by Des Sheridan
As they passed through an archway, the looming presence of the church confronted them in the blackness. A wing jutted out in their direction with a great window in it, and, recessed on the right hand side was a set of stone steps that led up to a small doorway. To the right of the door a mullioned window, paned with clear glass, created a domesticated effect. It was like the entrance to a house, not a church, thought Pascal. The flower beds flanking the building appeared to have only white flowers in them, which made Pascal wonder if his eyes were playing tricks on him in the moonlight. James quickly unlocked the wooden door and, swinging it inwards, ushered them into the pitch black bowels of the funery chapel of the Dukes of Norfolk.
Chapter 63
Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 15 October 2014
The phone rang in Robert’s hotel room at about ten in the morning and he moved swiftly to pick it up. The last time he recalled being so on edge was after the Caves of Kesh experience. As then, he could sense new presences impinging and events gathering pace. The voice at the end of the line was fast-fire and nervous.
‘Donovan Triskel Lally, Restaurante La Luz del Sol, Calle Brigandaje. One hour, please, go upstairs and ask for Donovan, OK, Mr Grainger?’
‘Hold it! Hang on! Please repeat the address. Did you say La Luz? Brig...and...aaji? Yes? That’s fine, see you in one hour,’ replied Robert. He hastily scribbled the address on a piece of paper.
‘And your name?’ But the line had clicked dead.
It took them a while to find the place, Robert’s tension increasing the more he feared they would be late. La Luz turned out to be one of the many restaurants that characterise the Old Town, and was located in a small enclosed square accessed down a narrow alley. It was eminently missable, a workaday establishment like dozens of others that serve the needs of the many not so very well-off pilgrims that wind their way to Santiago. The interior was jaded and unprepossessing with coloured plastic table clothes and little jars of dried flowers on each table. But Robert reckoned the food must be good if the smells wafting up from the kitchen were any indication. He recognised the response. Fear could make you hungry. Tara was oblivious to any threat, which irritated him. They climbed an old wrought-iron staircase to the upstairs restaurant, where there must have been a further fifteen or so tables. As they were about to sit down at a table, a waiter came over and asked with a smile,
‘Good morning senor and senorita, how may I help you please? Some coffee or a beer?’
They ordered iced teas and Robert looked into the man’s face.
‘Thank you, we are waiting for a friend and that is why we are here.’
‘Oh yes? And what is the name of your friend?
‘We call him Donovan.’
The waiter, smiling no longer, looked Robert in the eye and asked tensely.
‘And your name please?’
‘Grainger, my name is Grainger.’
‘This way please, follow me,’ ordered the waiter firmly, ushering them deeper into the room to a quiet corner near the service door.
‘Mr. Donovan may be a while. I will bring your drinks. Please relax.’
You must be joking thought Robert, wishing to God he was armed. A very long ten minutes later, a man in a shabby suit and brown leather hat appeared around the corner of the stairs and sauntered over to them. Robert recognised him as the man at the bar in Ponferrada. As the newcomer reached their table he removed his hat with his right hand, and spoke quietly.
‘Please, I Leandro Lallio, pleased to meet you.’
He seemed nervous, extending no hand in greeting, so they just introduced themselves and all sat down. Leandro ordered coffee from the waiter and waited for him to depart.
‘Now, you have come long way to find me, please, how may I help you?’
Robert knew that he must know more than his casual tone might suggest, but before he could respond Tara jumped in and spelt it out for him. Robert was alarmed. Leandro might well be a crook or an imposter of some sort. But he supposed Tara saw him as their only lead, and was therefore laying some cards on the table. She explained about the tomb at Rosnaree, how they had found a clue to come to Santiago and that their aim was to reunite the four parts of the Triskell.
‘And then what happen, then?’ Leandro asked quietly. Robert noted that the man’s verbal command of English was pretty respectable, in contrast to his barely comprehensible note.
Tara paused before responding.
‘Some say the Triskell can be used to read the future, but I am not pursuing it for that reason. I am following guidance in a series of dreams. I am trying to do what is right, but to be honest I don’t think I have much choice. The dreams frighten me and a man has been killed in Sligo. If I stop I think others will try and kill me for this knowledge.’
Leandro crossed himself and, his sombre expression relaxing for the first time, smiled broadly.
‘Listening to you, my dear lady, be like listening to myself these few days! I believe you, Tara Ruane, and I welcome you. We are I believe sincerely brother and sister in this matter!’
He stretched out both hands impulsively and clasped Tara’s warmly. Robert groaned inwardly. There was too much emoting for his taste.
‘And Mr Grainger, he I think be a collector of rare objects?’ Lallio continued in a more even tone. Less warmth here, thought Robert.
‘I am indeed a collector, or more precisely a protector, of rare objects, but not on this visit, Mr Lallio. This is a private matter, I am simply helping a friend,’ Robert replied tilting his head towards Tara. Leandro nodded and seemed satisfied with this answer. After a moment he extended his arm and the two men shook hands. Leandro continued.
‘Well so then I welcome you too. Firstly, please, a – how you say - protection. If, there is interruption we go in there.’ He pointed to the service door. ‘And move fast - run, no questions – you understand?’
Robert nodded, his antennae activating. The Spaniard was decidedly jumpy.
‘Are you expecting company?’ Robert asked as casually as he could.
Leandro shook he head, but wiped the sweat off his brow with a large blue handkerchief. It seemed to Robert to be a bit early in the day to be so hot and bothered. The man must have seen doubt enter Robert’s eyes.
‘No Robert, please. It is just carefulness. Trust me, it is just in case. Now let us relax and enjoy our drinks. I will order tapas!’
Robert was in no mood to relax. There was more to this than met the eye. Leandro clearly thought there might be trouble, otherwise why mention it?
Chapter 64
Arundel, UK, 13 October 2014
The chapel interior was clearly very old and, in the dark, decidedly creepy. At the altar end a great seven-panel window occupied virtually the entire wall space. Above him, in the gloom, Pascal could just make out a vast timber-vaulted roof. A large wooden choir stall flanked the side and massive pillared sepulchres lined the walls, adorned with sculpted effigies marking the resting places of the Dukes and their spouses. More modest slabs, wall plaques and brasses, all with inscriptions, recorded the graves of lesser associates of the Howards. James pointed out the cruciform shape of the building with the parish using the nave and transepts while the funerary chapel, where they stood, was located in the chancel.
Moving carefully, they edged forward in the darkness. A vast wooden cross, holding up a life-size crucified Christ with bended knees and protruding rib cage, adorned a wall. Affixed not far off the floor, the crucifix declared the Catholic affiliation of the Chapel and seemed almost to jump out at Pascal, causing him to pause. Pascal studied it and relished the graphic detail of the suffering Christ, his head crowned with a gruesome ring of thorns, which in the light of their torches looked both gruesome and real, and was splattered in painted blood. At least Catholics acknowledged unflinchingly the baseness of human existence and life, and the horror of suffering and death, he thought. They don’t hide it away.
The pain of the crucifixion reminded Pascal of his victim
s and he instantly longed for another one and the pornographic intimacy of inflicting pain and extinguishing life at his will. And he remembered the thrill, a heady mix of ecstasy and dread, whenever his Avatar entered his body and co-habited with him. The very thought of the Other One, who both repelled and enticed him, was intoxicating. He recalled the thrill of experiencing altered instincts and sensations in the cave at Kesh. He was convinced that they resulted from animal DNA mixing into his blood and coursing through his veins. Through the Avatar he could transcend his human limitations.
A small red-flamed lamp by the side of the altar, which Pascal knew signalled the supposed presence of Christ, flared up at that moment. Instantly he felt the urge to smash it but lurching forward he felt something stop him. It was as though the darkness was closing in around him, daring him to continue so it could swallow him up. He sensed its power and knew he was its target. Angrily Pascal stepped back, afraid now of this place, afraid of something present here. Something that didn’t like him. He had never experienced anything like this and it filled him with terror.
James hissed beside him, ‘No, this way, follow me!’
He took them directly to the William Howard’s tomb. It was a simple slab sloping outward and down from a side wall, made of blue limestone and enclosed within a low iron grille. James read out the inscription.
Here lieth the remains of
William Lockridge Howard,
Born 1606, deceased 1701, 3rd son of the 4th Earl of Surrey,
Scholar, Teacher and Seer,
Noble Servant to the King and of his Master Most High.
Reunited in loving embrace with the shield of Triskele
to which he was ever faithful.
At the bottom right of the plaque, James explained, a small insignia, like a chevron on the side of a vertical line, indicated the occupant of the tomb as a recusant but it was the insignia on the bottom left that set Pascal’s heart thumping: three small spirals, interlocking. Pascal felt the hair rise on the nape of his neck. The Triskell must be here!
‘Get on with it, get that slab up!’ Pascal hissed anxiously at Erik.
Erik used a hammer to whack the crowbar into the seal about the tomb and repeated the process several times. Then he switched to a sledgehammer. Pascal cursed inwardly at the crash each blow created. They sounded so loud that the whole world must hear the din, he thought. He sensed afresh the darkness thicken around them like a cloak that would suffocate them. He was surprised to see his exhaled breath form mist in the air and realised that the night temperature had fallen sharply in the short time they had been in the church. It was as though Nature was passing a harsh judgement upon their endeavour and subjecting them to an icy chill. Pascal felt cold perspiration tickle his neck. Damn this place, damn this cursed Christian charnel house!
Two more attempts saw the plaque smash into three pieces and collapse inwards, a plume of dust arising from the interior. Erik roughly pulled the pieces of slab out of the grave and, like a man possessed, cast them down on the tiled floor. Jean flashed his torch downwards into the desecrated grave, the contents revealed in a beam of white light. William Howard’s skeleton stared up at them, with gaping eye cavities and a rictus grin. Pascal pulled back, but shouted at Erik.
‘Go on, see what is in there! Get it out!
Erik hesitated awkwardly a moment then shoved his hand heavily through the curved bones of the rib cage, which immediately collapsed at the intrusion, sending a further cloud of dust upwards. He withdrew his arm moments later and a large shrouded, roughly circular object emerged from the grave, held firmly in his grasp.
Pascal tore the item from Erik’s grasp and ripped at the cloth wrappings. Dust wafted up anew and made Jean cough. Pascal caught sight of James watching him take possession of the trophy. The historian’s face was set hard, his eyes burning with hate and his lips narrowed. The loathing, and the impotent violence that fuelled his anger, was palpable to Pascal. By assisting them James was betraying the Duke, as well as the class and profession that he had spent his life serving. For an instant Pascal leered at James triumphantly, relishing the man’s humiliation.
Pascal then returned his gaze to the tarnished, rusty-looking object in his hands. The detail was much obscured by dust and debris but two things were evident. The sweeping lines of La Tène craftsmanship and the occasional glint of brilliance from the gems embedded in it were definitely visible. What surprised him was how cold it was to touch, so cold that it stung his fingers like frostbite. The coldness of the grave was the only explanation he could think of, however absurd it might be. His hands were shivering now, uncontrollably and he realised that he was petrified. Something awesome was present in the darkness watching him and saw him for what he was, an enemy of Christ and a friend of the Other One. Turning on his heel, without a word to the others, he fled from the place in terror, clutching the Triskell under his arm.
Chapter 65
Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 15 October 2014
The tapas dishes arrived and the simple act of eating seemed to calm everyone’s nerves. They exchanged small talk for a few minutes but it was rather forced, so much so that after a few minutes Leandro decided to bite the bullet.
‘So,’ he announced solemnly. ‘I trust you and God strike you down if you betray the honour of the Triskell. You know most of story anyway, I believe, or at least the bits that matter. Donovan Lally brought Triskell piece here in 1660, adopting surname Lallios, which in a later generation changed to Lallio. Donovan becomes married and the secret of the Triskell is passed from eldest son to eldest son, down the generations.’
He handed Tara a cardboard folder.
‘Here, the stories of my family are written down. No, not for now, read them later! For my part, when my father died I lose interest. I bury the knowledge because I really did not want it. I wanted bigger TV and holidays near Malaga and more pop music. And I succeed. I blot the responsibility out. I suppose, my friends, the human mind can hide what it does not want to see. This helps us survive. It is only the last few months that it has resurfaced, and as with you, Tara, it come as a dream. A dream that had your face in it. Dios mío! These experiences - so unsettling. Sometimes I feel madness is close. Too close!’
Robert caught the sound of fear in the Spaniard’s voice. The man mastered it and carried on, shrugging his shoulders.
‘I have no children, so I think to leave the Triskell to the town museum. But you being here changes that. Have you found the other pieces?’
‘Apart from the base, no, not yet,’ said Tara. ‘This has been our first exploration but we plan to search in Brittany and England also. We have clues there as well. But let us show you Rosnaree first. It will amaze you.’
She pulled her laptop out of her shoulder bag and powered it up. Robert interrupted.
‘Tara, I am not sure this is the right time.’
She snapped at him. ‘Of course it is the right time. Can’t you understand the significance of my meeting Leandro?’
‘Yes, of course, but...’
‘Look Robert, if you would prefer wait outside that would be fine.’ The glare that accompanied this brooked no further discussion, so Robert gave up. Tara had clearly decided that Leandro was to be embraced like a long lost brother, he thought impatiently, even though she knew nothing at all about the man.
She took Leandro through the history, using images of the dig and the finds, finally showing him the Triskell base.
Suddenly, agitation returning to his face, Leandro clasped her wrist.
‘Are you believer? A Catholic?
Tara, startled by this unexpected turn in the conversation, kept her cool.
‘Well, it is hard to say, Leandro. I was born a Catholic but lapsed as a teenager. I am not a religious person but lately it has been coming back, the belief, or at least the recognition of the presence of God. And yes, now, I do believe. In what I am not sure but I believe it is the Spirit that is guiding me, total belief in that.’
&nbs
p; Still he clutched her wrist, nodding his head vigorously. Robert felt uneasy, wondering if the man was unhinged. Leandro responded gushingly to Tara.
‘We so alike, you and I. My experience is so similar and the last few days have turned me round. I would die now to protect the Triskell. I thought yesterday I would die, but I don’t need to now. The Virgin saved me. She really did! She dealt with the man, so now we are safe. I hope!’
For a second doubt creased the car mechanic’s face, then he smiled.
‘Yes, I no doubt that all is safe now. I want you have the Triskell to join it with the other parts. And don’t be afraid, just have faith. Always move forward in faith. Promise me!’
Robert, sensing that the man was starting to rant, was watching his face keenly. Something was wrong here. Leandro was oscillating rapidly between surges of absolute terror and pure joy.
‘But what about your duty to protect the Triskell, Leandro?’ asked Tara doubtfully, withdrawing her hand. This did not reassure Leandro who half rose out of the chair.
‘Don’t worry about me, Tara. Just believe me. Like you, I was lost and now am found. I have new life, thanks to the Virgin and Saint Juan! I am a happy man. I have no son and there is no more a reason to hide the Triskell but all reasons to reunite it. That is what the dreams mean. Can’t you see?’
‘What do you mean, we are safe now?’ Robert cut in.
‘The Good Shepherd found me and struck down the forces of evils. That is all. That is everything!’
He laughed slightly hysterically before adding conspiratorially, ‘But you be careful. We were not alone, in Ponferrada, but I don’t worry, the serpent was struck down! But it show that we need to be watchful and alert. Always alert!’
Robert shot bolt upright.
‘Who was struck down? What are you talking about?’