The Butcher's Daughter, page 19
“There’s no doubt we’re all with you, Mary!” Hunter proclaimed loudly - waiting for no man’s answer. He turned around and took up the march again, plunging us deeper into the jungle.
The rest of us fell in quietly behind him and we resumed our exhausting struggle against sucking mud and thigh-deep water. More than one man cursed after tripping over a hidden tree root or stumbling on an invisible rock and falling headfirst into the putrid water. My imagination ran wild through the night with visions of water snakes swimming all around me.
By noon on the next day we mercifully found ourselves back on dry land. We stopped to make camp to rest our weary muscles and to cook ourselves a hot meal.
“Fine speech back there, Mary,” Hunter said as he stretched out on the ground next to me. He laid his head down on his backpack and closed his eyes. “Inspiring, really.”
“I wasn’t sure they’d all follow us,” I replied. “I know what you will say: never give an order unless you know it will be obeyed. Well, no matter, I thought it best if...”
But I stopped my mindless prattling when I heard Hunter start to snore.
I plopped myself down next to him and closed my eyes as well. But despite my fatigue I couldn’t sleep and so I made the rounds among the men. I offered words of encouragement here and there and helped dress a wound or two. And then I walked off a little way beyond our camp to find a quiet spot where I could relieve myself in privacy. And as I squatted with my trousers down around my ankles, I saw something odd through the brush standing in-between the trees - and I smiled.
“Mary, Mary,” Hunter called out, shaking me. “Up you go sleepy bones. We should try and cover more ground today whilst we still have the light to navigate by.”
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and yawned. “What’s your hurry, James?”
“Beg pardon? I’d say we’re all most anxious to find whatever there is to find out here and then work our way out of this shithole.”
“I had the most wonderful dream, James. I dreamt of chocolate.”
“Mary!”
“No need to be testy, James. Perhaps I can improve your mood. The object we are looking for on the map...”
“Aye? What of it?”
I couldn’t help myself and gave Hunter a haughty smile before answering. “I know what it is.”
Hunter looked at me as if I were ill. “Oh? I pray you tell us, Mary.”
“It’s a small, stone obelisk.”
“A small, stone obelisk? Is it now? Fascinating. And how did you come by this revelation? Was the obelisk in your dream too?”
“Don’t be silly,” I replied in a playful tone; I raised my arm and pointed. “I’ve seen the obelisk. It stands about three hundred paces or so over there.”
Hunter stared at me dumbfounded for a moment, processing what I had just said, and then turned to the men. “Quick lads, grab your shovels and your pickaxes and follow me! Let’s snap to!”
The obelisk, the only manmade object in sight, stood about nine feet high in the middle of a small clearing surrounded by many trees. We could easily have missed it. The monument, or whatever it was, had been chiseled from a single block of white, polished stone. Stars and gods and strange beasts not of our world adorned the pillar’s four sides. The craftsmanship was exquisite. We started digging all around the obelisk’s stone base. We searched and dug for hours with nothing to show for our efforts except for the empty holes.
And when the light began to fade, we put aside our tools, lit our fires and rested. I looked around the campfires and saw one hundred dispirited faces. There was no song, there was no laughter. We were all too miserable and tired.
Hunter and I sat on the ground side-by-side and shared a meal of salted beef and a little mellow wine mixed with water.
Hunter poked me playfully in the ribs. “I truly thought you were touched in the head for a moment when I woke you earlier, Mary. I am sorry for being cross before.”
“If we did this all for naught, the men will indeed think me quite mad.”
“I think the Aztecs were mad to place that ridiculous carved stone pillar out here in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere,” Hunter replied in a weary voice.
Efendi, having set the night watch and making the rounds with the men, came over to our fire and sat down beside us. “The map has been true so far, Mary. Who would go to such effort only to play some silly child’s prank? No, I think not. The priest who made the map was here. I feel it in my bones.”
Hunter removed the map from his shirt and studied it once again. “Perhaps we are missing something. Maybe to the priest the obelisk itself was the treasure, not any gold.”
Hunter handed the map over to Efendi.
“This is,” Efendi said, scrutinizing the map carefully, “a faithful reproduction of the original. I am certain of it.”
I sighed. “Well lads, in the morning we can dig some more and search the area for clues. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Huh…” Hunter uttered, absently staring at the fire with a puzzled look.
“What is it, James?” I asked.
“Well, what Mustafa says is true. We made a precise copy of the original.”
“So?”
“But we didn’t copy the inscription on the obverse side of the map.”
“What?” I asked, crestfallen. “There was more? But the original is lost to us!”
“Aye, but I still remember what was written on the back of the original. I gave it no thought at the time and it probably means nothing.”
“And?”
“It was the name of a person actually. The name Luke was scribbled across the back of the map.”
“No, James,” Efendi said, correcting Hunter. “The name Luke was written on the reverse side of the map, yes, but someone also added the number one hundred and nineteen below the name.”
“Luke and one hundred and nineteen?” I asked. “How odd. What could it mean?”
“Could Luke have been the priest’s name?” Efendi asked.
“I suppose his given name could have been Luke, Mustafa, but unlikely,” Hunter replied. “He was a Spanish monk and probably called himself Pedro, José, Miguel or something of the sort. We shall never know. Well, we best get some sleep. Tomorrow will be another long day.”
In the morning the rains came, cold, biting rains out of the north swept over our camp and we were all more miserable than before. Still we dug, probing the earth, and searched. We methodically expanded our digging in concentric rings farther and farther away from the obelisk. We dug all day long and found nothing. Each hole we made slowly filled with water and by evening every pit had disappeared in mud. Spirits plummeted.
As dusk settled in around us, I gathered all of my men in a tight circle. “We’re all feeling wretched and supplies are running low,” I said, frustrated. “It is not in my nature to quit a thing once started. But, well, unless one of you bright lads has some worthy thought, I’m at a loss what else we might do. We can’t dig up the whole world. Captain Hunter, let’s have a look at that map of yours. Let’s pass it around so every man can take a peek. Perhaps one of you will see something that James, Efendi and I have missed.”
Hunter passed his precious map around and every man took a hard look. But no one had a word to say.
“Very well,” I said. “James, pass the map around again. Think lads, think. Think hard. I should mention that this map is a copy of an original. Someone, probably the priest who drew the map, scribbled the name Luke and the number one hundred and nineteen across the back of the original.”
I had barely finished my words when a tall, lanky seaman, a man named Pike, Henry Pike, took a step forward. Pike, a good man, had sailed with me for years.
“One hundred and nineteen you say, Lady Mary?” Pike asked.
“Aye,” Hunter answered for me. “What of it Pike?”
“Might you mean eleven and nine, Capt’n Hunter?”
“Eleven and nine?” Hunter asked. “I suppose, why?”
“And you say a priest made this map?”
“Aye, Henry, now you know the whole story,” Hunter answered, clearly growing irritated. “I trust you are amused.”
“Amused? No, sir. Why I believe the inscription is a reference to chapter eleven, verse nine from the Gospel of Saint Luke, Luke the Apostle of the New Testament. It is a favorite of many.”
It was if a bolt of lightning had struck me in the head and I at once knew that Pike had solved the last part of the riddle. “Please, tell me one of you God fearing lads brought a Bible with him?”
Pike held up his hand. “No need, Lady Mary. I know the verse by heart: “And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.” The Gospel according to Luke, chapter eleven, verse nine.”
Hunter threw up his hands, disgusted. “Well, that’s just jolly now, clear as pixie shit.”
“Let me see that map again,” I asked excitedly. “James, look, look here. Could it be that the priest drew the pillar on its side, pointing north, and not standing straight up as one would naturally assume looking at this map?”
“Knock, and it shall be opened to you,” Hunter mumbled to himself. His eyes suddenly lit up as he repeated those holy words. He glanced down at the map in my hand and chuckled. “Damn,” he said loudly for all to hear. “My brain must be numb!” He grabbed a dozen men and hurried over to the obelisk. “Push lads, not too hard, easy now. Let’s test it, see if she’ll tip over on this side to the south.”
My men pushed. The obelisk didn’t budge.
“Right. Good. Now, let’s swing around to the opposite side and try again to move her, tip her over towards the north. Let’s see if she’ll give up her secrets this time. Gently now.”
The men pushed again and to our astonishment the obelisk creaked and groaned and started moving. The stone slowly started tipping over on its side on hinges hidden underneath its base.
And as my men lowered the obelisk on its side, ropes and pulleys running through a pair of hollow tubes set well below the earth went taught and the ground, one hundred feet off - one hundred and nineteen feet to be exact - gave way. My men and I rushed over to the spot to have a peek. And there, stashed inside a crudely constructed wooden vault six feet down in ankle-deep water, we saw a dozen Europa-made chests.
My men quickly lifted the chests out of the vault and set them on the ground side-by-side. We crowded around in a circle with our torches in hand and stood by quietly, mesmerized, as Hunter pried the first lid open. And when we saw the glittering bars of silver and gold stacked neatly inside that chest, our jaws went slack to the sounds of oohs and ahhs.
We paused outside of town. The prudent thing to do, I knew, was to bury our treasure somewhere outside of town and come back for it another day as Drake had done with most of the silver he had stolen from the Silver Train. But I was too worn down by fatigue to care and the Spanish garrison charged with protecting the Name of God, a meager collection of riff-raft, didn’t have the muscle to stop us.
So I sent a squad of my men ahead, down to the beach, to secure our longboats and to make certain that the Phantom was somewhere near-by. We were three days late but Atwood, that wonderfully stubborn Scot, had decided on a hunch to linger off-shore for just a few days longer. Then we pulled our supplies and chests of treasure off the pack animals and emptied their contents out along the road. We re-stuffed the burlap sacks with our precious gold and silver bars and then discarded the wooden chests in the swamp.
And then my men and I, a filthy, sorry lot of stinking flesh with open sores and wounds, wearily trudged through town in single file in our torn and ragged clothing. We looked like a company of whipped desperadoes on the run and the villagers kept their distance. We marched down to the beach, piled our booty into the longboats and pushed-off quickly before the captain of the garrison could come by to wish us farewell, before he could ask us any questions about where we had been or what we had found - before he could satisfy any curiosity he might have about our burlap sacks bulging at the seams. We left our mules and donkeys, our tools and the last of our supplies behind as parting gifts for the villagers.
“What is this?” Atwood asked from the ship’s rail as we pulled our longboats up alongside the Phantom. When I started up the rope ladder, he laughed. “I could smell you heathens all the way from shore. What is that awful, dreadful stench? Did you fall into a shitter? And what happened to your hair, Mary? Good Lord, you’re bald!”
“We have a good story to tell, Jacob.” I said brightly.
“Be that as it may, you and your sad party will not step aboard this vessel before you bathe, I swear it! God only knows what vermin you carry with you and I am duty bound to protect this ship, even from infection. What a sorry collection of misfits you be. Whew! Nasty!”
“We bear glad tidings, oh my Captain,” I replied playfully. “You may find us more appealing, our odor more fragrant, once you see the gifts we bring.”
“Indeed? A tantalizing proposition, you’ve piqued my curiosity. Oh very well, Madam, if you are bearing gifts and wish to share - then welcome aboard to one and all I say!”
And then, on a childish whim, just as Atwood reached for my hand to help me over the rail, I leapt off the rope ladder and plunged feet first into the sea below with a great splash. My men howled and cheered and those who could swim soon stripped off their shirts and shoes to join me. The sea had never felt so good. For modesty’s sake, I swam around the rudder, over to the ship’s starboard side, so that my men could strip-off all their putrid clothing. After Hunter swore on his life that he would rescue me when I was ready, I did the same. I discarded every stitch of fabric.
Once I was back on board the Phantom, after I had properly washed every inch of me with soap and dressed in fresh clothing, I went up on deck and found the whole ship’s company assembled, waiting patiently for me, silently staring at the dozens of fat, burlap sacks stacked high against the main mast. The world was still and at peace. I listened to the rigging blocks clattering in the breeze and to the water slapping up against the hull. I could hear the pintles grinding in their gudgeons as the ship bobbed up and down on the ocean’s gentle swells. I took in the faces of my men and savored the moment of our sweet triumph, a moment I knew would be etched in my memory forever. Hunter, washed and clean-shaven, casually strolled towards me to stand by my side. I had to suppress a terrible yearning to fall into his arms and slip my tongue inside his mouth.
“Lady Mary,” he said loudly for all to hear, pointing to the pile of burlap sacks. “Look, look at what you’ve done!”
The crew broke their silence and erupted into wild cheers, stamped their feet and applauded.
“I had,” I said, after the men had quieted down, “a little help. We never would have found what’s in those bags without the cleverness of three men. Captain Hunter, Master Efendi, and Master Pike, would you please step forward and do the honors? Show the rest of the lads what shiny things we hauled out of Panama’s dismal swamps!”
The three men proudly walked to the main mast together, grabbed one sack and spilled its contents out across the deck. Those who had not yet seen our riches, who had stayed behind with Atwood, gasped.
“As owner and investor,” I said, “my share as you all well know is one-third and one-third again of all we take. But, on this occasion, I’ll only take my one-third share as owner. I hereby forfeit my one-third share as investor. That amount will be divvied-up among all of you in proportion to your rank. Master Pike, without your love of the Scriptures, without your devotion to your faith, we may never have found this pretty metal. I hereby triple your share.”
Phantom’s crew went berserk with hoots and hollers. Men tossed their hats up in the air and cheered. It pleased me to see them happy. It pleased me to keep their loyalty.
As men dispersed to see to their duties and to store our treasure below, Atwood rattled off commands to get us underway. Topmen raced up the ratlines and scurried out along the yardarms and soon we had a good breeze rounding-out our sails, stretching our ship’s canvas taut.
I saw Hunter, Atwood and Efendi standing at the helm and walked over to them. “Is it more or less,” I asked, “than what we took from old Dowlin?”
“Oh, I’d say quite a bit more,” Hunter answered. “Each gold bar is worth about five hundred and fifty pesos, maybe more, which is equivalent to about two hundred and twenty-five English pounds I think. The silver bars are worth, give or take, thirty-five pesos apiece. As luck would have it this ship is blessed with two men on board gifted in mathematics and it just so happens they are standing with us.”
“Indeed, Jacob and Mustafa are good at mathematics? How fortunate. And what is their opinion?”
Hunter traded glances with Atwood and Efendi and laughed. “Well, their opinions differ. Jacob here calculates our stash to have a total value of about fifty thousand pesos. Mustafa disagrees. He believes the figure is closer to only forty-eight thousand pesos. But, here’s the rub: a Scot they say will lie to inflate his worth to trick you where a Turk will lie to hide his worth to cheat you. So my guess is the proper value lies somewhere in-between.”
“And what would forty-nine thousand pesos be in English pounds?”
“Roughly, about twenty thousand, two hundred pounds sterling I should think, give or take. Not a bad haul considering a common seaman makes only about eight ounces of gold a year.”
“Ah, so you too have skills in mathematics, James?” I asked my man with a coy smile.
Hunter winked at me. “Oh no, not me, my dear lady. I am but a simple soldier. Numbers tend to numb my brain. Over the years I’ve barely been able to keep track of the number of ships I’ve sailed with and a running tally on all the wenches I’ve bedded...”
