The Confusion

After Minerva’s holds and lockers had been stripped to the bare wood, they waited for a high tide and began throwing ballast-rocks overboard, trying to float her off the reef. Jack watched this operation from a battlement of the Castle, where he was allowed to carry his cannonball to and fro sometimes, under guard. After a while de Gex joined him, greeting him with: “I remind you, Jack, that suicide is a mortal sin.”

Jack was baffled by this non sequitur until he followed de Gex’s gaze over the mossy crenellations and down a hundred feet of sheer stone to icy surf flailing away at rocks. Then he laughed. “I’ve been expecting some Arcachon to come up here and put me to a slow death-d’you really think I’d do the deed for him, and spare him such a pleasant journey?”

“Perhaps you would wish to avoid being tortured.”

“Oh no, Edouard, I’m inspired by your example.”

“You are referring to the Inquisition in Mexico?”

“I was wondering: Did the Inquisitor know you were a fellow-Jesuit? Did he go easy on you?”

“If he had given me light treatment, you and Moseh would have detected it-and you would not have decided to trust me. No, I fooled the Inquisitor as thoroughly as I fooled you.”

“That is the most bizarre thing I have heard in my entire circuit of the world.”

“It is not so strange,” said de Gex, “if only you knew more. For, contrary to what you suppose, I do not consider myself some kind of saint. Nay, I have secrets so dark that I myself do not know them! I phant’sied the Inquisitor might somehow wrest out of me through torture what I could not discover by prayer and meditation.”

“That is more bizarre yet. I preferred the first version.”

“Really, it was not so bad as the Jews are always claiming. There are any number of ways it could be made far more painful. When the Holy Office is reestablished in London, I’ll institute some improvements-we’ll have a lot of hereticks to prosecute in a short time, and this desultory Mexican style simply will not do.”

“I had not considered suicide when I came up here,” Jack muttered, “but you are bringing me around smartly.” He stuck his head out through a gap between crenels and leaned over the edge of the wall to see what the final few seconds of his life might look like. “Pity the tide is so unusually high-I’d hit water instead of rocks.”

“Pity we are abjured to deliver you in one piece,” de Gex said, gazing at Jack almost lovingly. “I would love to put what I learned in Mexico City to use, here and now, against your person, and get a full accounting of what you did with King Solomon’s gold.”

“Oh, is that all you wanted to know? We took it to Surat, excepting some trivial expenditures in Mocha and Bandar, and there Queen Kottakkal took it from us. If it’s that particular gold you want, get thee to Malabar!”

Edouard de Gex shook his finger at Jack. “I know from Monsieur Esphahnian that the true story is far more complicated. He spent years in the north of Hindoostan, fighting in some infidel army-”

“Only because he failed the Intelligence Test.”

“-and by the time he finally got to Malabar, the Jew had had plenty of time to insinuate himself into the confidence of that pagan Queen. A substantial part of the gold had already been diverted into the ship-building project. What became of it?”

“You said yourself it had gone to the ship-building project!”

Jack naturally turned to look towards the ship in question now. She had foundered perhaps two miles away, but seen from this tower through clear Arctic air, she seemed much closer. She was riding unusually high by this point, which was no wonder since for the last half-hour her hull had been veiled in splashes made by the ballast-stones that the crew were rolling out through the gun-ports. The waves began to nudge her back and forth as her keel lifted off the reef. Finally a cheer sounded, and several cannons were fired as signals and celebrations. Triangles and trapezoids of canvas began to cloud her spars. “Note how upright she carries herself, even when underloaded,” Jack had pointed out.

“I will not be taken in by this ruse of changing the subject,” de Gex said.

“Oh, but I’m not,” Jack answered, but de Gex plodded onwards with his interrogation.

“Vrej claims that timber and labor are practically free in Hindoostan. According to his review of the accounts, too much gold was missing and whatever I may think of his theology, I would not dream of calling into question his accounting.”

“Vrej has been tiresome on this particular subject for nigh on eight years now,” Jack answered. “When he vaulted over the rail the other day, right out there, the first thing that came to my mind-even before I really grasped that he’d betrayed us-was joy. Joy that I’d never again have to listen to him on this subject. Now, you have picked up the torch.”

“Vrej has related his suspicions to me. He says that whenever he raised this subject, the others would shrug it off with all sorts of vague similitudes, about ‘greasing the path’ or some such…”