The Secret of Excalibur_A Novel

  Or cows. She was surprised to see several black and white Friesians making their languid way around the terraces, munching on the grass. “A lot simpler than mowing it,” Chloe told her. “You just have to watch out for the—oops!”

  “Eurgh!” wailed Nina, extracting her right foot from a recently laid cowpat.

  “For the poo,” Chloe concluded. “Sorry. Although it’s supposed to be good luck.”

  Nina scraped her foot through the grass. “Funny, I don’t feel lucky.”

  The shoe was as clean as it was going to get, and they continued up the hill. “Is this the path of the labyrinth?” Nina asked.

  Chloe shook her head and pointed at one of the terraces to their side. “No, but you can still see where it was—most of it, anyway. Some parts have been eroded to the point where they’re barely climbable. And if you did follow it, it’d take you over four hours to reach the top.” She looked sidelong at Nina. “The Glastonbury labyrinth doesn’t have any connection to King Arthur—at least, not that I know of. Are you just asking out of curiosity, or …”

  Nina stopped walking. “There might be a link, but we’re not sure. Which is why we needed the opinion of an expert.” She took out several photographs. “What do you make of these?”

  Chloe examined the first photo, a close-up of one of the symbols of the labyrinth inscribed on the blade they had found in Syria. “It looks like the same basic path …” She checked the next image. “So does this. And—what is this?” she asked, reaching a picture showing the whole blade.

  Nina took a breath. “We think that’s Caliburn.”

  “You’re joking,” Chloe gasped. She waited for a response, and got none. “You’re not joking? Oh my God, you’re not joking!”

  “We’re not joking,” Nina assured her.

  Chloe hurriedly flicked through the rest of the photos. “If it were anyone else but you, I wouldn’t believe it. But—you really think this is Caliburn?”

  “As far as we can tell. But the reason we’re here is that …” She paused and looked round. Although there were other people on the tor, none of them were within earshot. “We think these symbols are a clue to something hidden here.”

  Chloe eyed her. “Something?”

  “Or someone. King Arthur.” Chloe let out a little excited squeak. “There’s a chance Arthur’s tomb could be here, under the tor. Problem is, we don’t know where.”

  “But you’re the director of the International Heritage Agency, you could get whatever equipment you want!” said Chloe, her eyes lighting up at the thought. “A complete ground-penetrating radar survey, or even a gravimetric—”

  “Unfortunately, there’s a time factor involved,” Mitchell cut in. “I can’t go into details for security reasons, but if the tomb is here, both our governments have agreed we need to locate it as soon as possible.”

  “We think you’re the best person to help us find it,” Nina said to Chloe. “Do you think you can?”

  “Well—well, I’m flattered,” Chloe stammered, blushing again. “But I don’t know. I mean, I know the tor very well, but …” She examined the pictures again. “Unless you’ve got something specific to work from, I don’t know how much help I can be. This is the pattern of the Glastonbury labyrinth, yes, but—how did you find this? How does finding Caliburn lead you to Arthur’s tomb?”

  “It’s … complicated,” said Nina. “And that’s the understatement of the year. But long story short: we think those symbols were inscribed on Caliburn by the Glastonbury monks as a way to find Arthur’s tomb—his real tomb, not the one they dug up for show in 1191. It’s where they hid Arthur and Guinevere, to keep them safe … and it’s also where they hid Excalibur.”

  “Excalibur?” Chloe’s mouth hung open for a moment. “Blimey. That would be a hell of a find.” She suddenly looked worried. “If you find it, you will … you will mention that I helped, won’t you?”

  Nina gave her a reassuring smile. “You’ll get full credit, believe me. But the main thing is actually finding it in the first place.” She pointed at one of the symbols in the topmost photo. “We assume it’s got something to do with these dots marked on the labyrinth, but we don’t know what they represent.”

  Chloe scrutinized the picture, brow furrowing. “If you account for the real labyrinth being distorted by the shape of the tor,” she said, “then the nearest of the dots would be … on the third terrace. Over here!” She picked her way along the narrow, scrubby terrace to one side, Nina and Mitchell following, then came to a sudden stop. “Of course!”

  “What is it?” Nina asked, catching up.

  “It’s a marker stone!” At Chloe’s feet was an unassuming lump of rock, half buried in the ground. “They were used so people walking the labyrinth could tell how far they still had to go. Most of them are missing now, but there are still a few in place.”

  “So the tomb’s under one of the markers?” said Mitchell.

  “Maybe,” Nina said, “but which one? Each of the symbols has different stones marked. And we’re missing the symbol on the sword’s tip.” She took the pictures back from Chloe, fanning them out like a hand of cards. “How many of these marker stones were there originally?”

  “Nobody’s sure,” Chloe replied, “but probably about thirty.”

  The number of stones marked on the various symbols of the labyrinth seemed to confirm that. Nina looked back and forth between the photos. Each symbol contained a different number of stones, in different positions, but there was definitely a crossover among them. Some stones appeared on more than one labyrinth, and of those some showed up more frequently than others …

  “I need a pen and paper,” she said, an idea taking form.

  Chloe rummaged through her little rucksack. “I always come prepared,” she said, taking out first a thermos, then a large ham-and-egg-salad sandwich wrapped in plastic, before finally producing a dog-eared notebook and a pen. “Here.”

  Nina took the pen and notebook. “What’re you thinking?” Mitchell asked.

  “That we can narrow down where to look even if we don’t have enough information to find it exactly.” She drew a large copy of the labyrinth on a clean page, then added the positions of the marker stones from the symbol in the first photograph. “Okay, that’s the first one. Now, let’s add the second …”

  From each picture in turn, she marked the stones on her drawing of the labyrinth. It took several minutes, but gradually the clues hidden by the monks became clear. Only three stones appeared on all of the labyrinths.

  Nina regarded the final result—not merely a drawing, now a map. “I bet the symbol on the missing piece of the sword would only have one of those three marked on it,” she said, circling them. “That’s where the tomb is, that’s how to find the entrance. It just looks like a decoration, but if you know what it means, it leads you right to the door!”

  Chloe took a closer look. “I know how to find those points, but none of them have marker stones any more. And if there really is an entrance, it won’t be easy to find—thousands of people follow the labyrinth every year, but nobody’s ever discovered anything this major.”

  “But they didn’t know where to look, did they?” said Mitchell. “Where’s the nearest one?”

  Nina gave the notebook to Chloe. She turned it to match the orientation of the crude map with the tor. “The fifth terrace, west side. This way.” She led them back to the path uphill.

  Once they reached the terrace, Chloe guided them round the tor’s flank. “Somewhere around here,” she said finally, coming to a stop. The hillside was steep, only the very top of St. Michael’s tower visible above. But there was nothing unusual about the spot, just rough grass and rabbit holes.

  “I don’t see anything,” complained Mitchell.

  “If anything’s here, it’ll be buried. Here, give these a try.” Chloe opened her rucksack again, taking out a handful of thin steel tent pegs, eight inches long with hooked ends, and handing one each to him and Nina. “Have
a poke.”

  Nina bent and shoved the spike into the earth. It was quite dense, offering resistance, but she kept pushing until it was as deep as it could go. “Well, nothing there,” she said, pulling it back out and trying a different spot a few feet away. Mitchell got the idea and joined in, as did Chloe.

  But nearly half an hour of probing discovered nothing but stones—certainly nothing that might conceal an entrance. “So much for that,” Mitchell said.

  “There’re still two more sites,” Nina reminded him.

  The next was on the sixth terrace, looking northwest. Now within sight of both the summit and the steep zigzag path up the tor’s north side, the group attracted some curious looks from tourists as they jabbed at the ground. But again they found nothing.

  “Third time lucky,” Chloe said hopefully as she checked the map once more. “Okay, the last one is … first terrace, on the southeastern side. All the way back down and around, I’m afraid.”

  Nina eyed the sun, which was steadily dropping toward the western horizon. “Will we still have time to get there?”

  “We should, although we won’t have a huge amount of time to look around before it gets too dark. Where are you staying, by the way?”

  “London,” Mitchell told her.

  She looked horrified. “You’re going to drive all the way back to London? Oh, don’t be silly, it’ll be the middle of the night before you get there! I live in Shepton Mallet, it’s only about ten miles away. You can stay with me tonight, I have a spare room. And a sofa,” she added to Mitchell. He appeared less than impressed at the prospect.

  “Are you sure?” Nina asked.

  “Oh, it’s no problem. And how often do I have the discoverer of Atlantis at my house? It’ll be an honor.”

  “In that case, we accept. Don’t we, Jack?” He grunted noncommittally.

  “Brilliant! Okay, we’d better get going.”

  • • •

  Shadowed from the sun, the southeastern face of the tor was colder, more ominous. The steepness of the hill meant the tower above was now completely out of sight, and even Glastonbury itself was blocked from view, adding to the feeling of isolation. The chatter of sightseers was gone; apart from the croaks of distant birds, the only sign of life was a lone cow in the field below, completely oblivious of the visitors.

  “This is where the marker stone must have been,” said Chloe, looking at the map again.

  Nina examined the hillside. It seemed no different from the two other spots they had already searched. “If the tomb’s here at all, it’s got to be near.” She took her steel peg and stuck it into the earth. The others followed her example.

  They searched for ten minutes, twenty, finding nothing out of the ordinary. The sky beyond the tor gradually took on a salmon-pink shade, slipping to a vivid orange as the sun neared the horizon. Another five minutes. Still nothing.

  Then—

  Nina’s probe stopped abruptly, only four inches beneath the surface.

  To begin with, she didn’t react. It wasn’t the first rock she’d found. Instead, she withdrew the peg and tried again, six inches away. If it were just a stone, a small change of position would be enough to miss it.

  But the peg stopped again. Four inches deep.

  She moved again, tried again. Four inches. Pushing harder, she heard a faint clink of metal on stone through the soil. “Hey, guys,” she said, feeling a growing sense of excitement, “over here.”

  “What?” Mitchell asked as he and Chloe joined her.

  “Something quite big. Could just be a rock, but it seems very flat. Help me see how big it is.”

  They stabbed the pegs into the tor, moving farther apart. Every attempt stopped four inches deep, until they had covered a width of over four feet. Checking perpendicularly, whatever lay under the soil was just as tall.

  A square.

  “There’s no way that’s natural,” muttered Nina, seeing the pattern of holes marking the object’s edges.

  Chloe took a trowel from her pack. “Here, let me.” She knelt and scooped out several clumps of soil from the center of the square, working more carefully as she got deeper. The tip of the trowel scraped against stone. She exchanged a look with Nina, then widened the hole, brushing loose soil away with her hand.

  What lay beneath the ground was clearly man-made, smooth and flat. But that wasn’t what set Nina’s heart racing. Instead, it was a word, inscribed in the stone.

  MERLIN.

  Chloe sat back, stunned. “Blimey.”

  Nina brushed more of the soil away, revealing additional words in Latin. “‘The wrath of Merlin?’” she translated incredulously. She snatched the trowel from Chloe’s hand and hacked at the hole to widen it. “No, wait. It’s part of a sentence. ‘The wrath of Merlin, which strikes—’” More frantic digging. “‘—which strikes only those who see his face. Those who know the truth may find …’” She fell silent, amazed.

  “What?” Mitchell demanded. “What does it say?”

  Nina looked up at him, awed. “‘Those who know the truth may find the tomb of Arthur.’” She placed her hands on the ancient stone slab, barely able to believe what she had discovered. “It’s real. It’s actually real.”

  • • •

  Nina held up her hands. “No, really, I couldn’t eat another thing.”

  “Are you sure?” Chloe asked. She pushed a plate toward her guest. “Another slice of cake?”

  “No thanks, really.”

  “Some ice cream? After Eights? Cheesy nibbles?”

  “No, thanks!” Forced to abandon further excavation by lack of light, they had covered the exposed stone with soil once more and driven to Chloe’s house intending to return to the tor the following morning. Nina looked around at the door of Chloe’s dining room, through which she could hear Mitchell talking. He had told the two women that he needed to make a phone call, though Nina suspected he was really trying to escape Chloe’s constant offers of more and more rich, fatty food.

  Chloe regarded the last piece of cake hopefully. “You don’t mind if I …”

  “Help yourself!”

  Mitchell came back into the room as Chloe slid the cake onto her plate. “Oh, all finished? Shame.”

  “You can have this slice if you’d like,” Chloe offered. “Or some ice cream? Pringles?”

  “That’s okay, thanks!”

  “Who were you calling?” Nina asked, just as her own phone rang. “Oh, excuse me.” She took it from her pocket, seeing Chase’s name on the screen. So he’d finally deigned to speak to her, had he? “Eddie?”

  “Hi, love.” He still sounded glum, but at least he was no longer angry. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. What about you?”

  “Better than I was. Listen, there’s something I need to tell you, but I want to do it in person. I’m about to get a train back to London.”

  “Back? Wait, where are you now?”

  “In Bournemouth. There was something I had to tell Lizzie as well. Are you still at the hotel?”

  “No, I’m, ah … in Somerset.”

  A pause. “What?”

  “I came to Glastonbury.”

  “What?”

  “No, listen, we found something! There’s something underneath Glastonbury Tor. We think it’s King Arthur’s tomb—we found the entrance!”

  Another, longer pause. Then: “For fuck’s sake, Nina!” The verbal explosion was loud enough for her companions to hear. “I told you not to go!”

  “Yes, and I told you you don’t tell me what to do, Eddie! We’ve got a job to do, remember—finding Excalibur? Well, that’s what we’ve been doing.”

  “We? Is Jack there?”

  “Yes, Jack’s here,” Nina snapped. She glanced at the others. Chloe, embarrassed, was regarding a clock with intense feigned interest, while Mitchell had a questioning expression. “For God’s sake, Eddie. Is that why you’ve been so territorial with me when he’s around?”

  He fumed silently for a f
ew moments. “Look, just get back to London, all right? I still want to talk to you.”

  “It’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’m staying here overnight.”

  “With Jack?”

  Nina ground her teeth in frustration. “Yes, Eddie, with Jack.”

  “That’s it, I’m coming up there. Lizzie, I need to borrow your car.” In the background, Nina heard Elizabeth tell him in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t have it. “All right, I’ll get a bloody taxi! Where are you?”

  “Eddie, you’re being completely ridiculous—look, I don’t even want to continue this conversation until you stop acting like a damn child! Okay? I’ll talk to you tomorrow when you’ve got a grip on yourself.” She stabbed at the button to switch off the phone before Chase could say anything else. “Aargh!”

  “I’ll, er, put these plates in the dishwasher,” said Chloe, hurriedly clearing the table. She bustled into the kitchen, leaving Nina and Mitchell alone.

  “Goddamn it!” Nina was about to bang her phone down on the table when she remembered she was a guest and settled for smacking it against her thigh instead. “I’d forgotten how mad he can make me. I sometimes wonder what the hell I see in him.”

  “Must be that whole opposites attract deal, I guess,” suggested Mitchell. He reached across and patted her upper arm.

  “Yeah, well, sometimes he’s a bit too opposite, y’know? I mean, I’m engaged to the guy, but we’re hardly anything alike. Sometimes I worry that …” She trailed off.

  “What?”

  “I shouldn’t really be talking about this. It’s my problem, not yours. You probably don’t even want to hear it.”

  He gave her a sympathetic look. “Maybe I can help.”

  Nina scrunched up her face, confused. “I don’t know, it’s just … I’m just worried we might be too different!” she blurted, the admission filling her with a mixture of catharsis and guilt.

  “You think that if you get married, it might not work out?”

  “Exactly! Eddie’s already been married once, and … Well, maybe that’s an extreme example of things going bad, but at least he and Sophia were from the same country. They had that much in common.”