Beth didn’t seem to follow their reasoning, given the question in her eyes, but she turned too, and held up the map again. She made an interested-sounding hum. “You know, that squiggle almost looks like a bird. It doesn’t align north to the top of the paper though.”
“Don’t put it past a pirate to write sideways on his map.” Sheridan grinned and turned with the rest of them. “Let’s say it is a bird. So it’s the way to hold the map. How do we know? What we should be facing with it, I mean?”
“St. Martin’s! Of course.” Beth laughed and shoved the map at Sheridan, who took it eagerly. “We’ll assume that square shape at the base is the window that most directly faces St. Martin’s. Here.” She ran to the remains of a window and patted the stone.
“To your right next then.”
Libby trailed behind as Beth led them along the east-facing wall, along what might have once been a rampart before the top levels had fallen in. They turned at the corner, scurried over a low bit of wall, and struck off down the hill. Libby, Oliver, and Bram hurried to catch up.
“Are you ever going to tell us where you found the map, Beth?” Oliver called after his sister.
She made no answer.
“If the key to knowing how to use it was in a letter to his wife, as was the message about treasure from the Canary, with that songbird reference,” Libby mused as she jumped down from the wall with the aid of Oliver’s hand, “then it has to have been somewhere Mrs. Mucknell would have known to find it. Probably not, for instance, in a cave.”
Bram snorted a laugh. “You mean most ladies don’t go climbing about in caves? What a novel concept.”
“You do have a point, Libby,” Oliver said. “Perhaps not in her care exactly, since she never hunted it up herself. But a place she’d have easy access to, if she knew to look for it. The church, maybe. The garrison.”
She came to a halt. “Their house.”
Oliver stopped too, staring at her for a moment with another of course look on his face. And then burst into a run. “Beth! Tas-gwyn’s? So you fetched the letters while we were there!”
His sister wasn’t paying him any heed though. She and Sheridan had arrived at another outcropping of stones whose original purpose Libby couldn’t discern, and they’d fallen to their knees behind it. “Shovel!” she shouted.
Oliver delivered it into Beth’s hands—she certainly didn’t look inclined to move out of the way and let him do the digging for her.
Bram heaved a long breath and leaned against a different piece of wall. “You might as well make yourselves comfortable.” As if to prove it, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a bag of chocolate drops, and held it out to them. “Don’t let their initial excitement fool you. Sheridan can dig for hours—days—not find anything, and still be convinced he’s in the right place, or just a few inches off.”
“Inches make all the difference, you know.” A clod of earth flew up from where Sheridan’s voice came. “Off by one and you find nothing.”
Hours? Days? Libby reached into the sack and pulled out a chocolate. “We don’t have that long.”
“We’ll have as long as we need.” Oliver accepted a chocolate, too, and turned to the sea. “The Lord didn’t bring us all together just so that we’d fail.”
Bram lifted a sardonic brow. “Does he always speak so?”
Libby smiled. “Yes.”
“And you don’t find it off-putting? Or ridiculous?”
“Actually, no. I find it . . . encouraging. And something to emulate.”
She was rewarded with Oliver shooting her a smile.
“There’s something here!” Beth’s voice came more quietly than Libby would have expected, almost reverently.
“Probably a stone.” Bram shook the bag of chocolates and peered inside. He took a full minute, sometimes, picking the perfect one. Though what made one perfect in that moment, she couldn’t say, since he’d end up devouring them all within an hour, each selected with the same ridiculous care.
“Wood, actually.”
Sheridan’s clarification didn’t stir Bram from his study. “An old timber, then. Careful you don’t bring some ancient foundation caving in around you, prodding at its support as you probably are.”
“It isn’t a timber. The size of the planks is all wrong,” Beth said.
Libby moved closer, her curiosity outweighing any Bram-inspired doubt that they could have possibly found something so quickly.
They’d dug down only about a foot, and the hole was only a few inches wide. Given how they crowded the hole, she couldn’t see much past them, but they were working rather efficiently now—Sheridan loosening the sod with a practiced shovel, picking it up like a square of green carpet, Beth going in underneath and moving the dirt into a neat pile. Soon, enough was visible that Libby could see what Beth had meant about the plank size. This was definitely no ancient timber—it was slender planking, thin, with the wood rotted by soil and moisture enough that the shovels could probably crack it away.
“Look.” Beth breathed the word with awe and rocked back onto her knees so they could peer over her shoulder.
It looked like a crate. One with Mucknell branded across the top.
Libby gripped Oliver’s arm. “It’s actually there. Right there.”
Bram, chocolate now in his mouth, moved to her other side. “Probably filled with nails. Lead shot. Moldy clothing—”
“Do shut up, Telly.” Sheridan scraped more dirt away. “Could break though. If we try to pull it out, I mean. We’d have to excavate all around it. Or . . .” He grinned over at Beth. “Ladies first?”
She shoved the tip of the shovel into the dirt-packed crack between two planks in reply. A splintering sound filled the air, a creak as she levered it. A snap that made Libby wince. What would they do if it were just moisture-eaten clothing or a supply of nails that probably would have been much appreciated at the time but was worthless now? Perhaps, from an archaeological perspective, it would still be interesting.
But she had a feeling Lorne and Scofield weren’t overmuch interested in that sort of archaeology. And she couldn’t be sure the unknown American was either.
When Beth shot to her feet a minute later, though, it wasn’t moldy silk or iron in her hands. It was . . . a fork?
Beth frowned and laughed both when she handed one to each of them. “Silver.”
“Ware,” Sheridan added. “Brilliant. And it’s engraved.”
It was indeed. Which wasn’t unusual. All the silver at home had an ornate T upon each and every handle. But this wasn’t just the usual single letter, nor even a full monogram. A name was etched into the handle, elegant and flourished.
Elizabeth.
She looked up at Beth. Beth looked at her. And they both grinned.
Birds suddenly took wing on the opposite side of the castle, crying out as they flew up into the mist. Libby’s pulse quickened. “Someone’s here.” And she’d abandoned her post at the castle’s entrance. Was it Mabena catching them up? One could hope.
But she couldn’t quite believe it. “Stay down, behind that wall. I’ll get rid of whoever it is.”