Ark of Fire

by C. M. Palov

  Rudely awakened only a short time earlier, she and Caedmon had been ushered into the backseat of the waiting vehicle. Seated in front of them was the driver, Sanchez, a sullen man given to muttering in Spanish, and his copilot, Harliss, a southerner with an accent so thick he might as well have been speaking in Spanish. Both men were armed. And both had made it very clear that they would not hesitate to use their weapons.

  Leading the pack in a second Range Rover were Stanford MacFarlane and his right-hand man, Boyd Braxton. To Edie’s relief, she’d had little to no contact with the hulking brute since the attempted rape. Knowing that Caedmon had enough on his plate, she’d made no mention of the near miss.

  “Didn’t you say something about swans and geese being interchangeable in the medieval lexicon?”

  “Hmm?” Clearly lost in thought, Caedmon tore his gaze away from the window. “Er, yes, I did say that.”

  “Making it all the more likely that this place Swanley is where we’ll find the Ark.”

  “Actually, I have no idea if the Ark is hidden at the nunnery. The Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary may simply be where we find the next clue.”

  Jealously she watched as MacFarlane’s henchmen passed a thermos filled with hot coffee back and forth between them.

  “My feet feel like two blocks of ice,” she complained in a lowered voice, pointedly glancing at the pair of green wellies she’d earlier been issued.

  Caedmon, decked out in an identical pair of boots, commiserated with a nod. “The English Wellington was designed to keep the foot dry, not warm. Although we’ll be glad of them should we have to traipse through a damp field.”

  Edie didn’t bother to point out the obvious—that a full-speed sprint through that same damp field would be next to impossible in the clunky rubber boots.

  They’d driven through the postdawn gloom for approximately twenty minutes when Edie sighted the first road sign for Swanley. As they approached the town limits, she was surprised that Swanley looked a whole lot like any American residential suburb, the outskirts littered with strip malls and fast-food eateries.

  How were they going to find the Ark in the midst of so much suburban sprawl?

  “Don’t worry. The priory is located in the outlying countryside,” Caedmon remarked, correctly guessing at her thoughts.

  As if on cue, Sanchez exited from the superhighway, veering onto a two-lane country road. Peering out the window, she’d forgotten how simple things—trees in the distance, brown pastures, stone farm fences—could exude a stark cinematic beauty; the contrast between the countryside and the nearby town was like midnight and high noon.

  Up ahead, MacFarlane’s Range Rover came to a halt, pulling to the side of the road. Sanchez pulled in a few feet behind.

  “Is this the place?” she asked, not seeing anything in the rural landscape that even remotely resembled a medieval nunnery.

  “I believe so,” Caedmon replied. “MacFarlane plotted the course on a computer navigation system. Although we’ll probably have to trek across a field or two to reach our destination.”

  Harliss opened the passenger door. “Get out.” Gun in hand, he ushered them toward the other vehicle while Sanchez unloaded several large, bulky canvas packs from the Range Rover’s cargo bin.

  As MacFarlane huddled his men, she and Caedmon were ordered to stand to one side. She could see that Harliss had a handheld GPS receiver, which all four men intently studied. Although she tried to listen in, she could catch only a few snippets—avenues of approach . . . terrain features . . . obstacles . . . reconnaissance.

  “They’re treating this like some sort of military operation,” she whispered to Caedmon.

  “Apparently so.”

  “Making us the enemy combatants, huh?”

  Too busy scanning the surrounding area, Caedmon made no reply.

  “Move ’em out,” MacFarlane gruffly ordered.

  Sandwiched between two pairs of armed men, she and Caedmon moved with the pack in a northeasterly direction. In front of them about two hundred yards in the distance was a dense grove of trees. As they trudged across the field, Edie wondered if Philippa of Canterbury had had any notion of the deadly train of events she would someday trigger with her quatrains.

  More than likely she had.

  Why else would the noblewoman-cum-nun have gone to such lengths to hide her dead husband’s gold arca? Philippa had survived the horror of the plague and no doubt blamed the Ark for the deadly wave that swept across England.

  Last night Caedmon had informed her that Philippa belonged to the Gilbertine Order, an order of nuns founded in England. In a span of only six years, Philippa had risen through the priory ranks, eventually becoming the cellaress, a position in which she oversaw all of the food production. A capable woman with a flair for management, she could have easily arranged for the Ark of the Covenant to have been brought to Swanley. Maybe she let her fellow nuns in on the secret. Because they lived a life devoted to religious worship and contemplative prayer, there was little fear that the secret would be revealed to nosy outsiders.

  Holding the GPS receiver in his right hand, Harliss led them through the grove of trees, the gnarled leafless limbs like so many arthritic hands.

  Just beyond the bare boughs, Edie glimpsed a stone wall.

  “I see it!” she exclaimed, raising her right hand and pointing, inexplicably excited. “It’s on the other side of the grove.”

  “Roger that,” Harliss responded, leading them toward to the right.

  A few moments later, they entered a clearing.

  Edie quickly glanced from side to side.

  “Oh God . . . it’s been destroyed.”

  CHAPTER 65

  Stunned, the six of them stood rooted in place.

  “What the fuck happened?” Braxton muttered, expressing what everyone in the group was no doubt thinking. All that remained of the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary was three stone walls punctuated with arched windows; tangled strands of dead ivy cascaded from the glassless openings.

  “It looks like it was hit by mortar fire.” This came from MacFarlane, his leathery cheeks flushed with what Edie assumed to be barely contained rage.

  “My guess is that the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary was destroyed during the Tudor reign,” Caedmon quietly remarked. “In 1538, Parliament, at the behest of Henry the Eighth, issued an official edict known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The new law enabled Henry to confiscate all property owned by the monastic orders. Aided by an overzealous population who hoped that church riches would trickle into their greedy hands, the king’s men demolished many a monastic building; the lead in the roofs was removed and the stone reused for secular building projects.”

  Edie stared at the eerie remains: the gouged Gothic shell that opened heavenward, the sheaves of ice-laden grass, shimmering jewel-like. Perhaps it was the early-morning mist, but she could have sworn that a ghostly imprint of incense and candles and prayerful chants still lingered.

  She turned and glanced at Caedmon, conveying a silent question: What if the next clue had been embedded in a piece of stained glass that had been smashed to smithereens centuries ago?

  With an almost imperceptible shake of the head, he warned her against voicing the query aloud. He then pointedly glanced at Stanford MacFarlane.

  Edie got the message, loud and clear. If MacFarlane thought the game was over, she and Caedmon would be killed on the spot. No matter what, they had to maintain the pretext that it was still “game on.”

  Startled by a sudden screech, Edie reflexively turned her head.

  There, perched on the branch of a leafless tree was a raven, loudly cawing.

  Although not a superstitious person by nature, she considered the raven a very bad omen.

  CHAPTER 66

  “Not to worry,” Caedmon announced, affecting a tone of bluff good cheer. “The fact that the priory was destroyed will not impede our progress in the least. In fact, it will make the task at hand far easier
to execute.”

  “Do you think I suddenly went loco? There’s nothing here,” MacFarlane argued, gesturing to the empty space abutting the three stone walls.

  “Ah! ‘They have eyes, but they do not see.’”

  “And what does King David have to do with anything?”

  Knowing that he needed to produce a rabbit from his top hat, Caedmon replied, “The good king’s observation is most apropos. For though the untrained eye sees nothing but overgrown grass and three stone walls, the trained eye sees the nunnery as it once stood.”

  Several seconds passed in terse silence.

  “Go ahead. I’m listening,” MacFarlane said, rather grudgingly.

  Relieved that he’d passed the initial audition, Caedmon cast Edie a quick, reassuring glance.

  Don’t worry, love. I can do this. I can buy us the time we need.

  He gestured to the meadow adjacent to the stone walls. “If you care to join me, I would like to take what the archaeologists call a ‘field walk.’ Since we don’t have the benefit of an aerial photograph, by slowly walking the site, we should be able to detect slight fluctuations and anomalies in the ground surface. These fluctuations and anomalies will enable us to piece together the perimeter boundary of the original nunnery. Once we’ve done that, we’ll be in a much better position to know where to begin the search.”

  Although MacFarlane nodded his assent, a silent addendum was included—the gadabout had better produce some tangible results.

  The rabbit trick suddenly becoming that much more difficult, he commenced the tour by saying, “First, a quick primer in monastic layout. The majority of medieval priories followed a standard prototype of three buildings, usually two stories in height, arranged in a U shape. This U-shaped configuration would have abutted a church.” Caedmon gestured to the three stone walls. “As you can see, the demolished church is all that remains of the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

  “If I’m imagining this correctly, the church and the U-shaped buildings would have enclosed some sort of courtyard,” Edie remarked.

  “Quite correct. The garth, or cloister as it is more commonly called, was the large open space within the enclosed buildings. The cloister was primarily used for gardening and the interment of the dead.”

  A definite spark of interest in his eyes, MacFarlane clearly recognized the possibilities that the cloister presented. “I’m guessing that no one would have thought twice about a deep hole being dug inside the enclosed courtyard.”

  “We are of like mind. Furthermore, only nuns and novices were permitted inside the cloister, thus making it the perfect place for Philippa to bury the Ark of the Covenant.” Arms spread wide, Caedmon gestured to the vacant meadow that moments ago MacFarlane had been so quick to dismiss. “Here, Philippa could have safeguarded the Ark from the outside world while at the same time keeping a watchful eye on it. Shall we begin our stroll around the cloister?”

  Taking the lead, he walked to the other side of the small meadow, MacFarlane on his heels, Edie and the henchmen also in tow.

  “This, I believe, is where the refectory would have been situated,” he said, gesturing with his hands to an area of overgrown weeds and tangled grass. “The refectory was, as you undoubtedly know, the dining hall where all meals were taken.”

  “. . . aka the penguins’ mess tent,” one of the henchmen snickered.

  Ignoring the jibe, Caedmon marched forward approximately fifteen meters. “And this would have been the lavatorium.”

  “The wash area, right?”

  He nodded at Edie. “That’s correct.” He then walked another fifteen meters. “Here would have stood the kitchen area.”

  “And just how is it that you know all of this?” MacFarlane suspiciously asked, glancing back and forth between the last two areas delineated.

  Caedmon knowingly smiled, about to divulge how he’d pulled a rabbit out of thin air. “If you’ll look carefully, you’ll see a slightly raised furrow.” He pointed to the ground. “That is what’s known as a kitchen midden. Or what the layman might refer to as a buried trash heap. And if you were to search the lavatorium, you would see a depressed furrow rather than a raised furrow.”

  “Caused by centuries of running water,” Edie correctly deduced.

  “Satisfied?” He directed the question to the man who held their fate in his hand.

  Again, MacFarlane glanced back and forth between the “kitchen” and the “lavatorium.” Appeased, he jutted his head at the small meadow. “Keep walking.”

  Caedmon continued with the tour. “Across from us, on the other side of the cloister, would have been the nuns’ dormitory. And directly opposite the church would have been the chapter house and abbess’s quarters.” Raising his arm, he motioned in four separate directions. “With each of the four nunnery buildings accounted for, we can now extrapolate the cloister boundaries.”

  MacFarlane surveyed the area in question. “And you’re certain that the Ark would have been buried somewhere within the cloister?”

  Caedmon hesitated, the question inherently a tricky one. “I have strong reason to believe that Philippa would have deemed the cloister the safest place to hide the Ark. Although where in the cloister, I couldn’t begin to speculate.”

  To his surprise, the admission garnered an unconcerned shrug. Turning to his men, MacFarlane commenced to give orders.

  “Sanchez, I want you on the metal detector. Gunnery Sergeant, you’ve got the GPR. And, Harliss, you’re on guard duty.” The orders met with a deferential chorus.

  His input no longer needed, Caedmon was ordered to stand beside Edie, the two of them placed under the watchful eye of the unintelligible southerner. A man prone to toothy grins that conveyed a dark malevolence, Harliss let it be known that he had disabled the safety mechanism on his H&K MP5 machine gun. “Meanin’ I can shoot y’all all the sooner,” as he had so obligingly informed them.

  Scanning the landscape, Caedmon could sight no avenue of escape, no farmhouse that he and Edie could run to; the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary was situated in a remote milieu. If they could somehow make their way to the country lane where the Range Rovers were parked, they might be able to flag down a passing motorist. But getting to the roadway amid a hail of bullets was a remote possibility at best.

  Which left only one viable option: He had to disarm one of MacFarlane’s henchmen.

  No easy feat, given that all three men were sturdily constructed and no doubt knew how to comport themselves.

  “What’s going on?” Edie asked, nudging him with her elbow. Sanchez’s sweep of the cloister already underway, the ground was littered with several small flags.

  “Each time his metal detector finds any buried metal, the device beeps. Whereupon the spot is marked with a flag, the color of which designates the type of metal detected.”

  “Oh, I get it. So, I’m guessing that gray is for silver, orange is for bronze, black is for lead, and yellow is for gold.”

  He nodded. “Since a metal detector can’t fully identify the buried object, Braxton will use ground-penetrating radar to survey all areas that tested positive for gold. The working assumption is that the Ark of the Covenant was indeed made of pure gold.”

  Edie raised a quizzical brow. “Radar? You mean like the guys in the airport tower use?”

  “Not exactly. Rather than sending radio waves into the air, these waves are directed into the ground. The electronic signals then bounce back into a receiver.” He nodded toward the small laptop computer that Braxton had set up on top of the GPR receiver. “A computerized map will be generated based on the density and position of the returned signals. It should enable them to determine the size and depth of any buried object.”

  “Normally, I’d say, ‘Way cool,’ but I’ve got a funny feeling this ground-penetrating radar is going to make or break us.”

  Caedmon made no reply, having reached the same conclusion.

  Worried about their immediate future, he wordlessly stared at E
die. At the curls covered in a bridal veil of morning mist. At the mottled purple bruise on her right cheek. He thought that she resembled nothing so much as a bedraggled street urchin. Something straight out of Dickens. Brave and vulnerable in the face of danger.

  “I’ve got something!” Braxton suddenly hollered.

  At hearing that, Caedmon inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. “I’d say we’re bang on target.” Then, his interest getting the better of him, he called out, “May I have a look?”

  When MacFarlane nodded his assent, Harliss happily did the honors of escorting them over to the laptop computer, prodding them forward with a negligently held machine gun pointed at their backs.

  “I’m getting a whole bunch of little unidentified objects,” Braxton said, pointing to the computer screen.

  Caedmon studied the monitor; the computer-generated image resembling nothing so much as a black-and-white photograph of the moon. And the dark side of the moon at that.

  He tapped his finger at several small spots on the computer screen. “I believe these are miscellaneous stones left hither and yon when the nunnery was destroyed. But this looks promising,” he said, pointing to what appeared to be a large, solid object buried some two meters below the surface.

  “Whatever it is, it’s a big mother. Sir, you want me to dig it up?”

  A definite gleam in his eyes, MacFarlane nodded.

  Moments later, pickax in hand, the behemoth began swinging like a brigand in search of gold doubloons, no thought given whatsoever to properly excavating the site, of carefully slicing away section by section in order to recover any historic artifacts that might be nestled in the soil. For these men, there was only one artifact of any import.

  While Braxton attacked with his pickax, Sanchez assisted with a hand shovel, the two men making fast work of it. Donning a pair of knee pads, MacFarlane perched himself on the edge of the hole. His gaze intent, he peered into the deepening chasm, putting Caedmon in mind of a large bird of prey about to swoop upon its quarry.