'What is?'
'That he should speak French, and you can understand him! I wouldn't be more surprised if he should know Latin!'
'Yes, he is a remarkable—' He stopped abruptly, as if a wall of rough stones had crashed down upon him. 'My God, ' he whispered. 'That's it!'
'What?'
'No Latin.' Matthew's face had flushed with excitement. 'What Reverend Grove said to Mrs. Nettles, in Bidwell's parlor. 'No Latin. ' That's the key!'
'The key? To what?'
He looked at her, and now his grin was childlike too. 'The key to proving you innocent! It's the proof I've been needing, Rachel! It was right there, as close as...' He struggled for an analogy, and touched his grizzled chin. 'Whiskers! The cunning fox can't—'
'Ah!' Nawpawpay's hand lifted, muddy to the wrist. 'Here is a find!' Matthew waded into the water to meet him. The chief opened his hand and displayed a single silver pearl. It wasn't much but, coupled with the fragment of pie dish, was enough.
Matthew was curious about something, and he waded on past the chief until the water neared his waist.
And there! His suspicion was confirmed; he felt a definite current swirling around his knees. 'The water moves, ' he said.
'Ah, yes, ' Nawpawpay agreed. 'It is the breathing of the spirit. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But always, it breathes. You find interest in the water spirit?'
'Yes, very much.'
'Hm.' He nodded. 'I didn't know your kind was religious. I shall take you to the house of the spirits, as an honored guest.'
Nawpawpay led Matthew and Rachel to another hut near the pond. This one had walls daubed with blue dye, its entrance cloaked by a fantastically woven curtain of turkey and pigeon feathers, rabbit fur, fox skins with the heads still attached, and various other animal hides. 'Alas, ' Nawpawpay said, 'your woman can't have entrance here. The spirits deign only to speak to men, and to women through men. Unless, of course, the woman was born with the spirit marks and becomes a seer.'
Matthew nodded. It had occurred to him that one culture's 'spirit marks' were another culture's 'marks of the devil.' He told Rachel that the chief's custom required her to wait while they went inside. Then he followed Nawpawpay.
The interior was very dim, only one flame burning in a small clay pot full of oil. Thankfully, though, there was no eye-searing smoke. The house of the spirits appeared empty, as far as Matthew could tell.
'We speak respectfully here, ' Nawpawpay said. 'My father built this, many passings of seasons ago. I often come here, to ask his advice.'
'And he answers?'
'Well... no. But then again, he does. He listens to my problem, and then his answer is always: Son, decide for yourself.' Nawpawpay picked up the clay pot. 'Here are the gifts the water spirit gives.' He followed the flickering flame deeper into the hut, with Matthew a few paces behind.
Still, there was nothing. Except one thing. On the floor was a larger bowl full of muddy water. Nawpawpay reached into it with the same hand that held the pearl, and then his hand reappeared muddy and dripping. 'We honor the water spirit in this way, ' he said. As Matthew watched, Nawpawpay approached a wall. It was not pinewood, as the others were, but was thickly plastered with dried brown mud from the pond.
Nawpawpay pressed his handful of mud and the pearl into the wall and smoothed it down. 'I must speak to the spirit now, ' he said. And then, in a soft singsong chant, 'Pa ne sa nehra cai ke panu. Ke na pe pe kairu.' As he chanted, he moved the flame back and forth along the mud-caked wall.
There was a red glint, first. Then a blue one.
Then... red... gold... more gold, a dozen gold... and silver... and purple and...
... a silent explosion of colors as the light moved back and forth along the wall: emerald green, ruby crimson, sapphire blue... and gold, gold, a thousand times gold...
'Oh, ' Matthew gasped, as the hairs stood up on the back of his neck.
Held in that wall was the treasure.
A pirate's fortune. Jewels by the hundreds—sky blue, deep green, pale amber, dazzling white—and the coins, gold and silver enough to make the king of Franz Europay gibber and drool. And the most stunning thing was that Matthew realized he was seeing only the outermost layer. The plastering of dried mud had to be at least four inches thick, six feet tall, and four feet wide.
Here it was. In this dirt wall, in this hut, in this village, in this wilderness. Matthew wasn't sure, but he thought he could hear God and the Devil joined together in common laughter.
He knew. What was put into the spring at Fount Royal was carried out by the current of an underground river. It might take time, of course. Everything took time. The entrance to that river, there somewhere in the depths of Bidwell's spring, might only be the diameter of Lucretia Vaughan's pie plate. If a pirate had taken a sounding of the fount before lowering bags of jewels and coins, he would have found a bottom at forty feet—but he would not have found the hole that eventually pulled everything into the subterranean flow. Perhaps the current drew more powerfully in a particular season, or was affected by the moon just as were the ocean's tides. In any case, the pirate—most probably a man who was only smart enough to loot vessels, but not to vessel his loot in a sturdy container—had chosen a vault that suffered the flaw of a funnel at its bottom.
Spellbound, Matthew approached the wall. 'Se na caira pa pa kairu, ' chanted Nawpawpay, as he slowly moved the flame back and forth and the small sharp glints and explosions of reflected light continued.
Matthew saw in another moment that the dried mud also held bits of pottery, gold chains, silver spoons, and so forth. Here the gold-encrusted hilt of a knife protruded, and there was the cracked face of a pocket watch.
It made sense that Lucretia Vaughan's pie dish would go to the doctor, as some sort of enchanted implement sent from the water spirit. After all, it was decorated with a pattern that they most likely had figured out was a human organ.
'Na pe huida na pe caida, ' Nawpawpay said, and that seemed to finish it, as he held the flame toward Matthew.
'The courage—' Matthew's voice cracked. He tried again. 'The courage suns. You say the white fish stole one?'
'Yes, and murdered the man to whom it was given.'
'May I ask why it was given to this man?'
'As a reward, ' Nawpawpay said, 'for courage. This man saved another who was gored by a wild tusked pig, and afterward killed the pig. It's a tradition my father began. But that white fish has been luring my people with his bad ways, making them sick in the mind with strong drink, and then making them work for him like common dogs. It was time for him to go.'
'I see.' Matthew recalled that Shawcombe had said his tavern had been built with Indian labor. And now he really did see. He saw the whole picture, and how it fit together in an intricate pattern.
'Nawpawpay, ' Matthew said, 'my... uh... woman and I must leave this place. Today. We have to go back from where we came. Do you know the village near the sea?'
'Of course I do. We watch it all the time.' Nawpawpay wore an expression of concern. 'But Demon Slayer, you can't leave today! You're still too weak to travel that distance. You must tell me what you know of Franz Europay, and I also have a celebration planned for you tonight. Dancing and feasting. And we have the demon's head, carved out for you to wear.'
'Urn... well... I—'
'In the morning you may leave, if you still desire to. Tonight we celebrate, to honor your courage and the death of that beast.' He directed the light to the treasure wall again. 'Here, Demon Slayer! A gift for you, as is proper. Take one thing you see that shines strong enough to guide your hand.'
It was astounding, Matthew thought. Nawpawpay didn't realize—and God protect him from ever finding out —that there were those in the outside world, the civilized world, who would come through the forest to this place and raze it to the ground to obtain one square foot of dirt from that wall.
