The Troublemakers, page 18
‘I tried to stop them taking her – I fought like a wild thing – but Father and Miss Prim were too strong. They locked me in the dungeon and took Shelly away.’ Thorn swallowed. ‘I don’t know exactly what happened to her – but –’
‘I do,’ Cordelia croaked. ‘My father told me: anyone who hears the scream of the leaden soul is drained of their magic.’
She turned to Shelly. ‘Sir Piers unlocked the case, didn’t he?’ she asked. ‘You heard the sound that thing makes, didn’t you, Shelly?’
Shelly slowly nodded.
Thorn clamped an arm around Shelly’s shoulders, her face grey as a lost cloud.
‘Miss Prim only let me out of the dungeon when my father brought Shelly back the next morning. They carried her inside and put her to bed. She was nothing but a huddled lump under a blanket, hardly moving, barely breathing.’
Cordelia’s insides were frozen, as though she had swallowed too many snowcakes.
‘I think my father feared he’d gone too far. I think he thought it might’ve killed Shelly,’ Thorn went on. ‘He must have been afraid because he didn’t take me away that day. He said he’d wait to see if Shelly got better or worse over the next few weeks. Perhaps he worried it was like a cut that bleeds you slowly dry, and when all the magic is gone, you die.’
The Troublemakers all huddled round Shelly protectively, patting her gently on her shells. The scene went blurry, and Cordelia realized she had tears in her eyes.
‘Is Shelly going to die?’ she whispered.
‘No,’ Never assured her. ‘After several weeks, she started slowly improving.’
‘But that was when we knew they’d be coming for us next, to stamp out our magic,’ Thorn said grimly. ‘We had to get out of Miss Prim’s somehow. On the next trip to the park, I managed to get away from Miss Prim for a minute to explain to Master Ambrosius what had happened. He used to come to the park every day in case his sister was on parade, but he hadn’t seen her for weeks. He made some –’
‘Wait, wait, what?’ Cordelia frowned. ‘Master Ambrosius the sweetmaker? What does he have to do with all this?’
This question provoked a cloudburst of explanations. All the Troublemakers began talking at once.
‘Master Ambrosius is Shelly’s brother!’
‘He helped us escape!’
‘He made Slumberous sweets disguised as liquorice, and gave them to Thorn to slip to Prim!’
‘Salted liquorice is the only kind of sweet that Prim eats because it’s so disgusting!’
‘Prim says liquorice tastes of the bitterness of indulgence –’
‘Thorn spilled the sweets at dinner – well, she pretended –’
‘Then Miss Prim ate them –’
‘And fell asleep in her mashed potatoes!’
‘Then we climbed out of the window on knotted bedsheets and met Master Ambrosius below the castle walls –’
‘We had to make a sling for Shelly cos back then she was too weak to walk –’
Cordelia held up her hands, feeling positively drenched in information, and Never stepped in.
‘We thought we’d be going to live with Master Ambrosius,’ he explained. ‘But he said it wasn’t safe for us in England. Sooner or later our parents would find us, and we’d be right back where we started.’
‘And he really is a de Sneer?’ Cordelia asked, remembering her shock when Never had said this at the Kingless.
Never nodded. ‘He is – but he’s a good person.’
‘He was heartbroken to see his sister so … dulled,’ Thorn muttered. ‘But it made him more determined to save us – and even more determined to help us with our revenge. He’d arranged for us to go to his aunt on an island far away – the Duchess – and he’d found an old sailor with a ship that could get us across the Atlantic. The sailor and his ship were waiting in the bay.’
The Troublemakers turned to regard Smokestack.
‘You’re the old sailor!’ Cordelia gasped.
‘I was glad of the company.’ Smokestack smiled. ‘I’d joined the navy as a young lad but left when I’d seen enough cruelty from the admirals to last a lifetime. I became a fisherman. It’s a lonely life at sea, though, with nobody to listen to my yarns. When this pack of kids tumbled aboard my ship one stormy night, calling themselves the Troublemakers, I welcomed them with hot tea and buttered toast.’
‘And bedtime stories!’ Annie added.
‘We set sail that night – we had to get away before Miss Prim woke up,’ Never told Cordelia. ‘We patched up Smokestack’s boat with magical repairs and renamed it the Trouble. We set a course for St Freerest, and as we sailed south we realized we were travelling towards a star we’d never seen before, over the western ocean.’
Cordelia nodded, remembering the beckoning whisper of the star she had seen between Little Bear’s ears on her own voyage.
‘When we arrived at St Freerest, the Duchess took us in. She was happy to have us all to stay with her at the Kingless, where she could keep us safe. We were there for a while, making plans for revenge.’
‘But it was Shelly who brought us to the island. She was like a hermit crab, curled up and hiding for most of the voyage. But when we got to St Freerest, she kept wandering on to the beach and staring longingly out across the sea towards an island we could see like a ghostly shape on the horizon, right underneath that star. Shelly wouldn’t speak; she wouldn’t sing. No magical things sparked in her hands. But she could feel the pull of the island, like a tide. Though the Duchess didn’t want us to leave her protection, she knew we had to go. She suspected it was the only way Shelly might ever get better.’
‘The star led us safely through the rocks,’ said Annie, ‘through the gigantic jaws. And since we got here, Shelly’s been slowly coming out of her shell again.’
‘And it’s been the perfect base to wage our war on the Sensible Party,’ Thorn growled. ‘So many ingredients here that we can turn into trouble. And so many passing ships to steal things from.’
‘We rob ships of their fine goods, turn them into Trouble Clothes and send them back to London!’ Billy crowed.
Cordelia gave a start. ‘I’ve just worked out your smuggling route!’ she cried. ‘You get the Trouble Clothes to the Duchess, and she packs them in crates of cocoa beans – I helped you pack one! – and she puts them on ships back to London, to be picked up by Master Ambrosius, who makes sure they reach their intended victims!’
The crate she had helped Never to pack had been destined for the Artifice Chocolate House. Artifice was another word for trick.
‘The Artifice Chocolate House doesn’t exist!’ Cordelia whispered. ‘And I saw a crate get pushed off the back of a ship arriving in London. That was the other end of the route! And it happened the day before Miss Prim went berserk in the park.’
‘The Tornado Cloak was my idea!’ Tabitha yelled gleefully.
‘And the Belch Bonnet was me!’ Billy grinned.
‘I used my own hair to stitch the Troublemaking seeds to her gloves.’ Thorn grinned wolfishly. ‘It’s the best kind of revenge: tailor-made for the victim.’
That word again. It hung like a sword above their heads.
‘Revenge,’ Cordelia said quietly. ‘Surely you can do something better than that with all your talent?’
‘Prim’s cruelty turned my talent inside out,’ Thorn spat. ‘I told you: everything I make turns to trouble. So we’re sending the trouble back to the people who did this to us.’
‘But Master Ambrosius has been arrested,’ Cordelia told them soberly. ‘So whatever you’re planning next – something in the chocolate houses, by the looks of it –’
The moment the words left her lips, she realized she had put a foot wrong.
Thorn’s eyes narrowed.
‘How do you know what I’m planning next?’ she hissed. ‘Have you been sneaking into my cabin, Maker?’
Cordelia saw no point in denying the truth.
‘Yes, I have,’ she said. ‘You’ve all been through something absolutely terrible, but spreading more terror won’t help mend things.’
Thorn clutched Cordelia’s arm, and the Hatmaker jolted as though she’d had a brush with an electric eel.
‘I’m not good for anything else,’ Thorn hissed. ‘Revenge is what I’m made for. And we’re going to keep stealing clothes and keep smuggling them into London until Trouble overruns the city! Though nothing we can do will ever be bad enough to pay them back for what they did to Shelly.’
Thorn’s face was aflame. Cordelia was suddenly reminded of the last ship the Troublemakers had attacked. It had been set ablaze and sunk, not a soul left aboard.
These children had been changed by the cruelty they had suffered. Like creatures that had been inhumanely treated, they themselves had become inhuman and vicious.
She shuddered, remembering the chilling warning of Capitano Boniface: They sink ships and take no prisoners.
‘And now you’re one of us!’ cackled Tabitha. ‘I wonder what your pirate name will be?’
‘I’m not one of you!’ Cordelia gasped, pulling away from Thorn. ‘You’re the reason I’m an outlaw! The Turbidus seeds –’
‘No, Cordelia Hatmaker.’ Thorn smiled. ‘You’re the reason you’re an outlaw. You put a magical hat on the king’s head, not us. You’re a born Troublemaker.’
Cordelia shook her head, not wanting Thorn’s words to be true.
‘I’ll never do the things you do!’ she shouted. ‘You do terrible things!’
The Troublemakers looked wounded at this.
‘But you can help us with our revenge!’ Never said.
‘I won’t!’ Cordelia shouted, backing away. ‘Making is meant to make lives better. It should never be a weapon! I won’t teach you another thing. Not unless you stop your attacks. I won’t teach any of you!’
A mutter rumbled round the circle of Troublemakers. The atmosphere turned darker.
Cordelia could not stand by while they burned ships and flooded London with destructive, dangerous clothes.
‘Revenge isn’t a good enough reason to do anything,’ she said. ‘No matter what’s happened to you. If you want to break your curse, Thorn, you have to make something better than destruction, no matter how hard it is.’
Thorn’s eyes narrowed.
‘You’re either with us or against us, Hatmaker,’ she snarled, prowling forward.
Hatmaker and Troublemaker stood nose to nose, so close that Cordelia could see the flint-and-tinder sparks in the Troublemaker’s eyes and the place where the curse smouldered in her soul.
‘It has to stop,’ Cordelia insisted.
‘So, you’re against us,’ Thorn whispered. ‘Remember, this was your choice.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Cordelia challenged Thorn defiantly. ‘You can’t feed me to the Sea Dragon – I know that’s an empty threat.’
Thorn threw a meaningful look to one of her crew. ‘Fetch the hat we made for this emergency.’
‘Aye, aye, Cap’n!’
‘Now, now, Captain,’ a wise old voice began. ‘Perhaps a little pondering needs to be done –’
‘Your pondering takes ages, Smokestack!’ Thorn roared. ‘SEIZE THE PRISONER!’
Cordelia’s arms were grabbed. She struggled, but Billy and Jim had her fast. The deck juddered as someone ran.
‘WAIT!’ Cordelia yelled. ‘What are you doing?’
She twisted round to see Never hurrying back along the treehouse, carrying a dark blue tricorn. It was the colour of oblivion, studded with barnacles and fringed with dodo feathers.
Never had said that dodo feathers were good for forgetting.
‘NO!’ Cordelia screamed, struggling as the hat was borne towards her. ‘I’m Cordelia Hatmaker! I’m Dilly! I’m the littlest Hatmaker! Father! Goose! Sam! I’m –’
‘I’m sorry,’ Never whispered.
The hat came down like banishment on her head.
The Troublemakers’ attack on Little Bear had left the ship in a bad state. If it hadn’t been for the flock of birds descending on them right afterwards, Little Bear and her crew would have gone to the bottom of the sea.
The birds had swallowed the fire engulfing the sails. But still they were left in tatters. A crossbeam had been pulled down by the twisting waterspout, sticky ropes of spiderweb were tangled in the rigging, and the sea monster towing the Trouble had scarred the hull with its flaming tail. Little Bear wheezed and groaned as water seeped in through the damaged wood.
The moment Prospero, Sam, Goose, Melchior and Davey were freed, they ran to the rails. The birds that had rescued them streamed overhead, disappearing into the wink of the sunset.
Somewhere out there, very close but impossible to find, was the island where Cordelia had been taken.
‘CORDELIA!’ Prospero roared over the empty ocean. ‘CORDELIA!’
They caught a little wind in their ragged sails and turned back for the only land in sight: St Freerest. Goose and Sam worked alongside the captain and the crew through the night, hauling up buckets of water from the hold and plugging the leaks that sprang through the damaged hull.
They dropped anchor off St Freerest at first light. Across the bay, the hulking form of the Invincible became slowly visible. Beyond, the Kingless towered at a rakish angle above the jumble of the port.
Prospero went ashore straight away, to seek out workmen and supplies to mend the ship. However, he got nothing but shrugged shoulders and furtive glances and returned to Little Bear empty-handed.
‘The Duchess wouldn’t even answer her door,’ Prospero growled, striding across the deck. ‘I think she’s told everyone on St Freerest not to give us any help. She’s desperate to stop us getting to that island.’
They lowered Davey over the rail on a rope to inspect the burn in Little Bear’s hull.
‘She needs patching and tarring,’ Davey called. ‘She won’t be seaworthy for a week, probably longer!’
‘We’ll fix Little Bear ourselves, even if we have to work all day and night for as long as it takes!’ Prospero said. ‘And then – as soon as she’s seaworthy again – I’ll think of a way to get to the island. There’s got to be a way!’
He set to work mending Little Bear’s hull, swearing loudly in French if any sailors in the dark blue suits of the Royal Navy rowed past looking curious. He worked with heartbroken fury. The few moments he stopped, to wolf down food, he spent scrutinizing the place on the map where Cordelia had seen the Island of Lost Souls. He stared so hard he seemed likely to make a hole in the parchment with his eyes.
Goose and Sam clambered through the rigging, untangling spiderweb from rope. From up there, they could see the Duchess at the door of the Kingless, gazing out at them.
‘If only there was a way we could make her tell us where the island is,’ Sam said, scowling at the Duchess.
‘We could go to my brother, Ignatius!’ Goose suggested suddenly, turning to stare at the Invincible. ‘Ig’s aboard the admiral’s ship! We could tell him we know where the pirates are, explain about Cor–’
‘We’re in disguise and we need to keep it that way, Goose!’ Prospero barked. ‘We’ve just got to hope the Duchess doesn’t turn us in to the admiral. We’d be fools to turn ourselves in.’
Goose looked a little stung. He tugged sullenly at a spiderweb and got it wrapped stickily round his arm. He winced as he pulled it off.
The sun tracked across the sky, watching with an unblinking eye as the crew of Little Bear worked relentlessly. At high noon, the Splendora sailed into the bay.
‘We mustn’t communicate with Capitano Boniface,’ Prospero instructed the crew as they watched the ship drop anchor. ‘I’ll go to him after nightfall and explain.’
They ducked their heads, working through the day and deep into the night, until even the stars looked tired. When Sam and Goose could do no more, they fell, aching, into their beds.
Sam gathered the energy to whisper, ‘There’s gotta be a way ta get to that island.’
And Goose whispered back, ‘We might have to take matters into our own …’
But they were both asleep before he could finish his sentence.
The next morning, when Sam and Goose put their ears to the captain’s door, they heard desperate mutterings coming from behind it. They softly knocked on the door and Prospero opened it, haggard and red-eyed.
‘We brought you some tea,’ Sam said, holding up a steaming teapot.
They could see the cabin was a mess. Papers were strewn everywhere.
‘I can’t find a single map with that cursed island on it,’ Prospero croaked. ‘I’ve half a mind to kidnap the Duchess, damn the admiral, and –’
Prospero froze, mid-sentence.
‘The admiral …’ he murmured. ‘He’s looking for them too …’
He strode to the window, staring out at the hulking Invincible floating like a fortress in the middle of the bay.
‘That island’s hidden within shrouds of magic,’ he muttered. ‘But what if …’
Goose and Sam stood in the doorway, watching as Prospero dived for his treasure chest, throwing maps and instruments aside as he feverishly searched for something.
They set the teapot on a map of the Antilles and backed slowly out of the room. Clearly, the captain had taken leave of his senses, driven to distraction by grief and worry.
‘We’ve gotta do somefing!’ Sam whispered.
‘I agree!’ Goose said firmly. ‘Where shall we start?’
Sam and Goose left a note pinned on the ship’s wheel. At Goose’s behest, it began and ended with apologies, but the middle was full of conviction (though no details, so Prospero could not follow them). Then they slipped away on the little rowing boat.
This time when they stepped ashore, they found the port of St Freerest sullen and tense. Instead of raucous mariners carousing in the streets, there were blue-suited sailors everywhere, hammering up posters that said:
WANTED: THE TROUBLEMAKERS
REWARD: The Price of a King’s Ransom
(or something of equal value)
Scrawled in red across the bottom of every poster were the words:
‘I do,’ Cordelia croaked. ‘My father told me: anyone who hears the scream of the leaden soul is drained of their magic.’
She turned to Shelly. ‘Sir Piers unlocked the case, didn’t he?’ she asked. ‘You heard the sound that thing makes, didn’t you, Shelly?’
Shelly slowly nodded.
Thorn clamped an arm around Shelly’s shoulders, her face grey as a lost cloud.
‘Miss Prim only let me out of the dungeon when my father brought Shelly back the next morning. They carried her inside and put her to bed. She was nothing but a huddled lump under a blanket, hardly moving, barely breathing.’
Cordelia’s insides were frozen, as though she had swallowed too many snowcakes.
‘I think my father feared he’d gone too far. I think he thought it might’ve killed Shelly,’ Thorn went on. ‘He must have been afraid because he didn’t take me away that day. He said he’d wait to see if Shelly got better or worse over the next few weeks. Perhaps he worried it was like a cut that bleeds you slowly dry, and when all the magic is gone, you die.’
The Troublemakers all huddled round Shelly protectively, patting her gently on her shells. The scene went blurry, and Cordelia realized she had tears in her eyes.
‘Is Shelly going to die?’ she whispered.
‘No,’ Never assured her. ‘After several weeks, she started slowly improving.’
‘But that was when we knew they’d be coming for us next, to stamp out our magic,’ Thorn said grimly. ‘We had to get out of Miss Prim’s somehow. On the next trip to the park, I managed to get away from Miss Prim for a minute to explain to Master Ambrosius what had happened. He used to come to the park every day in case his sister was on parade, but he hadn’t seen her for weeks. He made some –’
‘Wait, wait, what?’ Cordelia frowned. ‘Master Ambrosius the sweetmaker? What does he have to do with all this?’
This question provoked a cloudburst of explanations. All the Troublemakers began talking at once.
‘Master Ambrosius is Shelly’s brother!’
‘He helped us escape!’
‘He made Slumberous sweets disguised as liquorice, and gave them to Thorn to slip to Prim!’
‘Salted liquorice is the only kind of sweet that Prim eats because it’s so disgusting!’
‘Prim says liquorice tastes of the bitterness of indulgence –’
‘Thorn spilled the sweets at dinner – well, she pretended –’
‘Then Miss Prim ate them –’
‘And fell asleep in her mashed potatoes!’
‘Then we climbed out of the window on knotted bedsheets and met Master Ambrosius below the castle walls –’
‘We had to make a sling for Shelly cos back then she was too weak to walk –’
Cordelia held up her hands, feeling positively drenched in information, and Never stepped in.
‘We thought we’d be going to live with Master Ambrosius,’ he explained. ‘But he said it wasn’t safe for us in England. Sooner or later our parents would find us, and we’d be right back where we started.’
‘And he really is a de Sneer?’ Cordelia asked, remembering her shock when Never had said this at the Kingless.
Never nodded. ‘He is – but he’s a good person.’
‘He was heartbroken to see his sister so … dulled,’ Thorn muttered. ‘But it made him more determined to save us – and even more determined to help us with our revenge. He’d arranged for us to go to his aunt on an island far away – the Duchess – and he’d found an old sailor with a ship that could get us across the Atlantic. The sailor and his ship were waiting in the bay.’
The Troublemakers turned to regard Smokestack.
‘You’re the old sailor!’ Cordelia gasped.
‘I was glad of the company.’ Smokestack smiled. ‘I’d joined the navy as a young lad but left when I’d seen enough cruelty from the admirals to last a lifetime. I became a fisherman. It’s a lonely life at sea, though, with nobody to listen to my yarns. When this pack of kids tumbled aboard my ship one stormy night, calling themselves the Troublemakers, I welcomed them with hot tea and buttered toast.’
‘And bedtime stories!’ Annie added.
‘We set sail that night – we had to get away before Miss Prim woke up,’ Never told Cordelia. ‘We patched up Smokestack’s boat with magical repairs and renamed it the Trouble. We set a course for St Freerest, and as we sailed south we realized we were travelling towards a star we’d never seen before, over the western ocean.’
Cordelia nodded, remembering the beckoning whisper of the star she had seen between Little Bear’s ears on her own voyage.
‘When we arrived at St Freerest, the Duchess took us in. She was happy to have us all to stay with her at the Kingless, where she could keep us safe. We were there for a while, making plans for revenge.’
‘But it was Shelly who brought us to the island. She was like a hermit crab, curled up and hiding for most of the voyage. But when we got to St Freerest, she kept wandering on to the beach and staring longingly out across the sea towards an island we could see like a ghostly shape on the horizon, right underneath that star. Shelly wouldn’t speak; she wouldn’t sing. No magical things sparked in her hands. But she could feel the pull of the island, like a tide. Though the Duchess didn’t want us to leave her protection, she knew we had to go. She suspected it was the only way Shelly might ever get better.’
‘The star led us safely through the rocks,’ said Annie, ‘through the gigantic jaws. And since we got here, Shelly’s been slowly coming out of her shell again.’
‘And it’s been the perfect base to wage our war on the Sensible Party,’ Thorn growled. ‘So many ingredients here that we can turn into trouble. And so many passing ships to steal things from.’
‘We rob ships of their fine goods, turn them into Trouble Clothes and send them back to London!’ Billy crowed.
Cordelia gave a start. ‘I’ve just worked out your smuggling route!’ she cried. ‘You get the Trouble Clothes to the Duchess, and she packs them in crates of cocoa beans – I helped you pack one! – and she puts them on ships back to London, to be picked up by Master Ambrosius, who makes sure they reach their intended victims!’
The crate she had helped Never to pack had been destined for the Artifice Chocolate House. Artifice was another word for trick.
‘The Artifice Chocolate House doesn’t exist!’ Cordelia whispered. ‘And I saw a crate get pushed off the back of a ship arriving in London. That was the other end of the route! And it happened the day before Miss Prim went berserk in the park.’
‘The Tornado Cloak was my idea!’ Tabitha yelled gleefully.
‘And the Belch Bonnet was me!’ Billy grinned.
‘I used my own hair to stitch the Troublemaking seeds to her gloves.’ Thorn grinned wolfishly. ‘It’s the best kind of revenge: tailor-made for the victim.’
That word again. It hung like a sword above their heads.
‘Revenge,’ Cordelia said quietly. ‘Surely you can do something better than that with all your talent?’
‘Prim’s cruelty turned my talent inside out,’ Thorn spat. ‘I told you: everything I make turns to trouble. So we’re sending the trouble back to the people who did this to us.’
‘But Master Ambrosius has been arrested,’ Cordelia told them soberly. ‘So whatever you’re planning next – something in the chocolate houses, by the looks of it –’
The moment the words left her lips, she realized she had put a foot wrong.
Thorn’s eyes narrowed.
‘How do you know what I’m planning next?’ she hissed. ‘Have you been sneaking into my cabin, Maker?’
Cordelia saw no point in denying the truth.
‘Yes, I have,’ she said. ‘You’ve all been through something absolutely terrible, but spreading more terror won’t help mend things.’
Thorn clutched Cordelia’s arm, and the Hatmaker jolted as though she’d had a brush with an electric eel.
‘I’m not good for anything else,’ Thorn hissed. ‘Revenge is what I’m made for. And we’re going to keep stealing clothes and keep smuggling them into London until Trouble overruns the city! Though nothing we can do will ever be bad enough to pay them back for what they did to Shelly.’
Thorn’s face was aflame. Cordelia was suddenly reminded of the last ship the Troublemakers had attacked. It had been set ablaze and sunk, not a soul left aboard.
These children had been changed by the cruelty they had suffered. Like creatures that had been inhumanely treated, they themselves had become inhuman and vicious.
She shuddered, remembering the chilling warning of Capitano Boniface: They sink ships and take no prisoners.
‘And now you’re one of us!’ cackled Tabitha. ‘I wonder what your pirate name will be?’
‘I’m not one of you!’ Cordelia gasped, pulling away from Thorn. ‘You’re the reason I’m an outlaw! The Turbidus seeds –’
‘No, Cordelia Hatmaker.’ Thorn smiled. ‘You’re the reason you’re an outlaw. You put a magical hat on the king’s head, not us. You’re a born Troublemaker.’
Cordelia shook her head, not wanting Thorn’s words to be true.
‘I’ll never do the things you do!’ she shouted. ‘You do terrible things!’
The Troublemakers looked wounded at this.
‘But you can help us with our revenge!’ Never said.
‘I won’t!’ Cordelia shouted, backing away. ‘Making is meant to make lives better. It should never be a weapon! I won’t teach you another thing. Not unless you stop your attacks. I won’t teach any of you!’
A mutter rumbled round the circle of Troublemakers. The atmosphere turned darker.
Cordelia could not stand by while they burned ships and flooded London with destructive, dangerous clothes.
‘Revenge isn’t a good enough reason to do anything,’ she said. ‘No matter what’s happened to you. If you want to break your curse, Thorn, you have to make something better than destruction, no matter how hard it is.’
Thorn’s eyes narrowed.
‘You’re either with us or against us, Hatmaker,’ she snarled, prowling forward.
Hatmaker and Troublemaker stood nose to nose, so close that Cordelia could see the flint-and-tinder sparks in the Troublemaker’s eyes and the place where the curse smouldered in her soul.
‘It has to stop,’ Cordelia insisted.
‘So, you’re against us,’ Thorn whispered. ‘Remember, this was your choice.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Cordelia challenged Thorn defiantly. ‘You can’t feed me to the Sea Dragon – I know that’s an empty threat.’
Thorn threw a meaningful look to one of her crew. ‘Fetch the hat we made for this emergency.’
‘Aye, aye, Cap’n!’
‘Now, now, Captain,’ a wise old voice began. ‘Perhaps a little pondering needs to be done –’
‘Your pondering takes ages, Smokestack!’ Thorn roared. ‘SEIZE THE PRISONER!’
Cordelia’s arms were grabbed. She struggled, but Billy and Jim had her fast. The deck juddered as someone ran.
‘WAIT!’ Cordelia yelled. ‘What are you doing?’
She twisted round to see Never hurrying back along the treehouse, carrying a dark blue tricorn. It was the colour of oblivion, studded with barnacles and fringed with dodo feathers.
Never had said that dodo feathers were good for forgetting.
‘NO!’ Cordelia screamed, struggling as the hat was borne towards her. ‘I’m Cordelia Hatmaker! I’m Dilly! I’m the littlest Hatmaker! Father! Goose! Sam! I’m –’
‘I’m sorry,’ Never whispered.
The hat came down like banishment on her head.
The Troublemakers’ attack on Little Bear had left the ship in a bad state. If it hadn’t been for the flock of birds descending on them right afterwards, Little Bear and her crew would have gone to the bottom of the sea.
The birds had swallowed the fire engulfing the sails. But still they were left in tatters. A crossbeam had been pulled down by the twisting waterspout, sticky ropes of spiderweb were tangled in the rigging, and the sea monster towing the Trouble had scarred the hull with its flaming tail. Little Bear wheezed and groaned as water seeped in through the damaged wood.
The moment Prospero, Sam, Goose, Melchior and Davey were freed, they ran to the rails. The birds that had rescued them streamed overhead, disappearing into the wink of the sunset.
Somewhere out there, very close but impossible to find, was the island where Cordelia had been taken.
‘CORDELIA!’ Prospero roared over the empty ocean. ‘CORDELIA!’
They caught a little wind in their ragged sails and turned back for the only land in sight: St Freerest. Goose and Sam worked alongside the captain and the crew through the night, hauling up buckets of water from the hold and plugging the leaks that sprang through the damaged hull.
They dropped anchor off St Freerest at first light. Across the bay, the hulking form of the Invincible became slowly visible. Beyond, the Kingless towered at a rakish angle above the jumble of the port.
Prospero went ashore straight away, to seek out workmen and supplies to mend the ship. However, he got nothing but shrugged shoulders and furtive glances and returned to Little Bear empty-handed.
‘The Duchess wouldn’t even answer her door,’ Prospero growled, striding across the deck. ‘I think she’s told everyone on St Freerest not to give us any help. She’s desperate to stop us getting to that island.’
They lowered Davey over the rail on a rope to inspect the burn in Little Bear’s hull.
‘She needs patching and tarring,’ Davey called. ‘She won’t be seaworthy for a week, probably longer!’
‘We’ll fix Little Bear ourselves, even if we have to work all day and night for as long as it takes!’ Prospero said. ‘And then – as soon as she’s seaworthy again – I’ll think of a way to get to the island. There’s got to be a way!’
He set to work mending Little Bear’s hull, swearing loudly in French if any sailors in the dark blue suits of the Royal Navy rowed past looking curious. He worked with heartbroken fury. The few moments he stopped, to wolf down food, he spent scrutinizing the place on the map where Cordelia had seen the Island of Lost Souls. He stared so hard he seemed likely to make a hole in the parchment with his eyes.
Goose and Sam clambered through the rigging, untangling spiderweb from rope. From up there, they could see the Duchess at the door of the Kingless, gazing out at them.
‘If only there was a way we could make her tell us where the island is,’ Sam said, scowling at the Duchess.
‘We could go to my brother, Ignatius!’ Goose suggested suddenly, turning to stare at the Invincible. ‘Ig’s aboard the admiral’s ship! We could tell him we know where the pirates are, explain about Cor–’
‘We’re in disguise and we need to keep it that way, Goose!’ Prospero barked. ‘We’ve just got to hope the Duchess doesn’t turn us in to the admiral. We’d be fools to turn ourselves in.’
Goose looked a little stung. He tugged sullenly at a spiderweb and got it wrapped stickily round his arm. He winced as he pulled it off.
The sun tracked across the sky, watching with an unblinking eye as the crew of Little Bear worked relentlessly. At high noon, the Splendora sailed into the bay.
‘We mustn’t communicate with Capitano Boniface,’ Prospero instructed the crew as they watched the ship drop anchor. ‘I’ll go to him after nightfall and explain.’
They ducked their heads, working through the day and deep into the night, until even the stars looked tired. When Sam and Goose could do no more, they fell, aching, into their beds.
Sam gathered the energy to whisper, ‘There’s gotta be a way ta get to that island.’
And Goose whispered back, ‘We might have to take matters into our own …’
But they were both asleep before he could finish his sentence.
The next morning, when Sam and Goose put their ears to the captain’s door, they heard desperate mutterings coming from behind it. They softly knocked on the door and Prospero opened it, haggard and red-eyed.
‘We brought you some tea,’ Sam said, holding up a steaming teapot.
They could see the cabin was a mess. Papers were strewn everywhere.
‘I can’t find a single map with that cursed island on it,’ Prospero croaked. ‘I’ve half a mind to kidnap the Duchess, damn the admiral, and –’
Prospero froze, mid-sentence.
‘The admiral …’ he murmured. ‘He’s looking for them too …’
He strode to the window, staring out at the hulking Invincible floating like a fortress in the middle of the bay.
‘That island’s hidden within shrouds of magic,’ he muttered. ‘But what if …’
Goose and Sam stood in the doorway, watching as Prospero dived for his treasure chest, throwing maps and instruments aside as he feverishly searched for something.
They set the teapot on a map of the Antilles and backed slowly out of the room. Clearly, the captain had taken leave of his senses, driven to distraction by grief and worry.
‘We’ve gotta do somefing!’ Sam whispered.
‘I agree!’ Goose said firmly. ‘Where shall we start?’
Sam and Goose left a note pinned on the ship’s wheel. At Goose’s behest, it began and ended with apologies, but the middle was full of conviction (though no details, so Prospero could not follow them). Then they slipped away on the little rowing boat.
This time when they stepped ashore, they found the port of St Freerest sullen and tense. Instead of raucous mariners carousing in the streets, there were blue-suited sailors everywhere, hammering up posters that said:
WANTED: THE TROUBLEMAKERS
REWARD: The Price of a King’s Ransom
(or something of equal value)
Scrawled in red across the bottom of every poster were the words:
