Crispin felt like the biggest fool, especially when he released her hand and looked at Tucker, twisting his lips as if trying to keep from bursting out with a laugh. It was bad enough he indulged his apprentice with an unusual amount of camaraderie, but it was much worse to treat a servant girl like a lover. He didn’t know why he did it, except that the hurt on her face ached his heart and her smile gladdened it.
This is what comes of loneliness, Crispin. Abbot Nicholas may have been right; ’tis better to marry than to burn.
Jack placed a neutral expression on his face and cleared his throat. “Er … Master … did you find anything?”
“Hadn’t had time to look yet,” he muttered, and then moved toward the piers revealed by the low tide.
The smell of wet, sandy riverbed and fish was strong in the air. River plants and reeds lay exposed and pungent on the shore, and the smell of the privies downstream made his eyes water.
They all searched, and it was Tucker who cried out, calling them over.
Crispin trotted toward him, followed by Flamel and Avelyn. She was holding the alchemist’s elbow, unmindful of her skirts trailing in the mud.
Crispin arrived and looked where Jack pointed. More symbols. Crispin searched against the wall, hands reaching and feeling. He reached well above his head when he found it. He pulled the parchment out, heart pounding with the thrill of discovery.
He opened the damp kidskin and held it up to the fading light of late afternoon. This time there were no sigils, just carefully penned Latin.
And here you are, having found the second parchment. You are clever to have found it. The game proceeds.
Crispin turned it over and held it to the light, searching for shadow writing, but there was nothing there. “He tells us we are right, but he leaves no clue.” He shoved it into Jack’s hands. The boy turned it over and over.
“But that’s … that’s not playing fair!”
Crispin shook his head, thinking. “No, he is playing. And so it will be fair. That is the game he wants to play.” He scrambled back to the place they’d found the symbols and searched the stones. There! A tile. The other stones were worn and mossy, but this was new. A tile with the raised image of a lion’s head.
“Look here.” He ran his fingers over it. The tile was definitely new. The mortar for it was clean and unblemished by the rot from the river. This had been recently set and for no discernible reason.
Jack came up beside him and peered at the tile. Crispin continued to explore it with his fingers. He took out his knife and pried it loose. The mortar was still fresh and hadn’t had time to set properly. Crispin fished around behind it but found nothing. With his knife, he scraped the mortar from the back of the tile, but there was nothing there, not even a tiler’s mark. He turned it over and over in his hands.
“A lion’s head,” said Jack. “What could that mean?”
“It must be the message, for there is no place beside it or behind it to hide a parchment.” He came out from under the bridge and joined the others as they helped one another up the embankment. When they reached the street again, meeting the curious looks from the others still waiting to pass through the gate, they huddled together out of the wind near an alehouse, looking at the tile.
“A lion’s head,” said Crispin. “Something in London that has to do with a lion.”
Jack threw up his hands. “That could be anything, sir, from the king to … to…”
“Yes. It is ambiguous. Thoughts?”
“The Lion Tower at the Tower of London,” said Jack.
“Impossible to get to. He wouldn’t make it that difficult.”
Jack snapped his fingers. “The Lion’s Head Inn!”
“Better. Simple. Let us go there now.”
19
CRISPIN AND HIS ENTOURAGE arrived at Thames Street, where the Lion’s Head Inn overlooked the river. Merchants with heavy cloaks milled in the courtyard, watching as young boys stabled their horses. They passed bored glances over Crispin and his fellow travelers before they entered the inn.
Crispin looked up at the sign hanging over the street. A painted lion’s head, mouth opened in a silent roar. “Everyone search,” he admonished them, and Jack went with Crispin while Avelyn followed Flamel. They searched the walls with their fingers and eyes, by the stone foundation and up into the lime-washed plaster of the walls.
Avelyn clapped her hands for their attention. Crispin trotted over and looked where she pointed. A niche above the lintel had a small carving of an alchemical symbol. “Give me a boost, Jack,” said Crispin. The boy steadied his back against the wall and made a step with his interlaced fingers. Up Crispin went, stepping as lightly as he could into his apprentice’s hands. He eyed the sigil and then poked his fingers into the niche. They touched parchment and his heart flared with excitement. He pulled it out at the same time he jumped down.
But once he’d unfolded it, his heart, which had so leapt with anticipation, suddenly chilled.
Alas. So close, but wrong. Choose again.
Crispin had been forming a plan before they had reached the inn. If the clues were always by the symbols, why not simply search all of them? But now he saw the futility of that. For not all of them were clues to the next venture; some were warnings and taunts such as this. They had made the wrong decision. He crumpled the parchment in his fist and let it fall to the mud.
“Bastard,” he muttered. “It was a good guess, Jack. But it was wrong. Now what?”
“He wants to be clever,” said Jack, pacing. “He don’t want it that simple.”
“No, he doesn’t. But it does have to do with a lion. What do we know of lions?”
“I still say the Lion Tower where the king’s menagerie is. There are lions kept there, so they say.”
“Possibly. But still. We cannot enter there. Does that mean he can?” That brought him back to thinking about Henry … no. Suffolk, perhaps. But if the abductor was playing fair, then he would know that Flamel could not enter the Tower precincts. “Lion, lion. Lion … el. Lionel of Antwerp. The duke of Clarence. Richard’s uncle.”
“But he’s dead, sir.”
“And buried at Canterbury. Too far. Lion … heart. King Richard I.”
Flamel shook his head. “But he is buried at Anjou, at Abbaye de Fontevraud.”
“Yes,” Crispin agreed. “Much too far.”
“I still say it’s the Tower,” muttered Jack, kicking at the crumpled parchment in the dirty snow.
“The lion is the symbol of the monarchy. It is on the king’s arms. A lion passant. What else is it the symbol for?”
Flamel shrugged. “Strength. Courage. Kingship.”
Jack toed the parchment. “Daniel in the lion’s den.”
“Biblical,” Crispin said with a nod. “Very well. Lion’s den. Lion skin. ‘And lo! a swarm of bees was in the lion’s mouth, and an honeycomb.’ Bees? No, foolish. It is winter now. No bees. Samson, perhaps?” And then he smacked his forehead with his hand. “Saint Mark! His symbol is a lion.”
Flamel edged forward, hope in his eyes. “Is there a St. Mark’s church in London?”
“No,” said Crispin, sagging. But he perked up immediately. “But there is a Mark Lane.” Without another word, he turned and hurried down the road to Tower Street and headed north until they reached it.
“Jack, you go that way, and I’ll go this way.” Flamel followed Jack while Avelyn grabbed Crispin’s cloak and held on. He took care to scour each post and lintel on every shop and house but found nothing. He looked once or twice at Avelyn’s concentrated face as her eyes tracked over plaster and wood.
By the end of the street where it changed names, they had searched all the structures. Crispin turned to survey Jack and Flamel, but they had disappeared beyond the curve of the road. Crossing his arms under his cloak, he’d just begun to wonder if he should look again when a stone post caught his eye. An iron ring hung there to tie off a horse, but there was a raised carved surface where the ring met the
stone.
He allowed a heavy cart burdened with winter fuel to lumber by in front of him before he ventured into the street to cross the lane and stand over the granite post. Now that he was upon it, he could clearly see that there was the carving of a lion’s face with the iron ring protruding from either side of its mouth. He reached around it, beneath it, where the iron ring pierced the stone … and touched parchment.
After withdrawing the tightly rolled piece, he unfurled it and held it up to the fading light.
You are clever and shall be rewarded for your diligence:
We’re those who reach toward heaven, scale the heights, an assembly which one bond unites. As he who clings to us, through us on high alights.
Thinking a moment, Crispin read the words again. “An assembly. One bond uniting. Scale the heights. Ah. A flight of steps,” he said aloud. “Avelyn, go get your master and my apprentice.”
Off she went, moving quickly over the snowy street until she, too, disappeared around the bend.
Crispin worked on the problem of what staircase could be meant by the riddle while he waited, and it wasn’t long until she returned with Jack on her heels and Flamel picking up the rear, breathing hard.
“You found something?” The alchemist huffed, swallowed.
“We need to find a staircase.”
“A staircase?” He looked around. The light was falling quickly now, and the street lay almost in darkness, mostly because of the tall buildings shadowing the lane. “Where?”
Crispin racked his brain for an idea as to where he could find a prominent staircase in the city. Had to be St. Paul’s. Not only did it have the widest, grandest stair, but, as the riddle said, it would reach toward heaven.
“I think St. Paul’s cathedral,” he said. “It sits on a hill and is therefore the highest church with the highest staircase in the city.”
No one would gainsay him, whether through weariness or because they thought him right. Together they moved through the darkening streets, as windows became shuttered and storefront doors were bolted. Candle and lamplight from windows and open doorways painted the snowy ground with gold, even as the snow itself tinted blue from the falling darkness.
“We will soon need a lantern,” said Jack as they turned up Budge Row.
Avelyn tapped the boy’s shoulder and Jack turned to her. She motioned to herself, made a nod to Crispin, before she lifted her skirts and ran like the wind toward the Ditch. She’d have to be fast to get out of the gate and back through before the guards closed it up. He doubted she would make it.
“I suppose she will meet us at the church,” said Crispin.
They hurried, not wishing to be stopped and told to go home by soldiers or the Watch. They threaded over Watling Street and then dropped down to Carter Lane before going up Old Dean’s Lane to the west door of the cathedral.
Clerks were hurrying down the steps, eager to get home to their meager suppers after an unsuccessful day of soliciting work within Paul’s Walk. Crispin bumped a few shoulders, and the men looked back at him with scowls. He tried to bow, to be polite, but his mind was on other things, on finding more symbols and more parchment.
Jack made it to the top step first and waited with an impatient jiggling leg for Crispin and Flamel. When they arrived to the top of the stairs, they all spread out across the porch, searching for symbols.
This is damnable, thought Crispin as his eyes scanned anything and everything. How many more clues would they be required to find? Flamel must be going mad. But of course, because of the cruelty of it all, this might very well have been the plan all along.
Yet after many minutes of fruitless searching, Crispin swore under his breath.
“I don’t see anything here,” said Jack, voicing all their concerns.
“No,” Flamel agreed. “Should we look around the rest of the building?”
Crispin gave the church door one more glance. “It makes more sense that he should have led us inside. There are steps up to the quire as well.”
In they went, entering through the smaller door cut from the large double doors. Crispin’s steps echoed in the quiet church. Long shadows fell diagonally across his path down Paul’s Walk, a busy thoroughfare during the day, but dark and ominous once night had fallen.
Crispin could see monks in the arcades beside the nave. Their cowled heads turned warily toward his little group as Crispin led them up to the quire’s wide steps. He motioned for Jack and Flamel to search while he went off to do the same.
Each carving and floret suddenly looked different. He had seen them hundreds of times before, but now he doubted his own senses. Had he seen them before? Were they new to his eyes? He felt the weight of the lion tile in his scrip. Were any of these recently added?
Flamel made a shout, which echoed throughout the long nave. Whirling, Crispin saw him point and he trotted through the arcade to halt beside him. The carving was not an alchemist’s sign, but the rudimentary drawing of a fox.
Crispin frowned. “How do you know this is it?”
“Renard. What you call … a fox. This is the protector, the cultivator, of the Elixir of Life.”
Nodding, Crispin searched. Yes, it was plainly not of the mason’s art, for it was carved on the stone with a metal instrument, quickly and crudely … and recently.
His hands felt along the pilier cantonné, higher, higher, around the wide, irregular column. Fingers dipped between the stone shafts flying up the pillar. The mortar was solid nearly all the way up … until his fingers found where it had been scraped away. A fingernail passed over the parchment, but his fingers were too big to grasp it.
He turned to Jack. “You have nimble fingers. Come.” The boy complied and stood before Crispin in the darkening nave.
Jack stepped up and balanced against the stone. With two fingers, he reached it and snatched the parchment, waving it to show he had done it. He jumped down and immediately surrendered it to his master.
Crispin opened the parchment as Jack and Flamel crowded around him, peering over his arm. Jack translated and read aloud:
“‘I congratulate you. You play the game well. Your reward: I perch in silence on my peak. A tongue have I, but do not speak. Until I’m moved I must be meek.’”
They looked at one another.
“Perched. Does he mean a bird, like a crow?”
“No,” said Crispin. “Listen to the words. A tongue have I, but do not speak. Until I’m moved I must be meek. Perched on a peak,” he muttered. “Has a silent tongue … until moved. What has a tongue but is silent until it is moved?”
“People have tongues,” said Jack. “And animals. A donkey? They will not move and then bray when forced.”
Crispin shook his head. “Too literal.”
“Something with a tongue that speaks when moved,” Jack muttered. “But not a true tongue … Ah!” His face brightened. “A bell, of course.”
As one, their gaze rose directly above their heads into the darkened tower with its set of bells.
“Do we have to go up there?” wailed Jack.
Crispin sighed. “It would seem so.”
Jack stared up into the gloom of the tower and whistled. “I hope you haven’t seen fit to offend the bishop of London, Master Crispin. We might need his help.”
Crispin tried to think. He could not recall ever offending Bishop Braybrooke. At least not lately. In fact, he might even be on the bishop’s good side for helping him stop some boys from using bows and arrows to take down the pigeons that had gotten inside and roosted in the vaulted arches above Paul’s Walk. But it was just as likely that the bishop would choose not to remember him.
“We must wait, at any rate, for Avelyn’s return.” Avelyn. Her name slipped so easily off his tongue. His face warmed as he thought of her. She had certainly gotten under his skin.
They decided to wait outside under the shelter of the porch, even as the last of the light dimmed from the pink-streaked sky. The church’s arched doorway gleamed gold and then g
ray as clouds covered the retreating sun. The cathedral loured above the nearby lanes already set in the gloom of their own chasm of shadows. As the night fell, the city drew quiet, as if drawing a blanket over itself, ready for sleep. Candlelight flickered behind shutters and cooking smells fluttered over the rooftops, and there was, perhaps, the gentle murmur from behind closed doors and little else but the occasional barking dog or mewl from a stray cat.
Crispin spied a light jogging along between the houses on Bowyers Row, and soon the figure of Avelyn appeared in the gloom, carrying her dented lantern. She marched up the steps right up to Crispin and smiled her devilish grin before looking to her master, whom she should have greeted first. Crispin was beginning to wonder how he was to tell her that theirs was a brief affair and that nothing whatever would come of it. Surely she did not expect anything. He had told her the truth about himself.
Still, her unbridled cheer and boldness did appeal to him. He wouldn’t mind another night in her company.
After exchanging their finger language, she pushed past Flamel and led the way through the arch and inside to Paul’s Walk. A few cressets burned within, lighting the path, but the columns threw the long nave into inky gloom. Avelyn’s little lantern helped, but it was a small circle of light, and the four of them clung to it like moths around a flame.
They arrived at the crossing and looked up high into the dark bell tower again.
“Maybe it’s not up there,” Jack said hopefully. “Maybe it’s somewhere directly below the bell?” He looked around on the tiled floor, directing Avelyn’s arm with the lantern to shine where he searched. She didn’t seem happy about it and tried to snatch the lantern away. “Master Crispin, make her help!” he cried.
“Avelyn,” he said, voice stern, though surely she could not tell the tenor of his voice. Nonetheless, she seemed chastened, at least as chastened as she ever looked.
Whatever accomplished it, Avelyn assisted Jack, but by the sighing sounds from the lad, Crispin could tell they had no luck.
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