The Mask of Destiny

by Richard Newsome

  After five minutes of sweat-coated effort, Gerald’s head popped out into a large chamber. He dragged himself over a low stone wall that ringed the top of the shaft like a wishing well set into the floor. Light filtered into the chamber through windows high in the walls. It took a few seconds for Gerald’s eyes to adjust. When they did, he let out a low whistle.

  He leaned over the wall and called down to the cave below. ‘It’s safe for you guys to come up now. And Ruby?’

  ‘Yes?’ her voice echoed up the shaft.

  ‘You have to promise me something.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That you won’t scream when you get up here, okay?’

  There was a long pause. ‘Why would I want to scream?’

  ‘Well, there’s a few bones up here, that’s all.’

  There was another pause. Then Ruby’s voice filtered up through the hole in the stone floor. ‘Sam wants to know if there’s any rats.’

  Gerald grinned to himself. ‘No, Hercules,’ he called down the hole. ‘You’ll be right. Ruby, give Sam a leg up, then he can reach down and pull you up by the hands.’

  Soon, Sam’s head emerged through the hole in the floor. He looked around and his eyes opened wide.

  Gerald gave him a hand over the wall. ‘Uh, Ruby,’ Sam called down to his sister. ‘Maybe you should close your eyes for the last little bit.’

  Ruby’s voice sounded up from below. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. How bad can a couple of bones be?’

  Her head reached the surface. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ she said to Sam. ‘Give me a hand.’ Gerald and Sam reached down and yanked Ruby up into the chamber.

  She landed lightly on her feet. ‘Thank you,’ she said, brushing herself down. ‘Now where are—’ She stopped mid-sentence and turned a slow circle, taking in the full majesty of the enormous hall surrounding them. Every wall, every section of the ceiling, every frame of every window, was laid out with a pattern fashioned entirely from bones.

  Human bones.

  An alcove to their left was decorated with a mosaic constructed from hundreds of skulls—a vast bank of sightless eye sockets trained right on them. Arms and legs lined the architraves, feet and hands formed sweeping patterns of flowers and swirls. Tibias, ulnas, humeri…thousands upon thousands of them in gothic splendour. Ruby took it all in with a slack-jawed silence.

  ‘Ruby?’ Gerald said gently. ‘Are you all right?’ He swapped an anxious look with Sam. ‘Ruby?’

  The screaming only started when Gerald put his hand on her shoulder.

  Pigeons lofting in the upper window ledges were shaken from their nests by a shriek of such unparalleled clarity that it made Gerald’s teeth hurt. Ruby’s mouth extended like a bullfrog and the glass-splintering sound that escaped seemed to go on forever. The more Sam tried to calm her, the more wound up she got. She batted away his hands and screeched in primal terror at the skulls, which seemed to echo back like some choir of the damned. It was a good minute before she ran out of steam.

  In the silence that followed, stray pigeon feathers wafted down from the rafters to rest on their heads. Gerald held out a tentative hand to Ruby.

  ‘I did try to warn you,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. Cheers,’ Ruby said in a hoarse whisper. ‘A few bones. That really helped. Thanks.’

  Gerald took her by the elbow. ‘There’s a door at the far end,’ he said as soothingly as he could. ‘Let’s find a way out.’

  Ruby nodded. ‘Yes. Out would be a good idea.’ She allowed herself to be guided past piles of bones, stacked end-on like cordwood up the walls. They walked by long tables constructed from femurs and clavicles, chairs with skulls at the ends of the armrests, even a hat stand with a spray of ribs coming out the top.

  ‘Who would do this?’ Ruby whispered, her eyes tracing the white-boned artistry that surrounded them. ‘It’s obscene.’

  ‘I’ve heard of places like this,’ Gerald said, leading them into a long corridor. ‘Catacombs. Houses of the dead. These skeletons probably date back a thousand years. I don’t think there are any fresh ones.’

  ‘But who would use human bones to make a sculpture?’ Ruby said.

  Sam shrugged. ‘It’s good to have a hobby.’

  They rounded a corner and Gerald suddenly stopped in his tracks. Sam walked into the back of him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sam said. ‘Can’t you—’ He stopped protesting when he saw it. The corridor made a sharp turn to the right. And on the wall facing them was a mosaic, unlike any they’d seen so far.

  ‘My family seal,’ Gerald croaked. ‘With real arms.’

  Halfway up the wall, at the centre of an elaborate design of bones, was a triangle of arms, clutched at the elbows. But instead of a sun at the centre, there was a single skull, its vacant eyes staring at them.

  ‘What’s that doing there?’ Ruby said.

  Gerald glanced down at the gold rings on his fingers. Did he feel a spark of electricity coming from them? The bands pulling tighter against his skin? He flexed his hands.

  Sam was already at the wall, his nose right up against the skull at the centre of the mural. ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Is the ruby casket behind here?’

  ‘Could be,’ Gerald said, joining him by the nest of bones. ‘Booby-trapped, do you think?’

  Sam inspected the jigsaw of body bits and pursed his lips.

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ he said. He poked two fingers into the eye sockets of the skull, and pulled.

  The head popped out like a cork from a bottle. There was an unnerving silence as they waited for something to happen.

  Nothing did.

  Finally, Sam spoke up. ‘Looks good to me,’ he said. ‘Here, Ruby. Hold onto this.’ And he tossed the skull to his sister.

  Ruby caught the head on her chest. She looked down to find two empty eyeholes staring up at her.

  A strange gurgling noise came from Ruby’s throat. She looked to Gerald, panic in her face.

  ‘It’s all right, Ruby,’ he said. ‘It can’t hurt you. It’s just a piece of bone.’

  Ruby opened her mouth and gargled a response. She swallowed, and said quietly, ‘That’s right. Just a piece of bone.’

  There was a sudden knocking sound behind them. Gerald spun round. The wall of bones was starting to vibrate, clattering together as if caught in an earthquake.

  ‘Uh oh,’ Sam said. ‘Bone slide!’

  The wall collapsed on top of them. Hundreds of leg and arm bones tumbled across the floor, sending up a cloud of dust. By the time the debris settled, Gerald, Sam and Ruby were waist deep in skeleton bits.

  Sam gave a rueful grin. ‘Whoops,’ he said.

  Ruby stood frozen in place. A rib was teetering on one shoulder. A jawbone complete with teeth rested on her head like some Halloween tiara. She still held the skull in her hands. A look of manic insanity was etched into her face.

  Gerald kicked his way through the litter to get to her. He plucked off the rib and jaw and tossed them aside, then took the skull and dropped it onto the pile behind him. Without saying a word, he led Ruby out of the bone avalanche.

  She turned her head to face him, the manic smile still in place, her eyes like ping pong balls. ‘Thank you, Gerald,’ she said slowly. ‘That was very kind of you.’

  Gerald raised an eyebrow. ‘Uh, don’t mention it. Are you okay?’

  Ruby blinked a dozen times and her cheek twitched. ‘Of course. Why don’t you go and help Sam?’

  ‘Okay. As long as you’re sure.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure.’

  Gerald cleared a path to where Sam was standing. They both looked back at Ruby.

  ‘I think she’s in shock,’ Gerald said.

  Sam knocked the last of the bones away from the wall. ‘It’s better than the screaming. Hey, check this out.’

  Set into the blank stone wall was a squat vault, about the same size as the dumb waiter in Gerald’s house in London. Its interior was lost in shadows. Gerald reached inside a
nd felt around. His hand fell on something and he pulled out a large book bound in red leather. Pressed onto the cover in gold leaf was the Archer family seal.

  Before Gerald had a chance to flip it open, Sam emitted a cry of delight. ‘I think it’s the casket!’ His arm was sunk up to the shoulder in the vault. He strained and dragged a long stone box halfway out of the hole. Gerald shoved the book into his pack and gave Sam a hand.

  ‘This has got to be it,’ Gerald said. Together, he and Sam hefted the casket out of the wall. They struggled with it to a clear space near where Ruby was standing. The sight of the ancient stone chest seemed to jolt Ruby out of her trance.

  ‘It’s identical to the others,’ she said. Then she shot a glance at her brother. ‘And don’t for one second think I won’t be getting even with you for that skull.’

  Gerald dropped to his knees and ran his fingers over a carving of an archer in the middle of the casket lid. There was a hollow in its muscled abdomen. ‘The ruby would fit in there perfectly,’ he said.

  He looked at Sam and Ruby. ‘We’ve got some bait now. That cat woman won’t be able to resist this. Time to call Inspector Parrott and let him know what we’ve found.’

  Sam looked down at the chest by his feet. ‘Can’t we just break it open and take whatever’s inside?’ he said. ‘It weighs a tonne.’

  ‘Can’t risk it,’ Gerald said. ‘It’s bound to be another of those golden rods and you saw how Green handled the last one. It was like it was made of hundred-year-old crystal. We’ll need the key.’

  ‘So we have to carry this?’ Sam said.

  ‘Just like Hercules,’ Gerald said. ‘Come on. It can’t be far to the outside.’

  Sam and Gerald each took an end and started a slow walk down the corridor.

  ‘How do you think the casket ended up in that wall?’ Ruby asked. ‘This place would have been built centuries after Lucius brought it here.’

  ‘I’d say it was the same people who dug that shaft down to the cavern where we found the skeleton,’ Gerald said. ‘Maybe some of the original monks found the casket next to Lucius and moved it to higher ground. It must have been stuck behind those bones for hundreds of years.’

  Ruby shivered. ‘Let’s not mention the bones,’ she said. ‘Ever again.’

  Gerald swallowed a grin. It was good to see Ruby mostly back to normal.

  They turned a corner and Gerald slapped a hand up to his throat, as if swatting at a mosquito. He lost his grip on the end of the casket and it crashed to the floor. The sudden lurch forward tore it from Sam’s hands and his end dropped with a thud. An indescribable pain shot into Gerald’s chest. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  ‘Gerald?’ Sam said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Gerald spun to face them, his hand still at his neck. A trickle of blood ran from between his fingers.

  ‘Gerald?’

  His eyelids peeled back. He couldn’t breathe. His free hand shot out and grabbed Ruby by the arm. His knees buckled; they wouldn’t hold him. He took a step backwards to lean on a wall. His body shuddered. His legs collapsed, and he slid to the floor.

  ‘Gerald!’ Ruby cried.

  There was a movement from the shadows ahead. Then a slender woman with a wave of dark brown hair stepped from an arched doorway and into the light. She held a narrow tube in one hand.

  ‘Hello, Gerald,’ she said. ‘I see you’ve found my casket.’

  Gerald’s breathing came in short spasms. His lungs were incapable of filling themselves.

  The woman strode across to them, leaned down and plucked a tiny dart from Gerald’s neck.

  ‘Now listen to me very carefully,’ she said. ‘Or you are going to die.’

  Chapter 10

  Gerald lay propped against the wall with his legs along the floor. Shallow breaths fluttered in his chest. Ruby was on her knees, clutching his hand.

  ‘Push the casket over here.’ The woman snapped her order at Sam. He obeyed without a word, heaving the box across the stone floor.

  She was all efficiency—dressed in commando chic: body-hugging black trousers and shirt, laced boots and a leather pouch attached to her belt. A long cylinder was slung over her back and strapped across her chest. She knelt by the side of the casket and ran her hands over the surface, a smile playing on her face.

  ‘My uncle was right about you,’ she said. ‘You are useful idiots. You and your friend Constable Lethbridge.’

  Gerald struggled to take in a breath. ‘Mason Green… your uncle?’

  Ruby held his hand tight. ‘Don’t try to talk,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter about Green.’ Then she turned to the woman. ‘What have you done to him? What was in that dart?’

  The woman glanced up from the casket. ‘Charlotte,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My name is Charlotte. I have given Gerald a strong dose of a deadly toxin, which, if left untreated, will cause his central nervous system to collapse. He has about ten minutes left to live.’

  A cry caught in Ruby’s throat. ‘No! You’ve got to help him.’

  Gerald coughed weakly. His skin was the colour of mortician’s wax. ‘Cold,’ he whispered. ‘I’m cold.’ He blinked—he was losing focus at the edges, as if he was looking down a long tube. But he could make out the tears that were running down Ruby’s cheeks. He gripped her hands, her fingers burning hot in the ice of his grasp. He held on, as hard as he could.

  Ruby stared into Gerald’s eyes. The light in them was starting to fade. ‘You can’t let him—’ she swallowed her words. ‘There must be something.’

  Charlotte pulled a red leather roll from the pouch on her belt and untied the binding. She unrolled the package to reveal a large gem. Even in the dull light of the catacombs, the ruby glowed.

  ‘There is an antidote,’ she said, as calmly as if she was discussing the weather. She picked up the ruby and placed it in the indentation in the casket lid. The gem sat in place as naturally as a queen on a throne. Charlotte gripped the stone in both hands and twisted. The carving of the archer swivelled like clockwork. ‘I could give it to you,’ she said. She curled her manicured fingers under the edge of the lid, and pulled. The top came free and she laid it on the floor. ‘But first, you need to tell me something.’

  Gerald felt a heavy weight pressing on his chest. Pins of light were sparking in his eyes. He strained to raise his head so he could see what Charlotte was doing. ‘Is it…golden rod?’

  His voice was so weak it barely reached the woman hovering over the casket.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Charlotte said, lifting a gilded bar into the light. ‘The third of the holy three.’

  Gerald’s head flopped back. His grip on Ruby’s hand began to weaken. ‘I knew it…’ ‘Do something!’ Ruby screamed.

  The cry jolted Charlotte from her fascination with the relic in her hands. She shrugged the cylinder from her shoulders and slid the rod into its padded interior, locking a cap on the end. ‘I will give you the antidote if you tell me what you know about the Tower of the Winds.’

  There was a stunned silence. Gerald could make out the words but they made no sense to him. He’d never heard of any such place. He tried to respond but the energy deserted him.

  ‘We don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Sam said. He took a pace towards the woman but stopped mid-stride.

  ‘Not so close, Mr Valentine,’ Charlotte said. She pulled a glass vial from the pouch on her belt. ‘If I drop this, your friend’s life goes down the drain. I’m sure you don’t want that on your conscience.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘He still has five minutes or so. I mixed the batch myself. I studied chemistry at Cambridge, you see.’

  ‘Did you learn how to kill your relatives there as well?’ Ruby said.

  Charlotte let out the type of laugh you might hear at a polite cocktail party in a ritzy hotel. ‘Do you mean that old fool at the courthouse? He’d outlived his use. It was easy enough shooting a dart into him while he was talking to you, Gerald. Almost as e
asy as getting your DNA from the drinking straw in the cafeteria.’

  ‘You were the waitress!’ Sam said.

  ‘You are the clever one, aren’t you. Yes, I slummed it for a morning. Then it was a simple task of planting the evidence in your bedroom. And since your friend Constable Lethbridge had kindly told me where to find the ruby, my job was basically done. A phone call to the police to let them know where the blowgun was hidden and I had successfully eliminated a burdensome old man and framed you for the murder. Leaving me free to claim my birthright. A good day’s work, I think.’

  ‘Lethbridge told you?’ Gerald’s voice was barely a whisper.

  ‘The antidote,’ Ruby said. ‘Please.’

  Charlotte stared at the tear-stained face before her, then at the wretched boy collapsed on the floor. ‘You know nothing of the Tower of the Winds?’

  ‘I’d do anything to save Gerald,’ Ruby pleaded. ‘You have to believe me. I’d tell you if I could.’

  Charlotte rolled the vial in her hand, then launched it across the room at Ruby. ‘Catch!’ she said, and set off down the corridor at a run.

  Ruby’s eyes fixed on the glass tube as it sailed through the air. Gerald lifted his head to see it spinning slowly towards the floor. Ruby dived forward and thrust out her right hand. But she was too late. The vial clipped her thumb and she missed it. A cry fell from her lips.

  Then Sam’s hand slid underneath, and the fragile container plumped into his palm as if alighting on a cushion.

  ‘Quick!’ Ruby called.

  Sam lifted the vial to his eyes. Inside the tube rattled a yellow stick the size and shape of a fountain pen. ‘What do we do?’ he asked.

  Ruby took the vial and unscrewed the end. The yellow stick slid into her hand. She stared down at it, helpless. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

  Gerald’s vision had narrowed to a pinhole. His chest had turned to concrete; his breathing was almost non-existent. But his eyes were focused with gun-sight precision on the object in Ruby’s hand. He’d only have one shot at this.

  He harnessed his energy and lunged forward, snatching the stick. He shoved one end into his mouth and clamped his teeth around a rubber stopper to wrench it free, revealing the tip of a needle. Then, with the last of his strength, he drove the needle hard into his thigh.