Chapter 150: Well, There’s a Heartbeat
Days of Bonnet asking, at breakfast, dinner, and supper, whether today might finally suit for the expedition had worn James down faster than any argument could have done. Thatch had taken to grumbling about it whenever they crossed paths, and Sam’s own needling was soft enough that James scarcely noticed he had agreed until the three of them were already marching through the swamp.
The passage beyond the camp looked little enough like the place James remembered nearly getting himself killed in. Now, timber props held up the ceiling where it had once fallen whenever it pleased, and lanterns hung along a path the lads had gone to the trouble of clearing and marking.
Beyond the cleared stretch, the old maze began again. More and more corridors branched off into rooms whose ceilings had long since come down, little more than heaps of stone now. James knew there were dozens of such chambers scattered through the place, most of them still buried beneath fallen masonry.
The mural-carved stone was somewhere farther in, with the great door and the serpent coiled around its frame. James still saw that door some nights when he ought to have been sleeping.
They had not reached it yet.
Behind them, Israel Hands leaned against a fresh-cut prop with his arms folded, watching Black Caesar put both hands against a fallen block.
"Caesar, ye’ll be at that till Christmas."
"Christmas."
That was all Caesar offered. He rolled his shoulders, widened his stance, and tried to lift the stone again.
Paulsgrave Williams looked the block over with an analytical eye.
"Near four hundred pound, I’d wager. Maybe more, dependin’ what has it caught underneath."
"Two shillin’s says he moves it before we’re back this way."
Hands held out his hand.
Williams looked at the stone, then at Caesar, and shook it all the same.
"Bloody hell, ye’ll lose that."
"Aye, probably."
James grinned and turned back toward the collapsed corridors.
"Might take weeks, might take months. We’ll dig forward slow and shore as we go."
Behind them, Caesar grunted and hauled once more.
Nothing.
Hands laughed.
"And the props?"
Bonnet asked, looking up at the ceiling. "The men working beneath them trust their own support?"
James shrugged. "Enough to keep working under ’em, that’s the best answer I’ve got."
Thatch snorted. "That’s no answer at all."
"Didn’t say it was a good one."
Sam laughed easily. "Some ruins that near killed you, and ye’re still walking toward it of your own free will. A man is either brave or a fool."
"Depends the day."
Bonnet watched the stone carved around the corridor. "Who do you suppose raised such a thing, Captain? I confess I’ve wondered since Mateo first spoke of it."
James looked up at the passage. "Folk lived on this island long before any of us thought to claim it, that much I know. Spain’s sickness and her slavin’ took most of ’em generations back, as she did in most places around these waters."
"Then it was them."
"Might’ve been."
James shook his head. "Never learned of anythin’ like this, though. Not in all my years, and not from any man who’d studied such things proper. A temple like this, and not one soul I ever knew had heard a word of it."
Thatch grinned wide enough to show most of his teeth. "Would ye listen to that. The man who knows everythin’, and here’s a hole in his smarts big enough to sail some bloody ship through."
"Aye, well."
James spread his hands.
"Even I’ve got to leave a bastard somethin’ to laugh at."
He reached inside his coat and drew out a length of black stone, no bigger than his palm, with a serpent coiled around itself.
Bonnet’s breath caught.
Sam tilted his head.
"Christ," Thatch said. "That, ye’ve been carrying that cursed little bastard about in yer coat?"
James turned it between his fingers. "Why not? Found it in the commodore’s chest, with a letter the sea had ruined past readin’."
"What, the English bastards?"
James turned the key again. "The very kind, though I’m not sure which exact bastard. Whoever sealed that letter had reason to care about these ruins in particular."
Bonnet hands came together before him, and his eyes remained on the carvings.
"You are telling us, Captain, that the Crown itself already knew of this place?"
"Maybe. That’s as far as I can honestly take it."
Thatch’s grin had changed from wide to hungry. "If the Crown thinks it’s worth some secret correspondence, whatever’s sitting behind that door is worth considerably more than gold and jade put together."
He leaned closer. "Could be weapons, old ones, perhaps. A hoard of arms some ancient kingdom thought worth hiding where no one would ever find ’em."
Sam shook his head slowly. "Don’t go making ghosts out of old stones, Thatch. But if England took the trouble over this place, then there’s something in there worth more than a chest of gold."
Bonnet was properly excited now, both hands pressed together. "Knowledge, gentlemen. A scholar back home would pay a fortune simply to look upon carvings such as these. I confess the notion delights me considerably more than gold ever could."
Behind them, Caesar had both shoulders against the stone, the veins snapping along his neck and sweat running into his chest.
Williams called out, cheerfully, "Mind yer own footin’ there, or you’ll have that thing rolling back over yer boots."
"Two shillin’s," Hands reminded him, grinning.
"I no forget."
Caesar heaved again.
The stone key had lain cold and still in James’s open palm through all of it, standing there while he half-listened to Bonnet’s excitement.
Then it moved.
A faint pulse travelled through the black stone, so slight James nearly mistook it for the beat of his own thumb against the thing. Then it came again, stronger this time, a cold shiver running through the key from one end to the other.
James’s fingers closed around it.
The serpent carved into the stone seemed to twitch beneath his palm.
He knew it had not. Knew it with the same certainty that told him the floor was solid beneath his boots.
But for one strange instant, he could have sworn the little stone had a heartbeat.
At that same instant, behind them, Caesar’s stone gave way with a groan deep enough to shake the floor itself.
Hands let out a shout that contained no words whatsoever.
For one full breath, nobody moved.
Bonnet’s hand had found its way halfway to his chest, a prayer half out before he caught it. Thatch’s fingers had closed around his hilt without seeming to know they had done so. Sam stood white around the eyes, staring at James’s closed fist as though he expected something to crawl out between his fingers.
James looked down at his own hand.
He was not laughing either.
"Captain."
Bonnet’s voice had gone thin.
"Did you hear the heartbeat?"
"Aye."
James opened his hand. The key lay there, black and still, just as it had every day since he pulled it from that drowned commodore’s chest.
"I felt it."
They looked at one another.
For a moment, nobody seemed quite sure what expression a sensible man ought to wear after feeling a dead piece of stone pulse like a heart.
Then they laughed, awkward and nervous, each waiting for one of the others to admit what they were all thinking.
Nobody did.
Instead, with sudden confidence, they turned and marched back down the corridor, their faces composed and their backs straight.
They made it perhaps twenty yards before their pace became considerably more purposeful.
By the time they reached the surface, all four were moving rather faster than any man had strictly needed to.
"One more thing, the lot of ye, before we’re back among decent company."
James kept his voice light, though something sat underneath it that he did not care to name.
"I’ve plans of my own, and could use one of your lazy asses help."