скачать книгу бесплатно
She glanced at the display before answering.
“Garin,” she said. He only ever seemed to call when it was bad news. That had become the nature of their relationship. Save a girl once, she’d joked, and you think it gives you the right to ruin her life. “What can I do for you?”
“Ah, Annja, sweetheart, how I’ve missed your dulcet tones,” he said, making no effort to hide the sarcasm in his voice. “Not missing me too much, I hope?”
“I’ve not even been here a day—besides, it’s hard to miss you.” She checked her watch and tried to work out what the time was where he was, but then realized that she had no idea where he was in the world.
“Well, according to this little gadget I’m looking at you’re in Wales of all places.”
“Spying on me?”
“Hardly. It’s just this new box of tricks we’re trying out that tracks back signals when they bounce off satellites. It’s a refinement on the old caller ID. You never know when it might come in handy.”
“I’m not sure I want to think about why you’d need to know exactly where someone’s calling from—mainly because every reason I imagine will probably be suspicious if not illegal.”
“Oh, ye of little faith.”
“So what can I do for you? Got some relatives you want me to visit?” She looked across the fields at a flock of sheep nuzzling along the barbed wire of the perimeter fence, and pushed a toe against a pile of rotting cigarette butts. She could never understand why people would litter in a place like this.
“Ask not what you can do for me, ask only what I can do for you.”
“What on earth are you babbling about?”
“I’m nearby, someplace they call London. Ha! I figured if you were at a loose end I could nip over and entertain you.”
“Entertain me?.”
“I’m a lover of beautiful women, Annja, you know me. I don’t discriminate—black, white, in color—doesn’t matter, beauty is beauty. And I like to collect beautiful things.”
“And vacuous ones.”
“Oh, you wound me...though I will admit to a weakness for the odd dumb blonde. I can’t help myself. That isn’t a crime. So, let me entertain you.”
On a bucket list of wants and desires, that was right down there on the bottom of Annja’s bucket along with the dregs. But for all his lecherous ways, Garin was charming, and good company, hence the ease with which he took to womanizing. “I’ll give the offer its due consideration, but right now I’m hoping for a couple of days of me time.”
“Well, if you change your mind...”
“You’ll be the first to know,” she replied.
“Excellent,” he said. “Have fun and try not to miss me too much.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said, but he’d already killed the call.
A boy peered over the edge of the grassy bank, looking down at her, Roman emperor to her gladiator waiting in the pit. He disappeared back behind the edge without giving her the thumbs-up.
Annja left the amphitheater, climbing the hillside that would have been banked seating back in the day. She then spotted her Roman emperor; he’d moved on to the shelter of a hedge at the end of the field with a couple of his friends. They were huddled together. She saw the spark of a lighter, which therefore explained the cigarette butts.
Behind the boys she could see a lonely spire.
She left them to smoke their coffin nails and went to check it out.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_8da79d3a-10e1-5e23-b187-e6c87ed6036d)
“I don’t mean to be difficult—” which of course was exactly what he meant to be “—but what exactly are you are planning to do with this thing now?” Geraint tilted his head slightly, making a show of thinking about it. “I suppose it could make an interesting flowerpot. Maybe you could turn it into a water feature?”
“Or I could hit you over the head with it,” Awena said. Her twin was proving more obstinate and much less enthusiastic than she had hoped he’d be, but then it hadn’t been his idea to steal the stone in the first place, so perhaps it was all just a case of sour grapes. The important thing was that he agreed with her—the stone wasn’t what the museum curator had thought it was. Unfortunately, he didn’t agree that it made it any more important than a well-preserved whetstone. That it had been used to hone blades rather than crush grain made no difference to him.
She took a deep breath, refusing to let him wind her up.
“Do I really have to spell it out to you?” She shook her head.
“Spell away, dear sister. I’m clueless.”
And he really was. He couldn’t see why she’d been compelled to steal it before it was consigned to some dank storage area in the bowels of the museum, never to be seen again.
She wanted him to be as wrapped up with possibilities as she was, not just humoring her. It might have been her idea, but he was her other half and she didn’t just want him to be in this with her; she needed him to be part of it.
“Don’t laugh, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain what you are looking at is the Whetstone of Tudwal Tudglyd.” She let that sink in. The whetstone was one of their father’s obsessions. He’d spent most of his life chasing around the country in search of it.
Geraint stood in silence, running a finger over the stone. “Could it be?” What he really meant was: What makes you so sure that it’s one of the things Father wasted his life on?
And it had been a waste.
They’d grown up with the stories and knew all about the thirteen Treasures of Britain and their supposed properties. She’d grown up with the myths even if she hadn’t grown up with a father, as he’d spent most of their childhood and adolescence chasing shadows.
“Don’t do this, Awena,” he said finally, not unkindly. “Once you start on this trail it’s going to be impossible to stop. You know that, don’t you? Don’t let it steal your life like it stole his.”
“It won’t.”
“I’m serious. He can’t think about anything else. He’s obsessed. It’s like madness that’s worried away at him over the years, removing all trace of his personality. Now all that’s left is this compulsive need to prove he’s right. Take a good look at this thing, see it for what it really is.”
“And what’s that?” she asked guardedly.
“A lump of stone.”
“Of course it isn’t just a lump of stone. We’ve both read Dad’s notes. Look at it. Think about what he worked out.... This has to be the whetstone. It was found in the same area where Tudwal Tudglyd’s whetstone was last known to have been, and there’s no denying it was found with other relics from the same era. It can’t be a coincidence.”
“Can’t it? Or is that just what you want to believe? Dad spent his entire life looking for this. Do you really think he’d have missed it if it was simply sitting in a display case in a local museum? He isn’t an idiot, Awena.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He doubted her. “Certainly it’s the real thing,” she snapped.
“Is it? Can you prove it? Is it supposed to have some kind of property that no other stone has?”
“If it’s used to sharpen a blade and a brave man uses the weapon, then it is guaranteed to draw blood. But if the blade belongs to a coward it won’t even sharpen.”
“But how do you prove that? Or do you have a convenient coward in mind? And who uses swords nowadays. It’s not exactly the weapon of choice, is it?”
“Blade. Not sword. There’s no shortage of knife crime in the city, is there?” She shook her head, refusing to be drawn into it. “It’s not about proving it and you know it. I believe that it’s the genuine article and for the moment that’s all that matters.” She prepared herself for a patronizing response, but surprisingly none came. It had been a while since their father had returned to the cottage, so by rights he ought to be home soon. He’d know just by looking at it and that was all the proof she would need. It was all the proof she had ever needed.
“The question remains—what are you going to do with it?” He still hadn’t conceded that it could be the real thing, never mind that it was. Awena hadn’t really thought much beyond liberating the whetstone.
“I’ll keep it safe until Dad comes home.”
“If he comes home, you mean.”
“He’ll be back,” she said. “He always comes back.” Which was true, but there was no way of knowing when. She was planning on accelerating the process by sending a photo of the whetstone to his cell phone. With luck it would be enough to bring him running.
Geraint covered the stone with the blanket. It was as though he didn’t want to have to look at it.
Awena decided that it might be for the best if she adhered to the old adage of out of sight, out of mind. If he didn’t keep being reminded of it, maybe they wouldn’t have to talk about it until they knew for sure she was right.
She tried hard to hide her disappointment by asking, “How was your trip?”
“Not bad,” he replied, nothing more.
When he’d come bursting into the house he’d been so full of life, desperate to tell her all about his trip; now it was just “not bad,” as though what had happened was suddenly unimportant. The theft had sucked all the joy out of his life. She hadn’t for a minute considered the prospect that he’d see it not as the beginning of some grand adventure they could go on together, but rather her catching their father’s particular madness.
The sooner the stone was out of sight, the better—that much was clear.
The best place for it was in their father’s study.
Geraint never went in there.
He wasn’t interested in reading the volumes and volumes of notes that made up Dad’s journals, the vast quantities of used and battered books he used as his points of reference for the great hunt, or the huge chart hanging proudly on the wall, tracing back their family tree to the last of the true princes of Wales.
The room contained a lifetime’s work, a lifetime’s obsession.
Geraint was right, though; she was in danger of following in his footsteps. She really was her father’s daughter. She was more than capable of becoming obsessed with the search, even though she knew most of them would never be found. There were worse things that might consume her life, especially now that she’d found one of the lost treasures. And didn’t finding one prove the existence of all of the others? In all the years her father had been hunting, he’d never laid his hands on a single one of them. And yet that only fueled his obsession. How would he react now, to actually hold one of them in his hands? To know he’d been right all this time. How would he take that vindication?
What he’d never said on those rare occasions when they’d talked about the quest was what he would do if he ever found one of them. What they did talk about was the history of oppression that was the foundation of Wales, how the English had beaten them down into submission and how these lost relics really were the inheritance of her people. They may have been called the Treasures of Britain, but they belonged to the Celts, not the invaders who came later. These treasures had nothing to do with the Romans, the Danes or the French who invaded their shores. Some of the treasures had their histories in Scotland, but the only documents which recorded their existence were in the Welsh Triads.
They were the Treasures of Wales.
Something to be treasured by all pure-blooded Celts like her family.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_7c25b2cb-b74c-5cca-93cf-3579f82105b1)
He had tried several times to get a better look at the peculiar pieces of stone during the daylight, but every time he did his presence drew curious looks from visitors and cathedral staff. He tried standing on it again to see if he could replicate that weird voice, but the stone remained silent.
He hadn’t noticed the priest he had seen that morning walking across the grounds toward him.
“Can I help you at all?” the cleric asked, a gentle smile on his weathered old face. The heavy crags only served to make him appear closer to God in a literal sense.
The man wrestled down the sudden surge of panic he felt at the curate’s approach and plastered a smile on his own face. It was highly unlikely—if not impossible—that the man recognized him from their previous encounter, but if he did, what of it? He wasn’t duty bound to accept an offer of tea just to salve the curate’s conscience, and walking away was hardly a crime.
“I’m good, thanks,” he said, hoping to keep the man at a distance. “Just taking a few minutes to myself. Soaking in the ambience of the cathedral. It really is an incredible building. Inspiring.”
“That it is,” the cleric agreed, accepting his lie at face value. The curate left him to his contemplation, and as soon as the man was out of sight he crouched down again to take a closer look at the stone he’d been standing on. It was rectangular in shape and stretched almost eight feet in length, but was less than three feet wide, like a grave marker but not. It almost abutted the cathedral wall, stone hugging stone. He ran his fingers across it, sensing there was something strange about the piece of rock, even if he didn’t know what. The fact that it was so large and in a single piece was noteworthy, especially in this region, but what really interested him was why it had been placed so close to the wall. That led to a second question he hoped to answer: What was its purpose?
He ran his fingers across the surface, feeling for any irregularities in the sheet of rock, but as far as he could tell it was perfectly smooth. How long had the stone lain in place? Maybe not time immemorial, but it had certainly been there more than a few centuries. Hence the surface was so smooth, as if it had been worn down by the endless shuffle of penitents’ and pilgrims’ feet. Though given its relative position to the cathedral that was impossible, surely? He lived for a good mystery. They made life interesting.
With one fingertip he found the slightest of indentations. It was so small he almost missed it, but then he found another and knew he was onto something; something had been scratched into the rock once upon a time so long ago that the weather had worn it down to almost nothing.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic water bottle. It was barely half-full, but that should be more than enough for what he intended. He unscrewed the top and searched with his fingers again, locating the slight indent of the markings, and tipped the contents of the bottle over it.
The water splashed and ran across the surface of the stone; some of it found its way into the shallow indentations. It wasn’t about washing them away; the water turned the dirt and grime caught in the cracks a darker shade in contrast to the stone it was ground into. Even without scraping the dirt away he could read the two words that were revealed as if by magic....
Two words that meant he’d found what he had been looking for.
Giraldus Cambrensis.
* * *
IT WAS NIGHT when he returned.
It had been so hard to resist the lure of the stone, but he couldn’t risk drawing more attention; the curate noticing two men loitering around the stone in one day was coincidence enough, a third time was just downright careless. And carelessness led to questions. And questions increased the risk of discovery.
He’d done his best to scatter earth across the surface, masking the newly revealed writing long enough for the soil to dry out and leave the surface seemingly bare again. The risk was that the curate returned to take a closer look before it had dried out. But even so, in this day and age of heathens who’d forgotten their own history, would the man even know who Giraldus Cambrensis had been? It was a risk he’d rather not run, if he could help it. It was always better to go undetected than trust to blind luck and the failings of the school system.
He had brought a crowbar with him, intending to try to prize the stone out of its position and reveal what lay beneath, and with luck turning himself into a grave robber in the process. That brought a wry smile to his lips. He was still struggling to believe that after all this time he’d done it...and by chance. Years and years of focused and very deliberate study, years and years of systematic searching, and he’d almost literally stumbled upon Giraldus Cambrensis’s final resting place.
He moved slowly around the side of the cathedral, keeping to the shadows as best he could. Nosy neighbors might be a cliché, but it was a cliché born in truth as far as he was concerned.
The section of wall closest to the funereal slab was out of sight of most of the street, but working by flashlight was asking for trouble. Someone would see the beam and, even if they didn’t know what it meant, would remember they’d seen it. He needed to operate fast, and as “blind” as possible.
He found the edge of the slab by feel and, on his knees, teased the metal bar down along the edge, pushing at it to feel for its thickness before applying any weight to lever it up. Not that it was going to be easy. The slab had been in place for who knew how long. It was part of the land. It wasn’t just going to pop open. He pushed down with all of his weight and the stone shifted slightly. He pushed again, but it didn’t budge more than that first inch.
He adjusted his position, trying to get more leverage—it was basic physics. A longer bar would have helped. He slid the tip of the crowbar farther in, forcing it into the dirt and underneath the great stone slab to increase his purchase. Then he leaned into it, putting all of his weight and strength into a single huge push to try to shift it.
For a moment he didn’t think it was going to move, then he felt it tear free of the ground, opening a crack no more than six inches wide—but that was all the gap he needed to wedge a piece of wood in place.
His back and shoulders burned from the effort. He could feel the strain in all the muscles around his upper arms and his ribs.
He reached for the flashlight, but didn’t hurry. He took the time to recover his breath and give his heart the chance to slow down. He wasn’t a young man anymore. He had brought his car jack with him, despite the difficulties of concealing it beneath his coat along with the crowbar and the piece of wood he had liberated from a nearby skip. Now he slipped it into the gap beside the wood and worked the jack’s handle until it rose enough to take the weight from the wood, increasing the gap without adding to the strain in his old bones.
He cranked it up another six inches, the jack’s feet being pushed down into the ground by the incredible weight of the slab combined with their small surface area.
He wasn’t sure how much higher he could risk working it.
The street was still silent. There was no sign of anyone approaching either across the footbridge or from within the cathedral.
He risked turning on the flashlight and angling the beam into the wide crack to try and get a first look at his find.
Beetles scurried for darkness, fleeing the too-bright beam as it shone inside. Other, slower-moving creatures slithered for safety.
It took him a moment to process what the contours of the darkness and the shades of dirt meant, but soon he realized he was watching something slide through the gaping eye socket of a skull.
There was no doubt in his mind he’d struck metaphorical gold. The only question was whether the stories were true, and if they were, that what he sought was still inside with the remains just waiting for him to find.
