“In the sack you will also find a name and a place. You are not to try to discover who bears the name, nor go near the place until the venture is complete. Nor even then unless in dire emergency.
“Do you, if you should leave England, return to this same inn. I shall find you.”
“But, milady, I—”
Her hand pressed mine. “Take it. I trust you. Indeed, there is no other I can trust. Even you may fail me. But as you are alone and without family, so am I….Do for me what you can.
“This that you hold may seem much, though it is not enough for what I need. Not enough for what you need, either, although it is a step.
“Take this, and of the profits from the venture, you may keep half. That is all. Now go.”
Swinging down, I turned. I saw her face for a moment, but masked with a domino such as women sometimes wore at masquerades or when they wished not to be known. Her chin I saw, and her mouth. It was a firm little chin, and the lips were lovely. The eyes behind the mask seemed beautiful.
She waved, and then the carriage began to roll. In a moment it had whipped around a corner and was gone.
A moment I stared after it, then went into the inn and to my room. I put the sack upon the table, doffed my hat and coat, and bolted the door.
Then I drew the string on the sack and dumped the contents upon the table.
They fell in a dazzling heap, and one, rolling free of its companions, fell upon the floor.
For a moment I could only stare. Gems…rare and beautiful gems! Not less than a dozen of them.
Stooping, I recovered the one from the floor. It proved to be a ruby, and a fine one, too.
With one finger I separated them. Three rubies, all of fair size, four diamonds, an emerald, three pink pearls, and a pendant of gold set with amber and onyx.
I sat down on the bed. I was perspiring freely. For a few minutes I simply sat and stared, stunned by the enormity of it.
Nor was I mistaken. My father had owned a few fine gems and had begun teaching me about them when I was very young. These were, as nearly as I could see in the light I had, excellent stones. Several had obviously been removed from their settings, losing a part of their value, no doubt.
There were also three gold coins. They were all alike. Taking one, I examined it close to the light, but the inscription was in a language strange to me.
Again I stirred the gems with my fingers, slowly pushing them together. Ten thousand pounds? Closer to fifty. And I was to have half…of the profits!
CHAPTER 28
WHEN I HAD completed my account of the battle of Ivry and took it to Richard Field, he greeted me with the news that the Good Catherine had come up the Thames only hours before, and was even now about to discharge her cargo.
Taking my payment from him, I left at once. The Good Catherine lay but a short distance away.
The captain was a square, solid man and he watched me board. I went to him on the quarterdeck. “I am Tatton Chantry,” I explained.
“I know you. You’ve become a famous man.”
“It is not fame I seek, particularly that kind. Two things I need to know: the success of my venture and the whereabouts of Emma Delahay.”
“Your ventures,” he put emphasis on the plural, “have been successful. I am a cautious man, Captain Chantry, not a gambler as many in the trade have become. I trade in staples, in established items. I do not look for gold or gems, just profitable trade.
“I was instructed to continue to reinvest what you ventured, and have done so. Come below to my cabin and you shall see.”
We went below and he took from the grate a small pot. “Hot chocolate,” he said. “It is something learned from Mexico.”
“A habit I acquired in Spain,” I said.
He glanced at me under his thick brows. “Spain, Captain?”
“I have been a prisoner there.” Briefly, I explained the circumstances of my capture.
“Good! You are a man after my own heart. There is a time to fight, and a time to talk. You saved your crew, and you saved yourself. The ship was already lost to you.”
From a drawer he took a small book. On the cover was pasted a small square of paper. Accounts of Captain Tatton Chantry.
Opening it, he showed me in neat columns of figures the sum and total of my investments and how each bit had been invested. I glanced at the total, then I had to look again from surprise. He noticed it and smiled complacently. “That is it, Captain, nine thousand four hundred and sixty-two pounds.
“I might add that having your money with which to work has made it easier for me. There is no need to seek more adventurers to include their bits. I hope you will not see fit to withdraw all you have here.”
“On the contrary. I wish to draw one hundred pounds now, and a bit more later. However,” here I paused for a moment, “I think you will have no need to look for other venturers. I have lately been asked to invest quite a large sum, more than enough to supply trade goods for several ventures.”
“You wish to venture my entire cargo?” He shook his head. “I would not advise it, Captain. You know the old saying about putting all one’s eggs in one basket. Much as I appreciate your confidence, I would suggest you place your investment in several ships. I can recommend—”
“I was coming to that. I wish at least four other good, substantial men, such as yourself. And,” I hesitated a moment, “although you may not approve, I would like one other, one who is daring, one who is shrewd, but one willing to take risks if they offer a substantial profit.”
Before him I placed the largest of the rubies. “Do you know gems, Captain?”
He picked up the stone and took it to the stern light, turning it slowly in his fingers. Coming back, he placed it on the table between us. “I know something of gems. My estimate would be around five thousand pounds.”
I sat back in my chair. “Several such stones were entrusted to me, Captain, and I am to invest them as I see fit. The lady who entrusted me professes to know nothing of ventures or the like.”
“But something of men,” the captain commented dryly. “You have known her long?”
“I do not know her at all.”
He shrugged. “I have been at sea all my life, Captain Chantry, and have been in many ports and foreign places. I am surprised at nothing.”
He got to his feet. “Very well. I shall make a list of the cargo I have in mind and will bring it to you. In the meanwhile I will think of other ships’ masters who might be the sort of whom you speak.”
We walked out on the deck, and at the rail he said, “These other ventures? Must they be to the New World?”
“Not at all. In fact, I have heard of the Levant Company, who will trade to the eastern Mediterranean, largely in raisins, currants, and such.”
“I had something of the kind in mind. This other man, the gambler. He has been wishing to chance a voyage around the cape to India. He has the vessel, he has the crew, and he is an excellent seaman. I will arrange a meeting.”
After a moment, he said, “This woman? Would she prefer you not to gamble?”
I shrugged. “With you and the others whom you will find the chances are much in our favor. I think she would be willing to take a flyer…she certainly took a chance on me.”
“Not so much of a chance, Captain Chantry. She was a good judge of men.”
I wondered afresh. Who could she be? I knew so few women, but obviously at least one knew me.
Could she have been Emma Delahay? This woman seemed much younger, and more slender. Moreover, Emma Delahay could make her own ventures.
“Captain,” I said, “who do you think she can be? I mean what kind of woman?”
He stared at the crowds along the river front. “I have been thinking on that. She may be a noble woman who wishes to be wealthier, or one who fears the future. She may be a mistress of some great man who has been given gems and is wise enough to know that beauty fades but gold does not. Or she may be a thief using this m
ethod of turning her stolen jewels into cash. She may also be some fashionable bawd who realizes that youth fades and with it her stockin-trade.”
He paused a moment. “Or it may simply be someone who wishes to establish a tie with you. And there is another thought. It may be that some enemy of yours has deliberately given you stolen goods, planning to have you caught in their possession.”
He turned and looked right at me. “Chantry, to be caught with stolen goods could mean hanging!”
Suddenly, and with awful clarity, I saw it all. It was a trick! Not by Rafe Leckenbie, who seemed to have vanished, but his mysterious supporter, the man with the white hair and the cold eyes!
The rest of the gems were hidden in my room! Even now the villains might have come seeking them, and me!
“I do not think that is the case,” I said, “but for safety’s sake, I think I will accompany my venture to the New World with you.”
“I’d be pleased, but do you not return to the inn without looking about.”
Indeed I would not.
Two more rubies and three diamonds were in my sash, sewn into the material only that morning. The emerald, three pink pearls, and the pendant were in my room, but well hidden.
One day, years ago, I had been leaning out the window watching what went on below when a gust of wind slammed the window at me and I jerked back quickly, my fingers clutching the edge of the shelf on which I had been leaning.
My fingers had given a sharp tug at the bit of board that trimmed the window ledge and it had swung out, revealing a cunningly hidden compartment beneath it. From the dust I gathered nobody had opened it in years, and may not have even known of its existence. Possibly some mechanical-minded guest had contrived it himself for the purpose of hiding something.
Into that compartment I had put the remaining gems, closing it carefully and scattering dust along the edge. The window was rarely opened, I knew. The chances were that nobody now alive knew of the place. I had planned to leave the gems there but a short time. Now I knew it might be long before they were removed, for I had decided to remain aboard the ship, and said so to the captain.
“Let me take the other gems,” the captain suggested. “I will have our friends here to speak with you within the next few hours.”
Hidden in my clothes was the slip of paper on which was written the name and the place where I could communicate with the mysterious lady.
“You go ashore, Captain?”
“There is much to do, Chantry. Much.”
“I wish to send a note ashore with you. Can you deliver it to Saint Paul’s Walk?”
“Aye, I shall be nigh to it.”
From my sash I took a bit of paper brought from the table in the cabin. On it I wrote: All is begun. “Tell him who sent it, that is all.”
A week later, I was at sea, bound for the New World.
CHAPTER 29
A HAND PRESSED DOWN on my shoulder, and lips whispered, “Ssh! Not a sound!”
Confused, I lay perfectly quiet. The man beside me was Silliman Turley. Slowly, my mind sorted out the pattern. I was ashore in the New World. The Good Catherine had sailed off without me. Close by was the camp of the party who had seized the Spanish people of whom one was Guadalupe Romana.
I lay still and I listened. At first there was only the faint rustle of leaves overhead, the breathing of Turley, and then a sound of voices, not too far off. I could smell the damp earth, the rotting leaves. Near me on a piece of bark, an ant struggled with some tiny bit of fodder.
The voices came again, and they were very close by. “I tell you, there is nothing! She’s hard aground in the river and it will take high water to float her free. She’s made a little water and it looks like somebody has gone through her. Things scattered about like a search was made of what must have been the woman’s quarters.”
“Nothing at all?” The voice was faintly familiar. “I can’t believe it.”
“Like I say, somebody’s been through it. But then she never got where she is by herself. Look, Cap, that passage through the outer island is narrow, and you can bet all you’ve got that somebody steered through.”
“There’s nobody aboard?”
“Not so much as a rat. We went over her, stem to stern. The current’s not strong in that river this time of year and she had some tide behind her and the wind. She went into the river and jammed herself into the sand, hard and fast aground.”
“No sign of the crew?”
“Like I told you. I found a camp ashore. There’d been some men camped there but they’d been attacked. Savages, it looked like. We found eight dead men, dead three or four days. They might have been a part of her crew.”
“Why savages?”
“One had an arrow in him and the bodies were stripped and mutilated.”
There was a silence. “Say nothing of this to anyone. You can find the ship again?”
“I can.” Again there was a pause. Finally the second voice said, “Cap? Looks to me like you had it pegged. The sinking ship was a trick to get them off her and ashore while she was looted, only something went wrong.
“I think those men I found dead were supposed to get back aboard her but they never made it. Savages killed them first. Then the tide, wind, currents, whatever, moved that ship. Maybe somebody helped.”
Leaves rustled. They could be no more than twenty or thirty feet away.
“Do you believe that story about the other man? The one who was fixing their boat?”
“The boat is gone, you said. If there was not such a man, what happened to it?”
“Savages?”
“Mayhap. I like none of it, Andrew. There is much going on. The ship gone through, the boat missing—”
“Aye,” Andrew replied gloomily, “and the vessel of Don Manuel is soon to be here, if the stories be true. We must be ready for them.
“Cap, I say slit the throats of this lot, or take what they have and leave them to the savages. Then take Don Manuel’s vessel, strip what’s worth having from the San Juan de Dios, and be off. We are short of hands as it is and no need to lose more fighting the savages.”
“Andrew, I want those chests! Our information was good. Part of it was the girl’s dowry, part was to the King of Spain. It was placed aboard the San Juan de Dios. It was seen to go aboard. The vessel has stopped nowhere until now. If it is not aboard then it is here, and I mean to have it!
“Andrew, much is at stake. I mean to go back—”
“They will hang you, Captain. Sure as you set foot in England again, they will hang you.”
“Gold can buy much, Andrew, and the Queen needs gold. By the time we return the way will be smoothed, and when we proffer a gift here and there…do not worry, Andrew. I know whereof I speak.”
“We kill them, then?”
“When we have milked them of all they know. Someone knows where the chests are, and I think it to be one of these.”
“You would kill the woman, too?”
“Though she knows where Inca gold may be, what is that to us? They can move about in Peru, as they are Spanish, and perhaps they can find it. We could not move freely there, for we should be discovered and killed. Unless she knows something of the chests she is of no use to us, and could be much trouble.”
“You are still thinking of England?” Andrew said gloomily. “I still say you should find another place, an island of our own from which we can sail our ships. Even a place on the shores of France. I know a—”
“Talk no more to me of that! England is my home and it is England where I would be.” They moved off, talking still.
Turley lifted his hand from my shoulder. “I was afeared you’d come awake, noisylike. They was right over us.”
“We’ve got to think of something, or they will kill them all.”
“Aye,” Turley agreed, “a bloody lot they are! But there’s two of us—not enough to do much.”
We waited and watched, yet nothing offered us a chance. We must do something,
alarm them, create a diversion….Ideas came and were discarded, yet there had to be a way.
Guadalupe was alerted, for I was positive she had seen me, that her signal had been based on something she knew. There must be some reason for our holding back. I saw Conchita bring a cup of something, coffee probably, to Guadalupe. They whispered together, I was sure, although they did not seem to do so. Conchita left, carefully not looking toward us.
Soon Armand, the Basque, came to the fire and squatted beside it, taking a piece of meat that had been broiling. As he ate he looked across the fire and up at the slope where we were hidden.
Conchita had gone back to where Guadalupe Romana was sitting, and was straightening some clothes she had washed, folding them, taking her time.
Armand straightened up from the fire, wiping his hands on his pants. At that moment Felipe came from the trees bringing an armful of firewood. He dropped it, dusted off his hands, and walked away toward the woods past the two girls. Armand followed.
“Turley!” I touched his arm. “Look! They are going to try to escape! Can you create a diversion? Distract the others?”
He glanced at the camp, and then like a ghost he was gone into the woods.
How he moved so swiftly I could not guess, but suddenly, at least two hundred yards off, I heard the cry of a wolf. A long, quavering howl that rose, quivered in the still air, then died away. It was such a howl as made the hair stand on the neck. Even I who knew—or suspected—that the wolf was Silliman Turley, was startled.
An instant later a large stone suddenly landed in the very center of the fire, scattering burning logs and embers. A series of weird whooping calls came from the woods.
And below in the camp, all was turmoil. Some of the captors ran for their muskets, which had been left rather carelessly stacked against a tree. Others drew their swords, rushing to the edge of camp.
A quick glance toward where Guadalupe had been showed that she, Conchita, Armand, and Felipe had vanished.
Moving quickly, I took a route that I calculated might intersect theirs. I was not as good in the forest as Turley, but even the few days I had been there had taught me a little. I ran—as swiftly and silently as possible.
Fair Blows the Wind (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 24