Home From The Sea

by Keegan, Mel

  “It was a fine enough idea, but the pagan gods of sea and sky have always had their own plans, and a storm blew up out of nowhere. The boat was smashed to kindling by wind and water, and Francisco was almost dead when he was scooped up out of the waves by a crew of Spanish pirates … heretics, traitors.

  “The crew of the Marianna sailed out of a secret anchorage, under the command of a brilliant strategist and tactician who had been sentenced to death by the King of Spain, and by Holy Mother Church also. Capitan Monteras was judged guilty of the crime of being a sodomite in a land where the only love allowed is that of a man for a woman.

  “Now, ’tis not for you and me to say what was right or wrong in Spain all those many years ago, but any honest priest, worth his salt, will tell you this: the matter is a private one which should be left alone, to be taken up between God and the accused upon Judgment Day. If there’s a price to be paid, let the Almighty set the amount and let the sinner pay it willingly out of his own pocket, in whatever coin the Lord decrees to be right … and then the two of them would call the debt settled and the go their separate ways in peace. Diego Monteras believed this.

  “Pirate, heretic, sinner? Oh, yes, he was all of these things. But Monteras also believed strongly in God and Heaven and hell, Spaniard that he was, through to the marrow of his bones. And he believed that the men who’ll be punished hardest and longest by the Almighty are those in the government, in the palace, and in the church.

  “Condemned to a slow and terrible death by torture, Diego fled for his life. He took his ship out to sea in the dead of night, and into the teeth of wild weather. The Marianna never looked back. She packed forty guns. She was long and low in the water, one of those ships that were built after the painful lessons of the Spanish Armada were learned. She was fast, hard, and she preyed on Spanish merchantmen for more than a decade, seizing every manner of treasure, from gold and jewels to silks and jade, ivory and great art.

  “All the treasure was equally divided among the crew, and Diego Monteras himself was already rich beyond a king’s dream of avarice when young Francisco was scooped out of the boiling waters of the storm.

  “Forget, if you prefer, the love which bloomed between them, for many of you might be discomfited to think long on this. You’re not sailors, and have no feeling for the mateship that happens, six months at sea, far from home. So don’t even give a thought to their private business … but remember it for one moment, just long enough to know how and why young Francisco would give the treasures of his royal house to the man who saved him from the storm, and gave him a better home and life than he’d ever known.

  “And here’s the part of the story that caught the ears of Sir Geoffrey Gaunt … and he told it to Queen Elizabeth, word for word, just as he’d learned it himself. They say he watched the Queen’s green eyes fairly dance with the glee that comes from knowing there’s another grand adventure out there, with blood and sweat and tears along the way and a pile of gold at the end of it!

  “As you know, Francisco was the last of his royal house, and he had a secret, passed down to him from generations before. The secret of the treasure house of the god-kings and emperors of a heathen land which shone with gold and shimmered with jewels for centuries before the Spaniards arrived, dragged down the native princes and enslaved every last one of those people, to the last babe in arms.

  “Now, you can imagine how Diego Monteras and the rogue crew of the Marianna were enchanted by this story of Francisco’s, which he told to the bold and handsome young Capitan. And you know the Marianna traveled far into verdant, perilous waters which had never even been sailed before, let alone charted. The wind fell dead away; the air was hot and heavy; the crew stood by the oars and rowed her up a wide, jungle-banked river which grew narrower and narrower with every mile they plied inland…

  “Until they came to a hill, and at the bottom of the hill was a stone quay, ancient, half ruined, overgrown with vines – built in the time of Francisco’s grandfather’s grandfather. And at the top of the hill was a strange temple where the rocks were still stained brown with the ancient blood of human sacrifices made to the god of the sun.

  “Oh yes, Francisco’s people had been savage. As savage as folk who burn men and women at the stake and rend their bodies with tortures that would make your flesh crawl if I were to recount them to you. Don’t be too quick to judge the ancient, heathen peoples of ages less wise, or less educated, than our own. Or, if you do judge the savages of bygone ages, judge also the Inquisition, and the offices of governments, even our own, that employed terrible brutalities … for much less worthwhile reasons.

  “As Francisco had memorized the story as a young boy, the treasure house of his people was far in the earth, deep under the hill. He took Diego up the slope to the temple, and right there, behind the altar stone, was the hatchway that was promised in the legend –

  “And under the hatchway, the long, steep stairway leading down and down, into darkness and cold, with the drip of water and the rank smell of moss and mold…

  “A band from the Marianna followed the tunnels deeper and deeper into the earth, until even the most stalwart were ready to turn back in dread; and then, just as Diego himself was about to call enough and take his men back to the sun and the light – then, their torches picked up a glimmer, a reflection, a shine on the surface of solid gold.

  “They had found it, the treasure of ages, passed down from vanished kings and emperors to a young man who had been made a slave by the same race that condemned Diego to torture and death for the sin of love.

  “Four days, it took the crew of the Marianna to carry out the gold. Statues, idols, cups, necklaces, bracelets, crowns. They spilled their sweat willingly till the hold was full of the stuff, and then they hauled the ship around in mid-river, put the oars back in the water, and they sang as they pulled back toward the open sea.

  “A week later they were safely back at their own secret anchorage, in a nook, a bay on the coast of South America which is so small, so insignificant, it barely shows up as a pimple on a map even today.

  “Now, gold is very pretty and it has a nice shine, but Diego preferred jewels. He liked the sparkle of diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies. He loved their color and their purity, and he had little use for metal, even a pretty metal like gold. So, over the space of years, he traded his share of the gold for this bauble and that bauble until he had no gold left of his own, and everything he possessed had been turned into the biggest, most perfect of the precious stones.

  “He kept them in a brass-bound chest lined with scarlet velvet, and by night, by lamplight, he and Francisco would take them out and count them, play marbles with them, toy with them as if they were mere amusements. The two of them lived like kings themselves in their safe, secret anchorage while, one by one, the crew of the Marianna grew old, infirm, and many passed away peacefully of old age.

  “In the end only a handful of old men were left, barely enough to crew the ship with a good wind in her sails, and nowhere near enough to stand by her oars if the wind fell. They all knew they were sorely close to the end of their time. They’d lived long, full, happy lives. They were content and they’d drawn their plans for what would become of the incredible riches they’d won, after they were gone.

  “Every man on the Marianna had left family back in Spain. Now they were at the ends of their lives, and were in little danger, they wanted to pass on their treasures to their kin, to see future generations living well on their spoils.

  “Each man wrote a letter to his family, and each buried his share of the bounty in a specific place which was marked on a piece torn out of a map. Then the letters and the tattered bits of the map were taken back to Spain and delivered by hand, by the very youngest of the crew – a mere lad of 50 years, called Felipe Chavez.

  “At least a dozen of the letters were acted upon, and some of the richest Spanish houses today can trace their largesse back to them. But a few fortunes were never collected, and one letter
was never delivered at all, because there was no one to receive it. Diego Monteras had left two brothers and an uncle, when he fled for his life. All had died childless, and although Chavez spent months hunting for any surviving members of the Monteras family, he found none.

  “In a quandary he returned to the Caribbean, intending to ask his captain what should be done with his share, since there were no Monteras sons or daughters. To his great sadness, he learned that both Diego and Francisco had passed away, just a week apart, though whether there was a sickness or a storm, no one knows. They were buried together, and they lie close to one another even now, though their grave is unmarked and where it is, I cannot tell you.

  “I do know the letter and the bit of map were passed from hand to hand, kept safe, secret … traded, lost, found, disbelieved, misunderstood … and the treasure of Diego Monteras was still out there, buried, waiting to be dug out of its hiding place by an adventurer who had the courage to believe in the story, and who could get his hands on the letter and map.

  “This was the story Sir Geoffrey Gaunt heard over and over until even he, who was a born skeptic, believed it, and he began to listen out for tales not of the treasure, but of the letter, and that scrap torn out of a map. He crossed many a palm with silver; he plied many a man and woman with fine wine, and at last the trail took him to a hermitage, high on the cliffs above a bay known as Coffin Cove, because the waters were so full of sharks, any galley slave trying to escape by swimming ashore would be dead before he made it halfway.

  “A friar lived at the hermitage … fat and old, and so bald, he had no reason to shave in his tonsure. He was Brother Alfredo, a keeper of books and records. He had thousands of them, rescued from ships and offices, stored in big wooden crates to keep the mice out of them.

  “Did he have a letter? Sir Geoffrey asked. Did he have a bit ripped from an old chart of the coast of South America? Well, Brother Alfredo had a mind like a cote full of pigeons. Messy, like his house. He remembered the letter, and he tore the hermitage apart for two days to find the old, brown parchment. But in the end, when Sir Geoffrey had begun to think the whole affair was one enormous wild goose chase after all – oh, the monk found it. Sir Geoffrey had the letter and the map in his hands.

  “The year had already begun to wind down. The winds were dead wrong for the undertaking of another quest. The Atlantic was about to grow stormy with winter, even if the crew were not anxious to get home, which they were … and back in London the Queen was probably twice as anxious to get a return on her investment! So Sir Geoffrey paid the monk in silver coin, took the letter and map, returned to his ship, and prayed to Saint Nicholas and Saint Christopher for a safe passage east.

  “Luck was with him. His ship raced home before storm winds, and she docked on the Thames not six weeks after he’d paid the monk. The Queen was so delighted with the profits of this voyage, she knighted him at once. And it was then, as they drank a little Madeira to celebrate the day, when he told her the story of the treasure of Diego Monteras … and word has it, he showed her the actual letter.

  “The Queen read it. She read it again. She set it down and drank another cup of wine, and she looked up at Sir Geoffrey with the green eyes that had made the likes of Sir Francis Drake himself take a step back.”

  There, Toby fell silent, sealed his lips and surveyed his audience with a dark, self-satisfied smirk. Jim had hung on every word. The man was a master storyteller. Fred Bailey was the first one to demand to know what happened next – obviously the Queen backed Sir Geoffrey to return to South America on the spring winds and hunt for the treasure, but was it found? What became of Sir Geoffrey?

  Several in the audience offered to buy Toby a rum, if a jar of ale would not keep him talking, but he held up both hands as if they had him at pistol point. “Not tonight! You want to know the rest? Come back tomorrow, and I’ll be glad to tell you. For now? Haven’t you seen the time? Get back to your homes, before your wives think you’ve been struck with death!”

  They groaned, and a few fingers shook ruefully at him, but the ploy was an old one. He would get a second bite at this cherry, and perhaps a third, before they had plumbed his store of songs and tales. They might even come back a second time to hear them all again before they began to grow bored. Jim was impressed, not merely by the balladsinger’s skill but also the haul of coins in the box under the bar.

  The locals wandered out, some staggering and propping each other up, and trying to remember the words to The Hogshead. Jim wondered where Toby had learned it, and as the last of his customers drifted away into the night, he latched the door. He leaned on the old timbers and looked Toby Trelane up and down in the flickering light of the half dozen lamps.

  “I’d tip my hat to you, if I was wearing it,” he said honestly. “I didn’t think you’d be able to seduce the rummy old bastards who drink here, but you had them wrapped around your little finger.” He nodded at the bar, the coins. “You reckon you can you do it again tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” Toby said honestly, “but I’m game to give it a try.” He yawned deeply and knuckled his eyes. “Can I beg a blanket? I’ll take the hearth corner, and be up and around before you in the morning.”

  “If that’s what you want.” Jim had more than half expected Toby to hold out his hand, look at him out of dark, bedroom eyes, but the man seemed genuinely exhausted. He was tired enough to want only to sleep tonight? It was a reasonable desire, even if Jim’s own nerves were prickling with intrigue. “You can take any bedchamber, upstairs, if you prefer a mattress under your spine. There’s no paying guests at the moment. You know this place well enough to know there’s six bedchambers up there, and only me sleeping in one of them. I’ve got the warm one, right up against the chimney.”

  Now, Toby looked at him for a long moment in which Jim was so sure he was going to say something, he held his breath. But at length Toby said simply, “I’m beholden. I’ll take Bess out for a breath of air, and then I’ll lay my head down. Do you mind dogs in the bedchambers? She has better manners than most of the gentry.”

  “It’s no problem to me.” Jim turned away and grabbed a half dozen tankards, three handles in each fist, to cover the moment’s awkwardness. “You can take Boxer out as well. He seems to have hit it off with your Bess. Lock up behind you when you step back in.” The tavern’s ratter was yawning at the kitchen door; his tail thumped as Jim spoke his name and glanced at him. “I suppose I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “You will.” Toby gave a low whistle to call both dogs, and lifted the latch. “Goodnight, Master Fairley.”

  “Sleep well, Master Trelane,” Jim said with an acid-hot humor as he dumped the tankards, and he tackled the steep, creaking stairs without looking back.

  The man was so hard to read, he could be dangerous. One moment, Jim was sure he had Toby pegged, and the next he was wondering. Mistakes would be so easy to make – too easy – and there was no way back from a blunder. One mistake was all it took to wreak ruin with a man’s whole life.

  With a sigh, he heeled off his shoes, tugged his shirt over his head, and sprawled out on the bed in the light of two tallow candles. The casement was open to the night air, and he glared at the stars framed in it.

  “Who are you, Toby Trelane?” he wondered aloud. “Where are you from – and where the hell are you going?”

  More importantly, what did he want? Jim’s wilful memory dwelt on the lean, hard body he had seen chopping wood, the soft flaxen hair that stirred in the sea wind. His fingertips could literally feel that skin, and he could almost taste the man’s lips. Almost.

  Minutes later, he heard the quiet squeal of the door, the rattle of the sneck and then the solid thud of the bolt sliding home. Toby and the dogs were back in, the tavern was locked up, and Jim followed him up by the soft sound of feet on the stairs.

  He took the room above the yard, and the door closed a moment later. The bed in there was too soft for Jim’s liking. Put the weight of two men on it, and
the mattress swayed and dipped. Then again, he admitted, if a man were sleeping alone, and all he was doing was sleeping, the mattress was soft enough to serve well enough.

  Frustrated, annoyed, mystified, disgruntled, he turned over, punched the pillow and closed his eyes. Sleep was a long time coming and when it did settle over his mind, his dreams were full of an elusive lover who was always elsewhere, unavailable, unattainable, even though he smiled at Jim and winked in mocking invitation.

  Chapter Four

  The smell of kippers greeted him as he swung downstairs. He followed his nose to the kitchen to find Toby pushing a pair of the smoked fish around with a wooden spoon, in the black iron skillet where a little butter had begun to sizzle. Yesterday’s bread stood on the table and the fat brown pot was brewing fresh tea.

  He looked rested, Jim thought, while Jim himself felt barely half awake and annoyed. The kitchen door stood open; the dogs were lying across the threshold while the cat washed his face in the warm, smoky draft from the hearth. Toby wore a smile this morning. He was in the same britches and shirt, but his waistcoat was off and his hair was unbound, loose on his shoulders. He was so fair, it seemed he rarely needed to shave. No matter the hour, he looked good enough to eat alive, which only made Jim more annoyed.

  “I was looking at your thatch,” Toby said by way of greeting as he pushed the kippers off onto a pair of ivory-stained plates. “It’s coming loose in a few places. You’ll lose a lot of it in the next big wind … I could fix it.”

  Jim answered with a grunt, and broke off a piece of bread.