“Try opening it.”
Anthea seemed reluctant to move.
“Okay, I’ll try.”
She collected the keys from Anthea and slowly approached the door. There was rubble beneath her feet, making it impossible to stand without moving it first. She spent the next minute doing so before finally getting a clear view of the door.
Strangely, it looked smaller in the bad light, whereas earlier it had looked more imposing.
She concentrated on the lock. The first key was the wrong shape, the second, a perfect fit. Nevertheless, there was no sign of the door opening. There were eighteen keys in total, seven of which were the correct shape.
But none unlocked the door.
She went through them all a second time, concentrating on the seven that fitted. She tried everything she could possibly think of: turning them left, right, turning the handle, lifting it…
It was useless.
Jen tried the last key for longer, now rattling the handle. She pushed and pulled…
Useless.
“Ugh!”
She removed the key from the door and retreated several metres.
“How exactly did you get in the first time?”
The question unsettled Anthea. “Through that door, there.”
Jen swept her hands through her hair. It was obvious that the keys did not work.
“There must be another way in,” Jen said, her eyes on the surrounding walls. She investigated them one by one.
Nothing but graves and debris.
Useless.
She returned to the door, trying the keys for a final time.
Nothing.
Jen rattled the lock vigorously before retreating several steps and picking up a piece of debris. She hurled it at the door, the object making no impression other than a dull thud followed by an echo.
“It’s hopeless.” She sighed. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Jen left the chamber and stopped on reaching the main passageway. She was still convinced there was another way in, probably from a different part of the vaults. Thanks to the appearance of the priest earlier, she hadn’t had the chance to explore anything past the Jeffries’ vault.
If there was another entrance, it was almost certainly nearby.
Movement from close by chilled her to the bone. It sounded like stone, not falling but definitely moving. She turned, the light from her phone now centred on Anthea’s face.
“What was that?”
The girl shook her head. Jen could see in the torchlight that Anthea swallowed, a nervous gulp. It was evident from her expression that she had heard the noise as well.
“Can we leave now?” Anthea asked, petrified.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Jen re-entered the chamber. She passed Anthea on the way back, neglecting to reply to her question. The noise had definitely come from inside the Jeffries’ vault.
She scanned the room with her phone light. As best she could tell, nothing had changed. She assumed the most likely cause was falling debris.
Finding it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Jen turned her thoughts to the tombs and then once again to the walls. Behind the debris was that doorway again, surrounded by the elaborate archway. The sight of it angered her – the keys that didn’t fit, the peculiarities that allegedly existed on the other side. She shone the light on the debris surrounding the archway before aiming it slightly higher.
She noticed something. The symbol above the archway was different; instead of the Jeffries’ flower, it was a five-pointed rose.
Was she seeing things? The darkness playing tricks?
She moved closer, hoping for a better view. She had seen the type before; it reminded her of the ones used by the houses of Lancaster and York in the Wars of the Roses.
But there was something stranger about this one. The original symbol was still there.
Only it had slid to one side.
A strange feeling had overcome her, somewhere in between excitement and sheer astonishment. Without doubt, the five-pointed rose had previously been hidden behind the Jeffries’ symbol. On closer examination, there was some sort of hinge attached to it, which was why the Jeffries’ symbol had been able to move. Jen attempted to rationalise how it might have happened, but for now nothing made sense. Had her throwing of the debris a few seconds earlier been the cause?
If not, she was stumped.
The excitement in her started to rise again. Unable to reach the symbol, she climbed up onto a nearby block of stone, but still came up short. Following that, she tried making a small pile out of other pieces of stone and debris that were close at hand, but it still wasn’t high enough.
The extra height, however, did at least allow a better look at the crest: the five-pointed flower had a second flower at the centre and a circle within that – presumably the sun. She remembered that the white rose of York pointed downwards, whereas that of Lancaster did the opposite. While the identity of the symbol did not surprise her, of greater interest was its condition. The stone was weathered, obviously older than the Jeffries’ symbol, but even more intriguingly, it contained no motto, unlike the one in front of it.
To Jen, that was itself a sign of authenticity.
She knew that mottos were not widely used until the 17th century.
Standing on the rubble, she looked up to her right at the Jeffries’ emblem. The Latin motto was dieu et mon droit. Her Latin was rusty, but good enough to know the literal translation:
God and my right.
She heard something, somewhere in the distance. Turning to her left, she shone the light on Anthea.
The poor girl was scared out of her wits.
Jen came down from the makeshift pile and moved quickly to the entrance of the chamber. She looked both ways, not daring to expose the light. On either side she saw nothing. Whatever had made the noise had stopped. The only thing she could hear was the extended breathing of the poor girl standing behind her.
Jen pointed the light at her face.
“Okay. Now we can go.”
Sitting alone before the big screen, the man with whitening hair watched as the two female intruders left the vault.
People said he had been crazy wanting to install a camera among the tombs – a lookout against would-be intruders. Even his own wife had scorned him for resorting to such drastic measures. Up to this point he had already been proven right on six occasions…
Tonight he could proudly make that seven.
On the top floor of the farmhouse, the door to the last bedroom on the right was slightly ajar. Thomas entered the room and sat down on the chair near the bed. The patient was still awake, but clearly exhausted. His breathing was laboured, as it had been before their arrival. Beneath the sheets, over seventeen stitches marked the area where the bullet had penetrated.
At least they had managed to remove it.
Thomas dragged his chair along the floor to the side of the bed. The patient looked up at him, his eyes displaying a mixture of fear and uncertainty. He said nothing, but the look in his eyes suggested communication.
What are you going to do with me?
For several minutes Thomas did the same. After watching him for what seemed an eternity, he asked, “Who are you?” To which he received no reply.
Just eye contact and the sound of extended breathing.
As the man tilted his head to the right, finally unable to stay awake, Thomas’s attention turned to his possessions: a dark woolly hat, black combat jacket, black combat trousers, black T-shirt, black socks and black boots.
Beneath the sheets, even his underwear was the same colour.
Aside from his gun, the man carried little. There was no form of identification; the nearest was a phone.
Thomas scrolled through the contact list. The numbers were English, all mobiles, but the identity of their owners impossible to know.
The entries were written in code.
After placing the mobile
phone in his pocket, Thomas got up, ready to leave, but then stopped. The man’s left pectoral muscle was visible where the duvet had fallen. There was a mark on his chest, a tattoo of some kind. It was either a symbol or a coat of arms – the prince was unsure which.
Whatever it was, it matched the one he had seen on the friar at the Tower.
He walked over to the side of the bed and lifted the duvet.
After replacing it around the patient’s shoulders, he walked away and left the room.
Stephen opened the boot of the limousine and unzipped the first holdall.
What he saw amazed him.
The bag was full of guns.
29
Jen was the first to make her way up the stairs, with Anthea following closely behind. After making sure the door was locked, they headed back along the cloisters, stopping on reaching the door that led back into the church.
In the distance Jen could see a light shining, quite possibly the security light outside the church, but whatever it was, it was clearly not an interior light. Less clear, the source of the sound they heard in the vaults.
If someone had entered the church, they had since disappeared.
They locked the door to the cloisters and continued toward the entrance of the church.
“Wait,” Jen said, as Anthea prepared to unlock the door. There was light outside, clearly the security light.
Someone – or something – had activated it.
Jen put her eye to the keyhole, seeing if she could make it out. She could see the light, but everything else looked normal. Nevertheless, the field of vision was far too narrow.
She couldn’t rule out the possibility that their exit could be observed.
“Tell me there’s another exit.”
“You’ve got either the sacristy or the cloisters.”
“Where is the door to the sacristy?” Jen asked.
“Over there.” She pointed to the left of the altar – the other side of the church.
“Perfect.”
This time Jen allowed Anthea to lead. For the first time, Jen reminded herself that she was inside a church. In her mind, somehow the vaults seemed separate from the church itself. Despite the secrecy, it hadn’t felt like breaking and entering until now. Behind the altar, the raredos was illuminated by light coming in through the stained-glass windows. Why had the security light come back on?
The thought disturbed her.
She genuflected quickly as she passed in front of the altar, and made a muttered sign of the cross. If anything, that had unnerved her even more. Anthea opened the door to the Lady chapel, a latch handle that fortunately didn’t need locking with a key. On the other side of the chapel, a second door led to the sacristy. Anthea found the key at the seventh attempt, opened it, and locked it again from the inside. She saw the door to the outside.
In principle, it had been a good idea.
She switched the flashlight on her phone back on, and shone it on her surroundings. There were cupboards everywhere, including a large chest of drawers.
“What are they keeping here?” Jen asked.
“Stuff for the Mass, I’m guessing.”
Jen continued to take in the sights. “How about Parish registers? Burial records? That sort of thing?”
Anthea shrugged.
“It would be recorded, wouldn’t it? Even the old stuff.”
“Wouldn’t that be written in Latin?”
Jen was too busy to answer. “Check the cupboards; check the drawers.”
Jen went through the cupboards while Anthea started on the large chest of drawers. Most of the content was albs and various vestments, whereas the papers were bulletins or things to do with the order of service.
Either way, no registers or anything of the sort.
She closed the door of the cabinet and looked at Anthea.
“Come on.”
From the window of Wootton Court, the old man watched as the two figures emerged from the door that led to the sacristy. One, he recognised, but the other he was still to have the pleasure of meeting.
On leaving the sacristy, he saw them disappear into the graveyard.
Less than two hundred metres from the church, the longhaired brunette approached the gate that led to the footpath.
The dust of the church, accompanied by the stress of not being seen, felt extra heavy on her lungs, forcing her to stop to use her inhaler.
She could see movement near the sacristy, the door opening and closing, followed by the sight of two figures running. She watched as they disappeared toward the Hog.
Alone in his cousin’s study, Thomas attempted in vain to control his patience as the dialling tone continued to dominate his hearing. Although it was after eleven, it was unlike his father to go to bed that early.
Finally an answer.
“I’m sending something through to you.”
The prince replaced the receiver and inserted the number into the fax machine.
At the other end of the line, the Duke of Clarence collected the first three sheets. All three contained nothing but one small photograph, the contact list of someone’s mobile phone.
There were eight sheets in total – each containing phone numbers.
He didn’t need his son’s instruction in the ninth that the clues would lie in uncovering the identities of their owners.
Moments later, in the headquarters of MI5, the DG received the same fax. Wasting no time, he picked up the telephone.
“Get me the Director of GCHQ.”
Jen was back in her room by 11:30. The first thing she did was examine the photographs she had taken, the images far more visible on her laptop.
The symbol that had been hidden behind the Jeffries one definitely had the appearance of the white rose of York. According to the Internet, there was a yellow sun in the centre of a white rose with five petals that rested on a green five-pointed star, itself inside another white rose with five petals that also lay atop a five-pointed green star. The largest of the five-pointed green stars also pointed downwards, but much of the other detail on the one in the vault had been worn away. The upper part of the smaller rose, in particular, had practically disappeared, but there were enough parallels to satisfy her that the two were a match.
In theory, that much wasn’t a problem. The original church – once part of the priory – dated back to the early Norman era, and she was certainly in the right county. She guessed in all likelihood, there were bound to be some graves of that era in the vaults – and just because she hadn’t seen them didn’t mean that they didn’t exist. She exhausted Google for any hint of a secret door, local legend, old wives’ tale or other, but yet again the exercise proved fruitless. If the Internet was to be believed, the church had enjoyed a relatively uneventful history…
Or to be more precise, a Jeffries-dominated uneventful history.
The family history seemed equally uninspiring. The family came on the scene in the mid-1550s, rising from minor to prominent noblemen in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Most were significant landowners, but nothing else to trouble the history books.
All in all, pretty forgettable.
But there were things that didn’t add up. Firstly, Anthea was right. Edward Jeffries’ father had been a politician, rising to leader of the Democrat Party. Several stories came up on Google, including a Wikipedia profile. The man had been a politician, only to die in a car crash prior to the 1994 election.
She tried to remember him but couldn’t; she figured she was simply too young.
The second thing was even stranger. The family motto dieu et mon droit was not entirely original.
Nor was it even original to that graveyard.
Even to this day it belonged to an even more prominent family.
30
Oxford, England
The black Ford pulled into a parking space on the right-hand side of Museum Road, just outside Keble College. Seconds later, Thomas emerged from behind the wheel, dressed far more smartly than he had
the night before. The slip-on shoes, dark trousers, and smart sports jacket did not look out of place. To a casual observer, he could have been anything from an undergrad to a research fellow – perhaps something more impressive still. There was something about the way he walked that suggested familiarity.
He turned left where Museum Road met Parks Road and left again on reaching the Porters’ Lodge.
This was the main entrance to Keble College.
He flashed his old student card to the face behind the entrance window, catching a brief acknowledgement but nothing more. Instead, the woman was more preoccupied with the departing prospective students and their agitated parents as they left the college on the back of a recent guided tour.
Five years had passed since Thomas had last visited Oxford. Nothing ever changed. It was a city of elegance and beauty that continued to merge the elitist, the wannabe, the tourist, the local, and the downright drunk. In term time, he was used to every street and alleyway being packed to the rafters with students, some strutting, others ambling, making their way to the chosen port of call: the library, the lecture theatre, the dorms…
The bar…
At certain times of the year, the city had a buzz to it. The buildings of the university radiated distinction and permanence, unlike the students. The awe of the old guard lingered, whether it be in the form of a plaque, painting, or photograph of past achievements. He remembered his first week – the expectation, the stress…the contemplation of suicide…
Even for a royal it was relentless – perhaps even more so. It was difficult to shake the impression that someone was always watching you.
But fortunately today was different. The academic year was over; it was the time of transition. Today there was a different kind of environment. It was not the student, but the happy snapper, mainly from Asia or America, who frequented the famous buildings – the dinner gowns replaced by T-shirts and baseball caps, and the various wide-angle camera lenses.
The Plantagenet Vendetta Page 18