A Rather Remarkable Homecoming (33 page)

One verse hovered in my mind long after I heard it:

It seemed to sum up all that was good about the Cornish countryside. I wondered if Trevor had deliberately selected this passage to resonate with his struggle to protect Port St. Francis. I sighed contentedly, allowing myself to get lost in the drama of it all.

But about forty-five minutes into the show, out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure directly across the theatre, coming through the door at the back of the special box where the Mosley brothers were seated. It was that thuggy guy who’d shown up at Grandmother Beryl’s place today; the one who stood in the road with folded arms and a menacing attitude. Tonight he’d managed to enter the theatre quietly and unnoticed, for the lights were low and the audience was gazing steadily at the stage.

I watched as the thuggy guy bent over to whisper into the ear of the taller of the Mosley brothers, who inclined his head without turning it. Even in the dim light, I could see his expression change, only slightly but significantly.

I nudged Jeremy and whispered, “Look! Something’s up with the Mosleys!”

Jeremy watched closely as the shorter brother checked his flashy wristwatch, which set off a sharp gleam in the dark theatre. Then the thuggy guy retreated behind the curtains at the rear of the box; and in the next moment, the two Mosley brothers rose quietly, and stealthily stole out of their box.

There had been something urgent and sneaky in the way the Mosley brothers slithered away, despite their deliberate attempt to appear unmoved and casual.

“They’re up to no good, I just know it,” I whispered.

“Right. I’ve had it with those bastards,” Jeremy replied in a low voice. “I’m going out to see what they’re on about.”

“I’m going with you,” I said.

“No way,” he said.

“Yes, ‘way’,” I said, “or else,” I added dramatically, “I’ll scream this place down.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jeremy said. “Let’s go.”

The Mosley brothers and their thuggy driver got into the limo and sped out of town. Jeremy and I were very careful to follow at a distance. Luckily, a farm truck got in between us, so the Mosleys weren’t seeing our car directly behind them.

When they turned onto the country road that led to Grandmother Beryl’s house, I said suspiciously, “Where are they going?”

The answer was soon apparent, for as the road curved away toward farmland, the Mosley limo instead pulled right into Grandmother’s driveway and stopped; whereupon the Mosley brothers and their driver got out on foot and headed toward the house. The farm truck continued on the road that climbed up along the farms and meadows, and Jeremy followed it, bypassing Grandmother’s house.

“Where are you going?” I exclaimed.

“Just parking farther away,” Jeremy said as he maneuvered into a small, dirt area off the road. He turned off the headlights and cut the engine.

“We’ll have to go out on foot if we want to see what they’re up to,” he explained. “You’d better stay with me. I don’t think you’d be any safer sitting in this car alone. We’ll cut across the meadow and come down by the earl’s stone wall. From behind Grandfather Nigel’s garage, we should get a decent view.”

It was a good plan. When we reached Grandfather’s garage, we sidled up along the wall near the earl’s property line, until we came to the back of the garage, where we were able to crouch in the overgrown shrubbery. From that vantage point, we could see quite clearly that the Mosley brothers were standing at the far edge of Grandfather Nigel’s garden, peering over the stone staircase to the little cove below. The thuggy driver was already making his way down the staircase, carrying a flashlight.

The Mosleys remained above, smoking cigarettes. I could see the red dots of the ends of their cigarettes, and from time to time, when the clouds passed away from the moon, I could make out the two pairs of Mosley eyes momentarily glinting in the moonlight.

Jeremy nudged me and nodded toward the horizon line, where a boat had suddenly appeared. As it came closer, it looked like any other yacht that might have been heading for the Port St. Francis harbor. Except that this one stopped here, parallel to Grandmother Beryl’s cove, beyond the rocks, and anchored. Then it did something very odd indeed—it turned out all its lights.

A moment later, one strong signal light could be seen flashing on-off, on-off, on-off.

I watched as, from the cove, the Mosley driver raised his flashlight and echoed the message: on-off, on-off, on-off.

A dinghy must have been lowered from the yacht; for when the moon shone briefly again through the moving clouds, I could see that a little boat was now coming away from the big boat and moving straight toward the shore of Grandmother Beryl’s cove. Two men were in it. They brought their little boat right up on the shore, and beached it there.

“Boy, these look like bad men,” I whispered to Jeremy. Then we both realized we’d heard somebody say this before.

Jeremy murmured, “That’s what Basil told us! He wasn’t raving about Blackstrap Doyle or some smuggler from years ago. He was talking about the Mosleys in the here and now!”

While the Mosley brothers looked on, their driver stepped forward and examined the cargo on the small boat. This appeared to be a stack of packages that looked like large, flat white bricks.

“What are they doing?” I whispered.

“Smuggling drugs, from the look of it,” Jeremy said in a low voice. “I’ll bet that’s another reason why they want to control all this property out here.”

He reached for his mobile, then swore under his breath. “No signal,” he said. “We’ve got to get out on the road and call Alfred. Fast!”

But it was already too late. Because now a truck had pulled into Grandmother Beryl’s driveway. Before we had time to realize what was happening, two more tough-looking guys had popped out of the truck, and were heading toward the garden. They had guns in holsters visible under their open jackets. Meanwhile, the men from the beach were already making their way up the stone staircase with their contraband cargo.

Well. To this day, Jeremy blames me for what happened next. All I did was scrooch a little closer to him. Can I help it if men keep their mobile phones in their pockets? And is it my fault that those damned mobiles are so touch-sensitive that the minute I bumped into Jeremy, his dumb phone started to talk in that mechanized female voice?

“Say a command!” the voice chirruped loudly. Before Jeremy could hastily turn it off, the impatient fembot spoke again, this time, I swear, in a more annoyed tone. “Say a command!” she repeated.

Now all three thugs, plus the two Mosleys, whirled in our direction, just as the moon decided to peek out again through a pocket in the gauzy clouds, thereby shining a most unwelcome light on us. Suddenly, the Mosleys’ motley crew dropped everything, and they all began to run toward us.

“Come on, Pen!” Jeremy exclaimed, grabbing me rather roughly, I must say, and dragging me off in the only direction we could possibly go to get away from the bad guys: down the slope of land toward the sea, where the horseshoe-shaped rock stood as a portal to our escape. But if you think this is an easy thing to do in your nicest evening shoes and dress, guess again.

When we hit the beach, we tore off as fast as we could go, with the Mosley crowd in hot pursuit. First we ran past Basil’s cottage, which was locked and dark. God knows where he was tonight. Fortunately, having just been down here with Basil, we had a better sense of the strange terrain than the Mosley guys did. We knew how to weave our way around the rock pools and cliffs in the dark . . . whereas those other guys stumbled in an attempt to keep up.

We rushed onward, where the wind and sea were rougher, but I knew what Jeremy was thinking: if we hurried, we might reach that cleft in the rock and vanish into it unseen; and in the dark the Mosley guys would never even guess that it was there.

I heard a loud popping sound and realized that someone had fired a shot. The sea was swirling across my ankles and the jagged rocks that we picked our way around; the wind whistled up against the sheer wall of the cliffs. Jeremy had a flashlight but didn’t dare shine it. He just felt his way along the cliff, until his fingers found the keyhole-shaped opening.

“This way, Pen,” he said softly, darting inside and drawing me in with him.

It was a leap of faith. Well, a squish of faith. We were, after all, banking on Basil’s crazy story that he’d seen Paloma go into this opening and yet live to come back out again, so many years ago.

We soon discovered that this unassuming cleft in the cliff wall led into a deeper cave than we’d realized. It was more like a narrow tunnel, about five feet wide and barely six feet high, with a curved but very jagged ceiling and walls. So we had to be quite careful not to scrape our heads or hands against them. The ground beneath our feet was sandy and rocky, with little eddies of water here and there.

Only scant minutes later, we could hear the Mosleys’ men thumping around just outside the cave. They ran right past it, so there was silence for a moment, during which we watched from inside. A short while later, the men returned, angrily walking up and down the shoreline and gazing out to sea, as if waiting to see if we’d tried to swim for it.

“They can’t hold their breath forever,” I heard one of them say.

We backed off, and stood quite still. One of them struck a match, but only to light a cigarette. Smoke wafted in the air. We could hear their voices as they stood there trying to figure out what to do, but I couldn’t make out the words. I started to get the feeling they were going to camp out for awhile and roast marshmallows or something.

Jeremy sensed this, too, and very carefully he pulled me deeper into the cave with him.

“How long are they going to stay there?” I whispered, trembling.

“Depends on how big their operation is tonight,” Jeremy said quietly, “and how badly they want to catch us.”

 

We decided to retreat even farther, following the cave-tunnel, which abruptly turned left and continued. As soon as we’d made that turn, Jeremy was finally able to switch on his flashlight. After we’d walked about twenty-five feet, the tunnel opened into a much wider chamber. Sharp rocks jutted out everywhere from the walls, and without our light, the cave would have been treacherous indeed.

Cautiously we made our way deeper into this larger chamber. Jeremy shone his light dead ahead so we could watch where we stepped, until at last we reached the very back wall.

I gasped when I saw it. For, flat against the wall was a big, lifesized rock construction, which, clearly, human hands had made. It resembled a huge doughnut with a knot at the top, so that it looked like a giant engagement ring mounted against the back of the cave.

“Look!” I whispered, stepping forward to trace my fingers around the strangely familiar carvings decorating it—that very same mesmerizing pattern of swirls, whorls and spirals which I recognized from three places—Paloma’s sketch, Basil’s Scarlet Knot stone, and Great-Aunt Penelope’s doodles in her notebook. What we were now standing in front of was a nearly six-foot tall replica of the Scarlet Knot.

“Jeremy,” I whispered, “remember what Paloma told her interviewer? She said she was haunted by the ghost of Prescott’s mother, so she believed she had to return the stone to its source. Prescott must have shown her this place when they were courting.”

“Which is why she came back here toward the end of her life to return it,” Jeremy agreed.

“Right,” I said. “It all matches up perfectly with Aunt Pen’s minutes about the Great Lady. Do you think Basil took Aunt Pen in here to see this?”

“Of course,” Jeremy replied. “No wonder she let him into her club.”

 

After what I guess was about a half hour, Jeremy went back to check on the tunnel where we’d come in. I had turned on my little pencil-sized flashlight and waited hopefully.

Very soon though, Jeremy retreated back to the chamber where I was waiting.

“I can’t tell if the Mosleys’ men are still out there, because the tide’s coming in, fast. I couldn’t get far enough to see outside. The tunnel is filling up with seawater,” he said grimly. I saw that his shoes and pants were wet. “It’s too late to try to swim for it. This whole place is going to be flooded soon,” he warned.

I glanced around wildly, looking for some escape, but already the seawater had been seeping into the inner chamber itself. I watched, horrified as the tide now came swirling in rapidly with sudden force, already lapping around the giant-sized Scarlet Knot.

But then Jeremy noticed something interesting. “Look!” he said, pointing to where the rising tide was sloshing up over the bottom curve of the “wedding band” of the Scarlet Knot. The water seemed to spill over the stones and disappear.

“It’s acting almost like a drain,” he said, examining it. “There’s got to be some place behind that rock where the water is going.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked in alarm when Jeremy shone his light between the Scarlet Knot and the actual wall of the chamber, then began to wedge himself in there.

He didn’t answer at first, just kept feeling around with his arm and leg. “There’s a narrow opening back here!” he announced. “I’m going to try to get through it and see what’s on the other side!”

Before I could even object, within seconds, he disappeared. I waited for what was probably only a moment but seemed interminable. Then I heard Jeremy’s voice calling out to me.

“Come through, Penny!” he said. “Hurry! There are two steps down, once you get in.”

I flattened myself against the crevice where he’d vanished. The area was worn smooth here. I held my breath and pushed forward, and for a moment I found myself wedged between two rock walls. I pushed again . . . and then popped out on the other side.