“Perhaps.”
It was some time before he recognized the slightest of gaps in the sheer rock—at eye level—but back below him on the path. “We’d passed right by,” he muttered. He picked his way down the trail and stared at the irregularity above.
“Petrine, stand on my shoulders.”
“Are you certain? Your shoulders, I mean?”
Jacques nodded.
The valet waggled his finger. “No untoward moves. Not from
this high up,” he said, his voice shaking badly. “Be steady.” He
removed
his goatskin and packet and set them against a brittle scrub that
immediately snapped in half.
Carefully he climbed and planted himself atop Jacques’
shoulders, then spoke straightaway. “Here, I’m right in front of it.”
“Quiet, Spaniard. There could be others about.”
Petrine readjusted his weight, then continued his efforts. “Well disguised, these cuts in the rock. Taking all my might to slide this stone over. May need more time. Strength. More than I … moving—yes—the stone,” he huffed. “Now it rests next to the mouth of the cut. I did it!”
“Good, good.”
“A long—looks like—horizontal shaft. Very dark. But a bead of light in the distance.” Petrine coughed, burrowing his boots deeper into Jacques’ shoulders.
“Come down,” Jacques ordered, his voice fading. “My muscles are worn.” He patted his lips with the back of his hand. “Hard to breathe this high up. I’m parched, too.”
The valet cautiously slipped from Jacques’ shoulders and squatted.
Jacques slumped on the path next to Petrine and took the water pouch, upending it in his mouth. He stared at the mountainside and
rubbed his neck. “A man-made tunnel this high up? What other purpose? A mine?” He took another drink. “The shaft leads to riches.
It must.”
“No blockages as far as I could see into the murkiness. Room for a man to crawl on his belly, not much more.”
“Ready?” Jacques stood. “I’m going up.”
“I’ll go. Your bruised shoulders.”
"This is the main chance. It will be me.”
Petrine lurched to standing and snatched the goatskin from
Jacques’ hands. “Taking the pouch is out of the question,” he
growled. “Shaft is too narrow for a big man like you—and it.”
Jacques glared. “You pay too little heed of your station, valet. I’m the one to go,” he said, drawing his dagger.
Petrine took a quick step back.
“Be careful with me.” Jacques placed the dagger’s blade between his teeth before raising himself on top of the valet’s shoulders.
“Hurry. Your weight crushes—”
A moment later, Jacques stared at the entrance to the shaft. “Partly in,” he said, painstakingly inserting his body headfirst into the slender shaft.
Anticipation roused his blood, even as the dry, acrid smell
taunted
his nose.
Prostrate on his stomach, he clenched the blade hard between his teeth until, watching his knuckles pale, he stopped
breathing. The whistle of a far-off wind played its mournful tune.
If I’m trapped, Petrine will never be able to rescue me by himself. A lonely, ugly end.
He relaxed his fists, then advanced, clawing the rockshaft bit by bit. His mind tumbled. The cold pressed around him. Each time he rested his chin on the coarse rock surface, beard stubble jabbed his
cheeks, the dagger crowded his tongue. He pushed forward, the
corridor narrowing as he went.
In a short while his fingertips met … nothing, emptiness. A
drop-
off! Jacques’ heart hammered. The pinpoint of light Petrine had
spotted
eked from some source below, but whatever was there—colder,
menacing—couldn’t be seen.
As best he could, Jacques dislodged a pebble with his dagger and flicked it out into the void. No sound.
A bigger stone then
?
But he hadn’t the room to maneuver a bigger stone. He shivered uncontrollably. Fear was upon him.
Dare I send my dagger over the brink
?
If the dagger’s fall is drawn out—my dagger is lost and I’ll proceed no further. Not without better—
He let go of his weapon. A muffled thump.
A short, soft fall then?
Lengthening his body like a blind worm until it extended over the void, Jacques tucked his chin, covered his head with his arms, and made one last push.
“Aaagggh.”
Thudding on the ground, he winced, ribs throbbing.
His fingers pawed the dagger underneath him, rough granules of sand biting into his cold, numb hand.
When his eyes adjusted to the indistinct light, Jacques sat up,
straining for breath. He was in a cavern as big as a ship’s hull.
Squeezing his dagger and pointing it with both hands, he spun round and round, his eyes searching the rock ceiling, then the sandy ground.
The faint illumination in the cavern came through a hole in the
wall, smaller in circumference than the one he’d just traveled.
Jacques would explore that presently. But first he walked the perimeter of the cavern to discover some clue, something that would give him satisfaction. No detail escaped his grim stare, ceiling to ground.
Bare. Nothing but gritty, bare soil. Where’s my treasure? What’s the secret?
He ached. He repeated his survey.
Nothing
.
Collapsing to his knees, he shouted, stabbing his dagger into the
ground.
“Eeeeeeeeeeehhh.”
Sand, gravel, rock exploded as he gored and gashed the earth.
“Yeeeeeeeeeehhh.”
Exhausted, Jacques let go his weapon and fell to the sandy floor. He lay flat on his belly, puffing heavily, muscles weak, played out. When at length his inflamed eyes flickered open, he observed at
arm’s distance a small round object protruding on the ruptured
surface. He rubbed dusty tears from his eyes. A coin. A bronze coin.
Jacques stretched toward it, his shirtsleeve inadvertently
scooping a portion of sand. Another coin peeked through. Silver! His eyes darted about. Trembling, he raked at the sand and gravel.
More coins!
Jacques forced himself upright and began to eagerly shave the cold granulated surface with his dagger’s blade. At finger’s depth, he
discovered a solid, even base—a concretion—dotted with round
depressions, each depression filled with a coin. Several more scrapes of his dagger revealed dozens of coins—side by side—all housed in the concretion.
“Yahhhhhhh!”
Repeating his actions in a narrow swath, Jacques worked his
way to the center of the cavern. Innumerable coins, resting in the dimples of the concretion underpinning, curved outward from the cavern’s center in an ever-widening spiral. A pattern! A pattern imitating the spiraling shell of a bisected chambered nautilus!
Jacques choked tight his fist.
This floor is laden with riches!
The tears in Jacques’ eyes turned into a gleam. The gleam of his eyes quickened into a tickle in his gut. The tickle transformed into a heaving laugh, and the laugh exited his mouth in a giddy shout.
“Haaaaaaaaww.”
The cavern resounded with grossly outrageous laughter.
“Am I not deserving?”
Jacques held up a gold
maravedí
, then reached out and seized a fistful of the largest coins, allowing sand to drain through his warming fingers. “I’m a man of wealth. From this day forward, I shall never want. Nor shall I ever again tip my hat to an unworthy. I am somebody. And to Venice I will go.”
Jacques soon began to scrutinize the treasure more closely.
“This is peculiar. The assortment of money—here in the spiral. Silver thalers laying beside gold ducats. But then lowly bronze—and more bronze.
Doblas
of gold—and Florentine florins—next to humble copper pennies that then are followed by pieces of eight—all silver.” Jacques scratched his chin with the butt of his dagger.
When once more he worked his way from the outer spiral
toward the center of the nautilus pattern, unfamiliar monies appeared—
coins from antique times, denominations he’d never seen. Gaulish
coins, silver shekels, gold and bronze. Coins with Greek inscriptions, even Arabic dinars. Jacques’ lips twitched fitfully. Why, for God’s sake, was the cavern’s fortune such a profusion of priceless silver and gold coins, but yet peppered with far less valued copper and bronze?
The answer came slowly. The nautilus pattern spiraled outward, creating a history recorded in coins. The gold, the silver ones—these
were placed in the spiral by kings and queens. But the smaller
denominations? Men and women of lowly birth had left those.
Still, I’m bewildered. What unites lowborn men with those on high? And men of many nations, of different cultures? Of different times?
Jacques rose to his feet. “I care not a whit to answer that
question. What matters is that I’ve found the cache of wealth Vicomte de Fragonard foretold—and to which Esther the Israelite alluded.” He paused. “But can this be the
vital secret
the mighty Church of Rome wishes to keep?”
At eye level above the cavern floor, Jacques found himself
staring at the dim light coming from a modest hole in the wall. He stepped
to the opening and cautiously leaned in. There were several
handholds in the breach that tunneled upward at an acute angle.
A thought stirred fleetingly in Jacques’ head.
I have what I want but not what I need.
A sweet smell pervaded the shaft.
Driven by an acute impulse, Jacques sucked in all the fragrance he could, checked behind himself, stuffed his dagger between his teeth, then hoisted himself into the rocky notch. His skin stretched taut as fear again hardened his muscles.
Twice the tunnel constricted and changed direction, but
handholds aided his labor, and the faint light at the far end of the shaft led him forward.
He struggled ahead until, reaching the end of the passageway, he was able to sit on his heels. He blew on his bitterly cold hands.
Immediately, his fright and fatigue vanished as something akin to bright daylight—a radiance that bore semblance to earthly light yet illuminated the span with a supernal glow—drove away the
murkiness. Jacques sheathed his dagger and eased himself down
into the space below.
At the center of a large chamber, resting on pillars chest high,
stood an ogee-sided sarcophagus wrapped in a cerement of diaphanous
linen. The coffin’s luminance drew Jacques forward while all
intention,
all restlessness in him dissolved. A sweet and familiar smell welcomed him. Ambergris, for embalming. He breathed in the
fragrance, stepped forward, and peered through the nimbus of light surrounding the sarcophagus.
Beneath the linen shroud lay the delicate figure of a man,
apparently dead. A close-cropped beard enveloped the face while small beads of blood ringed the temples and forehead. Burnished hair, a narrow nose, and slender lips completed the compassionate face. The hands, Jacques saw—each showed a deep, purplish-black hole in the palm.
Jacques closed his eyes.
He felt a subtle lightness in his limbs and body, yet he was
unafraid. Nor did he cry out as the cool air streamed past head to toe. His strange heart opened in surrender.
And when he looked again, he had risen—to the high canopy of the rock cavern.
Jacques existed effortlessly outside himself.
From his lofty harbor above, he saw two men on the cavern
floor—one living, one dead.
Below was a material person—the physical person—of Jacques Girolamo Casanova, a flesh-and-blood man who, though standing,
was more dead than alive, a man whose lifelong vanities and
frivolous pleasures had produced a damp spirit, a stagnated self.
Jacques thought:
I clothed myself in coats of gold. It did not bring peace. I knew dishonorable women. They did not bring comfort. I sought the adulation of others. It gave little happiness. Love was offered me, but I turned away.
He proffered a wordless cry.
In this same simple tableau bathed in pure and ethereal light, Jacques also beheld the reclining corpus of a man who, though now conquered, emanated yet a placid contentment and serenity, the quintessence of which seemed alive, merciful, loving. The reclining man manifested the beauty of enlightenment in his face, the joy of love in his essence, the grace of God in his celestial glow.
At this moment Jacques felt a freedom he’d never before
experienced, the freedom of truth. For a moment there was meaning.
Then the veil closed. Effortlessness ended.
In an instant Jacques seemed to melt back to the cavern floor, once again standing beside the open coffin. A soft tear now rolled
down his cheek while he quietly regarded the figure immersed in light.
A treasure of inestimable value, the Vicomte had said.
Jacques placed his hand to his throbbing chest, trying to quell the bounding blood within. He leaned over the sarcophagus, peering once again through the nimbus of light encircling the deceased man.
“To the marrow of my bones, I now know the face of god Jesus.”
For some time Jacques stood still, fully entranced by the tender serenity that exuded from Jesus the Nazarene. While light continued
to bathe the translucent winding sheet and coffin, an ecstasy
superior to all other earthly pleasures infused Jacques’ veins.
“And now I fathom that which is beyond all earthly value, of inestimable value—the peace that passeth understanding.”
***
When finally Jacques descended to the lower cavern, he reburied
each coin he’d excavated from the ground. Then taking his own
purse from his boot, he set—with care and precision—half of his
money in the outward spiraling tail of the nautilus.