Duglass Evelith had probably invited me because he wanted to keep an eye on what I was doing, just as much as I wanted to spy on him. But I didn't mind that. The real test of wills would come when Mictantecutli was discovered, and salvaged.
‘I’ll call you,' said old man Evelith. 'When you've packed, Quamus will come down and help you to move. Won't you, Quamus?'
Quamus gave no indication that he would or he wouldn't, or even that he had heard. Enid came closer to the wheelchair, and said, 'We mustn't be away too long, Mr Evelith. Let us go visit Anne, and then get back. Mr Trenton, I'm very glad that you're making progress with the finance.'
The three of them went off down the corridor, the wheels of Duglass Evelith's wheelchair making a light purring noise on the tiles. I turned around and saw that the blonde receptionist Margot had been watching me.
'Friends of yours?'
'Acquaintances,' I said.
'Kind of weird, aren't they? If you don't mind my saying so.'
'Weird? For sure. But then, you know, different people think different things are weird. I mean, they probably look at you and think you're weird.'
Margot blinked her long false eyelashes at me. 'Me? Weird? How can I be weird?'
I smiled at her, and walked back to Dr Rosen's office to tell him goodbye. Later, as I left the clinic, Margot was still looking at herself in her pocketbook mirror, frowning and pouting and trying to work out how anybody could say that she was weird.
Outside, a cold wind was rising, and I was beginning to feel that there was something in the air. Something chilly, something threatening, and something soon.
Twenty-Nine
It took a week for Edward and Forrest and Dan Bass to prepare a reasonably accurate costing of how much it would take to raise the David Dark up from the mudbank to the west of Granitehead; and during that week we dived on the location of the wreck eleven times.
We were lucky: on the fourth dive we found protruding from the mud a row of four decayed timbers, which later turned out to be fashion-pieces which outlined the stern transom. This was our first visual confirmation that the David Dark was actually there, buried in the ooze, and we celebrated that evening with a dozen bottles of California's best.
During the next few dives, we excavated scores of deck-timbers; and it rapidly became clear that the David Dark was lying at an angle of about 30 degrees, with one side of her hull preserved almost up to the spar deck. Edward telephoned a friend of his in Santa Barbara, California, a maritime artist called Peter Gorton; and Peter flew over to help with the preparation of sketch-plans and charts.
Peter dived on the wreck three times himself, groping through the murk to feel the stumpy remains of the stern-post and the black, eroded teeth of the fashion-pieces. Afterwards, silent, absorbed with what he had seen, he sat down in Edward's living-room with a drawing-board and scores of sheets of paper, and created for us a conjectural sheer drawing of what he thought the David Dark actually looked like now, as well as dozens of conjectural body-sections.
I went down myself on the twelfth dive. It was a bright, calm day, and visibility was unusually good. Edward swam along with me, a distorted white companion in a world without gravity or wind. We approached the wreck of the David Dark from the north-east, and when I first saw her it was hard to understand how Edward had missed her during all that year of diving and searching. Apart from the black timbers which had now been excavated from the sloping ooze, the bulk of the David Dark was represented on the sea-bed as a long, oval mound, like an underwater burial-place. During the three cold centuries she had lain here, the tidal streams had scoured around her, creating a natural depression on all sides, and heaping silt on to her upper decks as if they were trying to conceal the evidence of an ancient and unforgiven murder.
I swam right around the wreck, while Edward pointed out the exposed fashion-pieces, and the stern-post, and indicated with a sloping hand just how much the wreck had keeled over when she had sunk to the bottom. I watched Edward cross and re-cross the wreck, flying above the sea-bed at a height of no more than three or four feet, his fins stirring up cauliflower clouds of silt. It was then that I remembered what old Mercy Lewis had told me on Salem Common that day: 'You must stay away from the place where no birds fly.'
This was the place: deep beneath the surface of Salem Harbour. She had warned me, but now it was too late. I was committed to whatever fate was going to bring me; and I was committed to bringing up Mictantecutli, if it was really here.
When we surfaced, Edward shouted across at me, 'What do you think? Fantastic, isn't it?'
I waved, panting for breath. Then I swam back to the Diogenes, and climbed up the diving-ropes on to the deck. Gilly came over and said, 'You've seen it?'
I nodded. 'It's amazing that nobody's come across it before.'
Dan Bass said, 'It isn't really. Most of the time, the visibility is so poor that you could swim within a couple of feet of it and not notice anything unusual.'
Edward came aboard and shook himself like a wet seal. 'It's really extraordinary,' he said, handing his mask to Gilly, and wrestling his head out of his orange Neoprene hood. 'You get this creepy sense that you're trespassing on history… that men were never supposed to discover this wreck. You know what it reminds me of? Those ancient Celtic barrows, which you can only detect from the air.'
'Well,' I said, 'now that we've found it, how long is it going to take us to bring it up?'
Edward blew water out of his nose. 'Dan and I have been talking about this, from a logistical point of view. How many divers and marine archaeologists we're going to need, how many diving-boats, how much excavation equipment. We're going to require warehouse space on shore, too, so that we can store equipment and lay out all the loose timbers we find. Everything we find is going to have to be annotated, numbered, sketched, and filed away for later restoration. Every timber, every spar, every knife, fork, and spoon; every bone; every shred of fabric. Then we're going to require refrigeration storage to keep the main timbers from eroding, and of course somewhere to store the main hull itself, when we eventually bring it up.'
'How eventually is eventually?' I wanted to know.
'It depends on our budget, and the weather. If we have a short diving season this year, and if we can't immediately lay our hands on all the specialized equipment we're going to need, then three or four years.'
Three or four years?'
'Well, sure,' said Edward. He unwrapped a piece of cough-candy, and popped it into his mouth. 'And even that's less than a third of the time it took them to bring up the Mary Rose. Of course we're benefiting from all of their experience; and there's even a chance that we can borrow some of the lifting equipment they developed. Once we've got the budgeting settled, Forrest and I will probably fly over to England and have some detailed meetings with them on the best way to bring up the David Dark with the minimum of damage.'
'But, for Christ's sake, Edward, three or four years'? What about Mictantecutli? What about all those people who are going to be haunted, and possibly killed? What about all those spirits that can't rest?'
'John, I'm sorry, but three or four years is pushing it right to the very limit. If there wasn't this unusual urgency, I'd normally expect to take eight or nine years over an historical salvage job of this magnitude. Do you realize what we've got here? An historic wreck of absolutely incalculable value; the only known surviving wreck from the late 17th century which hasn't even been touched since it first went down. What's more, it was engaged on a secret and extraordinary mission; as far as we know it's still bearing its original cargo.'