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bookishwenchMy Yuletide assignment, written for Weasleytook:
National Treasure: British Edition
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is made from this work. Also, the diamond necklace was real, but the ring and Walter Hempstock are not.
“Riley, you are being completely ridiculous,” Ben said as they picked their way between tourists while heading towards the Tower of London.
“Not completely,” Riley said, giving his friend a disgruntled scowl. “Partially, maybe.”
“There is absolutely nothing that could possibly go wrong,” Ben said, then stopped dead in his tracks and looked at Riley apologetically.
“You did not just say that,” Riley said, sounding like he was about to hyperventilate. “You do realize that anything from flaming poisoned arrows to a rabid Bigfoot driving a tank has just become possible in the next five minutes, right?”
“Okay, I admit that was a stupid thing to say,” Ben said as he tried to avoid Riley’s petrified gaze, “but truthfully, we’ve got a foolproof plan here, and everything should be fine.”
“So says the man who is no longer allowed in Buckingham Palace,” Riley grumbled.
“Technically you wouldn’t be either if anyone knew what you were really doing in that cubicle,” Ben said.
“Can you not make it sound quite so lurid?” Riley said. “I was just monitoring all the security cameras and creating a false fire alarm and . . . you know what, that actually does sound worse.”
“See? Now, compared to some of our other endeavors, this is really pretty straight forward,” Ben said.
“And also legal,” Riley added, then paused. “Right?”
“Probably,” Ben said, and Riley shot him a look again. “Well, believe me when I say the result is going to be worth it. Seriously, she is going to be more impressed by this than anything ever.”
“Better than the scrolls from the Library of Alexandria?” Riley asked.
“Okay, it’ll be a close second,” Ben said.
“I guess that’ll have to be good enough,” Riley said.
“Riley, nothing is ever going to top finding the lost works of Euclid,” Ben said.
“Yeah. Because the world really wanted more geometry,” Riley said with a sigh. “Out of curiosity, how many times has a high school student hit you over the head with their math textbook?”
“None,” Ben said, laughing. “That kind of thing doesn’t happen, Riley.”
“Twenty-seven,” Riley said, pointing to a bump on his head. “Last time was two days ago. Why does this stuff not ever happen to you? Why doesn’t your car get towed away or your name get accidentally left off or misspelled in every CNN story about the treasures? My own mother called me wanting to know who Raleigh Pull was.”
“Hey, you wound up with the girl,” Ben said.
“Okay, true,” Riley said, his face lightening up with a smile.
“You’ve actually been hit with math books twenty-seven times?” Ben asked as they finally walked up to the gates and into the Tower of London complex itself.
“I think so,” Riley said. “Somewhere around eighteen they start to run together.”
“Geez,” Ben said, forking over the entrance fee for both of them since he was feeling a little guilty.
It had been two solid years since Ben and Abigail had come to a mutual realization that their relationship, which had experienced more stops and starts than a broken down jalopy, was not going to work out the way they’d hoped. Despite Ben’s parents somehow deciding to make another go of it even with their constant arguing, Abigail and he realized that the incessant bickering that was the main characteristic of their relationship just wasn’t either of them really wanted. They had, shockingly, remained friends, and once the pressure of trying to make themselves be happy with each other was gone, they actually were happy with their friendship.
Abigail and Riley winding up dating, though, had been something of a shock to everyone concerned. Ben, who was now happily involved with a freelance author, had no problems with it, even though his mother had told him he was probably repressing his anger and redirecting it towards increasingly bizarre treasure hunts. However, when he’d pointed out that had been his behavioral pattern since age six, she’d shrugged and said he had a point.
Last week Riley had confided in Ben that he wanted to propose to Abigail, and at once Ben had said no ordinary strip mall jeweler would be able to come up with a ring that would be special enough for the occasion. Reluctantly, Riley had allowed Ben to talk him into hunting down a diamond ring of historical significance fraught with mystery, which is what had led them to the Tower of London, apparently the resting place of a truly dazzling gem, and not one of the crown jewels, either.
“Okay, so, you want to fill me in on what exactly we’re here to find?” Riley asked.
“A ring,” Ben said, walking past a group of ravens cawing loudly on the green.
“Yes, a ring,” Riley said, almost trotting to keep up with him, “but what’s so special about it?”
“It belonged to Marie Antoinette,” Ben said, then stopped and tilted his head sideways, “except that it actually didn’t.”
Riley sighed again. “And could you translate that into a story that someone who hasn’t spent their entire life poring over every detail of history might be able to understand?”
“Right,” Ben said. “Okay, so once upon a time there were two jewelers named Boehmer and Bassange. They had been contracted by King Louis XVI to make a diamond necklace for his girlfriend, Madame du Barry, but he stipulated that it had to be jaw-droppingly stunning.”
“I don’t want to get her a necklace,” Riley said petulantly. “I need a ring.”
“I know, I know. The necklace doesn’t even exist anymore. Just listen to the story. Anyway, Boehmer and Bassange spent years looking for enough diamonds to make this necklace,” Ben explained.
“How many diamonds are we talking about?” Riley said, becoming a bit more interested.
“A lot,” Ben said, “but by the time the necklace was ready, old Louis XVI had died and his girlfriend was kicked out of the court because the next queen, Marie Antoinette, couldn’t stand her.”
“Cat fight. Fun,” Riley said.
“That’s pretty much what Boehmer and Bassange thought, only now they were stuck with having put all this money, time, and effort into creating a really expensive necklace that didn’t have a buyer,” Ben said. “So they did the logical thing and tried to sell it to Marie Antoinette.”
“I guess I can see that,” Riley said.
“The problem was not only was it ridiculously expensive, but it wasn’t Marie Antoinette’s taste at all. It was really gaudy, completely over the top,” Ben said.
“It’s possible to have too many diamonds?” Riley asked.
“It is if they’re put into the necklace equivalent of a diamond-encrusted polyester leisure suit, which this apparently was,” Ben said.
“Oh, please get the image of John Travolta dressed in one of Elvis’s jumpsuits out of my head now,” Riley said, shuddering.
“Sorry, now you’ve got it stuck in mine too,” Ben said, shuddering in turn. “So the queen sent Boehmer and Bassange on their way.”
“And what happened to the necklace?” Riley said.
“Boehmer and Bassange kept trying to get rid of it, and it wound up the center of a scandal involving a morally depraved cardinal, a prostitute who could pass for Marie Antoinette’s double, and a fairly terrifyingly conniving con artist who happened to have court connections. It’s all very convoluted, but the upshot of it is that the jewelers ended up trying to claim that the queen had agreed to buy the necklace and that therefore she owed them money, a lot of it,” Ben said.
“But she didn’t,” Riley said.
“No, all the papers for it were forged,” Ben said. “Still, the scandal of her buying a completely pointless and ostentatiously flamboyant necklace—“
“Not to mention ugly,” Riley chimed in.
“Yes, that too, was enough to besmirch the queen pretty badly even though it was shown to be false, and it undoubtedly contributed to her unpopularity and eventual trip to the guillotine,” Ben said.
“Okay, but the necklace?” Riley asked.
“Boehmer and Bassange broke it up, and the husband of the woman who masterminded the whole fiasco ended up selling the stones individually all over the place, though mostly in London, and pretty much glutting the market with diamonds for a while. In modern currency, they would have been about $100 million dollars altogether,” Ben said.
“Holy cow,” Riley said, feeling a little light headed. “We’re going after $100 million of diamonds?”
“No,” Ben said, looking at him like he had grown extra arms. “I’m not quite that insane. No one knows what happened to all of them, and some of them were cut into smaller stones. But one particular diamond, the big eleven carat showpiece at the center of the necklace, was sold to an anonymous gentleman in London, and he had it made into a ring for his daughter.”
“Eleven carats?” Riley said. “That’s more than Bugs Bunny could handle. Could she even lift her hand with that thing on it?”
“Apparently, because it passed down through the family for a couple generations until it was sold off, then sold again and again, then stolen, then stolen by somebody else, then finally it was lost to history sometime before the end of World War I. Absolutely nobody knew where it was,” Ben said, then grinned.
“I take it that it’s not so lost anymore?” Riley said.
“The last guy who had it apparently feared Britain was going to lose the Great War and decided the safest thing to do was to stick a nice little nest egg someplace nobody would think to look,” Ben said.
“Like the Tower of London, where thousands of people go in and out every day?” Riley asked.
“Like in plain sight, right in front of everyone’s nose, the one place nobody ever searches,” Ben said. “Come on. It’s this way.”
As Ben strode off towards the White Tower, Riley called out, “But what if it doesn’t fit?”
“Then resize it!” Ben called over his shoulder, and Riley trotted to catch up.
The crowds were mulling about as usual in the White Tower, some heading to the shop downstairs, others to look at the Royal Armory or just to stare at the eleventh century wonder’s rooms, but Ben’s steps were much more purposeful.
“What are you making a beeline toward?” Riley asked.
“Just, please, don’t use that term,” Ben said, grimacing.
“Why? Does it bug you?” Riley said, giggling like a seventh grader at his own pun.
“Yes, actually, because bees don’t go in a straight line, so it doesn’t even make sense,” Ben said. “Also, I don’t like bees. Never have. Don’t know why. They give me the creeps. But here we are.”
They entered St. John’s Chapel, an impressive but rather austere-looking room with pillars topped by arches, all made of pale stone.
“This is one of the oldest parts of the whole Tower,” Ben said, looking around at the relatively empty chapel. “It’s been here over nine hundred years. This is pretty much exactly what it would have looked like back when William the Conqueror built it.”
“Yeah, great. England’s full of old stone stuff, though, so could we maybe get back to the engagement ring?” Riley said.
“This way,” Ben said, motioning toward one of the pillars, then mumbling quietly to himself. “Third one from the altar on the left, around the back, smallest stone in the fifth tier… did I tell you these stones were all shipped over from France?”
“No, and let’s pretend you didn’t,” Riley said. “Fifth tier, and then?”
“And then,” Ben said, and he quietly tapped nine times on the stone to the tempo of “The Marseilles.”
Absolutely nothing happened.
“Cute,” Riley said. “I think I’ll just go to Tiffany’s.”
“No, really, it’s here!” Ben said, tapping out the tune again on the stone with the same lack of a result. “I’m totally sure of it.”
“Maybe you counted wrong,” Riley said with a sigh, knowing his friend wasn’t going to give up until they either found the ring or were thrown out, and personally he was betting on the latter.
“Wait, wait, wait, I’ve got it,” Ben said, going to the opposite side. “Not third one from the altar on our left but third one from the altar on the altar’s left. This is the right one.”
“Okay, but if it’s not, can we just get a cup of tea and do something a little less insane, like, I don’t know, seeing if London Bridge really is falling down?” Riley said.
“Sure, if you want to go to Arizona, which is where it is now,” Ben said, still carefully inspecting the stones. “This has to be it.”
He squatted next to the new pillar, tapped out the pattern on the rock, and again nothing happened.
“Geez, I’m sorry, Riley,” Ben said, getting up. “I honestly believed this was…”
And he turned around to see not only that Riley was gone, but that a large paving stone on the floor where Riley had been standing had fallen away in apparently perfect silence, leaving a gaping hole in the floor that led into a pitch black hole.
“Okay, I was not expecting that,” Ben said, then shrugged and jumped into the hole, following wherever Riley had fallen.
He didn’t see the stone then silently slip back into place as though the opening had never been there.
It was actually the eleventh century equivalent of a playground slide. Ben found himself skidding down a totally blackened tunnel, hurtling around, back and forth, in a descending oval, apparently inside the thick, curved wall of the chapel itself and rocketing downward through the lower floors beneath it until he must have been well below the basement level. With a thud, he landed at the bottom, just managing to keep from scraping his knees on the rough stone floor. Searching through his pockets, he found his flashlight and flicked it on.
“Hey,” Riley said from two inches away in front of his nose.
“Gyah!” Ben said, nearly falling over. “You startled me.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what falling down a hole and into a Norman era Six Flags did to me, too,” Riley said. “Are you hurt?”
“No, you?” Ben asked.
“Everything still seems to be working. So where are we?” Riley asked.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Ben said, shining the flashlight around the room.
“Great, that’s comforting,” Riley said. “I can tell you one thing about our new accommodations: there is no cell phone reception. At all. I’ve already tried.”
Riley shoved his useless phone back into his coat and began digging through his pockets. He took out a flashlight of his own, and between the two of them they were able to realize they were actually in a cave. Water dripped from the ceiling onto the floor, and the temperature was cold and damp. It also smelled.
“Okay, so, assuming that Harry Potter isn’t going to come down here and save us from a big, scary snake, what are we supposed to do?” Riley said.
“I am completely confused,” Ben said, and by the light of the flashlight his face really did look befuddled. “Look, I was browsing through an antique store a few months ago and found an old diary from 1915 that had been written by a guy name Walter Hempstock. He mentioned finding the ring and hiding it here, but it was in a code, specifically a fairly simple letter-to-letter substitution cipher, which was why the book was probably stuck in the discount pile. He wound up dying during the war and leaving no descendents, so it’s fair game, but he never mentioned—"
“That we’d wind up in a giant cave with two flashlights and probably no way out so we’re gonna die?” Riley asked.
“Well, no, that wasn’t in the code,” Ben said, giving him a look. “We’ve been in tighter spots than this, so shush!”
“You shush!” Riley said. “Ancient treasures have been trying to kill us for the last decade or so, and it looks like third time’s the charm!”
“If Hempstock got out, so can we,” Ben said, “just calm down.”
“Fine, fine, so what did this coded message actually say?” Riley asked.
“To find the precious treasure, tap the Gallic anthem upon the third column from the left in the chapel of the tower of palest color, in the line that matches digits upon the hand, the smallest stone being the key, and what shall be opened to you will reveal itself as the nonpareil gem of the island,” Ben said.
“That’s it?”
“No, there was one other line, but it didn’t make much sense. I thought it might have been thrown in to confuse someone trying to decode the message,” Ben said.
“Which was?”
“Since winds on rough days, I next to hear even speaking tales over night’s emotion,” Ben said.
“So we’re supposed to blow wind on something while telling stories and being afraid… or possibly sleepy?” Riley asked.
“Sure, yeah, try that,” Ben said, giving him his most disgustedly annoyed look. “Or, if we want to appear sane, we can just go around the perimeter of the cave until we come to a door or some stairs or something that might conceivably be useful.”
“Fine,” Riley said. “Have it your way, but when it turns out we need to have brought a mini-fan and a copy of Peter Rabbit, I’m going to say I told you so.”
They carefully picked their way across the rough stone floor, and it was easy to believe that Hempstock had been the only person there in the last five hundred or more years. There weren’t even any bats, though Riley thought he might have heard the high squeaking of a rat or two. Finally, after carefully moving counterclockwise halfway around the large room, Ben’s flashlight picked out something glittering a few yards away in a natural alcove about ten feet off the ground.
“Is that the ring?” Riley asked.
“One way to find out,” Ben said. “You want the honors?”
“Sure, why not,” Riley said. “Like you said, what could possibly go wrong?”
“Oh, do not say that down here,” Ben said, rolling his eyes. “Once was bad enough. Next you’ll tell me you broke a shoelace again.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you,” Riley said as he clambered onto Ben’s shoulders and began feeling around in the rocky niche. Almost at once, his hand closed on something small and cold. “I think I’ve got it!”
Ben let him back down onto the ground, and Riley opened his hand to reveal a rather filthy but undeniably stunning diamond ring. Even with the accumulated dirt of nearly one hundred years, it still glimmered like a not-so-little star in his hand.
“Whoa,” Riley breathed. “That is one big honking diamond. Okay, Ben, if we do get out of here alive, this was totally worth it. If we don’t, then it wasn’t, but still.”
“Duly noted,” Ben said. “So that was the first goal. The next one is getting out of here. Let’s keep going.”
Riley put the ring in his pocket for safekeeping, checking very carefully first that there wasn’t a hole in it. The continued their lap of the underground chamber, and scattered here and there on the floor they began to find occasional ancient coins and the remains of old torches.
“Again, I’m not seeing any skeletons, so they must have found a way out,” Ben said.
“Not seeing skeletons is almost always good news,” Riley agreed, then stopped dead in his tracks. “Hey, look! A door!”
The irregular walls of the cave formed a smaller indented chamber just ahead, and there did indeed appear to be a rather odd-looking knob sticking out of the wall. Both of them heaved a sigh of relief, but just as Riley was about to grab it, Ben abruptly put a hand on his shoulder.
“What?” Riley said. “I want out.”
“Yeah, but think about we wound up down here. It could be a booby trap,” Ben said.
“Or not?” Riley said.
“Or not,” Ben agreed.
“It isn’t even a door,” Abigail said.
“Oh, come on,” Ben said, turning around and immediately beginning to argue with her. “How could you possibly tell that. Wait, what are you even doing down here?”
“Hi,” she said, then gave a stunned Riley a kiss. “You actually thought you could go off on an adventure without my noticing? Come on. Of course I wanted in!”
“But how did you… you got down… with the pillar… and the whoosh-boom… and the… did you happen to leave the hole in the floor open by any chance?” Riley said, still sounding shocked.
“Yes, I got down here the same way you did. Emily called me about the diary,” Abigail said.
“My mom?” Ben said.
“Yes, your mom,” Abigail said as though he were being very dim. “She says hello, by the way.”
“Okay, so Ben’s mom mentions a diary and you figured out everything from that?” Riley said.
“Not exactly,” Ben answered. “Mom has the actual diary. I left it with her for safe-keeping.”
“Still answering for me, I see,” Abigail said with a sigh. “The two of us puzzled out the riddle after a couple hours, and when I realized Riley’s so-called business trip was actually a treasure hunt, I thought I’d tag along to keep you out of trouble.”
“And… door?” Riley asked, giving her hopeful puppy-dog-eyes.
‘It’ll be a climb, but yes, the door back into the chapel is propped open,” Abigail said.
“Okay, so if you’re so smart, how exactly do you know that that,” Ben said, pointing emphatically at the knob, “is not a door?”
“Because you stumbled onto a lot more than I think you thought you did,” Abigail said. “I’m not sure why exactly you came down here, but do you know what this place is?”
“Cave?” Riley said, shrugging.
“Uh-huh,” Abigail said, grinning. “And?”
“And it’s old, a lot older than Hempstock, and judging by the coins we passed on the floor over there, it’s a few hundred years older than the Tower of London as well,” Ben said.
“Ja,” Abigail said. “Much older. Did you know Hempstock was originally a custodian for the building?”
“Yes,” Ben said defensively. “He was also fairly intelligent.”
“Try brilliant,” Abigail said. “He held at least five Ph.D.’s in various subjects, including history, languages, literature, engineering, and philosophy.”
“Wait, what?” Riley said. “The janitor was all Good Will Hunting?”
“Walter Hempstock changed his name from Sir William de Basingcourt Chauncy-Podmore IV,” Abigail said. “He was the janitor here for a very good reason. He was looking for something, and he found it.”
“So… you wouldn’t know anything about a, um, piece of jewelry or anything that’s down here?” Riley said.
“You mean the Marie Antoinette diamond? That’s chickenfeed,” Abigail said dismissively, then pointed dramatically at the knob in the wall. “That’s the big deal.”
“The doorknob?” Riley said.
“Not a door,” Abigail repeated. “Take a closer look. But don’t touch it!”
Riley, Ben, and Abigail all moved closer to the odd ornament sticking out of the wall.
“Wait,” Ben said, squatting down next to it so that he was at eye level with it. “That’s not a… you can’t be serious!”
Abigail nodded emphatically, and Riley turned his head back and forth several times between the two of them before finally shouting, “Just tell me already!”
“The cipher had the extra sentence you thought was a throw away,” Abigail said. “It’s an acrostic. Take the first letter of each word and you’ll get it.”
“Okay, ‘since winds on rough days, I next to hear even speaking tales, over night’s emotion.’ That comes out to s-w-o-r-d-i-n…,” Ben began, then stopped, staring at her.
“Sword in the stone,” Abigail said. “That, gentlemen, is Excalibur.”
“King Arthur’s sword? Like, knights of the Round Table, Sir Lancelot, Merlin, ‘If ever I would leave you,’” Riley said, warbling the last few words in his best impression of Robert Goulet.
“Precisely,” Abigail said. “The story said that Arthur drew the sword out of a stone, becoming King of the Britons, and that at his death it was thrown into a lake. Well, somebody got the last part wrong. The knights returned it to the stone Arthur originally pulled it from, and lo and behold, it’s still here.”
“I thought Excalibur and the sword in the stone were two different swords,” Ben said.
“Different versions disagree, but considering we’re looking at it, I’d say we’ve solved that mystery,” Abigail said. “They’re the same one, and that’s it.”
“Hempstock really found this?” Ben asked, then shifted his gaze back to the sword hilt sticking out of the solid rock wall. “And he didn’t tell anyone?”
“It was World War I,” Abigail said. “Patriotism was at a high point, and the populace would have wanted the king to try his hand at the sword. Think what would have happened if George V couldn’t pull it out of the stone.”
“Hysteria, panic, mass confusion, a coup d’état, wild monkeys running down the street and flinging rotten bananas at people,” Riley said. “Okay, maybe not the last part, but still.”
“But it would have destabilized things,” Abigail said. “I’m guessing when William of Orange had the chapel built, he did it to hide the cave and the fact that he obviously wasn’t able to pull the sword out of the stone wall. Hempstock didn’t want to risk publicizing the discovery until after the war was over.”
“And he died first,” Riley said. “That’s kind of sad, really.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, looking wistful. “Now the whole world can know, though. We’ll make sure he’s credited as the one who found it.”
“Okay,” Riley said, grabbing the handle and pulling it out of the wall. “We’ll need to bring this up as proof.”
“Riley!” both of them screamed together.
“What?” he said, looking at the admittedly cool sword he was now holding.
“I don’t believe you just did that!” Abigail said. “That was only supposed to be removed by the one, true king!”
“That was what, a millennium ago? It got loose over time is all. Here, I’ll put it back,” he said sliding it easily back into the wall. “See? No harm, no foul.”
Ben looked at Abigail, then at the sword.
“He’s probably right,” Ben said. “Let’s just get out of here, okay.”
The three of them spent the next two hours slowly wending their way back up the slide until they finally emerged in the chapel, unfortunately right in the middle of someone’s wedding ceremony.
“Um, sorry?” Riley said as all the well-attired guests stared in shock at the grime-covered strangers who had just popped out of a hole clearly marked with a sign reading “Do not enter. Utility work.”
“That’s what you came up? Utility work?” Ben said.
“It worked. Also, you came up with nothing except starving to death because you didn’t think to keep the door open in the first place,” Abigail said, slipping her arm through Riley’s as they left the chapel to report the find to the curator of the Tower of London.
As they sat outside her office, waiting to explain what had happened, looking bedraggled and smelling like something that had died during the reign of Richard III, Riley decided the moment had come.
“Um, before we go in, I’m guessing you already put two and two together, but,” and he got down on one knee in front of the rickety old wooden bench Abigail was sitting on and pulled the ring out of his pocket, “would you marry me?”
Abigail grinned through the layer of grime covering her face.
“Of course,” she said, and the two of them kissed under the rather amused gaze of the guards who were waiting with them.
Ben slapped his friend on his back.
“Congratulations,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier for the two of you.”
“I’m not wearing that ring, though,” Abigail said, eyeing it with distaste.
“Um, what?” Riley said, staring at the mammoth diamond.
“Let me guess. Ben’s idea?” Abigail said.
“Yes?” Riley said uncertainly.
She rolled her eyes and turned to Ben, then said, “You thought it would be romantic to use a diamond that probably resulted in the Queen of France guillotined due to the bad false reputation she got from the conspiracy plot surrounding it and turn it into an engagement ring?”
“Yes?” Ben said, sounding uncertain. “When you put it that way, though, I kind of see your point.”
“It really is pretty, though,” Riley said.
“It is,” Abigail admitted, “and it’s much too heavy. I wouldn’t even be able to lift my hand. Let’s donate it to our wing in the Smithsonian and just get something simple at Tiffany’s, okay?”
“Sounds good to me,” Riley said, smiling.
Within a couple weeks, every newspaper in the United Kingdom and pretty much everywhere else on the globe was full of two linked stories. The first was the remarkable discovery of Excalibur by the same group of treasure hunters who had found the Templar Treasure and the City of Gold. But the second was the accompanying photograph of Prince Charles hauling in vain on the hilt of the famed sword as the Queen looked on disapprovingly before taking an unsuccessful turn herself.
It never moved a fraction of an inch.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is made from this work. Also, the diamond necklace was real, but the ring and Walter Hempstock are not.
“Riley, you are being completely ridiculous,” Ben said as they picked their way between tourists while heading towards the Tower of London.
“Not completely,” Riley said, giving his friend a disgruntled scowl. “Partially, maybe.”
“There is absolutely nothing that could possibly go wrong,” Ben said, then stopped dead in his tracks and looked at Riley apologetically.
“You did not just say that,” Riley said, sounding like he was about to hyperventilate. “You do realize that anything from flaming poisoned arrows to a rabid Bigfoot driving a tank has just become possible in the next five minutes, right?”
“Okay, I admit that was a stupid thing to say,” Ben said as he tried to avoid Riley’s petrified gaze, “but truthfully, we’ve got a foolproof plan here, and everything should be fine.”
“So says the man who is no longer allowed in Buckingham Palace,” Riley grumbled.
“Technically you wouldn’t be either if anyone knew what you were really doing in that cubicle,” Ben said.
“Can you not make it sound quite so lurid?” Riley said. “I was just monitoring all the security cameras and creating a false fire alarm and . . . you know what, that actually does sound worse.”
“See? Now, compared to some of our other endeavors, this is really pretty straight forward,” Ben said.
“And also legal,” Riley added, then paused. “Right?”
“Probably,” Ben said, and Riley shot him a look again. “Well, believe me when I say the result is going to be worth it. Seriously, she is going to be more impressed by this than anything ever.”
“Better than the scrolls from the Library of Alexandria?” Riley asked.
“Okay, it’ll be a close second,” Ben said.
“I guess that’ll have to be good enough,” Riley said.
“Riley, nothing is ever going to top finding the lost works of Euclid,” Ben said.
“Yeah. Because the world really wanted more geometry,” Riley said with a sigh. “Out of curiosity, how many times has a high school student hit you over the head with their math textbook?”
“None,” Ben said, laughing. “That kind of thing doesn’t happen, Riley.”
“Twenty-seven,” Riley said, pointing to a bump on his head. “Last time was two days ago. Why does this stuff not ever happen to you? Why doesn’t your car get towed away or your name get accidentally left off or misspelled in every CNN story about the treasures? My own mother called me wanting to know who Raleigh Pull was.”
“Hey, you wound up with the girl,” Ben said.
“Okay, true,” Riley said, his face lightening up with a smile.
“You’ve actually been hit with math books twenty-seven times?” Ben asked as they finally walked up to the gates and into the Tower of London complex itself.
“I think so,” Riley said. “Somewhere around eighteen they start to run together.”
“Geez,” Ben said, forking over the entrance fee for both of them since he was feeling a little guilty.
It had been two solid years since Ben and Abigail had come to a mutual realization that their relationship, which had experienced more stops and starts than a broken down jalopy, was not going to work out the way they’d hoped. Despite Ben’s parents somehow deciding to make another go of it even with their constant arguing, Abigail and he realized that the incessant bickering that was the main characteristic of their relationship just wasn’t either of them really wanted. They had, shockingly, remained friends, and once the pressure of trying to make themselves be happy with each other was gone, they actually were happy with their friendship.
Abigail and Riley winding up dating, though, had been something of a shock to everyone concerned. Ben, who was now happily involved with a freelance author, had no problems with it, even though his mother had told him he was probably repressing his anger and redirecting it towards increasingly bizarre treasure hunts. However, when he’d pointed out that had been his behavioral pattern since age six, she’d shrugged and said he had a point.
Last week Riley had confided in Ben that he wanted to propose to Abigail, and at once Ben had said no ordinary strip mall jeweler would be able to come up with a ring that would be special enough for the occasion. Reluctantly, Riley had allowed Ben to talk him into hunting down a diamond ring of historical significance fraught with mystery, which is what had led them to the Tower of London, apparently the resting place of a truly dazzling gem, and not one of the crown jewels, either.
“Okay, so, you want to fill me in on what exactly we’re here to find?” Riley asked.
“A ring,” Ben said, walking past a group of ravens cawing loudly on the green.
“Yes, a ring,” Riley said, almost trotting to keep up with him, “but what’s so special about it?”
“It belonged to Marie Antoinette,” Ben said, then stopped and tilted his head sideways, “except that it actually didn’t.”
Riley sighed again. “And could you translate that into a story that someone who hasn’t spent their entire life poring over every detail of history might be able to understand?”
“Right,” Ben said. “Okay, so once upon a time there were two jewelers named Boehmer and Bassange. They had been contracted by King Louis XVI to make a diamond necklace for his girlfriend, Madame du Barry, but he stipulated that it had to be jaw-droppingly stunning.”
“I don’t want to get her a necklace,” Riley said petulantly. “I need a ring.”
“I know, I know. The necklace doesn’t even exist anymore. Just listen to the story. Anyway, Boehmer and Bassange spent years looking for enough diamonds to make this necklace,” Ben explained.
“How many diamonds are we talking about?” Riley said, becoming a bit more interested.
“A lot,” Ben said, “but by the time the necklace was ready, old Louis XVI had died and his girlfriend was kicked out of the court because the next queen, Marie Antoinette, couldn’t stand her.”
“Cat fight. Fun,” Riley said.
“That’s pretty much what Boehmer and Bassange thought, only now they were stuck with having put all this money, time, and effort into creating a really expensive necklace that didn’t have a buyer,” Ben said. “So they did the logical thing and tried to sell it to Marie Antoinette.”
“I guess I can see that,” Riley said.
“The problem was not only was it ridiculously expensive, but it wasn’t Marie Antoinette’s taste at all. It was really gaudy, completely over the top,” Ben said.
“It’s possible to have too many diamonds?” Riley asked.
“It is if they’re put into the necklace equivalent of a diamond-encrusted polyester leisure suit, which this apparently was,” Ben said.
“Oh, please get the image of John Travolta dressed in one of Elvis’s jumpsuits out of my head now,” Riley said, shuddering.
“Sorry, now you’ve got it stuck in mine too,” Ben said, shuddering in turn. “So the queen sent Boehmer and Bassange on their way.”
“And what happened to the necklace?” Riley said.
“Boehmer and Bassange kept trying to get rid of it, and it wound up the center of a scandal involving a morally depraved cardinal, a prostitute who could pass for Marie Antoinette’s double, and a fairly terrifyingly conniving con artist who happened to have court connections. It’s all very convoluted, but the upshot of it is that the jewelers ended up trying to claim that the queen had agreed to buy the necklace and that therefore she owed them money, a lot of it,” Ben said.
“But she didn’t,” Riley said.
“No, all the papers for it were forged,” Ben said. “Still, the scandal of her buying a completely pointless and ostentatiously flamboyant necklace—“
“Not to mention ugly,” Riley chimed in.
“Yes, that too, was enough to besmirch the queen pretty badly even though it was shown to be false, and it undoubtedly contributed to her unpopularity and eventual trip to the guillotine,” Ben said.
“Okay, but the necklace?” Riley asked.
“Boehmer and Bassange broke it up, and the husband of the woman who masterminded the whole fiasco ended up selling the stones individually all over the place, though mostly in London, and pretty much glutting the market with diamonds for a while. In modern currency, they would have been about $100 million dollars altogether,” Ben said.
“Holy cow,” Riley said, feeling a little light headed. “We’re going after $100 million of diamonds?”
“No,” Ben said, looking at him like he had grown extra arms. “I’m not quite that insane. No one knows what happened to all of them, and some of them were cut into smaller stones. But one particular diamond, the big eleven carat showpiece at the center of the necklace, was sold to an anonymous gentleman in London, and he had it made into a ring for his daughter.”
“Eleven carats?” Riley said. “That’s more than Bugs Bunny could handle. Could she even lift her hand with that thing on it?”
“Apparently, because it passed down through the family for a couple generations until it was sold off, then sold again and again, then stolen, then stolen by somebody else, then finally it was lost to history sometime before the end of World War I. Absolutely nobody knew where it was,” Ben said, then grinned.
“I take it that it’s not so lost anymore?” Riley said.
“The last guy who had it apparently feared Britain was going to lose the Great War and decided the safest thing to do was to stick a nice little nest egg someplace nobody would think to look,” Ben said.
“Like the Tower of London, where thousands of people go in and out every day?” Riley asked.
“Like in plain sight, right in front of everyone’s nose, the one place nobody ever searches,” Ben said. “Come on. It’s this way.”
As Ben strode off towards the White Tower, Riley called out, “But what if it doesn’t fit?”
“Then resize it!” Ben called over his shoulder, and Riley trotted to catch up.
The crowds were mulling about as usual in the White Tower, some heading to the shop downstairs, others to look at the Royal Armory or just to stare at the eleventh century wonder’s rooms, but Ben’s steps were much more purposeful.
“What are you making a beeline toward?” Riley asked.
“Just, please, don’t use that term,” Ben said, grimacing.
“Why? Does it bug you?” Riley said, giggling like a seventh grader at his own pun.
“Yes, actually, because bees don’t go in a straight line, so it doesn’t even make sense,” Ben said. “Also, I don’t like bees. Never have. Don’t know why. They give me the creeps. But here we are.”
They entered St. John’s Chapel, an impressive but rather austere-looking room with pillars topped by arches, all made of pale stone.
“This is one of the oldest parts of the whole Tower,” Ben said, looking around at the relatively empty chapel. “It’s been here over nine hundred years. This is pretty much exactly what it would have looked like back when William the Conqueror built it.”
“Yeah, great. England’s full of old stone stuff, though, so could we maybe get back to the engagement ring?” Riley said.
“This way,” Ben said, motioning toward one of the pillars, then mumbling quietly to himself. “Third one from the altar on the left, around the back, smallest stone in the fifth tier… did I tell you these stones were all shipped over from France?”
“No, and let’s pretend you didn’t,” Riley said. “Fifth tier, and then?”
“And then,” Ben said, and he quietly tapped nine times on the stone to the tempo of “The Marseilles.”
Absolutely nothing happened.
“Cute,” Riley said. “I think I’ll just go to Tiffany’s.”
“No, really, it’s here!” Ben said, tapping out the tune again on the stone with the same lack of a result. “I’m totally sure of it.”
“Maybe you counted wrong,” Riley said with a sigh, knowing his friend wasn’t going to give up until they either found the ring or were thrown out, and personally he was betting on the latter.
“Wait, wait, wait, I’ve got it,” Ben said, going to the opposite side. “Not third one from the altar on our left but third one from the altar on the altar’s left. This is the right one.”
“Okay, but if it’s not, can we just get a cup of tea and do something a little less insane, like, I don’t know, seeing if London Bridge really is falling down?” Riley said.
“Sure, if you want to go to Arizona, which is where it is now,” Ben said, still carefully inspecting the stones. “This has to be it.”
He squatted next to the new pillar, tapped out the pattern on the rock, and again nothing happened.
“Geez, I’m sorry, Riley,” Ben said, getting up. “I honestly believed this was…”
And he turned around to see not only that Riley was gone, but that a large paving stone on the floor where Riley had been standing had fallen away in apparently perfect silence, leaving a gaping hole in the floor that led into a pitch black hole.
“Okay, I was not expecting that,” Ben said, then shrugged and jumped into the hole, following wherever Riley had fallen.
He didn’t see the stone then silently slip back into place as though the opening had never been there.
It was actually the eleventh century equivalent of a playground slide. Ben found himself skidding down a totally blackened tunnel, hurtling around, back and forth, in a descending oval, apparently inside the thick, curved wall of the chapel itself and rocketing downward through the lower floors beneath it until he must have been well below the basement level. With a thud, he landed at the bottom, just managing to keep from scraping his knees on the rough stone floor. Searching through his pockets, he found his flashlight and flicked it on.
“Hey,” Riley said from two inches away in front of his nose.
“Gyah!” Ben said, nearly falling over. “You startled me.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what falling down a hole and into a Norman era Six Flags did to me, too,” Riley said. “Are you hurt?”
“No, you?” Ben asked.
“Everything still seems to be working. So where are we?” Riley asked.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Ben said, shining the flashlight around the room.
“Great, that’s comforting,” Riley said. “I can tell you one thing about our new accommodations: there is no cell phone reception. At all. I’ve already tried.”
Riley shoved his useless phone back into his coat and began digging through his pockets. He took out a flashlight of his own, and between the two of them they were able to realize they were actually in a cave. Water dripped from the ceiling onto the floor, and the temperature was cold and damp. It also smelled.
“Okay, so, assuming that Harry Potter isn’t going to come down here and save us from a big, scary snake, what are we supposed to do?” Riley said.
“I am completely confused,” Ben said, and by the light of the flashlight his face really did look befuddled. “Look, I was browsing through an antique store a few months ago and found an old diary from 1915 that had been written by a guy name Walter Hempstock. He mentioned finding the ring and hiding it here, but it was in a code, specifically a fairly simple letter-to-letter substitution cipher, which was why the book was probably stuck in the discount pile. He wound up dying during the war and leaving no descendents, so it’s fair game, but he never mentioned—"
“That we’d wind up in a giant cave with two flashlights and probably no way out so we’re gonna die?” Riley asked.
“Well, no, that wasn’t in the code,” Ben said, giving him a look. “We’ve been in tighter spots than this, so shush!”
“You shush!” Riley said. “Ancient treasures have been trying to kill us for the last decade or so, and it looks like third time’s the charm!”
“If Hempstock got out, so can we,” Ben said, “just calm down.”
“Fine, fine, so what did this coded message actually say?” Riley asked.
“To find the precious treasure, tap the Gallic anthem upon the third column from the left in the chapel of the tower of palest color, in the line that matches digits upon the hand, the smallest stone being the key, and what shall be opened to you will reveal itself as the nonpareil gem of the island,” Ben said.
“That’s it?”
“No, there was one other line, but it didn’t make much sense. I thought it might have been thrown in to confuse someone trying to decode the message,” Ben said.
“Which was?”
“Since winds on rough days, I next to hear even speaking tales over night’s emotion,” Ben said.
“So we’re supposed to blow wind on something while telling stories and being afraid… or possibly sleepy?” Riley asked.
“Sure, yeah, try that,” Ben said, giving him his most disgustedly annoyed look. “Or, if we want to appear sane, we can just go around the perimeter of the cave until we come to a door or some stairs or something that might conceivably be useful.”
“Fine,” Riley said. “Have it your way, but when it turns out we need to have brought a mini-fan and a copy of Peter Rabbit, I’m going to say I told you so.”
They carefully picked their way across the rough stone floor, and it was easy to believe that Hempstock had been the only person there in the last five hundred or more years. There weren’t even any bats, though Riley thought he might have heard the high squeaking of a rat or two. Finally, after carefully moving counterclockwise halfway around the large room, Ben’s flashlight picked out something glittering a few yards away in a natural alcove about ten feet off the ground.
“Is that the ring?” Riley asked.
“One way to find out,” Ben said. “You want the honors?”
“Sure, why not,” Riley said. “Like you said, what could possibly go wrong?”
“Oh, do not say that down here,” Ben said, rolling his eyes. “Once was bad enough. Next you’ll tell me you broke a shoelace again.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you,” Riley said as he clambered onto Ben’s shoulders and began feeling around in the rocky niche. Almost at once, his hand closed on something small and cold. “I think I’ve got it!”
Ben let him back down onto the ground, and Riley opened his hand to reveal a rather filthy but undeniably stunning diamond ring. Even with the accumulated dirt of nearly one hundred years, it still glimmered like a not-so-little star in his hand.
“Whoa,” Riley breathed. “That is one big honking diamond. Okay, Ben, if we do get out of here alive, this was totally worth it. If we don’t, then it wasn’t, but still.”
“Duly noted,” Ben said. “So that was the first goal. The next one is getting out of here. Let’s keep going.”
Riley put the ring in his pocket for safekeeping, checking very carefully first that there wasn’t a hole in it. The continued their lap of the underground chamber, and scattered here and there on the floor they began to find occasional ancient coins and the remains of old torches.
“Again, I’m not seeing any skeletons, so they must have found a way out,” Ben said.
“Not seeing skeletons is almost always good news,” Riley agreed, then stopped dead in his tracks. “Hey, look! A door!”
The irregular walls of the cave formed a smaller indented chamber just ahead, and there did indeed appear to be a rather odd-looking knob sticking out of the wall. Both of them heaved a sigh of relief, but just as Riley was about to grab it, Ben abruptly put a hand on his shoulder.
“What?” Riley said. “I want out.”
“Yeah, but think about we wound up down here. It could be a booby trap,” Ben said.
“Or not?” Riley said.
“Or not,” Ben agreed.
“It isn’t even a door,” Abigail said.
“Oh, come on,” Ben said, turning around and immediately beginning to argue with her. “How could you possibly tell that. Wait, what are you even doing down here?”
“Hi,” she said, then gave a stunned Riley a kiss. “You actually thought you could go off on an adventure without my noticing? Come on. Of course I wanted in!”
“But how did you… you got down… with the pillar… and the whoosh-boom… and the… did you happen to leave the hole in the floor open by any chance?” Riley said, still sounding shocked.
“Yes, I got down here the same way you did. Emily called me about the diary,” Abigail said.
“My mom?” Ben said.
“Yes, your mom,” Abigail said as though he were being very dim. “She says hello, by the way.”
“Okay, so Ben’s mom mentions a diary and you figured out everything from that?” Riley said.
“Not exactly,” Ben answered. “Mom has the actual diary. I left it with her for safe-keeping.”
“Still answering for me, I see,” Abigail said with a sigh. “The two of us puzzled out the riddle after a couple hours, and when I realized Riley’s so-called business trip was actually a treasure hunt, I thought I’d tag along to keep you out of trouble.”
“And… door?” Riley asked, giving her hopeful puppy-dog-eyes.
‘It’ll be a climb, but yes, the door back into the chapel is propped open,” Abigail said.
“Okay, so if you’re so smart, how exactly do you know that that,” Ben said, pointing emphatically at the knob, “is not a door?”
“Because you stumbled onto a lot more than I think you thought you did,” Abigail said. “I’m not sure why exactly you came down here, but do you know what this place is?”
“Cave?” Riley said, shrugging.
“Uh-huh,” Abigail said, grinning. “And?”
“And it’s old, a lot older than Hempstock, and judging by the coins we passed on the floor over there, it’s a few hundred years older than the Tower of London as well,” Ben said.
“Ja,” Abigail said. “Much older. Did you know Hempstock was originally a custodian for the building?”
“Yes,” Ben said defensively. “He was also fairly intelligent.”
“Try brilliant,” Abigail said. “He held at least five Ph.D.’s in various subjects, including history, languages, literature, engineering, and philosophy.”
“Wait, what?” Riley said. “The janitor was all Good Will Hunting?”
“Walter Hempstock changed his name from Sir William de Basingcourt Chauncy-Podmore IV,” Abigail said. “He was the janitor here for a very good reason. He was looking for something, and he found it.”
“So… you wouldn’t know anything about a, um, piece of jewelry or anything that’s down here?” Riley said.
“You mean the Marie Antoinette diamond? That’s chickenfeed,” Abigail said dismissively, then pointed dramatically at the knob in the wall. “That’s the big deal.”
“The doorknob?” Riley said.
“Not a door,” Abigail repeated. “Take a closer look. But don’t touch it!”
Riley, Ben, and Abigail all moved closer to the odd ornament sticking out of the wall.
“Wait,” Ben said, squatting down next to it so that he was at eye level with it. “That’s not a… you can’t be serious!”
Abigail nodded emphatically, and Riley turned his head back and forth several times between the two of them before finally shouting, “Just tell me already!”
“The cipher had the extra sentence you thought was a throw away,” Abigail said. “It’s an acrostic. Take the first letter of each word and you’ll get it.”
“Okay, ‘since winds on rough days, I next to hear even speaking tales, over night’s emotion.’ That comes out to s-w-o-r-d-i-n…,” Ben began, then stopped, staring at her.
“Sword in the stone,” Abigail said. “That, gentlemen, is Excalibur.”
“King Arthur’s sword? Like, knights of the Round Table, Sir Lancelot, Merlin, ‘If ever I would leave you,’” Riley said, warbling the last few words in his best impression of Robert Goulet.
“Precisely,” Abigail said. “The story said that Arthur drew the sword out of a stone, becoming King of the Britons, and that at his death it was thrown into a lake. Well, somebody got the last part wrong. The knights returned it to the stone Arthur originally pulled it from, and lo and behold, it’s still here.”
“I thought Excalibur and the sword in the stone were two different swords,” Ben said.
“Different versions disagree, but considering we’re looking at it, I’d say we’ve solved that mystery,” Abigail said. “They’re the same one, and that’s it.”
“Hempstock really found this?” Ben asked, then shifted his gaze back to the sword hilt sticking out of the solid rock wall. “And he didn’t tell anyone?”
“It was World War I,” Abigail said. “Patriotism was at a high point, and the populace would have wanted the king to try his hand at the sword. Think what would have happened if George V couldn’t pull it out of the stone.”
“Hysteria, panic, mass confusion, a coup d’état, wild monkeys running down the street and flinging rotten bananas at people,” Riley said. “Okay, maybe not the last part, but still.”
“But it would have destabilized things,” Abigail said. “I’m guessing when William of Orange had the chapel built, he did it to hide the cave and the fact that he obviously wasn’t able to pull the sword out of the stone wall. Hempstock didn’t want to risk publicizing the discovery until after the war was over.”
“And he died first,” Riley said. “That’s kind of sad, really.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, looking wistful. “Now the whole world can know, though. We’ll make sure he’s credited as the one who found it.”
“Okay,” Riley said, grabbing the handle and pulling it out of the wall. “We’ll need to bring this up as proof.”
“Riley!” both of them screamed together.
“What?” he said, looking at the admittedly cool sword he was now holding.
“I don’t believe you just did that!” Abigail said. “That was only supposed to be removed by the one, true king!”
“That was what, a millennium ago? It got loose over time is all. Here, I’ll put it back,” he said sliding it easily back into the wall. “See? No harm, no foul.”
Ben looked at Abigail, then at the sword.
“He’s probably right,” Ben said. “Let’s just get out of here, okay.”
The three of them spent the next two hours slowly wending their way back up the slide until they finally emerged in the chapel, unfortunately right in the middle of someone’s wedding ceremony.
“Um, sorry?” Riley said as all the well-attired guests stared in shock at the grime-covered strangers who had just popped out of a hole clearly marked with a sign reading “Do not enter. Utility work.”
“That’s what you came up? Utility work?” Ben said.
“It worked. Also, you came up with nothing except starving to death because you didn’t think to keep the door open in the first place,” Abigail said, slipping her arm through Riley’s as they left the chapel to report the find to the curator of the Tower of London.
As they sat outside her office, waiting to explain what had happened, looking bedraggled and smelling like something that had died during the reign of Richard III, Riley decided the moment had come.
“Um, before we go in, I’m guessing you already put two and two together, but,” and he got down on one knee in front of the rickety old wooden bench Abigail was sitting on and pulled the ring out of his pocket, “would you marry me?”
Abigail grinned through the layer of grime covering her face.
“Of course,” she said, and the two of them kissed under the rather amused gaze of the guards who were waiting with them.
Ben slapped his friend on his back.
“Congratulations,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier for the two of you.”
“I’m not wearing that ring, though,” Abigail said, eyeing it with distaste.
“Um, what?” Riley said, staring at the mammoth diamond.
“Let me guess. Ben’s idea?” Abigail said.
“Yes?” Riley said uncertainly.
She rolled her eyes and turned to Ben, then said, “You thought it would be romantic to use a diamond that probably resulted in the Queen of France guillotined due to the bad false reputation she got from the conspiracy plot surrounding it and turn it into an engagement ring?”
“Yes?” Ben said, sounding uncertain. “When you put it that way, though, I kind of see your point.”
“It really is pretty, though,” Riley said.
“It is,” Abigail admitted, “and it’s much too heavy. I wouldn’t even be able to lift my hand. Let’s donate it to our wing in the Smithsonian and just get something simple at Tiffany’s, okay?”
“Sounds good to me,” Riley said, smiling.
Within a couple weeks, every newspaper in the United Kingdom and pretty much everywhere else on the globe was full of two linked stories. The first was the remarkable discovery of Excalibur by the same group of treasure hunters who had found the Templar Treasure and the City of Gold. But the second was the accompanying photograph of Prince Charles hauling in vain on the hilt of the famed sword as the Queen looked on disapprovingly before taking an unsuccessful turn herself.
It never moved a fraction of an inch.
