The Skin Map

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “Do you really think so?” he wondered, delighted by her assurance and enthusiasm.

  “I would not be surprised if by this time next month, we were baking for the royal household.”

  “For Emperor Rudolf himself ?” gasped Englebert. “Oh, ja, that would be something.”

  Indeed, a royal warrant would have been the guarantee of success. With that in hand, all loyal, right-thinking consumers would beat a path to the door of the bakery shop called, simply, Etzel’s.

  They opened for business on a bright, brisk morning three weeks after arriving in the city and waited for the custom that would make their fortune. The first week of trade came and went without causing so much as a ripple of interest, and the second followed in much the same way. A few curious or intrepid folk appeared and were artfully persuaded to try some of Englebert’s lighter, softer, tastier bread. Those who did so professed themselves pleasantly surprised, impressed, and satisfied.

  “They’ll come back,” Wilhelmina told Etzel. “With every nibble, we catch a fish. We just need to cast the net wider, that’s all.”

  This left Etzel scratching his head. But Mina was in no doubt; as soon as word spread that a new baker had arrived with delicious new recipes, they would be inundated with orders and customers.

  Still, as time passed and the days went by, Etzel’s bread, delectable as it undoubtedly was, remained unsold. As the third week threatened to go the way of the previous two, Wilhelmina, feeling increasingly desperate, took several loaves down the street and out into the Old Town Square, where she gave away free slices of their freshly baked product to passersby. Some few of these she was able to coax back to the shop to purchase a loaf of the same for themselves. Happily, the day ended with a profit for the first time.

  Sadly, it was also to be the last time they would close up the shutters with coins in the cash box—the last, at least, for a very long time.

  The trouble, Wilhelmina had begun to suspect, was twofold. First: they were foreigners. There was no getting around that. They were Ausländers and viewed as such by the self-considered sophisticates of Prague. Second: the location of the shop—down one of the old city’s disagreeable streets—did not inspire either confidence or curiosity in the solid God-fearing citizens they hoped to lure through the door. There were possibly other reasons, too, of which Mina was unaware, but any way she looked at it the situation had every appearance of a disastrous error of judgment in the choice of location.

  As the days drew on, and the glowing autumn began to ebb into the dull chill drab of winter, so did Wilhelmina’s confidence wither and fade. She greeted each grey day with dread and finished with a sense of grim relief that at least she would not have to face it again. Englebert tried to remain cheerful, but his natural optimism was eroding with each renewed failure. And that was the hardest part for Wilhelmina—watching that great, good, joyful soul dwindle by degrees into ever-bleaker despair as the bread so lovingly baked went untasted, unsold, and uneaten.

  The bright hopes that had sped them so fair and free on favourable winds appeared set on a collision course with the treacherous coast of a harsh and bitter reality. When the two crashed—it was only a matter of time, now—their happy little shop would, like a storm-tossed ship broken on the rocks, sink without a trace.

  CHAPTER 10

  In Which Kit Entertains Second First Impressions

  Kit, yawning from a restless night on a lumpy horsehair mattress, could hear muffled voices through the panelling. Cosimo and Sir Henry were deep into a lengthy conversation which began as, “Would you excuse us, Kit? Sir Henry and I have something to discuss in private. Don’t wander away. Shouldn’t take but a moment. We’ll call you.” But they were still going at it hammer and tongs and, with no end in sight, Kit was bored with sitting in the vestibule and fed up with counting knots in the floorboards. He decided to stretch his legs.

  Planning to be back before anyone realised he had gone, he tiptoed down the corridor and found a rear staircase that led to an outside door. The day was cloudy and trending toward rain; availing himself of one of Sir Henry’s heavy wool cloaks hanging from a hook by the door, he slipped out, leaving the stately stone pile of Clarimond House with no other aim than to get some fresh air into his lungs and treat himself to another look at Olde London Towne. Flitting out through the back garden gate, he walked along the mews until he reached the Musgrave Road and was instantly shocked anew by the unfathomable conundrum of a place at once so utterly strange and yet uncannily familiar. Perhaps it was like meeting in the flesh someone you knew very well but only through entries in a diary. Or, maybe it was like meeting, as an infant, a friend you knew only as a grown-up adult. This, Kit thought, is what it is like to get a second first impression. So much was recognizable and unchanged, so much alien.

  He proceeded down the road, passing half-timbered buildings that were not only unspoilt and pristine—not having suffered the ravages of time and remodelling—but also less desirable, since they were dwellings of common people and not the treasured darlings of the historic preservation set. No hanging baskets, blue commemorative plaques, or BMWs parked kerbside; no kerbs. Rather, they featured dirty little windows, dingy render, mildewed thatch, chimney tops black with soot. Long rows of such houses gave the scene a curious monochrome appearance, as if he had stepped into a black-and-white photograph. The streets were either roughly cobbled or, more frequently, rutted dirt tracks; and every thoroughfare, so far as Kit could see, was sullied with horse and cattle manure. Cows, pigs, sheep, geese, and chickens were herded along the urban byways by farmers on their way to or from one of the city’s livestock markets. Trees and plants were few; the little greenery visible was confined to the small out-ofthe-way patches where feet did not tread, nor cattle graze.

  A more subtle, yet no less profound, difference was one he noticed only as he walked along: the altered soundscape. His first thought was that something had gone wrong with his hearing. Not deafness—he could hear the occasional dog barking, the whinny of a horse, the rusty groan of the iron gate as he pushed it open, the voice of a street merchant calling attention to his wares a little farther along—all that and more he could hear without difficulty. But the city seemed subdued, as if an occluding veil had been drawn across the world.

  Kit’s promenade very soon proved extremely taxing of his mind and senses. The continual noticing and cataloguing of innumerable diversities was exhausting and, unused to the rigours of such mental labour, Kit soon wearied of his ramble and made his way back to Sir Henry’s mansion.

  Approaching the house from the road, and still a short distance away, Kit saw both Cosimo and Sir Henry emerge from the main gate and step out into the street, searching both ways. Cosimo saw him first and hurried to meet him.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Nowhere,” Kit replied. “Just out for a walk.”

  “Did you speak to anyone?” he challenged.

  “No,” replied Kit, somewhat defensively. “Not a word to anyone. I don’t think anyone even noticed me.”

  “Well, get inside.”

  “Why? What did I do wrong?”

  “I’ll explain inside. Come along.”

  Feeling like a naughty schoolboy, Kit followed the two men back into the house; his coat was taken from him by a servant, and he was hustled into Sir Henry’s book-lined study. “I don’t suppose you have any idea of the havoc you might have caused?”

  “No, but—” Kit began, then changed tack. “Look, why am I even here? You two have your big powwow and don’t include me. Fine. Whatever. I just want to find Mina and go home.”

  “You’re here because we need you. I need you.”

  “Yeah? I don’t see why. So far, everything you’ve done could have been done without me.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, adding, “Nobody tells me anything.”

  “I am sorry,” Cosimo said, softening his tone. “Yes, of course, you’re right.”

  “We should not have kept you in the dark
,” Sir Henry volunteered. “See here, young Christopher. You have a gift—a rare and special ability. However, as with all such endowments comes great responsibility. There are dangers as well as benefits, and you must be made aware of them before the gift can best serve you. You must be educated.”

  “Sounds good to me,” replied Kit. “I’m all for it.”

  “We begin here and now.” His great-grandfather turned back to the table heaped with piles of books and scrolls of parchment. “Have a look at this.”

  Kit stepped to the table as his great-grandfather spread an elaborate diagram of what looked like a tree lying on its side—albeit a very stubby, short-trunked specimen with a mass of spindly, curling, tendril-like branches in unruly profusion. Some of the major limbs of this unusual tree were labelled in a neat cursive hand. A quill pen and ink pot lay nearby, and Sir Henry’s fingers were stained.

  “What am I looking at?” wondered Kit. “Is this the map?”

  “Oh, no,” said Cosimo. “This is merely an attempt to chart the possible routes your Wilhelmina might have travelled. As you can see”—he waved a hand across the diagram—“we have narrowed our search considerably.”

  Kit regarded the tangled confusion of branching and intersecting lines. “What did it look like before?”

  “It has taken considerable effort to get this far. I doubt we can reduce it much further,” continued Cosimo. “The point is, we’ll have to search each of these pathways to find your friend.”

  “All of them?” said Kit.

  “Every last one of them—until we find her, that is.” Observing Kit’s stricken face, he added, “Cheer up, old son. You never know—we might find her on the first try. The thing to remember is that, complex though the whole might be, each single path leads only to one particular place.”

  Kit looked doubtfully at the impressively complicated chart.

  “Not to worry,” Sir Henry chimed in. “This is just the opportunity we needed to spur us to the exploration of several pathways we have been meaning to trace—not to mention one or two basic theories that need testing and verifying.”

  “Happy to help,” replied Kit. He stared at the diagram, trying to make sense of it. “So, where do we start?”

  “Right . . .” Cosimo’s forefinger hovered over the parchment, then stabbed sharply down. “Here!” He ran his finger along a main limb off the central trunk; from this three smaller branches diverged, and each of these split again, and yet again.

  “This one is called the Oxford Ley,” Sir Henry informed him.

  “It runs right down the middle of the High Street,” confirmed Cosimo. “It’s a fairly static ley, as these things go, but responsive with the right manipulation.”

  Kit turned this over in his head for a moment. “Okay, but why not go back to Stane Way? That’s where Mina and I parted company, as you already pointed out. Why not start from there?”

  “I investigated Stane Way, as you will recall, and failed to find her.”

  “And, since the young woman did not arrive with you at your destination,” explained Sir Henry, “we must assume that she has gone somewhere else. It is this somewhere else that we are doing our utmost to locate.”

  “And Oxford,” Cosimo continued, “is where I keep my copy of the map. We must collect it and take it with us on our search. As it happens, we can leave from there too.” He paused, studied the diagram for a moment, then looked up. “Have you ever been to Oxford?”

  “Not lately.”

  “Splendid place,” offered Sir Henry. “You will like it immensely.”

  Returning to the chart, Kit said, “This is the same map the Burley Men want, right? What’s so important about it? Buried treasure?”

  “So to speak,” replied Cosimo. “The map was made by a man named Arthur Flinders-Petrie. It is in the form of numerous tattooed symbols—”

  “Whoa there,” interrupted Kit. “By tattooed you mean . . . ?”

  “Exactly. Flinders-Petrie had the map indelibly inscribed onto his torso so it could never be lost nor separated from him. Upon his death, in order to preserve the map, his skin was made into parchment.”

  “A skin map,” breathed Kit. “Priceless.”

  “Indeed, sir! We suspect it is far more valuable than any monetary figure could describe,” put in Sir Henry. “Among the Questors, there are various theories, of course—some hold with one, and some another.”

  “Wait—not so fast,” objected Kit. “These questors you both keep talking about—who are they?”

  “Ah! Yes, the Questors. I suppose they are best described as a loose confederation of colleagues, all of whom belong to the Zetetic Society.”

  “You have a society?”

  “For obvious reasons, it is an extremely secretive organization,” Cosimo told him. “Very small and informal.”

  “How small?” Kit wanted to know.

  “Seven or eight—perhaps. Maybe nine at a stretch.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Things happen,” replied Cosimo. “People die.”

  “Of course.”

  “The important thing is that we are all of us united in the quest.”

  “The quest to find the Skin Map.”

  “That is the chief goal of our glorious enterprise, young sir,” confirmed Sir Henry, his tone taking on a note of pride, “to find and reunite the pieces of the Flinders-Petrie map so that we may learn what it was that he discovered. To this end we are pledged to aid one another and share all knowledge and resources in furthering the quest.”

  “You will be inducted into the society in due course,” put in Cosimo, “and we will introduce you to the other members then.”

  “Okay, so about these theories,” said Kit, returning to the original question. “What did old Flinders discover?”

  “Your grandsire and I believe he may have discovered the secret of the universe—or something even more significant and momentous.”

  What, thought Kit, could be more significant than the secret of the universe? Before he could voice this question, Cosimo said, “We really won’t know until we have found all the pieces of the map—”

  “It’s in pieces?” Kit shook his head. “This just gets better and better.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Sir Henry, “we possess only one fragment.”

  “And that’s where you come in,” Cosimo continued. “Finding the pieces is an arduous, not to mention dangerous, enterprise. It is a young man’s game, and I am no longer a young man. Not to put too fine a point on it, I am getting old and may not live to see the end of this quest. What little knowledge and expertise I have been able to acquire over my many years in the chase, I would like to pass along to someone who can carry on the work.”

  “You skipped a couple generations, great-grandpapa,” Kit pointed out. “Why didn’t you hand over the reins to your own son?”

  “I would truly have liked that,” Cosimo said gently, and to Kit’s surprise the old man’s eyes misted. “Nothing would have pleased me more, believe me. But you have to understand that when I made my first leap, it was pure chance and accident. It took me years to understand what had happened to me and find out how to get back home. By the time I was able to return, my son had grown up, lived a full life, and died an old man. In due course, I approached your father—”

  “Dad? You can’t be serious!”

  “But John had inherited neither the knack nor the inclination. He refused to see me again after our first meeting. I suspect I am the reason your family moved from Manchester.”

  Kit nodded, trying to comprehend all he was being told. “So, tell me, what does this map look like?”

  Before he could reply, there was a knock on the door and a liveried servant entered to say that the carriage was ready and waiting. “Hold that thought,” replied Cosimo, rolling up the diagram. “We can talk on the way.”

  CHAPTER 11

  In Which Efforts Are Made and Actions Taken

  The journey in Sir Henry’s
coach was, Kit considered, enjoyable if not exactly comfortable. Gentle autumn sunlight poured down like honey, suffusing the genteel English landscape with a fine amber glow. The fields and small towns rolled slowly by, unfolding one after another in stately progression at the regular steady clip-clop pace of the two chestnut mares. Sir Henry himself, in his smart black hat with the silver buckle, black leather gloves, and silver-topped ebony walking stick, was the very picture of gentlemanly style and grace. Occasionally, they met or passed other travellers: farmers with donkey carts, traders with pack mules, a hay wain pulled by heavy horses; more often, they encountered foot traffic: country folk carrying baskets of produce or pulling fully laden handcarts; more rarely, they saw riders.

  The only drawback in travelling this way was the road, which was more in the way of an endless series of potholes joined by ruts than a seamless ribbon of pavement. At intervals there were streams to be forded or rocky steeps to be negotiated. The latter required the passengers to alight while Sir Henry’s young driver expertly led the team and coach over the rough terrain. The jouncing, bouncing jolt and sway of the carriage took some getting used to, but once mastered became oddly soothing.

  What his two companions were telling him, however, was anything but soothing. Kit tried to keep his mind on what they said, but it was proving a struggle. Most of what they told him he simply could not comprehend, and the small portion he did understand sounded too fantastic to credit—even by his own increasingly relaxed standards—and he could not help feeling that Sir Henry and Cosimo had parted company with the solid ground of reality and were now floating high over fantasyland.

  Then again, why quibble? Why strain at a gnat, his father used to say, when you’ve already swallowed a gnu—hooves, tail, horns, and moo?