May

by Gabrielle Lord

  I stared at the butler and his tray with the cards. Another of the clues was falling into place!

  ‘And I wonder,’ said my great-uncle, ‘if by drawing that pair of cards, the winning blackjack, your father was trying to tell you something about a particular one of the great Earls of Ormond in Ireland.’

  There was a moment’s silence until Great-uncle Bartholomew spoke again. ‘What would you say,’ he asked, ‘if I told you that the tenth Earl’s nickname was Black Tom? As in, Black Tom Butler, the tenth Earl of Ormond?’

  I blinked. The drawing that I’d looked at hundreds of times, and puzzled over as many times, suddenly took on a new meaning. Black Jack. Black Tom Butler. Is that what Dad meant?

  ‘It’s strange how things that happened hundreds of years ago seem to have something to do with what Dad stumbled across in Ireland only last year,’ I commented.

  ‘Some things don’t date,’ said my uncle. ‘Some things are always there, ticking away, just waiting to be discovered. They’re still digging things out of the past. The passing of time doesn’t change that.’

  Is that what the Ormond Singularity was? Something that happened four hundred years ago still waiting to be discovered? I turned my attention back to my uncle.

  ‘That reminds me,’ he said. ‘The family story is that the Ormond Jewel was given to Black Tom by his cousin, the Queen.’

  ‘Black Tom was a cousin of the Queen?’ I asked. ‘The Sovereign Lady?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he nodded, ‘and the Ormond Riddle was also associated with Black Tom.’

  I carefully took in this new information—connecting the Ormond Riddle and the Ormond Jewel with some guy who’d been around four hundred years ago called Black Tom Butler. I liked the sound of this guy, with his pirate’s name.

  ‘Because if your father had the Ormond Jewel and knew about the Ormond Riddle, he was well on the way to—who knows what? There’s always been this vague story in the family about the Riddle and the Jewel, that they have to be put together. Like a horse and cart. That both are needed … For what? I don’t know. That’s the great mystery.’ He shrugged. ‘Could be that they’re both necessary for cracking the mystery of the Ormond Singularity—whatever that might be.’

  My great-uncle shook his head. ‘But I do know this much,’ he continued, ‘even if you solve the Ormond Riddle—and that’s going to be hard enough without the last two lines—it’s useless without the Ormond Jewel.’

  My mind made a leap as I recalled Winter and the overheard conversation she mentioned. She’d picked up something about a double-key code!

  ‘You have to have both,’ I said slowly, ‘because they are two halves of a double-key code. The Ormond Riddle is only half of the key. The Ormond Jewel is the other half! Maybe the two combined reveal the Ormond Singularity!’

  ‘I think you’re onto something, Cal,’ my uncle said, nodding.

  ‘You say Black Tom was the tenth Earl. That means there were another nine before him, and maybe more after him. What’s so special about him?’

  ‘He was a great builder of castles and fortresses,’ he said, and immediately I thought of Jennifer Smith and my dad’s memory card, containing pictures of castles and ruins. ‘He left a mark. A couple of his castles are still standing today and are open to the public. But most importantly, he’s the earl connected with the Jewel and the Riddle. My sister Millicent told me when I was a boy that it’s thought that Black Tom might have even written the Riddle. It was a time of great intrigue and secret codes were very necessary, especially if you had plans you didn’t want anyone to know about. In those days, being on the wrong team meant you could lose your head for treason.’

  ‘So the Ormond Riddle might be hiding a big secret?’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s possible,’ said my uncle.

  I jumped as a piece of timber exploded in the fire. All this historical stuff was very complicated. But one thing was clear. If I wanted to find out Dad’s secret, having the Ormond Riddle, even with the last two lines, wasn’t enough. I had to find this Ormond Jewel. So just who had it now?

  I lay on my air mattress, awake for a long time, listening to the crackling of the dying fire, and hoping I wouldn’t hear Oriana’s car returning.

  215 days to go …

  There’d been no sign of Maggers or that dark blue Mercedes all day and I wondered where the territorial magpie had taken my predators. Great-uncle Bartholomew was back amongst his books and papers, searching for the Piers Ormond documents that he had ‘somewhere’ in his massive mess.

  ‘What do they look like?’ I asked, trying to help. ‘What exactly am I looking for?’

  My uncle stood up from where he’d been crouching. ‘I put them in a big envelope and tucked them in a book, I remember. It was a large envelope with a solicitor’s address on it somewhere. But I don’t remember which book.’ He looked around, sheepishly. ‘Maybe it wasn’t even a book. Could have been a magazine.’

  I looked around in despair. The place was full of aviation magazines. Somewhere in all these piles of books and magazines there might be an envelope. There was only one thing to do—we’d have to go through every single one.

  We’d almost finished checking through every journal and book on the ground floor. I had one last box to go through—old flying magazines. I tried not to be too distracted by the photographs and stories. It reminded me of when I was a little kid and how I used to go through Dad’s flying magazines, cutting out the aeroplanes I liked and sticking them in my scrapbook, hoping one day I could fly my own.

  I had almost come to the bottom of the box when I saw a piece of yellowing newspaper sticking out from a magazine. The headline caught my attention:

  I moved closer to the nearby lamp and started to read it when I was aware of a presence behind me. Spooked, I turned to find Great-uncle Bartholomew leaning over me. Very quickly he whisked the old piece of newsprint out of my hand.

  ‘Stop wasting time reading that old stuff!’ he ordered. ‘I thought you needed to find the Piers Ormond documents!’

  I was startled at the look of pain and anger on his face.

  ‘I didn’t mean to pry. I was just—’

  ‘Never mind what you were just doing! We’ve finished the search down here. It’s time to go upstairs and start there. Hurry up!’

  I got to my feet, shocked at how my great-uncle had snapped at me. What was so wrong with looking at a bit of old newspaper? It was just another sad story. He’d acted as though I was doing something bad. Puzzled, I went upstairs and tried to forget about it.

  I’d just made it through another carton, upstairs, when a familiar sound caught my attention. I looked down the hallway to see Maggers fluttering at the upstairs window. My great-uncle saw him too and went running down the hall and opened it.

  ‘No! No, Maggers!’ he shouted. ‘Go away! Go flying! Quick, hurry up!’

  But Maggers did no such thing. Instead of flying up and into the night sky, he flipped through the window and into the house, soaring along the hallway and then flying downstairs to land on the wing table where he waited for us expectantly.

  We raced downstairs after him. Again, Great-uncle Bartholomew tried to coax him outside. But it was no use, he wouldn’t budge.

  ‘He’s hungry,’ said Bartholomew, reaching for the mince in the fridge. ‘He’s probably forgotten how to feed himself. I’ll give him something to eat and send him on his way again. Otherwise your friends will be down on us like a ton of bricks!’

  Great-uncle Bartholomew suddenly stopped his actions, put his knife down and looked at me, his eyes wide. ‘Glory be! I’ve just remembered! I put those documents in the wedding photo album! My ex has it! She took the albums, I’m sure of it!’

  I took a deep, frustrated breath. ‘So where is she now?’

  ‘Not far away enough,’ he muttered.

  Maggers had pecked up almost all the meat by now and I was anxious that he should be out and about—flying a long way away from here.

 
‘Tell me where she lives now and I’ll go there straight away,’ I said.

  ‘You know what I said about the neighbour who uses his shotgun for real?’

  I nodded.

  ‘She lives with him. Across those paddocks over there,’ Great-uncle Bartholomew pointed out the kitchen window. I came up behind him to see where he meant. ‘Beyond those trees that you can see just to the right, near that dip in the hill, is his house. The one with the orangey glow, and tall windmill turning by the water tank. It doesn’t look like his truck’s there.’

  ‘I could be there in ten minutes,’ I said, ‘look through the album, get the documents and be back again in under half an hour.’

  But my great-uncle was staring sightlessly out of the kitchen window, as if he hadn’t heard me at all. ‘She was a handful, my ex-wife. After she ran away with our next-door neighbour, I found she’d taken all sorts of things, including the albums. People round here think I’m a cranky old fool because I discourage visitors. But I’ve never shot anyone. My shotgun’s purely for show. But that’s not the case with Barney Helstrom. When he pulls out the shotgun, he is dead serious. Perfect mate for my ex-wife. But that’s another story.’ My great-uncle’s face had turned quite red. ‘Plus he’s got two rottweiler-dingo-cross dogs,’ he continued. ‘The meanest set of eight legs you could imagine. He calls them “Skull” and “Crossbones”. They’re hounds from your worst nightmare!’

  ‘I’m going to try to get inside and find the album,’ I said. ‘I have to get my hands on those papers about Piers Ormond.’

  ‘It’s very dangerous,’ said my great-uncle. ‘Not just because of the dogs … if Barney finds you in his house …’

  ‘I’m writing my mobile number down,’ I said as I scribbled it on a piece of paper. ‘If you see him coming, give me a ring to warn me and I’ll get out as fast as I can.’ My voice sounded brave and bold but inside I was quivering.

  ‘But the dogs …’ my great-uncle began.

  ‘Oriana’s thugs are really dangerous,’ I said, cutting his words short. ‘Make sure you have plenty of ammo, just in case they show up.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Cal. I could hold them off for days. It’s you I’m concerned about. I don’t want anything happening to you.’

  A sound from outside silenced him and I strained to hear what it was, hoping that it wasn’t what I thought it was.

  It was the sound of a car.

  They had followed Maggers!

  I ran to the front door and peered through, the leadlight glass distorting the view. Despite that, the dark blue Mercedes was plain to see, its headlights shining down from the road.

  I didn’t need any urging. I bolted out the back kitchen door, jumped the triple-wire fence separating my great-uncle’s rundown garden from the paddocks beyond, and ran through the long grass, my backpack bumping along on my still tender shoulder.

  As I ran across the clear paddocks, I kept low, trying not to make too much of a moving silhouette, using any cover that was available—bushes and small trees along the fence margins as far as I could. I hoped Great-uncle Bartholomew would be OK, barricaded into his house with his shottie and his piles of ammo. Even if they did get into his place, there’d be no trace of me.

  I thought fleetingly of my great-uncle’s weird reaction to the newspaper clipping I’d found about the abduction of two babies, but I had other things to worry about right now, because I had almost reached the trees that my great-uncle had pointed out to me through the window.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Already I could hear the sound of dogs howling and barking. They’d picked up my scent! I froze. Anyone in the house would be alerted by now that there was a visitor on the way. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. I could hear the savagery in their howls, the viciousness in their barking.

  The barking became more frenzied as I approached the small, timber, two-storeyed house. I was relieved to see a tall wire fence that ran around the perimeter. Two large dogs, one yellow like the dingoes he partly came from, the other wearing the brownish-black of the rottweilers, were hurling themselves against the netting. Even at a distance and in the dark, I could see their piercing white teeth.

  But no-one came outside to see what the ruckus was all about. Great-uncle Bartholomew’s ex-wife and Helstrom must not be at home.

  I had to find a way past the dogs. I glanced over at my great-uncle’s place, now just a distant shape beyond the paddocks. I wondered what was happening there, but the barking quickly drew my attention back to where I was crouched.

  ‘Slow down, and observe,’ my dad used to say to me when we were out fishing in the tinny. ‘After a while, you’ll start to see where the fish are. You’ll see how the water is moving, where the warm eddies are, and you’ll start to see the tiny fish that attract the bigger fish. If you’re still, things will often reveal themselves.’ I used to think, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK Dad.’ But now his words started to really mean something.

  I soon saw that the way into the house lay in the surrounding trees. Since I’d been on the run, I’d had to use trees a couple of times to get out of trouble or as observation posts. A big oak tree, its leaves already brown and dying, was growing near enough to the fence for me to get a hold of it. Then, like Tarzan, I hoped to move from tree to tree, keeping out of the reach of the two dogs.

  I stood up, took a deep breath and made a huge running jump at the wire fence.

  The two insane, mongrel dogs launched at me and snapped at my toes and hands as I pulled myself up to the top of the fence. I grabbed the nearest bough of the oak tree, and let go of the top of the wire fence. For a moment I thought it was going to break and that the dogs were going to eat me alive after I crashed to the ground, but the bough held. Arm over arm, like some sort of human gibbon, I worked my way along. With great relief I reached the trunk of the tree, scrambling onto a central fork.

  It wasn’t high enough! One of the leaping hounds jumped up and grabbed my sneaker, clamping down on it hard, trying to shake me out of the tree. I couldn’t believe its strength and ferocity. I wrapped my arms around the oak tree’s solid trunk, clinging on, while the two dogs did everything they could to dislodge me. I could feel teeth as they dug deeper into my foot, trying to get a better grip.

  Fearfully, I looked down at the yellow dog and just as it lurched to get my foot deeper into its mouth, I kicked as hard as I could. The dog let go for an instant and that gave me my chance. I practically flew up into the tree, reaching out and grabbing the branches of a smaller tree which was intermingled with the oak. I hauled myself across while the two dogs, enraged at my escape, tried even harder to jump up to get me. They clawed deep scrape marks into the trunks, and slobbered wildly, sending trails of frothy spittle over the dusty ground.

  I couldn’t waste any more time watching them. Now I had to jump and grab the railings of the small verandah on the second floor. Without thinking too much about it, I launched myself with all my strength into the air.

  I made it! I grabbed the timber rails and swung my feet into the guttering that ran along in front of the verandah, then I pulled myself over the railings, safe from the dogs. I hoped that Barney Helstrom and his partner would stay away long enough for the next part of my search.

  Two double doors that opened onto the verandah were locked but when I pushed on them they moved a little. With the dogs snapping and howling beneath me, and gun-happy Barney Helstrom possibly showing up at any time, I didn’t care too much about his property. I kicked at the doors. On the third kick, they flew open and I fell inside.

  I was in a bedroom. A quick check of the drawers and cupboards revealed nothing I needed. I hurried into the next room, which was an office, but all I could find were old accounts, farming books and novels. I was starting to get anxious.

  I rushed downstairs to a central living area where, on a coffee table near a window, I saw a pile of albums. I went through them. The first one was full of old photographs taken at ‘Kilkenny’, showing m
y great-uncle’s ex-wife, a nice-looking, dark-haired woman I’d never met before, with Great-uncle Bartholomew. I was shocked to see that in every photo my great-uncle’s face had been aggressively scratched out or blackened.

  I picked up the second one as my mobile rang, making me jump. I snatched it up.

  ‘Barney Helstrom’s car is on its way down the road,’ my great-uncle puffed. ‘You’ve got about one minute before they pull up outside the house.’ His voice was strained and hoarse; his breathing raspy in his throat.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s my heart. All this excitement.’ There was a sudden crash as he dropped the phone. I heard a groaning noise at the other end of the line.

  ‘Uncle Bart!’ I yelled down the line. ‘Talk to me!’

  All I could hear was silence. I shoved my mobile back into my pocket and grabbed the next album, shaking it, turning it upside down, flipping through its pages. I had to get out of there. Something was wrong with my great-uncle and Barney Helstrom was only a minute away. I tipped the third album up when a heavy envelope, just as my uncle had described, slid out onto the floor. I snatched it, jammed it into the back of my jeans, and hightailed it up the stairs again, through the bedroom and straight out of the wide-open double doors.

  The dogs downstairs went wild once more! I jumped up onto the top of the railing on the small verandah and launched again into the tree. When all this was over, I thought, I’d be able to get a job in a circus. If I lived long enough.

  Beneath me, the dogs were revving up, frothing at the mouth, ears flattened back on their heads. I was really pumped—worried about my great-uncle and worried for myself. I had no idea how I was going to get out of this. My heart was racing, my hands were sweating as I grabbed at handfuls of leaves, not caring about the scratches and scrapes to my face and hands as I pushed on through the tree, thinking only of keeping myself high enough to avoid the jaws of the dogs.