The Basingstoke Chronicles Read online

  THE BASINGSTOKE CHRONICLES

  By

  Robert Appleton

  Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon

  2009

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-077-9

  ISBN 10: 1-60174-077-8

  Copyright © 2009 by Robert Appleton

  Cover design

  Copyright © 2009 by Judith B. Glad

  All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.

  Published by Uncial Press,

  an imprint of GCT, Inc.

  Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com

  Prologue

  My name was not always Patrick Walton. How the two rarest flowers on Earth came to rest a mere few feet from where I sit every evening for dinner is a tale many years in the telling. I have never been one to exaggerate--being a man of science, such is not my nature--nor am I prone to lend weight to unlikely claims, especially when their basis is un-scientific. Therefore, to the fantastical elements of this story I am forced to lend the more illustrative voice of my good friend, Lord Basingstoke: a man whose daring propelled him a great distance to find me; a man for whom the unlikely is, and always was, only ever a matter of time.

  Throughout that winter's night on the shingle of Ten Gulls Beach in Devon, southern England, I believed every word of my companion's absurd account. So too, now, do I remember them. The flames from our campfire resisted the onshore breeze with zeal. We had hoped to find a more sheltered spot in which to dry ourselves, but had happened upon only a rudimentary cove. The frank moonlight distilled enough rocky shapes and creeping lines of surf for my every thought to feel stolen or in harm's way.

  "Strange, after all we've been through," I said.

  "What's that?" replied Lord, rubbing his hands in the heat.

  "How such a harmonious place can give me--what was that word--the creeps?"

  He laughed, recalling the last time he had heard that term used outside of its original dialect. "Oh, just before the journey began--a long way from here, " he said.

  I shook my head in mock disbelief. The year was nineteen hundred and one. Across the beach, I spied the shape of our vessel bobbing like the neck of an empty bottle, inconsolable in dark silhouette, an ocean messenger bereft of its long-held message.

  "The fellow's name was Rodrigo Esteban Quintas, my diving partner from Cuba. We had hired a research vessel for some serious underwater work," Lord continued. "And by work, I mean spending a scorching summer in cool, turquoise seas, searching for sunken treasure. Hey, we were the hardest workers of any rich people I knew."

  I had to interrupt, "How rich were you, exactly?"

  "Rich enough to make a difference and too rich to care. Let's just say if we were in my own time, you wouldn't be sitting so close to me without a title of some kind--a Sir perhaps, or a Duke. Seeing as you're a foreigner to these parts, an honorary Count might suffice."

  My friend's manner was often so aloof it would veer between outright arrogance and a tone that was utterly endearing without a second's warning.

  "Hear, hear! An emissary from a distant land has arrived at this fair isle with a priceless secret for us all and otherwise not a clue. Let us drink a toast to his brazen heroics and sadly poor grasp of English colloquialisms."

  With that, he produced his familiar, gilded-silver whisky flask. Alas, as he tipped it, it was empty.

  "Damn your hide, man. What did you fill it with?"

  I replied, with a sheepish whimper, "I didn't."

  Despite his insistence at my being out of place, Lord Henry Basingstoke will always be the anachronism. But what great adventurer isn't? To say Columbus or Alexander were simply products of their times is paradoxical, for history tells us the reverse is true. While events may have aligned for conquest, their eras have become the products of their own legacies. The discovery of the New World belongs to an Italian, not he to it; likewise the forging of an Eastern Empire to a Macedonian King. Man creates history, and time--that most cold inevitability--can be made to bow to these bold, aberrant figures.

  Lord, as I liked to call him, is one such figure, though I thoroughly doubt he would agree. An Englishman in every sense of the word--from what I have come to know of them, that is a fine compliment--he relishes every challenge life has to offer as surely as every comfort. As he sat opposite me on Ten Gulls Beach, orange firelight waving shadows across his animated face, I knew it would probably be the last time I'd see him. The telling of his great adventure, of which I had only been a small part, was his parting gift to me--the culmination of our friendship through time.

  And I miss him to this day.

  Though written from memory, I could not have fashioned this account any closer to Lord Basingstoke's own words without excluding myself from the latter chapters, for that was how he told it to me. This I have remedied by telling it as he would to a stranger. As far as possible, I have tried to assume his mannered dialect. This upper class way of speaking is, it seems to me, both timeless and proper.

  So it is here that I'll submit, as I did then, to his incredible tale: the adventures of a fine gentleman as told to me, a humble listener, on December 16th, 1901.

  Chapter 1

  I daresay adventure has always been in my blood. Cold blood, some would tell you, and on the odd occasion, quite the opposite. But there is a touch of the mercurial about every adventurer, at least in my experience. You must therefore judge for yourself whether my part in this tale amounts to wisdom or folly. It was certainly not what I expected. Let me first tell of how it all began, one grey evening in 1979, a few miles outside Bucharest...

  My good friends Lord and Lady Brooke were my companions that early summer's night. Fine archaeologists both, they had kept me amused with anecdotes from their latest dig in Thebes, where a cheeky Egyptian translator apparently must have confused the words excavate and extort. He had charged workers for their water by the litre, all the while blaming it on the Brookes. I had no idea translation could be so profitable.

  "Our profession says it all, I suppose," Sam Brooke mused, staring down at the night lights of Bucharest as our limousine climbed a winding hillside road. "Digging up the past, breathing life into this mediocre modern age we live in. There's no magic in the world any more, right Ethel?"

  Lady Brooke was in her mid-twenties, a good decade younger than her husband, and despite bearing scars and bruises from her hands-on expeditions around the globe, was by far the most beautiful archaeologist invited there that evening. Even in the dim orange light of the limousine, she was, to my mind, a perfect English rose.

  "Only what we can conjure, darling," she replied.

  I had known Sam Brooke since our public school days in Edinburgh, where he had even then followed his each and every whim. Those tended to involve impromptu, off-campus detours between lessons or meeting a local girl. More often than not the two were one and the same. I had tagged along on occasion...nervously. A perennial sophisticate, Brooke was more guileful than anyone I have ever met, except, perhaps, for his wife.

  The bumpy road smoothed as we passed the white gates of Dumitrescu's estate. Curious stone renditions of were-cats, gargoyles and other unsightly creatures perched atop five-feet-high columns that rose from an elliptical wall across the mansion grounds. All
were painted white.

  The semi-annual Archaeological Society get-togethers entailed, in my opinion, the best and worst of that particular profession: those with outlandish theories but the moxie to prove them--or at least try--and those who would happily dig up an entire continent to find the missing spout of a teapot. Eccentrics and fanatics all.

  "Uh...do I have to?" I groaned.

  "Yes," replied Ethel, "or else we'll make you host the next one. And that's the Christmas soiree, need I remind you."

  "To hell with that!" I said, scrambling for the door handle. They laughed and held me in.

  "Just remember to stay clear of MacDuff this time," added Sam. "I hear he's baying for Basingstoke blood."

  "Nicely put, dear," said Ethel.

  I scoffed. "You just remember to keep him clear of me. I'm sick of these Scots and their anti-English jibes. So they're an inferior nation. What do they want us to do about it?"

  Sam smirked. "That's why you won't be hosting the Christmas party."

  As the limousine eased to a halt on compacted gravel, I felt a twinge of excitement. Say what I might about the Archaeological Society, their meetings had always produced something unexpected. Being rich doesn't make one eccentric. It simply enables one's quirks to be indulged and take centre stage.

  The year before, Paul MacDuff had presented his 'Robert the Bruce' collection with a thoroughly nauseating jingoism. He had continually harked back to ancient English defeats, and seemed to relish the discomfort of those English in attendance. Later that evening, we had come to blows, and my own reputation had taken a nose dive along with MacDuff, after his chin had met my well-placed upper-cut. Suffice to say, if it weren't for Brooke and his wife, I would never have been invited, that night, to Romania.

  At first glance the home of Georghe Dumitrescu was much smaller than I imagined. A wealthy industrialist of some note in eastern Europe, his particular passion was for antiquities and artifacts pertaining to the earliest known civilizations: Mayan, Sumerian, Minoan. Though I had never met him, Brooke was a colleague of his--the two had lectured together a few times--and he assured me the Romanian was a fellow with impeccable taste.

  Not so far, I thought, observing the gothic stone decorations. Dr Moreau has more taste. I soon relented. The mansion was only two stories high and around six rooms across, but stretched back a long, long way. Not being much of an architect, I could not identify its era. The filled-in moat and ornate portcullis, however, persuaded me that it had at one time been an estate of geographical significance, easily defensible from its elevated position on the hillside. Perhaps the summer retreat of a powerful warlord?

  Distinguished alumni from around the world greeted us inside. All were gracious and polite. The narrow stone vestibule opened up through heavy, double wooden doors into the main interior; it was there I realized exactly why the building had appeared so disproportionate in length. A vast hall with symmetrical Arthurian archways and stone tables on either side of its thirty-foot width, monopolized the entire inner sanctum of the house. There was no higher level between two parallel balconies to the left and right, and the resulting space created an awesome, primal atmosphere. Imagine a chateau built around the shape of a giant broadsword, and now imagine that space filling, by torchlight, with the elite of the world's archaeological community. I took a swig from my hip flask.

  "Lord Basingstoke?"

  I swiveled toward the voice.

  "Glad to finally be able to put a face to the name. Sam speaks very highly of you. I'm Dumitrescu. Please call me Georghe."

  I wiped away a dribble of whisky from my chin and quickly screwed the top back on my flask. Brooke shook his head at my uncouth behavior. I felt all eyes in the room sentence me with a drumhead efficiency. Somehow, I had to regroup.

  "A pleasure, sir."

  To everyone's surprise, Dumitrescu motioned toward my flask. "May I?"

  As I offered it, judgment also seemed to pass to this suave, dark-haired gent. And with him being the host, the mood in the room lightened; his brief swig at once dispelled my embarrassment and pardoned my crime. The guests returned to their stations.

  "Very magnanimous of you," I said softly as he returned the flask.

  "Think nothing of it," he replied. "Here, the king makes the laws, not the court."

  I smiled and savored the moment.

  Perhaps the magic is not lost from Romania after all.

  The main talking point of the evening was Dumitrescu's imminent presentation. An old Peruvian lady effused at every opportunity on its possible ramifications, yet there were too few details for me to discern exactly what his 'discovery' might be. Just a sonorous enthusiasm, a rising choir of mystery.

  "Something about a new civilization," an elderly American gent told me.

  "An artifact from pre-history," advised a middle-aged South African man.

  "The eleventh Commandment," whispered Ethel. "Thou shalt not turn around right now."

  I broke that one instantly. And sure enough, a half hour late, supercilious as ever, MacDuff emerged from the vestibule and handed his cloak and deer-stalker to the doorman. He did not make eye contact with anyone who greeted him, instead saving his first glare of the evening for the one who'd knocked him unconscious at the previous gathering. I stared right back.

  "Just ignore him," Ethel said. "There's close to eighty people here tonight--plenty of cover for you both."

  I smiled and gave her a quick glance from head to toe. Her burgundy cocktail dress matched the color of both the long strip of regal carpet and the heraldic banners which draped down from the balconies, yet looked odd beneath her curled, chestnut hair. Her eye-shadow was also a little overdone, and a graze on her left shoulder hadn't fully healed. However, I had to take a breath. She was still by far the most exquisite thing in the room.

  "Come on, tiger, they're starting in a minute. Let's go find Sam," she said, pulling me by the arm into the flock of guests migrating toward the far tip of the hall. Dumitrescu already waited atop his podium.

  Loose knots of conversation untied. The party slowly converged in front of our host, who began.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, archaeology is the science of human history. It is our means of proving what time has labored to conceal--the steps of our forebears across ever drifting sands. We are the collectors, the puzzlers, the few who care. Our grit paves the way for writers and historians. To those who say we are the thieves of mythology, that we have no dreams of our own, I say listen... Listen to the whispers of those gone before us, waiting for their true stories to be told, and their real worlds discovered. Those who claim otherwise are the thieves, perhaps the greatest thieves of all, for they would steal the truth of our heritage."

  This final phrase met with a generous applause. It was the practice of each Society host to start the proceedings with a personal prologue to the evening. Dumitrescu had given a fine, if somewhat fanatical, opening statement. A wave of anticipation grew from the left of the congregation. Necks craned and heads swayed to see what was happening.

  "First, let me introduce you all to a new riddle," the Romanian announced.

  Four pallbearers appeared, carrying what looked like an open-top metal casket through the crowd. As they placed it onto a wooden table before Dumitrescu, the party shuffled around in a tight semi-circle.

  The glass covering reflected all manner of horrified expressions. The figure inside, a male well over six feet in height, had already started to decompose. His right side appeared to have suffered significant damage. My first impulse told me it had been badly burned, yet the corruption of skin on its left half suggested otherwise; I had seen a drowned body before and the similar discoloring was hard to forget.

  So, burned and drowned, I thought. A little more information wouldn't hurt.

  Dumitrescu, looking rather pleased with himself, adjusted his bow-tie and cleared his throat.

  "This man, whom we have nicknamed the Enigman, was found two weeks ago, floating fifteen miles off the coa
st of Cuba. The crew that found him said that while he had not been dead long, there was no other vessel visible on the ocean for miles. They had no idea how or why he was there. The pathologist who later examined him revealed he had drowned after suffering extensive burns. His conclusion was a fire or explosion on his boat which then must have sunk, leaving him to die on the sea."

  He paused to clear his throat a second time. His words apparently flowed with more patience than his thoughts. The well-dressed gentlemen who had carried the casket then appeared with another item, a flat glass case which they placed next to the body.

  "Now, the real mystery lies in his clothing. Note the pattern of the embroidery. If there's a better example of Inca design, I've never seen it. "

  Sure enough, the angular, almost maze-like blue pattern could have been found on any Peruvian market stall--two shades of blue to be precise: crenellated sky blue woven across a navy blue background. Knee-length, the garment was similar to a Hellenic chiton, a close-fitting cloth with the upper right side left open for activity. Needless to say, no one indulged this fashion in 1979.

  "Also," he continued, "our experts tell us that while the woolen fabric is only twenty years old, it is from a species of animal which has been extinct for nine thousand years."

  Everyone remained silent for a few moments. I could hear the collective cog-wheels turning back the ages for an easy answer, and then grinding to a collective halt. It was a stalemate of logic.

  "You're sure about that?" came a thick Scottish accent to my right. It was MacDuff.

  "There is no error," replied Dumitrescu. "The facts have been checked a dozen times. We have found no answers."

  As murmurs rose to a cacophony of wild debate, I looked across to the strawberry-haired Scotsman. As our glares clashed, I knew we had both extended the same thought.

  What else was on that boat?

  Chapter 2

  A strong smell of lager wafted across the three of us as we entered Delfin hotel, Cienfuegos, Cuba. Glorious cool air streamed from the three working fans overhead, permitting me a long overdue sigh of relief. The noon sun had proved tyrannical since the first moment we had stepped off the plane, and I am not one to suffer heat readily. In my opinion, the only effective sun blocks in Cuba are either nighttime or asbestos; the rest are for naive tourists.