Hidden in the Jungle

Before Soren could ask what he meant, Henrik Vogler came through the tavern door. Soren saw him before the man reached the table and knew from the deliberate way he crossed the room that the meeting had not been accidental. Vogler had been sent to protect the financier's interests, and since leaving Copenhagen he had taken that responsibility to mean keeping himself informed of nearly everything Soren did.

He pulled out the remaining chair and sat without ceremony. His linen was still remarkably clean for a man who had spent the afternoon among warehouses and loading crews, and the lighter coat he had chosen for the climate seemed scarcely to trouble him. A flintlock pistol rode at his belt. Vogler glanced once at the coin on the table before Soren returned it to his pocket.

“I wondered where you had gone.”

“The supplies are nearly aboard.”

“I know. I have been counting them.”

That was characteristic of Vogler. He had no objection to unpleasant work when money was involved, particularly if the money belonged to someone else and he had been charged with watching it. He had already discovered errors in two manifests since they arrived and had made certain Soren heard about both.

Vogler looked across the table at Alfonzo. “Have you persuaded the Father to join us?”

“Not yet.”

“Then I hope you are having better luck with him than you did with the powder merchant. We paid too much for the last six tins.”

Soren did not rise to it. “Father Alfonzo knows the upper river.”

“So I have heard.”

The priest regarded Vogler without much interest. “And you are the man paying for this?”

“My employer is.”

“He believes there is gold inland?”

Vogler's attention shifted to Soren before he answered. “Master Lundgaard gave him reason to believe so.”

There was no need for Soren to argue over the wording. He had done exactly that. In Copenhagen he had displayed the strange coin, portions of the map, and several old accounts of expeditions that had entered the interior and failed to return. He had spoken of the possibility of a ruined city, perhaps a temple, and of the wealth the Spaniards had spent generations seeking. Without those promises no sane investor would have paid for ships, equipment, wages, provisions, and arms on the strength of an old piece of parchment.

Alfonzo looked from Vogler to Soren. “And if you find nothing?”

Vogler answered before Soren could. “Then my employer loses a considerable sum, and Lundgaard returns home owing considerably more than he did when we left.”

The priest's expression suggested that this explained more than Soren wished it to.

The truth was plain enough. The Lundgaard family had possessed land, silver, books, and a respectable house when Soren was a boy. By the time his father's accounts were finally opened to him, much of the land had already been pledged and the income from what remained could no longer carry the debts. Pieces of the household had been sold quietly at first. More would be sold if he returned without anything to show for the expedition. The library would likely go before winter. After that, the house itself would not be far behind.

Soren had not crossed the Atlantic merely because he enjoyed old maps.

Neither had he crossed it because he was foolish enough to believe every dying sailor's story. The map had structure. Its measurements belonged to a man who had traveled the country he described, and the coin in Soren's pocket belonged to no European mint he knew. Those facts were slender, but they were facts.

Vogler knew the rest.

“He will have his accounting when we return,” Soren said.

“I expect he will.”

Alfonzo rubbed the edge of his crucifix with one thumb. “You have both spent so much that turning back now would be harder than going forward.”

Vogler gave the priest a brief look of approval. “You understand business.”

“I understand pride.”

Soren let the remark pass. He had not come to argue theology or finance. “I need a man who can tell me where loaded boats can travel safely, which settlements will trade with us, and which languages we are likely to hear. I am not asking you to lead us into the place marked on the map. If you decide you have gone far enough, you can turn back.”

Alfonzo studied him for some time. The tavern noise carried on around them while a man near the door laughed over something Soren could not hear, and somewhere in the rear of the building a bottle struck the floor and broke. None of it seemed to reach the priest.

When he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its resistance. He told Soren that the river was already rising from rains farther inland and that channels safe for a loaded boat could change quickly. Men hired at the port might know the lower reaches well but become nearly as ignorant as Europeans once they passed beyond the places where they usually traded. Some settlements would welcome iron tools, cloth, salt, or knives; others had good reasons to distrust armed strangers. Knowing the language of one people did not mean a man could speak with the next.

Soren listened without interruption. This was the knowledge he had come to find, and Alfonzo knew it.

At last the priest asked how many men were going. Soren described the two boats, the hired oarsmen and porters, the sailors, Gunnar Holm, and Lars Pihl. He explained that they carried powder and shot enough for hunting and defense, tools for cutting a trail when necessary, trade goods, medical supplies, and provisions to keep them independent until they could judge what was available inland.

Alfonzo was not impressed by the preparations, but neither did he dismiss them. He had seen worse men enter the interior with less.

“I will go with you for a time,” he said eventually. “Not because I believe this journey is wise. If you insist upon going, someone should at least keep you from making every mistake available to a foreigner.”

Vogler gave a quiet sound that might have been amusement, but Soren ignored him.

“When you choose to return,” Soren said, “no one will prevent you.”

The priest nodded. He had agreed to nothing concerning the temple itself, and Soren understood that pressing him further would accomplish little. It was enough that he would come.

They left the tavern together and returned toward the river. Vogler went ahead when they reached the warehouses, drawn back to the loading as naturally as another man might have been drawn to a card table. Alfonzo disappeared briefly to collect his belongings while Soren continued to the quay.

The expedition was taking shape there without ceremony. The boats had been pulled close against the pilings and loaded according to Gunnar Holm's judgment rather than the original lists. He had found a water cask leaking around one hoop and sent it back, shifted several sacks lower in the lead boat, and moved two tins of powder after deciding the first arrangement left them too near the wettest part of the cargo. Gunnar was a large man, but his usefulness had never depended solely upon strength. Years of soldiering and hard employment afterward had taught him that badly packed supplies could ruin a journey as surely as an ambush.

He worked in his shirtsleeves among the hired men, lifting when lifting was needed and otherwise letting men do the work they had been paid to do. Soren asked about the boats, and Gunnar gave him the necessary facts without turning the report into a complaint. The leaking cask had been replaced, the loads were balanced, and the local boatmen were satisfied with the draft. One man had warned that they would need to shift weight again if the upper channels became shallow. Gunnar had already told him to speak up when they reached such water.

That was why Soren trusted him.

Lars Pihl had found shade against the warehouse wall and was using the last quiet minutes to work in his journal. Soren saw the drawing when he passed: the harbor, church tower, warehouses, and several ships reduced to careful lines. Lars had marked the river level against the pilings and added notes concerning wind and weather beside the sketch.

Soren stopped long enough to examine the page. One distance had been estimated too closely and entered without qualification. He pointed it out, expecting an explanation. Lars looked again toward the church tower, admitted he had guessed from the quay, and marked the figure as an estimate rather than erasing it.

Soren handed the journal back.

Lars had been hired for his pen and mathematics, but that small correction mattered more to Soren than either. An expedition could survive an error entered honestly. It could not survive records altered to protect the pride of the man keeping them.

By then Vogler had returned to the second boat and was comparing the ammunition crates against his ledger. Gunnar answered the questions that mattered and continued working. Neither man liked the other much, but both understood that the powder had to be dry and accounted for, which gave them enough common purpose for the moment.

Father Alfonzo arrived carrying a single leather bag. Several men on the quay knew him. One crossed himself as the priest passed; another stopped work and watched him climb into the lead boat. Alfonzo gave no sign that he had noticed either reaction.

The sun had fallen lower while Soren was in the tavern, and the worst of the glare had gone from the river, though the heat remained. The provisions were secured beneath oiled canvas, the water casks wedged where they could not roll, and the last of the trade goods had been divided between the boats. Soren went over the loads once himself before checking the compass at his belt. The needle settled where it should.

Around him the hired men spoke quietly about the country ahead. Gunnar had heard enough in the market to know that some of them disliked the upper river. One called a particular stretch cursed; another said hunters avoided camping there because animals disappeared from the forest long before a man reached it. Alfonzo heard the talk from his place in the boat and did not contradict them.

Soren found that more interesting than the stories themselves. Men who worked rivers and forests learned to recognize dangers that never appeared on charts. A place without game might mean bad water, disease, poor soil, flood ground, or something else a stranger would fail to notice until it harmed him. He had no objection to caution built from experience. What he distrusted was the point at which observation ended and superstition began.

For now, the compass at his belt still knew the difference.