He turned and looked right at me. “Chantry, to be caught with stolen goods could mean hanging!”
Suddenly, and with awful clarity, I saw it all. It was a trick! Not by Rafe Leckenbie, who seemed to have vanished, but his mysterious supporter, the man with the white hair and the cold eyes!
The rest of the gems were hidden in my room! Even now the villains might have come seeking them, and me!
“I do not think that is the case,” I said, “but for safety’s sake, I think I will accompany my venture to the New World with you.”
“I’d be pleased, but do you not return to the inn without looking about.”
Indeed I would not.
Two more rubies and three diamonds were in my sash, sewn into the material only that morning. The emerald, three pink pearls, and the pendant were in my room, but well hidden.
One day, years ago, I had been leaning out the window watching what went on below when a gust of wind slammed the window at me and I jerked back quickly, my fingers clutching the edge of the shelf on which I had been leaning.
My fingers had given a sharp tug at the bit of board that trimmed the window ledge and it had swung out, revealing a cunningly hidden compartment beneath it. From the dust I gathered nobody had opened it in years, and may not have even known of its existence. Possibly some mechanical-minded guest had contrived it himself for the purpose of hiding something.
Into that compartment I had put the remaining gems, closing it carefully and scattering dust along the edge. The window was rarely opened, I knew. The chances were that nobody now alive knew of the place. I had planned to leave the gems there but a short time. Now I knew it might be long before they were removed, for I had decided to remain aboard the ship, and said so to the captain..
“Let me take the other gems,” the captain suggested. “I will have our friends here to speak with you within the next few hours.”
Hidden in my clothes was the slip of paper on which was written the name and the place where I could communicate with the mysterious lady.
“You go ashore, Captain?”
“There is much to do, Chantry. Much.”
“I wish to send a note ashore with you. Can you deliver it to Saint Paul’s Walk?”
“Aye, I shall be nigh to it.”
From my sash I took a bit of paper brought from the table in the cabin. On it I wrote: All is begun. “Tell him who sent it, that is all.”
A week later, I was at sea, bound for the New World.
29
A hand pressed down on my shoulder, and lips whispered, “Ssh! Not a sound!”
Confused, I lay perfectly quiet. The man beside me was Silliman Turley. Slowly, my mind sorted out the pattern. I was ashore in the New World. The Good Catherine had sailed off without me. Close by was the camp of the party who had seized the Spanish people of whom one was Guadalupe Romana.
I lay still and I listened. At first there was only the faint rustle of leaves overhead, the breathing of Turley, and then a sound of voices, not too far off. I could smell the damp earth, the rotting leaves. Near me on a piece of bark, an ant struggled with some tiny bit of fodder.
The voices came again, and they were very close by. “I tell you, there is nothing! She’s hard aground in the river and it will take high water to float her free. She’s made a little water and it looks like somebody has gone through her. Things scattered about like a search was made of what must have been the woman’s quarters.”
“Nothing at all?” The voice was faintly familiar. “I can’t believe it.”
“Like I say, somebody’s been through it. But then she never got where she is by herself. Look, Cap, that passage through the outer island is narrow, and you can bet all you’ve got that somebody steered through.”
“There’s nobody aboard?”
“Not so much as a rat. We went over her, stern to stern. The current’s not strong in that river this time of year and she had some tide behind her and the wind. She went into the river and jammed herself into the sand, hard and fast aground.”
“No sign of the crew?”
“Like I told you. I found a camp ashore. There’d been some men camped there but they’d been attacked. Savages, it looked like. We found eight dead men, dead three or four days. They might have been a part of her crew.”
“Why savages?”
“One had an arrow in him and the bodies were stripped and mutilated.”
There was a silence. “Say nothing of this to anyone. You can find the ship again?”
“I can.” Again there was a pause. Finally the second voice said, “Cap? Looks to me like you had it pegged. The sinking ship was a trick to get them off her and ashore while she was looted, only something went wrong.
“I think those men I found dead were supposed to get back aboard her but they never made it. Savages killed them first. Then the tide, wind, currents, whatever, moved that ship. Maybe somebody helped.”
Leaves rustled. They could be no more than twenty or thirty feet away.
“Do you believe that story about the other man? The one who was fixing their boat?”
“The boat is gone, you said. If there was not such a man, what happened to it?”
“Savages?”
“Mayhap. I like none of it, Andrew. There is much going on. The ship gone through, the boat missing—”
“Aye,” Andrew replied gloomily, “and the vessel of Don Manuel is soon to be here, if the stories be true. We must be ready for them.
“Cap, I say slit the throats of this lot, or take what they have and leave them to the savages. Then take Don Manuel’s vessel, strip what’s worth having from the San Juan de Dios, and be off. We are short of hands as it is and no need to lose more fighting the savages.”
“Andrew, I want those chests! Our information was good. Part of it was the girl’s dowry, part was to the King of Spain. It was placed aboard the San Juan de Dios. It was seen to go aboard. The vessel has stopped nowhere until now. If it is not aboard then it is here, and I mean to have it!
“Andrew, much is at stake. I mean to go back—”
“They will hang you, Captain. Sure as you set foot in England again, they will hang you.”
“Gold can buy much, Andrew, and the Queen needs gold. By the time we return the way will be smoothed, and when we proffer a gift here and there … do not worry, Andrew. I know whereof I speak.”
“We kill them, then?”
“When we have milked them of all they know. Someone knows where the chests are, and I think it to be one of these.”
“You would kill the woman, too?”
“Though she knows where Inca gold may be, what is that to us? They can move about in Peru, as they are Spanish, and perhaps they can find it. We could not move freely there, for we should be discovered and killed. Unless she knows something of the chests she is of no use to us, and could be much trouble.”
“You are still thinking of England?” Andrew said gloomily. “I still say you should find another place, an island of our own from which we can sail our ships. Even a place on the shores of France. I know a—”
“Talk no more to me of that! England is my home and it is England where I would be.” They moved off, talking still.
Turley lifted his hand from my shoulder. “I was afeared you’d come awake, noisylike. They was right over us.”
“We’ve got to think of something, or they will kill them all.”
“Aye,” Turley agreed, “a bloody lot they are! But there’s two of us—not enough to do much.”
We waited and watched, yet nothing offered us a chance. We must do something, alarm them, create a diversion … Ideas came and were discarded, yet there had to be a way.
Guadalupe was alerted, for I was positive she had seen me, that her signal had been based on something she knew. There must be some reason for our holding back. I saw Conchita bring a cup of something, coffee probably, to Guadalupe. They whispered together, I was sure, although they did not seem to do so. Conchita left, carefully not looking toward us.
Soon Armand, the Basque, came to the fire and squatted beside it, taking a piece of meat that had been broiling. As he ate he looked across the fire and up at the slope where we were hidden.