Matthew Skelton - Endymion Spring

Fortunately, a brave horn-player broke the silence with an untimely belch and a nervous ripple of laughter passed through the crowd. Fust paused to glare at the ring of offending faces.

"Fools," he spat. "You laugh now, but you have no idean what will come!"

The few titters stopped. Peter, dressed as Adam, strode into the arena. Bare-chested and brave, he faced his Master. To a chorus of approval, Christina the walked up behind him and, like Eve, coiled her arm seductively around his waist.

Fust, as the Pope, pointed at them accusingly.

"You!" he hissed, barely able to contain his fury. "You two are to blame for all this! It's all your fault!"

A couple of spectators, thinking this was part of the performance, chuckled.

Fust, livid with rage, turned on them with his heavy ring-clad fingers. "Fools!" he cursed again, his jewels catching fire in the light. "You're all damned fools!"

This only served to increase the general sense of hilarity. People broke into a chorus of laughter and insults, taunting the Pope.

Immediately, Peter and Christina raised their hands to silence the commotion. Gently, with voices tinged with sorrow, they began to sing:

"King or Queen, Pope or Knight,

Each lies equal in God's Sight;

Earth to Earth and Dust to Dust,

We claim your Soul: Johann Fust…"

Fust looked at them in disgust and then, as the full comprehension of his situation dawned on him, his mouth curled into a sneer.

"No! I won't go! You can't make me!"

Peter and Christina — as Adam and Eve — repeated the verse, emphasizing Fust's role as Pope, a preeminent member of the procession and the first to be led to the grave. While they sang, a host of skeletons emerged from hiding and moved stealthily towards him, about to claim their first victim. Once summoned to the grave, Fust would have to wait in quiet compliance — death — until all the citizens of Mainz lay beside him, from the noblest knight to the poorest beggar. Finally, at the end of the symbolic dance, God would descend and raise them all from their slumber…by which time I would be gone.

One by one the skeletons approached Fust and bowed before him, inviting him to participate in the Dance of Death.

Fust became hysterical. "No! I won't go! Never! You can't take me!"

He ran from one side of the crowd to the other, appealing to people to let him pass, scrabbling at them, but the spectators, now a wall of bodies, blocked his way.

Peter and Christina walked steadily closer.

Fust attempted once more to run away, but a mischievous devil, sensing trouble, rushed up behind him and kicked him in the backside, causing him to fall down. On his hands and knees, he scrambled away from his daughter and chosen son-in-law, crawling like an infant.

Even now, the skeletons barred his way.

Impassive, Peter and Christina looked on as Fust, reduced to no more than a child, was dragged away by his arms and legs, struggling furiously against the ignominy of death. The crowd gave an enormous roar of approval — like the earth opening up — and the musicians on top of the wallstruck up their instruments. The last I saw he was pinned to the ground by an army of devils and demons in the realm of the dead and forced to remain still by an open grave. He was writhing desperately beneath their hoofs and claws, trying to pursue me and regain the book.

Peter and Christina shook their heads and scanned the faces of the crowd for the next person to join the Dance of Death. I longed for them to pick me out of the mass of heads, but I forced my steps away.

Blindly, I stumbled through the excited throng of people — an unnoticed beggar, hapered by a burden on his back — working my way towards the protective shadow of the great cathedral. I glanced back just once, when I heard Peter's voice soaring above the crowd like an angel's chorus:

"Naked we're born, Naked we'll go,

See how the Vain are soon brought low.

Godspeed the poor Boy on his Way.

Fear not, we'll meet some other Day…"

I turned and made my solitary way through the suddenly cheerless city, waling towards my future.

Blake felt uneasy. A wind had picked up and leaves were blowing against the sides of the locked-up colleges, which towered above him like massive shadows. Gargoyles gripped the ledges of the buildings with chiseled claws and angels peered down at him from the roofs. He was making his way through the dark city streets towards AllSoulsCollege.

Duck trotted behind him. "Did you bring Endymion Spring? " she asked excitedly.

"Of course I did," he answered, "but you're not to mention it, OK? We can't let anyone know we've got it until we figure out who's the Person in Shadow."

"And then what?"

It was such a simple question, but it made him stop in his tracks. He wasn't sure.

"I don't know," he said uncertainly.

Beside them an enormous drum-shaped building with blackened windows and a silver dome — the Radcliffe Camera — grew out of an islanded garden in the middle of a cobbled square. Just behind them was the Bodleian Library, a vast stone crown with windows lit up like jewels. Somewhere in the Upper Reading Room, beneath the rows of glowing lamps, their mother was working into the evening.

Until now, Blake had expected someone — either Jolyon or Psalmanazar or even Duck — to tell him what to do, but he no longer felt he could trust anyone. It was up to him to solve the mystery on his own.

Even Endymion Spring , it seemed, had abandoned him. All day long the book had taunted him with its silence. The black page was still there, warning him of the Person in Shadow, but there was no sign of the original riddle he had seen, nor any clues about the future.

To his left he could see the imposing walls of AllSoulsCollege, its thistle-like minaret and distinctive towers steeped in shadow. Inside its gates was yet another library, a chapel-like building with row upon row of leather books, reached by curving wooden staircases. The entire city, it seemed, was built of books. Stacked on top of each other, slotted side by side, they fitted together like bricks to form a tremendous fortification of reading, a labyrinth of words. There were even miles of books beneath him now, in tunnels below the ground. The university was an immense walk-in library. The Last Book could be hidden anywhere.

Endymion Spring squirmed suddenly in Blake's knapsack, thumping him in the small of the back.

"Hold on," he said. "I need to take a look." He grabbed Duck's elbow and steered her towards a large, old-fashioned lantern hanging from a sconce on the wall, opposite the Church of St. Mary the Virgin.

The wind was gathering strength and the pages of the blank book whipped back and forth like a thing possessed, flickering past his eyes so quickly he couldn't tell whether they contained any new information. Once or twice, he thought he glimpsed streaks of words, but they could have been smudges, shadows, anything. The lamp threw restless shapes against the stone buildings like autumn leaves.

Suddenly, a gust of wind tunneled through a nearby alley and seized the book from his hands. It almost flew away from him, rising towards the church, but he managed to cage it against his chest like a frightened bird before it broke free. Heart racing, he stuffed the volume back inside his bag. It wasn't safe to take any chances — not here, not now, not with the members of the Ex Libris Society so close.

"What's happening?" cried Duck, her voice grabbed by a fist of wind and hurled down the street.