Page 60 of Under Arthur’s Protection

A man in his mid-forties, with close-cropped white-blond hair and a staff badge clipped to his shirt, entered the room. He approached my table, holding a thin folio against his chest. “Excuse me, Dr. Lyons?”

Behind him, Arthur’s attention shifted, as it had when the first archivist brought out the boxes for me.

“We found some additional documents in another collection that may be relevant to your inquiry.” He placed the folio in front of me. “These were cross-referenced from an older catalog, so they weren’t in your original request.”

“Thank you.” I set the stack from the box aside and opened the folio as he walked out the door.

Inside was a journal, kept by a traveler crossing England in the late 1700s. He described historic sites in a cramped hand and included drawings of several relics. The dates started at 1762.

It was beautiful, stunning research. I tried not to linger on irrelevant sketches, but there were chalices, rubbings of tomb inscriptions, and a few weapons I photographed in case I ever needed the documentation.

I turned what must have been the tenth page when⁠—

Oh my god.

My breath caught.

It was a sketch. Of a sword. The same enameled pommel, same ring attachment, and same corroded blade. The adrenaline was pumping before the words formed in my brain: This is my sword.

Beside it, the author had left notes about a visit to the parish church in Temple—St. Catherine’s Church—where they’d seen an inscription on the tower wall.

Oh my god!

It was there. At the church. The words. Porta Novae Avallonis.

According to the notes, he met an English collector who’d been so taken with the Arthurian connection⁠—

Oh shit.

He’d commissioned a variant of the inscription to be added to a sword in his collection, as a personal flourish.

No, no, no.

The collector had a name. Sir Edmund Hargrove of Hertfordshire. He’d owned the sword and had the inscription Clavis Novae Avallonis added to it.

In 1761.

Shit.

The inscription was a later addition. Not original. I’d been so sure there was a link between the sword and the church that ran deeper than some eighteenth-century whim. But here it was, in a firsthand account. Dr. Hopkins had been right. The literary tradition explained the inscription better than my interpretation had.

Your job is to authenticate the sword, not to prove some deeper story.

I’d wanted it to be more. But was that anything other than ego?

If it checked out, half my report wrote itself. It was a solid marker in the provenance chain, including a full sketch of the physical object, a clear explanation for the inscription, and a name with a date. I could write this up, verify the collector’s identity, and close this segment of the authentication with confidence.

The FBI didn’t need me to identify who crafted the sword. They needed proof it was a genuine antiquity with a history. They needed proof it wasn’t made last year out of scrap metal.

But the idea of wrapping up anything today sat funny in my stomach. I peered at Arthur, who was eyeing the door to the reading room. If I finished, we’d fly back to Michigan, and I’d hand over my report tracing the sword back almost three hundred years, along with my evidence it was older. Then I’d go home to New York. This crazy chapter of my life, with my own bodyguards, would be over.

With a sigh, I photographed the pages in the folio and sat back. How would I stage this information? I could extend the trip, saying I needed to research Sir Edmund. Or—another sigh—I could call someone who had better access than I did.

I pulled out my phone, pushed back from the table, and scrolled for Rachel’s number. I walked toward the wall of windows, in Arthur’s direction.

He intercepted me before I’d taken three steps, his brows knitting together. “Everything all right?”

“Just making a call,” I said. “And stretching my legs.”