They turned up the rutted lane, climbing toward the lonely hill. Jack fell silent and pale beside him. It wasn’t all that long ago when the boy was in danger of ending up there, and well he knew it. Crispin, too, approached with trepidation. Here was the place that the other conspirators in the Plot were dispatched: hanged, drawn, quartered. A particularly nasty and lingering death for daring to venture into treason. And well Crispin knew, too, that he was damned fortunate to have escaped it. His pride often made him wish he had been executed with the others instead of living in his humiliation, but he had grown accustomed to life, and the notion of giving it up had become harder and harder. Not that he particularly relished his existence on the Shambles, but it had its advantages. And with a curt glance to Avelyn, he recognized one of them.
As they neared, they could see that the gibbet stood empty, and for that Crispin was grateful. He had no liking for the idea of searching underneath the body of a dead man, and a man bound for Hell at that.
The wood of the post and jutting beam glistened from damp under the starlight. A well-used rope hung from its beam and swayed with the night wind. It reminded Crispin of the rope back at Flamel’s shop hanging from its own beam. Thomas Cornhill met his death swiftly and was hung by his heel on it. But Perenelle Flamel lingered. Who knew what peril she was in at this very moment?
Standing below the gibbet’s platform, he heard Jack swallow and breathe, even above the constant wind. The boy was murmuring prayers, and Crispin decided to spare him. “You look here below, Jack. I … I will go up.”
He trudged farther up the hill to the gibbet’s steps. He hesitated only a heartbeat before he put his foot to the first step and slowly climbed. God’s blood, but it felt as if he were going to his doom. What a fearful place, full of ghosts and evil spirits. No matter how many prayers a priest chanted, no blessing ever seemed to permeate its dark wood.
He stood on the platform at last and looked down. Yes, he knew how very lucky he was. Perhaps when next he met the duke, he could be civil again.
Get to work, Crispin, he told himself. It helped to assuage his choking fear of the place.
He began to search. And it didn’t take long. The carving was on the post of the hanging tree. A crude drawing of a raven. Crispin didn’t need an alchemist to tell him what it meant.
He felt around it and found the parchment in a gouged-out niche.
You are a worthy opponent. The game is soon over. Stand and enjoy the view before you continue.
Your reward: Eyes bold, skin cold, silver-armored, breath hold. Multiplying, fortifying, never thirsting, shore shying.
The references to death should not have disconcerted him so, yet he thought of little but Perenelle’s jeopardy. Ever mindful that he should not discount anything the abductor said, Crispin stood on the gibbet and looked out over London, trying to discern what he was supposed to see.
London lay before him. Its many slanted roofs, covered in clay tile and lead sheeting, gleamed with damp. Smoke rambled over the rooftops like sheep in a meadow. Small lights from braziers or candles in windows sparkled, jewels on black velvet. In the distance, the dark Thames glittered when a wave caught the starlight. But he saw little else, for the night had closed in, and with it the mist from the Thames laying all under a blanket of gray fleece.
He descended the steps again and adjusted his leather hood over his head.
“It is late,” he announced to them. “It grows colder by the minute. We should return you to your shop, Master Flamel, and resume this search on the morrow.”
“What … what did you find?” asked the man, his eyes fearful.
“Another riddle, Master Flamel. But … we are close to the end. He has said so.”
He looked up at Crispin with a concentrated stare. “The end, Maître Guest?”
“Let us talk back at your lodgings.”
Weary, the four of them returned to the darkened shop. Flamel used a very ordinary key to unlock the door, but he had taken only a step inside when his foot scuffed upon something that was out of place.
“Avelyn,” Flamel muttered. “Foolish girl…” His voice died on his lips. There wasn’t much light, except for that thrown out by the banked hearth, but as Crispin’s eyes adjusted, he could see, too, what Flamel was seeing: that the place had been ransacked yet again.
“Avelyn!” cried the alchemist. He grabbed her arms when she came up beside him. “Go look!”
Her eyes were wide with concern. She bounded like a doe over the ramshackle debris and minced over an overturned table to the ambry. She released the secret door where the Philosopher’s Stone was kept and reached inside. A strange cry, like a dying dove, made Crispin wince. He realized it came from her. She looked up at her master, a sorrowful expression on her grimacing face.
20
“No!” gasped Flamel. HE tried to scramble over the debris, but Crispin held him back.
“I’ll go,” he told the man, and climbed carefully over the broken chairs and pots. Once he made it over, he stood beside Avelyn and looked into the empty drawer. She opened the other one, just to make certain, and reached for the velvet bag that held the river stone. That remained untouched. She threw it down with such ferocity, it broke a jar. Clutching her head, she shook it from side to side.
Had she not locked the door when she fetched the lantern? No, Flamel had to unlock the door to enter. Worse, had this hunt been all a ruse to get them out of the way so that the malefactor could do his will at his leisure?
“We’ve been fools.”
Flamel sobbed against a broken table, covering his eyes. “My wife! My dear wife! What will become of her?”
Crispin sagged. He felt as forlorn as Flamel looked. And then anger swept over him. “This isn’t over, Master Flamel. I will get to the bottom of this. And I will make whoever is responsible pay. Jack, come with me.”
Without a word, Jack followed Crispin out the door. Suddenly, a hand was pulling on Crispin’s coat, and he turned to face Avelyn’s wide eyes. “I’m going to end this,” he told her.
She pointed back into the shop. He resisted, but she pulled on his coat harshly and pointed again. With an exasperated breath, Crispin poked his head in and looked where she was pointing: to the bit of rope still tied to the roof beam, the rope that had held the dead apprentice. Then she lifted her skirt and crossed her foot behind her knee, just as the apprentice was positioned. She dragged Crispin farther into the room and showed him the only upright table. After spitting on its surface, she used her spittle to draw a symbol.
It could have been just her gibberish, as Flamel had said she could not read or write, but it looked to him like one of the many symbols they had already seen.
“Master Flamel,” he said.
The alchemist wiped his face of tears. He looked older than he had when they had met three days ago.
Crispin pointed to the wet sigil on the table. “What is this sign?”
Wearily, the man rose and lumbered over to them. He looked. “That is the symbol for the planet Jupiter. It is also the sign for the higher, finer work of alchemy.”
“And that would be?”
The man leaned against the table, seemingly unable to hold himself up anymore. “The Greater Arcana … that of the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone.”
Crispin looked at the symbol again and then up to the snippet of rope that remained. Yes, the shape that the hanging man had taken could be construed as this sigil. Was it a message, too?
“Your servant seems to think that Thomas Cornhill was placed here in the shape of this sign. Would that indicate the man’s intention?”