Stones of Fire

63

Onward, Christian soldiers, Cædmon mused silently, noticing 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 drawing on the tabletop.

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

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

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

‘As I earlier mentioned, 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 often referred to as brides of Christ. So Philippa was the good housewife of Christ, as it were.’

MacFarlane took a moment to digest the crumb tossed to him. ‘What does Galen’s widow being a nun have to do with anything?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. He’d already been led down a false path by one man. Clearly, he was not about to proceed without a clear map.

‘It’s possible that Philippa took the Ark with her to the nunnery.’ Cædmon jutted his chin at the Oxford University search engine he’d brought 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 we’ve got in short supply.’

As he waited for the search results, Cædmon couldn’t help but wonder at MacFarlane’s impatience. It made him think that the Warriors of God were working to some sort of deadline. But a deadline for what? Although tantalized by an ancient mystery that had beguiled such luminaries as Newton and Freud, Cædmon was keenly aware that lives had been ruthlessly taken, MacFarlane’s obsession with the Ark clearly knowing 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.’ Cædmon decided to dumb down. ‘What you are looking at is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s register of nunneries compiled in the year 1350. That being two years after the plague, I suspect the archbishop was very keen to have a head count. Since most folk in the Middle Ages rarely travelled more than thirty miles from the place of their birth, I’ll first search for Philippa in the Kent listings.’

As he scrolled through the register, Cædmon 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 interrupted.

‘It is located in the hamlet of Swanley, south-east of London.’

MacFarlane turned to the behemoth with the sutured head. ‘Pull it up on the GPS system.’

Using a stylus that looked ridiculous in his oversized hand, the brute began pecking away at a hand-held device.

‘I’ve got it. It’s at the intersection of highways M20 and M25,’ he announced, passing the apparatus 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.’

Cædmon shook his head and 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 a National Trust property. Given the importance of the task, we would be better off waiting for daylight.’

MacFarlane stared at him, long and hard.

‘We hit the road at first light,’ he said at last. Then, his gaze boring into Cædmon, he hissed, ‘If you’re thinking about sidestepping me like that Harvard pencil dick, you think again, boy.’

Although he took exception to being called a ‘boy’, Cædmon kept himself 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, put it in a forest. We won’t know if the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the forest until we can properly examine the site.’

‘Well, you better hope to God that it is the right forest.’

Cædmon wondered what would happen should they not find the Ark. He guessed slit throats and bodies buried at low-water mark featured somewhere.