The Oak Island Affair

by Jane Bow

  Vanessa shook her head.

  “Mademoiselle D. says if treasure had been hidden in the Cave-In Pit, it would not have escaped notice. And it wasn’t long after that that Sophie’s husband Henry leased the land to the next group of treasure hunters.”

  “You mean the whole Sophie’s Cave-In thing could have been a ruse, to reawaken interest in the treasure hunt?”

  “That’s what my father would say.”

  “What about the triangle then? How do we know that was ever really here?”

  “All we have are the records, but there are too many disparate records about too many finds for it all to be a hoax.”

  Down the slope at Smith’s Cove the early sun lit up a mess of bulldozed stones and trapped, stagnant sea water. Brigit stood in the wind.

  “The greed here has sharp teeth, mean piggy eyes.”

  Vanessa hugged her arms, glanced over her shoulder back up the rise, then pointed to the cove’s chaos of water and rocks in a grey-green lagoon. It smelled of salt, seaweed, decay.

  “This is where the underwater tunnel started. Its splayed, finger-like intake shafts were lined with coconut fibres.”

  “From the Caribbean?”

  “Probably. They were hidden under the stones.”

  “So.” Brigit looked around at the devastation. “Here we are at the limestone end of the island, where there are sinkholes, caverns, tunnels.”

  “Someone chopped down trees and waded out, right here, into the receding tide with the huge logs and stones, trying to build a cofferdam to keep the sea from flooding in. The remains are still there, under the water. Like the treasure, probably.” Vanessa told Brigit about the drill that had brought up pieces of oak, then metal, a piece of parchment, then more oak from more than a hundred and fifty feet down, before the bottom of the original treasure shaft and all those that followed it had collapsed.

  On the way back to Joudrey’s Cove Brigit suddenly veered off the road to the left. Another cone-shaped boulder was wearing the green yellow rust of lichen. Grasses kissed its base, daisies nodded. Vanessa opened her book.

  “This must be the top of the cross.”

  Brigit pointed inland, away from the treasure shaft site, in the direction of the headstone.

  “So the stem of the cross goes down there?”

  “Right. Below the headstone there are two stones marking it.”

  “Two?”

  “One partway down the lower stem, the other at the bottom.” Vanessa looked at her watch. “Do you want to see them too?”

  “No, but give me another minute at the headstone, Van. I’ll meet you at the boat.”

  In Joudrey’s Cove a man was standing beside Dancer.

  “Hello!” He waved, smiling. It was the American from the library.

  Vanessa crossed the beach toward him. He seemed to be alone. The treasure hunter’s bungalow was still closed up. So what was he doing here?

  Before Sanger could say anything, something on the ground by Vanessa’s foot distracted his gaze. He bent down.

  “Well I’ll be damned.” Sitting in the palm of his hand as he straightened was a coin.

  Vanessa took it, turned it over. It was heavy, the edges rough cut, a head stamped on one side, the Spanish coat of arms on the other.

  “This is a gold doubloon!” She looked back toward the road where Brigit had just appeared. “Brigit, come and look!” Vanessa handed it back, started scraping at the pebbles with the edge of her running shoe.

  “I wonder if there are more.”

  “It must have been dropped a long time ago.” Accent on the “la-ong time,” spoken as “ta-am.”

  “You know how stones push up from under the ground.” He held the coin out to Vanessa. “It was your foot found it.”

  Before Vanessa could take it, Brigit arrived. Vanessa smiled at Sanger.

  “Brigit, this is Edward Sanger.”

  Sanger held out his hand.

  “My friends call me ‘Teach.’”

  Brigit stared at the hand.

  “Brigit!” Vanessa laughed, embarrassed. “You’ll have to excuse her, she’s still a little jet-lagged. She just arrived from the west coast.”

  Sanger’s smile did not waver but his interest was in Vanessa. He continued to hold out the doubloon.

  “It’s yours.”

  But what was Brigit’s spontaneous aversion about? And trespassing then taking treasure off someone else’s private property would be a Wrong Choice. Vanessa smiled.

  “No thanks. You’re the one who saw it.”

  “‘Edward Teach,’ wasn’t that Blackbeard’s name?” Brigit yanked the jib sheet free of its clamp. “What kind of man would choose the name of a pirate who stuck lit candles into his beard and went around raping and murdering?”

  “Why didn’t you ask him instead of just standing there like a wooden post?”

  Vanessa set the long tack back across the bay.

  “As for that doubloon, you don’t really think he happened to find it right then?”

  Vanessa’s annoyance turned into mischief.

  “I think he’s hot.”

  “Hot? He’s ancient!”

  “Late forties. Distinguished looking.”

  “Middle-aged cannot equal hot, Van. It’s an oxymoron.”

  “An oxy-what? Did I hear the word ‘moron’?”

  VII

  “I WONDER IF THERE’S A connection between Santi’s story and the diary.” Brigit was sitting in the sunshine on Gran’s deck, feet up on the railing as they breakfasted on lobster sandwiches. “Do you think his ‘I-don’t-know-how-many-times-great’ grandfather really did steal gold from the king of Spain?”

  “I know that people kept trying. They probably figured that if the king could steal from South America, why not? There was a blacksmith on one of the galleons who made a whole ship’s anchor out of bars of gold the men kept slipping to him during the voyage. Painted black, the anchor looked just like a normal wrought-iron ship’s anchor. Perfect, they thought, because who would ever think to look for contraband gold on the sea bottom? But what they forgot was that when you raise and lower a ship’s anchor it scrapes against the bow.”

  “Oh no.”

  “And they had to anchor off Altamira then sail into Cadiz harbour.”

  “Don’t tell me—”

  Vanessa nodded ruefully.

  “They were all hanged from the yardarms.” Vanessa got up. “I’m going to work on the translation.”

  “How much do you have left?”

  “Another few hours.”

  “And then we have to go back to Oak Island,” said Brigit. “I need some uninterrupted time there. I saw these hands, Van, at the headstone.”

  What Vanessa needed was more facts. “Logic is the route to the past,” her father used to say. “In Cadiz we knew it was an important city seventeen hundred years ago, and that the Romans had imported the Greeks’ idea of wisdom plays. It was an easy step from there to mapping the way they would have used their city space and then making an educated guess about where the amphitheatre would be.” Finding it had been the achievement of his life. When the gold company that had financed his archaeological institute had shut it down, a light at the centre of her father’s life had been extinguished. If only he were here with her now.

  Gran’s telephone rang as Brigit was gathering up their dishes.

  “It’s probably that stupid agent.”

  “Vanessa?” The voice was deep, slightly flat, American; Edward Sanger inviting her to dinner at Stewart Hall. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” How had he got her number? Not from Mlle Durocher.

  “I couldn’t possibly. My friend—”

  “I thought maybe she’d want to sleep off her jet lag.”

  “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

  But he went right on talking. From the moment he had first glimpsed her on the beach in the early sunlight he had thought he was seeing the golden-haired goddess Athena.


  Silently, Vanessa began to listen. What was the harm?

  By the time she hung up Brigit was hovering.

  “You’re not really going to go?”

  “Sure,” Vanessa shrugged. “Why not?”

  “He’s a predator, Van. His name is Blackbeard for God’s sake!”

  “Well, maybe I need a little wind on my ass too. You don’t want me to live my life caged up, do you?” She dodged out of the reach of Brigit’s tea towel.

  VIII

  “YOU REMEMBER BRIGIT, MADEMOISELLE? She used to come down in the summers sometimes.”

  “But of course.” Mlle Durocher took Brigit’s hand in both of her own. “How could I forget these brown eyes? So whimsical.” She turned to Vanessa. “You have finished translating, chérie?”

  “Not quite, but he did come up here, Mademoiselle—”

  “No Timmy, not that one.” A young mother searching the stacks across the hall with a little boy had a sleeping baby strapped into a chest pouch. “Here, what about Edward Bear?”

  “Edward Bear’s a wuss.”

  “Oh, Tim.”

  Whining commenced in the stacks. Timothy’s mother dragged him toward the door.

  “Sorry, Mademoiselle, it’s nap time. We’ll be back tomorrow, when we’re feeling a little more co-operative.”

  Outside, clouds were gathering. Vanessa checked the stacks, the reading room across the hall. They had the library to themselves.

  “You must have read everything anyone’s ever written about Oak Island,” Brigit was saying. “So you must have some ideas about the nature of whoever buried the treasure?”

  “Baaf, I think the books about Oak Island have not been written by people who have lived our history.” Mademoiselle came out from behind her desk. “They say, for example, that the engineering knowledge that would have been necessary to build this complex treasure shaft and the flood tunnels limits the number of people who could have done it. I say balls to that, if you will pardon my French. Come.”

  They followed her into the reading room.

  “You modern Anglais think that no one crossed the Atlantic before Columbus. Nothing in this world existed before you invented it! But how do you think my people, the Acadians, constructed their drainage systems? Hundreds of years they’d used engineering to reclaim the sea marshes before the British kicked them all out — 8000 men, women, little children — and took everything they had. Talk about pirates! Or what about the Cornish tin miners, who had been excavating underground for a millennium? Or the medieval builders of those great European cathedrals, do you not think they could have dug a little treasure shaft and a few tunnels?” There was a low shelf on the far side of the room. Mlle Durocher began to pull out books. “Anyone — pirate, soldier, renegade — could have dug the treasure shaft.”

  “Wouldn’t someone have talked, though?”

  “Not if they were dead.” She passed the books back to Vanessa and Brigit.

  “Or couldn’t get back here, didn’t know the right coordinates,” said Vanessa. “Navigating at sea is nearly impossible without a chart.”

  “What about the date?” Brigit looked at Vanessa. “Didn’t you tell me once that the new oaks growing in the clearing when Daniel McGinnis discovered the treasure shaft put the time frame in the late 1700’s?”

  Mlle Durocher snorted.

  “The writers of books that say that, they forgot to read their weather records. If they had, they’d know that in 1759 a huge storm swept across Nova Scotia. Trees all down the coast fell. The ones that grew up again are all the same age.” She glanced at the title on the red cloth spine of another book, handed it to Vanessa.

  “Could the Acadians have stashed their family fortunes in the treasure shaft while the British and the French were fighting?” Brigit asked.

  “Poof!” Mlle Durocher straightened her back. “What fortunes?”

  “What about the Acadian pirates who sailed out of Le Havre, just down the coast?” Vanessa hazarded. Her arms were full of books now.

  “They liked to harass the British ships trading in and out of Boston and New York, and they might have been in league with French pirates.”

  “All that was much later, in the 1700’s. But think, Vanessa.” The old lady lowered herself into one of the chairs at the reading room table where Edward Sanger had sat. “Remember Sergeant Jose’s man and the French pirates had a hand signal and there was also—”

  “Uncle Seamus’ apron! They were all Freemasons, like so many of the Oak Island treasure hunters.”

  Mlle Durocher smiled. “Why do you think you are holding all those books?”

  Vanessa dumped them on the table and settled into one of the other chairs. Behind her the tiled fireplace in the corner stood as a reminder of the days when this had been someone’s living room. The ceiling was ten feet high, plaster moulded into a circle of intertwined leaves at the centre. Where once an imported crystal chandelier would have hung, now there was a round frosted glass light cover. How many happy afternoons had she spent here batting ideas back and forth with Mlle Durocher?

  “But first, what more can we know about Brother Bartolomeo’s pirates?” asked the old lady.

  Vanessa had brought Gran’s exercise book.

  “Why don’t I let Brother Bart tell it himself. You remember, there were two ships.” Vanessa read:

  They were French. A few hours later every chest and crate Jose and his group had tried to save had been loaded into the longboats and taken to a little sailing ship called L’Amitié which was lying with another similar ship just round the end of the point. The ship’s captain was a slim Frenchman with brown hair tied back and a crisp white lace neck ruff, Captain Du Moulin. Perhaps, he smiled, we would like to join him? They needed extra hands.

  Some stepped forward. Jesus gestured for me to do the same, but I hesitated. Would they argue if I pleaded my vocation to You? I could find my way back to Habana. To do what? No, I had made a promise to Jose. And all I had left of my Mia was her people’s treasure. So I too stepped forward, You will say forsaking my church and my order. Two men declined the offer. The captain shot them in the head.

  Vanessa looked up. “Brother Bart was tall, clumsy, middle-aged, no use in the rigging, but he had a few words of French so the captain put him to work in the ship’s galley.” She continued:

  The captain of L’Amitié’s sister ship, L’Espérance, was the expedition’s leader. His name was Martin St. Clere. His family was one of the oldest in France, but the men told me that he hated the French king. When we anchored for the night Captain St. Clere and his advisor came aboard L’Amitié. The captain was a well-built man, about my height, in his mid-thirties. He wore his red-blond hair short. His eyes were quick, intelligent. In spite of the weeks at sea his doublet and stockings, which were green, looked as if they had been freshly laundered. His advisor was older, steeped apparently in mathematics and science and sorcery.

  Vanessa looked at them. “Listen to this, one of the two ships’ flags showed an hourglass and a man holding a sword against a black background. The other was the skull and crossbones.”

  Mlle Durocher smiled, started sorting through the pile of books on the table and came up with a slim volume. Inside was a picture of the Jolly Roger flown by a French pirate ship. It was the flag Brother Bart had described.

  “Now look at that one.” She pointed to a small red book with a frayed binding.

  Vanessa opened it, stopped at a photograph of a hammer, chisel, compass, set square, knife, a sextant shaped like a 0-degree triangle with a rounded bottom and a plumb line hanging from the apex. The tools were used by the French Freemasons to symbolize their moral rules.

  “Look.” Vanessa pushed the open book across the table to Brigit. “This is the exact shape of the sextant they found laid out in pebbles near the treasure shaft.”

  “And see the sextant and compass set one on the other?” Mlle Durocher added. “Just like the ones on the ring of that man, the American.”
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br />   “Blackbeard,” said Brigit. “Vanessa’s having dinner with him tonight.”

  Mlle Durocher looked over her spectacles.

  “You will not show him the diary?”

  “Of course not! It’s a friendly dinner, that’s all.” Vanessa turned back to the book, where another plate showed the four pillars of the Temple of Solomon, a dagger crossed with a bone, a hammer and chisel crossed, crossed swords, and a Star of David — made of two triangles laid on top of each other, one pointing up, the other down — like the one Vanessa had seen on the embroidered Freemason’s apron in which her ancestor Seamus Holdt had wrapped Brother Bart’s diary.

  She turned the page.

  “Look!” A third plate showed a coffin with a skull and crossbones on it. “‘The coffin, skull and crossbones are emblems of mortality, and cry out with a voice almost more than mortal, prepare to meet thy God.’ And listen to this: ‘the hourglass is an emblem of human life, the scythe an emblem of time, which cuts the brittle thread of life and launches us into eternity.’”

  “The pirates’ flag!” said Brigit. Mlle Durocher looked proud as a mother hen.

  Vanessa returned to the book.

  “‘Darkness and death formed an essential part of ancient worships across the world. It was thought that man, once he had been besmirched by lust and greed and evil, must descend into darkness, chaos, must die a symbolic death before he could be reborn and initiated into the higher secrets … In Scottish and French Freemasonry this is reflected by the coffin which symbolizes the Chamber of Reflection, where an aspirant has to spend time before he is initiated.’” Vanessa looked at Mlle Durocher.

  “They buried Brother Bart! — I just finished translating that part — Here, listen. They had sailed up the coast of America looking for something.” Vanessa found the place.

  We kept having to heave to while Captain St. Clere put in to shore in a longboat. Finally he came back jubilant. They had found what they were seeking: the outline, carved into a cliff, of a knight. Very ancient, Jesus said.

  Mlle Durocher frowned.

  “A knight?”

  “And a landmark, because.” She continued to read.