by Sean Ellis
“Stop here,” Leeds announced after directing her to turn into a typically nondescript suburban cul-de-sac.
Elisabeth eased the sedan to the curb and Leeds promptly got out, protectively cradling his injured right hand, but otherwise moving with his usual self-assuredness. She hastened after him, catching him just as he turned up a concrete path to the front door of a rambling ranch-style home that had seen better days. Without preamble, Leeds stabbed a finger at the doorbell, then impatiently rapped the knuckles of his left hand against the doorframe.
A dog began barking from somewhere inside the house, followed by gruff commands from its owner. The door swung open a moment later to reveal a stocky middle-aged man who studied them carefully through the screen-door—Elisabeth noted that his gaze lingered appreciatively on her—before speaking. “Can I help you folks?”
“I am Dr. John Leeds.” There was, at last, the barest hint of discomfort, or perhaps it was urgency, in his tone. “This is Elisabeth. I have been told that you are a physician. I have been injured...” He held up his right hand, and the movement caused a fat drop of blood to spatter on the concrete at his feet. “I require medical attention.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Well, goddamn...Why did you come here? You should get to the emergency room!”
Leeds pitched his voice low. “This is a bullet wound. I cannot seek treatment through the normal channels. I was assured that you could help me...Dr. Ayak.”
The man went instantly pale. For a moment, he appeared unable to do anything but stare at them, but then he furtively opened the screen and stepped out, pulling both doors shut behind him. When he spoke again, it was in a low hiss. “Now what the devil are you playing at, here? You folks reporters?”
For the first time since she’d been with him, Elisabeth saw Leeds taken aback. “I—we are not.”
“Read about ‘Ayak’ on the Internet, did you?”
Elisabeth couldn’t tell if the man was taunting them, or making a sincere inquiry.
Leeds inclined his head. “It would appear that I was misinformed. I apologize for disturbing you.”
The man snaked a hand out abruptly and snared Leeds’ shoulder before he could turn. He held the occultist, staring into his eyes for a moment, and then seemed to reach a conclusion.
“We don’t use that secret language bullshit no more. It’s the goddamned twenty-first century, you know.” He gave a weary sigh, and then beckoned them to enter the house. “Unless that’s cherry pie filling you’re dripping on the ground, it’s plain to see you’re hurt. Come on in and I’ll have a look.”
As they followed him inside, the man called out, “Louise, there’s some folks come to speak with me in private. Why don’t you go watch the ‘Wheel’ in your bedroom.”
There was a sound of movement from somewhere in the house, and an abrupt silence when a television set was switched off, but the man said nothing more as he led his guests through a formal dining room, and into a neatly arranged kitchen.
“Put your hand over the sink, and let’s see what bit you.”
Leeds complied, and gingerly began unwrapping the cloth. Elisabeth gasped involuntarily as she saw the ragged wound—raw red, speckled with grisly bits of yellow and white, surrounded by swollen purple skin. It looked as though his hand had been nearly amputated, just above the palm. His fingers flopped uselessly across the back of his hand, one of them still adorned with the gaudy Ouroboros ring.
Their host also looked a little shaken by what was revealed. He shook his head. “There’s not a lot I can do for you. You don’t go to the hospital, and those fingers are as good as gone. Not even sure they can save ‘em for you.”
“Then I have no further use for them,” Leeds replied, his earlier dispassion once more in evidence. “‘If thine hand offends thee, cut it off.’”
The man gave a disbelieving chuckle. “Well. You’re a God-fearing man, then. Let me get my bag.”
As the man headed for the exit, Leeds called out to him. “Time is of the essence, doctor. Before you proceed, I must ask that you put me in contact with the Circle.”
The doctor froze in mid-step, and turned around, his face twisted with the same suspicion that had originally greeted them. “Mister, I don’t know who you think I am—”
“You are part of an ancient and honored rite of brotherhood, a circle of men who stand in defense of the Invisible Empire. As am I. In the name of our shared bond, I call upon you in my hour of need.”
Elisabeth thought Leeds’ pronouncement sounded rehearsed, but then she felt that way about him most of the time. As an actor, she had an ear for such things, and to her, Leeds seemed always to be playing from some carefully prepared script. Yet, as she listened to what he was saying, the full impact of his words hit home.
The Circle...oh, God, what have I gotten into?
“Mister...what did you say your name was?”
“Dr. John Leeds.”
“Dr. Leeds, then. You obviously know a thing or two about me, and in the name of whatever it is you think we share, I’m gonna do what I can to fix up your hand. But let me set you straight about something. Any ‘brotherhood’ I might belong to? That’s got nothing to do with ancient rites or any of that mumbo jumbo. I wear the sheet—yes, I’ll admit it—but only because I’m not about to stand idly by while the country I love is being taken over by a bunch of Jews and niggers and spics.”
Elisabeth winced visibly at the slurs, and immediately felt a flush of fear at having betrayed herself with the reaction.
Leeds again seemed uncharacteristically rattled by this development, but quickly recovered his composure. “It just so happens that a particular nigger is responsible for my injuries. I was hoping that you and your brothers could help me with...a little payback?”
The man stared back through narrowed eyes. “Mister...excuse me, Doctor, this here’s the twenty-first century. We don’t do that lynch mob shit no more. We can’t afford to, if you take my meaning.” He paused and took a breath. “However, I may know a few good ol’ boys who aren’t as, shall we say, scrupulous? They don’t care nothing about rites or ancient mystic brotherhoods neither, but for the right price, I reckon they’d do most anything you want.”
Leeds gripped the man’s forearm with his good hand. “Make the call.”
* * *
Joe stood up and crossed to what looked at first glance like a side table. He removed the various decorative accouterments, and Kismet saw that the table was actually an old steamer trunk. Joe unlocked it and threw back the lid to reveal several stacks of leather bound books.
“Here,” Joe said without looking at Kismet. “Is everything we know about Hernando Fontaneda.”
It had not escaped Kismet’s notice that Joe had been consistently using the Spanish form of the name. He rose from his chair and went to stand beside the young man.
“These are Fontaneda’s diaries.”
The volumes might have been from a museum exhibit on the history of bookbinding. Those in the stack on the far left looked rough, hand sewn, while those on the right appeared to have been fashioned using modern—or at least twentieth century—techniques. Kismet gently picked up a book from the left hand stack and opened it.
The old binding creaked in his hands. The thin vellum pages were brittle and the ink had gone blurry in places. There was no question that the book was hundreds of years old, but if he needed any further evidence of that, he found it on the first page; a date:
Anno Domini 14, Junio 1645
The book was written entirely in Castilian Spanish, a language that normally would have posed little difficulty for Kismet. The script however was elaborate and spidery, and like so many writings of that era, the text was rife with grammatical errors and inconsistent spelling. The prose was rambling and disjointed, as if the author had been having trouble keeping the sequence of events straight. Nevertheless, it took only a few minutes of reading for him to begin painting a picture of the life of Hernando Fontaneda and his f
our hundred and fifty year old secret.
In the year 1549, the ship carrying young Hernando De Escalante Fontaneda wrecked on the Florida coast. The survivors were captured by Indians who proceeded to sacrifice them all, except for Fontaneda, who somehow learned enough of their language to be useful. During the seventeen years that followed, he learned several native dialects and served as a translator for the Calusa king, Carlos.
Kismet was already familiar with much of the story; Fontaneda’s memoir of his captivity was a matter of public record. But the book he now read contained a slightly different recollection of those events.
During his time with the Calusa, Fontaneda heard many rumors of a magical pool capable of healing grievous injuries and extending life indefinitely—the very thing he claimed had brought Ponce de Leon to the Florida peninsula. But the pool...the Fountain...was far from Carlos’ territory. Fontaneda, a slave and prisoner, had no opportunity to ascertain its location, but he never stopped thinking about it. He even wrote about it in his memoirs, calling it the “River Jordan” and claiming he had never found it. He had even spoken mockingly of the many natives who had believed the legend over the years. ‘So earnestly did they engage in the pursuit, that there remained not a river nor a brook in all Florida, not even lakes and ponds, in which they did not bathe; and to this day they persist in seeking that water, and never are satisfied.”
The claim, written for publication in Spain, was disingenuous. It was true that Fontaneda hadn’t actually found it, but he knew exactly where it was.
Risking the last of his inheritance, he set out once more for the New World, and this time, he brought with him a small army, mercenaries all—outcasts and fugitives, conversos and Moriscos fleeing the persecution of the Inquisition, freed Negroes desperate to make their own fortune and avoid being returned to a life of servitude. The expedition debarked at Saint Augustine sometime around the turn of the 17th century. Fontaneda would have been about seventy-five, far too old to be tramping around the fetid swamps and jungles of the Florida peninsula, especially at a time when surviving to fifty years was an accomplishment.
At first, the expedition traveled through lands inhabited by peoples known to Fontaneda, and whose languages he spoke. But the Spaniard had not come seeking peaceful relations. His forces attacked the village where Carlos’ hoard was kept, and they took the treasure with them as they continued on, intent on finding an even greater prize.
For several days, as they traveled deeper into the interior, the surviving Calusa harried them but after a while, the Indians turned back, content to let the wilderness finish what they had begun. Some of Fontaneda’s men fell prey to wild beasts—panthers, alligators and poisonous snakes. On more than one occasion, the voyagers would awaken to discover some of their number missing, carried away in the night by unseen attackers. Later on, they would find the headless corpses of their comrades, a warning to the survivors.
A warning that went unheeded.
Eight days after the massacre of the Calusa village, their party now reduced by half, they discovered a village of natives living near the shore of a great lake. In the middle of their village, bubbling up from the ground, was a spring of water. The purity of the water and the abundance of healthy plant and domestic animal life, as well as the vigor of the villagers bespoke a single truth; they had found the Fountain.
Yet this spring was clearly not the source. Its potency was diluted; its power nothing like that of which they had heard. The villagers still grew old and died. Fontaneda knew they must continue their search. They entered the village, and demanded to know the source of the waters. When the natives were not forthcoming, the Spaniards slaughtered them and took to living in the village. Soon after, they located a cave entrance in a place revered by the slain villagers, and Fontaneda led the expedition into the dark entrance. The cavern was holy ground for the natives; no human had entered its depths in centuries. Not far inside the cavern, they discovered a miraculous chamber, where fire danced upon the surface of a shimmering pool. The merest taste of the water from the pool invigorated Fontaneda magically stripping away the years and healing his wounds.
Natives who had survived the village massacre fled into the forest, spreading the news of the Spanish atrocities. Ancient tribal feuds were forgotten in the face of the new threat, and several tribes combined their forces to make war with Fontaneda’s army, most of whom died when the attack finally came. Fontaneda and six other survivors fled back into the cavern.
They fortified their position, setting up traps to protect themselves, although none of the natives dared enter the sacred cavern. After a long period of time, they decided to venture from their refuge, only to discover that the village had been burned to the ground, and overtaken by an unnaturally dense thicket of foliage. A few of the survivors claimed that the ill fortune of the expedition was evidence of God’s judgment upon them; they were being punished for partaking in such an unholy quest. Had they not been warned, before ever embarking on their endeavor, that the search for life eternal apart from Christianity, was the search for the profane; the will of the Devil, not the will of God? Now, they knew it was true.
The discovery of the Fountain had indeed given them youth and virility, but at great cost. The restoration was useless as long as they were imprisoned in a foreign wilderness. Moreover, many that had drunk of the Fountain's water had perished. The Fountain had not proved to be the source of life eternal for them, but had instead caused death, and quite possibly, damnation.
The decision was finally made; they would return to the shore of the ocean and wait there for ships from the island colonies to arrive. Upon returning to civilization, they would confess their crimes, and remain silent before all others concerning the profane Fountain.
They attempted to reach the coast, but were attacked several times, and forced to retreat once more to the fortified cavern. In the end, only Fontaneda and two comrades, all of them badly wounded, reached the safety of the Fountain chamber. The sparkling waters were a constant temptation; they had only to drink of the unholy water and be healed. His companions held out, refusing the easy path of sin. Hernando however vacillated. Drinking from the Fountain, he immediately felt his body restored to health. His comrades died, cursing his weakness.
For untold years Fontaneda lived alone, at times lapsing into madness because of the virility burning with no outlet, inside him. His magically begotten youth would fail him from time to time, blessing him with long spans of lucidity, but in his weakness he would always return to the cavern, and the restorative waters of the Fountain.
As the Spanish increased their presence in the New World, Fontaneda gained the courage to return to his countrymen. The presence of fellow humans gave him an outlet to his carnal frustration, and his first return was blessed with over a decade of normal existence, married and living as he was accustomed thanks to King Carlos’ treasure stash, but never revealing who he really was, or the secret of the Fountain.
It was at this point that Fontaneda’s account ceased to be a reminiscence of days past, and instead became a day to day record of his life. Kismet, lost in the story, began skimming the sometimes brief entries and soon reached the point in the tale where Fontaneda had made his drunken boast to the colonial governor. The account was not quite verbatim with what he had read in the letter, but sufficiently close to convince Kismet that the author of the diary was the same man that Andrés Rodríguez de Villegas had written of.
Hernando Fontaneda born sometime around 1535, was still alive—still robust and vital—a hundred years later.
Kismet weighed this assertion carefully. He didn’t doubt that he was reading a contemporary account, written by someone living in the mid-seventeenth century. But it didn’t necessarily follow that the account was the whole truth. Fontaneda...or Fortunato...might have been a con man, just like many of the alchemists and mystics that roamed Europe, claiming to be immortal. Where was his proof?
He went back to reading, curious to see
what Fontaneda had done next. Not surprisingly, after fleeing Saint Augustine, he returned once more to his refuge in the cavern where he had found the Fountain of Youth.
From that point forward, through the end of the volume, the entries were nothing more than the meandering thoughts of a fugitive living in self-imposed exile. Kismet closed the book and reached for another, but then hesitated. It would take weeks to read through them all. He needed to get this collection away, find somewhere safe, away from Leeds’ relentless machinations. Unless...
Kismet turned to his hosts. “You’ve read these?”
Joe shrugged noncommittally.
“You said you knew about the Fountain,” Kismet pressed.
“He told us about it,” Candace volunteered. “I mean, back before he...”
She trailed off, but her meaning was clear. Fontaneda, the man who had later reinvented himself as Henry Fortune, had told Candace and her father, Joseph King, about the Fountain. Why he had chosen to unburden himself remained as much a mystery as his death, and Kismet was burning with curiosity about both of those questions. There was something more to all of this, something he was missing, but it seemed unlikely that he would get answers from this pair. “Did he tell you where to find it? Is that information here?”
His hosts exchanged a meaningful glance, and then Joe spoke again. “No. But there is a map.”
Kismet felt a thrill of anticipation, coupled with frustration at the young man’s evasiveness. “Where is this map?”
Joe smiled cryptically. “Like that letter said, he took his secret to the grave.”
“The map is buried with him? In his coffin?”
“Well it ain't quite that simple—”
Before he could complete the thought, Annie burst into the room, visibly alarmed. “Someone’s coming!”
