Antonio passed the skin to Na’gu’set, who also sucked back some water.
“Listen,” whispered Connor. “There it is! I can still hear the noise.”
Silence fell upon the temple. Everyone’s ears strained to hear the faint scraping against the rocks. The men glanced at each other, the glimmer of hope raising their weary brows.
“Thank God,” muttered Angus. “That means we can end our backbreaking work down in the cavern.”
Prince Henry shook his head. “Nae, lad. We must continue.”
“Why?” asked Angus, surprised. “They’re digging a shaft to rescue us! Why continue to kill ourselves on a now pointless effort?”
Prince Henry, slowly straightening and stretching his back, waved the group to the table that displayed the design of the temple. He turned the diagram until it faced him. The men peered over his shoulder and studied the complicated picture of tunnels, shafts and chambers.
“Part of our design for the chamber included foiling any attempt to build a second shaft down into the temple. It would be an impossible task to avoid the traps without detailed knowledge of the original engineering.”
He pointed to the maze of safeguards surrounding the underground temple. “There is only one narrow space to break through the ceiling without setting off the traps. Right here, at the northwest corner.”
“But the men above helped to build the chamber,” said Connor, “so they should know about the safe angle into the temple as well.”
“You’re right, Connor. And from the sound of the scraping, it seems like they are attacking the problem correctly. But just a slight mistake will cause either a triggering of the flooding mechanism or a collapse of rock into the chamber itself. See right here? They will require a perfect angle between the drainage pipes. If I could talk to them, I’d tell them not to try it. It’s too dangerous for them and for us. We don’t need to lose any more good men.”
“You knew they were going to try something like this,” argued Antonio. “They couldn’t just sail away from the island, knowing there was a still a chance that you were alive down here in the temple.”
Prince Henry stared grimly at his friend. “If they do make it through, then we can truly celebrate. But what if they cave in the temple or set off the flooding mechanism? Then we will need some other way out in order to escape certain death. We must keep working at our attempt to access the drainage system.”
A moment of reflective silence fell over the gathering.
“Then it’s back to work,” moaned Angus.
“I’m afraid so. Antonio and Connor, try to get some sleep. As long as nothing changes, you can come and relieve us in four more hours.”
Connor glanced up at the arched ceiling that prevented his rescue, then back to Prince Henry, who had rescued his family long ago, as he descended down through the grate. Exhausted, Connor collapsed onto the floor. In his wildest imaginings, he could never have guessed his life would end like this.
Nineteen
The leg of the chair grazed Black Douglas along his temple, releasing a trickle of blood past his left eye. Surprised by the attack, he lowered his bulk and threw up his arms in self-defense, but the second assault did not come. Robertson and a second foul-smelling mountain of a knight were on Princess Sarah before she could reach the oil lamp resting beside her bed. With their combined weight, the men easily pinned her face first to the ground, twisted her arms behind her back before dragging her back up onto her feet. Sarah writhed in anger, her eyes burning red with tears and hate.
“What do you mean leave?” she screamed. “I’m not going anywhere without my brother!”
Black Douglas thanked the planners who had put the women’s tent far away from the rest of the camp. No one of importance would hear Sarah’s angry outburst.
“You are obviously hysterical over the death of Prince Henry,” cooed Black Douglas, composing himself. “It’s best if we remove you as quickly as possible from this terrible situation.”
She strained once more against the iron grip of her captors, then lowered her voice to a menacing growl. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”
“The next ship for New Jerusalem will be leaving within the hour. And don’t worry, Princess; I’ll travel with you to help you through your grieving.”
He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She bristled with anger.
“After you told me how the beam in the ship broke loose and knocked me unconscious, and then you risked your life to rescue me before the ship sank, I thought that you truly were a man who deserved my brother’s respect. Now I see the weak, desperate man you really are. You had my brother’s trust, and he made you his second-in-command of the Templar Order. And how do you repay him? With cowardly betrayal!”
Black Douglas smirked, as if he found the conversation amusing. “If anything, Princess, it is your brother who betrayed me. The Templar Order would have faded into obscurity if it were not for the strength of the Douglas clan. I deserve to lead the Order.”
Sarah paused, her eyes narrowing. “You really are mad. The only reason he brought you into the Order was to help unite Scotland. The Templars would have been perfectly fine, perhaps even better, without you in our ranks!”
Black Douglas flinched at the slap to his honour.
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it? You are a traitor!” hissed Sarah.
Black Douglas strode up to the princess, his cheeks twitching in anger. He lowered his voice to a menacing growl. “You don’t know how much I’m looking forward to carrying on this conversation during our sail to New Jerusalem.”
Sarah glared right back. “I would rather die here with my brother on Oak Island than be stuck on a ship with you.”
The two glowered at each other in a test of wills. After what seemed like an eternity, Black Douglas cracked a patronizing smile and backed off. “Princess Sarah, you of all people should know how important it is to maintain the Magdalene bloodline. With your brother gone, the life of a Sinclair princess becomes all the more important to the continuation of the Order. You must live and have children. Therefore, it will be my great honour to help you achieve such a noble task.”
Sarah recoiled, stunned by his words. “What is your twisted mind suggesting? That I marry you?”
He closed in on the princess until his callous stare filled her vision. “It’s destiny that has brought us together, Sarah. Consider it. We have an opportunity to combine the two greatest Scottish bloodlines into the most powerful clan our nation has ever seen. The great honour of bearing my children and being the wife of the future king of Scotland will be yours and yours alone.”
Sarah’s expression evolved from disbelief to a calm defiance. She leaned ever closer until their noses touched and her gaze bore into the dark abyss of his icy stare.
“Go to hell.”
He blinked in shock, then slowly backed away. Without warning, a heavy backhand caught Sarah just above the ear, causing her head to snap viciously sideways. A searing explosion erupted in her head as she crumpled into unconsciousness. Black Douglas smiled at the young woman, hanging slumped between his two henchmen.
“My, she is a feisty one.”
“What shall we do with her?” asked MacDonald.
“She is obviously overcome with grief at the death of her brother. Carry her to her ship, then gag her and tie her to her bed. Post a guard outside of her room to ensure she is not disturbed by anyone. We cannot afford any more of her interference.”
MacDonald nodded. “Aye, Grand Master.”
Black Douglas helped himself to a bottle of whiskey as the limp princess was removed from the tent. Putting the narrow neck of the bottle to his lips, he allowed the brown drink to smoulder in his mouth before throwing it back as he reviewed the events of the day. Prince Henry was dead. Black Douglas was now Grand Master of the Templar Order, and Princess Sarah was going to provide him with a strong royal bloodline.
He held the bottle up to the heavens, curling his mustache with
a satisfied grin.
“Here is to the best day of my life.”
Twenty
Ow! That hurts! Stop!” Na’gu’set stopped pushing. After edging their way through the damp narrow shaft for what seemed like countless hours, Connor and Na’gu’set had come to their tightest constriction yet. The unending darkness did not help Connor’s growing fear of death. He could not turn, stretch, bend or even cough without banging up against the rough confines of the floodway. The tight walls were beginning to feel more and more like the inner lining of his own coffin. He would surely have lost his mind in the crushing blackness if it had not been for the companionship of Na’gu’set. Although quiet for the most part, Na’gu’set’s calm, encouraging words at his most frustrating moments always helped Connor back away from the edge of panic.
It was two days since the scraping noises from the surface had mysteriously ceased. Knowing their slim chance of rescue from above had all but vanished, the men had sombrely refocused their efforts on once again breaking through to the floodway. It was now their only chance for survival. A mild victory was achieved when they did finally crack through the bottom of the stone floodway, but everyone knew that the real challenge was at hand. Prince Henry, Antonio and Angus warmly embraced Connor and Na’gu’set, the slenderest members of the party, before they hoisted their greased and half-naked bodies up into the cramped floodway. Na’gu’set had been right that any loose clothing would get snagged on the rough surface. It was Angus’s last glance, however, that still haunted Connor’s memory. It was the heart-wrenching glance of a final goodbye. Everyone realized this was a desperate act bordering on suicide, but no one would dare utter such a thought. Firmly pinned in the tunnel and barely able to breathe, Connor grimaced as he realized that Angus might have correctly predicted the outcome of this desperate folly.
“I . . . I can’t breathe,” gasped Connor, his voice muffled by the ring of rock pinning his chest.
“But you are almost through,” encouraged Na’gu’set.
“But it constricts further,” argued Connor. “I don’t think I can do it.”
There was a pause.
“Do we go back?” asked Na’gu’set.
Connor managed a wheezing sigh. “Nae. I’d rather die trying to move forward in an attempt to rescue my friends than to live an extra couple of days in that underground tomb.”
Na’gu’set placed a comforting hand on Connor’s calf. “Then this is what you must do. When I say, you must blow out all of the air from your lungs. Grab hold of something, anything on the other side then pull with all of your strength. I will push as hard as I can on your feet. The oil that Antonio put on your body should help you slide through the narrow part.”
Connor thought back to when he had stripped down to only his breeches and allowed Antonio to slather him in lamp oil. At the time, he had thought it was a ridiculous idea. How tight could the shaft get? Now he could only hope that Antonio’s idea of greasing him up like a stuck pig would make the difference.
“Aye, Na’gu’set. I’m ready.”
“Wiggle your toes when you are completely out of air,” Na’gu’set instructed.
Connor didn’t have to blow for long. The rocks were already constricting his breathing so much that it only took a second for the air to run out. He wiggled his toes. Grabbing onto a seam in the shaft, he pulled. A sharp, searing pain erupted from either side of his chest. If he had any air left in his lungs, he would have cried out in anguish as his ribs cracked, the sharp noise echoing in the floodway. Suddenly, Connor shot forward a couple of feet. He came to rest in a slightly wider cavity. Gritting his teeth, he allowed the tears to flow freely as his sides ignited with fiery pain.
“Connor! Are you hurt?”
“I think I cracked my ribs,” Connor groaned, “but I am through.” He tried to regain control of the pain in the still darkness as both young men contemplated their situation.
“You are thinner than I,” said Na’gu’set, finally. “I don’t think I can follow you any further. Can you go the rest of the way on your own?”
His aching sides were crying “No!” but there was no turning back now. He forced himself to ignore the fire in his ribs as he slid forward several more inches. “I reckon so.”
“Then may the Great Manitou be with you, Connor. Here. Take the rest of my water. You will need it when you reach the end.”
An invisible hand tapped his foot through the opening. Connor reached back and took the small water skin from his friend.
“Thank you, but what are you going to do?”
“I will slide backwards to the narrower passage behind us and try moving in that direction. We must hurry, Connor. Prince Henry said that we do not have much time. They will be setting the traps very soon, which will put our floodway permanently underwater.”
“Then I will see you on the other side,” replied Connor.
Gritting his teeth against the searing pain from his ribs, Connor looked into the nothingness that lay ahead. Grabbing hold of a crack in the floodway, he slid himself forward a few more inches.
Robertson was furious.
“We told Grand Master Douglas that the culverts would be flooded yesterday! At this pace, we’ll be lucky if we even get a crack in the coffer dam by sunset! For the love of God, put your backs into it so that we can all go home and see our families!”
Robertson stood at the highest point of the curved coffer dam looking back at the shore line. Huge jets of spray shot up into the air behind the dam, giving the disgruntled foreman the appearance of an angry sea god. Robertson, however, cursed the strong winds and huge ocean waves that had delayed his efforts to finish the project. Unfortunately, this dam had not been designed to collapse quickly like the one on the other side of the island. Bringing this one down had required hours of backbreaking work and excavation to ensure that several seasons of Atlantic storms would remove any evidence of the dam’s existence.
“You know we want to get back to our families as badly as you, Master Robinson,” piped a filthy worker. “But we can’t help the weather. If we had been out here yesterday, half of the crew would have been swept out to sea!”
Red-faced, Robertson screamed, “Instead of flapping your lips, why not put your energy into tearing down the dam!”
Although he was bellowing like a madman, Robertson was indeed enjoying the moment. Black Douglas had put him in charge of the whole operation. With the death of Prince Henry, Black Douglas had decided to sail ahead to New Jerusalem with Princess Sarah. The vast majority of the sappers, craftsmen, engineers and designers were already en route for Europe. Robertson was left in charge of the final ship and a skeleton crew of workers to finish the job at Oak Island before sailing home to Scotland.
The temporary town of tents had been taken down, the remaining acorns had been planted in the open fields and all that was left to do was reduce the two coffer dams to sea level. The natural eroding action of the waves would handle the rest. Robertson looked around the island with satisfaction. In twenty years, no one would ever know that one of the greatest engineering feats in the world lay underneath this tiny island.
He glanced skywards. The high position of the sun told him it was just after midday. He felt that if the weather did not get any worse, they could finish the job of breaking down the dam and setting the ingenious trap before sundown. Then it would take just another two days to finish off the remnants of the second dam that once protected the entrance to the Temple. By the end of the week, they could all go home.
The thoughts of welcoming women, mutton and freshly brewed ale beckoned him from beyond the horizon. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and inspected the five stone culverts that fanned out into the bay. Once in the sea, the culverts would run saltwater to the trap above the temple.
“Easy, lassie,” he mumbled to his masterpiece of engineering. It looked like the hand of a stone giant resting in the mud of the bay. “You will get the chance to soak your fingernails in just a little while.”
His daydream of success was broken by a sudden commotion. A young worker’s leg was pinned by the tumbling of a large boulder. The worker was screaming, and several men were running to his assistance. Robertson was just about to chastise the clumsy oaf for furthering the delay of their departure when a slight movement at the opposite side of the bay caught his eye. Something was happening at the end of the middle finger of the culvert. The exotic stuffing of coconut husks that Prince Henry had discovered in the warm southern waters of this new land was a perfect filter for the culvert. The husks amazingly refused to rot in salt water. But something was pushing the husks out of the end of the floodway tunnel! For a second, Robertson thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, but then he saw the husks move again.
“Bloody varmints,” spat Robertson to himself. “One of those stupid groundhogs must have got caught.”
Robertson watched with disgust as the husks were pushed further out of the pipe. Then the unimaginable happened. Instead of the head of a large, furry creature appearing in the gap, a human hand reached through the muck and into the bright sunshine!
“Impossible!” Robertson gasped as he broke into a run along the top of the coffer dam.
“Stay with that injured man!” he shouted down to the crowd below. “I’ll go and get more help!”
Robertson watched in horror as a head, then shoulder and finally a body oozed out from the culvert. Although soiled from head to toe, Robertson recognized the figure at once. It was the boy from the Kirkwall sea fortress! He had been trapped with Prince Henry within the underground temple.
“Good God,” he hissed, as he broke into a sprint, “that means they’re still alive!”
Connor, blinded by the sudden brilliance of the sun, stopped and sucked in a glorious lungful of fresh sea air. After weeks of darkness, he had never experienced anything as wonderful as this moment. It was as if he had been reborn! Sea spray tickled his face, and the boom of the breakers on the rocks echoed right down to the bottom of his soul. Praise God, he had made it!
Betrayed Page 15
