Chapter 94: Secrets Below
The splash became Mary’s head breaking through the surface. She burst from the water in a frantic struggle, one hand slapping blindly against the ledge as she coughed up a lungful of water that clearly had no intention of leaving quietly.
James was already hauling her up beneath both arms, dragging her the rest of the way onto the stone walkway. She collapsed against him, gasping for breath, her wool clothes soaked through and her hair plastered across her face.
He held her upright and let her cough until there was nothing left to bring up, asking no questions while she fought to breathe again.
It took nearly a full minute before her breathing felt less like a woman drowning and more like one thoroughly angry.
Then she shoved him.
Both hands crashed into his chest hard enough to send him onto his back. Mary’s knee dropped beside his ribs as she came down after him, pinning him flat with both fists twisted into the front of his dripping coat.
"How long, Calloway."
"Really now?"
James managed a crooked grin despite himself, blinking water from one eye.
"That’s a bloody sense of priorities you have."
"How long."
Her voice never changed while her grip tightened, colder and harder than before, as though every bit of effort the swim had cost her had vanished.
James quit trying to play the fool.
"Since Nassau."
He didn’t hide behind a joke this time. "Since the mornin’ ye signed the Articles. The name caught my attention the moment I heard it, and once I started lookin’, the rest wasn’t hard to figure."
She didn’t let go.
"And you said nothin’."
"It wasn’t my tale to tell."
James met her eyes as steadily as he could. "You earned your berth like everyone else who signed that day, whatever name ye chose. Didn’t seem right for me to pry your secrets."
She stared at him without a word. Water dripped from her chin onto his chest, and James honestly couldn’t tell which way the next heartbeat would go.
Then her shoulders loosened.
"You’d sooner nearly drown the both of us," she muttered, "than simply explain the truth."
"In my defense, that little stunt was only supposed to endanger me."
"Aye? And what was I meant to do while ye were down there? Stand above the hole prayin’ over the water like some maiden from a ballad?"
His grin returned.
"Would’ve been a fine sight."
"I’d have had to march back to camp and explain to the crew their captain drowned himself over a game of pretend. They’d have gutted me on principle before they even finished buryin’ ye."
She climbed off him and sat beside the fire, twisting water from one sleeve with obvious disgust.
"Bloody hell."
Together they coaxed the fire back to life. James’s stubborn little ember finally surrendered beneath enough dry roots and scraps of dead wood. Flames spread at last, casting proper light across the chamber.
Mary tore a strip from the bottom of her shirt, wrapped it around a length of wood, and before long they had two rough torches burning beside the fire.
"One thing, Captain."
She held her torch over the flames until it caught. "This stays between us. If ye tell the crew, the next thing that finds ye in the dark won’t be nearly as friendly as a crocodile."
"You have my word lass."
James caught himself on the term this time but let it stand, watching her face for the flinch that never came.
"I wasn’t plannin’ to tell anyone before. I’ve no reason to start now."
Mary watched him another moment before a single nod. Whatever she’d been thinking, the matter was decided.
"Mary."
James let the name hang between them for a moment before a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"So Mary it is."
"It has been since the day I was born."
She raised an eyebrow. "Though if ye’ve a better one in mind, I’d dearly love to hear what possessed ye."
James rubbed thoughtfully at his chin.
"I was thinkin’... Elizabeth."
She stared at him.
"...Elizabeth."
"It has a certain dignity."
"It has entirely too many letters."
"Liz, then?"
"I’d still throw ye back in the water."
"Aye," James conceded. "Mary suits ye better."
She snorted despite herself, the corner of her mouth betraying the smallest smile before she turned back to the fire.
For a while neither of them said much and just fed the flames with scraps of dry roots and dead branches until the heat finally drove the chill from their bones.
Steam curled from soaked coats hung across nearby stones, boots were emptied of water, and the ache in James’s shoulders calmed down until he could ignore it.
Only once neither of them was shivering anymore did the silence drift back to the reason they’d come down here in the first place.
James looked around the chamber again. The hidden passage, the worked stone, the impossible craftsmanship. None of it had become any less strange while they’d been drying themselves.
"Well," he muttered, pushing himself to his feet, "We didn’t nearly drown just to sit by a fire."
Mary rose with her torch in hand.
"No," she agreed. "Let’s find out what all this is."
James’s best guess remained that the place had once been some kind of sewer or drainage channel.
Mary was already making her way along the stone path, torch held high.
The channel stretched farther than either of them expected. The water beside the walkway grew steadily shallower until James’s torch found worn stone rungs carved directly into the wall, leading upward out of the passage.
They climbed one after the other, boots slipping against rock made slick by centuries of damp. At the top they stepped into a chamber, and James knew at once they had crossed some unseen boundary.
Deep grooves scored one wall, polished smooth by something heavy that had once slid back and forth, holding water where someone wanted it.
Beside them sat a smaller recess carved into the stone, narrow at the neck and wider below. Inside lay a cracked clay jar, broken open across the floor.
Tarnished gold beads and dark green jade, stained with age and corrosion, spilled across the silt like the remains of a merchant’s purse abandoned long ago.
"Christ."
James crouched, rubbing one of the beads clean between thumb and forefinger. Thick roots had grown through the broken neck of the jar, and something with entirely too many legs darted away the instant his torch chased the shadows back.
"Well, someone left in a hurry."
"Or never left at all."
Mary’s voice came from the far side of the chamber.
She was crouching over another object half buried in the silt. James carried the torch over, and the light found a skeleton curled against the wall as though its owner had died with their knees drawn to their chest.
The bones were small but whether child or slight-grown adult, there was no telling anymore. Time had stripped away everything but pale fragments and a corroded gold cuff still clinging stubbornly to one wrist.
James watched the cuff for a long moment.
"That ain’t a sailor."
Mary shook her head.
"No."
Neither reached for it.
The gold had waited down here longer than kingdoms lasted. It wasn’t going anywhere.
James lifted the torch instead, searching the chamber beyond the dead. Whatever had happened here had happened centuries before either of them drew breath, and neither fancied learning the tale by disturbing the one soul left to tell it.
Beyond that chamber the passage changed again. It climbed steadily upward, narrowing into a sloping corridor built from carefully laid stone until the walls nearly met overhead.
Faded patches of blue paint still clung stubbornly where the damp hadn’t erased them. Carvings covered the walls as they climbed higher, showing people and beasts in a style neither James nor Mary recognized from any nation they had traded with or fought.
"If this is the hallway, I’d hate to see what they considered modest."
James brushed his hand across one of the carvings. Moss crumbled beneath his fingertips.
"Feels close enough to be a temple."
The corridor ended at a great carved stone door hanging open on a single hinge, leaving just enough space for one person to slip through sideways.
Carved into the stone around the doorway, a great serpent coiled upon itself, its body winding through the frame in patient loops until its tail disappeared beneath its own jaws. At the center of those coils sat a perfectly round disc of smooth black stone, polished so precisely it looked almost unnatural.
Beyond the half-open door, something caught the torchlight and answered it with the dull gleam of gold.
James shifted his grip on the torch.
"Ladies first?"
Mary snorted.
"Captain first."
Neither sounded particularly eager to rush forward.
Neither turned around, either.