by Manda Scott
About the Book
The end of the world starts now…
Ancient wisdom predicts the end of the world with uncanny precision. But it also provided the key to staving off apocalypse: a flawless sapphire of incomparable beauty carved into the perfect likeness of a human skull.
Hidden for four centuries, a crystal skull of exquisite beauty has just been found by Stella Cody, who also inherits its legacy of dark secrets, intrigue, and murder.
Facing an increasingly implacable enemy, Stella and her lover, Kit, struggle to crack the code that hides the Skull’s intended resting place.
Their search takes them from the intellectual rigour of Cambridge University to the untamed wildness of England’s prehistoric stone circles.
But time is against them, and they have days – hours – left to uncover the secret that may yet save the world.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Postscript
Author’s Note
Bibliography
About the Author
Also by Manda Scott
Copyright
2012
THE CRYSTAL
SKULL
MANDA SCOTT
For my mother and father, with love
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Four women were central to the writing of this book. In order of their appearance in the creation: Kate Miciak, Vice President and Executive Editor of Bantam Dell Publishing Group (US) sat over dinner and listened to the germ of an idea and said, ‘Go for it,’ and so made it happen. Jane Judd, my exceptionally patient agent, nursed us through the turbulent early stages before passing the baton to Selina Walker, editorial director of Transworld Publishers, without whom we would have no book. Last, but never least, my partner Faith Roper provided support throughout and then proof-read the final drafts against tight deadlines, with impeccable clarity and insight. My thanks to you all.
Along the way, my brother, Robin Scott, provided geological advice and Aggy offered to take me caving. Brian Gent of Blue Camas sent me his notes on crystal skulls and the Albion skull in particular and my teacher, Chris Luttichau, shared all that he knew of the Maya. My thanks to all of these; clearly any mistakes in comprehension or portrayal are entirely mine.
Finally, thanks to Nancy Webber and Deborah Adams and all those who work behind the scenes at Transworld for their sterling efforts.
That which you seek lies hidden in white water. Stone will be rendered unto stone, made safe in a place of hallowed beauty against the Enemy that seeks its destruction. Search north and then east, fifteen and twenty, behind the hanging thorns within the curve of the bow, in sound of the falling river.
Enter with courage. Go forward as far as the dark allows. Step through night’s arch and come to the cathedral of the earth. Face the rising of the sun, and its setting, pierce the curtain to the well of living water and discover at last the pearl there entombed.
Find me and live, for I am your hope at the end of time. Hold me as you would hold your child. Listen to me as you would listen to your lover. Trust me as you would trust your god, whosoever that may be.
Follow the path that is herein shewn and be with me at the time and place appointed. Do then as the guardians of night foretell. Thereafter, follow your heart and mine, for these are one and the same. Do not fail me, for in doing so, you fail yourself, and all the worlds of waiting.
Item CO78.1.7 of the Cedric Owen archive – the first of two ciphers discovered within the text of the Owen ledgers by Drs O’Connor and Cody in the spring and summer of 2007.
Text of both ciphers plus digital copies of the original ledgers, with relevant markings highlighted, can be downloaded as pdf files from the college website:
www.bedescambridge.ac.uk
PROLOGUE
To Dr Barnabas Tythe, visiting professor, Balliol College, Oxford, written this thirteenth day of July, in the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and fifty-six, greetings.
My dear friend – I write in haste and with regret that I must depart without a proper leave-taking. Cambridge is alive with accusations of heresy. Poor Thom Gillespie is already arraigned and faces death by burning for nothing more than questioning the use of a prayer book to mend a fractured wrist.
All those of us who practise medicine in accordance with the highest science, abjuring the superstitions of the Church, are in like peril. With a secret such as mine, I am doubly in jeopardy. Already there is a pamphlet circulating which states that I am in possession of ‘a blue stone skull in the shape of an unfleshed man’s head’ and that I use it to gaze upon the stars. In our current climate, even so much would see me burn, but it cannot be long ere someone links the heart-stone with my healing of the sick which would, I greatly fear, lead to the stone’s destruction as well as mine.
I leave, therefore, on the evening tide in the company of others who share my peril. They wait outside and we shall be away ere my ink is dry. But, before I go, I must tell you that I have been in close communion these past three weeks with Dr John Dee, who has lately been Astrologer to the Princess Elizabeth in her exile at Woodstock and has become the second of my teachers, behind only yourself.
As you know, it has long been my belief that if ever I have success in my physic, it is down to you alone. More than any other, you have taught me the rigours of anatomy and how observation of the patient is of paramount importance. But these last weeks Dr Dee has been most assiduous in showing me how the twin sciences of medicine and astrology may be brought together to hasten the restoration of the afflicted.
He has looked long and deep into the tissue of the blue heart-stone that has been my family’s heritage and is of the opinion that it is of an age far greater than the oldest relics of Christendom. It is, he thinks, one of many that were birthed together in the temples of the heathen ancients, and sent forth to the world for the greater benefit of Mankind. He believes that there are those who fear the greater good that will be wrought by these stones in years to come and therefore seek their destruction. Thus I have Enemies of which I know naught, who will seek me out where ever I may go and will threaten the core of my life.
I am ashamed to confess that I have been in possession of the stone for a decade and yet am ignorant of its true nature, and this ignorance may be my death. It is pursuit of learning, therefore, as much as fear, that drives me from England to seek the help of any who might educate me as to the stone’s purpose and my own.
In this regard, Dr Dee has observed my Part of Fortune, and the turning of my natal sun, and assures me that I will return to England at some future time when the climate is less dangerous.
I wish to believe him, and shall do so, knowing that only thus may
I see you again. Until then, I must take my fortunes in France, carrying from Dr Dee his letter of recommendation to a friend whom he would trust with his own life and mine.
I have no knowledge of where this adventure will lead me, but am heartened by the scatter of the Constellations; on this day, Venus has come to rest on the fourth degree of Virgo, in near trine to Mars, as she did on the morning of my birth. Every felicitous part of my life has taken place under the good auspices of this star and her position now cannot but aid my cause.
With that to cheer us both, I take my leave. Know that I miss you greatly and will return to Bede’s, and to you, when time and life allow.
For now, I am your most humble servant, honoured student and honest friend,
Cedric Owen, Physician, Master of the Arts (Bede’s College, Cantab 1543) and Doctor of Philosophy (1555).
1
Beneath Ingleborough Fell, Yorkshire Dales, May 2007
BECAUSE IT WAS her wedding gift, Stella came first out of the tunnel. Filthy, wet and shivering hot-cold from the effort of the last fifty-metre uphill haul, she crawled on her belly, pulling herself face down into the empty blackness beyond.
She moved slowly, keeping taut the umbilical line that linked her to Kit, feeling first with her hands for the quality of the footing, then shuffling forward no further than the spilled light from her head-torch.
Like the tunnel, the cave was of chalk. Her gloved hands pressed on stone, washed smooth by century upon patient century of water. Her torch showed bright trickles of damp everywhere, washing over flat, undulating limestone. Beyond the splash of yellow light was unknown territory, unmapped, unexplored, as likely to be a ledge and a bottomless fall as a flat cave floor.
With cold-stiff fingers, she established safety, set a bolt into the wall by the mouth of the tunnel, clipped in to it, and tugged the rope to let Kit know that she had stopped and not to pay out more rope. By the light of her head-lamp, she checked her compass and her watch and marked the incline and her estimate of its length and direction with wax pencil on the chart that she kept in her chest pocket, where it would not snag on tunnel walls.
Only after she had done all these things did Stella turn and look up and round, and send the thread of her torch into the vast, cathedral space Kit had found for her.
‘My God … Kit, come and look.’
She spoke to herself; he was too far back to hear. She tugged twice on the rope, saying the same thing, and felt the single answering twitch and then the sudden slack as he began to move towards her.
Her hands coiled rope as a habit, without any conscious thought. Switching off her head-lamp, Stella stood in the roaring silence and let Kit’s gift stand still in all its vast, black perfection around her, so that she could remember it for the rest of her life.
Marriage is fine for the rest of the world, but I want to find you a present that will last us for ever, something to remember when the magic of now has grown to quiet domesticity. What is it in the world that you want most, my lovely woman, that will let you love me for eternity?
He had said it in Cambridge, in his river room that sat proud above the Cam, with the river running glassy green below, on the morning before they had gone to the registrar with their two witnesses and made themselves legal in the eyes of the world.
She had known him little more than a year; he the Bede’s scholar to the depths of his bones, she the Yorkshire lass with a degree from a metropolitan university who knew nothing of the ivory towers. Between these two poles, they had found a meeting of minds that had carried them, in fourteen dizzying months, from discussions on string theory to marriage.
Then, lying at peace with herself and the world, there was nothing she wanted from him that he had not given, but it was a beautiful day and she was thinking of rock and how little of it there was in the flat fenlands of Cambridge.
‘Find me a cave,’ she had said, without thinking particularly, ‘a cave no one else has ever seen. For that, I will love you for ever.’
He had come to kneel by the bed, to a place where his complex green-brown eyes could see and be seen. They were quiet then, more hazel than emerald, with hints of leafiness and summer. He had kissed her on the centre of her brow and smiled his driest, most knowing smile, and said, What if I were to find you a cave with buried treasure that no one has entered for four hundred and nineteen years? Would that be almost as good?
‘Four hundred and nineteen …?’ She had sat up, too fast for the heat of the day.
Always, he surprised her; it was why she was going to marry him. ‘You’ve found Cedric Owen’s cave? The cathedral of the earth? Why didn’t you tell me?’
Because I wanted to be sure.
‘And are you now?’
As sure as I can be without going there to look. It’s all in the cipher in the ledgers; the hanging thorns, the curve of the bow, the falling river. It had to be somewhere Owen knew like the back of his hand and the only place is Ingleborough Hill up in Yorkshire. He was born on the side of it. The thorns are gone by now but I found references to them in an old diary and there’s a river that falls into Gaping Ghyll.
‘Gaping Ghyll? Kit, that’s the deepest pothole in England. The cave system running out from it goes for miles.’
It does indeed. And there are bits of it that haven’t been explored yet, possibly a cathedral of the earth that no one has been in since Cedric Owen wrote his poem.
Would you like to go, as our present to each other? To find the cave and search out the white water and dive for the hidden pearl entombed therein?
Stella had known, then, that the gift was for him as much as for her. Cedric Owen’s blue heart-stone was Kit’s life’s love, his project, his grail for ever quested for as long as she had known him; the great treasure of his college that had been sought by the high and mighty down the ages but never found.
They had not known where to look, the great and the good; they had not read between the lines for the hidden words and phrases as Kit had. It was his greatest accomplishment, and his greatest secret; by marrying him, she became a part of it.
Even so … she wrinkled her brow and looked out of the window at the sandstone library and great lawned courts of Bede’s College, with their five hundred years of tending and all the legends that went with them. She had learned those, too. ‘I thought the skull killed all those who ever held it?’
He had laughed and slid his part-dressed body over the top of hers and said, Only if they fell into the sins of lust and avarice. We won’t do that.
They were close then, eye to eye, nose to nose, heartbeat to heartbeat sharing each breath. She had held the weight of him balanced on the palms of her hands and looked up into the measure of his face and, quite truthfully, said, ‘I could fall into lust for the first descent of an undiscovered cave. You can’t begin to imagine what kind of gift that would be.’
But I can. You’re a caver: it means to you what finding Owen’s heart-stone would mean to me. It’s why we can do it, you and me, bravely and together. Then we can tell the world what we have found.
She was the caver; hers the responsibility to bring the dream to reality. Which was why she had persisted after she found the rock fall that blocked the route, and why, when she had discovered an opening that might lead to where they wanted to go, she had gone first along the long, claustrophobic tunnel, where she had to become a snake and then an eel and then a worm in order to bend round the corners and slide under the overhangs and creep, inch by pulling inch, up fifty metres of a one in ten incline that brought her at last to the exit and the cavern beyond.
The rope went tight in her hands and then slack again as Kit rounded the final bend. She switched on her head-torch, to give him something to aim for.
Like a flickering cinema, her beam picked out random lengths of stalactites and stalagmites, closing like shark’s teeth from floor to roof and back again. She eased the camera from the lid of her pack and turned a full half-circle, taking serial shots from floor to roof
and roof to floor.
The flash reached out and splashed colour across the rising, falling calcite, drew rainbows from the constant sheen of water, sprinkled brilliant, living diamonds across the roof at each crack and angle of the rock.
She took pictures for the sheer joy of it, revelling in the beauty. Only as Kit was easing out of the tunnel to stand beside her did she follow at last the thunderous noise and turn west, to shed light on the cascading torrent of the waterfall.
‘My God …’
‘The cathedral of the earth. You clever, clever girl. I thought the rock fall had finished us.’
She was no longer alone. Kit’s voice warmed her ear. Kit’s arm wrapped her waist, immersing her in bittersweet joy; it was always hard to relinquish the purity of solitude, and yet, out of all the world, this one man understood her need for black aloneness and did not fear it.
She leaned in to him, dry-suit to dry-suit, and turned her light up to his face. Encircled by black neoprene, he was filthy and euphoric at once; a man on the brink of a promise.
She said, ‘I can’t think Cedric Owen knew about this route; you’d never get a Tudor physician in doublet and tights along that tunnel.’
‘Nor any sane man, without his lady love to guide him.’ He twirled a knightly bow and blew her a kiss. ‘Mrs O’Connor, I adore you and everything there is of you, but I can’t kiss you with a head-torch on.’
Laughing, she snatched the flying blessing from the air with her teeth. ‘That’s Dr Cody, until it becomes Professor Cody, and don’t you ever forget it.’ They had been wed for a little over forty-eight hours. Already the argument was old and private between them; in public there was never a chance he would steal her name.
She said, ‘Have you a flare? It’d be good to see it all properly.’
‘I have.’ He was already rummaging in his pack. ‘And then we have to find out where Owen came in when he walked the easy route. I’m rather hoping there’s an obvious way out. I really don’t want to have to do that second hairpin in reverse. Going down and then up and trying to turn at the same time wouldn’t be any fun at all.’