by Jon Mackley
‘So what do we do? Hire a car?’
‘Too obvious. They’ll expect us to run like frightened rabbits, so we’ve got to stay put, stay out of sight, for a while. I’m hoping … if they don’t catch us at a roadblock in the next few hours, they’ll think we’ve got through and extend their search area.’ He thought again. ‘If they secure the area within the next two hours then they’ll have the blocks about eight miles away from the centre of the city.’
‘Why eight?’
‘The average walking speed is four miles an hour. They’ll watch the fields and have the choppers scouring the countryside for us. You can bet any money they’re already sitting on the station like hungry vultures.’
‘What does it mean?’ Lara asked. ‘Do we have time to look around?’
Will nodded reluctantly. ‘Yes. We can’t avoid the roadblocks. We’d be daft to try. If we stay put long enough they might think they’ve missed us. The blocks will probably be in place for three hours while they look for us, then they’ll close in on Chester or extend the search, or both, so let’s get inside and see if we can figure out how to get out of this one.’
‘Can I make an observation?’ Lara asked.
‘If you’re going to tell me it’s going to rain, I already know.’
‘It’s you, Will. You know a lot about the way these people think. What did you say you used to do?’
‘I was a history teacher, you know that. I’ve just been trying to avoid them for a long time. I’m starting to anticipate their manoeuvres.’
‘If they’ve been following you for some time, don’t you think they’ll have sussed out your manoeuvres too?’
‘Possibly,’ Will said sullenly. He said nothing more and Lara found herself staring up at the red stones and the angular window tracery of the cathedral. She suddenly felt uneasy. She wondered if it was knowing that someone was following them or whether she was overwhelmed by the size of the cathedral and she was stepping back through centuries of history.
The visitor’s entrance was in the modern part of the building. Frustration and unease pressed down on Lara as she walked in. The structure made her feel tiny and oppressed. She was pleased when she moved into the cloisters; then she walked into the cathedral itself and stood in the North aisle.
‘You look uncomfortable,’ Will observed. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I don’t like churches.’ Her gaze became vacant. ‘I think … I think I saw something once. It’s like a bad dream, just creeping in the corners of my mind. I haven’t been in a church since.’ She shuddered at the concealed memory and glanced around. The cathedral was wide and light, not like the place in her dreams.
‘Do you have a faith?’ Will asked as he stared up at the high pointed arches.
‘None whatsoever.’
‘It’s important to believe in something,’ he said earnestly.
‘What do you believe in?’
Will reflected for a moment, as if this was something he had never considered. ‘Hope,’ he said eventually.
Lara’s eyes traced the path of the aisle. ‘What are we looking for?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe a seal of Solomon, a five pointed star, or something like that.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘Actually, I won’t know until we find it.’
Lara looked at the wooden carvings at the end of the nave. The woodwork was made up of hundreds of tiny ornate decorations. ‘This is like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ she said bitterly. ‘What happens when we get there? We push the star and a secret passage opens up no one has ever found before? Come on, Will. This isn’t a film.’
‘If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction,’ Will said.
‘Don’t start hiding behind Twelfth Night,’ Lara snapped. ‘We can’t go through every statue and carving in this place. It would take the rest of our lives to do that.’
‘Longer, probably,’ Will said. ‘That’s why the poet knew he was safe to hide his secret here.’
‘All right,’ Lara said. ‘Let’s think about eliminating some of the work.’ She left Will standing in the nave and returned to the cloisters. There was a shop at the end of the cloister garden, and Lara bought a guidebook and map from a girl she thought should be in school. ‘All right,’ she said when she returned to Will. She spread open the map, ‘Fourteenth century is Mid-Gothic?’ She ran her finger along the drawing of the walls. ‘That’s the south aisle, the south transept …’
‘Where’s that?’
‘That’ll be the right hand side of the cross made up by the church. The whole of the choir is pretty much mid-Gothic style and so is the Lady Chapel.’
‘Brilliant,’ Will said, sarcastically. ‘That eliminates a quarter of the cathedral.’
Lara ignored him and started to walk forward towards the choir, avoiding the many rows of chairs. ‘I wonder why they stopped building. The north aisle wasn’t finished for another hundred and thirty years.’
‘The Black Death?’ Will told her. ‘Famine? No money? Maybe the people were more concerned with staying alive than completing the house of God. Sticking up a building wasn’t going to keep the Reaper at bay.’
Lara nodded, looking down at the mosaic. Her heart gave a little leap as she reached the tower crossing. The mosaic on the floor depicted an eight-pointed star. ‘I don’t suppose the poet lost his ability to count between seeing the star and writing about it?’ The echo underneath the tower shocked her. Her words seemed to flee from her then return with added vigour.
‘No, he was specific. Five points.’ He was reading the guidebook over her shoulder. ‘This is nineteenth-century work, anyway. The building is thirteenth-century, but the carvings and tiling have been done in medieval designs.’ He sucked on his lip. ‘I wonder …’
‘What?’
‘We’re barking up the wrong tree. The poet would have guessed carvings wouldn’t last forever. He wanted something that would survive for centuries, not something that was probably already riddled with woodworm.’ He tapped his foot in frustration. ‘The answer’s here, I know it. I’m just trying to jump that last hurdle of the poet’s logic. The answer’s so simple. It’s staring us in the face.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a figure of speech, like not seeing the wood for the trees. Keep looking around, Lara. Five-pointed star, that’s what we want.’
She gazed up at the ceiling, and her heart gave another little flutter. The oak bosses had six-pointed stars. ‘Still too many,’ Lara whispered. With a sigh she started to analyse the medieval carvings. There were misericords telling the life of St Werburgh – the patron saint of Chester. Lara shivered. The parish church in the village where she grew up was dedicated to this saint. There were other misericords in the choir stalls depicting animals. She guessed the carvings were symbolic representations of Christ, although the elephant seemed to be a thick-necked giraffe with a worm coiling from its nose.
Will was standing in the centre of the eight-pointed star, head back, staring at the ceiling. She wondered what was going through his head. His expression was pained, as if he was trying to catch an idea just out of reach.
‘The windows!’ he said suddenly. ‘If we’re talking about enlightenment, the poet could have used a double metaphor.’
‘Too easily broken,’ Lara said. ‘How much fourteenth-century glass survives?’
Will took a couple of steps back, then sat in the front row of the chairs. ‘Problem is we’re assuming the poet knows the same things we know. We’ve got 20-20 hindsight, as Robert Pirsig would say. We know Henry VIII dissolved the abbeys, but this building survived to become a cathedral rather than getting smashed up like some of the others. How could the poet have predicted damage done in the English Civil War? How could he have known it wouldn’t have been destroyed in the bombing of the Second World War?’
‘I don’t think he would have guessed any of these things,’ Lara admitted. ‘When you consider the destruction this country
has faced then it’s a miracle the cathedral is still standing.’ Her eyes darted around. ‘And another thing, we keep calling him “the poet” and “the Gawain-poet”. Doesn’t he have another name?’
‘Another mystery lost in the mists of time. We don’t really have a name for the manuscript, it was added by later editors.’
‘No clues at all?’
Will smiled. ‘Just one. At the top of the first folio of the manuscript there are the words “Hugo de”. The scribe, or one of the later owners, could have written it. We don’t know.’ His face creased as if trying to chase an illusive thought. ‘What was it you said earlier?’
‘Lots of things, what in particular? I started the morning by demanding coffee.’
‘You talked about finding the Seal of Solomon and pushing it, opening up a passage no one had found before.’
‘Was I? I’m sure it was hypothetical.’
‘If you’re right, then the poet would have seen the construction of that part of the cathedral.’
‘Will, you said that was an improbable fiction.’
‘Think, Lara. They stopped building the cathedral around 1350. Most people date Gawain as being written between 1350 and 1400 – it contains similar passages to another text, Winner and Waster, which dates from about 1352. The poet wouldn’t have seen the building of the last part of the cathedral unless he lived to be very old.’
‘I thought we’d already established that, that’s why I eliminated a quarter of the cathedral from the necessity of inspection.’
‘But let’s suppose he was influential and could have convinced the Benedictine abbot that something needed to be built according to his specification.’
‘You’re saying the whole building could be part of the plan?’
‘Why not? He could have been influential. If he had something important to hide and if the abbot was in on it, it’s not impossible.’
‘That’s a lot of “ifs”,’ Lara said.
The quiet of the cathedral was suddenly broken by chatter: a party of school children had entered. Most gave the impression of not wanting to look at ancient gothic architecture and wandered around, bored. But when they glanced over to see where the noise was coming from, she stared past them.
Four men had followed them. Men in trench coats.
Will saw them too. ‘Yuck, we’re in trouble,’ he said. He walked away from them. ‘Don’t turn,’ he hissed. ‘We need to get lost among the tourists. Quickly, Lara. Your map. Where are the other exits?’
Lara fought the urge to look at the men again. With shaking hands she unfolded the map. ‘South transept,’ she said. ‘There’s a door in there.’
‘Let’s hope it isn’t locked,’ Will said. ‘All right, slowly, quietly, let’s head that way.’ His face was a mask of grim determination. ‘You go first. I’ll follow in a couple of minutes. They’re looking for two people together. Perhaps they won’t guess that it’s us if we leave separately.’
Lara did as she was told. Will returned to the carvings, trying to look nonchalant. Lara stole a peek behind her. Will was straining to hear the echoing footsteps. She walked like a tourist, looking with apparent disinterest at the huge complex windows which were splashes of colours of red, yellow and blue, then peered at the chapels in the south transept.
Her heart beat in her throat. The south door wasn’t far. She fought the urge to run, or to look back to make sure Will was following her. She wondered if anyone could smell her fear. She jumped, hearing a sudden shout, but fought the urge to turn when she realised it was one of the children playing. Then the cathedral was plunged into an unnatural silence, as though everyone had turned as one to recognise Will. When she looked back she could not see him. At first she feared he had been found. But Will had been running for a long time: he would blend in with the other visitors.
Ten steps between her and the door. Ten steps between her and freedom.
She stopped. There would be many people following Will, not just the four in the cathedral. Others might be waiting outside. And she daren’t try to open the door in case it was locked, or, worse, alarm bells would ring alerting the entire cathedral to their failed escape.
The cathedral was doused in an uncanny stillness, like time had stopped, and she alone was working outside from it.
Where are you? she hissed under her breath. Perhaps he’d stopped in one of the side chapels in the manner of a casual visitor.
The second chapel beguiled her. The reredos behind the altar was shining gold. Despite every instinct screaming at her to get out, and her heart pounding in her throat, she flicked through the guidebook. Something to do with King Oswald of Northumbria, in a stance of battle against Cadwallon ap Cadfan, the King of the Britons. The stones of the floor glittered yellow and gold, a contrast to the red sandstone of the walls. She read further: the chapel, dedicated to St Oswald, was rebuilt in the middle of the fourteenth century.
Come on, she chided herself. You don’t have time to be a tourist. Get away.
Where was Will?
She turned away, disappointed. How could they solve the mystery of six hundred years in half an hour? They should have come here before whoever was following Will could have splashed their faces across the front of the newspapers. How could they have thought to find a Seal of Solomon amid this sea of carvings? She doubted the poet would have made it easier by colouring it, exactly as it had been written in the text, a golden star on a gules coloured shield. Or yellow on red.
He heart caught in her throat.
What if the star had been just the symbol and the description of the star, the shield and the line number mixed together to make the perfect ‘one’. She gazed around her again, at the red sandstone and the sand-coloured floor.
‘Lara.’ Will’s voice caused her to jump. The hushed whisper was stern and commanding. ‘I told you to leave.’
‘It’s here, Will,’ she said. ‘We weren’t looking for a star at all. It’s the colours that are important.’
Will was surprised. ‘What colours?’
‘The colours on the shield. The stones of the cathedral represent the red. I doubt there’s another building in the area that looks like this one.’
‘Lara, that’s brilliant,’ Will said urgently. ‘But this isn’t going to matter in two minutes when those men find us.’
‘Then I’ve got one minute and thirty seconds to find the seal,’ Lara said, her eyes imploring. ‘Just something to show us this is the right place.’ She crouched on the floor, running her fingers along the stone. ‘It’s here,’ she said, almost giddy with anticipation. ‘I know it.’
‘Lara,’ Will said desperately. He touched her shoulder. ‘All right, if you’re convinced, I’ll make a diversion. I’ll try to get out of the cathedral and lead them away from you, and then get them lost in the streets.’
‘Wait a second,’ she told him.
‘We don’t have any more seconds.’
She crouched behind the altar, running her fingers across the stone. ‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘There’s writing here, almost impossible to make out.’
Will glanced anxiously over his shoulder, then crouched with her. ‘It’s like they tried to cross it out,’ he said blowing some dust away. A figure was cut in the flagstone:
‘What is it?’ Lara said. ‘It’s like the Roman numeral for ten, but I’ve not seen it written like that before.’
‘The bar across the top symbolises a thousand,’ Will said. ‘That symbol means ten thousand. It was easier than writing ten Ms.’
‘Will,’ Lara’s heart fluttered. ‘You said that’s the figure for 625 converted into base five.’
Will nodded. He peered over the altar to make sure their followers weren’t moving towards the south transept yet. ‘There’s more writing,’ he told her. ‘Let’s see if I can make it out.’ He ran his fingers over the letters, as if trying to understand a fourteenth century Braille. ‘The first letter is Thorn,’ he said with a smile. ‘I think we do know the sweet Roma
n’s hand.’
‘Enough of Twelfth Night! What does it say?’
‘Let’s see. Ƿe sprynges calle. Ƿe trauayle biginez.’ He gave a bewildered gasp. ‘That’s it? No more?’
‘What does it mean?’
Will stood up and started to stride towards the south door, oblivious to potential danger. He wrenched it open and walked outside into the cold air. Lara ran to keep up with him. ‘Will, what is it? What did it mean?’
‘That fourteenth-century clown was having a big joke on us all along,’ Will snapped. ‘There’s no buried treasure in the cathedral, no hidden wisdom. X marks the spot: that was his idea.’
‘But what did the writing say?’
‘It said “The springs call. The travel, or the work, begins.”’
‘That’s all?’ Lara couldn’t hide her disappointment. ‘There must have been something else, something we missed that told us where to go. Perhaps we need to lift up the stone to see what was underneath.’
‘And what d’you think the Dean would think of that? You were right. There’s nothing that the renovations of the cathedral wouldn’t have discovered. This has been a prank by a medieval trickster, nothing more.’
Lara gave a despondent sigh. She had wanted to believe in Will’s idea; she wanted to crack the code with him and do something that no one before had achieved. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked sadly.
‘We go back to the restaurant where we had lunch yesterday.’
‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? We should be getting away now.’
‘That’s what they expect us to do. I need coffee and I need time to think how we’re going to get out of here.’
5
