The Cortés Enigma (9 page)

Chris raised his eyebrows, surprised by the inclusion that followed. If TF was correct, the statue was of a woman named Malinche, famed as both the lover and interpreter of Hernán Cortés on his visit to the New World.

The next entry was clearer to read and also focused on TF’s visit to the church.

The fine stained-glass window, the sight of which had originally filled the intrigue in me to the very limit of my being, I now saw with clear eyes and, thanks again to the help of Sam, at a distance far nearer than I had witnessed so far. The image, what I had initially assumed to be Noah and his animals, lined up two by two, I had already since identified displayed something of a Spanish flavour, but it was not until I managed to see it up close I saw the true secrets hidden within the scene. This colourful window, both magnificent in appearance and bold in texture, was I am now quite sure a memory of past events, a trait shared with many such windows on the island. Speaking it over with Sam, he assured me, although spoken in the strictest confidence,
that a ship of such character and personnel had once been ruined on the rocks sometime before the sailing of the great armada, and its survivors later took up residence among the local cornfields. The history of these people is recorded in no texts, but on inspecting the window further, I saw other things that, had I not done so that day, I might have never understood. The window, already a multitude of colours, appears green only in five places, each of rare shape. The inclusions were clear to me; examples of which confirmed beyond doubt I was following in old and, dare I say, not unimportant footsteps.

“Would you like another drink?”

The voice startled him. Dropping the diary, Chris looked to his left. Valeria was standing alongside him, an embarrassed grin crossing her pretty face.

“I’m so sorry, Mr Malone,” she said, nearly getting his name right. “I did not realise you were concentrating.”

Chris grinned back, trying his hardest to conceal his own embarrassment. “It’s my fault, I assure you,” he said, finding himself exploring her blouse. “Em…sorry, what was the question?”

“I asked if you would like more coffee.”

He hesitated. “Sure.”

Valeria left and returned moments later with the coffee, its gentle steam rising from within the rim.

“Thanks,” he said, watching her place the mug down on the coaster, replacing the one he had just finished. She was just about to depart when he asked her, “So, how well do you know the island?”

She replaced the empty cup on the counter and returned to Chris’s table. “It was my home from the first time I arrived. I have been here over seven years. Why do you ask?”

He grinned, finding himself once again taken with her cute pronunciation of English words. “Actually, I was wondering if you could help me out. Obviously I’m new here. There’s still so much that doesn’t make sense.”

She smiled and moved toward him, for now neglecting her duties as a waitress. Fortunately it was still early, and the café was empty apart from them. “Of course, I’d be thrilled. What is it you need?”

“Well.” Chris scratched his head, wondering how best to proceed. He knew Ben would kill him if he told her too much. “Apparently my long-lost relative had been looking for a graveyard. You see, apparently he thought there were relatives of ours buried somewhere nearby. Only I can’t find the graveyard. Are there many here?”

“The main one is Old Town Church. It is about fifteen minutes from here.”

“Would it have been around a hundred years ago?”

“Why, yes, that is the reason for its name.”

He smiled. “I don’t suppose you could show me on this map?”

Chris had a guidebook on the table beside him, currently open to a map of the island.

“Here,” she said, pointing to a small village east of Hugh Town. Judging from the map, it was probably no more than a hamlet. “Nearly everyone on St Mary’s who dies is buried there.”

Chris nodded, convinced he was onto something. It wasn’t even 10am, and he was making progress.

“So tell me more about yourself.”

10:30am

St Lide’s is one of six inhabited islands that make up the Isles of Scilly. Measuring an area of 2.2 square kilometres and with a population of two, it is officially the fourth largest of the islands in area and sixth in permanent residents.

According to tradition, the island was the first of the Scillies to be inhabited. As the Stone Age progressed, the island provided a sustainable existence for a community of farmers and fishermen that continued for over 20,000 years. As the centuries passed and the island became abandoned, it was visited by a Christian missionary named St Lide on his way to Cornwall from France. Legend had it St Lide became stranded on the island and only escaped after constructing a small raft of wood two years later. After completing his mission of preaching Christianity in Cornwall and Wales, he decided to return to the island that had brought him such hardship and discomfort and lived out his life as a hermit.

The natural history of the island had barely changed over the centuries. Like all of the minor islands, it was an impressive assortment of jagged cliffs, rare marine and birdlife, exotic fauna, and a handful of man-made monuments. In the past, civilisation took the form of two settlements, one named New Town, the other Old Town. The majority of the population had lived in New, which, despite its name, still dated back to the 1700s.

Hell’s Bay was located at the most south-eastern point of the island, a barren, isolated outcrop that overlooked several small islets that spread out into the North Atlantic. Ben stood at the top of a cliff, looking down across the water. While St Mary’s had been a hotbed of activity, a classic UK seaside resort primed with the latest technology and home to hundreds of people, St Lide’s was lonely, forlorn and forgettable, with evidence only of lost civilisation and habitation. In the distance, the outlines of former fishermen’s cottages stood out like stone phantoms, their walls ragged and dangerous.

Ben felt a sense of despondency about the island, as if a great sadness engulfed it. It was in the sound of the steady wind that created a tuneless whistling as it pierced gaps in the rocks, or that of a seagull’s cry, echoing, then lifeless. The noises were shrill and sharp, almost ghostly. It was as if the spirits of the past were trapped, their wailing sighs caught somewhere between the beach and the rocks, the present and the past.

The wind was stronger higher up. It was cold, even compared to St Mary’s, the sharp wind bringing a bitter chill. Ben looked around. A low wall, once part of a gun battery from the Civil War, protected the edge of the cliff for a distance of over two hundred metres before disappearing suddenly.

He guessed it had once been a lot larger.

“What is this place?” he asked Kernow, pressing his hands firmly into his pockets for warmth.

“This whole thing had once been a lookout post, put in by the Cavaliers in the English Civil War.”

The story seemed to have credence. About three hundred metres away, the ruins of a small castle overlooked the sea. A single tower rose over fifty feet into the sky, surrounded by outer curtain walls, part of which no longer survived. The only approach was courtesy of a footpath that led up the hill to a metal bridge that connected the entrance to the rest of the island.

They walked toward the castle, stopping on reaching the edge of the cliff. Below he counted six caves surrounded by a pebble beach, one of which was partially covered by the waves.

“At high tide, you can’t see these caves,” Kernow said, pointing. “In six hours time, this whole thing will be underwater.”

Ben took in the view, concentrating on everything above the waterline. The area was dangerous, the rocks ragged, the caves on the verge of collapsing.

“You know once upon a time, this whole area would have been cut off from the ocean. Instead of a cove, you’d be looking at a lagoon. A small inlet would have existed somewhere over there.” Kernow pointed in the direction of the choppy water that surrounded the outcrop on which the castle still sat. “Over time, land got worn away by subsidence. Most of the east section of the castle is now underwater.”

Ben nodded. He could tell from the map back in the boathouse how the land was cut away, almost at a right angle. On the south-east side of the castle, he saw the remains of a cliff that would have separated the lagoon from the sea. As he observed the site more closely, the cliff, the lagoon, the castle, he was increasingly drawn to the conclusion that the location had been carefully chosen and that the lagoon may well have served as a moat.

“Where exactly was the boat found?”

“Right down there. Languishing against the rocks.”

Ben looked, following the direction of Kernow’s finger. “It was just floating there?”

Kernow understood what Ben was getting at. “See there.” He motioned to the largest of the caves, third out of six from left to right and partially underwater. “Even a week ago, that crevice was less than half that size.”

“You mean it caved in?”

“As a sailor, Hell’s Bay is located in just about the wrong place for everything. When the storm hits, rocks as big as boulders fly up as high as a second-storey window.” He turned to Ben. “Not the place to be caught in a storm.”

“How do we get down?”

The pathway that led from the top of the cliff down to the bay was reputedly the most dangerous of all on the Isles of Scilly. What started off as a wide, well-defined area flanked by long grass and colourful wild flowers soon descended into an uneven muddy path that was overgrown with weeds and stinging nettles and exposed to the wind.

From start to finish, the path was about half a mile long, and it took just over ten minutes to reach the bottom. Ben led the way as Kernow struggled behind him with the uneven terrain. He took a breath as the pathway met the beach, waiting impatiently for Kernow.

“This is where the
Dunster
was found?” Ben shouted up the hill as he gestured to an area of shallow water in a particularly rocky part of the bay. Assuming the answer was yes, it wasn’t difficult to understand how the boat had sustained extensive damage.

“A little further on.” Kernow pointed. “It was trapped in the jaws of that cave.”

Ben followed Kernow’s directions and headed toward the cave. He entered the water as far as his walking boots would allow without getting wet feet and continued all the way to the cave, where the level was much shallower.

He looked around, taking in the view. A pebble beach in the shape of a crescent moon separated the caves from the water, its hard stones occasionally becoming swept up by the gentle tide. Inside the cave he could hear the sounds of creatures moving, fish, birds and perhaps even the fluttering of bats…visibility was restricted to about ten metres.

Composing himself, he entered the cave, doing his best to ignore the cold. The water became deeper the further he ventured: some seeped in from the nearby rock pools, while the rest he assumed was leftover from high tide. There was evidence of marine life everywhere, mostly shells or starfish, some lying dead on the rocks. A familiar stench pervaded the cave, rotting seaweed, dead fish…

Silt.

Kernow was waiting outside, leaning against a rock. He removed some tobacco from his top left pocket, filled his pipe and lit it. It was clear from the shape of the mouth that he had been right about the cave’s recent collapse.

“Once upon a time this was all much smaller,” he said of the nearest cave. “Back in the 1800s, it would have been four times as small. Back then it would hardly have been possible to fit a ship in at all.”

Ben explored as much as the light would allow before returning to Kernow. From his brief preliminary survey, he couldn’t determine where exactly a ship could have been hidden.

“Where’d you find it?” Ben asked.

“The
Dunster
was found here.” Kernow gestured to an area of sharp rocks and shallow water less than ten metres away. “The last ship to turn up here was about seven years ago, a fine vessel named the
Tripoli
.”

“You think the
Dunster
was trapped in the cave?”

“Back in 1909, the whole island was abandoned as a result of consistent subsidence. It’s quite possible your ancestor witnessed that first hand when he was here.”

Ben nodded. “When exactly was my great-great-grandfather’s boat found?”

“Six days ago. About 9:30 Friday morning. See, I’d been fishing off St Agnes. Can be a real good place to drop the net if you get there early enough.”

“Why’d you come here?”

“Was sailing past Hell’s Bay just before nine, along with a good friend of mine, Bill Tolliday. It was actually Bill who noticed it first. Initially he thought it was a schooner languishing on the rocks.”

“Who got it out?”

“I informed the coastguard immediately, using the radio, but by the time we checked it ourselves, we realised what we were dealing with. Later that day I came back with the
Lancreta
.”

“The what?”

“Name I gave my other boat. Routine sweep of the island suggested more rocks had come down as a result of the storm a few days before. Radar from the local weather station confirmed it had been particularly bad around Hell’s Bay.”

Ben was doing his best to control his emotions. He took a deep breath, but no matter how hard he tried, air just refused to go down. The cold was bracing, but he knew it was not the icy wind alone that accounted for the horrible shivering in his spine.

He investigated the other caves in turn, each revealing nothing out of the ordinary. Unsurprisingly, all confirmed evidence of silt.

“Thanks for your time, friend.”