“You mustn’t mind Lomas,” Grand Master Bevard said conversationally, bringing my attention back to the present. “He only means that he isn’t happy about someone else being brought in to search for his charge.”
“I don’t need any help,” Lomas said through stiff lips. “Especially from a man who was so careless with his own duties that the Black Knights stole a portion of the treasure.”
“He wasn’t careless,” I said defensively, catching him by surprise. “Thomas Randall kidnapped and tortured one of his men. He killed countless innocent people. He burned our ship and sank her after killing most of the crew. When he finally made it to the treasure, which he had to dig to, by the way, because Tristan refused to tell him where the entrance was, he had to use Medusa’s head just to get away from everyone. If it weren’t for Tristan, the entire treasure on Oak Isle would be in the hands of the Black Knights.”
“You have forgotten your place, Madame,” Lomas said, regarding me sourly. “Why are you even here? This is a man’s conversation.”
I felt like I’d been slapped, my mouth hanging open as I glared at him.
“I’ll take it you haven’t heard.” Bevard chuckled. “I wondered if you would have, having just arrived from South America. Samantha here has been greatly discussed among those who know the story of Oak Isle.”
“This is my wife,” Tristan said coolly, pushing me forward. “Samantha Green O’Rourke.”
“I’m from the future.” I silently dared him to argue with me about it as his eyes narrowed, studying me truly for the first time.
He didn’t really seem to believe me.
“Why is she here?” he asked Tristan, apparently deciding to ignore me.
“Because I opened Pandora’s Box in the bottom of the pit that Randall dug almost three hundred years from now,” I growled, feeling my defenses picking up more. Being ignored bothered me, especially when it was because I didn’t have the same anatomy as everyone else in the room. “It brought me here, and so help me, if you keep trying to act like I’m not here, I’ll give you a reason to remember me.”
Tristan laughed, putting a hand on my shoulder and pulling me back. “I’d be careful, Captain. Sam’s been a pirate for a better part of a year, as a man and a woman. I wouldn’t put it past her to beat ye in a fight.” His tone held a small amount of his own warning toward Lomas; he wouldn’t stop me if I decided to fight him.
The Spaniard regarded us with cold eyes, his nose twitching once before he turned toward the Grand Master. “What is my part in all of this?”
“As you’re aware, it is well known among our ranks that the portion of the treasure sent to the Southern Americas was lost.”
“I am.” Lomas didn’t seem to like that fact. Actually, he appeared to loathe it. Suddenly, I wondered if the men sent to find the missing portion were being punished somehow. In my mind, I would have thought the Order’s best men were on the case, but Tristan was one of their best, wasn’t he?
“Randall will know, too. It’s the only lead he has on finding what he’s looking for.” Tristan was slipping back into his business mode, looking at the map on the table.
“You think he will go south?” Lomas was uncertain, but turned to the masterpiece as well, frowning.
“That’s what the Black Knights have done in the past.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
“Aye, lass,” Tristan said, nodding. “They’ve sent at least two companies in the past two hundred years, that we know of. Ye’ve heard of Christopher Columbus?”
I almost snorted. Of course I’d heard of the man who “discovered” the new world. There must have been something in my expression that confirmed my knowledge, because he smiled, continuing on.
“He was a Black Knight. He and his followers never found the treasure, though, probably because of the extreme force they showed the natives.”
“Cortés is the next Knight we know of,” Lomas said, appearing to think it over. “He thought the treasure was with the Aztecs, which we now also believe to be true, but it was gone when he tried to take it.”
“Why the Aztecs?” I asked, fascinated. These were stories I’d heard growing up. In fact, Cortés, himself, reportedly named the mountains just outside my hometown. He called them the Superstitions, after many of his men mysteriously died while traveling through the range. They were looking for a city of gold, but all they found was grief.
“We’ve uncovered some documentation that suggests the Knights who first arrived with the treasure became sick, or were already sick, when they made landfall. They were friendly with the natives, but none of them survived whatever it was they’d caught.” Bevard sighed, shaking his head. “We can only assume that the treasure was then overtaken by the native people. They would have recognized its importance.”
“Didn’t Spain tear South America apart looking for gold, though?” I could feel it, the same kind of excitement that had overtaken me when I was studying the Treasure Pit with Dad. I wanted to know what had happened. I needed the pieces to the puzzle. It was as if he were standing there with me, drinking in all the information we could as the Knights told me what they knew.
“The tribes began hiding their gold together,” Lomas explained. “They knew what the conquistadors were looking for. They used their riches for religious purposes and didn’t want it tainted. It is my personal belief that Montezuma’s treasure was that of several tribes, hidden together to keep them safe.”
“And they would have hidden the Templar’s treasure there as well, knowing it held sacred value to the men who had brought it,” I added for him, the lines connecting together in my head. “What happened then?”
“Cortés tortured the people,” Lomas answered simply. “All of his research had led him to the same place ours has. The treasure of the Knights Templar should have been in Mexico City—or Tenochtitlan, as it was called then.”
“But it wasn’t.” I was no stranger to things not working out when it came to treasure. Nothing ever seemed to go right on Oak Isle, no matter how many signs you had saying something should be true.
“After Montezuma died, the Black Knights raided his palace and vaults. But whatever had been there was already gone.” It was Bevard who spoke this time, watching my face carefully. “No one has seen it since.”
“We believe that a large number of servants and guards carried away the riches, but we don’t know where. There are so many different tales of fortune in the New World, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Lomas added, frustrated. “I don’t understand how something so massive could disappear so suddenly!”
“Well, the Templars did it,” I pointed out. “In my time, your treasure is considered a myth as much as anything else. No one has ever found it. Well, except me, but it’s not like I got to do anything with it before I was sent here. And even if I had, no one would have thought that there was more hidden somewhere else.”
“It seems that Cortés followed a few leads he found on his own, traveling up further into North America, but there was nothing. We don’t even know what leads he was following. Due to the extreme nature of the natives now, we haven’t traveled as far north as he did.” Bevard finally looked at Tristan, who, when I turned to him as well, appeared to be absorbing all of the information quickly.
“Is there any way to go further north? Randall will do it for sure, if he believes that is where the cache is.” He paused for a moment, apparently considering his words, and then went on. “I believe he’s looking for the Holy Grail. When we first found him in the Pit, he was upset to find that not everything we’d carried to the island was there. He must not have realized that some of it was transported to other places once it reached Oak Isle.”
“Why would he want the Grail?” Lomas questioned, surprised.
“He stole the ichor. If he drinks it from the Grail, he will carry the gods’ immortality.” Bevard’s voice was crisp and to the point, but it still stung me somewhat. Thomas was bad enough now. I
f he were as invincible as a god? There would be no stopping him and whatever plans he had.
“What’s in the missing treasure?” I asked out of curiosity.
“Not the Grail,” Lomas said, sounding supremely thankful. “But there are plenty of things we don’t want the Black Knights to get their hands on.”
“Oak Isle had many Greek treasures,” Tristan offered.
“Norse,” Bevard said. “The missing treasure was full of Norse artifacts. Among them, Thor’s gloves and hammer. Imagine, if the Black Knights could control lightning? We would never be able to get close to them again.”
Slowly, I felt another line in my brain connecting. It was an old story I’d heard, from when I was so young it seemed like another hundred lifetimes ago. Frustrated, I tried to grasp onto whatever my subconscious was tying together, ignoring the chatter about what else was missing.
And then, suddenly, I remembered. Gasping, I turned to look at Tristan, eyes wide.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“It might be nothing, but I heard . . .” I stopped. Glancing between the men, I was suddenly nervous to share my revelation with them. Swallowing, I hurried to continue on. “I think I know where the treasure is.”
The three men looked at me in surprise and disbelief. Well, all except Tristan, anyway.
“What do ye mean, lass?” he asked patiently.
“It’s a lot of things tied together,” I replied, starting to feel stupid. “I don’t know a whole lot about any of it.”
“Tell us,” Bevard encouraged, entwining his fingers and resting his chin on them as his elbows sat on the table, his form leaning forward in his chair.
“Cortés visited where I was born,” I said, watching their eyes widen some more. “He named the mountains around the valley I grew up in. So, we know that whatever leads he was following brought him there. There’s a lot of reservations in Arizona—I mean, a lot of Native Americans live there. The Apache live in those mountains. They always have. Everyone thought that they were the ones who killed Cortés’s men because they felt threatened by the newcomers.”
Pausing, I tried to choose what part to tell them next. One was going to excite them for sure; it made me grin like an idiot just thinking about it. The other . . . the other was a far reach, at best. Pursing my lips, I decided to share the least helpful thought first.
“I was working in the library one day and came across another story about a man—a miner—who was hit in the head and claimed to have a vision. Supposedly, he saw thousands of Aztec slaves and warriors marching out of their city with their treasure. In his vision, they carried it into Utah. Cortés never went there, according to my knowledge, though. However, when the man went to dig and find the treasure, there wasn’t anything. Well, that’s not true. They found the armor of a Spanish conquistador in one of the caves he uncovered. That’s all. The book didn’t say much more about it.”
“Are you suggesting that someone found the treasure in this . . . Utah you speak of?” Lomas stared at me, his gaze burning intensely.
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “I think a vision had by a man with a concussion is shaky, at best. However . . . I do think the treasure could be somewhere else. Somewhere that Cortés visited, but never got to explore.”
“Ye mean the mountains outside yer home?” Tristan’s eyes narrowed as well as he took in what I was saying. “Why?”
“A couple of reasons, actually.” My hands were shaking by now, half out of excitement and half out of worry that I was about to lead them on a wild goose chase. “The Indians were protecting the mountains, right? Wouldn’t they do the same if there was a massive treasure hidden there?”
“I suppose so,” Bevard replied.
“Well, there is a massive treasure there, according to local myth. It’s rumored to be a gold mine, with so much of the stuff that you can pick it right up off the ground without any effort. No one has been able to find it since the original man who claimed to know where it was died.”
“The treasure isn’t a gold mine,” Lomas said, some exasperation seeping into his tone. “It would be actual objects. Things that had been crafted by man.”
“You said the natives used gold for their religious practices, didn’t you?” I asked him. “So, why wouldn’t they have hidden their sacred treasure in a place where more of it was?”
“They could have thought that it was a place designated by the gods,” Bevard offered, his own thoughts hidden behind a mask of contemplativeness. “But that’s all circumstantial at best. We believe there is truth in all things, but the only point you have working for your theory is that the natives killed the Knights to protect something.”
“That’s not all.” Excitement rushed through me and I smiled, ready to reveal the thing that had made me tie it all together. “You said there were lightning controlling objects in the treasure? The reason the Apache hold those mountains sacred is because they believe their lightning god lives in them.”
They all visibly straightened at my comment, just as I’d expected. Lomas looked as if he’d been clubbed over the head, no doubt because a woman had just told him several truths he’d never known. Bevard was smiling, as if it all made sense. Tristan was gaping at me in awe, as if he’d never considered that I might know more than just Treasure Pit information.
“That does lend some credibility to the thought that the treasure might be hidden there,” Bevard agreed.
“How far is it from these mountains to Mexico City?” Lomas asked, still skeptical.
Frowning, I knew that this would be a hard part for them to believe. I’d had a hard time believing it when I searched how far it was from Utah. “Almost fifteen hundred miles,” I said quietly.
How could thousands of slaves and guards transport a massive treasure that far without being seen by anyone? How would they have done it without leaving some kind of trail? The thought seemed impossible, laughable even.
Then again, so had the idea of the lost treasure of the Knights Templar being at the bottom of the Treasure Pit.
The men seemed to be thinking along the same lines, each of them lost in their own thoughts, and I frowned, feeling stupid again.
“It could be nothing,” I stated once more. “But what you were saying made me remember all of it. It’s a reach, tying it all together like that, but it’s the best I can do to help at the moment.”
“It’s good, Sam,” Tristan said encouragingly. “At the very least, it gave us more information. What do ye think, Captain Lomas?”
The Spaniard stared evenly at me, lips pressed together tightly, whatever thoughts and feelings he had hidden behind his mask of a face. “I think . . . it’s not a bad idea. For all we know, Cortés tied things together and followed the path they made. If we could find any more information on these particular mountains and the people who live around them, we might be able to decide more definitively.”
“If you want to go and look, you mean?” It felt like my heart was in my throat. He’d said they didn’t go north because it was dangerous, and here I was, telling them they should go there.
“What kind of place is it, Madame O’Rourke?” Bevard questioned. “Jungle?”
“It’s a desert,” I replied, grimacing. “Not like the Sahara, but hot. Really hot, actually. There won’t be much water. The plants and animals aren’t very friendly either.”
“How far from the ocean?”
“Several hours by car.” Closing my eyes in frustration, I shook my head. Thinking about my hometown was getting me mixed up with modern day things. In my time, it would have taken around six hours to drive to the closest beach. They wouldn’t be coming from the west, though; I had no idea how far the closest eastern ocean was. “A while. I’m not exactly sure how long. A few weeks at the least, assuming we don’t just march straight through without stopping for anything.”
“We?” Lomas scoffed, looking between everyone in disbelief. “You expect to be part of a secret Order mission? Your place is
here, with the other wives. It will be dangerous!”
My earlier annoyance at being treated as though I was less than him returned in an instant and I frowned, trying to hold back my anger. “I am as much your equal as either of these men, whether you believe it or not. The fact that it is dangerous makes no difference. If you can go, so can I. Besides, I’m the only one here who has actually seen the mountains and knows what they look like.”
He stared at me, mouth gaping like a fish, and then finally turned to the Grand Master.
“She’s right,” he said, sighing. “She would have to go. I suspect that Captain O’Rourke wouldn’t leave without her.”
“No, sir. I would not,” Tristan confirmed. “And Lomas can’t be sure of anything without his witness to it all.”
“I would do just fine with a map, thank you,” the captain replied stiffly. “All Señora O’Rourke would have to do is draw one up for me.”
“I don’t know anything about making maps,” I shot back just as haughtily. “Either I go, or you don’t get to be part of the mission.”
Lomas looked aghast at that, moving toward the Grand Master again, who merely shrugged.
“We’ll go without ye.” Tristan filled him in. “I mean to handle Randall myself, with or without the Order’s assistance in the manner. He was my man. My mistake. I should have noticed the path he was on. I should have stopped him. Ye said yerself, I’m the one responsible for this mess.”
“We will take care of the arrangements,” Bevard said, nodding. “There are others we must consult and ships we must prepare. Captain O’Rourke, I do believe you should lead one of them. Be thinking of whom you would like on your crew. As for you, Lomas,” he spoke, standing and moving toward the man. “Would you come with me? I should like to go through the records we have of past searches. Perhaps Madame O’Rourke’s theory will play out more in them.”
Carried Away (The Swept Away Saga, Book Two) Page 10
