No, there was no help from the king’s anointed. It was up to him and Jack. As usual.
He looked up again and found the little light had climbed higher, almost as high as it could go … and stopped. It seemed to sway for a moment, seemed unsteady, when all at once, it fell. The light streaked downward through the widest part of the tower, never touching the stair. It lit the walls as it went, until it crashed to the floor.
Crispin stifled his cry and ran. His heart beat a triple measure as he arrived at the crossing of the transepts. He raced up the quire steps and slammed into the locked gate. But instead of the lifeless form he expected to see lying on the floor, a crumpled bit of metal lay there. The extinguished candle from the ruined lantern sent up a wisp of smoke.
Crispin looked up.
“Master!” hissed the distant voice of his apprentice from above, and never had he been so relieved to hear it. “I found it. But I dropped the lantern.”
“Forget the lantern. Just get down here, you knave.”
He heard Jack’s hurried steps along the stairwell and waited, his breath and heartbeat returning to normal. The fool and his slippery fingers. The boy could cut a purse as nimble as you pleased, but he could not keep hold of a simple lantern?
Jack jumped through the stairwell door and landed on the tiled floor. He ran up to Crispin and looked up at his face. “What’s the matter with you? You’re white as a winding sheet,” he said.
Crispin straightened. “Never mind me. Where’s the parchment?”
“I was reaching up and I slipped. It was almost me going over the side, and no mistaking.” Jack looked back at the ruined lantern. “Blind me.”
“Where is the parchment?” Crispin asked again. He took Jack by the arm and steered him over to the column where Flamel and Avelyn awaited them.
“What is it, Maître Guest? What is the riddle this time?”
“Jack,” Crispin said impatiently, “for the last time, where is the damned parchment?”
“There was no parchment,” he said, looking from face to face. “It was the bell.”
“What was the bell?”
“There was an inscription on the bell. In Latin. It said, ‘It begins and has no end. It is the ending of all that begins.’”
“This is a foolish waste of time!” cried Flamel.
A noise. Perhaps a step. They all fell silent as they listened.
“Monks,” Crispin whispered to them. “Let us go.”
They hurried together out of the arch and down the steps. A burning brazier stood in the cathedral’s courtyard and the four of them surrounded it, warming their hands over the flames.
Flamel rubbed his eyes. “Where are these riddles taking us? Is he not laughing at our antics? What does it mean, Maître Guest?”
“We are set on this course now, Master Flamel. Unfortunately, he holds the reins. We must do as he bids. At some point, he will tell us to leave the ransom, and so we must be accurate as to which riddle we find and in what order. When we are wrong, he tells us.”
“And so what is the meaning of this riddle?” Flamel asked again.
“I know!” said Jack. His face was bright with the excitement of discovery. But Crispin saw his features change as he realized the gravity of the situation. “I mean … I sorted it out on my way back down the stairs. It begins and has no end. It is the ending of all that begins. The answer is … death.”
Flamel gasped and Jack immediately saw the lack of grace in his pronouncement. The boy still had far to go in learning when to keep silent.
Crispin touched Flamel’s sleeve. “It is merely another riddle, good Master.” I hope. “The clue is ‘death.’ And so. What are we to conclude? He means a churchyard, gravestones.”
Jack’s contrition was evident by the set of his brow. “But Master,” he said softly, as if his tone could erase the harshness of his earlier declaration, “there are many graves in the city. How are we to know which one it is? Should we look here at St. Paul’s?”
“Two clues we have found here already,” Flamel offered anxiously. “And here is where he would have had me leave the ransom.”
“True.” Crispin pondered. But something about it did not sit well. “Since we are here, we might as well look.”
They would have to go back inside, for those of high stature were buried within the cathedral itself. Again they wandered separately. Crispin wished he had the broken lantern, for he could not seem to adjust to the dark as easily as young Jack did or Avelyn.
Crispin found one of the older tombs, erected before the fire in Norman times. The stone seemed to be crumbling from age, and even though it remained indoors, time had not been kind to its worn effigies. Still aware that a wayward porter or servant might be about, Crispin moved carefully around the tomb, studying the carvings and raised patterns. A skull with crossed bones caught his eye and he knelt, running his fingers over the cold, uneven stone. Another parchment in a niche. Hurriedly, he removed it and read:
Close. But not here beneath the vaulted ceilings. Beneath another greater vault you must look.
“Dammit!” He caught Tucker’s attention by waving the parchment. Jack, in turn, tapped Avelyn’s arm. They trotted over, collecting Flamel along the way.
“This is not the place.” He handed it to Jack, who read it slowly, mouthing the words.
“Where, then, Master Crispin?”
“A ‘greater vault’ would be the sky. But I do not think it another churchyard or plague pit. Something out of doors, certainly. Something that reeks of death.”
“Tower Hill,” whispered Jack. His face was in shadow, but his eyes glistened from the distant cressets.
“Yes,” Crispin agreed. That sounded right.
“It’s late. Surely the Watch is patrolling,” said Jack.
He set his jaw. “When has that ever stopped us before?”
They made their way to Candlewick Street and headed for the Postern Gate. Crispin let Flamel fall behind with Avelyn. He got in close to Jack and said to him quietly, “I do not like this game, Jack. He is setting us up for a purpose, and that purpose may very well be a diabolical one.”
“Do you mean to say that Madam Flamel might already be … be…”
“It’s possible. The cruelness of leading us on this chase without the possibility of renewing his bid for a ransom seems out of proportion.”
“He knows Master Flamel.”
“I would say so. Knows him well and has a grievance.”
“So he don’t want the Stone.”
“I think he does, but he obviously feels he has time to savor the getting of it.”
Jack looked back over his shoulder at the alchemist. “You said that you thought Master Flamel knew the abductor.”
“He might. What vexes me is the time it has taken to plant these clues, to invent these riddles. This was thought out very carefully, Jack, over a long period of time. What sort of grievance would he have? How did he know that Flamel was coming to England? It was supposed to be a secret.” He lifted his head and listened to the darkening city.
When they turned at Tower Street, they all stopped, listening. Crispin plucked the small noises of night from the chill air: a dog barking down the lane, a sign creaking in the wind, the restless whisper of leafless trees scratching against a garden wall, a rat rustling in the underbrush, the soft voices like a hum coming from the houses. Crispin felt like a thief, creeping through the streets, trying to avoid capture. Especially now that they had lost their lantern. It was difficult to see their way.
Ahead were the high curtain walls of the Tower of London and, above that, Tower Hill, where the gibbet awaited its next victim.