July, 2022, Outer Banks, North Carolina

Month Zero

It was the perfect cover. How could he had been so stupid as to have not thought of it? His mother, found, and now dead; his father: never met, and also dead.

But they must have loved each other once, loved each other enough to have left him in a place they thought would care about him.

Him.

Aidan Limbrey. Only not Limbrey, but Drummond. Aidan Drummond. It was the name of his adoptive parents, also dead.

But not by his hand. No-one was dead because of him. Yet, like his hero, he had also left Bristol. Not to fight in Queen Anne's War, but for this.

Also, not Aidan. His adoptive father had been an amateur metal detectorist in his spare time, and the early medieval period was his passion. Pre-Saxon Britain. His spare room had been a shrine to the Celtic Christian church - he had been named after one of the Lindisfarne saints - and many a weekend Brian Drummond had taken Aidan around to different places to dig things up. Mainly ring pulls. But once, a coin. A Queen Anne coin, which he was able to keep because it was not valuable enough to be treasure trove. Brian Drummond must have known about its twin, in the Drummonds' loft of their 1960s semi-detached house in the suburbs of Bristol.

And yet, it was only after they had died that Aidan had discovered the truth of his birth, and the circumstances of his parents, being childless, and being offered a good deal of money to take on a baby, so long as they asked few questions and offered no answers should anyone come calling. Aidan had sold all he could and had left his anonymous Bristol life behind. The house, rented from the council, had reverted back to them.

A Pakistani family was now living in the rooms Aidan had once called home, for he was, because of the private adoption, in no position to put in a claim for, techinically, he didn't exist. A few grand in his pocket, and a few clues about his origins, and the reason - Edward Teach - as to why his parents had been in Bristol in the first place.

So Aidan had decided to do what Mr. Drummond always hoped to do every Sunday in some anonymous field or other - strike gold.

The sunlight was different here, more brilliant, more direct, and it shone on the facets of the coin, making the detail on its obverse clearer. He peered closer, looking at the face of a forgotten queen, sandwiched between a devisive WIlliam of Orange and the first King George. She had done so much, yet she was barely even thought of. And there she was, looking refined, noble, as she looked to the left of the metal disc in his hand, being a symbol as well as a tangible fact that Edward Teach had indeed been real.

It was real to Aidan too; his father had given it to him - his adoptive father, Aidan reminded himself. Not that the man had ever given him anything but love, no matter what trouble he had caused him, and his adoptive mother.

Guilt bit into Aidan as he thought about all he had done, fourteen, and coming in late, skiving off from school to smoke and drink. Petty theft, coming home not at all for a week having gone to the banks of the Severn estuary and slept in a tent on the mudflats with his best friend, as they caught eels the old fashioned way and dreamed of living that restless way for the rest of their lives.

And still he had the coin. It was the one thing that meant something to him, that sparked an interest in him. One thing that had brought him to Figure Eight, to work in service to a group of people that another group of people called "Kooks". Rich, Tory-voting bastards, that was what Aidan would call them, had he been at home. But North Carolina wasn't home, it wasn't Bristol, it wasn't Britain.

When had he known he needed to leave? When he found the letters, when his parents had died? The adoption papers. His mother had been from a rich family, his father from a poor family. And yet a third man had been involved, putting Aidan away from all three, together. He had loved his mother, this third man, loved her so much that he had paid for Mr. and Mrs. Drummond to privately adopt Aidan when his natural mother had gone into labour and his natural father had left her alone. It was her coin Aidan now held. The date was important, as was the place. Charles Town, South Carolina.

But that man was dead now, too, killed in some sort of treasure-hunting adventure, where the gold of El Dorado had been found. Money even to rival that of mother, whose wealth had come from the sweat and the tears of slaves. Carla Limbrey had been in Bristol looking for clues for Edward Teach that would lead her and Aidan's father to the so-called lost treasure of Blackbeard.

Aidan Drummond smiled as he thought of how he was now sitting under the nose of the very people whose patriarch had been pulling the strings all those years ago. How none of the Cameron family knew of Aidan's existence. How easy it had been to be in service to the rich bastards, who saw the poor as mere living white goods, to be treated with as much disdain and as little thought as a washing machine.

The treasure was not lost, however. No. The treasure was right there, in Charles Town. Aidan blinked into the bright sun as he used the pressure washer on the decking behind the house.

"And when you have finished that, you can take the cover off the pool," he heard Rafe Cameron's voice calling from beside it. "Get the neutraliser for the algae and put it right."

"Yes, sir," Aidan called, swallowing a couple of times to get the accent right. If he spoke how he naturally spoke, his cover would be blown. He slipped the sovereign back into his pocket, the coin secure though the hole in its centre by a chain that was attached to his shorts belt loop.

Rafe Cameron's sister had, at least, stopped moping and looked a little happier. He was pleased about that - the whole group of them were very shaken up when they had returned from Venezuela - he had nearly been caught the second night they had returned, when they had become all angsty and sat up all night smoking weed and drinking, lamenting how both Ward Cameron and John Routledge were dead chasing after the metal that they both longed for, their friends similarly bemoaning their own lives, while living pretty well, considering people Aidan had known, who had no money and little hope, living one day to the next from milk stolen from doorsteps and food stolen from supermarkets.

"I'll just have to get used to my brother being in charge," Sarah Cameron had said to John B, as Aidan had listened to their conversation. It had been a brilliant story, and Aidan knew that it would be far-fetched if he was not, himself, undertaking something similar himself. Though he had never known Carla Limbrey, he wished he could tell them that he had lost a parent too. The cloth that she had put so much store had killed her, in the end. But, not before Aidan had sat beside her bed - knelt beside it - and held her hand, telling her who he was. She had turned her head, and taken his hand, kissing the back of it, tears in her eyes.

And then she had told him who his natural father was. Aidan knew, of course, from the letter he had burned after his parents had gone. What would he have done had the new gas fire they had been so proud of installing not been faulty, not killed them, silently, in their sleep? He had not been able to say goodbye. But having spent another night out with his best friend, Dougie Mourne had, in fact, saved his life.

The money he had inherited had then meant he could quit Bristol and begin his search for his family. And for the gold.

"And get me another beer, while you're at it," Rafe Cameron told him, lazily.

"Yes, sir," Aidan deferred, folding back the pool covering and adding the neutraliser. Had Ward Cameron, who had paid all that money because of his love for Carla Limbrey to his adoptive parents known about Blackbeard? He had been a manipulative man, a liar, a thief, with few morals, and that had got him where he wanted to be in life.

Stepping into the cool of the kitchen, Aidan paused and breathed in the air conditioning. Had he known? His natural father? He and Carla Limbrey had been scouring Britain for evidence of the Blackbeard treasure for months, after all, and they had naturally ended up in Bristol.

"No, I just want to be alone!" A door slammed and the voice and figure of Sarah Cameron trailed into the hall and stormed up the stairs. She and John B were living back in the house now, with what seemed like a ceasefire between her and her brother.

John B.

How close they were in age. Had their mothers known one another? And there he was, storming straight past Aidan and after his wife. Aidan knew that less than two years before John Booker Routledge had been in the same position he had been - Aidan could not help but know, the amount of talking they did about it.

"And get one for yourself," Rafe Cameron called to Aidan, as he walked briskly towards the patio doors. It was a coke for Aidan, in the end, to ensure a clear head, as Rafe called him over and patted a patio chair beside him. Aidan stopped suddenly, and looked the now-owner of Tannyhill.

"Now, you asked for Saturday off," Rafe said to Aidan. It had been a risk, to approach him directly. He usually went to the head groundsman, but the man had been ill for some time. If he was going to get to the Charles Town museum he would need two days off in a row, an overnight stop.

"I...I was going to ask Mr. Henrys to ask you himself, whether my two days off could be consecutive," Aidan said to Rafe, clearly. He would not look away; Aidan was here on his own terms, after all. Not that Rafe Cameron knew that. As far as he knew, Aidan was a relative of Janet Brooks, whose family owned the marina up the coast from Figure Eight.

Rafe Cameron stopped for a moment, as if something had occurred to him in that instant. Then, he took a sip of the beer that Ais had brought out for him and waved his hand in his direction.

"As long as all your work is done," he told him. Then, after another sip, Rafe Cameron turned over on the sun lounger and laid his face on his folded arms. Elation flooded through Aidan. Two days in a row. Charles Town. Or Charleston, as it was called.

Enough time to continue his search with the only clue he had: it had been used as a drinking vessel by the governor of South Carolina at a dinner back in the 1930s.

But, after that, what had happened to the skull of Edward Teach?