Nightbound (14 page)

“Forgive me,” he said, surprising her. “It was wrong to disregard your wishes. It won’t happen again.”

Alys felt a now-familiar surge of exasperation mixed with affection; Beau often unsettled her with such good-natured reactions. Whenever she’d worked on a dig in the past, she’d had to deal with too many egotistical superiors and resentful subordinates. Beau was nothing like that; he went out of his way to make things easier on her. She was beginning to rely on it, and on him. Since she’d only ever been able to depend on herself in the past, it was a novel and oddly comforting situation.

I’m not alone in this.
Alys felt her heart melt a little.
He wants me to count on him.

But could she? Was Beau as sincere as he seemed, or was he simply using his charm to control her?

He touched the side of her arm with his. “You’ll feel better if you thump me, you know. Go on. I deserve it.”

“I’ve never struck another person in my life.” She’d done far worse, not that she could ever tell him that.

“But you’ve wanted to.” He picked up her hand, which she still held in a tight fist. When she loosened her fingers, he brought them to his mouth for a kiss. “I am grateful for your understanding.”

The intimate contact of his lips against her knuckles coupled with his voice and the memory of the nightmare from her childhood combined to completely unnerve her. “It’s done. Let’s forget it.” She pulled her hand away and picked up the carryall. “I’m finished for tonight, too. Would you shut down the generators, please?”

He nodded, and she headed for the cloister.

As she showered, Alys felt less annoyed with Beau and more aggravated with herself. Because he was so willing to shoulder so much responsibility, he was easy to blame for her own shortcomings and frustrations. She hadn’t been entirely honest with him or the interns, either. The students’ efforts had been remarkable, and they did deserve a weekend for themselves, but Alys also wanted the time to work on her other problem: the flaw in her theory.

Everything had indicated that the treasure was here at the mission. After a week of digging and turning up only the most ordinary and unremarkable artifacts, and finding nothing to indicate the mission was in any sense unusual, she was prepared to admit that she had made a miscalculation.

The most frustrating aspect of all was that she
did
know where the Templars’ treasure was; the location had been repeatedly described in dozens of letters and journals belonging to the Spanish priests. She knew it lay deep beneath the earth’s surface, and was accessible only by a narrow stone passage. The only entry to it had been carefully concealed to prevent discovery. Some of the priests referred to the location in religious terms, describing stone vaults chiseled by the hammer of God, and sacred waters welling from a source of never-ending life.

Although the descriptions varied, every single one of the mission priests had used the same name to refer to it: the fountain of youth.

The legend of the fountain, which modern texts always paired with Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, was usually dismissed as pure myth, no more valid or real than the pool of Bethesda, the philosopher’s stone, or any of the other folklore focused on the mystical endowment of eternal youth dating back to the writings of Herodotus in the fifth century BC.

Alys might have rejected the legend of the fountain herself if the timeline and location had been different. But long before Ponce de León had stepped foot on Florida soil for the first time, the mission’s priests had entered into a pact to protect the refugee Templars by relocating them to what was then an equally mythic New World.

Down in the cloister, Alys brought her laptop to bed with her, booting it up so she could begin reviewing her notes again. Her most important source, the letters of a priest who had attended the Spanish explorer Pedro
Menéndez de Avilés when he had founded the first enduring colony in Florida at St. Augustine, had provided her with some clues.

Our master listens too much to his lady’s counsel,
Father Gonzalo wrote in a letter to his sister. He often wrote about Menéndez’s wife, who had been obsessed with finding the fountain.
She has urged him to march against the savages who occupy the land to the west and south, and capture their leaders, which has outraged the entire tribe. Yet even under torture, these old men refuse to reveal the location of the fountain. They will say only that it was made long ago by white-skinned strangers like us, and anyone who drinks from it is not restored to youth, but cursed. So dreadful are their superstitions that several of the poor wretches used their teeth to open their veins, so they might bleed to death in silence before they could be questioned.

Over time other explorers and missionaries encountered and recorded tales of what the Timucua referred to as the sacred waters, and from these accounts Alys had gleaned a few more precious bits of data. The settlement near the fountain had been abruptly abandoned by the Timucua at approximately the same time the priests at the mission had mysteriously vanished. After that, the natives in the area had become much more aggressive, vowing to kill anyone who tried to find the legendary fountain.

By mapping every recorded Indian attack in the region, Alys had been able to narrow down the possible location of the fountain to within a fifty-mile radius. After reviewing countless geological surveys, she had identified each water feature within the boundaries of her
search area, and further refined her results by eliminating every body of water that was not within walking distance of a native settlement.

That had left her with a dozen potential sites, most of which had been exploited by modern municipalities. And of the three that remained undeveloped, only one had been located near both an Indian village and a Spanish mission.

“You said you were finished with work for the day.”

Alys hadn’t heard Beau come down the steps—for such a large man he moved with exceptional silence—and when she looked up from the screen, she saw he had left his shirt open to the waist. “Aren’t you ever cold?”

“I’ve lived here for some time,” he reminded her. “I imagine I’m used to the weather.”

“This region is subtropical, and reports indicate this is the coldest winter on record, so you can’t be accustomed to it.” Although she rarely consulted with others on her theories, she wanted to discuss her idea with him. “Would you come here and look at this?” She closed the research file and opened the latest version of her site map.

Beau walked over and studied the screen. “What am I seeing?”

“A map of the entire property.” She zoomed in and highlighted the location of the mission. “We’re here, the Indian village is here, and the spring pond is between them, correct?” When he nodded, she zoomed out. “Every survey on this property dating back to the turn of the century lists a pond as retention or seasonal. It’s completely isolated, so this makes sense, but the water in it is fresh, not stagnant. So what’s feeding it?”

His eyes shifted as he studied the map. “The source
must be a spring beneath the pool. But what has this to do with finding evidence of the Templars?”

“I believe they hid something in the spring itself. Something they never wanted anyone to find. And whatever it was, it served as the foundation for the legend of the fountain of youth.” She closed the laptop and switched it off. “We have to search the bottom of the pond.”

“That will be difficult to do in the dark.” He regarded her. “You are serious? Alys, that pond is covered with ice.”

He was right, of course, but she wasn’t planning to stay in the pond long enough to develop hypothermia. “The surface never freezes solid. I’m a good swimmer, and I only need a few minutes.”

“A few minutes in water that cold will stop your heart.” He took the laptop and set it aside. “You are not going in the pond.”

“I don’t need your permission.” The conversation was turning adversarial, something she had hoped to avoid. “Think about it. It makes perfect sense that they would conceal the treasure underwater. Hardly anyone in their time could swim. They may have even created the pond just for that reason by digging it out and diverting the water to fill it. The feed from a spring would maintain the water level, and the silt on the pond’s bottom would conceal the entry point from view.”

He didn’t look convinced. “You would freeze to death to prove this. What if you are wrong, and the pond is nothing more than a pond?”

“It’s not,” she insisted. “If it were natural, the Indians would have used it, but we’ve found no signs of activity
anywhere around the pond. And why didn’t the missionaries use it for their water supply, instead of digging that well we found beside the kitchen?”

He switched off the lanterns. “Natives have all manner of taboos. As for the missionaries, perhaps they didn’t care to walk half a mile carrying filled buckets.”

She sat up. “Beau, they were medieval Catholic priests. They enjoyed suffering so much they invented self-flagellation. Besides, they had to know the water in the pond was drinkable. The well would have taken days, maybe even weeks, to dig.” She frowned. “Unless they dug out the pond after the well, in which case they’d have to haul water from the nearest river.”

He came to stand over her. “You can theorize all you wish, Alys, but you can’t go into that pond. You’ll have to find another way to search it.”

“All right. We
are
in Florida, home to most of America’s finest marine biology programs. Maybe one of the local universities has some underwater cameras or robotic gear we can borrow.” She watched his shadow retreat to the other bed. “If you’re never cold, why do you wear your clothes to bed?”

“To preserve your modesty, madam.” As always he pushed aside the covers and lay flat on his back. “At home I don’t wear a stitch of anything when I sleep.”

“Oh.” She turned over onto her back. “Well. Thank you.”

“Good night, Alys.”

Alys opened her eyes to the sound of children laughing, and sat up to see two little mischievous faces peering over the foot of her bed. “How did you get down here?”

The thin, strawberry blond girl grinned, showing a gap where her front teeth should have been. “
Grand-père
sent us,” she said in her lisping French accent.

“He isn’t our grandpa,” her companion, a tiny brunette with a head full of curls, scolded with a distinctive American voice. Her dark eyes gleamed as she looked at Alys. “He’s our great-great-great-great-great-forever-and-ever-great-grandpa.”

“I’m sure he is,” Alys told them, climbing out of bed. “But you two can’t stay here. We’re not prepared to look after little girls.”

“We want to see the Indian village.” The French girl tugged at her hand.

“No, we want to go swimming,” the American insisted.

“Children. Please.” Alys took hold of their hands and marched them over to the steps. “You need to go home.” She hesitated. “Do you know how to get back home from here?”

“We do.” The French girl’s face grew solemn. “But we can’t go away, not yet. You are very close,
ma demi-sœur
. Soon you will find them, and it will be very bad for you.”

“Very, very bad,” the American intoned.

The blonde nodded toward Beau’s bed. “He is last, like you,
Grand-père
says, so he must not fail. You must not let him fail, Alys.”

“You know my name.”

“We know everything here.” The American girl beckoned for Alys to lean down and, when she did, whispered, “He has a secret. We can’t tell you what it is because that’s not fair, but it makes him sad and lonely. You could make him happy again.”

“How?” Alys whispered back.

The brunette’s cheeks dimpled. “You know how, silly.” She grabbed the French girl’s hand, and the two of them skipped up the stairs, vanishing from sight halfway to the top.

“Two ghosts?” Alys sighed and went back to her bed, pushing at the lump under her covers as she tried to get comfortable. The tangle of linens wouldn’t budge, so she draped one arm and leg over it and used one end as a pillow.

As awkward and bulky as its shape was, the mound felt very nice against her body. She burrowed against it, smiling as she felt it grow warmer. Just as she was falling back asleep, she felt a caress on her cheek.

The girls again.
Alys kept her eyes shut. “I don’t believe in ghosts. Go away.”

The annoying, nonexistent spirits muttered something as one of them nuzzled the top of her head. The touch didn’t feel like it came from a little girl, however.

“I mean it, whoever you are,” she warned. “I’ll throw you on the floor.”

“You can try,” a deep voice said.

She opened one eye and saw the pattern of the coverlet fading and smoothing out into a golden brown bulge—but the one on her bed was purple. “Why aren’t you violet?”

“I’m not a flower.”

Alys lifted her head to see Beau’s face, and went very still. “What are you doing in my bed?”

“Let me show you something.” He reached out and switched on the lantern nearest to them, and pointed toward the other side of the room.

Alys looked over at her empty bed, the coverlet and sheets in a rumpled pile on the floor, and groaned as she let her head fall against Beau’s chest. “Not again.”