Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (6 page)

“I never asked your father what secret the parchment held, nor did I ever surrender to the temptation to use it myself, though the desire was great, especially for an old tutor who values wisdom and knowledge above all else. Those things were not meant for me to know, young Master. But they are meant for you.” Phineus pressed the vial into Jim’s empty hand and closed Jim’s fingers into a fist. “Wait awhile until your head and your heart clear from this loss, then perhaps this will guide you on your way.”

“Thank you, Phineus,” Jim said quietly. He took both the vial and the letter and tucked them into his box, which he then placed into his pocket.

“Speakin’ o’ makin’ our ways,” MacGuffy interjected from the back of the group. “It be far too late for travellin’ tonight, and the carriage we brought be already gone back to town. There be not enough gold amongst the lot o’ us to buy a room for even a single evenin’. So perhaps we shall rest in yonder stable, if there be even a little straw for our beds. Then tomorrow, to the lighthouse we shall return.”

“Will you come with us, Phineus?” Jim asked. But only a look at his old tutor’s face gave Jim the answer.

“No, Master James. I shall always be your servant and your teacher, but my frail body is too old for such adventures. I shall go to Kent to stay with my sister for a time. Perhaps I shall find another family to teach before I grow too old and too frail to carry out my duties with honor. But never will I find another house as great as the house of Morgan.”

“I’ll get it back, Phineus,” Jim swore then. He swore it with all the heat and fury of a young boy’s heart caught afire. “I don’t know how, but I will. I’ll find treasure like my father did. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll get back at the Cromiers for this and I’ll rebuild our house and I’ll make it an honorable family again. I swear it.”

Phineus pulled Jim close and held him there for a moment. Then he stood again with a groan, one hand on his old back. Phineus shook the hands of the Ratts and MacGuffy and bowed his head politely to Lacey. Then lastly and again, he took Jim’s hand in his own.

“Farewell, Lord Morgan. I have no doubt I shall hear your name again, attached to the beginning and end of a great adventure, I’m sure. If I am still alive on that day, I trust you shall call on me if needed, and I will come.” Then the old tutor walked away, disappearing over the hill and into the night.

Jim and his friends watched old Phineus hobble away. They were about to walk down to the stables when the rattle of wagon wheels and the clang of bells on reins came from the road. A prisoner’s carriage
rounded the bend. Next to the driver sat a constable of Rye, a blue cloak over his shoulders, blue tricorn hat on his head, and the badge of the King’s Men on his breast.

“Good evenin’, sires,” the constable said, tipping his hat to the clan and MacGuffy, who stood beside Jim near the road. “Tis an evil night indeed. Though I know it will do little to bring back what’s been lost, we’ve a prisoner we believe wrought this misfortune on Morgan Manor. Caught her screamin’ and rantin’ in the haunted forest. Thought at first she was one of the ghoulies herself! We’re takin’ her to London for justice.”

“Nonsense!” A shrill voice screamed from the back of the wagon. George, Lacey, Peter, and Paul, jumped at the sound – all except for Jim.

Jim knew that voice.

He knew it from his childhood.

“You shall refer to me as DAME, you common dog! For it was I who gave grace to the wretched name of Morgan and I who gave that pile of rocks even a touch of nobility. For I am still as noble as…as a queen!” The voice cackled from the black bowels of the wagon, from the shadows behind the bars.

But shadows or no, Jim knew to what villain this voice belonged.

FIVE

im’s teeth clamped so hard that he heard them grind together in his ears. He squeezed his fists so tight that his fingernails bit half-moon cuts into the palms of his hands.

“You’re no Dame, Aunt Margarita!” Jim shouted, his voice hoarse and raspy. “My father threw you out of his house for being a liar!” A sharp gasp echoed from the blackness behind the bars of the prisoner’s carriage.

“I know that voice,” the mad cackle said. “But it cannot be, can it? It could not possibly be my dear little friend, James Francis Morgan, could it? This I must see with my own eyes.”

From the shadows, two hands reached through the bars. The pale fingers were ringed with diamond and gold that glistened in the rising moonlight. Finger by finger the bejeweled hands gripped the bars tight, and with a fierce tug, yanked Aunt Margarita’s face into view.

Paul and Lacey leapt back from the wagon and George and Peter braced themselves at the sight. But who could blame them? The old woman had become more ghoul than flesh and blood. No longer as round and pale as the full moon, her madness had sucked the life from her, a bit at a time. Dame Margarita’s body was as drained as her mind and her soul. Her wrinkles folded deeply. Black bags hung low beneath her eyes, open wide and unblinking. Even her platinum blonde wig was gone. Only thinning wisps of gray remained, dead and lifeless as the gypsy witch’s that once cursed Jim’s box.

Aunt Margarita’s wide, watery eyes passed over each of the clan until they reached Jim’s face. It was then she reared back her head, erupting in laughter, deep and throaty like a hungry wolf’s howl.

“Well, well, well, so you survived after all,” Margarita said gleefully. “Old Cromie thought you might have. I was certain, oh so certain, that you were too soft to survive beyond the manor walls - without your servants, your playthings, or your chocolates. But perhaps I was wrong about you, my boy.”

“It’ll take more than you and the Cromiers to finish me off, hag!”

“Mind your tongue and mind your words!” Margarita pressed her face close to the bars. With bulging eyes she glared down on Jim. “You eluded Bartholomew in London. Well done! And I can tell you that his father was none too pleased with him at that. But by your company and those hopeless rags you now wear, you failed to find your father’s treasure, didn’t you? And now look!” Aunt Margarita jabbed at the blackened ruins before her with a crooked finger, a bent smile upon her face. “All that was the house of Morgan is gone.” Jim shook from head to toe at his Aunt’s taunts. All the hurt and disappointment of his broken dreams bubbled up within him.

“You poisoned my father, the greatest captain on the seas! You tried to kill me, and now you’ve burnt down my home. I hope they throw you in a dark hole at the end of some forgotten corridor in a forgotten prison, so long that you never see the light of day again!”

Dame Margarita squeezed the bars until her knuckles rose up on her hands. The sinews in her arms and neck drew taut as straining ropes. Her face trembled and her eyes bulged in their sockets.

“You think you know it all, don’t you, you fool? You think Lindsay Morgan was some great man of honor? That he was some unblemished image of nobility and goodness? You don’t know half of what you think you know. If you knew what I knew … if you knew what Count Cromier told me. If you knew what that Treasure of the Ocean really was and what Lindsay Morgan’s thievery truly cost, you would not speak so boldly to me.” Aunt Margarita pulled one fist from her bars and leveled a finger at Jim’s face.

“If you knew who you were, James Morgan, Son of Earth and Son of Sea. If you knew what fate lay in store for you, you would wish the soldiers had caught you in the forest that night. Mark my words, boy, you shall come to curse the day you were born.” Aunt Margarita began to wag her finger back and forth, cackling laughter once more lacing her words. What little reason left in her eyes slipped away. “You’ll see! You’ll see, you’ll see!” Margarita released her bars, sinking back into the shadows of the box until only her echoing laughter remained.

“That will be enough of that,” the Constable said. He nodded his head toward Jim and his friends. “I’m sorry for your loss. Have no fear, though, we shall see her to justice.” Then the driver flicked the reins and the carriage jerked down the road. But before it turned round the hill and out of sight, Aunt Margarita’s shrill voice cried out once more.

“You’ll see, Jim Morgan! You’ll see!”

“Be givin’ no mind to a mad witch’s words, lad,” MacGuffy began to say. But Jim hardly heard the old pirate. The weight of all the sorrow and sadness broke the dam in his heart. All by themselves Jim’s legs began to run. Hot tears burned in his eyes as he ran over the hill toward the stables, which was all that remained of the great house. Smoke from Morgan Manor stung his nose and singed his throat as he ran, but the pain in his heart ached far worse than any heat.

“Come back, Jim!” Lacey and George called from the top of the hill. Their words never reached Jim’s ears. He ran alone in a bubble of hurt, with all the rest of the world on the other side. As he ran, his little box rattled against his side in his pocket. It was once again his only possession in all the world.

SIX

im ran as hard and fast as he could, churning up sand and ocean water as he pounded down the beach. He struggled to hold back his tears and slapped away the few drops that spilled onto his cheeks. On and on Jim ran until night fell like a blanket over the coast and the stars appeared in the darkened sky.

When Jim had run until his burning legs were finally ready to give out, he slowed to a walk, coughing for air with his head hung low. He looked around with stinging eyes to find himself on an unfamiliar, rocky stretch of beach. No homes or houses lit the nearby hills and Jim cursed himself a fool for running so far on his own. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets with a defeated sigh and turned to walk back in the direction from which he’d come.

As Jim trudged through the sand he kicked at stones and cursed the Cromiers and Aunt Margarita for all the evil they had inflicted upon him. Along the way, and as angry young men often do, Jim began to formulate fantastic and impossible ways to get back at those fiends. He grew so distracted by his miserable plotting that he reared back to kick a particularly large stone without realizing that it was quite a bit bigger than he suspected. He struck the stone square and very nearly shattered his toe, which sent him yelping like a pup and hopping up and down on one foot. Jim was about to swear retribution upon all the bloody stones in England in addition to his enemies when the sound of pipes playing a sad song caught his attention from just up ahead.