The Nightingale Legacy (50 page)

He just held her hands, remaining still. Then she shook herself and there was this strange smile on her mouth. She turned from him then and once again touched the massive sword. She said, “North, there’s something written on it here, just where the handle fits to the blade. Can you make it out?”

He stepped closer and squinted at the vague lettering. He said aloud, “I believe it says something like
Excalibur.
” He stared at the sword and said again, “
Excalibur.
No, my God, that’s legend, ancient myth. It’s not real, it can’t be real. It’s simply not possible. I won’t believe it. We’re in this strange buried chamber and our minds aren’t functioning properly. No, I won’t believe it.”

“King Arthur’s sword,” Caroline said slowly. She traced her fingertips over the etched lettering. “His sword. Malory wrote all about it. King Mark has nothing to do with anything here. He never did. All along, it was King Arthur and the magic sword that came loose from the stone only for him. But it came loose for me as well. That sword came free in my hand so easily, why, I lifted it effortlessly and swung it. Why? Because I was in danger? I don’t know, but what other explanation could there be? And now it’s back
where it belongs again. The sword must remain here, North, it must.”

“I don’t believe we could pull it out in any case.” But North nonetheless, simply because he had to try, grasped the sword between his hands and pulled with all his strength. It didn’t even quiver.

“It will stay here,” he said, “since no one could pull it free, except for you.”

“When I desperately needed it or I would have died.”

North disliked the thought of magic, thoroughly disliked anything he couldn’t eventually explain, but he couldn’t deny the presence of the sword in front of him or the etching clear and fine on its shining steel. Had she really pulled it free? Rather, had the sword come free in her hands because it was magic?

He smiled down at his wife. “Those jewels aren’t embedded in the stone. What do you want to do with them, Caroline?”

She leaned forward to pick up one of the golden chalices and bumped her hip against the stone. She felt the gold piece of jewelry she’d tripped over when she was trying to escape from Bess Treath. Slowly she withdrew it. It was an armlet. It seemed to match the one that sat in its place of honor on the crimson bed of velvet in the drawing room with the etched letters
REX
on it.

“Where did you get that? It looks just like the other one.”

“It does look like the other one’s twin. I tripped over it when I was running away from Bess Treath and stuffed it in my cloak pocket. There’s etching on this one, North. Can you make it out in this dim light?”

He squinted at the etching, turned the armlet this way and that, then very slowly lowered it. He looked very pale in the shadowy light. His hand holding the armlet was none too steady.

“I don’t believe this,” he said.

“What is it?” she said, clutching at his arm.

“I really hate to have to say this. This armlet shouldn’t exist, shouldn’t feel warm and alive in my hand, as if it was worn just moments ago.” He handed her the armlet. “Here, Caroline. Read it.”

She turned it over and over in her palms, just feeling it, not looking closely at it. He said, “Are you reading it with your fingers?”

She gave him a smile. “Actually, I really don’t have to. It’s the mate to the other one, and since the other one says
REX,
I have no doubt that this one says
REGINA.
”

“Oh no, it’s much more specific than that,” North said. “It says
Guinevere.
”

T
HE
E
ARL AND
Countess of Wyndham were seated in the drawing room, the Duchess frowning sadly into her teacup. “To think, Marcus, we missed all the excitement, every drop of it, and only by three days. It’s not fair.”

“You must have just missed my messenger,” North said.

“Your messenger,” the earl said, “is right this minute very likely enjoying himself greatly. My servants will feed him and cosset him and will no doubt wring every scrap of information out of him, count on it, then they’ll probably send him back with advice, the bloody meddlers.”

“Now, Duchess, it is fair,” Caroline said. “It was our adventure, not yours. Now, since you and Marcus just might have been the ones to save the day, North and I wish to thank you both very much and to give you this.” Caroline handed the Duchess a beautiful gold necklace, thick and rich-looking, so very old, yet shining and vibrant, warm to the touch.

“You can wear it with your pearls,” the earl said, lightly touching his fingertips to the rich gold links.

“As for the remaining jewels and gold coins and jewelry, like you and the Duchess, Caroline and I are sending some to the British Museum, giving the chalices to the Salisbury Cathedral, and displaying the remainder here at Mount Hawke so all can come and see them.”

“If we ever lose all our groats, we can always sell a bracelet or two and save ourselves,” Caroline said.

“Ha, you’d send me to work in the tin mines before you’d part with a single piece of jewelry we found,” North said, lightly stroking his fingertips over her arm.

She smiled, and for a brief moment it was a faraway smile, one that severed her from all of them completely, but then she was back again, and her smile was warm and filled with mischief and happiness. She looked over at the bed of crimson velvet. In it now were two armlets, touching each other, together again for as long a time as the Nightingales existed. As for the sword, she and North had agreed that it be left where it was and that no one else should know about it, not even their family, not even the Earl and Countess of Wyndham. He’d told her that same night, “The fewer who know, the better. Rafael Carstairs won’t say a thing, I’ve already spoken to him, and naturally Coombe won’t.”

Caroline had frowned, saying, “It still isn’t enough, North. We don’t want anyone accidentally stumbling upon it. Indeed, from the beach you can see the shadows there in the middle of the cliff, see there’s something strange. Anyone with a whit of curiosity would investigate. I know I would. The last thing we want is scavengers going in there and trying to steal it. No, what we need is a nice explosion of some kind. The good Lord knows there are enough of them at the damned tin mines.”

“We need a bloody miracle,” North said. “God, I’m so tired I can’t think anymore. We’ll worry about it in the morning.”

Both of them had indeed considered it a miracle. Near to dawn that same night, when they’d finally fallen into their bed, so exhausted they could barely think, the wind had risen to gale force, the rain had pounded the earth and uprooted trees, sending even huge rocks tumbling over the cliffs and into the water, and the cliff had collapsed in on itself, sealing away forever that chamber and the sword
Excalibur
embedded in that slab of stone.

Caroline said now to her mother-in-law, “You refused to tell me what you wanted of the treasure. Please, you must have whatever it is you desire. Marie, too.”

Cecilia Nightingale said, “I’ll ask Marie. Doubtless she would enjoy one of the armlets. As for me, my dear, I would just as soon never touch any of those things again for as long as I live.”

“Why ever not, Mother?” North said, his head cocked to one side in question.

“Er, it’s rather difficult, North,” she said, looking down at her hands, which were whiter and softer now since she’d come to Mount Hawke. “I saw the armlet Caroline placed over there on that crimson velvet, the one your great-grandfather supposedly found here on Mount Hawke land. And the one beside it that you found, Caroline, in the cliff.”

“Yes,” Marcus Wyndham said. “I found the first one in that croaking old clock. It was the reason the thing sounded so bloody ugly, like a sick person trying to cough.”

Caroline said, “I guess it will remain a mystery. Who put it there and why? When was it done? Why didn’t any of the Nightingale men ever say anything about it?”

“It’s not a mystery, Caroline,” Cecilia Nightingale said.

“What do you mean, Mother? Do you know anything about the damned thing?”

“Ah, well, I did it, you know.”

“Did what, Mother?”

Cecilia Nightingale looked at her son and said, “I overheard your grandfather speaking to your father. It was one of the very few times your grandfather wasn’t screaming at your father to rid himself of me. Anyway, I eavesdropped. Your grandfather was showing your father the armlet. He was stroking it as if it was alive, as if it was the most precious thing in the world. He said that the Nightingale men
kept it close, never showing anyone else. You see, North, your great-grandfather, who had found the wretched thing, had nearly had it stolen, and thus he hid it away. He didn’t tell your grandfather about it until he was dying. Your grandfather, who’d been ill the previous winter, decided it was time to pass the armlet down to his son, your father. I’ll never forget how he stroked the thing, caressed it as one would a man or a woman. It was obscene, and rather pathetic. I watched when your grandfather placed the armlet reverently back into the safe. I saw the combination. Late that night, I opened the safe and took the armlet. I wanted to get back at your grandfather, North, as simple as that. He loved the armlet as much if not more than a human being loves another human being. I hated it and I hated him, so I took the damned armlet and hid it in the clock. Paltry of me, I know, but I wanted him to suffer, to lose something he valued above all else. No one said a word. It was as if the thing had never existed, but I knew the pain he must have felt, knowing someone had stolen it and not knowing who had done it. His own son? I do wonder if he blamed his son, your father, if he even accused him of taking it. Or perhaps he believed it was one of the male martinets. And I was pleased because I knew he’d never know. He would listen to that bloody clock for the rest of his days and never realize what was inside it. And now you found its mate.”

“Where the devil do you think that first armlet came from?” North asked no one in particular.

“Well,” Caroline said slowly, eyeing the armlet, “it must have been accidentally dropped by those people who were carving the chamber into the cliff. Good Lord, at least a thousand years ago, don’t you think? There was no reason for your great-grandfather to lie about where it was found.”

“Near the barrows and that stone fence and the copse of trees,” North said. “It’s the only explanation, I guess.”

“And to think,” the Duchess said, “all this time everyone believed that if any king were here, it was King Mark.”

“But King Arthur isn’t buried there.”

“Just the treasure and the s—”

“The what, Caroline?” the Duchess said, raising a graceful dark eyebrow.

“Nothing. My mind is just meandering. Goodness, here’s Miss Mary Patricia with two babes!”

The cooing and laughter, the pats, the kisses, the pained looks from Coombe, and the occasional yells for food from Little North and Eleanor became the focus for the remainder of the afternoon.

Coombe came into the drawing room that evening, his arm resting in an interesting sling, cleared his throat, and announced, “Dinner is served, my lady.”

“Ah, Coombe, thank you,” North said. “You’re looking quite the romantic hero. How are you and Polgrain doing?”

“We will survive, my lord, we will survive, but it is difficult. One thinks that one knows another, but in this case, it wasn’t true. Poor Mr. Polgrain deeply regrets that he wasn’t conscious enough to aid you that night, my lady, but Mr. Tregeagle had drugged him as well as her ladyship, as you know. It was only me he believed would succumb to his plot. It has depressed us profoundly.”

Perhaps disappointing and depressing for him, Caroline thought, eyeing the very neat sling he wore around his shoulder and under his elbow. It made him look very dapper. The memory of that night was clear and sharp. All that had happened, the terror, the grinding pain, and finally the triumph, all of it was there deep inside her, and would be with her always. But most of all what would remain with her until she died was the image of herself easily drawing
Excalibur
from the stone, feeling how it had been made just
for her, that it was part of her. It would always be with her, that aura of being touched by something beyond herself, beyond this modern world. She’d been touched by magic, by ancient magic that had no explanation, but it did have reality, it did have meaning. It had saved her life. No, it had given her the gift of enabling her to save her own life.

“You’re looking deep and thoughtful,” North said to her as he placed her hand over his forearm to lead her into dinner. “Are you perhaps considering the use of those wrist cuffs on me tonight?”

She grinned up at him. “Yes, that just might please both of us mightily.”

It did please both of them, North in particular, who lay sprawled on his back, staring up at his wife’s flushed face, wondering how she could look more beautiful than she had just that morning. Her breasts were larger, and he gently pulled his hands from the cuffs and cupped them in his palms. “I love you,” he said, and she leaned down so he could kiss her.

“Come lie next to me,” he said, and pulled her down, gently pressing her cheek against his shoulder. “Now, let me tell you about Dr. Treath. He is leaving next week. I spoke to him this afternoon. He blames himself, which perhaps he should do, I don’t know. I don’t understand how he could be so blind to what happened to every woman who ever came into his orbit, but there it was. I didn’t ask him if he remembered taking his own fourteen-year-old sister to bed. I didn’t think it mattered. Everyone knows about his sister now, just as everyone knows that Tregeagle drugged you and helped her take you away to St. Agnes Head. Thank God she had to leave for a while to go back to her brother, for he would have missed her. But it gave you the time you needed.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You’re still damp from our lovemaking. I like that. Also, let me tell
you that I admire you, Caroline. You’re brave and loyal and inventive, but then again, it was those qualities that drew me to you in the first place, those qualities, your beautiful self, and that mess of problems you carried on your back. But, you know, there’s something new about you, something that happened that night—” He paused, and she felt his shrug.