Uprising

Chapter Fifty-Three

As they sat there in the pale afternoon sunlight and Alex listened intently with her eyes fixed on his, her hair blowing in the breeze, her chin cupped in her hand, Joel told her everything…

…Except for one detail. He couldn’t bring himself to confess what he’d done to the beloved old man.

Nor did he mention the fact that, just a few hours ago, he’d killed a man with his bare hands.

‘I know they’re after me,’ he finished. ‘It’s not safe for me to go back home, until I find that cross. That is, if I find it, and if it really has the powers that it’s supposed to have. Personally, I find that kind of thing very hard to believe. But it’s all I’ve got.’

‘There are a lot of things people don’t readily believe,’ she said, ‘but which are true. Let’s have a look at this notebook of yours.’

He took it out of his pocket and handed it to her.

‘It’s old,’ he said. ‘Not in great condition.’

‘So I see.’ As she carefully turned the pages, the torn-off, folded-up back cover of the map slipped out.

‘That’s where I copied out the bits I could read,’ Joel explained. ‘Which isn’t much to go on, is it?’

‘Your grandfather was obviously a very clever man,’ she said. She’d already reached the final page.

‘You’ve read it all? So fast? It took me ages.’

‘I’m a speed reader.’

‘Does any of it make sense to you?’

‘Let’s go through it. You see this list of words here?’

‘I couldn’t figure those out at all.’

‘You wouldn’t, unless you’d studied ancient languages. This one, Vetalas?

Sanscrit, meaning vampire. Moroi is an old Slavic word for the same thing. Your grandfather probably jotted these down to remind him of what to look for in the ancient texts he found in all these libraries.’

‘Lamashtu?’

‘A goddess worshipped by the Babylonians. She was said to have drunk human blood. As you see, vampire mythology goes back a lot further than most people know.’

Joel clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Okay, this is all very educational. But what about the cross?’ He reached out to take the notebook from her hand. ‘It’s cold out here. Do you want to go inside?’

‘I’m fine.’

Joel opened the notebook at the page that described the origins of the cross and the travels of the enigmatic Ringan. ‘Who was Ringan?’

‘I don’t have the answer to that,’ she replied. ‘And I think your grandfather might have been wondering about it himself. See how he put an N in brackets after the name, with a question mark? Who was “N”? Good question.’ She fished in the pocket of her jeans, and came out with a BlackBerry smartphone.

Joel couldn’t help but smile to himself as he watched her dial up a Google search and type the name ‘Ringan’ on the tiny keys. He liked the intensity of this woman. She was already hooked. He could feel it, and was glad he’d come to her. She was someone who’d been through the same things he had. Someone he could trust.

She shook her head. ‘Ringan comes up all over the place. But not the Ringan we’re looking for, unless he was some pop star’s kid or some kind of Indian recipe.’

‘How about keying in “Ringan Scotland”?’

‘I’ll try.’ She tapped the keys, scrolled down. ‘Nothing.’

‘Shit.’

‘Wait. Here’s something. From the Royal Commission of Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. St Ringan’s Chapel, in Stirlingshire.’ She read out loud. ‘“An old chapel called St Ringan’s, where those who died of the plague in 1645 were buried. The chapel was in existence by 1497 although no trace of it survives.”’

‘No good to us,’ Joel said. ‘We’re looking for something much older than that. My grandfather said fifth century.’

She grimaced. ‘You’re right. Hold on. Take a look at this.’

Joel shifted towards the edge of his seat. ‘What’ve you found?’

‘The alternative name of St Ringan’s Chapel is St Ninian’s Chapel.’

He looked at her. ‘Ninian. The N in brackets.’

‘Let me dig a little deeper here.’ Alex stroked a few more keys on the BlackBerry, then smiled. ‘Here. “In Scotland, Ninian is also known as Ringan.” Same guy. Good old Wikipedia. Now—’

Joel was tense as he watched her retracing the research footsteps of his grandfather decades earlier.

‘Okay,’ she said with a flourish. ‘We can start filling in the gaps. According to three history sites I’ve just checked out, legend has it that long before he was ever beatified, Ninian was sent to Scotland during the fifth century on the orders of St Martin, who ordered him to bring Christian teachings to the Pictish people who later became the Scots. St Martin sent a contingent of stonemasons along with him to build his church there.’

Joel checked the scribbles on the back of the map. ‘So on his travels, Ninian meets this holy man—’

‘—Who entrusts him with the rock he tells Ninian has magic powers. I don’t know if Ninian believed him at the time, but seemingly he got the chance to find out for himself when locals approached him for help with their Baobhan sith problems.’ She pronounced it ‘baa-van-shee’.

‘Sounds like you know what a Baobhan sith is, then,’ he said.

‘Guess.’

‘A vampire?’

‘Yup. They were also called “The White Women of the Highlands”. They took the form of beautiful young women who seduced men by inviting them to dance, lured them somewhere quiet and then drank their blood.’ Alex smiled.

‘What’s funny?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. I was just thinking about something.’

Joel couldn’t read the look in her eye. He glanced back at the notebook. ‘So this lump of rock supposedly had powers against these vampire creatures. And then, according to what my grandfather wrote, after he saw what it could do, he had one of the stonemasons sculpt it into a cross.’ He paused. ‘Which means, I guess, that whatever powers the cross apparently possesses don’t have anything to do with the power of God, forces of good warding off evil spirits and all that kind of thing. There’s some other reason why it can do what it does. But being a good Christian, Ninian felt he had to rework it into a religious icon. I suppose that was the only way they could understand it.’ He frowned at Alex. ‘Just what are we dealing with here?’

‘I really don’t know,’ she replied. Joel thought there was a slight nervous tone to her voice, but he was too taken up with the mystery to dwell on it. He traced his finger along one of his grandfather’s sketches of the ancient artefact. ‘If the stone was only just a bit larger than a man’s head, the cross can’t be that big. Fifteen inches tall, maybe. Question is, where did it go after that?’

‘April 1975. Your grandfather travelled to Venice,’ Alex said. ‘Looks like he tracked it that far. But did he find it?’

‘He got close,’ Joel said. ‘But he never found it. Maybe he was planning to go and look for it again one day. I don’t know.’ He sighed. ‘I just wish he’d told me more about his work. I was just a kid, and my father didn’t like it when the old man used to try to talk to me about these things. They used to argue endlessly about it. And then…then it happened, and it was too late.’

Alex leaned back in her seat. The afternoon was wearing on, and the sun was dipping slowly over the London skyline. A cold wind was blowing in from the river, streaming her hair across her face. She brushed it away pensively.

‘I’m sorry they suspended you from your job,’ she said. ‘But, like you said, now you have some time on your hands.’

‘And not a lot else,’ he said.

‘You’re serious about finding this cross, aren’t you?’

‘I’ve no choice in the matter.’

‘Then how do you feel about a trip to Venice?’