The Emerald Key

by Christopher Dinsdale

  “Then it’s unanimous. Brother Galway, I suggest you go and pack, for you have a ship to catch and a book to retrieve. May God be with you.”

  Chapter 3

  Never in Jamie’s wildest imagination had he ever thought of setting out across the Atlantic Ocean on a six-week voyage to another continent. His life, however, had been filled with unexpected turns from a very young age, and as he walked towards the long departure quays that jutted out into the sparkling crown of Cork Harbour like sharpened thorns, Jamie thought back to those early happy years.

  He had grown up helping his father run a well-

  managed flour mill in the village of Clara, Westmeath. His father was a respected elder in the community, and he was very vocal in his objections to the ways of the British government. It angered him when officials looked the other way as the many British landlords ran thousands of desperate tenants off the properties that they had farmed for generations. The potato blight had robbed many of the small farmers’ incomes and they could no longer pay the rent. Desperate, the tenants led the villagers of Clara in an uprising against the government. Several irate farmers broke into the Lord Westmeath’s personal smokehouse and stole a full side of pork. Several families might have eaten well that week, but the lord complained of the break-in to the authorities. They in turn sent a detachment of soldiers to punish the community.

  In the middle of the night, armed with rifles and torches, the redcoats descended upon the Galway flour mill. The Galway family would be punished, since Lord Westmeath assumed their objections had likely incited the vandalism. The loss of the mill would, in turn, punish the community for not turning in the criminals who had stolen Lord Westmeath’s property.

  Within minutes, the prominent family business was engulfed in flames. The small Galway home sat next to the mill. Jamie could still remember staggering up to the window and seeing his father running through the flames of the mill’s doorway, armed with only a single bucket of water. Whatever his father’s plan was to stop the flames, Jamie never did find out. When he didn’t return from the flames, Jamie doubted his father ever contemplated that his wife might enter the burning building in an attempt to rescue him. Her screams of fear turned to screams of pain, and then no screams at all. Jamie remembered his older brother’s arm wrapping around him. He looked up at Ryan, tears in his eyes, unsure of what to do.

  Ryan, eleven at that time, stood, not staring into the flames but at the redcoats on horseback, laughing at the inferno and warning the villagers who had gathered around the burning mill not to further break the laws of the land or more punishment would be heaped upon their village.

  Perhaps it was remembering the single bucket of water in his father’s hands that made Jamie think of that fateful night. Now he was staring out at a sea that could fill up an endless line of buckets and likely never lower the level of its mighty basin. Jamie examined the long wooden hull of the Independence and its three huge masts that seemed to reach as high as a cathedral spire. This was the vessel that would take him across that mighty expanse of water to the land called Canada.

  Jamie, dressed in common travelling clothes, entered the sea of people that filled the pier. The Brotherhood had decided it would be wise not to bring undue attention to Jamie’s departure. Around him, young men waved handfuls of tickets in the air, shouting out to the bedraggled crowd offering cheap passage to Quebec, New York, or Philadelphia.

  A young sailor came up beside him as he continued to gawk at the ship. He joined Jamie’s gaze skyward.

  “She’s a beauty, eh?”

  “She’s bigger than I imagined.”

  “This is my ship. It’s my first duty on board the Independence. Jim Darby is my name.”

  “I’m Jamie Galway. Pleased to meet you.” They shook hands.

  “Good to meet you, Jamie. I heard that she has a good captain who treats the crew and passengers fairly. After my last tour across the Atlantic, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever want to sail again.”

  Jamie looked at him. “Why? What happened?”

  “The ship I sailed was an old slave ship. Shipping companies used to make a fortune running slaves from West Africa to the southern United States until the Civil War changed the rules. Slave running to the colonies was then outlawed. So the companies switched their human cargo from slaves to starving peasants. Not much of a difference, really, if you ask me. Governments still paid the shipping companies good money to haul needed labour to the colonies. On my last ship, the captain treated them the same if not worse than if he were transporting a shipload of slaves.”

  Jamie had to force his next question from his lips. “On which ship did you serve?”

  “The Carpathia,” Jim said, shaking his head. “The captain didn’t seem to understand that those were human beings down in his hold. He would treat those poor Irish worse than livestock. He crammed far more in than was allowable and then he barely fed them the whole way there. If any died, and many did, they were unceremoniously tossed into the sea during the crossing so he wouldn’t have to deal with the paperwork upon his arrival in Canada. Lord, I hated working under him.”

  Jamie felt sick. “Is the Independence faster than the Carpathia? My brother is on board the Carpathia and I was hoping that we might catch up to them before it docked in Canada.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” the young sailor said as he hoisted his kit onto his shoulders. “The Independence is fast for its size, but she won’t catch the Carpathia. We’ll be loaded down not only with passengers but with a full load of cargo as well. I imagine we’ll be at least a good week behind her.”

  The sailor hurried off to join the rest of the crew boarding the ship up the rear gangplank. Jamie looked down at his ticket. It was labelled “2nd class.” The Cardinal had been able to arrange the money to keep him out of the crowded holds that were the cause of so much sickness and death during the crossing. Jamie felt guilty accepting the generous offer as the church coffers had all but dried up during the horrendous famine. But, as the Cardinal said, it wouldn’t do Ryan or the Brotherhood any good if he was dead upon arrival in Canada.

  Jamie joined the other passengers boarding on the forward gangplank and slowly made his way up to the deck and the awaiting officer. There was a family of five ahead of him, a mother and father, two boys and a little girl. They seemed as destitute as the family that had tended to him after the attack. Their tattered clothing hung loosely from their bones, their sunken eyes underlined with dark rings.

  “Have you been to Canada before?” Jamie asked, trying to ease his own nervousness with conversation.

  The husband gave a bitter laugh. “Never been on a ship before, let alone the shores of another land.”

  “My sister has a small farm in Canada West and she’s invited us to live on it with her family,” said the wife, teary-eyed. “There’s nothing left for us here.”

  The husband extended his hand. “I’m Brendan O’Connor. This is my wife Erin and my three children, Neil, Colin, and Patricia.”

  They shook hands. “Jamie Galway.”

  “Are you planning a move to Canada as well?”

  “No, I’ll be soon coming back home.”

  “Back to Ireland?” he asked incredulously. “What is there left to return to? This island is a floating morgue.”

  The officer, eyeing the destitute family over a thick greying moustache, kept his distance from the three sniffling children. After a brief examination of the tickets, he pointed them in the direction of the hold.

  “Fourth class. Take the stairs to the very bottom. Your berth will be labelled.”

  The family shuffled slowly towards the opening through the deck and then disappeared into the bowels of the ship. The officer turned towards Jamie.

  “Ticket.”

  Jamie passed it to him.

  “Ah, second class. Follow the deck around to the forward cabin and a purser will show you to your room.”

  Jamie did as he was told. He made his way toward the front of the
ship, past two towering masts, and handed his ticket to a young purser who was waiting for him at the doorway.

  “Welcome to the Independence, sir.”

  The porter led him down a narrow hallway to a finely crafted door with a brass handle. Jamie opened the door and had to step over a tall ledge to enter the room.

  “Safety reasons,” commented the purser, nodding to the ledge at base of the door. “Keeps the water out of your cabin should the weather get bad.”

  “Then let’s hope for good weather, shall we?” said Jamie, who then offered the young lad a coin, which he gratefully accepted.

  After lowering his single bunk away from its stored position on the wall, Jamie collapsed onto its mattress and stared up at the freshly painted ceiling.

  “Hold on, Ryan. I’m only a week behind you.”

  Jonathon Wilkes was a very patient man. Waiting on the docks at Cork with a young boy standing by his side, he realized that he would not be closing in on one of the greatest treasures in Europe if he had not planned every step of the way with painstaking precision. Somewhere in this crowd was the missing piece of the puzzle that was required to find Ireland’s fabled ancient treasure. After all of his work and effort, a few more hours of waiting in a restless crowd would not bother him in the least. In fact, he rather enjoyed it. It was all part of the exhilarating game of the hunt, and he was the one controlling all the pieces.

  As Wilkes eyed the crowd, he let his mind drift back to his first big payday. It had taken him three years, eleven months, and fourteen days to wait out the Buddhist monks in Tibet before he finally struck the motherlode. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the monks, had left his palace compound with his entourage as if he were a ghost, in the dead of night and with remarkable silence. The only reason Wilkes had discovered his silent departure was through one of his ingenious tripwires, which he had stretched across several paths that he had suspected might lead to the treasure. It was the tinkling of a soft bell that had woken him from his light sleep. He quietly rolled out of his covers, grabbed his machete, his unlit torch, and his gun, and by the light of the quarter moon ran for the marked path.

  It was difficult to follow the mountainous trail at night with only sparse moonlight to guide him, but he had memorized the terrain so well, he knew exactly where the monk he was following was taking him, deep into the steep Himalayan cliffs that surrounded Tibet’s capital city of Lhasa. The path quickly became treacherous and narrow, but Wilkes could sense that the monk was just ahead, and he was not about to let up on the chase.

  His life nearly ended as he rounded a protruding crag in the mountain and his foot came down on nothing but air. The path had vanished at the edge of a cliff. Wilkes had not sensed the sudden drop and he began to fall toward his death. His flailing arms swung wildly for anything to help stop his fall. A lip of stone smacked against his right palm. He grabbed hold. It was not enough to stop his momentum, but it was just enough to swing him across to his right. While dangling on one arm, he controlled his panic long enough to allow his body to make the half turn. His head and body crashed hard into the towering rock face next to the path. With his right hand remaining on the protrusion, his left groped desperately along the rock for any purchase. Miraculously, it found the rough root of a plant jutting out into the darkness. He grabbed hold and prayed that it would take his weight. For a moment, Wilkes hung with his feet hovering three thousand feet above an invisible jagged valley far below.

  Wilkes quickly recomposed himself and assessed his situation. Even in the inky darkness, he knew that the path he had taken up the mountain must be somewhere just to his right. He swung out a foot and felt for it. Yes! His boot caught the edge of it, but it was too far away for his foot to get a proper grip. He had only one chance. Before his strength gave out completely, he heaved on the root, found a temporary toehold, and brought both hands to the rocky ledge that had saved his life. Tentatively sticking out his foot again, he could finally hoist his leg up onto the flat surface. With a final push, he swung himself back onto the path. His body collapsed onto solid ground and he thanked the heavens that he couldn’t see what nightmare lay below him at the base of the cliff.

  Suddenly, his side exploded in pain. A foot had lashed out from somewhere in the dark, crunching hard into his ribs. Wilkes ignored the stinging fire from his side as he rolled away from the edge. He sprang up into a crouch. He heard a blade being unsheathed somewhere in the darkness. Wilkes slowly reached down to his feet and grabbed a large handful of dirt. His attacker must be close and likely moving in for the kill at this very moment. With a wide arc from his arm, he released a cloud of dirt at what he guessed would be head height. A grunt of pain just to his left told him the dirt had found the wide open eyes of his attacker. He leaped to his feet and charged like a bull at the sound, shoulder down, catching his attacker in the side. Wilkes felt a searing pain in his back from the swing of a sword as he slammed the attacker hard into the side of the mountain. Then he heard a satisfying crunch as his full weight crushed the attacker into the jagged rocks.

  Stinging hand chops suddenly exploded around his neck and head. Instead of blocking them, Wilkes ducked and swung a leg low, tripping the attacker, who fell to the ground, but Wilkes lost his balance as well and fell hard onto his injured back. He could hear his attacker get to his feet first and charge forward. Wilkes curled into a ball, feet up, ignoring the fiery pain from his back. He felt a sudden weight on the soles of his boots. He used momentum to roll backwards and with the attacker’s weight still perched on his feet, kicked his legs out over his head. For a second, there was only silence as his attacker was launched high into the night air. A terrified scream fell away as the invisible man tumbled down the side of the dark cliff to his doom.

  Curled on his side, it took a minute for Wilkes to catch his breath. He felt his back, and the warm stickiness of fresh blood told him he would have yet another scar decorating his tattered body. He ripped off a piece of his shirt, rolled it into a ball and placed it over the wound. He then used the strap of his satchel to keep it in place.

  Working his way back along the dark face of the mountain, his hands suddenly disappeared into a hidden fissure. It was a perfect secret entranceway that led into the heart of the mountain itself. Turning sideways, he squeezed his tall frame into the fissure. Complete darkness enveloped him. He paused and listened. From somewhere deep inside the mountain, he could hear the rhythmic chanting of Buddhist monks. Surely they would not be worshipping in the dark, he surmised. Therefore they must be a long way off.

  Wilkes decided to take a huge gamble. He checked his gun to make sure that it was cocked and loaded. Then he pulled out his torch and lit it. A long, narrow tunnel suddenly flared to life in the orange glow of his torch. His eyes were drawn to a beautiful oval-shaped shrine that had been carved into the stone wall of the tunnel. Sitting inside the shrine, surrounded by a stunning halo of iridescent stars, was a golden statue of Buddha. His welcoming smile and extended arms were highlighted by a ruby-encrusted toga that adorned his rotund belly. Wilkes instantly knew the statue alone was worth a small fortune. He could only imagine what treasures lay further down the tunnel. Wilkes was not stupid. A bird in hand was worth more than two in the bush. He opened the flap to his leather bag, removed the Buddha from its perch, and carefully lowered it in.

  The three years, eleven months, and fifteen days of waiting it out in the Himalayas had finally paid off in spades.

  His adventure in Tibet now seemed so long ago. Wilkes did return to that same cave years later, but not surprisingly, after searching the entire cavern, whatever had been in there had long before been removed. The missing Buddha and dead guard were all the evidence the monks had needed to prove their secret location had been blown.

  Since then, Wilkes had been able to scrounge up some interesting Egyptian artifacts and steal a couple of small Mayan statues, but he could no longer afford the life of luxury he had grown accustomed to after the sale of the Buddha. He need
ed another big payoff, and soon.

  After hitting the history books in the London library as he searched for a new treasure trail, he had come across an old story about Ireland that explained how, after the fall of Rome, the Irish had become the wealthiest and most educated country in Europe. Several legends proclaimed that a vast treasure had been hidden during Ireland’s golden years, but its location remained a mystery to this day.

  “Not a mystery to everyone,” chuckled Wilkes. “Surely someone, somewhere must know where it is.”

  He then glanced at his copy of the London Times. The headline quoted the prime minister as saying only market forces could cure the continuing Irish famine.

  “An unending famine in a land that holds treasure,” muttered Wilkes. “This is what a man who has an interest in antiquities would call ‘easy pickings’. ”

  Wilkes booked a ticket on the next ship leaving London for Dublin. Upon his arrival in Ireland, he had gone straight to Trinity College, where he set eyes on the Book of Kells, one of the only books known to have survived from the golden age of Ireland. He had never seen anything like it before in his life. Each letter was a work of art in itself, producing almost magical depictions of Irish nature from the ancient ink. The text itself read in an almost spellbinding beauty that seemed more the written word of an angel than that of a human being. His appreciation for what the Irish had accomplished after the fall of Rome rose considerably. He no longer had any doubts that a country capable of such a high level of culture could also produce magnificent treasure.

  He knew from experience that a coin placed in the right starving hand might get him the information he needed to begin his search, and indeed it had. He learned from a penniless historian that there was a secret group of men called the Brotherhood, and rumours continued that they knew the location of a buried Irish treasure. The historian also mentioned that the Brotherhood seemed to have connections to the Irish Catholic Church. Prodded further about the treasure, the historian believed that the key to finding the treasure lay encoded in several keys kept safe by the Brotherhood, and one key was rumoured to be encoded in an old text located within the walls of the abbey in Limerick.