Moon Mask Read online

  “About the mask giving its wearer the ability to travel through time,” Raine remembered what King had told him. He also made another connection. “He was part of the Bouda. He thought that with the entire mask, he could go back in time and save his people from dying on that slave ship.”

  “Or, from ever stepping foot on it,” King nodded. “My father and I spent several months travelling with a group of Tuareg nomads around the Sahara,” he continued. “One of their stories tells of how, several hundred years ago, one of their parties fled a violent enemy and sought shelter in a great stone city.”

  “The city of the Bouda.”

  “There, a prince of the city, a man named Kha’um, they told us, fought and destroyed the Tuareg’s enemies and offered them sanctuary. As thanks, they gave him a sword and a dagger.”

  “Gold?”

  “Not gold,” King corrected. “Brass.”

  “Which, in the heat of battle,” Raine realised, “you could be forgiven for mistaking as gold. Just like the descriptions of the Black Death you found.”

  King nodded. “The cave paintings I told you about, they depicted a black hulled ship coming to a great stone city and the entire surviving inhabitants being loaded on-board in chains. The oral traditions also say that the feared Bouda were conquered by white devils.”

  “So they were captured by slave traders,” Raine said.

  “And, it stands to reason that whoever conquered the Bouda would have claimed the Moon Mask for themselves. In 1705, a log entry was made by a Lieutenant Percival Lowe, of the HMS Swallow,” he flicked through his notes to show Raine a photocopy of an old ship’s log. “Lowe was ordered to board the slave ship L'aile Raptor which had been found drifting off the coast of Jamaica. On board, he found that all but one of the human cargo had died of starvation, because all the crew, save for the ship’s captain, had died of disease. That captain, a British man named Edward Pryce, was found in his quarters, rocking back and forth like a madman, while holding a brightly coloured mask.” He glanced at the quote that Lowe had taken from Pryce. ‘“Savage mumbo-jumbo’ he said again and again.”

  “So, the surviving ‘slave’,” Raine said delicately, “you think is the Black Death.”

  “That’s right,” King agreed.

  “And, other than the captain, he was the only survivor of a disease which, one way or another, killed everyone else. So what happened?”

  “Lowe’s log doesn’t mention what happened to the ‘heathen’ as he put it. Pryce was admitted to an asylum and I’ve never found any further mention of the mask itself.”

  Raine pulled himself back up into a sitting position and ran his hand through his black hair. He took another swig of bourbon then handed the bottle to King. “So, it’s a dead end.”

  King took a gulp and felt a wave of nausea pass through him. The world spun as the copious amount of whisky he had consumed in a short period of time hit his head.

  “It was,” he admitted. “My father and I began to focus our attentions elsewhere. If we couldn’t find the mask, we would have to find the city itself.”

  “But the fact that an entire city has remained hidden for centuries,” Raine said, “implies that finding it isn’t going to be easy.”

  King felt a pang of loss stab at him. His father had died searching for that elusive city. “That’s right,” he admitted, trying to focus his thoughts. “But then I got a lucky break. A construction crew working on a new tourist complex outside of Kingston in Jamaica stumbled upon an underground chamber they didn’t know was there. Turns out there had once been a sugar plantation on the site, with a large house attached to it. Records showed that it burned down in 1707-”

  “The same year that the reports of the Black Death began,” Raine pointed out. King felt a pang of annoyance that he had picked up on that fact so quickly.

  “Yes,” he agreed tightly. “But I don’t think he was responsible for the house’s destruction.”

  “Oh?”

  King began to rummage through his satchel while he continued. “The archaeologists who examined the site - the house's wine cellar they believed – found, among the racks of bottles, the remains of three humans and . . . this.” He pulled another book out of his bag, this one even more battered and obviously far older than his notebook.

  “This,” he explained, “is the diary of Emily Hamilton, the daughter of the plantation’s owner.” He handed the book to Raine to look at, although it was wrapped in a sealed, acid-free plastic bag so he could not open it.

  “In it, she talks about a slave who saved her when she had an accident during the annual burning of the sugar crop. She convinced her father to make him her manservant and over the course of the next year, she mentions him a number of times, always referring to him as ‘My Hero’.”

  “Sweet,” Raine rolled his eyes sickeningly.

  “Most of it is just the prittle-prattle of a young English girl living on a Caribbean island during the eighteenth century, attending dinners and parties, making eyes with Mr Darcy-wannabes, that sort of thing. It’s got more emotional ups and downs than Eastenders-”

  “Than what?”

  King ignored him. “The book itself is historically unimportant. To raise funding, the local museum auctioned it off.”

  “Historically unimportant to everyone except to you,” Raine realised.

  King nodded. “She became very close to her ‘Hero,’ closer than would be expected for that period in fact. But she does write down, somewhat fancifully, about some of the adventures he had in his homeland. She writes about her ‘Hero’s’ great city, about some of his battles and, most importantly, she mentions a ‘magical mask.’ But,” he added before Raine could interject, “what is really interesting is where the dairy ends.”

  “Ends?”

  “The last entry is made on the 14th May, 1707. It’s a perfectly normal account of a perfectly normal day, just like any that came before it. Except for the fact that, only two thirds of her way through the book, she makes no further entries. It is also the day that the Hamilton estate on Jamaica was burned to the ground, tragically along with every member of the Hamilton family, and every one of their slaves and servants. There are no records of what caused the fire, only that nothing was left.”

  King sat up and shivered, hugging his knees. A thin layer of condensation had settled onto them both and, with no more whisky, the cold was beginning to settle in. “A month later,” he concluded, “the first mention of the Black Death appears. To the slaves of the Caribbean islands, he becomes a bit of a folk hero, a Robin Hood of the New World if you like.”

  “So, you think the Oni of the Bouda was captured by slavers and taken to Jamaica where he became the manservant of this Emily chick. Then somehow he escaped and became the ‘Black Death’, attacking ships and colonies across the Caribbean before setting sail on a quest to find all the pieces of a magical mask so that he could travel back in time and save his tribe from annihilation?” Raine laughed a little. “Are you insane?”

  King looked at him indignantly, a swell of anger resurfacing. “Yeah,” he replied sharply. “A little.”

  Raine raised his hands in conciliatory surrender. “Hey, I’m not criticising your theory, Benny. In fact, to someone who knows jack-shit about this stuff, it all makes a certain amount of sense to me.” He frowned though, troubled. “Two things though. If this Kha’um and the Black Death are the same man, how could the Black Death be seen wielding a golden sword and dagger? I mean, surely they would have been confiscated from Kha’um when he was captured?”

  It was King’s turn to frown. “That’s something I’ve never been able to reconcile,” he admitted.

  “Also, why would Emily Hamilton be hiding in a basement when her house was on fire?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you said the archaeologists found her remains in-”

  “No, they weren’t hers,” King corrected. “The remains they found
were all from males. And they didn’t die because of the fire. They all had indications of blunt force trauma. They were killed before the fire had a chance to finish them off.”

  “But, to have dropped her diary means she was in the basement?”

  “Cellar,” King muttered. “And yes, I presume she must have been. But she made it out and whoever those remains belong to, didn’t.”

  Raine narrowed his eyes at King. “Let me guess. You know who those remains belong to?”

  King looked out across the black expanse of the Amazon far below. “That very same night,” he said, “a lookout post on Jamaica spotted a ship off the coast. They logged and reported its presence but it apparently vanished. The report was never investigated further.”

  Raine eyed the archaeologist. “So . . ?”

  “So . . . the ship flew the Jolly Roger.”

  “The Jolly Roger?” Raine asked, frowning, the magic of the story broken. “Like the Skull and Crossbones?”

  “Yeah,” King said, perplexed.

  Raine laughed. “I thought that was just fictional, something invented for Captain Hook stories!”

  “What?!” King choked. “No, it was-”

  “In fact,” a new, far lovelier sounding and much less slurred voice joined the conversation. “The skull and crossbones image on the Jolly Roger was first recorded in 1687 and has been used by pirates the world over until the present day.”

  “Sid!” Raine and King both jumped to their feet.

  “Glad to see you two boys have made friends,” she said, only half joking. She smiled at Raine, her features distorted by the flash of her head-torch. “Now, if you don’t mind, at two o’clock in the morning, I’d like to steal my, now drunken,” she observed, “boyfriend away to bed.”

  King suddenly looked sheepish. “Sid, I-”

  “Now, say goodnight to your friend, Ben,” she said, mock-motheringly. “It’s time for bed.”

  He looked at Raine and shrugged. “Night.”

  Raine nodded, “Night,” he said.

  Watching their silhouettes fade into the darkness, fingers tentatively touching until firmly holding one another’s hands, Raine felt a pang of emotion, a flash of painful memory of his own fingers tentatively touching and then holding the hand of his own love, in another jungle on a distant continent.

  He blinked the image of her face out of his eyes and took a final swig from the dregs of the bourbon bottle before heading back to the mess tent to find another.

  Sid led King through the maze of tents, wincing as, aided by the bourbon, he tripped on several of the guy-ropes and caused a stir of mumblings from within.

  Eventually they returned to the tent they shared and Sid pulled aside the flap to allow him access. She followed him inside and secured the heavy-duty zip and mosquito net.

  King sat back on his haunches in the centre of his thick sleeping mat and, when she lit a rechargeable lantern, Sid noticed him staring at her. His dark eyes had suddenly sobered and the levity she had seen in him moments before had vanished.

  “McKinney fired me,” he said without preamble.

  Sid was surprised not to hear bitterness in her boyfriend’s tone. Instead, it was a simple statement of the facts.

  “I know,” she admitted.

  “Gloating, was she?”

  She should have known it wouldn’t take long for that bitterness to break through. “She came here looking for me,” she explained, curling onto the mat beside him. “Believe it or not, she heard what had happened in the mess tent and came to explain the probable cause for your actions.” She smiled sadly and laid her warm hand on his shoulder. “Baby, I’m so sorry your theory didn’t pan out.”

  He pulled away from her. “Who says it didn’t pan out?”

  “Nadia’s analysis of the remains-”

  “Suggested that the human remains were from a white man,” he finished for her. “That doesn’t take my theory out of the running. We have a piece of the Moon Mask. There’s no denying that . . .” He trailed off, aware of his girlfriend’s scrutinising gaze. “What?”

  Sid removed her hand from his shoulder and took King’s hands in hers. “Ben. I love you, you know that. And you know I’ve always supported your theories and I’ve defended your crazy ideas,” she laughed but King did not return the gesture. “But its over-” she put a hand up to stop his response. “This quest has gone far enough. You’re a great man, Ben. You have a great mind! Say you’re right. Say the ‘Black Death’ was a real man, say he was a pirate obsessed with finding a relic from his tribe . . . then what?”

  “Then I show McKinney and-”

  “What? What do you show them? That you were right and they were wrong? Whoohoo! So you’ve saved face! But at what cost, Ben? At what cost?” She looked at him longingly but his face remained as impassive as the Moon Mask itself. “Your reputation? Your life?”

  She saw the flash of agony in his eyes. The loss of his father was still raw, a recent wound yet to heal. Reginald King had died for this insane quest. Ben’s entire family had died, one way or another, all to prove the Moon Mask was real. Now, he possibly had a physical piece of that mask. But what did it really prove?

  Sid spoke before King could reply. “I’m coming with you Ben,” she said. “Tomorrow, when you leave.”

  He opened his mouth to protest but Sid put a finger to his lips to silence him. “It’s done,” she shrugged. “I’ve told McKinney.”

  “Why?” King asked, shocked. She had worked hard to get a place on the UNESCO expedition. “This place was your dream assignment!”

  The answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming. Sid’s eyes drifted to the top of the tent, as though peering through the canvass to the starry night sky beyond.

  “Because I love you,” she told him at last. “Because I will sacrifice anything, anything, for you.”

  There was an unspoken question which lingered in her dark eyes. King read it. But will you sacrifice anything - Kha’um, the Moon Mask, the Bouda - for me?

  It was something he had thought a lot about, especially since his father’s death. That loss had made him open his eyes to what he had. A career, prospects – however few – and a beautiful, intelligent woman who he couldn’t stand being without.

  He kept telling himself that the moment just hadn’t presented itself to reach into his satchel and pull out the ring-box concealed within. Yet, somewhere deep inside, he feared the answer to his girlfriend’s question. And it was that fear that had stayed his hand and kept the engagement ring hidden in his bag for over six months.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t love Sid. He did, deeply and truly. Since the day she had walked into the library at Oxford University all those years ago. It hadn’t been some fairy-tale romance. There had been plenty of ups-and-downs, trials and tribulations. Like any relationship.

  Yet, for all the love he felt for her, he knew that a husband needed to be committed, one hundred per cent. He needed to be ready to sacrifice anything, anything, for her. But there was one thing he feared he couldn’t sacrifice.

  The Moon Mask.

  He had thought he could. Following his father’s death, he had sworn to forget all of his ‘crazy’ ideas. Sid had convinced him not to follow his father’s path. He thought he had put the world of the ‘maverick archaeologist’ behind him. Yet his mind always searched for clues to the Moon Mask’s location. His nightmares always replayed that terrible afternoon in Lagos.

  His quest for the Moon Mask was far more than mere scholarly one-upmanship. It was more than fame-seeking, it was more than proving that his father wasn’t a nut-job.

  It was about proving to himself that his mother and sister hadn’t died for nothing all those years ago.

  Could he sacrifice that?

  He knew he needed to tell Sid something. Saw the desire in her eyes. Felt the longing in his heart.

  He reached for his bag. “Sid, I’ve been meaning to ask you something-”


  “Don’t.” She caught his hand and pulled it back. It was as though she had read his mind, his thoughts. She knew his fear.

  Tears flowed down her cheeks. “Don’t say what you don’t mean,” she pleaded.

  “But I-”

  “Just kiss me,” she demanded, cupping his chin in her hands and bringing their lips together.

  In that brief meeting of flesh, all of King’s worries evaporated. The passion grew, the heat intensified.

  Piece by piece their clothing was removed. Inch by inch her hands explored the hard ridges of his muscular body. Kiss by kiss, his lips caressed her silk-smooth cocoa skin.

  For tonight, at least, Benjamin King knew, he could sacrifice himself, if nothing else, to her.

  The dream was the same as the previous night, and the night before that, and every night for as far back as he could remember.

  Nathan Raine ran through the dense underbrush, his athletic legs pumping hard, branches tearing his clothes, whipping his face. The sound of automatic gunfire drilled into the dark sky, accompanied by the screams of the dying and the wails of the mourning-

  “It is not healthy to sleep in such a position.”

  The words jolted him awake and he sat bolt upright in the canvass chair.

  He was in the mess tent, tendrils of sunlight creeping under the canvass as it flapped in the strong morning wind. Stood three feet away, a severe expression blanketing the natural beauty of her face, was Nadia Yashina.

  A mischievous grin split through his sleepy daze. “I can think of a few better positions to sleep in, if you’d care for a demonstration.” He scanned the Russian woman’s body, clad in tight fitting black trousers and a form-hugging khaki vest-top which revealed the merest glimpse of the top of her full, rounded breasts.

  “No doubt you could conjure up numerous experimental bedtime positions more comfortable than that, but I believe you have a number of other candidates who are first in line to be your . . . guinea pig.”