Knight's Cross (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 3)

by Christine Kling

  “Piece of cake.”

  “Really? You want to take the helm and show me?”

  “Hell no. I just know it won’t be a problem for you.”

  “Okay, it’s time to find out.” Riley grabbed the winch handle. She pushed the button on the autopilot to start the turn and cranked in on the genoa sheet. “Head up to the bow and keep watch for rocks. I’m going to cut the corner a bit tight here.”

  Soon Bonefish had buried her rail, the sheets were in tight, and they were charging for the two-hundred-foot-wide channel. They would have to take it on the diagonal, since the wind wouldn’t allow them to go straight in. She pinched her up as tight as she could, and they just squeaked through.

  Cole came back to the cockpit and swung down onto the seat. “Nicely done, Cap.” He pointed forward through the spray-soaked dodger. “Do you see what’s just ahead?”

  Riley adjusted the autopilot to put them on the chart plotter’s route, then she leaned out to look around the dodger.

  In the midday sun, the golden castle atop the steep hill looked magical. The jagged edges of the upper battlements stood out in stark contrast against the cloudless blue sky. The castle walls appeared to flow down the hillside to the red roofs of the village clustered at the water’s edge.

  Cole slipped down into the boat’s interior and returned with the folder containing the pages Theo had printed out for them. It was much easier to look at the images on paper than on the tiny screen of Riley’s phone. Cole flipped through the pages to find the drawing of the castle, and then he held it aloft.

  “What do you think?”

  The drawing was an amazing facsimile. “I think we’re in the right place.”

  They threaded their way through the rocks, past a huge charter gulet boat, and dropped the anchor in about forty feet of water off the village at Kaleköy. Close as they were now, Riley could see the bright-red Turkish flag flapping from a pole over the castle. There were several small sailboats and tourist day-tripper boats tied to the docks and floating pontoons out in front of the village waterfront restaurants, but Riley preferred to anchor.

  She changed clothes while Cole lowered the dinghy into the water. She always chose to dress in long pants and shirts with sleeves when she went ashore in small villages in Islamic countries. Riley believed it was a sign of respect.

  Cole had the outboard running by the time she was dressed, so she locked up the boat, and they went ashore. They tied the dinghy to a half-sunk stone quay. Once on the dock, Riley looked up at the castle.

  “It’s amazing how little it’s changed since someone drew that sketch in the back of the sea atlas.”

  “Well, the sketch wasn’t really made all that long ago, in the total picture of things here. That was drawn just over two hundred years ago, but this castle was already seven hundred years old when the Silver Girl and her Knight visited it.”

  Riley asked an older woman in a long skirt and head scarf for directions to the castle. The woman pointed up a dirt track through some houses, and when they followed the directions, they found themselves at the tail end of what turned out to be about a dozen British tourists hiking their way up the steep hillside. Eventually, the path gave way to a wooden staircase. The Brits’ tour guide had come ashore with them off the big charter gulet, and when they paused for him to point out the view of the islands in the sound, she and Cole pushed their way to the front and trotted up the stairs without them.

  Riley was breathing hard when they got to the top, but it was worth it to have the place to themselves, if only for a few minutes. There wasn’t much inside the castle walls except for a very worn small theater. If there had once been buildings inside the walls, they must have been built of wood and were long gone. Now the walls encased only several levels or terraces of grassy dirt.

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket and started taking photos of the castle walls.

  Cole walked up behind her and watched over her shoulder. “I sure don’t see any obvious hiding places, do you?”

  “This is really just a ruin. It looks great from far away, but there’s nothing inside the walls. You think there was more to it when Silver Girl was here?”

  “I doubt it. I think we’re going to have to work on the second part of the engraving on the shield.”

  The tour guide leading the Brits arrived with his flock, and Cole and Riley moved over against the walls to give them some more room.

  The wind seemed to be shifting more west. If so, their anchorage could get bumpy. She pulled up the compass app on her phone and turned to face the wind. Still north of west, but it would bear watching.

  The tour guide assembled his group and began his talk. “One remarkable aspect of this location is that you have evidence of three distinctly different eras simultaneously. Of course, there are the Byzantine castle walls you see around you. The theater there was cut from the stone by the Romans before the Crusaders ever arrived here, and outside the castle walls in this direction, you will find a Lycian necropolis. The tombs you will see there are between two and three thousand years old.”

  Riley had never heard of the Lycians. Just as she was thinking it, one of the tourists asked, “Who were the Lycians?”

  “They were an ancient people who lived along this coast and inland from Fethiye to Antalya. Ancient Egyptian records mention the Lycians as allies of the Hittites in 1250 BC. They were a hardworking, wealthy people with a distinct language, art, and culture all their own, though they were attacked by the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Lycia was the last region on the Mediterranean coast to be incorporated into the Roman Empire. Follow me to the necropolis in the olive orchard outside the castle walls.”

  Riley followed the tourists over to a spot where she could look across the orchard. There were at least eight or ten stone tombs scattered across the ridge. Those that were intact stood about twelve feet high. They were like giant stone sarcophagi, with long domed lids perched on top. Some of them had been tipped over or the stone lids removed, but most stood intact. She could hear the tour guide telling the tourists about grave robbers who had cleaned out anything of value in the tombs by the fourth century.

  Cole appeared at her side a few minutes later.

  “Look at all those tombs,” she said. “Seriously, two to three thousand years old, and they are still standing.”

  “Please don’t tell me they hid this manuscript in one of those. We could never budge those stone lids.”

  “If we can’t, I don’t think they could either, Cole.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the graphic on the shield. What if the waves meant the beach at the base of the hill beneath Kaleköy—not the castle itself?”

  “Excellent! Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Wow. You’re in a hurry all of a sudden.”

  He grinned at her. “There are restaurants down there, and after all that exertion from sailing, I worked up an appetite.”

  “Riiiight,” she said, drawing out the word. “It was the sailing.”

  The gentleman who met them at the door to his restaurant introduced himself in more-than-passable English as Lukka and explained he was the owner of the place. Riley thought there was something familiar about his name. He ushered them in to where an older lady in a white head scarf was sitting on a carpet in front of a small, round table. She held a long dowel, which she used as a rolling pin to make large circles of very thin dough. Lukka said she was his mother, and the woman nodded and smiled shyly at them. He explained that she was making gözleme, a traditional Turkish flatbread, which she would fill with various toppings like minced beef or lamb, eggs, or vegetables.

  A VHF radio mounted on the wall suddenly emitted a loud burst of static, and then a voice called, “Lukka, Lukka, this is Sea Rover.”

  The restaurant owner answered the call, and when they switched to a working channel, the boaters wanted to make a dinner reservation. Lukka wrote the name in a book on the counter, then returned to Riley a
nd Cole.

  “I’m sorry. Please, follow me.”

  When he showed them to their table, they ordered a variety of gözleme, and he was pleased.

  Before he left them, Riley pointed out to the harbor and said, “We’re just learning about this region, and we saw the Lycian tombs in the necropolis up on the hill. But isn’t that a tomb sticking out of the water?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and do you see the stairs and the stone foundations out there on that rocky islet?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Are those Lycian, also?”

  He nodded. “Our village is built on top of the remains of the sunken city of Simena. It was common for Lycians to place the sarcophagi in the center of the living area. They worshiped their dead ancestors, and they wanted them nearby.”

  “What caused the city to sink?” Cole asked.

  “An earthquake in the second century caused a downshift of the land in this area. Most of the city was destroyed. There are more ruins over off Kekova Island, as the city was in two parts. It’s very beautiful over there, and you will want to see the hidden harbor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a very small cove with high, red-colored cliffs on one side. There are some excellent examples of rock-cut Lycian tombs in that cliff face.” He nodded at them. “Enjoy your meal.”

  “I hope you’ve got your wallet,” Riley said.

  “I don’t. I’d better go out to the boat and get some money.”

  “Then bring back the photos of the shield, too. We need to work on this cipher. There are just too many places around here to hide something.”

  While Cole was gone, Riley pictured the design on the shield. The letters KK had waves under them, and then the eye and the letters and symbols S
  When Lukka returned to their table with glasses of tea, Riley said, “I just remembered where I heard your name before. It was the name of a man in Malta in the nineteenth century.”

  “My name is the ancient name for Lycia. It is not a common name in Turkey.”

  “It is a lovely name, though.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  So the son of the Silver Girl, the man who donated Joseph Roux’s sea atlas, was named after the ancient civilization of Lycia. That only confirmed they were in the right place. Riley was certain. Below her, wavelets were breaking upon a rocky beach scattered with local fishing boats and dinghies. The waves in the design? What of the eye symbol in the cipher, then? At what, or in which direction, were they supposed to look?

  Riley pulled her phone out of her pocket to take some photos of what one could see from the beach just below the restaurant. She held the phone up and turned it on. The compass app was still selected, and she noticed that the direction she was facing was due south.

  What if the S was for south—or sud, in French? Then what would the V mean? She remembered the cipher on the map page. Part of it was Roman numerals. What if the V wasn’t a letter, but a number?

  Riley pushed back her chair and walked across the restaurant. Lukka was nowhere in sight, but his mother was watching. Riley pointed to the radio and pantomimed taking the microphone and talking. The old woman nodded and smiled.

  “Bonefish, Bonefish, this is mobile.” She didn’t think his phone was on, and she hoped that Cole had not thought to turn off the VHF.

  “Mobile, this is Bonefish. Six eight?”

  “Roger.” Riley switched the radio channel and she heard Cole’s voice already speaking. “. . . up, beautiful?”

  “Could you bring in the sextant? I want to try something.”

  “That’s a strange request, but your wish is my command.”

  “Hmm. We should stand our night watches like that every night. It does wonders for your outlook on life.”

  “O Captain, my Captain,” he said, and she could hear the leer in his voice.

  “Back to sixteen.” She wanted to add “years old.” But it was great to see him so happy for a change.

  Cole arrived at their table carrying her sextant box at the same time their food arrived. The gözleme was cut into wedges that looked somewhat similar to flour-tortilla quesadillas. They had a platter piled high with them.

  “My God, that smells great!” Cole pulled several pieces onto his plate. “Careful, they’re hot.”

  Though the aroma was making her stomach growl, she had to tell him what she’d been thinking while he was gone. Riley opened the folder and took out the photo of the close-up of the engraving on the shield. Just as she’d recalled, there were the two letters K with what could be wavelets beneath them, followed by the picture of the human eye. Then the letters and symbols S
  She pointed to the double letters K.

  “We already figured out that this first part might mean the beach here at Kaleköy. So what if the eye means to look? Like we’re supposed to look somewhere.”

  “Okay, but where?”

  “What if the S is for south?”

  “Were they speaking English?”

  “In French, Spanish, German, Italian the word for south always starts with S.”

  “Okay, then what do you do with the next two symbols? How is south less than V?”

  “What if it isn’t less than. What if that’s the symbol for measuring an angle?”

  “Okay, but what—oh, then the V isn’t a letter.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s the Roman numeral for five. That’s why you wanted the sextant.” He picked the box up off the seat and placed it on the table.

  Riley flicked open the latches and opened the box. She lifted out the familiar instrument. “What sort of navigational instruments would the Knights of Malta have used back then?”

  “According to the Silver Girl legend, they sailed here the year Napoleon conquered Malta. That was 1798. They actually had sextants then, but they were rare. But navigators had been using quadrants and octants to measure angles since the 1600s.”

  “Then this just might work. Wait here and keep eating. It’ll just take me a minute.”

  Riley left the restaurant’s open deck through a side door and walked down the steps to the beach. She took her phone out of her pocket and used the compass to line up her direction. Then she slid the phone back into her pocket and preset the sextant arm to a five-degree angle. She lifted the sextant’s 7x35 scope to her eye. The line where the brilliant-blue water met the shoreline created a distinct horizon. Riley twisted the eyepiece to bring the island’s image into focus, then she swung the sextant back and forth, searching for something that would pop out at her. And then she saw it. Over the top of the hills in the foreground, she saw a dark hole in a red cliff face. She remembered what Lukka had said about the rock-cut tombs in the hidden harbor.

  “Cole, come here. You’ve got to see this.”

  On the Beach

  Shipwrecked on the Shore of Tunis

  July 27, 1798

  She dreamed of the little house by the fruit-tree orchard in Saint Julian’s Bay. The house had a red roof and green shutters now, and there was a young boy playing in the yard. His soft, curly hair was the color of chestnuts. His father appeared in the doorway, and he called the boy’s name. Lukka. The boy ran and jumped into his father’s arms. His father was Chevalier Alonso Montras of Aragon.

  The flies crawling on her face awakened her.

  Alonso lay next to her. She had dragged him far up the beach to where the waves and tide could no longer reach them and cut away the cupboard door she’d tied to him. Then she had gone back to find her barrel, and she’d pushed and rolled it through the sucking, muddy sand. Then she’d gone back one last time to the waves. She’d collected ropes and canvas and pieces of flotsam she thought they might be able to use. After she’d dragged a piece of sail piled high with her treasures to the spot in the shade of a tree where Alonso lay, she had collapsed next to him and fallen sound asleep. Was that yesterday? She was not sure.

  He looked so white. He’d soiled himself, and that was what was attracting the flies. She
didn’t know if he was alive or dead, and she hesitated before touching him. She wanted to live a bit longer in the moment of not knowing. She feared he was gone, and she felt the pressure of the tears—when she saw his hand move.

  Arzella gasped and entwined her fingers in his. “Alonso, my love. I am rested now. Let us go find you help. There must be a settlement along this river.”

  She fashioned a sort of sled out of a section of rope and a large piece of sail. She cleaned him, dressed him, and got him to eat a few dates and walnuts. Then she pulled Alonso and all their belongings onto the sailcloth, tied the rope to two corners, and made a yoke for herself.

  At first, she didn’t think she would be able to move it at all. But she imagined the house in the orchard just a few steps ahead, and she pulled with all her might. The cloth slid a few inches across the sand. And then a few inches more.

  All day she dragged him upriver. She kept to the sandy edges. There wasn’t much water there—it was more like moist sand. The sand was more slick there, and there were fewer rocks. But if she dug, a pool would form in the bottom, and soon enough water would collect to quench her thirst and fill the goatskin bag.

  The river valley changed the farther inland she traveled. Down by the sea, it had been all flat marshland, but gradually the banks rose higher. Now she was in the bottom of a gorge with rocky cliff faces on either side.

  By late afternoon, she was done in. On the left side of the ravine, a tall rock pinnacle cast a shadow down the embankment. She saw what looked like a cave at the base of the rock formation, but when she climbed up to it, she discovered it was really little more than a shelf with a rock overhang. It would still provide shelter in the event it rained. She toted all their belongings up the embankment, leaving Alonso for last.

  She took him by the shoulder again and shook him. He winced at the pain, but she took that for a good sign. “Can you help me?” she said.

  He made no reply, but when she put one arm under him and tried to lift his shoulders, he pushed off the ground, and together they got him to his feet. It took almost an hour to get him up a hillside that she could climb in five minutes. His breathing was shallow, and often she heard a gurgling noise in his chest that reminded her of her father’s last days. When they reached the ledge, she lowered him onto the bed she had made out of their clothing. He closed his eyes and lay still.