Chapter 251: Ghosts Are for Cowards
By dawn, James had made up his mind.
He had spent the whole night staring at a stone that kept its secrets, and that had been well enough to make the decision.
Whatever answer waiting for him wasn’t going to climb out of a desk drawer by itself, so if he wanted it, the ruins would have to surrender to his curiosity.
He took the serpent stone from beneath the desk, still wrapped oilcloth, and took the golden mask as well, lifting it from the chest where it had been untouched since the day he’d brought it home.
James hadn’t sold the thing, and not because he had forgotten. Some stubborn part of him kept saying it would be useful somehow.
He put [Discretion] over his shoulders, buckled [Verdict] onto his hip and strapped [Counterargument]’s four freshly loaded barrels across his chest, as any other dawn that might end with some confrontation.
In the end, a man who had already drowned once and woken up wearing another man’s scars had little room left to laugh at ghosts. That didn’t mean he believed in the damned things, but he had no right to call anyone else a fool for doing so.
The marsh around the ruins had turned into good black earth for cane and corn ever since the digging started, dyked and drained from one end to the other.
This one low, wet pocket had been left alone on purpose.
A raised timber causeway brought them over the mud, piles driven deep enough to hold the plank decking above the muck, while smudge fires burned across the rail every few yards, persuading the insects that their meal might be easier to find elsewhere.
The camp at the end had sailors and diggers working side by side, carrying baskets of debris out of the ruins, pushing fresh timber props along on handcarts, trimming wicks, and coiling rope. The pot stayed warm over the cook-fire for whoever came off the last shift hungry enough to eat whatever was in it.
The whole place had comfortable efficiency. Everyone seemed to know what needed doing, which was more than could be said for most crews he had known.
James found Mark first, still Mark to every stranger on the island, lecturing a knot of sailors through the lashings on a windlass with patient flatness.
"Rope’s sound enough. Can’t swear the same fer half the bloody fools yankin’ on it."
One of the sailors figured that agreeing with her was probably the wiser course.
"Gold, or bloody curiosity? Which one hauled you back out to this miserable hole?"
"Does it matter? I’m here, ain’t I? Ye can fret over why once we’ve hauled whatever’s down there back into daylight."
It didn’t, and James had learned that asking Mary the same question twice rarely got him a better answer.
Nearby, Jim had gathered himself an audience that hadn’t learned their lesson yet.
The handful of diggers leaned on their shovels, listening with their mouths half open while the long fella grew two feet with every turn of his story.
Jim was telling them, warming to the tale proper. "Longer’n a man’s whole bloody forearm, ’em teeth, they were! Had the damned beast down with nothin’ but this wee knife, mind ye, an’ a prayer to whichever saint’s daft enough to look after fools like me!"
James left the poor men to believe every word and kept walking. There was no kindness in ruining a good lie before the liar had finished enjoying it.
Near the encampment, Ox and Barrel were carrying crates of lamp oil and coils of rope from a cart between them, making the load look lighter than it had any right to be and grinning like boys who had been let out of their lessons early.
Barrel set his crate down with a thump.
"What really down there, then? Not what Jim says."
"Gold. Or worse." Ox replied.
"Worse better." Barrel nodded, and picked the crate up again.
James left them to their work, and found Kit and Bran complaining to each other near the cook-fire. Neither seemed to remember what had started it.
Kit spread out his arms wide. "First man tae the bottom gets first pick, an’ that’s me, ’cause I’ll be halfway there while the rest o’ ye are still pissin’ about!"
Bran snorted in contempt. "Man? Look at the size o’ ye! Ye’re a wee, scrawny shite still growin’ inta yer boots, Kit. I’ll have three of my boys down that hole, both fists full o’ gold, an’ back up again afore ye’ve even found yer arse!"
"That’s not how ye find treasure, Bran! That’s not how it works at all!"
She laughed loudly. "That’s exactly how it works, bach. First hands on it, first hands keep it, an’ God help the poor sod who’s still standin’ there complainin’ while the rest o’ us are spendin’ his share."
Both of them turned on James the instant they noticed him listening, each certain he would take his side.
He only raised both hands and grinned.
Like a reasonable captain, he refused to choose between them, mostly because he expected to be down there with them both. There was no sense starting a quarrel before breakfast.
All of that aside, James looked over the camp and remembered one face was missing.
It took his memory back to the same dawn, not an hour gone, when he’d stood at his own door and told Anne where he was headed.
The lass had replied in considerably fewer words, but she’d made perfectly clear why he would be alone. "You’ll not see me within a mile of that cursed place, James Calloway. Not for all the gold in Havana, nor one sweet word more out of that silver tongue of yours."
"Ghosts are for priests and yellow-bellied cowards, lass. And you’re neither, are you?"
"Every sailor from here to Nassau says that ground’s cursed, and I’ll not be the damned fool who goes down there just to prove ’em right."
James had tried a few more arguments after that and lost every one of them, and in the end, Anne had sent him out of his own house before he’d finished lacing his boots.
He hadn’t seen her give ground to steel, cannon fire, or even the noose. Ghosts, apparently, had found the one fear in her that pistols never could.
James grinned over that the whole way in, then looked at the rest of his thoroughly disreputable company. He figured there was no finer crew in the whole Caribbean for walking into a hole that had already made one attempt to kill him.
The vegetation that had once swallowed the entire site was gone now, hacked back and burned away until the carved stonework around the entrance stood naked to daylight. It was likely the first time it had seen it in centuries.
Workers moved in and out of the dark passage beyond it at an easy pace, while timber shoring held up ceilings that had once crumbled whenever they pleased.
Months of work and curses had bought them a clean path into the grand chambers below. They were the same chambers James and Mary had only glimpsed once before, when the ground had nearly buried them both.
There hadn’t been a better day to finish the job than this one.
James called everyone together with one cheerful shout.
Every soul present finally had reason to learn what this godforsaken swamp had been hiding from him for the better part of a year.
Nobody hung back.
Mary, Jim, Ox, Barrel, Kit and Bran.
James led the whole merry, quarrelsome company into the dark and never looked back.