Jeri Westerson - Shadow of the Alchemist

“What is it, Maître Guest? What is the riddle this time?”

“Jack,” Crispin said impatiently, “for the last time, where is the damned parchment?”

“There was no parchment,” he said, looking from face to face. “It was the bell.”

“What was the bell?”

“There was an inscription on the bell. In Latin. It said, ‘It begins and has no end. It is the ending of all that begins.’”

“This is a foolish waste of time!” cried Flamel.

A noise. Perhaps a step. They all fell silent as they listened.

“Monks,” Crispin whispered to them. “Let us go.”

They hurried together out of the arch and down the steps. A burning brazier stood in the cathedral’s courtyard and the four of them surrounded it, warming their hands over the flames.

Flamel rubbed his eyes. “Where are these riddles taking us? Is he not laughing at our antics? What does it mean, Maître Guest?”

“We are set on this course now, Master Flamel. Unfortunately, he holds the reins. We must do as he bids. At some point, he will tell us to leave the ransom, and so we must be accurate as to which riddle we find and in what order. When we are wrong, he tells us.”

“And so what is the meaning of this riddle?” Flamel asked again.

“ I know!” said Jack. His face was bright with the excitement of discovery. But Crispin saw his features change as he realized the gravity of the situation. “I mean … I sorted it out on my way back down the stairs. It begins and has no end. It is the ending of all that begins . The answer is … death.”

Flamel gasped and Jack immediately saw the lack of grace in his pronouncement. The boy still had far to go in learning when to keep silent.

Crispin touched Flamel’s sleeve. “It is merely another riddle, good Master.” I hope . “The clue is ‘death.’ And so. What are we to conclude? He means a churchyard, gravestones.”

Jack’s contrition was evident by the set of his brow. “But Master,” he said softly, as if his tone could erase the harshness of his earlier declaration, “there are many graves in the city. How are we to know which one it is? Should we look here at St. Paul’s?”

“Two clues we have found here already,” Flamel offered anxiously. “And here is where he would have had me leave the ransom.”

“True.” Crispin pondered. But something about it did not sit well. “Since we are here, we might as well look.”

They would have to go back inside, for those of high stature were buried within the cathedral itself. Again they wandered separately. Crispin wished he had the broken lantern, for he could not seem to adjust to the dark as easily as young Jack did or Avelyn.

Crispin found one of the older tombs, erected before the fire in Norman times. The stone seemed to be crumbling from age, and even though it remained indoors, time had not been kind to its worn effigies. Still aware that a wayward porter or servant might be about, Crispin moved carefully around the tomb, studying the carvings and raised patterns. A skull with crossed bones caught his eye and he knelt, running his fingers over the cold, uneven stone. Another parchment in a niche. Hurriedly, he removed it and read:

Close. But not here beneath the vaulted ceilings. Beneath another greater vault you must look.

“Dammit!” He caught Tucker’s attention by waving the parchment. Jack, in turn, tapped Avelyn’s arm. They trotted over, collecting Flamel along the way.

“This is not the place.” He handed it to Jack, who read it slowly, mouthing the words.

“Where, then, Master Crispin?”

“A ‘greater vault’ would be the sky. But I do not think it another churchyard or plague pit. Something out of doors, certainly. Something that reeks of death.”

“Tower Hill,” whispered Jack. His face was in shadow, but his eyes glistened from the distant cressets.

“Yes,” Crispin agreed. That sounded right.

“It’s late. Surely the Watch is patrolling,” said Jack.

He set his jaw. “When has that ever stopped us before?”

They made their way to Candlewick Street and headed for the Postern Gate. Crispin let Flamel fall behind with Avelyn. He got in close to Jack and said to him quietly, “I do not like this game, Jack. He is setting us up for a purpose, and that purpose may very well be a diabolical one.”

“Do you mean to say that Madam Flamel might already be … be…”

“It’s possible. The cruelness of leading us on this chase without the possibility of renewing his bid for a ransom seems out of proportion.”

“He knows Master Flamel.”

“I would say so. Knows him well and has a grievance.”

“So he don’t want the Stone.”

“I think he does, but he obviously feels he has time to savor the getting of it.”

Jack looked back over his shoulder at the alchemist. “You said that you thought Master Flamel knew the abductor.”

“He might. What vexes me is the time it has taken to plant these clues, to invent these riddles. This was thought out very carefully, Jack, over a long period of time. What sort of grievance would he have? How did he know that Flamel was coming to England? It was supposed to be a secret.” He lifted his head and listened to the darkening city.

When they turned at Tower Street, they all stopped, listening. Crispin plucked the small noises of night from the chill air: a dog barking down the lane, a sign creaking in the wind, the restless whisper of leafless trees scratching against a garden wall, a rat rustling in the underbrush, the soft voices like a hum coming from the houses. Crispin felt like a thief, creeping through the streets, trying to avoid capture. Especially now that they had lost their lantern. It was difficult to see their way.

Ahead were the high curtain walls of the Tower of London and, above that, Tower Hill, where the gibbet awaited its next victim.

They turned up the rutted lane, climbing toward the lonely hill. Jack fell silent and pale beside him. It wasn’t all that long ago when the boy was in danger of ending up there, and well he knew it. Crispin, too, approached with trepidation. Here was the place that the other conspirators in the Plot were dispatched: hanged, drawn, quartered. A particularly nasty and lingering death for daring to venture into treason. And well Crispin knew, too, that he was damned fortunate to have escaped it. His pride often made him wish he had been executed with the others instead of living in his humiliation, but he had grown accustomed to life, and the notion of giving it up had become harder and harder. Not that he particularly relished his existence on the Shambles, but it had its advantages. And with a curt glance to Avelyn, he recognized one of them.

As they neared, they could see that the gibbet stood empty, and for that Crispin was grateful. He had no liking for the idea of searching underneath the body of a dead man, and a man bound for Hell at that.

The wood of the post and jutting beam glistened from damp under the starlight. A well-used rope hung from its beam and swayed with the night wind. It reminded Crispin of the rope back at Flamel’s shop hanging from its own beam. Thomas Cornhill met his death swiftly and was hung by his heel on it. But Perenelle Flamel lingered. Who knew what peril she was in at this very moment?

Standing below the gibbet’s platform, he heard Jack swallow and breathe, even above the constant wind. The boy was murmuring prayers, and Crispin decided to spare him. “You look here below, Jack. I … I will go up.”

He trudged farther up the hill to the gibbet’s steps. He hesitated only a heartbeat before he put his foot to the first step and slowly climbed. God’s blood, but it felt as if he were going to his doom. What a fearful place, full of ghosts and evil spirits. No matter how many prayers a priest chanted, no blessing ever seemed to permeate its dark wood.