I spilled some of the musket balls to give myself more buoyancy. Trimming the diving bell was like operating the altitude of a balloon, and I hovered a few feet off the rock I’d initially landed on.
Then the current caught me, and I was pulled toward the dark opening. The barrel scraped a side, caromed toward the other, bounced again, and slid into blackness. It was like falling into a hole, with no way to climb back out.
But what was inside might change the world.
Chapter 38
I was briefly in utter blackness. There was a quick blue glow, as if a crevice was letting in light from above—was that where Jubal had taken breath?—and then darkness again, as forbidding as a sewer. On I swirled, bobbing in my barrel. I’d gambled that the rock was only a few hundred yards wide and that the cave couldn’t go far, but what if the ocean descended to the very bowels of the earth?
Only the need to bargain for my family kept me from panicking and signaling to be pulled back out.
Suddenly I yanked to a stop, and at first I thought my companions were trying to reverse me. I looked out my porthole for a landmark, but all was dark outside the little window. I had a faint glow inside my contraption from the bottle of fox fire, but it illuminated little but my own hands. Then I realized the trailing line must have snagged. I loosened my harness, plunged my head down into the sea, and reached outside the barrel with my arm to jerk. The line finally freed, and the barrel floated forward once more.
I hurriedly rose back into its air space and continued like a leaf in a drain, blind and stuffy. Then I slammed rock and could feel, with my feet, a cliff face. I was at a dead end, pinned by current. Darkness like pitch, my breath going stale.
I refreshed my air first, hauling in one of Astiza’s leather bags and bringing its stopper into my little air space inside the diving bell. I released the plug and felt my head clear.
And now, time to explore.
I released myself from the harness, took a breath, and swam out and upward, feeling for the cave ceiling.
Instead, I broke clear of the surface. I was in a grotto.
I sucked in air. I could breathe! The cliff where the diving bell had grounded was wet, rough, and silent. There was no sound of guns or sea. I felt until I found a ledge above water. I dared go no farther lest I lose the position of the diving bell, so I calculated the few feet I’d come, carefully worked my way that distance back, and felt the barrel with my feet. I reached inside my shirt for the white cloth, dove, and pushed its tack into the barrel’s soft lead. This would signal it was safe to enter the cave. Just as I did so the bell jerked as if with a life of its own and began to be hauled in by my companions. The quarter hour was up.
I swam to the ledge and hauled myself out. Let there be light.
Having learned my lesson at the battle of Vertières, I unwrapped an oilskin parcel with flint, steel, tinder, candle, and a phosphor bottle. I carefully uncorked the latter invention and withdrew a splinter. It flared just enough to light my fuzz of oiled cotton and wood shavings. Then I lit the candlewick, and shadows retreated even more. I put the wax taper in a crevice, seeming bright as a chandelier after utter blackness. The pool I’d emerged from glittered.
Finally I looked about.
I was sitting below a rock dome that peaked fifteen feet above the surface of the sea. There was a crevice above, an old volcanic vent that must be providing distant air. Everywhere but where I sat the dome plunged sheer into the sea. But behind . . .
I turned and jumped. An alligator crouched, giving me a toothy grin as if it had been waiting patiently for dinner to crawl out of the sea. Its teeth gleamed.
But this monster was golden, I realized, its eyes great emeralds and its rows of teeth quartz crystals. It was long as my arm. Behind, receding into the shadows, was a reef of gold and silver. I’d found a dragon’s hoard of necklaces and crowns, great silver wheels with mysterious writing, and sculpted animals studded with gems. On some the turquoise and jade was bright as the sunny Caribbean, and the workmanship as exquisite as anything in Nitot’s jewelry shop. There were also little hillocks of loose emeralds, green as a model of Ireland.
I’d found Montezuma’s lost treasure, or at least what was left of it. This remnant equaled the wealth of a thousand kings. Whole armadas could be financed, I calculated. Palaces erected, armies recruited, cathedrals built. How had the salvagers been persuaded to leave it here?
As if in answer, I realized there were adjacent piles of white, and I looked more closely. Bones, lots of them. Skeletons clustered around the hoard like soldiers at a campfire. Their skulls looked at the treasure as if in reproach, flesh and clothing long rotted away.
The Maroons had apparently never reemerged. Killed to keep a secret? Trapped by the current? Or sacrificing themselves to bury a discovery too dangerous to harness, as Astiza suggested?
Superstition.
All I knew is I didn’t want to join them.
I crawled to the booty for inspection. There were hideously beautiful metal masks, jade-tipped swords, and golden necklaces as heavy as slave collars. Golden toys rolled on tiny wheels, and simple cast bars of precious metal were stacked like bricks. I suspected the conquistadors had melted some of the Aztec art down for transit.
Finally there were curious triangular objects I didn’t recognize at all: sausage-shaped machines with delta wings and helmeted riders. They were contraptions different than anything I’d ever seen, except that they reminded me of the reckless canvas goose at Fort de Joux that madman George Cayley had launched into the air.
They were, in short, flying machines, or at least representations of one.
Maybe Martel was more than just a lunatic. Was there really enough detail to allow French savants to devise something to fly the English Channel?
I knelt as if before saints, overcome by the fabulousness of the find and bewilderment at its meaning. How and why had escaped slaves salvaged this from some storm-washed reef and carried it here for hiding? They’d avoided the temptation of spiriting it away and spending. Why? Had they no greed? Or had the treasure tricked and trapped them here?
There was a splash behind, and I jumped again. But it was only Martel, surfacing from the diving bell as lithe as a seal. He hauled himself up beside me, shook water from his thick hair like a dog (me quickly shielding the candle from this idiocy), and then gaped at the wealth of an empire. For a moment, even he was at a loss for words.
Eventually he crawled to one of the peculiar birdlike toys, gingerly holding it as if it were magic and might fly away on its own. He had an almost boyish look of wonder and triumph.
“I told you so, Gage.”
Chapter 39
I realized why no one had ever retrieved the treasure of Montezuma when I attempted to exit with a handful. The seawater didn’t dead-end in the cavern; it found another underwater crack and continued, possibly all the way through Diamond Rock. This meant there was a constant tide running into this cave, and none out. Without help, it was a tunnel of no return. No wonder it contained bones of the dead!
I plunged into the pool, strapped inside the diving bell, and jerked the rope for Jubal to pull me out, and that’s the only way I emerged alive. Escape was like trying to breast a river while encased in a sausage. My black friend had returned the longboat to its hiding place and swum to a perch above the cave entrance to handle the towline, but even with that platform he had to haul like a longshoreman.
His reward was when I unstrapped myself, surfaced, and held up a golden necklace heavy enough to make its wearer stoop from the weight.
“It’s really there, Jubal!”
“By Damballah’s scales, that collar alone is enough to start rebuilding my country.”
“Ezili favors us, I think.”
“Ezili favors herself, as our French partner favors himself. Everyone has their own dreams.”
Yes. Once we got the treasure out we’d have more temptation than schoolboys at a brothel. In the meantime, we all had to wo
rk on trust.
“I’ll swim this underwater to the buoy anchor, drop it on the bottom, and go get more.”
He pointed toward the sky. “Hurry. The weather’s getting worse.”
I looked. The sea was grayer, waves higher. I could still hear the artillery duel, but it was beginning to be muted by the drum pound of surf. I hoped our bomb ketch would pull away soon, before my family got hurt. “Maybe that will make it easier to sneak under the noses of the British.”
“Agwe, the sea loa, is restless. Something’s wrong, Ethan.”
“Jubal, if you saw the wonders of that cave, you’d realize that everything is finally very right.”
His nod conveyed doubt. “Why did the Maroons bring and hide it here? Why did they never come back for it?”
“They left their bones. We won’t.”
“Maybe we should just leave Martel now, and go, with the necklace and the longboat.”
“No, his men have my family. And there’s an entire treasury down there. This is payback for all you’ve suffered, Jubal: years of war, the loss of your lover.”
“I don’t think life balances its ledger.” He sighed. “How many trips to carry it all out?”
“Dozens.”
“I can’t pull that long.” The black glanced upward. There were flashes like thunder against the clouds, the crash of British artillery. “It’s too hard to pull you or Monsieur Martel through the tunnel so many times. You send him out next to help me. Then you fill a sack, tie it to the barrel, and we just pull that. We empty the treasure, you pull back this line, and together we transfer all the gold and jewels to the anchor. The last time you come out with the diving bell.”
“Agreed. I trust you. But you shouldn’t trust Martel.”
“Ethan, I was a slave. I don’t trust nobody.”
So we set to work, and work it was. I strapped myself back into the barrel and drifted into the cavern to inform Martel of our plan. I was amazed at how much shorter the distance seemed now that I had traversed it before.
Martel was at first as skeptical at leaving me alone with the treasure as I was of leaving him with Jubal. I explained that, first, I had nowhere to go without his help, and second, as we transferred I would be leaving him with the growing heap of gold. “But not the toy birds, or whatever you want to call them.”
“Flying machines.”
“Those stay until I come. And if you try to betray me or kill Jubal, you lose them. And remember, my blacks are aboard your ketch.”
“As is your wife and child. And my inspectors and sailors.”
“The only way this will succeed is if we all work together.”
“I’ve tried to explain that to you from the beginning, Monsieur Gage. It’s good to have partners, no?” And with a Gallic snort he plunged into the diving bell and jerked on the line to be pulled out, the water helping neutralize the golden alligator that weighed at least a hundred pounds and that he cradled in his arms.
I set to work before my candle burned down completely.
We set up an efficient system. Jubal and Martel traded tasks, one swimming gunnysacks of gold and precious stones out to our anchor depository, the other tugging on lines to haul out the treasure or to signal me to pull the empty bell back. With each relay I loaded a gunnysack with loot, hung it on the floating barrel, and watched it jerk away before returning empty ten minutes later. Slowly the Aztec hoard diminished, my labor as mechanical as if I were shifting coal. The hoard was only half depleted when I swam down to attach a sack and found a crude note that Jubal or Martel had tacked inside the air chamber before I pulled it back.
“Storm coming. Finish now.”
I didn’t argue. Yes, I left a dragon’s nest of gold behind, but we had enough treasure to buy Napoleon’s palace at Saint-Cloud three times over. The candle was guttering. So I took the flying models, tucked them in my shirt, filled the gunnysack with some last precious idols, strapped myself into the leaded rum barrel, and gave a tug.
I still braced for betrayal. If the line went slack from being cut, I was determined to grab the rough sides of the tunnel and try to kick my own way up and out.
But no, my journey went smoothly. Hands grabbed. I came to the surface with the last of the treasure, blinking away water. Light was rapidly failing. I heard no more gunfire.
“Did the British hit our vessel?”
“No, we would have heard cheers.”
The twilight was an odd, ominous green, and the swells were growing higher. It was so hazy I couldn’t see the top of the rock. I bobbed uneasily up and down in the waves, and I could hear our longboat scraping where it was hidden in the cleft. The air felt very heavy.
“Yes, no time for more gold,” I said. “When will the ship come back?”
“Midnight,” Martel said. “You brought the flying machines?”
“If that’s what they really are, yes. You’ll win my consternation if you make them into something that actually flies.”
“Your challenge is accepted, monsieur. French science leads the world.”
“You have the lunacy of a true savant, Martel.”
“And you the nerve of a good grave robber.”
Compliments exchanged, we swam to the tiny cove where the longboat was moored, hauled ourselves aboard, donned more clothes—I had a vest—and gobbled cheese and wine. Our bread, alas, had gone soggy, and I missed a spoon of sugar, too. Jubal eyed the storm while Martel tried to puzzle out the triangular objects, and I watched Martel. The first priority was to safeguard Astiza and Harry, waiting on the ketch. And then?
If all else failed, I still had the emerald.
I’ve learned to be cautious around my enemies so I’d swallowed it, in case Martel tried to take it back from me. To time its emergence correctly, I shouldn’t eat much anyway. So I dropped my share of the spoiled bread overboard and watched fish come to gobble.
“So can you fly to London?” I idly asked Martel.
“Look, here are the wings. And here a man sitting between to steer. This is sculpted from something the Aztecs had seen, I’m certain of it. But did the wings flap? This will require much study.”
“I’ve been on a glider that crashed. It would be a brave man who first mounts a contraption based on a toy.”
“I will be that man.”
Night came, and we lost all sight of Martinique. It was as if we were marooned, no stars overhead, the wind continuing its alarming rise. Surf was beginning to boom against stone. The longboat bucked uneasily up and down. Anchoring the ketch to scoop up the treasure wouldn’t be easy.
Time dragged. Were the French not coming? I’d row to shore before dawn rather than risk another day here.
Then there was a scrape above and bits of grit and pebbles rained. A hundred feet above a horn lantern swayed in the wind. “Look, a glim,” I whispered to the others, pointing to the light.
Men were working down the cliff. Had they seen us?
One if by land, two if by sea, the British were coming.
Chapter 40
Life is never simple. My captured family and I were now within imminent gunshot range of English, French, and Haitian rivals; the weather was deteriorating toward a real storm; and fish had gotten all our rolls. I was sticky with salt, windburned, thirsty, and weary. Any man who tells you adventuring is a lark is a liar.
“Maybe the English won’t see us if we row out to the buoy,” Jubal whispered back.
“In these seas? We’ll splash like a duck,” I said.
“They’ll see no more if we meet them with steel,” Martel suggested. He drew a stiletto as wicked as a warlock’s wand, and it gleamed in the night like a shard of ice. The bastard looked as anticipatory about sliding it between a man’s ribs as I do about stroking a woman. Our renegade policeman was a dog needing to be put down, but we could use his bite now.
“You’ve certainly more pluck than I can muster,” I said to encourage him. “Could you show us how to stalk, please? Jubal and I will guard the rear until Pe
lee heaves to. We’ll keep your flying machines safe as well.”
He looked at the lantern bobbing above. “I prefer that we cut English throats together, Gage. Just to continue our partnership.”
“I rather like the Albions, despite our differences at Lexington and Concord. They’re terribly earnest but have a dry sense of humor. Slitting English throats seems more of a French than an American task, don’t you think? Not that my hopes and prayers don’t go with you.”
“You’ll strand me on the rock.”
Excellent idea. “Not if you’re quick,” I lied.
But before Martel could demonstrate his assassination skills or, even more conveniently, be killed, more pebbles rained down and a shout came from above. “There’s a boat down here!”
“Too late,” the Frenchman muttered. He tucked his stiletto away, unwrapped an oilcloth, uncovered a brace of pistols, and tossed one each to Jubal and me. He took up a third, stood in our bouncing craft, aimed, and fired. There was a cry and the lantern tumbled, bouncing into the air like a meteor and then plunging in the sea, leaving us in darkness again. “Vive Napoleon!”
“Frogs!” the British sailors exclaimed. Muskets flashed above, and balls pinged and whined about our heads.
“Couldn’t we have discussed our strategy before you cried out like a charging regiment?” I grumbled.
“French élan, and a commendable shot in these conditions,” Martel replied. “Pelee will be here soon. Make them hesitate, Gage.”
So Jubal and I fired, too. British pistols banged back, I heard the richest variety of curses this side of a Portsmouth alehouse, and then we were all busy reloading. More lights appeared at the top of the rock, and a general alarm was raised. A trumpet sounded, and drums rattled. We’d spent the entire day slipping out treasure from under the British noses, and now, in the dead of night, we’d raised the entire garrison. Was Martel trying to get us killed?
“We can’t fight the whole bloody fort,” I said. “Let’s row for Martinique and you lads can come back for the treasure later. I’ll take Astiza and Harry and be on my way.” Leaving an emperor’s ransom hurt, of course, but I had my emerald on deposit.
The Emerald Storm Page 27
