Chapter 15
Caroline slipped from the house in the pearly twilight between night and dawn. As tired as she was, she could not bear to face Garrett this morning and tell him she’d brought him from the Chesapeake to search for a legend.
No one saw her. Pilar and her husband slept in the servants’ wing of the mansion; Amanda and Jeremy were so exhausted that they never stirred. As for Noah, she had no idea where he’d spent the night. Caroline helped herself to a banana and a scone from the kitchen and went down to the beach, followed by a small yellow dog with a black ring around one eye.
The sand was smooth and damp near the water’s edge and covered with palm fronds and other vegetation farther up. The sloop lay at anchor where they’d left it; the misty sea was blue and empty as far as Caroline could see.
She had come from the house in bare feet, having donned only a shift, her stays, and a gown this morning. She lifted her skirts and waded into the shallow water, laughing as crabs and small fish darted away. The gently rolling waves were as warm as the air, giving no hint of the violence of last night’s storm. She walked out until the soft Caribbean covered her legs and thighs. Then she held up her gown and petticoat with one hand and washed herself in the salt water.
Returning to the deserted beach, Caroline bent and picked up an old conch shell. It glistened in the first rays of purple morning light. In a childish gesture, she held it to her ear and listened, but the only sounds she heard were the birds and the lapping of the water. Then, to her astonishment, she heard a woman’s voice.
And how do ye like my Silkie? The words were English, but so heavily accented in old Cornish that Caroline could barely understand the meaning.
Startled, Caroline dropped the shell and stared at the open sea. For one instant, she saw a small two-masted boat with a high pinked stern and a sharp-pointed bowsprit riding the mist just beyond Garrett’s anchored sloop. But when she blinked at the glare of light reflecting off the waves, the pink was gone.
Caroline gasped, closed her eyes, and listened, waiting for the woman’s voice to come again. Nothing. She tried harder, concentrating with all her will.
“Is that what this one has taught you?”
Caroline opened her eyes to see Kutii sitting cross-legged on the sand beside her. The one-eared black cat was curled up in his lap, and Kutii was scratching Harry’s gnarled head.
She jumped back, heart pounding. “Oh, you scared me,” she admonished. “I heard a strange voice and—”
“You heard her voice—the Star Woman.” He smiled. “Your mother’s mother’s father’s mother. That is good. She has much wisdom to give you. Is this the first time you have heard her calling to you?”
Caroline shook her head. “I don’t think so. I didn’t see her. I just . . .” She gave him an impatient look. “Where have you been? I was afraid you wouldn’t come. Now that I’m here, I don’t know where to look for the gold.”
The Indian regarded her stoically with sloe eyes as black as the devil’s well. He was dressed simply this morning in a red cotton loincloth and silver armbands. Two thin braids on either side of his forehead were pulled back to hold the mass of his long hair in place. In his ears were simple shells that tinkled when he moved his head.
“Have you come to help me or not, Kutii? I promised Garrett gold. He’s going to be furious with me if I can’t produce it.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his face to catch the early rays of island sun. Caroline could see the intricate patterns of exotic tattoos on his cheeks and chest clearly.
“This place has memories for this aging warrior,” he said, continuing to stroke the cat.
“You aren’t aging,” she said. This morning he looked younger than she did.
“Once this one was guardian to the royal family of his people. The woman given to him as wife carried the bloodline of a thousand years of rulers.”
“I’ve heard the story.” Caroline looked out at the water again. Only the sloop that had brought them from Port-au-Prince was there; she could see no sign of the strange little boat.
“In the high mountains you call Peru,” Kutii continued. “The Spaniards came on horseback with armor that gleamed in the sun.”
Caroline nodded. She knew this tale almost as well as he did. The Indian had related the tragedy of his family’s massacre and his enslavement at least twenty times. She knew how he had fought on alone after his fellow Incan guardsmen had fallen, how he had watched his loved ones die and then been forced to act as a beast of burden. The Spaniards had made him carry part of the treasure he’d spent a lifetime protecting. Bent double with the weight of gold and silver, he had suffered beatings, thirst, and starvation as he traveled with the stolen treasure to Panama City and then along the torturous jungle route to the Caribbean.
But Kutii hadn’t remained a prisoner of the Spaniards. Before the overland pack train reached the Spanish port, Sir Henry Morgan and his Englishmen had sacked Panama City, then tracked the caravan and ambushed them. Now a prisoner of the privateers, Kutii was taken aboard the Miranda, an English ship captained by one of Morgan’s followers, Matthew Kay.
“Henry Morgan betrayed his friends,” Kutii said, picking up on Caroline’s thoughts. “He wanted the treasure for himself. And when the ship was attacked and sinking, one man stopped to cut Kutii’s chains so that he would not drown with the Incan gold.”
“James Bennett,” she said. “My great-great-grandfather.”
Kutii nodded. “He was a good man, the chosen one.”
“Chosen to marry my Grandmother Lacy. She was of royal blood, a granddaughter to a king of England. At least that’s what my mother always said.”
The Incan chuckled. “She was the Star Woman, and she possessed great power. She saved this one—”
“Yes, yes,” Caroline said. “You were a slave in a plantation sugar mill and she risked her life to rescue you. I’ve heard all that a hundred times. But I don’t understand why you persist in calling her Star Woman. My Great-great grandmother Lacy, was from England.”
“Her home was the stars,” he corrected firmly. “She was the Star Woman of my people’s legends—the one who could swim with dolphins and see across time. Once, long ago . . .” He waved a slim hand through the air expressively as he began to relay an old Incan myth.
“The gold, Kutii,” Caroline interrupted. “I know all about you and my grandmother, and how you adopted her so that your bloodline would continue. But I don’t have time to listen to it again today. You must tell me where the gold is hidden. I have to ransom Reed, and I have to give Garrett—”
Kutii’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Is this what this warrior has taught you—to be without respect for your ancestors? Must you be as rude as the young people of your generation?”
“I mean no disrespect to you, you know that, but—”
“Do you always carry on conversations with cats?”
Caroline spun around to see Garrett striding toward her across the sand. “Oh . . .” she gasped. “It’s you.”
“It seems to be. Who were you talking to? No—” He shook his head. “I’m sure your explanation would be interesting, but what I need now is to know where the money is. I assume your family hid it somewhere in the house or buried it in—”
“Buried,” she answered, to stall for time.
He took hold of her shoulders. “Last night was wonderful. Don’t ruin it by trying to cheat me of my due. There’s too much at stake. I’ve just begun to trust—”
“Trust me?” she demanded. “You don’t trust me.” She jerked free and began to walk quickly down the beach. “You won’t even admit to me that you blew the powder store,” she said over her shoulder.
“All right,” he shouted following her. “I blew up the damned powder.”
She stopped short and whirled to face him. “You did?” A smile broke over her face. “You really did? Then you’re a spy for General Washington?”
He shrugged. “Hardly. But I will admit to you that I’m not a Tory.”
She exhaled softly. “Neither am I.”
“Fine,” he said, his tone indicating he didn’t believe her. “Now that we’re both on the same side of this conflict, can we get down to finances?”
Caroline glanced back at the water’s edge. Harry, the cat, was batting at a fiddler crab with his paw. Kutii was gone, as she’d expected. “Give me a little more time,” she said to Garrett. “I need to talk to someone.”
“There’s no one on the island but Pilar and Angus. It’s obvious they don’t know where the money’s hidden, or they wouldn’t be living poor as Job’s turkey.” His gray eyes hardened. “No more excuses. It’s past time. Where it is?”
“I don’t know . . . exactly.”
“You don’t know.” His voice went flat with rising anger. “Go on.”
“The treasure exists.”
“Now it’s a treasure—not just a store of gold, but—”
“It’s real, Garrett.” She motioned toward the manor house. “Arawak Hall—Fortune’s Gift. They were built with Spanish gold. Gold Henry Morgan’s men took from the siege of Panama.”
“Pirate gold?”
The force of his glare was so virulent that Caroline took an involuntary step backward. “It’s a family legend,” she said her mouth suddenly dry.
“What!”
“Don’t shout at me.”
“Shout at you? You’re lucky I don’t wring your neck. Now, stop all this nonsense about pirate treasure and—”
“No,” she said. “It’s real. My grandmother saw it, and her grandmother before her. A ship went down off this island carrying—”
“Son of a bitch!” Garrett knotted his hands into fists and kicked a piece of driftwood as hard as he could. “Son of a blue-faced, double-arsed bitch!” he cursed. “Sunken treasure! You dragged me away from the war to dive for an imaginary fortune lost, what—a century ago? For the love of Christ, woman! Are you sane?”
She was close to tears. Her throat constricted, and it was hard to breathe. She’d known that he would be angry when he learned the truth, but she hadn’t guessed she’d care so much.
“I went through with this farce,” he said acidly. “I married you, and I brought you and your sister down here. I even let myself fall in love with you. I was beginning to think maybe—just maybe we had a chance to really make something of this marriage. To—”
“It’s not like that,” she protested. “I told you I was a witch. You laughed at me.”
“A witch. I could live with a witch—but not a liar and a cheat.”
“The gold is real, Garrett.”
“Just as real as your saying you loved me last night?”
“I meant it.”
He scoffed. “Doesn’t it get hard to keep the lies straight?”
“I want the gold as much as you do,” she cried. “Maybe more. My brother’s life depends on it. Do you think I want him to rot away on a British prison hulk?”
“What are you waiting for?” He gestured toward the sea. “Start diving for this treasure if you’re so sure it exists. How deep can it be? Twenty feet? Two hundred? Two thousand? Or maybe we can lower a rope and ask the gold to—”
“Stop it. You’re twisting everything. The gold isn’t under the ocean.”
“No? It was under the ocean, but it moved. Is it under that palm tree? Or here?” He kicked at a hump of sand. “Should we dig here—or over there? It’s not a very big island. We should be able to dig it all up in a couple hundred years.”
She turned and ran away from him into the jungle, his taunts echoing in her ears. Tears clouded her eyes; leaves scratched her face and arms. “Damn you,” she cried. “Damn you, Garrett Faulkner.”
She ran until she thought her heart would burst from her chest, until she could hardly lift her legs, until she was panting for breath. And when she stopped, she could no longer hear the sounds of the ocean or feel the sea breeze on her cheeks.
She sank to the ground and buried her face in her hands, but she would not cry. He was being so unfair. She wasn’t lying to him. There was a treasure—she knew it. But she couldn’t expect anyone to believe the truth of how she knew.
God’s flesh! Ha’ ye no faith in yourself, girl?
The woman’s voice again. Inside Caroline’s head. This time, she didn’t tense up. She waited. And softly, almost in a whisper, the voice came again.
Aye ’tis time ye showed the sense of an Eastern Shore lass. ‘Tis still here, girl, waitin’ for ye where I left it.
A flash of blue filled Caroline’s mind. Suddenly she was surrounded by an underwater kingdom of living coral, blue and yellow fish, and feathery sea ferns. A crab swam by so close she could have reached out and touched it. For an instant, she was transfixed by the strange beauty. Then she blinked and she was back leaning against a palm tree in the jungle.
My world, the woman said. I lifted a king’s ransom from the ocean floor for James, but I never trusted him. And some, I hid away for a rainy day. You must—
“Caroline!” Garrett’s voice. “Damn it! Where are you?”
“You didn’t trust him either?” she asked.
“She did not,” Kutii said. He was sitting in a hammocklike loop of a kaklin vine about eight feet up from the jungle floor. A green parrot perched on his wrist. The Incan was feeding the bird pieces of banana.
“She said she dived for the treasure,” Caroline said.
“Like a dolphin.”
“But how?”
Kutii shrugged and flashed a rare smile. “She was Star Woman.”
“She didn’t tell me where to find the gold.”
“Caroline!” Garrett was closer than before.
“I need your help.”
“Use your own strength,” the Incan said. “You carry her power.”
Garrett shoved a leafy vine aside and stepped into sight. “I’ll not have you running off and getting lost.”
“You’ll not have!” She stared at him as she got to her feet and brushed off her skirts. “You may be my husband temporarily, but you have no right to tell me where I can and cannot go.”
“You don’t know this jungle. There may be snakes or—”
“The only snakes I’m afraid of are those that walk on two legs,” she said. Then ugly suspicions curled in the back of her mind. “Why do you want a ship so badly?”
“I intend to run the British blockade—bring ammunition and guns in from French and Dutch ships lying off the coast.”
She swallowed, trying to rid her mouth of the metallic taste of fear. Weeds of suspicion sprouted at the shadowy comers of her mind. “Dangerous work for a tobacco planter. Who are you, really?”
“Garrett Faulkner.”
“Not the man they call Osprey?”
He made a sound of derision. “Hardly”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she said. “If I thought you were the traitor who killed my husband and left my brother to die, I’d shoot you myself.”
“That’s a comforting thought,” Garrett said. “Didn’t a Continental tribunal find Osprey innocent of those charges?”
“How can you defend a coward like that? I’ll never believe he was innocent. Never! Have you ever heard of a captain who survived when his ship and entire crew was lost? Use common sense, Garrett. He’s as guilty as sin—and I won’t rest until I see him hanged for his crimes.”
“Suit yourself. But right now I don’t give a damn for Osprey or his problems. I want to know why you lied to me.”
“I told you, I didn’t. I’ll find the gold. I just need a little time.”
“Two days, Caroline.” His voice was cold. “Show me solid proof in two days or I’m leaving you here and finding a ship some other way.”
Annemie’s disapproving face was a study in carved amber. “You let them slip though your fingers,” she accused. “They spent nearly a week in Port-au-Prince before purchasing a sloop and sailing off—presumably to Arawak Island.”
“God’s bowels, Mama. Must you come here to shame me?” Matthew sat up in his bunk and shoved the sobbing black child who was with him onto the floor with one vicious kick. “If my crew hears you—”
“Hold your tongue,” she warned, pointing a beringed finger at him. “And ask forgiveness of our Lord for taking His name in vain.” She sniffed. “This cabin stinks like a harlot’s crotch.” Scowling, she glanced at the naked girl crouching in a corner, trying to cover her budding breasts with bloodstained hands. “How old is this one?”
“Old enough,” Matthew growled.
“Where did you steal her?”
“She’s bought and paid for, Mama dear. I gave her mother—”
“Stop whining,” Annemie snapped at the child. “And cover yourself.”
Still weeping, the girl retrieved a torn shift and tried to wrap it around herself. The attempt proved futile; not enough of the garment remained intact to be of any use. Annemie seized the child by the hair and stared into her swollen face. It was plain to Annemie that she’d been beaten, and she was certain she knew who had done it.
Releasing the girl, Annemie turned to the servant who had accompanied her to the ship. “Wrap her in a blanket and take her to the good sisters.”
“She’s mine,” Matthew protested as the tall liveried mulatto draped a blanket over the child and led her toward the hatch.
“Enough. You’ve had your shilling’s worth and more,” Annemie said. “Put your breeches on. Have you no respect for your mother?”
“Doubtless you’ve seen my pizzle before.” He picked up his rum-sodden breeches and stuck a hairy leg into them. “You’re naught but a seek-sorrow,” he complained. “If they’ve gone to Arawak, so much the better. The island is small. Where can they hide?”
“They could have come and gone without a by-your-leave,” she retorted. “An informer sold news of their passing to Julien Puce in Port-au-Prince. Fortunately, Julien spies against the French for Falconer as well as for the British crown. Falconer’s message to be on the lookout for them did not come to him until after Osprey and the woman had set sail, or Julien would have detained them.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Several weeks. You will sail on the next tide, Matthew. Falconer will have them in the palm of—”
“I am the captain of this ship. I decide when and where it sails,” he said stubbornly.
“Then decide to sail on the tide,” Annemie ordered. “And if a hair on their heads is harmed before they face Falconer, you will—”
“I will bring him alive if I can.” He smiled. “And it is not her head I am interested in.”
“Do not fail me in this,” Annemie warned.
“You know best, Mama. As always.”
But the gaze that met hers was more defiant than dutiful, and Annemie’s heart was troubled. “See that you continue to believe that, my son, lest you too lose your value to me.”
On Arawak Island, the black tomcat padded silently through the underbrush, slipping between the tall ferns and leaping from fallen log to hummock. The sun was directly overhead, hot and molten, but the heat did not trouble the cat. Once a larger, wild cousin saw the sway of leaves and crouched in ambush, but when the tomcat came into view, the native feline sniffed the air, rolled its tawny eyes, and turned to flee.
Harry paid the wild cat no heed. He hurried on, drawn inexplicably to an outcropping of limestone on a hillside within the sound of the breakers. Here the trees were scrubby and clung to the shallow topsoil in sporadic clumps.
For thousands of years, rainwater had gathered into streams on the mountain peaks and rushed down to empty in the sea. Gullies and hollows had been worn into the limestone, some deep, some shallow. And shaded by a tenacious banana tree, Harry found a crack leading deep into the heart of the rock. Without hesitation, he dived into the cool darkness.
Minutes passed, and a small brown lizard scampered across the rock. Afternoon shadows began to lengthen. Clouds drifted overhead, as white and fluffy as meringue. A seagull folded its wings and dropped down on the limestone to preen and strut. Then a black furry head emerged from the crack, and the bird squawked and took off into the air.
Harry trotted out into the bright glare of afternoon, and the sunshine reflected off the tiny gold guinea pig clutched in the cat’s mouth. Harry dropped on his belly and released his prize. He extended a scruffy paw and batted playfully at the intricately carved statue, then watched as it tumbled down the limestone incline and came to rest against a fern. Yawning, he closed his eyes, stretched out on the warm rock, and began to purr contentedly.
The gold guinea pig with the turquoise inlaid eyes lay motionless in the island sun.