Cabal of The Westford Knight: Templars at the Newport Tower (Book #1 in the Templars in America Series)

by David S. Brody

  He took one more long stride to clear the fence line and dove for the tree, his body soaring forward and to the right. As he neared the ground, he tucked his chin and rolled, making a ball of himself just as he had done during the water-ski fall. He popped back to his feet and spun in time to see the Cadillac go careening by, less than a body length away, its tires tearing up the same green lawn that had cushioned his fall.

  The car screeched to a halt, its chassis still straddling the sidewalk, smoke steaming from its tires. Pegasus stood in front of Cam and barked at the vehicle. “Easy, fella. Stay.” The thick branch lay on the grass, near where he had rolled, and he considered charging at the car and confronting the driver. But McLovick, or whoever it was, surely carried a more formidable arsenal than a stick. Cam tensed, ready to flee into the nearby woods as the driver revved the engine. The white reverse lights flashed at him menacingly, then the driver shifted into gear and sped off.

  He made a mental note of the license plate and plopped down on the cool, dew-covered grass, his heart pounding in his chest. And began to shiver. Not from the cold, or a sugar imbalance, or even from fear but from an almost numbing sense of foreboding.

  * * *

  Cam spent a good part of the rest of the morning answering questions from the police. No, he didn’t get a good look at the driver—he was wearing a hat and sunglasses and the car’s sun visor shielded his face. Yes, he was sure it hadn’t been accidental or sun glare or a flat tire. Yes, he thought it was related to the attack on Brandon. The police made a quick call—the license plate was a dead end, the Cadillac having been stolen from a mall parking lot the night before.

  Lieutenant Poulos offered Cam a ride home. “How’s Brandon doing?”

  “Still hanging in there.” Cam had phoned his uncle between answering questions from the police. “He was sort of lucky he got thrown out of the Bobcat. Otherwise he would have got burned even worse than he was.” He swallowed. “But they couldn’t save his leg.” A jolt of guilt rushed through Cam like an electrical charge, as if saying the words made the whole surreal series of events somehow more real, more concrete. He had come up with the stupid Bobcat plan—Brandon was just doing him a favor, just being a good guy.

  Poulos glanced sideways. “You can’t beat yourself up over it. You were trying to do the right thing. The guilty party here is the guy who planted that bomb.”

  He shrugged and forced a half smile. “Thanks.”

  “You know, one of the best field goal kicking coaches around is a guy with cerebral palsy, spent his whole life in a wheelchair. Coaches now for the Miami Dolphins.”

  He tried to rally. “Yeah. And the guy they call the grandfather of hockey goalie coaches just had a foot amputated and rides around in a cart on the ice. He’s still coaching.” He had followed the story because the coach lost his foot due to complications from diabetes. He tried to picture Brandon with a prosthetic leg. It just didn’t fit. Brandon was always jumping around, hyper almost. But, then again, he was one of those glass is half-full people. He might give thanks to be alive and make the best of things.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes. “Think that bomb was meant for you?”

  “It was meant for whoever was planning on digging up that yard. Brandon just happened to be the one who jumped into the driver’s seat.” He tried to fill his lungs with oxygen, to squeeze the heaviness out of his chest.

  “I remember how I felt the first time someone took a shot at me. Quite a wake-up call. All of a sudden, you look at life a bit different.”

  Cam nodded.

  “We got a warrant and searched McLovick’s house. Nothing.”

  “Alibi?”

  “Yup. Pretty good one.”

  “McLovick’s a scumbag but he’s not stupid. He’s the obvious suspect so he’d be careful.”

  “Like I said, we’ve got nothing.”

  “How about forensics?” On those TV shows, they were always catching the bomber by tracing the duct tape or the battery or the friggin’ dental floss he used. Always something mundane.

  Poulos let out a long sigh. “You’re a lawyer so you know how this works. There’s only so much money to go around. If Brandon lives, no matter how bad he’s hurt, the case isn’t going to get the same scrutiny as a fatality.”

  The irony was that lawyers always said a dead client was a bad client. Personal injury attorneys wanted their clients to live anguished lives, the better to maximize pain and suffering damages. Suffer greatly but don’t die. The police, on the other hand, were saying that it would be easier to solve Brandon’s case if he were dead, that somehow the attack was more offensive if Brandon happened to stop breathing. The civil courts valued Brandon more if he lived, the criminal courts more if he died. He had too much on his mind to try to decide which point of view was more screwed up.

  * * *

  Cam walked into Westford’s J.V. Fletcher library an hour later for his scheduled meeting with Amanda Spencer. He had showered and thrown on a pair of old jeans and a green golf shirt. Normally he would have put Pegasus on a leash and roller-bladed the few miles into town center. Or at least taken the Harley. As he drove, he remembered lying awake at night as a kid on a Boy Scout camping trip after being told a bear had been spotted nearby. He hadn’t slept, knowing that at any minute the bear might crash through the tent wall. In the end, the bear had wandered away in the night. He doubted he would be so lucky this time.

  Ten minutes early, he drifted over to browse the Westford Knight collection in the reference area. Maybe he should have stayed and listened to the storyteller with the little girl and her mother. A photograph of a rubbing of the Knight caught his eye and he pulled it out of its plastic sleeve to examine. He had seen only the sword when examining the carving; the rubbing showed the Knight in more detail.

  WESTFORD KNIGHT RUBBING, J.V. FLETCHER LIBRARY, WESTFORD, MASSACHUSETTS, USA

  “You know, you can make a rubbing look like pretty much anything you want.”

  He turned to see Uncle Peter, red-eyed through his horn-rimmed glasses, standing behind him in a pair of khakis and a wrinkled dress shirt. He had never seen him unshaven before. “What are you doing here?”

  Peter shrugged. “Trying to be useful. Nothing I can do for Brandon. And Peggy’s driving me crazy. I thought I’d see what this Westford Knight nonsense is all about.”

  Cam had called him and recounted his visit to the Knight site and subsequent joust with the Cadillac. “Glad to hear you have an open mind about it.”

  “Come on, Cameron. There’s a reason it’s called a legend.”

  “All right.” He held up a hand. “We’re both stressed out. I don’t want to argue.”

  Together they thumbed through the plastic-sleeved collection of photos. A number of older photographs taken in the 1940s and 1950s, like the rubbing, showed the Knight more vividly. Apparently the accumulation of rock salt and sand from passing snow plows, along with the elements and passage of time, had eroded many of the Knight’s details.

  “Maybe it’s a knight, maybe it’s not,” Peter said.

  A young woman with white-blond hair and fair skin glided toward them, a brown soft leather briefcase swinging at her side. She halted a few feet away, feet together, and straightened her back. A pair of deep, shamrock-green eyes studied Cam. “I am Amanda Spencer.” Her lips and eyes practically jumped off her cream-colored skin like green and red sparkles on a Christmas sugar cookie. He had expected someone plain and dowdy and older. Instead he found himself staring at a face that belonged locked in a medieval tower, waiting to be rescued by the Knights of the Round Table.

  She held his eyes. “I see you are not hurt,” she declared in the same British accent he had noticed during their phone call.

  How did she know about his footrace with the Cadillac this morning? “I’m fine.” Normally he read people easily but she was a wall to him. “By the way, I’m Cameron Thorne.” He held out his hand, smiled.

  She offered the most perfunctory o
f handshakes, a quick touch with the tips of her fingers. “Of course you are. You may follow me.”

  He shook his head. So much for his boyish charm. “Oh, and this is Peter Thorne, my uncle. It was his son who was … injured. I hope it’s all right that he joins us.”

  She nodded. “I hope your son makes a full recovery.”

  She had that kind of blemish-free skin that made it difficult to guess her age but Cam ball-parked it at late twenties. Of average height, she strode gracefully, like a dancer or gymnast. She wore a long, shale-colored blazer over a floral blouse and a beige skirt that flared at her calves. The look reminded him of a friend from his old law firm who, though she knew the firm expected her to dress in proper business attire, insisted on doing so as fashionably as possible. Her hair was shoulder-length, except for a single, braided tail that protruded an extra five or six inches down her back, swinging irreverently like a golden pendulum as she walked.

  They headed down a long staircase toward the rear exit of the library before circling back underneath the stairs and stopping at a small display. A thick stone, about the size of the seat of an office chair, rested on a metal pedestal. She stepped aside, leaving a clean, floral perfume in her wake, and motioned for Cam and Peter to examine the artifact. “This is called the Boat Stone.”

  Carved onto the light gray face of the stone were three distinct designs: an old-style sailing boat, an arrow and the numbers 184. The impressions appeared to have been made by a series of holes punched into the stone, much like the carving on the Westford Knight rock ledge but at closer intervals.

  [Photo courtesy Kimberly Scott.]

  BOAT STONE, J.V. FLETCHER LIBRARY, WESTFORD, MASSACHUSETTS, USA

  “How old is it?” Cam asked.

  She shrugged. “I was not present when it was engraved so I do not know for certain.”

  No, but presumably you’re the expert on this stuff. “Perhaps you could indulge us and hazard a guess.”

  Instead of responding, she nodded and straightened herself. “Please pardon me for a bit.” She walked down the hall, pulled out her cell phone and whispered her way through a quick conversation. While he waited, he snapped a picture of the stone.

  She returned, her tone softer. “I apologize if I have been rude. Let’s begin again. Please call me Amanda.” She held out her hand, this time shook his firmly. “Lately,” she continued, “most of the people I show these sites to are only interested in clues to some buried treasure. Or they believe aliens carved the Knight.” She offered a half-smile. “It can be a bit trying. Which is why I asked for your background information.”

  That’s what her phone call was for. “And I checked out okay?”

  “Well, you are a solicitor.” This time a full smile. “But otherwise you seem acceptable.”

  He held her eyes for a second, thankful to have finally broken through. He lowered his voice. “Look, someone blew off my cousin’s leg because of this buried treasure. He could have died. Then I almost got turned into road kill myself. And some priest tells me I need to talk to you, presumably because you can help me figure all this out.” He gestured toward the Boat Stone. “Please? We really need some help here.”

  She nodded, took him by the arm and spun him gently back toward the display. This time the floral scent mixed with the warmth of her breath and body. Peter stood behind them, his arms crossed. He sighed audibly. She ignored him and spoke. “The boat depicted in the stone is a medieval knorr and the arrow is a medieval crossbow arrow. Many experts believe the Knight effigy and this stone were carved by the same people. The Boat Stone may have been some kind of directional marker, pointing the way to an encampment site or ship--”

  “Which way was the arrow pointing?” Peter interrupted.

  “It was found by a farmer when the town was widening the road near his home and moved many times, so nobody knows. The road followed an old trail, used by your Native Americans.”

  Cam wasn’t sure why they were his Native Americans but he let the comment pass. “Close to the Knight?”

  “No, not particularly. A bit of a hike. But the Stonybrook River connects the Knight and the Boat Stone sites. Prince Henry and his mates could well have come up the Merrimack River from the coast, then found their way to Westford on the Stonybrook.”

  “Impossible,” Peter countered. “It’s not navigable.”

  “Not entirely. But it is with a bit of portaging.” She paused. “What you might find interesting is that the Boat Stone was found in the western part of town on Route 40.”

  Cam’s stomach tightened. “Route 40, where it intersects North Street?”

  “Spot on. In close proximity to the Gendrons’ home. I assume that’s why Monsignor Marcotte suggested you contact me. He must fancy that your Mr. McLovick’s interest in the property is related to the Knight and the Boat Stone.”

  “Look, if they’re my Native Americans, then he’s your Mr. McLovick. He’s Scottish, not American. I want nothing to do with him.”

  “Touché.” She smiled and nodded. “From what I know of Mr. McLovick, I would not want to lay claim to him either.”

  He answered her smile and found himself staring at her mouth. But the memory of Brandon’s bloodied body intruded. He refocused on the Boat Stone. Medieval ships, arrows, knights, swords, the numerals 184, stone enclosures—they were all somehow related but they didn’t fit together in any neat pattern. It was like trying to do a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle with only six pieces. Or perhaps the better analogy was that it was like trying to solve a crime with only a few pieces of evidence—the best thing to do was study the evidence you had and hope it led somewhere. “You said the boat and the arrow are medieval. How about the numbers? When did Europeans begin using Arabic numerals?”

  “I’m not certain of the exact date but they were definitely in use by the late 14th century.”

  “So you think this Prince Henry Sinclair legend is true, that he sailed over from Scotland a hundred years before Columbus and ended up in Westford and that his men carved the Westford Knight and this stone?”

  She stared at Cam for a long time, her green eyes boring in like drill bits. There was an intensity in the her gaze that disquieted him. He wanted to turn away but sensed she was testing him, probing for weaknesses, questioning whether she could trust him. It was an incredibly effective technique—he had nothing to hide but after five seconds under her gaze, he began searching his conscience for something he had done wrong, some lie he had told. Finally she allowed her eyes to soften, took Cam by the elbow and walked him toward the door. “Come, it is best that we speak outside.”

  * * *

  Cam and Amanda exited the library, Uncle Peter on their heels, and crossed the street to a shaded wooden bench on the triangular town common. He wished he could ask Peter to leave—Amanda might be less guarded without his sullen, stalking presence.

  Shifting his weight forward on the park bench, Cam eyed the passing traffic. Amanda smiled at him. “I understand you are jittery. But I don’t think they will try anything out here in the open.”

  Again with the pronouns. “Who, exactly, is ‘they’?”

  “My bosses are wondering the same thing; we’re bothered also.” She lifted her head. “Do you see that house across the way, the yellow one?”

  He peered across the common at a sprawling yellow Victorian with white trim and a single turret. “Yes.”

  “My office is on the second floor. When folks come to the library and want to view the Knight, the staff phones me and I amble over and escort them down the hill to view the effigy.” It was an odd way to make a living, or even spend your free time but he had too much on his mind to bother questioning it. “I also am in charge of maintaining the entire Westford Knight collection. It is the largest collection of Westford Knight-related material in the world.”

  He had a friend who collected old lighthouse postcards, claimed he had the largest collection in the world. He resisted making the comparison. “But that’s not why we’re
sitting in this park right now.” Or in Peter’s case, pacing.

  “I fancy not. But it should indicate to you that there are folks who place great value on the Westford Knight and its history—enough to pay me a full-time wage and hire an office and pay my expenses.” She paused. “And also, when necessary, take the appropriate security precautions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as there are two pairs of security operatives watching us now.”

  He sat forward, studying the cars surrounding the triangular common. “Obviously, the security is not for Peter’s or my benefit.”

  “It is for mine. We are not certain who is targeting you, or why. But since it apparently relates to the Knight, we are taking extra precautions.”

  He was beginning to understand why she had been so guarded early in their meeting. “What other precautions might you be taking?”

  “You are being videotaped through my office window. And this conversation is being recorded.” She glanced at her briefcase, which presumably held the recording device. “Later, our people will have a go with it—body language and voice patterns and such—to determine whether you are being truthful. We believe your story is true but, again, we also believe in taking necessary precautions.”