by R. G. Bullet
More questions were asked about the events with the Kurul and Archy recounted the incident at Alturus’s place.
Finally, Sentinel Remnant came forward and put his hand on Archy’s shoulder. “Could you give us a moment, please? This shouldn’t take too long.”
The chief usher came over and Archy followed him out back into the crypt to await his fate.
Chapter 21
The Verdict
The only sounds in the crypt were spitting torches and the murmurs of the sentinels coming from the Inner Hall. Archy perched himself against one of the tombs and leaned forward with his head in his hands. This was a hundred times worse than any school test. They’d never fully accept a boy as a Keeper—he knew it.
He pushed himself up to leave but as he did so, the door creaked open and Sparrows peered back at him.
“Can I bring you some hot chocolate, Mr. Bass? We have a good range from Madagascar. It wouldn’t take me long to get it.”
Archy managed a smile, and sat back down. “No, thanks. I’ll just wait.”
After a while he got up and crossed over to the old elevator. He felt the wind blowing down the shaft, making the flames on the torches dance. At that moment he could hear Big Ben somewhere way above, booming out the eighth hour across the city. He let out a heavy sigh. An age passed before the doors finally opened and Sentinel Remnant walked out. He moved slowly, his face dour.
“I’m sorry, Archy. We feel we’ve kept you waiting long enough.”
Archy’s heart sank. The next few seconds seemed to pass in slow motion. He saw Sentinel Remnant’s mouth move and utter the words: “Unfortunately we can’t offer our support. We recognize Alturus made the Swap with you but under the circumstances it looks, well—I am indeed sorry. It’s best if we take over from here.”
Archy’s remaining drop of confidence drained completely. He knew it had been a long shot that they would accept him. Alturus had forewarned him but still, his whole world seemed to evaporate before him. The Shroud had become his life. Everything he said or did was with the Shroud in mind.
Sentinel Remnant continued. “You did remarkably, considering the Kurul were onto you, I don’t know if I’d have handled it so well.”
If Sentinel Remnant had meant it as a compliment it didn’t help a bit.
“Alturus said you’d at least give me a chance,” said Archy.
“Yes, but no one would take those kinds of risks, Archy. The odds are stacked against you.”
“But I want to take the chance. How bad can it be?” Archy pressed.
“Very bad. Let me make it clear. It’s a very short time frame. You don’t have the experience to make a Restitution. You and Alturus both stand to lose. It wouldn’t be easy for an adult but—”
“At least let me try,” Archy pleaded. “Were you ever told not to give a chance to any of the Keepers, whoever they were?”
“No, I—”
“Was I chosen?”
“Well, yes, in a way you were—”
“That’s my point. Can’t I have my chance?”
Archy could see that his words were having some impact. The sentinel pulled his lips into a line and nodded. “I think I see your angle, Archy.” He stroked his chin. “Wait here a minute, I’ll do my best.”
Sentinel Remnant returned to the Inner Hall and Archy caught a glimpse through a gap in the doorway. He could see Sentinel Remnant talk animatedly at the head of the hall. He could hear raised voices, but it was impossible to determine exactly what was being said. Archy did see Sentinel Puffin fumble with his tanks, apparently flustered.
The minutes passed slowly until Sentinel Remnant returned.
“Well, it’s like this, Archy. We’re prepared to offer our support for a brief time only. Alturus did choose you for the Swap, and we must honor Noah’s wishes to allow the Shroud to land where it may.”
A smile cracked on Archy’s face. “So, they’ll let me do it?”
“Yes, but there’s bad news. It’s all hinged on results. You hardly have any time to prepare. You’ll have to hit the ground running.”
Archy started to bounce with excitement and the sentinel held up both hands in an attempt to calm him. He grinned. “We’ll make the TimeQuest and Restitution coincide with this next weekend. The gateways there and back are in Rome—and they’re locked and hidden. We’ll have our staff crafting the keys around the clock in Greenwich. The sentinels want me to let you know you still have every right to cancel. One of us will return the gladius. I can’t promise more because—”
“I’ll do it. I’ll do it,” Archy shot.
“There’s more. The rules will be very specific.”
“That’s all right.”
The sentinel shook his head but a trace of a smile lingered on his lips. “Very well, Archy. You’d better come in, and whatever you do don’t mention the Kurul anymore, not till I help you figure this out. Come along.”
***
The sentinels sat with Archy late into the night, working out a plan for the Restitution. The most important part of it was that Archy had to return the gladius to its owner, Maximus Crassus, within the proper time frame.
One complication arose. Alturus had been vague relating where he took the gladius from and what time he took it. His memory was unreliable. “I drink lot of wine,” he had told Sentinel Fleury. They decided that hypnosis wouldn’t work in this instance. Suggestions were offered by Sentinel Gibbons to use sodium pentathol, also known as the truth serum, to induce straight answers about the gladius.
Sentinel Fleury showed a flicker of glee over using the serum, and after he said a very stiff goodbye to Archy, got the chief usher to start up the elevator so that he could go back to his offices at SOTS quarters to organize matters.
As Archy watched the rest of the proceedings, he noted that everything would have to be done properly. He could see they were rigid in that respect, particularly Sentinel Fleury.
“Don’t worry about him,” said Sentinel Remnant after Sentinel Fleury had left the Inner Hall. “He’s very good at what he does. By tomorrow night he’ll have the finer details of the Restitution. He’s here to help you. We’ll expect you here tomorrow night at six to get the instructions.” He summoned an usher and whispered something to him, then carried on tying up the details of a very long night. The usher returned and handed a brown envelope to Sentinel Remnant. Sentinel Remnant passed it on to Archy. “Here’s some money to get you there. Whatever else you need, call me.”
The package contained a bound stack of fifty pound notes. It was the most money Archy had seen in his life.
With Sentinel Fleury gone, Archy felt the time was right to find out more about the Kurul. “Alturus says that the TimeQuest is like a break from the Kurul because they can’t go back.”
Sentinel Puffin replied. “He’s right, they can’t. We’ve protected the exact whereabouts of gateways as carefully as the Shroud, and without the correct keys there’s no chance.” He paused and pulled at his wispy eyebrows thoughtfully. “Since you brought up the Kurul, you should know how they could have found you a few weeks ago.”
“How?”
“We had our agents scouring newspapers for any words having to do with rugs, the name Rushburys, and boys. One of them found a report of a robbery in the The Windsor Times and it all tied in. It wasn’t a coincidence. But that’s how we could have got to you. Archy. The Kurul could have found you too, you know. You were indeed lucky!”
Around midnight Sparrows let Archy out of an inconspicuous exit in the basement of Parliament. Archy made his way along the foggy embankment of the Thames to the parking garage. He felt for the rug hovering invisibly exactly where he left it, climbed on, pulled his collar up high over his chin, and with the weighty task of the Restitution on his mind, headed back to Rushburys.
Chapter 22
46 and 56
What do you mean you’re going out tonight? You’ve gone out two days without me,” said Vincent. “I want to go too.”
“We’ll go tonight, I promise,” said Archy.
Archy didn’t want to leave Vincent out in any way, but SOTS seemed so concerned about security that he worried about who or what should be involved. He knew that detention would be the only thing that would stop Vincent from flying, and that he was smart enough to keep out of trouble this time.
“Excellent! I’ll get my stuff—tonight?”
“Tonight!”
The day ticked along uneventfully and around five o’clock, Archy found Vincent getting ready in his dormitory, laying out a mohair sweater on the bed and trying to repair the zipper on an old leather jacket.
“You set?” said Archy.
“Nearly,” Vincent said. Archy could see Vincent’s hands trembling with excitement. “This is Richard’s old jacket—the zipper’s busted, but it’ll be a lot warmer than last time. How long can we stay out tonight, Archy?”
“Couple of hours, I think. We’ll be going a lot faster too.”
They headed off, dodging Matron Overly along the way as she was leaving the sick room. The tuck room had a few juniors inside when they arrived and Archy waited patiently so he could get the rug out without anyone noticing.
None of them seemed to be in any rush to leave. In fact it looked like the boys were trying to dare each other to stay longer in the haunted aisles.
“We’re brave to be down here after sunset,” said Vincent loudly. But the boys setting out a chessboard on top of one of the boxes nearby didn’t seem hear or else pretended not to.
“Some of the stories coming out of this room and you’d think there’s a nutcase down here, lurking with a meat axe,” Archy added, but still no one flinched.
Vincent tapped Archy’s elbow. “Wait here a sec.”
Vincent crossed over and entered one of the music rooms, leaving the door ajar just a bit. A few seconds later, Archy and the boys in the tuck room could hear a horrendously girlish scream.
“Aaaaaaargh! It’s got me! NOOO.” Now they could hear a lot of clanking from the piano and the sound of a music stool being dragged back and forth across the concrete floor.
“NNaaaarrrrr!” Sounds of coughing could be heard, as if someone were being strangled. “NNNaaarrgghh!”
That did the trick. The boys burst out through the doors of the tuck room as if it had been hit by tear gas. Boxes were left open and chess pieces lay scattered everywhere as the reverberation of a dozen boys thundering up the corridor into various parts of the school bounced off the walls.
Vincent finally peeked out of the music room.
“Some friend you are, huh, sitting there while I was attacked.”
“That’s the fakest thing I have ever heard,” said Archy. “And it wasn’t the screams that scared ‘em—it was your piano playing.”
“Ha Ha!” said Vincent, looking over the empty room with a smug face. “It worked, though.”
Archy opened up his tuck box and took out the folded rug. Vincent followed him back into the music room. Archy locked the door and laid it out carefully, stepping around it and sitting at the front. Vincent had already claimed his spot right in the middle. Archy then folded the corners. Without further fuss, Archy lifted them up and out of the music room, hovering in midair just as some of the boys came back in through the swinging doors of the tuck room.
“This ghost rubbish is a myth,” said a tall boy, leading the huddled group of frightened juniors back in behind him. “Don’t you see we have to be men about this? There’s nothing here,” he said, surveying the tuck room. “Nothing.”
Above them Archy moved the rug forward. He ducked to avoid the metal lampshade hanging from the ceiling, but Vincent’s head hit it with a resounding DING! Everyone, looked at the lamp swinging around in circles.
“Uh-oh!” gasped one of the juniors. All of the boys, including the tall one pretending to be brave, pressed themselves against the wall.
Archy couldn’t wait. He swooped past them, shoved the doors open, and darted into the corridor. When the doors swung shut he could hear a lot of shouting and crashing behind them. The doors burst open again and all the boys stampeded out.
“RUUUUNN!” cried the tall boy, elbowing his way to the front of the crowd. “Run for your lives.”
Archy flew out of the building, then swung around to head in the direction of London. He flew slowly to begin with, then took the rug faster and higher. Behind him, Vincent gripped the sides of the rug with all his might, then slowly relaxed to watch in wonder as they shot over small towns and above the busy roadway.
From their new altitude they saw the lights of the cars snake off into the distance, white on one side and red on the other. And after a while, they saw the orange glow of the vast city.
As they approached London, Archy told Vincent as much as he could about the sentinels and their views about who should be a Keeper. By the time they landed in Covent Garden, Vincent knew everything that Archy had learned about the Shroud, about Alturus, SOTS, and the little he knew about the Kurul—everything except the mission of the Restitution.
Archy explained that he couldn’t get him into Parliament without the sentinels’ approval but Vincent seemed okay about it, particularly after Archy handed him a wad of money and told him to get decent food. He also handed him a shopping list.
“What’s this about, Archy? Why do you need toilet paper? Rushburys stuff not good enough for you?”
“Just get everything on the list, okay?” said Archy. “I’ll meet you back here in a couple of hours.”
***
Archy landed near the flawed doors in Parliament and dismounted. Forbes was waiting.
“I had the feeling we’d meet again, Mr. Bass,” Forbes said, releasing one of his sniffing laughs.
Forbes went through doorways that looked like entrances to grubby storage rooms and down sets of perilous stairwells that had been made to deter any sane person. They wound down a spiral staircase that went on for so long that it made Archy’s head spin, but finally they came to St. Stephen’s Crypt.
Forbes let him into the Inner Hall and left him there, explaining that he had to help prepare the sentinels. Archy sat alone on one of the benches, studying the interior. The stillness didn’t ease his tension. He checked his watch, then got up to take a closer look at the dozens of packages propped against the wall. A couple of them were open. Archy could see they were oil paintings ready to be hung. Most of them were still wrapped in brown paper, but the opened ones were of distinguished-looking people.
A distant squeaking noise, like a couple of mice fighting, broke the silence and got louder by the second. Archy looked up to see the chief usher carrying another portrait into the Inner Hall. His highly polished shoes, Archy realized, were the source of the odd noise.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Bass. They told me you’d be down here. I’m dashing in and out this evening.”
Archy watched him hurrying to ready things for the sentinels’ arrival. As Chief-Usher-in-Charge-of-the-Inner-Hall he certainly had to be quick. His name, Archy would soon learn, was Mr. Ian R. Hall but as far as he was concerned this was not funny, especially not this evening.
Archy could see that the chief usher was getting more flustered by the second. So when three trainees arrived late, Archy could only sit and watch as the chief usher shot out terse commands.
“These hearing aids aren’t charged properly. How are the sentinels supposed to listen?” he said, putting tiny pink gadgets back into a box, “…and the cylinders must be checked. Sentinel Puffin needs a regular flow—one part oxygen to two parts helium. You know all this. Why do I have to repeat myself?”
A trainee (distinguishable by his white overalls and Usher-in-Training written on them) approached. He had a rat-like face and kept sucking the air through his protruding teeth.
The other trainee stood hesitating near the back benches. “Shall we turn the heat up now, Mr. Ian R. Hall or—”
“It’s Chief Usher to you, lad! Not now. We turn up the heat only after seven complaints
. No more, no less. Good grief!” He handed the boy the box of hearing aids and shooed him away as if he were a scraggly chicken. “Recharge, recharge!”
Archy was largely ignored during the setting up of the Inner Hall, but after the chief usher finished rushing around he slumped down on the bench near Archy and let out an exasperated sigh.
“Sorry about this, Mr. Bass. These emergency meetings are rare. This one caught me off guard. We were moving the portraits down from the SOTS offices.”
He held one of the oil paintings showing a brown-haired man in a dark business suit, leaning back against a large wooden desk. The chief usher was scouring the wall for the hook when a trainee hurried back over to help him.
“Did you know Baron Von Mannheim, Chief Usher?” the trainee blurted.
“He’s the 56th Keeper to you, Barnett. Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean you can’t show respect by using his proper title. I shouldn’t really be telling you anything at your level.” He took a quick look around. “Quickly then, take a seat.”
In a hushed voice, the chief usher gave a brief history of the Keepers and how they passed the Shroud on like a baton in a relay race. The retiring Keeper would live out his life having been richly rewarded by SOTS for years of vigilance.
Archy learned that Herman Von Mannheim was a baron by title who had inherited extraordinary means and power. The Shroud had been secure with him for more than forty years, but the baron also inherited his family’s lunacy, which didn’t reveal itself until later in his life. It started with slight head nodding and throat clearing, which first occurred while in a famous auction house in Munich. The baron outbid everyone on lots 310 to 327 before his chauffeur spotted the oddity and hustled him away. But it was just the start of a tragic slide.