“Hello,” she said. “I’m Jane Roberts. I have a reservation.”
The man moved his head slowly up to her, blinked, and without speaking pulled himself to his feet and went into the back room. He returned with a girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a thick Welsh accent.
“Roberts. I have a reservation for two rooms for tonight and tomorrow night.”
The young woman flipped through the book on the desk, made a check mark next to a name.
“I’ll be paying for both rooms, but you can keep the key to the second room back there until my friend arrives. His name is Dafydd Reynolds.”
“The diver,” said the girl, smiling slightly. “We know him. I’ll see he gets it. Room is upstairs on the third floor. I gave you one facing the sea. It’s got a nice queen bed up there. Breakfast is down here in the conservatory”—she pointed out to the bright, glass-enclosed porch facing the ocean—”from seven to nine. We can make you takeaway lunches if you want. Just let us know at breakfast. Best to come down early if you want lunch though. We’ve got a houseful this week—only reason you got these rooms is we had a few cancellations this morning.”
“Why so busy?”
“The pagans,” said the girl.
“The what?”
“The pagans. They swarm Bardsey during the solstice. Like a sort of Stonehenge thing, but here. It’s creepy, if you ask me.”
“People without day jobs, I suppose,” she said, winking at the girl and walking to the stairs.
Then, from the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Lestinus.
When she turned toward him, she saw instead a young, bald man wearing a full-length wool cassock with a rope belt almost identical to the one her hallucination favored. She stood and stared for a moment. When the girl at the desk handed the man a room key, then eye-rolled up at Carys, she realized that the man was real.
She smiled to herself and started up the stairs.
At the top, she stopped to catch her breath. Her legs were weak, and her lungs weren’t working right. She was sick from the mold—but she’d think about that later.
Her room was bigger than her room had been at the Farmer’s Arms. Two large windows gave her a breathtaking view of the sea. She could not see Bardsey Island, which was far off to the west and obscured by the highlands surrounding the little town. The room’s cornflower-blue wallpaper was peeling in the corners and lent the chamber an archaic but not entirely unwelcome feminine touch. The queen bed’s pure white duvet, edged in silk of the same blue, beckoned her exhausted, enervated body. She dropped her bags and flopped down on it.
She woke with a start an hour later. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. She almost felt good for a moment, then remembered that she had to call Harper. Nicola was dead. And by now, he knew. Her stomach flipped, and she thought she’d be sick. She could not postpone the inevitable. She dialed the number for Waggoner.
“John,” she said when he answered, “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” he said in an oddly flat tone. She recognized it as shock. “I can’t believe she’s gone. She was…she was a wonderful woman. She gave me something to be happy about after my wife died. She was my partner in this search. I don’t know what I’ll do without her.”
“I know,” she said.
“Don’t ask me what you can do to help, because you’re already doing it,” he said. “I want revenge, Carys. Whoever it is that is responsible, I want them to go to jail for the rest of their lives. I want to take this prize away from them. They can’t win. We can’t let them win.”
“They won’t,” she said. “We’re so close. I’m in Aberdaron right now. I’m going over to the island tomorrow to work out where we want to focus our search efforts.”
“I was working on the eclipse data on my computer before I…before JJ came by to tell me about Nicola,” said Harper. “It’s not helpful. There were no total eclipses visible from Bardsey during the sixth century, according to NASA data. There were a couple of partials, but nothing that lasted very long or would have created the sort of fat or large sun that was described in the poem.”
Now she was meeting the cold-hearted, all-business Harper who had built his business singlehandedly, the man she had expected to meet before his illness got in the way. And without some more concrete directions to the cave, they were practically back at square one.
“What are we missing?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Harper. “Nicola translated this herself. If I could find her notes, I might be able to make more sense of the original words in the poem.”
She thought for a fleeting moment about telling Harper Nicola’s secret, about how she’d conscripted an army of linguists to help her translate the poem. She thought better of it. Although one of those linguists would come in mighty handy right about now.
“If you had to have this poem translated again, who would you go to? Who would you ask?”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” he said. “I feel so powerless here. I could do some more research on my computer, but it won’t be as thorough as Nicola would have done.”
“Just see what you can come up with. I’ll give you a call tomorrow when I find out what we’re dealing with over on the island. There’s supposed to be some sort of big pagan gathering there tomorrow, just to make things interesting.”
“Why?” he asked.
“To celebrate the summer solstice,” she said.
Lestinus appeared to her right and turned to her.
“The fat sun,” he said softly.
“What?” she asked him.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Harper.
“Lestinus,” she said.
She turned back to the monk.
“What did you just say?” she asked him.
“The fat sun,” said Lestinus. “It is what the pagans are here to celebrate.”
She stared at him for a minute.
The summer solstice.
“John,” said Carys. “Lestinus just said the fat sun is the summer solstice.”
There was silence on the line, and when Harper spoke again, it was barely audible. “Between the mother tree and the last light of the fat sun.”
Her mind whirled, the poem and these new facts colliding with each other, then snapping into place to form a complete picture.
The spotted rock rose’s blooming season was around the solstice. The meltwater in mid-June from the high mountains of Snowdonia would have made the Gamlan run high enough that it could have carried Arthur’s casket barge all the way to the sea. The western shore of Bardsey, Dafydd had said, was riddled with caves. If she could get an unobstructed view of the sunset on the summer solstice while standing next to the mother tree on Bardsey Island, she could draw a virtual plumb line that would cross a point on the western shore—marking where the cave was located. Most important, the summer solstice would be the one thing guaranteed to happen every single year in exactly the same place in the sky. Unlike an eclipse.
“It makes perfect sense,” she said to Harper. “It’s the solstice.”
Lestinus smiled slightly at her.
“But apparently I already knew that,” she said.
“It fits everything in the poem,” said Harper. “My god, you’re right. I can’t…”
Then Harper was quiet a long time. Finally, he said, “Arthur must really want us to find him.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“How is it possible that you just happened to arrive in Aberdaron and figured all this out one day before the solstice? You end up in exactly the right place in exactly the right time? It’s…it’s inconceivable. How could this be luck?”
Harper was right. It was entirely impossible that all this had fallen into place at the perfect moment. She turned to Lestinus. He sm
iled broadly at her—his face open and genuinely happy, his eyes sparkling like the ocean.
“Carys,” he said, “you have been judged worthy.”
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
It was early evening, but the sun rode high in the sky. This time of year, sunset didn’t happen until close to ten. Frank liked it so much more than the short winter days, when the sun came up at eight-thirty and dropped purposefully and quickly down again before three. It was why the Brits drank so much—that and the rain.
His mood had cratered. Between the death of the maid and now finding out what the Jones woman had been through—there was no way she deserved the hell that Gyles likely had in mind for her. No one did, really. This was why it was always better not to know anything about targets except their location. Details just clouded things, made him less focused, more likely to hesitate when push came to shove, as it inevitably did when Gyles was involved. He just hoped things went smoothly. He didn’t want to have to kill anyone else.
But Carys Jones was standing between him and his payday.
He stayed a few cars back from Dafydd’s pickup. The two men, from what he could see, had been talking nonstop since they left Mumbles. He picked up his phone and dialed Gyles.
“They’re on the move,” he said. “Aberdaron. They’re going out to do a dive on Bardsey Island tomorrow.”
“They? How many are there?” growled Gyles.
“Three. The woman, her father, and the guy she’s hiring to bring her on the dive,” said Frank.
“A dive,” said Gyles. “That’s interesting. You know what, Frank, my man? She’s not running. She’s hunting. She’s found the damn tomb.” Gyles laughed out loud.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“The burial site that the manuscript describes,” said Gyles. “The one that’s supposedly full of treasure. Why else would she be diving in the godforsaken North Atlantic unless she was looking for something? Or already found it.”
“How do you want me to play this?” he asked.
“She’ll lead us right to the damn treasure if we let her,” said Gyles. “This is brilliant. Follow them. Get a boat. Get out there. When they’re done, find out what they found, where it is. Specifics. Take hostages if need be. You know how to dive, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Haven’t done it in a long time, though.”
“I’ll send you some help,” said Gyles.
He had not been expecting that. Not at all. And he knew just what he meant. Gyles was going to kill four birds with one stone, and he was one of the birds.
“I don’t think I’ll need help,” he said. “I seriously doubt any of them brought a gun to their little diving party. The woman doesn’t strike me as the violent type, the diver is just doing a job, and the father thinks he’s on his way to a tearful family reunion.”
“So be it,” said Gyles. “I’ll have someone on standby in case you change your mind. I’ve got a couple of blokes on contract who could get there pretty quickly.”
“I’ll let you know what I find,” he said.
“Also, don’t forget to grab the manuscript and translation,” said Gyles. “We still need those. Can’t imagine she’d take that on a dive. It’ll probably be stowed wherever she’s staying. Frank, this is terrific stuff. I think this deal might just be the solution to a little client-relations problem I’ve got.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” he said. He hung up.
His stomach began to turn sour. He didn’t like the plan. He needed a new one.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
The wind began to kick up as Carys stood on the dock looking out over the ocean. It was around sixty-five degrees, partly sunny, and the wind wasn’t very strong, but she couldn’t get warm, even though she was wearing a sweater and a scarf she’d bought that afternoon. On the beach next to the dock, a very young man and woman, both pale-skinned and dark-haired, played with their tiny daughter, who was as improbably blonde as Carys had been at that age, before her hair had turned jet black.
The toddler screamed each time a thin wave surged up toward her feet. She ran back up the beach, looking behind her at the wave, right into her mother’s arms. Her mother swung her around, put her down, and the child toddled back down to the water to do it all over again.
The voices around her were all Nicola’s and her father’s. She couldn’t remember what her mother’s voice sounded like. It made her heart ache. She could remember her mother’s sayings, some of which she’d picked up from being married to a Welshman, like “tit for tat.” Even as a child, Carys thought that sounded naughty. She remembered the way her mother would hold her face with both hands when she kissed her on the forehead, as if Carys might slip away. But mostly she remembered how her mother’s eyes always seemed to be red and surrounded by dark shadows, and how sometimes she just couldn’t get her mother to smile, no matter how many cartwheels she did on their Cambridge lawn.
If there was some way that Lestinus could help her remember her mother’s voice, she’d inhale those mold spores until her kidneys exploded. She was getting sick and was likely to get sicker as long as she kept smelling the book. But the tradeoff might be worth it. As much as she hated to admit it, Lestinus—or whatever part of her brain he was helping her access—was making this search easier.
She turned to walk back to the inn to inquire about dinner options when she spotted Dafydd’s solid form striding down the dock toward her. She smiled and quickened her step toward him. He smiled back, but it was an odd, half-hearted sort of thing. She felt a pang of disappointment at this.
Then, from around Dafydd, strode on older man. He pushed past Dafydd and cantered toward her. She froze, unsure how to react. She backed away a step, and the man stopped short.
“Carys,” he said. “It’s me. It’s Dah.”
She squinted at him. Her brain seized up, refusing to process the words or their message. The last time she’d seen her father, he’d been young and handsome. This man had gray on his head and gray in his skin. He had a paunch. He was shorter than her father. Of course, she had been so young the last time she laid eyes on him.
Then the man smiled tentatively. The set of his mouth, the way his cheeks inverted slightly into dimples, and his voice…it was the same voice she could still hear in her head these decades later. The world began to pull away and push in toward her at the same time.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered. Anthony took another step toward her.
“You know him, right?” asked Dafydd. “Everyone in town knew him. Said he was your father, and your name was really Carys.”
She glanced at Dafydd. He looked so worried.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was trying to keep everyone out of this.”
“Annie said you were in trouble,” said Anthony, taking another step toward her. She put up her hand to stop him. Dafydd flinched. Anthony raised his hands and backed up. “She said she thought you’d gone to Mumbles. Peter—you met Peter at the inn where you stayed. He saw you and Dafydd together. Peter’s known me since we were babies. It’s not his fault I’m here.” He jerked his thumb toward Dafydd.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. Her anger began to burn red. “I told Annie not to tell anyone I was here. You need to leave right now.”
She began to walk back down the dock toward the inn. Anthony stepped in front of her and raised his hands to her shoulders. Dafydd stepped in and grabbed Anthony by the shoulder.
“She said she doesn’t want to see you,” said Dafydd.
She looked at them both, then sidestepped them and continued walking. Anthony shook free of Dafydd’s hold and pursued her down the dock.
“Carys,” Anthony said weakly behind her. “Please. Please let me help you. Just tell me what is happening so I can help you.”
She heard his footsteps stop. She stopped and turned.
“Why would you want to help me?” she demanded, the words falling from her tongue like ice cubes.
Anthony began to speak, then stopped. He looked down at the dock, then over at Dafydd and then back at her. “Because I…I…you are still my daughter. If you’re in danger, I want to help.”
Carys smiled a thin, bitter smile.
“Now,” she said. “You want to help now?”
“Yes,” said Anthony. “I want to help now.”
“I don’t want it,” she said. Her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands.
Dafydd took a tentative step closer. “Carys, are you alright?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine as soon as this…person leaves,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” said Anthony. “I’m so sorry.”
She glared at him, every bit of hate and anger she’d accumulated for the past thirty years shooting at him through her eyes. He looked down at his feet, unable or unwilling to say anything else. She turned back around and walked to the hotel.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Carys and Dafydd had the dining room in the glass conservatory at the back of the inn to themselves. The setting sun illuminated the slate sea and the undersides of the clouds with a reddish gold. They’d ordered glasses of wine and a light dinner, but neither was eating.
“His bus doesn’t leave for another hour,” said Dafydd.
“As long as he’s on it,” Carys said as she flicked at the limp salad on her plate. She drained the last of her wine and motioned for the waitress to bring another.
“You shouldn’t drink any more wine,” said Dafydd. “You won’t process oxygen as well tomorrow when we’re diving.”
“Take all the fun out of life, why don’t you?”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
The Ghost Manuscript Page 21
