Into the Gauntlet

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  "Look what I found!" Dan cried out behind them.

  Amy and Nellie both whirled around, Amy with a finger on her lips, Nellie gesturing toward the collection of spy cameras around them.

  "Oh, sorry--it's nothing to do with the clue hunt," Dan said, but with such excitement in his voice that Amy suspected he was lying. She started to hand him the notebook they'd been exchanging notes in, but he shook his head.

  "No, really!" he exclaimed. He held out a huge sack. "I just found this great place called the Stratford Brass Rubbing Centre, right by the public restrooms. Well, I had to go down a little path, but still.... Look what I bought!"

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  He opened the bag.

  Amy remembered that back in their normal lives, one of Dan's wacky fascinations had been grave rubbings. Many Saturdays back home in Boston he'd take the bus to a cemetery, pick out his favorite tombstones, and make a copy by rubbing a pencil over paper on top of the inscriptions. Even on the way to their grandmother's funeral, Amy knew, he'd been hoping to get a rubbing of her gravestone. Amy guessed brass rubbings were pretty much the same thing, except on a grander scale. Dan was pulling out banners of black paper and figures of knights and kings and dragons to use for the rubbings.

  "Isn't this the coolest stuff you've ever seen?" Dan asked, beaming. He looked from Amy to Nellie, and his shoulders slumped. He began putting everything back into the sack. "Of course, I just bought it to do later, after we finish the clue hunt."

  He sank down beside the two girls.

  This is like a curse, Amy thought, and went back to reading the poem.

  Time passed. Dan went out again and came back with more snacks. Nellie left to go feed Saladin back at the hotel. And then the church attendant was standing over them, saying, "I'm sorry. I'll have to ask you to leave. We're closing in five minutes."

  They'd lost an entire day. And they still didn't have a clue.

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  "We can't leave!" Dan protested. He glanced down at Shakespeare's tomb, the same stupid slab of stone he and Amy and Nellie had been studying for most of the day. "Not yet!"

  The attendant stared at him.

  "I've been volunteering here for twenty years," the old man said. "And I've seen lots of people obsessed with Shakespeare. But I've never seen quite such devotion to his grave site. You've been here all day, haven't you?" He shook his head in disbelief.

  "What can I say--we're fans," Dan mumbled.

  "Then perhaps you can come back another time," the attendant said. "But you'll have to say your farewells to the Bard for now."

  Dan reluctantly stood up and started moving toward the door. He exchanged glances with Amy. Her face twisted in anguish, and he could tell she was thinking, But we can't leave without a clue! And --what if everybody else really did figure it out already?

  Desperately, Dan whirled around.

  "Please, sir," he said to the attendant. "I know this probably isn't usually allowed but --could I make a rubbing of the words on Shakespeare's tomb?"

  He hoped Amy was proud of him for not just running up there. He held up one of the large sheets of black paper he'd gotten from the Brass Rubbing

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  Centre and put on his most innocent, pitiful-looking expression.

  The old man hesitated.

  "Oh, all right," he finally said. "It's good to see a young lad like yourself already so interested in great literature."

  The man went over to his desk for a moment--Dan tried to watch to see if he was turning off any sort of security system, but it was impossible to tell. Then the man lifted the rope to let Dan actually step onto Shakespeare's tomb. He had to move a bouquet of flowers to kneel down and start the rubbing.

  Dan put the paper over the inscription and began rubbing a silver-colored wax stick across the surface.

  [Proofreader's note: The left side of the inscription is rubbed off, and says:

  Good frend to digg

  Blese be and cvrst]

  appeared on Dan's page. He shifted to do the middle section of the poem, working the wax up and down across the paper.

  "Hey! Whatcha doing? Some kind of artwork?"

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  A voice cried out, and Don jumped, his wax stick skittering across the page. It was Hamilton Holt.

  Of course, Dan thought. If the Holts were watching everything on camera, naturally they'd think I was copying over a lead. Stupid me.

  Fortunately, Amy was already answering for him.

  "Oh, Dan has this weird hobby, doing grave rubbings," she said, shrugging. "That's all."

  "Cool," Hamilton said. "Will you do one for me?"

  "And me?" Jonah appeared behind him.

  "And me?" That was Sinead.

  "Really, guys. It's nothing," Dan protested, looking up as he continued to color.

  "Then you won't mind sharing." Now it was Ian speaking, even as he palmed the camera that had been on the altar.

  So maybe they didn't all come back just because they saw me kneeling on the tombstone, Dan thought. They came back to pick up their cameras, so the church attendant wouldn't find them when he closes up.

  That didn't make Dan feel any less nervous.

  What's the big deal? he told himself. I haven't found a lead. I'm just getting a copy of this poem so Amy, Nellie, and I can stare at it for another six or seven hours. Why shouldn't I ruin everybody else's night, too?

  "Sure, I'll make a copy for all of you," Dan said, faking a generous tone. "Each team."

  He looked back at his paper. His rubbing had gotten

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  sloppy while he was looking away. He'd started coloring his paper below the last line of the poem, over a section of the tombstone that had been covered by the flowers.

  So this is a bad copy, Dan thought. So what? I'll just give it to one of the other teams.

  Then he realized more words were appearing on his paper, words that were carved into the tombstone so lightly that they couldn't be seen in the stone. They showed up only in the rubbing. But they were definitely there. Shakespeare's tombstone poem didn't just have four lines --it also had a secret second verse.

  And the secret fifth line, the only one Dan could read so far, began:

  BUT IF A MADRIGAL KIN Y BE ...

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  CHAPTER 13

  Dan froze.

  No! he told himself. You can't let anyone see that you've noticed anything new....

  He forced his arm to start moving again, to keep rubbing the wax stick across the paper. But he was careful to keep the wax stick in the area away from the secret words. He scooted forward onto the paper, as if he was just trying to reach the farthest word, "FOREBEARE." But he was really trying to cover the secret line of poetry with his knees.

  Was it just his imagination, or was everyone standing too close? Claustrophobically close? Who would catch on first--would Ian over on the one side see the words But if not quite covered by his left knee? Or would it be Jonah on the other side seeing the ye be not quite covered by his right knee? Why hadn't Dan spent his whole life up to this point eating constantly so he'd have really, really fat knees?

  Dan's wax stick careened almost off the paper. He hadn't been this bad at coloring since kindergarten.

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  No, wait, he told himself. Use it!

  He whipped the paper away from the tombstone and began tearing the page into pieces.

  "Messed up," he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. "Sorry."

  He tucked the torn papers facedown under his foot.

  "Amy?" he said. "Want to hand me another sheet of paper?"

  Amy's eyes met his. He could tell she knew he'd found something. She understood he was trying to hide it from the others.

  "Sure," she said, and gave him the paper.

  As he very, very carefully started another rubbing of only the top four lines of the poem, Amy started talking.

  "Did anybody else get to see Shakespeare's birthplace?" she asked, clearly trying to distract everyone fr
om Dan. "The wallpaper in some of the rooms is painted cloth--kind of like cheap tapestry is how the guide described it. But it's really gaudy looking. And back in the 1800s when tourists visited the house, they wrote their names on the walls and windows. There was a fight over who controlled the house, and the names on the walls were whitewashed over, but there are still some windowpanes with names on them, even of famous people like Sir Walter Scott.... Oh, and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited the birthplace together in 1786, I think, and both of them signed the guestbook...."

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  Obviously, Amy was trying to bore everyone to the point that they all just fell asleep.

  Dan finished two rubbings and handed them out. Hamilton drifted toward the door. So did Ian.

  But Sinead leaned closer.

  "I read about that!" she said to Amy.

  "And did you know that P. T. Barnum tried to buy Shakespeare's birthplace in 1847?" Amy added. "He wanted to ship it to the United States and put it on wheels, to be displayed all over the country. Like it was part of his circus."

  "That's awful!" Sinead said.

  Dan thrust a rubbing into Sinead's hand. Then he did one for Jonah, too.

  Okay, Amy, he thought, hoping she could read his mind again. Start moving everyone else toward the door so I can do a rubbing for us with all the secret lines.

  "Perhaps you would be so good as to do another rubbing just for me?" Alistair said, leaning in close.

  Dan jumped. He'd been so focused on Amy and Sinead that he hadn't even noticed that Alistair had arrived, too.

  "I -- I thought you were teamed up with the Starlings now," Dan said. "I'm just doing one per team."

  "Ah, but what is a team, really?" Alistair asked cryptically. "Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Is that also true of the word team? Or -- family? What do the words really mean?"

  Alistair was definitely losing it.

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  Just to get rid of him, Dan did another quick rubbing and handed it to him.

  Now it was only the attendant standing over Dan.

  "Young man," the attendant said. "It's past six."

  "Last one," Dan said frantically. "I promise."

  He did the top part of the rubbing in a flash, getting only the barest hint of each word. Then he shifted positions. He filled in the last part, the secret part, upside down, with his back toward the attendant. Dan just hoped the old man wasn't craning his neck and looking over Dan's shoulder. Dan actually got goose bumps thinking about what could happen --what if the attendant saw the words appearing on Dan's paper and cried out loudly enough for everyone to hear, "Great Bard in Heaven! I never knew it said that on Shakespeare's tomb!"

  Dan was trying so hard to keep the attendant from seeing the secret lines of poetry that he didn't look at them himself. He reached the bottom of the tombstone and dropped his wax stick. Then he rolled up the paper as quickly as he could.

  "Thanks," Dan told the attendant.

  As soon as he got outside, Dan pulled Amy aside. The others were just ahead of them, but Dan couldn't wait. He unrolled the paper and held it so only Amy could see.

  "Didn't I do a good job on this one?" he asked, trying to make it sound like he was only bragging, showing off his work.

  The silver rubbing glowed in the fading sunlight.

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  And finally Dan got to read the entire poem from Shakespeare's grave, secret lines and all:

  [Proofreader's note: The entire inscription is rubbed off, and says:

  Good frend for Iesvs sake forebeare, to digg the dvst encloased heare.

  Blese be y man y spares thes stones, and cvrst be he y moves my bones.

  But if a Madrigal kin y be

  Then plees mine wish reverse for me

  And dig aweigh at his stone site

  Y y may solve our Family plighte.]

  Sweet, Dan thought. This is actually poetry I understand right away. And something that will he fun to do! Shakespeare was asking them to dig up his grave.

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  CHAPTER 14

  This is terrible! Amy thought, staring at Dan's tombstone rubbing. We can't dig up Shakespeare's grave! We can't!

  It wasn't like the Clue hunt hadn't forced them to be grave diggers before. But this was William Shakespeare....

  "Amy," Dan said very, very softly, so no one else could hear. "If we don't do this, one of the others will. Eventually, they'll find the rest of the poem or just start digging because they can't think of anything else to try."

  Amy looked around. Just ahead of them, Jonah was saying into his cell phone, probably to one of his parents, "Yeah, saw the tomb. Even got a drawing of it from Dan. And I've got a report ready to send you."

  If Jonah Wizard decided to dig up Shakespeare's grave, he'd probably buy the church first, have it torn down, hire a bunch of bulldozers and backhoes to do the digging ... and then just throw away Shakespeare's body when he was done.

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  If the Holts dug up Shakespeare's grave, they'd probably use his skull for football practice. Oh, they wouldn't plan to. But with the Holts, everything ended up being about sports.

  If...

  Amy couldn't go on imagining dire possibilities.

  "Why do so many things in the clue hunt come down to deciding between bad choices?" she asked Dan.

  "I knew you'd agree to do this!" Dan said, beaming.

  "We'll be respectful about it," Amy said. "We won't disturb anything we don't have to. We'll put everything back the way we found it--"

  "Except the next clue," Dan said.

  * * *

  Fiske Cahill and William McIntyre sat in a private room in a restaurant on the banks of the river Avon. The view was lovely--the trees, the sky, the boats bobbing gently in the water --but neither man was paying attention. Mr. McIntyre was talking on his cell phone. Fiske Cahill was wishing that his bold, decisive sister Grace were still alive. This was not a new wish for Fiske -- he'd missed his sister desperately ever since she died. But the Clue hunt was winding toward its most dangerous moments. Fiske himself would have to make judgments that could help save or ruin everything.

  "You were always better than me at that kind of thing, sis," he whispered.

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  He reminded himself that so much more depended on Dan and Amy than on him. But how was that fair?

  Mr. McIntyre said, "Yes, thank you. Good-bye," and shut his phone.

  "Our friend at the church says everyone has departed now," Mr. McIntyre reported. "He believes that master Dan was the only one who found the lead. But someone from each of the other teams was there. And no one was fighting."

  Fiske nodded once, curtly, accepting this.

  "So it was not too risky tipping off each team to go to the church," Mr. McIntyre added, almost sounding cheerful.

  Fiske stood and went over to stand by the window. He wished he could have seen how Amy and Dan had looked, coming out of the church. Were they happy? Confident? Excited? Or was the Clue hunt wearing on them?

  Could their bright young lives be destroyed as their parents' had been destroyed?

  "This round isn't over yet," Fiske said. "Look what happened when we handed out all those tickets to the Globe."

  "You know we have to keep forcing the branches together," Mr. McIntyre said. "There's no other choice. What's the Shakespeare quote? 'There is a tide in the affairs of men /Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.' We had to memorize that whole speech in school. This clue hunt --it's like that tide for the

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  Madrigals. This is our best shot in five hundred years for reuniting the Cahills. And, as you know, it's more important than ever that we succeed." His expression turned grim again. "It's our last chance."

  Fiske had never done well in school. He'd been too shy and awkward to feel comfortable sitting in class, or even just with a private tutor.

  But he was pretty sure that Shakespeare's next line after 'leads on to fortune' was something about
miserable failure.

  "You do know the play that that line's from-- Julius Caesar --you do know that it all ends in tragedy," Fiske said. "Don't you?"

  * * *

  "We've got to tell Nellie," Amy whispered.

  "And get some supplies back at the hotel," Dan whispered back.

  "And by then it will be dark and we can sneak back into the church," Amy said, finishing their plans.

  They waited for the others to get far ahead of them and then they took a circuitous route back to the hotel. The whole village of Stratford seemed to be closing up for the night.

  A block from their hotel, they rounded a corner--and saw Nellie on the sidewalk, talking to Alistair.

  "Well, that's very kind of you to invite us to join you for bangers and mash for dinner tonight," Nellie was saying.

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  Amy and Dan began frantically shaking their heads at Nellie, behind Alistair's back.

  "But we're all really tired," Nellie said, without changing her expression. "I think we'll just order room service and go to bed early."

  Amy and Dan nodded and darted back around the corner. They walked all the way around the block to get to the hotel. At each corner they flattened themselves against the wall and looked first, just in case.

  In the room, Saladin let out an angry Mrrp! that clearly meant, What? You left me alone all day and now you're going to abandon me again?

  Dan grabbed a flashlight. Amy grabbed the best tool she could find in a rush: a metal nail file. As they started to leave the hotel, she pulled out her phone to call Nellie.

  "Didn't you see how close Alistair was standing to her?" Dan asked.

  "Right," Amy said unhappily as she put the phone away.

  "We'll be back before she has a chance to miss us," Dan said.