“I know,” she said. “I just need one more day.”
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
“It’s going to be crazy over there,” the young receptionist warned. “Are you sure you and your friends want to go?”
Carys smiled and thanked her, and the three of them headed out of the hotel.
“Probably get heckled by pagans for blocking the view,” Dafydd said as they walked down the narrow sidewalk.
The big Boston Whaler that Dafydd had rented was docked at the marina down the street. It was filled with scuba gear, a few large waterproof flashlights, and a pile of what looked like blankets. Once they were inside, Dafydd released the lines holding the boat to the dock, pushed off, and gunned the twin engines. They roared into life and pushed the boat forward through the blue-gray water. The nose rose up, as if it were straining for the sky. As soon as they entered open water, the boat began to buck on the waves, which seemed to tower above their heads. She grabbed the sides of the boat and held on as tightly as she could.
“Takes a while to get used to the motion,” said Dafydd. “Good thing it’s a calm day.”
About thirty minutes later, they arrived at the Bardsey marina dock. It was occupied by one of the ferries, so they waited just offshore. Dafydd went to the back of the boat and grabbed two of the blankets.
“I got you a little present,” he said, and tossed one of the blankets to her. She unfolded it. It was a hooded wool cassock, just like the ones the pagans were wearing. And very much like the one Lestinus wore.
“It’ll be a lot easier to blend in, and if someone is following you, they’ll never be able to pick you out of the crowd,” Dafydd said. She nodded. It was a good idea. A great one, really.
Anthony pulled a cassock over his head and grinned from beneath the oversized hood.
“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,” he intoned while crossing himself. Then he pretended to bonk himself on the forehead with an invisible board. Dafydd laughed out loud. She grinned—Monty Python. She hated that her father loved it, too.
“You each get one of these,” said Dafydd, holding up two walkie-talkies. “I’ll hang just off the coast until I see you—who is going down to the cliff edge?”
“I will,” she said.
She pulled on her cassock and they tested the radios, which worked fine when they were two feet away from each other. She was struck by just how tenuous and ill-conceived this plan was.
“Anthony, I’ll walk with you up to the tree. You stand there,” she said. “Then I’ll go down to the edge of the cliff until I find a spot where I can see both you and Dafydd. Keep your eyes out for a large, no-necked man who looks out of place among all these hippies.”
Dafydd gunned the boat up to the dock once it was clear and Anthony jumped out. Dafydd reached for her arm just as she was about to step onto the dock.
“Be careful,” he said earnestly. “I mean it.”
She glanced at him.
“I really do want you to find this tomb. I know that didn’t come across very well last night,” he said.
“That’s putting it mildly,” she said, and stepped out of the boat. Their eyes connected briefly, then he backed the boat away from the dock, spun it around, drove it between the two buoys that marked the short channel, and sped away south toward the headland and around to the west side of the island.
She felt ridiculous in her cassock until she looked around and realized she and Anthony were the least strange people on the shore. Some of the other revelers were dressed in togas. Some, including several women, were naked. One man had covered himself with mud and was wearing a very small and not entirely effective loincloth. She would have stared but she was just glad that she was surrounded by people who were not, in all likelihood, after her or King Arthur’s tomb.
They took a narrow dirt road north from the dock across the barren island landscape. They walked in silence, along with about thirty giddy, unsilent pagans, for several minutes. Then the pagans peeled off to head west to the coast. Carys and Anthony continued north toward the treeless green hill that dominated the center of the island. Along its western slope, they’d find the old farmhouse where an apple tree, the oldest apple tree in Wales—perhaps in the world—stood silently tucked up against the wall of a barn, where it was shielded from the worst the Irish Sea could throw at it.
Bardsey wasn’t a big island—about a mile across, a few miles long—but what it lacked in width, it made up for in height. The road climbed steadily, and after a few minutes, she noticed that Anthony was breathing heavily. She stopped.
“I’m just not in very good shape,” Anthony said between gasps. “I mostly sit on my butt all…day at the college.”
“You’re doing fine,” she said. The air hung still between them. She turned and continued, and a few minutes later, he fell into step behind her. They didn’t speak again until they got to the farm, a small single-story whitewashed building with a thatched roof and dark green shutters. A half-hearted fence surrounded it. The place had become a B&B, and there was no activity anywhere. The occupants were likely down by the shore.
“We should probably not invade their property,” she said. “The last thing we need is to have you chased away by an angry islander. Just keep the tree to your back and guide me into line when the sun sets. Check the radios.”
As they looked toward the west, they saw clusters of people gathered on a slight rise by the shore about a quarter mile from where they were standing. She couldn’t see the immediate shoreline, as Dafydd had predicted, but she assumed Dafydd had made it around to that point by then. She grabbed her radio.
“Dafydd, this is Carys. Are you there?”
She heard her voice come out of Anthony’s radio, but there was no answer from Dafydd. She set off down the slope of the hill toward the crowds. Lestinus appeared and fell into step next to her.
“It has not changed since we were here,” he said.
“Let’s hope the coastline hasn’t scrambled things too badly since then,” she said. “The ocean levels have changed a lot in this part of the world.”
Down below on the hillside, a slow drumbeat pounded. She could see some of the revelers dancing in slow, indeterminate movements. It looked like a seaside Woodstock. After a few minutes, she got near the top of the cliffs that dropped down to the sea and found herself engulfed by throngs of pagans and assorted solstice tourists. The drum was percussive now, and she could feel it in her chest. From where she stood, she could see Dafydd and the Boston Whaler tossing mightily on the rough waves below. He was hanging back, about a hundred yards offshore.
“The caves were in the side of the cliff,” said Lestinus. “We had to climb down and then lower him. It took us a day to get him into his tomb. We had to do it all over again when we brought our people’s belongings back here to bury with him for safekeeping. It was excruciating. The water is so high now. The mouth of the cave will be underwater. We never could have gotten him and the people’s treasures into the cave the way it is now.”
“If his tomb has been underwater, it’s probably disintegrated, you know,” she said.
“It’s stone, and we sealed it well,” he said.
“How can I open it?” she asked.
“You shouldn’t. Let him sleep. Just knowing he is there is enough.”
She stared at him for a moment.
“Dafydd,” she said into the radio. “I’m in position. Can you hear me?”
A moment of static ripped over the radio, then a click.
“Loud and clear,” came Dafydd’s voice. “Wave to me so I know which of those freaks is you.”
She slowly waved her hand above her head.
“Got ya,” he said.
“Carys, you’re still coming in on this end, too,” said Anthony’s voice, “although I can’t hear Dafydd.”
“Sounds good, Anthon
y,” she said, looking back. She could see him standing by the house, directly between the tree and her.
“Now, we wait,” she said. A man in a feathered hat standing next to her smiled.
“Yes, we wait,” said the man. “Isn’t it exciting?”
“Very,” she said with a half smile.
Lestinus turned slowly, surveying the crowds.
“The godless pagans,” he said. “Unwashed. No morals. They worship trees and rocks.”
“That much hasn’t changed in a millennium, has it?” she asked in Latin quietly.
It was 9:43 p.m. The sky was miraculously still clear, a rarity at this time of year, or at any time of year in this part of the world. For a moment, she let the heat of the fading light penetrate her. It was so beautiful here. She willed the beating of the drum, which matched that of her heart, to draw away some of the tension.
Suddenly, a pain stabbed like a knife into her abdomen and doubled her over. The man in the feathered hat reached for her. With difficulty, she stood back upright.
“Just indigestion,” she said to the man, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead.
“Too much partying last night, huh?” he said. She smiled faintly while trying not to collapse. The pain was now spreading out and dulling. Diving was probably the very worst thing for it. She took three deep breaths and stood up straight.
The sun kissed the horizon. The walkie-talkie chirped.
“About fifty feet to your right, Carys,” said Anthony. She sidestepped people as she made her way through the crowd. “That’s good. Hold right there.”
She stopped and saw that Dafydd was now slightly to the left of where he needed to be. She directed him over until the boat was silhouetted in the sun as half of it sank below the waves.
“How we looking?” she asked, looking back toward Anthony.
“Perfectly lined up,” he said. She could barely hear him above the crescendo of the maddening drumbeat and chants of the crowd. Lestinus stood silently next to her, taking it all in. She radioed down to Dafydd.
“You’re right on,” she said. “Drop the first buoy now.”
Dafydd scrambled to the back of the boat and dropped an anchor attached by a rope to an orange, triangular float.
“Move forward now,” she called. “We’ve only got a minute of sun left.”
The boat motored forward. She directed him slightly to the right, then left, then, just as the sun slipped down below the horizon, she saw him drop the second buoy. Together, they pointed to the exact spot on the shore that was between the apple tree and “the last light of the fat sun,” as Taliesin had called it. She felt a shiver up her arms.
“I’ll see you both back at the dock,” she said into her radio. She pushed her way through the crowd and looked up to see the purple glow upon the farmhouse and the tree. The mother tree, shaking lightly in the ocean breeze. It had seen Arthur buried. Tonight, it might see him again.
Around her, hundreds of people swayed and sang. Some cried, some prayed on their knees. A man in a cassock walked toward her. She thought it was Lestinus until he veered sideways, embraced a naked woman, and swung her around.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
By the time Carys and Anthony got back to the main dock on the other side of the island, Dafydd was waiting for them. They hopped into the boat and sped back through the pounding waves to where he had placed the buoys. The lingering twilight had turned the ocean purple, and the temperature was falling fast. She wondered if she’d get to see the sun again.
Getting into the wetsuit was even more difficult in the back of the rocking boat than it had been in her hotel room, but by swallowing every ounce of modesty and with some help from both Dafydd and Anthony, she got the thing on. Dafydd watched her carefully as she put on her tank vest, weights, and regulator, to ensure that she at least appeared to know a little bit about what she was doing. It was a task made more difficult in the fading light. She put her mask on upside down at first, then quickly corrected it.
Dafydd went through a short overview of the usage of the equipment. She absorbed it all, pretending that it was all just an unnecessary review.
“I’ll swim next to you until we get to the cave, then I’ll be behind you,” said Dafydd. “Never out of view of each other, got it? At the first sign of trouble, thumbs-up means we’re surfacing, no matter what. I mean it. This”—he made a circle of his thumb and forefinger, the A-okay sign—”means we’re good to go.”
“Got it,” she said.
“We have about one hour of air,” he said. “If you hyperventilate, you’ll go through it even faster, so breathe steady and slow.” He switched on a flashlight and slipped its strap around her wrist. He clipped another one to her belt.
Dafydd sat on the edge of the boat and dropped over backward with a quiet splash into the darkness. Her heart pounded furiously.
“Deep breaths,” said Lestinus and Anthony, in unison. She gave them both a thumbs-up, then corrected herself and flashed the A-okay sign. She sat on the edge, grabbed her facemask, and dropped over.
She fell into a tight, black, bitter cold nothingness. The sound of bubbles consumed her, and she lost all sense of the surface. She’d forgotten this part, the confusion. The freezing water dug into her skin like a thousand tiny knives. For a moment, she panicked and began to struggle against the water. She gasped for air, and the mouthpiece dug into her gums. She wanted up and she wanted up now.
Then a voice, this time her own, told her clearly that the panic would ruin everything. She had to get herself under control or this dive would be over before it had even begun. She willed herself into stillness and she forced herself to slow her breathing, to let go of the panic, to let the water take her wherever it wanted. Her vest began to float her up. She surfaced slowly in the roiling water, next to Dafydd.
Anthony pointed his high-powered flashlight toward the coast to the spot where the buoys were aiming. Somewhere below that spot of light would be a hole in the wall of rock, an entrance to a cave, inside of which would lie the tomb of the King—if the manuscript was true, if the coastline hadn’t shifted or changed or eroded too much, if they’d interpreted the ancient Welsh words correctly, if no one had found it already and cleaned it out…if, if, if.
Dafydd flashed her the A-okay sign. She flashed it back—although it was another of her lies. He submerged slowly, letting the air out of his vest. She did the same. They sank silently into the blackness. She began to warm, but pressure built in her ears. She pinched her nose and blew through it gently, and her ears cleared. She swam along, trying to focus on keeping her breathing steady, but she was not in shape.
This was all an incredibly bad idea.
She and Dafydd surfaced periodically to find the spot of light on the shore and make sure they were on the right track. Then down they went again. Swimming was a lot easier under the waves.
After fifteen minutes of kicking into an endless impenetrable blackness about six feet down, Carys began to feel the water pushing and pulling her strongly back and forth in a rhythmic pattern—waves. They were near the rocks. Then the light from both of their flashlights fell on a sheer wall of rock that loomed up in the darkness. She shined her flashlight down, through the clear, frigid water, and the wall seemed to have no bottom. Dafydd shined the light on himself and turned his thumb down, to indicate they should descend. They slowly dropped down along the wall of rock that had once been an exposed cliff.
After they dropped about twenty feet, Dafydd flashed his light at her. They hadn’t encountered anything that looked like a cave opening yet. They slowly kicked across the face of the cliff to the right, sweeping the flashlights up and down the cliff face in opposite directions, looking for something like an opening. She felt her limbs and abdomen relaxing into a comfortable, slightly warmer state. The fear was beginning to dissipate. She began to kick her legs more slowly and deeply a
nd she thought she heard…
Something like a giant hand grabbed her, shoved her, rapidly and with a force she had never experienced, directly into the cliff face. She hit with a force that dislodged her mask and filled it partially with water, and smashed her arm. She worked to contain her panic. She tried to reach up and adjust the mask, but she was being dragged, like a doll, down the face of the craggy cliff, down, down, faster and faster, as if she were falling through air.
Water washed into her mask and blinded her completely. She grabbed for her mouthpiece as she smashed again and again into the cliff wall. Pain shot into her arm, her hip, her leg as each hit the cliff face. She could hear the tank’s metallic clunk as it too bounced along the wall. Then her arm was yanked back, as if by a forceful, angry hand, and with it went the regulator. She swallowed a small amount of water but it was enough to make her gag. She couldn’t see anything and she was falling and flailing, trying to put the mouthpiece back in her mouth.
With a clank, she landed on her back on something hard. The powerful hand was holding her down on top of rocks. Her eyes were closed tightly against the stinging salt water. Her lungs began to burn, her mouth full of saltwater. Panic slowly filled her, but she held it partially at bay. She began to windmill her arms behind her, searching for either her primary or backup regulator. She couldn’t find them.
She let the panic take over. She began to scratch at the rocks to right herself and get to the surface. But the powerful force of the water, or whatever it was, held her firmly in place. She was drowning. This was how it ended.
The Ghost Manuscript Page 24
