by K. T. Tomb
“But the Church did not find out who held the Grail until a hundred years later. They found out the Hospitallers had moved it from Aleppo, but they never knew where it was. The Knights by then were the rulers of Rhodes, and soon they became the rulers of Malta. The Church and every other entity in the world have tried to find it, but they know not where it is. The Sovereign Council of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta are the only ones who know the Grail is in Santarém, but even they don’t know the location. Of course they have looked for it, but they are content not knowing because to know where the Grail is held is to know where the power to control the world can be gained. And this is a power no single man or woman should have.
“It has fallen to my family to guard it. My ancestor was a daughter of Fra’ Fernando Afonso, and he trusted only her with the location. Every woman in my family has showed one of her daughters ‘or granddaughters’ this place and we have guarded it these centuries past. We have guarded it from the Spanish, from the Portuguese, from the raiding and ultimately defeated French and from the victorious drunken rabble of the British. A single woman guards this place, simply because she is raised to understand this power must never be used. When I die, my granddaughter will guard this place. And she will have a daughter who will guard the Grail after her.”
Cash sat in silence. She was speechless. The woman made sense. The earth was born in chaos and would never be calm or controlled by a single person or state. The Holy Grail was too sacred. It was too important for anyone to control, and yet, she felt the desire to take it. She had searched for it this past month, but she felt as if she had been looking for it her whole life. In a way she had been, like most people in the world. She had grown up with the stories of King Arthur and his knights, of their quest for the Holy Grail. Stories had been based on it and songs and films were made about them all. Even the stories of Sinbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers and Aladdin were based on the same theme. They urged the quest for a sacred treasure. In a way every person in the world looked for this old silver cup and had been looking for it from moments after they were born.
“Cash! Cash! Where are you?”
Tim’s voice shouted from up the hill.
Cash did not reply.
“You have to choose now. I cannot stop you taking it, I can only rely on your judgment to do the right thing.”
“Cash!”
Cash hesitated. She wanted to take the cup, but she could not. Her heart wanted to take it, but her head told her she should not.
“Cash!”
Cash crawled back to the entrance. She nodded to the woman in the shadows and crawled back out.
“Here! I got on a ledge!”
“Thank God!” Tim sounded intensely relieved. “She’s still there.” He said to someone beside him. “Can you get out if we throw you a rope or should we send someone down?”
“Just throw me the rope!”
A thick cable with a harness was lowered gently toward the sound of her voice and she strapped herself in.
“Heave!”
Up on the road there was a truck with that familiar cross. Two men held the rope as another helped her with the harness and then began to treat her injuries. Cash would not let him. The moment she was free from the harness she hugged her husband.
“Can we go home now?”
Chapter Ten
Cash said goodbye to Tim at the airport in Lisbon. He had to go back to San Francisco; there was nothing either of them could do about that. They would work something out at some point. She had decided she needed some peace to organize her thoughts. There were feelings and thoughts to work through, and she had to make a start on her book.
She sent most of her things to Barry in a package and bought a road bike and some biking gear. It was an expensive kit, but she wanted to clear her head. Nothing worked as well as riding through the country. She had done it for years and she wanted the calm it gave.
She set out from Lisbon on a sunny morning and rode North through the Portuguese countryside. Her route took her through all those fields to Coimbra and then further north, into Spain, to Santiago de Compostela. She visited the Cathedral and stayed at one of the pilgrim’s inns that still stood along this ancient route. She would travel that route for a while as well. It was not the great pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but possibly the most travelled in the world; the route between Lourdes and Santiago de Compostela. Saint James in the Fields the name meant. Saint James was supposed to have appeared here, and somehow it did seem fitting she pass here. James had been one of the disciples and been present at the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. He had been there when that simple silver cup had become the Holy Grail, an object that would drive men mad for centuries to come.
Every day she rode on, collecting her thoughts, and every evening she would pull out her laptop and sit down to write. Her route kept taking her along the coast, past A Coruña and through Asturias into Cantabria. By the time she boarded the ferry to Plymouth in Santander she had been riding for two weeks and had finished several chapters.
She relished the sea air, the calm of the days on the boat and the mad nights on board. When she began her trip from Plymouth to Wales she was the happiest she had been in a very long time. There was company here but she had peace and quiet when she wanted it. The writing moved on and she wrote whenever her head was clear and her mind set on writing.
Coming in to Plymouth she cycled on again. She took two days to ride the long way around by way of Glastonbury and Bristol to Cardiff and then down to her home. She wanted to go via Glastonbury. It was the place where King Arthur’s Avalon had been, or Merlin’s Tor, according to the legends. It was where William Blake had placed Joseph of Aramathea and the Grail in his extolment of England’s virtues in his great poems. It too seemed to fit right in with her journey of the last weeks.
Tim was waiting for her in Barry. He would have to go back to San Francisco again soon. He had been given tenure now and it would be career suicide for him to give that up. Cash understood that only too well but he understood Cash could not go back to that. They agreed they would travel, and of course spend the summers together, doing what they had always enjoyed doing together the most. During the summers they would visit those places they had always been intrigued by, they would help each other with their respective research. They would be doing the things they had done when they were first drawn to each other.
So Cash sat herself down in her beloved library in her house at Barry and wrote. She would ride out into the valleys when she could and she played tennis. This was where she was at home and here she would stay, she knew that now, and nothing would change that. She would travel, but this was where she wanted to return.
***
“Oi, Sheila!” Jack’s voice boomed across the Barry Island fairground. Cash looked up from her book signing outside the restaurant in the pleasure garden that had been rented out for the party.
“How’re you going, Bruce?”
She smiled at him.
“Going alright. Yourself?”
“Doing well.” Cash signed another book and excused herself. “I reckon I owe you thanks for talking to Tim.”
Jack waved her words away.
“Never mind. It was a pleasure thumping some sense into him. For a woman like you, he should have been working harder than a one-armed bricklayer in Baghdad. Mind you, when you were gone he was sweating it like a gypsy with a mortgage.”
Cash just had to laugh at him. The man was too funny sometimes.
Cash smoothed her little black dress and sat back down. Underneath the table she kicked off the heels she had been wearing. They made her feel taller and sexy, but sneakers were more her style. She did not have to dress up for this party; she was the star, but she felt like she had to.
Tim and her publisher were entertaining the guests inside the restaurant and she watched Jack walk in and slap Tim on the back of the head before enveloping him in a massive bear hug. Those two would be alright she reckoned.
/> “Cheers,” another familiar voice said.
Cash’s face lit up. The tall willowy Ethiopian woman had taken up her invitation after all. She had been afraid Makeda would not come. She had been less than pleased with Cash for not contacting her until she had gotten back home. They had been through a lot in that short time and it had almost felt like Cash had forgotten about her. But here she was.
Cash hugged her close and apologized again for not contacting her earlier.
She pulled Makeda to one side and said simply, “I did find it.”
She felt she could tell this woman. After all, Makeda had been through those with her things and had understood what the Grail meant. And she did understand.
The critics who had been given advance copies were raving. Their reviews predicted this Grail quest novel would be a worldwide bestseller. It made the party all the better for it. The drinks flowed freely and the guests were happy. Of course the party spilled over into the attractions of the park and a tipsy Cash and Makeda tried to decide on who had been the better driver in Syria by ramming each other in the bumper cars.
The tea cups were filled with literary critics and Cash looked at them, thinking of another cup. It would remain a part of her of course, but it seemed far away now. She thought of those moments in the cave and of the decision Al-Zahir and Fra’ Fernando Afonso had made. And right here people of various nationalities and faiths were happily enjoying each other’s company. How different would it have been if the Grail had been taken by someone? There were problems in the world now, but the world was not fighting over something as simple as a cup, nor was a single person in charge of the world. It was as it had to be.
“What are you thinking of?” Tim asked her as he hugged her from behind.
She lay her head on his arm and stroked his hand.
“I’m thinking we don’t have it too bad, despite all our problems.”
She turned her head to kiss his cheek. He stroked her hair.
“Did you see Jack and Makeda?”
He pointed to one of the tea cups. Cash smiled as she saw her two friends there, locked in an intimate embrace.
“They make a good couple.”
She took Tim’s arm from her shoulder and turned to face him.
“Like we do.”
She looked at his lips and then into his eyes. There was a twinkle in her own eyes.
“You don’t think I scrub up nicely?”
“You look amazing, but then you always do.”
“Right bloody answer for a change.”
Cash pressed her lips to her husband’s and felt her thoughts and worries drift away. They would be alright and life would be well. Her books would keep coming, undoubtedly with more adventures. And undoubtedly they would be more bestsellers.
The End
Cash Cassidy returns in:
The Lost Continent
A Cash Cassidy Adventure #2
Return to the Table of Contents
THE
LOST CONTINENT
A Cash Cassidy Adventure
#2
by
K.T. TOMB
The Lost Continent
Published by K.T. Tomb
Copyright © 2014 by K.T. Tomb
All rights reserved.
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Dedication
The author wishes to dedicate this book to the late
David Eddings.
The Lost Continent
Chapter One
Patricia Julia Cassidy could not remember being more happy. Her last book, The Templar's Secret, had been a runaway success. After her book signing tour across the country, she and her husband went on a two-week vacation in Borneo during his summer break.
They had moved to California the year before when her husband had been offered a professorship with Berkeley. She missed her home in Barry and the first few months after the move had been rough. But after time she adjusted, settling into a routine, including her tennis competitions at the country club.
She pulled into her driveway, having just returned from her set at the tennis club. The sun steamed over the immaculately groomed yard and the trimmed hedges lining the entryway. The heat of California had been a shock to her system after the time they had spent in Cardiff. She exited the car and headed inside. She knew Tim would be home after his last class ended in a few hours. The semester had just started, which meant that there would be a series of fundraising dinners and parties they would have to attend. Cash cringed at the thought and as she approached the door to her house, her cell phone rang.
“Allo, Cash,” the voice of her friend, Jack, greeted her when she answered, in his thick Australian brogue.
“Jack, darling!” she replied. “I didn't see you at the club today. Under the weather?”
“You only wish,” he said. “Just be glad I wasn't there. Might give you a fighting chance to win then.”
“Oh, fuck off!” she replied with a laugh.
She and Jack had been tennis partners for just about a year. People sometimes speculated on their relationship, and truth be told, Cash herself had dabbled in entertaining the idea of them as a couple when she and Tim had been going through a particularly rough patch in their marriage. But in the end, they had settled into a comfortable friendship. They continued talking to each other with playful banter as they often did. He called her Cash from the first day they met at their suburban country club and they had been instant friends. Unlike anyone she had met in California up to that point, Jack had instantly called her Cash; making the link between her name, Patricia Cassidy, and the Australian tennis champion Pat Cash. Being an Aussie himself, he had gotten it.
She relished the nickname and had used it as her nom de plume when she first became published. Now in the circles her husband ran with, there were many who still insisted on calling her Patricia, mostly the upper crust tenured professors and spouses who attend the fundraisers and talk at great length about their boats. There was nothing she hated more.
She opened the door to her house, still chuckling about something Jack had said on the phone. Tim sat on the couch sipping a glass of scotch and dressed in an impeccable bespoke tuxedo. He looked at her with an unmistakably disappointed expression on his face. Cash suddenly became aware of the sweaty tennis clothes that she wore, the messy bun in her hair and the gym bag slung over her arm.
“Jack,” she said into her cell phone, “I'll call you back.”
She clicked the call off and looked up at him in dismay. Genuine dismay.
“Cash.” Her husband stood up. He held his hands palms up, almost in supplication. “Did you forget?”
“I'm so sorry,” she said. The moment she saw him, she remembered the silent auction that they were supposed to attend that night, raising money for his department at Berkeley. They were expected in less than twenty minutes on campus. “I did. I forgot completely. I am so sorry!”
He dropped his hands and looked her over.
“Here I was living in the hope that you had at least showered at the club and then stopped off to have your hair done up.”
“Give me ten minutes. Not a second more.” She dropped her bag and rushed off to the shower. Exactly nine minutes and thirty seven seconds later, she emerged from the bedroom wearing a black cocktail dress, her hair freshly washed and styled into a loose updo, with blonde tendrils framing her immaculately made up face. She stopped at the door to the living room to adjust a strap on her heeled shoes.
“Bra…vo,” Tim said, pronouncing each syllable as he looked her up and down and clapped his hands approvingly. In a lascivious tone he said, “You know, they don't need me to be exactly on time.”
“Don't come near me,” she said, extending a hand in front of her. “This hairdo was nothing less than a miracle. I'm not messing it up for anything.”
/>
“Well, if you insist,” he said, with a smile. Extending his arm to her he said, “Shall we, m'lady?”
She took his arm with a smirk as they headed out the front door. Her timing had allowed for the fifteen minute drive to the campus. They would arrive fashionably late.
Cash had grown to endure these types of events. They very much still made her cringe at times but she put on a brave face because she knew her being there was important to Tim. Since the near meltdown of their marriage the previous year, he had made a true effort of acknowledging her accomplishments; acclaimed novelist and scorching intellectual… his words. He had even come to the last tennis open held at the country club, despite having to endure sitting through multiple matches that had nothing to do with Cash. It had all signaled to her a new leaf, a newfound respect for her. Not only for her career but also for the things she loved to do and had done long before they had married.
Just over an hour later, Cash reached across to a tray being carried by a passing waiter clad in black and white, and plucked another glass of champagne from it. The smile on her face felt stiff and her cheek muscles were starting to ache. People milled around her looking at the various pieces of art and other items up for grabs in the silent auction.
“How are you holding up?” Tim said, walking up behind her and slipping his arm around her waist.
“It's not entirely miserable,” Cash said with a smile. Her statement was interrupted by a slight buzz from her little evening bag. She reached inside it for her cell phone and looked at the screen.