Eleanor

by RA Williams

  ‘A navy man not a strong swimmer?’

  ‘Some of the finest seamen cannot swim a stroke. Incentive enough to ensure they are never so careless as to allow their vessel to go from under them.’ Bending his elbow on another Madras, he topped up his cup, edging ever closer to her.

  ‘We stayed with Titanic until the last. I lost sight of my aide when we went into the water. Never saw him again.’ Frowning at the fire, he took a long drink. ‘The ship took me down with it. I held my breath. Gott. It felt like hours. The lifejacket I wore saved me, returning me to the surface.’

  He drained the cup.

  ‘I came up beside two men. They pulled me to a lot of floating debris knotted in cargo netting. I was so cold. Felt my life draining away. There were others in the water: Männer, Frauen, Kinder. Their wailing. I hear it still. Yet the two men clinging to the debris behaved as though they were on holiday at the seaside, passing a flask back and forth. They offered a nip to me. I managed it down. Don’t remember what it was.’

  Wobbling to his feet, he retrieved a piece of driftwood and laid it across the fire. Before sitting, he filled his cup yet again.

  ‘I glimpsed a lifeboat in the distance. My companions wished to stay with their ersatz raft. They asked my name before wishing me good luck. I managed to crawl my way through the cold sea to the lifeboat. Thankfully, there was a German woman and her daughter on board, or else I would have surely drowned.’

  His shoulder brushed against hers as he tossed a twig onto the dancing flames.

  ‘So many dead that night. Then, the Great War came. More dead. Spanish influenza after the war. Twenty million dead. Our world devastated, and Germany destitute.’

  He stared into the fire.

  ‘Most of our Imperial Navy was scuttled after the war. What was left was handed over to former enemies as reparation. The Versailles Treaty said nothing about civilian schooners. So… now I command at the pleasure of a new German navy.’

  She stared at him. He was hammered, and she felt a pang of sadness for the man. But it was now or never, and as much as she empathised with Herr Frisch, she knew an opportunity when she saw one. She filled both their cups before asking, ‘What are you really doing down here, Erik?’

  He leaned towards her, his face shadowed by the crackling fire. ‘What are you doing here, Elle?’

  He was tougher than she’d thought. She pondered his question. ‘On this beach? Or on Adel?’

  ‘Both are good questions.’

  ‘I’m on Adel looking for pirate treasure, obviously.’ She took her time before answering the second question. Even she was not so callous as to wound him more. ‘And I’m on this beach with you because I choose to be.’

  The German gave her a boozy laugh. ‘I’ve never met a woman like you. So full of life. Optimistic. Yet you are cautious. I think this is what it means to be American.’

  She smiled, letting her hand rest on his. ‘I have a lifelong philosophy: getting out of trouble is far more interesting than getting into it. I thought I was clever – cleverer than most, anyway. But… in the last few days, I’ve come to realise I’m not clever at all.’

  The sozzled German stared into the bottom of his empty cup.

  ‘You looking for answers in there, Erik?’ She topped it up.

  He looked up at her. Their eyes met. He was not a bad man.

  ‘Flüssigmetall.’

  ‘Are you so pickled that you’re talking gibberish?’

  ‘Liquid metal.’

  ‘Like mercury?’ she asked.

  ‘Ja, mercury.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘I’m not on a surveying expedition.’ He took another long swig. ‘I have orders. The Reichsmarine have orders.’

  She nodded, moving closer to him, refilling his cup.

  ‘What are those orders?’

  ‘Not even I am so drunk as to tell you that. But—’ He drank.

  ‘But?’ She drank too.

  ‘Your ship. It is on your ship.’

  ‘What ship? On Adel?’ She felt excitement bubbling up inside her, but was cautious to let it show.

  ‘Nein,’ he replied, his words slurring. ‘Gott. I feel poorly.’

  ‘What ship?’ she asked again.

  ‘The wreck you have discovered. Griffin.’

  She kept schtum, but in her head she cursed a storm. Seizing upon Herr Frisch’s vulnerability, she propped him up with an arm.

  ‘Erik?’ He managed to raise his head towards her. ‘Those two men on the ersatz raft. The ones who found you after Titanic sank. You didn’t catch their names, did you?’

  ‘One of them was foreign,’ he said, trying to remember. ‘He was an Arab, I think. Perhaps Persian. His name – what was it? Mahmoud, that’s it. The other? No, I cannot remember it.’

  ‘Was he foreign as well?’

  Herr Frisch lazily nodded his head. ‘Ja. Britisch. What were they called, again?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who did visit the Jesuskind.’

  She stared at him in disbelief, and emptied her whole cup, straight down the hatch. ‘The Three Kings?’

  ‘Ja,’ he replied. ‘The Three Kings. Melchior. Gaspar. What was the other?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Balthasar.’

  ‘Ja, Balthasar.’

  ‘Balthasar,’ she repeated, climbing to her feet, a frisson of excitement shooting through her. It was all she could do not to jump up and down. Instead, she laughed. She laughed loud and she laughed deep.

  ‘Balthasar,’ she said again. Herr Frisch had seen him. After Titanic sank. He was real. Crouching down, she went to give Herr Frisch a kiss. She need not have bothered.

  His head was already on the sand. Lights out.

  Adel’s red mast light winked, a lonely picket in the sea. Elle felt a bit like that winking light. Alone. But also newly confident.

  Balthasar Toule had survived Titanic. And, like Adel’s masthead, he was out there somewhere in the darkness. She just had to find him.

  Throttling up the Chris-Craft, she hollered out a victory yawl as she crashed through the dark-maned waves. Henrikson must have heard her coming. By the time she let off the motor and drifted alongside Adel, he was standing at the port-side rail staring down at her, a swirl of cigar smoke hovering above his straw hat.

  ‘Gotten rid of Herman the German?’

  ‘Couldn’t handle his grog, so I took it on the arches,’ she replied, climbing up to Adel’s deck. ‘He’ll be wanting his launch back, I expect.’

  ‘I’ll buy him another. Hell, I’ll buy him two.’

  She noticed the two crewmen behind him shouldering rifles. ‘Big day?’

  ‘Big day,’ he repeated.

  ‘Me as well.’

  ‘Fancy a wager who’s had the bigger?’ he asked, the moonlight revealing his jubilant grin.

  ‘Show me,’ she replied. He nodded towards the foredeck. Passing the empty inspection tables, Henrikson stopped her before a half-dozen wooden hogsheads leaking seawater. Two other crewmen sat in deckchairs, Springfield rifles across their laps.

  ‘Expecting someone to rob the stagecoach, Sheriff?’

  ‘Can’t be too careful,’ he replied, prising off the lid from one of the barrels. She looked inside. In the darkness, she couldn’t see a thing. A bare bulb hung by a wire from the canvas awning above her head, and when Henrikson pulled its cord, it cast the hogshead in a pallid glow. The barrel was brimming with seawater-sodden sawdust. He reached in, hands rummaging around before striking upon something with a clink. He brought his hands out and slowly opened them over one of the inspection tables. Gold coins gleamed in the barren light.

  ‘Escudos.’

  She took one in her hand, looking it over. Rough-cut, it was stamped with an anchor on one side and a fort with a ‘G’ on the other.

  ‘Spanish?’

  He nodded. ‘From their royal mints in Guatemala.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘A load.’

  She looked up
at him. ‘Is that a scientific quantity?’

  ‘Two long tons,’ he blurted out with a laugh.

  ‘That’s the stuff,’ she replied, before looking around for her own discovery. She couldn’t see it anywhere.

  ‘You’ve tapped Griffin’s hold?’

  He shook his head. ‘A measly store in Griffin’s bow,’ he said, walking among the wooden barrels, each brimming with Spanish gold coins.

  ‘Value?’

  ‘Millions,’ he said, swallowing a laugh. ‘Tens of millions.’

  ‘Honduran lempira?’

  ‘US dollars.’

  ‘What an apple,’ she replied, unable to disguise her pleasure. ‘You’ve become a tycoon overnight, Skip.’

  He nodded. ‘I imagine we can fill another twenty or thirty hogsheads with all the loot down there.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful haul, but—’

  ‘But?’

  ‘None of it is Mayan.’

  ‘Come,’ he said, gesturing her to follow him to an inspection table at the starboard rail. A surplus sail was draped over something. ‘I took the liberty of having my lads remove the encrustations.’

  He drew back the fabric.

  Elle shuddered, staring at what lay beneath.

  ‘Remember the fragment?’ she managed to squeak out. ‘The artefact you showed me in the Abacos. The one you found on your previous visit here?’

  ‘Still in the hogshead of water in the galley stack, I think.’

  ‘Do you think it could be fetched and brought here?’ Elle asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  After he had gone, Elle backed away from the inspection table. Leaning against the rail, she sparked up a cigarette, quickly taking a few puffs of tobacco to settle her nerves. While she was off larking about with the German, Henrikson’s lads had removed all the encrustations, revealing a monolithic block within.

  Henrikson returned.

  ‘Here. I’ve got it.’

  He laid a wet burlap bundle on the table, cutting off its twine binding. Tucking his pocketknife away, he unwrapped the burlap, removed the pinnacle of stone from within and laid it on the table. It joined to the crown of the monolithic stela.

  Elle’s hands hovered over it, the separated fragment aligning perfectly.

  ‘Now then,’ Henrikson said, looking up. ‘Would you kindly tell me what this is all about?’

  ‘Something more valuable than all the looted gold you found on Griffin,’ Elle replied, eyes still fixed on what lay before her.

  Taking a step back, she took in the carved stone slab in its entirety. It was both beautiful and unsettling.

  ‘How tall?’ she asked.

  ‘One hundred and eight inches,’ he replied. ‘Precisely.’

  She tried to do the maths in her head. ‘Nine feet, right?’

  Henrikson nodded. ‘Is that significant?’

  ‘Nine is a significant number. Divide it by three and you’ve got a Triple Trinity.’

  Tossing the cigarette overboard, she lightly touched the intricate reliefs carved into the red sandstone.

  ‘I’ve never seen one like this. There’s a lot of variation in Mayan stelae, but normally they are of low-relief,’ she said, inspecting the three-dimensional block packed with Mayan boxed hieroglyphs. ‘The density of the epigraphy is wonderful.’

  ‘Can you decipher them?’

  ‘Hmm. If they were Proto-Germanic runes, then yes. But I’m no expert on these Mayan graphemes.’

  She looked closer.

  ‘Incredible detail. There must be all manner of information encrypted here. Red sandstone’s correct for the region. I’m pretty confident this is one of the nine stelae raised from the chamber below the temple structure in Copán.’

  ‘Pretty confident? Is that the scientific term?’

  She glanced up at him with a smile.

  ‘It’s been an interesting day, Skip. Give me a minute with this, okay?’

  Elle looked back to the stela before them, her hand running along the top, where the two broken halves met. It was indeed Camazotz, bat god of the underworld, dressed as a warrior. But he was not alone. There was another – a female with barbed fangs emanating from her sneering upper jaws.

  ‘Awilix.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A Mayan deity. Queen of the night. She is associated with sickness and death,’ Elle said, inspecting the skilfully worked engravings. Awilix wore a necklace of skulls, hands and hearts about her neck, a skirt of writhing snakes and claws twined about her feet.

  ‘What’s he doing with her?’

  ‘Giving her the Saturday night holy water,’ she said, her hands brushing away the drying sediment crusting the stela’s detail. Camazotz stood behind the queen of the night, his horn-shaped codpiece penetrating her.

  Taking up the bucket that was catching excess water drips from the inspection table, she poured it over the stelae to reveal more hidden detail.

  ‘Wings.’

  ‘Wings?’

  ‘Can’t be,’ she replied, voice hushed. ‘This doesn’t make any sense. Awilix is an earthbound god,’ she said, looking closer. But there they were. Engraved in the stone and plain to see. Featherless. Like a bat’s membranous wings.

  ‘Camazotz, sure. He’s the bat god, so I expect to see him with wings. But on a female god?’

  ‘Is there a goddess with wings?’

  ‘Can a woman really be behind all of it?’ she muttered to herself. ‘La Reine Blanche.’

  ‘The White Queen?’ translated Skip. She looked up at him. ‘I’m from Halifax. I speak French.’

  ‘Dr Mauss saw her,’ she said to herself. ‘In his vision. A Crimen. A white woman appeared, bringing predation upon civilisation. Then vanished. Crimen have wings.’ Feeling the side of the slab, she asked, ‘What’s on the other side?’

  ‘Ah, I think you’ll find the other side especially interesting.’

  Henrikson whistled for his crewmen. It required all their brawn to roll the stela over. Backing away from the table, Elle went quiet. Not because what she saw frightened her. It was familiar – all too.

  ‘That’s not Mayan,’ Henrikson said.

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  Undoing a button on her linen shirt, she lifted the fine chain she had worn around her neck every day for the past seventeen years, revealing the silver talisman. Taking it in his calloused hand, Henrikson stared at it before looking back to this ancient monument.

  ‘Well, then. Suppose I was right in picking you for this job.’

  She nodded, staring at the back of the stela. A Totenkopf grimaced back at them, its lithe body eviscerated, a river of maggots flowing forth.

  ‘Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,’ Henrikson said, slowly reading the Latin apophthegm chiselled into the stone.

  She pulled away, the talisman slipping from his hand, and stared at the life-sized death symbol. It was identical to hers, in every way but one.

  ‘Is that gold?’ she asked.

  ‘Why do you think it’s so heavy?’

  She touched the death symbol. It was cool, the gold as lustrous as the day it was set into the sandstone. Her fingers ran along its skull, down its neck to the shoulder, and then down its arm to the hip before reaching its foot. It must have been six feet tall.

  ‘Hollow?’

  ‘Most certainly solid.’

  She looked at him. ‘Solid?’

  He nodded as she returned her gaze to the stela, giving the symbol a knock. There was no deep echo.

  ‘Do you yet realise the significance of this?’

  He shrugged. ‘I know its value.’

  ‘To be clear, everything on Griffin came from the holds of Señora de Marisol?’

  ‘Yes. Morgan transferred the lot of it from the Spanish flagship.’

  ‘And everything on the flagship originated at Copán?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Where the Maya stelae were hidden?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, by compari
son to this, all your ill-gained lucre is worthless.’

  She went to the rail, staring across the channel’s calm waters. Henrikson joined her, offering a fat cigar.

  ‘That stela is going to rewrite history.’

  ‘Appears your theory is in fact…’ – he lit her cigar – ‘…fact.’

  She turned to stare at the stela again. Balthasar Toule’s death symbol stared back. ‘Expect the resurrection of the dead.’

  She began to chuckle. Henrikson joined in. A few more puffs from their cigars and both of them burst out laughing. Throwing her arms around him, she gave him a big kiss.

  ‘The old boys at St Dunstan’s can kush meyn tokhes!’ she hollered joyfully into the schooner’s masts.

  Henrikson choked on his cigar smoke. ‘Something still confuzzles me about the wreck, though. Hardly important now.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she replied, her laughter dying away. ‘Everything’s important.’

  ‘I’ve located fittings for twenty-nine of Griffin’s cannon. However, I can account for only twenty-eight.’

  He walked towards a mound of dripping seaweed piled on Adel’s quarterdeck. Peeling away a handful of malodorous mess, he revealed a cannon breech and pointed out a crown stamped into it.

  ‘This comes from the very best foundry in England. Made from brass. Only Griffin would have cannon of this quality.’

  ‘How many did you say Griffin had?’

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘One’s missing?’

  ‘Just one,’ he replied, watching her throw her cigar into the sea. ‘Hey, you just tossed a very fine Havana overboard.’

  Elle didn’t care. Her confidence was giving her a strength she’d not felt for a while.

  ‘I know where your missing cannon is.’

  The Papillon puppy’s tail thumped against the floor as Elle approached. Crouching down, she scratched his snout as he raised his head to her. Dougie Beedham, who’d been sleeping in his chair in the hotel courtyard, languidly opened his eyes to the darkness.

  ‘What’s all this then?’

  ‘Morning, Dougie,’ said Henrikson, chewing on the remnants of his Havana. ‘Excuse us calling at such an ungodly hour.’

  ‘Skip?’

  Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he squinted at the crewmen standing behind Henrikson. ‘What hour is it?’

  ‘Gone two in the morning,’ said Elle.