Stones of Fire

‘Gee, I’m surprised you don’t want to leave tonight. It’s only pouring down rain out there,’ she teased.

‘While I refuse to entertain the notion that MacFarlane may yet steal the prize, we need our rest.’

On that point they were in complete agreement.

‘Do you think the church is still standing?’

‘Difficult to say. Any number of churches and monasteries were destroyed during the Reformation and the Civil War. Tomorrow will be soon enough to ascertain if St Lawrence the Martyr is intact.’

‘Even if it’s still there, we have no idea where in or around the church the Ark is hidden.’

‘I never said this would be an easy venture.’ Pushing back his chair, C?dmon rose to his feet. As he walked over to the divided bed, one of Bach’s melancholy cello suites droned from the radio. Edie thought it sounded like a funeral march.

Ignoring the music, she surreptitiously watched as C?dmon took a packet of biscuits from the bedside table. No doubt about it, C?dmon Aisquith was very much his own man, his quirky intellectualism strangely appealing. As he headed back to the oriel, biscuits in hand, Edie could see that something was wrong, his expression not nearly as ebullient as it had been seconds before.

‘Uh oh. What happened? You’re no longer in a John Philip Sousa mood.’

C?dmon handed her the packet of chocolate-covered biscuits. ‘Here, tuck in.’

‘You’re not going to have one?’

Waving them away, he reseated himself at the table. ‘Something about the solution is too neat and tidy. Too bloody obvious.’

‘Maybe Galen wanted the solution to be obvious.’

‘Had that been his intention, he would never have gone to the trouble of writing the quatrains.’

Her sweet tooth having also gone south, she put the biscuits aside.

‘Yeah, I see your point.’ She stared at the quatrain. ‘Maybe a not-so-neat solution will come to you in the morning.’

‘Or to you. Your chain-of-custody box showed a marked talent for analytical reasoning.’

Edie smiled. ‘You liked that, huh?’

‘It’s one of many things that I like about you.’

C?dmon’s reply made her instantly regret the parting of the red bed.

‘Well, what do you know? I like you too.’ A great deal, in fact. Maybe more than she should, given that she knew so little about him. Other than he had once attended Oxford, had worked for MI5 and recently wrote a book, she knew nothing about C?dmon Aisquith. A man of mystery was one thing. A man without a past was something else entirely.

But then she’d not been very forthcoming herself.

‘C?dmon, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ she blurted without preamble.

His blue eyes locked on to hers.

Edie took a deep breath, bracing herself for the backlash.

‘I lied to you.’

45

‘Nothing here but a bunch of old bones.’

Stan MacFarlane shone his Maglite into the open grave, in which his man stood chest deep. Scattered at Braxton’s booted feet were the mortal remains of Galen of Godmersham. And a whole lot of mud, the grave quickly filling with water. Earlier the night sky had opened up, the rain coming down in buckets.

Stan next shone his torch into the face of the Harvard scholar, who stood shivering on the other side of the grave, the beam casting a golden light onto the driving rain.

‘You told me it would be here.’

‘Based on the quatrains, I thought there was a good possibility that the gold chest would be found in Galen’s grave.’ His paid medieval expert, beginning to look like a wet rat, shrugged. ‘What can I say? We played the odds and lost.’

‘Could you have misinterpreted the quatrains?’

The scholar rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Hmm… it’s possible, but… I really thought I correctly deciphered them. That’s the tricky thing about Middle English, it’s all about layered meaning. Hey, do you guys mind if I sit inside the Range Rover? I’m gonna catch my death if I stand out here much longer.’

Tuning out the man’s whiny-ass complaints, Stan carefully considered his next move, knowing it was a move twenty-five years in the making. For it was twenty-five years ago that the archangels Michael and Gabriel had appeared to him soon after the blast in Beirut. Sent by God to pull him from the rubble.

The terror attack on the marine barracks had been the first of the signs that the End Times were near.

Saved in body, and more importantly in spirit, he had given his life over to God’s work. Not once had he shirked his duty, commissioned with the task of building God’s holy army here on earth. What had begun as an informal prayer group in the First Gulf War had become a twenty-thousand-strong faith-based force by the time the tanks rolled into Baghdad eleven years later.

Twenty-five years had come and gone, yet his mission was still incomplete.

God had something great and glorious intended for him.

But only if he uncovered the Ark.

The Ark was the key that would unlock the gates of the Millennial Kingdom.

The Ark was the weapon that would destroy the Muslim infidels.

Just as it had destroyed the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites.

‘You know, I’m as stumped as you.’ The scholar had apparently decided not to go back to the Range Rover.

His train of thought interrupted, Stan realized that the remark didn’t ring true, the other man too pat. Too well rehearsed. As though it were a gun aimed at point-blank range, Stan shone the Maglite at the scrawny man’s face. Pupils quickly contracted into black dots. ‘Why do I suddenly not believe you?’

‘You’re kidding, right?’ The other man affected a theatrical look of stunned disbelief. ‘What reason would I have to lie? I need the cash to pay off my loans.’

‘I can think of any number of reasons why you might lie to me.’ Stan continued to shine the light at the other man’s face. As though he were boring a hole right through the middle of his forehead.

‘Look, I thought for certain the Ark would be — I mean the gold chest would be buried with Galen.’

‘What did you just say?’ The beam of light drilled that much deeper.

‘Arca. I said arca. As in “Arca and gold ful shene he carried to the toun he was born.” Remember the third quatrain?’

The truth revealed, Stan stared at the scholar, contempt washing over him in waves.

Sensing the winds had suddenly shifted, the Harvard scholar nervously glanced at the car. No doubt trying to remember if the keys had been left in the ignition.

‘You can’t outrun a bullet,’ Boyd Braxton jeered, having climbed out of the grave.

Judge and jury, Stan pointed an accusing finger. ‘“And then shall the wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.”’

Surprisingly belligerent, the other man pointed a finger right back at him. ‘You’re a fucking lunatic, that’s what you are!’

‘Unkind words for the man who holds your fate in his hands.’

The Harvard scholar glanced at the Israeli-made Desert Eagle automatic pistol negligently held in the gunnery sergeant’s right hand, belligerence now replaced with fear. Cowardly, snivelling fear.

‘You’re right, dude. Heat of the moment. Sorry. And just to prove that I’m still part of the team, I think I know where the Ark is hidden.’ The scholar jutted his chin towards the small church nestled on the other side of the cemetery. ‘When you guys did your earlier security check in the church, I caught sight of a very large marble plaque depicting the martyrdom of St Lawrence.’ Spreading his arms,