William was gone.
She drew a quick breath and kept on walking. “The view from the top of this hill will be quite spectacular, I’m sure. Even if it’s raining, might we—?”
A cry of pain echoed across the hillside, followed by a male voice sputtering expletives in Gaelic. Then silence. Siobhan stopped, waiting for William to reappear. He reemerged from the foliage after a short time, sheathing his sword as he strode toward her.
“What happened?” Siobhan asked.
William tossed her a satisfied smile. “Our friend will not be any more trouble to us.”
“You can’t leave me here. Come back and untie me,” a male voice called from the foliage where William had reappeared.
Siobhan hurried along after William. “Will he be all right?” she asked, pursing her lips with concern. She didn’t want the man to meddle in their affairs, but she didn’t want him hurt either.
“Trust me.” William met her gaze. “I left him food and water and enough slack to get it. It’ll only be a day or so until we send someone from the monastery to get him. He’ll be just fine, I promise.”
She didn’t have much time to linger over thoughts of Lucius’s fate as the ferns and shrubs thinned, then vanished, and the path they followed became a steep and rocky slope. “Stay close,” William advised as he continued upward. Siobhan grasped at brush to keep her balance while clambering over boulders.
The wind calmed as they continued, but the sky grew darker and the heavy air pressed in around them. If only the rain holds off a while longer, Siobhan thought as she picked her way across the rocks.
When they came to an area that flattened out, William stopped. He offered Siobhan his hand, pulling her up over yet another boulder that obstructed their path. “How’s your head?” he asked. It was the first time they had spoken since they’d encountered the rocky terrain.
“Better today.” She nodded breathlessly, grateful for the small respite. “How much farther?”
“I’m not certain. Let’s take another look at the scroll.” His breathing was steady now.
Siobhan removed the container from her pocket and set it carefully upon a nearby rock. She settled on the ground beside it.
“We must be getting close.” William sat opposite her and waited for her to open the scroll. She unwound the papyrus, careful to make sure it did not fly away in the breeze. The paper looked stark, pale, eerie in the darkening afternoon light.
Siobhan concentrated on the sketch William had said represented the Mother’s Cradle high in the Cairngorm Mountains. A smattering of dark dots littered the base of the cave. She twisted the scroll toward him. “Could these be the rocks we’re climbing over?”
“Could be.” As he studied the drawing, she looked at it from the opposite side.
She drew a sharp breath as something she hadn’t seen before appeared on the upside-down page. “From this angle, the whole drawing looks like a cave.”
William moved to kneel beside her.
“It’s a bit like looking at cloud formations and seeing something in the odd angles and depths. But if you look at it just right, you can definitely see a cave.”
Siobhan stared at the drawing that had not made any sense when they had viewed it in the monastery. But upside down, random marks formed into images before her eyes. The same smattering of dark shapes lined the bottom of the page, along with two vertical lines crossed by a horizontal line.
“Look here,” William said pointing to a long, flowing line that split in the middle. The words that had looked like gibberish before now looked the same as those on the bottom of the page that Brother Kenneth had translated as “mother’s tears.”
Siobhan inhaled sharply as she stared down at the drawing. “Could that line be a hidden waterfall inside yet another cave? Could the treasure be hidden there, behind the falling water?” She paused. “An underground water-fall?”
William sat back, staring not at the scroll but off in the distance. “We’ll know soon, because I do believe that is the Mother’s Cradle up and off to the left.”
Siobhan looked to where a dark shape yawned in the hillside. She frowned. “It’s just a shadow.” She squinted and glanced down at the scroll, then up at the high site. “It…Maybe. But could it be any less accessible?”
He grinned, bringing out the slight indentation in his left cheek. “The Templars were hiding a very valuable treasure. They weren’t going to make the task easy.”
She returned his smile. “You have a point.”
“Ready to find a treasure?” William stood and waited for Siobhan to return the scroll to its leather casing, then slide it into the secret pocket in her gown. When she was done, she stood, and together they hiked up the steep mountainside.
Finally, they reached the lip of the cave just as the pewter gray skies opened wide, sending a hard, steady stream of rain to the earth.
“Luck seems to be on our side,” William said as he set his saddlebag down and rummaged inside until he withdrew a flint stone, a tallow candle and the lantern. With a flick of the stone, he sent a spark onto the wick. The spark became a flame, and soon light spilled into the darkness, illuminating the cave’s interior.
“Ready to continue?” he asked.
She reached for his free hand. “Thank you, William, for helping me and my father.”
For an instant a shadow crept into his eyes, and then it was gone. “We’ll free your father.” He gently squeezed her fingers, then released them. “Let’s find the Spear.”
Side by side they moved deeper into the cave. Siobhan’s heart raced as they descended the downward slope. “Will there be another trap?” she asked, giving voice to her fears.
“Anything is possible. Stay alert.”
They passed through a long tunnel. William stopped and pressed his hand to the smooth stone walls. “These walls were shaped by man’s tools, not by nature.” He lifted the lantern to reveal a face carved into the wall above them.
Siobhan’s hand clutched William’s arm. The image was of an old man’s face surrounded by greenery. “What is it?”
“A Green Man. They’re nothing to fear. They’re pagan in origin and were sometimes used by the Templars as a symbol of rebirth. The faces should grow younger in appearance as we progress. It also means we are going the right way.”
They headed deeper into the coolness of the cave. As they headed downward, Siobhan would occasionally spot another face peering out of the chipped stone. The faces did appear to be growing younger as she and William moved deeper into the mountain.
The farther they went, the more silent the air became. They rounded a bend in the rock and came to a large open area. To the right were four colonnades carved from the mountain rock, almost like a temple. Beside each colonnade stood a statue of a knight wearing a Templar tunic and holding a sword across his chest. “What does it mean?” Siobhan asked.
“I believe we have found the entrance,” William replied. “What else could it be?”
“A trap?” she suggested as an odd sensation rippled across the back of her neck. “It looks too perfect, too splendid.” Siobhan retrieved the scroll from her pocket and set it on the ground. She smoothed the surface and studied the three lines she’d noted earlier. “We’re missing something.” She stood. “Can I have the lantern?”
He gave it to her. Slowly, she walked past the colonnades and around the open area, pausing every few steps to illuminate the high rock walls. She tried to remember her father’s stories. Then it was there. A fragment from a tale he’d told her about entering God’s treasured kingdom.
“Most people anticipate walking through Saint Peter’s gates,” she said out loud, “when sometimes it’s down Saint Peter’s stairs that will take you where you want to go.”
Siobhan’s mouth went dry. How had she remembered that? Instead of looking at the ceiling, she dipped the lantern toward the floor as she continued her progression along the walls until she came to a dip in the ground. She dropped to her kn
ees, and with one hand dusted the loose earth aside from between the dip and the stone wall to reveal a carved step. “Hidden stairs.”
William joined her, and together they brushed the earth back away from the wall to reveal not just three stairs, but an archway set back into what she’d assumed was more of the stone wall. The hardened dirt fell away to reveal the passageway.
“Do you think this is it?”
Siobhan sat back on her heels and smiled. “This is it. I can feel it. That doesn’t sound logical, I know. But the temple is wrong. I feel that just as strongly.”
He reached out and grasped her hand with his. “I believe you.”
Warmth crept through Siobhan at the three simple words. Together they set to work clearing the stairs. The earth was loosely packed, and it didn’t take long before they stood in yet another small chamber, at the bottom of ten stairs that had been carved into the rock.
William held the lantern aloft to reveal three slabs of rock, also cut from the stone. Two stood vertically, with a smaller slab perched across the top—just as the drawing indicated. Placing the lantern on the ground nearby, William and Siobhan brushed away the last of the dirt to reveal a stone door.
William pulled his dagger from his boot and chipped away at the seal until the last piece fell away. The sound of crumbling mortar hitting the earth echoed in the silence. “This is it. We are here.” Excitement danced in his eyes.
Her heart beat so fast she could scarcely breathe—not from fear, but from the fact that they had found the treasure room by putting together the clues her father had left.
“Are you ready to look upon what has not been seen for many years?”
She nodded. It took their combined strength to push the solid rock door aside. “Get the lantern,” she said breathlessly.
He got it and stepped inside, illuminating the dark cavern behind the door. Siobhan followed close behind. Stale air greeted them as they stepped inside the chamber. William set the lantern down, allowing their eyes to adjust to the half light. As her eyes adapted, she could see a long chamber, but no treasure. In fact, there was nothing at all, except another arched doorway on the opposite side. Determined to find something of use, she searched the walls for paintings or more carvings but could find none.
William drew an unlit torch out of a metal holder on the wall. He touched the tip to the flame of the lantern and illuminated the opening of the chamber with light. He handed her the torch, and they entered the chamber together. They walked farther, shining the light over every surface, but found nothing. “Looks like the journey continues,” he said with a touch of disappointment.
“We’ll find it,” she said, reassuring him even as doubt pierced her prior certainty. They had to find the Spear, or her father would die. Siobhan tightened her hand around the torch and moved slowly forward into the darkness.
Siobhan stopped. “Listen.”
William paused beside her. A low, deep hissing issued from the darkness ahead. “Sounds like water.”
Siobhan smiled up at him. “It sounds like a waterfall. Come on,” she said, hurrying down the passage. As they continued toward the sound, the walls came alive with bright, vivid paintings of men on horseback, wearing tunics bearing the Templar cross, charging into battle against a turbaned enemy. “Scenes from the Crusades,” William noted as they hurried past.
They went on, eyeing the paintings as they did, until suddenly without warning, the floor slanted sharply down. Siobhan dropped her torch. She cried out as she slipped. She grasped for the walls, but the path was too steep, and she felt herself sliding over a precipice and into the darkness ahead.
Chapter Seventeen
“Siobhan!” Panic gripped William. He braced himself against the wall and made a wild lunge down the steep slope for Siobhan’s arm. He couldn’t lose her. He connected with something solid. Her fingers wrapped around his. He held tight and pulled with all his strength.
When her head appeared above the level of the floor, he grasped both her arms and tugged her beside him. They collapsed back against the floor, breathing heavily. “I thought I’d lost you again.” He pulled her into his arms.
“I didn’t expect the floor to just fall away like that.” She rested against his chest until her own breathing and the beat of his heart returned to a normal rhythm.
“Another Templar trap. Just like the Egyptians in their burial chambers, the Templars were fond of traps to protect their treasure.”
“What will we do now?” Siobhan asked.
William sat up, bringing Siobhan with him. Together they gazed off into the darkness beyond the tunnel. “Once again you were clever enough to discover the trap that was set here. Now all we have to do is figure out a way across.”
“What was the second clue that Brother Kenneth decoded from the scroll? ‘Only the faithful…’ ”
William picked up the lantern from where he’d tossed it to the ground. He held it out before them, illuminating a ten-foot drop that plunged into a pool of water. The water came from the waterfall on the other side. Between the pool and the more distant waterfall lay an island. They had to somehow bridge the divide between themselves and the island.
“ ‘Only with faith and might can one leap the divide to part a mother’s tears,’ ” William said, recalling the phrase from the scroll. An idea took root. He hurried back to the colorful images that lined the walls. Holding the lantern high, he searched each scene. Templars engaged in various battles lined one side of the wall, while Templars at prayer lined the other. Faith and might. “Siobhan, run your hand over the wall and look for anything not as it seems.”
She nodded and headed to the wall depicting men at prayer, while William skimmed his fingers over the rough rock on the opposite side. At a drawing of a knight holding his sword across his chest in salute, his fingers felt a rough cut in the stone that did not appear to be anything more than a part of the drawing. Upon closer examination, however, he could see that the cut encircled the drawing, as though designed to conceal something more.
“I found something,” Siobhan called over her shoulder. “This image of a Templar on his knees is cut away from the rest of the stone, as if it would move if I pushed it inward.”
“Press it, hard,” William encouraged her, at the same time depressing the image he’d found. The stone sank into the painted image. In the next moment, a grinding sound filled the confined space of the tunnel. Farther down toward the ledge, a slab of stone slid sideways to reveal a winch set back into the carved stone. “Your father is a wise man to conceal the winch in such a way,” William exclaimed as he scooted on his knees toward the device. He twisted it to the right again and again as the mechanism moved something at the base of the ledge Siobhan had nearly tumbled off.
The ground beneath them began to shake. Grinding sounds filled the air. A heartbeat later, a two-foot-wide wooden plank slid out of the solid rock beneath them, creating a bridge to the island beyond.
“Templar brothers have provided safe passage.” William stood and offered Siobhan his arm. She accepted with a smile as he guided her across the bridge.
At the end of the bridge sat two giant urns filled with oil. William touched the candle from the lantern to them both. They caught fire and filled the underground cavern with a warm golden glow. The cavern’s ceiling extended high above them. Crystalline formations in the rock walls and ceiling caught the flames and sparkled like a thousand stars overhead.
“It’s beautiful,” Siobhan breathed beside him.
They were deep inside the earth, yet a sense of peace, of restfulness and welcome, filled William to the core. “Your father is a true talent, Siobhan.”
She looked at him, then back at the waterfall that spilled down a rock face that lay beyond the opposite side of the island. “My father?”
“I can’t imagine how long it took him to build this place. And he would have had to do it in complete secrecy, too.”
“Do you really think the treasure is here behind the
waterfall?”
He grinned. “Do you want to find out?”
At her nod, they hurried across the island until they came to the water’s edge. More than a hundred yards separated them from the base of the waterfall. A light mist hung in the air as the water rushed over the falls with a soft roar. Siobhan had started for the water when he held her back with a touch on the arm. “It would be easier for our return if we left our dry garments behind on the island.”
A flush of color stained her cheeks before her lips worked into a smile. “What a clever ruse, sir, to get me out of my clothing once again.” Her tone was playful as she reached for the ties of her gown.
“Allow me.” He reached around her and made short work of the lacings until her gown dropped to her feet and she stood in her shift before him.
“Seems only fair that I should help you with your tunic and mail.” She looked at him inquiringly. His breath caught at her expression, and a surge of heat shot through him. By the time she had removed his garments down to his braies, he was trembling with need. He fisted his hands. The treasure, he reminded himself. They were here for the Spear.
Regaining control of his senses, he reached into his saddlebag for his flint and a tallow candle, then grasped his sword. Offering her his other hand, they entered the softly churning waters. He pushed through the current that dragged against their flesh the closer they got to the falls.
William stopped at the base of the falls and turned to Siobhan. “Take a deep breath,” he shouted above the crashing of the water. As soon as Siobhan’s chest expanded, he plunged them forward into the stream.
The falling water hit them hard, nearly knocking Siobhan off her feet, but he held her tight against his side and moved them steadily forward into the heaviest part of the flow. The need to draw breath grew stronger with each labored step.
To Tempt a Knight Page 14