The Cortés Enigma

by John Paul Davis

  Of all places, Colts led them back to the Gibbous Moon. Danny was behind the reception desk, finishing on the phone.

  “Hi there, Danny,” Colts said, beaming his brightest smile. “Some storm, huh?”

  “Between you and me, Mr Colts, I’ve seen a lot worse.”

  “How about that?” Colts said, looking at Ben and Valeria. “Such a man of the world.”

  Danny watched as Colts walked through the doorway of the sitting room and into the bar area. The tables were clean, coasters plentiful, visitors, not for the first time, notable for their absence. Colts led the way across the red carpet and stopped in front of a large wall cabinet, the centrepiece of the room.

  Immediately Valeria understood what was going on. “Oh my.”

  “By my accounts, the Gibbous Moon became famous for two reasons,” Colts said; his trademark grin returned. “Besides being the worst drinking establishment on this whole goddamn island.”

  Ben was not amused. “What’s the other two?”

  “One, it’s the oldest inn on the island. Perhaps oldest of all on the Scillies.”

  “What’s the other thing?”

  Colts nodded at the artefact located behind the glass. “People round here have never been quick to get too close to this. They say misfortune and death surround those who touch the Devil’s Cup.”

  Valeria wetted her lips, her eyes focused on the white cup-shaped stone that lay before her. She had seen it every day for seven years, even cleaned the area around it.

  Never had she connected it with the five emeralds.

  Ben folded his arms, remembering the object from when Nicholl had shown it to him the day after his arrival. “What is it?” Ben asked, ever sceptical.

  “Tradition has it the cup was moulded by Lucifer himself. Used to like tormenting people, particularly Scillonians. One night, he gave this as a reward to a former owner…”

  “Let me guess. He beat him at cards?”

  Colts laughed. “Actually, drinking. Not many people can outdrink the devil. They say anyone who picks it up will be met with grave misfortune. Death within seventy-two hours.”

  “You ever touched it?”

  Colts adjusted his hat. “Well, that would be telling now, wouldn’t it?”

  Ben looked at Valeria. “You?”

  Valeria was as white as a sheet. No prizes for guessing who was the most superstitious of the three.

  Ben bit his lip, eyeing the cup from a distance. Conventional logic told him he should leave it alone; after all, it was someone else’s property.

  He tried to open the cabinet. “You got a key?”

  Valeria was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Ben?”

  “Come on. Give me the key to the cabinet. Come on.”

  Valeria removed the keys from her pocket and shuffled for the right one, nearly dropping them. Ben took them and inserted the correct one into the lock. The glass door on the right opened, allowing Ben access. There were five items on a single shelf, the alleged former property of TF, a small miniature portrait, said to be of the former owner who outdrank the devil, and, finally, the cup.

  Ben wriggled his fingers and touched it, tentatively at first before carefully picking it up. Its texture was identical to the other five: white, weighing about 9kg and easy to hold. The shape was identical to the cup in the stained-glass window: long and thin, like a simple drinking cup from the Middle Ages.

  He turned it over, inspecting the base. Like the others, there was writing, not three letters but two.

  “Well, captain? What’s it say?”

  Ben double-checked it and passed it to Colts.

  “CR,” Colts said, adjusting his hat. “Any bright ideas?”

  Ben shook his head. “No, not really.”

  Colts studied the letters and looked back at Ben with a dry expression. No doubt about it. It said CR.

  “Nothing springs to mind?” Colts asked.

  “I’m still pretty sure the earlier stuff said Godolphin.”

  Colts took a seat at the nearest table, put the cup down and removed his hat, revealing a receding hairline flanked by fuzzy black hair with hints of grey. This was the first time Ben had seen him bareheaded. It seemed to change the man’s complexion, adding at least five years to his appearance. His hat had made him seem taller.

  Somehow, the hat made Ben take him more seriously.

  “Give me everything. In order.”

  Ben started with the trumpet. “HIN. OLP. GOD. OSS. CR.”

  Colts considered the message, for now struggling to make sense of it.

  Ben looked at both of them in turn. “You’re sure they spell out the name of a place?”

  “Yes,” Valeria said.

  In truth, Ben didn’t doubt it. He took the other three stones from Valeria and spread them out across the table. Looking at them in order helped, although the absence of the trumpet made things more difficult.

  “Godolphin,” Ben said, convinced by the bell, fish and missing trumpet. As he pushed the cup next to the rose, he noticed something. The CR on the cup was right of centre, indicating a space.

  “Godolphin Cross,” Ben said.

  Colts looked up. “Pardon me?”

  Ben noticed a change in Colts’s expression. It was as if he’d hit a nail on its head. “I said–”

  “No.” Colts waved his finger and rose to his feet. “You said Godolphin Cross. Who told you about Godolphin Cross?”

  “Nobody. It’s what it says.”

  Ben stepped to one side as Colts moved alongside him and looked the stones over, one by one. Even with the absence of the trumpet, the logic behind the order of the letters was undeniable.

  And obviously correct.

  “You sure you didn’t know about this before?”

  Ben was confused. “No. Why…Colts?”

  Colts had moved away from the table, heading toward the doorway. Fortunately there was no one about; the wind and rain battering against the windows was the only sound, their voices aside.

  “You telling me you’d never heard of the place before tonight?”

  Ben was speechless. “You mean it exists?”

  “Oh, it exists all right.” He turned to Valeria. “And you?”

  She hesitated, eventually finding the nerve to muster a response. “No, never.”

  “Godolphin Cross was the family estate of the Godolphin family. The chief seat of all the famous governors.”

  “The chief seat. Where is it?”

  Colts raised his eyebrows. “England.”

  Standing by the doorway, Danny was a bundle of nerves. He saw the American, his friend and the archaeologist steal the Devil’s Cup from the cabinet, and place it carefully in Valeria’s handbag along with three other objects.

  In truth he didn’t know what worried him most. The fact that they were taking the Devil’s Cup or simply touching it.

  He returned to the desk, looking as if he was working. He saw Colts smile at him as he left, holding up a parting hand.

  “Best of evenings to you, friend. Don’t you be working too hard.”

  There was no danger of that. “You can’t possibly be heading out again in this?”

  “Ben here is mighty anxious Miss Flores be escorted safely back to her boat. And like you say, friend, seen much worse.”

  “Yes, sir,” Danny mustered.

  “Be seeing you real soon, Danny boy.”

  Danny waited until they had departed through the main door. The street was engulfed by the storm, the howling of the wind practically deafening. As the door closed, the sound of the wind became muffled, overpowered by that of the rain hammering down against the glass, and running down the slope into the sea or gutters.

  Danny tried to compose himself. He waited until they had left before picking up the phone. It rang five times, six, seven.

  Voicemail.

  He daren’t leave his post, but he was faced with a situation that was almost unheard of.

  Mustering all the strength he co
uld, he put on his jacket and followed the three thieves into the teeth of the storm.

  The Fourth Day

  44

  Cornwall, England

  Dawn came early, or maybe sunset was just really late. Ben had lost track of time. There was light on the horizon, a distant glimmer surrounded by haze. He could see it, just shining there, somewhere above the sea. As his eyes adjusted, he saw red, not just orange. There was a saying in these parts: red sky at morning is a sailor’s warning. He’d never known whether to take such things, such prophesies, as anything more than superstition. Just like touching the Devil’s Cup, it all seemed highly romanticised. Yet warning bells were ringing in his mind, just as they had been since the moment he learned Chris had gone missing.

  Then he remembered.

  He was still missing.

  The boat reached land at just after 5am. According to Colts, they had made good time. The boat was a cabin cruiser. Ben had been on it twice now, firstly with Colts to St Lide’s.

  It seemed like a long time ago.

  The journey took over five hours, all of which was in the dark. The storm that had battered the Isles of Scilly since late afternoon had followed them like a metal rod attracts lightning. Huge waves crashed against the ship, flooding the deck and pounding the vessel from side to side. Ben had never been prone to seasickness, but these conditions were extreme. They ate immediately, cooked by Colts in the galley, and Ben brought it up within minutes. Valeria even sooner.

  Even Colts admitted the storm was a bad one.

  The journey ended at the town of St Just, located on the coast near Land’s End. After departing the boat while it was still dark, Ben and Valeria followed Colts through the quiet streets, the occasional light from a window, a clubber returning home, a teenager from a party, the rare companions to the numerous streetlights whose light created a homely glow above the drenched pavement. After following Colts to a dimly lit multi-storey car park, they got into a five-year-old Ford Transit and journeyed through the empty streets.

  Thirty-five minutes later they reached their destination.

  The village of Godolphin Cross lies in the south-west of Cornwall. Ten miles east of Penzance and eighteen from St Just, it sits in an upland area, the plateau of the nearby countryside. Its position was locally celebrated; as the name suggests, it was a point where the parish met a crossroads. Passing the pub on the corner of the crossroads, weary travellers would be faced with four choices: to follow the path west would bring them to Penzance, north to St Ives or maybe south to The Lizard and the surrounding coastline. Then there were those who headed east, and inland.

  The path that leads out of Cornwall.

  Godolphin Cross was a large village compared to most. Lying midway between the towns of Hayle and Helston, it had a medical centre, a redundant church, several houses and a primary school that had recently passed its last Ofsted inspection. The Godolphin Cross pub was located at the crossroads, overlooking the roads like a watchtower, its thick granite façade and large windows monitoring all four points of the compass.

  While the village itself was little more than a reference point, less than a mile from the crossroads stood a more prominent feature. Hidden behind ancient woodland, and nestling within the steep inclines of the surrounding hillside, a supposedly cursed former dwelling served as a reminder of past glories. Once upon a time the 550-acre estate had been famed as one of the finest in Cornwall. A Tudor house still occupied the site where once an even larger house had stood. Elizabethan stables adjoined the house on one side, beside well-maintained gardens that hosted wild and exotic flowers, the first of which were at last starting to bloom. The years may have passed, but the sights, they say, never changed. Even after the fall of the monarchy, the family prospered, before an eventual decline in their fortunes in the 1800s. As the family’s wealth reduced, the house became progressively more uncared for and eventually redundant. Cold. Forgotten. Dilapidated.

  Ten years earlier, the sight that would have met the three travellers would have been one completely different. A decade under the care of the National Trust had seen the former shell slowly return to public life. On spring and summer days, couples and tourists would walk the corridors, explore the rooms and gardens, and eat cake in the tea room, enjoying a personal journey into the lives of those of long ago.

  But the past was the past. Though parts of the house had been modernised, still the history lingered, like a continuous echo trapped in a cave. Memory of past inhabitants was everywhere: its large portraits, wooden furniture, beds slept in by those long since departed. This was the true history of the estate, a property owned by one family. They were the family who possessed not only the property but the history itself.

  Locally it was known simply as the Godolphin Estate.

  Its importance was self-explanatory.

  Colts drove north on reaching the crossroads and followed the deserted road for three-quarters of a mile. The Satnav suggested a left turn, an innocuous unclassified side road heading into acre upon acre of heavy woodland. Colts turned and followed it, the purpose of the road soon becoming obvious.

  They were heading along the driveway leading to the main house.

  What Ben saw left him speechless. Thick ancient woodland restricted the view on either side before a 16th century mansion appeared out of nowhere. Well-manicured lawns flanked the building both front and side: the first an immaculate circle decorated by a small stone ornament, the central feature of the grass before the grand façade, while behind the house the grounds continued seemingly indefinitely.

  The front of the house was unlike anything Ben had ever seen in real life. Eleven single, quartered windows faced out from the front of the building at equal intervals, the dark glass giving nothing away of the inside. Unlike most houses of its type, the centre of the second storey, an imposing thick block of grey granite, overhung the lower by at least five metres and was supported by six large pillars. Two windows on either side of the pillars matched those of the upper storey in both size and appearance. A gently sloping roof was at the centre between two minor triangles that crowned matching towers on both sides.

  Ben looked at it, speechless. Though this was his first visit, he had seen the façade, and recently.

  In the later pages of TF’s diary.

  Colts slowed the van on reaching the main lawn, where he was met by a serious-looking woman, plump body, dyed red hair and aged somewhere in her early sixties. Colts wound down the window.

  “Mr Colts?”

  Colts smiled. “Good morning. Thank you so much for agreeing to this at such short notice.”

  The woman’s expression didn’t warm as she handed over the keys. “When you’ve unpacked, perhaps you would be so kind as to come to the main office. We have some forms for you to sign.”

  “Much obliged.”

  Colts parked around the right side of the property and immediately stretched on getting out from the driver’s seat. “Feels mighty good to stretch one’s legs.”

  Ben was still at a loss to comprehend what had just happened. While the scenery was delightful, a luxurious estate in the middle of a forest, he still had no idea what they were doing. “Where the hell are we?”

  “Godolphin Cross,” Colts replied, smoking his pipe for the first time in thirty minutes. “Or, to be more precise, as this place is known, Godolphin.”

  Ben folded his arms as he looked at Valeria. Despite the long journey in the back of the van, on top of a night of broken sleep sailing in a storm, her appearance was still incredible.

  “Care to elaborate?” Ben asked.

  “The Duke of Leeds sold the property in 1929. However, before that time they owned the estate here. You understand what I’m saying, Ben? They were the real bigwigs in the community.”

  “What happened after 1929?”

  “Nothing happened. Not of relevance. For a while it was taken over by a family called the Schofields. In 2007, this old place was taken on by the National Trust.”
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  “You mean it’s open to the public?”

  “Not today. You see, it just so happens three weeks out of every four, this old house is used as a holiday let.”

  “So that’s why that kind old lady gave you her keys,” Valeria said.

  That hadn’t struck Ben until now. “You mean you leased it?”

  Colts removed his bag from the back of the van, extended the strap and pulled. He laughed, knowing from Ben’s reaction that, not for the first time, he was having an effect.