‘If we can find it, son.’
As one, father and son turned to the charts behind them on the wall, and Ben suddenly began to clear the table. Tim helped unpin the maps and, with a clear space created, they could now be studied in some comfort.
Aleksey was tracing the line with his finger, and when Harry sat back down, he asked the older man, ‘What doyouthink the Frobisher story tells us?’
Unconsciously, the old man began to rub his arm, and Aleksey immediately had a vision of the savage injury which he’d sustained only a few months before. ‘Fathers and sons. That’s what I think we can learn from this story—the strange inheritances we take from our fathers. What is a curse, after all, but an inheritance? I think there was a mutiny. On board theNicholas. We’re a very superstitious bunch, us seafarers.’ He leaned forward a little. ‘Even today, in the wardroom, you never clink glasses to toast—the ringing foretells a sailor’s death at sea. Imagine being upon the oceans in those days. No way to navigate properly. Scurvy sending whole crews mad. Absolute belief in curses, superstition, monsters of the deep. You have this man, Praise-God Barebone, a miracle child from a fanatical Christian sect gone to sea to get away from those beliefs, and maybe the sacrifice made for that cargo was too much for him. Men lose God but sometimes find him again in the strangest places and at the strangest times.’
‘You think Praise-God Barebone mutinied?’
Harry nodded. ‘But he can’t bring himself to kill his captain. Remember Fletcher Christian, son, and theBounty. From Christian’s perspective, it would have been better to have killed Bligh. But I suppose he thought he had—putting him out in that boat. He could not know he had instigated the greatest feat of naval navigation and courage the world has ever seen. But Barebone puts Frobisher off—perhaps somewhere on the French coast? I don’t know. But somehow Frobisher did lose theNicholas—and the treasure. The timeline isn’t clear—how long it took Frobisher to find Barebone, but find him he did.’
He leaned back, the overhead illumination throwing his craggy face into deep shadow, and for a moment Aleksey thought he could see the skull beneath the weathered skin. ‘Let’s sleep on it.’ His suggestion appeared welcome to the other four, Harry particularly, as he rubbed absentmindedly at his still-healing arm.
When it was only him and Ben left they studied each other across the charts. Ben shook his head at him ruefully, and Aleksey accepted the wry chastisement. ‘See if there is any food left, Benjamin, and I will put the feet out.’
* * *
Despite both being tired, neither of them fell asleep right away. They lay side by side, arms folded beneath their heads, both thinking their own thoughts. It was raining, the soothing sound pattering on the tiles above them.
‘What did you make of everything Harry told us?’
Ben grunted. ‘He had me until the feet.’
Aleksey rolled his head, regarding Ben’s profile. ‘The moron’s contribution a step too far for you?’
‘Hmm.’ Ben was silent for a while, mulling something over. Aleksey waited, hoping he might mention aliens once more. ‘I’ve heard of that Fletcher bloke. I bet Harry could tell some great stories about mutinies.’
Aleksey pursed his lips. ‘I’ve only got a few good years left.’
‘Still not convincing anyone by the way. Especially not me. So, the Bony guy mutinied—because of the curse and believing in the devil—dumped Frobisher, and sailed away with theNicholas? But Frobisher tracked him down and demanded to be taken to his treasure?’
‘Well, Harry said he was rich by the time the daughter saw him again. So, yes, I presume he found it.’
‘But what then? Took it and re-hid it? Because he told his son something on the scaffold. That must have been a location.’
‘I was thinking about the man Barebone—why he was murdered. There have been many cases of wealthy people having secret things built for them, and to keep the privacy of the location, the builders are killed. Perhaps there was no mutiny, but they hid the treasuretogether, and that is why the fisherman was paranoid—he understood the nature of man and the power of greed. Knew that Frobisher could not stand to have the location of his treasure known by anyone but himself.’
‘Huh. Who’d be paranoid like that? Strange kind of bloke.’
‘You aren’t funny.’
‘Yeah, I am. Okay, so I get they steal the treasure, or Bony does and Frobisher takes it back from him, whatever, and then each generation passes down the secret location of this hoard to the next, but what about Sharpie? That’s where Harry lost me.’
‘Yes. The moron’s old school friend’s feet wash up on our island. I do not understand it either.’
But somewhere in his brain, a little voice was still asking himdo you get it yet? do you get it?and in his dreams that night, he finally did. He saw Ben under a great wave, being rolled and turned and drowning, and upon seeing thishehad spread his arms wide and commanded the seabed to rise, and it had, and then Ben had been floating serene in translucent green waters, as if in a tiny tropical snow globe, until a man had fallen from the sky, and Ben had dived down to watch the body twisting, for it was caught in a whirlpool, and yet whenhehad dived down, because he did not fear this great sucking beast of his own creation, Ben was safe at the bottom of the abyss, for he was hanging onto a wooden spar, and the spar had beenhisdead brother Nikolas’s leg, desiccated and bony and gilded with gold.
He woke with a huge gasp of realisation and thumped Ben awake, his heart racing, breathing deeply to calm his excitement. ‘I know where Nikolas is. I’ve seen him.’
* * *
Chapter TEN
A sense of palpable excitement kept Aleksey quiet in the boat as they sped in the wet, cold early morning gloom across the ocean towards Oasis Rock. He allowed that the others hadn’t quite got into the spirit of this adventure yet, having been shouted awake in the pre-dawn darkness. But they hadn’t seen what he’d seen.
He was replaying the moment when, earlier that year, he’d watched Ben diving and spinning in the shafts of summer sunlight which had penetrated the shallow waters of the reef around the spear. Even at the time, he’d noted the wooden spar that Ben had clung to as he’d scooped up the sand and let it play between his fingers.A wooden sparright beneath a shard of rock that seemed designed by a god of malice and mischief to impale unwary ships. Like theNicholas.
He glanced around at the others’ expressions and laughed out loud. Harry was looking staunch and stalwart at the wheel, but the other three, even Ben, seemed less than enthusiastic at this jaunt. He allowed the day was noticeablynippy, especially with the wind chill whipped up by their speed over the chop. He allowed that none of them had suitable clothing for such an adventure. But mostly he allowed the undeniable truth of the appalling situation: they’d run out of food on Light Island, there had been nothing for breakfast, and they were all starving. Not only had they consumed all of Harry’s meagre rations, they’d scoffed everything the moron had brought to supplement those supplies.Hewas attempting to channel his inner Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen and relish this painful hunger for the sense of power and control it should still give him, but he had to admit it wasn’t a strategy that was proving particularly successful just at that moment. He swung his foot out and kicked lightly at Ben’s shin. Ben narrowed his eyes and, over the thin lapels of his jacket, which he had clutched beneath his chin, muttered,
