Page 174 of Blood Game

The path she was meant to follow, as Vilette once told her when she gave her the pendant?

Excitement spread as the team members worked against time and the elements, taking photographs, cataloging everything.

Isabel's body was carefully wrapped to preserve it, then lifted into one of the large vans to be taken to the university, to be photographed and analyzed before being returned to the gravesite. Then the team began the work of removing a second body from the grave site.

In spite of deterioration over the centuries, dark hair could be seen along with the knight’s garments and shield he had been buried with.

“You see,” Diana pointed out. “His shield. The story in the tapestry is true. The commission of knighthood.”

The image on the shield was the House of Montfort. But it was the simple shroud and the hand-stitched image that revealed far more—a trinity knot and thistle, symbol of the land of James' birth and faith—Scotland.

There were artifacts in the crypt that were carefully catalogued and then removed—the knight's sword, a mace, and a smaller knife, along with other tokens from those who had known him, Diana explained—a small glass vial, still intact, its contents remarkably preserved. But it was the last item in the crypt that caused the buzz of conversation and anticipation—a stone coffer that lay at his feet.

Was this the secret James had brought back with him from Teba in Spain? A secret shared with him by another knight in that fortress prison where he was taken after that failed battle? The secret James and Isabel had brought back to France? And painstakingly stitched into that last panel, along with the image of that short voyage from the abbey to Scotland?

The stone coffer was slowly lifted from the crypt into the light of day for the first time in almost seven centuries. Letters were carved in the stone at the front of the coffer and a design encircled the box.

“It is not Latin,” Diana whispered, as cameras continued to record everything along with the historians' commentary about what they had found.

Not Latin, that they might have expected to find, the same as written on so many ancient grave slabs from the same time period. But a much older text that the archeologists remarked with surprise.

“It's ancient Hebrew,” Kris replied. It was a name, recognized from her early studies at college.

“Yeshua.”

Beside her, Diana made the sign of the cross.

“What can it mean?” she whispered.

What was inside the coffer? Artifacts? Possibly an ancient text? Nothing after all these years?

Whatever was or might have been inside, was something that Hasan Malik had been determined to keep the world from knowing when he tried to destroy the tapestry.

A blaspheme against the one true God, as he had told Marcus when he told his sister to burn it?

The crypt was closed and the contents removed to the university at Edinburgh for further study and analysis before the coffer was officially opened.

Scientists, theologians from around the world and a dozen faiths, historians, lay people, set the internet on fire after that single name in old Hebrew was leaked to the media. Whatever might be in that stone coffer had upended both the modern and ancient world.

Over the next several months it was a story that slipped from the world of archeology onto the opening page of every newspaper and media outlet. And finally, state of the art, high tech equipment allowed them to look within the coffer without opening it out of concern that exposure might cause the contents to deteriorate.

What had they found at that remote Scottish village? What did it mean? The faint image that had emerged on their screens was startling – the vague outline of a goblet that had been hidden for centuries. And with that name, Yeshua?

Had they found the cup of Christ?

Diana Jodion had been bombarded with requests for an interview. From her office at the university, she simply informed the media that she was concentrating on the restoration of the tapestry.

The University of Edinburgh had gone into information lockdown, leaving the media with only those early videos from Cate's career, her accident, and speculation about what archeologists had discovered at that gravesite.

In New York, David Ellison had his legal team working overtime on negotiations for exclusive book rights, and Kris, along with others who had been at the site, had been sworn to silence until further notice, and the London publisher had to employ full-time security while meetings went on, for exclusive world rights.

It had all started with that black-and-white photograph Paul Bennett had taken during the war.

Cate would have loved it.

CHAPTER

FIFTY-ONE