Excalibur Rising (21 page)

     As he climbed past the first stack he schooled himself to be patient.  There was no reason to believe that Peacock had necessarily climbed all the way to the top of the ladder.  He could have found what he was looking for at any level, and the ladder ran up four levels. 
      The ladder was a work of art, made of polished oak to match the bookshelves, with wheels that ran on a track around the library.  As he climbed Ryan noticed that the ladder builder had incorporated a book container at every level, making it possible for a person standing on the ladder to pull a book off the shelf and place it in the box to be carried down later.  It was not until he reached the third level that he found a box that contained what appeared to be books.  Closer inspection revealed that the two volumes in the box were, in fact, storage boxes disguised as books.  Ryan looked along the shelf of books that met him at eye level, and realized with a thrill of excitement that none of the books were actual bound volumes. The entire shelf was occupied by storage boxes bound in leather, with gold lettering on the spines.  He could only imagine that one of Crispin Peacock’s ancestors had nursed such a passion for this beautiful room that he could not bear to have the appearance destroyed by shelving mismatching document boxes.
     Ryan could see the space left by the removal of the two volumes already at hand on the ladder. In fact it would seem that more than two volumes had been removed.  Apparently there had once been a third volume.  He carried the two volumes down the ladder and over to the library table.  He judged the binding on the boxes to be Edwardian, early 20
^th
century, several generations removed from Taras Peacock’s generation.  He wondered what had caused Peacock to climb the ladder and select these two volumes.  No, he corrected himself, make that three volumes. One volume had excited Peacock so much that he had abandoned his search and hurried down the ladder to look more closely at his treasure. It was no great stretch of the imagination to conclude that the missing box had contained the Griffinwood Document.
     Ryan opened the first box and found a pile of accounting ledgers, row after row of expenses and receipts written in black ink that had faded to brown.  Despite the luxury of their leather binding, the document boxes had not been designed for maximum preservation of the contents.  The papers were spotted with mildew and rust marks and held together with relatively modern paper clips.  A quick glance was enough for him to know that the documents were not especially old, but without taking the time to read them he would have no idea whether they were important.  Accounting ledgers often revealed unexpected secrets.  There was a lot to be said for following the money.  He closed the box and looked at the lettering on the spine.
Benedictine Hospice, Glastonbury.
     Years of experience had taught Ryan not to jump to conclusions, nonetheless his mind insisted on taking a shortcut.  His excited thoughts ignored the sensible conclusions of a trained academic mind and jumped straight to the fact that the papers had come from Glastonbury, the home of the miraculous Glastonbury thorn purported to have been brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea along with the Holy Grail.  Glastonbury had once been rumored to be the original site of Camelot, although no proof had ever been found.
     He opened the box again as though, knowing now that it had come from Glastonbury, he might find some mystical insight into its contents.  He scrutinized the neatly written accounts.  Nothing had changed; the pages contained nothing but the daily accounting of the expenses of a small group of Benedictine nuns at the turn of the 19
^th
century.
     He picked up the second box and found another pile of papers, older than the first ones, and in much worse condition.  He shuffled through, treating the documents with scant respect, and barely noticing that the papers were shredding under his fingers.  This was nothing but death and burial records for the Sisters of St. John, showing the slow dwindling of the population of the Mother House, until its dissolution in 1901. Presumably that was when the documents had been sent to Griffinwood Manor for safekeeping.
     He worked his way to the bottom of the box until his fingers closed over a small package tucked under the mound of paper.  He pulled the package out into the light.  It was wrapped in brown paper, limp with age, and tied with string that fell to dust beneath his fingers.  He folded back the paper and the light from the stained glass library dome flashed down on the golden object inside, a cross some four inches in length and decorated with dull red stones.  He took a shuddering breath. He knew those stones, he had seen them in Professor Peacock’s hand in Vegas, and he had clutched just such a stone as he stepped through the mist in Norfolk.  It was the same kind of red stone that he had handed to Elaine that very morning, the stone she said would allow Violet to step through the gate.  He missed it, Ryan thought. Taras Peacock had been so excited by what he had found in the third box that he had not even looked into the other two boxes.
     Ryan looked around the library.  If Peacock had found the Griffinwood Document in one of these boxes, what had he done next?  He knew it had ended up in the hands of the Society of Arthurian Scholars, but that would never have been Peacock’s first thought.  First he would have tried to translate it himself.  He would have to swallow a great deal of academic pride before he could admit that the language was unknown to him.  So what would he have used? A dictionary?  So, where were the dictionaries?
     No, he thought, Peacock would not have kept his personal reference books in the library, he would have kept them in a study somewhere else in the house.  Despite his penchant for sending handwritten notes, surely Peacock had a computer, and an e-mail account, and all of the other things that a serious researcher would need and, therefore, he had a study. 
     Ryan slipped the gold cross into his pocket and set off in search of the study.  He stepped out of the library into the magnificent but sadly neglected grand entrance that featured a black and white tiled floor, a sweeping staircase to the upper floors, and several suits of armor.  He had noted the armor when he had first arrived at the manor, and had already made the assessment that they were poor Victorian imitations of the real thing.  However,  they certainly lent a gothic atmosphere and drew the eye away from the peeling paint and chipped tiles.
     He thought again about the Griffinwood Document hidden away in a bound leather box.  Two boxes sat on the library table but where was the third box? Had Peacock delivered it to Molly Walker along with the document, or had he left the box somewhere in the house?  For once he was presented with a question that was easy to answer. Call Molly Walker and she would tell him.  He checked his cell phone. No signal. So the library was not the only place without a signal. If he wanted to make a phone call, he would have to go outside.
     A figure appeared out of the deep shadows behind the staircase, Crispin Peacock with a tray containing a dusty wine bottle and two glasses.
     “I was just coming to find you, old boy,” said Crispin.  “What are you doing out here?”
     “Looking for your cousin’s study,” said Ryan.
     Crispin shook his head. “Already looked,” he said, “nothing there, no computer, no nothing.”
     “Books,” said Ryan. “Did he have reference books?”
     Peacock shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose so,” he said. “The place is a bit of a tip. Do you want to see it?”
     “I certainly do,” said Ryan, forgetting entirely about his need to phone Molly Walker.
     “Follow me,” Peacock commanded, turning on his heel and retreating into the gloomy shadows behind the stairs.  Ryan followed and Peacock led him past several formal living rooms, through an enormous dining room and into a small room with a beamed ceiling, a brick fireplace, and a huge oak desk.
     Peacock set the tray down on a corner of the desk while Ryan fumbled along the wall for a light switch.  The light flickered for a moment as though the bulb was on its last legs but eventually it steadied and Ryan was able to see that the study did in fact contain a book case.
     “What are we looking for?” Peacock asked.
     Ryan spread his hands. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Here’s what I think might have happened.  Your cousin found the document in the library___”
     “You’re sure of that?” Peacock asked.
      “Yes, I’m sure of that.” Ryan replied.  “I’m also sure he would have tried to translate it himself, so it’s possible he used one of the reference books in this room.”
     “I don’t see how that helps us,” said Peacock. “Apparently he couldn’t translate it, and that’s why he took it to those people in London.”
     “Trust me,” said Ryan. “There’s method in my madness.  I know what I would do, and I think most researchers would do the same thing. The document was old, and probably fragile, so he wouldn’t want to handle it very much, and he most certainly would not photocopy it. Photocopying , that would expose it to too much light.  I think he probably hand copied some of the major paragraphs, or diagrams, or whatever they were, and he would have used that to try to find the language.  I’m betting that somewhere in here we will find at least a few lines from the document.”
     “Well, it’s worth a try,” said Peacock, “although I don’t know how that gets us to the sword.”
     “It’s not just about the sword,” said Ryan. “There’s something much bigger than just the sword.”
     “Any idea what?” Peacock asked.
     Ryan hesitated, thinking of all the things that he had not shared with Crispin Peacock, and ashamed that he had allowed himself to forget about Barry Marshall’s children.  The thought of where they might be and what might be happening to them, dulled the excitement he felt as the pieces of the puzzle came together. 
     Now, he thought, was not the time to mention the children. 
    “So what’s behind it all?” Peacock asked.
     “No idea,”Ryan said, “but I plan to get to the bottom of it one way or another. You look through the papers on the desk.  We’re looking for something that looks like writing but isn’t.”
     “Looks like writing but isn’t?” Peacock repeated.
      “Squiggles, hieroglyphics, pictograms, curlicues,” said Ryan. “I’m going to check the dictionaries.”
     Peacock began to leaf through the papers on the desk and Ryan checked Professor Peacock’s reference shelf.  He pulled the books out one by one shaking them to see if any papers would fall out.  He went through Norse languages, Sumerian, West Germanic, Tibetan, and Welsh without finding anything.  No surprise there. Taras Peacock would have had no trouble recognizing any of those languages. He ran his finger along the shelf and came to rest on a slim volume with tattered binding. It was a book that had been much used, or much abused.  He read title;
The Search for our Ur Language; Vincent Cornwellian Ph.d..  
He knew the name, knew the man’s reputation and understood the subject; the search for the original, the Ur, source of all written language.  Ryan did not personally believe that such a language existed but obviously Taras Peacock had found the book useful. 
     He flipped through the pages and found what he was looking for. A sheet of notepaper was folded in among the pages; Taras Peacock’s copy of the Griffinwood Document.
    “Got it,” he declared.
     Crispin Peacock looked up from his search of the papers on the desk.
     “What?”
      “I have it.  I’ve found his notes.”
     He spread the paper on the desk under the light, which had again begun to flicker.
     “Well, no wonder he was stumped,” Ryan said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
     The page was filled with sweeping runic-like characters transcribed by Taras Peacock in ball point pen.  Nothing on the page was familiar to Ryan.
      Crispin Peacock looked over Ryan’s shoulder and then stretched out his hand and turned the paper sideways. His hand trembled slightly as he touched the paper.
     “That doesn’t help,” Ryan said.
     “No, probably not,” said Peacock.  “Still, well done old chap, very well done.  Good detective work.  Shall we have that wine now?”
     Ryan registered the abrupt change of subject and the sudden loss of interest.  Peacock had done the same thing in the library when Ryan mentioned that Violet had a vision of a nun.  Peacock had already uncorked the dusty old wine bottle, and now he poured red liquid into the two wine glasses.  Ryan wished it had been white wine. The memory of the red wine in Las Vegas still haunted him, red wine spilling across the carpet.  Red, he thought.  Red light spilling across Crispin Peacock’s white shoes, turning them red.
      Ryan held the glass steady and concentrated on regulating his breathing,  Red shoes. The man who took Barry Marshall’s children wore red shoes, or maybe not, maybe he had simply crossed into a pool of red light, the red light of the sanctuary lamp.  Could the shoes have belonged to Crispin Peacock?  Why, he asked himself, would Crispin Peacock do such a thing? 
     “You okay, old man?” Peacock asked.
      “I just need to make a phone call,” he replied, needing to find an excuse to leave the room.  He needed to be alone.  He needed to think.  He needed not to drink the wine. “I had an idea I wanted to run by Professor Walker.”
      “Professor Walker?  Peacock asked. “Do I know her?”
     Ryan was alert now, wondering how Peacock knew that Professor Walker was a woman.  He was certain that he had never mentioned her name, never referred to her as Molly Walker.
     “She’s with the Society of Arthurian Scholars,” Ryan said. “I was wondering about what else your cousin took to them.”
     “Probably nothing,” Peacock said airily. He sipped his wine, or maybe he only seemed to sip his wine.  “I can usually find a signal in the corner of the dining room, up against the window,” he said helpfully.
     “Thanks,” said Ryan. He set down his wine glass and went out of the study and into the vast dining room with its yellowed wall paper, and mismatched chairs around a huge refectory table.
      A dim light filtered through the veil of dust cloaking the French windows, and as he stepped into the light his phone sprang into life, chirping and beeping the day’s activity.  He checked the screen.  Molly Walker had called him at three o’clock, and again at four, and then about every half hour for the rest of the afternoon.  Interspersed with her calls were missed calls from Todd and Michael Mandretti, and finally a voice mail.  He dialed and waited for his message.  As he waited he looked out the window and saw Crispin Peacock hurrying across the lawn in the direction of the ruined chapel.