A Game Of Swans

Chpt 12 - (Un)Lucky

At 6pm sharp, the four of us had reconvened back at the docks as agreed.

The sun wasn't quite setting yet, but it had lowered in the sky, the first tinges of an orange sunset dancing next to the blue of the sky and the sea.

My walk back with Arthur had been a silent one, filled with him throwing concerned looks in my direction, and eyeing the visible cut and bruises on my temple, which I had to admit were now throbbing so bad that fighting off the headache that had ensued was becoming impossible. The minor bruises around my neck did nothing but increase my discomfort, which the more serious bruises on my stomach also contributed to.

I was definitely going to have to check on those when I had a moment alone.

As the Englishman and I approached the docks, Antonio and Francis waved at us. Judging by the looks on their faces - two identical grins - they had found something useful. Some tension evaporated out of me. I hope they have.

"Hola, mis amigos!" greeted Antonio, "How nice of you to join us!"

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Whatever, you Spanish monkey, we're on time."

Francis was the first to notice my injury, and he frowned at me. "What happened to you, mon chéri?"

I waved him off with an air of nonchalance. "Nothing, I got into a minor scuffle. Besides, that's of little consequence at the moment. Did you two find anything useful?"

Arthur sent me a curious glance, and Antonio and Francis shot each other a brief look before the moment passed and Antonio began sharing what him and the Frenchman had found.

"It's not much, mis amigos, but one of the older fishermen managed to point us in the direction of a small, now unused Docking House about an hour and a half's walk along the coast. It went out of commission in 1523 when Portugal stopped using it as a back-up storage area for carrack ships. Most of it was in ruins, but some logs were still there."

"And?" cut in Arthur, who seemed to be bouncing on his heels in what I guessed must have been excitement, "What did you find?"

"As Antonio said, mes amies, not much," Francis began, "But, we were lucky enough to find half of a record on the Flor de la Mar. It was a 400 ton Portuguese carrack built in Lisbon in 1502 under the command of a man named Lord Pascoal Filipe Tiago, and captained by Alfonso de Albuquerque. The logs said that the ship and crew were apparently expected to return here to Funchal around 1511, but they never showed up."

"The Flor de la Mar got caught in a violent storm," joined Arthur as he connected some of the dots of this information with our own, "(Y/N) and I visited the priest in the cathedral and then an old bookshop in the centre of town. They had a few books on ships from the 1500s. The disappearance of the Flor de la Mar was considered one of the biggest mysteries of the 1500s, but it eventually faded from most history because very few people knew about it's voyage."

Francis and Antonio both had hopeful expressions growing on their faces as Arthur spoke.

I took a moment to silently thank Arthur for not mentioning the part where I threatened the priest, stormed off, and then got into a bar fight before he found me a few hours later.

"Did you find any information about where it might have gone, mis amigos?" Antonio asked.

"Yes and no," I answered, "In another book about the biggest shipwreck mysteries of the 1500s, there was a small passage that spoke about a shipwreck that occurred in the Cocos 'Keeling' Islands, a remote territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean. No one knows what ship it was or who was on it, because by the time the shipwreck had been discovered, there were no survivors. In fact, there were no people on it at all. It was like they'd all just... disappeared. But get this:" I stared at them all intently. "Whatever ship it was, it had apparently been caught in a violent storm around 1511, which caused its shipwreck."