It seemed only right to speak of love, or the absence of it, or the longing for it in the face of wilful death, on a day of ruined festivity, on the verge of what might have been a great celebration of a great man’s life. They spoke at length of Gerald Usherwood, his military service, his work for the government, his charities, and his passion for the Holy Land and the mysteries of its past. They laughed, they shed tears, they sat for long minutes in silence; Sarah decided it was time to explain how things really stood.
She said nothing right away, but shook her head gently, as if trying to dissuade herself. Once she crossed the line, there would be no turning back. She couldn’t guess where it might lead. For several moments, she stared directly into the copper flames. The golden light was reflected off her face, gilding her like the goddess of some long-forgotten Greek cult. He was silent beside her. The moment might not come again, she thought, or, if it did, might be ruined by matters out of her control.
‘Ethan,’ she said, ‘there’s something I have to tell you. It has to be between us. No one else in the family must know.’
‘This sounds serious,’ he said.
‘It is serious.’ She bent down and used the long poker to push a log back into the flames. Sparks rose like fireflies, sudden and flame-forged.
‘It’s about my mother,’ she said, still hesitating. ‘About something she told me three years ago on her deathbed. Her long-kept secret. Her long-hidden love. She had an affair about thirty years ago, an affair that lasted up until her death. I’m the result, though my father knows nothing of it. She told me who my real father is. He’s still alive, but I’ve never met him, though I’ve often thought of turning up on his doorstep: Hello, Dad, it’s your long-lost daughter. I knew his name long before she told me, though. He’s an eminent academic, a historian.’ She stumbled to a halt. ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you before this.’
Ethan was shaken by the news. He remembered his sister-in-law Ann, a small woman with delicate features and an infectious laugh. And he thought of his brother James, a quiet man in whom he had often confided at difficult times in adolescence. Now, he had to adjust to Sarah being nothing but a friend, while pretending to the family she continued to be his niece.
They talked through the evening, gradually leaving behind the two pressing topics of the day, the murder and Sarah’s unburdening of herself.
It was almost time for bed when something crossed Sarah’s mind.
‘Ethan, I’ve thought of another place.’
‘I’m sorry… A place?’ He was tired after a late night and early morning, followed by a stressful day.
‘For the letter.’
‘Oh, the letter. Why didn’t he just post it to you? Or tell you where he’d put it?’
‘I think he was going to do that at the birthday party. He said something a few weeks ago about having something to tell me on the day. As usual, that was all he said. But it has just occurred to me that he might have put it in the library after all.’
‘Sarah, we’ve been right through the library—’
‘No, we haven’t. I don’t know what’s in his will except for one thing: he was going to leave all his biblical studies books to me. Plus his papers. He knew I would get the books after he died, that they’d go straight to me. He might have left the letter in one of them.’
After an argument about going back to the crime scene in the freezing cold, Ethan shrugged his shoulders and they went across.
It took them ten minutes to find it. Ethan stumbled on it in the a book entitled The Earliest Christian Artefacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins, slipped between pages 50 and 51. Sarah smiled.
‘I used to use this a lot when I was here. He knew I’d look at it before long. Now, let’s see what this letter says.’
It wasn’t just a letter. It was a thick handwritten memoir that began with Gerald’s account of an LRDG expedition into the south-western Libyan desert in May 1942. Sarah read it aloud. It took a long time, but as the story unfolded, exhaustion lifted from them and they grew transfixed. A temple in the desert, a shimmering of mosaics, relics of the crucifixion, the tomb of Christ. It read like something from Indiana Jones.
A sheet of headed notepaper followed those that recounted the discovery of Wardabaha, its tombs, and its relics.
My Dearest Sarah, it began, If you are reading this, I shall have gone to meet the men I have killed and receive justice for any wrongs I have done to others. More likely, I have returned to oblivion, and perhaps that will be for the best. Of all men, I have been among the closest in life to Jesus. I have stood by his tomb and handled relics of his passion in my bare hands in a cold place while silence swallowed me alive. But I do not believe. Not in him, not in any god, not even, perhaps, in myself.
No doubt you are asking yourself ‘What happened?’ To Wardabaha, to the relics we found, to the Tuaregs. The truth is, I’m not exactly sure, at least insofar as the city is concerned, and the Kel Tamasheq. Some bad things happened after we left the oasis. Word got out somehow, and there was an attempt to steal the relics and to find the city. We destroyed our records of the trip, but it was too late. One of our number had boasted about the find to the wrong person, someone who was sent to the front the following day and made a prisoner of war. No one knows what happened exactly, but the story got into the hands of the Germans. No, not the Jerries as such, a queer bunch, dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. Or rather more than that. The Hungarian, Almásy, was mixed up in it somewhere. He wanted to get his hands on the things we brought back; two of our party were killed as a result.
The war in North Africa moved west and ended less than a year later. Things seemed to go quiet after that. Chips and I hung on, then we were transferred to Palestine till the whole show ended in ’45. I’ve devoted my time since then to finding out more about it all, the tombs, the relics, everything. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is all genuine, that we really did find the place where Jesus Christ and all those others were buried.
But it’s not over. I chose you to take this thing on after me; you were the only one in the family to show a flicker of interest. Now it’s up to you. To tell the world. To organise an expedition into the desert. You’ll have to keep it low key until the university is ready to make an announcement. Chips has three of the relics, I have the other three; he knows all about you. I’ll introduce you at my birthday bash next year, get you properly acquainted. We’re both too old to take you out there, but I know the coordinates by heart: 20 4 1 N by 20 7 3. I’ve drawn a rough map on the next sheet. I can’t tell you what you’ll find there, or whether anyone will have got there before you; one thing we both know is that, if anyone did, they haven’t said a word about it to anyone.
Take care of yourself, my dear. You have pleased me very much, above all by your intelligence and determination. Whatever you may think now, you are a beautiful young woman who deserves a good man and a happy marriage. I’m only sorry that I may not live long enough to see that happen, but I’m confident it will.
Speaking of wills, I’ve seen to it that you’re quite well provided for in mine. Most of the older generation lack for little, so my money will go mainly to my grandchildren and their children. I know you will use the money well.
I know there’s something I haven’t mentioned, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. Unless… Could it be the relics? I still have them here at Woodmancote. Where are they? In the safest hiding place I could think of. By the time you read this, my funeral will have come and gone. Perhaps then it will be time for you to visit the family mausoleum. It’s a stuffy old place, and I’ve decided not to spend the rest of eternity dumped there. It would remind me too much of that other place, that place the sands have probably covered again. I’m to go up in smoke. The world I knew is long dead. You have your life ahead of you.