“Before you go,” Munro said in a sepulchral tone from his place on the bench. “Can I just direct your attention to the walls and ceiling? Not a crack or fleck of plaster dust after this place nearly came down around us. But even stranger than that” – he lifted a gloved finger towards The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia – “the painting’s gone.”
A collective roar rose up. The canvas was blank, as if there had never been a painting on it at all.
“I’ve spotted a lurker,” said Blaise, nodding at the Wee Cuppa Café’s picture window. “The hoodie staring in at us.”
“I’ll get him.” Sunni hurried out of the café and called after the figure, which had turned to jog away. “Oh, come on, Dean, will you just get inside?”
Dean turned round to face her and shrugged.
“We want you to come in,” she insisted. “I’ll even buy you something to eat.”
“All right.” He strolled over with a grin.
She gave him a gentle shove through the door and over to their table. “I found the spy.”
Blaise pulled a chair over for Dean. “I don’t mind this guy.” He pushed away his sketchbook, pencils and a circular brass object. It was made up of two discs, one larger on the bottom and a smaller one on top, with a red gemstone set in the centre. Both the outer and inner rings were etched with letters of the alphabet.
“What’s that?” asked Dean, picking it up and rotating the inner wheel round.
“A cipher disc. People used these to break codes a long time ago,” said Sunni. “Fausto Corvo’s clones carried this one about in the projections we visited. We’re going to have a go at deciphering some gobbledygook we saw in the shadowlands.”
“Let’s see it,” said Dean. Blaise showed him the nonsense words from the hulls of the ships in Venice, on the basilisk sign in Prague and on the sketches in Amsterdam.
VYLNLUG LUVUHOM GUULN
VYLNLUG LUVUHOM UJLCF
VYLNLUG LUVUHOM GYC
“The first two words are the same in all three,” said Dean.
Sunni rolled her eyes. “We’d got that far.”
“Well, doesn’t the cipher thing come with directions?”
“Yeah, we think it’s based on the kind of cipher Julius Caesar used. The letters on the inside ring are the coded ones,” she said. “So you line up the first letter of the code with the correct letter on the outside ring.”
“How do you know what the correct letter is?” Dean asked.
“We don’t,” said Sunni. “We have to try each letter out one by one till we find the right combination.”
Blaise got a clean sheet of a paper and a pencil. “So we start with A, the first letter of the alphabet.” He lined up the V on the inner ring with A on the outer ring and wrote down ‘A’ on his paper. “Okay, so the next letter of the code is Y and that lines up with D on the outer ring.” He wrote a D next to the A.
“I get it,” said Dean. “That means the L in the code is Q on the outside ring. Then S and then Q again. Okay, I’ve got the answer. ADQSQZL.”
Blaise crossed out the letters on his paper. “Well, that didn’t work.”
“So now line up the V with B, the next letter on the outer ring,” said Dean.
“All right, boss,” Blaise answered with a grin and rotated the inner ring one letter over. “V equals B. Then Y equals E. And L equals R.” He carefully wrote each letter on the paper.
“BERTRAM,” said Dean.
Blaise and Sunni looked at each other, astonished.
Blaise quickly figured out the last four letters on paper and said, “You’re right, Dean. How did you do that so fast?”
“I play a lot of games.”
“So the first word in the code is Bertram,” said Blaise. “And I bet the second is Rabanus.”
“Ravenous.” Dean stretched and glared at Sunni. “I’m feeling pretty ravenous. Thought you were going to get me something to eat, Sun. I’ll have a brownie.”
“No, Rabanus, not ravenous,” said Sunni slowly, with a puzzled look at Blaise.
“They sound they same,” said Dean.
“Yeah, they do,” she answered, grabbing her phone and punching something into it. After a few moments, she read, “Rabanus, from Old High German, meaning raven.”
Dean whistled.
“What about Bertram?” asked Blaise, quickly working through the rest of the scrambled words on his sketchbook.
“Germanic,” said Sunni excitedly. “Means bright raven.”
“The name Corvo means raven too,” said Dean.
“Yeah, and Corvo said to look for the three paintings under the Bright Ravens.” Blaise held up his paper so they could see.
BERTRAM RABANUS MAART
BERTRAM RABANUS APRIL
BERTRAM RABANUS MEI
“Hold on,” Sunni said, busy with her phone. “Maart is Dutch for March.”
“And April is April?” smirked Dean.
“Brilliant, Dean.” Sunni narrowed her eyes. “And Mei is May in Dutch too.”
“Type in BERTRAM RABANUS MAART and see what it says,” Blaise said.
After a few minutes Sunni’s eyes grew wide and she held the phone up to show them a picture. “It’s the title of this landscape painting by Bertram Rabanus.”
“We saw a sketch of that in the Amsterdam projection!” said Blaise.
She scrolled to two more pictures. “These too. They’re the sketches that had the codes on the back.”
“Is there any information about Bertram?” Blaise asked.
“No. He’s practically anonymous,” said Sunni. “Just a signature on these paintings.”
“I’ll bet Bertram never existed.” Blaise jabbed his finger into the paper. “He must have been Fausto Corvo. That workshop in Henryk’s house must have been where Corvo worked while he was in Amsterdam.”
“Covering up his three magical paintings with boring landscapes and signing them with the alias Bertram Rabanus,” said Sunni.
She joined Blaise as he jumped up and swept his sketchbook and the cipher disc into his messenger bag. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Hey!” Dean exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
Sunni slapped some coins down on the table. “Get your brownie and come on!”
“Where?”
“My house,” said Blaise, taking Sunni’s hand with a smile. “We have to track down where those three landscapes are now.”
“Because they have some pretty special under-paintings,” Sunni said, tying her lavender-striped scarf around her neck.
The trio made their way into the early November evening and looked up. The sky was a canopy of celestial jewels sparkling on dark velvet, still, ancient and perfect.
Epilogue
The Mariner’s Chamber was peaceful at last. After weeks of investigations, the police had finally gone, shaking their heads at the blank canvas where Fausto Corvo’s painting used to be. The castle’s managers had fretted, distressed that their prize attraction had vanished and that Sir Innes Blackhope’s will stated that nothing could be changed in that room. The blank canvas would have to stay as it was. So two cleaners swept the tiled floor and polished the picture frame, readying the chamber for reopening.
“This is ridiculous,” one said as they replaced the rope barrier in front of the empty canvas. “Who’s going to come here to see a blank picture?”
“The same people who come to look at that,” replied the other, nodding at the floor where the tiled labyrinth had been before it faded away.
“It’s daft,” scowled the first cleaner. “Looking at nothing!”
“People like the mystery of this place.” The second cleaner shrugged. “It’s the Blackhope enigma.”
“I guess you’re right. We’ve got visitors already,” said the first cleaner as Sunni, Blaise and Dean ventured through the door. “Yes, you can come in. We’re just leaving.”
When the cleaners had gone, the trio walked up to the blank canvas on the wall.
“It’s r
eally weird seeing it blank,” said Blaise, touching his hand to his chest. “It kind of hits me here.”
“Me too,” said Dean. “We were inside that painting once and now it’s disappeared.”
“Corvo made sure no one can ever mess about with it again,” said Sunni.
“Good,” said Dean. “And good that the Oculus thing went to the Corvo museum so no one else can get their dodgy hands on it!”
“Yeah, but what about the lost paintings?” Blaise turned to Sunni. “We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we? Not telling anyone that we’ve located them?”
Dean jumped in. “That’s Corvo’s secret. No one can know but us!”
“He’s right,” said Sunni. “We promised we’d find them and make sure they were safe. And they are. And that’s all Corvo wanted.” The magician would have been pleased to see the Dutch museum where his three disguised masterpieces had ended up, with its state-of-the-art security and keen guards.
Blaise nodded. “Just making sure neither of you changed your mind.”
“No way,” she answered. “We can’t let him down now. What if we tell, and criminals steal them? They’re safe where they are, hidden under the Rabanus paintings.”
“I sure hope so.” Blaise gave the blank canvas a long look then turned away. “Well, we’re done here, I guess. There’s nothing left to see.”
“Yeah.” Sunni said, biting her lip as she followed him out. “The magic’s all gone.”
But Dean lingered by the canvas, staring at it. “Uh, you’d better get back here.”
Together they peered at the surface.
“What?” asked Blaise.
“Keep watching,” Dean whispered. “There!”
Something small and pale grey appeared on the blank canvas, moving slowly and smoothly, like an object just visible in the fog. Its outline became clearer as it travelled with long strokes of its feathered wings.
“A raven,” Sunni breathed. “Corvo’s world is still there, somewhere deep down.”
The raven glanced out at them for a moment. Then, within the blink of an eye, it wheeled and soared away into the canvas’s infinite whiteness.
THE END
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the entire Templar Publishing team for their enthusiasm and support for The Shadow Lantern and for the previous two books in this trilogy, The Blackhope Enigma and The Crimson Shard. My editors, Anne Finnis and Emma Goldhawk, gave me invaluable guidance throughout the revision process. Fiction designer Will Steele helped make my illustrations look as fine as possible. I am particularly grateful to The Parish’s Tom Sanderson for designing all three book jackets so beautifully. I am thrilled every time I look at them.
The team at Candlewick Press have done a wonderful job adapting my books for North American readers. Many thanks to my editor, Kate Fletcher, for all her work.
My agent, Kathryn Ross, has been my stalwart supporter and adviser throughout the creation of the trilogy. I’m grateful for her good humour, wise perspective and all the hard work she does on my behalf.
When I embarked on telling the story of Sunni and Blaise’s adventures, I was not sure I would publish one novel, let alone three. Fortunately, I share the path with my husband, Pablo, whose love and encouragement keep me going. I deeply appreciate his support and that of family and friends worldwide.
A huge thank you goes out to my readers, young and old. I have been touched by your messages, cards and letters from around the globe. It gives me so much pleasure to know that you enjoy my stories and I’m looking forward to bringing you new ones in the future.
Q & A with
Teresa Flavin
What gave you get the idea for this book?
After The Crimson Shard, there were still mysteries about Fausto Corvo, Soranzo and the three magical paintings for Sunni and Blaise to solve. As I am very interested in magic lanterns and other devices that entertained people before movies were invented, like the camera obscura, zoetrope, phenakistoscope, thaumatrope and zoopraxiscope (you can find great examples of these on the Internet), I was really keen to feature a magic lantern in this story. I also wanted to bring the adventure back to Blackhope Tower, but this time, set it at Halloween so I could include some ghostly characters. As soon as I imagined Munro appearing at Blackhope Tower with Corvo’s Oculus, the story began to take shape.
Was there an Oculus in real life?
Sadly not! The Oculus is from my imagination, but it is based on actual inventions that projected images. For many centuries, would-be magicians had been creating the illusions of spirits and demons using mirrors, glass lenses and clever lighting. In Holland in the sixteenth century, the production of lenses improved, which then led to the development of the telescope and microscope in the early seventeenth-century. Better glass lenses also brought about more convincing special effects for showmen to use.
It is believed that the first person to create a portable magic lantern was a Dutch scholar named Christiaan Huygens, in the mid-1600s. As information about his device spread, others, such as the famous German scholar Athanasius Kircher, began developing their own magic lanterns and painted glass slides to create shows that would astonish audiences. Over the following centuries, magic lantern technology grew more and more sophisticated. By the 1890s, magic lanterns were at the height of their popularity, but soon began to die out with the invention of films.
Today magic lanterns and their slides are collectors’ items. If you do a search for magic lanterns on the Internet, you will find fantastic examples from over the centuries – and you might even find a vintage magic lantern performance in a museum or gallery near you.
Were magic lantern slides really as scary as the ones Munro showed?
Absolutely! Painted slides were much like the ones Munro showed in the Oculus, with pictures of skeletons, witches and monsters. As the technology improved, showmen presented ever more dramatic magic lantern performances designed to spook people. One seventeenth-century travelling showman had a ‘lantern of fear’, which he claimed featured the appearance of Death itself.
Have you ever seen a ghost or spirit?
I have never been lucky enough to see one, but I believe that I may have heard one or two on my travels. While I was staying in an old English inn, I was awoken late in the night by footsteps pacing back and forth in the room above me, only to learn later that there was nothing up there but an empty attic space! And, another time, I stayed in a Scottish castle where the temperature dropped suddenly in one corridor – right next to a particularly creepy old portrait.
Was Emperor Rudolf II a real person?
Yes, he lived from 1552-1612 and was ruler of one of the most powerful European empires of the time. Under his reign, Prague became known as the ‘Golden City’, attracting great artists and scholars as well as magicians.
Rudolf was fascinated with art, alchemy, astronomy and all the new knowledge that the Renaissance had cultivated. He obsessively collected magical and scientific curiosities from around the world and built royal workshops in Prague castle, where artists and craftsmen produced large quantities of artworks for him. He even had agents that travelled around Europe seeking new paintings and sculptures for his collections.
Fausto Corvo would have been very keen to give his three paintings to a patron like Emperor Rudolf, who would have appreciated their artistic and magical brilliance.
What is a cipher disc?
It is a tool for creating and deciphering codes. The cipher disc was designed in the mid-fifteenth century by Leon Battista Alberti, a talented Italian architect and philosopher. It is made up of two discs, one larger than the other. Each disc has letters of the alphabet marked around its edge, with upper case letters on the larger disc and lower case letters on the smaller one. When the smaller disc is rotated and a lower case letter is lined up with an upper case letter on the larger ring, codes can either be created or deciphered.
In The Shadow Lantern, the code Fausto Corvo used was relati
vely simple, but the Alberti cipher disc could also be used to make much more complex codes.
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