And De Fun Don't Done (69 page)

Les gave the end column several intense once up and downs. Well, I don't know exactly what is in there, though I've got a sort of an X-ray picture, if you'll pardon the pun, Father Eduardo. One thing for sure, if there is anything in there you wouldn't pick it up on a metal detector. But how do I get it out without that dirty great beam crashing down and squashing me or wrecking what's left of the place? That's the thing. If that column came down, it'd shake the whole town. Les absently rubbed the right toe of his trainer against his left calf muscle. With a bit of luck, though, I don't think it will. Les had one more look and shook his head. Well, only one way to find out. He walked up to where the pinchbar was standing near the inside door.

If what Les thought was in there, the last part of the poem would all fall into place. But for the time being getting it out was the problem. Les surmised, however, that when Eduardo stashed his loot he hadn't intended burying a time capsule; it just happened that way. If there was some sort of trouble and he had to leg it, he'd want to be able to get it out without too much trouble. Les tapped the hammer end of the pinchbar against the sandstone
blocks supporting the wooden column; they appeared solid enough. He swung the pinchbar back and gave it a good, hard hit. The noise kind of boomed across the room and off the walls. Les walked up to the next column and did the same thing. This time what noise there was was more of a dull thud. The sandstone blocks at the end definitely weren't as dense. Les walked back to the end column and stared at it for a while, trying to picture himself in Eduardo's shoes, then decided to take a punt. He walked around and stood with his back to the X on the far wall, so he faced all the doors and entrances to the manse, jammed the pinchbar near the left hand corner of the sandstone blocks and heaved. Nothing happened or felt like happening. Les moved the pinchbar to the middle and tried. Same result. He moved the pinchbar to the right corner and heaved again, keeping up the strain. There was nothing at first, then a faint movement. Les sweated and strained some more; this time the sandstone blocks definitely moved. This is it, panted Les. There's some sort of a key stone or balance. He stopped, took a deep breath then jammed the pinchbar underneath as far as he could and heaved again, keeping up the pressure. The whole column seemed to creak and groan mournfully through the great hall as the sandstone blocks lifted about an inch. There was a crunching, grating sound of wood on stone and a horrible, dry scraping sound of metal against metal and the sandstone blocks swung round to the left as one, pivoting to a stop with one corner pinned beneath the base of the column diagonally across from where Les had stuck the pinchbar. Norton wiped a hand across his forehead then stepped back for a look.

Set into the marble tiles where the sandstone blocks had been were the tips of half a dozen bronze cannonballs sticking up like several partially buried Easter eggs. Les knelt down and stuck his fingers as far as he could beneath the sandstone blocks and felt the edge of a metal plate. He surmised the inside of the blocks would have been hollowed out to a certain extent and the metal plate set over the cavity. He stood back up and noticed the top
of the sandstone blocks had been smoothed off, almost like marble, and was the same as the bottom of the massive wooden column, which was still suspended in mid air with one small edge resting on the sandstone blocks. Three of the cannon balls at the edge were loose, something like a set of ballbearings, and Les guessed these would be the balance or counterweight. There'd probably be indentations in the plate beneath the sandstone blocks, you hit it on the sweet-spot, it lifted, clicked out then swung across. Very ingenious Eduardo, commended Les. And I'll bet you had the slaves killed too after they built it. Les looked up at the mahogany column hanging in the air again and gave it a bit of bump. It shook slightly, but held firm. That's what Les had been counting on. Because now he had to crawl under it, and if it came down while he was there, Les would end up flatter than a cane toad after a week on the Pacific Highway; that's if they could scrape enough of him up. Les gave the wooden column one more tap, put down the pinchbar and crawled underneath over the cannonballs.

They were hard and cold and dug into his back. Shit! What I need is a bloody mechanic's trolley, cursed Les as one dug into his hip and another his elbow, making him curse again with discomfort. He felt round the bottom of the column and looked up. There was some sort of a wooden dowel sunk into it, something like the stopper on a hot-water bottle, only this was about eighteen inches across and the lug in the middle was about two inches thick and a foot across where it was carved out. Les gripped it and gave it a wrench anti-clockwise, but after sitting there all these years it wasn't about to budge. Les grunted and wrenched again. Nothing. He climbed back out and picked up the pinchbar. Les squatted down, held the hammer end of the pinchbar about two feet away from the wooden stopper, and swung. It hit the wooden lug with a dull thump and maybe a tiny crunch. Les swung the pinchbar again. This time there was a definite crunching sound and movement. Les gave the lug a few more taps and climbed back underneath.

The wooden stopper was loose now. Les gripped it and twisted and it started coming out just like the plug in a hot-water bottle. Les kept twisting. Would stuff start pouring out once he removed it? Norton didn't think so. The stopper was about six inches thick with a solid, wooden thread; Les got it out and placed it on the tiles. Inside the column was a cavity wider than the stopper with a lip running around the bottom. Les placed his hand inside and felt something cold, hard and heavy sitting at an angle against the hole. Les gave it a push and a shove and figured it wouldn't be hard to jam the tips of your fingers getting it out, so he went and got the crowbar. He levered the crowbar under the object till it was right on the edge of the hole, gave it one last twist, pulled the crowbar away and out fell a Spanish jar about a yard long and a bit over a foot wide. Les took the weight on his chest and rolled out from under the column. I thought so, grinned Les, as he got to his feet and stood the Spanish jar on its end. I bloody well thought so. In the light from above, the shiny, brown, ceramic container looked almost like a small version of one of the mahogany columns. Look at that, smiled Les. He shook his head in admiration and his gaze moved back to the name on the far wall. You're not bad, Eduardo. Not bad at all. That's about as perfect a fit as you can get. Now, though, what's in the bloody thing? Les got a towel from his backpack, placed it on the ground near the last column and laid the Spanish jar on its side with the neck over the towel.

Getting the wooden stopper out of the Spanish jar was a snack compared to the column. It was the same thing, only this time Les only had to give it a couple of light taps with the crowbar and it came away easily. He twisted it round a few more times, there was a muffled, rattling sound and as Les removed the stopper hundreds of gold coins began pouring from the neck of the jar. Les lifted the container up and screwed the stopper back in before any more fell out. Les looked at the pile of coins sitting on the towel, glistening and shining before his eyes. There
would have been three or four hundred piled on the towel and who knows how many more still in the Spanish jar; and the only word to describe them would be beautiful.

‘Holy bloody hell!' Les shook his head again and called out loud. ‘Have a look at that.'

Les picked up one of the coins. Between his fingers he couldn't tell exactly how big it was; it was about the same size as an Australian dollar, only thicker, heavier and a little rougher in the moulding. A sudden burst of sunshine came through the ceiling, causing the coins to glisten and shine even more. Norton didn't have a clue what they were, but you didn't have to be Albert Einstein to know they weren't ferry tokens. He held one up in the light and examined it in more detail. On one side was a profile of a square-jawed man with a big nose, solid chin and long hair tumbling over the shoulder of his breast plate. Running clockwise round the rim was ‘Phillip V. D.G. Rex', beneath the breast plate was a date, 1729. Les turned the coin over. On the other side was a circle of flowers or a garland with a crown at the top and in the middle was a shield divided into four parts. Les could faintly make out what looked like a hand in one corner and some kind of engraving in the others. The printing on this read, ‘S. Initium Sapientia Timor Domini'. Les looked at it for a moment then dropped it among the rest and picked up a couple of others. They were all the same, only with different dates. Les was still none the wiser as to what they were. But they were obviously gold and just the weight of them alone would have made them worth a fortune. There had to be four or five kilograms, or more, lying on the towel. Not counting their historical value as collector's items. Les ran his hand through the money and something caught his finger and glinted up through the gold coins. Les moved the coins aside and picked up the most beautiful gold necklace he had ever seen. It was at least a couple of feet in diameter with thick, chunky links as thick as a pencil. Set at the bottom was a gold cross about three inches by two inches and a good half an inch thick. But it was like no other cross or crucifix Norton
had ever seen. The ends of the crucifix weren't squared off, they were split into three and turned out and around, something like the design on the ace of clubs in a deck of playing cards. Set at the ends of the arms of the cross were two rubies as big as pencil heads, and set at the ends of the cross were two emeralds the same size. The centre of the cross was thicker and crafted in a hexagonal design and set in the middle was a diamond as big as a fingernail. The sun had gone back behind the clouds but the exquisite cross still dazzled and shone in Norton's hands. Its weight or value Les couldn't even hope to guess. Oddly enough, from the rough, hand-crafted workmanship you would think it was one of those junk things you pick up in a flea market or Woolworths. But this was the real McCoy. Les looked at it for a while before putting it back among the coins. He sat back and looked at what he had found and a few things began to fall into place. Including the one thing he'd overlooked in his haste. But he was a bit dry. He got another carton of orange juice and sipped it while he sat on the floor and stared at the coins and the necklace lying on the towel in front of the Spanish jar.

Les wasn't sure what put him onto it at first; it just all seemed to come together at once when he was half drunk. When he lined the photos up the Spanish jars sitting on the verandah looked a lot like the wooden columns in the manse. The red, Pompeii tiles they were sitting on made him think briefly of ancient Rome. Then Millwood reading the poem out to him at the hotel, giving his explanation, only convinced Les even more that he was wrong. Les kept reflecting back to that old saying, ‘You can't see the forest for the trees.' Like he'd done with the hurricane. Only this time it was ‘you canst see something else'. The ten. Next thing Les thought of Eduardo's Spanish name on the wall, last love, treasure, and, bingo! There it was. The other clue though was Norton's toe. He'd stubbed it on a protruding bolt when he was walking around upstairs at the manse. It hadn't hurt enough to worry him, even though part of the nail went blue, but as he walked around upstairs he was on the lookout for more
bolts sticking out. There weren't any. Which made Les a little curious as to why he found four sticking up from the beam above the column at the end. Eduardo had bored them into the column for extra support. Which, paradoxically, was the thing that had Les worried. He wasn't sure whether the inside of the beam was full of dry rot over the years or the rain had got to it. Evidently not. They built them to last in those days. Getting it out was elementary common sense. When the time came for Eduardo to remove his loot, he wouldn't have his back turned. He'd be watching the doors and entrances to the manse to make sure he was on his own. As for cleaning up afterwards, the sandstone blocks would swing back into place alright, thought probably not as neat as before. But whoever came into the manse would be looking for Eduardo, not a loose-fitting column down one end of the ballroom. Bad luck he drowned in a storm and never got a chance to retrieve his swag. Though it was nice to think one of the family finished up with it. And that was probably the bottom line. Norton was family. He knew there was something stashed in the manse from the first time he went upstairs and looked around. The bloodline and the family traits were just too strong — even over the centuries. As old uncle Harry always says, a Norton is a Norton. Whether they're baked, boiled or fried.

As for Eduardo porking his sister? That was pure bullshit. Malicious gossip fostered over the years by the likes of that old bag Mother Nettleford. Eduardo and Elizabeth would have been close. They would have loved each other deeply and probably been the best of mates. They would have danced together, dined together, got drunk together. If there was any ganja around in those days, you could bet they would have packed a few ping- pongs together. They were more than likely almost inseparable. As for the laboured love where she fell pregnant to Eduardo, that was another clue. The labour was helping her rotten, slave-trading brother get the column together and stash the loot. Part of it was probably Elizabeth's. You could bet your life she was halves in the whack with
Eduardo; or she'd at least have done his bookwork for him. She had plenty of money. The whole family was loaded. Look at the places they lived in. She probably felt like a break from Jamaica, so all cashed up she sailed over to England for a while. Which was no big deal; ships came and went all the time in those days. In England she teamed up with Blackmore the poet, supported him, found out she was a dab-hand at poetry herself and sort of lived happily ever after. The news of her brother's death obviously affected her and brought on her own premature death. She probably thought about going back to Jamaica, but apart from her family, there wasn't that much there now. The loot? She didn't particularly need it at the time. But being a woman she had to tell someone about it. So she wrote the secret into one of her most beautiful poems. How did the rumour start? When she took ill suddenly, she probably garbled it on her deathbed. No one, not even her immediate family, knew what she was talking about and it just became rumour and folklore from there. And that was about it. ‘How do I love thee? Let me count four ways.' I wouldn't fancy counting those coins, thought Les, still staring at the ones on the towel and in the Spanish jar. There's probably thousands of them. Not counting any other Tom Foolery that might be sitting in the jar. Then Les began to laugh. A scornful, bitter laugh that echoed off the surrounding walls and the marble tiles as the last thing he'd overlooked dawned on him.