Toward a Secret Sky

by Heather Maclean

  “Is there one that might lead us out of here?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. There’s the Sullivan guy from Gilbert and Sullivan. There’s a memorial to Winston Churchill, but he’s not really buried here. There’s the architect Sir Christopher Wren,” she rattled off.

  “Architect?” I asked. Something familiar was ringing in my brain. “Of what? What did he build?”

  “This church,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Why?”

  “That’s it! It has to be!” I said. “My mom was a computer analyst—well, that’s what she told me she was, anyway. And in every computer program, the architect always leaves a secret back door for himself so he can get back in if he needs to fix something. Why would this church be any different?”

  “So you think the architect’s secret way out starts at his tomb?” Hunter asked.

  “It makes perfect sense,” Gavin said. “And we’ve got to start somewhere.”

  My pocket vibrated. I was getting a text. I switched on my phone screen, and my stomach dropped.

  “What’s happened? Who texted you?” Hunter asked.

  “Stuart, a kid from my class,” I answered. “Five of the people who were poisoned at the party died this morning, and Jo is barely hanging on. We have to get to Magnificat, fast.”

  The rest of the crypt was not as cheerful as the café. In fact, for an actual tourist destination, it was poorly lit, dusty, and super scary. We passed dozens of giant stone coffins, each decorated more gruesomely than the next. Some had screaming lions carved into them; others were protected by snaking serpent tails or tall fences topped with rows of spears.

  The crypt was cavernous and completely empty of people. Our footsteps echoed eerily, bouncing off the dead bodies and returning to us magnified. The farther we walked, the darker it got.

  Sir Christopher Wren’s tomb was in the very back of the crypt; we had to walk the entire length of the cathedral again. By the time we got there, I was jumpy, convinced a bony hand was going to slide out from under one of the heavy lids like in a haunted house amusement ride. But this was no theme park. This was real.

  Wren’s burial plot was by itself, under an arch that had a small, barred window with a view of the street gutter. So we aren’t all the way underground, I noted. Which meant getting to a tunnel wasn’t going to be as easy as opening a door. We were going to have to descend to somewhere else.

  I didn’t know if I could handle a place even creepier than the crypt. I had no problem with heights, but the idea of being trapped underground with rotting corpses was my worst nightmare. Hunter, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable, almost excited. I wondered if I had claustrophobia and was only just discovering it. I definitely had hate-being-underground-with-dead-people-phobia. I took deep breaths and tried to calm my racing heart. I was definitely regretting my forced chutzpah with Gavin, since now I couldn’t let on how freaked out I was or he would send me home.

  The architect’s grave was cordoned off by a small wrought iron fence. Unlike the other tombs, which had huge statues and elaborately carved coffins, Wren was laid to rest under a simple, rectangular black marble slab set just six inches above the floor. On the wall above it hung a large stone plaque engraved with a bunch of Latin:

  SUBTUS CONDITUR

  HUIUS ECCLESIÆ ET VRBIS CONDITOR

  CHRISTOPHORUS WREN,

  QUI VIXIT ANNOS ULTRA NONAGINTA,

  NON SIBI SED BONO PUBLICO.

  LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS,

  CIRCUMSPICE.

  Obijt XXV. Feb: Ano: MDCCXXIII. Æt.XCI.

  Gavin translated: “Underneath lies buried the builder of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond the age of ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you. He died on the twenty-fifth of February, 1723, aged ninety-one.”

  A secret tunnel out of St. Paul’s wouldn’t simply be labeled with a sign. We’d have to discover it, and I was certain we’d need to solve a puzzle to do so.

  I’d learned that the trick to solving most puzzles—whether they were leisure games or scientific conundrums—was to identify the oddity, like the old Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the others . . .”

  As he was reading, I was studying the layout of the words, looking for anything out of the ordinary. The quicker we found something, the quicker we could get out of the crypt.

  The inscription had eight lines of Latin, all center spaced, all capital letters. I tried skipping around and reading the first letter of every word, but Latin is so weird—and so full of Qs and Vs—that nothing came of it. I counted the words. Nope. Then I noticed that while each line had multiple words on it, there was one that was conspicuously shorter than the others. In fact, it only contained one word: circumspice.

  “What does the one word all by itself mean?” I asked Gavin. “‘Circumspice’?”

  “‘Look around you,’” he answered. “Why?”

  “It’s the only one all by itself,” I said. “I think that means something: look around you.”

  Hunter picked up the phrase and started swiveling her head in all directions. “Look around you. Look around you.” The smooth, white stone walls offered no other clue. She then spun her entire body in slow circles. Still nothing.

  “What’s the line above it say again?” I asked.

  Gavin reread it. “Lector, si monumentum requiris. Reader, if you seek his monument.”

  “Circumspice,” I finished. “Look around you.” I repeated it. “Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.”

  “We are,” Hunter said. “There’s nothing around us.”

  “This has to be it. It just feels right.” I walked through my thoughts out loud. “It says ‘if you seek,’ and we are seeking. ‘His monument.’ Could mean this church, but that’s pretty obvious. His monument is his legacy. Why couldn’t it be the secret way out?”

  “Okay, go on.” Gavin seemed impressed.

  “We need his help,” I continued. “We’re asking him to show us the way out. And he’s saying, ‘Here it is. Just look around you.’”

  Hunter opened the small metal gate, walked into the nook, and stood at the foot of the metal slab. Gavin joined her, moving toward the window and tracing the edges of stones with his fingers, probably looking for a loose one. I preferred to stay outside, away from the deceased. I kept reading.

  “Circumspice. Look around you. Look around you.” Suddenly, like a dodge ball in gym class, it hit me. Hard.

  “Look around U!” I said. “The letter u. Maybe that’s it!”

  There was only one u in circumspice, and I began to read the letters in a circle around it, starting with the letter directly above it to the left. There were seven: N-U-M-O-N-A-C.

  LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS,

  CIRCUMSPICE.

  Obijt XXV. Feb: Ano: MDCCXXIII. Æt.XCI.

  “Numonac?” Hunter said. “Is that Latin?”

  “No, but it’s close,” Gavin replied. “And it could be two words.”

  “Numo and nac?” Hunter said. “Any better?”

  “Nope,” Gavin answered.

  “What if we start with a different letter than the n?” I asked, already mentally doing just that. “If you start with the m and go counterclockwise, it’s M-U-N-C-A-N-O.”

  “Mun cano means ‘grey world’ in Latin,” Gavin said, lighting up. “Does that mean anything to anyone?”

  “Greyworld is the name of those artists who install large, interactive sculptures around London,” Hunter offered. “Trash bins that talked in Cambridge, traffic posts that played music, trees that sounded like a music box when you turned a golden key on their trunks, a nighttime rainbow in Trafalgar Square …”

  “Do their works have anything in common?” Gavin asked.

  “I guess the fact that they all use sound,” Hunter answered. “They started with fence railings that played a song when you dragged a stick along them.”

>   Sound. An odd clue, considering the crypt was deathly quiet.

  “I’m not sure reading counterclockwise makes much sense,” I corrected myself. “You’d read a circle more like a rainbow, from top and bottom, left to right each time. That would be num cano.” Goosebumps prickled across my forearms.

  “In Latin, num cano is ‘you sing,’” Gavin said.

  As if on cue, Hunter let out a piercing warble—“Here lieth Christopher Wren!”—and collapsed on top of Wren’s grave.

  Hunter lay motionless on the marble slab, and probably due to shock, Gavin and I stood motionless next to her. But only for a moment. Because then the entire slab started to sink.

  She lifted her head, smiling at us. “Rather dramatic, I know, but the occasion called for it. It’s so darn serious down here.” She didn’t seem to realize she was moving with the slab.

  “Um, Hunter,” I said, afraid to move in case I made it worse, like jumping in after someone who’s just fallen through ice. “Your singing seemed to activate something and . . . the ground . . . it’s moving!”

  The slab, now perfectly flush with the floor, stopped sinking. Hunter rose to her knees. She was now in the center of Wren’s slab.

  “It’s not moving now, right?” she asked.

  “No, it’s stopped,” I answered.

  “Good,” she said, standing up. She took a step toward us, but as soon as she shifted her weight, the entire slab tilted. It must have sunk until it rested on a bar across the middle, because the metal plate was now acting like a giant teeter-totter. It kept tipping under Hunter’s feet, the top rising into the air behind her, until she was no longer able to stand. Her feet slipped out from under her, she landed with a thump on her bottom, and promptly slid out of sight into a black hole now opened in the floor. As soon as she was gone, the tablet righted itself, sealing Hunter below us.

  She was gone, and the room was eerily quiet, as if she’d never been with us. Terror tightened its grip on my chest. I had to say something, to prove to myself I could still breathe.

  “We have to get her!” I croaked.

  “I’m on it,” Gavin answered, and he really was, leaping deftly onto the middle of the slab. “I’ll slide down, hold the slab so it stays open, and you come after me. I’ll catch you, I promise.” He shifted his hips, and the plate tipped open at the bottom again. As soon as it was wide enough, he dove into the dark hole, feet first. My heart sank as he disappeared. I was afraid my fear would swallow me whole.

  Thankfully, the tomb didn’t swing closed. Gavin held it open.

  “I’ve got it,” he called up to me. “Climb on, Maren!”

  I looked around the crypt wildly, trying to decide what to do, but my brain wouldn’t hold a sane thought. I had just made a huge scene with Gavin, insisting I was brave enough to continue, but I hadn’t counted on the trip involving subterranean terror. Maybe I should let Gavin take Hunter to Magnificat by himself. But then I’d be stuck in the bowels of the crypt, I reminded myself. Just me and all the dead bodies. There was no good option.

  The deciding factor was Gavin. No matter where he was, I wanted to be with him. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, climbed gingerly onto the marble slope, and let go. I slid into Gavin’s waiting arms, landing against his broad chest with a satisfying thump. I clung to him as I watched the band of light from the opening shrink into a thin line and then disappear as the slab swung shut. It was now completely dark.

  I felt Gavin’s lips against my ear. “I’ve got you,” he breathed. I let myself melt into him a little, relaxing into his strong but soft embrace.

  “Can you guys see?” Hunter called out from the darkness.

  “Nope, nothing,” I answered. I begrudgingly stepped out of Gavin’s arms, since Hunter was right next to us.

  I glanced around, willing my eyes to pick up anything: a shape, a shadow, a small movement. It was darker than anywhere I’d ever been—completely and utterly black. The ground had some extra give in it, so I knew we were standing on dirt. And since Gavin was able to hold the slide open, I knew that the room couldn’t be very tall. But other than that, I was at a complete loss. It was a scary feeling to be in total darkness. I found Gavin’s hand and laced my fingers with his. He squeezed mine reassuringly.

  “I can see,” Gavin said.

  “You cannot,” I answered. “It’s pitch black.”

  “Angels can see in the dark,” he replied.

  “Of course you can,” I said with a sigh, starting to feel foolish for my fear now that I was standing safely next to him. How could you ever compete with an angel? I thought. Well, at least he hadn’t been the one to solve the puzzle. “So, where are we?” I asked.

  “In a low room, quite large, that extends out at least one hundred feet in every direction, except to our left,” he said. “There’s a wall about forty feet away to the left, and it has a door on it.”

  “Is the wall with the door the right direction?” Hunter asked. I could hear her shuffling closer to us. I held out my free hand, and she bumped into it with her shoulder. We linked elbows. “Will it lead us to the river?”

  “Aye,” Gavin answered. “The Thames is that way.”

  “Then let’s go,” Hunter replied, nudging me so that I, in turn, nudged Gavin.

  Gavin led us slowly into the dark. We’d only taken about fifteen steps when a whooshing sound filled the air. Two beams of light flared ahead of us. I shut my eyes against the sudden brightness, and when I opened them, I could see there were torches hanging on either side of a large wooden door—actual torches!—and they were burning with a bright fire. A man stood next to them, glowing in the light.

  “Is it a ghost?” Hunter whispered, digging her nails into my arm. I was relieved I wasn’t the only terrified one.

  “There are no such things as ghosts,” the apparition called out to us in a deep, male, English accent. “You’re either on this earth, or you’re not.” I recognized the voice, but couldn’t connect it to a face.

  Gavin picked up the pace, as if he was excited to get to the man. A few steps closer, and I saw why. It was Alfred, the salt-and-pepper-haired guard.

  “You’ve found your young friend, I see,” Alfred said, nodding at Hunter. She smiled at him like a family member. They’d obviously run into each other a few times over the last twenty-four hours. I was glad she’d had someone looking out for her before Gavin and I arrived, but I couldn’t figure out why he was in the subbasement, and how he’d gotten there. I hadn’t seen anyone else in the crypt.

  Gavin stepped forward and gave Alfred a hearty handshake.

  “And you’ve chosen a path,” Alfred said, gesturing toward the door behind him. “You’re off to Magnificat, then?”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, startled that a night watchman knew about Magnificat or our plan.

  “Why else would you be down here?” he answered simply.

  “It’s all right,” Gavin assured us. “He’s an angel.”

  “How do you know?” Hunter asked.

  “Angels can see the breath of other angels and demons,” I explained, secretly wishing I had the same ability. Alfred did seem like an angel now, especially the way Hunter was beaming at him.

  “Very true,” Alfred answered. “And I’m happy to assist you in any way that I can.” He had a calming presence, just like Gavin.

  Hunter seemed awed. “So Magnificat is behind this door?”

  Alfred nodded. “Aye, through the tunnel. And after your handiwork on the roof, I’m guessing you won’t be alone in there.”

  “What do you mean?” Her wide eyes danced in the torchlight.

  “Once you pass through this threshold, you’re no longer protected by St. Paul’s,” Alfred answered. “While it is easier for demons to fly in from an open sky to snatch their prey, they can still come after you on foot. They’re quite fast, you know. And they do roam the tunnels, in every direction they are able.”

  “Tunnels? You mean there’s more than one tunnel behin
d this door?” I gulped.

  “There’s an entire network under London, and they’re all connected,” Alfred said, confirmation of what Gavin had told us in the café. “Every tunnel has hundreds of offshoots and openings. But luckily your path to Magnificat, while one of the longer tunnels, is straight as an arrow. All you need to do is keep running, and leave the rest to Gavin and myself.”

  “You?” Hunter asked, her face softening. “But I don’t want anything to happen to you! I’ve already caused everyone enough trouble.” She moved forward and gave Alfred a big hug. That Hunter, she sure likes to hug people. Although in this case, I couldn’t blame her. There was something so sweet about Alfred. He reminded me of my grandfather back home, and I felt a pang of homesickness. Weird, I thought to myself. That’s the first time I’ve thought of Scotland as “home.” Just in time to possibly never see it again.

  Alfred chuckled. “I’ll not have you worrying about my wellbeing, young lady. I can hold my own, you know. Besides, I can’t let Gavin here have all the fun. Two beautiful ladies are too much for this young chap.”

  “Hey!” Gavin said, playfully punching at the older angel’s shoulder. Before Gavin’s fist could connect, Alfred’s hand shot up and caught it in a white-knuckled grip. Alfred was no weak old man.

  He tossed Gavin’s fist aside and opened the door with a flourish. We peered over his shoulder and saw that the tunnel was made of tightly packed earth on all four sides, was extremely narrow, and was very, very dark. My new-found claustrophobia kicked in. As long as we don’t have to go too far and Gavin is with me, I thought, I can make it. Hopefully.

  “It’s exactly five hundred meters from here to Magnificat,” Alfred explained. “Not terribly far, but in the dark, you can get disorientated.” Five hundred meters didn’t seem too bad, until I did the metric conversion in my head: five hundred meters was about the length of four-and-a-half football fields. As if a long, suffocating tunnel filled with demons wasn’t bad enough, I remembered I was not a great runner.

  “What do you mean ‘in the dark’?” Hunter asked. “We have the torches.”