The Blackthorn Key (16 page)

The third floor had three bedrooms and a sewing room. Two of the bedrooms were stuffed with dolls and frilly things: his daughters'. The other bedroom was plain and cramped; for Mistress Coggshall's maid, I guessed. I couldn't imagine whatever my master wanted me to see was in here.

There were two more bedrooms on the top floor. One wasn't quite as girlish as the chambers below, but was just as
frilly, with a four-poster bed draped in aquamarine velvet. The other was clearly Hugh's.

Like the workshop, the bedroom was laid out nearly identical to Master Benedict's. Simple bed, side table, desk by the window, covered in paper. Even the furniture looked like it was made by the same carpenter. And here, too, stacks of books grew like trees from the floorboards, though nowhere near as many.

The bedsheets were crumpled. On the floor, next to a teetering pillar of tomes, were the last few bites of a loaf of bread. I tapped it with a fingernail. It ticked back, hard as a rock.

“No one's been here for days,” Tom said. He looked at the papers on the desk. “Are we going to have to go through all that?”

It did seem like the best place to start. I sat at the desk and began to shuffle through Hugh's papers. Tom searched the clothes in the closet, turning out pockets.

There were lots of notes, recipes, and thoughts on herbs and mixtures in general. Looking for “Hugh's fourth,” I scanned the fourth page, the fourth line on each page, the fourth word. Nothing looked promising. It was getting harder to concentrate, too. The puzzle cube in my pocket was poking my leg, and while I liked wearing my master's
sash, its seams were starting to chafe my waist. The thing was designed to be worn on the outside, not hidden next to the skin. I untied it and flopped it on the bed.

After last night, Tom had as much reason to like the sash as I did. “This is really something,” he said. He sat on the floor, legs splayed like he was still a little boy, and began poking the vials one by one out of their straps. His stomach growled like a taunted tiger. “I don't suppose any of this is food,” he said hopefully.

“That's food,” I said, nodding at the vial he was holding. “Sort of. It's castor oil.”

Tom made a face. “Gives me the trots.”

“It's supposed to.” I put aside Hugh's papers and stared at the page from the ledger. “There's ipecac next to it, if you prefer. That makes things come out the other end.”

“If you're trying to ruin my appetite,” Tom said, “it's not working.”

I was hungry, too. I'd left Tom's house so early, I hadn't even had the chance to eat breakfast, and now we'd missed lunch, as well. I thought about raiding Hugh's pantry, but I forced myself to stay at the desk, reading the ledger page over and over again. We still hadn't figured out what everything in the message was for. In particular, we'd barely paid
any attention to the words “end.swords” in the second line. Master Benedict wouldn't have written that for no reason. It had to be part of the clue.

The question was how to decipher it? The period might separate the words, as it appeared. Or it could mean something else, like a starting point, or a stand-in for a comma or an apostrophe. It might even be nothing, a distraction to throw a would-be spy down the wrong path. End swords. Sword's end. End's words. Send words. Send them? Send them where?

“What's in this?” Tom said curiously.

He held up a vial from my master's sash. The liquid inside was clear and yellow. Unlike the others, the top was sealed with wax and bound tightly with twine. “Oil of vitriol,” I said.

“Is that like castor oil?” He began to pull at the twine.

“Don't touch it!” I shouted.

He froze.

“That's not something you eat,” I said. “Oil of vitriol dissolves iron.”

He blinked. “Really?”

“It also dissolves people. If you get it on you, it'll melt your flesh.”

He jerked his fingers away from the stopper. Still, he said, “Can we try it on something?”

“If you want.” I stared out the window, trying to think. Hugh's bedroom, four floors up, was a story taller than the townhouses that faced it, giving him a nice view of the city. I could even see right into the forest green of a private garden nestled off an alleyway two streets over.

And there was a pigeon sitting on the windowsill.

“What the . . . ?” I began.

Tom looked up.

“It's Bridget,” I said, amazed.

She bobbed her head and pecked at the glass.

“She followed us here?” Tom said. “What do you feed that bird?”

I unlatched the window. It was hinged at the top, swinging outward, so it began to push her off the sill. She flapped her wings accusingly.

“I can't open it unless you move,” I said. Then I stopped.

I grabbed the ledger page. I reread my master's message. My heart was pounding.

Hugh's 4th below the lions the gates of paradise

“Is something wrong?” Tom said.

“I . . . I think I know where Hugh's fourth is.”

“Where?”

“Here,” I said. “Right here. We're standing in it.”

“Hugh's bedroom?”

“What floor are we on?”

Tom counted. “The fourth.” He looked surprised. “Hugh's, fourth. But how do you know that's the right answer?”

I pointed out the window. “Look.”

Bridget tried to stick her head through the crack at the bottom of the frame. Tom followed my stare past her to the private garden beyond. It was walled off from the alley by a gate with pillars of stone, linked together by an iron fence. On top of the pillars were two statues, facing away from us. Their tails curved around the base.

Tom looked at me quizzically. I pushed the ledger paper over to him. He read it, then looked back at the garden. His eyes widened. “The statues.”

I nodded. “They're lions.”

I STOPPED SHORT WHEN I
rounded the corner. I stared at the brick wall that blocked our way. Again.

“We should've turned left,” Tom said.

I looked back the way we came, seeing nothing but more brick. “Left would take us to the street.”

“No, right is the street. Left is the houses.”

“This place is a maze,” I said.

“I think that's the point.”

It sure seemed to be. We'd left Hugh's house and made our way to the alley that led to the statues of the lions. We should have been in a nice straight path to the private
garden. Instead, someone had laid a confounding pattern of walls between the houses, fifteen feet high, complete with sharp turns and dead ends. There were iron spikes set in the top of the walls, to stop anyone from climbing over. “This thing has more twists than a pretzel.”

“What's a pretzel?” Tom said.

“It's a kind of dough the cook at the orphanage made. You dip it in butter and—it doesn't matter. We go right.”

“It's
left
,” Tom said.

“It's
right
.”

Bridget flapped by overhead, going left. Tom glared at me.

“All right, fine,” I said. “It's left.”

Tom folded his arms. “We should put the bird in charge.”

•  •  •

The bird was right. Going left led us along a path through the maze that exited directly in front of the pillars. Behind the wrought-iron fence was the private garden, which looked a lot like the one where Lord Ashcombe had found the buried body on Oak Apple Day. The gate here was closed, too, but not padlocked. At the top of each pillar that flanked it, the stone lions faced the mansion beyond, one paw raised.

“What now?” Tom said.

I held out the ledger page.

below the lions the gates of paradise

He looked at me. “And that means . . . ?”

There was a gate between the statues. Were these the gates of paradise? I couldn't see anything special about them. The pillars looked like large gray slabs stuck together with mortar. I ran my hands along them. They remained large gray slabs stuck together with mortar.

Beyond the fence, a path of cracked slate led from the gate and forked around a boxy granite structure, eight feet high and twelve feet across, ivy crawling up its walls. A plain stone cross adorned the top. Bridget waited for us there, preening an outstretched wing.

The path ended at the rear door of the mansion. On either side of the slate, the grass grew unkempt. The once-cared-for bushes had lost their trimming, their branches sticking out in misshapen lumps.

I unlatched the gate. “Let's check it out.”

“We're not allowed in there,” Tom said. “It's private.”

The house's windows were dark. The only sound in the
garden was Bridget, cooing at us from atop the cross. “I don't think anyone's lived here for weeks.”

We walked along the path to the other side of the stone structure, which turned out to be a mausoleum. The front, facing the house, had a wooden door with an iron latch. Vines crawled upward around the sides, sprouting bright white flowers that flared out like horns. Above the door was a brass plaque, tarnished to a mottled green by centuries of weather.

IN MEMORIAM

GWYNEDD MORTIMER A.D. 1322

REQUIESCAT IN PACE

I frowned. “Mortimer. Why do I know that name?”

“Henry,” Tom said. “Lord Henry Mortimer. He was the third man killed by the Cult.” Tom went over to the mansion and peered in the window. “You think this was his house?”

Bridget flapped down to the grass. When I picked her up, she stuck her beak into my fingers, looking for food. “I didn't bring anything,” I told her.

“Christopher.”

Tom stared back the way we came, head cocked to one side.

“Come here,” he said.

I did. He turned me so I was facing the garden. “Look.”

From where we stood, the mausoleum blocked most of the iron gate that led back to the maze. We could still see the lions on the pillars above it. The way they were posed, they appeared to be guarding the corners of the shrine. Behind the houses that backed onto the enclosure—all of whose windows had been bricked up, I noticed—was the window to Hugh's bedroom, where we'd first spotted the hidden garden. Beyond that was the steeple of a church. Even from this distance, I could make out the statue on the spire. It was a bearded man with a halo, right hand raised in blessing, his left hand holding a key.

“That's Saint Peter,” Tom said. “Keeper of the Pearly Gates.”

Saint Peter hovered directly above the mausoleum, lions at his feet on either side. Vines trailed around the door, flowers blooming white.

Below the lions, the gates of paradise.

We'd found it.

•  •  •

The mausoleum was dark and cramped inside. A marble sarcophagus, six feet long, rested in the center. It had no markings except water stains and a Latin inscription on the side.

DOMINUS ILLUMINATIO MEA

The Lord is my light.

Three of the walls held an alcove. Inside each was a statue, eighteen inches high, made of the same marble as the sarcophagus. On the left, a man with a round face and downturned lips held a tower in one hand and a book in the other. Facing him on the right was a bald man with a long beard, holding the paw of a lion lying peacefully at his feet. I was surprised to realize that I recognized them both. I'd seen their images in that book my master had given me to read three months ago, the book Lord Ashcombe had questioned me about in the shop. They were Catholic saints: Thomas Aquinas on the left, Jerome on the right. The patron saints of knowledge and learning.

The statue opposite the door was an angel. His sharp cheekbones and blank eyes were framed by long flowing hair. His wings were spread, every feather carved in such detail that they looked almost real. In his right hand he
held a sword turned downward, its tip hovering just above the stone. His other hand was open, palm forward, fingers pointed toward the ground.

Bridget poked her head in the mausoleum's entrance, one foot stepping cautiously into the dark. Tom leaned over and peered at Saint Jerome's lion. I couldn't take my eyes off the angel.

End swords.

I went around the sarcophagus. My fingers traced the angel's blade to its tip.

Sword's end?

I pulled on the stone, gently, so as not to break the statue. I prodded the tip, and looked at the hilt. The angel stared back, unmoving.

Tom came over to join me. He touched the angel's open palm. “It's like he's trying to show you something.”

Below the statue was nothing but rough stone. I looked behind us, at the sarcophagus. In the dim light, at the bottom of the casket, a shape caught my eye.

“Tom,” I said.

He turned, and stared at the same place.

To anyone else, it would have looked like just another water stain on the marble. But we'd seen this shape before.