The Twelfth Ring by Sam Clarke

Author:Sam Clarke [Clarke, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2017-06-13T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

The speed camera flashed. ‘Dad, you’ve triggered another one,’ I said. He slowed the car down. Marginally. We had flown to Sicily on a commercial flight and our rented people carrier was about to reach the outskirts of a town called Licata. My father had brought me up to speed with his translation of the Arabic pages. I was obviously being fed an abridged version: in 1318 a French knight called Godefroi de Carignan was travelling on the doomed Nuestra Señora ship when she had sunk off the coast of Sicily. Despite sustaining serious injuries, Godefroi had managed to reach the shores of Licata, which back then was called Limpiadum. The locals had rushed him to a monastery in Agrigento, where his wounds could be tended to. Unfortunately, infection had set in and it was only a matter of time before Godefroi would succumb to his fate. The knight was carrying the mysterious twelfth ring, a coveted item even in those years. To prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, he had embarked on a final journey to deliver the ring to a secure hiding place. Before setting off, he had marked his intended destination, the approximate position of the sunk Nuestra Señora and the towns of Licata and Agrigento on the map in our possession. Pity our map was incomplete and, as luck would have it, the ring’s hiding place happened to be drawn on the scroll’s missing part. My father couldn’t have cared less. Apparently, he and Miguel were good at cracking mysteries and they were certain that an in-depth study of Godefroi’s letter would have revealed clues to the ring’s location – they couldn’t believe that the knight would put all his eggs in one basket. I sincerely hoped their gut feeling was right. Knut, who was adamant to add the ring to his private collection, had hired my father’s company to retrieve it and was financing the expedition. I knew there had to be a lot more, but kept quiet and pretended to go along with it. Unsurprisingly, I also kept quiet about my conversation with Kostas.

The plan was to go to Sicily and retrace Godefroi’s steps. The knight’s only connection to Licata was to have been washed up on its shores, so our stay wouldn’t be long – enough to recover from the jet-lag and, hopefully, crack the letter. My father and I had never been on a long-haul trip before and he was determined to make it a bit special. He had pledged to spend an entire afternoon hanging around with me and had even hired a boat to explore the Sicilian coast. If I survived the drive, we would finally spend some quality time together.

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