The Secret of Excalibur

stop acting like a damn child! Okay? I’ll talk to you tomorrow when you’ve got a grip on yourself.’ She stabbed at the button to switch off the phone before Chase could say anything else. ‘Aargh!’

‘I’ll, er, put these plates in the dishwasher,’ said Chloe, hurriedly clearing the table. She bustled into the kitchen, leaving Nina and Mitchell alone.

‘God damn it!’ Nina was about to bang her phone down on the table before remembering she was a guest and settling for smacking it against her thigh instead. ‘I’d forgotten how mad he can make me. I sometimes wonder what the hell I see in him.’

‘Must be that whole opposites attract deal, I guess,’ suggested Mitchell. He reached across and patted her upper arm.

‘Yeah, well, sometimes he’s a bit too opposite, y’know? I mean, I’m engaged to the guy, but we’re hardly anything alike. Sometimes I worry that . . .’ She tailed off.

‘What?’

‘I shouldn’t really be talking about this. It’s my problem, not yours. You probably don’t even want to hear it.’

He gave her a sympathetic look. ‘Maybe I can help.’

Nina scrunched up her face, confused. ‘I don’t know, it’s just . . . I’m just worried we might be too different!’ she blurted, the admission filling her with a mixture of catharsis and guilt.

‘You think that if you get married, it might not work out?’

‘Exactly! Eddie’s already been married once, and . . . Well, maybe that’s an extreme example of things going bad, but at least he and Sophia were from the same country. They had that much in common.’

‘Have you talked about this with him?’

‘Yeah, right,’ Nina scoffed. ‘It takes a near-death experience before Eddie’ll discuss his feelings without making some stupid joke out of everything.’ She let out a frustrated growl. ‘Oh, what do I do? Did you go through anything like this before you got married?’

‘Afraid not,’ said Mitchell. ‘We thought we were a perfect match. Naivety of youth, I guess.’

‘Great, I really needed to be reminded that I’m not officially young any more.’ But there was a hint of humour behind her words. ‘God, he infuriates me sometimes. Why can’t he be a bit more, more . . .’

‘Like you?’

‘Exactly! Well, not exactly, that’d just be weird and narcissistic.’ Mitchell laughed; after a few seconds, Nina managed to join in. ‘Heh. But yeah, there have definitely been times when I’ve wished he could be less . . . Eddie-y.’

Mitchell moved his chair slightly towards her, looking into her eyes. ‘And more . . . PhD-y?’

Nina laughed again, giving him a knowing grin. ‘Eddie was right about you, you know. You do flirt.’

‘You got me,’ said Mitchell, putting a hand to his heart in mock contrition. ‘It’s a grave personality flaw, I admit. But the only thing that matters is: do I flirt well?’

She smiled, enjoying the attention. ‘I’d have to say . . . not bad.’

‘Room for improvement?’

‘Mmm . . . maybe.’

‘Then I guess I’ll have to keep practising.’ He smiled back, leaning a little closer to her . . .

Chloe entered the dining room, doing a slight double take when she saw her guests sitting much closer together than during the meal. The moment broken, Nina blinked and pulled back. ‘Well, the dishwasher’s loaded!’ Chloe said, a little too loudly. ‘I’ll go and sort out some bedclothes for you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Nina. ‘And get Jack an extra blanket - we don’t want him getting cold on the couch.’

‘Ah, well,’ Mitchell sighed, ‘practice makes perfect.’

17

Early morning sunshine lit up the southeastern side of Glastonbury Tor. Of the hole in the ground and the stone slab beneath, there was no trace except for some disturbed earth - and the hooked end of a steel peg poking from the soil. ‘Here we are,’ said Chloe, pointing at it. She laid down the rest of her equipment on the terrace.

Mitchell looked on dubiously as she marked out a cordon round the dig site with wooden poles, then tied a length of red and white striped plastic tape between them. ‘Are you sure that’ll make any difference?’

‘This is England,’ Chloe told him with a smile. ‘Never underestimate the power of a simple piece of stripy tape to keep people away. Besides . . .’ She held up a fluorescent yellow safety jacket. ‘Nothing makes a person more invisible than a workman’s coat!’

Mitchell didn’t seem convinced, but kept quiet. Instead, he put down his black holdall. ‘I got the embassy to deliver some gear of my own,’ he remarked as he unzipped it and showed Nina two heavy-duty flashlights and a pair of walkie-talkies.

‘Oh, so that’s who you called last night,’ said Nina.

‘Yeah, I wanted to be prepared. We don’t know what’s inside there.’

‘If there is anything inside there.’ Nina’s initial enthusiasm had faded overnight, her fight with Chase still dwelling on her mind.

With the shovels Chloe had brought, it didn’t take long to expose the whole of the stone slab. Nina used a brush to clean the soil from the chiselled letters. The entire inscription was in Latin, several lines long.

‘“Know you that behind this stone lies the one true tomb of Arthur, king of the Britons, and his second queen, Guinevere,”’ Nina read. ‘“Only those who know the history of Arthur and the legend of Arthur shall be worthy to reach his presence and pay respect. The one shall see you through the labyrinth to face the trial of Nivienne . . .” Nivienne?’ she asked Chloe.

‘One of the possible names of the Lady of the Lake,’ she replied.

‘Right. “. . . the trial of Nivienne, who shall hold the unworthy in the place where she dwells, and the wrath of Merlin, which strikes only those who see his face. Those who know the truth may find the tomb of Arthur; those who do not . . .” Oh boy.’

‘What?’ Mitchell asked.

‘ “... shall never leave.” Yeah, this isn’t good. Sounds like the monks left a couple of booby traps.’

‘But the tomb’s hundreds of years old,’ Mitchell objected. ‘The traps wouldn’t still be working after all that time.’

‘You’d think, wouldn’cha?’ said Nina with sarcasm born of painful experience.

‘That might explain one old legend,’ Chloe said. ‘There’s a story that a group of thirty monks once entered tunnels they found beneath the Tor, and only three came out alive.’

Nina winced. ‘Oh, I don’t like those odds.’ But she still took a spade and began to dig.

Once the soil around the stone slab had been cleared away, Nina and Mitchell carefully inched its upper end clear of the deeper-set stones on which it was resting, then tilted it back to reveal . . .

‘Oh, my God,’ said Nina. ‘Would you look at that.’

It was a tunnel, narrow but passable, descending into the Tor. More Latin text was inscribed on one of the stone supports framing the entrance. Nina immediately converted the Roman numerals. ‘1191,’ she said. ‘The same year the Glastonbury monks said they found Arthur’s tomb in the grounds of the abbey. But this was the real tomb . . . the real treasure.’

Mitchell shone a light into the passage. ‘These props look kinda iffy.’ While the entrance was stone, inside the tunnel support was provided by wooden beams set into the clay and sandstone walls, and they had succumbed to rot from the damp earth over the centuries.

Nina picked up another torch and checked for herself. ‘They lasted this long,’ she said, hoping she wasn’t cursing herself by speaking. She quickly touched her pendant to be safe. ‘As long as nobody kicks them out, they should be okay.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Chloe said nervously. ‘I think I’d prefer to wait out here, hold the fort. If that’s all right with