shaking. And there it was, spattered with shit, the stone I’d arguably sacrificed my wife and happiness for: the wretched emerald.
Cursed indeed.
I looked out to sea. Somewhere on that reef was the treasure of an ancient empire, and I’d leave it to Jubal whether to lead Haitians back someday to dive if they dared. Salvage when the sea was smooth sapphire and angry gods were remote. I couldn’t bear it anymore.
And my own stone? I was sorely tempted to kick it away or bury it in the sand. Its beauty was bitter reproach. But then I thought of my boy, motherless now, and his father with no trade but gambling and adventure. What kind of upbringing could I give him?
Life doesn’t stop, and he had all of his ahead. If Astiza was truly gone, I was his sole parent now and would have to decide what to do next. Maybe Philadelphia, and Quakers, to help put sense into him that I didn’t have. Maybe he’d absorb Franklin’s wisdom when I had not. I owed him time, and hope.
Or maybe a school in London, where I’d be closer to my enemies.
So, grimacing, I wiped the damnable stone off and pocketed it, too, determined to sell it as a trust for my son.
I must remain destitute myself to remind me of the dross of dreams. I must commit to something larger than my own retirement.
I had to find grim meaning out of disaster.
So I limped to make reunion with Jubal and Harry.
“Papa!” No cry gladdened my heart more, that at last he seemed to recognize and need me. He clung like a little monkey, sobbing for reasons he didn’t fully understand himself. Finally he asked, which he must, “Where’s Mama?”
There was no corpse. I’d seen the diving bell, and other jetsam. Yet there could be no reasonable hope, either. “Swimming, Horus.” I hadn’t the heart to tell him what must be true.
“She’s not coming?”
I sighed. “I hope she’s saved herself somewhere else. We’ll pray for that, you and me, because she’d like that.”
“I’m cold, and scared of the ocean.”
“We’re safe for now, and tomorrow we’ll find help.”
“I miss Mama.”
“Me, too, more than I believed possible.” And so we wept, united by tragedy. “I’ve missed you, more than you know.”
We slept as best we could, the wind slowly dying in the night, and by the next morning the sun was bright and birds were flying above a ravaged forest. The sea had settled a great deal, and thankfully sucked the bodies back out of sight. Of Jubal’s remaining comrades, including Antoine, we saw no sign.
So I’d killed them, too.
I still trembled lest the sea give up Astiza. So long as it didn’t, there was the cruelest kind of hope. I knew she must be dead, so why did my heart deny it? Because there was something magical about her I’d sensed when digging her out from that first cannon-shattered room in Alexandria. I couldn’t imagine the world without her light. I’d watched her drown, yet didn’t have the instinctual sense of loss I would have expected. We’d ended, but I didn’t feel it. I needed a body and didn’t have one.
“Where are we?” Jubal asked.
I looked inland. A huge mountain rose in the haze, its top smoking. “Perhaps Montserrat. I think we should walk the coast, looking for a settlement or a boat. Antigua is not far, and from there we can get passage home.”
“I found some plantain and coconut. You hungry, boy?”
Harry’s gaze was a million miles away, but not his appetite. “Yes.”
So that was it. I’d been married and apparently widowed in less than a year, and as stripped to my core as it was possible to be. My survival was the worst punishment I could imagine. I would see her, suspended in that last green swell, the rest of my life. And yet her spirit still inhabited us.
Why did I feel nagging hope?
I looked down at Harry. How, what, when would I tell him?
Yet I was surprised by his expression. He looked more determined than devastated. “Let’s look for Mama while we walk.” Did he share my instinct?
I swallowed. “Yes.” And not find her lifeless body, I prayed.
We started trudging down the beach. I told Jubal how he could decide whether to come back for the treasure. “Astiza said it was cursed, but maybe only for some of us.”
“I’ll ask Cecile Fatiman. She’ll decide what to do.”
“Be careful. I think Ezili misled me.”
“She’s a jealous goddess.”
“What will you do next, Jubal?”
“Try to rebuild my country. And you, Ethan?”
I was silent, looking east at the watery horizon as we hiked. “Martel said he was sent to betray me by the leader of the French. I was an errand boy manipulated into a fatal quest.”
“So you must flee to America?”
“I thought that, at first. But Britain, I think, to establish my boy in a good school. I need to make him a future. It’s the one country that has the resources to stand up to the French. The English have flooded the Continent with gold and spies to undermine Bonaparte’s dictatorship. Which suggests, Jubal, my real task.”
“Which is?”
“Revenge. It’s the only meaning I can think of. I’m going back to France.”
“Harry needs a father, Ethan.”
“He’ll have one. But first there’s one task I owe the world.”
“You must forget the world.”
“No. I’m going to hunt down and kill Napoleon Bonaparte.”
