flicked the halves apart with a thumbnail. Unsure of what he expected, to see—a tiny painted portrait or a precious curl of hair—he was moderately surprised to see a coin. A Spanish escudo to be precise.
He started to lift his free hand in a gesture of confusion but then his gaze flew back down and he stared hard at the small silver coin. After a moment, he drew the oil lamp closer and turned the wick brighter, slanting the coin this way and that in the light, inspecting every tiny detail.
"Where did you get this?"
"It was in the packet of letters my father sent me,” she said quietly. “It came a year after he sailed on the Gull ."
"Just so? He put the coin into a letter and sent it to you?"
"Not exactly. It was on the letter, not in it. But I think it was deliberate. He knew I, alone, would find it."
"Explain."
Eva moistened her lips. "When I was a little girl, Father would send letters back from wherever his business ventures took him, mostly to France and Italy and the Netherlands. He would seal them with discs of wax and when he discovered that I carefully peeled off the discs and saved them, he started sending them in various colors and shapes, some with fancy designs pressed into the wax. The seals that came on the letters he sent from the Indies were thick and bold. Three peeled off with no trouble; the fourth cracked against the knife as I tried to take it off."
"The coin was inside?"
Eva nodded. "At first I thought it was part of the game, for he was always testing me with riddles and hiding messages inside of messages. I broke the other three disks, found three more coins, and thought myself very clever for having found them. There again, he had always sent little trinkets or coins home when he was away, so I thought nothing of it and simply tossed them into a drawer and all but forgot about them."
Dante was still studying the coin, but when she stopped talking, he glanced up. "What made you think of them again?"
"As you can imagine, when the one year absence stretched into two, then three without any further word, I kept reading and re-reading his letters. Seeing his handwriting was the closest thing to contact that I had, and it kept me believing that he was still alive. In the last letter he wrote, his words and thoughts seemed to be more scattered. He mentioned the ancient Greek poem Argonautica and Jason's quest for the golden fleece. It was as if he was trying to tell me something but not saying it outright. I tried every trick I could think of, every cipher we had used in the past, even waded through the wretched poem in Latin, no less. Nothing really fell together until I remembered the coins and thought perhaps the clue was there; that the key to his message might be in the coins.”
Dante held the open locket in his hand with the chain draped over his long, blunt-tipped fingers. He used the point of a jewelled dagger to pry the escudo free and flip it onto the desk. “Go on. What did you find out about them?”
“The year the coins were minted is clearly stamped: 1586. Beyond that I wasn't sure what all the markings meant."
“Did you show them to anyone else?”
She answered with a troubled nod. “I needed help from someone who could access the naval records.”
"Go on. What were you told about the coins?"
Eva's eyes showed a spark of eagerness for the first time. "According to the markings and the year it was minted, the escudos were part of a silver shipment placed on board a galleon that was lost at sea. The NSV on the face of the coin identified the ship as the Nuestra Senora de Valencera . It was wrecked in a storm that year on its voyage home to Spain."
Dante took a slow sip of wine as he studied the flush in Eva's cheeks and the rather remarkable shade of green that her eyes took on when she was excited. It took no special powers of perception to guess that she believed her father had discovered a shipwrecked galleon with a cargo bay full of silver coins.
The problem, of
He started to lift his free hand in a gesture of confusion but then his gaze flew back down and he stared hard at the small silver coin. After a moment, he drew the oil lamp closer and turned the wick brighter, slanting the coin this way and that in the light, inspecting every tiny detail.
"Where did you get this?"
"It was in the packet of letters my father sent me,” she said quietly. “It came a year after he sailed on the Gull ."
"Just so? He put the coin into a letter and sent it to you?"
"Not exactly. It was on the letter, not in it. But I think it was deliberate. He knew I, alone, would find it."
"Explain."
Eva moistened her lips. "When I was a little girl, Father would send letters back from wherever his business ventures took him, mostly to France and Italy and the Netherlands. He would seal them with discs of wax and when he discovered that I carefully peeled off the discs and saved them, he started sending them in various colors and shapes, some with fancy designs pressed into the wax. The seals that came on the letters he sent from the Indies were thick and bold. Three peeled off with no trouble; the fourth cracked against the knife as I tried to take it off."
"The coin was inside?"
Eva nodded. "At first I thought it was part of the game, for he was always testing me with riddles and hiding messages inside of messages. I broke the other three disks, found three more coins, and thought myself very clever for having found them. There again, he had always sent little trinkets or coins home when he was away, so I thought nothing of it and simply tossed them into a drawer and all but forgot about them."
Dante was still studying the coin, but when she stopped talking, he glanced up. "What made you think of them again?"
"As you can imagine, when the one year absence stretched into two, then three without any further word, I kept reading and re-reading his letters. Seeing his handwriting was the closest thing to contact that I had, and it kept me believing that he was still alive. In the last letter he wrote, his words and thoughts seemed to be more scattered. He mentioned the ancient Greek poem Argonautica and Jason's quest for the golden fleece. It was as if he was trying to tell me something but not saying it outright. I tried every trick I could think of, every cipher we had used in the past, even waded through the wretched poem in Latin, no less. Nothing really fell together until I remembered the coins and thought perhaps the clue was there; that the key to his message might be in the coins.”
Dante held the open locket in his hand with the chain draped over his long, blunt-tipped fingers. He used the point of a jewelled dagger to pry the escudo free and flip it onto the desk. “Go on. What did you find out about them?”
“The year the coins were minted is clearly stamped: 1586. Beyond that I wasn't sure what all the markings meant."
“Did you show them to anyone else?”
She answered with a troubled nod. “I needed help from someone who could access the naval records.”
"Go on. What were you told about the coins?"
Eva's eyes showed a spark of eagerness for the first time. "According to the markings and the year it was minted, the escudos were part of a silver shipment placed on board a galleon that was lost at sea. The NSV on the face of the coin identified the ship as the Nuestra Senora de Valencera . It was wrecked in a storm that year on its voyage home to Spain."
Dante took a slow sip of wine as he studied the flush in Eva's cheeks and the rather remarkable shade of green that her eyes took on when she was excited. It took no special powers of perception to guess that she believed her father had discovered a shipwrecked galleon with a cargo bay full of silver coins.
The problem, of
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