The Valentine Legacy (38 page)

He moaned, his energy returning at a great rate. He said to her later, “You said you've loved me since you were fourteen years old. Jessie, you've always fought with me, been in constant competition with me, insulted me, even hit me every time you could when we were racing. Surely that isn't love.”

“It was my mating call, I suppose,” she said, bit his shoulder, and giggled. “I didn't know what else to do. You thought I was an obnoxious brat, you used to give me those tolerant looks of yours, those looks that said clearly that you wished you could swat me, and I couldn't bear it. I had to make you react and so I did everything I could to push you over the edge.”

“You pushed me over the edge more times than I can even remember.” He began to laugh. “The best time though
was when you fell through the ceiling of your father's stable and landed in the hay trough, mashed cucumbers all over your face, and that was just three months before I married you.”

“I hadn't intended to fall,” she said, punched her fist into his belly, then lowered her head and kissed his belly where she'd struck him.

“You'd best think about this, Jessie.” He groaned. She whispered against his hard flesh, “Oh, I always know what I'm doing when I'm loving you, James.” Her hands were soft, her mouth warm.

“I'm not going to make it this time, Jessie.”

She made very certain that he didn't.

There was no nightmare that night, to which James replied the following morning, “I just knew that if you actually saw that place with an adult's eyes, then the terror would fade into nothing at all. And I was right.” He gave her a fatuous grin, kissed her nose, and left her, whistling one of the Duchess's ditties.

“Well,” she said to the empty bedchamber, “he was right about that.”

He was a bold man that first eat any oyster.

—JONATHAN SWIFT

F
ROM THE LOOK
on the Duchess's face the next morning over breakfast, Jessie realized it had probably been an excellent night for the English Wyndhams as well.

By the end of the morning, however, everyone was in a profound depression. They'd read Samuel Teach's two diaries yet again, thoroughly.

“Nothing,” Marcus said. “Damnation, nothing more, except that he bored me nearly to madness.”

“Curse him,” Jessie said. “He said nothing more about the treasure. Didn't he even try to find it?”

“Evidently not,” the Duchess said, sighed, and patted Charles's back. He obligingly burped, and she told him what a fine fellow he was.

“That leaves the castle, then,” James said. “More than a long shot. An impossibility, if the truth be told.”

Even Anthony was downcast.

“Let's forget about all this for the moment. Let's go to the ocean,” Badger said, and off they went.

It was a lovely day, a bit on the cool side, but it didn't stop Anthony from running like a wild animal to the water's edge, shrieking when a wave caught him, splashing up to
his knees. The Duchess was sitting beneath a lone live oak that provided some shade from the radiant sun overhead. Badger had brought lemonade and some delicious seed cakes that no one knew how he'd prepared, given the fact that he'd had no time and surely he'd slept throughout the night, hadn't he?

The men had rolled up their trouser legs and were playing just as freely as Anthony, enjoying themselves as they threw rocks to each other, running and leaping, sometimes falling.

“This isn't fair,” Jessie said, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. “That's just what I did when I was little. Now I'm afraid to even skip because I might hurt the babe.”

“Men,” Maggie said, “always remain little.”

“Yes, but they're having fun, Maggie. Wouldn't you like to be yelling and running around, chasing waves, finding crabs, pushing each other down in the sand, things like that?”

Maggie shuddered, not deigning to answer as she smoothed down a streamer that was flying around wildly with the stiff ocean breeze. The Duchess laughed. “It's no use, Jessie,” she said. “I would like to perhaps walk along the water's edge. It's so incredibly lovely, so different from where we live in England.” She lifted baby Charles, who'd just yawned from his nap, and cooed up to him, telling him what a big boy he was, how his baby yawns were even clever. Then she put him on a blanket and watched him crawl off into the sand. “Oh dear,” she said, and scrambled after him. “I should have known the moment he woke up I would get all the exercise in the world.”

“My dear Sampson has an idea,” Maggie said suddenly, then tried to wave her words away with her hands.

“What's the matter, Maggie?” Jessie asked. “What idea does Sampson have?”

“He told me not to say anything, that he wanted to think
about it some more. But I think he's terribly smart. He thinks the key to the treasure is somehow tied to the original Valentine's diary, the one we haven't even looked at yet.”

“But how could that be?” the Duchess said as she managed to retrieve Charles again from the sand. “The original Valentine was Blackbeard's great-grandmother.”

“She could have given Blackbeard the idea of where to bury his plunder,” Maggie said simply. “That's what Sampson thinks—not realizing, of course, that there would be a treasure sometime in the misty future, but naming an excellent place to dig a hole, if you know what I mean. You did say, didn't you, Jessie, that the original Valentine was part of that Roanoke colony and that the colonists moved about with the local Indians? Maybe those Indians were here. Who knows?”

“Yes,” Jessie said slowly, staring at Charles, who'd managed to dig up a blue crab, which was scurrying wildly away. “And she could have been in this area. Yes, it's very possible.” Jessie jumped to her feet. She stared down at Maggie and the Duchess, but she wasn't really seeing them. “Yes, it's more than possible.” She broke into a dead run down the beach to where the men were flinging clumps of sand at one another, laughing, and singing one of the Duchess's ditties at the top of their lungs.

She yelled, “Sampson's brilliant! Come along, all of you, we've work to do and treasure to find!”

 

Since it was Sampson's idea, he was the one given the signal honor of deciphering the very faded and spidery sixteenth-century writing penned by the original Valentine. He read silently for a very long time before he looked up, smiled, and read aloud,

“‘We've been with the Croatoan Indians for nearly a month now. Without them, we would have not survived. There was no food and so many were ill. They helped us
pack everything and brought us back to their village. They have tended our sick with local herbs and concoctions they have known for hundreds of years.

“‘ . . . Manatoa is my friend. Today he took me with him to fish in this small inlet that lies at the end of the chain of islands. After he caught nearly more fish than his small boat could hold, he rowed through this narrow channel that had thick poplars on both sides of it. There was also a high point of land that stuck up above the trees. Then the channel flowed into a much larger inlet. He said we were now looking toward the mainland, no longer the ocean. He said the narrow channel hadn't been there twenty years ago. He said everything changed here all the time.'”

“Do you think that's Teach's Hole?” the Duchess asked as she pulled Charles's fist out of his mouth.

“Very probably,” Jessie said. “I was told that it was very different a long time ago. Today there are very few poplars left there and that point is gone.”

“‘ . . . Manatoa told me that a sand dune could disappear overnight. He said storms could carve a channel through an entire island or silt up an already-open channel. He said whole stands of trees could be gone after a storm, their roots ripped up and the trees pulled out to sea. He said he never hid anything beneath the ground. It would never last. He told me not to forget that.

“‘ . . . Manatoa showed me one of the many marshes today and told me never to wade in it or stick my hand in the filthy water, even at high tide. He said there were snakes just below the surface and they would bite me and I would die. He told me about this one evil marsh. One day a villager came shouting into their midst that the marsh was empty. This had never happened before. All the other marshes would be empty or nearly so at low tide, but not this one. Everyone believed there was some sort of underground spring that fed it, but no one really knew. Manatoa told me
that they went to marvel at it. There were snakes wriggling around in the black mud and crabs and slimy layers of sea growth that smelled awful. Everyone believed it either a miracle or a portent of doom. No one knew. One of Manatoa's friends waded into that black mud and discovered piles of huge rocks at the bottom sticking up through the mud. They were all round. He was terrified. I was the only one he told. He was afraid to tell any of the others. They might cast him out for being so foolish, for what if this had been an evil happening? He, by his action, could have cursed all of them. Manatoa told me those rocks were hard and big and wouldn't move regardless of any storm. He said those rocks had been at the bottom of that marsh for a very long time. If they hadn't disappeared by now then they probably never would. He said those rocks were the only things he would trust to survive on these islands.'”

“What kind of rock?” James asked.

Jessie said, “The stones remaining from Blackbeard's castle are limestone, quarried from the mainland near Charleston. I remember overhearing Mr. Gaskill talking to Mr. Burrus about it. As for the rocks in this marsh, I don't know. Round? How odd.”

“Not odd at all,” Marcus said, brushing off his sleeve, grinning like a pirate who'd lost his patch. He then jumped to his feet and spread his arms grandly. “Ballast stones, Jessie. They're ballast stones.”

“Just like those stones Blackbeard and some of his men sat on while sulfur burned down in the hold,” Badger said. “Good God.”

“Valentine did give her great-grandson, Blackbeard, the solution for burying his plunder without danger of losing it in the shifting sands,” Sampson said. “Lordie, this is just splendid.”

“And it was your idea, my dear,” Maggie told him fondly. She took his hand and kissed each knuckle. “You're
magnificent.” Anthony looked disgusted. Charles rubbed his knuckles over his new tooth.

“Jessie,” James said, “just where is this marsh?”

 

It was twilight. The three scouts stood by the marsh staring down at it. There were only three of them, for they didn't want to draw attention to themselves. The last thing any of them wanted was for the Ocracokers to demand to know what they were doing. The scouts, James, Jessie, and Badger, stood at the edge of the marsh, which lay nearly a half mile from the village on the inland water side of the island. It was brimming with filthy black water that made Jessie shudder just to look at it.

“It looks evil,” she said.

“It stinks, that's for sure,” Badger said, nodding. He dropped to his haunches and stared at the motionless surface. Suddenly there was a ripple, then a cottonmouth poked its head up, and Badger fell back on his rear end, gasping.

“However did Blackbeard get the two necklaces for Valentine if the water was this high?” Jessie asked. “Surely he didn't stick his hands down there?”

“No,” James said slowly as he took Badger's hand and pulled him up. “He would have used something—a long pole, perhaps, with a scoop on the end of it. Something like that.”

Badger said, “It seems that Mr. Sampson's correct in his deductions. He thinks the treasure must be inside something metal, so the nasty marsh water wouldn't get to it. He thinks this metal casket is tied securely with chain to the ballast rocks.”

“Yes,” James said. “That's what Jessie and I think, too. We need to come back at low tide. In the meantime we need to make a pole sturdy enough and long enough to get the job done. Once the pole touches the metal casket, it's got
to be strong enough to bring it up without breaking the pole.”

“It's a start,” Jessie said, hugging James to her side as they walked back into the Warfield house, which now didn't look quite so decrepit. “It's exciting.”

“Nearly as exciting as you filled with my child,” he said. He looked at the scythed lawn, the front door that stood open, looking inviting, not threatening, and said, “I think your father just might like to come back here to visit. It's a beautiful place, different from any place I've ever seen.”

“Riding horses on the beach is fun, too,” she said. “ Perhaps now, with you, it would be more than fun.”

“I would hope so. We must do it before you're too fat to sit behind me with your arms around my waist. I don't want you falling off the back of the horse.”

She laughed, poked his arm, and they went into the house to the nearly overwhelming scent of Badger's oysters, simmering in wine, rosemary, and onions. “I hope he knows what he's doing,” James said. “Oysters! They're slimy ugly things. What man in his right mind would drop one in his mouth?”

But they all did. If Jessie and Spears didn't care for them, Marcus and James waxed eloquent on the way they slid down the throat. The Duchess threw an oyster at her husband, who peeled it off his chest, wiped it with a napkin, and handed it ceremoniously to James. Oysters, the majority of the party decided, weren't at all a bad thing—as long, Spears announced, as Mr. Badger was there to prepare them.

The next morning Jessie arose full of energy. She met Badger, who was cursing under his breath, coming from the kitchen.

“Whatever is wrong?”

“I broke my special wooden spoon. I'm going to Mr. Gaskill's store to see if he has something I could use.”

“I'll do it. I know you want to build the pole with the other men.”

Badger nodded, clearly distracted, and took himself to the small overgrown garden in back of the house where all the men were gathered, their hands filled with tools, their heads filled with ideas, each different from the others'. She heard Marcus shout, “Dammit, Spears, you've got lumps in your brain! The prongs won't give us enough strength. The pole will break.”

She called out, “Why don't two of you go to the marsh, stick the pole in, and see how long it needs to be before you find the ballast stones? I guess you just might want to make two poles, to give you more leverage.”

She heard ferocious muttering. She shook her head even as she was grinning, as unrepentant as a child who'd stolen a forbidden sweetmeat.

“Men,” Maggie said fondly, shaking her head as she came up behind Jessie. “That was a reasonable suggestion but since none of their exalted highnesses had thought of it, well, there must be something wrong with it.”

“They'll go,” Jessie said. “Won't they?”

“It's an even chance,” Maggie said. “Your streamers are a bit on the edge, Jessie. Hold still. You must remember to straighten yourself up after James fondles you. He's exuberant, isn't he? That's nice.”