July

by Gabrielle Lord

  ‘This is not drama!’ she cried, her eyebrows gathering together in a frown. ‘The more you tell me, the easier it will be to solve this! You guys need all the help you can get! You and your friend haven’t been able to work out what I’ve just seen. I have the sort of mind that is good with mysteries. I’ve been living with mysteries most of my life!’

  ‘Living with mysteries? What do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ I relented. ‘You pretty much already know everything I know. How my great-uncle read out a description of the Jewel to me, and how it fits with this,’ I pointed to the glowing jewel lying in front of us. ‘And how these two pieces, the Riddle and the Jewel, go together to solve the mystery of the Ormond Singularity. That they form—’

  ‘The two halves of the double-key code,’ she interrupted, like she was trying to rush my words out for me.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Your great-uncle was spot on!’

  ‘What have you just seen?’ I repeated, running out of patience.

  I watched her looking excitedly at the Jewel and then back to the Riddle. She picked up the Jewel and held it reverently in her hand, gently opening it. ‘I guess you know who she is?’

  ‘Sure I do. Queen Elizabeth the First. She gave the Jewel to one of my ancestors.’

  She gave me a triumphant glance. ‘So what else do you know about this ancestor?’

  ‘He was Black Tom Butler, the tenth Earl of Ormond. He and his family acted as the Queen’s stewards, working in the interests of the Crown. It was a tricky job. Trying to keep in the good books with his Irish countrymen as well as staying popular with the Queen. But he must have done well because she gave him this. Remember, we worked out ages ago that the drawing of the waiter pointed to the word “butler”, and if you look at the drawing of the boy with the rose, you’ll see that there’s a rose on the back of the Jewel.’

  Winter turned the Jewel over once more, at the same time glancing across to the drawings, looking from one to the next.

  ‘Come on. Quit stalling. If you really know something, spit it out.’

  ‘Just a couple more questions, promise. I get that your dad drew this Sphinx to tell you about the Riddle, but what’s with the head of Caesar? Any ideas about that?’

  ‘No. Nothing so far. Except that it could mean something about a great ruler, or leader. The Queen, maybe. We don’t have anything on the monkey either.’

  ‘Great.’

  She wasn’t being sarcastic. I looked at her in surprise.

  ‘What’s great about it?’

  ‘I like a challenge,’ she purred. ‘The trickier the better. I’ll chase up everything I can on Caesar and riddles and pyramids and sphinxes. I’ll check out monkeys with jewelled collars and golden balls. I think I said once before that he looked familiar.’

  She made a note for herself.

  ‘Maybe it’s somebody’s pet?’ she suggested. ‘It has that cute collar. Maybe your dad couldn’t draw the person he really meant to tell you about, so he drew the person’s pet?’

  It was as good a suggestion as anything I could think of. ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘That’s how my dad’s brain was functioning towards the end.’

  ‘You look really sad again. You OK?’

  I nodded. Although it made me feel a bit better when she noticed, it also made it harder. Her concern forced me to deal with how I was feeling, and most of the time I just wanted to push it all away. Far, far away.

  ‘Like I said before, tomorrow is his anniversary,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe it’s been a year. There are so many questions I want to ask him. And things I’d like to say. But that’s not possible and it’s like this big, shadowy tombstone looming up in the middle of the year, days before my birthday. I just need to get past it.’

  She didn’t say anything and I was relieved. Again, I had the sense that Winter really knew what I was going through.

  ‘Also, right now,’ I continued, ‘I need to be totally focused on solving this,’ I looked at everything on the table, ‘and whatever it is that you’ve just seen. If you’re ever going to tell me.’

  She nodded. ‘OK, last thing,’ she said, sliding the transparency closer to her with the tip of her pinkie. ‘Please tell me what you know about this.’

  ‘One of the words is the name of a place in Ireland—maybe where Dad stayed or something. Not sure about the other one.’

  ‘I can tell you this for free,’ she said. ‘Vulkan is determined to discover what the Ormond Singularity is, and he will try anything to make sure nobody gets there before he does. You must be very careful, Cal. He wants that Jewel back desperately, and he has it in for you more than ever now that he’s lost a man.’

  ‘He’s not the only one who has it in for me. He’ll have to join the queue.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, her eyes sparkling with energy. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve seen in this double-key code.’ She picked up her own, handwritten copy of the Riddle as she spoke. ‘I’ve been obsessing over this. I’ve learned it off by heart. These words have almost become a part of me, and the minute I opened up the Jewel and saw the Queen’s portrait inside, I had a sudden flash: I thought—what if the lady mentioned in the Riddle is Queen Elizabeth? The same as in the Jewel?’

  A light flashed on in my brain. ‘So,’ I said thinking aloud, ‘if that lady in the Riddle is this lady inside the Jewel, then those words about leaves and grace and numbers and all the other stuff—are describing this locket with her portrait inside?’

  Winter’s vigorous nodding was infectious. ‘You got it,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly it! When I saw the Jewel I immediately noticed a couple of things.’

  Her face, usually pale, was lit up with colour. With her glowing cheeks, she suddenly looked like just an ordinary girl—instead of Winter Frey.

  ‘You know how I thought it might have been a number riddle?’ she continued. ‘Cal, how many of those gold leaves are there surrounding the emerald?’

  I peered closer and counted them.

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘Eight are the leaves on my Ladyes Grace,’ Winter recited. ‘Eight!’

  I checked the Jewel, counting carefully. There was no doubt about it. There were eight small golden leaves winding around the outside of the emerald, four on each side. Eight leaves in the Ormond Riddle, eight leaves on the Ormond Jewel.

  ‘But what’s the Ladyes Grace?’

  ‘The Ormond Jewel is the Queen’s gift—her “grace” to Black Tom. Think about it. She graced your family with this beautiful gift.’

  Something electric surged through my body. Winter was amazing! My mind was racing, trying to see more and more of the connections between the piece of vellum and the glowing jewel.

  Winter’s words tumbled out in excitement. ‘Don’t you see? This line describes the Queen’s portrait in its oval frame: Fayre sits the rounde of my Ladyes face.’

  She looked up at me, her face shining. ‘I’ve been studying Henry V with my tutor Miss Sparks. She said that if you change the Shakespearean English into modern language, that line would go something like, “the portrait of my lady’s face sits nicely in its frame”.’

  ‘You’ve told your tutor about this riddle?’

  ‘No way!’ she laughed. ‘I just told her I was reading some Shakespearean poetry. She was so excited that I was showing an interest! She helped me with the language. She told me that funny-looking word in the last line—yifte—is actually gift. She explained how sometimes copyists wrote “g” without quite closing up the top of the letter, so that it got mistaken for a “y”. But then she got real interested in what poem I was reading and I had to change the subject fast.’

  I looked at the pearls and rubies that ran around the oval emerald, between it and the eight leaves. On a hunch, I started counting the rubies. There were sixteen. That didn’t match up with anything. But when I counted the pearls a flash of excitement moved me. I counted them again.

  ‘Winter! Ther
e are thirteen of them! Thirteen pearls!’

  ‘The thirteen tears!’ she said. ‘The Riddle says thirteen tears!’ Her eyes widened again. ‘Of course! That’s it! That’s what pearls were called in the olden days! Tears of the moon! Thirteen tears!’

  I looked at the Ormond Jewel more closely.

  Thirteen tears. Thirteen pearls.

  ‘Wow,’ I whispered.

  The two halves of the double-key code were really coming together. I thought about Boges and how pumped he would be with this new breakthrough. Pumped enough not to give me too hard a time over meeting up with Winter again, I hoped. The Riddle was throwing light on the Jewel—secretly describing it. We were getting closer.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked Winter. She was hunched over her open notebook, sketching something.

  ‘Drawing it,’ she said, looking up at me with a grin. ‘Is that OK? Having a picture of the Jewel means I can keep working on the puzzle.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said, happy to be making progress.

  I watched as Winter deftly drew the outline of the Jewel, with the eight leaves and thirteen pearls clearly defined around the massive emerald.

  Realising with a start that we’d been talking for a long time, I began gathering everything up, thinking I should go. Winter stopped what she was doing and watched as I repacked my backpack.

  ‘I should go,’ I said, kind of like a question, more than a statement.

  ‘Cal,’ she said, moving closer to me and looking into my eyes with such intensity it almost made me uneasy. I stopped shoving things into my backpack.

  ‘I’ve found a way,’ she said softly, ‘to ask my parents things, to talk to them.’

  I stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t mean all that psychic stuff, just something really simple that seems to work for me. I know that love is eternal—it’s part of our soul. And even though my mum and dad aren’t here with me anymore, I can still talk to them. And you know what? The best thing is that answers do come. When I have something on my mind, I go to them. I go to the cemetery and sit near their graves. It might sound a bit spooky, but it’s really not. It’s actually quite peaceful. Often I’m sitting there and the answers just come to me, float into my mind.’

  I frowned, considering what she’d just said. ‘So you think if I went to where Dad …’

  ‘I’m sure of it. It’s been a year since you lost your dad. I’ll come with you. It always helps to have a friend who understands.’

  That last phrase made me smile. A friend who understands.

  ‘Tonight? On the eve?’ I asked.

  Winter nodded.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll be able to get inside the vault,’ I said. ‘Dad’s in a mausoleum,’ I explained.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Let’s do it.’

  Winter and I hurried past the stone wall of the cemetery, heading towards the main gates. I knew they’d be locked at this hour, almost midnight, but the darkness of the night gave us the best cover for climbing over and getting in.

  We made our way past the silent graves and brooding vaults. The white, marble figures of angels and columns looked grey in the dim starlight and the light breeze chilled our faces and rustled the leaves in the surrounding trees. I made my way easily and quickly through the winding paths with Winter close beside me.

  ‘Here it is,’ I whispered when we reached the Ormond vault. My gaze fell on the lock on the door—to my surprise it looked the same as it had when I’d last been here, in January. I had assumed Rafe would have changed the lock after the drawings went missing from the storage container he’d hidden inside.

  I put my bag down and started fumbling around inside, checking to see whether I still had the old key on my chain. When my fingers found it I slipped it out and into the lock. It fit perfectly. With a deft tweak and a bit of a push, the heavy door gave way, creaking as it opened.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to Winter. ‘I’ll switch my torch on once we’re inside and I’ve closed the door again.’

  Winter took my hand and stepped briskly in behind me. We closed the door and I flicked on my torch. Immediately, the dusty interior of the mausoleum came into view, with the caskets on the benches, and the remains of withered flowers and wreaths. I flashed the light around. Rafe’s storage boxes were no longer there.

  Winter released her grip on my hand and grabbed something from a pocket in her skirt. When she opened her hand, I saw that she had brought with her three half-burned tea-light candles and some matches. I watched as she stood them in a row along a shelf, then lit them.

  She smiled in the soft, solemn glow. ‘What’s down there?’ she asked, pointing to the stone steps leading down into more darkness.

  ‘Some very old Ormonds.’

  ‘I’m glad I wore my coat,’ she said with a shiver. ‘It’s cold in here. Cold, but peaceful.’

  She was right. The last time I’d been here, to find the envelope with the drawings, I had been with Boges who was spooked, thinking of ghouls, but tonight with Winter it was different. We sat down, cross-legged on the floor.

  ‘What would you say to your dad?’ she asked. ‘If he were here?’

  I gazed at the dusty lid of the urn that held my dad’s ashes, unsure of how to answer. ‘I guess I’d tell him I miss him,’ I said, finally. ‘And that I’m doing everything I can to finish what he started. Stay alive, solve this mystery and put our family back together.’

  ‘He’d be so proud of you, Cal.’

  I looked up at Winter. ‘What do you say to your parents?’

  I was taken aback—she had tears in her eyes. She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

  ‘At first,’ she said, looking down and fiddling with her skirt. ‘I told them how bad I felt about the car accident. About how I felt like it was all my fault.’ She stopped to look up at me. ‘I haven’t told you exactly what happened to my parents … It was my tenth birthday when it happened. It was my birthday,’ she repeated, ‘and I wanted to go to the aquarium to see the seahorses. Mum and Dad both seemed really stressed and busy, but I chucked a bit of a tantrum and made them take me.’

  She stopped and took a deep breath before continuing.

  ‘On our way there, driving down a bend on this steep, winding road we’d travelled along a thousand times, Dad lost control of the car. I know I was mucking around and I probably distracted him, but I remember the car skidding sideways, and Dad grabbing hopelessly at the wheel, his eyes in the rear-vision mirror frantic, trying to protect his family. I saw Mum reach for his knee, then the car rolled and my whole world tumbled upside-down. I’d undone my seatbelt earlier—a habit they were always getting mad at me for—so when we started crashing down the side of the road, I was flung out. I landed in a bushy flat, with barely a scratch on me. But the car, with my parents trapped helplessly inside, kept on rolling and crashed on the rocks way below the road.’ Winter looked deep into my eyes again. She looked so sad, exposed, vulnerable. ‘They didn’t have a chance.’

  She took another deep breath, the only sound in that deep stillness. It seemed that even the spirits of the dead were listening to her words with rapt attention.

  ‘I blamed myself. Sometimes I still do, but I’ve learned a lot in the last few years and I’ve come to realise that you can’t control everything that happens in your life. I know I didn’t cause that accident. Bad weather, a slippery road and worn brakes maybe, but not me.’

  I silently nodded, letting her keep talking.

  ‘But now I want to find that car. I need to see it. You know how you thought ages ago that you saw me at Sligo’s car yard, prowling around? Looking under tarpaulins?’

  ‘Yeah?’ I asked, curiously, wondering where this was headed.

  ‘I’m sorry I never admitted it to you before, but it was me. I lied to you. I hated doing that. But I just wasn’t ready to tell you—or tell anybody really, about what I was there for, and why it’s important I find it, see the damage, and then let it go.’
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br />   ‘But the car would have been destroyed ages ago,’ I said.

  ‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘But I just have this feeling it’s in Sligo’s car yard somewhere. Piled up somewhere among all the other car bodies. I feel it more than ever when I’m near my parents’ graves. It’s like they’re trying to tell me something …’

  The candles flickered and dimmed, then flared up again as the wind blew through a crack near the mausoleum door.

  159 days to go …

  ‘You know,’ Winter said, looking around, ‘you could make a good little hideout here. You have privacy upstairs and downstairs, a good lock on the door, plus I’m pretty sure your neighbours wouldn’t make any noise,’ she said with a giggle.

  The candles had burned down pretty low. Winter leaned over one and dipped her finger in the melting wax. ‘It’s after midnight,’ she announced as she examined her fingertip.

  ‘We’d better go,’ I said. ‘But I feel like I should leave something behind, something that shows I was here, on Dad’s anniversary.’

  I dug around in my backpack and was about to give up when something pricked my finger. I pulled it out. It was the guardian angel pin that Repro had given me. Gently, I laid it on top of Dad’s urn where it glinted softly.

  ‘Miss you, Dad,’ I whispered. ‘Here’s an angel to watch over you.’

  155 days to go …

  My mobile vibrated in my pocket.

  check your blog. very interesting development.

  I did as Boges suggested and logged onto my blog. When I saw the initials at the bottom of the private message I’d received, I almost fell over.

  I blinked, dumbfounded.

  Oriana de la Force was the client Sheldrake Rathbone had referred to in his phone conversation with me! She was using the services of the Ormond family solicitor! The man with the Piers Ormond will! And yet she’d admitted that whatever benefit the Ormond Singularity brought with it when decoded should rightly be mine. So what was in it for her? Now my mind was in a real mess.