History Keepers 1: The Storm Begins (26 page)

Eventually Jupitus came to the library door. Here he checked that no one was around and slipped inside. A minute later Rose followed him.

‘Sssh!’ Jupitus snapped as Rose, her bangles jangling, picked her way through the minefield of ropes and pulleys that lay behind the façade of faces.

‘Good gracious,’ she remarked, on arriving at the hidey-hole that Jupitus had created for them. There were two comfortable chairs and a little table set with a plate of sandwiches.

‘We may be here all day.’ He shrugged. ‘No point in being uncomfortable. I know that you like Lapsang …’ he said, unscrewing the flask.

‘I love it, thank you,’ said Rose, settling herself in a chair.

‘Well, I can’t bear it, so Oolong will have to do. You see, we have a clear view of the tube.’ Jupitus shone his light into the far corner. ‘We’ll see him, but he won’t see us.’

‘Perfect,’ replied Rose with a weary smile.

They sat in silence for nearly an hour before Jupitus finally spoke. ‘This reminds me of our last mission together, back in the day.’

‘Byzantium, 328,’ replied Rose. She had also had time to remember it. ‘We waited all night in the sewers under the hippodrome. They were going to destroy the city with a plague of flies and destabilize the whole of Asia Minor.’

‘It was locusts, not flies,’ Jupitus corrected. The brief sentence masked the faint sound of a message arriving in the pipe. Consequently neither he nor Rose noticed it.

Another ten minutes passed in silence. With nothing else to talk about and the events of yesterday still preying on her mind, Rose suddenly announced, ‘Jupitus, it’s ridiculous of me not to mention it … I found the flower in your rooms yesterday, along with all those old notes of mine.
Why
do you have them?’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

‘The flower, Jupitus – my chequered rose.’

‘This was a mistake,’ said Jupitus, standing and picking up the lantern. ‘There is no point in
both
of us being here.’

‘No, I wish to discuss this with you!’ Rose insisted. As she grabbed his arm, she knocked the lantern to the floor, extinguishing the candle and plunging them into darkness.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’

They both heard it at once: the soft sound of a door clicking shut. They froze. From the other side of the wall of faces came the sound of footsteps slowly crossing the room. There was a creak as the second concealed door was opened, and a silhouette holding a lantern slipped into the space. The figure carefully made its way over to the pipe in the corner and retrieved the new message.

Jupitus felt carefully along the ground for the lantern. ‘Argh!’ he yelled as boiling-hot wax spilled over his hand. The intruder immediately halted; then turned, hurled his lamp at Jupitus and Rose, and leaped through the nearest section of wall.

The face of Stede Bonnet,
the
infamous ‘gentleman’ pirate of 1770s Barbados, split in two as the spy tumbled through onto the floor. He picked himself up, charged across the room and was gone.

‘After him, quickly!’ shouted Jupitus as he too threw himself through the pirate’s broken portrait, followed swiftly by Rose. They dashed across to the library door. The spy was disappearing up a staircase, his distinctive navy-blue cloak trailing behind him. They charged after him.

At the top of the stairs, the corridor split in two. The cloaked figure was nowhere to be seen. They both listened intently to see if they could hear his retreating footsteps; there was no sound but the ticking of a grandfather clock.

‘I’ll go this way, you go that,’ said Jupitus firmly. ‘Are you armed?’

Rose rummaged in her carpetbag and produced a letter opener.

Jupitus rolled his eyes. ‘Take this,’ he commanded, drawing a small pistol from a holster inside his jacket.

‘What about you?’ Rose asked as he passed her the gun.

He took Rose’s letter opener.

She felt a stab of affection. ‘That’s so gallant of you!’

‘The bullets are expensive. Only fire if you absolutely have to,’ he retorted brusquely as he set off.

‘I know you’re gallant, even if you won’t admit it!’ Rose called after him as she headed the other way.

Jupitus followed the corridor round to the communications room. He opened the door and looked inside; the workstations were empty and the large Meslith machine sat motionless inside its glass case, its quills poised over blank sheets of parchment.

Meanwhile Rose stopped at the entrance to the stateroom. The door was wide open. She held up the pistol and went in. The room was deserted, the lights extinguished. The moon was beginning to rise through the giant windows, casting four long rectangles of light across the floor. From behind a screen in the corner, she heard a dumbwaiter rumbling and a hatch opening. She swung round. She could see the outline of two feet at the bottom of the screen.

‘Who’s there?’ she demanded, pointing the pistol directly at the partition, her arms rigid.

There was no reply – only the clink of crockery being loaded into the dumbwaiter.

‘I asked, who’s there?’ Rose repeated in her most commanding voice as she headed towards the screen.

‘What’s that?’ came a voice from the corner.

She recognized it immediately. She relaxed and lowered the gun as Norland put his head round the screen.

‘Miss Rose, I didn’t hear you come in.’

Norland was innocently loading dirty plates into the dumbwaiter. ‘Afternoon tea. Should have done it hours ago. Clean slipped my mind. Don’t get old is my advice to you. Off to target practice?’ he chuckled, glancing down at Rose’s pistol.

‘Did anyone just come through here?’ she asked.

‘Not seen a soul.’

Rose sighed and put the pistol down on the table. ‘I’d forgotten what it’s like to hold a gun. Not an altogether happy memory.’

Suddenly she caught a glimpse of dark blue under the table. It took a split second for her to register the information – it was the spy’s navy cloak. She reached for the pistol, but Norland got there first. She gasped as he pointed it directly at her.

‘It was
you
!
You
were in the Library of Faces?’ she gasped.

Norland’s expression had altered completely: the jovial smile had been replaced by a contemptuous sneer.

‘I don’t understand,’ Rose stammered, edging backwards towards the open door.

‘Forty years I’ve been here,’ Norland snarled, advancing threateningly. ‘Does anyone care? “Norland’s not important. He just cleans up other people’s mess”.’

‘No one thinks that. You’ve always been a valuable member of the team.’

‘Don’t patronize me! One mission! One miserable mission – then never trusted again. Just because of the shapes in my eyes. “Poor old Norland – he can barely cross the road to the eighteenth century.” You diamonds make me sick. You’re so smug and self-important.’

Rose reached the doorway and turned to run, but Norland was one step ahead of her. He slammed the pistol in her face, knocking her to the floor. He kicked the door shut, turned the key in the lock and threw it across the room.

‘Zeldt has promised me a new beginning.’ Norland’s eyes flashed wildly as he spoke. ‘He’ll
take
me to history – to wherever I wish to go. Get up!’ he hissed.

Rose, trembling, picked herself up. Blood was trickling down her face.

‘Over to the window,’ he barked. Rose did as she was told.

There was a knock on the door – someone tried to turn the handle. ‘Rose, are you in there?’ Jupitus asked from the other side.

Rose shrieked as Norland raised the gun, pointed it at one of the huge windows and fired. The glass shattered, and wind gusted into the room.

‘Rose!’ Jupitus shouted from the other side of the door, shaking it violently.

Norland took hold of Rose’s dress and pushed her through the open window, holding her over the precipice. He was much stronger than he appeared; the muscles of his forearms bunched and the veins throbbed on his big hands. Rose teetered on the ledge. Below her was a sheer drop down the side of the Mount into the foaming sea.

‘Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Minoan Crete, Babylon – I will travel everywhere!’ Norland shouted over the gale.

‘Rose!’ a voice cried from above. A great shadow
descended
, and Jupitus, hanging from a curtain tie, swooped down and crashed through the adjacent window. Amid a shower of glass, he landed gracefully on the stateroom floor. Norland let go of Rose. As she fell, gasping, she hooked the handles of her carpetbag onto a spike of broken window frame. One of the handles tore, the bag split apart, and a cascade of belongings – lipsticks, old tissues and dentist reminders – showered down on her.

Jupitus advanced on Norland, punching him square in the face. The butler raised his pistol and fired, but Jupitus, with the toe of his perfectly polished boot, sent the gun flying through the open window and into the sea beyond. Norland lunged at his opponent, but in a series of expert manoeuvres, Jupitus chopped him in the throat, smashed his arm, dislocated his ankle and deposited him, half-dead, on the floor.

He ran over to the open window and grabbed Rose’s hand just as her carpetbag gave way. Pulling her back into the room, he helped her onto a chair to regain her breath, took off his jacket and put it round her shoulders. Rose looked up at Jupitus: his eyes were bright, his cheeks flushed, his hair wild and dishevelled like a romantic hero.

‘Exciting enough for you?’ he asked breathlessly.

Suddenly Rose leaped to her feet, threw her arms around him and kissed him passionately. Jupitus made no attempt to stop her.

The door was unlocked and Galliana flew into the room, followed immediately by Oceane Noire – who halted in shock and fury at the sight of Jupitus and Rose in a passionate embrace. The pair broke apart as an assortment of other panicking keepers came into the room.

Galliana went over to inspect Norland, who was lying comatose on the floor.

‘Your spy,’ Jupitus announced coolly. He put his hands on Rose’s shoulders. ‘This is who you have to thank for catching him.’

Later that night, after the semi-conscious Norland had been locked away and the furore had died down, Oceane made her way to Jupitus’s suite and knocked firmly on the door. Jupitus appeared in his dressing gown.

‘We need to talk,’ Oceane announced, sweeping into the room without waiting for an invitation. ‘Rose Djones and you in a tawdry clinch was not a sight to warm the heart.’ Her voice was as sharp as
vinegar
. ‘I will make it clear to you, Jupitus – again: as agreed, our “friendship” is going to develop, whether you like it or not. Neither Rose Djones nor anyone else will interfere with that development. That is, of course, if you do not wish me to reveal your precious secrets to the commander. It’s a wild guess, but I think she might have some difficulty in accepting your grubby past.’

Jupitus locked eyes with her. Fiercely in-dependent, he hated to be blackmailed, but he knew that the alternative was worse. ‘I understand,’ he said coolly.

Oceane smiled curtly and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

24 C
ASTLE
S
URPRISES

AFTER EVERYONE, FIRST
the guests and then their servants, had gone to bed and the flickering candles had been extinguished, Charlie said goodbye once more to Mr Drake (he promised ‘for the last time today’), and the three agents, dressed in the darkest clothes they could find, set off down into the heart of the castle.

As they reached the wall-fountain, the clocks struck four. The solemn sound of the bells echoed around the stone passageway; then there was silence again.

First they tried to push on the wall-fountain, but were not surprised to find it immovable.

‘So how do we get in?’ whispered Jake as they all examined the wall for some mechanism to open the chamber.

‘Perhaps it’s something to do with these characters,’ suggested Charlie. He was referring to a series of Roman numerals engraved into the stone below the fountain: I, VIII, VI, III, IV, II, and so on.

Topaz knelt down and looked at them more carefully. ‘There’s no logic to these numbers. One, eight, six, three, four, two, seven, five, nine …’ she counted. ‘Mean anything?’

Charlie shrugged. Jake took the candle from Topaz and studied them closely. As he ran his fingers across the numerals, he noticed something.

‘Look, they move!’ he exclaimed excitedly – and demonstrated how the rectangle of stone surrounding each numeral could be depressed.

‘There must be some particular code,’ mused Charlie.

All three of them stared at the numbers to try and solve the puzzle.

Suddenly Jake’s eyes opened wide and he exclaimed, ‘1492 – the year America was discovered. Shall I try it?’

Topaz shrugged. ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’

‘Well, the
worst
that could happen,’ said Charlie,
pushing
his spectacles up his nose, ‘is that the mechanism is booby-trapped and a wrong number releases hidden blades that decapitate us. But feel free …’

Jake tried the sequence of four numbers. The door did not open. Charlie scratched his head while Topaz stared at the numbers.

‘1649,’ she murmured – so softly that the others didn’t hear at first. ‘It’s 1649,’ she repeated more clearly. ‘I’ve seen it before.’

Topaz didn’t wait for their approval. She simply pressed the numbers, and the panel of stone opened with an echoey clunk. Taking the candle out of Jake’s hand, she went inside. A stone staircase went down towards a distant pool of light.

‘Shall we?’ she asked as she fearlessly started to descend. Jake and Charlie followed, closing the door behind them.

‘How did she know that number?’ Jake asked Charlie.

‘1649 is the year Zeldt was born,’ Charlie whispered. ‘He was born in London on the thirtieth of January of that year. The legend goes that his birth coincided with the beheading of Charles the First. Creepy,’ he added, a chill going down his spine.

‘The execution of Charles the First? I’ve read all about it!’ said Jake excitedly. ‘He wore three shirts so that he wouldn’t shiver.’