The Columbus Affair: A Novel

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

BÉNE AVOIDED THE DEBRIS, CLIMBING ACROSS THE BOULDERS and finding the wooden slab. He aimed his light past the doorway into another chamber, this one smaller than the previous. No smooth walls. No art. Just a harsh cavity in the rock that extended about twenty meters back and half that tall. He stepped inside. Frank and Tre followed him.

Their lights dissolved the darkness.

He spotted what appeared to be an altar of some sort, fashioned of rock and situated against one wall. Nothing rested on top. To its right was a low rectangle of rough stone, maybe half a meter high and two meters long. A taller slab projected upward at one end.

“It looks like a grave,” Tre said.

They walked closer, loose gravel crunching beneath their feet. Their lights brought the scene into clear focus. Béne now saw that the end slab was a tombstone. He recognized the two letters atop the marker.

“Here lies,” he said. “It’s Hebrew. I’ve seen this on a lot of other graves.”

All of the remaining writing was likewise in Hebrew.

Tre bent down and examined it closely.

“What is a Jewish grave doing here?” Béne asked Clarke.

“I wondered that, too,” Frank said. “So a few years ago I photographed the marker and had the words translated. It says, ‘Christoval Arnoldo de Ysassi, Pursuer of Dreams, Speaker of Truth in His Heart, Honored Man, May His Soul Be Bound Up in the Bond of Everlasting Life.’ ”

Tre stood. “It’s the grave of Christopher Columbus. De Torres wrote that Columbus’ real name was Christoval Arnoldo de Ysassi. This is where he’s buried.”

Béne recalled what Tre had told him on the plane about Columbus’ grave. “You said yesterday that the widow of Columbus’ son brought the body to the New World.”

“She did. First to Santiago, then the remains were moved to Cuba. There’s a lot of controversy over who is buried in Santiago now, or whether the bones are in Cuba or Spain. Now we know that she brought them here, to the island the family controlled. Which makes the most sense.”

“I’ve always wondered who this is,” Clarke said. “We had no idea who the man might be. We knew him to be Hebrew, but that’s all. So we left the grave alone. If others knew this was Columbus, they would have destroyed it.”

“Damn right,” Béne said. “He was a thief and murderer.”

“This is an important historical find,” Tre said. “It’s never been proven where Columbus is buried. Nobody knew. Now we do.”

“Who cares?” Béne said. “Let him rot here.” He turned to Frank. “Is this all?”

“Look around. What else do you see?”

He scanned the chamber with his light.

And saw niches carved into the far wall.

He stepped over and examined the closest one with the flashlight and saw bones. Each of the others was likewise filled with a body.

“Our greatest Maroon leaders,” Frank said. “That one to your left is Grandy Nanny herself. Laid to rest here in 1758.”

“I thought her grave was in Moore Town, on the windward side, Portland Parish?”

“At first, then she was brought here by the Scientists.” Frank pointed. “The bones you just examined are Cudjoe’s.”

He was shocked.

Cudjoe had been a great Maroon chief in Grandy Nanny’s time, her brother, who fought the British, too. But he made a disastrous peace, one that forever changed the Maroon way of life, and began their downfall.

Even so, he was revered.

“He lived to be an old man,” Béne said.

Frank came close. “Some say he was over eighty when he died.”

Béne rattled off a quick count and saw fourteen niches cut into the rock.

“Johnny, Cuffee, Quaco, Apong, Clash, Thomboy. All leaders from long ago,” Frank said. “Special people, laid here in this place of honor. We thought the person buried here had to be important, at least to the Jews, so we decided to make use of this place, too. That has always been the Maroon way. Little was ours, all was shared. Here, our special people could rest quietly.”

Béne did not know what to say.

This was totally unexpected.

He motioned to a rum bottle in one of the niches.

“For the duppies,” Frank said. “The spirits like their drink. We replenish it every once in a while so they’re never without.”

He knew the custom. His father’s grave outside Kingston was similarly stocked.

“There’s more,” Frank said. “But, as with all things Maroon, it is a tale told only among a select few. Mainly Scientists, who considered this room sacred.”

Béne had never cared for Maroon healers, who’d taken the odd name of Scientist. Too much mysticism for him, too few results.

“Is that why there’s an altar?” he asked.

Frank nodded. “The Scientists once conducted rituals here. Private things that only they could see.”

“Not anymore?” he asked.

“Not in a long while. And there’s a reason for that.”

“You keep a lot of secrets,” he said to Frank.

“As I’ve told you many times, some things are better left unsaid … until the right moment.”

“So tell me your tale.”

Frank explained about a time when there were four other objects in the chamber. A golden candlestick, about a meter high, with seven branches. A table, less than a meter long and half that high, with golden crowns bordering the top and a ring at each corner. And two trumpets, made of silver, each about a meter long, inlaid with gold.

“Are you sure of those?” Tre asked.

“I never saw them myself, but I talked to others who say they did.”

“Those are the most sacred objects in Judaism. They came from the Second Temple, when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans. People have searched for those for 2,000 years. And they were here? In Jamaica?”

“They had been placed with the Hebrew grave. I was told that they were magnificent in workmanship.”

“And no Maroon ever tried to sell them?” Tre asked.

Frank shook his head. “The spirits are important to us. They roam the forests and can either protect or harm. Never would we offend them by taking something from a grave. Instead, we protected those objects and made this place special.”

Béne faced Tre. “What does all this mean?”

“That a lot of history books are going to be rewritten.”

But Béne was more concerned with something else. “What happened to those objects?”

“The Scientists returned here one day and the treasures were gone. Only colonels and Scientists knew of this location. They concluded that the duppies took them away. After that, this place was no longer used for worship.”

“When was this?” Béne asked.

“Sixty years ago.”

Béne shook his head. Another dead end. “Is that it? People wanted me killed to protect this?”

“These graves are important. They are our past. And for a Maroon, the past is all we have. Even the Hebrew grave is important. It is clearly from long ago. The Jews helped us when no one else would. So we honored the Hebrew, as one of us. His treasure was also honored.”

“And now it’s gone.”

But he wondered. Were those objects what Zachariah Simon was really after? He’d talked about finding Columbus’ grave and the mine, but it made more sense that Simon would be after a treasure. Apparently this place had indeed been a gold mine, but for a different style of gold.

Which did not exist anymore.

He shook his head and headed back for the cave’s exit.

Tre and Frank followed.

None of them said a word.