The Copernicus Archives #2

by Tony Abbott

  “We’ll have to look there, too. But the cell first. We have to see the cell,” I said.

  The warder paused at a wooden door in the corner tower, the Bell Tower, where Thomas had been held. He unlocked the door with a massive old key. Stairs coiled up in the darkness. The warder switched on a series of lights, and we climbed several flights, then went down a short passage and into a small room with a vaulted ceiling. A prison cell.

  The warder turned on a lamp, and the walls shone gold. The pale white of the outside spotlights filtered through the “arrow loops,” as the warder called them—narrow, cross-shaped openings in the wall—casting crosses of light on the floor.

  I wondered if Thomas More had noticed those crosses and thought about Crux, the cross he’d kept secret for so long, even to the last day of his life, the cross he knew he had to pass on, the cross that became his final duty to protect, the prisoner’s cross.

  Together we searched the cell, touching nothing but examining everything. This took a half hour, no more.

  “Becca?” Lily stared at me with such intensity, I wanted to turn away.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  My head began throbbing. Could anything at all still be in such a place after five hundred years? I didn’t know that, either. The light from the arrow loops, as dull as it was, flashed into my eyes. I felt nauseated and checked my nose; it was dry.

  “There’s nothing here,” Darrell said finally.

  Wade nodded. “We can’t even say what we’re looking for. Becca . . .”

  “I don’t know!” I couldn’t stand their looks. I turned away from them and saw a man holding a smoking oil lantern pass the cell. He looked in but didn’t stop.

  “I thought the Tower was closed,” I said. The warder didn’t respond.

  “Didn’t you see him?” I whispered to Lily. Without answering, she stepped away to Darrell. “Lily?” I said.

  She didn’t answer me.

  “Hey!” No answer.

  It was happening again. This time I was going back even before my friends faded from me. My neck ached, and my eyes. Everything hurt. In my mind, I stepped outside the cell and into the passage. The figure shuffled slowly away from me. “Wait,” I said. “Please, sir?”

  He turned, held up his lantern. I nearly fainted when I saw his face. I knew him, but then he had been nearly twenty years younger than he was now.

  “Helmut Bern!” I said. “Bern? Is it you?”

  Tilting his head, trying to see in the darkness, he drifted toward me, one slow step at a time. He had a beard now, gray, ragged. With an old man’s eyes he squinted at my face in the lantern light. “Rebecca Moore, yes? I remember you from . . . before. Why are you here? Are you trapped, too?”

  If Bern’s hair was gray, his cheeks were even grayer. They were sunken like a corpse’s. His eyes were ringed with black. His teeth were chipped, sharp, animal-like, and some were missing altogether. He had open sores on his lips, his cheeks, his nose. His clothes were nothing more than rags falling from his shoulders. His fingers were black, he was barefoot, and his body stank.

  I glanced inside the cell, then back to him. “What happened to you?”

  “I . . . I . . . couldn’t find my way home. I don’t know anymore where the machine is. I don’t know. They released me from Charterhouse to see him die. They killed him today. I saw him on the scaffold. Thomas More. He let me stay at Charterhouse for years.”

  “It’s July sixth?” I asked. “1535?”

  “I’ve been trying to return home to my life,” he said. “But I need the machine that sent me here. I can’t find it. It’s not anywhere I go.”

  “Kronos? You can’t find Kronos?”

  His eyes rolled up until only yellow showed. “I don’t know the way!”

  I remembered what Wolff had said. “Egmond Abbey,” I told him. “It’s in the Netherlands.”

  “Egmond Abbey? Where is the Netherlands from here? Kronos is there?”

  Bern had been part of Sara’s kidnapping. He’d held us at gunpoint, shot our friend Marceline Dufort. But he was broken now, crushed. He was lost. Alone. Loneliness, the word that Copernicus himself had used. Maybe it was because of all the horrors that Nicolaus had told me about that I wanted to be kind to this man. To allow something good to happen. Good for Bern, at least.

  “Go down to the water,” I said. “Sail to the Netherlands. Kronos is at Egmond Abbey. It’s the only way back to our time. Bern, can you hear me?”

  He leaned toward me as if he was going to fall on me, or cry, or hug me, or all three. “Thank you,” he whispered. His breath was horrific. Wetness spattered my cheeks. It surprised me that I felt his hot spit. “I won’t forget this,” he said. Holding up his lantern, he started to shuffle down the passage.

  “Wait.” I stepped after him. “Do the letters R-A-H mean anything to you?”

  He stopped, turned, shook his head. “They have her by the river, you know. Kratzer and the others. She’s Albrecht’s daughter. They’ll ransom her and the relic. Kratzer knows Albrecht will pay. But they’ll probably kill her first. Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe it is. I’ll show you, if you like.”

  He shuffled away, pulling the yellow light with him and me with it. I knew that “following” him was all in my mind. I was in More’s cell with the others, not in the hall with Helmut Bern. There was no Helmut Bern, not anymore. By the look of him, he would die soon. He would never make it to Egmond Abbey.

  It didn’t matter. In my mind, he staggered out of the Bell Tower, and I went with him. It was dumb to look for Wolff or Terence or anyone from the here and now, but I did. Of course they weren’t there. Only Bern and I were there.

  The city of London, bustling just minutes ago, was now a silent town. Only the creaking wheels and clattering hooves, only the smell of water and the stink of death were there, burning my senses.

  Helmut seemed to disintegrate with each step, but he was quicker than I thought he could be. How I tore down the streets after him and his swift yellow lamp, I can’t tell, but soon I heard the tidal slosh of waves against the riverbank. Then someone screamed like an animal. I knew that voice, a howl from a young woman who could not speak. Helmut pointed vaguely. “Out there—”

  “Joan!” I cried at the top of my lungs. “Joan!”

  Her answering wail was cut short by a man shouting angrily in German. Kratzer? I rushed to the bank. Was I actually doing this or just in my mind? I couldn’t tell what was real and what not as I stumbled to the water’s edge. A hundred yards from me, a handful of men dragged a struggling girl into a boat.

  “Stop!” I yelled, running on the sand, not knowing if I’d made a sound. “Stop!”

  Joan fought with at least two men. One whipped out something silver from his waist. A knife. He forced her into the rowboat. She smacked his face, attacked the other man with her fingernails, tore away from both of them, was caught by a third and dragged, tripping and sliding across the sand. Her wails were terrifying. She was thrown facedown into the boat. One of the men pushed it off the sand into the water. Oars cut the surface frantically. They were rowing away.

  “No!” I screamed, my feet sinking in the sand. “Joan!”

  Whether she heard or not, I have no idea, but she lashed out at the man with the knife. She screamed hideously and put a hand to the front of her dress. Was she protecting something? The algorism box! Crux! The knife rose and fell, rose and fell. There was a splash, thin white arms waving frantically from the water.

  “Loslassen!” the knife man cried. The other rowers swung their oars at Joan to stop her howling. They did stop it. A sickening thud, then silence.

  I was in the water finally, wrenching my leaden legs forward. There was no movement on the surface where Joan had fallen in, and no sound save the ever-more-distant slapping of oars and Helmut Bern shrieking, “Bringen Sie mich! Take me!” He sloshed into the river, desperately swimming out to the boat.

  “Joan!” I yelled, gasping for breath. “Joan!”
I dived in. One arm in front of the other, kicking, flailing. The rowboat was downriver already. Bern was dragged onto it. I saw her white shape under the water, sinking away from the surface. I pushed myself down and clutched a wrist as cold as stone.

  I swam and kicked my way to the bank as quickly as I could. I dragged her limp body up onto the sand. The beautiful young woman of the portrait was pale and beaten, her face purpled with bruises. A slash on her forehead bled into her eyes, over her cheeks. There was something under her dress at her waist. The algorism box Kratzer had been trying to steal. She’d kept it from him at last.

  It was true. Joan Aleyn was a Guardian!

  But even as I laid her gently on the sand, I realized that what I’d thought was the box under her dress was no such thing. There was a roundness at her waist.

  She was . . . expecting.

  This girl, this young woman, was going to be a mother.

  Now no one else was with us. All the others—my best friends in the world—were nearly five hundred years away. I was the only one, alone with this woman.

  Her face was ashy gray under the moonlight—except where her forehead and temples were slashed and bleeding, blossoming red. I pinched her nostrils closed. I’d never done this before, just seen an online video.

  Holding her nose shut, I pressed my lips to hers and breathed in as hard as I could. Remembering how you alternate—pump the chest, breathe into the mouth, chest, mouth—I breathed in, then thumped my hands on her chest. Again. Again.

  She jerked under me, convulsed. Water oozed from her lips, fountained out, mixing with her blood. I tipped her head to the side. Kept pumping. Then she coughed and spat river water onto the sand. She looked up at me, her face icy pale, her lips blue. I wanted to say something, but had no idea what. She groaned softly and tried to sit up.

  “No, no,” I said. “On your side.” She spat out more water, coughing, gagging.

  I cast around for something to stop the flow of blood into her eyes. My hands dug into my soaking pockets, finding nothing but the last of the wadded-up napkins I’d taken at the sandwich shop. She flinched under my touch. I can’t tell you what that felt like—like touching air that touched me back. I watched, astounded, as the napkin, wet as it was, became soaked in her blood, and I felt my fingers grow moist when her blood seeped through the paper, soaking into the drops—now brown—of my blood. The ground shifted and gave under me. I swooned but held to her tightly.

  “Keep this on your forehead,” I said. “Press hard.”

  She did, her eyes now staring fully at me. In gratitude? In awe? Who even was I, coming to her from the future? A stray beam of moonlight flashed into my eyes. I heard the sudden roar of traffic on Lower Thames Street. Joan faded in and out. My vision, whatever it actually was, was pulling away from me. I fought it.

  “Go, Joan!” I said to her, not knowing if she heard me. “Go to Holbein. He’ll take care of you. Take the relic. I can’t take it. Tell him to hide it in his crypt.”

  She was nearly invisible now. I heard Wade and Lily murmuring nearby, the echo of voices surrounded by stone. For an instant, I was overwhelmed by the smell of the damp cell I had left to follow Bern.

  Then Joan clutched my wrist with her free hand, wrenching me back to her. Still holding the bloody napkin on her face, she set my hand gently on the bump at her waist. She pointed to herself and growled a word.

  That growl was her name. “Joan.” Then she pointed at me, her eyes wide.

  “I’m Becca,” I said. “Rebecca.”

  She nodded and touched my hand to her waist again, and it was as if someone had drowned me with icy water. It had been staring at me the whole time.

  R A H

  “I . . . I . . .” The sand and the river faded away. I was solidly back in Thomas More’s cell in the Bell Tower. Someone was shaking me by the shoulders. I gasped and gagged. Wade slapped his palm on my back. I came to.

  “Becca!” he said. “Becca, where are you?”

  “What? I—”

  “Terence and Julian have spotted Archie Doyle,” said Sara. “He followed us to the Tower. Markus Wolff slipped away. We’re supposed to wait here—”

  “Sir Felix is bringing his spies to help us,” said Darrell. “Two people will die here tonight. Bec, you’re wet—”

  “It’s not here. It’s not this tower! Tell him to meet us at Saint Andrew!” I said, my clothes soaked, my head splitting in two. “The Holbein puzzle leads back there. Crux is in Holbein’s crypt! It’s there!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I told them all what I’d seen and done, while Roald and Sara urged us quickly away from the Tower and Archie Doyle, and into the winding streets back to Saint Andrew.

  “Becca,” Wade said, hustling next to me, “this is just—”

  “Not now! I don’t need to hear it’s impossible. I know it’s impossible. But if it didn’t happen, if I didn’t save her, RAH means nothing, and we have no relic.”

  I pushed ahead of Wade, ahead of everyone but Roald and Sara, up Tower Hill, that sad last climb of Thomas More, saying out loud what I should have realized ages ago. “Copernicus wasn’t talking about the Tower of London. He was talking about Saint Andrew’s tower. That’s where two dead will die.”

  “Which means Copernicus is in London right now,” said Lily. “He’s here.”

  I realized that, too.

  We were breathless and frantic by the time we reached the church. A dozen armed men swarmed toward us instantly when a voice came out of the shadows.

  “It’s all right, officers. They’re with me.”

  Sir Felix hustled over. The men backed off.

  In a low voice, he said, “The government has set up a ring of security around the church. It’s been cleared of people. My intelligence mates identified the car as belonging to a German national who consults with the government. Except on this occasion. He’s after something, and thinks you have it. He somehow tracked me, of all people, and may have followed me here. But I dare say he’s after you.”

  He checked his watch, scanned the street, then checked it again. Why that seemed sinister, I can’t tell you. Maybe it was because I remember Simon Tingle doing the same thing before he was shot. I cast a quick look around for a car with no license plates. It wasn’t there. Not yet.

  Roald said, “This will sound odd, Sir Felix, but we have information that there will be an attempt on someone’s life, possibly right here.”

  “Two attempts,” Wade added. “Tonight.”

  Sir Felix blinked as if we were lunatics. Then he slid into gear. “I suggest some of you go inside and find whatever this man wants. Roald, Sara, you come with me and talk to my man in charge. Give him a description of your pursuers.”

  The church was open, dimly lit when we entered.

  “Becca, are you sure about this?” asked Darrell as we crossed the nave.

  I tried to reconnect the last few dots that had brought us there, but they wouldn’t come together. “I don’t know. I hope so, but I don’t know.” I shivered, my clothes still wet. My pulse pounded in my wrists, my neck, my temples. My forehead burned. I hoped something was down there we’d all missed the first time. If it wasn’t, we had nothing.

  We entered through the door at the base of the tower, picked through the rubble to the second door, and climbed the steps down into the crypt. Lily shed her tablet’s full light ahead through the dust on Holbein’s stone and the recently pried-out mortar around it.

  “Lily, shine the light lower,” I said, and read the writing on Joan Aleyn’s partially pried-out stone.

  JOAN ALEYN HOLBEIN

  ORPHAN, FOUNDLING, WIFE

  BORN 21 DECEMBER 1515

  I felt myself sharpen, all my senses come into play. Maybe that’s what saving a life does to you, puts you into focus. If I really did save Joan’s life.

  I reached out and placed my fingers on the stone. It was cold, damp. My fingertips searched for the words and numbers I had seen only an hour before.r />
  DROWNED 6 JULY 1535

  But they weren’t there now, no matter what Markus Wolff and I had seen earlier. They weren’t there. I stared at the stone. “She didn’t . . . she didn’t . . .”

  “Becca?” Wade said. “What does it mean? No death date? But we saw it.”

  “It can’t mean she’s still . . .” Darrell didn’t finish.

  My heart shuddered inside my chest. All I could think was that I actually had tampered with history, that Joan Aleyn didn’t die that day.

  “She lives,” I said. “Copernicus said, ‘She lives.’ He meant that Joan survived that night.”

  “It’s not possible,” Lily whispered. “It’s not. But . . .”

  I was already searching for another stone, the one I now believed would be there. It was. Below Joan’s vault was a third stone. It read:

  REBECCA ALEYN HOLBEIN

  DAUGHTER OF HANS AND JOAN HOLBEIN

  BORN 7 SEPTEMBER 1535

  DIED 19 MARCH 1604

  “Rebecca Aleyn Holbein,” Darrell whispered. “R-A-H. We didn’t see that before.”

  “Because it wasn’t there before,” I said, shaking, terrified, and humbled that Joan had named her daughter after me. “The relic is behind Rebecca’s stone. We have to open it. I don’t want to, but we have to. Joan would want us to.”

  Together Wade and Darrell used the same tool Wolff had used earlier. They chipped away the mortar and carefully pried back the stone. A flat wooden box lay just inside, next to a tight wrapping of cloths and dust that might have been Rebecca’s remains. My hands shook; my throat tightened. “Oh . . .”

  Wade touched my arm. “Becca . . .”

  I took control of myself and placed my hands on the box. It was made of wood and slate and clamped with brass corners. I brought it out into Lily’s light. Lifting the latch, we opened the box. Our faces were bathed in a fierce amber glow like Thomas More’s had been five hundred years ago. I felt the same sort of quiet falling over us as in the cave on Guam when Wade and I found our first relic. The silence in the crypt just then was heavy, deep, almost holy.