They closed the sarcophagus, put their scuba gear back on, stowed the dry bag with the manuscript and the two leather pouches in Dafydd’s satchel, and lowered themselves back into the icy water. They kicked steadily back the way they’d come without interruption. Her stomach pains stayed relatively in check, and she felt calmer than she had on the way in, although a twinge in her side let her know that things weren’t entirely right.
They slid silently back out of the cave opening, navigated around the tall stone pillar and into the pushing and pulling of the dark, surging waves. Dafydd pointed the flashlight at himself and signaled for them to swim out a little farther, away from the shore, the rocks, and the downdraft. About thirty yards out, the wave action seemed to lessen and they slowly surfaced.
Once their heads broke into the cool, fresh breeze, they removed their masks and let their eyes adjust to the relative brightness of the moonlit night. Dafydd began to raise his flashlight out of the water to signal at Anthony. Then, he paused.
“Carys,” he said. “Turn off your light. Now.”
She obeyed.
“How many boats do you see?” he asked.
In the fading light of the solstice, aided by the glow of a newborn full moon, Carys could see their Whaler bobbing up and down on the waves. Just one boat, she thought. Then, for just a split second, she saw the bow of another boat poke out from behind the front of theirs. She peered more closely. There was someone on the Whaler with Anthony.
“Police maybe?” she asked, gasping out the words between waves. “Marine patrol?”
“Nothing like that out here. How many people do you see? I see one with Anthony.”
She willed her eyes to focus despite the wind blowing into her face.
“I see one,” she said. It’s the thug, she thought. Who else would it be? But how?
“Can we swim to shore? Call for help?” she asked.
“Nowhere to get out of the water,” said Dafydd. “All cliff this side.”
“Back to the cave? Wait him out?”
“Not enough air,” he said.
They let the inevitable sink in for a moment.
“We have to go to the boat,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “All I have is a knife.”
“We don’t have a choice. We can’t take the manuscript on the boat. Got enough air to hide the dry bag in the cave opening? We can get it later.”
“Another diver could find it,” he said. “Or it could be swept away.”
“We can’t risk bringing it on that boat,” she said.
“Right. Hang tight.” Dafydd began to swim back to the shore, and at the last minute, just before he was about to get pulled into the rocks, he went under and was gone.
Carys bobbed in the water, kicking slowly, and watched the figures move around on the boat about a hundred feet away. There was definitely just the one guy with Anthony. He was big. That big head. The lack of a neck. The slope of the shoulders. It was him. The goon.
All she and Dafydd had were the element of surprise and the darkness.
When he surfaced next to her, she had a plan. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the only one they had.
A few minutes later, Dafydd dropped his tank, vest, fins, and weight belt to the ocean floor and they split up. Carys, still in full gear, swam straight for the back of their boat. Dafydd set off on a silent swim to the left of where they’d surfaced, in a wide arc that would bring him around to the far side of the boats.
As she got closer, Anthony spotted her splashing through the waves. He began to raise his hands to warn her off, but the goon, directly behind him, jammed something in his neck and he stopped.
She pretended she hadn’t seen anything. She swam up to the stern of their boat, gripped the platform next to the engine, and readied her best performance. Anthony leaned over the stern, looking down at her.
“Anthony,” she said, gasping dramatically. “The cave. It collapsed. Dafydd is trapped down there. We have to send for help.” Anthony said nothing and made no move to her. “Did you hear me? Radio for help right away.”
“Carys, I think…” Anthony began, but then the thug’s head came around Anthony’s shoulder and looked down at her.
“Hello, Carys.”
“Who are you?” asked Carys, feigning great shock.
“Ah, you don’t remember me? We met at your house. I came to see how your dive went,” said the goon. “Find anything good?”
“The cave collapsed,” she said. “My dive guide is trapped down there and he’s running out of air. We have to get help. Anthony, radio for help.”
“I’d be pleased to help, but first I need to know what you found,” said the man. Anthony stood frozen.
“We found nothing,” she said, still clinging to the boat. “The rocks came down before we were able to get very far. Help me out—we need to get help right away.”
Anthony made a move to grab her, and the man jammed the object, which she could now see was a gun, into the back of his neck.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Frank could feel the man shaking against him, and it wasn’t because he was cold. No matter how often he held a gun on a man, watching him beg for his life, it gave him a sense of control that he felt at no other time in his life.
“Please, call for help on the radio,” said the woman. It sounded genuine. She looked scared. Of course, now that she’d seen the gun, he expected her to be scared.
“Pull her out,” he said to the father. The man stepped over the transom of the boat and onto the small ledge next to the engine. He started to bend from the waist, toward the water, and reached out his hand toward the woman. She reached up to grab it.
He moved the gun away from the father’s neck and opened his mouth to tell them that all he wanted was the treasure and the books and he’d be on his way.
“I…” he began.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glint of moonlight off a large swell rearing up to his left. It was moving fast and it rose up underneath them. Before he knew it, the world shifted underneath the rolling giant.
Everyone and everything in the boat was shoved hard to the right. He grabbed the gunwale to steady himself, and he heard the father fall down into the water, right on top of the woman. The two immediately disappeared under the waves.
He righted himself, still holding on to the gunwale. He spun around to reach into the water to pull the two out. He felt a little panicked, worried that maybe they were drowning. That wasn’t what he wanted. Not at all.
As he started to bend over, something heavy and swift crashed down on the back of his skull. The world instantly went black. He dropped hard to the floor of the boat.
The last thing he saw as his brain closed down was a slow parade of the faces of every person he’d ever killed, with the face of the maid lingering longest. He panicked very briefly as he realized what was happening, the utter finality of it, there in the solitude and blackness of his mind. Then he was washed by a great relief and a final brief image of his mother, smiling, improbably; she never smiled…she barely even looks at me anymore when we talk I love you Mum I’m sorry I’m so sorry I never wanted…then there was total release.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Carys surfaced, her head pounding. She grabbed the back of the boat, yelling before her eyes were even clear.
“Anthony!” she yelled. Dafydd stood on the back of the boat with the boat’s small fire extinguisher in his hands. Just then Anthony surfaced, coughing hard, right next to her. She grabbed him around the waist.
“Anthony!” she yelled. “Dafydd, help us.”
She felt a hand on her scuba vest, hauling her up. She sat down hard on the platform next to the engine. She opened her eyes to see Dafydd.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his eyes wild.
“No,” she said.
“Anthony?”
“I’m alright,” she heard Anthony yell from the water.
“Where’s the gun?” she asked. “The man…”
Dafydd said nothing as he pulled Anthony up onto the back of the boat.
She spun to look behind her and saw the man splayed out, his head resting in an enormous pool of dark fluid. She cried out.
“I had no choice,” said Dafydd, reaching for her, holding her by her arms. She looked into his eyes as best she could in the shifting light.
“Is he dead?”
“I think so,” said Dafydd. “I haven’t checked.”
She took off her fins and vest, then moved to the body. She pressed two fingers against the side of the thick, muscular neck, the warmth already draining away. There was no pulse.
“Oh my god,” she said.
Dafydd and Anthony exchanged glances, and there was a short silence but for the slapping of the waves.
“We’ve got to put him in the other boat,” said Dafydd. “Take it out to sea. Drop him over. Let the boat drift. I’m not going to jail.”
“It was self-defense,” she said.
“So we say,” said Dafydd.
They stood silently for a moment. She looked at Dafydd, waiting for him to speak again. He didn’t.
“Let’s get going,” said Anthony.
“He’s right. We need to move,” said Dafydd. “We need to get out of here.”
With a businesslike manner she found disturbing, Anthony and Dafydd hauled the bulky body over the side into the other vessel and dropped it on the floor with a great thud. The sound nauseated her. Dafydd took the helm of the thug’s boat, and Anthony, wiping his hands down again and again, came back aboard their boat and approached her. He stood in front of her for a moment, then reached out and embraced her—and for the first time in decades, she returned the embrace.
“I thought he was going to kill you,” she said.
“I’m fine,” he said, holding onto her. “We’re going to be fine.”
They drove both boats at full throttle for about an hour directly west. When they finally stopped, there were no lights visible from land, from buoys or from any other boats. The only light was the moon and the reflection off the gathering waves, which tossed their two vessels around like bathtub toys. She sat at the bow of their Whaler as the two men readied the thug’s body for his voyage to the bottom. There was a splash. She lowered her head. They were murderers. No matter why it had happened, no matter if it was self-defense, it was done. And it was entirely on her.
Dafydd started the other boat’s engine, steered it around to face west, locked the steering column, and jumped back onto their boat. They watched as the empty vessel plowed slowly and deliberately through the waves and swells, on its solitary journey far out in the Irish Sea.
Dafydd came up to the bow a moment later. She was shivering. He sat next to her on the bow seat, wrapped a blanket and then his arm around her, and pulled her close.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. We will never report this. We’ll never talk about it. To anyone, ever. It never happened.”
“I’d do it again,” he said. “I didn’t think it was real, Carys. I thought you were just another crackpot. Now…I…I’m in. Whatever you need. This isn’t business anymore.”
“You should get as far away from me as you can,” she said.
“I’ve spent my entire, boring life on this stretch of Welsh coastline. So have my parents, and their parents before them. You’re the most interesting thing that has ever happened to me, Carys Jones,” he said. She looked up at him, and he was slightly smiling. “I’m in. All the way.”
She grabbed his hand resting on her shoulder and squeezed it tightly.
“Whether you like it or not,” she said.
An hour later, they were back at the buoys marking the dive site and Dafydd was in the water. He emerged a short time later with his pack containing the dry bag. He got in, took the helm of the boat, turned it toward the mainland, and pushed the throttle forward as far as it would go.
6
Friday, June 22
The trio crept back through Aberdaron to their hotel. It was just before three in the morning. The last of the pagans were drifting through town, nodding drunkenly to them as they passed. Carys was still shaking, frozen to the core and sure she would never be warm again. The three of them plodded, exhausted, up the stairs. Her numb fingers fumbled with the keys. Dafydd took them gently and opened her door. They all entered her room and arranged themselves on the chairs and bed and stared off in different directions, immersed in their own version of the night.
Finally, Dafydd broke the silence.
“Let’s show your father what we got.”
Dafydd pulled the dry bag out of his pack and laid it out on the bed next to her. She looked over at it, and a flash of anger passed through her. That’s it, she thought. That’s what this was all about. We paid two lives for these sacks and another manuscript? We’ve become murderers for this? She felt an indifference to the contents of the bag that she couldn’t have imagined just twelve hours earlier. She resented it and what it had put her through. And she couldn’t stop that resentment from slowly bleeding over to Harper. The old man. Safe in an asylum. Giving orders that he knew he’d never have to carry out. What had he thought he was doing getting her involved in this? And what had she been thinking getting Dafydd and Anthony involved in it?
“Carys, open the bag,” said Anthony. He shivered slightly, and semicircles of gray formed hard under his eyes. His lips were tinged with blue, his graying hair swept up and matted into odd shapes by the salt wind. He was slumped in the lounge chair in the corner and looked like he was too exhausted to ever rise again. But his eyes were burning.
The dry bag lay next to her. Inside was possibly the answer to one of the biggest unanswered questions in history, and all she wanted to do was heave it out an open window back into the ocean. But things had a momentum now—the time for stopping was long past.
She took a deep breath and reached for the bag, then stopped herself and retrieved a pair of clean gloves from her luggage. She unzipped the watertight enclosure carefully and slowly drew the manuscript from the bag. Then she pulled out the two pouches. She laid them both on the bedspread. Anthony lifted himself with effort out of the chair and walked to the side of the bed. Dafydd leaned in.
Carys smoothed her hand across the leather-bound manuscript. It was of finer quality than Lestinus’s manuscript. It had remnants of gilt detailing on the cover. A mark of wealth. She slowly and carefully opened the front cover. “My Journey—Madoc Morfran,” she said out loud.
“Who?” asked Anthony.
“Madoc Morfran.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Anthony, and he sat down heavily on the bed next to her.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“A Welsh explorer,” he said. “Legend says he sailed to North America.”
“Well, how the hell did his travel journal get into King Arthur’s tomb?” Dafydd asked. Carys shot him a glance.
“King Arthur’s what?” asked Anthony, his eyes wide.
Dammit, she thought. She turned to her father. Here we go. Another moving part added.
“The manuscript I told you about was written by the personal priest of the man that we believe was the inspiration for the legend of King Arthur, Riothamus Arcturus. The manuscript led us to Bardsey, and tonight we discovered the tomb where, according to the manuscript, Arthur and, eventually, the wealth of his people were buried after he fell at the Battle of Camlann.”
Her father sat there, mouth dropped open.
“Except neither he nor the treasure is there anymore,” she said. “All we found was this journal, some jewelry, and some seeds and seashells. Everything else was gone.”
Her father’s mouth co
ntinued to hang open. He finally closed it.
“And that’s why that guy was following you,” said Anthony. “He thought you’d lead him right to the tomb.”
“Yup,” said Dafydd. “And we dutifully complied.”
“I don’t know how he found me,” she said. “But I guess it doesn’t matter now. What matters is we figure out where this Morfran guy buried Arcturus.”
“That’s not really all that matters. There’s also the jewelry,” said Dafydd.
“All the property of the Welsh government,” she said, placing her hand on the leather pouch. “So don’t get any ideas.”
Dafydd scowled a bit.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll get your ten percent.”
Dafydd was about to speak, but Carys turned and opened the other pouch. She pulled out the arrowhead, shell, and some of the seeds. She looked up at the men.
“We’ve got to figure out what these are. They’re obviously intended to be some sort of clues,” she said. She closed her eyes. “More clues,” she mumbled to herself.
“We can bring the shell and seeds to the university,” said Anthony. “We have a lab that can analyze these and tell us what types they are, where their habitats are, all that. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
They sat silently for a few minutes more.
“King bloody Arthur,” said Anthony. He let out a long, low whistle.
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen that tomb with my own eyes,” said Dafydd. “It was the most ancient thing I’ve ever seen in one piece.”
“Carys,” said Anthony, smiling, “my girl. You’re going to be famous.”
She looked up at him.
“Only if we find him,” she said.
“Isn’t that tomb, the jewelry, the manuscript, aren’t they considered incredibly important historical finds in their own right?” asked Anthony.
“I suppose,” she said.
“I should think so,” he said. “Either way, king or no king, you’re going to be famous. And wealthy. The government has to pay you the value of those things before they can take them, you know. It’s the law.”
The Ghost Manuscript Page 26
