* * *
The Keep
Across a small stretch of unkempt, grassy grounds, which Jackaby informed me was the bailey, we found an entrance to the central structure. The keep was constructed of the same heavy stones as the curtain wall but seemed to have fallen into greater disrepair. Thick roofing tiles had tumbled from high above to litter the base of the building, and the foundation had settled unevenly over time, spreading some of the solid blocks apart in wide cracks.
We reached the entrance, a thick door with a heavy iron lock. Jackaby did not need to withdraw the magpie’s key to see that it was no match—the lock was much too large. He stepped toward the door anyway. Though imposing, the wood had suffered insects and the elements for three hundred years, and with a liberal shove of his shoulder, the wood crumbled around the lock and the thick door swung open.
The keep had no ground-level windows. A stairway wound up to the right, and a passageway curved off to the left. A trickle of light snuck clumsily down the stairs from the second floor, but the passageway on the left only darkened further as it rounded the corner. Torches had been fitted on the wall every seven or eight feet, but they hung unlit and dusty.
“I don’t suppose you have any matches in one of your countless pockets, do you?” I asked.
Jackaby’s coat contained a straw doll, several silver charms, a deck of tarot cards, and a bronze gyroscope, but no matches.
I pulled out the map and looked closely at the sixth point for any hints. Seated between the four teardrop towers, the keep was marked with a simple pair of spectacles not unlike those Anaximander had been wearing back at the shop. Perhaps they were a warning that we would scarcely be able to see a thing inside. A nervous prickle crept up my neck. Something about the castle felt wrong.
Jackaby stepped up behind me.
“Any mystical insights?” I asked.
“I’ve told you before,” he said, peering around, “what I do is not mysticism; it is observation and analysis.”
“Right. Have you observed or analyzed anything helpful?”
“The air is anathematic, laden with an aura of untold danger.”
“Untold danger. Charming. That seems to be the unifying theme of today’s outing.”
“Left. We are meant to go to the left.” Jackaby stepped through the doorway. “Coming?”
I peered into the inky darkness, trying to shake the uneasiness creeping over me. “What do you suppose the water was for?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “To turn some wheel that’s long since rotted away, perhaps—or weigh down a dumbwaiter whose chain rusted through half a century ago. Maybe that was how we were supposed to open the door to the keep, but the termites got to it before we did. Nothing in this place is really as functional as it once was, I’m afraid.”
I took one last glance at the tall watchtowers looming above us. Their bricks were sun-bleached and crawling with ivy. The useless cannons jutted out of the side like broken limbs on a long-dead fir tree. Warning bells rattled in my head.
“Jackaby, wait . . . ,” I began, but he had already vanished into the dark hallway.
I trod inward cautiously, keeping close to the wall as the light fell away behind me. The curving hallway was nearly pitch black. “Jackaby!”
“Just ahead of you, Rook,” came my employer’s voice from a few yards in. “There’s another door here.” I heard the rattle of a knob and then a click. As I hurried to catch up, Jackaby gave the door a push, and a shower of sparks lit the black ceiling above him, followed by a muffled hiss. One by one, the dusty torches sputtered to life. Some flared brightly as flames played amid shrouds of cobwebs, dying down quickly to a steady glow.
Jackaby blinked at the flickering torches. “Well, it looks as though a few things in this place still function! That was a clever bit of work.”
He stepped through the door. The flickering lights within outlined a wide chamber, empty except for a sturdy writing desk. Jackaby smiled.
“Jackaby,” I said, “we shouldn’t be in here. This whole castle is backward.”
“I’ll be quick. How do you suppose they managed it? Steel and flint fitted in the corner of the door, I assume. Then what? Hidden streams of oil within the walls? No, oil would have long since dried. Gunpowder?”
He began rummaging through the drawers in the old desk. My nerves were already ringing, but something about the word gunpowder set them further on edge. There was a bit about gunpowder in the old song, wasn’t there? A verse about pistol charges?
Jackaby discovered two dusty glass tumblers in the desk and held them up in the lamplight. “That’s it,” he said. “Just the glasses. Not even a flask to go with them.”
My thoughts arranged themselves abruptly. Charges . . . yes, that was right. When Farrell and his men came to ambush the Bold Deceiver in the song, the cornered criminal drew his pistol, but he couldn’t fire the charges because . . .
My eyes widened, “Get out!” I yelled, but my voice was lost in the deafening sound of the first volley of cannon fire hammering into the keep.
Debris rained down from the ceiling, and behind me a massive section of the stairwell collapsed into the hallway, billowing up a cloud of stale rock dust. My ears were ringing, but I could see daylight over the top of the rubble. I turned back to see if Jackaby was behind me when booming shots rang out from the second tower. The doorway above me buckled, and I leapt back into the room just as the entire entry was engulfed in a cascade of masonry. A hand grabbed my wrist and hauled me swiftly under the sturdy desk. Jackaby and I were a tight fit, but we sat out the barrage as rocks and beams thudded above us.
When the shuddering explosions subsided, we pushed our way out into what was left of the keep. My ears rang. Jackaby’s satchel was pinned under a wide chunk of a broken column, and pulling it free loosed a small rockslide. We had to shove past boulders and splintered scraps of wood, but we soon reached daylight. Where once a three-story structure had towered above us, now the tallest surviving wall reached scarcely higher than my shoulders.
“What sort of cretin points his cannons at his own keep?” Jackaby demanded, shaking bits of brick out of his knit cap.
“You were right,” I said, trying to catch my breath in the dusty haze.
“Generally true.” He glanced back as we picked our way up and out of the wreckage slowly. “About what, in this particular instance?”
“The water was important. We skipped a step. In the song, the Bold Deceiver is undone because a woman fills his charges with water, rendering his pistol harmless. We were meant to do the same to the cannons.”
“Oh, yes. Of course! Good connection, Rook.”
“Not much help now, though, is it? I doubt we’ll be salvaging anything from this rubble.”
“Well, that’s not completely accurate,” he said. “I did manage to snag the glasses before the building capsized on us. I’ve got them tucked safely away, right here.” He patted his satchel happily.
“A pair of glasses—oh, for pity’s sake, that’s what the spectacles on the map were about. They were glasses. Do you realize, sir, that you have them safely tucked away in a bag that was recently crushed under a building?
Jackaby nodded, unfazed. “Remarkable craftsmanship, this. It was bequeathed to me by a fellow who believed that it once belonged to Rhiannon herself. Have you read the Mabinogion? No? Marvelous stuff. Welsh. I’ve never been entirely convinced of the artifact’s authenticity, but all the same . . .” He tossed back the flap and withdrew the two glasses, complete and unharmed, with a clink. “It is excellent for storage.”