Page 56 of The Salted Sceptre
‘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 youwillrest.’ 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.’
