The Master noticed the involuntary movement and smirked. He fixed the Acolyte with a look of unalloyed menace. 'Do you not want to strike me? I sense that you do. Or do you prefer to take your pleasures only with young girls?'
The Acolyte said nothing but stared rigidly ahead of him.
The Master slapped the Acolyte's face again. A red welt appeared on the man's cheek. The older man hit him again, harder still.
Taking a step back, the Master appraised the
trained killer. His face contorting with contempt, he spat in the Acolyte's face.
The Acolyte did not react even as spittle ran down his cheek.
'Get out of here. . you barbaric pig,' the Master said. 'If you fail me again I will treat you worse than you treated Gail Honeywell.'
Chapter 40
Oxford: 30 March, 10.18 p.m.
With lightning reflexes, Philip hurled himself forward to catch hold of Laura's arm as she fell. Bracing himself on the edge of the pit he helped her scramble to safety. She was shaking as she sat on the narrow strip of floor. Philip found a space beside her. 'A little silly,' he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. Laura was speechless.
He reached for the water bottle in his rucksack. 'Here, have a drink.'
'Shame you don't have anything stronger.' She grinned and took a long swig, wiping her mouth as she handed it back. 'Christ. . thanks,' she said, lowering her head onto her knees.
'Any time. I don't want to do this on my own, now do I?'
Laura gave him a weak smile. 'So, what now?' 'Good question.'
'I was sure the route had to be linked with the alchemical colours.' Philip shrugged.
'Maybe it's backwards? It doesn't make sense otherwise.'
'OK, but how are we going to find out?' 'Use the rucksack.'
'But that's not heavy enough, and if we lose it. .'
'Better than one of us going down.'
Philip reached for the bag. Stepping to the edge of the chasm he placed it gently on a red circle next to where the black pedestal had stood. He let go slowly and stepped back. Nothing happened.
'Right,' he said and pulled the bag back. 'But I'm still not convinced. Let's use the rope. Tie it around your waist and I'll use the wall bracket to brace it. If it holds your weight, then fine. If not, I'll catch you.'
Laura wound the rope around her waist in two loops and Philip knotted it tightly. Then he swung the other end over the iron wall bracket and stood on the edge with his feet well apart. Laura moved forward carefully to place one foot slowly on the red pedestal. She was breathing heavily and beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. 'Here goes.'
It held. She turned to face Philip with a look of triumph on her face and he gave her the thumbs-up.
'Try the next one,' he called to her. 'I'll give you some slack.'
Laura inspected the pattern of circles in front of her. In the second row, second from the left, stood a yellow platform. Moving as light-footedly as she could, she hopped onto the yellow stone and let out a deep sigh of relief.
Til go the whole way,' she announced. 'It's too dangerous for both of us to be on these things at the same time.' Then, turning to look again at the 'bridge' of pedestals, she stepped onto the white one in the third row. There she paused for a moment, took a deep breath and then moved onto the black circle in the final row. A few seconds later she was on the other side.
'OK, your turn,' Laura called, her heart racing.
She untied the rope and paid it out so that Philip could approach the bridge with it hooked over the bracket and then tied to his waist. On Laura's side of the pit she looped the rope over another torch bracket in the wall near the archway. If one of the pedestals should give way Philip could pull himself over along the rope.
Moving as quickly but as carefully as he could, Philip followed the same route that Laura had taken — red, yellow, white and black, and in a few moments he was on the far side standing next to her.
'Phew,' he said and wiped the sweat away from his eyes. Td like to say that was fun. But in all honesty I can't.'
Through the archway was a short corridor which twisted to the left and then sharply right. As Laura and Philip took the second bend they emerged into a circular room. It was lit from the ceiling. In fact, the whole ceiling seemed to glow.
It was made of solid rock but the light seemed to be emanating from the stone itself.
'My God,' Philip said, looking up at the rock over his head. It was lumpy and mottled, and on closer inspection he could see a dusting of yellow crystals covering the entire surface. 'Must be some sort of natural light-emitting crystal,' he added.
'Clever alchemists.'
'I guess so. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?'
The room was bare except for another opening in the wall opposite the archway that they had come through. Laura peered in. Corridors led off left and right. On the wall ahead were two metal discs, each about the size of a CD. Etched into the left-hand disc were two concentric circles. The disc on the right carried another symbol, a circle with what looked like a pair of horns on top and a cross at the base.
'Any ideas?' she asked.
Philip peered at the Newton document. 'They're both on here — look, next to the labyrinth.'
'The one on the left is the symbol for Sol, the sun; the other one is Mercury, isn't it?'
Philip nodded.
'So, do we follow the sun or Mercury?'
'What relevance do either of them have?'
'Mercury is the winged messenger. The sun. . what? Light … the surface, maybe?'
'Doesn't help much. Mercury was the most important metal to the alchemist, though, right? One of the three basic elements used to create the Earth.'
'So we should go this way, then?' Laura pointed to the corridor on the right.
'Maybe. But the sun is the centre of all things in astrology.'
The ceilings of both corridors were illuminated in the same way as the chamber behind them. 'I would go for the left, the sun.'
'OK.'
Laura led the way. They took it slowly. A few yards in, the corridor curved to the right and then to the left, and soon they came to another fork. Here the path split into two smaller passageways, each one heading off at an angle, ten o'clock and two o'clock. Between the openings stood a rock column. There, at Laura's head height, they found another disc. It was divided by a vertical line. To the left of this they saw again the symbol for the sun, the circles they had seen earlier, and on the right, etched into the metal, was another symbol. It looked like the letter 'h' with a horizontal line through it.
'Does this mean we just keep following the symbol for the sun? That can't be right.' Laura frowned.
'No, it doesn't feel correct,' Philip confirmed.
'Which either means we go this way' — she pointed to the right-hand passageway — 'or we go back to the first pair of symbols and take the other route.'
Laura took the Newton document from Philip's hand and sat cross-legged on the floor with her back to the rock column that divided the pathways. The light from the ceiling was bright enough to read by.
'So, what information have we used so far?' Laura said. 'The colour code? We've used that twice, haven't we? And it doesn't seem relevant here. Mercury is a metal, but the other symbols are Saturn and the sun, so the Mercury symbol must refer to the planet.'
Philip squatted down beside her. 'What about the positions of these symbols?' he mused. 'Maybe they're telling us something.'
They both stared hard at the paper, trying to match the positions of the symbols with the schematic of the labyrinth that Newton had reproduced from the original.
'It's not their positions,' Laura said suddenly. 'It's their relationship to the incantation — this.' And she pointed at the lines of Latin they had obtained using