by C. M. Palov
Edie made no comment. Instead she clamped her jaw together. Tight. Trying to stop her teeth from clattering, worried that the slightest motion would upset what had become a delicate balancing act. She knew the chitchat was Caedmon’s attempt at keeping her calm. And while she loved him for it, it wasn’t doing a damned thing to quell her fear.
The golden beam of light reappeared.
“I want you to listen very carefully to me, Edie. I’m about to lower a lifeline to you. It will pass on your right side. Understood?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, not altogether certain what he meant by a “lifeline.”
She had her answer a few moments later when a length of soft chambray grazed her right hand. She instantly recognized the blue fabric—it was the sleeve from Caedmon’s shirt.
“I’ve tied my anorak and shirt together, contriving a lead for you to grasp. Now, very carefully, you are to reach out and take hold of the lead with your right hand.”
Edie visualized the instructions just given to her. Very quickly she realized that to grab hold of the lead, she’d have to let go of the rock that she was clinging to.
“I can’t!”
“You can,” Caedmon urged. “It won’t take but a second to grab the sleeve. Grasp it and wrap the fabric around your hand. Good and tight. While you do that, you can continue holding on to the rock with your left hand.”
“But I might lose my balance.” Her voice was little more than a terrified croak.
“The key is not to make any sudden movements. Maintain your center of balance by taking slow, measured breaths. Understood?”
She made no reply, terrified that she was seconds away from plunging to her death.
“Edie, this is the only way to extract you from the shaft. Please, love . . . I know you can do this.”
She heard a catch in his voice. That’s when she knew the calm tone was all for show. Caedmon was just as terrified as she. For some insane reason, that imbued her with a burst of courage.
Not giving herself time to change her mind, Edie released her hold on the rock, moved her fingers a scant inch to the right. Snatching hold of the dangling length of chambray, she wrapped the fabric around her hand.
She held the shirt in a death grip.
“Okay, I just jumped the first hurdle. Now what?” She still didn’t have the courage to crane her neck and look up.
“You now need to grab the lead with your left hand. After which, you can firmly plant the soles of your boots against the shaft wall. While I haul you to the surface, you will carefully climb up the side of the shaft. Similar to rappelling down the side of Yawgoog’s bridge,” Caedmon informed her, once again speaking in that surreally calm voice. “Only in reverse.”
“Are you insane? It’s completely different. If I lose my grip, I’m a goner.” If she’d lost her grip on the bridge, she would have simply gone for a cold dunk.
“Rest assured, I have a firm grip on my end. Believe me, Edie, if I could climb into this hole and carry you on my back, I would. But I can’t.”
“I know, Caedmon. I know.” She fought back the tears. At the moment, it was the only battle she had a prayer of winning.
Stay in control.
Stay focused.
It’s the only way to get out of the shaft.
To that end, Edie grabbed the length of fabric with her left hand, following through on the rest of Caedmon’s instructions. To her surprise, the new position—flat-footed, torso inclined away from the shaft wall—felt far more secure than the old position. She even felt stable enough to peer up to the top of the shaft. She could see that Caedmon’s long legs were straddled over the shaft opening, his feet firmly planted on the rim, giving him the necessary leverage to hoist her to the top.
“Set to begin the upward trek?”
“Ready to roll,” she called up to him.
With Caedmon doing all of the heavy lifting, the climb was much easier than she had envisioned. Between his grunts and her groans, Edie slowly and sure-footedly made her way to the top. When Caedmon secured a hand around her wrist, pulling her up and out of the shaft, she collapsed against him.
Still holding her in his arms, Caedmon scooted away from the shaft.
“You’re only wearing an undershirt,” she inanely whispered against his chest.
“I was fully prepared to strip naked if need be.”
“Just so you know, that was the ground zero of fear.”
“For us both.” Caedmon jostled her shoulder. “We need to depart. Before the bloody roof collapses on us. That may not be the only death trap in the sanctuary.” There was no mistaking the urgency in his voice.
“What are you saying? That the entire place is booby-trapped?”
“It’s possible.” Shoving himself upright, he extended a hand to her. “Come on. There’s nothing more to investigate. While the sanctuary is proof that the Templars established a colony in the New World, it’s obvious that whatever treasure had been housed here disappeared long years ago.”
Edie scrambled to her feet. She belatedly realized that her digital camera limply hung around her neck. “Hope it still works. It took quite a beating in the fall.”
In the process of putting an arm into a chambray shirt sleeve, Caedmon gazed over at her. Instead of donning the shirt, he used the sleeve to gently wipe at her cheek. “It appears that you took quite a beating as well.”
She shoved his hand aside. “I can get cleaned up later. Let’s get the heck out of here. And I don’t know how to tell you this, but your beloved Knights Templar were a devious bunch of bastards.”
“The secret to their success,” he replied as he finished dressing. He handed her the second flashlight. “I lead, you follow. Do be vigilant.”
As they walked single file across the sanctuary, Edie aimed her flashlight at the floor, scanning for any anomaly that might be a concealed Templar death trap. No sooner did they go into the narrow passageway that led back to the cave entrance than she sighted something out of the ordinary.
“Stop!” she shouted, grabbing the back of Caedmon’s jacket with her free hand. “There’s something suspicious-looking on the floor. To the left side of the entryway.”
Slowly pivoting, Caedmon aimed his flashlight at the floor.
“Stay put,” he ordered. “I’m not certain, but . . . Good Lord! It’s an inscription.” He went down on bent knee. “It appears to be written in charcoal. Pass me your camera. I want to document this.”
Extending her arm, Edie handed over the camera. Afraid of falling into another shaft, she didn’t move her feet so much as an inch. From where she stood, she could see that the inscription was several lines long.
“What does it say?” she asked as Caedmon snapped off a shot.
Frowning, he shook his head. “No idea. As I recall, you brought your netbook computer.”
“It’s in my knapsack.”
“Excellent. I’m hoping we can get a mobile signal from the bridge. That will enable us to search the Internet. I’m not altogether certain, but I think the inscription is written in the Enochian alphabet.”
“The Enochian alphabet? Never heard of it.”
“Enochian is an occult language devised by Dr. John Dee in the late sixteenth century.”
“Next question: Who’s Dr. John Dee?”
Camera in hand, Caedmon walked toward her. “Well, that’s what is so damned odd. . . . Dr. John Dee, in addition to being an alchemist, was a personal advisor to the monarch, Queen Elizabeth.”
CHAPTER 34
“Okay, let’s tackle this Enochian inscription,” Edie said as she booted up her netbook. Since it weighed in at only two pounds, she’d gone ahead and packed it. Using her iPhone as a wireless modem enabled her to hook into the Internet anywhere there was cell phone service. On the cheap.
Sitting side by side on the sun-kissed granite slab, she and Caedmon were drying out. The ascent out of the hidden cave had been a wet one, their clothes sodden, their boots soggy. All in all,
it’d been a helluva day.
Finished cleaning her various scrapes and cuts, Caedmon shoved a small first-aid kit into his knapsack.
As she waited for the computer to boot up, Edie pulled the memory chip from her digital camera. Hopefully, the chip survived the plunge in the shaft. “You said that some guy named Dr. John Dee invented the Enochian alphabet.”
“Actually, he invented an entire language. If I recall the story correctly, Dr. Dee claimed the Enochian language was transmitted to him by the heavenly host and that it was the same language spoken by Adam in the Garden of Eden.”
“The heavenly host? What are you saying, that this Dr. Dee communicated with angels?”
“It was a popular pastime in the Elizabethan period,” Caedmon replied as he removed his wet jacket. That done, he leaned back on his forearms and tipped his face to the afternoon sun. “Personally, I have my doubts as to the celestial provenance of the Enochian language. Although, mystical tendencies aside, Dr. Dee was the first to apply Euclidean geometry to navigation. A brilliant mathematician, he built navigational tools that enabled an entire generation of English seafarers to sail the high seas and explore the great beyond.”
“Quite the Renaissance guy. Must be something in the English water.” Glancing up from the computer, she winked.
“I think mercurial wizard is a more apt description, Dee the inspiration for such literary characters as Prospero and Dr. Faustus. Not to mention Ian Fleming’s 007.”
“So in addition to everything else, Dr. Dee was a spy.”
Caedmon nodded. “The Virgin Queen’s premier spy at that.”
Edie popped the memory chip into her computer. She saved the photos on her hard drive, then opened them for viewing. Despite the dim light in the cave, she’d managed to shoot clean, crisp images.
“Okay, here’s the photo of the Enochian message.”
Sitting upright, Caedmon stared at the computer screen, his gaze narrowing. Edie figured that he was zeroing in on the very same thing that caught her eye—a Templar Beauséant smack-dab in the middle of the inscription.
“While we don’t know how to translate the words written in the Enochian script, we do know that the Beauséant means ‘glorious.’ ” Edie tried to put an upbeat spin on what she feared might be an impossible task—deciphering a message written in angel code.
“Mmmm . . .” Caedmon lightly tapped his chin with his index finger. “If you would be kind enough to Google ‘Enochian alphabet.’”
Edie typed the two words into the Google search engine.
“That one,” Caedmon said, pointing to the image results. “The chart with the Enochian alphabet juxtaposed with its Latin counterpart. I’m thinking our charcoaled message may be a simple transliteration.”
“Meaning that whoever wrote the message substituted an Enochian letter for its Latin counterpart.”
“That’s the working theory. Dr. Lovett’s notebook is in my field kit.”
Rolling onto her side, Edie opened his knapsack and rummaged through it. When her hand made contact with an object that closely resembled a pistol, she said, “I cannot believe that you actually brought a flare gun.”
“In case we get lost on the moors.” He took the mechanical pencil and notebook from her, opening the latter to a blank page. “Right. Let’s have a go at it, shall we?”
“Well, it was a good idea,” Edie murmured a few moments later as she peered over his shoulder at the translated message. “Too bad it didn’t pan out.”
“You need to come at this particular horse from the arse end.” Caedmon’s blue eyes twinkled, the man clearly knowing more than he let on. “By that I mean you must read the message from right to left.”
“Oh, I get it, like Hebrew.” She made the necessary course correction. “Okay, I come up with ‘Ralegh Beauséant Swine Court.’ Which doesn’t tell me a whole heck of a lot.”
“It’s pronounced rawley not raleff,” he informed her, now broadly grinning. “As in Sir Walter Ralegh, the Elizabethan sea captain and famed explorer.”
“I always thought his name was spelled with an i. At least that’s how the city in North Carolina is spelled.”
“Be that as it may, Sir Walter spelled his surname without the i.”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying that this message was written by Walter Ralegh?”
“Possibly,” Caedmon hedged. For several seconds he stared at the deciphered message before saying, “It could well be that Ralegh left the charcoaled message to inform anyone who might follow in his footsteps that he discovered the Templar sanctuary and that he was homeward bound. In those days, safe passage across the Atlantic was in no way guaranteed. An armed Spanish galleon or a turbulent storm at sea could have sent Sir Walter and his wooden ship to the bottom of the ocean.”
“So you think he left the message just in case he didn’t make it back to England.”
“Precisely. But let’s put that aside for the moment.” He tapped the Templar battle standard with the pencil tip. “I suspect that the Beauséant is a pictogram that refers to the Templars’ ‘glorious’ relic.”
“Which we presume was kept in the niche inside the sanctuary.”
“That is the working assumption.” He next tapped the last line in the communiqué. “Now this business about the ‘swine’s court’ . . . admittedly, I’m baffled.”
Edie stared at the nonsensical phrase. “Guess it has something to do with pigs.”
Caedmon suddenly slapped his palm against the granite slab. “Oh, for bollocky’s sake! Swine refers to Bacon.”
“Only after you cook it.”
“No, I mean Sir Francis Bacon, the sixteenth-century English philosopher. Elizabethan history has never been my strong suit, but as I recall, Bacon, Ralegh, and Dee all ran in the same circle, bound by their shared interest in hermetic philosophy and the occult sciences.”
“The occult sciences being something of an oxymoron, right?”
“To the learned and enlightened men of Elizabeth’s court, occult science, or alchemy, was the first of the sciences. And, curiously enough, the Knights Templar also had an interest in alchemy, having been exposed to it in the course of their dealings with the Sephardic Jews.” Evidently realizing that he was rambling, he selfdeprecatingly smiled. “But I digress.” Pencil still in hand, he underlined the last line of the translated message. “Bacon’s court can only refer to one place: Gray’s Inn.”
“Sorry, but I’m drawing a big fat blank.”
Caedmon crossed his booted feet at the ankle, once more leaning back on his elbows. “Located in London, Gray’s Inn is a professional association for barristers. There are four of these inns, the other three being the Middle Temple, the Inner Temple, and Lincoln’s Inn. During the Elizabethan period, the inns were boarding houses and social clubs all rolled into one. Sir Francis maintained lodging at Gray’s Inn.”
“So then it’s possible that Walter Ralegh took whatever it was that he found in the Templar sanctuary to Gray’s Inn, whereupon he turned it over to Francis Bacon.”
“According to the Enochian communiqué, that’s what Ralegh intended to do. We have no way of knowing if he followed through.” Reaching for a water bottle, he twisted the cap and offered the opened bottle to her.
Edie waved it off. “Perhaps at this juncture I should point out that there’s a lot we don’t know. Particularly since we have no clue as to what this ‘glorious’ relic is. Even if we did know what we’re looking for, we have no idea where to look for it. And, news flash, Sir Walter and Sir Francis died centuries ago.”
“At which time the Templars’ relic was bequeathed to someone. No doubt, someone in that same circle of men.” Seemingly unperturbed, Caedmon took a swig of water.
“Oh, yeah, a completely unknown ‘someone’ should be easy to track down.” Shaking her head, Edie rolled her eyes.
“There’s no need for sarcasm.”
“Hey, one person’s sarcasm is another person’s reality check,” she countered.
“In my humble opinion, we just smashed headlong into a concrete barrier.”
CHAPTER 35
Mercurius heavily sighed. “It must be done.”
“You have my word.”
Communiqué ended, Saviour turned his attention to the pair lounging on the stone slab beside the river. His mentor had been displeased to learn that the Brit and his woman emerged from the cave empty-handed. It meant that there was nothing in the cave to retrieve. Whatever treasure had once been safeguarded in the subterranean hideaway had already been confiscated. That being the case, Saviour now had to ensure that no one ever learned of the cave’s existence.
Unzipping his canvas carrying case, he first removed a leather quiver that contained two dozen wooden arrows. Unlike an aluminum or fiberglass arrow, a cedar shaft had its own unique personality. The wood grain gave each arrow its own feel. Its own smell.
He fingered several arrows, gauging the spines of each, the stiffness of the arrow determining its flight distance. He settled on a wooden arrow with blue feather fletching. The color of the Aegean Sea in the early morning light.
On Panos Island he used to feign interest as Evangelos droned on about shear drag, kinetic energy, and the laws of physics. When it came to archery, Saviour knew that only one thing mattered—hit the target.
And he was very good at that.
Smiling, he lightly touched the steel tip of the selected arrow. “This will hurt you a great deal, Englishman,” he softly whispered.
Before it kills you.
CHAPTER 36
“The car may be dented, but the engine still runs,” Caedmon informed Edie, refusing to acknowledge that they’d hit a roadblock. After all the years of study, this was the closest he’d ever come to deciphering the mystery of the Knights Templar.
Monks. Warriors. Mystics. New World colonists. It was fast becoming a heady brew.
