Quid Pro Quo

Chapter Twenty Nine

We stood in the dark larder; I trained the slim beam of torchlight onto the floor where piles of sandy earth had been scraped aside and struggled to control my breathing. Ty knelt with his hands resting on his thighs, grains of sand stuck to the hairs on his forearms where he had dug feverishly for several minutes.

"Is that it?" I whispered, despite us being alone in the cool air of the old food store.

The artificial white circle of torchlight danced across an old leather suitcase in a rhythm matching the frenetic beating of my heart. I stood with my back pressed against the wall of the subterranean larder to leave room for Ty to excavate. The luggage lay about thirty centimetres below the surface, directly beneath where the line in the sand was etched. It was a medium-sized and dented dark leather object that might have been fashionable sometime in the mid-seventies, but it didn't look to have suffered too badly from its time underground.

"It must be." Ty grasped the edges of the case and tried to lift it. It steadfastly refused to budge.

"Still stuck..." He scraped further grainy earth from around the cracked leather corners, tossing handfuls aside.

"If this is it, the votives I mean, what are we going to do with them?" I wondered aloud.

"I don't know, but we are certainly not going to give them to Sharp," Ty replied. He motioned for me to bring the light closer and I obliged, focusing the beam on the shallow trench he had excavated around the case.

Edge got a firm grip on the handle and heaved the suitcase clear of the hole. I knelt next to him as he blew forcefully into the case's old metal fastenings to dislodge any grains that may have clogged them. I held my breath as he popped the clasps and opened the lid.

There before me in the bottom of the luggage lay the two most beautiful objects I have seen in my life.

A sword of about seventy-five centimetres in length, and whose blade tapered in the middle, rested atop an oval disc the size of a large tea tray. Both were encrusted in dirt but showed patches of burnished gleaming golden metal.

"Holy shit," I let the breath out of my lungs in a low whistle.

"Yes, quite literally. Hold that light steady," Edge admonished me. He lifted the sword from the case and held it up with the fingertips of both hands. The blade was five centimetres wide at its broadest and it melted into a hilt of intricately worked gold that was covered with winding patterns. Ty shifted the weapon and examined a neat hole in the bottom of the grip, then gently rubbed some dirt away from the swirling designs. He passed it to me, and I took it in one hand, immediately surprised by the dead weight of it.

"This weighs an absolute bloody tonne!" I exclaimed.

"It looks to be made mostly of gold. The blade and hilt might even be hollow," Ty replied, inspecting it even more closely.

"I think Martha mentioned something about them being hollow for the ceremonial use of blood," I remembered Martha's mini lecture.

"It would be incredibly hard to wield in battle, and gold is soft," he rubbed the edge where the uniform sharpness was marred by several dents. "But it looks like it was used."

He reached back into the case and withdrew the oval disc. It was far more ornate than the sword and was covered with twisted bands of metal in an immensely intricate Celtic pattern. Between these bands were inset areas of shining mother-of-pearl, some of which were obscured with mud, but others shone out like gems. Ty flipped the object in his hands and noted a pair of raised hoops.

"This is the shield; it probably had leather straps that have rotted away," he said.

"It's so beautiful," I said.

"The craftsmanship is unbelievable. I had no idea that the ancient Britons could make anything like this," Ty whispered. Neither did I, but in fairness my appreciation of what the ancient Britons were, and were not, capable of was minimal at best.

"It must have belonged to someone with serious power. Martha said it was a high priest. It would have taken years to craft it, look at the designs," I opined.

"Satchmo, these things are absolutely priceless. If she is right, then there is nothing like these anywhere, and they are a revelation in the ancient history of this country. We cannot let Sharp have them, whatever we do." Ty looked up at me, even in the dark I could make out the fierce resolve on his face.

"I agree, but I'd rather that he have them, and we get Martha back safe and sound," I replied sharply.

"She will be unharmed, I guarantee it," Edge said, definitively shutting me down.

I knew that he couldn't guarantee it, but hearing him say that made me feel significantly better.

"This stuff should go back into the ground until everything is sorted," I said, surprised at the determined tone in my voice.

Ty merely nodded and began of reburying the life's work of a dead man and the key to the future life of his daughter.

*

We sat out by the fire pit. Ty had spatchcocked a chicken and held it in place at the end of a long cleft stick. It was cooking slowly, the fat cracking and spitting as it ran from the meat. The smell was divine, and my stomach gurgled greedily; reminding me that I had neglected it in recent events.

He sat cross-legged opposite me, the submachine gun disassembled in front of him. Various parts were spread over a sheet like the contents of a psycho's Kinder Egg. He was carefully cleaning each piece with a toothbrush and oiling it from a small, dented metal can.

"Do we have a plan?" I asked, brushing my hair down with my palms as I often did when I was nervous.

"Hmm?" Ty's focus remained on maintaining and arranging the myriad odds and ends that comprise a high-end tool of destruction. He began clipping a few back together.

"I'll turn dinner, shall I?" I said sarcastically.

"M-Hmm," he replied, I rotated the chicken pole in its V-shaped rest, exposing the other side to the heat of the embers.

"Ty, I need to know how you see this thing going down. I really don't want to be going into this business blind. I don't much like surprises."

"Then you must find life unpleasant, Satch," a smile flickered across his lips, but he still didn't raise his focus.

"I'm fucking serious here, Ty," I insisted.

He put a newly reassembled trigger mechanism down and locked me with those blue eyes.

"You think I'm not, Satchmo?" There was a sudden venom in his tone. Again, I caught a glimpse of the other Tyrone Edge, the one who exacts vengeance according to his own warped code, the one who is happy to deal pain and, for all I knew, death.

I gulped.

"The truth of it is, I cannot tell you what is going to happen, because I don't know," Ty continued sternly.

"I understand that..." I replied, standing my ground.

"But you are right," he interrupted me. "A basic plan wouldn't go amiss."

"I'm glad you agree," I said with a note of relief in my voice.

"Better get thinking then, hadn't you?" Edge shut the conversation down once more and returned his attention to piecing the now-oiled weapon back together.

My brow furrowed with frustration, but I rapidly realized that our discussion was over. I decided to take him at his word and formulate a plan with the safe return of Martha, the minimum harm being visited upon me, and the preservation of Britain's heritage as priorities. In that order.