.
“My father,” she continued, “took part in an attack on a pirate stronghold here in England. He wrote about many dying in the battle, and the huge fire that ensued. And from the carnage, they pulled a woman who was with child. The mother perished, for her burns were severe. But the child survived unscathed.” Tears came in greater torrents as she said, “I was that child.”
“Miraculous,” her husband whispered.
“Was it?” Dolphin asked. Her eyes glistening. “I am not so sure.”
Blake pulled his wife close, embraced her with a gentle but firm touch. “You are a miracle to me,” he said softly. “It doesn't matter how you got here.”
“But it does,” she said, pulling away. “Do you not see? This changes everything. I am not the daughter of an English naval officer. And I have never known my real parents. Why didn't he tell me?”
“I'm sure he planned to,” Blake replied. “But you were too young whenâ”
“That never stopped him before. My father always told me things.” She sighed. Sadness and exhaustion flooded out of her, and she collapsed to her husband's shoulder. “My real father . . . I don't even know who he is.”
“Yes, you do,” Blake assured her. “Your father was the man who adopted you and cared for you all the life you remember. He was real; his love for you was real. When you adopt a child, that child is sewn so deeply into your heart that he becomes your own. Your father loved you as his very own.”
Dolphin's chin trembled, and a brave smile curled on her lips.
“S'cuse me, sir,” said Hopper, tugging at Blake's cuff. “Is that the way it is . . . with all children who get adopted?”
“Yes, it is,” Blake replied, and Dolphin drew Hopper close by her side.
Blake said nothing more, but his mind reeled over recent revelations. And something more troubled him. Dolphin's father had written of a horrible fire . . . of a woman with child pulled from the burned wreckage. Why did that sound familiar? He thought it might have been something Declan Ross had told him, but Blake couldn't remember for sure.
Ross.
Blake felt a chill race along his spine.
Ross
needs to be warned, but how? A message by courier to New Providence,
perhaps?
Blake sighed. The nightmare of nightmares had come true. Bartholomew Thorne lived, and the only ones who might be able to stop him had been rendered unaware . . . or powerless.
C
at felt uneasy. He hadn't had any real rest the day before because of a wicked storm that had rocked the three Brethren ships as they sailed from Jamaican waters toward Pine Island. He knew he ought to be exhausted, but still he could not sleep. He covered his eyes with a hand and turned his head into the fabric of his hammock. Anne had the helm of the
Constantine
, and Cat knew she was as capable a sailor as anyone. And Father Brun was there if anything went wrong. So Cat couldn't blame this disquiet on fear for the ship. The sea at last was relatively calm, and if Scully's information was to be trusted, they had a long stretch of open water ahead of them. So it wasn't the sea that stirred his innards. Cat tried to convince himself that he was just too keyed up over the possibility of capturing the Merchant on La Isla Desvanecente.
No
, he thought as he turned again in the hammock.
The ominous
shadow of the Merchant inspired fear of another sort.
The dread that tingled in Cat's mind and grasped at his gut came from a different source. . . . The damp, heady scent and the warm, stagnant air of the cabin reminded him of another place, but Cat didn't want to recognize it for what it was. Even as he finally began to feel drowsy, he knew it was still thereâfaintly scratching at the back of his mind.