The Cortés Enigma (16 page)

Ben finished his chicken and chips without mishap, and Valeria came to clean away his empty plate. He ordered a banana bread pudding when offered dessert, and it arrived moments later.

“So what’s your name?” Ben asked as she delivered the dessert, knowing the question was somewhat overdue.

“Valeria,” she said, running her long delicate fingers through her strong wavy hair. Despite continuing with her duties, setting a table two along from his, her eyes remained focused on Ben.

“Forgive me for asking, but what’s a pretty Spanish girl like you doing in a debatably English dump like this?”

“I like it here. It upsets me you should think of it in such a way.”

A wry smile. “I said it was debatable.”

“Debatably English or debatably a dump?” The question sounded all the cuter when asked in her soft Latino twang.

“Both! I’m guessing this island does count as British.”

She folded a napkin and set it down neatly on the next table. Despite the lack of customers, the girl clearly took pride in her work. “Only in name.”

Ben laughed, this time softly. “Anyway, you still haven’t answered my question. What on earth brought you here from…”

“Extremadura.”

“Beautiful part of Spain.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“I’ve seen Mérida.”

She smiled, this time giving Ben a glimpse of her perfect white teeth. “I was born there.”

He raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised. “Forgive my misjudgement. I’d have put you down more as a rural village kind of girl.”

She looked at him, either insulted or intrigued. “Why you say that?”

“The way you handle yourself. The way you seem to be able to take care of anything that comes your way.” He recalled the day before seeing her tending to an overflowing pump in the garden. “The way Mr Nicholl seems to save money by employing his waitress as his handyman.”

She laughed, a giggle. “What can I say? I am truly indispensible.”

He looked at her, enthralled by every aspect of her appearance. He noticed things he hadn’t seen before: her eyes, deep and brown, with an inner fire like a smouldering volcano on the verge of erupting; her skin, smooth olive, sultry, a never changing hue even after so long out of the Iberian sunlight. Tonight she wore two small earrings dangling softly from both ear lobes, occasionally hidden beneath the flow of her wavy hair. A beautiful, but, he guessed, lonely girl, trapped in a run-down time warp.

What possible reason did she have for staying here?

“My cousin tells me he saw you getting on a boat yesterday evening, heading toward that big lighthouse. I understand you live there.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“You live there alone?”

“No. With my grandmother.”

Ben nodded, assuming she was going to continue, but she didn’t. “Who came first?”

“She did,” Valeria replied, smiling. “Without her, my mother could not have been born.”

He grinned, as did she. For several seconds they held eye contact, Ben finally winning the stare out. As she looked away, she picked up some empty wine glasses from a nearby table.

“Forgive me, Señor Ben. I must be moving on.”

“What time do you finish?”

She shrugged. “About seven.”

“Then what say we have a drink in the bar?”

19

6:30pm

The Queen’s Castle on St Lide’s was unlike the other tourist sites on the Isles of Scilly. There were no employees, no cafés or gift shops – no watchful eyes to observe their activities. The site manager checked in every so often, perhaps once a week, usually a Thursday. It was a routine that had lasted over fifteen years, one of little change.

Pizarro trusted the information.

The breakthrough had come at 6:23 that evening. Despite the noise, Cortés knew there was no chance of them being seen or overheard. Being the only people on the island there was no one on hand to witness the four men of west European features knock through the wall and enter the long abandoned chamber on the other side.

The interior of the chamber was difficult to make out with the light fading. While the rooms on the ground floor were nearly always dark, even in the daylight, at this hour the area within the strong grey stone walls was consumed in almost total blackness.

Pizarro was the first to enter, followed immediately by Cortés. As they made their way over the pile of rubble, the four intruders spread out across the previously hidden inner chamber. Features were difficult to make out, the illumination of the dim yellow glow from the torches doing little to help, their light flickering like a burning lantern. In the dark, shadows moved in strange directions, giving the impression there were two people instead of one, a human cloaked by a sinister doppelganger lurking in the shadows.

Juan Cortés entered the new chamber through the now dismantled wall and pointed his torch in front of him. They had entered a tunnel, a well-preserved subterranean passage lined by thick walls, similar to those in the castle. The tunnel continued, left then right like the start of a clockwise circle. Logic told him it followed the coast; perhaps it would open up on reaching the sea. The castle was not the same as centuries ago, erosion on this side was worse than the others thanks largely to its proximity to Hell’s Bay.

Cortés knew that was another place they could end up.

The tunnel walls disappeared after about two hundred metres, replaced by solid earth supported by wooden struts and beams. In some areas the wood had cracked, leaving it susceptible to caving in. Pizarro grimaced as he examined the wood in the torchlight, concerned by the clear evidence the ancient pine had become rotten years ago.

He was surprised it was still in place.

Further on, the area became wider. There were holes in the ground everywhere, not random, but purposely cut. Scattered along the tunnel were ancient tools, buckets, ladders, pickaxes, spades…

The remnants of an ancient tin mining operation.

Pizarro was becoming nervous; Cortés, on the other hand, remained calm and silent. Pizarro knew from experience that meant either one of two things. Either he was equally nervous or he was just plain focused.

The mine ended, following which they came to an open room. Incredibly there were barrels inside, firkins and something much larger. Cortés looked inside and immediately coughed.

Pizarro looked as well. “Gunpowder.” He looked at the nearby barrels. “Worthless now.”

Cortés rubbed his face, removing sweat. “What of the map?”

Pizarro studied the ancient text, struggling to make it out in the torchlight. “Further, I think.”

The entrance to the next room had been difficult to see at first, so dark was the surrounding area and so great was the quantity of barrels and firewood.

“It seems incredible the soldiers could operate so close and not know,” Pizarro mused.

Cortés was less surprised. “Perhaps that was their plan.”

A second chamber was located along the passage, less than fifty metres on from where the gunpowder had been kept. The second room was a lot like the first, crowded, dark and slightly cramped. A large wooden partition wall had been put up on one side, and it was soon clear why. Behind it was a deep hole, a perfect square, surrounded by equipment, unmistakeably of the Civil War era. A large bucket was attached to a thick white rope dangling freely into the hole below.

Cortés felt his heart sink on seeing it.

“Someone has beaten us to it.”

20

8:50pm

The bar was deserted apart from them. A cosy log fire burned in the original fireplace, the wood crackling when the logs split under the heat of the continuous flame. The glow matched the colour of the wall lights, whose yellow light shone dimly through thick orange shades. To Ben the features were in character with the building, simple and quaint, as if it existed in a time before electricity.

In reality, he guessed little had changed since his ancestor’s visit.

Ben was sitting alone at a table, his attention on the door to the ladies’ room. Moments later, he saw it open, followed by the return of Valeria. As before, she looked beautiful, somehow even more so. Did he miss her in her three and a half minute absence? Was it a trick of the light? A new layer of lipstick and foundation makeup she had recently added to her already lovely face?

He smiled at her as she sat down. “So what really made you want to come and live here?”

“My grandmother moved here when I was very young.” Valeria played with her hair as she spoke; Ben noticed she had been doing so regularly. “My grandfather worked as a property developer. They visited here back in the 1970s, and my grandmother fell in love with the place. When they were here, they saw the old lighthouse – by then it had fallen into disrepair. My grandmother asked my grandfather to buy it, and he refused.”

“He refused?”

“My grandfather died in the 1980s, leaving my grandmother alone in a village she no longer loved. It was her decision to leave.”

A ghost of a smile had formed across Ben’s face. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard of someone emigrating from Spain to England.”

Valeria laughed for the first time in a while. “My grandparents always loved to travel. My mother was the same – and my father. When she was young, my mother and four of her friends went out one day into the mountains near our village. There was a church on the hill; it had once been part of a monastery. The site was dilapidated and had a reputation of being haunted. People in our village respected the rumours, particularly of dead monks.

“For three days they were missing. The entire village was gravely concerned. The mayor called on people to help with the search. They looked everywhere.” She started to laugh. “When they found them, they were sleeping beneath one of the pews. To keep warm, they had even taken to using some of the old monks’ habits as blankets.”

Ben laughed, not knowing what else to do. “What happened to them?”

“They were fine. Even when she was a little girl, mother was always brilliant at taking care of herself – and others.”

“I bet your grandparents didn’t see it that way.”

“My grandmother was livid, as was my grandfather.” She laughed again. “Then again, how could they stay mad? Seeing their daughter in the habit of a monk?”

He laughed again, this time for longer. “So tell me about your lighthouse?”

“The Old Man’s Foot was the only lighthouse on the Isles of Scilly – at least until the 1920s. The adjoining building had been owned by the governors of the islands. Although I think they never used it.”

Ben was intrigued. He assumed she was talking about the Godolphins.

“What was it for?” he asked. “Was it a house?”

She shook her head. “More a lookout post. Sometimes a hospital. For over three hundred years the isles were in conflict with the Dutch, and sailors of both countries would seek refuge at the lighthouse. Many ships crashed here, more than anywhere else.” She lowered her head. “It’s sad, no? That so many people can die so suddenly.”

Ben bit his lip and cleared his throat. He noticed a change had come over her, a distant look in her eye and a softness in her voice – as if she was speaking of a personal memory. For several seconds he studied her, the movement of her lips, the smoothness of her skin, the sound of her breathing.

For that brief time he had almost forgotten the reason for his visit to the island.

“Being honest, I’ve never really thought about it.”

“It must be so difficult,” she said, again playing with her hair, twisting it in a spiral around her index finger. “Being here, in a strange place. Stirring up ghosts of the past.”

He forced a smile. “You know what they say? Nothing ventured…”

She smiled again, this time sombrely. “I had an uncle – Pedro was his name. He heard about a great legend from somewhere in the south of Spain. During the Civil War, apparently some of the soldiers found something buried in the mountains. Stories spread like wildfire of lost gold, possibly brought back from the Crusades. But rumour is a frightful thing.” She looked at Ben, this time with fire in her eyes. “It is a desperate man who searches for treasure. Gold is never worth dying for.”

Ben sipped his whiskey, replaced the glass on a coaster and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at her for several seconds. “You think I’m searching for treasure?”

“There’s no reason to play dumb, Ben. The story of your ancestor is legendary here. Even before he was found, people talked about the voyage of the great Tommy Malone.”

He half-smiled, again taken with how cutely she mispronounced the name. “Perhaps you could fill me in; you seem to know a lot more about him than me.”

She flushed coyly. “Forgive me, Ben. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m actually rather fascinated. What is this legend? What’s your take?”

“I...I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She rose to her feet and headed for the door.