Nick watched her as she walked away, and gave Jonesy a narrowed-eye stare. Jonesy paused on the quarterdeck bottom step, followed Nick’s glance at Miss Chase’s retreating form, and returned Nick’s glare with an innocent, insouciant smile. The customs agent coughed, and Nick turned his attention once more to business.
Harriet waited until she’d reached Winston before allowing herself another big grin.
This could be fun.
Rolling empty water casks, it turned out, was challenging work. She could only imagine how much more difficult they’d be to handle once they were filled. She and Winston and Chang formed a line to pass the casks to the waiting hoist, and she joined in singing the “heave away, haul away,” chorus of their work song as they hauled on the line. They’d just lifted the third cask up and over to the dock when Nick tapped her on the shoulder and gestured for her to follow him down the gangboard.
“We’re here. Do you know where to go?”
She paused at her second step onto the dock, standing on an immobile surface for the first time in weeks. She fought the need to sway.
Then it hit her. Her father had been here. Perhaps to this very dock. Perhaps he had stood in the very spot she now stood.
She swallowed the rising emotion before it could turn her into a watering pot and took a good look at the portion of town that was visible, comparing the reality before her to the memory of the map her father had drawn and mailed home. The map she had stared at for countless hours, memorizing every line, every stroke. The map that had been stolen.
Was the thief here? Had he reached Spain before them, perhaps already absconding with the treasure? She pointed up the city’s main street, to the top of the hill. “Up there. That church was on the map, I’m sure of it. Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Dolor.” Her pronunciation was likely off as she’d never heard it spoken, only seen it on the map. No matter. It was on the map, and the real building was in sight. She could be there within the hour.
Her heart pounded. She clenched her fists to control her trembling.
Sheffield shaded his eyes to view the spire of the church. “This is a nation of Catholics, Mi—Harry. Spain has more churches than my sisters have shoes. How can you be certain that’s the same church as on your father’s map?”
Harriet froze at hearing Sheffield speak the informal name, and immediately decided she liked it. She shielded her eyes from the bright sun, somehow so much hotter here on land than out at sea, and wished she’d asked Smitty for a straw hat from the slop chest as a bonnet was out of the question. “One way to find out.”
“Fair enough.” Nick gave the bos’n the signal he was leaving, got the acknowledging hand signal in return, and he, Miss Chase—no, no, must think of her as Harry for now—and Jonesy headed for the church, pushing their way through the crowded dock area and uphill, where the crowds soon thinned out. There were newly constructed buildings along the street, mixed in with weather-beaten structures, crumbled ruins, and those heavily damaged but still in use that bore silent testimony to the war that had marched through just a few years ago.
Would the treasure have survived? If it existed in the first place. Would it have been stolen by looters once the bombardment stopped?
A soft gasp of dismay beside him brought Nick’s thoughts back to the present, and the realization that they’d reached the top of the hill, and the church. Or what remained of it.
Most of the roof had caved in, as had three walls, leaving just enough of two corners of the roof to hold up the spire. Miss Chase … no, Harry … stood with one hand over her mouth, her eyes wide, as she surveyed the damage.
Jonesy let out a low whistle. “Hope the treasure wasn’t hidden in the church.”
Harry shook her head. “It was hidden with a person, not a place. Papa was worried the fighting would come this way. He and Viscount Sheffield hoped the padre would move it to safety if the need arose.”
“They gave the treasure to a padre?” Trust his father to trust a man of the cloth more than his own son.
“Someone who had taken a vow of simplicity, yes.”
“What if the padre was in there when, you know…” Jonesy gestured with his hands and made a sound mimicking a cannon ball blasting everything to smithereens.
“Let’s find out.” Harry turned determinedly toward the nearest structure that still seemed intact and occupied, a house with a sagging roof and shaded patio in front.
Nick put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you speak Spanish?”
“I’m fluent in French and know a smattering of Greek and Latin.” Her shoulders drooped. “But hardly any Spanish.”
Nick nodded. He walked over to the two elderly men seated outside the front door, playing chess in the shade. “Hola, señores,” he called.
“More Englishmen,” said the one wearing a faded, dusty black boina, slouched low on his forehead.
“Oh, you speak English?” Harry looked like she was going to conduct the interview.
Nick rested his hand on her shoulder again, silently reminding her of appropriate behavior for a cabin boy. She took half a step back.
“Si, and we have had much practice today,” said the other one, who had a big grey mustache.
“We were hoping you might know what happened to the padre from that church.” Nick jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Father…” Belatedly he realized he didn’t even know the name.
