He sank lower on the chair, relaxing. Avelyn’s fingers softly caressed his neck and shoulders. If only he could figure out the meaning behind the symbols. He supposed the best direction would be to decipher them all. Though Flamel had said they meant nothing. A code, then, that the alchemist was unaware of? Crispin had come upon many such codes in his travels when he acted for the old king. Diplomacy was full of such secret messages. He’d just start at the beginning with the first one he found and-
He jerked upright, eyes wide. “God’s blood!” His exclamation had startled Jack, who blinked at him with mouth gaping. “We need to ‘begin at the beginning.’ To be able to find the pattern-if pattern there is-then we must find the first symbol.”
“But how do we know which the first one is?”
Flamel wiped the wine from his lips. “Might the answer be in the symbols themselves?”
“Yes,” said Crispin, scooting closer to the table. “These are alchemical symbols, so you said.”
“But from what I have seen,” said the alchemist, “nothing suggests a starting point.” He sat back, slumping. “What is the key?”
Jack scratched his head, making his messy curls messier. “We’re missing something vital. What did that parchment say, Master? You shall never see her return unless you play fairly. You had best begin at the beginning. If these symbols have aught to do with that note and they are meant to be clues, then that miscreant would have left us some way to reckon it.”
Something ticked in the back of Crispin’s mind like an annoyance, a half-remembered thought or dream. He closed his eyes and knocked his head back. Avelyn carded fingers through his hair, now hanging free over the back of the chair. “Stop it, you damnable woman,” he muttered. “I’m trying to think.” But she either had not read his lips or didn’t care to comply. She had been like this from the moment he’d met her, though he recalled very little from that night, as drunk as he was.
He opened his eyes slowly. He had been drunk, yet Avelyn had been playful but determined. She had done something that annoyed him. What was it?
He turned to look at her. She smiled and cast her eyes down to his scrip. Her eyes were bright with amusement.
He grabbed his scrip, still captured by her gaze, and fished around until his fingers lighted on a scrap of parchment. It wasn’t a dream, then. They had found a parchment that night that Flamel tried to claim was something of his. But it obviously had not been. It had been left by the abductor. And Flamel knew it.
He pulled it out and compared it with the other note. Yes, they looked to be from the same hand. The smaller fragment held Hebrew letters, Greek letters, Latin.
Flamel grabbed his hand. “What are you doing with that?” But then he stopped himself. He remembered, too.
“You knew this wasn’t something of yours. You knew this was from someone else. Why did you lie to me?”
“I was worried what it might be. And then you took it before I could assess. Sometimes, Maître,” he said, shaking a finger, “you are a very impetuous man!”
“So I’ve been told,” he said absently, studying the fragment. “This is very strange. There are only these letters, the same in succession, over and over.”
“Ah! Look here.” Flamel pointed with a finger with a broken, yellow nail. “You see, don’t you? The Greek letter alpha
and the symbol for the Hebrew letter aleph
And here. Do you see this symbol?
It is the astrological sign for Aries. It is the first of the signs. What does that suggest to you?”
“Beginnings. ‘Begin at the beginning.’ Then we must find these symbols among all the rest, to begin. This is the key.”
“Right, then,” said Jack, leaping to his feet. “Let’s go.”
“Wait, Tucker. Where?”
“Eh?”
“Where would you suggest we begin?”
Jack sagged back down to his seat. “Oh.”
“Would we find these symbols randomly around London, or would they begin at a specific location? The more I see of this fellow, the more he makes a certain sense to me. I do not believe he would start us just anywhere. Where should we look to find the first clue? Where would anyone begin?”
They sat quietly, thinking, until Jack perked up again. “Birth.”
“Too broad an idea. It could be a manger, a church of the Virgin, anything.”
“Well,” said Jack, scratching his chin and the few sprouting hairs there. “Scriptures?”
“‘In the beginning God made of nought heaven and earth. Forsooth, the earth was idle and void, and darknesses were on the face of the depth; and the Spirit of the Lord was borne on the waters. And God said, Light be made, and the light was made.’ Should we look for light, then? A sunrise? A candle?”
Jack frowned. “As you said. Too complicated.” He screwed his face up in thought. “Master, a journey is a beginning. And it begins on a road.”
“No,” said Crispin, thinking. “It begins at one’s front door.”
Jack rubbed his nose. “I’ve not seen any carvings at anyone’s front door. It would make the most sense to have it at this front door.”
“True. But there is none here.” He looked at Flamel, who was staring back at him with interest. “A front door. What is the front door of London?”
“The Tower?” said Jack, brow furrowed.
“The Tower is not a door. If anything, it is within doors.”
“The gates!” Jack said quickly.
“Better. Which is the right one?”
Jack ticked them off on his fingers. “Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishop’s Gate, Aldgate, Postern Gate. That’s too many front doors to choose from, Master.”
Crispin sat back, arms folded. “In days gone by, when I rode in and out of London, mostly toward Westminster, I often took Ludgate. Let us start there.”
16
Avelyn could not be persuaded to stay behind at the shop, no matter how many ways Flamel threatened her.
“You need to discipline your servant more thoroughly, Master Flamel,” said Crispin, taking the lead. “I suggest a good beating.”
“That will not curb her willful tendencies. She is a strong-willed girl. Obstinate. Perenelle fawns on her as if she were her own child. And Avelyn thrives on it. It is no use, she has always been this way. There is no schooling her.”
“Put her on bread and water for a week. That might help.”
Avelyn trotted up to him with a calculating smirk on her face. Surely she had not read their lips, for she had been behind them. She tried to take Crispin’s hand, but he shook her off. “Are you quite certain she’s deaf?”
“Quite, Maître. And quite mute. She would have a great deal to say if she were not. As it is, her fingers can talk rather quickly.”
Again, she tried to take Crispin’s hand and he shook her off with a flick of his wrist. He stopped in the middle of the street and wagged his finger in her face. “No! You must stop this at once. I am not some ploughman or stable boy.”
She shook her head and smiled. Her humoring him infuriated. But he said nothing more as he stalked ahead. He turned at Jack’s snort, only to catch her imitating Crispin’s furious stride and posture.
There was nothing to be done. It was best to ignore her.
Since they were already outside the city walls, they headed down the Ditch to Fleet Street, passed over the bridge spanning the pungent Fleet stream, and meandered down toward Ludgate. Upon reaching the stone archway, they separated and each scoured the structure, both on the west side, the inside, and the eastern side in London proper.