The Camelot Code (16 page)

Mitzi eases her physical and emotional pain with some retail therapy.

By the time she settles on the Airbus to the UK, she’s assuaged herself with the purchase of several packs of Calvin underwear, a red button-up long-sleeved top and a navy-and-white striped shirt to go with a long milled wool skirt in the same colour, a pale-blue V-neck lambs’ wool jumper and a matching T-shirt to wear beneath it.

It’s been a long time since she’s bought wool but she has no intention of freezing in those crazy British temperatures. Given the option, she’d never even visit a country that thinks seventy degrees is a good summer’s day.

The transatlantic trip turns out to be more bearable than the internal flight was from San Francisco to Washington. No screaming kids around her. No warring families dug into the trenches of coach-class seating. By the time she’s had a deep Ibuprofen-induced sleep and watched several weepy movies, the plane is hitting the blacktop at Heathrow, or Hell Row as she heard the cabin crew calling it.

It’s gone midnight when she clears customs and finds her way to the airport Hilton. No sooner does she set the digital clock by her bed and crash out than it’s buzzing and flashing with all the urgency of a nuclear alarm.

It’s seven a.m.

Mitzi can’t believe six hours vanished in a blink.

Her shoulders and neck have stiffened post-car-crash, especially on the side where the safety belt jerked tight on impact and prevented her being thrown around the tumbling vehicle like a rag doll in a washing machine.

She puts on the new skirt and striped shirt and finds it doesn’t really go with the lamb’s wool jumper like she hoped. Worse than that, the black rings around her eyes are now so dense and circular they look like some joker painted them on her face while she was asleep. Her nose has also swollen more and turned black across the fracture. She uses a bathroom mirror to fix a new dressing and tells herself, ‘Mitz, you’re gonna have to give up that dream of pulling a royal husband while you’re here.’

Around eight she heads downstairs to breakfast. She has an hour in which to meet up with Bronty, brief him, check out and be in reception to meet the ambassador’s driver to take them to their meeting.

A young woman stood by the restaurant door takes note of her room number and shows her to a table for two, which by no accident is in the far corner where she can’t frighten other guests.

Bronty turns up soon after a young Polish waiter has left her with a pot of black coffee and a sympathetic look. The FBI man’s dressed in caramel-coloured cords and a pink Lacoste polo shirt. He has a cable-knit brown sweater draped over his shoulders.

‘Sweet Mother of God,’ says the ex-priest as he settles at the table. ‘What happened to you?’

Mitzi puts her cup down. ‘That’s your one free cheap shot. Now, do you want coffee? Or do you want to push your luck with more questions about the face?’

The tinted windows of the armour-plated Range Rover give Lance Beaucoup and Jennifer Gwyn the sinful luxury of holding hands without worrying whether bodyguards in the following car might see them.

They travel north along coastal roads, past Avonmouth, then west over the Second Severn Crossing, skirting Newport and into the six hundred square miles of wilderness that is the Brecon Beacons.

The four-by-four rumbles into a rugged landscape of forests, fields, lakes and mountains. It’s a stretch of countryside that is the among the most guarded in Britain.

Jennifer runs a finger gently over the ridges of Lance’s scarred knuckles as he grips the steering wheel. ‘What are these? Evidence of a misspent youth?’

‘Fights won and lost. Childhood scuffles and adult battles. I remember each and every wound.’

She puts him to the test. ‘This?’

He glances at a shiny white bridge spanning the first and second knuckles of his left hand. ‘A brawl in a Parisian bar. My best friend’s twenty-first birthday.’

‘And this?’

He looks at a sliver crease the length of his little finger. ‘Ah, that was a fall from my girlfriend’s Vespa.’ There’s a hint of nostalgia in his voice. ‘I was seventeen and she nineteen.’

‘And pretty?’

‘
Very.
We hit a patch of oil and I came down hard on my hand. Fractured my collarbone as well. It hurt a lot, but not as much as when she left me for a married man.’

‘
C’est la vie,
’
says Jennifer. ‘Love sometimes ends in people being hurt.’

He takes a beat, looks at the road ahead and then asks, ‘Will you hurt me one day?’

She grips his hand tightly and smiles sadly. ‘You know I will. Ours is a love that will break both our hearts.’

Bronty excitedly tugs Mitzi’s arm as she checks them out at the reception desk. ‘They’ve sent a Rolls-Royce for us.’ He virtually scampers out of the hotel towards the waiting vehicle.

She gets her credit card receipt and follows him outside. ‘Looks older than Joan Rivers,’ she says eyeing the vintage vehicle.

‘It is,’ says the driver, a former soldier called Harold, now in his fifties. ‘Considerably older. This is a Phantom IV, ma’am. Hand-crafted by the same team that created the first Rolls for the queen.’ He opens the rear door for them. ‘If you please.’

Mitzi slips inside, followed awkwardly by Bronty, who is pulling an antiseptic wipe from a travel-pack he’s clutching.

The door shuts without a sound and the driver continues his story as he settles into the front seat and glides the car away from the hotel. ‘You are sitting in the most exclusive Rolls-Royce ever made.’ He eyes Bronty wiping the armrests. ‘It is also valeted every day, sir.’

The FBI man embarrassingly balls his tissue and slips it into a pocket.

‘This model is one of eighteen built in the early fifties and they were only made for royalty and heads of state.’

Mitzi looks at him in the rear-view as she responds, ‘So, did Sir Owain buy it from a royal or a state official?’

‘I have no idea, ma’am. You’ll have to ask him yourself.’

Bronty notices the traditional flying lady statue over the front grille has been replaced by a different symbol. ‘What’s that figure on the hood, the one where the usual Rolls statue goes?’

Harold takes delight in explaining. ‘Ah, well, sir, just as the queen’s original Rolls had a special mascot of St George slaying a dragon, Sir Owain’s has an individual sculpture on the bonnet. We call them bonnets, not hoods, sir. The statue is of an unknown knight, atop the crest of a hill where a famous battle was fought. It’s part of the family’s heraldic crest. Honour in Anonymity.’

‘That’s a motto that wouldn’t work in Hollywood,’ says Mitzi. She accidently presses a button on her armrest and a glass screen slides up behind the driver.

His voice crackles from recessed speakers. ‘That’s for privacy, ma’am. Should you wish to speak to me, there’s a microphone button next to the one you just pressed. When the green light is on I can both hear you and speak to you. Otherwise, I will leave you in peace for the rest of our journey, which will take approximately fifty minutes.’

Mitzi says, ‘Thanks,’ but she’s not sure if he’s heard her or not. She turns to Bronty. ‘Did you get a message from Vicks to call me about the cross?’

He covers his face with his hands. ‘Sorry, I forgot. Eleonora had me working so hard on her case, I just didn’t get round to it.’

‘Great. At least I know where I stand in the food chain.’

‘You’re now at the very front.’ He smiles as genuinely as he can manage. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Whatever you can tell me. Why is the Celtic cross unlike normal crucifixes, and what does the circle signify?’

‘Well, it’s popularly believed that when foreign missionaries started to try to convert Druids to Christianity, St Patrick came upon a stone carved with the circle for the moon and he insisted a Latin crucifix was carved over it. He blessed the new symbol of crucifix and moon united and the first Celtic cross was born.’

‘Neat. You think it’s true?’

‘There’s as much to prove it as disprove it. Another theory has it that the circle is a Eucharistic emblem, the holy wafer of Christ, which is always round. Others believe it represents the halo of the Holy Ghost. These days everyone from the Church of Wales to any tourist company with a connection to Ireland, Scotland or Wales seems to use it. Plus online mystics, astrologers, shops selling fortune-telling crystals and any Irish folk group that’s ever played in public.’

‘All bullshit, then?’

‘One man’s bullshit is another man’s faith. And as we both know, faith can move mountains.’

‘And make lots of money.’

‘Of course. Nothing ever works without money – not even the church.’ Bronty remembers a story from his days as a priest. ‘Crazy old father in my seminary insisted the circle on the cross was nothing to do with the Eucharist or St Patrick. He said it was Christian recognition of an alliance with the Round Table Knights of King Arthur.’

‘Hard to imagine Jesus and Merlin in the same breath.’

‘Any harder than envisaging St George slaying a dragon, water being turned into wine or a virgin birth?’

‘Suppose not.’

‘Anyway, the old priest was a great storyteller. He used to entertain us with tales about how holy crosses for the knights were cast from metal dug from Jesus’s tomb by the Apostles. He said they were half dagger, half cross and would also be used to sink into the hearts of heathen warriors to save their souls.’

‘That’s a nice Christian act. Have you seen the sketch made by the store girl in Maryland?’

He looks guilty. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t.’

She digs in her purse and takes out a folded copy.

He takes it off her and looks. ‘It’s hard to tell from this, as I guess the scale and dimensions are all wrong, but it looks part dagger, part crucifix.’ He hands it back with a smile. ‘That said, the pointed end was probably so the cross could be stuck in the earth and Mass held on a hillside or suchlike.’

She folds the paper up and returns it to her purse. ‘You think we should call your old priest and show him this?’

Bronty laughs. ‘Mitzi, Father Ryan was very fond of the altar wine. It aided the colour of his storytelling, if you get my drift.’

‘Okay, but if he believed this King Arthur and holy cross stuff maybe other people do. That would explain why it was valuable and why people killed for it. You know, like the Holy Grail and fragments from the True Cross?’

‘King Arthur didn’t even exist,’ he says dismissively. ‘Anyway, I thought you said Vicky had shown the sketch to someone at the Smithsonian?’

‘She has and they said Iron Age, remember?’

‘I do,’ he answers snappily. ‘And they’re much more likely to be right than Father Ryan.’

‘Still no harm in checking. Experts almost always disagree with each other.’

He shakes his head at her stubbornness. ‘Then you’ll need to do it through prayer and divine intervention – he died six or seven years ago.’

Mitzi falls quiet and mulls over the cross as she stares out of the car window. The landscape is rapidly changing as the city starts to rise up and wrap its arms of bricks and glass around them.

She takes out her smartphone, clicks on the camera function, leans close to Bronty and demands, ‘Smile!’

He forces a grin.

She takes the shot, and holds the camera so they can both see the result. ‘It’s for when I get back. I want to show the girls that I was in a Rolls. It might distract them from wanting to kill me for staying away so long.’

Caergwyn Castle blushes pink in the afternoon sun. Its four corner towers and a sturdy central keep stand rudely exposed against the soft greens of fields and forests.

Jennifer Gwyn steps from the Range Rover. She’s wearing a light boat-neck sweater and blue Jacquard trousers, having chosen comfort over glamour for the two-hour road trip. The air is refreshingly crisp, with a hint of flint and iron and she enjoys the feel of a gentle wind in her hair as she looks up at the battlements.

She knows he is there. Behind the stone at the top of the tower, watching. Looking down through glassed slits that once concealed the deadly arrows of the country’s finest bowmen.

Myrddin.

He has known her all her life. At times, understood her better than she could herself.

The old man has had much to say while she’s been away in America. Once she’s face-to-face with him, he’s bound to peel open her thoughts.

The burly bodyguards spill from their vehicles and begin to relax. The SAS and Marines constantly train in outer sections of the fortified grounds. Arthurian ‘soldiers’ are drilled and barracked closer to the castle walls. Those two rings of deadly steel are supplemented by an armed security team that only operates inside the ancient building.

A moon-faced butler in black suit and white shirt approaches, followed by two young footmen in red jackets. ‘Welcome back, Lady Gwyn.’

‘Thank you, Alwyn. How is everybody?’

He walks with her to the door, as the footmen take cases from the Range Rover and instructions from Lance. ‘I am pleased to say that all are well, m’lady. Mrs Stokes is off as you know, due to have her first child next week, so Nerys is filling in as head chef.’

‘She’s up to that?’

‘Most certainly. Don’t tell Mrs Stokes this, but Nerys’s lamb cawl is the finest since my mother made it.’

Jennifer laughs and gives a traditional Welsh response:
‘Cystal yfed o’r cawl a bwyta’r cig
’
–
‘It is as good to drink the broth as eat the meat.’

He’s pleased to hear her use the old language. ‘Will you and Mr Beaucoup be dining alone tonight? Only —’

She anticipates his comment. ‘No. We will eat with Myrddin. He will curse me into my next lifetime if we do not join him.’

‘A wise decision, your ladyship.’

Alwyn leaves her in the grand entrance. It is a cavernous space of dark wooden floors and walls, coats of armour, heraldic crests and mounted animal heads.

The young footmen smile as they pass her and haul cases up a grand staircase that splits at the top into two galleys.

Lance appears. Apprehension shows in his eyes. There is no escaping Owain’s presence in here. The castle is steeped in his heritage. His spirit runs like electricity through every room.

Jennifer sees his fear. ‘You feel him, don’t you?’

He tilts his head in resignation. ‘It is impossible not to.’

She takes him lightly by the hand and walks him into a corridor. ‘Come, let’s take tea in the southern drawing room. Afterwards, you can do your work and then we’ll meet again for dinner.’

‘With Myrddin?’

‘Yes, with Myrddin.’ She sees his worry. ‘I will see him first. Make sure that I soften the blows.’