Ark of Fire

CHAPTER 63

Onward, Christian soldiers, Caedmon silently mused, realizing that each of the four armed men gathered around the table wore a Jerusalem cross ring on his right hand.

“And you’re absolutely certain that the two geese depicted in the stained glass window will lead us to the Ark of the Covenant?” MacFarlane gestured to the Canterbury drawing that lay on the tabletop.

Seated in front of a laptop computer, Caedmon stopped typing, taking a moment to glance at his adversary. He knew that he served but one purpose. Once he fulfilled that purpose, he would no longer be in a position to safeguard Edie.

Surreptitiously, he glanced at the locked closet door on the far side of the room.

Somehow he had to devise a suitable enticement, a bargaining chip, that he could use to garner Edie’s freedom. Until then, he would merely reveal enough to whet MacFarlane’s voracious appetite. But not so much that he lessened his overall worth. Stanford MacFarlane had to believe that without him, he would never find the Ark.

“As I mentioned earlier, one of the geese symbolizes Philippa in her role as the good housewife to her husband, Galen of Godmersham. After Galen’s death, Philippa joined a nunnery, where she lived out her remaining days. With that in mind, I believe that the second goose also represents Philippa; nuns are often referred to as the bride of Christ. Or the good housewife of Christ, as it were.”

MacFarlane took a moment to digest the crumb just tossed to him. “What does Galen’s widow being a nun have to do with anything?” he asked, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. He’d already been led down a false path by one man. Clearly, he was not about to venture forth without a proper road map.

“It’s possible that Philippa took the Ark with her to the nunnery.” He jutted his chin at the Oxford University search engine that he’d pulled up on the Internet. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to find out which order Philippa joined. Although it may take some time, as there were scores of now-defunct religious orders active in the fourteenth century.”

“Time is the one thing I’ve got in short supply.”

As he waited for the search results, Caedmon couldn’t help but wonder at MacFarlane’s impatience to find the Ark. It made him think that the self-styled Warriors of God were operating under some sort of deadline.

But a deadline for what?

Though he was tantalized by the ancient mystery that had beguiled such luminaries as Newton and Freud, he was keenly aware that lives had been ruthlessly taken; MacFarlane’s obsession with the Ark knew no bounds.

“Ah! We have a hit,” he announced, pointing to the computer screen. “According to a fourteenth-century document called the Regestrum Archiepiscopi—”

“Can the Latin,” MacFarlane snarled.

“Right.” Properly chastened, he decided to dumb down all relayed material. “What you are looking at is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s registry of nunneries compiled in the year 1350. That being two years after the plague, I suspect the archbishop was very keen to take a head count. Since most folk in the Middle Ages rarely traveled more than thirty miles from the place of their birth, I’ll first search for Philippa in the Kent listings.”

As he scrolled the register, Caedmon knew that he was operating on nothing more than a strong hunch. A hunch that if proved wrong could have tragic results.

“There she is,” he murmured. “Philippa, widowed wife of Galen of Godmersham, is listed as a member of the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to the entry, she entered the nunnery with a dowry worth approximately—”

“Just tell me where the priory is located,” MacFarlane i nterrupted.

“It is located in the hamlet of Swanley, southeast of London.”

MacFarlane turned to the behemoth with the sutured head. “Pull it up on the GPS.”

Using a small stylus that looked ridiculous in his oversized hand, the brute began pecking away on a handheld device.

“I’ve got it. It’s at the intersection of highways M20 and M25,” he announced, passing the handheld computer to his superior.

MacFarlane studied the computer-generated map. “You were right. Swanley is exactly thirty miles from Canterbury. Which means we can be there within the hour.”

Caedmon vetoed the idea with a shake of the head. Knowing that MacFarlane was a man willing to punch above his own weight, he calmly pointed out the obvious. “If we traipse around a medieval priory in the middle of the night, we might very well be confronted by the local constabulary. Particularly if the nunnery is listed on the Heritage Trust. Given the delicate task at hand, we will be better aided by the light of day than the gloom of night.”

MacFarlane stared at him, long and hard.

“We hit the road at first light,” he said at last. Then, his gaze narrowing. “But if you’re thinking about sidestepping me like that li’l Harvard pencil dick, you think again, boy.”

Although he took exception to being called “boy” Caedmon kept his ire in check. “Bear in mind that Swanley may simply be where we find the next clue.”

“What are you saying, that this is going to turn into some sort of scavenger hunt?”

“If you wish to hide a tree, you must hide it in a forest. We won’t know if the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the forest we seek until we can properly examine the site.”

“Well, you better hope to God that it is the right forest.”

At hearing that, Caedmon intuited what would happen should they not find the Ark. It was an intuition that involved slit throats and bodies buried at the low-water mark.