Triskellion (13 page)

“I’ll do it,” he said, limping over to the corner table and reaching for a bottle.

“I can’t thank you enough for taking a sympathetic view.”

“Well, doesn’t do to make too much of a drama out of it, eh?”

Celia Root took the glass that the commodore was offering. “No, quite. I do think that the awful business of Kate, of the divorce and so on… Well, it might explain their behaviour
a bit. But I must still punish them somehow.”

“Hmm,” said the commodore, taking a gulp of his drink. “I think we should probably drop it. We wouldn’t want them to think we
did
have something to hide.” He drained his glass and looked directly at Celia Root. “Would we?”

To say that Rachel was surprised to see Gabriel sitting in the wicker chair in the corner of the bedroom would have been an understatement. Adam was too furious to wonder at it. Still smarting from their dressing down and their own humiliating apology, he was ready to vent his anger and batter Gabriel’s head against the rose pattern on the wall behind him. The calm smile on Gabriel’s face did nothing to dissuade Adam, and Rachel had to grab her brother firmly by the arm to restrain him.

“Where did you go? What are you doing here?” Rachel hissed, as angry as her brother, but less inclined to violence.

“Yes, sorry about that,” Gabriel said calmly. “There would have been big trouble if he’d found
me
there.”

“Oh, right,” Adam spat back. “So finding us there was no trouble at all?”

Rachel hushed her brother. “Sssh. They might hear downstairs.”

Gabriel sat up straighter in the chair. “Well, think about it. You got a mild telling off, but then didn’t you see how he backed down? Whether you
think
you are or not, you’re one of
them
. Both of you. You’re protected, which is why
I need your help. Because I’m not.”

Rachel had never felt less protected in her life. But she knew that Gabriel was right. The old man had backed down and become surprisingly forgiving. In thinking about it, Rachel completely forgot to ask how on earth Gabriel had come to be in their bedroom.

Gabriel smiled widely at the twins. From behind him on the chair he pulled out the thick, folded map he had found in the study at Waverley Hall and waved it at them. “Fancy a treasure hunt tomorrow?”

Rachel and Adam were not sure that they did.

“Come on,” Gabriel said. “Just to see if this map still makes any sense.”

“I guess we could,” Rachel said.

Adam scoffed. “Right, if we’re not totally grounded.”

Rachel nodded. Her brother had a good point. “Anyhow, where would you start?”

Gabriel unfolded the map and laid it out on the floor in front of him. He pointed to a spot across the moor where a large bee had been drawn in black ink and carefully painted with yellow stripes.

Gabriel looked up at the twins. “Tell me about the man who looks after the bees,” he said. “
He’ll
know.”

T
he sun sets over the moor, throwing the three figures into silhouette and casting long shadows that stretch across the chalk circle. Two of the figures hold hands as they stand in front of the third. The third is taller, black-faced and beaky in profile, hooded in a long cloak, like a huge bird of prey
.

It is a ceremony
.

The cloaked figure holds out a book in front of the couple, a man and a young girl. A beam of orange sunlight glints off the pointed helmet of the man as he unlinks hands. He produces a glowing, metallic Triskellion, which he places on the book
.

The hooded man grasps the object in his right hand and holds it out to the girl, who links her fingers through the blades of the golden amulet. The man in the helmet does the same. The two are joined, with the blessing of the third who mutters an unintelligible incantation. The Triskellion glows and the three remove their hands, leaving the amulet hovering gently in
midair. It begins to spin slowly, then quicker, until it is no more than a blurring golden light that then rises, hovering momentarily over their heads before shooting off into the red sky
.

The hooded man kneels to kiss the ground at their feet, then raises himself
.

The girl turns to look at the man
.

She smiles, she looks radiant
.

She looks like Rachel…

Try as she might, Rachel couldn’t shake off the disturbing dream as she trudged across the spongy moor towards Honeyman’s cottage the following morning. Disturbing, but also oddly thrilling, now that it was obvious that the girl in the dreams was her. Sure, the brain plays strange tricks, she told herself, but her brain must have placed her in the vision for a reason. Dreams always meant something, didn’t they? It was weird, but also … romantic.

Rachel stopped, realizing that, deep in thought, she had marched ahead of the others. She turned to see Gabriel, some distance behind, setting his own languid pace, as always. Adam ambled along beside him, sulkily. He had not wanted to meet Gabriel at all, but when they had found they hadn’t been grounded, and were more or less ejected from the cottage after breakfast, he’d had little choice. There wasn’t a lot else
to
do, after all. Gabriel had been there, waiting for them at the gate, smiling; as though there’d been no doubt in his mind that they would turn up.

As they marched across the moor, Rachel could hear that Gabriel was speaking softly to Adam, reassuring him, persuading him.

“It’ll be fine, you’ll see,” he said. “You’re not in trouble. You can’t let a couple of old people tell you what to do. This is a great adventure. Your
life
is a great adventure.”

Rachel listened to Gabriel’s soft monotone, thinking how hypnotic his voice was. How his words seemed to wash gently over you, making you feel better, however bad things were. And by the time the boys caught up, Adam’s mood
did
seem to have lifted.

When they arrived at the beekeeper’s cottage, Gabriel stopped and winked at Rachel. She felt herself redden; felt beads of sweat breaking out between her shoulder blades.

Jacob Honeyman broke into a broad smile as he threw open the door to his shack and saw the twins standing under the corrugated tin porch. As Rachel and Adam stood slightly apart to reveal Gabriel standing behind them, the colour drained from the beekeeper’s face.

“This is Gabriel,” Rachel said.

Honeyman’s jaw hung slackly as he continued staring at the boy, unable to speak a word. Rachel coughed and the beekeeper seemed to rally a little. “Hullo,” he said. “I thought you’d come one day.”

Rachel looked at her brother and screwed up her brow in silent question, but Honeyman’s exact meaning was lost in one of his sudden explosions of coughs and twitches
and a furious bout of scratching.

“You’d better come in,” he said.

Jacob Honeyman sat watching Gabriel’s every move in dumb amazement, while the boy unfolded the map on the table. As Gabriel flattened the vellum out, Honeyman stood up and looked over the drawn landscape, his finger hovering over the various landmarks – the chalk circle, the ancient church – then tracing out patterns with his finger where the map was covered with the intersecting lines.

“Where did you get this from?” Honeyman whispered in awe. “I didn’t know this existed.”

“They’ve been looking after it for us at the big house,” Gabriel said.

Rachel looked over at her brother, the question obvious in her bemused expression.

Honeyman drew his finger back towards where the bee was marked on the map. “This is where we are … this is where my ancestors were … what seven hundred years ago when this was drawn.”

“This is where all our ancestors were,” Gabriel said.

“All our ancestors?” Adam asked.

“All our ancestors,” Gabriel repeated. “The beekeepers have been here for many centuries, and your family … your grandmother’s family, the Roots, have been here as long as the Wings.”

Suddenly it became clear to Adam: the knowledge that he
and Rachel did belong here; the confidence that this place was as much theirs as anyone else’s. That this strange little village was as much a part of their make-up as New York was. Maybe more so, seeing as their family would have been here long before any Europeans lived in America. A large part of what made the twins who they were, of their own genes, originated on this very spot.

As if picking up on Adam’s thought, Gabriel continued, “My family too … even though we’ve travelled about. This was the first place they settled. This was where they started families.” He waved his hand over the map, and as he did so, a stray bee flew in from Honeyman’s kitchen and landed squarely on top of the bee that had been drawn in the right-hand corner.

“What are the chances of that happening?” Adam laughed, then stopped abruptly when he saw that the other three had fallen silent. They watched the bee intently as it was joined by another. Then another, and another. In total, thirty or forty bees flew in from the kitchen or through the open window and landed on the map.

They watched, holding their breaths, as the bees, far from crawling randomly over the map, began to marshal themselves into formation behind the first, largest bee, their tails buzzing from side to side.

“It’s a waggle dance,” Honeyman whispered.

“A what dance?” Rachel asked, not taking her eyes from the bees. They were now forming a ragged, vibrating line.

“A waggle dance. They use it to pass each other information – about where nectar is, or anything else they need to find. They use it to navigate, too. The speed and the angle of waggle relates to the distance and direction of the prize.” Honeyman pointed. “The big one,
there
… he’s the forager. He knows where the stuff is and conveys the information to the others.”

They continued to watch in amazement as the bees, like a miniature tribe dancing a sacred ritual, crawled across the map, following the dotted lines that were traced faintly on the surface. They buzzed between the chalk circle, the church and a point in the woods marked by the drawing of a tree with a twisted trunk. After three or four circuits, a shape began to emerge, and the three points on the map were gradually linked together by a continuous pattern of bees.

“Whoa,” Adam sighed. “Some trick.”

“I don’t think it’s a trick,” Rachel said. “I think they’re mapping something out for us. Like they’re trying to tell us…” She looked across at Gabriel, who was nodding gently. “Tell us what?”

“Well, they’re marking three points between the church, the circle and the woods … and you can see the pattern they’re making.” Gabriel looked from Adam to Rachel. “Can’t you figure it out?”

Rachel and Adam remained silent. Stumped.

Suddenly in an explosion of coughs and twitches, Honey-man jumped to his feet, breaking the silence. “It’s telling us
where the missing bits of the Triskellion are,” he said. “The golden Triskellion.” He was panting with excitement, pacing around the room and clutching nervously at the collar of his grubby jacket. “We know one’s in the church … this is telling us where the other parts are. I’ve spent thirty odd years reading, researching, digging and metal detecting … and in the end the bees done it.”

“Well, the bees did it with the map,” Gabriel added. “And we wouldn’t have the map without Rachel and Adam. And Rachel and Adam might not have been quite so enthusiastic if you hadn’t sparked their interest. So let’s just call it teamwork, shall we?”

“But why is finding these bits so important?” Rachel asked. “I still don’t get it.”

Honeyman huffed impatiently. “If we put this artefact back together, it will be one of the … no,
the
most important pre-Saxon artefact in the country.” Honeyman folded his arms with finality, then thought again. “The most important artefact in the world.” Honeyman nodded thoughtfully, grinning and jabbing his finger towards Gabriel. “And he’s the one who can get it. I know he is.”

“I like to think of it as restoring the family jewels,” Gabriel said. “Well, the family jewels of the village at any rate.”

“I still don’t get it,” Adam said.

Gabriel put a hand on Adam’s arm, looked at each of them in turn before he spoke. “What do you think? Shall we go and find them?”