‘I figured, if anyone could make sense of it, it’d be you.’
‘I don’t know about that. It’ll take me some time to put it all together properly. But I’d hazard a guess that this is a cross of some kind. Look at this fragment here. See how the crosspiece seems to join up with part of an outer circle? Typical of the Celtic style.’ He jumped up suddenly and went over to one of the crammed bookcases, gazed along a row of spines and plucked out a book. Chloe smiled as she watched him flicking eagerly through the pages.
‘Like this one,’ he said, turning the book round so she could see the drawing.
Chloe nodded. ‘Beautiful.’ She pointed at the pieces on the desk, running her fingertip along the faded inscriptions. ‘What about these markings? Rebecca thought they were some kind of ancient runes.’
‘Ancient carvings of a sort, certainly. Strictly speaking, all known examples of so-called “Celtic” runes were in fact either Scandinavian or Germanic in origin, so whether …’ His voice trailed off and he paused with a frown, stroking the cool, smooth, creamy stone with his fingertips. ‘As for the material it’s made from — it’s like nothing I’ve ever encountered before. A type of quartz, perhaps? Moonstone, maybe. No, moonstone doesn’t have these tiny coloured flecks. It’s something else.’
‘Well, it’s yours now, so you can take all the time you need.’
‘Really? Are you sure?’
‘I told you,’ she smiled. ‘I brought it back for you.’
‘That was very thoughtful of you,’ he said, looking touched. Before he could start getting all emotional on her, Chloe knocked back the last of her coffee and stood up.
‘I have a lecture after lunch. Should just make it if I hit the road now.’
‘I’m sorry to see you leave so soon.’
‘The hectic life of the ambitious young student,’ she laughed.
‘What are you doing the day after tomorrow? I could make us dinner, that meatball thing you like. You could stay overnight and drive back in the morning. Unless you have an early lecture.’
‘That’d be great. I’m going to be on my own anyway. Rebecca and Lindsey are going to some crappy gig.’
He beamed at her. ‘Then it’s a date.’
When she was gone, Matt Dempsey went over to his desk and spent the next hour piecing the strange stone fragments together. He’d been right — the object that gradually formed on his desk was a Celtic cross, probably the oldest example he’d ever seen. Thankfully it seemed as though Chloe had managed to find all the pieces. Their broken edges were sharp and fresh, not worn smooth with the passage of time, telling him that the cross had only very recently been damaged.
What a terrible shame, he thought. To have survived so long, only to be broken like that. Chloe had said she’d found it at the foot of a cliff, far below the battlements of an old abandoned castle: maybe it had fallen from there. Or been dropped. Matt was fully aware that, even today, there were self-appointed treasure hunters still ransacking every corner of Europe for items of historic value. This one had evidently — and perhaps literally — slipped through their fingers.
Matt rooted through a box of odd bits in the corner of the office until he found what he was looking for, some lengths of thin wire. With great care, he wrapped the wire around the reconstructed cross and twisted its ends together to form a cage-like casing that would hold the pieces firmly in place. Once it was reassembled, he used a digital caliper gauge to note its exact dimensions, and then spent another half hour making a careful, detailed sketch.
The more he studied the cross, the more fascinated he became. Nothing quite like it had ever come his way before. Those markings: what could they mean? He prided himself on his knowledge of ancient languages, but this defeated him. ‘Damn,’ he muttered, scanning his bookshelves. He could think of a couple of titles that might conceivably help him puzzle this mystery out, but they were at home.
He thought guiltily about the Etruscan vase restoration project that was going on across the hall, and of the arrangements for the party of Japanese historians who were arriving tomorrow. But his capable assistant Mrs Clark had all that under control, didn’t she? It was nothing he couldn’t leave until the morning, was it? Matt hesitated.
It was no use. He simply had to know more. He picked up the phone and told Janet Clark he was going home early. Then, after carefully packing the wired-together cross into a box of shredded paper along with the sketch he’d made of it, he hurried off to catch the bus.
Chapter Sixteen
The morning was crisp and bright as Dec sped westwards in the Audi banger, but it wasn’t the sunshine that was putting a broad grin on his face as he drove. Glancing at the shiny new laptop on the passenger seat next to him, he instinctively reached out and patted it like a faithful dog.
The reply from Errol Knightly had arrived just after seven o’clock that morning.
Dec had jumped straight into his banger and burned rubber — inasmuch as the Audi
Him and Errol Knightly. What a team they were going to make. Dec was so excited about it that when the radio news came on, with one of its top items the growing concern over the apparent disappearance of MP Jeremy Lonsdale, he was too lost in his thoughts to even notice.
It wasn’t much longer before he arrived at Bal Mawr Manor, nestled among the rolling hills of the wild Pembrokeshire coastline. As he goaded the protesting Audi up a long hill, the glittering sea to his left, his first sighting of the place was the spectacle of four tall towers, circled by clouds of seabirds and silhouetted against the sun; beyond them was the greyly glittering Irish sea.
‘Looks like a frigging castle,’ he muttered to himself. The Audi managed to drag itself over the crest of the hill and the building came more fully into view. Dec let out a low whistle. The manor house was an arresting sight, perched on the cliffside overlooking an immense sweep of white beach. The nearest neighbours were farms dotted here and there against the green hills. A scattering of buildings in the far distance was all that remotely resembled a town anywhere within sight.
Dec drank it all in with a sense of awe as he approached the tall gates of the manor and found himself on a thickly tree-lined private road that stretched on for ages. Just as he was beginning to think he’d taken a wrong turning, the trees opened up and the road ended abruptly at a barrier. Beyond it was a ten-foot drop to a wide expanse of water that Dec realised with amazement was a moat surrounding the entire manor house.
On one of the barrier’s high pillars was a small black box that he knew from movies to be an intercom system.
He wound down his window, pressed a button, and a moment later a crackling voice from the speaker asked him who he was. Dec stammered out his name.
For a minute, nothing happened; Dec sat in the car gazing at the incredible dwelling across the water. The place was at least five times bigger than the whole of Lavender Close put together. What he’d at first taken to be ivy growing up the manor’s walls was actually a climbing sprawl of thorn bushes. Black shapes in the still waters of the moat were the half-submerged blades of two huge paddle wheels. Above the water, the massive closed wooden gate wasn’t a door, but a drawbridge, held up by enormous iron chains. Either side of it were gleaming metal
