EXCERPTS from
FRIENDS FOREVER
by Christian Benjamin Seaborn
Prologue / NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND – MONDAY, 19 OCTOBER 1330
As quietly as possible, the small band of knights, not even two dozen, made their way along the side of the huge rock on which atop stood the mighty Nottingham Castle, on their way to accomplish the unthinkable military mission: to kidnap the ruthless dictator and traitor whom had been running and destroying England for three years.
It was a dark, damp, and windy and cloud filled October night in middle England, quickly approaching midnight. They dared not even so much as light a single torch as they first made their way from the nearby park and river where they had left their horses – their means of quick escape – with the two young squires. Towering some one hundred and thirty feet directly above them in the dark was the castle, the outline of the towers ominously visible. Ideally, it would be nice if all were fast asleep in the castle. Given the events of the day, however, this was extremely unlikely. Most, if not all, of the two hundred soldiers loyal to the enemy within were on alert. Based upon sheer manpower – two hundred against a handful – made this mission nothing short of folly. The element of surprise – the only element to this in the knights’ favor – was what Sir William was counting on to make this work. If successful, this quest to right English history that had been undone three years earlier, would surely go down as one of the most successful military operations ever undertaken for the next hundred years, if not forever. To be unsuccessful would surely mean that if any of them were still alive by morning, it would be short-lived, their “reward” certainly to be a place upon the nearest gallows at first sun.
The squires, John, now in his fifteenth year and Charles, fourteen, both were well aware that what would happen would happen quickly, if it was to happen at all. They also knew that if this were to fail there would be no doubt that their executions would be as swift as those of the knights they were following would be. The fact that one of the knights, Sir Andrew, had been Charles’s father and, more or less, John’s father figure, was the only reason why they had been brought along. Someone had to tend to the steeds. While John was himself an excellent horseman, Charles, although he wanted to be, was not nearly as good as John was. John had even competed in a few jousting tournaments, holding his own. Still, it would take two of them for this evening’s task and, as the best of friends; the young squires were virtually inseparable. Friends for life, they would say about each other.
“Something is happening,” Charles said with excitement, pointing to the growing light from the opening of the cave.
Indeed, John thought to himself, but what? Was it Sirs William and Andrew or was it Mortimer’s men? Should they hold steady or run?
“Whatever happens, whatever the chaos, remain with the horses.”
Sir Montagu’s command ran through John’s mind.
“Hold steady,” John said to Charles. “Hold steady.”
Chapter One / SEATTLE, WASHINGTON – THURSDAY, 16 OCTOBER 2014
Jason Martindale, a planning engineer for the city of Seattle, was in his office at the Seattle Municipal Tower, adjacent to City Hall, when he was summoned to the mayor's office. A portly, balding man, standing five feet eight inches, with a jovial air about him, Jason was three months shy of turning fifty years old. Through six different city administrations, he had been at his job for twenty-two years. He was well respected and certainly well liked.
The mayor’s office at City Hall was good-sized for an elected public servant.
“Jason,” the mayor said, standing up.
“Mr. Mayor,” Jason said.
“No need to sit down, Jason. This will only take a second of your time.”
Jason, a bit awkwardly, stood on the opposite side of the large desk.
“I need to ask a favor of you, since it is entirely out of your sphere of things.”
“Obviously, you know that the big exhibit from England has arrived,” the mayor continued.
Of course, Jason knew about it. It was a huge exhibit focusing on the medieval times of England. Everybody in Seattle knew about it, or should have, given the massive publicity campaign the city, the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the state had poured into the project.
“I need you to run over to the exhibition hall and be our unofficial initial greeter,” the mayor said.
“Find something interesting?” Jason asked, coming up behind his son at the exhibit as it was being set up.
“Yeah. It’s this tech thing on all the old castles of England,” Andy said.
The last slide was a drawing of a courtyard.
“I wonder what that place was?” Andy asked aloud to no one in particular.
“That was Sheen Palace,” Jason said, without a moment’s hesitation even to think about it and then adding just as effortlessly, “King Edward III died there in 1377.”
The trouble was Jason knew nothing of English history. Certainly, he knew nothing of the history of medieval era castles and palaces, let alone the names of any of them. He had never even heard of King Edward III, much less where and when he had died. How, he wondered to himself, had he known these small items of ancient English history, he thought to himself.
“You know, dear, there was more,” Grace, Jason’s seventy-five-year-old mother, said.
“More? More, what, mom?”
“Oh, my,” Grace said, unsure of how to proceed or even if she should. None of this had ever made any sense to her as Jason’s mother. For the better part of forty-five years, she had tried to put it all out of her mind and now it was back, in a highly disturbing way, it was back.
“More what?” Jason repeated.
“When you were five, you were asking your father to tell you all about England. He then got some maps of England that he brought home. He showed you where London was and other places. But there was one place that he didn’t show you but you brought up.”
Jason looked at her puzzled.
“You asked him to show you where…”
She paused.
“I asked him to show me what, mom?”
“You asked him to show you, on the map, where Sheen Palace was,” Grace said. “How did you know about some fourteenth century palace, which no longer even exists, when you were just five-years-old?”
Chapter Two / “I SHOULD BREAK THE BITCH’S NECK!”
“You’re late,” were the first words out of Steve’s mouth.
Like Tom, Steve too was a tall man who did not look anything like his sixty years. In his younger years, Steve had been a military man, Navy, Tom was under the impression. Steve was still in good shape, with an overbearing presence about him that was a bit scary, certainly unsettling, especially given the angry mood Steve was in.
In stony silence, they rode up one of the three outside elevators of Seattle’s Space Needle to the revolving restaurant.
“So what’s going on, Steve?” Tom began, purposely eyeing that the waiter was well out of earshot.
“What’s going on is that stupid bitch I still call my wife, that’s what’s going on.”
“What seems to be the problem with Mrs. Jacobson?” Tom asked.
“She is threatening my whole business, that’s all,” Steve retorted, the anger once again growing in his voice. “You need to stop her before I do.”
Suddenly, Tom felt very uncomfortable. Even though Tom was supposed to be Steve’s personal lawyer, for the most part Tom felt like a glorified babysitter. He knew that Steve owned his own security firm, Wigmore Security, with clients – major clients – all over the world, for the most part both Steve and Kevin kept Tom in the dark where the business was concerned. The few times that Tom had tried to bring up the business with Steve, Steve had told him that Tom only needed to know what Steve wanted him to know and that he should not ask too many questions. While Kevin had not been as outward about it, he too had gently let Tom know not to ask questions. Just do whatever it was that Steve would need from time-to-time was to be Tom’s role as Steve’s attorney.
“Linda is talking divorce after twenty years of marriage. Last night she announced airily to me that she intends on seeking half of everything. Over her dead body is she touching Wigmore,” Steve said. “I want you to stop her. I should have left her in the gutter where I found her.”
“Steve, you know I’m not a divorce lawyer,” Tom began.
Irked, as Tom half-expected Steve to be, Steve started to say something but Tom cut him off. There were times to let Steve run the show and there were times not to. Now was the time for Tom to take the reins, as best he could, of the situation.
“Let me finish,” Tom said, to which Steve backed down. “I think the prudent course of action is that you should tell Mrs. Jacobson to have her lawyer contact me directly. Let them start the action with me. That way, I can get a grasp on the situation in order to best advise you on what to do.”
“What to do is that I should break the bitch’s neck is what I should do,” Steve said.
Chapter Three / THE KING’S TABLE
For most of the previous day, Friday, Jason had been unable to get the whole Sheen Palace thing out of his mind, to the point of it having become a major distraction. When that slide had come up and Andy had said he wondered what that place was, Jason should have had no idea. Instead, completely effortlessly, he had not only said that it was Sheen Palace but that King Edward III had died there in 1377. It made absolutely no sense to Jason and that was what had been bothering him for the last thirty-six hours. By profession, he was a planner. He liked, needed, for things to make sense and this made no sense whatsoever.
He swiveled around in his desk chair to the desk and flipped on his Mac computer, which instantly came to life. He typed in Google.com, clicked on the Images section and then typed in the two words that had been bothering him: Sheen Palace.
Only the first photo was important. It was the same photo of the drawing in the slide that had been shown at the exhibit. Jason clicked on it so that it just came up on the screen by itself. He enlarged it even more and then, leaning forward to study it, became absorbed in just looking at the details from left to right, right to left, top to bottom and vice versa.
It was a black and white sketch of the courtyard of Sheen Palace. On the left hand side were two buildings that looked like stables where the horses would have been kept. Next, just left of the center – although in the distance – was an archway leading out of the courtyard. The archway was connected to the buildings – the stables – on the left and to the main part of the palace on the right. There were two people in the sketch. One, Jason assumed, appeared to be a gardener. The other person was standing in the doorway of the long entranceway to the palace. A long stonewall ran along the entire length of the palace, from the archway entrance to the courtyard all the way off of the right side of the drawing. On top of the palace roof was a huge chimney.
The fireplaces were huge at Sheen, Jason thought to himself.
Suddenly, Jason pushed himself away from his desk and rubbed his eyes. This was craziness, he thought to himself. He had not merely assumed that the fireplaces were huge at Sheen because of the size of the chimney. In his mind, he had seen a huge, darkened fireplace, without a fire in it. It was not a manufactured image. It was a memory from a Fourteenth Century palace that had been demolished five hundred years ago.
With the sound of the real wind blowing outside his house, staring intently at the Sheen drawing, Jason could nearly “see” the treetop in the drawing wildly blowing in the gusty wind; could nearly “hear” the person in the entranceway admonishing the gardener “Come inside. Thy work shall wait. Come inside before the wind bloweth thee away.”
“Well, I think I got enough groceries to get us through another week.”
Startled, Jason nearly jumped out of his chair. So intently had he been looking, seeing and hearing what was in the drawing, he had neither heard nor seen Jessica appear in the doorway of the den, having just returned from the weekly grocery shopping.
“Speaking of food,” Jessica said, “I saw something in this morning’s paper that I thought might be a great idea for lunch today.”
“What’s the name of this place and where is it?” Jason asked.
“It is downtown. Like a couple of blocks from the Smith Tower. It’s called The King’s Table,” she said.
“Will we be treated like royalty at The King’s Table?”
“Honey, I always treat you like royalty,” Jessica said, giving him a peck on his cheek.
Chapter Fifteen / NOREEN WAS BEING FOLLOWED
The streets of Seattle were nearly void of any other cars at that hour, save for a taxicab here and there. Although she had not seen it when she had first pulled out of Smith Tower, the last three turns she had made she realized that the same set of headlights behind her had also turned. Noreen was being followed.
Instinctively, she automatically locked all of her car doors. Arriving at the street that was where her and Liz’s apartment building was, she turned right onto the street. While being a well-lit street, it was devoid of any other cars, of any other human beings; Noreen felt very alone and very insecure. If she had to scream for help, would anybody even have heard her? While driving with her left hand, her right hand fumbled in her purse for her Smart phone. Pulling it out, she debated whether to bring up Liz’s number or to have 9-1-1 ready to go. Liz, she reasoned, would be right there. Only God knew how long it might take Seattle PD to arrive on the scene. She did not actually call Liz, but had the number ready with just the touch of the Send button. It provided a small sense of security, thinking of her roommate flying down seven flights of stairs – from their apartment on the seventh floor – to come to her rescue, if necessary.
Sure enough, she saw out her rearview mirror that whoever it was who was behind her also turned right. She drove the four blocks to her apartment building, pulling into the driveway of the locked underground garage. She quickly hit the button in her car to open the garage door. As the gate was opening, she again looked in her rearview mirror, watching the car that had been following her slowly go past by, as if in slow motion. Mentally, she noted that it was a dark, four-door sedan with windows that she could see were tinted due to the reflection of the streetlight on the car as it drove by.
Once inside the well-lit garage, she waited for the gate to close behind her, making sure that nobody had followed her in. Unsettled by this, for a moment she just sat frozen in her car, having pulled into her designated parking spot next to Liz’s spot. The elevator up to her apartment was a mere twenty feet away. Suddenly, it seemed like a hundred yards away. If someone had managed to get inside the garage with her, she wondered if, on a dead run, she could make it to the elevator.
Then there was, without warning, a tap on her window on her side of the car. She jumped, turning to look.
Chapter Fifteen / NOREEN WAS BEING FOLLOWED