Traitor Angels (14 page)

He made a strangled noise that might have been partly a laugh. “If you have to ask, then . . . Never mind, Elizabeth. I will see you at supper.”

He turned my hand over in his, then bent his head over them. He kissed the inside of my wrist. His lips felt impossibly soft and warm. I sucked in a breath, staring down at his head bowed over our joined hands, candlelight glinting gold in the black strands of his hair. The blood that he and Robert had said circulated in our veins seemed to turn to honey in mine, traveling from my wrist up my arm to my chest, melting me from within.

Then he lifted his head. I couldn’t speak as he smiled at me. The lines of his face were tired, and there was a smudge of dirt on his temple—he had come to my room without bothering to wash first. Because he hadn’t wanted to wait to comfort me.

He’s beautiful
, I realized with a jolt of shock. The hands that held telescopes and scribbled long mathematical equations; the eyes that peered at the stars night after night. The slim line of a cut on his forehead from our fight in the fields outside Oxford. The way the fabric of his shirt stilled, as if he were holding his breath while he looked at me.

The fabric rose and fell; he had released his breath. “I had better dress for supper,” he said quietly.

Dress. For supper.
Which meant in a few minutes he would be in his own room, taking off his shirt and breeches. I could almost imagine the ridged muscles of his chest, which I had seen
through his water-soaked shirt.

My face turned to flame. Antonio laughed and sent me a wicked grin, as if he knew precisely what I was thinking. Odd’s fish! Couldn’t I just melt into the floor and be put out of my humiliation?

Jumping to his feet, he said, “I’ll see you in the dining room.”

I couldn’t say a word. I stared at the black and white marble squares of the floor, watching Antonio’s shadow cross them. The door opened and closed; he was gone.

I laid a hand on my overheated cheek. What on earth was wrong with me? Betty would tan my hide for having such impure thoughts.

Like someone in a trance, I went to the door. When I pressed my hand against it, I imagined I felt the vibrations of Antonio’s footsteps traveling along the corridor and up the wooden door into the tips of my fingers. Linking me to him. And I couldn’t help wondering if my thoughts truly were impure . . . or if maybe I was just beginning to see the world with different eyes.

THE DOOR BURST OPEN, NEARLY WHACKING ME IN
the face. I jumped back just in time. Robert came inside, grinning and waving my father’s strip of vellum in the air.

“The entire word isn’t capitalized,” he said.

Antonio appeared over Robert’s shoulder, buttoning his travel-worn shirt one-handed, as if he had been in the middle of undressing when he’d heard the commotion and rushed out. I could see the lines of his collarbones. Quickly I averted my gaze.

“You’d better come in before you attract the servants’ attention,” I said, ushering the boys into my room. “What exactly are you talking about, Robert?”

“Only the first letter is capitalized.” He looked expectantly at Antonio and me, but we stared at him blankly. “Don’t you see? If only the first letter is capitalized, then perhaps only the first letter is significant! We should put together only the capitalized
first letters and see if they spell out a secret message.”

I shrugged; it was as good a suggestion as any. “We can try that.”

Antonio closed the door and leaned against it, raising his eyebrows. It was clear he didn’t think much of Robert’s idea. I took the proffered vellum and scanned it again. The first capitalized word within a line was “Stars.” “
S
,” I said aloud, privately wondering if there was another layer of meaning behind my father’s poem—for stars, after all, had been the focus of many of Galileo’s investigations, and it had been his findings about the skies that had raised the Church’s ire and nearly cost him his life.

I skimmed the rest of the line. “Their—
T
.
S
and
T
so far.” Oddly enough, there weren’t more relevant capitalized letters in the next three lines, and then there were two in adjacent words. “
P
and
A
.”

“
S-T-P-A
,” Robert recited, and frowned. “It doesn’t sound like a real word yet.”

“Let me finish.” Father wouldn’t have made a mistake; I was sure of it. Thus far he’d shown himself to be a canny word magician, imbuing his writings with multiple meanings. I skimmed the rest of the poem. There were three more words we could use—“Us,” “Lets,” and “Start.” “
U
,
L
, and
S
. The entire message reads, ‘
S-T-P-A-U-L-S
.’”

My heart raced.
St. Paul’s!
I knew it well; there probably wasn’t a soul in London who didn’t. It was the largest church in the city, perhaps the largest church in the world. And the place held a tender place in my father’s heart—as a boy, he’d attended St. Paul’s school, which was affiliated with the church, and as a young man he had mourned when Cromwell allowed his troops
to use the church as a barracks and the building fell into terrible disrepair.

“St. Paul’s?” Antonio asked. “I thought you Protestants didn’t worship saints.”

“It’s a church.” A wide grin crossed Robert’s face, and he clapped me on the back, laughing. “Your father must have hidden this treasure in St. Paul’s!”

My heart sank. “The place is enormous,” I said. “St. Paul’s must have hundreds of possible hiding places. How can we ever hope to find them all? And how can we even look? The ministers and worshipers would certainly notice us tearing apart the walls and floor!”

“Confound it!” Robert aimed a vicious kick at the wall, then hopped around in agony, clutching the toe of his shoe and uttering a string of curses.

“When you’ve finished dancing, you might want to take a look at this,” Antonio said dryly. He had bent to study the vellum in my hand, coming so close that his hair brushed my fingers. I jolted. Antonio glanced over his shoulder at me, grinning as if he knew exactly why I had started. I scowled at him. Never mind that the dusting of his hair on my fingers
had
made my pulse leap; he didn’t need to know that.

Robert limped over to us. “What is it?”

“The ink has faded in an odd pattern,” Antonio said. He pointed to the words “our” and “would.” “Do you see how the letters
r
in ‘our’ and
d
in ‘would’ are gray, while the other letters are still black? I can’t think why only some letters should have faded unless”—he regarded me, all trace of merriment gone—“unless your father used two bottles of ink.”

“A second secret message,” I breathed. “What do the gray letters spell?”

I held the vellum while Antonio rattled them off: “
U-n-d-e-r-t-h-e-f-o-n-t
.”

Under the font
. The baptismal font, it had to be! Most likely it was a small piece of furniture made of wood or carved from stone, kept near St. Paul’s altar to be used in infants’ baptisms.

I seized Antonio’s hand, tugging him after me toward the door. “Come! There’s no time to lose!”

We shot into the corridor. As we raced headlong down the passage, the stones in the walls flashing past us, Robert grabbed my wrist, jerking me to a stop.

“How long has it been since your father hid this treasure?”

“I don’t know.” I tried to shake his hand off; I was desperate to keep going. “Years, I suppose. The box in Oxford was buried in 1642, and this poem is in my father’s handwriting, so he must have penned it before he went blind.”

“Then let’s pray the church hasn’t replaced its font anytime in the past twenty years,” Robert said grimly.

St. Paul’s Cathedral was a massive building clad in white stone, which gleamed ghostly in the darkness. A series of lean-to shops huddled against one wall; they were little more than shacks. By day the stalls did a bustling business, selling books and pamphlets. Many times I had strolled among them, looking for yet another book my father had requested. Now their flaps were tied closed for the night, and the air was quiet except for the clatter of our horses’ hooves on the courtyard pavers.

We left our horses at the church’s western end, in front of a
series of black marble steps leading up to a portico. I had feared the doors would be locked, but Robert pushed them open and strode into the place. Antonio and I hurried after him.

The sanctuary smelled of candles and stone. It was dark, its long rows of pews empty. The interior was fashioned like a cross, with the sanctuary forming one long line intersected by the north and south transepts. The only light came from a patch of evening sky showing through a jagged hole in the roof. Bluish lines appeared elsewhere in the vaulted ceiling—the sky peeking through the cracks, I realized. Instinctively I looked at the walls. Even in the dimness I could see how they bulged outward, clearly buckling from the tremendous pressure of supporting the damaged roof. It was a wonder the building didn’t fall down on our heads at that very moment.

Pieces of the floor were broken or missing entirely. The lack of light forced us to adopt a shuffling gait, stepping carefully over missing stones in the floor. As we reached the spot where the transepts met the sanctuary, footsteps sounded in the distance. The guttering yellow circle of a candle’s flame appeared ahead of us—coming from the altar, I guessed.

“Who goes there?” called a man’s pleasant voice. “Have you come to worship?”

Antonio and I looked at each other, and he shrugged. Playing the part of a late-night pilgrim was far better than admitting the true reason for our visit.

“Yes—” I started to reply, but Robert interrupted me with a harsh whisper: “It’s no use pretending—I recognize the man’s voice. He’s one of the ministers, and he knows me.

“It’s I, the Duke of Lockton,” he went on, more loudly. “We’ve come to pray in solitude.”

The minister hurried toward us, the candle flame bobbing beside him. By its weak illumination I could see the man’s weathered, friendly face and shoulder-length gray hair. He wore a white clerical collar and long black robes.

“Your Grace,” he said, beaming, and bowed. “You are most welcome in the Lord’s House, as indeed are all those who praise his name. If you wish to worship in private, then by all means I will remove myself from your presence.”

He backed away, but Robert stayed his progress with a raised hand. “Wait. Where’s the font? I—I wish to see it, for I’ve heard it’s in poor condition. Perhaps I could replace it.”

“Your Grace is most generous,” the minister said, bowing again. “Have you come on behalf of the commission?”

Robert’s forehead wrinkled. “The what?”

“A commission has been formed to oversee the possible renovation of our beloved church.” The minister’s words tumbled out in excitement, one after the other. “It’s a group of respectable gentlemen—John Evelyn, Hugh May, Roger Pratt, and Christopher Wren. They began inspecting our church earlier this month.”

My eyes darted to the front of the sanctuary, which was draped in shadows, so I couldn’t see anything, not even the small half-pillar shape of a baptismal font.

“Oh. Yes. We’re new members of the commission,” Robert said hastily. “We’ve come to look at the font.”

“Follow me, Your Grace.” The minister walked backward to the altar, keeping his body half bent in a perpetual bow. It took all of my self-discipline not to snap at him to go faster. At last, we were so close! He bumped into the altar rail and stopped, waving toward a shadowy object to his right. “The baptismal font is here, Your Grace.”

“Thank you. You’re dismissed.” Without another word, Robert took the candle the minister held out to him and clambered over the altar rail, with Antonio and me right behind him. My hands shook with excitement. We were almost to the answers now. I glanced over my shoulder at the minister. He was shuffling backward down the center aisle between the rows of pews. Soon enough he’d be gone, and even if he found our behavior strange, he wouldn’t dare complain about it to anyone.

The font was carved from dark wood. We ran our hands over its sides. In some places the wood was warped, its surface bulging out like miniature bubbles. When I pressed my fingers into the protuberances, though, the wood gave easily. It was rotted, probably from decades of water damage. There was nothing hidden inside.

“Roll it onto its side,” Antonio ordered. “Maybe there’s something under it.”

Quickly we levered the heavy font to the floor. By the light from Robert’s candle, we peered at the bottom. The octagonal panel of wood was still pale, untouched by water or sunlight. Two tiny nail holes marred its otherwise smooth surface. Nothing else.

Robert vaulted over the rail. “What are those holes on the bottom of the font?” he called after the minister.

The elderly man rushed up the aisle toward us. “An object was nailed there, Your Grace. The commission found it when they came a fortnight ago, for I told them it’s cracked and leaks holy water onto the floor—clearly an intolerable situation.”

My heart dropped. We were too late.

“What was it?” Robert demanded.

“Your Grace, it was nothing important, I assure you—”

In a few strides, Robert had reached the minister and grabbed the man’s hands. “What,” he said through gritted teeth, “was it?”

The minister opened and closed his mouth a few times. I gripped the altar rail so tightly wood splinters dug into my palms. Beside me, I heard Antonio’s ragged breathing.

“It was a piece of vellum,” the minister said shakily. “Inside it was rolled a piece of paper covered with drawings and writings in a tongue that looked remarkably like Latin, but which one of the commission gentlemen said was Italian.” He drew himself to his full height, his mouth settling into a disapproving frown. “To my eyes, it looked like witchcraft, and I was relieved when they took it with them. Only the Lord knows how long the paper’s impure presence has polluted our house of worship.”

I couldn’t move, could barely breathe as I listened.

“Where’s the paper now?” Robert demanded.

The minister glanced at his hands gripped in Robert’s and cleared his throat, looking nervous. “In a place most easy for you to reach, Your Grace. Mr. Wren is an accomplished astronomy tutor at the University of Oxford, you see, and he grew nearly wild with excitement when he saw the paper. He said he knew well of the king’s interest in natural philosophy, and he insisted on bringing the discovery to him immediately.” The minister attempted a placating smile. “For the past fortnight, the vellum has been in your father’s possession. I daresay if you told him of your interest, he would be happy to share it with you.”