“Cliff’s downstairs looking for Derek,” I said. “I came with him because I’m afraid there may be trouble.”
Iris grinned. “I’m not surprised. Now I suppose they’ll have a bang-up fight. It’s been coming under the surface for a long time, though Cliff keeps his feelings battened down. A fight is supposed to settle everything—men!”
I sat down a bit anxiously, glanced at the menu the waitress set before me, and ordered conch chowder to send her away.
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked.
“We can bake cakes, or knit socks. Or load the muskets when the Indians come.”
Iris was neither a cake baker nor a sock knitter, but if there were muskets, I suspected she would be quite willing to fire them herself.
“We can’t just sit here waiting!” I said.
“There’s nothing else to do. Cliff’s a haunted man, and until he lays his ghosts, he won’t really come back to life. Now he thinks Derek is one of them.”
“What you said to him didn’t help.”
She went right on. “When I saw Cliff this morning the first thing he said was, ‘This is the last time I can ever say that Poppy was alive a year ago.’ He’s been brooding all day, and he’s ready to stir up trouble. I gave Angela and Pedro the day off and told them to stay home tomorrow too—since we’ll all be out on Derek’s boat.”
“You didn’t help much in calming him down,” I repeated. Perhaps “haunted” was the word for Iris too.
“He knows I fly off when I’m pushed.” She sounded defensive. “He makes allowances.”
“I don’t think so. He came here to confront Derek. He told me he had to know.”
Apparently Iris couldn’t face her own actions, and she changed the subject abruptly. “Everything will be better when tomorrow is over. For more than one reason. I’m going out to the island tonight with Derek to help get things ready. Though of course he’s bringing in caterers to set up the food. I’ll come over on the Aurora in the morning and pick you up. The caterers will come out by boat later. Have you been aboard the Aurora yet?”
I shook my head. At the moment I wasn’t much interested, and I kept listening for sounds from the stairs.
“The Aurora’s a dream—a power yacht, and very fast. Starting at dawn tomorrow, Derek will be over on the Dolphin getting everything up from the bottom. He already knows what’s down there and has the places marked. Though the storm this afternoon could have shifted sand, so the job may be harder than he expected and take longer. He’ll use his divers as long as he can. There’s a limit to how many times a diver can go down in one day.”
Iris sounded as though she might be bolstering her own courage, reassuring herself.
“Once it’s over,” she went on, “once everything is safe in vaults on the island, then Derek and I can be married. I don’t want to wait for a big wedding and all that nonsense. I just want Derek for my husband as soon as possible.”
She closed her eyes, and her hands were clenched on the table. What Iris wanted she would have, no matter what.
“Who’s coming to this treasure party?” I asked.
“Only us. Cliff’s family. We’re the ones Derek wants to impress, I think. And for Cliff that will be party enough. Though of course Marcus will be there—he’s one of us.”
“Then the rumors we’ve been hearing about treasure really are true? I mean, there’s talk about gold bars and chains and all sorts of fabulous items.”
Iris glanced around quickly, but the nearest occupied tables were some distance off and the room hadn’t filled up.
“It’s true enough.”
“Why hasn’t be brought these things up as he found them? Isn’t he taking a chance to wait?”
“This way he’ll make one trip. And it’s all safer on the bottom of the ocean, with a ship to guard the area on top. The Dolphin’s an old scow, but she’s fully armed, and Derek can trust the men he keeps on board.”
“Men like Eddie Burch?” I asked.
She gave me a quick look. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that Eddie keeps turning up, and I don’t like him.”
“He’s okay. Despite their old trouble, he’s been devoted to Derek for years, and if he really got out of line, Alida could handle him.” Iris broke off. “Look who’s coming, Laurel.”
I looked around and saw Derek and Cliff approaching down the room. Derek’s arm was around Cliff’s shoulders, and Cliff was laughing.
“So much for mayhem,” I murmured. “Maybe they have better sense than we thought.”
“It’s a bit early,” Iris said, as they reached our table, “but sit down and join us for dinner. There’s no cooking going on at home.”
Everything wasn’t quite as congenial as it seemed, however. Derek gave Iris a cool look, and he didn’t sit down when Cliff did. “I’m busy downstairs right now. I’ll grab a bite at the bar and see you later.”
I caught the hint of alarm in Iris’s eyes. “We’re still going over to the island tonight?”
“That’s the plan,” Derek said and walked away.
Iris turned her quick anger on our father. “You told him what I said! When I was only making things up!”
“Of course I told him. I had to know what you were so mad about.” Cliff looked at her thoughtfully. “Derek thinks you may be the one who’s developing envy and jealousy. Perhaps you always were jealous of Poppy. And maybe of your sister Fern.”
Iris looked so shocked that I felt sorry for her. Perhaps the one thing she’d always counted on, been sure of, was Derek’s almost fatuous affection.
She rose from the table abruptly. “I’m not hungry. I’ll come back later and meet Derek. Right now I want to telephone Alida.”
Cliff let her go, but she looked so upset that for an instant I wanted to run after her to make sure she was all right. I hadn’t expected to feel any sympathy for Iris. But even as I thought of following her, I denied my own intuition. There was nothing I could do or say that would help her now, and she would certainly repulse any such effort from me. So I stayed with my father, where I wanted to be.
It wasn’t until much later that I wondered if events were as much affected by what one didn’t do as what one did. If I had followed Iris, might I have prevented her call to Alida—or at least delayed it until she felt better? If she hadn’t made the call, perhaps Alida wouldn’t have taken the desperate step she did, and then some of the awful things that followed might never have happened. Or would they have happened anyway, in some other pattern?
All this was hindsight. We are seldom warned at the time when we most need it. I sat at the table with my father, glad to see him more cheerful and glad enough to be with him, never dreaming of the storm Iris was about to stir up.
11
The Aurora was magnificent—not a large yacht, but nevertheless a white sea queen whose prow raked the water dramatically. The deckhouses were in two layers, the top one offering good visibility for the helmsman. An oddly shaped funnel served in place of a sail, and above the waterline a row of white circles indicated portholes. Aft, a sun deck overlooked the stern, and its teak boards already burned hot in the sun.
We had left Key West around nine in the morning, and we were all on board except for Derek, who had gone directly from the island to the Dolphin. Iris, Fern, and even Alida had come from Doubloon Key to meet Cliff, Marcus, and me in Key West.
The moment I’d come aboard, I’d sensed an odd disquiet—as though those on the boat were apprehensive about something. Iris looked enticing and cool in white piqué shorts and a lemon shirt, her hair bound back with a white band. Her perfection was marred, however, by her restless, nervous air—so unlike the calm I’d first thought typical of Iris. I wondered if she might have learned more about Derek’s activities than she could accept.
Fern had wrapped herself inappropriately in a filmy creation that blew about her in the wind and was the color of those woodsy ferns for which she was named. There se
emed an unearthly quality about her today, as though she had little connection with gravity, never losing her balance when the yacht rolled in the swells and floating along without clinging to handrails or lifelines like the rest of us, who were mortal. She stayed near Cliff when she could, showing a yearning and anxiety that was obvious and which probably embarrassed him, since he was hardly a demonstrative man.
I felt that Alida shouldn’t have come. She looked pale and ill and spent her time stretched out in a deck chair topside, with her eyes closed much of the time. Iris had brought her along reluctantly, and only because Alida had insisted on being part of the day. Whenever Cliff was in sight, she opened her eyes and watched him anxiously, her apprehension contagious, so that uneasiness lay heavily on all three women and began to affect me as well. Though I had no certain idea of what there was to fear. As I realized later, all their fears were different.
Chairs had been set out for us on the sun deck, where we could look down and watch as treasure was brought up from the bottom of the sea. Divers from the Dolphin had been working since dawn, and when we anchored near the wreck site a power launch came over to put aboard all that had been collected earlier.
The stern of the Aurora was quickly puddled with sea water and strewn with chunks of coral. Now when divers went down, they came up directly to the Aurora, climbing an improvised platform and depositing additional treasure on each trip. There was no longer any question that this wreck was the Spanish galleon, the Santa Beatriz. Much of her cargo had been registered in Spain, and what had not been marked for the King’s taxes was probably contraband.
I stood at an upper rail with Marcus beside me, more conscious of him than ever on this beautiful day I wanted to share with him, yet feeling that we had moved away from each other. The preoccupation of all the men was entirely on the main event—the treasure—while the women focused mainly on the men. Perhaps because they worried us more than all that gold.
Derek had come over with the first load and was supervising the astonishing trove as it was brought up and dumped casually into the stern of the Aurora. Heavier pieces were either left on the Dolphin or remained on the bottom for later retrieval.
For a time we were all struck into awed wonder at the sight of so much ancient gold. Only Alida didn’t seem to care. She watched Cliff, and when he wasn’t nearby she lay back in her chair, shaded by an awning, indifferent to all else. She really looked like death, and though Iris and I took turns keeping her company, she didn’t respond. Sooner or later, I must find out what had happened on the island after I’d left. Fern would know. But right now Fern too was hypnotized by the gold.
The sun struck a yellow dazzle from the piles of treasure. There were a great number of gold bars, and probably two or three dozen long chains with carved and twisted links, all ringing as only gold can as each chain was dropped on the heap. Large gold plates stamped with elaborate designs had been recovered, and there were more gleaming piles of golden doubloons. Gold, as Marcus had told me, never tarnished like lesser metals and always looked like gold, even after all these hundreds of years.
Derek brought a few special items up for us to look at and handle. He was bursting with energy today and flashing even more confidence than usual, so that he seemed overpowering and a little frightening. None of the women’s uneasiness had touched or dampened his enthusiasm as the collection grew.
Marcus watched, always the observer today, and not entirely happy about Derek’s triumph.
I could understand now why Iris had looked displeased about the gold medal I had found. That was a fluke, since nothing was supposed to be brought up until this staged celebration today.
“Why are there so many gold chains?” I asked Derek, weighing the heaviness of a chain in my hand.
“They could be used like money,” he said. “Every link had a value and could be spent separately. Chains were supposed to be ornaments worn by Spanish noblemen, so this was a good way to smuggle in gold without being taxed for it. I expect there was a lot of greasing of palms, since there’s plenty here that was never stamped for the King’s taxes.”
He put a doubloon in my hand, and I saw the Spanish shield on one side and the cross on the other. For me, the Aurora seemed peopled with ghosts that drifted out of the gentle swells and clung to the rails, peering at us with hollow, accusing eyes.
I tried to shake off the macabre fancy. There was enough else to concern me now. I gave back the doubloon, remarking on how heavy the gold was.
“Sure,” Derek said. “Gold’s two and a half times as heavy as iron, and eight times the weight of sand.”
As time passed, the scene grew monotonous as far as I was concerned. One couldn’t keep exclaiming over each new item the divers brought up. Especially since Derek already knew what was down there, and it was no surprise to any of his crew. Where the original finds must have been greeted with tremendous excitement, this was, to some extent, an anticlimax.
I wandered about the decks and in and out of cabins, exploring the Aurora’s luxury. Marcus and my father were talking together on the leeward side. Iris stood where she could continue to watch Derek giving directions as divers came aboard. Eddie Burch, out of his diving gear now, darted about on idle chores, as tense and nervous as though our uneasiness had infected him too. At least he kept carefully away from Alida, though once I saw him standing where he could look up at her deck chair, his face expressionless.
Fern stood at a rail, where she watched the endless movement of the water, looking a bit like a figurehead, with her filmy dress blowing back from her body. When I approached her, she turned away almost sadly, as though there was nothing she could possibly say to me.
Hampers had been brought aboard filled with food for lunch, and we ate on deck, or wherever we were. Derek didn’t stop to eat at all, still alert to every detail of the continuing parade of treasures from the past.
It was late afternoon when the caterers arrived in their own boat, and the diving ceased. Derek’s divers went back to the Dolphin, except for Eddie Burch, who stayed with us. The caterers set our dinner out in covered dishes, kept hot in the dining area of the big saloon, and then went back to shore. We helped ourselves from the buffet and sat down at a long table. This was a family party, and the crew didn’t join us. Of our own group, only Alida remained on deck because the idea of food nauseated her.
Iris had brought sprays of orchids aboard, and their splendid colors glowed down the length of the table like waxy jewels.
At my place, a single blossom recalled the photograph that had been destroyed in Poppy’s bedroom—a reminder I could do without. Whenever possible, I averted my eyes from the flowers, though I knew this was a weird fancy I’d developed—that an orchid could watch me.
The swift darkness of the tropics was all around us. The engines were running now as the Aurora moved away from the wreck site, though Derek said there was still more to be brought up at a later time, and the Dolphin would remain on guard. In my last moments on deck I’d noticed that the Dolphin’s lights were growing distant astern, and I knew we were running for Derek’s island. There would still be an unloading tonight by his crew, since Derek was anxious to get his treasure into waiting vaults on Doubloon Key.
Derek poured champagne and toasted the success of his long venture. He was affable and hearty now, and if the strain that had touched the rest of us had reached him, it wasn’t visible. As I watched him, I could more and more imagine his being engaged in something as horrific as the drug trade, and I wondered if some knowledge of this lay beneath the uneasiness I felt aboard the Aurora.
I began to listen again as Derek spoke.
“I haven’t been given enough credit for respecting an historic site,” he said. “The old controversy goes right on between the treasure hunter, who puts up the cash and makes retrieval possible, and the historian, who’s always afraid something valuable will be damaged or sold before records are complete. I have put up the money, as you all know, but nothing will leave Doub
loon Key until the archeologists are satisfied.”
Though we joined in Derek’s toast to the Santa Beatriz, I was still aware of the underlying disquiet, and it seemed to be growing. By this time it had reached Cliff and Marcus too, and when Derek sat down, my father spoke to him across the table.
“It’s possible that no historic wreck should be salvaged by anyone but the archeologists. Then what’s found would furnish scientific information and not be damaged as it is brought up. And it would be kept in museums for everyone to enjoy. I remember a phrase used for the marauders who strip sunken wrecks and sell what they find for profit: ‘Piranhas on a carcass.’”
There was a stunned silence around the table, and everyone except Fern stared at Cliff. She had picked up an orchid and was turning it about in her fingers. My father had finally taken a stand and was flinging down a challenge to Derek. But what he was talking about wasn’t any rape of the Santa Beatriz.
Derek took no outward offense, his smile affable enough, but I didn’t like the cold light in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” he said quietly, “but I can’t agree. Your archeologist can take forever sifting teaspoons of sand. He’d be at this for years after the wreck was found. And while he was being so careful, storms would scatter whatever was left, and most of the wreck could be lost. My way is better—and cheaper. The historians will get their turn, now that the job’s accomplished.”
Cliff said nothing more, but I could sense the satisfaction he’d felt in opposing Derek, and I didn’t think he was through yet. More was surfacing than gold from the bottom of the sea.
Fern was the one who sprang to her feet now and held up her glass. The Aurora rolled slightly, and she steadied herself with one hand on a chair. She loved moments of drama, and when she spoke I knew that she too was challenging Derek.
“Here’s to beating the curse!” she cried. “You all know what I mean—the curse of death and bad luck that follows anyone who disturbs ancient bones, whether they’re in a wreck or a tomb. But you’ll overcome that, won’t you, Derek?”
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