Chapter 19

Chapter

Nineteen

I closed the Fachan’s eyelid and stroked his forehead. Hester kissed his right cheek then dropped her head in silent acknowledgment of his death. Otis sniffed loudly and wiped away several tears.

‘He died a warrior,’ Hugo murmured. ‘In battle.’

I bit my lip and nodded. I couldn’t profess to have known the Fachan well – this was only the third time we had met – but I was certain this was the death he’d have chosen. If only that same thought would help ease the pain and guilt stabbing at my heart. This was on me: the Fachan’s death was a direct result of my own actions.

‘I’d do just about anything right now for some drugs,’ I admitted quietly.

‘Spider’s silk won’t help.’ Hugo’s voice was soft, without censure. ‘You need to allow yourself to feel the pain. Numbing yourself won’t alter the fact of his death. He deserves better than that.’

He wrapped his arms around me and, for several moments, I buried myself against his chest. It would be nice to hide away from the world in Hugo’s arms while I grieved for the Fachan but there wasn’t time. We only had three days.

‘We can’t linger here, Hugo,’ I told him. ‘We have to leave.’

‘I know.’ He glanced behind him. ‘We can probably still get out the same way we came in. Only this cavern seems to have been damaged.’

As I nodded and turned towards the narrow tunnel, a tentative voice called down from above, ‘Hello? Daisy? Hugo?’

I exhaled with relief. It was Gordon; he was alive and thankfully had escaped Athair’s wrath. I looked up towards the hole in the roof that led to the open sky and squinted. ‘We’re here!’

‘Don’t move!’ he shouted. ‘I’m drawing a rune to pull you out of there.’

Bless his striped sorcerer’s socks. I reached for Hugo’s hand and gripped it tightly, while Hester and Otis managed brief grins and flew upwards of their own accord. A moment later Gordon’s rune started to work and we followed them, our bodies rising through the cavern and the deep folds of the earth. It was an extraordinary way to leave the cave but sadly I was in no mood to enjoy the experience.

‘Thank you, Gordon,’ Hugo told him. ‘You saved us a great deal of time.’

I nodded, though I couldn’t smile. At that moment, I wasn’t sure I’d ever smile again. ‘Yes, thank you.’

The lanky sorcerer dropped his gaze. ‘I don’t deserve your gratitude,’ he said. ‘When I saw Athair, I could have tried to stop him but I didn’t. I hid as soon as I caught sight of him. I’m a coward.’

‘No.’ My voice was harsher than I’d intended and I grimaced when Gordon flinched. I tried to soften my tone. ‘You did the smart thing, Gordon. He’d have killed you stone dead if you’d tried to intervene. You can’t win against him.’ The ache in the centre of my chest deepened; even the Fachan hadn’t been able to win against my father.

Hugo looked around. ‘We’re quite a distance from the entrance to the main cave.’

‘There was a brownie,’ Gordon said. ‘A blonde female. She found me and directed me to this spot. She was here a moment ago.’ He glanced about him. ‘She vanished when I started drawing the rune. I don’t know where she went.’

Hester snarled. ‘Eloise.’

Otis flinched.

‘Leave it, Hester,’ I said tiredly. ‘She’s not the problem here.’

There must have been something in my tone of voice because Hester dropped the subject without an argument. She flew towards me and, with uncharacteristic affection, nuzzled the base of my neck. ‘Three days,’ she whispered. ‘There are only three days. Please, Daisy, tell me you have a plan.’

I didn’t say anything. The only thing filling my head at that moment was the Fachan’s dead body lying in the hidden cave so far below our feet.

Hugo cleared his throat. ‘Give Daisy some time.’

‘We don’t have time,’ Otis whispered.

When Hugo smiled, the ghost of his dimple appeared in his cheek. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Three days is plenty of time. I’ve got a plan.’

I was convinced he was lying. I gazed at him and he caught my look. ‘Well,’ he amended, ‘the beginnings of a plan.’ He held out his hand. ‘If you’re still willing to fight?’

I snorted. No matter how much I was hurting it was a ridiculous question, and Hugo knew it.

I took his hand. ‘The only person I’ll ever surrender to is you,’ I whispered.

There were a lot of phone calls to make and some people took a lot more convincing than others.

My adopted mum and dad already had their bags packed. They’d known for several months that there would be a day when they would have to run and hide. I cursed Athair another thousand times for doing this to the people I loved, then I got down to business. ‘I’ve been in touch with Rose,’ I told them. ‘She’s made arrangements. All you have to do is get to King’s Cross by ten o’clock tonight.’

‘We’re on our way out of the door as we speak,’ my dad said briskly. ‘Don’t worry about us.’

‘Is Hugo with you?’ Mum enquired. ‘Has he popped the question yet?’

‘Believe me, this is not the time for romance,’ I said firmly.

‘Daisy-Pop, there is always time for romance.’ It was easier not to argue.

Mr McIvanney, my old boss at SDS, took more persuading. ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded. ‘I can’t shut down the business and tell all my employees to go into hiding!’

I kept my patience; it wasn’t his fault he didn’t understand. ‘Anyone connected to me is in serious danger – mortal danger. Send an email to all your customers in the next hour with your apologies and shut everything down until Saturday.’

‘But—’

‘Do it.’

‘Is this a drug thing, Daisy?’

I sighed. ‘Mr McIvanney, it doesn’t matter what it is. Just do what I say and nobody will be hurt.’ I hoped.

It took more than an hour to contact everyone. When I finished the last call, my whole body was shaking with exhaustion. It had been a long day, but the last thing I could afford to do was sleep. I couldn’t waste any precious minutes, not even on a cat nap.

Hugo took one look at my drained expression and grimaced. ‘Transport will be here shortly. You’ll get a chance to rest, Daisy.’ He gave me a meaningful look. ‘And you will rest.’ There was more than a hint of command in his voice. ‘You need to be alert for what’s to come.’

Rather than waste energy arguing, I simply nodded. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Transport? The Jeep is still in the car park. It’s ready to go.’

He flashed me a grin. ‘It would take us twelve hours to drive to Lincolnshire from here. That’s precious time we can’t afford to waste.’ He folded his arms smugly. ‘Fortunately, I’m Lord Hugo Pemberville, minor celebrity with major connections.’

I raised an eyebrow. Then I heard the faint whirring of an approaching motor. ‘Is that?—?’

‘A helicopter. It’ll get us to where we need to be in a few hours.’

I wasn’t prepared to start celebrating yet. ‘We don’t know where we need to be, Hugo.’

As if on cue, his phone started ringing. He glanced at the screen then held it up so I could see who was calling. It was the Primes back at Pemberville Castle. ‘Have faith,’ he said, and then he answered the call. ‘It’s me. Daisy’s here and you’re on speaker.’

Rizwan’s voice immediately responded. ‘Good. She’ll want to hear this, too.’

A sudden optimistic surge flooded my veins. If anyone could help us now, it was the Primes. ‘It sounds as if you’ve actually found something,’ I said.

‘Hugo told us what the Fachan said about the sceptre and the other items. Once we had that information, the rest was easy.’

‘Go on,’ Hugo said.

‘Two words for you, buddy,’ Rizwan said. ‘King John.’

Hugo’s expression immediately cleared. ‘Bad King John?’

‘The one and the same.’

I gulped in air. ‘From Robin Hood?’

This time it was Miriam who answered. ‘That’s the one. Robin Hood as a single entity didn’t exist, but King John certainly did and he was certainly a bastard. He was unbelievably cruel and frequently starved his citizens to death – and also his friends and family.’

My body tensed with anticipation. That fit with what the Fachan had told us, so far at least.

Becky’s voice filled the line as she picked up the thread. ‘He was obsessed with his own self-importance and desperate to maintain his power. There are several independently verified histories that state he gathered a group of craftsmen and sorcerers to create a set of crown jewels for his own enjoyment. There’s no information about the individual pieces because he had everyone who was involved in their creation executed immediately the jewels were completed. And the crown jewels themselves were subsequently lost.’

Hugo’s body vibrated with tension. ‘Lost?’

‘In 1216 King John and his army crossed a tidal estuary. They hadn’t planned particularly well, and according to some documents they were surprised by the incoming tide and nearly drowned. Although they escaped with their lives, they lost many of their baggage wagons. One of those wagons contained King John’s crown jewels.’

My heart was in my mouth. ‘Which estuary?’ I asked.

‘It’s known locally as the Wash,’ Miriam said. ‘By a village called Sutton Bridge, which isn’t far from King’s Lynn.’ She paused. ‘Sutton Bridge is in Lincolnshire.’

That was it. That had to be the place.

‘What are the chances,’ Hugo asked, ‘that it wasn’t the natural incoming tide that caught them unawares but a fiend who was determined to ensure the sceptre was never used?’

‘It’s certainly possible,’ Rizwan said. ‘We might never know for sure. It couldn’t have been Athair, though. His birth was still generations away.’

I nibbled on my bottom lip. The passage of time was a huge problem. ‘It’s been eight hundred years and nobody has uncovered any of that lost treasure?’

‘Not yet,’ he answered.

Hugo and I gazed at each other and he smiled. ‘Not until the country’s two greatest treasure hunters went looking for it,’ he said.

Hope surged in my chest; it was a desperate long shot but perhaps not all was lost after all. Athair knew of the treasure’s existence, he knew where it had disappeared and he probably knew about the sceptre’s powers. But King John had died decades before Athair was born and the crown jewels had already been lost. Athair didn’t know enough to retrieve the treasure for himself and probably believed that it wasn’t a danger to him as long as it remained lost in Lincolnshire. If we could find that sceptre in the next three days and use it against him… I was almost too afraid to allow the thought to form properly.

Hugo ended the call just as the air around us started to whip up. My hair flew in several different directions, and Hester and Otis started to shriek from where they were hovering beside Gordon. I tilted my head back and watched a sleek black helicopter as it started to descend.

‘Shall we?’ Hugo asked.

I didn’t have to say anything. We both knew there was nothing else left to try.