by C. M. Palov
“It’s just that we’re not . . . you know.” She fought the urge to look away, the unspoken topic of sex having reared its tempting head.
Caedmon held her gaze a second too long. Although her dating skills were rusty, she had the distinct impression that he was silently asking. When no answer was forthcoming, he strode over to the foot of the bed. His jaw tightly locked, he placed a palm on either side of the mattress and—
—separated the bed into two twin-sized mattresses.
“Not certain what we should do about the bedding.” He gestured to the mess he’d made of the red coverlet.
Acting on a hunch, Edie walked over to the armoire, opened it, and removed two sets of twin sheets. “We’re in luck. There’s a stockpile of twin sheets stowed away for this very emergency.” She tossed the folded sheets onto the bed. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it later.”
If he was disappointed, he hid it well.
“Afraid we’ll have to share the loo. My Herculean powers don’t extend beyond dividing the bed.” Turning away from the mussed coverlet, he reached for the bottle of port. “For some reason, I feel oddly buoyed by our progress today. Like a medieval monk who’s completed his daily chores and can now sit down to a jug of wine in the full knowledge that he has earned his simple pleasure.” As he spoke, Caedmon inserted a corkscrew into the top of the bottle, having procured the implement from the front desk clerk.
A wet plunk! could be heard as the cork slid free from the bottle.
Holding a glass in each hand, he walked over to where she stood. “I apologize that the port isn’t properly decanted. Since we’re slumming it, we must make do.” Then, smiling, “Careful. This stuff is dangerously gluggable.”
Edie took the proffered glass. Returning his smile, she took a sip of the ruby-colored port. “Yum. This stuff is gluggable.”
Caedmon laughed, the sound deep, rich, inviting. A lot like the port wine, it made her smile.
“Now, to the task at hand.” He motioned to the oriel window and the small circular table. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to yoke together the last four lines of verse.”
Not sure how much help she would be, her brain working in slo-mo because of the jet lag, Edie seated herself at one of the two wingback chairs wedged into the projecting bay window. Having a funny feeling that the port wine wasn’t going to help matters, she stared at the last four lines of translated text.
The trusted goose sorely wept for all of them were dead I know not how the world be served by such adversity But if a man with a fully devout heart seek the blessed martyr There in the veil between two worlds, the hidden truth be found
Using her index finger as a pointer, she underscored the first line. “Undoubtedly, a thinly disguised reference to Mother Goose.” Tongue literally in cheek, she winked at him.
All business, Caedmon circled the word goose with one of the sharpened pencils. “The words goose and swan were interchangeable in the medieval lexicon; the goose was symbolic of vigilance. In light of all that we know, that makes complete and utter sense.”
“It does? Sorry, but I’m not following.”
“Remember that Galen took upon himself the role of Ark guardian, vigilance the most important attribute of a sentinel.”
“And let’s not forget that the quatrains were also Galen’s swan song.”
Caedmon glanced at her glass, as if to silently inquire, Just how much of that stuff have you had?
Edie pushed her glass aside. “Sir Kenneth mentioned that everyone in Godmersham except for Galen’s wife succumbed to the plague. So I’m guessing that’s the gist of line two.”
“That would be a correct assumption. As for the third line”—lifting his glass, Caedmon took a measured sip—“it’s the typical admonition that one finds in any medieval tale.”
“Only the knight who is pure of heart can seek the Holy Grail, right?”
“Mmmm . . . quite.”
Slowly, he drummed his fingers on the wood tabletop, lost in thought.
A few moments later the finger tapping increased to a rapid rat-a-tat-tat.
“I take it that’s a good sign.”
“So good it makes my bollocks tingle,” he bawdily replied, slapping his palm against the tabletop. “Unless I’m mistaken, the bloody ‘blessed martyr’ is none other than St. Lawrence the Martyr.”
Edie searched her memory banks, the name vaguely familiar. It took a second for her to access the correct data file, the one about Galen donating a slew of sacred relics to the local church. “Oh my gosh! Galen hid the Ark at—”
“St. Lawrence the Martyr Church!” they exclaimed in unison, grinning at each other.
“According to the Old Testament accounts,” Caedmon excitedly continued, underlining the last line of the quatrain with his finger, “when the Ark of the Covenant was placed inside Solomon’s Temple, in the Holy of Holies, a veil was placed over the entrance to prevent direct access to that most sacred of holy relics. The expression ‘beyond the veil’ was thus coined because no one, not even the priests of the temple, could enter the sacred space.”
“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 th
e 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.