Flint.That could do us.
He began to scrabble in the hard ground to free a piece large enough that it could be used as a makeshift tool when Becks quietly came over and tapped the top of his head.
‘Unnecessary, Liam O’Connor,’ she said.
‘Uh?’ He looked up just in time to see Bob pulling a long lumber nail out of the wooden crucifix of the freshly dug grave. With a mournful squeak it came out and the crossbar clattered on to the hard hummock of dark soil, disturbing the nearby crows. They fluttered away noisily into the tumbling grey sky with caws of complaint.
‘Errrr … you can’t just go and do that!’ he said, absently blessing himself with the tips of his fingers.
Bob casually strode past him towards the gravestone. ‘Why not?’
‘Well, it’s … it’s just not right. That’s a desecration, so it is.’
Bob was already hunkered down over the gravestone and etching their pigpen symbol for ‘L’ into its granite surface.
Liam glanced heaven-ward. ‘Uhhh, really sorry about that … if you’re watchin’.’
‘’Tis later in the morning than I’d hoped to set off,’ called out Cabot irritably as he strapped the yoke to a pair of horses. ‘That is, if ye still wish me to take ye to meet John?’
‘Yes, yes we do,’ replied Liam.
‘Where’ve ye been?’
‘To get some fresh air,’ replied Liam as they skirted round the vegetable gardens towards the stables. He nodded at Becks. ‘Our lady was feeling sick.’
Cabot stuck out his chin. ‘Are ye better now, m’dear?’
Becks glanced quickly at Liam for guidance but he stepped in to answer for her. ‘She’s fine, so she is, aren’t you … Lady Rebecca?’
She managed to nod mutely and swiftly adapt her usual tomboy swaggering walk to something that, all of a sudden, looked a little more feminine as they drew up beside Cabot and the cart.
‘Noble-born, are ye?’ The old man’s eyes narrowed as he regarded her mud-brown dress made of coarse material and her peasant’s clogs. ‘Lady, are ye now?’ he said with a disbelieving tone in his voice. ‘Hmmm … and from what duchy do ye hail then?’
Liam looked at her. Come on, Becks, better make it sound convincing.
Her cool grey eyes returned Cabot’s suspicious stare for a painful few seconds, long enough that Liam wondered whether he’d made a mistake casually introducing her as an aristocrat.
‘Je viens de la duche d’Alevingnon en Normandy.’
Cabot’s manner changed instantly; his flinty soldier’s eyes widened. ‘Ma’am, please forgive my rude manner! I just — ’
She smiled. ‘It is quite all right, old man,’ she replied sweetly. ‘Our mission to recover this … item … requires a certain anonymity.’
Brilliant. Liam grinned at her. Bleedin’ brilliant. He could have hugged her there and then. But of course, now that she was supposedly a high-born, that would be inappropriate.
Cabot gestured to the cart, a simple wooden trap covered with a canvas awning, and two pot-bellied ponies scraping the frost-hardened ground with their hooves, impatient to get going.
‘’Tis not much, ma’am, but it is all we have here at the priory.’
She nodded calmly, almost serenely. ‘The vehicle is sufficient.’
‘And far better ye travel in a humble trader’s cart than in anything that might attract the interest of bandits,’ added Cabot.
Becks nodded. ‘Indeed.’
Liam smiled. ‘M’lady seems happy.’
Cabot looked up at a heavy sky that promised snow. ‘Then we ought to leave with haste. ’Tis three days, but only if there is no snow. Three days to Prince John’s winter residence.’ He pulled aside the canvas cover at the back of the cart. ‘There ye are, m’lady,’ he said, offering a calloused hand to help her up into the trap, but she ignored that and hopped up with all the regal grace of a squaddie scrambling up into the back of an army truck.
Liam pursed his lips. ‘Lady Rebecca’s a very independent woman, so she is.’
‘Aye,’ nodded Cabot, ‘noticed that.’
Bob clambered aboard behind her and the cart dipped and wobbled under his weight.
‘Best we get going,’ said Cabot to Liam. ‘We will wish to be well clear of the forests before it gets dark later this afternoon.’
CHAPTER 27
2001, New York
‘I’m not going to run off and find the first news station I can and blab all about you, you know.’
Maddy followed Adam up the steps and through a rotating glass door, into a quiet lobby. Before them the apartment block’s security guard looked up from behind a newspaper and a desk and smiled warmly at Adam.
‘Lovely evening, ain’t it, Mr Lewis?’
‘Isn’t it, Jerry?’ he replied cheerfully. ‘Unseasonably clement for the time of year.’
Jerry looked like the kind of guy who’d once worked homicide but been put out to pasture. He sat back in a seat that creaked beneath his weight and laughed. ‘Tha’s what I love about you Brits … always got somethin’ real smart-soundin’ to say about the weather!’
Adam shared his good-natured cackle with a wave and swept past his desk towards the elevators at the back of the foyer. He jabbed a button and they watched in silence as a number display slowly counted down, and listened to the muted rumble of early-evening traffic outside, the rustle of the newspaper in Jerry’s hands.
With a ping, the brass doors opened and they stepped inside. Adam hit his floor number and the doors swished quietly closed.
‘I can’t take that chance,’ Maddy finally answered.
‘You still don’t trust me?’
‘Nope. I’d be a fool to, since we only met this morning.’
He laughed. ‘Well, actually, we met seven years ago.’
Some of his smile spread her way. ‘I guess.’ She looked around the dark wood and brass of the elevator. ‘I’m guessing the rent in this block is pretty high.’
‘Very.’
A soft chime announced their arrival at the fourteenth floor and the doors opened, revealing thick carpet and more dark wood. ‘You think this looks pricey, just wait till you see my gaff.’
‘Gaff?’
He led her down the hallway and finally stopped outside a door, pulling a set of jangling keys from the inside pocket of his jacket. The door opened with a soft click and he pushed it open, gesturing her through first. ‘After you, madam.’
‘Oh, very gentlemanly,’ said Maddy. She stepped in and almost immediately she had to stifle a gasp. A wall of floor-to-ceiling tinted windows looked out on a forest of Manhattan skyscrapers, bathed in the rich vanilla light of a setting sun. She crossed a large open-plan lounge until her nose was almost jammed against the glass. ‘Oh my God … this is so cool!’
‘I certainly pay for that view,’ he replied, stepping in after her, draping his jacket over the back of a chrome bar stool and hitting his answerphone.
Maddy turned to watch. There were messages. Of course there were: several from work, several female voices each enquiring what he was up to this evening. Adam shuffled through them, dismissing them casually. He offered her a self-conscious fluttering smile. ‘Sorry about that.’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t worry. Clearly you’re much in demand.’
‘Now then,’ he said, ‘I just need to dig out that old drive of mine.’ He stepped past an exercise bike towards a chest beside the window. ‘Most of my junk from my university days is in here somewhere.’ He lifted the lid and carefully pulled out a dog-eared Warhammer box and chuckled. ‘Could never say goodbye to all my fantasy stuff. You can never let it go, you know? Not if you’ve put the time in, painting them, that I did.’
He dug back in, pulling out one or two other assorted items. For the first time since this morning she began to recognize once again the edgy, lank-haired young man she’d visited with Becks back in 1994; a loner, an awkward geek obsessed with dark corners of knowledge — puzzles, numbers, codes, conspiracies.