Despite the enormity of what she had in her hands and the events of the evening, she was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open.
“You look knackered,” Anthony said. He touched her on the cheek. She didn’t push him away.
“‘Night, love,” he said. He turned and walked away, leaving Dafydd and Carys alone. When Anthony had closed the door behind him, Dafydd turned to her.
“You’re a very brave woman,” he said. “Very brave. You did good tonight.”
He bent over and kissed her on the cheek and stroked his hand softly against her hair. She smelled the salt and sea on his skin.
“Goodnight,” he said. “Make sure to double-bolt the door behind me.”
She watched as he left the room. Something warm stirred in her, erasing a bit of the cold that had been there for hours. She turned back to the manuscript. Despite her exhaustion, she knew she wouldn’t sleep. She had reading to do.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Two hours later, the journal had managed to crush Carys’s heart like another death.
According to his record of the journey, Madoc Morfran, who claimed in the journal to be Arthur’s natural-born son, had whisked Arthur’s body away and buried it somewhere far across the sea. Location unknown. Location very likely forever unknowable.
Morfran had painted himself as a brave explorer in his journal, sailing an uncharted route. Yet even between the small, carefully drawn lettering, written along the tiny rows of pinpoints in the pages that helped the literate of his era write in straight, tight lines to conserve the precious parchment, it was clear he had acted out of fear.
He wrote that the British Isles had grown cold and dim, a sign from God that man had overstayed his welcome. The skies had filled with ash and brought a drought that had already killed most of the livestock in the western part of Britain. The people, who had survived decades of threat from the northern hordes, were now facing death by starvation and disease—and the hordes were on the move again. Morfran wrote that he desired to carry on the work of his father. He wanted to save his people and find a safer place for them where food was plentiful and they could rebuild without interference or threat. He wanted to help create a new society based on the governmental and societal structures that the Romans had brought with them, and that they had instilled in the Britons through centuries of intermingling and education—a level of sophistication that was again in danger of being swept away.
Carys couldn’t tell yet in what year he had written the manuscript, or in what year he had left the British Isles, but a little bit of research would solve that matter. One thing was clear, though. His voyage had come around the time that the Anglo-Saxons had renewed their resolve to crush the rest of the British people and had begun to descend once more. Arthur’s legend had grown so large by then that, Morfran wrote, he feared it was just a matter of time before someone would be tortured into revealing the location of Arthur’s body—it had become more or less common knowledge that he had been taken to Bardsey. There was a reason that particular legend had flourished for fifteen hundred years. It was the only one that was true.
For the illiterate northern hordes to find and defile Arthur’s body would have cemented their psychological victory over the survivors in western Britain, and all would be lost, Morfran wrote. It was up to him to save this legacy.
So Morfran decided to leave. Arthur’s body and his treasure were removed from the crypt on Bardsey. Morfran took him and the people’s wealth and sailed with a small fleet of specially built sailboats into the setting sun for a month, by way of the frigid north islands “that steamed and boiled”—probably Iceland with its natural springs and geysers—then south again, hopping from island to island for sixty days and nights until they made land somewhere with lush, dense forests of mighty towering pine trees, where birds, animals, and fresh water were plentiful. There lived friendly “sand people,” as he called them, natives who welcomed Morfran and his crew.
It was with these people that Arthur had finally been laid to eternal rest.
There was very little in the way of clues or directions, just vague language about his final grave, in the sand people’s traditional burial grounds among tall dunes by the sea, the source of the people’s life. He wrote that the dunes formed a long spit of sand, behind which was a marshy land.
Ambrosius’s ring and the riches of the people, given to Arcturus over the years for safekeeping or to help fund his battle against the hordes, were buried with him in his new tomb in the sand. To do anything else would have been blasphemy—the wealth was rightly, and for all time, Arcturus’s, wrote Morfran. But Morfran did give Arcturus’s great sword Caledfwlch to the sand people as a gift for their kindness and as future payment for guarding the tomb at all costs—and he warned that other, bad men might be coming to seek the grave.
Then he sailed the fleet back to Britain. Half his crews remained behind, smitten by the beauty of the people and the land. Morfran wrote that when he returned to Wales, he desired to memorialize his father’s legacy. If pagans ever did find the burial tomb on Bardsey, they would know they had been thwarted. He wanted the people who came after to know that Arthur was safe, his legacy protected for all time and out of reach of the illiterate northern hordes. “You have lost,” he wrote. “He shall live on forever.”
He placed the shell, arrowhead, and seeds in Arcturus’s Bardsey tomb as proof that he had been to a land far away, the land of the King’s final rest. The few pieces of jewelry he left as proof that Arthur had truly been there—for only a warrior fighting the hordes would have possessed the riches of his people.
Her head hurt at the thought of spending the rest of her life trying to find Arthur. It was five in the morning, and the sun was beginning to kiss the ocean with sparks of yellow and red.
Lestinus formed next to her.
“Why didn’t you tell me he wasn’t going to be there?” she asked.
“I didn’t know. This all happened long after I left. You’ve done everything you can now. You can stop looking.”
“We’re right back where we started.”
“You must call the old man later and tell him what is happening,” said Lestinus. “They fear for your life.”
“That makes two of us.”
“You have completed the task,” he said. “You found the tomb. Tell the people so they can preserve it.”
That was what she should do, but she already knew she wouldn’t. She had done exactly as Harper had asked. She’d found the tomb. Technically, she was done with her mission. She could go home to claim her prize from Harper. Tell the historical authorities in Wales. Have the site preserved. She pondered that for a moment. Just for a moment.
“The task was to follow the clues wherever they led,” she answered. “And now they’re leading us somewhere else.”
She closed the journal and put it back into the dry bag, then pulled out the sack. She removed a shell. It was broad and pure white on the inside, with a light gray exterior. She’d seen ashtrays made of these shells. It was some sort of clam. Could be from anywhere in the North Atlantic. And the seeds. Maybe they’d have luck with those. She put it all back into the bag.
“You’ll find him,” said Lestinus, beginning to fade. “But you’ll need my help. Don’t let me go.”
He was right. He was invaluable. She still thought of him as a separate being, which she knew was the entirely wrong way to look at it. But it made it easier. She went to her luggage again, unzipped the front flap, retrieved the Ziploc bag with Lestinus’s manuscript, opened it with bare hands, stuck her nose between the pages, and inhaled as hard as she could.
The twinge came into her nose, then the head rush, and then she lay down on the bed and drifted off into a fitful sleep, filled with dreams of the ocean, and people in loincloths, and miles of sand.
She slept later than she’d intended to, and the men didn’t w
ake her. When she emerged from her room, it was noon and the pagans had more or less cleared out.
“You need to go back to Mumbles,” she told Dafydd over lunch in the hotel’s conservatory.
“I told you. I’m in this. What if there are more thugs coming after you? You’ll need help.”
Dafydd refused to leave them, so they drove to Aberystwyth in a convoy—Anthony with Carys, Dafydd in his truck. She and her father barely spoke during the drive to the university. He tried to initiate conversation a couple of times, but she just couldn’t muster the energy.
The only conversation was in her mind, the same phrase, repeating—I can’t believe this isn’t over yet.
She dialed Harper to give him an update. Again, he sounded stronger than he had even just the day before, and his enthusiasm poured through the phone into her ears. It would have been infectious if she weren’t so disheartened.
“John, we found the cave,” she said.
Harper gasped but said nothing.
“It was right where the directions said it would be,” she said. “We dove on it last night after the sunset. We found a stone crypt.”
“Was he there? Was the sword there?”
“No,” she said.
“How is that possible?” Harper burst out. “How do you know it was his tomb if he wasn’t there?”
“It was right where the manuscript said it would be, and when we opened it, we found some jewelry—Dark Age workmanship. But we also found another manuscript.”
“A what?”
“Another manuscript,” she said. “Same era. Written by a man named Madoc Morfran. In Latin. I read it last night. It’s about his journey across the Atlantic Ocean with Arcturus’s body, not sure how many years exactly after he was interred in the cave. Morfran reburied him somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, near the sea, with a community of natives.”
“Oh my god. Native Americans. You mean he’s been here the whole time?”
“It said natives, not native Americans. He’s somewhere on the eastern seaboard of either North, Central, or South America. I wouldn’t really classify that as ‘here.’ There was a sack of shells and seeds and an arrowhead in the crypt as well. The manuscript says they’re from the burial location. We’re trying to figure out where they’re indigenous so we can try to narrow down the general section of coastline. He left the sword with the people he found, to ensure that they would protect the burial site. We’ll probably never find that.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “The most important thing is that we track it to the end and find the burial location. Have you run into any trouble?”
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. She took a deep breath.
“No,” she said.
“You can finish the research here then,” he said. “Come back right away. We can work on it together.”
“I will. John, what do you know about Madoc Morfran?” she asked.
“Historically identifiable person,” he said. “He sailed across the ocean to escape a drought in mid-sixth century. Came back to Britain a few years later.”
She paused to think. Then she remembered what was happening back home.
“When is Nicola’s funeral?”
There was silence on the other end of the phone, then she heard Harper cough slightly.
“Monday,” he said. “I hope you’ll be back for it.”
“Are they going to let you go?”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” he said. “They are considering discharging me.”
“But you’ve been so sick for so long.”
“I had the doctor check me for a kidney infection,” he said.
“And?”
“There’s damage,” said Harper. “They called it moderately serious and possibly permanent. They put me on medication that cleared the hallucinations immediately. You need to stop exposing your lungs to that manuscript. It’s serious. Please promise me you’ll use a mask when you read it.”
“But I still need…” She halted. Anthony did not need to know about Lestinus.
“I know,” said Harper. “But we can take it from here without his help. You’re in enough danger as it is. You don’t need to make yourself sick, too.”
She looked in the rear-view mirror, and Lestinus’s vague shape was there, looking back at her.
“I’ve gotta call Annie. I’ll give you a call once we know more about the shells and seeds.”
“Come back to the States right after that. Don’t linger there,” said Harper.
Annie picked up after just one ring.
“How did it go?”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll fill you in when I see you.”
“You’re coming home?”
“Yeah, but not sure exactly when. Next couple of days.”
“Did you find the tomb?”
“I…. You know what? I just called to find out if you’ve made any progress on the thug.”
“Yeah,” said Annie. “Interesting thing there. The guy whose bloody business card you gave me—Plimpton—he ID’d the guy. His name is Frank Marshfield. We found some of his old military and criminal records. His military photo matches the picture from the Pike’s toll booth cameras.”
“Who is he?” she asked.
“I asked that question of Plimpton. He would only say that he had had dealings with Marshfield, and I suspect they were unpleasant.”
“So he’s a known commodity,” she said. Or was, she thought.
“Yup,” Annie said. “I’m betting, based on the looks of him, and the few police reports in the U.K. I was able to access, that he was hired muscle. Which means someone else is pulling the strings.”
“Annie,” she said. “No police yet. We still have work to do.”
“A woman has been murdered,” said Annie. “And Frank Marshfield is probably the one who killed her, for chrissake. Don’t you and Harper want to see him in prison?”
“Of course I do,” she said, swallowing hard. “Don’t worry. I absolutely promise you. He’ll get what he deserves.”
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
They arrived at the University of Aberystwyth at five that afternoon. Students were gone for summer break, but Anthony said there were a few postdoc students doing research projects in the Life Sciences department. One of them led a team of scientists who could help identify the habitat of the shell and seeds. They wound their way through the sprawling campus, which hugged the hillside above the ocean, and parked at a large building that looked like Hogwarts.
“I’m going to find out if they have any vacant professor housing that we can stay in for a little while,” said Anthony as he hopped out of Carys’s car. “We should stay away from my house—if someone is still following us.”
“What did you tell your wife?” asked Carys.
“Nothing, except I suggested she and my youngest son go visit some friends out of town for a few days.” He trotted up the wide stone steps and into the building. A few minutes later, Anthony walked briskly back out.
“They have a vacant three-bedroom apartment on the other side of campus,” said Anthony, wiggling the keys. “I’ll bring you two over there, we can drop off our stuff, and then we should head to the lab and see what needs to be done.”
The apartment was bright and cheerful and well-appointed, the top floor of an old, blocky brick house reserved for visiting professors and their families. Carys suggested that Dafydd find a store and get some provisions for the evening while she and Anthony went to the lab, but he refused to leave them.
The Life Sciences building was a modern, angular, concrete and steel structure that looked like an awkward spaceship that had accidentally landed in this barren, windswept place. They walked down a deserted hallway to the only occupied lab. Inside were three young men in jeans and white lab coats, two of whom we
re studying something through an enormous, complex microscope while the other one sat at a computer. Anthony rapped on the window. They looked up and then broke into smiles when they saw Anthony. The one at the computer motioned them in.
“Doctor Rogers,” Anthony said. “I’m in need of some of your brain power.”
Rogers stood up and reached to shake Anthony’s hand.
“Well, well,” said Rogers. “Doctor Jones. What brings you here to the land of the living?”
Carys winced slightly at the honorific—she’d forgotten how accomplished Anthony was.
“Danny, this is my daughter, Carys,” he said. She noted the brief puzzled look that flashed across Rogers’s face. She nodded. “And her friend, Dafydd. We’ve got some objects that we need identified, and I knew you were here for the summer. I thought maybe you could help.”
“What type of objects?” Rogers asked.
“Some very old seashells and seeds,” she said. “We need to know what type they are and their primary habitat.”
“James here is your man, then,” said Rogers, pointing at one of the younger men at the microscope. He looked up and made eye contact with Carys. She reached into her bag and pulled out the sack.
“As you can see, we’re in the middle of something here right now,” said Rogers, “but we can probably get to this tomorrow.”
“It’s very important. If there’s any way you could get to it first thing in the morning, we’d be really grateful,” said Anthony.
“Shells and seeds are important? I’m glad you’ve finally seen the relevance of our work here, my friend,” said Rogers with a laugh. “You spend too much time with maps.”
“You’re right about that,” said Anthony.
Carys stepped up to the lab table and placed the sack there.
“Thank you very much for helping us with this, James,” she said. “I’m going to leave you this shell and two each of the seeds.”
The Ghost Manuscript Page 27
