Wrapped

by Jennifer Bradbury

  “Right regal names those are,” she said, eyes wide. Caedmon settled onto the stool next to hers and tugged the lid from the urn. She peppered him with questions, punctuated with furious bouts of batting her long eyelashes, as he told her we’d come early to visit our father in the ward before we headed off to our work at the docks. At some point I circled around behind her to fetch a towel when the milk she’d been ladling into one of the pitchers missed its mark because she refused to take her eyes from Caedmon. She noticed neither the spill nor my movement. I caught Caedmon’s eye as I edged toward the door. He seemed to squint a bit at me—the only communication I received that he was annoyed at not having been consulted regarding the plan.

  I touched my cap at him, slipped out the door, and fairly flew up the stairs.

  I found the ward without trouble, most of its occupants still sleeping. I crossed quickly to Deacon’s bed and noticed with relief that his neighbor who’d seen through my poor attempt at a disguise a few nights ago was sleeping with his face toward the wall.

  I knelt beside the cot. “Deacon,” I whispered, nudging his shoulder lightly through the sheet.

  His eyes opened immediately, but he turned his head gingerly to meet mine.

  “You,” he said, smiling. “Jackson was right. You do make a poor boy.”

  I smiled. “Then we’re lucky Molly had a far better specimen to serve as distraction.”

  He looked confused for a moment, but then relief washed over his expression. “Caedmon is with you? He’s all right?”

  I assured him Caedmon was fine, that we’d both escaped Tanner unscathed.

  “But what of your father?”

  “He’s been away,” I said, conveniently leaving out the part about how I’d elected not to tell him when I had the opportunity. “He returns this evening.” I didn’t want to rile Deacon, even if he was lying injured in bed. And there was nothing to gain by telling him now.

  “Listen to me,” he said, pushing up on one elbow, wincing, and looking round the ward to make sure no one was listening. “You must go to the authorities with this. If Napoleon’s agents find the standard—”

  “We’ve already found it, Deacon,” I said, in as low a voice as I could manage.

  “You—” He looked confused. “Caedmon?”

  I nodded, then told him of our work thus far.

  “Oh dear,” he said. “Never did I think it would all come to this. I meant to secure some help for you both. Some protection.”

  “Protection? But how?”

  He sighed and sank back on the pillow. “I hide things about myself a sight better than you.”

  “You know my father by more than his reputation, don’t you?” I whispered.

  He nodded. “He stood by me when that damned business about the assassination went awry. But the higher-ups were looking for someone to blame, and I wouldn’t give up the names of my contacts, so . . .”

  “You were dismissed.”

  “It was time anyway. I’d had enough. But then you two stumbled into my rooms and laid this on me,” he said. “I was on my way to consult some men I knew I could trust when Tanner turned up.”

  I could hear cart and horse traffic increasing on the streets below as London roused itself from sleep. A few of the men around us began to shift.

  “Will you be all right?” I asked him.

  “Just a couple broken ribs and a nasty headache . . . nothing I’ve not dealt with before. But I’m safer in here than you are out there.”

  “We’ll be careful,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter how careful you are,” he replied sternly.

  “There are very dangerous people about who clearly have had an eye on you two for a while. You must give me time to arrange for assistance.”

  “Any delay could give the French the time they need to get the standard. We must go now,” I said gently.

  “But you’re not trained for any of this!” he said.

  “We’ve managed,” I assured him. “And the worst of it is over, surely.”

  He sank back on the pillow. “Tell me your plan.”

  I explained what we thought we’d learned, and about our planned errand to Showalter’s estate. “We’ll approach from the stream behind the house. The garden is dense there, and there are a series of paths leading to the pedestal—”

  Deacon gripped my forearm, his face as grave as I’d ever seen it. “If you find it, what then?”

  “Father returns this afternoon. Will he know what to do with it?”

  “The things your father knows might surprise even you, Miss Wilkins,” Deacon said. “Now go! Send word if you can. I’ll try and rouse some support if I can get a message out.”

  I nodded, shifted my weight from my knees to my toes, and prepared to creep away. “I’m relieved to know you’re well.”

  “I’m relieved to know you’re on our side.” He winked. “What those Frog spies would do with a prize like you . . .”

  I squeezed his hand in gratitude for his praise and crouched to kiss his forehead. I gave him one last look before I turned to rejoin Caedmon, who I hoped hadn’t fallen entirely for the milkmaid yet.

  I burst into the kitchen and grabbed Caedmon by the sleeve as Molly was offering to let him stir the porridge burning on the stove.

  “Good-bye!” Caedmon shouted as I dragged him back over the threshold and to the waiting carriage.

  “Nice visit?” I asked.

  “How is Deacon?”

  I assured him that Deacon was fine, that he understood our situation, that he would get what help he could for us when he was able. We climbed back into the carriage, and Caedmon ordered the driver to ferry us to Hyde Park. The gray light of dawn gradually brightened as we drove across town, shopkeepers and servants already bustling about as we made our way toward the Park. It was nearly five when we left the carriage and disappeared into the tangled hedge, bearing toward the river and Showalter’s gardens.

  We hurried across a footbridge, coming out a hundred yards east of where I knew the path leading to the cultivated part of Showalter’s garden ended at the river.

  “Won’t there be gardeners watering in the early hours?” Caedmon asked as we picked our way through a bramble toward the path.

  I nodded. “But only closer to the main house. This part of the garden is mostly left to grow wild.”

  “And then?” he asked.

  “We’ll get the standard from there to my house and to Father,” I said, adding, “somehow.”

  He hesitated. “And then?”

  I tilted my head and looked at him. “If you’re worried that I won’t honor my agreement to recommend you to Father—”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I’m far more worried about what happens when we have no more reason to see each other.”

  My mouth fell open. Somehow I managed to speak. “Caedmon—”

  He shook his head and seized my hand. “I . . . I could work in obscurity for the rest of my life if it meant I had some hope of seeing you now and then.”

  He did care for me. He really did. My relief at this news was so complete that I felt my shoulders relax, as if I’d let go a breath I’d been holding for a very long time. The old worries tried to crowd in, that he was an unsuitable match, that Mother wouldn’t stand for it, that I would be breaking Showalter’s heart . . . but they all withered in the glorious, searing knowledge that Caedmon cared for me. Perhaps even loved me as hopelessly as I did him.

  But I would have to wait to find out.

  “This really isn’t the time,” I said, mustering all the resolve I could.

  “There is no other time! We’re about to either save England or hasten its fall to France. Either way, I’ll be dished up for cavorting about with the most marvelous girl I’ve ever known in the garden of the man who aims to marry her,” he said.

  Marvelous?

  “No one’s seen us,” I insisted.

  “But the story will come out. There’s a man in a box back at the museum who
’ll be needing explanation. How willing do you think he’ll be to keep mum about who put him there?”

  “We’ll think of something,” I said, realizing I was talking about more than just Tanner in that box. I was talking about us. We would think of something, wouldn’t we? But one thing I knew with certainty: I couldn’t marry Showalter. Never.

  He studied me, as if he wanted to say more, do more. He lifted my hand and kissed it delicately. “In the event that we don’t,” he said, almost sadly, “at least I’ll have done that.”

  I felt the kiss linger there on the back of my hand, felt it travel up my arm and lodge itself in my heart like a promise.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I still clutched Caedmon’s hand as we hurried on, the light of surprise intensifying with each step. I strained to listen for sounds of anyone deep in the garden at this early hour. All seemed quiet. The house was nearly invisible; only the three chimneys rose above the taller hedges, where the wilder part of the grounds gave over to the manicured paths and tidy rows of cowslips.

  “There!” Caedmon whispered, pointing to the azure gazing ball in the small garden plaza. This time there was no red-coated waiter hiding in the brush.

  I watched our distorted reflections in the surface of the ball as we approached; dew still clung like a veil to its surface.

  In the daylight, I could see clearly that the gazing ball was a recent addition, affixed to a platform of some sort whose base had been anchored to the surface of the pedestal. I tried to imagine a forty-foot obelisk of granite rising past the treetops in its place.

  “The hieroglyphs are oversize in proportion to the stone,” Caedmon said, slipping into scholar mode as he traced the shape of one symbol. “I wonder if the companion base was marked similarly? Or if the obelisks themselves carried the same large characters.”

  As much as I loved the sound of his voice and the murmur of his thoughts coming unfiltered into the air, we had no time to waste. “Caedmon, suspend your rehearsal of your speech to the academy for a moment and tell me what to look for!”

  He snapped back, “Some way to crack it, I reckon.”

  “Have you ever seen one open before?” I asked. He shook his head. “Perhaps it’s like your puzzle box sarcophagus?”

  “Then there should be some loose bit of stone,” he said, as he leaned against its surface, both palms flat against the carved stone. I followed his example, pushing and leaning and shifting my way around the upper portions.

  Nothing budged. I then ran my fingers along the edges, looking for a grip or handhold.

  “There must be some way to open it,” I said.

  “Unless we’re wrong,” Caedmon pointed out.

  “No. This fits too well. And it’s our only possibility. It must be here,” I insisted.

  “If we’re right,” Caedmon began carefully, not meeting my eye, “then it’s likely to mean Showalter is somehow involved.”

  I straightened. “What?”

  Caedmon looked at me. “It’s in his garden, Agnes,” he said. “You got the jackal’s head at his party . . . you have to credit that it’s a bit too neat to ignore.”

  I shook my head. “Impossible,” I said. “We’ve known him for years.”

  He hesitated. “You don’t want it to be him.”

  I stopped and let my gaze rest on the glyphs. I didn’t want it to be him. But not for the reasons Caedmon thought. It was too difficult to think of how I’d deceived him already, how I would soon wound him with my rejection of his affection. I could not think him traitor and add insult to the injury.

  But no matter what I thought, it simply wasn’t possible.

  “It won’t matter what I want if we don’t find it,” I said. “But you’re wrong. Showalter is many things, yet I know him well enough to say that he is no traitor.”

  Caedmon looked for a second as if he might argue. He set his jaw tightly. Sucked in on the inside of one of his cheeks. He breathed out sharply through his nose and sat forward, eyes once again on the pedestal base.

  “What did the message say again?” Caedmon asked.

  I’d mused on the message so many times it was becoming as familiar to me as an A Lady quote. “‘W’s standard in the Great London Pyramid. This is the key. Emperor advised and awaiting delivery.’”

  “Damned puzzle,” Caedmon muttered.

  “Wait!” I said quietly, remembering my syntax and translation. “We’ve been assuming that the sender’s hasty reference to the key meant that the standard itself and its location was essential to Napoleon. I supposed they meant it in the causal sense of the word. That ‘key’ meant necessary. But what if I misinterpreted . . .”

  “Meaning ‘This is the key’ literally refers to—”

  “The jackal’s head!” I finished.

  Caedmon couldn’t speak fast enough. “That’s what Tanner said back at the museum—that we had some key he was in want of!” He pulled a long leather cord from around his neck, tugging it out of his shirt. At the end, the jackal’s head emerged with the scrap of linen still gamely hanging on.

  “It must actually fit inside one of the glyphs.” My voice had fallen to a whisper. The sun was warm on the back of my neck now. I was suddenly keenly aware that we were losing time.

  “That’s why they’re sized this way,” Caedmon said. “Extraordinary.”

  We redoubled our efforts, now searching with eyes instead of hands. It didn’t take long.

  “Here!” I shouted as I rounded the back.

  Caedmon scrambled over to where I crouched. At the corner of the pillar, half-hidden by a geranium planted at the base, sat a perfect carved version of the metalwork bauble that had started this whole affair.

  We stared at it a moment longer, seeing now what we were sure must have been the twin of that broken glyph on the upper corner of the Rosetta Stone. Ptolemy, or whoever had hidden the standard, hadn’t meant for it to be lost forever.

  Caedmon fumbled with the knot he’d tied to the iron and freed the key from its tether, then hastily unbound it from the scrap containing the message. “Ladies first?”

  “I think in the interest of science, you’d be the better choice,” I said. “Besides, it’s likely to try and bite your hand off or something dreadful, and I’d sooner that be you than me.”

  Caedmon took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He repositioned his hold on the jackal’s head so that the tips of his fingers barely grasped the edges. His shoulders straightened and his mouth set as he aligned the edges with the carved glyph. “For England,” he said quietly.

  “God save the king,” I whispered, the last words drowned as the key disappeared inside the slot and a series of clicks and rumblings began to emanate from deep within the stone. The entire slab hummed like a beehive, the tone reverberating into the earth beneath us, tickling the soles of my feet through my shoes.

  Caedmon gaped as a seam appeared in the surface of the rock. It had appeared to be an imperfection before, a faint, shimmering vein of mica like a ribbon of river on a map. But now the shape seemed to take the force of the vibration and tear. With a crack too loud for the quiet morning, the seam split wide, connecting itself to two other seams, forming a crude triangle perhaps a foot long on each side. As soon as the triangle appeared, it broke free from the surrounding granite and dropped inside the pedestal base. The shaking stopped as a cloud of dust rose—a cloud that impossibly carried the scent of sandalwood and earth and oil. The scent of an Egypt from two thousand years ago. I felt light-headed all of a sudden, to think that the last eyes to have seen what we looked at now belonged to those who’d hidden the standard here, knowing that someday, someone would find it.

  “This must be what it feels like to be at the opening of a tomb,” I whispered.

  Caedmon finally recovered his wits. “I should think this even better. There are many tombs, but that,” he said, pointing through the settling cloud of dust into the pedestal, “is entirely unique.”

  The rising sun illuminated the in
terior of the base. Though the walls were easily three or four inches thick, the inside was hollow, like the trunk of a giant old tree, rotted out by time. The fallen triangle of stone that had been the hidden door now lay against a smaller stone pillar inside.

  Atop this pillar sat the standard.

  It looked remarkably like the illustration in Deacon’s book. A human figure with a jackal’s head sat on an austere throne. The jackal’s feet and the legs of the throne melted into a narrow base about a foot long. Thin leather cords wrapped over the ends kept it upright on its stone perch.

  “Remarkable,” Caedmon whispered. “I really do wish I could write up some proper field notes.”

  I stared at him. “The scientific community will be forgiving in light of the circumstances.” I reached out tentatively to retrieve the standard. When nothing roared or sank its fangs into my wrist, I reached a little farther until my fingers closed around it. “Help me with the lashing,” I said.

  Caedmon pulled the laces from the ends, and the standard came free in my hand.

  Its weight was surprising. I drew it out, angling it through the triangular opening and into the sunshine, where the light glinted faintly off the bronze patina. Caedmon took it carefully from my hands, smiling at it as if it were a lovely toy.

  “We did it,” he whispered, looking up to meet my eyes.

  “Almost,” I said. “Let’s celebrate after we’ve delivered it to more secure hands.”

  Caedmon stood, tucked the standard into the back of his waistband, and pulled me to my feet. I glanced quickly over my shoulder to make sure no one had heard the commotion. It seemed we’d make it after all.

  But then the unthinkable happened.

  Lord Showalter stepped from the undergrowth beside the path a few yards ahead of us.

  “You there! What are you doing on my lands?”

  Neither Caedmon nor I spoke. Showalter advanced on us. His boots were wet with the morning dew, his simple white shirt falling open at the collar. I’d never seen him so informally attired, and somehow it made me like him a bit more. I’d never even pictured him in anything but his buttoned-up shirt and vest, coat and hat brushed to perfection. But seeing him this way, as if he’d dressed quickly for a jaunt in the garden, made him more human. And made what I knew I must do later—put an end to his pursuit of me—even more difficult.