Minerva's Voyage (9 page)

We lugged the chest into the edge of the spinney. Now I had more leisure, I looked closely at the emblem of the cipher wheel, something I'd never been able to do aboard the
Valentine
. Beneath the emblem was its verse:

If thou art not by birth or fortune blest
With means to live or answer thy desire
With cheerful heart, this cipher doth its best
To bring to pass the thing thou dost require
Pay heed to what these emblems really say
So thou live happy till thy dying day.

I read it out quietly so as not to arouse the suspicion of any who happened to be passing by. I had to clamp my mouth shut to stop myself laughing aloud, but I grinned at Fence. “Look at what it says:
this cipher doth its best to bring
to pass the thing thou dost require
…”

“I wonder what that can be.”

“Why treasure, treasure of course. There must be treasure hid somewhere. If only this were the place … the Isle of Devils.”

“Perchance it is. But lead us not into temptation,” Fence said, although he was grinning right back at me.

Dragging the chest further into the spinney and dig
ging up earth with our hands so we could bury it, at least for the moment, we came upon fresh water, gushings of it. I drank till my belly was full to bursting and tight as a drum; when I moved, I could hear liquid rolling around inside me. Fence had hiccups from drinking too fast. We knew now that we wouldn't die. Not of thirst, anyway, though possibly from drinking too much. We filled a couple of bottles that had washed up on the beach when we'd finished. This was to show that we had done the job Scratcher had sent us to do.

Then we moved to a drier spot to bury our booty.

Suddenly there were hoots and hollers, as well as clap
ping, from further up the shore. Admiral Winters seemed about to speak to the voyagers. Fence and I rushed across, slipping on the wet sand and spilling gobs of water from the bottles, as Winters waited for everyone to gather.

“The pilot tells me we lie in the height of thirty-two-and-a-half degrees of northerly latitude, some two hundred and thirty leagues from Virginia.” He paused. “There isn't a sign of the other ships of the fleet and I hope to God they survived. Offer your prayers for the poor souls aboard. But
we
have surmounted the storm, as you know, and are, according to my calculations and the pilot's, safe in the arms of the Bermudas.”

“Baruadas?” asked Boors, bleating twice and blinking.

“No, Sir Thomas. The Bermudas.”

“The Isle of Devils,” the Boatswain said with a low whistle.

Ho Ho.

C
HAPTER 16
L
OST IN A
D
REAM

We were in the spinney, the trees hung with spider webs big enough to catch birds; huge spiders crouched at their centres. I had been afraid of them at first, but was no longer, as they didn't seem to bite. We were examining the emblems, which we had dried and put back in the chest. We had buried it the second time, well away from the water, with a pattern of stones and twigs over the dirt to show us, but no one else, where it was hid. I put the cipher key inside it too.

For a while we'd been unable to visit, except once quickly, to repack the dried emblems in the chest. Like others, we were busy with the everyday chores of staying alive. We had helped build huts, thatching roofs with wild palm leaves from those strange trees around the shoreline. They looked like feather dusters. The trees of the woods in the forest, more familiar to all, had fashioned the walls of our cabins.

My hands were calloused and sore, and my head ached from the continual cuffings Scratcher gave it. But at least I was alive, something I would never have believed a fortnight since. Of course, I had to live with that tyrant Scratcher. I would rather have stayed with Fence, even in a hut the size of a coal hole. Fence, in his turn, lived with Admiral George Winters, while waiting on Boors and swatting flies for him. There were plenty of real ones to swat now we'd come ashore, along with other fliers, creepers, and crawlers. The bugs were bad. The thought of them made me itch. And indeed, I already had several large bites on my arms and legs that looked like the smallpox. Boors must be in heaven, with so many real insects to grouse about. Or hell.

Today Fence and I had met on the beach.

“Peter Fence!”

“Robin Starveling!”

“Starveling no longer. My belly is stuffed with fowl and tortoises.”

“Mine too. And tortoise eggs and fish and crabs. I'm sure I can feel the crabs crawling around inside me. And the voyagers say the crew will roast a pig tonight, to celebrate, as the minister says, our deliverance from the Devil.”

“I know. The ship's dog caught it by the leg. The men came running, Boors oinked, and I heard it squeal when stuck.”

We laughed at Boors' madness and at the poor pig's demise, although true it is it had made me sick to my stomach when I saw it dispatched. I didn't much care when a man hanged, even if I was obliged to pull on his legs, because he was likely wickeder even than I was and deserved what he got. But I had a soft spot for most animals — except dogs — and hated to see them killed. They'd done nothing wrong. Most of them were as good as I was bad. They were just hanging around minding their own business when someone decided to come calling with a knife to make soup out of them.

Fence hugged me as though we'd not seen each other in years. With one accord, we'd made towards the spinney, where we found the pattern of twigs and stones with diffi
culty, as some of the markers had vanished, likely in a recent downpour. But find it we did, and dug the chest up again.

“Drag it even deeper into the undergrowth,” I bid him, “so nobody sees us.”

This was done. Puffing from exertion, we spread the emblems out on the spinney floor, putting a small rock on each to prevent it flying away. They were all a little tat
tered, as well as quite smudged and brittle from their watery adventure, but their verses were still readable; however, the emblem of the ship, the first emblem I'd found, was of course missing, so although I felt we'd got the gist of it, perchance there was more and we'd never be able to solve the puzzle.

“Mayhap Scratcher lost it,” said Fence. “He had it last. Under his shirt.”

“He threw it overboard. Didn't I tell you?”

“No. Was he drunk?” Fence looked confused.

“Most likely he was. He certainly is most of the time now. He found two hogsheads of wine washed up, and made me help him roll them along the shore to a clump of rocks and hide them. Every night or two he goes down there to fill his bottle and sometimes Proule's. The ones we found on the shore. He has enough drink for a year at least. And by then he'll have made more. He's experimenting with berries.”

“He's right horrible when he's been drinking.” Fence frowned at the memory of it.

“Yes. But then again, he's almost as bad sober.” My thoughts returned to what we'd been discussing. “He doesn't still have the ship emblem. But even if he had stowed it somewhere, like the wine, it wouldn't have done him much good on its own. ‘Go to the Isle of Devils,' it said. Not much else if I recall. And we're here. We're the ones with the other clues … if there are any.”

“I'm sure there are, Robin. Where's the cipher key?”

“Here.” I took it from the chest. But now, since I'd emerged from the terrors of the tempest, the cipher's pattern of x's and y's had returned to my brain. I knew it backwards and forwards. I'd even dreamed of x's and y's, all in a row, dancing across lines of emblem verse. Dancing daemons. I told Fence about them.

“I've been having some weird dreams myself, of castles and caves, but I put it down to the tortoise eggs, which I
will
eat before bed,” he replied. “They're very rich.”

“You do know your alphabet, right?” I asked, anxious to get going.

“Aye, but not much more.” Fence was staring at the cipher.

“Each letter has five x's or five y's or a mix of both next to it.”

“Yes.”

He was silent for a moment, considering. “It seems to me that it must link up with at least one or two of the emblems, which have letters all over them.”

“Mayhap.” I wasn't nearly as sure as Fence. “I think the emblem with the cipher wheel has said all it had to say.”

“Aye,” said my good boy Fence, who usually agreed with me. “But we still have two others. And it's something to do with counting things in fives. I'm good at that.”

“You could be right. Mayhap we have to count every five or six x's and y's in the verse to get one letter of the solution.” I picked up an emblem. A stand of trees at night with two verses beneath. I picked up another with a picture of the sun, ships, and a rocky beach on it. There was a hand holding a crown in the foreground. The hand was emerging from a cloud. More verses. I scanned it quickly.

“No, this will never work. There aren't enough x's and y's here to make even one word. I can only find one y in these verses altogether. Maybe the pictures mean something … but then, why the cipher wheel? Doesn't it suggest a secret code of some kind?
Pay heed to what these emblems really say.
What they really say, rather than say on the surface?”

Fence shrugged and shook his head. It was growing late. The trees cast ghostly shadows and the tide was coming in. I could hear its dim roar as it broke further and further up the pink sand. It couldn't reach us here though. I suddenly had a prickly feeling, as if Proule or someone else was watching us. I shivered mightily. But it was well-nigh impossible. They were all back at camp.

“You cold, Robin?”

“No, it's just….”And then the strange presence, if that's what it was, vanished. “It's just the night drawing in. There's a coolness to it, giving me goose bumps. I have to go or

Scratcher will beat me blue and black for tardiness. Let's bury the chest somewhere new.”

“Deeper in the woods?” asked Fence.

“Yes. For safety. And then, as we go back, we can brood on the meaning of the cipher key.”

But true it is, much though we brooded all the way to the cabins, we were no closer to finding a solution to the puzzle. I was beginning to doubt there was one. It was only in the middle of the night that I woke, remembering some
thing peculiar about the verses under the cipher with the hand and crown.

“Ah,” cried I, befuddled with sleep and for a moment thinking myself back in the spinney with Fence, “I have it.”

“Have wha', huh, you blinking idiot?”

It was Scratcher. His voice was unmistakable though I could certainly smell the wine on him. It was a warm and sickening stench with a hint of vomit to it. Not as bad as Proule though, who smelled
mephitic
, to use one of Ma Oldham's words. I'll give her that, the old witch. She was good for new words, especially nasty ones that sounded much like what they meant. I kept a store of them for every occasion.

There was no moon, and the shutters to our small window hole were closed, making the hut blacker, mayhap, than the night outside. I still couldn't see him, but Scratcher's voice came through the dark so curdled with drink that the end sounds were falling off his words. “Have wha'?” he repeated.