Ark of Fire

CHAPTER 44

“I don’t know about you, but I’m not a big fan of dark and dreary weather,” Edie grumbled. For the last few minutes she’d been standing guard at their hotel window, closely monitoring the courtyard below, relieved they weren’t in a ground-floor room.

Relieved because her sixth sense told her that they were being watched.

Although given that she had zilch psychic ability, she couldn’t rule out the possibility that her “intuition” was nothing more than an irrational fear.

Busying himself with placing pencils and paper on the small circular table that was tucked into the oriel window on the other side of the room, Caedmon glanced over at her. “Small wonder we English are such a gloomy lot.”

“The Mahler doesn’t help.” Turning her head away from the window, Edie pointedly glanced at the small radio on the bedside table. The incessant sound of rain striking cobblestones competed with the ponderous strains of the Sixth Symphony in A Minor.

“Ah, but it doesn’t hurt.” Caedmon had earlier informed her that the drippy classical music helped him think. Something about musical notes and higher math.

Preferring rhythm and blues—Macy Gray was her favorite singer—Edie let it slide. There were worse faults than having questionable taste in music.

With a quick tug, she pulled the damask drapes across the window. That done, she glanced around the small hotel room. As had repeatedly happened since they checked in, her gaze landed on the king-sized bed decked out in a red-striped coverlet. Evidently a hotel room with two doubles was an unheard-of commodity in England; the front desk clerk had stared at her as though she were bonkers when she made the request.

She averted her gaze.

If she overlooked the bed—and it was darned difficult—the room had a warm, inviting feel to it. Ivory-colored walls were punctuated with dark wood beams and lots of pleated floral fabric. In a nod to the season, a ribbon-strewn garland hung above the entryway.

Again, she glanced at the bed.

“Yes, I know,” Caedmon said, seeing the direction of her gaze. “Rather imposing, isn’t it?”

“It’s just that we’re not . . . you know.” She fought the urge to look away, the unspoken topic of sex having reared its tempting head.

Caedmon held her gaze a second too long. Although her dating skills were rusty, she had the distinct impression that he was silently asking. When no answer was forthcoming, he strode over to the foot of the bed. His jaw tightly locked, he placed a palm on either side of the mattress and—

—separated the bed into two twin-sized mattresses.

“Not certain what we should do about the bedding.” He gestured to the mess he’d made of the red coverlet.

Acting on a hunch, Edie walked over to the armoire, opened it, and removed two sets of twin sheets. “We’re in luck. There’s a stockpile of twin sheets stowed away for this very emergency.” She tossed the folded sheets onto the bed. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it later.”

If he was disappointed, he hid it well.

“Afraid we’ll have to share the loo. My Herculean powers don’t extend beyond dividing the bed.” Turning away from the mussed coverlet, he reached for the bottle of port. “For some reason, I feel oddly buoyed by our progress today. Like a medieval monk who’s completed his daily chores and can now sit down to a jug of wine in the full knowledge that he has earned his simple pleasure.” As he spoke, Caedmon inserted a corkscrew into the top of the bottle, having procured the implement from the front desk clerk.

A wet plunk! could be heard as the cork slid free from the bottle.

Holding a glass in each hand, he walked over to where she stood. “I apologize that the port isn’t properly decanted. Since we’re slumming it, we must make do.” Then, smiling, “Careful. This stuff is dangerously gluggable.”

Edie took the proffered glass. Returning his smile, she took a sip of the ruby-colored port. “Yum. This stuff is gluggable.”

Caedmon laughed, the sound deep, rich, inviting. A lot like the port wine, it made her smile.

“Now, to the task at hand.” He motioned to the oriel window and the small circular table. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to yoke together the last four lines of verse.”

Not sure how much help she would be, her brain working in slo-mo because of the jet lag, Edie seated herself at one of the two wingback chairs wedged into the projecting bay window. Having a funny feeling that the port wine wasn’t going to help matters, she stared at the last four lines of translated text.

The trusted goose sorely wept for all of them were dead I know not how the world be served by such adversity But if a man with a fully devout heart seek the blessed martyr There in the veil between two worlds, the hidden truth be found

Using her index finger as a pointer, she underscored the first line. “Undoubtedly, a thinly disguised reference to Mother Goose.” Tongue literally in cheek, she winked at him.

All business, Caedmon circled the word goose with one of the sharpened pencils. “The words goose and swan were interchangeable in the medieval lexicon; the goose was symbolic of vigilance. In light of all that we know, that makes complete and utter sense.”

“It does? Sorry, but I’m not following.”

“Remember that Galen took upon himself the role of Ark guardian, vigilance the most important attribute of a sentinel.”

“And let’s not forget that the quatrains were also Galen’s swan song.”

Caedmon glanced at her glass, as if to silently inquire, Just how much of that stuff have you had?

Edie pushed her glass aside. “Sir Kenneth mentioned that everyone in Godmersham except for Galen’s wife succumbed to the plague. So I’m guessing that’s the gist of line two.”

“That would be a correct assumption. As for the third line”—lifting his glass, Caedmon took a measured sip—“it’s the typical admonition that one finds in any medieval tale.”

“Only the knight who is pure of heart can seek the Holy Grail, right?”

“Mmmm . . . quite.”

Slowly, he drummed his fingers on the wood tabletop, lost in thought.

A few moments later the finger tapping increased to a rapid rat-a-tat-tat.

“I take it that’s a good sign.”

“So good it makes my bollocks tingle,” he bawdily replied, slapping his palm against the tabletop. “Unless I’m mistaken, the bloody ‘blessed martyr’ is none other than St. Lawrence the Martyr.”

Edie searched her memory banks, the name vaguely familiar. It took a second for her to access the correct data file, the one about Galen donating a slew of sacred relics to the local church. “Oh my gosh! Galen hid the Ark at—”

“St. Lawrence the Martyr Church!” they exclaimed in unison, grinning at each other.

“According to the Old Testament accounts,” Caedmon excitedly continued, underlining the last line of the quatrain with his finger, “when the Ark of the Covenant was placed inside Solomon’s Temple, in the Holy of Holies, a veil was placed over the entrance to prevent direct access to that most sacred of holy relics. The expression ‘beyond the veil’ was thus coined because no one, not even the priests of the temple, could enter the sacred space.”

“Which means that the last line is a direct reference to the Ark.” When he nodded, she switched gears entirely. “Okay, when do we leave?”

“We don’t have a coach schedule handy. However, I suspect we can be in Godmersham by early afternoon. Sooner if we secure an auto hire.”

“Gee, I’m surprised that you don’t want to leave tonight. It’s only pouring down rain out there,” she teased.

“Though I refuse to entertain the notion that MacFarlane may yet steal the prize, we need our rest.”

On that point they were in complete agreement.

“Do you think the church is still standing?”

“Mmmm. Difficult to say. There were any number of churches and monasteries that were destroyed during the various wars of religion that raged for centuries across our little island kingdom. Tomorrow will be soon enough to ascertain if St. Lawrence the Martyr is intact.”

“Even if it’s still a going concern, we have no idea where on the church grounds the Ark is hidden.”

“I never said this would be an easy venture.” Scooting back his chair, Caedmon rose to his feet. As he walked over to the divided bed, one of Bach’s melancholy cello suites droned from the radio. Edie thought it sounded like a slow-moving funerary march.

Ignoring the music, she surreptitiously watched as Caedmon snatched a cookie tin off the bedside table.

No doubt about it, Caedmon Aisquith was very much his own man, his quirky intellectualism strangely appealing.

When he headed back to the oriel, tin in hand, Edie could see that something was wrong; his expression was not nearly as ebullient as it had been seconds before.

“Uh-oh. What happened? You’re no longer in a John Philip Sousa mood.”

Caedmon handed her the tin of chocolate-covered cookies. “Here, tuck in.”

“You’re not going to have one?”

Waving away the cookie tin, he reseated himself at the table. “Something about the solution is too neat and tidy. Too bloody obvious.”

“Maybe Galen wanted the solution to be obvious.”

“Had that been his intention, he would never have gone to the trouble of writing the quatrains.”

Her sweet tooth having also gone south, she shoved the tin aside.

“Yeah, I see your point.” Bummed, she stared at the handwritten quatrain. “Maybe a not-so-neat solution will come to you in the morning.”

“Or to you. Your chain-of-custody box showed a marked proclivity for analytical reasoning.”

Her mood percolating a teensy bit, Edie smiled. “You liked that, huh?”

“It’s one of many things that I like about you.”

Caedmon’s reply made her instantly regret the parting of the red bed.

“Well, what do you know? I like you too.”

A great deal, in fact. Maybe more than she should, given that she knew so little about him. Other than the fact that he once attended Oxford, had worked for MI5, and recently wrote a book, she knew nothing about Caedmon Aisquith. A man of mystery was one thing. A man without a past was something else entirely.

But then, she’d not been very forthcoming herself.

“Caedmon, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she blurted without preamble.

His blue eyes locked onto hers.

Edie took a deep breath, bracing herself for the backlash.

“I lied to you.”