Chapter 38
I was briefly in utter blackness. There was a quick blue glow, as if a crevice was letting in light from above-was that where Jubal had taken breath? — and then darkness again, as forbidding as a sewer. On I swirled, bobbing in my barrel. I’d gambled that the rock was only a few hundred yards wide and that the cave couldn’t go far, but what if the ocean descended to the very bowels of the earth?
Only the need to bargain for my family kept me from panicking and signaling to be pulled back out.
Suddenly I yanked to a stop, and at first I thought my companions were trying to reverse me. I looked out my porthole for a landmark, but all was dark outside the little window. I had a faint glow inside my contraption from the bottle of fox fire, but it illuminated little but my own hands. Then I realized the trailing line must have snagged. I loosened my harness, plunged my head down into the sea, and reached outside the barrel with my arm to jerk. The line finally freed, and the barrel floated forward once more.
I hurriedly rose back into its air space and continued like a leaf in a drain, blind and stuffy. Then I slammed rock and could feel, with my feet, a cliff face. I was at a dead end, pinned by current. Darkness like pitch, my breath going stale.
I refreshed my air first, hauling in one of Astiza’s leather bags and bringing its stopper into my little air space inside the diving bell. I released the plug and felt my head clear.
And now, time to explore.
I released myself from the harness, took a breath, and swam out and upward, feeling for the cave ceiling.
Instead, I broke clear of the surface. I was in a grotto.
I sucked in air. I could breathe! The cliff where the diving bell had grounded was wet, rough, and silent. There was no sound of guns or sea. I felt until I found a ledge above water. I dared go no farther lest I lose the position of the diving bell, so I calculated the few feet I’d come, carefully worked my way that distance back, and felt the barrel with my feet. I reached inside my shirt for the white cloth, dove, and pushed its tack into the barrel’s soft lead. This would signal it was safe to enter the cave. Just as I did so the bell jerked as if with a life of its own and began to be hauled in by my companions. The quarter hour was up.
I swam to the ledge and hauled myself out. Let there be light.
Having learned my lesson at the battle of Vertieres, I unwrapped an oilskin parcel with flint, steel, tinder, candle, and a phosphor bottle. I carefully uncorked the latter invention and withdrew a splinter. It flared just enough to light my fuzz of oiled cotton and wood shavings. Then I lit the candlewick, and shadows retreated even more. I put the wax taper in a crevice, seeming bright as a chandelier after utter blackness. The pool I’d emerged from glittered.
Finally I looked about.
I was sitting below a rock dome that peaked fifteen feet above the surface of the sea. There was a crevice above, an old volcanic vent that must be providing distant air. Everywhere but where I sat the dome plunged sheer into the sea. But behind…
I turned and jumped. An alligator crouched, giving me a toothy grin as if it had been waiting patiently for dinner to crawl out of the sea. Its teeth gleamed.
But this monster was golden, I realized, its eyes great emeralds and its rows of teeth quartz crystals. It was long as my arm. Behind, receding into the shadows, was a reef of gold and silver. I’d found a dragon’s hoard of necklaces and crowns, great silver wheels with mysterious writing, and sculpted animals studded with gems. On some the turquoise and jade was bright as the sunny Caribbean, and the workmanship as exquisite as anything in Nitot’s jewelry shop. There were also little hillocks of loose emeralds, green as a model of Ireland.
I’d found Montezuma’s lost treasure, or at least what was left of it. This remnant equaled the wealth of a thousand kings. Whole armadas could be financed, I calculated. Palaces erected, armies recruited, cathedrals built. How had the salvagers been persuaded to leave it here?
As if in answer, I realized there were adjacent piles of white, and I looked more closely. Bones, lots of them. Skeletons clustered around the hoard like soldiers at a campfire. Their skulls looked at the treasure as if in reproach, flesh and clothing long rotted away.
The Maroons had apparently never reemerged. Killed to keep a secret? Trapped by the current? Or sacrificing themselves to bury a discovery too dangerous to harness, as Astiza suggested?
Superstition.
All I knew is I didn’t want to join them.
I crawled to the booty for inspection. There were hideously beautiful metal masks, jade-tipped swords, and golden necklaces as heavy as slave collars. Golden toys rolled on tiny wheels, and simple cast bars of precious metal were stacked like bricks. I suspected the conquistadors had melted some of the Aztec art down for transit.
Finally there were curious triangular objects I didn’t recognize at alclass="underline" sausage-shaped machines with delta wings and helmeted riders. They were contraptions different than anything I’d ever seen, except that they reminded me of the reckless canvas goose at Fort de Joux that madman George Cayley had launched into the air.
They were, in short, flying machines, or at least representations of one.
Maybe Martel was more than just a lunatic. Was there really enough detail to allow French savants to devise something to fly the English Channel?
I knelt as if before saints, overcome by the fabulousness of the find and bewilderment at its meaning. How and why had escaped slaves salvaged this from some storm-washed reef and carried it here for hiding? They’d avoided the temptation of spiriting it away and spending. Why? Had they no greed? Or had the treasure tricked and trapped them here?
There was a splash behind, and I jumped again. But it was only Martel, surfacing from the diving bell as lithe as a seal. He hauled himself up beside me, shook water from his thick hair like a dog (me quickly shielding the candle from this idiocy), and then gaped at the wealth of an empire. For a moment, even he was at a loss for words.
Eventually he crawled to one of the peculiar birdlike toys, gingerly holding it as if it were magic and might fly away on its own. He had an almost boyish look of wonder and triumph.
“I told you so, Gage.”
Dietrich, William
The Emerald Storm
Chapter 39
I realized why no one had ever retrieved the treasure of Montezuma when I attempted to exit with a handful. The seawater didn’t dead-end in the cavern; it found another underwater crack and continued, possibly all the way through Diamond Rock. This meant there was a constant tide running into this cave, and none out. Without help, it was a tunnel of no return. No wonder it contained bones of the dead!
I plunged into the pool, strapped inside the diving bell, and jerked the rope for Jubal to pull me out, and that’s the only way I emerged alive. Escape was like trying to breast a river while encased in a sausage. My black friend had returned the longboat to its hiding place and swum to a perch above the cave entrance to handle the towline, but even with that platform he had to haul like a longshoreman.
His reward was when I unstrapped myself, surfaced, and held up a golden necklace heavy enough to make its wearer stoop from the weight.
“It’s really there, Jubal!”
“By Damballah’s scales, that collar alone is enough to start rebuilding my country.”
“Ezili favors us, I think.”
“Ezili favors herself, as our French partner favors himself. Everyone has their own dreams.”
Yes. Once we got the treasure out we’d have more temptation than schoolboys at a brothel. In the meantime, we all had to work on trust.
“I’ll swim this underwater to the buoy anchor, drop it on the bottom, and go get more.”
He pointed toward the sky. “Hurry. The weather’s getting worse.”