Ark of Fire (41 page)

“Caedmon, what did they do to you?” Edie worriedly inquired, barred from approaching by an older man who had a hand manacled around her upper arm.

As though he were caught in one of those bizarre dreams in which he was naked and everyone else was fully clothed, he belatedly realized that while he was attired in trousers, shirt, and shoes, he held in his hands jumper, pants, and socks. Mercifully, his trousers were zipped, although his shirt was completely unbuttoned.

“I was subjected to a somewhat thorough body search. Needless to say, I feel a bit violated.”

“I hope my men weren’t too rough,” the older man remarked, mirthlessly smiling. “I ordered them to go easy on you.”

Assuming the gray-haired man to be none other than Stanford MacFarlane, Caedmon summoned an equally humorless smile. “No need to sound the alarm. Your boys merely tapped the claret.” He wiped his hand under his bloodied nostrils, his armed escorts having come damn close to breaking his nose. “I shall live to fight another day.”

“As you can well imagine, I have several questions that I’m hoping you can answer for me.”

“Mmmm. I believe this is where I’m supposed to say, ‘I want my solicitor,’” he deadpanned.

“First and foremost, where is the Ark of the Covenant?”

Knowing that Edie’s life was very much at stake, he truthfully replied, “I have no idea. Although I’m certain that if we put on our team bonnets, we can uncover its location.”

“That’s what the last scholar I enlisted said to me . . . right before his death.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Edie put a hand to her mouth, horrified. In truth, he felt a bit queasy himself at hearing of his predecessor’s demise.

“I’m not a bloody psychic. I’m an academic. And as such, I must insist that you give logic a chance to put on its pants. That said, in my anorak pocket, you’ll find a sketched drawing which I believe may be of some interest.”

Properly enticed, MacFarlane walked over to the thug in possession of his anorak. Removing two sheets of folded paper from the front pocket, he first examined the translated quartets, then the sketched drawing of
The Presentation of Christ.

“Before I get to the drawing, I should tell you what we’ve learned to date. We now know that the quatrains were not written by Galen of Godmersham.” MacFarlane’s head jerked, the man clearly thunderstruck. “Rather they were written by Galen’s third wife, Philippa of Canterbury.”

“You’re certain of this?”

“There is no doubt in my mind.”

MacFarlane chewed on the morsel for several seconds. “And what about St. Lawrence the Martyr?”

“Another red herring,” Caedmon replied, suspecting the other scholar’s fate had been sealed with that particular mistranslation. “The ‘blessed martyr’ in question is Thomas à Becket. Which led us to Canterbury Cathedral, where we discovered a stained glass window.”

MacFarlane stared at the sketched drawing, like an addict staring at a full needle.

“As to the specifics of the window, one must bear in mind that it was created by an artisan with a very different set of cultural references. From a semiotic standpoint, deciphering the window is akin to peering through a dark lens. Complex theological tenets, historical fact, and archaic language structures are all jumbled together in that one seemingly innocuous drawing. Admittedly, it will take time to sort out the various strands.” Seeing the displeased expression on MacFarlane’s face, he hastily added, “However, we have reason to believe that the two geese in the basket are significant.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because one of the geese represents Philippa herself, in the medieval guise of the good housewife. Unfortunately, we have yet to decipher the meaning of the second goose.”

“When will you have it deciphered?”

“When I am sufficiently rested.” Caedmon stood his ground, knowing that if he didn’t, there would be precious few roots to cling to. Then, gesturing to Edie, he said, “We both require bed and board.”

The added caveat was more for Edie’s sake than his own. He could see it in her strained expression; she was utterly exhausted. If an opportunity arose to escape, she would need to be sufficiently rested to turn opportunity to advantage.

MacFarlane impatiently tapped his watch crystal. “If the Ark of the Covenant is not in my hands in sixteen hours’ time, I’ll kill the woman.”

Although the proceedings had thus far proved civil, Caedmon recalled the old proverb advising the unsuspecting diner to use a long spoon when supping with the devil.

“I will do all in my power to find the Ark,” he assured his adversary.

MacFarlane locked gazes with him, a barely contained malevolence lurking beneath the controlled expression. “Behave like a guest and you’ll continue to be treated as such. Am I making myself clear?”

“As a bell.”

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough chips for one day,” Caedmon grumbled.

“And guys with big guns and things that go bump in the night.” Edie squinted, there being only a small glimmer of light shining through the locked door. MacFarlane’s twisted idea of “bed and board” was a small storage closet and a couple of bags of soggy fries.

“But on a bright note, we shall be lulled to sleep by the babbling brook that runs beneath the mill.”

Edie made no reply; a damp chill oozed up from the floorboards on account of that same babbling brook. Already she could feel the ache in her joints.

“By the by, I’ve got your metal nail file hidden under the insole of my shoe.”

“I can top that . . . I’ve got a thousand dollars stuffed inside my boot. After the attack in Oxford, I was worried someone might steal the Virgin Air bag.” Her thoughts running every which way, she abruptly changed gears. “There’s something I need to tell you . . . I have intimate knowledge of Stanford MacFarlane.”

“Indeed?”

“Not that I have biblical knowledge of the man,” Edie quickly amended. “But I do know the heart of Stanford MacFarlane.”

“And how is that?” There was no mistaking the interest in his voice.

“My maternal grandfather was something of a religious zealot. If not cut from the same bolt of cloth as MacFarlane, Pops was certainly cut from a similar one.” She caustically laughed, the memory an unpleasant one. “My grandfather believed that freedom of religion extended only to other fundamental Christians.”

“Being a young girl, I’m surprised that you weren’t, er—”

“Indoctrinated? Having been raised by a mother who repeatedly told me that she would clean up her act, and who repeatedly failed to make good on the promise, made me a hard sell. Deep-seated trust issues, I suppose.” She readjusted her legs, the dark space a tight fit for the two of them. “Having sat through all those Sunday sermons, I know that men like my pops and Stanford MacFarlane lie awake at night, consumed with visions of a global theocracy.”

She paused a moment, recalling the earlier one-on-one conversation. “Although I get the feeling that, unlike Pops, MacFarlane thinks of himself as some sort of Old Testament patriarch.”

“One of those unsavory bastards who prays before the bloodletting, hmm?”

Edie shuddered. “He’s probably praying as we speak.”

Putting an arm around her shoulder, Caedmon pulled her close. “As long as there’s a chance of finding the Ark, you will be safe. MacFarlane knows that if he harms you in any way, I’ll refuse to comply with his wishes.”

“You don’t actually trust him to keep his word, do you?”

It being too dark in the closet for her to discern Caedmon’s features, she sensed rather than saw his sardonic smile.

“In my experience, trusting one’s enemy is a fine art.”

In the same way that she sensed the smile, Edie suddenly sensed its disappearance.

“It’s my fault that you got dragged into this mess. I should never have agreed to—”

Edie put a hand over his mouth,
sshhing
him. “Since meeting you at the National Gallery of Art, everything that I’ve done—and I mean
everything
—from coming to England to making love to riding in the back of that refrigerated truck, I’ve done of my own free will. We’re in this together, Caedmon. And don’t for one second think that we’re not. There was no way that either of us could have known they’d place a tracking device on me.”

“Are you saying that the punch-up at the Covered Market was merely a feint? Bloody hell. I should have seen that one coming. From the onset, MacFarlane has remained one step ahead of me.”

Hearing the self-recrimination in his voice, she thought a change of subject in order. “We now have less than sixteen hours to figure out the meaning of those two geese in the basket. All we know is that one of the geese represents Philippa.” She sighed, well aware that it was a very brief allotment of time. “I wish we knew more about Philippa. Other than the fact that she married Galen and she joined a nunnery, we’ve got precious few clues.”

“The nunnery . . . that’s it. You, Edie Miller, are bloody beautiful!”

Without warning, Caedmon began to loudly bang on the closet door with his balled fist.

“What the hell’s goin’ on in there?” came a deep-throated voice on the other side of the locked door.

“Tell MacFarlane that I know where the Ark is hidden.”

Onward, Christian soldiers,
Caedmon silently mused, realizing that each of the four armed men gathered around the table wore a Jerusalem cross ring on his right hand.

“And you’re absolutely certain that the two geese depicted in the stained glass window will lead us to the Ark of the Covenant?” MacFarlane gestured to the Canterbury drawing that lay on the tabletop.

Seated in front of a laptop computer, Caedmon stopped typing, taking a moment to glance at his adversary. He knew that he served but one purpose. Once he fulfilled that purpose, he would no longer be in a position to safeguard Edie.

Surreptitiously, he glanced at the locked closet door on the far side of the room.

Somehow he had to devise a suitable enticement, a bargaining chip, that he could use to garner Edie’s freedom. Until then, he would merely reveal enough to whet MacFarlane’s voracious appetite. But not so much that he lessened his overall worth. Stanford MacFarlane had to believe that without him, he would never find the Ark.

“As I mentioned earlier, one of the geese symbolizes Philippa in her role as the good housewife to her husband, Galen of Godmersham. After Galen’s death, Philippa joined a nunnery, where she lived out her remaining days. With that in mind, I believe that the second goose also represents Philippa; nuns are often referred to as the bride of Christ. Or the good housewife of Christ, as it were.”

MacFarlane took a moment to digest the crumb just tossed to him. “What does Galen’s widow being a nun have to do with anything?” he asked, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. He’d already been led down a false path by one man. Clearly, he was not about to venture forth without a proper road map.

“It’s possible that Philippa took the Ark with her to the nunnery.” He jutted his chin at the Oxford University search engine that he’d pulled up on the Internet. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to find out which order Philippa joined. Although it may take some time, as there were scores of now-defunct religious orders active in the fourteenth century.”

“Time is the one thing I’ve got in short supply.”

As he waited for the search results, Caedmon couldn’t help but wonder at MacFarlane’s impatience to find the Ark. It made him think that the self-styled Warriors of God were operating under some sort of deadline.

Though he was tantalized by the ancient mystery that had beguiled such luminaries as Newton and Freud, he was keenly aware that lives had been ruthlessly taken; MacFarlane’s obsession with the Ark knew no bounds.

“Ah! We have a hit,” he announced, pointing to the computer screen. “According to a fourteenth-century document called the
Regestrum Archiepiscopi
—”