Since he had to wait for electricity, Roberto flew to Lucerne to spend a few days in the office. These days his work with Ciprian Investments primarily was oversight. Philippe was a master at the investment and money management side of things. Roberto had turned those tasks over to his capable partner.
That week in Lucerne the men had drinks and dinner every evening. It was a chance for interaction Roberto had missed while he’d been away in London. Philippe’s feelings were just the opposite. He struggled to appear normal although he could think of nothing but betrayal as he sat with the man he’d believed was his closest friend. For him, the days of easy, casual conversation between friends were over. Now Philippe cared about only one thing. Himself. He listened to his partner to learn things he could use for his own benefit.
Roberto told story after story about the psychotic bookseller. To call him different was a massive understatement. From his strange, awkward demeanor to his startling long gray beard, his penchant for threadbare clothes and his aloofness around those he considered intellectually inferior, Edward wasn’t a man one wanted to socialize with. In fact social wasn’t a word that applied to Edward, unless you used the term socially awkward. There were no convivial dinners between the two of them. It would have been a painful exercise for Roberto and even harder for Edward. He was more comfortable alone.
Roberto told Philippe everything about the astounding secrets in the crypt deep below St. Mary Axe. Hearing the tales, Philippe couldn’t help but be fascinated. It was an incredible discovery. Swallowing his pride and hurt, he asked if he could come to London and see it.
“Let me broach that subject with my new partner Edward Russell.” Roberto laughed. “He plays his hand so close to the vest he can’t even see his cards. I doubt he trusted his own grandparents and it was their basement to begin with. I’ll see if I can convince him to give you a peek.”
They talked about Edward’s eccentricities. Roberto summed it up by saying, “Supposedly there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I think Edward straddles that line continually. And he falls to one side or the other frequently. It’s up to me to figure out which side he’s on when I’m dealing with him. And it’s never easy.”
When he told about Edward offering the tea, Philippe was aghast. “Are you serious? Do you think he was trying to kill you?”
“I doubt it. I think at that point he was on the insanity side of the line. I figure he was going to drug me and force me to tell him what I knew. That’s all over and done with. Not saying we’re friends, but we are civil to each other and it’s beneficial for us to be on the same team. I believe it won’t happen again.”
Philippe struggled to say friendly words to the partner he now loathed. “Just be careful.” Of course he had no idea he was talking to the wet-ops assassin Juan Carlos Sebastian. Careful was something that had been ingrained in him long ago. He’d gotten lax lately, but he’d vowed to keep his eyes wide open from now on.
“Don’t worry. I’ll watch my crazy partner every minute!”
Oh, so you have a new partner, Roberto. Before, I was your only partner. But that’s just a word. To me it meant more, but to you it means nothing. Even crazy Edward Russell’s your partner. It sounds as if he likes you about as much as I do.
——
That afternoon in London Inspector Dalton showed up unannounced at Edward’s store. He waved as he entered and said, “This is your last chance!”
“Last chance for what?” Edward replied.
Glancing at customers all around, he whispered, “Last chance to show me what’s in the room down below.”
“And why is that?”
“I’m retiring at the end of next week. Thirty years catching bad guys. It’s time for some fishing in Scotland. So how about it? Want to satisfy an old man’s appetite for mystery?”
“I’m sorry,” Edward replied, shaking his head. “It’s just not safe.”
Dalton slapped the wiry bookseller on the shoulder and said conspiratorially, “You make me think that’s where you have the bodies buried!”
Edward jumped back, startled both by the shoulder slap and the man’s words.
He replied curtly, “I suppose that’s meant to be a joke. I don’t see it as that funny.”
The policeman shook his head and smiled ruefully. “You need to lighten up, Mr. Russell. You need to get out in the sunshine more and spend less time here with these strange and esoteric objects of yours. I was just joking. Although there is a crypt down there, I believe we decided. I guess that’s where the bodies really are buried!”
Edward bid the officer good luck in his retirement and sent him on his way, relieved to have the man out of his affairs at last.
On Saturday Roberto returned to London. He’d been promised electricity on Monday, and he was ready to get back to work. These days Edward’s bookstore was so busy that the only free time they could work together was on weekends. Roberto got to the shop just as Edward was closing things down. The bookseller was positively exuberant.
“Things have progressed well while you were away. Come on! You have to see this!”
He flipped on the lights and they climbed down into the crypt. “Voila!” He gestured towards the heavy wooden door, now standing wide open. The men could see all the way through the doorway into the dark passage heading south from Roberto’s building.
“Good work! How’d you get the door open?”
“It was simple once I had this.” He held up a very old and very large iron key, caked with rust.
“Amazing! Where’d that come from?”
“From the leader.”
“The leader who holds the key?” Roberto recalled the words carved into the wall by the door.
“The very one!” He continued. “I hope you don’t mind I spent most of my time on your side of things. Once the door was open, I was anxious to see what was down there.” He pointed to the passageway.
“I’d have done the same thing,” Roberto admitted honestly.
Edward said that since there was no electricity he’d bought a spotlight, the kind night fishermen use. Its powerful beam gave him plenty of light for the side walls and thirty feet ahead.
He said he’d walked the entire corridor. It ran fifteen hundred feet and ended at a small opening. One couldn’t see through it, Edward said, because heavy vines and undergrowth covered it. There was also an ancient set of iron bars running from floor to ceiling at the tunnel’s end. Although he could see nothing through the thick growth, he could hear rushing water down below and picked up the unmistakable scent of the river.
“I reached the Thames. My theory is that the Romans built the tunnel as a burial passageway. They created the entrance from the river and the people who erected St. Mary Axe church in the fifth century added the bars for protection. Today I’m sure it’s invisible from the river side, covered with embankment or undergrowth, so it’s been hidden for centuries, I’d guess.”
“And where did you find the key?”
“I counted forty-six bodies lying on the stone ledges. The oldest are furthest down near the river. They’re mostly just bones and ash. You know that many of them have inscriptions beneath them. Once I’d gone all the way, I spent every day while you were gone copying each funerary inscription I could make out. I found poets, orators, teachers, physicians and consuls. But I think one of the very oldest bodies was the most important. His ledge was almost at the end. And interestingly he was laid to rest exactly like the others – no fanfare, nothing special at all.”
Roberto was fascinated. “Was he a general?”
“Better than that. He was Sextus Calpurnius Agricola. He was the Roman governor of Brittania, headquartered here in Londinium. I looked him up. His place of burial has been a mystery for centuries. Now there are two people on Earth who know where old Sextus lies. You and me!”
“Incredible! When was he buried?”
“That I don’t know – his date of death isn’t recorded anywhere I could find. The o
nly dates on his inscription tell when he was governor. 163–164 AD. He probably died not long afterwards.”
“So this key was with his body?”
“Yes. Once I found him, I’d cataloged almost all the inscriptions I could read – maybe forty or so. He was the only ‘leader’ per se. So I rummaged around. In the pile of bones that had once been his upper torso I found this key. I figure it had been around his neck when he was laid to rest. I brought the key back, inserted it, and amazingly it turned on the first try. So now we can pass through the chambers without going out to the street upstairs. Helpful, in my opinion.”
“Great job. Good work!”
Suddenly Edward’s mind boiled. His dark side emerged. Seething on the inside, he struggled to maintain a pleasant facial expression.
You speak to me as though I’m your obedient dog who’s just performed a trick. I’m going to kill you.
Patience. Patience. Good things come to those who wait. And those who plan creative endings to partnerships with rich, pompous asses like this one.
He struggled to mask his hatred of this man. “Thank you. I thought you’d enjoy hearing about what I found.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Edward loved the bookshop, but now he lived for just one thing – the hours after work sitting at his dining table, translating Guinevere’s diaries. He was surprised how the pages struck him. It was as though he were watching a dramatic soap opera, its episodes captured in Guinevere’s stirring words. Tossed together in her daily entries was a hodgepodge of profound sadness, terrifying fear, hopeful gratitude, the grace of a second chance, the lust of an immature girl, the broken heart of a man betrayed. She wrote of many feelings. More interesting were the feelings that were not there – repentance, shame and willingness to change. She was rueful not that she’d slept with other men. What saddened her was that her husband who adored her would find out. What she did caused her no guilt. Her sadness at having cheated resulted not from having done it but simply because Arthur now knew about it. It was clear from the diary that she intended to continue her escapades. She would henceforth be more discreet.
Edward started translating the Queen’s next entries.
In the days after she returned home from London, Guinevere kept to herself and consequently stayed out of trouble. The King was on a grouse hunt when they arrived back at Camelot, and she wept tears of gratitude, thankful she didn’t have to face him right now. It would happen soon, but she thought it better if Lancelot broke the news to him rather than Guinevere’s pretending everything was all right until he learned of her betrayal.
She hadn’t spoken to Lancelot since the night he’d caught her in the throes of climax with Lamorak. When he rode away one afternoon, she presumed he was going to find his master and reveal her misdeeds. He’d tell at least one of them – the one involving Lamorak. She didn’t expect him to confess his own sins.
Shortly after Arthur’s return from hunting, Guinevere’s world began to collapse. Lancelot had done the unthinkable. Far more than just a loyal servant, the knight and Arthur had long been very close friends. They confided secrets – private thoughts, plans and plots known to them alone. Until now Lancelot had kept his biggest secret hidden – the fact that he’d had sexual relations not once but dozens of times with the Queen, Arthur’s beloved wife Guinevere.
This time the knight had come clean. Lancelot told the King not only about Lamorak’s sexual escapade – he admitted he’d done it with her himself. Lancelot, the king’s best friend and confidant, confessed he’d had intercourse time and again with the love of Arthur’s life.
Most of those at Camelot presumed Arthur already knew his wife was a deceitful, conniving, lying whore who had slept with a dozen men or more since her marriage to the much older king. Everyone in the castle was aware – she was so blatant about it that surely the King knew too. Perhaps he chose to ignore his beautiful, sexual young wife’s dalliances – the entire court could see that his love for her was boundless. He treated her with the utmost respect and attention. He was repaid with the same love and affection she also liberally shared with others. Maybe he was willing to accept this because he treasured life with her more than life without.
For a week the King had been back on the isle of Avalon, but this time things were different. Suddenly the royal couple slept in separate wings of the castle and was never together except at dinner. The servers whispered gossip about how they sat at opposite ends of the huge dining table, saying nothing during their meals. It was sad, they all remarked. It cast a pall over Camelot, a place that had once rung with laughter.
The Queen normally saw Lancelot at least once a day here or there, but since the King had returned, Lancelot and Lamorak were nowhere to be seen. For days they’d been absent from the castle and its vast grounds. The Queen dared not ask her husband about them, and her trusted handmaidens could find out nothing. The men had vanished.
One evening at dinner Arthur broke the silence that accompanied their meals.
“I lead the men into battle against the Angles and Saxons tomorrow. It promises to be a difficult time and I pray our soldiers shall have success. We Britons are strong and well trained. Pray, my Queen, that I may have steadfast and firm leadership of the contingent of brave knights who shall accompany me.”
What he said next saddened her greatly, her diary reflected.
“Although you have not inquired, I will tell you that Lancelot and Lamorak have been leading an advance party near Bathampton Down, some fifteen miles north of here. Their reports have allowed us to prepare for the offensive we must mount in order to defeat our enemy.”
“My darling–” Guinevere began. But he cut her off, raising his hand from his seat at the far end of the table. His voice was quiet and sad but determined.
“Not now, my Queen. If the Lord wills it, I will return. We shall see then what He may have in store for Arthur and Guinevere. Until then I must keep my mind clear and focused for battle.”
He rose from the table and left the room. She would not see him again for ten weeks.
With most of its warriors away, the castle was quiet. A small contingency remained to guard Camelot, but daily activities were accomplished without the usual fanfare, laughter and interaction to which Guinevere was accustomed. People performed their duties with heads hung low, speaking quietly to each other. It made Guinevere sad, so she was determined to uplift everyone’s spirits. She danced gaily around the courtyards, laughed and joked with her servants and retinues. But nothing worked. They didn’t respond. They merely looked at her with reproach, shook their heads and went about their duties.
She approached Merlin one afternoon and asked why everyone seemed upset with her. “Why are they not smiling? I laugh but no one laughs with me.”
It must have been hard to write his harsh response in her secret diary. “Foolish girl. The entire castle knows you betrayed your husband and wrenched his best friend from his side. You have stolen his very spirit. Now he and his men – many of them your lovers – have gone into battle, a fight from which none may return. Yet you laugh. You smile. You want things to be as they were. Have you not noticed you are the only one who smiles? And of every soul who lives here at Camelot, have you not learned by now that you are the cause of their sadness?”
The next words must have been the most difficult.
Merlin said, “Leave me alone. Leave us all alone. Depart from here. Especially from the man who loves you. He deserves better.” The king’s magician walked away.
——
The diary entries became more subdued and less wordy. It took Guinevere several weeks to decide her libido needed stroking, so at last she again set out on the hunt. Her diary recorded in detail the results of her activities. On each of three days she approached a handsome man who caught her eye. One was a palace guard who conveniently stood watch in her wing of the castle at night. Two others were grooms, working in the king’s stables. There were plenty of empty stalls there with all the m
en off to war, and there was nothing like the smell of fresh hay around naked bodies, she thought with a grin.
But something unexpected had happened.
Each of them had turned her down.
It was done respectfully, no doubt. The men must have been afraid how she might retaliate if she felt spurned. But, Edward thought as he read, each mustered the strength of his convictions and chose the high road. Each man turned down a sexual romp with the lusty, exciting young Queen of England.
Confused and astounded, Guinevere pondered how this turn of events could have happened to her. Naively unwilling to blame herself, she decided their loyalty to her husband and their fear of the war made the men impotent. It must be that – they couldn’t perform, so they passed up the opportunity rather than face embarrassment in their Queen’s bed.
The sexually charged twenty-four-year-old girl had fantasized for days about each of her three upcoming trysts, but nothing had materialized. She was primed for action but had no partner. So she did the only thing she could think of. After her lady-in-waiting undressed her that evening, the naked Queen seduced the girl instead. It wasn’t perfect but, as her diary faithfully recorded, any port in a storm.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
One hundred and sixty miles southwest of London is the ancient city of Glastonbury. Glestingaburg, the town’s Anglo-Saxon name, was established in the Iron Age around the time of Christ’s birth. It is said Joseph of Arimathea visited here in the first century AD, and the place features prominently in the legend of King Arthur. Ages ago Glastonbury Tor, the highest point in the area, was surrounded by a lake. For centuries it has been reputed to be the actual isle of Avalon. According to legend, Avalon was the location of the magical castle Camelot, the home of Arthur and Guinevere.
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