Alex Archer - Celtic Fire

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.

They were more “ifs” than he would have liked, but in the grand scheme of things he was closer now than he had ever been, and that was something.

The flashlight’s beam caught the glint of something impossibly bright lying on the desiccated remains and his heart raced as everything he’d ever dreamed of became so much more real. It was there. He’d found it. He hadn’t expected it to have retained its luster after all this time, but there was nothing else it could be. There just wasn’t. Not buried with him. It had to be...had to be...

He’d read the letter a thousand times even though it was supposed to be secret, and in it he’d learned the truth about the bones of Gerald of Wales and what they had been buried with. There were countless legends of powerful weapons, great swords, shields, armor, mantles, cups imbued with magic—as many stories as there were weapons to be talked of. Gerald, the letter claimed, had been interred with a weapon of great power, both to keep him safe in the afterlife and to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

As with all treasure hunts there were hundreds of dots that needed to be connected, but this was it, the final dot. With the artifact in his hand he would finally know if it truly possessed the properties legend promised.

And if it did...

He slid his left hand into the narrow slit held open by the jack, and eased his arm all the way inside up to the shoulder, imagining the weight of the slab coming down on top of him. His fingers scrabbled against bone and tiny skittering creatures that crawled over the remains, until he found a hand closed around metal.

He intended to ease it free of the bony grasp, but it refused to move, almost as if the dead man was still intent on keeping the weapon safe as he had done for so long.