Ark of Fire

by C. M. Palov

  “Mmmm.” He mulled it over, still sifting through the pieces. “We don’t know that Philippa actually hid the Ark in Canterbury,” he said, well aware that Edie had a tendency to hurl herself at a conclusion.

  “Of course we know that Philippa hid the Ark at Canterbury. It’s right there in the quatrains. ‘There in the veil between two worlds—’”

  “‘He will find the truth.’ The truth, not the arca,” he quietly emphasized. “Which may be an encrypted way of saying that we’ll find our next clue at Canterbury.”

  Clearly disgruntled, Edie sighed. “And here I thought this was going to be easy. Okay, any ideas where in Canterbury we should look?”

  More accepting of the roadblock put before them, he didn’t waste his time with peevish laments, having assumed from the onset that they would traverse a crooked path.

  “Thomas à Becket was murdered inside the cathedral. I suggest that as a starting point for our search.” As he spoke, the lorry slowed to a stop.

  Caedmon peered out the rear door and saw that the driver had pulled into a car park with a roadside café. Hopefully, they would be able to hitch a ride to London from one of the dozen or so motorists parked in the lot.

  “I believe this is our stop.”

  CHAPTER 53

  “You might be interested to know that these medieval walls were built atop an older Roman foundation, the original village dubbed Durovernum Cantiacorum.”

  As they strolled across the ancient stone battlements that rimmed the town of Canterbury, Edie was relieved that she and Caedmon had reverted to their earlier camaraderie. She wasn’t altogether certain, the male beast a difficult one to decipher, but she thought Caedmon had gotten angry back in the alleyway because he hadn’t been able to adequately safeguard her from MacFarlane’s goon.

  Which raised a disturbing question . . . if the goon had a gun, why didn’t he use it?

  Able to see in her mind’s eye a massive pair of shoulders, the scary buzz cut, and a rivulet of blood zigzagging down a throbbing temple, Edie shuddered.

  “Cold?” Caedmon solicitously inquired, draping an arm over her shoulder.

  Shoving the frightening image aside, she wordlessly snuggled closer to him. Although she couldn’t be 100 percent certain, she didn’t think that they had been followed. After hitching a ride to London, they caught a train out of Victoria Station, the trip to Canterbury taking only ninety minutes. The train station being located on the outskirts of town, they were now en route to the cathedral.

  With a damp breeze raggedly sawing at her backside, Edie flipped up the collar on her coat. Overhead the clouds hung low in the sky, casting a dreary shadow.

  Taking a quick peek at the town map they’d picked up at the train station, Caedmon ushered her to the left, past the remains of an old tower that she guessed had once been attached to an equally old church.

  “All that remains of St. George’s Church,” he remarked, “the tower having somehow weathered the travails of time and history.”

  “Although it looks like most of the town fared pretty well.” She gestured to the neat line of half-timbered structures that fronted the narrow street. “I feel like I’m walking through a medieval living history museum.”

  “Indeed the inns, taverns, and shops are little changed from the days of Chaucer, all still vying for the traveler’s coin.”

  Like Oxford, the town was dressed in its Christmas finery, fairy lights merrily twinkling behind storefront windows. But Canterbury had about it a magical air that the staid Oxford had lacked. Probably on account of its fairy-tale appearance.

  As they walked along Mercery Lane, the pavement teemed with tourists, the modern-day pilgrims undeterred by the chilly weather. With each footstep, Edie was very much aware that she walked in another woman’s footsteps—none other than Philippa of Canterbury. Like most medieval women, Philippa’s life story had been written at birth. A man’s life in the fourteenth century was recorded on vellum, enabling changes to be made. But a woman’s life was struck in stone. Unchangeable.

  As they neared the city center, the thorny spires of the cathedral began to fill more and more of the skyline. To Edie’s surprise, she began to experience a sense of agitated excitement. Caedmon evidently felt it too, taking her by the hand as they approached a massive three-story gatehouse. Bedecked with tiers of medieval shields and a contingent of stone angels, the Savior stood front and center, welcoming saint and sinner alike.

  Caedmon led her through the arched portal. “Christ Church Gate . . . the physical divide between the secular and the sacred.”

  Emerging from the portal, Edie caught her first glimpse of Canterbury Cathedral.

  “Wow,” she murmured, the cathedral so immense as to be downright daunting—one of those perpendicular Gothic structures purposefully constructed for maximum impact. Everywhere she looked, there were towers and spires and statues.

  “Wow,” she again murmured, having yet to emerge from her dumbstruck state.

  “We approach as did the medieval pilgrims, awed and bedazzled,” Caedmon remarked. “Of course, the magnificence of Canterbury is not surprising, this being the mother cathedral for the Church of England.”

  “More like the mother ship,” Edie muttered, still overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place. “This is gonna take days. Particularly since we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  “But we know that whatever it is, it’s located inside the cathedral. And I suspect the clue has something to do with the Ark of the Covenant.”

  “But the clue could be anything. A piece of sculpture, a painting, a bas-relief. Anything. It could even have something to do with Thomas à Becket,” she added. “After all, he is the ‘blessed martyr,’ right?”

  “I believe that Thomas is merely a peripheral character, little more than a reference point to direct us to Canterbury. For it’s this colossus of stone and glass”—raising his arm, Caedmon motioned to the cathedral—“that played a pivotal role in Philippa’s daily life before she left for Godmersham. Moreover, she—”

  Caedmon abruptly stopped, in midsentence and midstep. Wordlessly, he stared at the exterior façade of the cathedral. Like a man transfixed.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, grabbing him by the upper arm.

  “The clue is embedded in neither sculpture nor painting nor bas-relief.” He turned to her, a beatific smile upon his lips. “It is embedded in glass. Stained glass, to be precise. Arguably one of the greatest artistic achievements of the medieval world, it was the first modern medium of direct communication; complex ideas could be transmitted in a pictorial format.” His smile broadened. “Not to mention that stained glass acts a ‘veil between the two worlds.’”

  Edie stared at the dark panes of glass that fronted the southern façade of the cathedral.

  “Stained glass was intended as a barrier between the secular world existent in the city streets,” Caedmon continued, “and the sacred world contained within the cathedral. Illuminated by light, the first of God’s creations, stained glass can come to life before one’s very eyes.”

  As though an affirmation from on high, a church bell sonorously tolled.

  “Come, Miss Miller. Destiny beckons,” Caedmon remarked, ushering her toward the main entrance.

  Following on the tailcoats of an American tour group, they entered the elaborately carved doors at the western end of the church. Immediately they were assaulted by the twin scents of incense and flowers and the twin sounds of clicking camera flashes and a Midwestern twang.

  “Above you, in what is known as the West Window, you will see a brilliant example of medieval stained glass,” the American tour guide expounded, in what was obviously a canned speech. “The sixty-three glass panels, which depict various saints, prophets, and kings, are just a drop in the bucket to what you’re gonna see on the tour; the cathedral boasts hundreds of glass panels. Make no mistake, folks, this is one of the cultural treasures of Europe.”

  Along with ever
yone else in the group, Edie peered upward.

  “Oh, God.” She groaned, stunned. “It’s gonna be like finding a holy needle in a sacred haystack.”

  Placing a hand to her elbow, Caedmon led her away from the tour group. “Admittedly, we have a daunting task ahead of us.”

  Edie craned her neck, taking another gander at the sixty-three glass panels on the West Window.

  “You think?”

  CHAPTER 54

  His neck inclined at an awkward angle, Caedmon stared at the top register of the stained glass panel, the blaze of color near dazzling, casting what could only be described as psychedelic patterns of light onto the cavernous gloom of the gothic interior.

  Les belles-verrières, he silently mused. Certainly more beautiful glass than one man and one woman could reasonably absorb in a single day. But mindful of the fact that MacFarlane might have correctly deciphered the quatrains, he and Edie forged onward.

  Some two hours into the search, they now stood in the Corona, a semicircular chapel originally built to house the relics of St. Thomas à Becket. Despite the fact that they had methodically examined dozens of stained glass panels created before the mid-fourteenth century, thus far they’d seen no images or references to the Ark of the Covenant.

  As he swayed slightly on his feet, the colorful windows having a hypnotic effect, several lines of Bible verse came to mind. “‘I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay their foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of—’”

  Edie raised a hand, preempting him in midsentence. “Enough already. I am totally and completely Bibled out. Trying to decipher these stained glass windows is an awful lot like learning a foreign language. Except we don’t have the Berlitz tapes. And you spouting verses from the Good Book does not help matters.”

  “Understood,” he contritely replied.

  Though Caedmon was at an advantage, having studied medieval iconography while at Oxford, the symbolism and didactic meaning contained within the Canterbury windows was, to the modern observer, not unlike a foreign language. Although it was a language well known eight hundred years ago. Illiteracy was the norm during the Middle Ages, so stained glass enabled the faithful to learn the stories of the Bible in an easily accessible format, thus making medieval stained glass a picture book for the masses.

  Ignoring the painful crick in his neck, he continued to study the glass panels, forcing himself to examine only those images specific to the Old Testament. Moses consecrating Aaron. The ascent of Elijah. Samson and Delilah.

  As they continued to the next group of glass panels, he caught sight of a leather-clad blur out of the corner of his eye. The size and heft of the blurred figure were similar to that of the assailant in Oxford; he slowed his step. Almost instantly, his heartbeat escalated, goose bumps prickling his skin. He knew this feeling. He’d had had it any number of times when he worked for Her Majesty’s service. Something in Denmark most definitely stank to high heaven.

  Muscles tightening, he slowly turned to face the enemy.

  It took but an instant to verify that the “enemy” was simply a tourist. Though the robust physique was similar, the facial features were completely off cue.

  Bloody hell, but he was on edge.

  And had been since the incident on High Street.

  “Is something the matter?” Edie inquired. “All of a sudden, you’re looking awfully tight around the jaw.”

  “No, no, nothing is the matter,” he assured her, taking her by the elbow and steering her toward the aisle of the cathedral choir. To one side of them, massive columns supported incised stone arches; on the other side, stained glass windows beautifully gleamed.

  “Ah! The famed Typology Windows,” he announced, effectively changing the subject. Knowing that the Typology Windows had been created prior to the thirteenth century, he angled his head to examine the upper panes of glass, ignoring the bolt of pain that traveled from his nape to the base of his spine.

  Edie elbowed him in the ribs. “Explanation, please. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a novice at this.”

  “Typology was a tool often used in the Middle Ages to certify the legitimacy of the New Testament with stories taken from the Old,” he explained. “A typical example would be the tale of Jonah and the whale. According to the Old Testament, Jonah remained within the whale’s belly for three days and three nights.”

  “Prefiguring Jesus being entombed for the same length of time,” she astutely commented.

  “Precisely. Usually, the stories were paired, one to the other, thus reinforcing a particular theological point through the manipulation of biblical imagery.”

  “Thought control at its very best.”

  He winked at her. “How else does one control the masses?”

  “Hey, look, it’s Noah and the Ark!” she exclaimed, pointing to a half-roundel. Placing a hand to her mouth, she stifled a burst of laughter. “Yeah, I know, wrong ark. Although at this point, I’m happy to see any ark.”

  Not nearly so enthused, Caedmon led the way to the next panel. Again, he began the slow process of identifying each and every biblical figure, his gaze systematically beginning at the top and moving downward. A monumental window, the panel was divided into seven horizontal registers, each register containing three separate scenes. When he came to the fifth register, he did a double take.

  “Bloody hell . . . I think I found it.”

  Edie’s eyes slowly panned the length of the window, opening wide when they hit upon the telltale image. “Oh my gosh! It’s a four-sided gold box.”

  “Actually, it’s the four-sided gold box. None other than the Ark of the Covenant.” Barely able to contain his excitement, he had an overwhelming urge to laugh aloud, to raise his voice to the heavens and whoop with joy. Instead, he pulled Edie into his arms, hugging her close. “We found it,” he whispered in her ear. “We actually found the bloody thing.’”

  Disengaging her right arm, Edie excitedly pointed to the window in question. “Did you notice the two baby geese in the basket?”

  He nodded, certain they’d found the very panel that Philippa intended them to find. The scene, The Presentation of Christ, detailed the well-known New Testament story of Mary and Joseph presenting the infant Jesus to the high priest in the temple at Jerusalem. Two seemingly innocuous items within the scene fairly screamed at him: Joseph carrying a basket that contained two goslings, and Mary, holding the baby Jesus aloft, standing before the Ark of the Covenant.

  “Yesterday you and Sir Kenneth were rambling about the medieval comparisons between the Mother Mary and the Ark of the Covenant. Is this what you were talking about?”

  Deciding not to take issue with the “rambling” charge, he nodded. “It was a religious concept known as Faederis Arca. No less a theologian than St. Bernard of Clairvaux explicitly compared the womb of Mary to the Ark of the Covenant; for as the Ark contained the Ten Commandments, so Mary carried the New Covenant within her womb.”

  “The symbolism of the Old Testament reinforcing the New Testament.”

  “Precisely.”

  Clearly excited, Edie yanked the Virgin Air bag off her shoulder. Unzipping it, she hurriedly riffled through its contents, removing her digital camera.

  Excitement was soon replaced with a crestfallen expression. “It’s a dead dog,” she muttered, showing him the darkened display. “And as you know, the digital camera has yet to be invented that will run on a drained battery.” She glanced at the exit door located on the far side of the nave. “I could run out and buy some new batteries at one of the souvenir shops.”

  Caedmon checked his watch. “I don’t know if you’ll have enough time. The cathedral is set to close in twenty minutes. The digital photo will have to wait until the morning.”

  “Do you really want to wait that long? Yeah, we found the window, but now we have to figure out what it means. And to do that, we’ll gonna need a picture.”

  “I agree. However—”

 
She put a staying hand on his chest. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  Obediently standing by, he watched as Edie rushed toward the northwest transept. When she disappeared from sight, he returned his gaze to the stained glass panel. As he stared, spell-bound, the distinctive scent of incense wafted through the chill air. It suddenly occurred to him that here, within the confines of one of the world’s great cathedrals, where man-made bread daily became God’s flesh, anything was possible.

  Turning away from the panel, he watched as Edie returned with a bespectacled, long-haired young man in tow. “This is William. He’s agreed to do a quick line drawing of the stained glass window.”

  A man of few words, William removed an artist’s sketch pad from his satchel. Paying them scant attention, he negligently leaned against a nine-hundred-year-old column and began to draw.

  “I earlier noticed him sketching the St. Thomas Memorial inside the transept,” Edie explained.

  “Ah! A budding artist.”

  “More like a budding con artist,” she replied, lowering her voice to a hushed whisper. “He refused to put pencil to paper for less than fifty bucks. Since we need an image in order to decipher the window, I agreed to his terms.”

  The silent seconds ticked past. Caedmon anxiously checked his watch, hoping the young artist completed his masterpiece before the docents herded them to the nearest exit.

  “What happens if we actually find the Ark?” Edie asked, staring at the four-sided gold box in the glass panel.

  I’ve asked the same question myself, love.

  And still he didn’t have an answer. Only a mounting sense of excitement.

  The Ark of the Covenant.

  Truly, the stuff of dreams.

  Having yet to utter a word, the art student ripped a sheet of white paper from his sketch pad. Paper in hand, he walked over to where they stood and silently handed Edie the drawing he’d made. She, in turn, handed him a small wad of American bills. Transaction concluded, she politely thanked him for his services.