Free Moon Mask by James Richardson Page B

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