The Skin Map be-1

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Kit felt the sense of helplessness that had dogged him since leaving Black Mixen begin to recede. He had only to get his hands on Sir Henry’s books and all would be well. At least this was the track his mind ran along at the moment. In a few days he would discover just how wrong he truly was, but by then this train of thought would have reached a wholly unexpected destination.

  Laying aside his spoon, he placed both hands flat on the table. “Lady Fayth,” he said, adopting a solemn tone to better communicate the sense of gravity he felt, “I don’t mean to frighten you, but Sir Henry and Cosimo are in serious trouble. I think it imperative that we find his notes at once.”

  “Trouble, you say? What sort of trouble?” she asked, cocking one perfect eyebrow. At his hesitation, she pounced. “Come, sir! If we are to get on, we must of necessity agree to a full exchange of confidences. We must keep nothing back.” He saw the defiance leap up in her eyes. “Lest you harbour any misguided sense of chivalric duty to protect a poor weak woman, I do assure you I am fully able and prepared to protect myself.”

  The idea of protecting this fiery spirit had not remotely occurred to Kit. Once suggested, however, he was caught in a proposition of powerful allure, the mere suggestion of which filled him with a sudden pleasure.

  “Speak, sir!” she demanded.

  He shook himself from his caveman reverie. “Yes,” he allowed, “a full and frank exchange of confidences. It is precisely what I was about to suggest myself.”

  “Then, as we are in agreement…” She patted her mouth primly with the edge of her napkin, then tossed the cloth aside. “Let us begin the search.”

  Kit looked longingly at the mutton slowly congealing on his plate. “After supper, perhaps-”

  “That will not do, sir!” She pushed back her chair and stood. “If finding his journals is as important as you claim, then we have not a moment to lose.” She strode from the room and into the corridor.

  Kit snatched a last bite of the mutton, then hurried after. She led him to the room where he had first met her: Sir Henry’s library. Kit caught up with her at the wall of books. “Do you know what they look like?”

  “I do not, for I have never seen them.”

  “Well, it should not take long to find them in any case. You start there”-he pointed to the top left side of the bookcase-“and I’ll start on the opposite end. We’ll meet in the middle.”

  Kit began at his end. The books were all big, heavy tomes bound in thick, dark leather, darker still in the flickering candlelight; he had great difficulty reading the titles hand-lettered in black ink on the spines, which, as he had noted before, were mostly in Latin. Giving this up as a bad job, he began pulling books off the shelf, one by one, and leafing through them. Some were handwritten on parchment, others printed on paper; occasionally, he came across one that contained a block print or etching-usually of some sort of machine or curious scientific apparatus; mostly, however, the pages were covered with small words crowded on pages with tight margins.

  After examining a number of these volumes, Kit began to suspect that Sir Henry’s journals, if they did indeed exist, would not be among the large and dense folios he was examining. He turned his eye instead to the smaller, more portable books he saw. These were fewer and more easily handled, and he had soon worked his way through all within reach. He moved a couple paces closer to Lady Fayth and became aware that she was humming; although he did not know the tune, the melody was charming.

  He was soon entranced by the lovely, lilting quality of her voice and no longer paying attention to what he was doing. He stood transfixed, a book unopened in his hand.

  “What have you got there?”

  “Hmm?” He glanced down at the small volume in his hand. It had a green cover and was closed by a leather strap that wrapped around a little brass boss; beyond that there were no other markings of any kind. “I don’t know.”

  “Open it,” she instructed.

  His fingers fumbled with the leather strap, and he cracked open the cover to reveal a page densely covered with a script of such eccentric nature he could not make out what language it might be written in, much less what it said.

  “What have you found?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, handing the book to her. “I can’t read it.”

  “It is in Sir Henry’s hand,” she announced, her excitement contagious. He watched her lips moving as her eyes scanned the pages, and he wished he were a page in a book just so he could have those lips moving over him like that.

  With an effort, he turned his eyes back to the book. “What does it say?”

  “Here he is writing about the manifest universe,” she replied, running a white fingertip along the line. “And something called the Omniverse, whatever that may be.”

  “The Omniverse!” cried Kit. “That’s it! That’s the thing they were talking about.” He tapped the page with his finger. “This must be Sir Henry’s ley travel journal. It has to be.”

  “Are you certain?” she asked, glancing up. “Do you want me to read more?”

  “No… yes… possibly.” Kit reached for the book. “Here, bring it to the light so we can see it better.”

  Without relinquishing the little tome, Lady Fayth moved to the candle stand and, opening the book, cradled it in both palms, allowing Kit to turn the pages. Though he still could not decipher the archaic penmanship, he did manage to work out the word Omniverse. He turned more pages and found tiny diagrams of lines that looked like broken triangles and rectangles, some with numbers attached to them that might have been latitudes, degrees, or distances-he could not tell.

  “We’re going to have to spend some time with this, I expect,” he decided, “if we’re going to find what we’re looking for.”

  “For what, pray, are we looking?” she inquired.

  Kit bit his lip. “I’m not at all sure,” he confessed after a moment’s thought.

  Lady Fayth frowned prettily.

  He turned some more pages. “But I think I’ll know it when I see it.” He reached to take the book. “May I?”

  She closed the book with a snap. “Certainly not!”

  “But-”

  “I will not have you pawing through my uncle’s private journal. If you wish to examine this or anything else you must provide me with an explanation of greater persuasion than you have offered thus far.”

  “Your uncle is in trouble. This book could help-”

  “So you have already said.”

  “After all this, you still don’t believe me?” He regarded the dangerous set of her jaw. “Apparently not.” Kit pushed out his lower lip in thought, then brightened as the solution came to him. “I know! We’ll ask Giles-he was there. He saw it all.”

  “Who is Giles?”

  “The driver-I mean, Sir Henry’s footman or coachman, or whatever. He was with us at Black Mixen Tump. He saw what happened. He can tell you.” Kit started for the door. “Send for him and let him explain.”

  “He will have gone to bed,” said Lady Fayth. “It must wait until tomorrow.”

  “All right,” agreed Kit. “First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll call him in.”

  “Until then, the journal stays with me.”

  “Absolutely. Just don’t let it out of your sight. I have a feeling that little green book is priceless.”

  CHAPTER 23

  In Which Lady Fayth Takes the Lead

  The decision to return to Black Mixen Tump had been swiftly reached-so swiftly that Kit still harboured misgivings. Lady Fayth was confident enough for both of them, however, buoyed as she was by the prospect of at last being allowed to make a leap-the very thing, she proclaimed with endearing enthusiasm, she had been yearning for all her life. In fact, she was almost giddy with it, which made Kit’s more sober assessment appear churlish and curmudgeonly by comparison.

  “Believe me, if leaping was not dangerous enough-”

  “Oh, yes-ferocious volcanoes and man-eating tigers and such, as you have already exp
lained so very colourfully.”

  “Right. Well, aside from all that, there is something I haven’t told you yet. There are people-bad men, very bad men, murderers in fact-who wish us harm. They always seem to show up. So we must assume they will be nearby, waiting to attack. They were at Black Mixen, and there was a fight. Sir Henry and Cosimo got away, but their attackers made the jump with them.”

  “All the more reason to be on our way, I daresay,” replied Lady Fayth blithely.

  “I’m not sure I follow,” said Kit, missing the link in her logic.

  “If our eminent forebears were not in direst danger,” she explained, as if instructing a backward child, “they would not stand in need of rescuing, and it would not fall to us to save them.”

  “Well, yes,” granted Kit, “but that doesn’t lessen the danger to ourselves. We still-”

  “Take courage!” she told him. “All will be well.”

  “I’m glad we got that settled.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I feel so much better now.”

  Sarcasm must not have been in fashion in the seventeenth century, apparently, for his remarks were taken at face value, and Lady Fayth favoured him with one of her incandescent smiles. “I am happy for you. We shall leave at once. I shall inform Villiers of our plans and have the servants prepare the things we require. Kindly inform Giles to ready the coach.”

  “But we haven’t deciphered the book,” Kit pointed out.

  “We can do that on the way. You said it will take three days to reach this leaping place, is that not true?” At his admission that this was the case, she placed the book in his hand and concluded, “Then we must not waste another moment.”

  Having made up her mind, Lady Fayth was across the room and almost out the door. “Wait,” called Kit, “there is one other thing.” He hesitated, uncertain how to put it.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “Your clothes, Lady Fayth. Forgive me for saying it, but I sincerely doubt that you can make a leap dressed like that,” he said, indicating her dress.

  She glanced down at her elegant satin gown. “Marry, what is wrong with my attire?”

  The defiant expression her face gave him to know that he was skating on very thin ice. “It is not, ah-functional,” he offered.

  “I suppose you would have me wear nothing at all!”

  The mere suggestion of her lithesome form arrayed in its natural splendour proved so distracting that Kit, with heroic effort, pushed it promptly from his mind and tried his best to explain in a way that would not be taken amiss. “My lady, we cannot know what we’re leaping into-it might be rough country, a jungle, a desert, anything,” he told her. “Also, there is the matter of time. We might be years or centuries ahead of the current date and age, or behind. In short, we simply cannot know what the people we encounter will be wearing wherever it is we’re going. We must try not to be too, um… different.”

  “Such disconformity could draw unwanted attention to ourselves as travellers,” she concluded. “I understand. By my faith, your counsel is wise. I will find something more fitting to the purpose.” She turned again to go. “Further to that, we will require money, I expect, and weapons.”

  “If you can get them…,” Kit began, but she was already gone. He stood gazing at the empty doorway. Faith, my counsel is wise, he reflected happily, his misgivings flittering away like dry leaves before the balmy breeze of her good opinion, if only for the moment.

  They would return in force, but by then the would-be leapers were already beyond the outlying hamlets of London in a carriage loaded with three days’ worth of food and drink, several changes of clothing, a purse full of gold sovereigns, two slightly rusty cutlasses, and a serviceable flintlock pistol. At Kit’s suggestion, Giles, who agreed willingly, was brought into the plan. They departed as soon as the equipment and provisions could be loaded onto the coach and they were soon clattering through the northern suburbs and out into the belt of farming settlements ringing the city.

  During the hours of good light, Kit applied himself to the study of the green book, poring over page after page of Sir Henry’s crabbed text. The book itself was as handsome a specimen of the binder’s art as could be found anywhere: tight pages of fine paper, gold-edged, with a place marker of black silk ribbon, all smartly bound in lustrous jade green kidskin, and so well made that it opened absolutely flat and closed with a satisfying snap. After properly admiring the craftsmanship of the tome, they had got down to studying the contents. Kit could not easily read Sir Henry’s idiosyncratic hand, but Lady Fayth, whose eye was more accustomed to the mode of the day, seemed to have little difficulty. Under her instruction, Kit began to gain some mastery of the script.

  Much of what he gleaned was so far over his head it might as well have been Japanese for all the impression it made. The language was arcane when not archaic, and the concepts discussed assumed a knowledge, or at least a vocabulary, Kit lacked. However, by dint of perseverance, and with Lady Fayth’s patient help, he was able to tease out a few useful nuggets of information from Sir Henry’s theorizing about the nature of ley travel, its purpose, its mechanism, and its possible uses. There was much mention of the Skin Map, and a lengthy discourse on its curious markings, with one or two examples, along with a few suggestions about the meaning of the symbols. There were also meticulous diagrams of ley lines and detailed directions to their locations, including maps.

  From his study of Sir Henry’s little green book, Kit learned that, temporally speaking, it made a very great difference where one crossed over on the ley. He shared this observation aloud to Lady Fayth, who confessed to being utterly confused.

  “I think it means you have a choice not only where to leap, but when,” he explained. “He seems to suggest that it’s like a road-like the one we’re travelling on now, with signs and mile markers along the way, see?” He pointed out the coach window to a pale white milestone they were passing just then. “Well, if this was a ley line, then each of the mile markers would correspond to a different time in the otherworld location connected to that particular ley.”

  “If you insist,” replied Lady Fayth hazily.

  “Now, suppose that milestone we just passed corresponded to the 1500s in the otherworld, then the next one might be the 1600s and so on,” Kit told her, waving the book in one hand. “Depending on where you make the leap, you end up in different times in the development of the world you’re leaping into. Incredible!”

  Lady Fayth was blase. “It sounds needlessly complicated to me.”

  “Perhaps,” granted Kit. “In any case, it means that we must be far more precise in our calculations to have any hope of ending up where we want to go.” He thumbed a few more pages in the book. “Precision-that’s the key. And that is why we need the Skin Map.” Lady Fayth’s perfect lips formed a perfectly puzzled frown.

  “Look at this,” said Kit, leaning near her in his zeal. He indicated one of the strange signs Sir Henry had copied there-a curious semicircular whorl with two almost parallel lines crossing it, one of which sprouted a barb like that of a fishhook at the end; a row of tiny dots lined the outer edge of the whorl.

  “This is one of the symbols from the map.” He leaned closer still, holding the book to her. “Sir Henry indicates that this little symbol tells not only where to find a particular ley, but also where that ley leads and the location of the milestones along the line to help navigate the time.” He beamed with this revelation and felt the visceral thrill of the nearness of her warm flesh. “You’ve got to hand it to old Flinders-Petrie: he thought of everything.”

  Lady Fayth accepted this appraisal coolly. “Those obtuse jots and tittles communicate all of that?”

  “Apparently,” allowed Kit. “Of course, one has to know how to read the symbols. That’s the chief difficulty-they’re written in a sort of shorthand-”

  “I do beg your pardon? With a short hand, did you say? However does the length of a person’s hand enter into it?”

  “Ah, yes.” Kit r
egrouped and started again. “I mean-a code. They’re written in code, or a secret symbol language. One must possess the key in order to unlock the secret of the symbols.”

  Lady Fayth gave a nod toward the book. “And is this key of which you speak to be found amongst Sir Henry’s pages?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t read the whole thing yet.” He glanced at the book in his hand. “Maybe. I hope so. It would make things a whole lot easier if it did.”

  Thus, together they turned to the section describing those otherworldly portals he called ley hubs-of which Black Mixen Tump was a prime example. What Kit eventually decided, after the lord scientist’s circuitous language had been deduced and distilled, was that at certain times-corresponding, Sir Henry believed, to the phases of the moon or the alignment of the sun or, perhaps, both-the portal would stand open, allowing the ley traveller to cross the threshold into another world. Unlike a ley line, which required movement as well as timing and other manipulations, all that was necessary to use a ley hub, such was Sir Henry’s understanding, was to position oneself in precisely the right place at precisely the right time and the crossing would be effected. In the case of Black Mixen, the right place was indicated by a stone that someone had thoughtfully placed atop the tump; the right time was thought to be either dawn or dusk on days when the moon could be seen above the horizon before the sun had either risen or set.

  Simple.

  “There must be more to it than that,” Kit muttered, mostly to himself. “Is that all he has to say about it?”

  “The entry is quite complete, but he has left a space to write further observations.” She turned the book so that he could see. “The next entry is about something called ‘manipulation of matter via harmonic vibration’ or something called sound waves. There is nothing more about this Mixen Tump.”

  No doubt there was more to it than Sir Henry knew, but all things considered, the information provided did roughly correspond to what Kit had witnessed not long ago in that very place. Besides, it was not as if he had any better choice than to trust his lordship’s veracity and judgement. Blinkered as it might be, the green book was the only guide he possessed.