The Secret Keepers

by Trenton Lee Stewart

  Scarcely seen at low tide, never seen at high, Reuben thought, wiping his eyes again. Here, just where the rocks met the receded water, was where he must search. He switched on the flashlight—there was no help for it—and passed its beam over the granite forms bordering the water. Above the X, below the Y. His eyes darted this way and that. He had hoped the signs would be obvious. They were not. He forced himself to become more methodical. Choosing a nearby boulder with a distinctive jagged edge, he began to scour the lowermost slabs to the right of it, one by one.

  Each of the nearest three boulders seemed promising at first glance—each bore formations of barnacles and seaweed that looked, to Reuben, very much like Xs. But barnacles and seaweed would not have been counted upon, and he knew it. The fact that he wanted to see an X so badly meant that he was going to see Xs everywhere. Calm down, he told himself. This may take a while.

  And then, on the very next boulder, he found an X chiseled into the stone.

  Reuben nearly whooped with amazement. The X was about the size of his hand. It wouldn’t have been noticeable from even a few paces off. But there was no doubt that it had been etched with a chisel, the grooves not large but deep, and lined with green-and-brown slime.

  Now, he thought excitedly. Below the Y.

  Above the marked boulder were at least six or seven more before the island’s bank leveled off to flatter terrain. Reuben was sure he would find the Y chiseled into one of the lowest ones, since these were most likely to be hidden underwater when the tide was in. His search produced nothing, though, and he found himself searching the higher ones with mounting frustration. Nothing. He returned to the one marked with an X. What was he missing? Had the Y been painted instead of etched, then washed away by decades of surf? Should he simply start attempting to pry up every boulder above the one with the X? Time was precious.

  He studied the boulders with his flashlight, trying to determine which one might be the most easily moved. They all seemed dauntingly massive. And one of them, two boulders up, was not nearly round enough to get rolling downhill, which was probably his only hope for moving any of them. It was more rectangular in shape, and branched at the top.

  Like a Y.

  Reuben was furious with himself for not noticing it sooner, but only for a second—then he was thrilled, shouting in his head with excitement and scrambling over the middlemost boulder, looking for a good place to get leverage with the crowbar.

  As it happened, there was not just a good place but a perfect one. A slot had been chiseled into the base of the boulder’s uphill side. Reuben shoved the end of the crowbar into the slot. It went in almost halfway, then stopped and would go no farther. Its midpoint braced against a rock footing, the crowbar stuck out like the raised end of a seesaw.

  Reuben, without thinking, wiped his wet hands on the raincoat as if it could possibly dry them. He grabbed the raised end of the crowbar and shoved downward on it with all his might. With a great sucking sound, the boulder levered upward, revealing a foot-high gap. Globs of mud dripped and plopped from the raised edges. He couldn’t believe how easily the boulder had come up. Then he saw that its interior had been almost entirely chiseled out, revealing that what had appeared to be solid rock was, in actuality, a roughly hewn dome. That hollowness made the boulder far lighter than it would have been otherwise.

  The dome of rock was very heavy nonetheless, and Reuben’s grip was weakening. Looking around for something to keep the dome propped open, he discovered a groove chiseled into the rocks near his feet, just inches below the lowered end of the crowbar. Putting all his weight onto the crowbar, he pressed the end down into the groove, where it caught and held, locked into place by the weight of the boulder. The raised rock dome and the crowbar now resembled a gigantic version of a homemade rabbit trap, the kind a child would make, with a box propped up by a twig.

  Reuben shined the flashlight into the gap. A narrow stone chute slanted downward about the length of his body, then appeared to level off. Beyond that he could see nothing. He didn’t give himself time to think about it. He thrust his feet into the gap, then his legs, then let himself slide all the way in, his back pressed against the wet, flat stone.

  At the bottom of the slope Reuben found himself shining his light down a long stone tunnel. Here and there water dripped from cracks in the ceiling, which was high enough for him to stand up straight. Those long-ago smugglers would almost certainly have needed to crouch, though. And they would have needed to know their way around, for the tunnel, at its far end, branched into two.

  The rights are all for fools, mate, the lefts for those who know.

  With echoing, splashing footsteps, Reuben hurried down the tunnel and turned to his left. The next tunnel was shorter, and it, too, branched in different directions at its end. Reuben again turned to his left. And then, not long after that, turned left again. He counted his steps and counted the turns, but really, getting back out should be simple: he would just need to turn right at every branch instead of left.

  But where was he going? And how far might these tunnels stretch? Did they pass beneath the island, beneath the mud, all the way to the mainland? Or no, all these lefts should actually take him seaward, shouldn’t they? Reuben felt rather turned around. He paused. All about him, the sound of dripping water echoed off the stone walls and ceiling. The crashing of the storm seemed far away, a memory. He steadied himself, reminded himself that he knew the way back. Purely from habit, he took the watch from inside his raincoat pocket and checked it. Then he pressed on. Surely the tunnels couldn’t go much farther.

  And indeed, around the very next turn he came to a dead end. A stone wall rose up before him. The ceiling rose, too; Reuben shined his flashlight up as if from the bottom of a well. Iron rungs had been set into the wall—irregularly and not very generously, it seemed, for some had daunting gaps between them. Aiming his flashlight into the gloom above the highest rung, fifteen or twenty feet above him, Reuben saw an opening in the wall, like the entrance to an alcove.

  Aiming his flashlight into the gloom above the highest rung, fifteen or twenty feet above him, Reuben saw an opening in the wall, like the entrance to an alcove.

  He was close. He could feel it. In his mind’s eye he could almost see it—an ancient chest at the back of the alcove, brimming with gold pieces, the answer to everything. Reuben could fill his pockets. In minutes he’d be gone.

  This is really happening, he thought, his heart thumping wildly. You’ve almost done it!

  The first rung broke away as soon as Reuben put his weight on it. His boot splashed down into ankle-deep water. The iron had been completely rusted through. He stood in a puddle, looking down at the broken rung—and also at bits of other rungs that had fallen from their places over the years. No no no, he thought, frowning. He was too close. He shined the flashlight at the wall again.

  The next rung looked to be slightly less rusted. Or maybe he just wanted to believe that. Still, he had to yank his left foot awkwardly high just to get purchase on it. The rung wobbled in the wall, yet Reuben had no choice but to trust it. Shoving off with his right foot, then immediately pressing with his left, he lurched upward and caught hold of the next rung, which from the ground had been impossible to reach. He nearly dropped his flashlight in the process, but he managed to hold on. So did the rungs, though just barely. They wiggled in the wall like loose teeth.

  Reuben shoved the narrow plastic end of the flashlight into his mouth, clamped his teeth down on it—and suddenly all the experience of his boyhood took over. He was an expert climber, an old hand at negotiating tricky spots. The walls on either side of him were close enough to be of use whenever a rung was missing: here he found a toehold in the stone, there a handhold, and there again he braced the sole of his boot against a side wall and shoved himself higher. And when—as happened twice—one of the rungs broke loose and fell with a jangling splash down below, Reuben didn’t panic or drop his flashlight or even pause to look down, but fluidly shifted his wei
ght and continued to climb. He felt a familiar calmness brought on by concentration. His one discomfort was the flashlight in his mouth. His jaws ached, and it was difficult to swallow; in fact, he was drooling. It felt very much like being at the dentist.

  Soon, though, he was at the topmost rung, letting the flashlight drop from his mouth onto the floor of the alcove (for it was indeed an alcove, only a few yards deep) and reaching for an iron stake driven into the rock, probably for that very purpose. A good thing, too, for no sooner had he grasped the stake than the topmost rung, which he still held tightly in his other hand, broke free from the wall. Reuben tossed it down next to the flashlight and hauled himself up. He swallowed a few times, just because he could. He felt an urge to rinse and spit.

  Taking up the flashlight, he shined it at the rear wall of the alcove. No chest. There was, however, a dark metal hatch built into the wall. Reuben was reminded of the submarine hatches he’d envisioned in the floors of his dream house. He’d never actually seen a hatch in real life, but this one looked much as he would have imagined. The problem was that it was closed and, worse, secured in its iron frame by a thick, rusty chain and a padlock fatter than his fist.

  Still, he was so close. Reuben quickly walked forward on his knees (the ceiling in the alcove was low) and examined the padlock. It looked ridiculously old, and bigger than any lock he’d ever seen. It was spotted with black and green and was, in places, badly rusted. He yanked on it. The chain rattled; the lock held firm.

  He pursed his lips, thinking.

  The chain. A chain was only as good as its weakest link, right? Reuben began inspecting the heavy links of this one. Some appeared as sound as the day they were forged, but most were rusty. One of them was badly so—in fact, more rust than solid metal.

  Now the phrase Always bring your tools, mate sounded mockingly in Reuben’s mind. A second crowbar would have come in handy right now. Did he dare return to the oil house? How soon would the tide start coming in again? He glanced around anxiously for something else he could use. His eyes fell on the broken iron rung.

  Reuben crawled back, snatched it up, and returned to the chain. He began to hammer the rusted link. Clank. Clank. Clank. He misfired, scraped his knuckles on the stone floor, put them to his mouth and tasted blood. Ignoring the throb of pain, he went back to hammering. Clank. Clank. Clank. He was a character from Greek myth. A blacksmith in the bowels of the earth.

  Clank. Clank. Clank.

  The link gave. Not much, but his flashlight verified a significant crack. He could see all the way through it, a narrow yet undeniable gap in the metal. Reuben excitedly positioned this broken spot against the metal of the adjoining link, then took hold of the chain and pulled on it with all his strength, trying to force the gap wider. He rested, then pulled again. The link stretched a centimeter. He yanked at the chain viciously now, again and again, each time positioning the gap in the link to receive the brunt of his force. The gap widened a little more. A dozen more yanks, and Reuben suddenly lurched over backward. He’d done it. The link had broken free. He got up onto his knees, breathing hard, dripping with sweat inside the raincoat.

  “I can’t believe it,” he whispered.

  For here he was, pulling the broken chain loose, its enormous padlock no longer an obstacle. He checked his watch, tucked it away again. He grabbed the hatch’s simple handle and pulled. The heavy round door resisted a moment, then yielded with a shuddering groan, swinging wide open.

  Reuben passed through the opening like a mouse into its hole. The hatch gave onto a cramped stone chamber, scarcely half as wide or as deep as his bedroom at home, with a ceiling low enough that even he was forced to stoop. It was as damp as the tunnels had been, its walls spotted with fungus and lichen. Near the back wall a chunk of masonry and rock lay where it had fallen from the ceiling. Reuben shined his flashlight around. The only thing in the chamber seemed to be himself.

  He turned and inspected the wall surrounding the hatch. Again nothing. Yet his hopes were not dashed nor even diminished. He felt a confidence now, a certainty. He was the first to have entered this chamber since Penelope had locked the hatch behind her more than a century earlier. In Reuben’s mind, she had without a doubt left treasure here, and without a doubt he would find it. There would be a hidden lever, a stone to pry up, something. He searched the walls again, more carefully this time. Then he shined his light up at the hole in the ceiling. He saw damp earth and stone, a beaded spiderweb, and nothing more.

  Reuben turned his flashlight onto the fallen chunk of ceiling. It was about the size of a manhole cover and a good foot thick. He kicked at the rubble around it and found something brown and pulpy—a rotten stick of some kind. Whatever that was, it hadn’t been part of the ceiling; it had been on the floor. He shook his head in disbelief. What were the odds? Of all places for the ceiling to give way, it had to be directly over the only thing in the chamber?

  If it had been a chest, it was a small one, and more or less crushed now. Reuben set his flashlight onto the floor, its beam directed at the chunk of stone and masonry. He got his fingers under the chunk’s jagged edge and heaved upward. A brilliant orange centipede appeared in the light, flashed over the end of Reuben’s boot, and wriggled away into the darkness. Reuben’s yelp of alarm sounded strange in the confines of the chamber. Flattened, somehow, like calling out from under a bed.

  He got the chunk up onto its end and was ready to flip it over when it buckled into several pieces. Piece by piece he tossed aside the rubble, careful now where he put his fingers, always on the lookout for crawling things. There was a lot of rotten wood that appeared once to have had a specific form—a flat piece and three or four slender pieces. Not a chest. A stool, he decided, or a small table. And what Penelope had left resting on top of it was now mixed up with its remains and the ceiling rubble. A few sweeps of his hand and Reuben had uncovered it.

  It was a slender metal box, about the size of a book. Once gray, it was mostly black and green now, with patches of red rust. Reuben looked at it dubiously. Could it be full of jewels? It made no sound when he shook it, and now, finally, his heart began to sink. It was occurring to him that perhaps the reason he’d felt so convinced, so absolutely certain that Penelope had left treasure behind, was that he so desperately needed it to be treasure.

  “Oh, please,” he whispered. “Please be something.”

  The box was unlocked, but its clasps had long since rusted shut. Reuben took up a stone and broke them open. The lid remained stuck tight even so, and broke off completely when he tried to force it. Inside the box was a leather pouch much like the one in which Reuben had found the clock watch. The leather was stiff and unyielding; it gave off a strangely fishy odor. The pouch’s single clasp was rusty but still functional, and soon Reuben drew out a thin sheaf of warped, mold-spotted papers. He felt around inside the pouch to be sure. Empty. The papers were everything.

  Reuben squeezed his eyes closed, fighting back sudden tears. This was what had been hidden down here all this time—a handful of old papers? He wanted to scream, wanted to tear the papers to shreds. He had banked everything on the expectation of treasure, and now he had a handful of papers? He took a deep breath, then another, and then another.

  They must be important, he reminded himself when he began to feel steadier. They must be valuable. Reuben opened his eyes, and now he saw that he was holding a letter from Penelope. Her last one.

  Okay, he thought, his excitement quickly returning. Maybe she gives directions. Maybe she’ll tell me where to go. Flashlight in one hand, ages-old letter in the other, Reuben began to read. The letter was written in a strong, sure hand, with a general disregard for margins, its words often crowded up against the edges of the page. It read:

  My dear brother, if you are reading this, then I have failed in the task which I have appointed myself. Yet it is possible that you or another will prevail, and it is in this hope that I write you now. What I set down here you may find hard to believe, but you will soo
n have proof of my words, if you have not already seen it for yourself.

  Jack, you know I possess something which the vile Bartholomew desperately desires. Believe me when I tell you that he has worked harder and longer than the most diligent laborer, has studied far more than any priest, and has lied, bribed, stolen, and even killed—oh yes, and more than once, brother—in his feverish quest to claim it for himself. Reading these words, you may wonder at such mania for the clever little clock that has now—in the hands, I hope, of a good and decent soul—found its way back to you. For it is possible that neither of you has discovered the clock’s secret.

  Reuben had arrived at the end of the first page. Carefully he peeled it off the stack, the paper taking with it some of the ink from the following page. The words were still mostly legible, though, and anyway he already knew the secrets that Penelope, in meticulous detail, revealed there. He moved quickly on to the third page, where he was brought up short by the first line.

  Such a wondrous thing, and yet so wicked.

  Reuben frowned. He had not expected this.

  A long history of evildoing traces to the origins of this clock watch, this beautiful object that rests with such apparent innocence, even as I write, in the pocket of my cloak. It is important, Jack, that you know at least a part of that history.

  Early on in our acquaintance, Bartholomew related to me (and later he showed me in a centuries-old book written in Italian, and another in English) a legend of a brilliant inventor. His patrons were two noblemen of fabulous wealth, brothers whose riches were almost as unequaled as the inventor’s genius. Each ruled a small kingdom, and each was as vain as only the richest of lords and dukes can become. For these brothers the inventor created many extravagant contraptions whose workings never failed to mystify the guests of their royal courts, a distinction which pleased the brothers immensely. Yet the men were exceedingly jealous of each other, always arguing about who possessed the greatest invention and always pressing the inventor to create something superior to what had come before.