Chapter NINE
The excitement was palpable now. As the second coin was produced and examined by everyone, gold passing and warming from hand to hand, he told them Molly’s response to the one brief question he’d been able to put to her, caught up as she’d been in Sarah’s wedding and the trip to St Albans:
‘Where did you find the things you bought your books with, moye solnyshko? Not the shells, but the big shiny coins?In Raddybum’s basket’had not been her particularly surprising answer.
Holding one to the light now, Tim asked speculatively, ‘I wonder if they were caught up in something—like the socks. I mean, they wouldn’t float in, would they? Like most of this other stuff?’
Ben took the coin from him, also examining it under brighter light. ‘Didn’t we read about some coins on the beach in North Devon when we went to that smugglers’ museum?’
As this was addressed to him, Aleksey cast his mind back to their trip to Hartland Quay, the memory of that day subtly mingled with those of his struggles with his various addictions. He’d been a man desperately seeking something to fill a void those props had left. And then he had bought this island, and although that ownership had come with some unique challenges of its own, Light Island had healed him, restored him. Brought him back to life.
He nodded to Ben’s question. ‘From another Spanish treasure ship, according to legend.’
Suddenly, Squeezy leapt up and grabbed one of the books from the pile on the sofa, came back to the table, told his boyfriend to move his hairy butt, and took the newly empty seat next to his father. Harry exclaimed softly as he saw the cover, and they sat for a moment, heads bowed over the pages. Aleksey turned his gaze slowly to Tim, and for a moment they shared an extremely rare moment of communion. It was the speechless understanding that he usually only found with Ben, but he and Tim were apparently thinking the same thing. Well, not entirely the same, he assumed, but certainly great pleasure in seeing this father and son pair so united again, as they must once have been. And for the first time it hit him forcibly that the changes Ben had been so recently enjoying fromhistransformation into a better man, must also have been pleasures Timothy Watson was benefiting from with his other half. Much of the moron’s restless, manic approach to life and everyone in it had possibly stemmed from deep dissatisfaction with his own misfortunes. He’d had his own void. He slid his hand across to Ben’s thigh and stroked it as they all waited for whatever scheme the pair was concocting, and Ben’s hand left the tabletop, where he’d been macabrely tying the shoelaces of the two feet together for some reason, and came to join with his beneath. They idly played with their fingers, and once more the sense of great privilege swept over Aleksey that he now had this casual, meaningless, commonplace thing with Benjamin Rider, where once he had had nothing more than sexual hunger and resentment.
Finally, the Staveley-Bathursts found what they were looking for, and Harry exclaimed triumphantly, ‘The Merchant Royal, 1641, sank about forty miles from Land’s End. Just like ourNicholas, it had its holds full of Spanish gold from the New World. Five hundred bars of gold bullion, four hundred silver ingots, millions of rubies, diamonds and emeralds. What a find. What a find.’
Aleksey grunted, disappointed. ‘So it was found?’
Squeezy nodded glumly. ‘Yeah. 2007. Big storm that year, remember the hurricane? Some small items washed up, and this salvage company used some pretty sophisticated tidal mapping satellites and then their remotely operated submersible, and found it.’
‘They brought up seventeen tons of gold and silver!’ Harry didn’t even pause at the whistle of admiration from Tim. ‘Three hundred million dollars-worth, at least, and they only scratched the surface of what they found down there. So you see, one gold coin on a beach and—well, who knows what might follow.’
‘Oh, tell them about the silver table, Dad; that was one of your best stories.’
Even Tim was chuckling at the moron’s enthusiasm, and Aleksey wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him find his boyfriend amusing before. Many other things but never engaging. Although he’d always assumed they found some common ground in bed. He and Ben had enjoyed the occasional discussion about this but had rarely come to any firm conclusion on the matter, one way or the other.
‘Ah, well, that’s a tale of greed, hubris and ghosts, son. Perfect for four young rascals like you!’ He folded his fingers on the table and leaned a little into the light.
‘Many years ago, in a time now lost to history, the Lord of Pengersick lived in his castle on the cliffs above Praa Sands. He was a man as cruel as he was greedy—a very unfortunate combination, as I’m sure you will agree. He put punitive rents on his tenants, starving them, and with this great blood fortune he accrued, he commissioned a silver dining table to be fashioned. Not silver dinnerware, mind you, but an entire silver table. What sort of mind could think of a table to dine on as the reward for starving his fellow man? One night, his hubris overcame even his greed, and he decided to entertain his like-minded friends, hosting a great banquet, and the centrepiece of this feast was of course his table. But being such an evil and greedy man, he wasn’t content with his guests admiring his glittering acquisition in his castle—he had it transported to his ship, and they dined upon the gently lapping waters of Praa Bay. But—’
Everyone laughed, and Ben squeezed his fingers. There was always a but for areallygood story.
‘—but, this gentle, peaceful bay had its own imperative, one that could not abide cruelty or greed, for these were the same waters that had once welcomed and sheltered God made manifest as a child upon Earth.’ Aleksey felt a shiver run down his spine. He knew what the old man was going to say. ‘The waters of St Michael’s Mount had been touched, sanctified a thousand years before this sacrilege, and the sea never forgets, lads, the sea never forgets. So, this arrogant lord and his guests weren’t welcome in such a holy place, and the very seabed rose up once more remembering an ancient command. The waters rushed over the ship as these wealthy men gorged their food and swilled their wine, and it was driven onto the rocks. Weighed down by their fine clothes and their full bellies, the entire party was drowned—and the huge silver table slid beneath the waves.’
‘Never to be seen again?’
Harry shook his head dramatically at Ben. ‘Not at all. Youdoneed to remember your Leviticus, son. Not only does the sea never forget, she always gives up her secrets. When the tide is low enough, on rare winter nights when the moon is full, you can see the icy glint of that table sunk beneath the waves. But don’t try to find it, lad. Many have attempted that and been lost. Some secrets aren’t for mortal men it seems.’
Watching his father’s profile, Squeezy suddenly snorted. ‘I like the bit about the winter nights and the full moon. That’s new.’
Harry chortled. ‘Ah, well, I’ve had a few years to add to some of my old bedtime stories, son. I left out the phantom cat on the castle battlements. Do you remember her? Kittywrath was always your favourite. However, not a legend at all is theSan Antonio. That went aground at Gunwalloe on the Lizard peninsula in Henry VIII’s reign, carrying the dowry for a princess. Gold ingots, just like these two here, washed up on that beach in the 70s. They say the wreck is only a short way off, but no one’s found it yet—not that we know about anyway.’
‘Would we not know such a thing?’ It seemed unspeakably annoying to Aleksey that someone would find sunken treasure and just abscond with it.
The moron had the audacity to roll his eyes. ‘We’re not going to bleeding well advertise our find, are we!’
Harry closed the book. ‘It’s interesting you should bring that up, sir. Have you heard of HMSExeter? And the Battle of the Java Sea?’ Aleksey hated moments like these. He’d spent the last fifteen years bluffing Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen that he’d had a superb education at the finest academy in Russia, which was all well and good when you were bullshitting someone with a single GCSE in metalwork. But he had a sneaking suspicion that not only did Harry know far more about most things than he did, the cretin possibly did as well. He wobbled his hand and muttered, ‘Ask me about Stalingrad.’
Everyone laughed, and Tim saved his embarrassment by pushing his glasses up and admitting he’d never heard of these either.
‘Exeterwas sunk by the Japanese in 1942. In 2003 the wreck was discovered. All well and good. But in 2013 they returned, and it was gone, aYork-classheavy cruiser and nothing left—just a big scrape left in the seabed.
‘Portal?’ Even Ben was laughing as he suggested this hopefully.
‘Illegal salvage, Ben. Tiny boats, a few air compressors, and they’d stripped awayten thousand tonsof steel from two hundred feet of water and no one knew it was happening. You see, steel made before 1945 is low-background steel—no radiation—and it’s incredibly valuable. The atomic bomb they detonated in New Mexico to test this new weapon of war changed the world—in more ways than one. It altered it at a fundamentalchemicallevel. Radioactive isotopes are now in the atmosphere, and any post-war steel contains these new elements. Imagine you are building something to house incredibly sensitive measuring equipment. You can’t have radiation leaking from the steel—and so the wrecks are disappearing. Secretly.’
Squeezy then concluded firmly, ‘Asours will.’
