by Chloe Palov
Leaning back in his leather wingback, blue-veined fingers laced over his chest, Sir Kenneth’s gaze narrowed, the old man undoubtedly deciding whether or not to reply. With a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, he finally said, ‘There are a few shreds of historical data to support your theory.’
‘Like what?’ Edie piped up, subtlety not her strong suit.
‘As you undoubtedly know, theories have waxed and waned as to how and why the Ark disappeared. However, if one carefully sifts through centuries of biblical silence, the Ark’s disappearance might possibly be laid at the sandalled foot of the Egyptian pharaoh Shishak, who conquered the holy city of Jerusalem in the year 926 BC.’
As his former mentor began to speak, Cædmon was reminded of the fact that Sir Kenneth never prepared for his tutorials, always speaking extemporaneously. And brilliantly. Most who flew by the seat of their pants eventually crash-landed. Never Sir Kenneth Campbell-Brown, his lectures also legendary.
Cædmon turned to Edie. Filling in the gaps, he said, ‘Shishak’s invasion occurred not long after Solomon’s son Rehoboam inherited the crown of Israel. Because the northern tribes had recently broken away during a power struggle, the kingdom of Israel was vulnerable.’
‘In other words, the opportunistic Egyptians swept down like vultures on roadkill.’
Sir Kenneth laughed aloud, clearly amused. ‘Well put, my dear! Well put indeed.’
On the far side of the room, the study door suddenly swung open. Without uttering a word, Mrs Janus, bearing a tray laden with Wedgwood and pewter, walked over to the tea table. Still silent as the grave, she handed each of them a tankard of mulled wine and a dainty plate with two small tarts. Watching the housekeeper depart, Cædmon thought he recognized the woman, unable to fathom why any domestic would willingly suffer Sir Kenneth’s mercurial ways for so many years. Clearly, the woman possessed the patience of Job.
‘The blasted Aga has been running full throttle since the first of December. If I’m not careful, I’ll put on a stone before Twelfth Night.’
Forgoing a beautifully incised dessert fork, Edie plucked a miniature tart off the plate with her fingers. ‘You were about to regale us with the story of Shishak’s invasion of Israel.’
‘So I was.’ Choosing wine over pastry, Sir Kenneth cradled his tankard between his hands. ‘According to the Book of Kings, in the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign “Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem: And he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king’s house; he even took away all.”’
‘Meaning that the pharaoh stole the Ark of the Covenant!’ When her exclamation met with silence, Edie’s brows puckered in the middle. ‘Well, what else could it mean?’
‘The Old Testament makes no mention of Shishak seizing the Ark. It merely records that the pharaoh managed to come away with five hundred shields of beaten gold.’
‘Solomon’s famous shields,’ Cædmon murmured.
‘There are some biblical historians who have theorized that King Rehoboam willingly handed over the five hundred gold shields to repay a debt of honour. Years earlier the pharaoh had granted the wayward Hebrew prince asylum when his father ordered his assassination. All that internecine rivalry between family members is what makes the Bible such a jolly good read,’ Sir Kenneth said in an aside, broadly winking at Edie.
‘Are there any historical records aside from the Old Testament that mention Shishak’s invasion of Israel?’ Cædmon asked, wishing the other man would keep to the point.
‘The only other account is an inscription at Luxor inside the Temple of Amun-Ra. According to this, after he attacked Jerusalem, Shishak apparently stopped on the Plain of Esdraelon, where he had a commemorative stela erected. The custom of the time mandated that Shishak show his gratitude to the gods by leaving behind a sizeable offering. As with the taxman, one must always appease one’s god. And to answer your next question, there is no record of what Shishak did with his ill-gotten gains once he returned to his capital city of Tanis.’
‘I thought the Ark was placed in Shishak’s tomb. At least that’s the theory put forth in Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ Edie conversationally remarked.
To Cædmon’s surprise, rather than berate Edie for introducing a fictional movie plot into the discussion, Sir Kenneth smiled. ‘You are absolutely charming, my dear. But you have jumped to an erroneous conclusion regarding Shishak and the Ark of the Covenant. As I earlier mentioned, there is no evidence that Shishak took the Ark.’
‘It stands to reason that if the pharaoh’s army took Jerusalem, Shishak would have looted Solomon’s Temple,’ Caedmon argued. ‘After all, the sole purpose of invading Israel was to come away with as much treasure as they could pocket.’
‘And what proof do you have that Shishak actually laid his greedy hands upon the coveted prize?’
‘As you have already stated, there’s no direct biblical evidence. However, it stands to reason that –’
‘Rubbish! It does not stand to reason!’ Sir Kenneth loudly exclaimed, punctuating his rebuttal with a fist on the arm of his chair. ‘Your assumptions are unwarranted. You would be well advised, young Aisquith, to refrain from fantastical deductions.’
Warning issued, the woolly-headed don surged to his feet and strode over to a nearby window. Despite the December temperatures, he threw open the window, letting in a burst of wintry air. The centuries-old glass caught the midday sun, cloaking the older man in a silvery-grey nimbus.
‘Reginae erunt nutrices tuae!’ he yelled to the bare trees that bordered the chapel yard.
Edie’s jaw nearly came unhinged, so great was her astonishment.
Having witnessed the performance many times before, Cædmon rose to his feet, walked over to the tea table and took two pecan tarts from a Wedgwood plate. He handed one of the tarts to Edie. ‘“Queens shall be thy nursing mothers,”’ he translated. ‘Taken from the Book of Isaiah, it is the Queen’s College motto.’
Munching on his tart, Cædmon gazed beyond the woolly head at the window, espying the small stone terrace that overlooked the knot garden. In the blossoming profusion of Trinity Term, Sir Kenneth liked to gather his favourites on the terrace. For some inexplicable reason, the memory of those lush spring days was especially poignant. And especially painful.
Edie put in, ‘I know Sir Kenneth will jump all over me if I suggest this, but what if Shishak dumped the Ark of the Covenant at Esdraelon just like the Philistines dumped the Ark at Bethshemesh? Shishak might have done that if his soldiers started to complain of tumours and lesions. Or, better yet, what if the pharaoh witnessed one or two of his soldiers tossed in the air because of the electric current produced by the Ark? I’d think that’d be reason enough to hide the Ark, say a prayer, and get the heck out of Esdraelon as quick as possible.’
Thinking this a likely scenario, Cædmon reseated himself, the maudlin mood instantly lifted. ‘You are a woman after my own heart.’
He also thought it probable that Shishak’s offering was, centuries later, happened upon by an English crusader, the dimensions listed in the Feet of Fines for Galen’s gold chest an exact match for the dimensions given in the Old Testament for the Ark of the Covenant. And Esdraelon, the site where Galen of Godmersham had discovered his gold chest, was where the commemorative stela had been erected by Shishak.
‘Sir Kenneth said something about Galen being the proud owner of a number of objets sacrés. Are you thinking what I’m thinking, that Galen also happened upon a few of Solomon’s shields?’
‘It’s not outside the realms of possibility that Shishak left a number of shields as a peace offering to the gods. Although I wouldn’t broach the notion with our host.’
‘Gotcha.’
Closing the window, Sir Kenneth strode back to his desk.
‘Nothing like a full-throated bellow to clear one’s mind, eh? You should try it, my dear. I suspect you have a healthy pair of lungs.’ Pronouncement issued, he turned to Cædmon. ‘While this has been a mos
t entertaining discussion, young Aisquith, your original supposition is not unlike a fart in a wind tunnel. Ephemeral at best.’
‘And thus “A terrible beauty is born,”’ Cædmon drolly murmured.
‘You were always fond of a literary flourish. Had you studied medieval literature rather than history, you might have gone far.’
‘Um, speaking of literary endeavours, I’m curious about the poems that Galen wrote prior to his death,’ Edie interjected, taking upon herself the thankless job of referee.
‘Yes, I thought the two of you would be interested in Galen’s poetry. The originals are kept at Duke Humphrey’s Library and do not circulate. But luckily for you, my dear, I’ve got a copy right here.’
Still standing, he shuffled through a pile of papers on his desk. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he impatiently rifled through the next pile. And then another, all the while muttering under his breath.
‘This is unconscionable!’ he angrily exclaimed, slapping a palm on the last pile. ‘Someone has pinched the blasted quatrains!’
37
As she did each and every year, Marta Janus carefully removed the tissue-wrapped ornaments from the box. First she unwrapped the six hand-blown glass angels from her native Poland. Next she got out the tartan-clad Santas. As always, she found the green-and-blue-plaid porcelain figures slightly grotesque, but Sir Kenneth was inordinately proud of his Scottish forebears, and so each year she hung the gaudy ornaments upon the tree. One plaid Santa for each crystal angel. Sir Kenneth always complained about the dressing of the tree, claiming it a strange ritual for a woman who professed to be a devout Catholic. Marta simply turned a deaf ear. After twenty-seven years in Sir Kenneth’s employ, she was no longer affected by his condescension. She’d built a wall around her heart, brick by brick, the mortar so thick as to be impenetrable.
At first she had believed Sir Kenneth Campbell-Brown was a kind and generous man. While many intellectuals had professed sympathy for the Polish dissident movement, few were willing to take in a refugee who barely spoke English. Sir Kenneth had no such qualms. He pointed; she cleaned. For the first year they had no verbal communication whatsoever. And then one day she awoke to find handwritten signs taped to nearly every piece of furniture. Her grace period having abruptly expired, the lord of Rose Chapel expected her to master the English language. At first, it had been nothing more than a silly game of butchered phrases and garbled sentences, then it went from game to something deeper, more complex, Marta determined to prove her worth to the man who had plucked her from the ashes of fear and uncertainty.
She was one of the lucky few who had managed to escape, paying an exorbitant fee to a ‘guide’ who smuggled her out of Gdansk in the hold of a fishing vessel. Her husband Witold had not been so fortunate. Caught in the communist crackdown, he’d been sent to prison for crimes against the state. A bricklayer by trade, his only crime had been to dream of a free Poland. Sentenced to ten years’ hard labour, he lasted three. Marta did not receive word of his death until he’d already been dead and buried sixteen months. She spoke of his death to no one, not even Sir Kenneth, obeying an unspoken rule in Rose Chapel: never speak of matters of the heart.
She supposed the rule had come about because Sir Kenneth did not possess a heart. Or if he did, it was rarely in evidence. In twenty-seven years there had been only two occasions when Sir Kenneth Campbell-Brown had exhibited any sort of tenderness. The first was when, having read of her plight in a local newspaper, he rang up the Catholic charity that had sponsored her when she first arrived in England, informing them that he would provide gainful employment for her. Nearly ten years would pass before the second.
Although there were countless incidents in between, incidents that spoke of a decadent and depraved existence. Many nights Sir Kenneth did not return to Rose Chapel. Many nights were spent in drunken revelry. One such night she happened upon two naked, giggling girls in the kitchen smearing butter on each other’s breasts. Another night she went to turn down the bed only to discover Sir Kenneth and a muscular black man committing an unspeakable act. Some nights she thought him the devil incarnate. Other nights, a beautiful Bacchus.
He’d certainly been beautiful that long-ago December eve, attired in a crisply tailored black tuxedo, his grey curls gleaming like polished pewter. He’d returned early from a party, claiming it had been a ‘ghastly bore’. Marta offered him a cup of mulled wine and asked if he would like to help dress the Christmas tree. He laughed at the invitation but loosened his bow tie and helped nonetheless. He’d even steadied a chair so she could place a twinkling star atop the tree. But the chair wobbled and she accidentally fell into his arms. Before she knew it, they were rolling together on the recently vacuumed carpet, pulling at each other’s garments like two crazed animals. She had not lain with a man in the ten years since she left her native Poland. In that impassioned instant Sir Kenneth ceased to be the master of Rose Chapel; he was simply a man. Forceful. Hard. Commanding. She’d cried out, the pain so exquisite she thought she would be torn asunder.
The next morning silence returned to Rose Chapel. Not unlike the first year of her tenure, Sir Kenneth did little but point and mutter. She did nothing but sweep and vacuum. No mention was made of the previous night’s passion. Had it not been for the crystal angel smashed beneath the tree and Sir Kenneth’s bow tie entangled in the tree, she could almost believe it had never happened. The broken angel went into the dustbin, the satin tie into her keepsake box.
One week later, on Boxing Day, when masters traditionally gave gifts to their servants, a small box wrapped in plain brown paper mysteriously appeared on her dresser. Inside was a hand-blown crystal angel. There was no card. Each year the mystery angel was the first to be unwrapped. And each year, despite his protests and complaints, Marta dressed a Christmas tree, forcing the master of Rose Chapel to remember their night of passion.
She’d long since given up any hope that Sir Kenneth’s soul could be saved. For to have a soul, one must first have a heart. Heartless man that he was, she feared the day would come when she would be replaced with a younger woman, a woman whose hair had not turned grey, whose body had not sagged. Marta feared what would become of her if she was made to face the wolves, penniless and pensionless.
But there was now a way to avoid the wolves. An American angel had come to deliver her from that which she most feared. She could now leave Rose Chapel on her own terms, her grey head held high. It required just one phone call.
Reaching into her apron pocket, Marta removed the scrap of paper with the scrawled mobile phone number. For two days she’d carried the slip of paper in her pocket. Staring at the number, she hesitated. Uncertain. Assailed with memories of that long-ago December eve. Like a woman lost in a blizzard, Marta turned her gaze to the neat line of Christmas ornaments waiting to be placed on the tree. In the kitchen a timer pealed.
Time to take the buns out of the oven.
Marta turned away from the ornaments. As she did, her hip jogged the table. One hideous blue-and-green Santa rolled to the edge, falling to the stone floor.
Marta stared at the broken bits of porcelain.
No longer uncertain.
38
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking,’ Edie said in a low voice, ‘that the Harvard “chap” stole the quatrains from Sir Kenneth?’
‘Indeed,’ Cædmon replied, the missing poems seeming proof that Stanford MacFarlane believed Galen of Godmersham had uncovered the Ark of the Covenant. It also strongly suggested that MacFarlane believed clues to the Ark’s whereabouts were contained within the lines of those verses. A poetic treasure map as it were. He and Edie had to move quickly.
‘Sir Kenneth, did you say that Galen’s poetry is housed at the Bod?’
Still shuffling through the piles of paper on his desk, Sir Kenneth glanced up. ‘What’s that? Er, yes. The original copy of the quatrains is kept at Duke Humphrey’s Library.’
Duke Humphrey’s Library was one of
fourteen libraries in the Bodleian. Unless things had greatly changed, only matriculated students and researchers who’d obtained written permission could gain entry to Duke Humphrey’s Library, the premises strictly off limits to visitors. To circumvent the restrictions, MacFarlane’s man had stolen a copy from Sir Kenneth.
‘Is there any possibility that I might be able to examine the original quatrains?’
Sir Kenneth stopped in mid-shuffle. For several long seconds the older man stared at Cædmon from across the paper-strewn desk. Making him feel like a child awaiting a parent’s decision about attending an upcoming football match. Except Sir Kenneth wasn’t his father. Although he had once been a father figure. Long years ago.
‘I could call the head librarian and ask that the two of you be granted a special dispensation to view the library’s collection. But I warn you, Galen’s quatrains are a linguistic puzzle tied with an encrypted knot.’
Having assumed no less, Cædmon respectfully bowed his head. ‘I am in your debt, Sir Kenneth.’
‘Did you know, my dear, that young Aisquith graduated with a first?’ Sir Kenneth remarked, abruptly changing the subject.
About to raise her tankard to her lips, Edie stopped in mid-motion. ‘Um, no. Guess that makes Cædmon a really smart cookie, huh?’
‘Indeed, it does. The smart cookie then went on to write a brilliant master’s thesis on St Bernard of Clairvaux and the founding of the Knights Templar. Later, when he went off to Jerusalem to conduct his dissertation research, I had every expectation that he would submit an equally brilliant dissertation.’
The knot in Cædmon’s belly painfully tightened. Bloody hell. This was the old man’s price for granting the favour, to stuff his entrails with red hot coals.
‘As you have no doubt guessed, I was not up to the challenge. I did not meet Sir Kenneth’s high standards,’ he confessed, refusing to let his estranged mentor deliver the coup de grâce. Better a self-inflicted wound than to be led meekly to the scaffold.