Chapter 34
Gwen
“It’s not a circle.” I halted on the steep path, one hand on the wooden railing, the wind pulling at my hair.
Below us, the cove’s beach stretched out in a wide crescent, wet from the retreating tide and the fog.
Above, the footbridge connected the mainland cliff to the island, where Lance was positioned with his binoculars.
“What?” Arthur stopped, two steps ahead of me, somehow aware I wasn’t moving. He carried the sword case, ready if we found somewhere to use it.
“The symbol.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled to one of the photographs of the sword’s ring, with the symbol that started everything—the cross and circle, with the wavy line beneath them.
I held the screen up against the landscape, despite the fog clinging to the headland and hiding much of the ruins above. “You need to see this.”
He joined me, looking over my shoulder.
“The circle isn’t abstract. It’s the headland.” I pointed at the massive rock formation rising from the sea, where the castle had once stood. “The wavy line is the water around it. And the break in the wave is the cave. Arthur, it fills at high tide, so it breaks the waterline at low tide.”
“And the cross?”
“Marks the spot.” I turned my head, and his face was right there, next to me. “The whole symbol is a map of this place.”
Arthur’s gaze cut to me. “You think?”
“I do.”
“You’re brilliant. Has anyone ever told you that?”
I wanted to kiss him, to close the few inches between us and brush my lips against his.
It would be nothing more than a celebratory kiss.
But Lance’s binoculars or the drone’s camera might have been on us.
Plus he had his earpiece in, so the guys might have heard us.
We were probably suspiciously close already.
On the drive from the ferry that morning, he’d warned me he’d be back in bodyguard mode once we got to Cornwall. I’d tested him when we arrived, but the second Lance appeared, the smiles and kisses were gone. But they’d be back tonight, if not sooner.
He said, “You should add the symbol-as-map connection to your email before we go in.”
“Good idea.” I recorded what I’d just figured out in the email and reset the forty-eight-hour auto-send timer. Once I was done, I pocketed the phone. “It’s one more data point connecting the sword and church to the castle. The question is—”
“Find it first.” He started down the path again. “Ask why second.”
He was right. Getting ahead of myself wouldn’t help anything. All the same, before I continued after him, I pulled my digital camera from the giant jacket pocket I’d stashed it in, and snapped a few photos.
We continued down, the wind no match for the yellow rain jacket Arthur had pillaged from his mother’s closet. Considering the size of their cottage, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the full sets of clothes they kept on hand. It was still weird, though.
“How long is the cave or passage or whatever you want to call it?” I asked.
“About three hundred feet.” He adjusted the sword case to his other hand. “Light reaches in through both openings, but there are plenty of deep shadows inside.”
“Thus the flashlights?”
He nodded from five steps ahead. “Thus the flashlights.”
The sandy beach was busier than I’d expected on a chilly, foggy October afternoon.
Maybe two dozen people spread across the beach, walking dogs and picking through tidal pools.
If I hadn’t been on a mission, I would have been taking photographs of what was visible of the ruins through the mist, or the legendary cave, the waterfall, or the bridge.
There was so much to see, and I felt the weight of all those legends.
“Stay close until we’re inside,” Arthur said, pausing to let me catch up. “How’s the camera, Tristan?”
I searched the sky for the drone. I’d watched them launch it from Lance’s rental car. They’d run some tests on the cellular connection before the drone vanished into the fog. The waves and tourists’ voices were too loud to hear the rotors spinning. “Can he see us?”
“He can,” said Arthur. “But he says a heavier bank is moving in from the west. Tristan’s confirmed the thermal works. Galahad’s with him to focus on visuals while Tristan handles the piloting.”
All this for my little sword.
“We’ve only got so much time.” Arthur inclined his head toward the cave entrance, the serious bodyguard face stuck in place. “We need to move.”
The temperature dropped once we were inside.
The air was dense with salt and damp, and the sound changed.
Beach noise fell away, replaced by the muffled roar of the waves.
Sand gave way to uneven rock, slick with algae and broken by shallow pools where the tide had left small pockets of water behind.
Centuries of tides had worn deep grooves and pockets into the slate walls. Daylight reached only a short way into the cave, and soon I had to turn on my flashlight.
Arthur did the same against the opposite wall.
A couple walked past us, the woman laughing at whatever the man had said. Their voices bounced off the ceiling and multiplied.
“If you want to focus on this section, I’ll move further in?” I suggested.
“Copy.”
The rough stone and jutting rock formations hid him from sight as I kept going, but we weren’t far apart.
I stopped halfway through and swept the beam left along the floor, raised it, and swept it right.
Back and forth, I treated the wall like a grid, searching for anything that interrupted the rock’s natural pattern.
Maybe a straight line. Maybe a curve too regular for water.
Maybe a circle with a cross and a wavy line.
Now and then, something caught my eye, and I took a photo. The cave walls told geological stories, but they weren’t the story I was after.
A man in a rain jacket walked past, heading for the beach. He paused long enough to say, “Your photos would turn out better with more light.”
“I know.” When I’d been sitting in Samantha’s meeting room, and the Cornwall connection showed up for the first time, I’d imagined all sorts of steps in my authentication work.
Standing inside Merlin’s Cave after being sent on a wild goose chase to Champagne, attacked in more than one location, and having sex with Arthur Penn…
none of that was on the list of things I’d planned for. “It’s a bit of a spontaneous trip.”
He grunted and continued on his way.
The rock was relentlessly natural. It was so full of grooves and ridges that I had to squeeze my eyes shut a few times to stop myself from seeing the symbol where it wasn’t.
Where are you?
Everything pointed to Tintagel. So where was the mark? Was it in the ruins above us?
“How’s the search going?” Arthur appeared from around a jutting rock formation.
“Nothing yet.”
“I lost my cell signal once we came into the cave. I’m going to pop outside for a second to check in with the guys. You good?”
“I’m good. I’ll keep at it.” I stared at the wall. “Can you hand me the sword, though? I want to compare it to the surface of the walls and the cave mouth.”
“Thinking it’ll inspire you?”
I shrugged. “Something’s got to.”
“Okay. I’ll be back in five.” He set the sword case on a flat, dry ledge near my feet and leaned in to press his lips to my temple. Quick, soft, and gone before I could react.
I watched his silhouette shrink, his shoulders shifting with each measured step over the wet rocks. He didn’t look back.
He kissed you like it was nothing. Like he’d been doing it for years.
My hand landed on my chest for some reason. Maybe it was because my lungs had forgotten how to work. Or maybe it was my heart that had stopped.
I’d kissed that man plenty of times over the past two days—many times while wearing far less clothing—but that kiss was different.
Because it did feel like nothing. Like a habit he was falling into.
Focus on the wall, Gwen.
Right. The wall.
I turned my flashlight back to the immense slab of slate across from me.
A woman picking her way through the cave wobbled on the rocks. She landed on a slick one, pitched forward, and I caught her hand before she fell.
“Oh!” Her foot plunged into a tidal pool. “That’s freezing.”
“Careful. The rocks are slippery through here.”
“Thank you.” She laughed while she steadied herself. “Bit more dramatic than the brochure, eh?”
“It has its charms.”
She smiled and continued toward the far end.
I’d finished my first grid, so I picked up the sword and moved deeper into the cave.
I swept the beam across a wide, relatively flat section of wall, roughly fifteen feet across.
The rock had a different texture here—straighter and flatter in places, as though nature hadn’t shaped it alone.
I moved closer to trace one area with my fingers.
The surface under my fingertips was smooth.
But a distinct edge interrupted the smoothness, as though someone had carved an arc several feet long—
I stepped back.
And then further back.
And then further.
I angled the flashlight to throw light across the full width of the section in front of me. As the shadows shifted, the grooves—random up close—turned into a pattern.
A curve. Too regular for erosion.
I moved the light to the right. A straight line, cutting vertically through the curve. And below it, undulating channels.
It was the wavy line. I tilted my flashlight upward. The circle. The cross.
I almost dropped the sword case.
The symbol was enormous—at least fifty feet high. I hadn’t expected anything on that scale. If I’d been standing five feet to the left, it would have been invisible, the edges of the sea-worn slate obscuring half of it.
I’d found it.
I’d really found it.
“Arthur!” I yelled, in case he was anywhere nearby. But no response came.
You found it, Gwen! It’s all real!
Every cell in my body wanted to jump up and down with glee, but the logical part of my brain reminded me of the woman who’d slipped on the rocks.
Take pictures. Take a lot of pictures!
I put the case down and fished my camera out of my pocket.
I angled the flashlight until the full carving appeared in the viewfinder.
I moved side to side and took different shots, showcasing how the image vanished if you moved too far.
Each click of the shutter was a fact, and I built arguments from facts.
The research paper was practically writing itself. From the sword’s ring to the church’s inscription to this cave. The Hospitaller inventory from 1312 confirmed the church dates. And now physical proof carved in stone showed the same symbol had marked all three.
But what did it mean? Was it a Templar symbol? Was it more ancient than that? Had someone simply copied this symbol onto St. Catherine’s Church after finding it here? How many unanswered questions were too many for a paper?
The academic press would focus on the evidence. Then the historians would come out. This place would be crawling within a week of publishing, and I didn’t even need a peer review to bring them out.
Take that, Dr. Theodore Hopkins! Try chasing people away from Tintagel now!
I lowered the camera and checked my phone. No signal.
Looked toward the beach entrance. No Arthur yet, either.
Light spilled in from the far end, broken by three men picking their way over the rocks. People had been walking back and forth the entire time I’d been working, so three more visitors were nothing unusual. But I didn’t remember these men passing me on their way to the far end.
They were large, their movements too coordinated for sightseers.
I should have remembered them going by.
They were fifteen feet from me when the first one charged. One hand clamped over my mouth while the other seized my arm.
I drove my knee up, but he sidestepped, dragging me against his chest and locking a thick arm around my middle.
The camera and my flashlight slipped from my fingers and cracked against stone.
I slammed my elbow backward, but unlike at the archive, the man shifted his weight and took the blow without a sound.
These weren’t the amateurs from Champagne.
I kicked. Twisted. The second man caught my legs. I was off the ground, my scream muffled against a huge palm that tasted like salt.
The dim light hit the third man’s face.
Oh fuck.
Rick Younge.
“This was easier than I expected.” He picked up the sword case from where I’d set it down. He sighed as the men began carrying me to the far exit. “I was hoping I’d see Arthur again.”