Triskellion by Will Peterson Page B

she immediately recognized.
    Reverend Stone grinned, thin-lipped and joyless. “Do you see what it is?”
    Rachel looked at Adam. He didn’t know. She looked back at the blade and it suddenly dawned on her that it was a part of something else. That if three such blades were placed tip to tip, they would form a shape she was coming to know very well.
    “It’s part of a Triskellion,” she whispered. Now she was full of questions herself. “What’s it made of?”
    “Well, there’s some gold certainly, but also one or two other elements we’re not certain about.”
    “Hasn’t a scientist tried to find out?”
    “We wouldn’t really be too keen on that. They’d take it away and lock it in a vault somewhere and we’d lose a piece of our history.”
    “Are there any other parts?”
    Reverend Stone spread his arms wide. “Ah, well there’s the mystery. Nobody knows what happened to the other two blades.” He glanced at his watch. “Now I don’t mean to hurry you, but…” He guided them back into the body of the church and locked the door behind him.
    Rachel looked up at the stained glass window that dominated the altar. Questions continued to flood her mind. “What about the figures in the window?”
    Reverend Stone rolled his eyes. He was beginning to look more than a little impatient; almost irritated.
    “Who are they?”
    “Well … I like to think that it’s an image of Sir Richard de Waverley, off to the crusades, wishing his wife goodbye.” Reverend Stone looked as if he was about to wish Rachel and Adam the same. But Adam had a question of his own.
    “What’s the inscription mean?” Adam was crouching down, pointing to the series of symbols engraved along the base of the tomb.
    “I think you need several degrees in ancient languages to even make a start on those. Some people think it’s an epitaph or a prayer. Or perhaps even a warning of some sort…”
    “What do you think?” Rachel asked.
    “I don’t know,” replied Reverend Stone, undoing the buttons on the front of his cassock. “But I
do
know I have a cricket match to umpire in five minutes.” From a hook near the entrance he took a white umpire’s coat and struggled into it, leaning against the heavy wooden door and stepping out into the sunshine.
    Adam and Rachel followed. The blast of hot air was like opening an oven.
    As he climbed on to his bicycle, the vicar turned back to the twins. “Maybe you’d like to come and watch?” He nodded towards his church. “You think some of the stuff in there is strange and inexplicable, wait until you’ve seen cricket…”
    Rachel and Adam exchanged a look, before walking away from the church in the same direction as the vicar.
    From the churchyard, the boy with black hair and wide green eyes watched them go. He whistled a simple tune, smiling and leaning back against a gravestone that rose up like fifty or so others, through the overgrown grass.
    Blackened and crooked. The names of the dead long since worn away.

“H e was
what
before
what
?” Adam asked.
    The old man smiled, indulgently. “Lbw. Leg before wicket, young man. The ball pitched on off stump and moved back inside, you see?”
    Adam nodded, none the wiser, then joined everyone else in clapping enthusiastically, as the batsman who had been dismissed walked off the field, and stamped up the rickety wooden steps towards the small pavilion.
    “Well played,” shouted several people in the crowd. The batsman touched the peak of his cap and smiled.
    Adam raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and stared across the expanse of green until he caught sight of Rachel, who had wandered away to the far side of the pitch. He waved until she noticed him and began to wander back round the boundary.
    It seemed as though most of the village had turned out to watch the match. There were people on every spare inch of grass round the edge of the pitch; enjoying picnics on tartanblankets while children played with plastic bats and