The Bone House be-2

by Stephen Lawhead

  “May I?” said Wilhelmina. Thomas passed the map to her, and she held it up to the painting. Though the symbols in the painting were crude squiggles next to the real thing, the basic shapes seemed more or less correct. The piece Mina was holding did match up with the upper right quadrant of the map in High Priest Anen’s hand. “Whoever cut up the map was very careful,” she observed. “Look at the ruffled edges.” She pointed out the lower portion and left side of the map. “See how irregular the line is?”

  “Whoever did it was at pains not to cut into other symbols,” replied Kit. “So they cut around them, producing this deckled edge.”

  “The adjoining pieces will match precisely,” offered Thomas. “By that you will know they are genuine.”

  Wilhelmina carefully re-rolled the human parchment and passed it to Thomas, who returned it to its cover. The four had then returned to the wadi camp, where Khefri had organised a special dinner of roast goat to celebrate the successful completion of the dig. They had eaten and talked late into the night, and now, as the sun was rising in the east, it was time to depart.

  Wilhelmina started down the avenue towards the spot where Giles was waiting. Kit lifted a hand and called, “Farewell!”

  “Go with God, my friends,” shouted Thomas, waving them away. “Grace and peace attend you.”

  But his words were lost in the shriek of the wind that suddenly gusted along the ancient pavement. The world grew hazy in a mixture of dust and grit… and the next thing Kit knew, a fierce rain was beating on his face. His clothing whipped about his limbs in a gale-force wind that, unlike his other experiences, did not summarily die away upon their arrival.

  “I think we’ve landed in the middle of a hurricane!” he shouted, trying to be heard above the crash and roar.

  “What?” came Wilhelmina’s voice from a distance that sounded like miles, but must have been only a few feet away.

  “This storm,” he cried. “We’re in the thick of it.”

  “It’s always storming here,” she shouted, emerging out of the lashing wind. “It never stops.”

  “Never?”

  “Not ever.” She pressed her wet face closer. “Not that I know.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “Lots of times.”

  He felt her hand grip his arm.

  “This way. Stay with me.” She turned her head and shouted over her shoulder. “Giles! Are you with us?”

  “Here, my lady,” came the reply from somewhere close behind.

  “Take hold of my hand. I’m going to count to three, and we run straight ahead. Ready? Here we go… one… two… three.. . Go!”

  Kit did as instructed, sprinting blindly into the teeth of the storm. For an instant it felt as if his flesh would be ripped from his bones, and then… darkness and silence. He was tumbling through an emptiness, through an airless void so absolute he thought he was suffocating. He gagged, but could not draw oxygen into his lungs.

  He felt a sharp sting on his cheek.

  “Breathe, Kit!”

  He opened his eyes to see Wilhelmina standing before him with her hand poised to strike again. “Hah!” he gasped, staggering backwards. “Stop that! I’m okay.”

  Mina turned to Giles, who was kneeling on a broad, leaf-strewn path a few paces away. “You okay?” Upon receiving his grunted reply, she said, “Sorry, guys. That one was the worst-but it saved us four more jumps and maybe two days of overland travel.”

  “Anything for the cause,” said Kit, woozily shaking water from his clothes. “I’m soaked to the skin.”

  “You’ll dry.” Wilhelmina started away. “Have you still got the map?”

  Kit patted his stomach, where the bundle resided under his shirt. He nodded.

  “Good.” She started away. “You’ll feel better once we’re moving again. It’s best to walk it off. Come on.”

  “Where are we?” Kit glanced around. They seemed to be standing in a lightly wooded countryside; the air was cool and redolent of fallen leaves. He could hear insects buzzing in the branches of the nearby trees.

  “We’re about three miles north of Prague,” she said, stepping off the path. “There’s a road a little farther along. It runs beside the river. It’ll take us into the city. If we’re lucky, we might be able to hitchhike the rest of the way.”

  “ When are we?” Kit asked.

  “Well, we’re somewhere in the autumn of 1607 during the reign of Emperor Rudolf. If we hit it right, we’re in early September.” She started towards a bayberry bush growing beside the path. “Or possibly August.”

  “And we’ve come here why?” wondered Kit.

  “I live here,” she said. “We need a good safe place to lay up for a few days to study the map and figure out what to do next. Wait here,” she said, stepping behind the bush. “I have to change.”

  “You stashed a change of clothes?” said Kit. “Nice.”

  “I dare not be seen dressed like this in the city. Too many people know me.”

  Kit looked down at himself. “What about Giles and me?”

  “Giles is fine the way he is,” came the reply from behind the bush. “As for you, take off that dumb turban and wrap it around your waist. Tie it like a sash; it will help disguise your flouncy shirt.”

  “Flouncy shirt,” muttered Kit. “It’s a jalabiya, I’ll have you know.”

  “I’m sure it is. With a sash, people will just think it’s a labourer’s smock. They wear those around here.”

  Kit obeyed as instructed, much to the amusement of the watching Giles. “Where did you go, you and Giles, when we left the wadi the first time? While I was helping Thomas dig up the tomb, where were you?”

  “In Edinburgh,” came the reply from the bushes. “Dr. Young was there. I went to convince him to help you excavate the tomb.”

  “But that’s-How can that be? He was in Egypt with me… wasn’t he?”

  “Not yet,” said Wilhelmina. “I should have thought that would be obvious.”

  “Not to me. Explain.”

  “It simple. Time, as we know, operates independently in different frames of reference.”

  “As we know,” Kit agreed.

  “So I simply had to reach him before he left for Egypt on his expedition.”

  “But that would mean I was already with him, digging up the treasure before you even asked him,” Kit pointed out.

  “Right,” said Wilhelmina. “Neat, eh?” She stepped out from behind the bush, wholly transformed. Gone was the girl in the camouflage jumpsuit and sky-blue scarf and desert boots; in her place stood a winsome lass in a long skirt, white blouse with puffy sleeves, and multicoloured shawl. She carried a cloth bag, which she handed to Kit.

  “This way, chaps,” she said, and soon they were moving through the long grass and down a gently sloping hillside.

  Kit could see the gleam of a river at the bottom of the incline and, sure enough, a road.

  “If we don’t dillydally, we can have dinner tonight at one of the best restaurants in the city.”

  Kit stopped walking and stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “Gosh, Mina. You are amazing. How do you know so much about all this?”

  “Practice,” she said. “Lots and lots of practice. And mistakes.”

  CHAPTER 24

  In Which a Destiny Is Determined

  The end, when it came, was swift and unexpected. Lord Gower had complained in the evening of feeling unwell. He had taken tea and a bit of dry toast and retired to his rooms. By morning he was no better, so a doctor was summoned to attend him. That same afternoon, in a feverish sweat and complaining of headache, he had lapsed into a fitful sleep from which he was not to be roused. Archie was with him when he died two days later; standing by the earl’s bed, he marked the toll of the nine o’clock bell from the tower of St. Mary’s Argent Square as his benefactor’s spirit fled its mortal confines. Archie bent his head and shed a private tear for the man who had been his teacher, friend, and, so far as Archie w
as concerned, the only father he had ever known.

  The next day was spent in the offices of Beachcroft and Lechward, Lord Gower’s solicitors, who arranged for the funeral and burial according to the earl’s will and special instructions. The funeral was held seven days later at St. Mary’s, with nearly two hundred in attendance. The mourners were provided tea and cakes at Lord Gower’s London residence after the graveside service, and Archie received the condolences of his guests with a dignified decorum the earl would have approved and commended. The next two weeks were spent in an inventory of the property in preparation for what Archie considered the inevitable invasion to come.

  The calendar turned over another leaf, and one morning George Gower, the estranged cousin of the earl, came knocking on the door in the company of his wife, Branca; a Peckham bailiff; and a solicitor in a top hat and black frock coat. Archie received them in the earl’s sitting room.

  “The hand-over of property will not be delayed,” intoned the lawyer imperiously. “We will be taking immediate possession. It would be most helpful if you were to collect your personal possessions and vacate the premises at your earliest convenience.”

  Archie, who had braced himself for this moment, was nevertheless stunned by the abruptness of the eviction and the coldness of the greed on display. When he found his voice, he said, “I have had an inventory prepared, if you would care to-”

  “We will make our own inventory, thank you,” the lawyer sniffed. “In any case, you will vacate the premises by three o’clock this afternoon. The bailiff here will be pleased to help you gather your things. He will accompany you now to ensure that you do not inadvertently remove any articles not belonging to you and to which you are not entitled.”

  “Your foresight is admirable.” Archie offered a grim smile to the new tenants. “How you must have longed for this day and prayed for its coming.”

  “Silencie a sua lingua!” snarled the woman, her potent Portuguese temper quick and hot. “You are not family. You have nothing to say.”

  “Indeed,” Archie agreed. “I assure you that I have no wish to remain in your odious presence a moment longer than necessary.”

  “Now, see here, you-” sputtered George Gower. “You bounder!”

  But Archie was already moving towards the door and departed without another word. “Summon Beachcroft,” he told the earl’s valet. “Then pack your things and, if I were you, I might spare a thought to the days ahead-if you know what I mean.”

  The valet nodded. “It is in hand, sir.”

  “You may instruct the rest of the staff to do the same.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  While the new owners began totting up the silver, Archie went to his rooms and began to pack his things. He was joined a few minutes later by the bailiff-a suspicious oaf who insisted on examining everything Archie put into his cases until Archie suggested, “Perhaps it would be best if you packed for me; then you could give your keepers a precise inventory of what I have taken.”

  “Never you mind my job,” muttered the man. “Get on with you.”

  Beachcroft, the earl’s solicitor, arrived with a copy of Lord Gower’s will just as Archie was placing his cases in the foyer. In the presence of the inheritors and their lawyer, he read out the relevant portion of the earl’s last will and testament, which explicitly stated that Archibald Burley was given leave to choose any five objects from the earl’s extensive collection of exotic artefacts.

  “ Any five objects he so desires,” stressed Walter Beachcroft, “without let or hindrance.”

  When Archie took his leave a short while later it was, much to the relief of the new owners, with five small dusty antiques of negligible interest. Had George and Branca known the true value of the items Archie selected, fits of apoplexy would have ensued all around. As it was, their ignorance allowed them some measure of insulation from the stinging reality. Taken together, the objects Archie chose amounted to a very tidy sum that would allow him to set up in the antiquities trade.

  Nor was that all.

  In truth, the far greater portion of Archie’s now-considerable fortune was already safely stashed in six large tea chests that had been safely deposited in the vaults of Lloyd’s Bank, and another delivered with his cases to King’s Cross Station a week earlier. After his summary eviction from Lord Gower’s London residence, Archie paid his mother a visit and bade her farewell, leaving her with a Lloyd’s Bank book for an account containing five hundred pounds in her name. Then he kissed her good-bye and caught the evening boat-train to the continent. Visits to Paris, Cologne, Vienna, and Rome were followed by more lengthy sojourns in Prague, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Cairo. At each stop along the way he acquired objets d’art and exotica that would form the basis of a collection of almost legendary proportions to tantalise the jaded palates of London’s elite collectors.

  Archie’s only contact with England during his sojourn abroad was in the form of a letter from Beachcroft, the solicitor, informing him that the earl’s estate had been sold to a sugar magnate. George and Branca Gower had taken their fortune and returned to Lisbon, where, presumably, they would live out their days in comfort and ease at the expense of their late relation.

  On the second anniversary of the Earl of Sutherland’s death, an extremely dashing tycoon answering to the name Archelaeus Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland, arrived in London. The dark, distinguished young lord took an apartment in an expansive Kensington Garden mansion. In the weeks and months to follow, the wealthier citizens of the metropolis would be buzzing about the rare and exquisite antiques this knowledgeable and well-spoken gentleman could produce from his seemingly inexhaustible store. Tales circulated about the earl’s extensive connections with the aristocracy of Old Europe and the royal palaces of the Middle East, which were the principal sources for the wondrous items he traded. These objects did not come cheaply.

  Certainly, the fine rings, bracelets, and necklaces; jewelled pendants, statuettes, daggers, and diadems; carved reliefs from attic friezes and pediments; intricately decorated red-and-black amphorae, bowls, lamps, beakers, and urns, and all the rest carried breathtaking price tags. But then where else could one obtain such superb specimens?

  “Beauty is all too often fleeting in this world,” Lord Burleigh was wont to remark. “I live only for one thing-and that is the pursuit of beauty that outlasts the ages.”

  This sentiment, and much else about the young aristocrat, mightily impressed his clientele, which now included a growing number of marriageable young women. As word of the eligible bachelor of Sutherland spread, his wealth grew-and grew in the telling-until he could not attend an evening performance at Covent Garden or the Proms without attracting a bevy of beautifully groomed and gowned young things. The situation did not go unnoticed. As one mildly envious onlooker was heard to opine, “I say, the Earl of Sutherland must love his gardening.”

  “How so, Mortimer?”

  “Why, to be surrounded by such a profusion of ravishing flowers he must work those beds like a very slave.”

  “Quite.”

  The young earl himself appeared to enjoy the feminine attention, yet remained slightly aloof from it, maintaining an air of mild amusement at his own apparent availability. And, while he displayed no favouritism in his choice of companions, being seen in public with a different beauty every night, there was one who began to emerge from the pack: a willowy, blonde lovely named Phillipa Harvey-Jones, daughter and sole surviving heir of prominent industrialist Reginald Harvey-Jones, a man in the chase for a knighthood if ever there was one. Reggie, as he was known to friends and admirers, enjoyed the reputation as a bruisingly tough businessman whose only pleasure in life was doting on his daughter.

  Naturally, when her name began to be linked with the dashing Burleigh’s, it roused Reggie’s considerable interest. Within minutes of their first meeting, he cut right to the point. “Your money, sir. Where did you get it?”

  “Beg your pardon?” Archelaeus raised his eyebrows
.

  “We are men of the world,” Reg told him. “Let’s not be coy-especially where money is concerned. We both know it is nothing to do with character. At best it is only an arbitrary indicator of a man’s place in the world.” He fixed the young lord with a narrow, uncompromising gaze. “So, how much have you got, anyway?”

  “Difficult to say,” replied Burleigh, easily sliding into a tone of confidentiality, “what with the northern properties, the southern holdings, and the London house. Most of that belongs to the family, of course.” Archie had long ago learned to play on Londoners’ innate ignorance of Scotland generally and its gentry in particular.

  “Just your private assets, then-your own private accounts-how much do you command personally?”

  “Oh, I should say around ten thousand.”

  “Not bad.”

  “Annually,” Burleigh added, almost apologetically.

  “I am impressed.” Harvey-Jones gave him a look of renewed respect. “That is twice as much as my income, and I work hard for what I get.”

  “I am certain that you do,” agreed the young lord mildly. “My own work is more in the way of a leisure pursuit.”

  “A hobby, sir?”

  “Something of the sort.” The young gentleman allowed himself a sigh. “Still, one must fill the empty hours as best one can.”

  “If you were married,” suggested the industrialist, “you would find other ways to fill those hours.”

  “I daresay.”

  “What is more, you would soon have fewer of them to fill!”

  “Daddy,” chirped a warm feminine voice, “you are completely monopolising our host with your chatter.” She affected a frown of disapproval. “You aren’t talking about money again, are you? Tell me you’re not.”

  “Furthest thing from my mind, Pippa dear.” Reggie gave his golden-haired daughter a peck on the cheek. “We were just now speaking of hobbies and avocations. The earl here complains of too much time on his hands. I told him he wants a wife.”