Last Respects
‘They found General Himmel’s gold bullion!’
Jimmy Hendricks stood by the fireplace in the drawing room, shaking his head in disbelief, smiling benevolently at Rebecca and the others. The damage to the chapel had clearly been forgiven.
‘I knew it!’ said the Admiral. ‘I knew Jurgen would not have taken it! Werner! Werner!’
He turned to go out into the hallway.
‘That’s not all, Gramps.’
‘Not all?’ the Admiral turned.
‘No,’ said Rebecca. ‘We found more gold. This insignia suggests it is from the Mercantile Royal, owned by Ebeneezer Trevelyan and plundered in 1641 by the Black Monk.’
Admiral Dewhurst-Hobb stared at her in astonishment, as the other adults joined them. Rebecca held up a small piece of gold.
‘But I thought … we all thought that was just a legend … The Black Monk’s treasure.’
‘My dear, are you certain?’ An equally flabbergasted Guppy Baverstock almost snatched the gold piece from her in his eagerness to inspect it. ‘Do forgive me, I didn’t mean to, er, snatch. You do know the Mercantile Royal is one of the most valuable undiscovered fortunes in the world?’
‘I hadn’t really quite thought of it quite like that …’ The implication of this registered with Rebecca. ‘Kraus must have found this too and buried it all together.’
‘Who gets all the loot then?’ asked Drew brightly. He did a double-take as Rebecca rolled her eyes at him. ‘And you weren’t even thinking about it?’
‘It is a question,’ said the Admiral, distracted.
‘This could indeed be the insignia of the Mercantile Company of Launceston.’
Guppy Baverstock looked up, removing his spectacles.
‘What’s so famous about it?’ asked Laura.
‘It was in that stuff Rupe sent when we came … although I’ve clean forgotten what it said,’ said Drew, to another eye-roll from Rebecca.
Guppy was only too pleased to answer. ‘The Mercantile Royal sailed to and from the West Indies. In 1641 while transporting 600,000 pieces of gold, she disappeared off Lands End. The wreck has never been found. Tremendously exciting! Nobody survived to tell the tale although the local legends say that the Black Monk plundered the boat before he sank it. This would add credence to such claims … Salvage experts think it is worth millions in today’s terms.’
‘600,000 gold coins … is a lot of gold coins. I wouldn’t have said we found that many,’ said Drew.
‘Yes well, in any case, I’m sorry to dash your hopes young man but as the wreck most likely sits inside British waters, anything discovered would probably become the property of the nation.’
‘Typical!’ grimaced Drew. ‘Send the Ferrari back!’
* * *
A breeze ruffled the trees surrounding the Smugglers’ Chapel where a small group was gathered in the graveyard around a carefully dug hole.
Drew lowered the casket containing the bones of Emily and her child into the ground.
Heads bowed, Rebecca, Drew, Laura and Rupert listened in silence as James Hendricks spoke.
‘… earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection …’
When he fell silent, Rebecca stepped forward to lay a single rose on top of the casket and closed her eyes for a moment. She took a handful of earth from the mound next to the grave and cast it in. ‘Today is the 14th of October, the anniversary of the hanging of their husband and father Nathan the Black Monk,’ she said quietly.
One by one, the others stepped forward and threw a handful of soil onto the casket.
‘Here lie Emily Trevelyan, husband of Nathan, and her child, whose name is known only to God … at peace at last.’ James Hendricks closed his bible, paused for a second to lay a gentle hand on Rebecca’s arm, before walking away in the direction of the chapel.
‘You okay?’ Laura put her arm around her friend.
Rebecca wiped away a tear. ‘It’s mad, why am I crying? I didn’t know her, either of them ... yet I feel as if I did. This is what they have sought for all these years though … it feels right.’
Something swooped down suddenly from above, causing them to leap out of the way.
The Peregrine Falcon landed beside the fresh grave and stood, wings outspread. It emitted a single mew, paused a few seconds to stare unnervingly at Rebecca and then flew off, high above the trees and out of sight.
‘I wonder if that’s the last we’ll see of him,’ mused Rupert, gazing after the bird.
‘Or our friend in the black cassock,’ added Drew.
Rebecca remained silent, walking away arm in arm with Laura.
The Admiral came over to Drew and Rupert from where he had been standing, a short distance off. ‘Your girlfriend is a pretty remarkable woman, young Drew.’
‘Oh, I’m not sure I’d be as bold as to call her an actual girlfriend, sir,’ said Drew, a little sheepish to find himself in this conversation with the Admiral.
‘Not sure, Drew? What are you waiting for, lad? Don’t hang about or life will pass you by!
One day I was sixteen like you, Andrew, then I woke up and I was seventy. That young lady is quite brilliant and unique. And awful bonny as your countrymen say … Only a fool would pass up a chance like Miss Rebecca McOwan.’ He turned and walked away, leaving Drew watching his retreating back, suddenly rather more preoccupied and disconcerted than he was ready for.
* * *
Before dinner that evening, the Dewhurst-Hobbs and their guests gathered in the faded elegance of the Manor’s drawing room, talking over the extraordinary events of the past few days. The Admiral was relating more of his wartime experiences to the captivated younger members, watched by his friend Werner.
‘… I pray that your generation never has to go through what ours did. There are no winners in war. Everybody loses, be it life, a loved one … or part of their own humanity.’
The Admiral reached for a glass of wine Gaston had placed next to him.
‘All my life I have lived with the memories of ordinary men who did not survive, whose lives were under my command. They may have been on the winning side but what, I ask you, was won for each of them? We have to honour these men first and foremost because of the sacrifice they made, because they believed in what they were fighting for. That’s how I reconcile it in my conscience, how I live with myself. I try and do right by the sacrifice they were prepared to make so the rest of us could live in a better world.
So what of Himmel’s gold? It is a shabby, tawdry thing … it was never his … stolen from the victims of a vile regime. Gold is said to be worth much. Is it worth even one life?’
‘But gold is also powerful. It could be used to do good.’ It was Rebecca who spoke.
‘I agree, Rebecca,’ said Von Krankl. ‘If in some way it might be a fitting tribute to all those who were lost … I know of your promise to your crewman’s father, Bertie, and what you asked Rupert to do if he found it … but … what do you say we put it back in the crates and send it off to serve a worthy cause?’
There was general agreement. The Admiral went to stoke the fire.
‘You see Rupert, your wise friend here, all of our children, embrace the hope of the future, and that sustains all of us. Werner and Rebecca are right … it should be so.’
Gaston reappeared in the doorway to inform everyone that dinner was ready. There was a gradual move towards the door. Rebecca paused, waiting for the Admiral.
‘Life, as they say, goes on, Bertie. Look at this.’ Von Krankl joined his old friend at the fireside, holding the picture he had brought through from the study earlier. It showed the U-821 with five uniformed men lined up at attention on the deck. The Admiral quickly grasped it and sighed.
‘How many times have I looked at this in the last sixty years? These faces … at last they have released their secrets. The picture might be fading but their memory never will.’
The Admiral clasped his old friend suddenly, his eyes filling with tears. ‘My own side wanted me to blast them to kingdom come, you know. Awful things, dreadful things happen in war but I will not commit murder. For that is what it would have been, old friend. But no more tears, Werner for you and I. At last we can dry our eyes.’
‘You are the best of men, Admiral. At long, long last perhaps we can put that awful war behind us. You have a wonderful family here. I wish you happiness in what life remains for both of us.’
They saluted. Rebecca had tears flowing freely down her face. The Admiral clasped his arm around his old friend’s shoulder.
‘This old house is big and empty. I need some company. There are so few of us left who can share the memories of the old days. Come, live here.’
‘You would open your home to your old enemy?’ There was a smile about the lips of Von Krankl.
‘Never enemies, Werner … just on different sides in a terrible war.’
* * *
After dinner that evening, the four youngsters went down to the rocks above elephant beach to sit and watch the day ending in a deep purple sky above the sea. Each was lost in their thoughts. So much had happened since they had got off the train from London. Out at sea, the Horns of Lucifer were silhouetted against the fading light, shadowy and mysterious as ever.
‘Who was Lucifer?’ asked Drew. ‘I know he was the Devil, if you believe in all that, but how did he get to be the Devil?’
‘Christians say he challenged God, fell from Heaven, tempted Eve and created death and suffering,’ said Rupert. ‘He became Satan, horned king of Hell. Yet Devil was only a new incarnation of the old woodland god Pan, while Lucifer was a personification of the Morning Star, the planet Venus and its goddess. ‘He’ was therefore originally ‘she’, and a divine representation of love, beauty and human warmth.’
‘Bloody hell! How do you know all that?’ Drew turned round in astonishment.
Rupert grinned and held up a book he had been reading from.
‘Jimmy Hendricks lent it me. I asked him the same thing.’
‘So the devil was a woman to start with. Surprise!’ said Drew, with a mischievous sideways glance at Rebecca.
‘I wonder what happened to Kapitan Kraus,’ mused Rebecca, ignoring him. ‘Did he die here too in1955?’
‘Well there don’t seem to be any records anywhere of him after that,’ said Rupert.
‘So you’d have to guess he did die,’ reflected Drew, quietly, picking at a clump of mussel-shells attached to the rocks.
‘Do you think you’ve seen the last of your ghostly pals? Does it feel over?’ Laura asked Rebecca, tentatively.
Rebecca shrugged and smiled. ‘Who knows? But if you’re asking me will I go on seeing ghosts or whatever … I don’t know. It’s all about time, somehow. Time is all we have and the only time is now … but time has always been only now, our now, Emily and Nathan’s now … and time will never be over … it’s a bit mind-boggling. Do you ever feel everything is just temporary? As if we are all waiting for the really big thing … and as if all that has happened so far is just a prelude?’
‘Gawd, let’s hope not!’ said Rupert. ‘Not sure I could take any more!’
Some gulls flew overheard, calling to one another noisily. They swooped and landed down by the water’s edge, ahead of the incoming tide.
‘You know, Rupe, how could Sky let your mother think her father was dead?’ Rebecca shook her head.
‘I guess it’s your average nutter with a cause. Normal people and feelings are of no consequence. To nutters there is only the cause. Nothing else is important.’
‘It’s a pretty warped view of what really matters. Life is nothing without the people we love. My family come first … always have, always will.’
‘This is all a bit heavy, guys,’ said Laura, wistfully. ‘But hey, it’s back to school on Monday! It’s going to seem pretty dull after all this. But then I suppose you two are used to holidays being this exciting.’ She turned to look at Rebecca and Drew.
‘Which reminds me, Becks, I started to ask about what really happened up in Scotland.’
‘Whoaaao! Is that the time? Best get back, guys!’ Rebecca jumped to her feet and set off at a run back up over the rocks towards the path.
‘I’m right behind you!’ yelled Drew, as Laura squealed and leaped up after the pair of them. Laughing, Rupert picked up his book and followed.