by Jane Bow
“Help!” The wind tossed the sound. “Brigit! Help!”
There was no reply.
She pressed and breathed, stones digging into her knees, the wind so cold against her wet nakedness, her thoughts swirling.
Please don’t let him be dead — though why the hell not..
“Come on, you bastard!”
I haven’t killed him … Dear God—
“Help!”
But there was no one, apparently, to hear.
Sanger blinked.
“Ed!” Thank God. But then the hairs on the back of Vanessa’s neck stood up. There was no life in his eyes. His hand, clammy as a dead man’s, came up, tightened around her wrist, pulled her closer. She leaned toward him, thought he wanted to speak. His free hand fastened onto one of her breasts, twisted it. The pain made her cry out.
She tried to pull away.
“No one.” The voice was a whisper, colorless, rattling, the rest of the words unintelligible. Sanger twisted his hand again.
Pain shut out vision, thought, breath. Then suddenly his grip loosened. Confusion seeped into his eyes. Fear peeked out. Vanessa used the instant to pry herself free, started to back away up the beach toward the road while out on the water her skipperless boat drifted.
Sanger struggled to his feet, and staggered toward her. She saw his axe leaning against the stump beside the tent, picked it up. Sanger took another step, his head thrust forward, bull-like, bellowing. She raised the axe. And knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was capable of killing, that should he lunge toward her, she would not hesitate to bring the axe down, split open the top of his head.
He stopped, his head swaying from side to side as if he did not know where he was. Vanessa dropped the axe and ran. Up the beach into the underbrush, branches scratching her arms, chest, back, stomach, tugging at her hair, slowing her. Her legs were stiff with cold, her skin covered with goosebumps. Some inner sense of direction took her to the road that ran down the centre of the island. She could turn right, running toward the treasure hunters and help. But she did not hesitate, went straight ahead, across the road and into the undergrowth to the lowland place where the headstone was. She could hear Sanger stumbling along behind her, crashing against trees, snapping branches, cursing.
Think, Vanessa. She found her direction then counted paces from the headstone, dodging bushes, keeping as straight as she could, toward what should be the large cone-shaped granite boulder partway down the stem of the cross. Found it. Came back half the number of paces to a place where a little patch of grass was long and soft, shiny in the sun.
“Brigit?” She whispered.
Nothing. Beyond the trees she could see Sanger, turning his head this way, then that, like a grizzly bear picking up the scent.
Beside the grass, flowers — a couple of lady’s slippers, the long stem and arching green leaves of the Solomon’s seal — grew around a jumble of small orange and black lichen-covered rocks.
And look, here was a hole, just large enough for a body to slide through, where two stones had been moved out of the way! The edges had been hacked out to make it larger. An axe that must be Mlle Durocher’s lay in the grass.
Sanger had spotted her, was lumbering this way. Only one choice presented itself.
XVIII
THE HOLE DESCENDED ON AN ANGLE. Stone scraped Vanessa’s skin, cold earth stuck to her bottom as she slid down it into a horizontal tunnel large enough to stand in. The floor was gravel, man-made.
“Brigit?” The tunnel walls bounced the name back to her. “Brigit?”
No answer. The only sound came from Vanessa’s own breathing.
This must be the Chamber of Reflection. Brigit must have come down here. So where was she? Where was the treasure?
Further down the tunnel there was a glow, flickering light from a side room. Vanessa moved toward it, felt the warmth of fire.
“Brigit?”
Silhouetted against the light stood a presence clothed in a floor-length hooded black cloak, oddly familiar, the way a dream can be, though Vanessa could not see her face.
Not la vieja, the old woman. This person was tall, erect. There was no goat carcass, no sweet cloying smell of blood and decay.
“Who are you?” She took a step toward the figure. There was no time for fear. “And why are you hiding inside that hideous hood?”
A gnarled hand reached up, pushed back the black wool. “It can get cold down here.”
La vieja in Altamira had been terrifying, a figure of death. This creature’s face was a sallow map of wrinkles. The dark eyes were of no specific color, older than time, remorseless and luminous, containing a world beyond the reach of human compassion anger greed, where a person was as likely to be ripped limb from limb as she was to be cared for. A concrete, material person? Or a nonsense, a figment of Vanessa’s fear? She came closer to the fire. The old woman picked up a log, fed it to the flames.
“Go back.”
“Where’s Brigit?”
“She was not ready.” The voice was emotionless. “Neither are you.”
Do not think. Do not speak or wonder what has happened, what it means. Vanessa knelt, holding her hands out to the heat. Stay still, balanced, focused.
There was, in this underground room, a sense of sitting in the lap of eternity, a place with no past, no future, just this fire and the old woman, and Vanessa’s certainty that to keep the vision she must not question or doubt.
The old woman stared at her, unblinking.
Vanessa forced herself to meet the gaze, to look directly into centuries of birth beauty blood destruction distilled into the dark pools of the eyes until finally the ancient shoulders arched into a shrug.
“Go on then, if you will. But if you do, remember three things.” She ticked them off on her bony fingers. “One, the rules that run the surface world do not apply down here. Two, from here there is no turning back. And three, what’s down here must stay down here.” She turned back to the fire.
Far away and above, Vanessa heard a thud: axe against earth.
“Excuse me?”
But the old woman was no longer listening.
Vanessa stayed for a moment to let the fire heat her nakedness, then returned to the tunnel, feeling her way along its wall into total darkness. Brigit must have come this way.
Except, she was not ready.
Behind Vanessa, at the upper end of the tunnel, pebbles trickled down through the hole, and now there was a body sliding.
“Brigit?”
Someone landed, grunted.
Sanger! The firelight in the side room went out.
Vanessa took a step away into the darkness. Another step.
Into thin air.
She dropped straight as a stone, air whistling past her eyes, her stomach lifting. Down and down, breath gone, until the bottoms of her feet smacked against water that swallowed her, cold as death. She kicked against it, beat her arms, broke the surface.
The tunnel must be at least ten feet above her.
“Hey!”
Oh dear Mother of God.
“Help!” The water’s cold fingered her bare stomach, her breasts, the small of her back. “Ed, help me!” Her cry echoed off stone walls.
“Vieja!” The word rang up, out, around the world.
Brigit was not ready, the old woman had said. This must have happened to her too.
“Oh Brig’, I’m sorry.” But there was no room inside her for the pain. She was breathing too hard, precious life energy leaking out. And neither are you, the old woman had said. She lay back in the water. Her skull ached in the caress of its cold.
“Ed? Help!” Her stomach, legs, feet were nearly numb already, her eyelids wooden. She would close them just for a moment.
“No, Vanessa.”
A female voice. Whose?
Not Mademoiselle’s, she’s dead. But this is the place of the dead—
“Are you ever going to learn, Vanessa?” The voice was exasperated, the way Mlle Dur
ocher became whenever Vanessa allowed herself to become mired in confusion, failed to see the point. “Remember what the old woman said.”
“What?” she cried. “What did she say?”
“There is no going back.”
No way back. Think it through, Vanessa. No way back. Did that mean there was a way forward? Vanessa felt the sides of the sinkhole. The rock had been polished smooth by the swirling grind of glacial stone and water. There were no foot purchases, no handholds. No sign of Sanger above. Had he passed out, or was he watching her? The only way to go anywhere was to dive down into the blackness.
To dive or to die here, within the next few moments. The air smelled of minerals. To dive was to die, surely, but where was the choice?
Don’t think about it. Vanessa looked up one last time, filled her lungs, once, twice, then ducked down under the water, kicking down, down, legs stiff with cold, keeping one hand on the wall of the sinkhole, deeper, her body cutting through water colder surely than any human could stand, down, down into a complete absence of light, every kick such labour now.
Don’t stop. Kick. Keep going—
The water above her suddenly became turbulent. Something fell past her, something large, heavy, clothed. A body. It bumped against her thigh.
Bubbles from it broke against her cheek as she swam down through the water. Her hand, sweeping blindly ahead of her, brushed against flesh — fingers reaching for her? — but then the body sank away into the blackness. Too heavy to be Brigit.
She kept on kicking, feeling her way down the sinkhole wall, muscles so stiff now, lungs crying for oxygen.
Found a break in the wall: another tunnel. She swam into it, no longer thinking or knowing that in doing so she was giving up any possibility of retracing her path, of replenishing her air supply.
But now here was another opening, in the roof of the side tunnel, a widening. She kicked upward, lungs bursting, and broke through the water’s surface into black, rank, mineral laden air. Took great gulps of it.
She was too cold, the feeling gone in her hands and her feet. Her thinking was fuzzy but full of thanks.
The darkness was absolute, a total absence of light, the perfect place in which to rest, to give in finally, to close her eyes, unless—
“Brigit?”
The sound ricocheted, became metallic. There was no response.
Was there at least a place to sit? So as not to die in the water, not to sink down to where the sunken corpse that must be Sanger would have come to rest, not to have to be with him forever in death. She dog-paddled, looking for the wall of the cavern, then felt her way along it, and found a ledge just above the water level. Her hands, as she pulled herself up, kept knocking against objects. Not rocks. Crouching against the wall, unspeakably cold, she picked one up. It was long and smooth, light as, falling out of her hand, it plopped into the water.
This one was rounder, with holes in it. And now here were more long thin ones with bumps at the ends—
Bones! Vanessa recoiled, hugged her knees. Were they human? Had other people huddled right here on this ledge, waiting, rocking, struggling not to vomit, not to lose their precious body warmth, teeth beating a ghostly tattoo into a blackness unknown to life?
She was sitting in the doorway to death. Because where else was she going? “What’s down here must stay down here,” la vieja had said.
How much oxygen could there be in here? Soon she would be just like these others. She reached out, felt along the ledge, found a medium sized bone. An arm maybe? She held it in front of her face, but where there is no light there is no sight. Still, with her other hand she shook the end of it.
“How do you do? My name is Vanessa. What’s yours?” Her voice was a friend. “Are you a man or a woman?” Man probably, according to Oak Island’s history. What woman in her right mind would come down here? A high keening sound started, hitched with sobs—
Stop it. Save your energy, Vanessa. She looked at the place where her hand holding the bone must be.
“Okay,” she told the bone, “never mind history, I’ll call you Eleanor.” Eleanor, her mother’s middle name after Eleanor of Aquitaine, heroine of the middle ages, Christian crusader, lover, mother of England’s King Richard I, the Lion Heart. “There may not be anything in the books about female treasure hunters, Eleanor, but history is written by the conquerors. Only God knows what really happened.”
She turned the bone over in her hand.
“So, pleased to meet you, Eleanor. Just think, once you were a living breathing person like me, sitting here having thoughts. When was that, I wonder? Well, one thing’s for sure, conquerors we ain’t!” Vanessa giggled and now she could see Eleanor, so thin, naked, sitting knees drawn up to her chest, skin so cold it hurt. Then went numb. Then died, energy extinguished. “Where did you come from, Eleanor? What did you think about, sitting here?”
Thoughts, feelings, memories came to her now fully coloured, textured, complete with smells, one after the other, faster, then faster still, colliding one into the next—
Stop it.
“Is that you, Eleanor?”
Breathe. As long as you breathe you are alive.
Oh, okay. Breathing: in….
Out: the treasure was probably down under the water at the bottom of this cavern with Sanger, his body draped over the lost chests, the first man to find the treasure, the winner! She shouldn’t laugh but the sound was a mountain brook bubbling over sun-splashed stones, a few silver-backed fish hiding among the pink granite, white quartz. In …
Out: she could make anything real in this blackness. Think it and there it was in living color:
Henry Sinclair. Brigit was right, he was small, barely five feet with his armour on, but so were the men in his retinue. Look at the fervour in his eyes.
Captain St. Clere was slim, stronger looking, also cultured, his eyes piercing, as ruthless as Sanger’s — hawk’s eyes, Mlle Durocher had called them. Vanessa shuddered.
Brother Bart in his brown monk’s robe, tall, gangly, his middle-aged face open in wonder at the honey-coloured girl holding his hand, smiling her invitation, helping him now to lift the rough robe … And now, just a few months later his body bent, staggering across the Altamira beach, kneeling to kiss the sand. Vanessa could feel the hot summer air, hear the sea breaking behind him in the moonlight.
Altamira. The smells of the sun and sea and sand, of fish up on the dock where vendors were shouting out the day’s catch; el mercado, where everyone congregated to gossip and laugh and haggle on a Saturday morning; the dust caught in the convent chapel’s coloured sunbeams as Mother Superior rasped her way through the morning prayer; the feel of Vanessa’s navy wool tunic against bare legs on a chilly winter afternoon; the sweet greasiness of churros; all the colours and smells of Altamira life calling to her in a language that sang as she, Carlita, Paco and Adrian roamed the beaches and hillsides of the Spain she had loved. And then lost.
But look, here came her parents, walking toward her across the beach.
“Dad?”
He seemed to glance her way, the sun reflecting off the lenses of his glasses.
“Dad listen, there doesn’t seem to be any right choice, any one right way.”
He just kept walking, continuing his conversation with her mother.
And here was Brigit. Thank God. Except that she was pushing her way through the Canary Island tomato plants, standing speechless for a moment at the edge of the deserted beach before running down through the hot sand, shedding her clothes and sandals and pack to splash through the waves.
“Hello, Van.” Charlie, smiling at her, and scents of the sun on the Canary Island sea, of the roses he had given her on the first anniversary of their meeting, of his favourite aftershave. She breathed in his every detail — the line of his whiskery jaw as he lay asleep in the early morning, the way his eyelashes curled, the curve of his earlobe, the brush of his lips on her breasts in the surf — until these pictures too faded. Disappeared.
/> True silence is devoid of feeling thought instinct. Need and fear find no holds here.
Golden, glorious light. It must be coming from inside her because her eyes were closed.
To have the thought was to lose the light. The sound of her breathing returned, and with it, through the numbness of this cold, a feeling.
Love, for her fingers, her toes, for her life even here in the darkness.
Soon the tide would rise.
“Right, Eleanor?”
She would turn into Eleanor because there was no turning back, and that would be all right.
There was, however, oxygen in here. From where? Vanessa looked up. The Templar, Henry Sinclair, would have dug upward once he was inside the tunnels, right Brigit? Upward to reach above the water line at high tide.
Vanessa forced her muscles into movement and stood up, her face against the cold cavern wall. She ran one hand up the rock, using the other to steady herself as she inched along the ledge, trying to avoid Eleanor and the others.
Found a horizontal iron bar, each of its ends sunk into the rock, a rung. There was a second one above it: a ladder! Vanessa tugged. The ancient iron held.
The cold had turned her body to wood but somehow she pulled herself up the rungs into the ceiling, into a tunnel up, or a sinkhole like the one she had fallen into. She began to climb.
Test each step. God only knew how old the rungs were. Rust crumbled under her fingers. Her hands and feet, gripping, were clumsy, barely able to feel as she climbed higher into the shaft in the cavern ceiling, but the cold and the blackness held no fear even as she wondered how high she was, how far it was to the bottom now, whether Eleanor had fallen.
A trickle of new air cooled her face. Vanessa reached out, felt the walls. If whoever had buried the treasure had tunnelled upward, were there also side tunnels? She climbed higher, tried again. Found the opening. Digging her fingers into the earth, she wiggled into it, flat on her stomach, until she could inch ahead, beetle-like.
The tunnel, no more than three feet high, went on and on. She was crawling through the inside of the earth and it did occur to her that no one in the world had any idea where she was, that if the earth in this ancient digging collapsed and she died, no one would ever find her. But the thought was inconsequential, disconnected from feeling or other thoughts, and now the tunnel was widening. The roof became higher, and now here was a thin, diffuse, bluish reflection of light. Vanessa got up onto her hands and knees, scurrying forward until she could come to her feet.