“Which part—diving on Bardsey or my father appearing out of nowhere after three decades?” she asked.
“Both, actually, but let’s start with Bardsey,” he said. “What’s the rush?”
She took a deep breath. Just the basics.
The waitress placed her wine in front of her. She lifted it and glanced at Dafydd, who scowled at her. She put it down without drinking.
“I’m trying to find a cave,” she said. “Its location is written in a very old Roman parchment that I’m analyzing. The cave can only be located based on the position of the sun on the solstice. That’s why I had to move so quickly, since the solstice is tomorrow.”
Dafydd smiled.
“Intriguing,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “I thought you were just trying to find modern locations for Roman place names?”
“Good memory,” she said.
“What’s in the cave?”
She smiled back. “I’m not sure. Right now, I’m just trying to establish that it exists and its location.”
“And your father,” said Dafydd. “Why does he think you are in danger?”
This would be much more difficult to explain.
“There are other people looking for the cave as well,” she said. “I’m fairly confident that they have no idea where I am, or where I’m looking, but they would like to find it before I do. And they’re not exactly…uh…subtle.”
“It’s treasure then,” said Dafydd. “A treasure hunt.”
“No,” she said. “No treasure. It’s just an important historical find—a previously undiscovered cave described by an old Roman manuscript.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Dafydd, his blue eyes boring holes into her. She couldn’t look away. “If this were just a historical search, you wouldn’t be in danger, would you?”
“Historians can be very territorial,” she said. “I will ask that you keep this expedition to yourself until it’s completed, of course.” She looked up at him and tried to grin. “I assume there’s a client-divemaster privilege or something like that, right?”
“Of course,” he said glumly. “Discretion is our motto.” He finally relented and smiled back at her. “And how are you planning to find this cave? You have to at least tell me the truth about that.”
“We’ll have the exact location tomorrow,” she said, “at dusk.”
“Why dusk?” asked Dafydd.
“It’s a long story,” she said. “You’re just going to have to trust me on this. I need to be on the west side of Bardsey tomorrow precisely at sunset.”
“You and about five thousand of those freaks in robes,” said Dafydd. “Why the west side? It’ll be completely mental over there tomorrow night.”
“There is an ancient apple tree on the west side of the island,” she said. “According to the manuscript, the cave lies at the point on the coast that is on the line between the sun just as it sets on the night of the solstice and that tree.”
“Where’s the tree?” asked Dafydd.
“About a quarter mile up the hill from the water,” she said.
Dafydd sat silently for a moment and she could feel him thinking.
“Then you have a problem,” said Dafydd.
“What problem?”
He grabbed the salt and pepper shakers off the table.
“You’ll only have a minute to determine the line,” said Dafydd. “Right at the solstice. And there’s only one solstice. You need to be as precise as possible.”
He placed the pepper in the center of the table.
“Here’s you at the tree,” he said.
He tapped the edge of the table.
“Here’s the coastline.”
He folded his napkin and put it in his lap, six inches lower than the edge of the table.
“And here’s me in a boat. From here in the boat, I can see the sun as it sets,” he said, pointing to a button on his shirt, “and I can see the point on the coast where the caves are located.” He pointed to the space between the table and his knees. “But I can’t see you by the tree. The coast is a series of big cliffs. Obviously, you can’t see the boat from the tree. How are we going to find the line from the tree to the setting sun, with only two people, neither of whom can see the other? And I’ll need to drop two buoys that are right on that line if we’re going to find the cave. We need three people to do this properly. We only have two.”
“Can’t I just stand on the edge of the cliff where I can see the tree and the sunset and then put a stake into the ground on the cliff edge marking the plumb line?” she asked. “Then we just dive directly below the marker?”
“You could do that, but we won’t be able to see the marker once we are in the water up against the cliff face,” he said. “We need a marker we can see from the water when we dive. That’s why I said we need to set two buoys. We could set them with two people but the plumb line will be a lot more accurate with three. Accuracy is the most important thing if we’re going to locate that cave, right?”
Her eyes drifted out to the ocean. She hadn’t really thought any of this through.
“When do you want to dive?” Dafydd asked.
“Tomorrow. Right after sunset,” she said.
He frowned.
“Bad idea. Why don’t we wait until morning? It’ll be a lot safer in the daylight.”
“I want to locate and get into that cave as soon as possible. It’ll be dark in the cave anyway, so what difference does time of day make?”
Dafydd took the salt shaker and wiggled it at her.
“Then we definitely need a salt,” said Dafydd, placing the salt shaker on the edge of the table. “Not just to make the plumb line more accurate. We’ll be diving at night, so we’ll need someone in the boat to indicate the line on the cliff wall with a flashlight.”
She looked at him silently.
“Do you know anyone here who you think would be willing to help out?” he asked.
She hated where this was leading.
“No. Do you?” she asked.
“Just one,” he said. “But he’s about to get on a bus.”
They finished not eating their meal and sat in silence. The waitress brought the check and Carys signed it to her room.
“I’ll let you go talk to him,” said Dafydd, rising from the booth. “I’ll be in my room, sorting out our gear and getting us a boat. I’ll come by your room later and we can make sure your wetsuit is going to fit.”
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
It was almost dark when Carys finally made her way out of the hotel and to the bus stop. It was only a short walk, but she took her sweet time. Her father was sitting under the bus stop awning. His legs were crossed, and he was shaking the dangling foot back and forth rapidly, as if it were on fire.
He used to do that all the time. Her mother said it made the whole house shimmy. Carys had never felt the house shimmy, but she knew that there was something bothering him when his foot started doing that. Good, she thought as she slowly made her way to the bus stop. You should be bothered.
She stopped about ten feet away from where he was sitting. He felt her presence and turned toward her, smiled broadly, and stood up. Her heart broke a little.
“I’m glad you came to say goodbye,” he said. “I’m so sor—”
“Don’t,” she said, raising her hand.
He looked down at the ground. “I don’t know what else to say,” he said. “It’s the only thing I can think of.”
She walked to the bus stop bench and sat down. Her father sat down next to her. He smelled exactly the same as he always had—and the scent of him flooded her with memories that began to overwhelm her. Her mother’s smell was in there somewhere, too. She looked at him. He had an expectant look on his face. The encroaching gray within his familiar black hair, the way his shoulders slumped forward.
Her memories abated. This wasn’t her father. This was just some guy who showed up.
“Dafydd and I need you to help us with something tomorrow night,” she said. “It will only take a couple of hours, and then you can go home the day after tomorrow, when we’re done.”
“Of course, Carys,” he said. “Whatever you need.”
She cringed at his eagerness.
“We’re going over to Bardsey tomorrow evening,” she said. “I’ll explain everything when we get into the boat. Until then, I need you to stay at the hotel. Don’t go out. Just lie low. Can you do that?”
He turned his body to face her fully.
“You are in danger, then?” he asked. “Annie said you were. She sounded terrified. What’s—”
“Please,” she said. “Annie is exaggerating. She should not have called you. And as long as you’re here, all I ask is that you make yourself useful and keep out of sight.”
“What is going on?” he asked. “If you are asking for my help, then things must be pretty goddamn bad.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then started to laugh.
“You are right about that,” she said. He started to laugh, too.
“I can’t tell you much,” she said. “The less you know, the better off we all are.”
Anthony placed a hand on her knee. She looked up at him angrily, then saw the softness in his face. The tension inside her loosened a little.
“I won’t help you unless you tell me what’s happening,” said Anthony.
She felt like she’d been smacked. When she started to breathe again, she leaned into him, her face just a foot from his. His breath was a yeasty, warm perfume that brought on the memory of sitting in his lap in the big red leather chair as he read her Le Petite Prince before bed. She removed his hand from her knee.
“You are not even supposed to be here,” she hissed. “And now you’re making demands on me? Well, Dah”—she let the word slide out of her mouth as she stood up—“go fuck yourself.”
She stood up and started to stalk away in long strides. She looked up to the hotel. Standing in a pool of light cast by the fixture over the hotel’s front door was Dafydd, arms crossed. He cocked his head, raised one hand, pointed his finger at her, raised it to the sky, and spun it around in a circle and pointed it at Anthony. Go back and get him.
She stopped. Goddammit, he was right. They needed Anthony. They could probably have paid someone to help, but at the end of the day, her father was the only one other than Dafydd she could even begin to trust to keep his mouth shut about what was going to happen tomorrow. And she wasn’t all that sure about Dafydd.
She slowly turned. Her father was standing, watching her. She stomped back toward him. Anthony looked like he was bracing himself for a blow. She threw herself back down on the bus stop seat like a petulant teenager.
“I’m looking for a cave,” she said. “It’s listed in an ancient manuscript. There is a man who is also looking for this cave. If I don’t find it first, bad things will happen to whatever is in that cave and me and the man who owns the manuscript. I haven’t told Dafydd any of this, because I need his help even more than I need yours and if he bolts, I’m screwed. Do you understand?”
“Not really,” said Anthony. “But go on.”
“Tomorrow we need you to help us find the cave on Bardsey Island,” she said. “I have no reason to believe that this man can find us here. But it would be stupid to assume he can’t. So we’re going to stay put tomorrow and only leave the hotel when we’re ready to head to the island. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Anthony. “How did you get the manuscript?”
“Through work,” she said. “The owner was a client.”
“Oh, of course,” said Anthony. “Sothington’s. I started sending letters to you there when you kept returning the ones I sent to your house. I knew at least your work would accept delivery.”
“I threw them away,” she said.
She looked over to make sure the blow had landed. It had. Anthony sat silently, then looked at her as if the previous exchange had not happened.
“Why would your work send you on such a dangerous assignment?” he asked.
“They didn’t,” she said. “I sent myself.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she said. She opened her mouth to finish the sentence, then paused. There were so many reasons. Which one would he understand?
None of them. She stood up and went back to the hotel.
An hour later, after she’d managed to get her father a room and said a grudging goodnight, she sat on her bed. She retrieved the manuscript from her bag and held it in her naked hands, its nubbled surface like dupioni silk beneath her fingers.
Everything had spiraled out of control. Now her father was making things even more confusing. But this was real, this book. And despite what she now knew of the monk, the truth was that three times in the past two days, Lestinus had proved that he was invaluable to this search, that she did need him, and that she could not do this without him. She possessed all the knowledge she would need to survive this, but without Lestinus, it was hopelessly locked in her head.
She needed Lestinus. Not just to survive this, but to win—to avenge Nicola, to preserve the King’s legacy, and, in the end, to secure her own future, though that was now tangential. She also needed Dafydd, and if she was honest, her father, too, if only for logistical purposes.
She’d never needed men before. She hated it. Since her mother died, she’d trusted only women and they had never, ever let her down. Now there were four men—one in an insane asylum, one she hated, one she barely knew, and one who was a figment of her imagination—who held her fate in their hands. And that wasn’t counting the ones who were pursuing her.
She turned the manuscript around slowly, considering it again. How much exposure to this mold could she handle? At what point would she lose sanity and become like Harper had been? Institutionalized, incoherent, unstable, unable to think clearly or defend herself? How much time did she have left before that was her fate? How much damage had she already done? She opened the book and ran her hand over the writing.
It didn’t matter how much time she had left, as long as it was enough to find the tomb. As long as she could hang on to her sanity and her health for another twenty-four hours, thirty-six at the most, it would be worth it. This was something worth being sick for, maybe worth dying for, as Nicola had known all along. It made all the uncomfortable neediness okay, at least until the job was done.
Carys slowly lifted the manuscript to her face and inhaled as deeply as she could. Her nose tickled as the mold spores entered, then her lungs began to burn slightly. Her head started spinning as she leaned back onto the thick white duvet and waited for Lestinus to tell her what to do next.
He appeared slowly in the corner, clear and crisp.
“Tell me why my mother killed herself,” she asked in Latin.
“She was sad,” Lestinus said. “A kind of sadness that made her feel like she was already dead. When even you could not bring her the faintest glimmer of joy, she knew it was time. And it wasn’t all your father’s fault. She was this way long before he left. Though he bears all the blame for what came afterward.”
“But she botched it,” she said. “She lived for another three weeks, all hooked up to machines. Everyone said it was a cry for attention.”
“It was not. She was interrupted,” he said. “She meant to die.”
“How could she leave me?”
“How could she stay?” he asked. His eyes were filled with the tears she had never been able to cry for her mother.
“Carys, there was one letter from your father that you didn’t throw away,” he said.
She stared at the monk, trying to understand what one had to do with the other.
There was a soft knock on the door that jol
ted her out of her head.
“It’s Dafydd,” came the voice. He entered carrying two wetsuits.
“I figured we should make sure we have the right size for you, or else it’s going to be a very uncomfortable dive,” he said, smiling. “Let’s see which one of these works.”
He handed one over.
“I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on diving this trip.”
“Just go naked,” he said. “That’s what I do. The bathing suit doesn’t give you much protection anyway. It’s more for modesty’s sake.”
She took the suit into the bathroom and pulled it on with great effort. It felt like the right size—she’d never worn one this thick before. She was already getting scared, and fear could be deadly underwater.
“How’s it going in there?” Dafydd called through the door.
“Good. It fits fine,” she yelled out.
“Come out and let me make sure,” he said. She hadn’t been able to reach the zipper on the back of the suit, and the top of her buttocks was visible. She opened the door.
“Turn around then,” he said. She did.
“Nice butt,” he said as he zipped her up and spun her around to face him. He smiled, then it dropped away. “Can I ask you something?”
“You’ve seen my butt, so I guess I have nothing left to hide, do I?”
“Quite right,” he said, and sat on the bed, nearly on top of Lestinus, who looked straight at Dafydd, then turned to Carys and pursed his lips with disapproval.
“You shouldn’t have strange men in your chambers,” Lestinus whispered. Carys rolled her eyes and sat down on the stuffed chair in the corner of the room.
“Fire away,” she said.
“Who were you talking to?” he asked.
“What?”
“Who were you talking to just now? I heard you very clearly.”
Her words stuck for a second in the back of her throat, then she inhaled and spoke as calmly as she could. “I was just talking to myself.”
“No, you weren’t,” he said. “You were having a conversation with someone in a foreign language. If there were phones in these rooms, I would have sworn you were on it.”
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