CHAPTER
19
I STOPPED SHORT WHEN I rounded the corner. I stared at the brick wall that blocked our way. Again.
“We should’ve turned left,” Tom said.
I looked back the way we came, seeing nothing but more brick. “Left would take us to the street.”
“No, right is the street. Left is the houses.”
“This place is a maze,” I said.
“I think that’s the point.”
It sure seemed to be. We’d left Hugh’s house and made our way to the alley that led to the statues of the lions. We should have been in a nice straight path to the private garden. Instead, someone had laid a confounding pattern of walls between the houses, fifteen feet high, complete with sharp turns and dead ends. There were iron spikes set in the top of the walls, to stop anyone from climbing over. “This thing has more twists than a pretzel.”
“What’s a pretzel?” Tom said.
“It’s a kind of dough the cook at the orphanage made. You dip it in butter and—it doesn’t matter. We go right.”
“It’s left,” Tom said.
“It’s right.”
Bridget flapped by overhead, going left. Tom glared at me.
“All right, fine,” I said. “It’s left.”
Tom folded his arms. “We should put the bird in charge.”
• • •
The bird was right. Going left led us along a path through the maze that exited directly in front of the pillars. Behind the wrought-iron fence was the private garden, which looked a lot like the one where Lord Ashcombe had found the buried body on Oak Apple Day. The gate here was closed, too, but not padlocked. At the top of each pillar that flanked it, the stone lions faced the mansion beyond, one paw raised.
“What now?” Tom said.
I held out the ledger page.
below the lions the gates of paradise
He looked at me. “And that means . . . ?”
There was a gate between the statues. Were these the gates of paradise? I couldn’t see anything special about them. The pillars looked like large gray slabs stuck together with mortar. I ran my hands along them. They remained large gray slabs stuck together with mortar.
Beyond the fence, a path of cracked slate led from the gate and forked around a boxy granite structure, eight feet high and twelve feet across, ivy crawling up its walls. A plain stone cross adorned the top. Bridget waited for us there, preening an outstretched wing.
The path ended at the rear door of the mansion. On either side of the slate, the grass grew unkempt. The once-cared-for bushes had lost their trimming, their branches sticking out in misshapen lumps.
I unlatched the gate. “Let’s check it out.”
“We’re not allowed in there,” Tom said. “It’s private.”
The house’s windows were dark. The only sound in the garden was Bridget, cooing at us from atop the cross. “I don’t think anyone’s lived here for weeks.”
We walked along the path to the other side of the stone structure, which turned out to be a mausoleum. The front, facing the house, had a wooden door with an iron latch. Vines crawled upward around the sides, sprouting bright white flowers that flared out like horns. Above the door was a brass plaque, tarnished to a mottled green by centuries of weather.
IN MEMORIAM
GWYNEDD MORTIMER A.D. 1322
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
I frowned. “Mortimer. Why do I know that name?”
“Henry,” Tom said. “Lord Henry Mortimer. He was the third man killed by the Cult.” Tom went over to the mansion and peered in the window. “You think this was his house?”
Bridget flapped down to the grass. When I picked her up, she stuck her beak into my fingers, looking for food. “I didn’t bring anything,” I told her.
“Christopher.”
Tom stared back the way we came, head cocked to one side.
“Come here,” he said.
I did. He turned me so I was facing the garden. “Look.”
From where we stood, the mausoleum blocked most of the iron gate that led back to the maze. We could still see the lions on the pillars above it. The way they were posed, they appeared to be guarding the corners of the shrine. Behind the houses that backed onto the enclosure—all of whose windows had been bricked up, I noticed—was the window to Hugh’s bedroom, where we’d first spotted the hidden garden. Beyond that was the steeple of a church. Even from this distance, I could make out the statue on the spire. It was a bearded man with a halo, right hand raised in blessing, his left hand holding a key.
“That’s Saint Peter,” Tom said. “Keeper of the Pearly Gates.”
Saint Peter hovered directly above the mausoleum, lions at his feet on either side. Vines trailed around the door, flowers blooming white.
Below the lions, the gates of paradise.
We’d found it.
• • •
The mausoleum was dark and cramped inside. A marble sarcophagus, six feet long, rested in the center. It had no markings except water stains and a Latin inscription on the side.
DOMINUS ILLUMINATIO MEA
The Lord is my light.
Three of the walls held an alcove. Inside each was a statue, eighteen inches high, made of the same marble as the sarcophagus. On the left, a man with a round face and downturned lips held a tower in one hand and a book in the other. Facing him on the right was a bald man with a long beard, holding the paw of a lion lying peacefully at his feet. I was surprised to realize that I recognized them both. I’d seen their images in that book my master had given me to read three months ago, the book Lord Ashcombe had questioned me about in the shop. They were Catholic saints: Thomas Aquinas on the left, Jerome on the right. The patron saints of knowledge and learning.
The statue opposite the door was an angel. His sharp cheekbones and blank eyes were framed by long flowing hair. His wings were spread, every feather carved in such detail that they looked almost real. In his right hand he held a sword turned downward, its tip hovering just above the stone. His other hand was open, palm forward, fingers pointed toward the ground.
Bridget poked her head in the mausoleum’s entrance, one foot stepping cautiously into the dark. Tom leaned over and peered at Saint Jerome’s lion. I couldn’t take my eyes off the angel.
End swords.
I went around the sarcophagus. My fingers traced the angel’s blade to its tip.
Sword’s end?
I pulled on the stone, gently, so as not to break the statue. I prodded the tip, and looked at the hilt. The angel stared back, unmoving.
Tom came over to join me. He touched the angel’s open palm. “It’s like he’s trying to show you something.”
Below the statue was nothing but rough stone. I looked behind us, at the sarcophagus. In the dim light, at the bottom of the casket, a shape caught my eye.
“Tom,” I said.
He turned, and stared at the same place.
To anyone else, it would have looked like just another water stain on the marble. But we’d seen this shape before.
I knelt, searching. I didn’t see any seams around it, any brick to move. I ran my fingers along the symbol, tracing the ripples of lightly corroded stone all the way around. The groove fit the circle perfectly.
I pressed it. The loop of stone slid in.
There was a low click.
A hollow grinding echoed in the chamber. I fell back, Tom pulling me by the collar. Bridget flapped her wings and flew for the light.
The sarcophagus shifted three inches toward Saint Jerome. Then it stopped.
Below the casket, dug in the floor, was a hole.