by Marie Laval
He hesitated.
‘I’ll take you to London,’ he said, taking her bag from her. ‘We need to talk, anyway.’
With the ease of a cat, he climbed over the balustrade with her bag and jumped down. Then he reached out for her and put his hands on her waist to ease her down on the gravel lane that wound its way around the bottom part of the terrace.
‘We must hurry. I took care of the gamekeeper earlier, but I saw two armed guards making their rounds. I have a carriage waiting on the lane outside.’
He took her hand and they ran across the lawn. Once they reached the wall to the estate, Lucas whistled. Another whistle answered almost immediately. He threw her bag over the wall, climbed up and pulled Harriet to him. Her long skirts hampered her, but she managed to throw one leg, then the other, over the wall and find her balance as she sat on the ledge at the top. Lucas jumped, landed on his feet with only the slightest sound and extended his arms.
‘Jump down, I’ll catch you.’
He hardly staggered when she landed in his arms, and held her against him for a moment before putting her down.
‘You may not be able to go back, you know that, don’t you?’ he asked, looking into her eyes.
She looked into his eyes and nodded. ‘I will never go back.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The coach driver was a large, brutish-looking man who knotted his big bushy eyebrows in a frown and spat on the ground when he saw her.
‘Didn’t know we’d have to take a runaway bride back with us,’ he grumbled, pulling his hat down.
‘Let’s go,’ Lucas urged, opening the carriage door to help her in.
He climbed in after her and the carriage set off at speed.
It was all so strange, she thought, staring at the man opposite her. After the first, wonderful shock of seeing him again when she believed him dead, she now felt detached, almost numb. Maybe it was her way of avoiding heartbreak. She could tell by the way Lucas looked at her, cold and indifferent, that he had all but forgotten—or discarded—the weeks they had spent together in Algeria. It was as if they had never been lovers. As if they would never be lovers ever again.
She pulled her cloak down, unpinned the wedding cap from her hair and placed it on the bench next to her. Whatever happened now, she would never marry Archie. She cleared her throat.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To a friend of your father’s in London. His name is Theophilius Knox. He’s going to help us.’
Harriet shook her head. ‘I don’t know him. Does he work for the museum too?’
‘No, he runs a bookshop. He was kind enough to lend me his carriage and driver when I said I had to get to Aylesford urgently to speak to you.’
‘How did you know about him?’
He sighed and rubbed his face.
‘Your father gave me his name. We had a few minutes before Mortemer and his men arrived at the tomb. He was very weak but still lucid, and there was much he wanted to tell me before…’ he sighed. ‘Before it was too late.’
Harriet’s eyes filled with tears. Suddenly she was back on that terrible day in Abalessa. She could almost feel the savage heat of the sun on her skin, taste the dust on her lips, feel the raw despair in her heart.
‘I wasn’t even with him when he died,’ she whispered, clutching her hands in her lap. ‘I left him all alone in the tomb.’
He leaned forward, looked into her eyes and took her hands in his. They were warm and strong.
‘You did what you had to do. You went to get help.’
‘What did he say to you?’
He let go of her and sat back.
‘He told me not to trust Drake. He said he was dangerous.’ He let out a short, humourless laugh. ‘He wasn’t wrong there, was he?’
‘He also told me to stuff a handful of emeralds and gold in my pockets and give them to you. Although he wasn’t happy about taking anything valuable from the tomb, he said you would need money when the scandal about the Brotherhood broke out. And…’ He paused.
‘…he told me how to find the Garamantes’ mines.’
‘He did?’
He nodded. ‘He wanted me to pass it on to the Tuareg keepers, which I did when I got better. Your father had some kind of agreement with them.’
Harriet’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘So you know where the mines are?’
‘I do. They are in the Tassili mountain range between Tamanrasset and the Tripoli territories. Maybe I will go there myself one of these days, try and find them.’
Maybe…
Would he ever go back? He had travelled to Algiers and boarded a ship bound for England under a false name. He was a fugitive now, wanted by the French army for treason. He hadn’t even been able to visit his mother and sister in Bou Saada one last time before their land and house were confiscated. If he did find the emerald mines, he might be rich enough to bribe his way into the good graces of French officials and buy the estate back. There was nothing better than money to help people forget.
As if she sensed he was thinking about his land, his family and friends, she asked. ‘What happened to Ahmoud? I heard he escaped from jail.’
‘That’s right, and he took care of Mortemer for me in the end.’
‘Egha,’ she said. ‘So it was him.’
He glanced at her. ‘You remember.’
‘I was there when Mortemer and Rachid were killed,’ she explained. ‘I saw the carvings on the daggers.’
‘Shame he didn’t get Drake that night,’ Lucas muttered.
Neither of them spoke as the shadows thickened and the carriage bumped along country roads.
‘Your father was desperate to expose this brotherhood and protect you from them,’ Lucas resumed at last. ‘Have you found out anything about them?’
‘Not much. They are called Brotherhood of the Silver Wolf,’ she said. ‘I think Lord Callaghan is their leader. I don’t understand what they stand for or how we can defeat them. They must be incredibly powerful. I don’t know what we can do since there’s only the two of us against them.’
‘We are not alone, Harriet.’ He shook his head. ‘Theophilius Knox can help us if we bring him the Barbarossa map.’
She glanced at him, surprised. ‘The map? What does that have to do with anything?’
He darted his pale blue eyes into hers. ‘Remember the letter your father sent you from Algiers?’
‘Yes, but…’ She frowned in concentration, trying to recall the exact wording of her father’s letter.
‘He mentioned that old trick you used to play on your Aunt Elizabeth.’ He smiled and arched his eyebrows. ‘A most formidable woman, by the way. I sincerely hope never to have to meet her again.’
‘You talked to Aunt Elizabeth?’
‘I went to your house this afternoon after meeting with Knox. I said I was a French scholar, made up some story about an ancient artefact you bought in Algiers that I wanted to study. She was the one who told me you were getting married to Drake tonight in Aylesford. She seemed very pleased about the whole thing.’
‘She always liked Archie.’ Harriet sighed. ‘Everybody likes Archie. If only they knew what he is really like...’
He arched his eyebrows. ‘Anyway, there is a secret message at the back of the map, a message your father wrote with—’
‘Lemon juice,’ she finished, opening her eyes wide. ‘Of course, now I understand! What’s the message?’
‘It’s the location of a file he compiled on the brotherhood. He said there was enough to incriminate them and that his friend Knox would know what to do with it.’
‘I hid the map in the old nursery, in my house.’
‘So that’s where we need to go first.’ He pulled the window down and shouted the address of Harriet’s house to the driver, then pulled it back up again.
She was watching him.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked. ‘I mean, you could have kept the emeralds and the gold you took from the tomb and disappea
red to somewhere safe. You could have even tried to find the emerald mines. Instead, you came all the way to England, risking your life for—’
‘For the Barbarossa map, of course,’ he cut in, coldly. ‘You did say it would be mine when you returned to London, or had you forgotten?’ He raised his eyebrows, crossed his arms on his chest.
‘I see.’ She turned her face away, but not before he saw her lips quiver and a single tear slide down her cheek.
He clasped his arms more tightly, as if trying to strengthen his resolve. He had thought long and hard about it and had concluded it was the only way. He would go in search of Barbarossa’s treasure, give Harriet whatever he found, and let her get on with her life. He was doing the right thing, he knew it. So why did it feel so wrong?
‘There’s another reason,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Two reasons, actually. I promised your father I would make sure you were safe, and I want Drake and his associates to pay for killing my men.’
She didn’t appear to have heard him but kept her head resolutely turned towards the blacked out window. Her eyes were closed. She must be tired. Maybe she was asleep.
Her chest was so tight every single breath hurt. She had hoped for another answer. She should have known better.
They didn’t talk until they reached London. The horses’ hooves and the wheels of the carriage echoed in the night as they drove up empty cobbled streets.
‘The house will be locked at this time,’ she remarked as nearby church bells chimed the twelve strokes of midnight.
It took another twenty minutes to reach Charlotte Street. The carriage stopped in front of the elegant four-storey house she had lived in all her life. Lucas opened the door and stepped down first. He held out his hand. She ignored it and climbed down the footsteps on her own.
‘We don’t have long. I am sure this is the first place Archie will look when he realizes I have gone.’
She gathered her skirts and walked towards the side of the house. Lucas told the driver to be vigilant then followed her down a flight of stairs leading to the basement kitchen.
With luck, Nelly, the housemaid, was still out with her sweetheart. Mrs Forbes, the housekeeper, turned a blind eye since the pair was engaged to be married.
She searched through a large flower pot at the bottom of the stairs.
‘There’s the key.’ She held the key to the service door.
She unlocked the door and let herself into the dark kitchen.
‘There should be an oil lamp somewhere.’ She fumbled about in the dark until she found it. Then she walked to the stove, pulled the top open, and lit a firebrand to the glowing red embers. She ignited the wick of the lamp and turned to Lucas.
‘Follow me.’ She held the lamp in front of her and opened the kitchen door onto a long corridor.
‘The nursery is on the second floor.’
They climbed up a flight of stairs to the ground floor, then two more. Harriet walked fast along the corridor and pushed the third door to the right. After placing the lamp on a table, she walked to the far corner of the room and knelt down on the parquet flooring.
Nobody ever came in here any longer, except a housemaid once in a while to do a bit of cleaning and dusting. The floorboards were loose at one end of the room and easy to lift. Underneath was a gap big enough for the large metal box where she’d kept her treasures for as long as she could remember. Over the years, she had filled it with colourful stones found during a walk in the park, trinkets or broken pieces of artefacts her father had brought back from an excavation, and all the letters and sketches he sent her. She had hidden the Barbarossa map at the bottom.
She opened the lid and pulled the old, yellowed parchment out with great care.
‘Is this it?’ Lucas asked in earnest.
She nodded. She got up and walked to the lamp, unfolded the map and held it against the light.
‘The writing is becoming visible now. Look!’ He stood behind her to look at the map over her shoulder.
‘It’s a series of numbers, and an address in the bottom corner, there,’ Harriet remarked, dismayed. ‘Theophilius Knox, Paternoster lane. My father wanted me to go and see his friend…’
‘That’s because Knox knows what the numbers mean.’ Lucas held out his hand. ‘Can I take a look at the treasure map?’
‘Of course, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ She tilted her chin up and handed him the map.
He glanced at the map and smiled before folding it and sliding it into his pocket.
‘Barbarossa’s loot is in Sardinia,’ he said.
‘I could have told you that.’ She shrugged. ‘I must go to my room to get changed.’ She started walking to the door, but he caught her arm.
‘There’s no time.’
‘I can’t stay in this wedding dress,’ she protested, struggling to get free. ‘All I have is my tapestry bag in the carriage. I don’t know when I will be able to come back here. I need my things.’
He didn’t let go of her arm. ‘I’m sorry but—’
He froze. ‘Someone’s coming,’ he whispered. He walked to the door and peered into the dark corridor.
She heard light footsteps coming their way.
‘It’s only Mrs Forbes. Stay here.’
She opened the door wide and strode out to meet her housekeeper who was walking down the corridor in her frilly white night cap and dressing gown, holding a candle in front of her. The woman let out a frightened shriek when she saw her.
‘Miss Harriet! What are you doing here?’
‘I had to come back for some clothes before leaving for my honeymoon. Archie is waiting outside,’ Harriet lied, gesturing towards the street below.
‘How beautiful you look in your wedding dress, Miss Harriet. How pleased we all are for you. Now, would you like me to help you pack?’
Harriet shook her head. ‘No thank you, Mrs Forbes. I will only be a moment. You can go back to your room. Good night.’
After reiterating her delight at the news of Harriet’s wedding, the housekeeper shuffled her way back down the corridor then up the stairs.
‘You can come out now.’ Harriet turned back to Lucas.
They went back to the basement and slipped out of the kitchen door. Harriet hid the key in the flower pot for Nelly and they ran to the carriage. They reached Paternoster Row as St Paul’s cathedral struck one o’clock. All the bookshops lining the small, narrow street were boarded up for the night. Theophilius Knox’s was no exception but light filtered through the wooden shutters. The driver knocked on the door which immediately opened onto a small, grey-haired man dressed in a black suit. He told the driver to stay with the carriage and gestured impatiently for Harriet and Lucas to come in.
‘Do you have it?’ he asked Lucas as he closed and bolted the door behind them.
Lucas produced the map.
‘Over here,’ Knox urged, pointing to a desk at the back of the shop where an oil lamp gave out a warm glow.
‘First, my dear,’ he said, taking Harriet’s hand. ‘I want to tell you how sorry I am your father is no longer with us.’
‘Did you know him well?’
The small man nodded and smiled. His faced creased in a thousand wrinkles, making him look positively ancient.
‘He was one of my oldest friends. We studied classics together at Oxford. Oscar was always the adventurous one. He went on to travel the world and make great discoveries whereas I inherited this modest shop from my father. Still, we met often. And we talked. I knew about his troubles.’
He pulled a seat out for her and spread the map on the desk.
‘Sardinia, hey? Who would have thought the old corsair would keep his secret for so long?’ He winked at Lucas. ‘But not for much longer, I suspect.’
Lucas smiled. ‘I’ll be heading over there as soon as this business is finished.’
Of course, the treasure was all that mattered to him...Harriet bent her head and closed her eyes briefly, annoyed to feel they were stinging.
‘Now, let’s take a look at the back.’
The old man held the map in front of the lamp.
‘Get a quill and write down exactly what I tell you,’ he instructed Harriet before proceeding to read out a list of numbers.
‘Hmm…’ he said when he finished, stroking his chin with his index finger. ‘We have fifteen lines. Each with three numerals separated with a comma. It’s a code, of course.’ He scratched his head as he started pacing the room and muttering to himself.
‘The numbers most probably refer to pages, lines and words or letters of a book he took with him to Algiers. Let’s see…He came to see me a few weeks before leaving and asked for Aeneid by Virgil, The Histories by Heredotus, and a history of the Third Punic war. Which editions did I get for him? It could make all the difference.’
He carried on debating with himself while pulling books from the shelves and came back laden with half a dozen volumes he piled on the desk.
He looked at Lucas apologetically and combed a strand of grey hair back with his fingers
‘I am afraid it might take us a while to work this out.’
‘Why don’t we each try the code with a different book and see what we come up with?’ Lucas suggested. He pulled a chair out, sat down, and grabbed a book.
‘You should go upstairs and make yourself comfortable, dear,’ Theophilious told Harriet.
‘I’d rather help,’ she objected.
She pulled a book towards her and looked at the paper with the numbers. The book was The Histories. She had read some of it before. It contained one of the few references ever made to the Garamantes and their civilization that so fascinated her father. It was a good place to start.
The three of them worked in silence, turning pages, writing letters and words, and trying to make sense of Oscar Montague’s code.
Lucas was the first to push his book back and draw a cross on his paper.
‘It’s not this one,’ he said. He took hold of another and started the same process.
‘Not this one either,’ Knox said with a sigh. ‘What about you, are you getting anywhere?’ he asked her.
She wrote another word, but didn’t lift her head from her paper. ‘Hmm…I think…maybe.’
