Tarver's Treasure

by Malcolm Archibald

  ‘Exactly so, Bethany. It would be better if you kept to our own church.’

  They glared at each other for a moment until Bethany started to laugh. ‘Really, Jack, you do take on so! I did not think that you cared a whit about what church people go to.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘I don’t really, but …’

  ‘Well then, get your best clothes on and come along.’

  When Bethany smiled at him like that, with her head slightly tilted and that rebellious curl of hair escaping from her bonnet, Jack would walk through the fires of Hell with her, never mind into a Catholic church, so he was at her side when they left the house and walked the short distance to St Paul’s. Jack looked in apprehension at the impressive dome.

  ‘I won’t know what to do,’ he whispered.

  ‘Just do what I do,’ Bethany said, her eyes washing over him. ‘And Jack’ – she hesitated for just a second – ‘try to make yourself agreeable.’

  Used to the simplicity of Bethany’s own church at Merrington-on-Wye, Jack found the blazing splendour of the Church of St Paul overwhelming. He stopped as soon as he stepped inside the door, gazing in astonishment at the ornate stained-glass windows and the riot of colour that seeped into every corner. From the elliptical dome to the brilliantly colourful fresco paintings and the carved decorations that glinted their golden glory to the dominating crucifix, everything was light and colour and spectacle. There were silver filigree monstrances and reliquaries, silver salvers and silver wall brackets, but with some gaping holes on the wall where some fitments had obviously been wrenched free. On the High Altar silver statues of the Apostles flanked another elaborate crucifix, but the altar front, although beautifully worked and impressively embossed, was black as any northern coal pit.

  ‘Jack!’ Bethany’s elbow, digging sharply into his ribs, brought him back to reality.

  Very aware that about half the congregation were watching, Jack stumbled to follow Bethany’s lead, kneeling when she knelt and trying to follow her responses to the priest. He did not understand much of the service, so in between the powerful singing his attention wandered to the congregation. Most seemed to concentrate on what was being said, but he noticed that many of the young men were paying more heed to the demure young ladies than to the priest. That much was similar, then. All the same, he was glad when it was over and the great doors opened to allow him to escape into the heat of the countryside; however, neither the priest nor some of the parishioners were content to allow him such freedom.

  ‘Mr Tarver, Mrs Tarver,’ Joseph Borg was at the priest’s side. He bowed to them both. ‘As you see, since the French destroyed the church at Fiddien, I also worship here.’ He looked directly at Bethany. ‘I am glad you persuaded your husband to come, Mrs Tarver.’

  ‘We were pleased to come,’ Bethany said. ‘It was a beautiful service.’

  ‘We think so,’ Borg bowed his appreciation. ‘And you, Mr Tarver?’

  Jack nodded. ‘I cannot recollect a service I enjoyed more,’ he said. ‘But pray, tell me why the silver altar front is black and all the rest is highly polished. Is that a Catholic practise?’

  Borg smiled and touched the charm around his neck. ‘When the French came, they looted everything they could, but we hid what we could from them and disguised other things. The black paint disguised the silver. The French were interested in portable gold, not in black lead.’

  ‘So you hid the treasure from Bonaparte?’ Bethany’s smile could not have been wider.

  ‘We hid what we could,’ Borg said cautiously.

  ‘How wonderful!’ Bethany approved. ‘I would not have let those atheistic wretches have anything!’

  Borg’s bow was deeper than before. ‘I am glad to hear you say that, Mrs Tarver. Perhaps we could convert you to the true faith?’

  ‘Perhaps you could,’ Bethany said. ‘That service was exceedingly good.’

  ‘Even although you did not understand it?’ Borg lifted his eyebrows.

  ‘I understood the spirit of it,’ Bethany told him.

  Borg’s slow smile was warmer than usual. ‘And you, Mr Tarver? Could you become a Roman Catholic?’

  ‘I am afraid not,’ Jack said, his respectability and his severe Wolvington upbringing not allowing him even the vestige of a lie.

  ‘My mother was a Catholic,’ Bethany said quietly. ‘Jack is Church of England, but without prejudice of any kind.’

  Borg held Jack’s eyes for a second, then extended his hand to a silent woman, who joined him. In common with many of the women present, she wore the faldetta, the Maltese hooped head dress, but when she flicked back the veil Jack saw her face was plump and pretty.

  ‘This is my wife, Maria,’ Borg said, and everybody either bowed or curtsied.

  ‘Maria! That’s Bethany’s middle name,’ Jack exclaimed, then waited for Borg to translate to his wife. Both women laughed at the coincidence and curtsied again, as Borg raised his eyebrows towards Jack and indicated that they should step aside.

  ‘Now that people have seen you here with your wife, there may be some who will work on your road.’ He glanced around at the respectably dressed Maltese, who Jack had only known as grafting farmers. Here everybody wore their Sunday best, with dark suits for the men, and black and white linen for the ladies. The atmosphere was of piety and family, with husbands attached to wives, sons to fathers, and daughters to mothers.

  ‘I would like to think so,’ Jack told him. He winced as the bells began again, deep and sonorous, each peal thrusting into his head.

  ‘I will see what I can do,’ Borg said, though he held up a warning hand: ‘But I will make no promises, Mr Tarver.’

  ‘I understand, Mr Borg, and I thank you for any help you may be able to provide.’

  ‘However, I must remind you, Mr Tarver’ – Borg’s face resumed its habitual solemn expression – ‘that not everybody in this island welcomes the British presence.’

  Jack looked at this very average-looking man with the dark, sombre eyes and suddenly understood why Bonaparte had been unable to tame this small island. There was a dynamic force behind the respectability, a vein of deep violence into which he had no desire to delve.

  He straightened his back and deepened his own voice. ‘Thank you for your advice, Mr Borg, but I must attempt to fulfil my contract. I have a wife to support.’

  ‘Of course,’ Borg agreed. ‘You must do what you must do, as must I.’

  They shook hands again, with Jack both respecting and liking this man who was so obviously opposed to his ideas.

  ‘Oh dear Lord!’ Bethany stepped inside the arched doorway within Ta Rena. ‘Oh Jack! Look at this!’

  Jack followed her, stopped and swore.

  The inside of the house, which Bethany had spent many hours cleaning, polishing and organising so that it met her exacting standards, had been wrecked. Somebody had gone through every drawer, lifted every carpet and broken every piece of furniture.

  ‘It’s the same in here,’ Bethany called from the bedroom, where her clothes were scattered around the floor and Jack’s precious equipment lay in a heap on the upturned bed.

  ‘What in God’s name? We’ve nothing worth stealing!’ Jack strode to his theodolite. It was scraped but miraculously unbroken. He breathed a sigh of relief, for it was unlikely he could buy such an item in Malta. ‘If only we had not gone to that foolish church, Bethany, this would never have happened!’

  ‘Well, we did and it has!’ She faced him then, instantly angry, but he saw the tears behind the fury and backed down.

  ‘Indeed. ‘What the deuce could they have been searching for?’

  Righting one of the chairs, Bethany sat down and took a deep breath. ‘Do you remember the first day we came to this house, Jack? When I thought I saw a man here?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Well, what was he after in an empty house?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘I’m sure I cannot imagine.’

  ‘Well, Jack, I’m sure I can.’ B
ethany looked at him. ‘Sit down, Jack, for there are things that must be said.’

  Jack did so, and they faced each other across the wreckage that had been their bedroom, with Bethany’s clothes an untidy pile on the floor and a small green lizard watching them from the top of Jack’s theodolite.

  ‘There’s something very smoky going on here, Jack, and it seems that we are in the middle of it.’

  Jack nodded. ‘I agree with that.’

  ‘I know you do,’ Bethany said quietly. ‘Now, you don’t like it, and nor do I, but I am afraid there is no help for it, so we must face things as they are and just get on with it.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Pray continue, Bethany.’

  ‘I am. Now, Jack, you have been busy with your engineering, but I have had time to think. Now, listen …’ Settling herself in the chair, Bethany pressed one finger against her knee. ‘One, there is the presence of Mr Dover, or whatever he calls himself. Why is he here?’

  ‘He was checking the French army in Calabria,’ Jack began.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Bethany interrupted. ‘Calabria is full of people who will tell us exactly what the French army is doing. He was spying on something, but I do not know what.’ She pressed another finger against her knee. ‘Then there is the navy carrying us out here. I know that we are important people,’ her smile gave the lie to that statement, ‘but we hardly warrant that sort of treatment. Admiral Blacklock sent us here for quite another reason than to build a road from a no-longer-important town to a cove that nobody ever uses.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Jack said doubtfully, ‘Sir Alexander mentioned the diplomacy.’

  ‘So there is. We have to be diplomats without knowing a word of the language.’ Bethany shook her head. ‘I hardly think so, Jack.’ She pressed a third finger against her knee. ‘And then there was the knife or, more importantly, Mr Egerton’s reaction to it – and Mr Borg’s.’

  ‘Mr Egerton was a trifle excited,’ Jack agreed.

  ‘He was in a prodigious fever of excitement,’ Bethany amended. ‘And Mr Borg said nothing at all. He pretended no interest, but I saw his eyes.’

  A fourth finger joined the preceding three. ‘And now we come home to this.’

  ‘A thief,’ Jack said.

  ‘That cock won’t fight,’ Bethany scoffed. ‘If they were trying to steal, they would have taken your theodolite. An instrument like that would fetch a good price in Valletta. No, Jack, whoever was in here was after something more than milk-and-water thieving.’

  Jack looked at her. ‘Yes, maybe so, Bethany, but what?’

  ‘The knife that Mr Egerton so greatly esteemed,’ Bethany told him. ‘And remember that Mr Borg specifically instructed me to take care of it? He did not want Mr Egerton touching it.’

  ‘I wonder why,’ Jack said. ‘And where is it now?’

  ‘As to the why,’ Bethany said, ‘I am sure I do not know, but I’ll wager a lot of your money that it means a great deal to somebody. I do not know who, and that is the most smoky thing, but as to the where, I know very well, and I assure you that nobody else does.’ The mischief was back in her smile.

  Jack glanced around the room. ‘Where is it Bethany? Did you return it to the cistern?’

  She pulled a face. ‘Do you think you’d catch me crawling about in there? I leave that sort of thing to you, husband dear. Oh no, much more sensible. Now watch closely.’ Bending her knee, Bethany slowly lifted her skirt, sliding it up her left leg until it was well above her knee. Raising her eyebrows she smiled to him. ‘I hope you are only looking at the knife, Jack, my man!’ Secured by a strap of linen, the dagger sat snug against the white flesh on the inside of her thigh.

  ‘What a resourceful little vixen you are,’ Jack told her.

  ‘Now nobody would ever find it there.’

  ‘No, that’s for certain.’ Jack tried to smile. He watched as Bethany replaced her skirt. ‘But why? Why hide it? Did you know somebody would look for it?’

  Bethany shook her head. ‘Of course I did not know, Jack, but I thought they might. I don’t trust that Mr Egerton half an inch, and Mr Borg is not all he seems either, with his pretended piety. You mark my words, Jacko, there’s something very smoky here and, as I said, we’re right in the heart of it.’ She leaned back. ‘Our good friend Admiral Blacklock has landed us in some very deep water, Jack, and I intend to find out what it is all about.’

  Jack looked at her, seeing the utter determination of her face. He felt a renewed surge of affection, but could not smile with that constant hammering inside his head.

  ‘I think the good people of Malta are in for a fright, Bethany.’

  Despite Borg’s encouragement, Jack walked to the site of his proposed road next morning with no expectation of finding any workers. He stood at the spot he had arranged as a rendezvous just as the sun cracked open the horizon and the Mediterranean morning brought the heat of the day. The countryside spread around him, rugged, hard, segregated by tiny fields and with the thin scar of the track an aching reminder of his inability to fulfil his obligations. He knew that nobody would come, that he was doomed to be a failure, to himself and to Bethany.

  The man walked so slowly that Jack barely realised he was moving until he stood at his side. He was small, dark and morose, with a brass ring in his ear. He leaned on a heavy walking stick and indicated the shovel balanced over his shoulder.

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Do you want work?’ Jack was more than slightly surprised. He did not mention the man’s need of support.

  The man nodded and brandished his shovel.

  ‘Then we shall build a road together, you and I.’ Jack told him. ‘First we shall dig the foundations, then we will find the material, and finally we’ll put them together, shall we not?’

  The man nodded, unsmiling, as Jack stripped off his jacket, took hold of the spade that he had brought and thrust it into the hard ground. ‘By God,’ he said. ‘If I only have one man, I’ll build this damned road.’

  ‘Yes,’ the one man said and, balancing awkwardly on his good leg, attacked the ground in perfect imitation of Jack.

  Within five minutes, the sweat was sliding from Jack’s forehead and his shirt was damp. He kept on, fighting his increasing dizziness, swearing softly at the enormity of the task before him and watching the swarthy Maltese hack at the iron ground.

  The singing had been continuing for some time before Jack was aware of it, but when he looked up he saw a third man working beside him, and others appearing, coming from different directions with spades or pickaxes to work at his side.

  By mid-morning, there were twenty men working on the road and Jack could spend time organising rather than labouring. The voyage out had given him a splendid opportunity to study the most modern practices of road building and he was now keen to put the theories into practice.

  ‘We want this road as level as possible,’ he shouted. Every British subject knew that it was necessary to speak loudly to get plain English into foreign heads. ‘And then we will dig drainage ditches along the side.’ He knew that Thomas Telford always dug drainage ditches, so he would do the same. Looking up at the burning sun, he could not imagine a time when floods of rain would descend, but perhaps Malta had a wet winter. He would have to ask Bethany to find out.

  When the men seemed not to understand, however hard he shouted, Jack hefted a pick and shovel and showed them exactly what he wanted, and then they followed his lead, uncomplaining in the heat.

  Jack and the men worked hard all day until dusk, when he thanked them and told them to go home. When he eventually returned to Bethany that evening, exhausted but exhilarated at the day’s work, he told her, ‘It was amazing! One minute I had nobody at all and the next there were twenty men all working like beavers.’

  ‘And more importantly, it’s lifted some of that Friday face of yours, Jack Tarver.’

  Jack nodded. He had hoped that progress with the engineering work would have made him feel better, but his head still ached and he constan
tly felt tired. It was the heat, he told himself. He preferred a cooler climate.

  ‘They only came because we went to church, of course,’ Bethany said smugly. They were sitting on the roof again, looking across the island, as she poured out the wine. ‘I could get accustomed to this life!’

  ‘So you forced me to church as a ploy to get me workers!’ Jack shook his head. ‘I had no notion you could be so circumbendibus.’

  Bethany did not attempt to hide her ‘I told you so’ smile. ‘Not circumbendibus at all, Jacko. Long-headed, perhaps. I went to church because I wanted to, but I thought that you accompanying me would persuade the Maltese to accept you.’ Her laugh was open and unashamed. ‘I told you we were a partnership, Jack. You do the hard work and I’ll provide the brains.’

  ‘I didn’t think that ladies lowered themselves to using their brains,’ Jack said, ducking her retaliatory slap. From the rooftop, he could see the road he had been making. The scar was raw in the ground, but he nodded with satisfaction. ‘We made fine progress today,’ he said, then glancing over: ‘Five months? I’ll have this road built in half the time – until we reach the cliffs.’

  ‘And then?’ Bethany asked.

  ‘And then things will become much trickier. Engineering some sort of road down the cliffs will be complicated, and then there is the attitude of the Maltese.’

  Bethany leaned forward and patted his sleeve. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ She smiled. ‘Between the two of us, I’m sure we will work something out.’

  The same twenty men turned up for work the next morning, and the one-legged man volunteered to act as translator.

  ‘My name is George,’ he said.

  ‘Why did you not speak English yesterday?’ Jack wondered. ‘I needed a translator then, too.’

  George shrugged. ‘Why did you not ask me?’ He looked over the gathered men. ‘These are all farmers’ sons and the like, but I have seen the world. I know Gibraltar well, and the Channel.’ His smile was more knowing than Jack liked. ‘I sailed with Joseph Borg.’

  ‘Sailed with him?’ Jack frowned. ‘I did not know that Mr Borg was a seaman.’