Stones of Fire

64

Dawn arrived, damp and grey, the passenger windows on the Range Rover still ice-rimmed. The cold went right through Edie, causing her teeth to chatter loudly. Although she suspected that fear had more to do with her rattling teeth than the outside temperature.

Rudely awakened only a short time earlier, she and Cædmon had been bundled into the back seat of the waiting vehicle. Seated in front of them was the driver, Sanchez, a sullen man given to muttering in Spanish, and his co-pilot Harliss, a southerner with an accent so thick he might as well have been speaking in Spanish. Both men were armed. And both had made it very clear that they would not hesitate to use their weapons.

Leading the pack in a second Range Rover were Stanford MacFarlane and his right-hand man Boyd Braxton. To Edie’s relief, she’d had little to no contact with the hulking brute since the attempted rape. Knowing that Cædmon had enough on his plate, she’d made no mention of the near miss.

‘Didn’t you say something about swans and geese being interchangeable in the medieval lexicon?’

‘Hmm?’ Clearly lost in thought, Cædmon tore his gaze away from the window. ‘Er, yes, I did say that.’

‘Making it all the more likely that this place Swanley is where we’ll find the Ark.’

‘I have no idea if the Ark is hidden at the nunnery. The Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary may simply be where we find the next clue.’

Enviously she watched as Harliss passed a cup filled from a Thermos of hot coffee to Sanchez.

‘My feet feel like two blocks of ice,’ she complained in a low voice, pointedly glancing at the pair of green wellies she’d been issued with.

Cædmon, decked out in an identical pair of boots, commiserated. ‘The English wellington was designed to keep the foot dry not warm. Although we’ll be glad of them should we have to tramp through a damp field.’

Edie didn’t bother to point out that a sprint through that same damp field would be next to impossible in the clunky rubber boots.

They had been driving through the post-dawn gloom about twenty minutes when Edie sighted the first road sign for Swanley. Approaching the town limits, she was surprised to see that Swanley looked a lot like any American residential suburb, its outskirts littered with car dealerships and fast-food eateries.

How are we going to find the Ark in the middle of this suburban sprawl?

‘The priory is located in the countryside,’ Cædmon remarked, guessing her thoughts.

As if on cue, Sanchez took the next exit off the main road, veering onto a narrow country lane. Peering out the window, she’d forgotten how simple things — trees in the distance, pastures, farm fences — could create a stark cinematic beauty, the contrast between the countryside and the nearby town like midnight and high noon.

Up ahead, MacFarlane’s Range Rover slowed and then stopped at the side of the road. Sanchez pulled in a few feet behind.

‘Is this the place?’ she asked, not seeing anything in the rural landscape that even remotely resembled a medieval nunnery.

‘I believe so,’ Cædmon replied. ‘MacFarlane plotted the course on a satellite navigation system. Although we’ll probably have to trek across a field or two to reach it.’

Harliss opened the rear door. ‘Get out.’ Gun in hand, he ushered them towards the other vehicle while Sanchez unloaded several large bulky canvas packs from the Range Rover’s boot.

Edie and Cædmon were ordered to keep their distance while MacFarlane briefed his men. She managed to see that Harliss had a hand-held GPS receiver which all four men studied intently. Although she tried to listen in, she could only catch a few snippets of what was said — ‘avenues of approach… terrain features… obstacles… reconnaissance’.

‘They’re treating this like some sort of military operation,’ she whispered to Cædmon.

‘Apparently so.’

‘Making us the enemy, huh?’

Too busy scanning the surrounding area, Cædmon made no reply.

‘Move ’em out,’ MacFarlane ordered gruffly.

Sandwiched between two pairs of armed men, she and Cædmon moved off in a north-easterly direction. In front of them about two hundred yards in the distance was a dense grove of trees. As they trudged across the field, Edie wondered if Philippa of Canterbury had had any notion of the deadly train of events she would someday trigger with her quatrains.

More than likely she had guessed. Why else would the noblewoman-cum-nun have gone to such lengths to hide her dead husband’s gold arca? Philippa had survived the horror of the plague and no doubt blamed the Ark for the deadly pestilence that had swept across England.

Last night Cædmon told her that Philippa had belonged to the Gilbertines, an order of nuns founded in England. In the span of only six years, Philippa had risen through the ranks, eventually becoming the priory cellaress, a position in which she oversaw all of the food production. A capable woman with a flair for management, she could have easily arranged for the Ark of the Covenant to have been brought to Swanley. Maybe she let her fellow nuns in on the secret. Since they lived a life devoted to worship and contemplative prayer, there was little fear that the secret would be revealed to nosy outsiders.

The GPS receiver held in his right hand, Harliss led them through the grove of trees, the gnarled leafless limbs like so many arthritic hands.

Just beyond the bare boughs, Edie glimpsed a stone wall.

‘I see it!’ she exclaimed, raising her right hand and pointing, inexplicably excited. ‘It’s over there.’

‘Roger that,’ Harliss responded, leading them towards to the right.

A few moments later they entered a clearing.

Edie glanced from side to side.

‘Oh God… It’s been destroyed.’