Ark of Fire ca-1

by C. M. Palov

  “Which means that the last line is a direct reference to the Ark.” When he nodded, she switched gears entirely. “Okay, when do we leave?”

  “We don’t have a coach schedule handy. However, I suspect we can be in Godmersham by early afternoon. Sooner if we secure an auto hire.”

  “Gee, I’m surprised that you don’t want to leave tonight. It’s only pouring down rain out there,” she teased.

  “Though I refuse to entertain the notion that MacFarlane may yet steal the prize, we need our rest.”

  On that point they were in complete agreement.

  “Do you think the church is still standing?”

  “Mmmm. Difficult to say. There were any number of churches and monasteries that were destroyed during the various wars of religion that raged for centuries across our little island kingdom. Tomorrow will be soon enough to ascertain if St. Lawrence the Martyr is intact.”

  “Even if it’s still a going concern, we have no idea where on the church grounds the Ark is hidden.”

  “I never said this would be an easy venture.” Scooting back his chair, Caedmon rose to his feet. As he walked over to the divided bed, one of Bach’s melancholy cello suites droned from the radio. Edie thought it sounded like a slow-moving funerary march.

  Ignoring the music, she surreptitiously watched as Caedmon snatched a cookie tin off the bedside table.

  No doubt about it, Caedmon Aisquith was very much his own man, his quirky intellectualism strangely appealing.

  When he headed back to the oriel, tin in hand, Edie could see that something was wrong; his expression was not nearly as ebullient as it had been seconds before.

  “Uh-oh. What happened? You’re no longer in a John Philip Sousa mood.”

  Caedmon handed her the tin of chocolate-covered cookies. “Here, tuck in.”

  “You’re not going to have one?”

  Waving away the cookie tin, he reseated himself at the table. “Something about the solution is too neat and tidy. Too bloody obvious.”

  “Maybe Galen wanted the solution to be obvious.”

  “Had that been his intention, he would never have gone to the trouble of writing the quatrains.”

  Her sweet tooth having also gone south, she shoved the tin aside.

  “Yeah, I see your point.” Bummed, she stared at the handwritten quatrain. “Maybe a not-so-neat solution will come to you in the morning.”

  “Or to you. Your chain-of-custody box showed a marked proclivity for analytical reasoning.”

  Her mood percolating a teensy bit, Edie smiled. “You liked that, huh?”

  “It’s one of many things that I like about you.”

  Caedmon’s reply made her instantly regret the parting of the red bed.

  “Well, what do you know? I like you too.”

  A great deal, in fact. Maybe more than she should, given that she knew so little about him. Other than the fact that he once attended Oxford, had worked for MI5, and recently wrote a book, she knew nothing about Caedmon Aisquith. A man of mystery was one thing. A man without a past was something else entirely.

  But then, she’d not been very forthcoming herself.

  “Caedmon, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she blurted without preamble.

  His blue eyes locked onto hers.

  Edie took a deep breath, bracing herself for the backlash.

  “I lied to you.”

  CHAPTER 45

  “Nothing here but a bunch of old bones.”

  At hearing that, Stan MacFarlane shone his Maglite into the exhumed grave where his aide-de-camp stood chest deep. Scattered at Braxton’s booted feet were the mortal remains of Galen of Godmersham. And a whole lot of mud, the grave quickly filling with water. Earlier, the night sky had opened up, the rain coming down in horizontal sheets.

  Stan next shone his flashlight into the face of the Harvard scholar, who stood shivering on the other side of the grave, the light beam casting a golden hue onto the driving rain.

  “You told me it would be here.”

  “Based on the quatrains, I thought there was a likely possibility that the gold chest would be found in Galen’s grave.” His paid medieval expert, beginning to look like a wet rat, shrugged. “What can I say? We played the odds and lost.”

  “Could you have misinterpreted the quatrains?”

  The scholar rubbed the back of his neck. “Hmm . . . it’s possible, but . . . I really thought I correctly deciphered the verses. That’s the tricky thing about Middle English, it’s all about layered meaning. Hey, do you guys mind if I sit inside the Range Rover? I’m gonna catch my death if I stand out here much longer.”

  Tuning out the other man’s whiny-ass complaints, Stan carefully considered his next move, knowing it was a move twenty-five years in the making. For it was twenty-five years ago that the archangels Michael and Gabriel had appeared to him soon after the blast in Beirut. Sent by God to pull him from the rubble.

  The terror attack on the Marine barracks had been the first of the signs that the End Times were near.

  Saved in body, and, more important, in spirit, he gave his life over to God’s work. Not once had he shirked his duty, commissioned with the task of building God’s holy army here on earth. What began as an informal prayer group in the first Gulf War had become a twenty-thousand-strong faith-based movement by the time the tanks rolled into Baghdad eleven years later.

  Twenty-five years had come and gone, yet his mission was still incomplete.

  God had something great and glorious intended for him.

  But only if he uncovered the Ark.

  The Ark was the key that would unlock the gates of the Millennial Kingdom.

  The Ark was the weapon that would destroy the Muslim infidels.

  Just as it had destroyed the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites.

  “You know, I’m as stumped as you,” the scholar droned, interrupting Stan’s train of thought.

  His attention snagged, Stan realized that the sentiment just expressed didn’t ring true; the other man was too pat. Too well-rehearsed.

  As though it were a gun aimed at point-blank range, Stan shone the Maglite at the scrawny man’s face. Pupils quickly contracted into shiny black dots. “Why do I suddenly not believe you?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” The other man affected a theatrical look of stunned disbelief. “What reason would I have to lie? I need the cash to pay off my student loans.”

  “I can think of any number of reasons why you might lie to me.” Stan continued to shine the light at the other man’s face, as though he were boring a hole right through the middle of his forehead.

  “Look, I thought for certain the Ark would be—I mean, the gold chest would be buried with Galen.”

  “What did you just say?” The beam of light drilled that much deeper.

  “Arca. I said arca. As in ‘Arca and gold ful shene he carried to the toun he was born.’ Remember the third quatrain?”

  The truth revealed, Stan stared at the scholar, contempt washing over him in undulating waves.

  Sensing that the winds had suddenly shifted, the Harvard scholar nervously glanced at the parked Range Rover. No doubt trying to remember if the keys had been left in the ignition.

  “You can’t outrun a bullet,” Boyd Braxton jeered, having climbed out of the exhumed grave.

  Judge and jury, Stan pointed an accusing finger. “ ‘And then shall the wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.’ ”

  Surprisingly belligerent, the other man pointed a finger right back at him. “You’re a fucking lunatic, that’s what you are!”

  “Unkind words for the man who holds your fate in his hands.”

  The Harvard scholar glanced at the Israeli-made Desert Eagle negligently held in the gunnery sergeant’s right hand, belligerence now replaced with fear. Cowardly, sniveling fear.

  “You’re right, dude. Heat of the
moment. Sorry. And just to prove that I’m still part of the team, I think I know where the Ark is hidden.” The scholar jutted his chin toward the small church nestled on the other side of the cemetery. “When you guys did your earlier security check in the church, I caught sight of a very large marble plaque depicting the martyrdom of St. Lawrence.” Spreading his arms, the other man indicated an expanse of some four feet. “I’m guessing that if we pry that mother off the wall, we’ll find the Ark hidden behind it.”

  “Pray that we do.”

  CHAPTER 46

  “Back in D.C.,” Edie clarified, not wanting Caedmon to think that she’d recently lied to him.

  “That would certainly explain the embarrassed blush you wear.”

  “Actually, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m not the least bit embarrassed that I lied. I’m thoroughly ashamed.” And, as he undoubtedly knew, shame was embarrassment on steroids.

  “Did you lie about Padge’s murder?”

  “What!” Edie vehemently shook her head, the image of Dr. Padgham’s sprawled, lifeless body flashing across her mind’s eye. “No, of course not. I lied about my, um, family background.”

  Crossing his legs at the knee, Caedmon sat silent, waiting for her to fill in the blanks. If he was upset or disappointed by the fact that he’d been lied to, he gave no indication of it.

  “Remember how I told you that my parents were killed in a boating accident off the coast of Florida? Well, that story was . . . well, it was a flat-out lie. I can’t speak for my father, but my mother never stepped foot in anything that ever floated on the water.”

  She snatched a mandarin orange from the bowl on the table. Hands shaking, she began to peel the piece of fruit, if for no other reason than to give her suddenly sweaty fingers something to do. God, she felt lousy.

  Unbelievably, she’d just told Caedmon Aisquith more about her childhood than she’d ever told another living soul.

  “Did you tell the lie to elicit my sympathy?”

  Edie stopped peeling.

  “No! Absolutely not!”

  Knowing why she told the lie, but not altogether certain why she suddenly wanted to tell the truth, Edie abandoned the orange and got up from the table.

  Maybe she was sick and tired of going to bed with men under false pretenses.

  Slowly, trying to collect her thoughts, she paced back and forth in front of the divided twin mattresses. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Caedmon finishing off the last dregs of his port wine.

  She stopped pacing. Turning toward him, she said, “Were they still alive, there’s not a single member of my family that I would be proud to introduce to you. I just . . . I just wanted a normal, sane, loving family. Was I so wrong in wanting that?”

  Caedmon shook his head. “It is what we all long for.” “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? But those weren’t the cards I was given.” Realizing how canned and melodramatic that sounded, she decided to just stick to the facts. No emotion. No drama-queen theatrics.

  “Okay, here it is. The unedited version of the story is that my mother, Melissa, was addicted to heroin, and bad men, and playing the state lottery. And just so you don’t jump to the conclusion that she was a horrible person, it wasn’t completely her fault. She grew up in a very repressive fundamentalist household. Unfortunately, she fell in love with a Jewish boy in her geometry class. Pops didn’t approve. So he kicked her out of the house. She was sixteen years old.”

  “I take it the ill-fated lover is your father?”

  Edie derisively snorted. “Hmph! Don’t I wish.”

  Wished because maybe her childhood would have unfolded differently had Jacob Steiner been her father.

  “According to my mother, there was a freak car accident. A strong wind gust caused the vehicle to swerve into a tree. Jacob died; she survived.”

  “Is that when your mother turned to drugs?”

  Edie nodded. “The grief nearly did her in. At least that’s the excuse she gave for not being able to pull it together. Oh, every now and again, she’d clean up her act. In fact, she cleaned up real good. But then”—Edie snapped her fingers—“just like that, she’d start to reek of stale beer and vomit.”

  Which was about the same time that strange men started to show up, the thin walls of the trailer doing little to muffle the grunts and groans.

  “I suppose I should mention at this juncture that my mother had no idea who fathered me. She thought it might have been ‘the guy with the Harley.’” Using her fingers, Edie made a pair of air quotes. “But mind you, that’s mere speculation.”

  Having just confessed to being illegitimate, Edie stared at the worn carpet beneath her feet. She could only imagine what Caedmon thought of her bio. He probably hailed from a snooty English household. Something straight out of The Forsyte Saga.

  “It sounds as though your mother led a tragic life,” he quietly remarked.

  “Try tragically flawed. Anyway, it wasn’t a long life. She overdosed on her twenty-eighth birthday. I found her sprawled on the floor of our trailer, the Allman Brothers song ‘Sweet Melissa’ playing on a secondhand tape recorder. They say that only the good die young, but—” She waved away the thought. “Never mind. I’m not really sure where I was going with that.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly very tired.

  “How old were you when your mother died?”

  “Hmm?” She belatedly realized that Caedmon had asked a question. “Oh, eleven.” Eleven going on forty.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to you when your mother died?”

  Gnawing on her lower lip, Edie debated whether to tell him. But like a runaway train that couldn’t put on the brakes, she went ahead and answered the question put to her.

  “I was put into a foster home. There were five of us. Some older, some younger. The older ones knew the drill; the younger ones were clueless.”

  Caedmon’s brow furrowed. “What drill? You’ve lost me.”

  “Lonny Wilkerson, my foster father, the man who signed a contract with the state of Florida agreeing to furnish me with a safe, clean, and healthy home, had a fondness for young girls.”

  “Bloody bastard! Don’t tell me that he—”

  “I have to tell you,” she interjected. Please, Caedmon. Let me tell my story. Let me give birth to this hideous memory. In the hopes that I can finally be free of it.

  “One night Lonny came into the room that I shared with the two older kids and he . . . he put his hand over my mouth, he pulled down my panties, and he . . . he raped me.” As she spoke, she kept her eyes downcast. She didn’t want Caedmon’s sympathy. She didn’t want his outrage. She just wanted a witness. “To this day I can’t recall any of the details . . . it was too much to process. All I can remember is that it was painful, it was quick, and I was afraid I would suffocate.”

  Taking a deep breath, she glanced up at him. Just as she figured, his expression was equal parts anger and sorrow.

  “That’s all I remember,” she said with a shrug. “That and the fact that it happened once a week for the next two months. When Lonny moved to a new girl, she promptly told the social worker what was happening and we were all moved to different homes.”

  Edie paused, battling the old recriminations.

  “I should have been the one to expose that monster but”—she caustically laughed—“I was afraid of being abandoned. Of having to make a new start.” Yet again.

  “You were a child,” Caedmon insisted.

  She shook her head, unwilling to negotiate the point. “Anyway, to make a long story not nearly so long, a few years later a social worker took pity and went the extra mile to track down my maternal grandparents. I stayed with them until I was eighteen.” And then, like her mother before her, she took a Greyhound bus out of Cheraw. Never to return.

  Getting up from the table, Caedmon walked over to where she sat on the edge of the bed. Wordlessly, he sat down beside her, his hip brushing against hers.

  “Don’t get me wrong or anythi
ng. I’m not some emotionally scarred person who can’t cope with the real world,” she matter-of-factly informed him. “I cope just fine.”

  “Yes, I know. But the old memories have a way of creeping up on us when least expected.”

  Something in his voice made Edie think he spoke from experience. Maybe his childhood hadn’t been Masterpiece Theatre wonderful after all.

  “You trod the path to hell at a tender age. But somehow out of the depths of that pain, you forged a new path for yourself.” As he spoke, Caedmon took hold of her hand. “You are a most remarkable woman, Edie Miller.”

  “Remarkable enough that you want to go to bed with me?” Turning her head, Edie looked him straight in the eye. “You see, that’s why I came clean. Every relationship I’ve ever had has been wrapped in a lie. This time I wanted a clean slate.”

  Caedmon let go of her hand. “Are you sure that’s what you want, for the two of us to sleep together?”

  Edie watched the conflicting emotions on Caedmon’s face. At times, and this was one of them, he could be too much the gentleman.

  “I came very close to climbing into bed with you the other night. And just so you know, this isn’t a puzzle that you can reason your way through. It’s just sex, okay?”

  Seeing the uncertainty in his eyes replaced with desire, Edie rose to her feet and stepped toward the nightstand.

  Caedmon grabbed her by the wrist, stopping her in midstep.

  “Where are you going?” There was a decided huskiness in his normally cultured voice.

  “I thought I’d switch off the lamp.”

  With a quick tug, he pulled her onto his lap.

  “Leave the light on.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Having verified that the gaping hole in the church wall was indeed empty, Stan wearily sat down on the nearest pew. The powerful Maglite cast an otherworldly glow onto the small parish church. Looking down from the adjacent stone walls, stained glass saints silently castigated him. His two men, one holding a sledgehammer, the other a pickax, stood at the ready, waiting for orders to be issued.