C. Palov - Ark of Fire

“Being a young girl, I’m surprised that you weren’t, er—”

“Indoctrinated? Having been raised by a mother who repeatedly told me that she would clean up her act, and who repeatedly failed to make good on the promise, made me a hard sell. Deep-seated trust issues, I suppose.” She readjusted her legs, the dark space a tight fit for the two of them. “Having sat through all those Sunday sermons, I know that men like my pops and Stanford MacFarlane lie awake at night, consumed with visions of a global theocracy.”

She paused a moment, recalling the earlier one-on-one conversation. “Although I get the feeling that, unlike Pops, MacFarlane thinks of himself as some sort of Old Testament patriarch.”

“One of those unsavory bastards who prays before the bloodletting, hmm?”

Edie shuddered. “He’s probably praying as we speak.”

Putting an arm around her shoulder, Caedmon pulled her close. “As long as there’s a chance of finding the Ark, you will be safe. MacFarlane knows that if he harms you in any way, I’ll refuse to comply with his wishes.”

“You don’t actually trust him to keep his word, do you?”

It being too dark in the closet for her to discern Caedmon’s features, she sensed rather than saw his sardonic smile.

“In my experience, trusting one’s enemy is a fine art.”

In the same way that she sensed the smile, Edie suddenly sensed its disappearance.

“It’s my fault that you got dragged into this mess. I should never have agreed to—”

Edie put a hand over his mouth, sshhing him. “Since meeting you at the National Gallery of Art, everything that I’ve done—and I mean everything —from coming to England to making love to riding in the back of that refrigerated truck, I’ve done of my own free will. We’re in this together, Caedmon. And don’t for one second think that we’re not. There was no way that either of us could have known they’d place a tracking device on me.”

“Are you saying that the punch-up at the Covered Market was merely a feint? Bloody hell. I should have seen that one coming. From the onset, MacFarlane has remained one step ahead of me.”

Hearing the self-recrimination in his voice, she thought a change of subject in order. “We now have less than sixteen hours to figure out the meaning of those two geese in the basket. All we know is that one of the geese represents Philippa.” She sighed, well aware that it was a very brief allotment of time. “I wish we knew more about Philippa. Other than the fact that she married Galen and she joined a nunnery, we’ve got precious few clues.”

“The nunnery . . . that’s it. You, Edie Miller, are bloody beautiful!”

Without warning, Caedmon began to loudly bang on the closet door with his balled fist.

“What the hell’s goin’ on in there?” came a deep-throated voice on the other side of the locked door.

“Tell MacFarlane that I know where the Ark is hidden.”

CHAPTER 63

Onward, Christian soldiers, Caedmon silently mused, realizing that each of the four armed men gathered around the table wore a Jerusalem cross ring on his right hand.

“And you’re absolutely certain that the two geese depicted in the stained glass window will lead us to the Ark of the Covenant?” MacFarlane gestured to the Canterbury drawing that lay on the tabletop.

Seated in front of a laptop computer, Caedmon stopped typing, taking a moment to glance at his adversary. He knew that he served but one purpose. Once he fulfilled that purpose, he would no longer be in a position to safeguard Edie.

Surreptitiously, he glanced at the locked closet door on the far side of the room.

Somehow he had to devise a suitable enticement, a bargaining chip, that he could use to garner Edie’s freedom. Until then, he would merely reveal enough to whet MacFarlane’s voracious appetite. But not so much that he lessened his overall worth. Stanford MacFarlane had to believe that without him, he would never find the Ark.

“As I mentioned earlier, one of the geese symbolizes Philippa in her role as the good housewife to her husband, Galen of Godmersham. After Galen’s death, Philippa joined a nunnery, where she lived out her remaining days. With that in mind, I believe that the second goose also represents Philippa; nuns are often referred to as the bride of Christ. Or the good housewife of Christ, as it were.”

MacFarlane took a moment to digest the crumb just tossed to him. “What does Galen’s widow being a nun have to do with anything?” he asked, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. He’d already been led down a false path by one man. Clearly, he was not about to venture forth without a proper road map.

“It’s possible that Philippa took the Ark with her to the nunnery.” He jutted his chin at the Oxford University search engine that he’d pulled up on the Internet. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to find out which order Philippa joined. Although it may take some time, as there were scores of now-defunct religious orders active in the fourteenth century.”

“Time is the one thing I’ve got in short supply.”

As he waited for the search results, Caedmon couldn’t help but wonder at MacFarlane’s impatience to find the Ark. It made him think that the self-styled Warriors of God were operating under some sort of deadline.

But a deadline for what?

Though he was tantalized by the ancient mystery that had beguiled such luminaries as Newton and Freud, he was keenly aware that lives had been ruthlessly taken; MacFarlane’s obsession with the Ark knew no bounds.

“Ah! We have a hit,” he announced, pointing to the computer screen. “According to a fourteenth-century document called the Regestrum Archiepiscopi —”

“Can the Latin,” MacFarlane snarled.

“Right.” Properly chastened, he decided to dumb down all relayed material. “What you are looking at is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s registry of nunneries compiled in the year 1350. That being two years after the plague, I suspect the archbishop was very keen to take a head count. Since most folk in the Middle Ages rarely traveled more than thirty miles from the place of their birth, I’ll first search for Philippa in the Kent listings.”

As he scrolled the register, Caedmon knew that he was operating on nothing more than a strong hunch. A hunch that if proved wrong could have tragic results.

“There she is,” he murmured. “Philippa, widowed wife of Galen of Godmersham, is listed as a member of the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to the entry, she entered the nunnery with a dowry worth approximately—”

“Just tell me where the priory is located,” MacFarlane i nterrupted.

“It is located in the hamlet of Swanley, southeast of London.”

MacFarlane turned to the behemoth with the sutured head. “Pull it up on the GPS.”

Using a small stylus that looked ridiculous in his oversized hand, the brute began pecking away on a handheld device.

“I’ve got it. It’s at the intersection of highways M20 and M25,” he announced, passing the handheld computer to his superior.

MacFarlane studied the computer-generated map. “You were right. Swanley is exactly thirty miles from Canterbury. Which means we can be there within the hour.”

Caedmon vetoed the idea with a shake of the head. Knowing that MacFarlane was a man willing to punch above his own weight, he calmly pointed out the obvious. “If we traipse around a medieval priory in the middle of the night, we might very well be confronted by the local constabulary. Particularly if the nunnery is listed on the Heritage Trust. Given the delicate task at hand, we will be better aided by the light of day than the gloom of night.”