Tarver's Treasure

by Malcolm Archibald

  ‘When you were sick with fever, Jack, I would have liked anybody to help, and these men also have wives and sisters and mothers. Come on.’

  ‘What …?’ Jack could only obey, as Bethany strode to the nearest wagon. For the remainder of that day, as the garrison of Scylla marched out with all the paraphernalia of war, he was fetching water and helping Bethany care for a never-ending horde of sick and wounded.

  For every injured soldier, ten were ill with fever, and Bethany tried to help them all, organising work parties from any straggler who came to watch.

  ‘Where is the surgeon? You – attend to this man!’ Bethany was everywhere, one minute listening to the words of a feverish boy, the next washing the face of a tanned veteran or berating a soldier for clumsiness with a groaning man.

  ‘Bethany!’

  ‘Not now, Jack.’ Bethany was holding a man’s hand, as he told her about his wife in Lincolnshire.

  ‘Bethany!’ Jack saw the man lean up to impart some information.

  The man pointed to his arm, where blood had soaked the sleeve of his jacket and was dripping from his hand.

  ‘Wait, Jack!’ Taking the dagger from its hiding place next to her leg, Bethany cut away the jacket. When she washed the arm, the wound was wide but shallow. ‘Find me some cloth for a bandage, Jack. Badger the surgeon!’

  ‘Bethany! There’s a ship for Malta!’ Jack pointed to the glittering waters of the harbour.

  ‘And here’s a man in need!’

  Bethany worked with the wounded for another day, then a desperate hand clutched at her. ‘Madam Doctor!’

  The accent was east European rather than French, but the man was a prisoner of war, with blood seeping through the bandage around his chest.

  ‘Madam Doctor!’

  Bethany knelt at his side, speaking first in English and then in French. When he spoke again, she gestured for Jack to come.

  ‘Madam Doctor,’ the man said again, and continued in a torrent of French. Bethany translated, her eyes fixed on the wounded man.

  ‘He is asking where I got the knife.’ She glanced at the dagger with which she had been slicing shirts into bandages. ‘My husband found it,’ she said, speaking English for Jack’s benefit, then French.

  ‘Where?’ The man tried to struggle up, moaned, then sank back down. ‘Please tell me.’

  ‘In Malta,’ Bethany said slowly.

  The man listened, his eyes darting from Bethany to Jack and back. ‘You found that knife? Where in Malta did you find it?’

  ‘In a building,’ Bethany told him. ‘Was it yours? Were you based in Malta there before we took the island from you?’

  ‘St Alfonso’s Tower?’ The soldier slurred the words. ‘Did you find it in St Alfonso’s Tower? I thought we hid it well.’

  Jack would not have recognised the accent, but he knew the uniform to be Polish. He tried to control any excitement, for in the horror of the war he had nearly forgotten the reason he had come to Calabria.

  Bethany bent closer, as the man’s voice began to fade. ‘Are you Monsieur Sobczak?’

  The man looked up, a hint of recognition on his face. He nodded. ‘You know me?’

  ‘I know of you,’ Bethany corrected. ‘And you hid it well.’

  Sobczak whispered something inaudible before stiffening with a new spasm of pain. ‘The Knight gave it up, then,’ he said, his voice suddenly distinct. He looked directly into Bethany’s eyes and his jaw dropped open, as he slumped back down.

  Bethany stood up slowly, smoothing a hand through her tangled hair. She shook her head. ‘He’s gone.’

  She staggered back through pure fatigue and Jack reached over to support her. ‘You’ve done enough,’ he said. ‘Enough.’

  ‘The second key must be somewhere in St Alfonso’s Tower,’ she said, even as she slumped in Jack’s arms.

  Malta was busier than ever, with sick and wounded returning from Calabria, bored guards watching prisoners of war, shipping milling in the Grand Harbour and hurrying officials attempting to appear important. Bethany threw herself on the bed in Ta Rena, allowed Jack to remove her shoes and stared at the ceiling.

  ‘I feel as if my life is circling all around me,’ she said. ‘What with battles and sieges and wounded men’ – she turned her head to face Jack’s – ‘and a foolish husband who believes every fantasy that comes into his head.’

  Jack lay beside her, watching the pattern of the evening sun dapple the ceiling, as it played through the plants Bethany had placed on the window ledge. ‘What do we do next, Bethany? We can go for the treasure ourselves, or tell Mr Dover about the second key and leave everything to him.’

  ‘Let’s discuss this properly,’ Bethany said, turning over so she lay on her face. ‘We know that there is a treasure hidden on this island somewhere. Correct?’

  ‘Agreed,’ Jack nodded.

  ‘But we do not know where it is. Correct?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Fine.’ Bethany sighed. ‘But we do know it needs two keys to open it.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Jack began to rub her back.

  ‘And these keys are in the form of knives. We have one …’ – at which point she displayed the dagger – ‘and we have been told where the second is hidden.’ She turned towards him. ‘No, don’t stop doing that. A little lower, please. Lower … lower. Just there …’ She wriggled slightly under his hand. ‘Now, we are in a good position to find the treasure, Jack, if we only knew where it was. The question is: what do we do now?’

  ‘We find the second key first, and then decide,’ Jack said, stroking softly.

  ‘Decide what? Either we tell Sir Alexander’ – she eased enticingly closer to him on the bed – ‘or we tell Mr Borg, who does not like the British very much.’ Twisting her head, she looked up. ‘We have two other choices, Jack. We can forget the whole thing, or we can try and find it ourselves. What do you think?’

  ‘Don’t forget Mr Egerton and Kaskrin and that devil woman Elizabeth Baranov,’ Jack reminded her. ‘I doubt they’ll give up searching for the treasure, so we’ll have to get it first. I think we should find the second key and then decide.’ Reaching under the bed, Jack checked the priming of the pistol he had placed there. ‘And you missed out one other option. We could tell Mr Dover. He does have the best interests of the country at heart.’

  ‘I would prefer not to tell him,’ Bethany said simply. ‘So we have a bit of a dispute. Let’s find the key first, then decide.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Jack agreed. ‘I knew you would think of something sensible.’

  Although the road building was well behind schedule, Jack refused to leave Bethany to search for St Alfonso’s Tower alone. ‘Not with Mr Egerton and his friends still running loose,’ he told her. ‘I’m not chancing that again.’

  ‘And I’m not chancing you having any more silly ideas,’ Bethany said, holding his arm. ‘So we’re together in this at last.’

  ‘As it should have been from the start,’ Jack agreed.

  They checked the map first and found the island dotted with the names of saints. There was St George’s Bay, St John Square, St Julian’s, a host of St Paul’s, a selection of Santa’s, but no St Alfonso’s Tower.

  ‘Maybe it’s changed its name?’ Bethany suggested.

  ‘In which case we’ll find it in the reign of Queen Dick,’ Jack sighed. ‘God, but this is impossible, Bethany!’

  ‘I know how to find it,’ Bethany said. When she smiled, the mischief had returned. ‘Now trust me on this, Jack, and don’t say anything stupid.’

  Jack stared at her. ‘What do you have in mind, Bethy?’

  ‘Put on your best clothes, husband dear, and come with me.’

  The interior of St Paul’s greeted them with splendour, and the priest, Father Vicente, welcomed Bethany with genuine pleasure. A small man with a completely bald head and soft brown eyes, he spoke good English with a strong accent.

  ‘Ah! The engineer’s wife! And you have brought your husband with you.’ Fa
ther Vicente’s smile broadened. ‘Have you come to be converted to the true faith, Mr Tarver?’

  Bethany threw him a warning look. ‘Jack has come to ask about all the saints on Malta,’ she said. ‘I thought it best that a priest explained, rather than somebody else.’

  Father Vicente raised his eyebrows. ‘An interesting question from a Protestant,’ he said. ‘Come,’ he indicated a side door, ‘come into my inner sanctum and we can talk.’

  The room was surprisingly bare and businesslike, with a simple desk and two chairs, while a crucifix was the only adornment on the whitewashed walls. Perching himself on the edge of the desk, the priest indicated that his guests should occupy the chairs.

  ‘It’s not right that we sit in comfort while you do not,’ Bethany said.

  ‘It is as it is,’ Father Vicente said and began a long lecture on the importance of saints to Christianity, their place in the Bible and how St Paul came to Malta. Jack listened with little interest. Wolvington College had driven any feeling for religion from him by its rigid rules of adherence, but he could understand how other people found such things comforting. He noticed that Bethany was listening intently, nodding at all the right places and making small noises of agreement.

  ‘I see,’ Bethany said when Father Vicente eventually halted – probably for breath, Jack thought uncharitably. ‘So why are there so many different saints here? I mean, St Paul I understand, but why St John, St Julian and St Alfonso?’

  It was so subtly done that Jack nearly did not notice, but the priest did.

  ‘Alfonso? Have I mentioned a St Alfonso?’ The smile was still there, but the eyes were shrewd and questioning.

  ‘Did you not? I am sure that somebody mentioned St Alfonso. He has a castle named after him, I believe?’ Bethany gave her sweetest smile, but the priest was immune to such blandishments.

  ‘There is a St Alfonso’s Tower, but that is a name given in irony, rather than in ceremony.’ He looked towards Jack. ‘I do not think it relevant to our discussion today.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but now I am interested.’ Bethany never denied her essential curiosity. ‘Tell me, pray, in what way was St Alfonso’s name given in irony?’

  Father Vicente began to explain: ‘Alfonso Bellus was anything but a saint, Mrs Tarver. In fact, he acted like the devil incarnate. He was commander of a galley in the seventeenth century but rather than protecting Christendom by attacking only Mohammedan vessels he captured everything he could and enslaved what he could not kill. At first his disposition was overlooked because he was a fine warrior and useful when it mattered, but eventually the Grand Master published his name prae foribus ecclesiastiche and declared him guilty of heresy, blasphemy, devil invocation and maleficium.’

  ‘Oh?’ Bethany looked at Jack. ‘He was an out-and-out blackguard, then.’

  ‘A blackguard?’ Father Vicente sought an explanation of the term. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, a decided blackguard. But the proclamation was not enough and eventually the Grand Master banished him from Malta.’

  ‘And quite right too,’ Bethany approved.

  ‘Unfortunately, he did not go far. He left the shores of Malta, as he had been commanded, but only went as far as a nearby island, which he fortified and used as a pirate’s base. His tower was known as St Alfonso’s, but even today people do not go there.’

  ‘No? Why ever not?’ Bethany wondered.

  ‘Because it is a bad place, Mrs Tarver. There are tales that would frighten young ladies and stories of terrible things.’ Father Vicente lowered his voice. ‘Even the local fishermen do not go there because of the tales of devils and monsters that haunt the coasts.’

  ‘I see,’ Jack nodded. ‘Well, that’s warning enough for me. If the local fishermen do not go there, then that’s a good reason to keep well clear.’ He stood up and held out his hand. ‘Well, Father, we have taken up enough of your time. I thank you for your help. You have cleared up a mystery for me.’

  Father Vicente slid off the desk with the agility of a boy. ‘Whenever you want to come into the fold, Mr Tarver …’

  ‘There are a few islands off Malta,’ Jack said, as they stood on the Dingli Cliffs looking out to sea. ‘The largest is Comino, between Malta and Gozo, and that is included as part of Malta, so no renegade could settle there. Then there are the St Paul’s Islands off St Paul’s Bay, which are also part of Malta, and there is Fifla,’ he said, pointing to the largish lump that broke the southern horizon. ‘Lastly, there is that place there, which does not appear on any map I have seen.’

  Bethany looked downwards to a tiny islet, which appeared at the head of a spit of rock. Only a couple of hundred yards square, it was dark and ugly.

  ‘I saw that when I was surveying the road,’ Jack explained.

  ‘Do you think St Alfonso’s Tower is there?’ Bethany asked. ‘Give me your telescope, please.’ She scoured the rocky island. ‘I can’t see anything. Can we get down there?’

  ‘Not past the religious site,’ Jack said, ‘but there must be another way.’

  A mile further along the cliff, a path descended in a series of dizzying zigzags. Jack led the way, very aware of the sucking drop to the sea, as his feet slid on loose stones, and even more aware that Bethany had only thin soles on her boots.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘If I wasn’t,’ she replied, ‘you’d soon hear me scream.’ Her smile was unconvincing. ‘I can’t see anything that looks like a tower, Jack.’

  ‘Nor can I,’ he agreed. ‘You can stay behind, Bethany, if you like.’

  She shook her head. ‘And you can go to Jericho, Jack.’

  The path ended on a tiny strip of beach that extended along the base of the cliffs, with the sea hammering to their left and the rough, light stone cliffs rising forever to their right.

  ‘Just follow the beach,’ Jack said.

  ‘And I thought we could swim!’ Bethany sweetened her sarcasm with a smile.

  Composed of fragments of fallen cliff, the shore was littered with sharp rocks that thrust upwards, threatening to pierce their boots, so each step was measured. It meant that, though only a short distance, it took them over an hour to get there. But at last the point stretched before them, white and ugly under the burning sun. At some stage in history, the sea had bored an arch through the rock, which had collapsed, leaving the tip of the point as an island: empty, bare and stark.

  ‘I still can’t see any tower,’ Bethany complained. She looked behind her, along the empty shoreline. ‘Who in their right mind would want to live here?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘Who says that this Alfonso fellow was in his right mind?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘This is taking far longer than I anticipated,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to return in the dark.’

  ‘We will return when we have found the key,’ Bethany told him sternly. ‘And that could be midnight or broad daylight.’

  Along the irregular coastline of the islet, the sea was dark and warm, breaking gently against the rocks and hissing down to settle for the next wave.

  ‘It is completely different to our sea,’ Bethany said. ‘It hardly looks like a sea at all. It’s so placid.’

  ‘Until the monster gets you,’ Jack said, smiling at the expression on Bethany’s face.

  Away from the beach, the islet was more fertile than it had appeared, with patches of rough grass and even a small tree, gnarled and wind stunted into a half circle. The centre of the island had sunk down to form a deep lake of brilliant azure, and on the landward side were the remains of the tower.

  ‘There we have it,’ Bethany said. ‘It’s so battered that I thought it was just a large lump of rock.’

  The tower was two crumbling storeys high, with a broad base that slanted at an acute angle to the narrower top. The large gateway loomed darkly a few feet above the level of the lake.

  ‘It’s a sea gate,’ Jack said. ‘Alfonso would bring his ship right in here from the sea.’

  ‘How would he do that?’ Bethany asked, sarcas
tically. ‘Did he carry it?’

  ‘The entrance must have been filled up, but I’ll wager that at one time there was a channel from the sea to the lake.’

  There was a high banking between the edge of the lake and the gateway, so Jack clambered up, with Bethany only yards behind. He was unsure what to expect, but when he got there he found that most of the internal construction of the tower had collapsed, leaving a heap of ruins within a framework of bare limestone walls.

  ‘Where do we start?’ Bethany said, looking around. ‘We could spend a lifetime in here and find nothing.’

  ‘If you were to hide a key in here, where would you put it?’ Jack mused. ‘Somewhere easily accessible, surely, but not immediately visible.’

  ‘Under a stone, perhaps? Or on a ledge?’

  ‘Or exactly where the last one was hidden, perhaps? I would imagine the Knights were rushed, so would not have had much time for anything complex. Not with Bonaparte’s men knocking at the door. If they hid our key in the cistern, why not do the same here?’

  ‘If they have a cistern …’ Bethany sounded doubtful.

  ‘They must have. They needed water and there wouldn’t have been a well so near the sea.’ It was so logical that Jack did not explain further. ‘Let’s have a look.’

  Hot and humid, the rising southerly wind whistled unpleasantly between the ragged stonework as they searched.

  ‘Here’s something,’ Bethany said. ‘Over here!’

  The cistern was on exactly the same pattern, a large but shallow tank under the floor of the courtyard, with an entrance that had once been covered by a trapdoor but now gaped wide.

  ‘We should have brought a torch,’ Jack said.

  ‘Too late now,’ Bethany told him, cheerfully. ‘Down you get.’ She pushed him forward.

  With no mechanism to supply water, the cistern was dry, and the absence of a trapdoor allowed some light in, but Jack still felt uneasy as he knelt on the floor from which the clay covering had long vanished. Crawling on hands and knees, he felt cautiously for he-was-not-sure-what.