The Sons of Adam: The sequel of The Immortal Collection

by Eva García Sáenz

"No, I haven't checked. What's the point? I've visited it almost every day. Believe me the tombstone has not moved."

  "Have you checked, Iago del Castillo?" she insisted.

  I clenched my jaw. Lyra's scar was sending shock waves of pain through my body and I tensed. Marion looked at me, scared, not knowing what was wrong.

  "It's nothing," I said. "I just got a cramp."

  "Sure.”

  How many more half-truths are we going to tell each other? Was it always going to be that way between us, if we had have both pretended to be ephemerals or if we had lived together as the longevos that we really are? Could we never have talked without filters?

  I think it's best if I go, Iago. I didn't want to cause you any pain with my questions."

  "Don't worry about it, it's fine," I lied again, and let her leave.

  She left the soft smell of her perfume in my apartment and the memory of Lyra in my head.

  Once I was alone, I looked at my scar again. I wasn't sure if it was Lyra or if it was my way of expressing grief and the sense of danger that was surrounding me ever since Gunnarr had returned.

  I allowed myself to think about my daughter once more, about the last few years, in my desperate attempts to keep her alive against her will, just like that winter following the deaths of Fenix, Syrio and Vega. Her family, her constellation, as she had liked to call them.

  I remembered her midnight walks along the Las Catedrales beach in Ribadeo.

  And suddenly it all seemed so clear: Las Catedrales - The Cathedrals.

  How did I not think of it before? I pulled my phone from my pocket and nervously called my father.

  "Hector, we never considered the Las Catedrales beach, in Lugo. It could be one of the clues that Gunnarr left me."

  My father didn't say anything for a few seconds.

  "I must admit that I was looking slightly further. Ribadeo is barely..."

  "Three hours away by car, about three hundred kilometers," I cut in.

  How many times had I made that journey over the last few decades? I knew the area well, and I'd owned a beach house there that I had later sold. I was unable to walk along that beach without remembering Lyra's desolation. For me, it had become an unpleasant place that I didn't wish to return to.

  "Are you at home?" I asked him.

  "Yes."

  "Wait for me there, I'm on my way."

  Minutes later I had parked on Widow's Hill and I ran to my father's recently recovered house. He was standing next to the chimney, waiting for me. He had stuck a huge world map to a wall which he had covered in colored pushpins.

  I gave him a puzzled look.

  "The red ones are probable because they meet several conditions: you will arrive by air or sea, they won't be large, you will find massacres and cathedrals, will there be thousands, will they be beautiful. The green ones only meet one or two conditions, but I'm not ruling them out just in case Gunnarr is trying to push your patience."

  "Let's start with the Cathedrals beach clue. How many islands are close to it?"

  My father walked over to his laptop and turned it toward me.

  "There are only a few islets in the province of Lugo, almost all too small to have a building big enough to hide Adriana. I've ruled them all out. Although we do have Panch island in Ribadeo. There's a lighthouse built in 1857, although I think it's too close to the village. There's a bridge that joins it to the mainland and it's teaming of tourists at the weekend. Adriana could be in the lighthouse but it's not the most suitable place for a kidnapping."

  "No, I agree. Thinking back, I remember Area island in Viveiro. It was inhabited until the middle of the 20th century and decades later it was just used as a campsite. We should go and check out the land, it won't take us long."

  "I'll go, you should focus on your research, the days are rushing by and Nagorno could die at any time."

  I frowned. My father would help me with anything if I asked him to, he'd always been that way. He never denied me anything, although it didn't escape me that we were helping Nagorno to stay alive, and that was a relief for my father.

  "Let's get going then," I said. "What other islands do we have?"

  I went over to the map and stuck a couple of green pushpins in the Pancha and Area islands.

  "This is where it starts to get interesting: The Farallones islands. They're actually three islands. But there are many shipwrecks there. In the last century alone, there's the María del Carmen steamboat, which sunk in 1931, the Castillo de Moncada cargo ship in '45, the Maryfran fishing boat in 1957... Could those be the massacres that Gunnarr's referring to?

  I've never been there but I looked for them on Google Earth and I only saw several steep rocky cliffs covered in grass, but no buildings."

  "There's nowhere with a roof to hide Adriana. I don't think that's she's there."

  My father went over to the wall and stuck a red pushpin in it.

  "I'll check them out, just in case. You never know. And now for the prime suspect: Coelleira island, named as such due to the rabbits that used to roam there. It's a bit far from Cathedrals beach, about an hour's car ride, but its story fits in very well with what we're looking for. First of all, because it's the largest island of all the ones we're looking at and it has a lighthouse, although it's on a very high cliff. There's only wind and mist, little more, but in the 9th century there was a Benedictine monastery that was attacked by the Normans."

  "Which is where the massacre comes in."

  "And that's not all, I've found a very interesting detail. In 1628 a report was filed by the dean of Mondoñero, complaining that some Biscayan fishermen were using the island as a lookout point to fish whales, which, as luck would have it, is something that Gunnarr is very good at. And guess what else... the following year the island was bought by an anonymous family whose name has never been recorded on any document."

  "So to be clear, the modus operandi has the stamp of the Ancient Family," I summed up, standing in front of the map.

  "Yes, but the good news doesn't stop there. In the 19th century, the island was disentailed and changed hands, becoming property of the Spanish Armada. That's when the lighthouse was built."

  "Disentailed, you say," I repeated, thinking of my brother. We both knew that Nagorno often managed to outsmart confiscations of his assets.

  "So we have another red pin," my father smiled, pushing it into the wall. "Now I've got somewhere to start. I'll leave for Lugo first thing in the morning. I'll check out all the islands and lighthouses along the way."

  "Maybe..." I suddenly thought, "maybe Adriana isn't above ground. Maybe Nagorno built some kind of tunnel, like he did at the MAC."

  "I'll go round each of them in a boat then. I'll look for caves, anything, son. But I'll do my best to bring her back soon."

  "If you see something suspicious, get away from there and call me. Make sure that you're not seen. Gunnarr has eyes in the back of his head."

  "I'm not afraid of Gunnarr, son. I've got my own eyes."

  27

  The first winter

  IAGO

  New England, 1621 A.D.

  I woke up with a warm body thanks to the fur blankets. Inside the wetu, the native houses, the central fire burned day and night, and there was a constant heat, despite the frost that was terrorizing the New England coast. Two full moons had already passed and I had got used to living like the Wampanoag people, speaking their dialect, which I could get my head around much easier than English or Spanish, and dressing with their comfortable pants and shirts that didn't get soaked by the snow.

  I went out fishing with them every morning. Sometimes, the storms left half dead whales stranded on the sand banks of the coast and we were able to live off their meat for several weeks. I had traveled north with Squanto and Samoset, another Indian who also spoke English and often helped out by interpreting.

  I learned how to hunt beavers with them. They weren't an easy catch. A lot of patience was required to track them and the Indians always
laughed at the fact that the Englishmen were unable to kill a single one. I quickly understood that it would be a very slow business if I was the only one out of the entire Plymouth colony able to hunt. I knew that the only solution was to let the natives hunt them and then trade them for goods, so I decided to go back to Cape Cod and let Governor Garver know about the progress I had made and, to be honest, rid myself of the constant worry I had about Widow Adams, which had kept me awake for more than one night.

  I said goodbye to the sachem and Squanto and left just after a snow storm, when the pine forests were pure silence and all that could be heard was the crunch of my moccasins on the hard snow. I reached the rickety fence after a day and a half's walk. There were no watchmen and I entered without anyone being aware of my presence.

  There was no one to be seen in the muddy roads of that that poor imitation of an English town. The wind whistled through the wooden boards of the few houses that had been built. I'd have to teach them to build with bricks. The well that marked the centre of the village looked as if it had been abandoned a long time ago and the broken pale I could see didn't even have a rope to pull the water up.

  The silence was broken when I heard the sound of a rickety door. Manon pointed a musket at me, not recognizing who I was.

  "It's me, Ely!" I shouted, raising my hands above my head. "For the love of our King James, don't shoot one of his subjects!"

  Upon hearing my cries, several other doors opened and I saw the Governor and Captain Standish rushing towards me.

  "My good friend Ely!" Governor Carver hugged me. "The Lord has answered my prayers. Have you brought food to calm our empty stomachs?"

  I looked around me, where some of the Puritans had gathered. Their cheeks were sunken and their bodies starving. I had seen the results of famine many times, too many times, but I had never seen bodies undergo such a drastic change in such a short time. I could barely make out the passengers from the Mayflower in those skeletons.

  "Food?" I repeated. "No, I haven't brought food, but I have brought the first beaver skins to send to London, just as we agreed before I left. What's the problem with the food? Haven't you managed to acquire any yourselves? And why can I only see men and children, where are the women?"

  "Almost all of them are dead," replied Marion, stepping forward. She had dark circles under her eyes, were there used to be tanned skin. Scurvy is killing us all off. We're losing two or three people every day. I'm the only one left to bury them, nobody's got the strength to help me, and that task leaves me with no time to look after the sick."

  "Scurvy? Aren't you able to keep scurvy at bay? What about the lemons I brought?"

  "They're just sea stories. It's not been proven that they do anything," said Manon, as if she was talking to a small child.

  "Where are they?" I shouted at her. I think it was my guilt that made me behave like a madman.

  Manon didn't flinch at my screams and pointed to the hut she had come out of. I ran to find the barrel I had left her before leaving with the natives.

  I lifted the lid, and as I feared, most were rotten or frozen, although there were still a few dozen in decent shape.

  "Squeeze them and give the juice to the sick, and to those that aren't sick. Small doses, several times a day. That's all they need," I said to the old doctor when I found him. He agreed. He was so desperate after having seen so many of his Sants die that he accepted my solution as if it was manna.

  "How many have died?" I asked Manon when they took me to the largest hut where all the sick were moaning in makeshift wooden beds.

  "Half, there's only about fifty of us left. Go back with the natives, Ely. There's no place for a man like you here. In a few weeks we'll all be dead and there won't be a colony."

  "Is that what you think of me? Do you think that I'm going to abandon you? Do you think I forgot about how you helped me?"

  Do you think that I've forgotten that thanks to you I no longer see Gunnarr's ghost?

  "I don't know."

  "Well, Manon, I'm not that kind of person. I'll dig the graves with you. What else needs to be done?"

  "Wash the sick people's clothes, which obviously stinks. Go the forest and bring dry wood, keep the fires lit in all the houses. But above all, we need food."

  "I'll fish."

  "The water's frozen."

  "I'll fish." I repeated. And I'll lay traps for the hares, see if I can catch a deer. As soon as I get enough food for a couple of days I'll go back to the Wampanoag camp. They've got turkeys, they'll teach you how to bread them at these heights. We have to reinforce the walls of the houses using mud mixed with straw, that way the cold won't get in and we won't find frozen bodies every morning."

  I hadn't seen her smile like that for a long time. Her tired face grew warm when she asked me:

  "So you'll stay?"

  "I'll stay, Manon. And I hope that one day you'll forgive me for having abandoned you."

  28

  Scars

  ADRIANA

  I rode in the dark for quite a while, trying to get away from the castle. The path was narrow but the mare kept going at a steady pace until reaching the edge of a cliff. There, she stopped in her tracks and I had no other option but to get off because she refused to go any further. Several meters below I could hear the waves crashing on the shore of a pebble beach illuminated by the moonlight. I began to climb down a steep hillside, amongst dry bushes and tall weeds, until reaching a small cove.

  When my eyes had adapted to the dark, I looked around, and behind me I saw the narrow opening of a cave.

  I ran to hide inside. The sun would be coming up in a few hours and maybe I could use it as a refuge when my captors came looking for me. But just as I was about to go in, a huge shadow separated from the wall of the cave and stopped me in my tracks. I ran the other way, terrified.

  "I'm very proud of how far you got, stedmor, I can see why my father is so fond of you. But now it's time to get you back to your cell."

  "I recognized Gunnarr's voice, and by his tone I could tell that he wasn't in the mood for games, but neither was I. I was exhausted from such a long day and night, exhausted from mulling over everything in my cell, exhausted at being a puppet in the hands of others and having no power to decide on something as simple as what I was going to have for lunch the next day, what clothes I would wear, which streets I would walk down, who I wanted to see that night.

  "You were just testing me, like when you faked a heart attack. You left the door unlocked on purpose, just to see if I'd escape."

  He smiled. He was holding a piece of rope in his hand.

  "Stop playing with me!" I shouted at him, nervously, without taking my eyes off the cord.

  "I'm not playing, I'm trying to find out what you're like. Let's say that I'm intrigued by your reactions. We're going to go back up the hill and you're going to get on my horse. It's hidden behind that ridge you can see there. Tuva can't take my weight and I don't trust you to ride her in case you gallop off and try to escape again. The mare will follow us. Oh, and by the way, you were going in the wrong direction. You won't find anything good in that cave."

  "Although, you and your uncle come here often. Otherwise, the Akhal Teke wouldn't have brought me here at night."

  "You're a clever girl. Come on, there's a shortcut here. I'll follow you."

  But once again, I refused to obey him. I ran the other way, grabbing at the thicket to pull myself up the steep slope.

  Gunnarr was on my back in seconds. He wrapped his arm around my chest and pinned me to the ground, putting his mouth to my ear.

  "Adriana, I've never hurt a woman, don't make me start today because I don't want to do it," he whispered.

  He'd called me Adriana for the first time. The 'almost' celibate man had let his guard down.

  I took advantage of the moment and elbowed him in the ribs, knocking him to the side. Then I jumped down several meters, ending up back in the cave.

  Gunnarr threw himself on top of me. For a m
oment I couldn't breathe, crushed by his immense body.

  "Sorry, stedmor," he said, sounding slightly ashamed. He raised himself up, freeing me from his weight. Then he pinned me down again, pushing his knee into my back, and pulled the rope from the back pocket of his pants.

  "Don't tie me up, please, your knots are so tight and my wrists are really sore. I promise, Gunnarr. I give you my word, I won't try to escape, but don't tie me up again."

  "Ok, but don't do anything silly. You go first, stedmor."

  He shackled my wrists with his huge hand and we walked over to his horse.

  Gunnarr got on first and then pulled me up and sat me behind him. We looked for Tuva, the Akhal Teke mare, and let the horses lead us back to the castle. It was pitch black and I couldn't make out any signs of civilization around us, just an enormous block of basalt mountain that loomed over us, which couldn't be seen from the other side of the castle.

  "Anyway, that cave you were going into... it's not a good place. Seriously. There's another one close by that doesn't have such a dark past, Cathedral Cove. We held many services there after the 1745 uprising, but you can only get to it during low tide. That's why the mare didn't take you there, even though I prefer it. For me, the route you took today is damned."

  "What's wrong with the cave? I've been in worst places, almost every prehistoric cave I've worked in had a worse entrance than that one, trust me."

  "That may be, but I don't think they have a worse history to tell. It's known as the cave of the Massacre. 396 members of the McDonald clan were burned alive and asphyxiated there in 1577."

  "What happened?"

  "We were in the middle of a war of clans. McLeods against McDonalds, McDonalds against McLeods. A death to avenge a grievance, an ambush in response to an insult. Uncle Nagorno and I were part and parcel of that time. Always short-tempered, always hostile, always on the verge of drawing our swords. It was a way of life and we were part of it. The McLeod clan was allowed to dwell on our island during one of the truces. The History books say that they got too cozy with the daughters of our clan. Nice euphemism. They began to jump them on any of the paths, they went into the farms at night and took them, none of them were safe. If you had have taken tonight's route in that time, there's no way you would have reached this point intact. They would have found you and had their way with you."