The Valentine Legacy (Legacy 3)

She’d been messed up something awful but Gypsom knew the master didn’t need any more fretting so he said quickly, “She’s jest fine, Mr. James. Jest fine.”

“We’ll leave now, Gypsom. Not a word to anyone.”

Before he left the house, James slipped a small gun in his boot. Nothing else to do. Oddly enough, no one seemed to be around so he got out without questions. He didn’t like keeping them in the dark, didn’t like it one little bit, but he didn’t see he had a choice. He wasn’t about to take any chances with Jessie’s life. And the babe’s. James had known fear before, goodly doses of it, but nothing like this. If Compton Fielding wanted, James would give him all Blackbeard’s bloody treasure. Who the hell cared? Only Jessie mattered to him. She had the spirit and the fearlessness of the best of his thoroughbreds, and that worried him even more. What if she tried to escape from Compton Fielding? He could even picture her attacking him. It made his blood run frigid in his veins.

That, he thought as he strode down the rutted path beside Gypsom, carrying one of the long poles, was a kicker. He frankly couldn’t imagine life without her now. Life took odd twists and turns. He didn’t mind that. What he hated was when life was out of his control, as it was now.

“Hello, James. I see Gypsom brought you. I’ve been watching you walk here. Fortunately there’s a small rise just over there—at least until the next storm flattens it—and I would have seen if you’d brought any of the others with you. You didn’t. You just might have saved your and Jessie’s lives.”

James said, his eyes on Jessie, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, James.”

“Good. Now, Compton, you can have all of Blackbeard’s treasure. I don’t care. It’s that simple. Understand, though, there might not be anything here. A lot can happen in two hundred years. It’s possible that if the treasure was truly attached to the ballast stones, it broke off and sank. It’s possible someone already found the treasure. It’s possible it was never here in the first place.”

“We will find out shortly. You and Gypsom stick those poles of yours down into the muck. Be careful, James. I will kill her. I don’t have anything to lose. Remember that.”

“I intend only to see if there’s a treasure,” James said. “If there is, take what you want and leave us alone.”

“I’ve always believed you to be a reasonable man. You’re young, but you think things through. Jessie, here, is your opposite. Find that treasure for me, James, or I won’t be happy.”

James took the long pole with the scoop on the end of it and eased it down into the dark, stinking muck. He quickly found the first ballast stone. “The stones are here,” he said. He felt around the first stone, then eased the scoop down to the next stone and the next after that. There were so many of them, piled haphazardly. It was difficult to know if he touched every one of them. He was beginning to despair, for he knew that Compton Fielding was becoming impatient, believing James was somehow trying to fool him. “Just a moment,” he called out. “I believe perhaps I’ve found something. Yes, it’s a chain and it’s wrapped around a ballast stone.” Just as they’d all thought it would have to be. He’d prayed the chain would be stout, the links as strong as the devil, given the vicious tides, the storms that blew over the island and rearranged the landscape in a matter of hours.

“James? You’ve got it?”

“Yes,” James said, so relieved he wanted to yell. “Come over here on this side, Gypsom. It’s time for our two scoops to work together. If we find a metal chest at the end of this chain, it will be heavy. I hope the poles will be strong enough to bring it up.”

The poles went deeper. It was getting close. James was beginning to wonder if that villain Blackbeard had just fastened chains to the ballast stones as a grand jest when his spade hit metal. Blackbeard’s treasure trunk. “I’ve got it!”

It was slow, tedious work. They had to fit their scoops beneath the metal chest and slowly bring it up, and pray the poles were strong enough not to break in half under the weight of the chest and the filthy muck in the marsh. They couldn’t take the risk of trying to pull the chain free of the ballast stone. If they lost their grip, the treasure could sink to the bottom of the world. Slowly, slowly, they worked it up. It was heavier than a horse that had once fallen on James during a four-mile heat. He’d been lucky, only three ribs cracked. If he failed at this, he wouldn’t be as lucky. He’d be dead. Jessie and his babe would be dead. He didn’t doubt that for a minute.

Suddenly, Gypsom slipped. The chest slid off James’s scoop and fell down into the muck again. James cursed, then quickly turned. “Don’t do anything, Compton. We’ll just get it again. Wait, Gypsom, I feel something. Yes, the chain is wrapped at least three times around another of the stones. It’s a good thing we’ve got more length of chain or else we’d never clear the surface of the muck.”

“I know you didn’t slip, James. It was Gypsom here. You afraid, boy?” Compton Fielding very carefully aimed the pistol and fired. Gypsom leaped backward as the bullet exploded the slimy ground at his feet and fell flailing into the marsh. He yelled as the black, filthy water closed over his head.

“Damn you, Compton!” James grabbed the man’s arm and jerked him out of the marsh as quickly as possible. “I need him, you bloody fool!”

Gypsom stood there, his shoulders bowed, trembling from head to foot, covered with slime. “There’s a hundert snakes in there, Mr. James,” Gypsom was whispering, so afraid that he could scarce speak. “Snakes. I felt one of ’em slithering around my arm. Oh Gawd.”

“That should teach you to be a bit more careful, Gypsom. Get back to work now before I become more impatient with you. Next time I just might force James to leave you in there.”

“If you kill either of us,” James said calmly, so enraged he wanted to close his fingers around Fielding’s neck and choke the life out of him, “then who will pull up your bloody treasure?”

“I’ll just tie Jessie up and be the second man. I’d just as soon not, but I don’t want any more mistakes. Get to it now. I want what’s due me.”

All during their labor, he heard Compton speak

ing quietly to Jessie, terrifying her, telling her that her precious husband best not lose his treasure or he’d have a wife without a head. Yes, he’d blow her head off. It made James frantic. He looked over at Gypsom. He’d never seen such intense concentration on his face in all the years he’d known him. He smelled dreadful, black filth covering him, hardening into a mask as it dried on his face. But he was a fighter. The good Lord knew that before James had bought him and set him free, he’d learned to be a survivor. He wanted nothing to happen to Gypsom.

They couldn’t lose the damned chest now. James had the three loops of chain free of the ballast stones. At last.

James said very quietly, “Does the chest have handles, Gypsom? Can you feel any?”

“I don’t know, Mr. James. I’m afeared to search out a handle, I jest might drop my end of the chest. I can’t do that, Mr. James. He’ll send me back into that pit.”

“That’s what Blackbeard called it,” Fielding said. “‘Deep in a pit,’ that’s what he wrote. It is a clue of sorts, but worthless out of this context. Now, James, how close to the surface is the chest?” He pulled Jessie forward as he spoke, bringing her to the very edge of the marsh now. The ground was soggy, the stench of rotted vegetation, of the gases in the marsh itself, were nearly overpowering. She was too scared to gag.

“We managed to unwind three loops of chain twisted around the ballast stone. It should give enough length to bring the chest to the top, but I can’t be certain. Be patient. For God’s sake, don’t let Jessie fall in.”