Secret Breakers: The Power of Three

by H. L. Dennis

  Tusia’s face coloured at the reminder. ‘So?’

  ‘Well, Arthur chose the sword. He went for the thing inside the case. Said that was the most important thing.’

  ‘Sounds sensible to me,’ Hunter said. ‘A king in battle would find a sword kind of useful, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. He would. He would. But,’ Brodie swung round to face him, ‘Merlin said he’d made the wrong choice. The obvious, but wrong one. It was the container that mattered. Merlin said the scabbard was worth ten of the sword.’

  ‘Really?’ Tusia’s forehead was furrowed into lines.

  ‘Yes. Because the scabbard looked more ordinary, but it wasn’t.’

  ‘So what’s so great about this sword case then?’ asked Hunter who obviously needed more convincing.

  ‘Well, so the story goes, the scabbard could make you invincible.’

  ‘Like no one could see you?’ Hunter replied.

  ‘Not invisible. Invincible,’ Brodie said, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‘It meant all the time Arthur had it, he couldn’t be hurt. Not even shed a drop of blood.’

  ‘Now that makes me think the scabbard is infinitely more valuable than the sword,’ Hunter added dramatically.

  ‘But Arthur died, right?’ Tusia asked, from her new position on her knees. ‘So the scabbard can’t have worked.’

  ‘He was badly injured eventually. In a terrible battle. But, and here’s the important bit, he’d lost the scabbard by then.’

  ‘Lost it? That was careless.’

  ‘Had it stolen actually. By this evil woman Morgan Le Fay. And after that, Arthur was vulnerable.’

  ‘And so he died?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Brodie.

  ‘Ermm, how can you sort of die, B?’

  Brodie was trying to keep track of her thoughts. ‘People thought he was dead but the story says he was taken off to Avalon. To this amazing place where he was going to be healed.’

  ‘I like the sound of Avalon.’ Hunter grinned. ‘With the making-you-whole-again thing. Sounds great.’

  ‘Yeah. But the point is, we’ve been just like Arthur. Focusing on the sword. All the poems we’ve read, all the sections of the story we’ve explored. They’ve been about the sword. And we should’ve been looking for sections about the scabbard.’

  Tusia leant back on her heels. ‘So, let me see if I’ve got this right,’ she said slowly. ‘We go back to the beginning, through all these books and texts, and this time we go looking for a scabbard, not a sword.’

  Brodie tried to look encouraging.

  ‘And that will take us how long exactly?’ said Hunter, resting his elbow now on the statue’s head. ‘I hate to mention the old candle clock, but last time we looked there were only two sections left to burn.’

  ‘I know. I know,’ spluttered Brodie. ‘So we focus and we try to be systematic. And we take it one step at a time.’

  ‘But we should start with the Malory, though, don’t you think, as he was the one the world rejected and all that.’

  Brodie nodded. ‘Yep. I think we start with Malory.’

  Tusia leant down and scooped up the copy of the Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory which was beginning to look well thumbed around the edges.

  Hunter reached forward and grabbed at the copy. ‘Let’s get looking.’ As he lifted his hand, a smudged, black, stamped design turned quickly from sight before the text of the story began.

  Tusia looked aggrieved. ‘You do realise there are twenty-five chapters in Book One alone, and it’d be much better if we took about eight chapters each. For the sake of fairness, don’t you think?’ she added, as if aware she was being stared at.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘About eight each. An equal split.’

  ‘No. Not that. I mean, the twenty-five chapters. What d’you mean?’ Brodie said now, taking her turn to grab at the red leather volume and flick through the pages.

  ‘Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘Notice what?’ she said, the pages slapping the air.

  ‘Well, Malory’s work is arranged into what he calls “books”. Each book’s arranged into chapters and the first “book” of what Malory wrote’s got twenty-five chapters.’ She smiled. ‘Shape and space. My thing. Remember? How things are arranged.’

  Brodie tried to take it in. As far as she was concerned Malory’s work was just a story. A long, complicated and wonderful story. It never seemed important to think about how it was set out. Suddenly, as if reading her mind, Hunter hurried forward. ‘Where’s the copy of the coded letter?’

  Brodie scrabbled for the notes they’d made during Smithies’ session on the code. She knew her grin stretched from ear to ear. She jabbed the page with her finger. ‘You’re right, Hunter. You said the numbers weren’t dates, and they’re not. They’re references. Look.’

  She traced her fingers across the capitalised words. ‘FIRST. TWENTY-FIFTH. First “book”. Twenty-fifth “chapter”. Well?’

  Tusia had the copy of Malory and was turning the pages furiously. ‘Here. It’s here,’ she said, holding it out in front of her so the three of them could see more clearly. ‘Book One. Chapter Twenty-five.’

  ‘And?’ Brodie said, barely able to focus her eyes on the print in front of them. ‘What’s it about?’

  Tusia read the title of the section slowly. ‘How Arthur by the mean of Merlin gat Excalibur his sword of the Lady of the Lake.’

  ‘And the scabbard. Does it talk about the scabbard?’

  Hunter thumped the page with the palm of his hand.

  ‘There, look. There. It’s the bit of the story you knew.’ He grinned broadly, and read the words aloud. ‘You are most unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword. For whiles you have the scabbard upon you, ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded; therefore keep well the scabbard always with you.’

  Brodie clapped her hands together. ‘So that’s it then. That’s it. We’ve found a section about the scabbard in the twenty-fifth chapter of the first book written by the man rejected by the world. We’ve done it. We’ve really done it. We’ve found the section of writing that must have the key to the Firebird Code somewhere in it.’

  Hunter was still frowning and pointing at the paper with his finger, his lips twitching as if he were counting in his head.

  ‘Even better than that,’ he said. ‘We’ve got even closer.’

  Brodie waited for him to go on.

  ‘We’ve found the section of story. I’m sure. The cloak of the phoenix, or the scabbard of the sword. It all makes sense. So now we have to try and use the “handle with care” numbers and somehow fit them with this bit of writing. That must be the thing we need to do next.’

  ‘OK,’ agreed Brodie.

  ‘But the bit of writing we’ve found is a fairly long section and the “handle with care” numbers Van der Essen gave us could fit with any of the words in this section.’

  Brodie tried hard not to look too crestfallen. ‘But we can narrow it down. If we give ourselves enough time.’

  ‘We don’t need to.’ Hunter pushed out his chest with pride. ‘We’ve done it already.’

  Brodie clung on to Tusia’s arm.

  ‘Think about the message from the Professor. About how much we know.’ He read Van der Essen’s letter aloud.

  To the worthy Alchemists of words, It is my dying wish that you seek the phoenix of power, in her cloak of elfin Urim; she who is wrongly considered to fly lower than the rightful dragon. Search 1st on the dawning of the 25th. Such a task requires 14 from the one the world rejected.

  ‘We’ve covered the first and the twenty-fifth. But what about the other number in what he wrote?’ said Hunter slowly. ‘Number fourteen. It must refer to the most vital fourteen words that we need to solve the code. Logical, don’t you think?’

  ‘Of all these words in the passage, how’d we know which fourteen he wants us to use?’ Tusia asked.

  ‘We go with the most important. That�
�s been the message all along. Remembering what’s really important.’ Hunter underlined groups of words.

  ‘Yes. So?’

  ‘So the most important words must be these. And these fourteen words are the key to the code,’ said Hunter and he placed his notes down on the floor and then stood to speak the words aloud like an actor on a stage and Brodie felt her stomach twist inside her as she listened.

  ‘For whiles you have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood.’

  Kerrith leant against the counter top and tried to avoid the display of cakes beneath the glass. ‘Skinny cappuccino,’ she said.

  Gordon chose not to correct her lack of the word ‘please’.

  Kerrith took the offered Styrofoam cup and curled her lip in disgust.

  ‘Staying long in Bletchley?’ Gordon asked, trying to keep the irritation from his voice.

  ‘Just a couple of days,’ she said without meeting his gaze. ‘What I have in mind will only take a couple of days.’

  ‘What will you do when the candle burns out?’ Miss Tandari’s question was hardly louder than a whisper.

  Smithies pressed his finger into the pool of wax on the table. It was cold. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

  ‘The children think it will be over,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe it will.’

  ‘You can’t mean that. Not after all the work you did to get them here.’

  ‘You made me promise to be careful. A time limit is being careful.’

  ‘But what if they can do this?’

  ‘What if they can’t?’

  Miss Tandari folded her arms. ‘What was she like? Brodie’s mother, I mean?’

  Smithies turned from the candle. ‘She wouldn’t give up. Even when Robbie and I thought we should, she wouldn’t give up. And …’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. Instead he took his wallet from his pocket and pulled out a folded strip of paper. Along the line of the paper tiny holes had been punched. ‘She sent me this, you know, just before she died. I have no idea why. But the holes and the light coming through gave me the idea. The invitations I sent to the children to be here. Light through the darkness. It seemed a good idea.’

  ‘It is a good idea.’

  ‘I know. But it’s dangerous and eventually the light runs out. Eventually, even if you don’t want it to, there comes a time to stop.’

  For the first time in weeks Brodie enjoyed her dinner. She took extra helpings of apple crumble and even a rather unpleasant crunch of what felt very much like a large section of apple core couldn’t prevent her finishing the second bowl.

  Tusia leant forward so as to be sure her words would not be lost on anyone else. ‘When are we going to tell Smithies we’ve found the key to the code?’

  ‘Surely, before we tell him anything, we’ve got to break the whole secret,’ spluttered Hunter, interrupting her train of thought. ‘It’s time for the “handle with care” numbers now. Where the fun starts.’ He stirred frantically at a mug of hot chocolate in which the chocolate seemed to be neither hot nor in fact real chocolate and was instead floating in great cloudy lumps on the top of the mug, looking a lot like miniature dumplings.

  Tusia sat back in her chair. ‘You want us to actually crack the code. Try and find out how the words fit that enormous series of numbers he gave us and read what the code says. Before we tell anyone in charge.’

  ‘It’s hardly enormous,’ mumbled Hunter, who was now wearing splashes of chocolate on his upper lip. ‘Just thirteen.’ He grabbed her logbook and scribbled them down. ‘Here, look. “Handle with care: 41, 33, 57, 2, 24, 40, 3, 52, 23, 24, 23, 39, 29 ”. See?’

  Brodie peered at Hunter. How could he possibly remember them? She couldn’t help being impressed or suddenly aware that the second bowl of apple crumble was sitting a little heavily in her stomach.

  ‘There must be literally hundreds of ways the letters could be substituted for these “handle with care” numbers though,’ said Tusia. ‘We’ve found the important words in the poem, but it doesn’t mean we’ll be able to work out how the numbers and the words we’ve found fit together.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Brodie, ‘and if you think we should tell him what we know now then I’ll go along with whatever you decide. But if we keep going it’d mean we’d gone the whole way, and how pleased would the Group be with that? It’d justify all their hard work with us. Prove we’d learnt something. Before the candle burns out completely.’

  Tusia took a moment to answer. ‘How about we try and work it out? But,’ Tusia sounded forceful, as if in a desperate attempt to at least think of herself in charge, ‘we give ourselves a time limit. Ten o’clock tonight. If we haven’t done it then we’ll tell what we know.’

  ‘Midnight?’ Brodie said coyly. ‘That leaves just a few hours left for the candle to burn. If we haven’t done it by midnight then we go straight to Smithies in the morning and we show him what we’ve worked out already.’

  ‘Having some sort of feast?’ laughed Miss Tandari who was taking her turn at staffing the sweet counter after locking up the museum for the night. ‘Don’t forget to brush your teeth after all that sherbet and chocolate.’

  Hunter led the way back to the huts, his arms weighed down this time with a bag full of edible goodies. Tusia threw her blazer around his head as they reached Hut 8. ‘Oh yes, such a clever disguise,’ Hunter moaned from behind the sleeves which flapped against his nose.

  ‘Well, you know we’re not supposed to go into each other’s rooms. They stressed that in the welcome pack information,’ Tusia reprimanded. ‘Now watch the step.’

  Watching the step was in fact impossible from beneath the folds of fabric and Hunter performed a magnificent flying leap as he tripped up the stairs. Once inside, Brodie stacked the Malory, their logbooks and lots and lots of pieces of paper on the chest of drawers which Tusia had positioned at a crazy angle just inside the door.

  ‘There to trap the good luck,’ explained Brodie as Hunter reeled from stubbing his foot on the base.

  ‘Fantastic plan,’ he groaned through gritted teeth.

  Brodie tried her best to look apologetic while nervously opening a packet of Polos. ‘OK. Let’s think this through. We’re pretty sure we’ve found the fourteen special words in the poem by Malory. For whiles you have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood. Somehow, we have to use those words and the string of “handle with care” numbers that were with Van der Essen’s letter, to crack the code.’ She copied the numbers from her logbook on to a clean page next to the special words about the scabbard they’d found. 41, 33, 57, 2, 24, 40, 3, 52, 23, 24, 23, 39, 29. It sounded almost easy in her head. ‘Numbers are your thing, Hunter. Where d’we start?’

  Initially Hunter seemed reluctant to take control of the session but after nearly three hours had passed and the clock on the windowsill was creeping nearer to eleven, and the best Brodie had come up with was a code that included the words ‘hamster’ and ‘beetroot’, he coughed to clear his throat and swept his rather too long fringe away from his eyes.

  ‘You’ve got to be more systematic,’ he said, in an obvious attempt not to sound too frustrated while glancing down at the discarded piles of screwed-up paper now littering the floor like overstuffed snowflakes. ‘Substitution codes are a thing of beauty and you really have to take more care.’

  Brodie considered herself well and truly told off and scribbled out the words ‘hamster’ and ‘beetroot’ from her pad.

  ‘If we think logically,’ Hunter added, ‘which after all seems sensible to do if we’re solving a code, then what we hope to find, when we’ve cracked this code, is the name of a location.’

  ‘A place name then. Where we’ll find the “phoenix” … whatever Van der Essen has hidden for us and written the code to protect.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hunter, rewarding Tusia’s suggestion with a broad smile. ‘And so although in code-cracking you should obviously consider every possibility, you should at least have some sense of what you�
�re aiming for and then when the code throws up something that may make sense, you know you’re on the right lines.’

  Brodie looked down at the floor.

  ‘Look, BB,’ said Hunter, standing up suddenly and swinging his arms by his side. ‘Think back to what we’ve learnt.’

  It was trying to use all Ingham had taught them that’d led Brodie to the words ‘hamster’ and ‘beetroot’. She tore out the page from her notebook and tried hard to focus on Hunter’s instructions.

  ‘Let’s think this through step by step,’ he said. ‘We think we’ve found the key to the code. A phrase from a poem. The fourteen words Van der Essen wanted us to focus on.’ He turned to write it this time on a large piece of paper he’d tacked to the wardrobe. ‘For whiles you have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood.’

  ‘And finding that part was exciting,’ said Tusia.

  Hunter tutted a little and continued. ‘We’ve fourteen words and they all contain letters.’

  ‘Can see why Station X chose you as a super-brain,’ Brodie mocked.

  Hunter tutted once more. ‘Now the next thing we’ve got to deal with is a series of thirteen “handle with care” numbers which Van der Essen wrote on the back of his message.’

  Brodie pulled her most impressed face as Hunter scribbled the line of numbers this time on to the big sheet of paper. 41, 33, 57, 2, 24, 40, 3, 52, 23, 24, 23, 39, 29.

  ‘Now,’ Hunter went on. ‘Each of these numbers must represent a letter in our phrase about the scabbard. In a really simple code the letter A is given the number 1 and the letter B is given the number 2. So, if I wanted to write BALL, for example, my code would read: 2, 1, 12, 12.’

  ‘OK,’ said Brodie. ‘Nice and simple.’

  ‘Yes. But so simple we wouldn’t need a special sentence hidden in part of a poem to write the code, would we?’

  Tusia shook her head. ‘No. A would always be 1, B always 2, I guess.’