Arthur and Cleo looked up in surprise to find the Earl of Dustshore standing behind them, a pistol raised, leveled at Arthur’s chest.
“Dustshore?” Arthur growled in disbelief. “Why?”
“As I said, that is none of your concern. Now, Miss Wallace, if you would be so kind as to hand me that hairpin?”
“Nay, I will not,” Cleo shook her head in protest.
“Then your husband shall die.” Dustshore moved his finger to fire the pistol.
“Nay! Wait! You can have it!”
“Dinnae give the bassard anything, Cleo. He is the one who killed yer faither. Are ye nae, Dustshore?” Arthur leveled a look that dared him to deny it.
“Yes, I did, and that unfortunate Virgil Standish person.”
“Why would you do such a thing?” Cleo demanded to know. “Why would you kill my father? He was a good man and did not deserve to die that way!”
Cleo moved forward threateningly, desiring more than anything to plunge a knife in the terrible man’s chest. Dustshore turned the gun on Cleo and Arthur immediately stepped in front of her shielding her with his own body. “Cleo is nae a threat, Dustshore. Dinnae harm her.”
“Perhaps not but she has something that I desire, and I will have it one way or another. Hand it over like a good girl and I will make your deaths quick, like your father’s. Defy me and I will make it last an eternity.”
“You are a monster,” Cleo hissed in disgust.
“Indeed, but I will have what I came for regardless of your opinions.”
“I do not understand why a hairpin of my father’s would be so important to you. It is not as if you are wanting for anything in this life. You have more wealth than any one man could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes. This is the last thing that my father gave me before you killed him.”
“It was not your father’s gift to give. Your father stole it. It was my father’s and he died never having reclaimed it. It was his last dying wish.”
“What do you mean, my father stole it?”
“Many years ago, long before you were ever born, Miss Wallace, your father, Professor Henry Wallace, was an ambitious young researcher whose paramount academic aim was to prove, or to disprove, once and for all, whether King Arthur, the King Arthur of legend, had actually existed, or whether as some believed he was merely a myth of the old ways.” Dustshore paused for breath, eyeing Cleo and Arthur warily to ensure that they did not make a move.
Cleo nodded, needing to hear the rest of the story. “And did he?”
“Henry was young then, very young, but he was a genius, an absolute marvel of the mind. He was full of vigor and hubris, but he was desperately poor and needed someone to fund his research. It was then that Henry came to my father, his lifelong friend, and asked him to fund his work. My father was the obvious choice as a nobleman of great wealth who was an adamant lover of history and a close associate of the British Museum. So, he agreed and became Henry’s benefactor.”
“It was your father who funded my father’s education,” Cleo nodded. The connection made sense thus far.
“Yes, he did, and he was the sole source of Henry’s expeditionary funding. No one else wished to take part in such a risky venture. Henry and my father started to research everything that they could get their hands on about the Arthurian legend. They spent months looking for anything that might give them a clue as to Arthur’s true identity in history, scouring the libraries of Europe for anything that might help them.”
That sounds like father,Cleo silently replied. Her heart felt as if it were stuck in her throat.
“Months turned into years, and then came the long-awaited breakthrough. Our fathers were studying an old nameless tomb engraved with runes when Henry noticed a protruding stone in the wall. When he pulled it out, he found a gold case with the name of Arthur’s queen, Guinevere, etched upon it. They opened the case, to find an intricately carved box, somehow preserved by its golden case. It was within the wooden box that they found the priceless hairpin that you now hold in your hand.”
Cleo looked down at the jeweled pin in a state of disbelief. “Are you telling me that this hairpin, my hairpin, once belonged to Queen Guinevere, Arthur’s Guinevere?”
“Yes, I am.” Dustshore nodded and glanced down at the pin in her hand with open disdain, but only for a moment so that Arthur would not be able to get the jump on him. “Henry brought it to my father, and they took it home to Dustshore with them. After pouring over every ancient and medieval text and record that they could find kept by the monks and clergy of the land, they deduced that this hairpin had to be one of King Arthur’s gifts to his bride, Guinevere, upon their wedding night.”
“To Henry Wallace, the hairpin immediately became an artifact unlike any other that the world had ever known. He claimed that the hairpin’s discovery could change the world’s perception of history, as well as its many myths and legends of old, but my father disagreed.”
“Why?” Cleo could not help asking. She agreed with her father and believed that the hairpin should be in a museum where it would be cared for and protected.
“Can you imagine what would happen if people had proof that the nonsense they dreamed of at night was true? Can you imagine what it would do for the social order if the lower classes adopted the Arthurian notions of equality, no matter one’s birth? The hairpin marked the end of the nobility as my father knew it. In father’s opinion, he had been the one to pay for the expedition, he should be the one to decided what was done with it. Your father disagreed.”
“And do ye share yer faither’s notions?” Arthur asked, in an effort of taking Dustshore’s attention off Cleo. The gun waving back and forth was making them both nervous.
“Do I believe that the hairpin would change the social order? Of course not. My father was a man who lived in a world that no longer existed, and everyone knew it, but that did not give your father the right to steal from him.”
