Dourado

CHAPTER 15

They parked on the shoulder of a narrow road that ran between the Burnatches River and a gently sloping hill. Covilha’s home had once sat atop that hill overlooking the Riverbend Cemetery. They crossed the old covered bridge, now open only to pedestrian traffic, passing over the river, and arrived at a wrought iron fence.

“It looks just like the drawing in the book,” Kaylin said, inspecting the fence.

Dane looked out across the graveyard. It was an old place that carried the evidence of its years in the weather-stained tombstones and eroded statuary. The paint on the fence was chipped. Patches of rust stood out everywhere on its pitted, black surface. Thick patches of clover stood out in the green carpet of grass. There being no gate nearby, he vaulted the fence, and then gave Kaylin a hand over.

They stood in the midst of several old gravestones. Dane knelt down to inspect the nearest one. It was dated 1841. He looked around.

“Where do you want to start?” he asked Kaylin.

She opened her notebook and looked over the images she had recopied onto one page. She had drawn a rough outline of the cemetery, and placed the house, river, bridge, fence, tree, and the name “Domenic” in their proper places. At Dane’s suggestion, she had sketched in the compass alongside the house. He pointed out that the objects they had located all were directly southeast of the house; the same direction the compass was pointing.

“Let’s orient ourselves with our backs to the house, facing the hill where the oak tree was,” Kaylin said. “We’ll walk straight ahead, and see if we come across anything that might be represented in these other sketches.”

They began their walk, taking care to appear to the casual observer to be a couple on a leisurely stroll to visit the resting place of a family member. Not, Dane noted, that there seemed to be anyone around. He looked carefully at each headstone they passed. The oldest ones were so eroded that he could not make out anything carved into them. One of the stones, however, drew his attention.

“Kay, look at this.” He knelt and rubbed a bit of moss from the discolored face of the old marker. As the gray-green moss was scraped away, it revealed the faint outline of a dove carved into the stone. It was weathered, but still easily recognizable.

“Check one more off the list,” Kaylin said. She crossed out the picture of the dove at the bottom of the page, and sketched it into its location on her rough map. The ground sloped gently upward as they approached the place where the oak tree had stood many years before. As they rounded a large, above ground vault, she laughed.

“The torch!” She pointed to a statue of a woman that topped the crypt. Dressed in a flowing robe, the figure held a torch aloft in her right hand. We’re tied,” she said, adding this new find to the map.

They each located one more item. Dane found a headstone with the outline of a cross carved in the top, while Kaylin found a fleur-de-lis. Kaylin added these to the map, leaving only the sketch of a bird unaccounted for. As they topped the rise, they stopped and looked out over the old burial ground. This was the view that Covilha would have had from beneath the oak tree. Might he have stood on this very spot and created his code?

“Maddock, look there.” Kaylin indicated a small, worn headstone just down the hill from where they stood. It read, Domenic LaRoche. “That’s it.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re still missing the bird.” He scanned the nearby headstones but nothing immediately caught his eye. Where was it?

“The bird,” Kaylin said to herself. “What if it was carved onto one of those stones that was so badly eroded that we couldn’t make out what was written on it? Or,” she held up a finger like a schoolteacher giving a lecture, “the drawing might have represented birds that nested in the oak tree.”

“Maybe,” Dane agreed, “but let’s keep going just to make sure.” It was his nature to be thorough. He did not want to miss an important detail because he had made an assumption based on incomplete information or a bad presupposition.

They continued their trek down the hill and across the graveyard. By the time they reached the far boundary, they had seen no bird symbol. Hoping that Kaylin’s earlier assessment would prove to be correct, they returned to the grave.

Kaylin knelt in front of the small tombstone. There was a faint inscription beneath the name. She ran her fingers across it gently.

“What does it say?” Dane asked.

“I can’t make it out. Hold on.” She tore a sheet of paper from her notebook and held it flat against the stone above the inscription. Fishing a pencil from her purse, she made a rubbing of the headstone. When she had finished, she held it up and read aloud. “Domenic LaRoche, Son of Marie-Louise, 1834–1836.” She stared at the paper for a moment, then looked back at the small marker. “He was just a baby. That’s so sad.”

Dane nodded. It was sad, but not unusual for that period in history. Something else was bothering him.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that only the mother’s name is listed?” he asked.

Kaylin pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Maybe he was illegitimate.”

“If that’s so, I’m surprised he had a proper burial and a headstone. Most mistresses couldn’t afford it, and the fathers wouldn’t usually spring for it.”

“Must have been an unusual circumstance,” she mused. A frown creased her brow. She opened her notebook, found the page she was looking for, and grinned broadly.

“Tell me,” Dane said.

“The letter you found in the book. You remember, I said it sounded like a letter from Covilha to his mistress? Look at her name.” She held the translation up for him to inspect.

“Marie Louise,” Dane marveled. “He buried the sword with his son.”

“That’s why they didn’t find anything when they dug up Francisco’s grave.” Her hands trembled. “It’s right here, Maddock! Right here beneath us!” She jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms around his neck.

He hugged her awkwardly and gave her a pat on the back before pulling away gently. Something was not right. He thought about it for a moment, before realizing what was bothering him.

“I’ll be right back.” He hurried down the hill and over to the fence that encircled the graveyard. A brief inspection of the wrought iron revealed a loose bar: a vertical post topped by a spike. A few twists, and the old solder broke, freeing the rod.

Kaylin greeted him raised eyebrows. “What’s that for?”

“You’ll see.” Choosing a spot in line with the center of the headstone and about three feet out, he pushed the spiked end of the bar into the earth. The ground was fairly soft, and he encountered no large rocks. With only a bit of persuasion, the bar sank slowly into the earth.

“Maddock, don’t tell me…” Kaylin covered her face. “You’re not going to dig up that little boy’s casket, are you?”

“Think about it,” Dane said as he continued digging. “Would a regular sword fit into the coffin of a two year-old? We’re talking about a sword that was wielded by a nine-foot tall warrior.” He stopped as the bar struck something solid. He wiggled it gently, and felt it slip over the side of the object. Ignoring Kaylin’s questioning look, he gently drew the bar back up, and continued to probe.

He quickly found the other edge. He guessed the object, the sword, he hoped, was about six or seven inches wide at this point. It was certainly too narrow to be a casket, and it was at a depth of just over two feet. He turned to Kaylin and smiled.

“I think we’ve got it.” They definitely had something. He just hoped it was the right something. What if it wasn’t the sword? What if they had come to New York for nothing? He pushed the worries from his mind. Such defeatist thoughts wouldn’t get them anywhere, and he’d find out soon enough what lay buried in this child’s grave.

Kaylin beamed back at him, confidence gleaming in her eyes.

“Turn around and screen me from the road,” he instructed. “Pretend you’re writing in your notebook, but keep an eye out.”

“No way,” she said. “Don’t you think we should wait until after dark to do this?”

“And have somebody beat us to it? Those guys have been one step behind, if not a step ahead of us, the whole time. Besides, with Covilha’s grave being dug up, they’re likely to keep a closer eye on the place at night.”

“Right,” she said, “because no one in his right mind would rob a grave in broad daylight.”

He rolled his eyes and started digging.

Kaylin gave him a mock-frown, then turned and pretended to be writing something in her notebook.

Dane chopped at the ground with increasing vigor. He tore up thick clumps of sod before breaking through to the soft dirt beneath. He wished for a better digging implement, but, as his grandpa used to say, you make do with what you got. He made quite a bit of progress before Kaylin called out a warning.

“Here comes a car!” Her voice was calm, but he could sense tension in her tone.

He tossed the bar behind the little headstone, and knelt down over the trench he was digging, pretending to be reading the inscription. The car passed without the driver taking any apparent notice of them. They were interrupted two more times by passing motorists. Dane had exposed a foot-long by ten-inch wide section of what was obviously an old metal box. The surface was pitted with rust, but still solid.

“Cops!” Kaylin called, this time with a touch of alarm in her voice. “And he’s looking this way.”

Dane hastily repeated his ruse, tossing away his digging apparatus and kneeling over the hole, which was now starting to resemble a latrine. He hoped the cops didn’t take too close a look, as he could not think of any plausible explanation for digging up a grave.

A brown and tan sheriff’s department vehicle cruised by, slowing as the deputy in the passenger seat peered at them with undisguised distrust. Kaylin mimicked writing furiously in her notebook, while Dane joined in the charade by pretending to read the inscription aloud to her. The car slowed further, and the deputy rolled down his window. Dane’s heart pounded. He was not afraid of going to jail. He feared that if the deputies discovered what they were doing, the authorities would take possession of the sword, or worse, whoever was following them might somehow get hold of it. They had to get the sword now, or face the real possibility of losing it.

Kaylin pretended to have just noticed the patrol car. She smiled and waved. Dane waved as well. They held their breath as the car slowed to a near stop before the deputies nodded to them and accelerated around the bend and out of sight.

Dane let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding before returning to his digging. Kaylin looked like she was going to crumple to the ground. Instead, she knelt, found a flat rock that Dane’s digging had turned up, and joined in. While she worked, scraping away at the soft loam, she kept an eye on the road.

They attacked the ground with a fury. After a few minutes, the piles of dirt around the forming trench had grown too large to hide. Dane felt his adrenaline surge at the realization that this was it. They had to get the sword out before another vehicle passed by. Droplets of sweat beaded on his forehead and rolled off into the moist dirt in the trench. His shoulders ached from the awkward digging motion necessitated by the wrought iron bar. His hands stung, and blisters were forming on his palms. Beside him, Kaylin panted as she hacked at the soil. He did not know if it was out of fatigue or fear of discovery.

Inch by inch they exposed the box. It looked to be more than five feet long. When the entire top surface was exposed, he used the point of the bar to scrape the dirt from around the sides. He then placed the tip underneath the bottom end of the box, and gently pried it up. Slowly, the box broke free of the soil that had ensnared it for more than a century and a half. He soon raised the end of the box high enough to get his fingers underneath. Straining, he lifted it until he could get two hands under it. It was remarkably heavy. Kaylin lent a hand, and the two of them dragged the box free from its grave.

It reminded Dane of a large gift box. The top was slightly wider and longer than the bottom so that it fit neatly over the bottom half. The lid had been welded all the way around at the bottom edge.

“We can’t open it,” Kaylin complained, her face taut with tension and frustration.

“Not yet,” Dane said, “but in any case, we need to fill this hole in before we do anything else.”

They hastily kicked dirt and rocks back into the trench they had dug. With the box missing, there was not enough dirt to fill the hole back to ground level. Dane gathered a few stray rocks and sticks, tossing them into the hole, then patched the top with chunks of sod. It would not hide what they had done, but someone would have to be right on top of it before they noticed.

Dane took off his jacket and laid it across the box. Kaylin did the same. Together, they hefted the large metal container. Holding it at waist level, they stumbled down the hill to their car.

When they reached the wrought iron fence, Dane propped his end on the rail and vaulted over. He cautiously dragged it toward him, letting the fence support its weight, and held it while Kaylin clambered over.

As she topped the fence, she looked up the road, her eyes widening and her face pale.

“Maddock, it’s the cops again!”

Dane grabbed the box around the middle and lifted it with a grunt of pain. He stumbled to the car and heaved the box down on the ground next to the rear tire. He stood up in time to see the car rounding the bend in the road.

Kaylin calmly walked to the driver’s side door, trying to put herself in a position to prevent the deputies from seeing beneath the car. She fished in her pocket for the keys, not realizing they were in Dane’s jacket, which lay draped over the box.

The car rolled to a stop. The deputy rolled down the window and leaned as far forward as his wide-brimmed hat would allow.

“Afternoon,” he said. His words were friendlier than his expression. His hazel eyes gleamed with suspicion and his narrow face and thin lips were set in a firm manner that said he would brook no foolishness.

“Good afternoon,” Kaylin replied, smiling sweetly, leaning forward ever so slightly.

“You folks visiting a loved one?” He smiled as if that were some big joke, eyeing Kaylin with more interest now than suspicion.

Given that the cemetery had met its quota of residents more than a century ago, Dane supposed it qualified as a joke. He smiled and let Kaylin do the talking, as she seemed to have captured the deputy’s attention. Dane supposed that sometimes there were definite advantages to being female and attractive.

“We’re doing some genealogical work,” she said. “We were trying to find the grave of one of my ancestors.”

“Any luck?”

“No. We thought we had found it, but we were wrong.” She frowned and bit her lower lip as if she were about to cry. “We’re so close, too.”

“Sorry to hear that,” the deputy replied, though the words held little empathy. He looked down and frowned. “What’s in the box?”

Dane could have smacked the guy. He told the first lie he could think of.

“Art supplies: an easel, paint, brushes and such.” He nodded to Kaylin. “My girlfriend was thinking of painting the cemetery.”

“It’s quite lovely,” Kaylin agreed.

“So I guess you were drawing in that notebook when we drove by a while back?” The deputy acted as if Dane were not there.

Dane didn’t care if he was noticed or not. He only prayed that the man would not ask to see Kaylin’s sketches.

“Yes, just a few sketches,” Kaylin said, beginning to look nervous. “Would you like to see them?”

What was she doing?

“No thanks. I’ll warn you folks, though,” the deputy said, removing his hat and running his fingers through his short, brown hair. “There’ve been some strange goings-on around here. If you see anything out of the ordinary, call 911.”

“We certainly will,” Kaylin agreed, smiling again. “Thank you for letting us know.”

The deputy looked them over again, then nodded and told his partner to drive.

They watched until the patrol car disappeared from sight before they loaded the box into the back seat.

“Now what?” Kaylin asked.

“We check out of the hotel,” Dane said, “load up the car, and get as far from here as we can. Then,” he turned and smiled at her, “we see what’s inside this box.”