‘Eat hot feathers, turkeys!’ Felicity was really getting into the spirit of things.
Feathers snowed down as the squealing, whirling, cascading pillow fight rolled around the hotel suite. Lamps toppled, chairs tumbled, vases were deflowered.
Sam and Gerald sought refuge under the dining table. ‘We’re down to one cushion,’ Sam said, breathless.
Gerald punched him on the shoulder. ‘Make it count.’
Sam gave a tight nod, and rolled out into no man’s land. He was immediately hit by a bolster across his ribs. Ruby was pulling back for another swing when Sam wound up with his last throw. But just as he released the cushion his hand was hit by a hard flying pillow from Felicity. Sam’s shot aired high…straight into the crystal chandelier.
There was a colossal crash as cushion met glass. The projectile sailed out the other side, shaking loose a dozen prisms. They rained down like shrapnel onto the carpet.
Everyone stopped.
The chandelier swung on its mount. The last of the goose feathers settled. Gerald emerged from under the table to survey the damage.
‘Oops,’ Sam said.
Ruby grinned wide. ‘You idiot,’ she said, and gave her brother a hug.
Felicity scooped up some cushions and tossed them back onto the sofa, and laughed. ‘I think I needed that.’
Gerald smiled. There was nothing like a pillow fight to vent steam. He knelt down to clear away the crystals. A large one had landed on an open magazine. His hand paused just as he was about to pick it up.
‘Oh, wow,’ he said.
Ruby looked his way. ‘What is it?’
‘Come and see this.’
They crowded over Gerald’s shoulder and looked at the crystal where it lay on the magazine. Through the glass prism, the words on the page bent and twisted like alphabet pretzels.
’Very pretty,’ Sam said.
‘Don’t you see?’ Gerald said. ‘Look at how the glass bends the letters?’ He moved the crystal back and forth, stretching and morphing the images in the magazine. ‘The pendant that Brahe was after, the one that we just gave him. It’s just a chunk of quartz on a cheap silver chain. It can’t be worth more than a couple of dollars. Its value is in what it does.’
‘What does it do?’ Sam said.
‘It’s a key,’ Gerald said.
‘To what?’ Sam said. ‘A chest of gold or something?’
‘No,’ Gerald said. ‘To a code.’
‘You’re thinking about the manuscript that was stolen from that university a few weeks ago,’ Felicity said.
‘Exactly,’ Gerald said. ‘What did Dr Efron from the museum call it?’
‘Wasn’t it something like Boy Itch?’ Sam said.
‘That’s Voynich, you numpty,’ Ruby said.
‘Do you remember back in the chalet, when we were hiding in that blacked-out passageway?’ Gerald said. ‘The voice we heard through the wall was Brahe. I’m sure of it. And he said something about the Falcon coming through with one half of the deal. That must be the manuscript that was stolen from Yale University. Mason Green’s crystal pendant was the other half of the deal.’
‘So Brahe is trying to solve the code in the manuscript,’ Felicity said.
‘That’s why it has never been deciphered,’ Gerald said. ‘Without the crystal prism it’s impossible, no matter how many supercomputers you have.’
Ruby looked at Gerald, impressed. ‘Gerald, you might be onto something.’
‘I’m sure of it,’ he said.
‘What’s in this manuscript that’s worth all this trouble?’ Sam said.
‘Dr Efron said it was rumoured to hold the secret to alchemy—to turning lead into gold,’ Gerald said. ‘If Brahe could do that—’
‘He’d have slightly more money than he already does,’ Ruby said, shaking her head. ‘He’s a billionaire, Gerald. A member of your new club. He’s not short of cash. I think your idea might need some more work.’
The wind fell out of Gerald’s sails. ‘There must be more to it than the money.’
‘Well, Brahe has got the pendant now,’ Ruby said. ‘There’s nothing we can do about that. He will release everyone, won’t he?’
Gerald looked blank. ‘Mason Green promised our parents would be released. But he said Ox and Alisha were in danger.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Ruby said. ‘What’s different about Ox and Alisha?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gerald said. ‘But what more can we do? Brahe doesn’t need anything else from us.’
Felicity straightened in her seat. ‘But he does need something more,’ she said. ‘Do you remember down in the square. Pugly said something about going to a castle, and looking for three people. Jan, Sigmund and someone else.’
‘Rudolph?’ Sam suggested.
‘No, that was the name of the old emperor, wasn’t it?’ Felicity said. ‘The one who bought the manuscript in the first place.’
There was a rattle at the door. A hotel waiter appeared with a large trolley, bearing plates topped with silver cloches. He glanced at the mayhem in the room and shook his head.
Gerald looked at the clock on the wall. He was surprised to see it was after eight in the evening. And he was famished.
The waiter set bowls of steaming dumplings and beef stew across the dining table.
‘Excuse me,’ Felicity said.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the waiter replied.
‘Is there a castle near here?’
The waiter looked at her dumbly for a second, then picked up a remote control from the sideboard and pointed it towards the windows. He pressed a button and the curtains tracked open, revealing an astounding night vista. On a steep hill overlooking the city stood the most extraordinary stone castle.
‘There is that one,’ the waiter said.
Chapter 22
Snow continued to fall under grim skies in the dull light of morning. The castle was no less intimidating. It stood over the city like a bully’s fist.
Breakfast was laid out across the dining table. Gerald turned to Ruby and said, ‘Can you read that again?’ His brain couldn’t process what he had just heard.
Ruby pushed her bowl of cereal to one side and folded back the page of the International Herald Tribune. ‘Some of Britain’s leading historians have gone missing, sparking a major police investigation,’ Ruby read. Even Sam put his fork down to listen. ‘A police spokesman said at least five senior academics have disappeared in the past week—all of whom worked at the British Museum.’ Ruby ran her finger down the page. ‘It lists their names. Professor McElderry is there. And so is that Dr Efron. It goes on to say that—oh my, listen to this—police have not ruled out a link to the theft of the Voynich Manuscript from Yale University.’
‘We only saw Dr Efron a couple of days ago,’ Felicity said. ‘How awful.’
‘Both McElderry and Efron,’ Ruby said. ‘That can’t be a coincidence.’
Gerald gazed out the window. Too many people had gone missing. A memory of Ox came to him, of them playing together for the school rugby team back in Sydney. Ox was always the last man to the ruck, always lumbering behind the play. But he was always there. Trying. Having a go. Gerald blinked. Then he could see Alisha. She was smiling as she haggled with a street vendor in a Delhi market. Her face was so vibrant, so full of life.
Gerald blinked again.
‘We need to get up to that castle,’ he said. He fished in his pocket and pulled out Brahe’s silver nose, rolling it between his fingers. ‘I want to know what Brahe is looking for.’
‘But we haven’t heard if our parents have been released,’ Ruby said. ‘We need to wait here for the police to call.’
‘I don’t like coincidences,’ Gerald said. He grabbed up his jacket. ‘And I don’t like waiting.’
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As it turned out, neither did Ruby, Sam or Felicity.
And just as it can in San Francisco, in Prague a hundred-dollar tip can buy you a ride in a hotel dining trolley.
They plodded across the Charles Bridge, huddled together in a vain attempt to ward off the cold. Only the occasional tourist crossed their path as they slogged through the snowdrifts and up the hill towards the castle.
‘You’d never forget who the boss was, would you?’ Gerald said, peering through the tumbling curtain of white towards the sheer stone walls high above.
Felicity nudged him with a shoulder. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If you were a peasant back then. You’d wake up every morning to see that thing staring down at you. You wouldn’t be game to do anything wrong. It’d be straight out to the fields for work or you’d have a platoon of soldiers on your case.’ He thought for a second. ‘It’d be like living next door to the school principal.’
Felicity laughed. ‘A lot like boarding school, then.’
They climbed a winding stairway cut into the hillside. At the top it opened out to a large square. At one end stood a tall set of iron gates capped by two enormous statues: a pair of giants engaged in ferocious battle. One was armed with a dagger and the other was wielding a club. Gerald, Felicity, Sam and Ruby stared up at them.
‘Yep,’ Gerald said, gazing into a giant face that was contorted with unspeakable rage, ‘just like boarding school.’
There was a slender sentry box at the base of each statue. Inside each one was a guard, wrapped in an overcoat and standing to attention with a rifle slung over his shoulder. The guards looked only slightly less ferocious than the giant statues that stood above them.
Ruby elbowed Gerald in the ribs and pointed to a sign on the gate. It read: ‘Closed for Christmas–New Year.’ Ruby looked up to the spired turrets of the castle beyond. ‘That puts a stop to all that, then.’
Gerald considered the guards in the sentry boxes, and their rifles.
‘We can get around those two,’ he said.
‘How, exactly?’ Ruby said.
‘It’ll come to me.’
The answer arrived a moment later, in the form of more guards. Muffled boot steps from behind caught Gerald’s attention. He turned to see four sentries marching their way across the square. He checked his watch. Right on nine o’clock.
‘The changing of the guard,’ Ruby said. ‘Just like at Buckingham Palace.’
They watched as the two soldiers in the sentry boxes emerged and marched out to meet their replacements. There was a convoluted exchange of orders and salutes, and Gerald saw their chance.
‘Quick,’ he hissed. ‘While they’re busy.’
He slipped behind one of the sentry boxes, and through the gates. He didn’t look back as he scurried across the courtyard, but he could hear footsteps following him. He hoped they didn’t belong to the guards.
Gerald ducked inside an arched carriageway and pressed his back against the cold stone wall. Felicity scooted in beside him, followed by Ruby and Sam.
‘Did they see us?’ Felicity said, craning her neck to peek back towards the gates.
‘Since we haven’t been shot, I think we’re okay,’ Sam said.
They crept to the far end of the carriageway, where it opened into a snow-filled courtyard. ‘What do we do now?’ Sam asked.
‘We try to find those guys that Brahe was talking about,’ Gerald said. ‘Jan and whatsisface.’
Ruby looked at Gerald and sucked on her teeth. ‘You haven’t given this a lot of thought, have you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’ve just broken into a castle. We can hardly front up to complete strangers and ask if they know someone called Jan. And what if they do? Where does that get us?’
Gerald kept staring across the courtyard at the building opposite. ‘It gets us closer to solving this mystery,’ he said flatly.
‘Have you ever considered that some mysteries are best left unsolved?’
Gerald thought for a second. ‘Nope,’ he said, and started off across the courtyard.
Ruby scurried after him. ‘You can be so stubborn,’ she said, catching up to him. ‘Why can’t you just ease up for once?’
Gerald stopped at a large doorway and turned to face Ruby.
‘Look,’ he said, staring hard into her eyes. ‘I may be entirely clueless when it comes to girls—’
‘Yes,’ Ruby said. ‘Entirely.’
‘But I am certain about two things. Our parents are fine and they’ll be free soon. And Brahe is not going to get away with this.’ Gerald didn’t say it, but after Mason Green’s warning, he still had a gnawing doubt about Ox and Alisha’s safety.
Ruby’s cheeks turned pink. She and Gerald looked at each other in silence until Sam and Felicity caught up.
Sam pushed open the door and stepped inside. ‘Let’s go you two,’ he called back to Gerald and Ruby. ‘What’s keeping you?’
Ruby opened her mouth to speak but was lost for words.
‘Come on,’ Gerald said to her. ‘Don’t stand in the way of a stubborn man.’
They climbed a broad set of stairs and found themselves inside a cavernous hall.
Sam let out a low whistle. ‘You could play a football match in here,’ he said.
Banks of windows ran the length of the hall and the grey daylight seeped inside. Chandeliers were suspended in a line along the centre of the stone-vaulted ceiling, their unlit bulbs casting no cheer in the chilly chamber.
Felicity called over from the far wall, where she was reading an information card. ‘It says here that there used to be jousting in this place.’
‘People in suits of armour on horses and all that?’ Sam said. He snorted to himself. ‘Mum loses it if I come inside with my football boots on.’
‘Sounds like this King Rudolph knew how to have fun,’ Gerald said.
Ruby wandered over to a window. ‘It’s good to be the king,’ she said, and gazed down at the courtyard outside. ‘This place is enormous. We could look for days and not find anything.’
Gerald joined her at the window. ‘It’d be good to get some height,’ he said. ‘To get an idea of how big this place is.’ He pointed to a tower across the courtyard. ‘That looks like the tallest part of the castle. Want to climb up and check the view?’
‘If I said no, would that stop you?’
‘Probably not.’
Gerald led the way across the courtyard and up some stairs to a door at the base of the tower. They peered inside a musty entrance hall. Apart from a stand of postcards against one wall, the room looked much as it would have done six hundred years before. At the back of the hall, a tight spiral staircase wound up into the shadows.
Gerald put his foot onto the bottom step and squinted up the barrel of the staircase. ‘I can’t see a thing,’ he said. Then he started to climb.
He flattened his left hand against the wall, feeling his way in the dark. The cold stonework was worn smooth by centuries of others making the same dim journey up the narrow winding stairs. On and on they went. Every few turns they would pass an arched window set into the thick wall, giving a spectacular view of the castle surrounds and the city of Prague beyond.
‘I’m beginning to see why Rapunzel got her visitors to take a shortcut,’ Ruby said, plodding higher and higher. ‘This is killer on the thighs.’
After a few more turns up the corkscrew, the stairs opened out to a landing and an enormous bell suspended inside a large wire cage.
‘Check that out,’ Sam said. The bell hung a metre or so above the floor. Ropes attached to its top trailed down through holes in the floorboards. It appeared to be extremely old.
Gerald tugged at Sam’s elbow. ‘Let’s keep going.’
The stairs wound on up
into the tower. Gerald strained to see, but the darkness was complete. All he could sense was the soft shuffle of their boots on the worn steps and the rub of stone wall against the skin of his hand.
Again, after a few turns of the narrow stairway, they came to a landing, and another bell suspended in a cage.
Snow swirled past the narrow window. The silence was absolute.
Gerald indicated the stairs with a nod and he set off again into the shadows. The stairway seemed to become narrower the higher they wound. Gerald arrived on a third landing to find the same arrangement as before: a huge bell suspended inside a room with iron bars for walls, like a prison cell. This bell was by far the largest. And the door to the room was ajar.
Gerald slipped through the gap. Ruby, Sam and Felicity followed. He wrinkled his nose at the stale mustiness in the air. The room was bare, apart from a wooden table against the far wall. It was covered in sheets of old paper. Sam lifted a large lump of coal from the pile and picked up a yellowed magazine.
‘It’s from 1984,’ he said, holding the cover up to the spare light filtering in from an arched window.
There was a sudden fluttering sound above their heads. Felicity gasped, grabbing Ruby’s arm. They looked up to see a pigeon flapping its wings before settling back in its nest.
‘I don’t think anyone has been here for a very long time,’ Gerald said.
But just as he spoke there was a loud bang.
They all jumped at the sound.
The door to the caged room had slammed shut. The bolt shot home. Gerald swung around to see someone disappear down the stairwell, heavy boots pounding into the darkness.
‘Hey!’ he yelled, rattling the door. ‘Hey!’
‘Was it Brahe?’ Felicity asked. She squeezed an arm between the bars but couldn’t reach the bolt.
‘Or Pugly, maybe,’ Ruby said. She joined Gerald shaking the door against its hinges. It wouldn’t budge.
‘Now what do we do?’ Felicity said.
The Crystal Code Page 16