The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (9 page)

Now he remembered. He had been here! So long ago . . .

Kitto spun around, a look of wonder and shock on his face as the memories came flooding back. The light playing off the pool’s surface, throwing flashes up on the craggy ceiling . . . the turtles’ incessant marching up and down the embankment . . . the smell . . .

“What is wrong?” Ontoquas took him by the shoulders, a look of alarm on her face. “Are you sick?”

“No. I . . . I remember. I have been here before! And there is more here than just barrels!”

“Y
ou? Here?” Ontoquas said, confused. She said something in Wampanoag to the effect that the boy was losing his mind.

“Yes. When I was very young.”
But how? How could that be?
And then it came back to him, those obscure comments that William had made back on the
Blessed William
about Kitto’s shoulders not being too broad yet. He and his father had come to the island with his uncle to hide the nutmeg first. Father had lost his leg in the firefight with Morgan when they fled, so likely he had not even gotten off the ship when they reached the island. But Kitto had. He had been so young he had forgotten it.

My uncle brought me to this cave! But why was it? He had a job for me to do, something only I could do . . .

Kitto traced his eyes along the rivulet of water that he had first noticed at the embankment. Midway up the beach it split. One branch went toward the left. Several feet away Kitto saw a small pool glisten in the dim light. Water dripped down into the pool from the rocks above.
That would be where Ontoquas gets the water,
he thought. But this other branch. The one to the right, that headed toward the barrels. There was something important about it.

I was small. I could fit. The other men could not!

“This way. It is this way!” Kitto hopped along the rows of barrels, squinting down at the tiny rivulet that cut through sand down to a stone floor beneath. It wound about deeper into the cave, then turned sharply into the rows of barrels themselves. Kitto’s breath quickened.

“Help me, Ontoquas.” Kitto needed to move the barrels. He needed to get at what was behind them. Ontoquas joined him, and together they wrestled with the first barrel. It was stout but not too much for them to manage—perhaps four stone—but they were able to spin it out on one lip and lift it from the barrel on which it was stacked. Then they pulled away another barrel. And another. In little time they had removed three layers of barrels and Kitto could see what he knew had lain hidden.

The rivulet of fresh water emerged from the wall itself through a low-slung passageway the water had dug through the stone over thousands of years. He pointed.

“Do you see it?
Do you see?
” Ontoquas did see, but she did not yet understand until Kitto got down on hands and knees and peered into the opening. He dragged himself forward on his elbows until he could poke his head into the darkness.

“I am going in,” he said. Kitto dug his forearms into the sand.

Ontoquas did not like the idea, but it was obvious there was nothing she could do to convince this boy otherwise. She did not know Kitto well, but she knew instinctively he had a fiercely determined spirit. No sooner could she prevent the tide from rising than keep him from going on.

Wrestling awkwardly with his toes and elbows, Kitto propelled himself forward until he had entered the tunnel up to his shoulders. The streamlet of water wet his right elbow, cool enough to give him a chill as it soaked into his shirt. The tunnel smelled clean and dry, not musty. Not that it mattered. What he was after did not mold, did not tarnish even.

The passageway was perhaps three feet in width but very low to the ground, so low that while Kitto was able to get his shoulders through quite easily, once up to his chest he could feel the rock snag along his back. Was he too broad after all? He remembered his uncle making odd comments aboard the ship about Kitto’s size. This is what William had meant.

“I can barely fit!” Kitto gasped. He wiggled vigorously back and forth, the rock raking along his spine as he moved. A thin layer of sand beneath him was pushed aside by his efforts, just enough to allow him to shimmy himself forward to where the passage opened up. Ontoquas grabbed his good leg at the knee and pushed from behind. In a moment his entire body was swallowed up in the darkness.

Ontoquas knelt down and peered into the shadows.
“Are you well?” she said, frustrated that she could not communicate better in English. The words she needed eluded her.
Aren’t you terrified to enter such a dark place? What do you expect to find back there?
She thought of what Kitto had said, that he had been to the island before. She thought he was mad, or that she misunderstood him, but how could he have known of this hidden passage otherwise?

When Kitto did not answer her calls but disappeared farther into the blackness, Ontoquas resolved to enter herself. She lay down at the opening and scooted forward with her palms and bent knees. Being somewhat more slight than Kitto, the way was easy for her and she entered quickly.

Up ahead of Ontoquas, now perhaps ten feet into the passageway, Kitto extended his hand to the ceiling. Yes, there it was. High enough for someone Duck’s age to stand.

I remember standing here,
he thought.
I remember that I had been given a torch. I remember the yellow light and the feeling of pride at being allowed to hold the torch by myself.

Kitto pulled himself into a sitting position. He reached a hand out beside him. His fingers found the cool rivulet, and he traced its passage upstream. It curved off to the right.
Yes, here is where it disappears into the wall.
His fingers felt a moist crack in the stone.

Just a little farther.

Kitto scooted along on his bottom, keeping his bad leg carefully aloft. He continued back several feet until
his stump bumped into an uneven wall, igniting his whole body in agony. Kitto gritted his teeth until the spasms of pain diminished.

“Please, wait!” Ontoquas called behind him.

Reaching out with his hands now, Kitto felt the wall ahead of him. He reached to his left and where there had been a wall was now open space.

This is where it is. Right here.

Slowly Kitto reached out with his left hand, leaning into the emptiness. His fingertips brushed along the bare stone floor. Kitto bent farther, straining against his lean frame. Farther . . . a bit farther.

There.
Something solid, but not rock. Kitto scooted closer to it and reached again.

He felt a corner, neat and square. It was wooden, with metal hardware. It was a chest.

Kitto edged closer and fumbled with the two latches, feeling his excitement grow. One of them broke off beneath his fingers and clattered to the stone floor. The other creaked loose. Kitto rested his hands on the chest’s lid as Ontoquas appeared behind him.

“How are you?” she asked, hearing but not seeing Kitto.

“Right here,” Kitto said. The chest was smaller than he remembered. But he had been so young then. It could not have measured more than eighteen inches along its face. Kitto pushed at the lid, but it did not budge. He gave the lid a sharp whack with the palm of his hand and tried again. This time the hinges responded, and he
could feel the lid rotate backward with a creak.

“What is it?” Ontoquas said, her hands reaching out and brushing against his along the wooden chest.

Kitto set the lid all the way back against its hinges. He reached down into the box slowly, and when his fingers struck the cool contents, a tiny jingling sound greeted his ears.

“Did you hear that?” Kitto said. He took Ontoquas’s hand in his and pushed them down into the chest. They each clutched a handful of what must have been coins. Kitto lifted his hand a few inches and let the coins fall from his grasp and clink with an unmistakable jangle into the chest. Ontoquas rubbed the coins in her hand against one another.

“Gold?” Ontoquas said, and she felt her breath quicken. She let the coins fall from her hands, then picked up a single disk and brought it to her mouth. She bit down on it and could feel the metal give beneath her teeth. She knew the
wompey
valued gold above all things. Her people did not prize it particularly, but sometimes they came by gold coins in their trades with colonists.

“Rich as kings,” Ontoquas said, remembering what Van had said weeks back when Kitto had identified the chest in her lean-to. She gave a small laugh, and to Kitto’s ears it was a sweet music. He laughed too, and plunged his hand down into the gold.

“There is more here than we could ever spend!” he said. “And this is only a small part of it. Watch your hand.” He pulled hers away and lowered the lid.

“Reach over it.” Kitto took her hand in his and guided it over the top of the chest. They each scurried a few inches farther into the darkness. Together they felt something, also wooden. Another chest, small again. This one flipped open easily, and their fingers plumbed through the odd collection of shapes inside.

“This is not gold,” Ontoquas said. “What is it?”

“Jewels,” Kitto said, but Ontoquas did not know the word. Her fingers found something quite thin, a tiny chain. She withdrew it slowly from the chest and pulled it to her. Something hung from the chain, something small. It was a necklace. Ontoquas’s people made necklaces from the shells they collected, and from the beads they traded for with the white people. She knew necklaces. Her thin fingers separated the strands, and she draped it over her head.

“See this,” she said. She found Kitto’s hand and pulled it to her.
Why do I find it so easy to touch him?
she wondered. She led his hand to the chain, and pushed into his palm the small medallion that hung from it.

“ ’Tis a cross,” Kitto said. That much he could tell, but there was some other knobbylike protrusion at the bottom that did not make sense to him.

Ontoquas understood. “Jesus Christ,” she said.

“Yes. Do you know . . . about him?” Kitto let go of the medallion.

“Yes. Men come to my people to tell us of him. Man and God. But we have our own gods.”

Kitto turned back to the chests. The tunnel was
wider, and he felt that there was room to move to one side of the first chest. He did so and reached farther back. He felt a third chest. There were at least five if his childhood memory served, and then some loose large items toward the back. He pivoted into a crawling position and painstakingly clambered deeper into the tunnel. Ontoquas stayed where she was, running her hand through the contents of the second chest.

“How did you know this place?” she said. Moving forward, Kitto felt a fourth chest, then a fifth.

“When I was a little boy, I dragged all of this in here.”

“You?”

“Yes.” He lurched forward a length, and reached beyond the fifth and last chest. His hands rested on something smooth and flat, like a broad bar.

“I was the only one who could fit in here,” he said as he ran his hands along the bar that lay flat on the floor. “I remember it was all so heavy, but I had to get them around this corner so they could not be seen from the outside if someone had a torch.”

“Why . . .” The words eluded Ontoquas.
Why did these have to be hidden? Wasn’t the cave hiding place enough?

“I am not sure,” Kitto said, understanding her confusion. “But there was something about this gold, these jewels. Something very special, and almost no one knew about it. My uncle, I remember he told me it was a secret. A ‘family secret,’ he said.” Kitto’s hands bumped against something resting on the bar, something solid but odd in shape. He ran his fingers along it.
What is it?

He edged closer. The object was heavy, but with considerable effort he was able to lift it up and run his hands along its bumpy surface. It, too, was hard, certainly made of metal. Gold? He did not know. It was perhaps two feet tall with a central section and then two parts that reached out, one to the left and one to the right.

“A cross,” he said.

“What is it?”

It was not the cross part he held, Kitto knew. That was the smooth bar on the ground. In his hands was the figure of Jesus Christ, arms spread out in the position of his crucifixion. The figure must attach somehow to the cross on the ground. Kitto ran his hands along the top and felt the sharp points of the crown of thorns at the figure’s head.

“More of the same,” he said, not sure how he could explain it. Effortfully, Kitto lowered the figure gently back to the ground. It certainly had the heft of gold.
But if it were gold, what would the value of something so large be?
He could not fathom it.

“I am coming back,” he said. A few moments later his hands found Ontoquas’s in the darkness where she reached out to help him. Kitto pulled himself beside her.

“Do you still have the chain?” Kitto said.

“Yes. You want me to put it back?” Ontoquas ran her fingers along the bauble at the end of the chain at her breast. She did not know why, but she very much wanted to see it.