Stones of Fire

by Chloe Palov

  She stopped. Turning towards him, she said, ‘Were they still alive, there’s not a single member of my family that I would be proud to introduce to you. I just… I just wanted a normal, sane, loving family. Was that so wrong?’

  Cædmon shook his head. ‘It is what we all long for.’

  ‘Yeah, it is, isn’t it? But those weren’t the cards I was given.’ Realizing how clichéd and melodramatic that sounded, she decided to just stick to the facts. No emotion. No drama queen theatrics.

  ‘Okay, here it is. The unedited version of the story is that my mother Melissa was addicted to heroin, and bad men, and playing the state lottery. And just so you don’t jump to the conclusion that she was a horrible person, it wasn’t completely her fault. She grew up in a very repressive evangelical household. Unfortunately, she fell in love with a Jewish boy in her geometry class. Pops didn’t approve. So he kicked her out of the house. She was sixteen years old.’

  ‘I take it the ill-fated lover was your father?’

  Edie derisively snorted. ‘Hmph! Don’t I wish?’ Maybe things would have turned out different if Jacob Steiner had been my father.

  ‘According to my mother, there was a freak car accident. A strong gust of wind caused the vehicle to swerve into a tree. Jacob died, she survived.’

  ‘Is that when your mother turned to drugs?’

  Edie nodded. ‘The grief nearly did her in. At least that’s the excuse she gave for not being able to pull it together. Oh, every now and again she’d clean up her act. In fact, she cleaned up real good. But then –’ Edie snapped her fingers ‘– just like that, she’d start to reek of stale beer and vomit.’

  Which was about the same time that strange men started to show up, the thin walls of the trailer doing little to muffle the grunts and groans.

  ‘I suppose I should mention at this juncture that my mother had no idea who fathered me. She thought it might have been “the guy with the Harley”.’ Using her fingers, Edie made a pair of air quotes. ‘But that’s mere speculation.’

  Having just confessed to being illegitimate, Edie stared at the worn carpet beneath her feet. She could only imagine what Cædmon thought of her. He probably hailed from a snooty English household. Something straight out of The Forsyte Saga.

  ‘It sounds as though your mother had a tragic life,’ he quietly remarked.

  ‘Try tragically flawed. Anyway, it wasn’t a long life. She overdosed on her twenty-eighth birthday. I found her on the floor of our trailer, the Allman Brothers song “Sweet Melissa” playing on a secondhand tape recorder. They say that only the good die young, but…’ She waved away the thought. ‘Never mind. I’m not really sure where I was going with that.’ She sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly very tired.

  ‘How old were you when your mother died?’

  ‘Hmm?’ She belatedly realized that Cædmon had asked a question. ‘Oh, eleven.’ Eleven going on forty.

  ‘If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to you when your mother died?’

  Gnawing on her lower lip, Edie debated whether or not to tell him. But like a runaway train that couldn’t put on the brakes, she went ahead and answered the question put to her.

  ‘I was put into a foster home. There were five of us. Some older, some younger. The older ones knew the drill, the younger ones were clueless.’

  Cædmon’s brow furrowed. ‘What drill? You’ve lost me.’

  ‘Lonny Wilkerson, my foster father, the man who signed a contract with the state of Florida agreeing to furnish me with a safe, clean and healthy home, had a fondness for young girls.’

  ‘Bloody bastard! Don’t tell me that he –’

  ‘I have to tell you,’ she interjected. Please, Cædmon. Let me tell my story. Let me give birth to this hideous memory. In the hopes that I can finally be free of it.

  ‘One night Lonny came into the room that I shared with the two older kids and he… he put his hand over my mouth, he pulled down my panties and he… he raped me.’ As she spoke, she kept her eyes downcast. She didn’t want Cædmon’s sympathy. She didn’t want his outrage. She just wanted a witness. ‘To this day I can’t recall any of the details. It was too much to process. All I can remember is that it was painful, it was quick, and I was afraid I would suffocate.’

  Taking a deep breath, she glanced up at him. Just as she had guessed, his expression was equal parts anger and sorrow.

  ‘That’s all I remember,’ she said with a shrug. ‘That and the fact it happened once a week for the next two months. When Lonny moved on to a new girl, she told the social worker what was happening, and we were all moved to different homes.’

  Edie paused, battling the old recriminations.

  ‘I should have been the one to expose that monster but –’ she laughed caustically, ‘– I was afraid of being abandoned. Of having to make a new start.’ Yet again.

  ‘You were a child,’ Cædmon insisted.

  She shook her head, unwilling to discuss the point. ‘Anyway, to make a long story not nearly so long, a few years later a social worker took pity and tracked down my maternal grandparents. I stayed with them until I was eighteen years of age.’ And then, like her mother before her, she took a Greyhound bus out of Cheraw. Never to return.

  Getting up from the table, Cædmon walked over to where she sat on the edge of the bed. Wordlessly, he sat down beside her, his hip brushing against hers.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong or anything. I’m not some emotionally scarred person who can’t cope with the real world,’ she matter-of-factly informed him. ‘I cope just fine.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But memories have a way of creeping up when you least expect them.’

  Something in his voice made Edie think he spoke from experience. Maybe his childhood hadn’t been Masterpiece Theater wonderful after all.

  ‘You looked into hell at a tender age, but somehow, out of your pain, you found a way to survive.’ As he spoke, Cædmon took her hand. ‘You are a remarkable woman, Edie Miller.’

  ‘Remarkable enough that you want to go to bed with me?’ Turning her head, Edie looked him straight in the eye. ‘You see, that’s why I came clean. Every relationship I’ve ever had has been wrapped in a lie. This time I wanted a clean slate.’

  Cædmon let go of her hand. ‘Are you sure that’s what you want, for the two of us to sleep together?’

  Edie watched the conflicting emotions on Cædmon’s face. At times, and this was one of them, he could be too much the gentleman.

  ‘I came very close to climbing into bed with you the other night. And just so you know, this isn’t a puzzle that you can reason your way through. It’s just sex, okay?’

  Seeing the uncertainty in his eyes replaced with desire, Edie rose to her feet and stepped towards the bedside table.

  Cædmon grabbed her by the wrist, stopping her in mid-step.

  ‘Where are you going?’ There was a decided huskiness in his normally cultured voice.

  ‘I thought I’d switch off the lamp.’

  He pulled her onto his lap.

  ‘Leave the light on.’

  47

  Having verified that the gaping hole in the church wall was indeed empty, Stan sat down wearily on the nearest pew. The powerful Maglite cast an otherworldly glow over the small parish church. Looking down from the windows, stained-glass saints silently castigated him. His two men, one holding a sledgehammer, the other a pickaxe, stood at the ready, waiting for orders.

  For the first time in twenty-five years Stan was worried that he might not be able to fulfil his obligations to God. With the Ark in his possession, he could change the destiny of the world according to God’s holy plan. But first he had to find it.

  I have to find the Ark.

  Those six words reverberated in his head like an emergency message playing on a continuous loop.

  He pushed himself off the pew. A soldier of God would not, could not, surrender.

  As he stepped towards his men, he kicked aside several pieces of broken marble, t
he centuries-old bas-relief detailing the life of St Lawrence destroyed. The thick Saxon wall had not given up without a fight, nearly an hour of labour required to expose the glaringly empty cavity.

  Stan straightened his shoulders, ready to fight the next battle. His rest would come when the mission was completed.

  ‘Looks like we’ve hit another dead end, huh?’

  Stan turned his attention to the Harvard scholar. Stoop-shouldered and shivering, he stood next to the pile of shattered stone.

  ‘Yes, my thoughts exactly.’

  Suddenly realizing that all was not right in the world, the scholar’s gaze furtively moved from man to man. If it had not occurred to him before, it did now. He was outnumbered three to one.

  ‘Hey, fellas! Why so grim? The clues are there, embedded in the quatrains. We just need to go back to the drawing board.’ When he received no reply, the scholar held his arms out, motioning to each of them in turn. ‘All for one and one for all, right?’ When that received no reply, he tried a different tack. ‘I say we talk this over. All those in favour of peace talks, raise your hand.’

  Stan wordlessly stared at the scholar. The snivelling pansy wanted to shake hands, forget their differences and begin again.

  ‘There is nothing more to be said.’

  Intuiting that his death sentence had just been issued, the scholar turned on his heel. Like a church mouse scurrying in the shadows, he ran towards the porch doors at the end of the nave.

  ‘You lil fuckwad!’ Dropping the pickaxe, Boyd Braxton reached for the .357 Desert Eagle secured in the holster under his arm.

  Stan slapped a hand on the gunny’s raised forearm. ‘Not in the house of God,’ he ordered sternly.

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Their weapons drawn, his men raced from the church in pursuit of the scholar who had betrayed them.

  In no particular hurry, knowing the prey would soon be cornered, Stan headed for the double doors at the back of the church. Tomorrow morning the denizens of the small hamlet of Godmersham would wonder at the jumbled pile of stone. Teenage vandals would be blamed. No doubt an endless series of jumble sales would be held to pay for the damage.

  Stuffing his Maglite under his arm, he reached into his trouser pocket and removed a gold money clip. He quickly unpeeled three hundred-dollar Franklins and shoved them into the wooden slit of the collection box.

  Amends made, he stepped outside, pleased to note that the rain had finally faded to a manageable drizzle. In the adjacent cemetery he saw a bobbing pinpoint of red light, the laser beam from the gunny’s pistol. He headed in that direction.

  Trapped en route to the Range Rover, the scholar now stood before Galen of Godmersham’s open grave, his arms raised in surrender.

  ‘“God swiftly traps the wicked,”’ Stan murmured.

  Boyd Braxton placed the muzzle of his Desert Eagle against the other man’s temple. ‘I think we’re gonna have to rename him Mister Twinkletoes.’

  ‘Do you guys have any idea of the sentence for murder?’ the scholar wheezed, his arms wavering in mid-air. Like bed sheets flapping in the breeze.

  ‘I answer only to God’s law,’ Stan replied. Then, giving the scholar an opportunity to atone for his depraved existence, ‘“Except ye repent, ye shall die in your sins.”’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong! You’re the guys sneaking around, breaking into churches, carrying guns. I’m just a debt-ridden grad student trying to make an honest –’

  ‘Man up! For you are soon to meet your maker.’

  ‘Christ! Don’t do this! I’m begging you to –’ The soliloquy was cut short by a mewling whimper.

  ‘Whew! Somebody needs a diaper,’ Boyd Braxton muttered, the scholar having lost control of his bowels.

  Disgusted, Stan nodded at the former gunnery sergeant. ‘Kill him. He is an abomination unto the Lord.’

  A single shot reverberated in the night.

  Like the tolling of a church bell.

  ‘Now that’s convenient,’ the gunny remarked, gesturing with his gun barrel to the near-headless body crumpled in the bottom of the grave. Stuffing the powerful pistol into his holster, he bent at the waist and retrieved a shovel. ‘All in a day’s work, huh, sir?’

  ‘God derives no pleasure from the death of the wicked. Neither should you.’

  His faith renewed, Stan knew that Eid al-Adha was four days and counting. Time enough to find the Ark. Like the good marine that he was, he had a contingency plan.

  ‘Has Sanchez checked in yet?’ Sanchez was the man tasked with surveillance in Oxford.

  ‘About three hours ago, sir. Aisquith and the woman are holed up in a hotel. Sanchez snagged the room next to theirs. Since there’s an adjoining door between the two rooms, he’s keeping an eye on the pair with a peephole video camera.’

  ‘Relieve Sanchez,’ he said to Braxton. ‘I want hourly status reports. If the Brit so much as sneezes into a snot rag, I want to know about it.’

  48

  ‘Leave the light on.’

  His request, not hers.

  Believing sex an act of give and take, she’d wordlessly complied.

  The golden glow from the bedside lamp illuminating their every move, they had undressed one another, fingers and hands slightly trembling. Both of them succumbing to a nervous hesitancy. A bashful sort of voyeurism as more and more flesh was revealed. Torso. Breast. Pelvis. Thigh. Until they finally faced one another, completely and disarmingly naked. Edie was acutely aware of her own body. Her breasts brushing against her inner arm. Her puckered nipples. The slight quiver in her knees. It’d been three years since her last lover. She wondered if she measured up.

  ‘You are lovely.’

  Pleased with the compliment, Edie stepped forward. Needing to make contact, she ran her hands over his chest, surprised to discover that he had the lean, tight build of a younger man. Moving closer, she pressed her mouth against the pulse at the base of his throat. Able to feel the blood course through him with each rapid beat of his heart.

  He was nervous.

  For some strange reason that excited her.

  Bending her head, she brushed his nipple with her tongue. Teetering slightly, Cædmon moaned her name, the cultured accent nowhere in evidence. She bit into his pectoral muscle.

  ‘I just put my mark on you,’ she murmured, tilting her head to one side as she admired her handiwork.

  ‘Two can play at that game.’ Warning issued, he slid his hand between her legs, possessively cupping her mons. A moment later, he smiled. She was already wet.

  Maybe not so nervous after all.

  Feeling an insistent nudge against her abdomen, Edie glanced down. For several seconds she stared brazenly. Now who was smiling? With his fully erect penis and ginger curls, he put her in mind of a lusty Viking.

  A lusty Viking who liked Beethoven, the strains of a piano concerto drifting across the room from the clock radio. Thinking she needed to introduce Cædmon to R & B, she placed her hands on his shoulders. Taking the lead, she slowly backed him to the divided bed. When the backs of his knees hit a mattress, she shoved him to a seated position. She then straddled his hips.

  Caedmon’s hands glided along the tops of her thighs, up the sides of her ribcage, before finally stopping at her breasts. A nipple popped between the V of his fingers. It was a strangely beautiful sight. She was glad they had left the light on.

  Intuiting what she wanted, his hands slid back to her waist. His eyes having turned an iridescent shade of blue, he helped her to find the right angle.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Set, go,’ she replied, wrapping a guiding hand around him.

  Taking her time, she seated herself, biting back a yelp as her body stretched and widened. The slow, steady expansion bordered on pain.

  ‘Lie back on the bed,’ she ordered. A second later, her hands on his chest, she started to move. Gripping her thighs, Cædmon groaned, the guttural sound competing with the strident piano chords in the background.

/>   Edie clenched her muscles. Then released. The movement merited another groan. Cædmon’s grip tightened. Go faster.

  Heeding the silent request, she picked up the pace, her buttocks slamming against his crotch with each downward stroke. She started to pant, sight and sound coalescing into a synchronized blur. Bouncing breasts. Bunched muscles. Pulsating veins on the backs of his hands. All of it accompanied by a frenzied piano crescendo.

  Her fingers dug into his shoulders. The achy fullness between her legs tightened.

  Until…

  She came. Quickly. Powerfully. Cædmon held her gaze, silently pleading with her to keep moving. Reaching behind her, she touched him. Then watched as he shuddered, his eyes rolling to the back of his head.

  The crisis passed, Edie fell forward, crash-landing on his torso. Tears in her eyes, she struggled to catch her breath. Her damp cheek nestled against his, she laughed softly.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I now have a whole new appreciation for classical music.’

  49

  Cædmon raised a hand to his mouth, stifling a yawn.

  ‘Sorry. I’m a bit knackered. Last night was…’ He laughed softly. ‘No need to tell you. You were there.’

  Walking alongside him as they made their way down High Street, Edie nudged him in the ribs. ‘Was I ever.’

  Their paltry belongings stuffed into the Virgin shoulder bag, they had checked out of the hotel immediately after breakfast. The plan being to take a coach to Heathrow and there hire a car for the drive to Godmersham, they were presently en route to Gloucester Green. The receptionist had informed them that the airport coaches left every twenty minutes. Cædmon and Edie were nevertheless agreed that St Lawrence the Martyr church might well prove a false lead.

  He glanced at his watch. Half past seven. It explained why High Street was nearly deserted. Smiling, Edie pressed closer. Returning the smile, like most men in the initial throes of lust he wondered if he fancied Edie a bit too much, his thoughts frequently settling upon her.