Grantville Gazette 37 gg-37

by Коллектив Авторов

  The two friends grinned like fools at their change of fortune. To go from roughing it, stranded on a deserted shore, to occupying ship's quarters that oozed with comfort was a pleasant kind of shock. Pam shook her head slowly, gazing at the luxurious space as if she were in a dream, daring it to be solid. Pam and Dore began rearranging the place to suit Pam's needs, taking one of the decorated screens from the wall and placing it in front of her bunk, to make it a sleeping alcove. The wood bases of the five-foot screens were quite heavy and certainly designed to stay upright even in the worst storms. Pam was pleased to find that this ship would provide a gentler ride than poor old Redbird had. They were under way at a fair clip now and she could barely feel it. As they went for another screen, Pam bumped into a pile of pillows leaning against the wall and knocked them over. When she leaned down to straighten them, she noticed there was an opening in the wall-a thin, dark crack running from the floor to a height of about three feet.

  "Hmm, what do you suppose this is?" She pushed the pillows away and felt along the crack with her fingers. It was actually a small, hidden door that had been left just slightly ajar. A thrill rose in her. So, our lovely craft has secrets. Wonderful!

  "Dore! Try to find a knife or something we can use to pry this open!" Dore began to scurry around the room in search of a suitable implement. Pam kept tugging and pushing here and there until she discovered a tiny spot the size of a man's thumb that appeared to have been worn smooth by years of touch. She pushed it and the door popped open as neat as could be. "Never mind, Dore. Bring a candle!"

  Dore, well-practiced with the flint and steel she carried in her apron pockets, had a candle lit faster than Pam could strike a match. She handed it to Pam and they both got down on their hands and knees to peer into the space they had revealed.

  To Pam's amazement, there was a deep closet here, a secret room. Among the various fascinating items within the dark space, the one that caught her eye above all was a large wooden box reinforced with metal bands. Crawling over to it, she tried to pull it toward the door. It wouldn't budge. There was something about the thing. . . . The very heaviness of it made the teeny-tiny hairs at the nape of her neck stand up and do the mambo. Sticking out of an ornate-looking brass lock was the back end of a tarnished silver key. Apparently its last user had left in a hurry . . . possibly the fat, turbaned pirate captain? The box looked like a certain kind of container all right, built like a safe, massive and thick. It was darkly age-stained and covered in a faded but flowing white script. She didn't dare think the words that were screaming to be heard in the back of her mind. It simply couldn't be . . .

  "Open it, Pam! Let us see!" Dore urged her on, her voice a bit higher-pitched than normal, more like that of a child's than a serious-minded, late-middle-aged woman of God. Pam marveled once again at the amazing youthening effect adventure was having on her friend. They kneeled in front of the mysterious box, both giggling, holding on to each other for support.

  Pam hesitated with her hand trembling near the key until Dore gave her a gentle push. They both jumped a bit, their nerves as taut as guitar strings.

  "Oh, we are so silly!" Dore said, laughing "It's probably full of ship's papers, all written in that ridiculous squiggle these Easterners use instead of decent letters." Even so, her face was still full of expectation.

  "Right!" Pam agreed. "It's not like we would actually find anything valuable on a real pirate ship! This isn't a movie, right?" They both laughed while Pam turned the key. There was a muffled click deep within the mechanism, then the lid popped up a few inches as it released from a spring. Pam and Dore's eyes were as big and round as harvest moons as they gazed at what lay within.

  "No, it's a real treasure chest!" Pam announced with comic nonchalance. "Holy shit," she murmured as she raised the chest's heavy lid until it caught some kind of stop and held open. "Holy shit," she said again as her hands touched cool metal and smooth stone. Despite her amazement at such an unexpected discovery, Dore managed to give Pam a quick look of disapproval over her choice of language. Suddenly Pam's mouth was a bit too dry and she nearly croaked, "I can't believe this."

  Dore murmured something incomprehensible as she peered over Pam's shoulder. This was replaced by a funny kind of squealing noise and she held onto Pam to steady herself. Scarcely believing what she was seeing, no, touching, Pam filled her hands with a shining mixture of gold and silver coins, glittering jewels and pearls. The box surely held a fortune, a small one perhaps, but a fortune nonetheless. As if to make sure it wasn't a figment of her imagination, she pried one of Dore's hands from its painfully tight grip on her arm and poured lucre into it. They knelt there staring silently into the chest's gleaming contents for a very long time.

  "It's real. A real treasure chest on a real pirate ship. Yo-ho-ho." Pam's voice was hushed and full of wonder.

  "One might say that our fortunes have changed," Dore said, her head shaking slowly as if to dispel her disbelief.

  "Go fetch Gerbald!" Pam told Dore, now feeling dizzy as if she were on some kind of wild carnival ride, the thrill switching to terror and back to thrill again. She dug deeper into the chest, scooping the contents to one side. Besides the coins and gems there were some larger pieces buried within: tiaras, combs and other less easy to identify objects, all a-glitter with precious stones.

  Dore ran for the door so fast that she might have shot off the top floor like a cannonball if she hadn't caught herself. Pam had never seen her friend move like that, but then chalked it up to her years surviving in the rough following Gerbald in and out of battles. Dore was certainly full of surprises, but then these days surprises had become the norm.

  Shortly a huffing, puffing Dore arrived with an amused Gerbald hurrying after. His ever-present goofy hat was knocked from his head by the low door casing as Dore literally pushed him through. Before he could bend down to retrieve the hat, he froze in place, seeing Pam holding a double palm-full of treasure. His eyes widened and he just stood there staring while Dore picked up his hat, long the object of her scorn, taking care to scrunch and twist its seemingly indestructible mustard yellow felt between her strong hands with great disdain. Failing to make much of a dent, she stood on her tip-toes and plopped it back onto his head where it looked no worse for the attempted wear and tear. "There, he is speechless! If only we had one of those video cameras to record the moment for ages to come."

  Pam smiled to see a bit of the feisty old Dore back in play.

  Gerbald straightened the much-abused and well-loved hat over his salt-and-pepper hair, taking a moment to digest what he was seeing. With a regal sweep of her arm, Pam escorted him to the closet, which he crawled into with easy grace. He pushed the box to gauge its considerable weight and was able to move it a quarter of an inch. Then he scratched his chin and grinned.

  Pam grinned back at him. "I think this must have belonged to that fat, old pirate captain. The writing on it looks more like that swirly Arabic script than Chinese characters. This wasn't the first ship he'd captured, I'll bet. We are probably looking at years of plunder here. I guess you really can't take it with you."

  Dore, who had managed to compose herself, quoted scripture in her old familiar Christian soldier's tones: "Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but righteousness delivereth from death. The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but he casteth away the substance of the wicked. Proverbs 10:2-3."

  Gerbald nodded politely in agreement with his pious wife, buying some always useful good will with the gesture, then turned to Pam. "Pam, when your luck changes it really changes. What do you intend to do with all this?"

  "I've decided already," Pam said, while letting a handful of gleaming coins slowly fall back into the chest with a musical tinkling. "We should divide it equally among everybody on this ship."

  Dore nodded in staunch approval.

  "That is the right thing to do, my Pam!" Dore told her. "We are all in this together. Shall I summon the bosun now?"

  "Allow me
to tell him," Gerbald cut in. "After all, I missed out on the thrill of first discovery. I would very much like to see our good friend's face when he hears of this windfall. I will tell only him for now. We can divide it all up and then pass it out to the men before tonight's party. I'll bet they will be over the moon."

  "Tonight's party?" Pam asked. She saw Dore deliver what must have been a painful blow to the small of her husband's back.

  "Oops," Gerbald said in English with a long-suffering sigh.

  "Spiller of the beans!" Dore growled at him, also in English. After many years together they used English and German interchangeably, and sometimes mixed the two together in one sentence, despite their best efforts not to. Pam mused that this habit was evolving into a creole some were calling "Amideutch." Dore continued in German, which would always be the most comfortable for her, "It matters not. We have all had enough of surprises by now anyway. We have earned a bit of fun after our many troubles and so tonight is for celebration!" she said expansively, her face alight with pleasure.

  "Who are you and what have you done with Dore?" Pam said but Dore didn't seem to hear. She was now pushing her husband toward the door. "Go now, oaf. We must make ourselves presentable. Now that our Pam is a captain, she can't go about dressed in these rags! Out with you!"

  Gerbald didn't resist. This time he was careful to duck and keep his hat on.

  "Maybe you can buy a new hat now," Pam called after him. It never hurt to hope.

  "What? Waste such riches on everyday items? No, I shall use my share of the riches to do something truly wonderful. I shall buy my own television set."

  "Not until I have a decent house you won't, foolish man. If the Lord has seen fit to gift us with riches, we must use them wisely!" Jumping, Dore took a swipe at the much-hated hat, but Gerbald was too fast. Her hand flew through thin air as Gerbald disappeared from sight, launching himself out the door and dropping from sight in a blur. No crash or injured call for help came, so Dore and Pam, now giggling like schoolgirls again, began rummaging through the room's many drawers and cabinets, laying out exotic garments on the bed and divans as they went.

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Counting their Blessings

  Soon after, the bosun was brought in to view their unexpected bounty. He let out a long whistle as he squatted in front of the brimming chest. "I've sailed the seas since I was ten years old," he said, "and never have I seen this kind of wealth. I will be able to buy some land and retire with such a bounty. Truly, your generosity is great to share it, Captain. We would never ask it of you." His eyes glistened moistly.

  "You've earned it, my friend," Pam told him. "You all have. Let's count it out, the four of us, and the lojtnant as witness, equal shares for all." The bosun nodded, but Pam still had some idea that she would somehow end up with more. The men of the sea had ways of doing things, and she knew the captain traditionally got a larger share of the booty, a much larger share. She intended to protest, of course, but wheels were already turning. Pam had projects lined up for years to come, and now she had that most critical of all resources: funding. One thing was certain, the first thing she would do with her share of the take was to make damn sure her colony succeeded, which went hand in hand with saving the dodo.

  When the lojtnant arrived, he expressed much the same sentiments as the bosun had, but Pam told him to just accept what was coming to him and be happy. He smiled and replied, "As you wish, Captain," obviously as glad to get his hands on such a large chunk of change as they all were.

  Together, Gerbald and the lojtnant managed to drag the chest out of its closet and bring it over to the large table Dore had cleared of Oriental knickknacks for the purpose.

  "Okay, here's what I think we ought to do," Pam said, after considering the situation for a few minutes. "Let's start with the coins. We will group them by types first and then the ones that don't match any others we can group by material and weight." She reached into the chest to scoop up a double handful of coins which she piled onto the table's surface.

  "Here, these two are the same, they look like copper and they have square holes in the middle. Chinese, maybe. I bet they're not worth much." She pushed them off into their own area. The next coin she held up to the light, and made a long whistle. "If this isn't a gold doubloon, I'll eat Gerbald's hat. I always think of the Spaniards hanging out in the Caribbean, but I guess I remember reading something about the Philippines as I was getting ready for this trip. Let's hope there's more of these."

  It turned out they weren't able to recognize most of the coins, but the bosun had an old sailor's eye for metals and was able to make what Pam thought were pretty good guesses about the value of each. Gerbald, as an ex-soldier, had also seen his share of coin and did his best to help the bosun make identifications. They sorted the coins into gold, silver and other less identifiable metals or blends of metals. Piles sprung up around the table as they worked. Pam could scarcely believed they were engaged in such a project. Once they finished with the coins they turned their attention to the loose precious stones.

  "Could this be a ruby, Pam?" Dore held up a red gem the size of her thumb.

  "Well, maybe. I really don't know much about this stuff." As it turned out, no one else in the group did, either. "Where the hell is a jeweler when you need one?" she muttered. They ended up grouping the gems into pretty little mounds by color. Overall, the coins were quite a bit more numerous, but they still ended up with a respectable amount of possibly precious stones.

  Next came the jewelry. The lojtnant carefully handed Pam a fanciful gold tiara encrusted with what must surely be blue sapphires. Pam placed it on her head and grinned.

  "Look, I'm Wonder Woman! Now we just need to find the bullet-proof bracelets!" Gerbald, a dedicated student of American pop culture, laughed. Dore just rolled her eyes to signify "How much of such foolishness must I endure?" while the Swedes wore the painful smile of wanting to show approval for a joke they just didn't get. Pam tried to explain Wonder Woman and the concept of a super-hero to them in Swedish. She was getting pretty good at the language, but would need a lot more time to really become fluent. Finally, after several long minutes of word searching and gesturing, the bosun and the lojtnant both nodded with the satisfaction of understanding.

  "We see now," the lojtnant said, "This is just like the sagas from the old days! This woman is as strong as Thor, she can fly like a bird and she has enchanted accoutrements to aid her in battle. It's obvious! Wonder Woman was one of your gods before you Americans became Christians! It's just as in our Norselands where the stories of the old gods still survive in the tales we tell children!" The bosun agreed heartily while Pam just smiled and gave up.

  "Close enough," she said, and remembered to take the tiara she was still wearing off, feeling like an idiot for having it on throughout her lengthy explanation. She held it in her hands for a moment, admiring its sparkling beauty. "Hey, I know someone who we should give this to. Princess Kristina! Look, it's even in the Swedish colors, blue and gold." The Swedes clapped their hands at this suggestion. A generous percentage of the treasure, in the form of jewelry, was put aside to donate to the princess's crown jewels, a gift from her admirers. A pang of sadness came to Pam as she thought of poor old Fritjof, and how much he would have approved of such a gesture. Even so, Pam didn't give everything to her patron. There was a certain pearl necklace that called to her in a siren song, and she claimed it without apology. "I heard there's a party tonight and a girl has got to have something to wear!"

  It took another hour to divide all the shares out of the various piles. As Pam had expected, the Swedes insisted that she take a larger portion. Since it was hard to gauge the value of the gems, she took a lion's share of those, figuring that some might be worthless, while others might be worth more than the entire find. She would have to wait until she found a qualified jeweler to find out, and that would likely be a while. Despite her many protests, she ended up with a larger pile of loot than the rest.

  "Look, I know you mean w
ell, fellows, but really, I want everybody to have an equal share."

  The bosun listened to her patiently, but his answer was always the same: "You are the captain, you get more. It's tradition."

  Finally, Pam conceded. "Fine, but I want you all to know I'm going to use most of my take to help make this colony work. I really don't need this much money for myself. I'm already pretty well off."

  This was met with warm smiles from her companions, which made her feel better about it. Smiling back, she dropped her take back into the chest, locked it, and put the key in her pocket.

  The bosun summoned the men. One by one, they filed past the table receiving their share, their eyes bugging at the size of the unexpected windfall. Apparently sailors of the day were not very well paid. The shares weren't really that big; it hadn't been that large a box. Even so, each seemed overjoyed, and thanked her profusely before making way for the next.

  When the task was all finished, Pam shooed everyone out of her cabin and fell down on the bed, very much ready for an afternoon nap.

  It is better to give than receive but it's lot of work, too.

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Captain's Ball

  As the breezes died with the evening calm, the junk was anchored back where it had started, not far from the camp that had been their home. Dore had come back to wake Pam and help her get ready for the party. After some fussing, they stood on the narrow deck outside Pam's door, both dressed in fine Chinese silks. The clothes they had chosen were most likely designed for men, but they had made do, with pleasing results. Dore had found a long skirt which she belted with a sash and a simple tunic top, all in deep reds which suited her well. The tunic must have belonged to a large man as it had plenty of room for Dore's buxom figure. Pam, who was slight in comparison, wore a pair of knee-high black silk pants, a simple white shirt that buttoned at its collar-less neck and a cerulean blue silk jacket ornately embroidered with gold pheasants and cranes, with large gold buttons and teardrop-shaped clasps. She left the jacket open to show off the lovely pearl necklace from the treasure chest.