Excalibur Rising (20 page)

     “And if I’m not Ariana’s daughter?”asked Violet.
     “You will not survive,” said Rowan.
     “Why don’t you just open the gate yourself?” Violet asked.
     Rowan nodded her head. “I could do that,” she said, “but then we would not be certain of who you are or how you came by your gifts.  We would not know if we could trust you.”
     “I don’t want you to trust me,” Violet said, uncomfortably aware of the long dark corridor behind her, and the rising water in the valley.  How long did she have before she would hear the sound of water trickling down the steps?
     “So you want me to risk my life by touching the gate?” Violet said. “Why should I do that?  What’s in there?”
     “We answered Percival’s call and we came for the king,” Rowan said, taking up the tale she had been telling, and that Violet was trying to keep straight through the many distractions of their journey deep underground.
     “We?” Violet queried. “Who is we?”
     “The people of the Magic Isle,” said Rowan. “We are the people of Avilion.  We forged the sword Excalibur that gave Arthur his power.”
     “The Lady of the Lake____”
     “Was one of us,” said Rowan, “although much of her legend is without any basis.  Your poets have lent a great deal of romance to the event. But it is true that when Percival raised Excalibur and called to us, we came.  The king was gravely wounded and beyond the help of any of our medicines. The only magic that remained to us was the bond between Arthur and Excalibur, and such magic takes time.  There was no safety for Arthur in his own kingdom.  We could not hide him on Avilion.  The isle is wrapped in mists but it is not hidden from the sight of any determined seeker.  Arthur could not remain there.  So we brought him through the portal.  We brought him here.”
     “Here?” Violet queried.
     “Here,” said Rowan. “He lies before you, beyond that gate that we long ago sealed with our magic.” 
     “Do you really expect me to believe that?” Violet asked, looking at the ancient forged iron bars.  Beyond was nothing but darkness.
     “I expect you to see for yourself,” Rowan replied.
     “Open the gate,” said Elaine.
     “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Violet hissed.
     Rowan laid a hand on Violet’s shoulder.  “Forget your quarrel with this girl,” she said. “Forget the rising water. Forget the absurdity of the story I have just told you. Forget everything you know of history and logic, and commonsense.  Take a deep breath, and think of your gifts.  Where do they come from, Violet?  Where do y
ou
come from?”
     Violet closed her eyes and tried to calm her racing thoughts.  She could not argue with the fact that she had a unique gift.  Who else did she know who could touch an object and know its history?  How did she know that Carlton Lewis had died?  Why had she seen such a clear vision of the attack on Barry Marshall; seen and felt it so clearly that she had even experienced his fears as her own fears? And the piece of paper, the first one that Ryan had handed to her, why had it seemed so dead, so alien?  How had she known that it came from a place outside of history?  How had she known anything she had known?  Was it possible for her to believe that she was the daughter of a woman named Ariana, a woman born outside of time and space on the mystical Island of Avilion? 
     If this was true, then all she had to do was open the gate and see for herself.   She reached out and touched the iron bars.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ryan
     “This,” said Ryan, “is the most amazing library I have ever seen.
     “Yes, I agree it’s quite impressive,” Crispin Peacock said, with his typical British understatement.
     Ryan stood in the center of the space and looked around.  The library of Griffinwood Manor occupied an octagonal tower, a later addition to the mainly Tudor building.  The tower rose three stories high to a stained glass dome.  Galleries circled the walls at each level and books occupied every inch of wall space, rising in row upon row of bound volumes.  A circular stairway hugged the wall leading from one level to the next and a library step ladder ran on rails around the lower level. 
     “Who on earth…? ” Ryan asked.
     “Don’t know,” said Crispin Peacock. “I really don’t know much about my relatives. I never really expected to inherit this place.  I thought someone would produce a child, but we seem to be perennially short of heirs in this family, lots of old uncles and aunts unable to produce offspring.  I don’t think old Cousin Taras ever expected to inherit, and I know I didn’t, but that’s the way it worked out.  Bit like Queen Victoria.”
     Ryan scoured his mind to find a reason why Queen Victoria and her multitude of children should in anyway resemble the Peacock family and their inability to reproduce.
     “She was only very distantly related to the Royal Family, you know,” said Peacock. “All kinds of people had to die before she had any chance at the throne. Lots of old Dukes and Duchesses who couldn’t produce legitimate heirs, a lot of bastards involved.  If you ask me she should never have been given the throne.  Personally I can’t see any good reason why a bastard can’t make a claim, after all no one asks to be born a bastard, do they?  Can’t be blamed for having a father who plays for the away team, if you know what I mean.”
     “She seemed to be very popular,” said Ryan.
     “Manic depressive if you ask me,” said Peacock.  He shrugged his shoulders. “Oh well, I suppose I shouldn’t complain.  All those infertile uncles have resulted in me inheriting this place.  So what do you think?”
     “It’s magnificent,” Ryan said, “truly magnificent. Where did it all come from?”
     “No idea,” said Peacock.  “I can only assume that someone bought up entire collections.  This whole library wing is quite a recent addition, but some of the books are ancient.  I know this is where Taras was working, but quite frankly I have no idea where to begin.  Libraries are not my thing.”
     “I love libraries,” Ryan said, “they bring out the treasure hunter in me.  This room is full of information, it’s just a matter of knowing where to look.”
      “I thought you were bringing your partner with you,” Peacock said. “Isn’t she supposed to be helping you?”
      Ryan spared a guilty thought for sending Violet away in the company of the mysterious Elaine.  Perhaps he had been wrong not to insist that he should accompany her, but he had been preoccupied with thoughts of the library at Griffinwood and the possibility of finding a real clue to the location of the sword.  Just as his instincts had told him to go to Norfolk, so they were now telling him to go to Griffinwood library and follow the trail that Taras Peacock had most certainly left behind.  He was pretty certain he knew where to begin, and now he had no wish to waste time talking about Violet, or mulling over the mystery of Elaine.
     “Violet was delayed,” Ryan said dismissively. “She might be along later.”
     “I’m sorry not to meet her,” said Peacock.
     “We’ll be fine without her,” Ryan said.
     “So where do we start?” Peacock asked.
     Ryan looked around the library. “I assume you’ve checked on all the books that are actually on the table,” he said.
     Peacock nodded. “Yes, I did that. I don’t see any connection, but maybe you should look.  You have a better idea of what you’re looking for.”
     Ryan looked at the small pile of books that sat on the dark oak table. He picked them up one by one.
     “Sons and Lovers, 1916,” he said, flipping open the flyleaf of the first book. He opened the next one.  “Agatha Christie 1933.”  He worked his way rapidly through the pile. “Well,” he said, “I think you’ve inherited a small fortune here.  These are all first editions.  It looks as though Taras was planning on cashing in and getting himself some spending money.”
     Peacock fingered the books with very little interest. “Nothing about the sword?” he asked.
     “Not in here,” said Ryan.
     “So where do we look now?”
     “The card index,” said Ryan, pointing to a row of index cabinets standing at the left side of the main entrance to the library.
     “All of those?” Peacock asked. ”There must be thousands of them.”
     “We’ll go through and see if he left any markers among the cards,” Ryan said. “That will give us a clue as to where he might have been looking. Of course, that’s assuming that every book in here is catalogued, which I very much doubt.”
     Crispin Peacock thrust his hands into the pocket of his jeans and stared around at the vast array of books.
     “This is impossible, isn’t it?” he said.
     “No,” said Ryan.  “It might take a while, but it’s not impossible.”
     Peacock shook his head. “There has to be an easier way.”
     If it was easy, everyone would have a TV program, Ryan said to himself, but he refrained from making the remark aloud. 
     “There’s probably nothing here,” said Peacock.  “I was just hoping that he left some kind of note or record that would tell us why he went off to catalogue the contents of a regimental museum.  That sounds like pretty small potatoes for someone of his standing.  If we could just find out about the museum …”
     “It’s not just about the sword,” Ryan said. “It’s about…” He hesitated.  Peacock knew nothing about Barry Marshall’s children, and perhaps it would be better to keep quiet for the time being.
     “Obviously we need to bring my cousin’s murderers to justice,” Peacock assured him, “but finding the sword would go a long way towards doing that.”
     “He also found the document here,” Ryan said.
     Peacock took his hands out of his pockets. “What document?” he asked quietly.
     “The Griffinwood Document,” Ryan said.
     “The Griffinwood Document?”  Peacock repeated, fixing Ryan with his pale blue eyes.
     “Oh,” said Ryan, “I forgot.  I haven’t seen you since Lewis’s funeral.”
     “No, you haven’t.  Is there something you haven’t told me?”
     “Well, yes,” Ryan said, thinking of the very many things he had not told Crispin Peacock, including the fact that he was being followed by a mysterious, but beautiful, woman named Elaine.  He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Elaine was a secret he should share with no one, mainly because no one would believe him.
     “So what haven’t you told me?” Peacock asked, “I thought we were in this together.  I thought we were helping each other.  After all Taras Peacock was my cousin.”
     “I don’t really know what it is,” Ryan said. “Violet and I went to Carlton Lewis’s funeral and Carlton’s widow told us about a document that had been found by your cousin, here in this house.  Apparently he wasn’t able to translate it and he had given it to the Society of Arthurian Scholars for translation.”
     “Why would he do that?” Peacock asked, a scowl crossing his features.
     “I don’t know,” said Ryan.  “Your cousin was fluent in a number of ancient languages so I can’t imagine why he was unable to translate that particular document.”
     “But why give it to that Society?” Peacock asked.
     “It was illustrated,” Ryan replied, “and the illustrations led them to believe that the document was something to do with Arthur, or Camelot,     or the Knights of the Round Table.  I don’t know all the details.”
     “For goodness sake,” said Peacock, sounding not just peeved, but distinctly angry, “why are we here messing around in this library, when the document is with these people.  Where are they?  Are they in London?”
     “They don’t have it anymore,” Ryan said. “It was stolen from them.”
     “Who stole it?”
     “I don’t know,” Ryan lied, still hesitating to mention Elaine and the mystery surrounding her activities.
     Peacock looked desperately around the library.  “Are you sure Taras found it here?” he asked.
     “That’s what he said,” Ryan replied.
     Peacock’s eyes roved around the room, looking up and down at the thousands of books. “And you’ve no idea who stole it?” he said.
     “No.”
     “Or what it was about?”
     “No idea at all,” Ryan said “although Violet___”
     “Violet?  Does she know something?”
     “No,” said Ryan, wishing he had never started into the whole subject of Violet. “Violet sometimes has sort of visions.”
     He expected Peacock to lose interest as the idea of obtaining serious information from the visions of a hysterical woman, but Peacock’s reaction was not what he expected.  Peacock’s eyes snapped into focus, abandoning their wild search of the acres of bookshelves.
     “What kind of visions?”
     “Oh, it’s nothing,” said Ryan. “She said she saw a nun.”
     “Fancy a cup of coffee?” Peacock said, suddenly changing the subject. “Or would you prefer something stronger?  I haven’t stocked the cupboards yet, but I can probably come up with something from the wine cellar.”
     “Your cousin liked wine,” said Ryan.
     “All my forebears liked wine,” Peacock said. “I have inherited quite a decent cellar.  I’ll go down and see what I can find.”
     “Don’t go to any trouble on my account,” Ryan said.
     “No trouble, old boy,” said Peacock airily. “I have to go outside anyway.” He patted his shirt pocket where Ryan could see the outline of a cell phone. “No signal in here,” he said, “must be all the books.  Don’t understand the mechanics of it, but can’t imagine anything penetrating that wall of paper.  I’ll be right back.”
      Although he stuck his hands back in his pockets as he sauntered out of the room, Ryan could not help but believe that Crispin Peacock was in a hurry to do something, and that something was not a visit to the inherited wine cellar. 
     As Peacock left the room he passed through the pools of light beamed down from the stained glass dome and his white tennis shoes appeared to change color; blue, green, red.  Something tickled at the back of Ryan’s mind.  Red shoes, there was something about red shoes. 
     He pushed the thought away and allowed it to be replaced by a new idea, the library ladder.  The ladder ran on a rail around the ground floor of the library and reached up to the top row of the ground floor stacks, to the books that were stored just below the first floor gallery.  Theoretically, with the use of the ladder and the stairs to the galleries, every book was accessible.  So, if Taras Peacock had been using the ladder in his search for first editions, then maybe the search had also caused him to find the Griffinwood Document.  If that was the case, then perhaps the ladder was still in the same position.  Well, it was worth a try.  Ryan’s pulse was racing as he climbed the ladder. He was back on track, doing what he did best, following a trail that no one else could see.