Across The Sea (18 page)

I could jump. If I wait for
Martino and he comes back with an order to kill me, I’m going to
wish I’d jumped when I had the chance.

Lily looked down at the water.
I should do it now.

“You lied to the King!” a voice
boomed from behind. Lily trembled. She turned. It was Martino,
looking down at her, his face tense with rage. Lily was too late to
act on anything now. Her lie had been uncovered.

“You made a fool of me,”
Martino added. “I’ll take care of you myself.” He threw her flag
down, but the wind caught it, and it flew off. “And I’ll treat you
just the same as if you were a full-grown man speaking untruths to
the King.”

Lily watched as her flag was
stopped by – and wrapped itself around – a taut rope leading up to
the top of the main mast.

Martino huffed and turned to
get the guards’ attention. Lily saw that the back of his shoulders
were just as tense as his face. He was furious. Lily stepped toward
the vertical rope and clutched her flag. She then turned toward the
sea and, pushing up with her hands, hopped over the gunwale, and
fell.

As she was about to hit the
water, Lily took a deep breath and pressed her arms to her
sides.

She splashed down into the
cruel, cold water.

Lily remained underwater,
knowing full well that many ships were sailing past. At any moment,
she could be hit by a hull. She heard the muffled sounds of ships
slicing the water overhead. She was surrounded by them; a school of
hulls. She needed air. She swam up, trying to see through the water
if any hull was coming at her. Her head popped out over the
surface. Two tall ships, one on either side of her, whipped past.
Another raced at her. Lily dove back into the water, swimming down
as fast and as deep as she could; a boat at that speed would kill
her. Once she was certain it had passed, she swam back up. Her head
re-emerged from the ocean. All around her, more ships zipped by.
She took a deep breath, deciding to grab onto one of the
vessels.

A ship flew toward her right.
Lily had no idea how to latch on.

As more vessels sailed past,
Lily saw a stationary ship in the distance, her sails down.

The black ship.

The smaller craft was falling
behind, waiting for the Armada to sail on. Lily waited as well. As
the last ship moved away, Lily knew that Martino and the King of
Spain would never waste time turning back to fetch her. She had
become inconsequential in their hunt for the Treasure of Atlantis,
and most likely believed she would perish in the water.

Lily moved toward the
stationary ship. She swam underwater for much of her approach; she
did not want the men on deck to see her. As she took a quick breath
above water, she saw that the vessel’s black sails were back up.
Now that she was free from the Armada, she was sailing away.
Oh
no
, Lily thought.
I can’t be abandoned here in the middle of
the ocean.

Lily swam with all the power
her body was capable of. She looked up again. She was nearing the
black hull. When she was able to touch it, she felt the ship
gaining speed. There was nothing, however, for Lily to grasp on to.
Off the edge of the deck, a loose rope swung from side to side.
Lily reached up with her left hand. She could not reach high
enough.

The ship moved on, her chance
gone.

Lily, however, never perceived
it this way. Her upper body lunged above water, reaching;
stretching. She gripped the rope’s end in her left hand. She held
on as she splashed back into the water. She prayed no one heard,
and then climbed the rope up the black hull. The rope led up
mid-ship. Her teeth chattered, the cool breeze passing through her
wet clothing.

As she neared the ship’s deck,
Lily’s heart was speared with an intense fear of what her eyes
would meet this time around. Would it be a boot? Some man’s angry
face? She swallowed and peeked over the gunwale.

There was no one.

Lily turned her head toward the
stern and recognized the skeletal, black robed Modo as he spoke to
a deckhand in a dark green uniform.

Lily gripped the rope in both
hands as she stayed hidden, hanging just off the gunwale.

The older man who had been with
Modo on the King’s ship stepped forth from behind the main mast.
Lily let go of the rope, then seized it again, lowering her head
just below the gunwale. The man walked past toward Modo at the
stern. Certain that no one was now looking her way, Lily moved up
onto the deck and slipped under what looked like a black sail piled
in a bundle.

In her new, dry hiding spot,
Lily peeled off her painfully cold, wet dress and wrapped herself
inside the loose sail. Once the sun descended and the darkness
rose, she would hang her dress to dry. She lay her head down and
exhaled. She felt the sea pass under the hull as the ship sped up.
She was safe, and far from the evil Armada.

* * *

Francis, holding a lit candle in
a candle holder, moved along the corridor toward the room with the
desk. He remembered that when Bodin’s ship had sailed through the
Stream Blade, Bodin had released the white orbs by pulling
something inside the desk drawer. When Bodin had done so, Francis
had glimpsed the outline of a secret, hidden doorway. It was
daytime again and Francis was alone in the cabin. This was the best
opportunity for him to investigate this secret doorway. He entered
the room, set the lit candle down on the desk and placed both hands
on the wall that the desk was set up against. He rubbed its
surface, attempting to find the hidden edges of the door. He felt
one. Vertical. He dug in his fingernails and pulled.

Nothing moved.

Francis tried again. Still, the
secret door would not budge.

“It’s locked,” Francis
whispered to himself.

The key
…

He reached into one of his
breeches’ pockets and pulled out the thin, square key which he had
found in the drawer under Bodin’s mattress. He pushed it in between
the edge of the secret door and the wall. The key was so thin that
it slipped right through. Francis drew the key down.

Click
.

The secret door popped open.
Francis heard footsteps. They were coming down the stairway from
outside. Someone had entered the ship’s cabin.

Francis turned and saw that he
had left the door to the room open. He gulped. What would Bodin do
if he found him here? Francis pulled on the secret door, picked up
the lit candle and slipped into the darkness beyond, closing the
secret door behind him.

Inside the closet-sized room,
Francis stood still, waiting to see what would happen next. He
heard someone step into another room, perhaps the room where he and
Bodin slept. This person stepped back into the corridor, then back
up the stairway and out the cabin door.

Francis breathed a sigh of
relief. In the candlelight, he looked about the tiny room.
Overstuffed book shelves lined the wall before him and on either
side of him. He lifted the lit candle close to the shelves to his
left. The spines of all the books had titles; some printed, the
rest handwritten. These included “A Study of the Mythology of
Atlantis”, “A Hypothesized Journey of the Lost Map of Atlantis” and
four volumes in a collection called “The Gathered History of
Atlantis”. Francis turned to the books on the shelves opposite the
secret door. These appeared more worn, older and its titles more
specific, such as “A Geography of Atlantis”, “The Rivers of
Atlantis” and “Vanquished Peaks”. The books on the shelves to
Francis’ right appeared even further aged with more than a few
volumes being just stacks of pages held together by nothing more
than string and ribbon. None of these had titles. Francis
anticipated that the books on these shelves were perhaps not even
written in English. He noticed a short volume, and pulled it out.
It had a tattered, brown leather cover. Francis opened it. Inside,
the pages felt very thin, powdery, as if they might disintegrate
into dust. The penmanship, however, was beautiful. A graceful hand
had written these words, and drawn the miniscule imagery along the
edges of all the pages. Images of men and women, all dressed in
flowing robes and all adorned with elegant jewellery, their skies
lined with stars and ships.

And all the words on the pages
were written in English.

The first line on the first
page read, “While many men wish to recover Atlantis, more would
risk everything for the Acadae.”

A door opened nearby.

Francis looked up.

A voice sounded, “Boy, where
are you, little boy?”

Francis snapped the book shut
and slid it back in its place on the shelf. He blew out the candle,
pushed open the secret door and headed for the corridor.

Outside the room with the desk,
he saw Bodin at the top of the small stairway, standing in the open
cabin entrance. His beady, grey eyes bore down on him. “Where were
you?” he asked.

“Just walking around,” Francis
lied, still holding the candle and candle holder.

“Come out here,” Bodin ordered,
“where we can all keep an eye on you.”

* * *

In the evening, aboard Modo’s
ship, Lily, wearing her now dry dress, snuck into the small kitchen
and pilfered some dried fruit from a cupboard, but only three small
pieces, so as not to cause alarm. Outside, in the dark, as she made
her way back to her hiding spot, she heard a strange noise.

“Brrrrrr…”

Lily stopped.
Where did that
come from?

By the light of the moon and
stars, Lily made out a door in the darkness beside her.

Bock
!

Lily jumped. Something had
slammed against the door. She placed her ear to its surface. She
heard heavy breathing.
What kind of monster is that?

Bang
!

Lily fell back, hitting the
deck. The creature had struck the door hard enough to make her lose
her balance. She stood, glancing her surroundings, a little shaken.
She saw no one. She moved away.

What is this crew
hiding
?

* * *

That very night, on Bodin’s
ship, Francis lay in his hammock, as Bodin lay in his own bed.
Francis wanted to ask about the word he had seen in that book. The
word “Acadae”.
What does it mean?
If he asked, however,
Bodin would know for certain that Francis had been sneaking around.
The hidden room was filled with secrets that Francis still needed
to uncover, unbeknownst to Bodin. Instead, out loud in the quiet
darkness, another question came to his lips.

“What happened the first time?”
he asked. He heard Bodin move in his bed. “What happened the first
time everyone went looking for the Treasure? What did Robert of
Dreighton and Admiral Rogalles find?”

There was a moment of silence,
before Bodin answered with, “Those old stories will have you
believe many things. When in reality, all Dreighton was looking for
was glory and fame, nothing more. There was nothing noble or heroic
about him.”

“More lies,” Francis stated.
“Just like the lies you tried to make me believe about my
brother.”

“Believe the fairy tales if you
like,” Bodin answered. “But those two found nothing. And
afterwards, no one believed them to be serious men. They retired
old and tiresome, rambling fanciful tales about themselves.”

“But Dreighton did find
something,” Francis countered. “Something else. Didn’t he?”

Bodin turned again in his bed.
“What do you mean?”

Francis wanted to answer, “The
Acadae,” but he stopped himself. Instead he just said, “I mean…
that he found nothing of value. And that’s sad.”

“Everyone stopped believing
that Atlantis ever existed long before he gave up searching for
it.”

“Then why is everyone looking
for the Treasure now?”

“Dreighton and Rogalles were
never the only ones who thought they knew where the Treasure was.
Besides England and Spain, there has always been a third
party.”

“Who?” Francis asked.
“Pirates?”

“No,” Bodin replied, and then
he said nothing more.

Francis stared at the dark in
Bodin’s direction. He thought that he could make out the foreboding
beast, sitting up in bed, staring back his way.

“Who?” Francis repeated,
careful not to ask too much.

“The Watermark," Bodin
answered, in a tone which suggested that perhaps Francis knew who
or what this ’Watermark’ was.

“Who is the Watermark?” Francis
asked. He really did not know.

Bodin said nothing for a
moment, then responded with, “They’re a secret organization. Some
believe that the Watermark has been in existence for many
centuries, but the British Navy has only recently learned of
them.”

This is good
, Francis
thought.
He hasn’t been this talkative for a while. I’ll keep my
mouth shut until he stops again.

“Last year,” Bodin continued,
“an officer from the Royal Navy posed as a young merchant sailor
and managed to acquire membership inside their ranks. He discovered
that they had newly gained knowledge of an ancient culture on the
hills of Northern England which has kept the whereabouts of
Atlantis and its treasure hidden from the rest of the world for
centuries, the knowledge being passed from one generation to the
next. When the English Military located this ancient culture, all
that was left of it was a poor family living in a farming village
with a population of no more than fifty. This family had been
passing down their secrets for five generations. But all that now
remained of them was a young woman; her parents having passed on
years before. When this young woman learned that the English
Military was searching for her, she fled from the village. The
Watermark, searching for her as well, found her in Brancanshire.
She was never certain of the Watermark’s motivations for finding
the Treasure but she did trust one member. Your brother...”