The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [26]
No, he was being a fool. His life was in his control now, at least most of it. He enjoyed his pleasures, the women who favored him with their attention and their bodies.
He sat there and pondered. A magic lamp given to King Edward I by a Knight Templar. The chances of such a lamp’s even existing in the first place were very close to none at all in his mind. And this same magic lamp that couldn’t possibly exist was hidden somewhere in England, now, in modern times?
It was impossible. It was a chimera, a dream, nothing more. And he shook his head even as he said, “I will be your partner, Miss Mayberry. Now tell me what else you have discovered about the lamp.”
She stuck out her hand and he shook it.
“All right. Now, tell me.”
7
HELEN LEANED VERY close to him and whispered, “Not three months ago when I was in Aldeburgh, again searching as I have searched for the past six years, there had been a vicious storm that had destroyed parts of the beach just the week before. It had even torn away parts of cliffs. I found a small cave, uncovered by the storm.
“At the very back of the cave an iron cask had been dumped over onto a ledge. There was a hole in the wall where it had been hidden. Inside the cask was a rolled piece of leather, barely holding itself together. I don’t know what language is written on that scroll, but it is very, very old.”
“You’ve taken it to none of the medieval scholars at Cambridge?”
“Oh, no, that would surely be my last resort. I want you to look at it, Lord Beecham. I want you to translate it. It would be your first act as my partner.”
He said very slowly, “How did you find out that I spent two years at Oxford studying the medieval parchments and manuscripts vaulted there, specifically the ones brought back from the Holy Land to England? You are not thinking about laying this at Blunder’s door, are you? He couldn’t have told you about my studies at Oxford. He has no idea.”
“One of the churchmen once told me about you. His brother taught you at Oxford some twelve years ago. Sir Giles—”
“—Gilliam,” Lord Beecham said, looking inward, remembering those exciting days when there was a discovery around each corner, on each page of some precious bit of parchment that Sir Giles had managed to unearth from the Oxford vaults.
“Yes. His churchman brother is Lockleer Gilliam, a vicar in Dereham. He married my father and mother once, about two years before she died.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I forgot. My father is a vastly romantic gentleman. He wed my mother on three different occasions. Vicar Gilliam is a man of flexible mind and infinite kindness. He and my father became great friends.”
“But why did you not simply take the writings to Oxford to Sir Giles Gilliam?”
“He died last year.”
“I didn’t know,” Lord Beecham said, and he felt a blow of guilt so swift and powerful it nearly bowed him to his knees. He hadn’t heard. No one had bothered to tell him because—because he was nothing more than a pleasure-seeking nobleman who didn’t give a damn about anything other than his own gratification. He looked down to see her hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I met Sir Giles once at his brother’s vicarage in Dereham. He was always talking, only it wasn’t to any of us. He was conversing with people who lived back then, in thirteenth-century England, and he was explaining to them that he needed to know more about this or that. Then, and I swear this to you, he would pause and it seemed that he was listening to someone speak who wasn’t there.
“The vicar told me not to pay any attention to Sir Giles. He said, however, that after Sir Giles’s conversations he wrote the most remarkable documents.”
Helen clearly saw Sir Giles,