Stones of Fire

67

‘Last night you gave me sixteen hours to find the Ark of the Covenant! I have forty minutes left!’ Cædmon yelled, twisting and straining to free himself from his captors.

MacFarlane stared at him as he considered his appeal, Michelangelo’s stern-faced Moses come to life.

‘Colonel MacFarlane, I know you to be a man of your word,’ Edie croaked, her eyes flooded with tears, every limb in her body quivering with fright. ‘Please give Cædmon a chance. Without him, you’ll never find the Ark.’

Pondering it later, Cædmon decided that this last throw by Edie had swung it. MacFarlane nodded curtly. ‘You have exactly forty minutes. If you don’t want to see Miss Miller’s head split open like a Fourth of July watermelon, you will find the Ark of the Covenant.’ He glanced dismissively at the gleaming altar vessels in the still-open trunk. ‘I’m not interested in digging up any more golden trinkets.’

Stay of execution issued, Braxton lowered the pickaxe. Glancing at Edie, Cædmon battled the strong desire to bend over and retch.

It had been close. With one swing, the behemoth would have punched a gaping hole right through her skull.

‘I’ll find your bloody gold box,’ he muttered, glancing at his watch, the countdown already begun.

Christ. Forty minutes to find something buried centuries ago.

The clock ticking, he ignored the stricken expression still plastered on Edie’s face. They had to stay focused on the task at hand. To that end, he slowly turned, studying the wintry landscape that surrounded the cloister. Leafless trees. Dead grass. The shattered walls of the church.

There was something here that he wasn’t seeing. But what?

In the distance he heard a loud honking sound. A swan searching for its mate.

Bloody hell.

‘Swans and geese,’ he murmured, wondering if the answer to Philippa’s riddle could really be so simple. He turned to MacFarlane. ‘In the medieval lexicon, the two words are interchangeable, one and the same. And if you’ll recall, there were two geese depicted in the Canterbury window, symbolizing the fact that swans and geese mate for life.’

The older man’s brow furrowed. ‘I’m not following.’

‘The name of this place is Swanley. In the Middle English of the fourteenth century, a ley was a meadow.’

‘I got the clue!’ Edie exclaimed, realizing the significance of the place name. ‘“Swanley” would translate as “swan meadow”. Meaning that we need to start searching for a meadow. Or some swans. Or maybe even both.’

The furrow in MacFarlane’s forehead deepened. ‘What kind of bullshit are you trying to pull? Swans swim on the water; they don’t flap around on a grassy field.’ He gestured to the surrounding dell.

‘I’m the first to admit it’s a nonsensical word combination. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that it is highly significant. In the quatrains Philippa referred to herself as the “trusted goose”. At Canterbury we discovered a stained-glass window in which the Ark of the Covenant was depicted along with two geese in a basket. Now we find ourselves here at Swanley. Trust me. It does mean something.’ He turned to Harliss, the keeper of the GPS navigation device. ‘Is there a lake or pond in the vicinity?’

Given the go-ahead by his commander, the muscle-bound lackey consulted his hand-held device. ‘Yeah, I got a body of water about two hundred yards east of here.’

‘Then I suggest we proceed there with all haste.’

When no objection was raised, he motioned to Harliss to lead the way. Sanchez remained behind at the cloister to pack up the equipment. Braxton, the pickaxe jauntily swung over his left shoulder, a powerful Desert Eagle pistol clutched in his right hand, brought up the rear.

As they trooped off towards the new destination, bare branches rustled in the damp breeze. Whispering. Warning.

‘Please tell me that I’ve got more than thirty-some minutes to live,’ Edie said in a lowered voice, glancing furtively at MacFarlane.

‘Hold up,’ Cædmon answered in an equally hushed tone, not wanting her to dwell on the time. He knew from experience that it was best to deal with those variables one could control rather than to obsess on something beyond one’s grasp.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. I need to stand tall. Or stand my ground. Or some silly cliché.’ While she appeared composed, Cædmon detected a note of panic in her voice.

He reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘An opening will present itself. It always does. And when that happens, we must seize the moment. No time for hesitation, right?’

She nodded, a vengeful gleam in her brown eyes. Cædmon suspected that she entertained a gruesome fantasy that involved a certain behemoth and a very sharp pickaxe.

A few moments later they arrived at a fish pond that he estimated to be a good ten acres. Towards the centre of the pond there was a small island. The swan meadow. In the middle of the isle a simple stone cross had been erected. It appeared to have taken root centuries ago.

‘This is looking really, really good,’ Edie said, clearly relieved at seeing the rough-hewn cross. ‘As the priory cellaress, the fish pond would certainly have been Philippa’s domain. Do you think she had the cross placed in the middle of the island as a sign?’

Cædmon shook his head. ‘I suspect the cross was erected before the construction of the priory. However, Philippa would certainly have recognized its significance. As with the Ark of the Covenant, the cross is a point of direct communication between heaven and earth.’ He cast a quick sideways glance at MacFarlane, the older man staring intently at the lone cross. As though it were some sort of mystical beacon.

He’d made his case. Thank God.

‘It could very well be that even before the priory was built, this was a religious site,’ he continued. Then, gesturing to the surprisingly clear, glassy surface of the pond, ‘Undoubtedly the pond is fed by a natural spring. Such springs were often dedicated to a local saint.’

‘Making this a holy place, right?’

Cædmon nodded. ‘And that would have made the isle a fitting place for Philippa of Canterbury to hide the most sacred relic in all Christendom.’ He gestured to a quartet of small rowing dinghies moored to the nearby bank. ‘I doubt if the local anglers will mind if we make use of their boats.’

MacFarlane walked over and inspected the boats bobbing on the water. ‘Gunnery Sergeant, I want you to row across with the woman. Harliss, you wait for Sanchez to arrive with the equipment. Aisquith and I will take the lead.’ Orders given, he untied one of the boats, brusquely gesturing for Cædmon to precede him into the vessel.

‘Hopefully she’s still seaworthy,’ Cædmon muttered as he took hold of the oars and began the laborious business of rowing towards the isle.

MacFarlane made no reply, his unblinking gaze set upon the limestone Lorelei that stood sentry in the middle of the isle.

For the next several minutes the only sounds were the creak and groan of oars repeatedly slicing through the chill water and the occasional honking of the resident swans. The rain having stopped, wispy tendrils of white vapour hovered over the surface of the water, wrapping the pond in a cloying embrace.

No sooner did the prow of the boat ground against the small isle than MacFarlane disembarked, the older man hurriedly sloshing through the calf-high water that lapped the grassy shoreline. Clearly impatient, he motioned for Cædmon to secure the boat to a clump of nearby bushes. A few moments later, Edie and the behemoth docked beside them. Together the four of them made their way to the cross.

Well aware that he only had eighteen minutes left on the clock, Cædmon fingered the worn stone. If a clue had been carved into the cross, the rain gods and wind zephyrs had long since made certain of its erasure.

Undeterred, he walked around to the back of the cross. Treading on something hard, he sank to his knees, shoving aside the long grass.

‘What are you doing?’ MacFarlane hissed, hunkering down beside him.

‘There’s something embedded in the ground. I think it’s a… yes, a plaque of some sort. Do you have a handkerchief or something? I need to wipe the surface.’

MacFarlane gestured to the behemoth, wordlessly ordering him to remove the black knitted hat he wore on his head.

Cap in hand, Cædmon began to rub vigorously at what looked like a bronze plaque some ten inches square, years of dirt having accumulated on its incised surface. As he worked, a shadow fell over him. Glancing up, he saw Edie hovering over his right shoulder, an anxious look on her face. She knew that her life hung in the balance, that whether she lived or died could very well hinge upon this bronze plaque. Fear a powerful motivator, Cædmon rubbed that much harder.

It took several minutes of determined polishing to reveal a single line of Latin script.

Staring at the plaque, Cædmon’s heart thudded against his breastbone, utterly staggered by that solitary line of Latin. Like a man who’d just seen a ghost flit past.

‘Hic amicitur archa cederis,’ he murmured as though it were a magical incantation.

‘What does it mean?’ MacFarlane demanded, shouldering him out of the way to examine the plaque.

Cædmon took several deep breaths, collecting himself. ‘It reads, “Here is hidden the Ark of the Covenant.”’