by Chloe Palov
Edie didn’t bother to point out that a sprint through that same damp field would be next to impossible in the clunky rubber boots.
They had been driving through the post-dawn gloom about twenty minutes when Edie sighted the first road sign for Swanley. Approaching the town limits, she was surprised to see that Swanley looked a lot like any American residential suburb, its outskirts littered with car dealerships and fast-food eateries.
How are we going to find the Ark in the middle of this suburban sprawl?
‘The priory is located in the countryside,’ Cædmon remarked, guessing her thoughts.
As if on cue, Sanchez took the next exit off the main road, veering onto a narrow country lane. Peering out the window, she’d forgotten how simple things – trees in the distance, pastures, farm fences – could create a stark cinematic beauty, the contrast between the countryside and the nearby town like midnight and high noon.
Up ahead, MacFarlane’s Range Rover slowed and then stopped at 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,’ Cædmon replied. ‘MacFarlane plotted the course on a satellite navigation system. Although we’ll probably have to trek across a field or two to reach it.’
Harliss opened the rear door. ‘Get out.’ Gun in hand, he ushered them towards the other vehicle while Sanchez unloaded several large bulky canvas packs from the Range Rover’s boot.
Edie and Cædmon were ordered to keep their distance while MacFarlane briefed his men. She managed to see that Harliss had a hand-held GPS receiver which all four men studied intently. Although she tried to listen in, she could only catch a few snippets of what was said – ‘avenues of approach… terrain features… obstacles… reconnaissance’.
‘They’re treating this like some sort of military operation,’ she whispered to Cædmon.
‘Apparently so.’
‘Making us the enemy, huh?’
Too busy scanning the surrounding area, Cædmon made no reply.
‘Move ’em out,’ MacFarlane ordered gruffly.
Sandwiched between two pairs of armed men, she and Cædmon moved off in a north-easterly 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 guessed. 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 pestilence that had swept across England.
Last night Cædmon told her that Philippa had belonged to the Gilbertines, an order of nuns founded in England. In the span of only six years, Philippa had risen through the ranks, eventually becoming the priory 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. Since they lived a life devoted to worship and contemplative prayer, there was little fear that the secret would be revealed to nosy outsiders.
The GPS receiver held 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 over there.’
‘Roger that,’ Harliss responded, leading them towards to the right.
A few moments later they entered a clearing.
Edie glanced from side to side.
‘Oh God… It’s been destroyed.’
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 being three stone walls punctuated with arched windows, tangled strands of dead ivy cascading from the glassless openings.
‘It looks like it was hit by mortar fire.’ This from MacFarlane, his leathery cheeks flushed with what Edie assumed to be barely contained rage.
‘My guess is that the priory was destroyed during the Reformation,’ Cædmon stated quietly. ‘In 1538, Parliament, at the behest of Henry VIII, issued an edict known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The law enabled Henry to confiscate all property owned by the monastic orders. Aided by many in the general population, who hoped that Church riches would stick to their greedy hands, many monastic buildings were demolished and the stone reused for secular building projects.’
Edie stared at the eerie remains: the gouged Gothic shell open to the heavens, the sheaves of ice-laden grass shimmering jewel-like. Perhaps it was the early-morning mist, but she could have sworn that a ghostly hint of incense and candles and chanted prayers still lingered.
She turned and glanced at Cædmon, asking the silent question: What if the next clue was contained 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 her query. He then pointedly glanced at Stanford MacFarlane. Edie got the message loud and clear. If MacFarlane thought the game was up, she and Cædmon would be killed on the spot. No matter what, they had to maintain the pretext that it was still game on.
Startled by a screech, Edie turned.
Perched on the branch of a leafless tree was a raven.
Although not a superstitious person by nature, she considered the raven a very bad omen.
66
‘Not to worry,’ Cædmon announced, affecting a tone of bluff good cheer. ‘The fact that the priory has been destroyed will not impede our progress in the least. In fact, it should make the task far easier.’
‘Do you think I suddenly went loco? There’s nothing here,’ MacFarlane argued, gesturing to the empty space within 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 hat, Cædmon replied, ‘The king’s observation is most appropriate. For while 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 silence.
‘Go ahead. I’m listening,’ MacFarlane said, rather grudgingly.
Relieved that he passed the initial audition, Cædmon 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 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 reconstruct the plan 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 – You better come up with something fast.
Cædmon commenced the tour. ‘First, a quick primer in monastic layout. The majority of medieval priories followed a standard prototype of three buildings, usually two storeys in height, arranged in a U shape. This U-shaped configuration would have abutted a church.’ He 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.’
‘So, if I’m imaging 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 in the courtyard.’
‘Precisely. 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, Cædmon gestured to the open meadow that moments ago MacFarlane had been so quick to dismiss. ‘Here, Philippa could have secreted the Ark from the outside world and at the same time kept an 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 rest in tow.
‘This, I believe, is where the refectory would have been situated,’ he said, gesturing to an area of overgrown weeds and tangled grass. ‘The refectory was, as you undoubtedly know, the hall where all meals were taken.’
‘Aka the penguins’ mess tent,’ one of MacFarlane’s henchmen snickered.
Ignoring this contribution, Cædmon marched forward approximately fifteen yards. ‘And this would have been the lavatorium.’
‘The wash area, right?’
He nodded at Edie. ‘That’s correct.’ He then walked another fifteen yards. ‘Here would have stood the kitchen area.’
‘And just how is it you know all this?’ MacFarlane asked suspiciously, glancing back and forth between the last two areas delineated.
Cædmon smiled knowingly, about to divulge how he had pulled a rabbit out of thin air. ‘If you look carefully, you’ll see a slightly raised area.’ He pointed to the ground. ‘That is what’s known as a kitchen midden. Or what the layman might refer to as a rubbish heap. And if you were to search the lavatorium, you would see a depression rather than a raised area.’
‘Caused by centuries of running water,’ Edie correctly deduced.
‘Satisfied?’ He directed the question to the man who held their fate in his hands.
Again, MacFarlane glanced back and forth between the ‘kitchen’ and the ‘lavatorium’. Appeased, he jutted his head at the small meadow. ‘Keep walking.’
Cædmon 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 directions. ‘With each of the 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?’
Cædmon hesitated. ‘There are strong reasons 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, this admission was greeted with 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, Cædmon 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 MP5 sub-machine gun. ‘Meanin’ I can shoot y’all all the sooner,’ as he had so obligingly informed them.
Scanning the landscape, Cædmon could see no avenue of escape, no farmhouse that he and Edie could run to, the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary situated in a remote spot. 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 there amidst a hail of bullets was a remote possibility at best. Which left only one viable option: he had to disarm one of MacFarlane’s men – no easy feat given that all three were sturdily constructed and clearly knew how to handle 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, it beeps. The spot is marked with a flag. I’m guessing the colour of the flag indicates the type of metal detected.’
‘Oh, I get it. So… grey is for silver, orange for bronze, black for lead and yellow for gold?’
He nodded. ‘ I should think so. Since a metal detector can’t tell what a buried object actually is, Braxton will use his ground-penetrating radar to survey all the areas that show gold. The assumption being that the Ark of the Covenant was indeed made of pure gold.’
Edie raised a quizzical brow. ‘Radar? You mean like they use at airports?’
‘Not exactly. Rather than sending radio waves through the air, these waves are directed into the ground. The electronic signals then bounce back to a receiver.’ He nodded towards the 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.’
Cædmon made no reply, having reached the same conclusion. He stared wordlessly at Edie. At the curls covered in a bridal veil of morning mist. At the mottled purple bruise on her right cheek. He thought 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 yelled.
Hearing that, Cædmon 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 escorted them over to the laptop, prodding them forward with his sub-machine gun.
‘I’m getting a whole bunch of small objects,’ Braxton said, pointing to the computer screen.
Cædmon 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 several small spots on the computer screen. ‘These are probably stones scattered when the nunnery was destroyed. But this looks promising,’ he said, pointing to what appeared to be a large, solid object buried some two yards 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, pickaxe in hand, the behemoth began swinging like a brigand in search of gold doubloons, no thought whatsoever given to properly excavating the site, of carefully slicing away section by section in order to recover any historic artefacts that might be nestled in the soil. For these men, there was only one artefact of any import.
While Braxton attacked with his pickaxe, Sanchez assisted with a 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 Cædmon in mind of a large bird of prey about to swoop upon its quarry.
Overhead the clouds fused together to release a cold drizzle on their uncovered heads. The light rain soaked MacFarlane’s grey hair, the spiky tufts clinging to his head like a skullcap. Seen in profile, he resembled a fierce Celtic warrior come to life.
‘Yeah, boy! We got it!’ Braxton shouted jubilantly.
Sanchez heaved himself out of the hole and rushed over to one of the canvas equipment bags, retrieving some rope. He tossed the coiled length at
his digging partner.
Edie slipped her hand into Cædmon’s. ‘I can’t believe it… They actually found it,’ she whispered.
As Sanchez and Braxton pulled their find to the surface, Cædmon held his breath, about to set his eyes on the most sought-after relic in the history of mankind.
It could have been mine, he thought jealously, had I played the game differently.
After several loud grunts and a muttered curse, a box was hauled out of the hole.
Its appearance met with a stunned silence.
‘I don’t think it’s made of gold,’ Edie said at last, the remark provoking a glare from Stanford MacFarlane.
‘No, it isn’t gold,’ Cædmon agreed. ‘A lesser metal. Bronze perhaps. Difficult to say, under all the grime.’ The box was secured on the outside with a large lock.
Braxton ran the back of his hand over his dirt-smudged brow, still panting from his labours. ‘Maybe the Ark is inside.’
‘Open it,’ MacFarlane ordered.
With one strong-armed swing of the pickaxe, the behemoth broke the lock.
His jaw tightly clenched, his gaze resolute, MacFarlane threw back the lid. Everyone stared wide-eyed at the uncovered treasure.
Everyone save Stanford MacFarlane.
‘What are those?’ MacFarlane pointed an accusing finger at the golden objects that filled the box.
Extending a hand, Cædmon lifted a finely wrought candlestick from the chest. Next, he examined a jewelled gold chalice.
‘These are the altar vessels from the destroyed church,’ he said, running his hand over an exquisitely fashioned paten. ‘No doubt the nuns had advance warning that the king’s men were en route to the priory. I imagine they hid them so they wouldn’t be confiscated.’ He gestured to the gold objects. ‘Not exactly a king’s ransom, I admit, but still valuable. You should have no problem finding a buyer for –’
‘I’m not interested in earthly profit,’ MacFarlane interjected. ‘My reward will come in the next life.’ Turning his head, he looked pointedly at Edie. Then, like an Old Testament patriarch, he very quietly and calmly said, ‘Kill her.’
