“Do you think I suddenly went loco? There’s nothing here,” MacFarlane argued, gesturing to the empty space abutting the three stone walls.
“Ah! ‘They have eyes, but they do not see.’”
“And what does King David have to do with anything?”
Knowing that he needed to produce a rabbit from his top hat, Caedmon replied, “The good king’s observation is most apropos. For though the untrained eye sees nothing but overgrown grass and three stone walls, the trained eye sees the nunnery as it once stood.”
Several seconds passed in terse silence.
“Go ahead. I’m listening,” MacFarlane said, rather grudgingly.
Relieved that he’d passed the initial audition, Caedmon cast Edie a quick, reassuring glance.
Don’t worry, love. I can do this. I can buy us the time we need.
He gestured to the meadow adjacent to the stone walls. “If you care to join me, I would like to take what the archaeologists call a ‘field walk.’ Since we don’t have the benefit of an aerial photograph, by slowly walking the site, we should be able to detect slight fluctuations and anomalies in the ground surface. These fluctuations and anomalies will enable us to piece together the perimeter boundary of the original nunnery. Once we’ve done that, we’ll be in a much better position to know where to begin the search.”
Although MacFarlane nodded his assent, a silent addendum was included—the gadabout had better produce some tangible results.
The rabbit trick suddenly becoming that much more difficult, he commenced the tour by saying, “First, a quick primer in monastic layout. The majority of medieval priories followed a standard prototype of three buildings, usually two stories in height, arranged in a U shape. This U-shaped configuration would have abutted a church.” Caedmon gestured to the three stone walls. “As you can see, the demolished church is all that remains of the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
“If I’m imagining this correctly, the church and the U-shaped buildings would have enclosed some sort of courtyard,” Edie remarked.
“Quite correct. The garth, or cloister as it is more commonly called, was the large open space within the enclosed buildings. The cloister was primarily used for gardening and the interment of the dead.”
A definite spark of interest in his eyes, MacFarlane clearly recognized the possibilities that the cloister presented. “I’m guessing that no one would have thought twice about a deep hole being dug inside the enclosed courtyard.”
“We are of like mind. Furthermore, only nuns and novices were permitted inside the cloister, thus making it the perfect place for Philippa to bury the Ark of the Covenant.” Arms spread wide, Caedmon gestured to the vacant meadow that moments ago MacFarlane had been so quick to dismiss. “Here, Philippa could have safeguarded the Ark from the outside world while at the same time keeping a watchful eye on it. Shall we begin our stroll around the cloister?”
Taking the lead, he walked to the other side of the small meadow, MacFarlane on his heels, Edie and the henchmen also in tow.
“This, I believe, is where the refectory would have been situated,” he said, gesturing with his hands to an area of overgrown weeds and tangled grass. “The refectory was, as you undoubtedly know, the dining hall where all meals were taken.”
“. . . aka the penguins’ mess tent,” one of the henchmen snickered.
Ignoring the jibe, Caedmon marched forward approximately fifteen meters. “And this would have been the lavatorium.”
“The wash area, right?”
He nodded at Edie. “That’s correct.” He then walked another fifteen meters. “Here would have stood the kitchen area.”
“And just how is it that you know all of this?” MacFarlane suspiciously asked, glancing back and forth between the last two areas delineated.
Caedmon knowingly smiled, about to divulge how he’d pulled a rabbit out of thin air. “If you’ll look carefully, you’ll see a slightly raised furrow.” He pointed to the ground. “That is what’s known as a kitchen midden. Or what the layman might refer to as a buried trash heap. And if you were to search the lavatorium, you would see a depressed furrow rather than a raised furrow.”
“Caused by centuries of running water,” Edie correctly deduced.
“Satisfied?” He directed the question to the man who held their fate in his hand.
Again, MacFarlane glanced back and forth between the “kitchen” and the “lavatorium.” Appeased, he jutted his head at the small meadow. “Keep walking.”
Caedmon continued with the tour. “Across from us, on the other side of the cloister, would have been the nuns’ dormitory. And directly opposite the church would have been the chapter house and abbess’s quarters.” Raising his arm, he motioned in four separate directions. “With each of the four nunnery buildings accounted for, we can now extrapolate the cloister boundaries.”
MacFarlane surveyed the area in question. “And you’re certain that the Ark would have been buried somewhere within the cloister?”
Caedmon hesitated, the question inherently a tricky one. “I have strong reason to believe that Philippa would have deemed the cloister the safest place to hide the Ark. Although where in the cloister, I couldn’t begin to speculate.”
To his surprise, the admission garnered an unconcerned shrug. Turning to his men, MacFarlane commenced to give orders.
“Sanchez, I want you on the metal detector. Gunnery Sergeant, you’ve got the GPR. And, Harliss, you’re on guard duty.” The orders met with a deferential chorus.
His input no longer needed, Caedmon was ordered to stand beside Edie, the two of them placed under the watchful eye of the unintelligible southerner. A man prone to toothy grins that conveyed a dark malevolence, Harliss let it be known that he had disabled the safety mechanism on his H&K MP5 machine gun. “Meanin’ I can shoot y’all all the sooner,” as he had so obligingly informed them.
Scanning the landscape, Caedmon could sight no avenue of escape, no farmhouse that he and Edie could run to; the Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary was situated in a remote milieu. If they could somehow make their way to the country lane where the Range Rovers were parked, they might be able to flag down a passing motorist. But getting to the roadway amid a hail of bullets was a remote possibility at best.
Which left only one viable option: He had to disarm one of MacFarlane’s henchmen.
No easy feat, given that all three men were sturdily constructed and no doubt knew how to comport themselves.
“What’s going on?” Edie asked, nudging him with her elbow. Sanchez’s sweep of the cloister already underway, the ground was littered with several small flags.
“Each time his metal detector finds any buried metal, the device beeps. Whereupon the spot is marked with a flag, the color of which designates the type of metal detected.”
“Oh, I get it. So, I’m guessing that gray is for silver, orange is for bronze, black is for lead, and yellow is for gold.”
He nodded. “Since a metal detector can’t fully identify the buried object, Braxton will use ground-penetrating radar to survey all areas that tested positive for gold. The working assumption is that the Ark of the Covenant was indeed made of pure gold.”
Edie raised a quizzical brow. “Radar? You mean like the guys in the airport tower use?”
“Not exactly. Rather than sending radio waves into the air, these waves are directed into the ground. The electronic signals then bounce back into a receiver.” He nodded toward the small laptop computer that Braxton had set up on top of the GPR receiver. “A computerized map will be generated based on the density and position of the returned signals. It should enable them to determine the size and depth of any buried object.”