by Julie Sarff
“Okay, now we find her tomb,” Alex says authoritatively and pulls out a small flashlight. At this point I am impressed. Did he pack that in his bag when he left home? The man is prepared.
“This way.” He motions for me to follow. Alex’s friend at the Earnest Ewe sent us directions to the general vicinity of the tomb, so we make our way past the raised tombs of the Covenanters. Soon, we reach a section of tombs that have been encircled with wire grills.
“What the heck?” the Prince asks.
“Ah, I think I know what they are for --to prevent grave robbery in the 18th century.”
“Why?” Alex asks, as we hurry along searching for the Countess’s tomb.
“Because, in the Age of Reason, everybody wanted to study anatomy. How do you think they got their never-ending supply of corpses?”
“Th-that’s …” the Prince screws up his face in disgust, “disrespectful of the dead!” he hisses as we move past the grated section of tombs into what appears to be an even older section of the graveyard. Here the tombs date from the late 1500’s.
“Most definitely,” I agree adamantly before stopping dead in my tracks. Right ahead of us is a small, ornate white marble tomb with a cherub on top. Alex and I look at each other and smile.
I rush over and read the epitaph. “To my beloved wife, too good for this world.” A minute later I reach up and tap the cherub with my knuckles.
Hmm, the cherub is substantial, I can’t really tell if it’s hollow. I glance around and spy a stick. That’s it, I’ll use the stick to tap it. With any luck we should be able to hear if the cherub is hollow.
Of all the things I’d never thought I’d do in my life this has to be right up at the top of the list. I rap on the angel softly with the stick. It makes no sound.
“Lizzie, the thing is made out of stone. You’re going to really have to whack it if we are going to hear if it’s hollow.”
Right. Whack it. Unbidden, I am swept back in time. I am up to bat, bases are loaded, the girl from Manitou High School with the mean underarm pitch has just struck out the last batter. It is all up to me. I bring the bat ---I mean stick--- down with a mighty swing.
To my dismay and horror, I knock the head clean off the cherub and it sails in the general direction of the Covenanter’s tombs.
Alex doubles over in laughter.
“Oh God, oh no, what have I done? I’ve desecrated the tomb.”
“Did you see that thing fly, it must have gone twenty feet, and I think I heard it smash to bits.”
“Sweet Baby Sargon, this is a protected cemetery! I’m in big trouble.”
“Yeah, they’ll lock you away for years, Lizzie, I’m sure,” he mocks as he bends over and peers inside the hollow body of the cherub.
“Well, I’ll be,” he mutters and pulls out a wad of paper. No scratch that, he pulls out a wad of rolled up pieces of vellum.
“I’ll be,” I echo as he holds them aloft.
The Prince stuffs the papers in the breast pocket of his sports coat and we make our escape. We decide to head for the gate, to see if there is any way a person on the inside can still exit if it’s padlocked. This is doubtful, but still worth a try before we try to scale the stone wall. We haven’t gone but fifteen feet from the tomb of the Countess when I hear it….a blood curdling cry. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
The Prince instinctively drops down behind a large tomb, tugging on my pant leg for me to follow.
“What the?” I start to ask, crouching down beside him.
The next moment, I hear a shout and then someone shrieks, “Help me!”
Alex and I exchange looks of astonishment.
“Help me!” the voice wails again.
“The Poltergeist Mackenzie!” I mouth.
“I don’t think so,” Alex mouths back. “Stay calm, Lizzie.”
Suddenly the Prince is creeping along from tomb to tomb heading in the direction of the scream.
What do I do? What do I do? Should I follow him? Has he lost all his marbles, running towards the sound of the shouts in this haunted cemetery in the middle of the night?
I sit down on the ground, and lean my head against the tomb. Fear is pushing me round the bend. I almost feel as if I am going to black out. For a moment, I lose control. I completely freak. Overcome with a feeling that the tomb I am leaning against is opening up (splitting in two right behind me), I open my mouth to scream but nothing comes out. I turn around quickly to stare at the tomb and I swear I see a blackened hand reaching out to grab me. I turn around to flee, but I am unable to move. I am rooted to the spot in fear. A set of fingernails rake down my back and I am so frightened I almost vomit. Not knowing what to do I jump to my feet and flee in the darkness, stumbling about, searching for Alex.
When a firm hand reaches out and grabs my leg, I let out a blood-curdling scream. The hand tugs at me and I hit the ground so hard I have pebbles in my mouth. In sheer panic I try to inch forward on my belly as something rather heavy jumps on my back.
“Shh, Lizzie,” Alex hisses, “stay down.”
I have to stay down, I can’t get up. The Prince of Wales is lying on top of me.
Quickly Alex scrambles over me, and pulls me behind a tomb. I watch as he dials 999 on his cell phone.
For a moment, it’s eerily quiet in the cemetery. I stare Alex in the eye, right before I attack him.
“Stop, Lizzie, ge’off,” he shouts.
“Excuse me,” comes the voice from the other side of the phone.
“Hang up, hang up,” I panic, trying to swipe his phone. “You can’t call the police because there are poltergeist about. The police don’t care and we’ll be arrested for knocking the head off the cherub.”
Oh mercy, I can see the newspapers headlines tomorrow: “Prince of Wales and Biographer Defile Tomb in Greyfriars Kirkyard!”
If I get out of here without being molested by Sir Mackenzie, I am going to be put in prison. Then I’ll promptly be fired from writing the Prince’s biography for the second time in my life.
“Yes, hello, this is Alex Windsor calling, there is a disturbance at the Greyfriars Kirkyard Send the police, quick.”
“Ow, Lizzie, knock it off,” he protests, trying to fend me off with his free hand.
“Umm, Alex Windsor, as in the Prince of Wales?” the voice one the other end of the phone laughs.
“Yes, I’m not making this up, I am the Prince of Wales. Please send help.”
“Is this a prank?” the voice keeps repeating.
“You can’t call the police because of poltergeist,” I shout.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s why he’s calling the police,” a disembodied voice utters from the darkness.
A scream catches in my throat. Directly above us stands a huge shadow with a hooded face.
“Hang up the phone,” the voice commands.
“Hello, sir?” the voice comes from the other side of Alex’s phone, “are you all right?”
“Hang up the phone!” the voice commands again.
“THE POLTERGEIST MACKENZIE!” I shout and launch myself like a coiled viper. “Run, Alex, run.” I scream. Somewhere in the night I hear a gun shot. This is my first clue that perhaps I’m not fighting the supernatural. I glance at the figure whose face I have just tried to gouge --it’s the man I saw at the entrance! Somehow I have entangled our bodies, so that we both fall backward over the top of a tomb. All the time I hit, kick, scratch and fight dirty.
It suddenly dawns on me. I know where I saw this guy before. He’s the truck driver I saw in the Cotswolds! The one who ran Lady Jones off the road, but what in name of Croesus is he doing up here in Scotland?
Then I hear another shot, and the Prince yells. “Get down, Lizzie.”
In the dark, I hear the wail of a police siren. By biting his hand like a rabid dog, I free myself from the manic truck-driver. In an instant the Prince and I are off again, running in the dead of night, trying not to trip over tombs. Another shot rings out and t
he Prince tackles me to the ground, flattening me like a pancake. This time I go down so hard I let out a huge “oof.” “This way, Lizzie,” he commands and we crouch low behind a tomb. From fifty yards ahead, we hear a cacophony of male voices.
“Would you stop? You’re going to shoot one of us.”
“Hurry up!”
“Drop it! Let’s go --the police are on the way.”
I see one of the men staggering under the weight of a headstone and then I get it. These men are wrecking the graves! From our position in hiding, we watch as the five black-hooded men make their way to the gate. One of them pulls out a pair of wire cutters from underneath his coat and snips the lock. Then they slip through the gate carrying off tombstones and other ornamentation from the 16th century.
“They’re stealing the headstones!” I whisper to Alex. “I heard about this on the news. They sell them to collectors.”
Inside me, it is as if a fire has been lit. “They are looting antiquities!” I hiss at Alex. “Well, relatively modern antiquities, but anyway, they must be stopped.”
Not too far away, we hear the wail of sirens.
“The police!” I cry triumphantly, but the sirens do not grow louder.
“They’re stuck in traffic,” Alex whispers.
That’s it. It’s up to me to stop these men. They cannot get away with looting tombstones.
“Lizzie, bloody hell,” the Prince curses wildly as I sprint off, deftly maneuvering around tombs.
“You stay put!” I shout to him. I’m already in trouble. The last thing I need to do is get the Prince of Wales killed.
When Alex tackled me, it hurt so bad I thought he had broken my rib. As I try to pursue the man, the pain intensifies and I let out a moaning noise.
The men don’t turn around to see what is behind them. My moaning is so unnatural that they drop their stones and flee as one man shouts something about the revenge of the Covenanters.
I follow them, moaning all the way to the cemetery entrance. In a flash, the men are out of sight, around the stone wall. From a carpark nearby, I hear the sound of a truck engine. I make it to the road just in time to see the men flash by. My jaw drops --it is the same truck I have seen several times before down in the Cotswolds.
This time I make out the license plate clearly as the truck slows down at an intersection.
I’ve got it! I’ve got the license plate number.
I stand there, like a ghostly specter, as a dozen police cars come careening around the corner and screech to a halt right at my feet. That’s when the pain in my chest becomes so overwhelming that I fall flat on my face.
Chapter 17
Two days later, the Prince and I find ourselves finally making our way across Scotland, heading for Northern Ireland.
It has been a wild past few days. I’ve spent most of it in the hospital. Turns out Alex bruised a couple of my ribs when he tackled me.
“Okay, you made me look ten times, there are no fingernail marks on your back, Lizzie. You imagined that part,” Alex had informed me back in the hospital, lifting up the back of my pajama shirt to do as I requested.
How could that be? I know what I saw. I saw that blackened hand reaching from the grave.
In any event, the hospital was bedlam. The reporters arrived in full-force. Inside my hospital room the police detectives traipsed in and out at all hours of the day, asking all sorts of questions:
What were the Prince and I doing in the graveyard after it was closed?
“Prince and Biographer Chase Down Tomb Robbers!” the London Times wrote.
“That is precisely what we were doing,” I responded every time a different detective, asked me the question.
According to his Highness, the Prince of Wales, was tipped off by his biographer that Greyfriars Kirkyard was going to be the next target of the tomb thieves. Royal Biographer, Trudy Rue, became suspicious of a truck she had often seen near her home in Bourton-on-the-Water. Following the truck to Scotland, Ms. Rue worried that the robbers were going after the famous 16th century grave stones in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Not knowing what else to do, she called Prince Alex, who happened to be visiting friends nearby. Police know now that these thieves are the same ones that have stolen headstones in cemeteries throughout the Cotswolds, around York, and also throughout Scotland. It was originally thought that these were random acts of violence by youth, but Scotland Yard detectives have long suspected this was all part of an underground market for stolen headstones and other tomb ornamentation.
Although the men initially fled the scene in the truck, Ms. Rue was able to give police the license plate number and the truck was stopped as it tried to cross the border. Five suspects were arrested. All five have ties to organized crime.”
I cringed reading all the lies we told, although I kept wondering, who would buy someone else’s headstone?
“Avid Black Market for 16th Century and Earlier Tombstones Fueled by Billionaire Collectors in the United States and China,” read the Daily Express answering my question the following day.
“Well, I would have never thought people would collect such things. I know a lot about the black market for ancient antiquities. It’s alive and thriving and can make a peasant in a backwards place like the tribal lands of Afghanistan a millionaire overnight, but tombstone collecting, that’s a new one. I feel ashamed of my fellow billionaire countrymen, although truth is I have nothing in common with the mega elite of any country,” I sniffed when I read the article out loud. Alex, who was trying to catch a few “zzzz’s” in the chair beside my bed, just mumbled “hmm” and shifted onto his side, falling back asleep.
From reading the newspapers and watching TV over the last few days, it appears the country is both riveted and divided that the Prince would, at the request of his (nutty) biographer, lock himself up in Greyfriars Kirkyard to try to catch the thieves.
“Our Hero,” wrote the Sun displaying a beaming photo of the Prince, looking smashing as he was photographed with Edinburgh police next to the recovered headstones.
“He’s Balmy!’ wrote the Mirror. “Prince off playing Batman at behest of bossy biographer. The Edinburgh police chief is looking into whether or not to bring criminal charges against Prince Alex, who actually admits to hiding out in Greyfriars Kirkyard at the request of his biographer, who tipped him off about the robbery.”
“We weren’t sure that they were the actual thieves,” Prince Alex told news reporters in a press conference. “All we knew was that the truck was the same one Ms. Rue had seen in the Cotswolds. She put two and two together at the last minute and called me. I was on vacation in Scotland, not that far away, and so I thought I would drive over and see for myself what was happening. It really was a last minute decision to join the tour and follow the men into the cemetery in hopes of catching them in the act.”
But what kind of man follows a biographer with a hunch?
“Fool for Love! Smitten Prince Follows New Love-of-his-Life into Peril,” wrote another tabloid.
“Fool for Love?” My brow knit together tightly as I read that title. The Prince was still taking refuge in my hospital room, although the Palace rang him continuously, demanding he return at once to Buckingham.
“You must come home now,” Alistair’s voice boomed out of Alex’s phone the last time he answered it. Alistair sounded uncharacteristically irritated. “Either you return to the Palace now, or we’re going to come and get you. We are in damage control here, damage control! Polls show that people are divided as to whether or not to thank you for protecting the honor of the dead, or to have you incarcerated for sneaking into a protected monument.”
“That’s it,” Alex had had enough. He switched off his cell and announced, “If we are going to Northern Ireland, we need to leave tonight. We have to slip out undetected.”
“But the doctors haven’t signed my release papers yet,” I wheezed. It still hurt to talk.
“Alright then, Lizzie, I’m going to have to go without you.”
“Well, if you’re sure…”
“I’m positive. What time do we leave?”
As soon as the nurse was done taking my vitals and left the room, I put on clothes. Alex grabbed my bag and we snuck out the back stairs after visiting hours were over. Walking caused my pain to flair up. I had to take it slow. Once out on the street, we were picked up by Michael, the owner of the Earnest Ewe. He drove to the outskirts of town, not far from his pub. The he pulled over, and hopped out leaving us with the car.
“It’s all yours, bring her back safe,” he said.
“He’s loaning us the car?”
“He is,” Alex replied. “We can’t take your rental. The Palace would track us down in minutes. Michael will keep it safe at the Earnest Ewe while we’re away.”
With a look of great concentration on his face, as if we were on the most important mission of his life, the Prince put the small 15th-generation Ford Escape into first and we rocketed off into the night. We were heading for the sea port of Troon, where we slept in the car until the ferry service opened at dawn.
Now it’s the next morning, the sun has risen warm and gold over the seaport and Alex wakes up, gives me an unreadable look and starts the engine. On this truly fine July morning, we are the first car on the boat heading for Larne in Northern Ireland.
Chapter 18
They say that because of the “Troubles” Northern Ireland remained wild and relatively unspoiled. Before the peace treaty at the turn of the century, the Catholics and Protestants waged a very uncivil war against each other, leaving over 3,000 dead. During that time, companies didn’t invest in the tiny country, so now after years of peace, Northern Ireland is a green gem, a tourist paradise of beautiful scenery and chic little towns.
We leave Larne and follow the coast northwards to Portstewart. In a country half the size of Delaware, it takes very little time to reach our destination. It’s not even nine o’clock when we drive into the seaside resort of about 7,000 residents.