Lock & Key

by Gordon Bonnet

  “And you can feel well enough with that tool to picture what shape the key should be?”

  “It usually takes me a few tries,” Per said. “But I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

  “That’s extraordinary.”

  Per shrugged again, and picked a small piece of charcoal from the counter, and a rather ragged piece of paper, and slowly, meticulously, made sketches of keys. He worked at this for nearly a half hour, repeatedly going back to the box with his tool to check his ideas, making modifications to his sketches as he gathered information about the inside of the lock barrel.

  After finishing the sketches to his satisfaction, Per pushed paper and charcoal aside, put his tool back into the leather pouch, and retrieved his cooled key blanks from the molds.

  He watched, fascinated, as Per picked up the ceramic molds, and knocked the key blanks jingling onto the workbench, examined each one with a critical eye, tossing three of them back into the crucible with a dissatisfied snort.

  Using pliers, hammer, and a punch, he shaped the best of the remaining two. First he cut away chunks of the flat blade of the key, using a bit of fine-grained sandstone to smooth the edges, and tested it repeatedly in the keyhole, moving gently and with great caution. The bits of silver he removed were carefully swept up and put back into the crucible. He wasted nothing, not even the smallest sliver.

  After working for nearly an hour, he tentatively tested the key, and felt it give slightly. He said, under his breath, “Nearly right,” and went back to his pliers and sandstone, bending and filing the blade with a deft hand. The next time he inserted the key, it turned smoothly, and there was a click as the latch released.

  Per allowed himself a faint smile to celebrate his success. It was the first time Darren had seen him smile since his arrival. He lifted the lid of the box, and it opened silently.

  The inside of the box was empty.

  “Somehow,” Darren said, “I expected there to be some kind of clue inside.”

  “There still may be,” Per said.

  “Where?”

  “I recognize this type of box. It was made not only for practical uses—for rich ladies to keep their jewelry in—but to transport secret messages. Spies and government officials use them. There’s often a secret compartment at the back, or sometimes under the bottom plate of the box. It’s got a false back or bottom, you see. That way, you can hide a message inside what appears to be an empty box. If you’re searched, or if your belongings are stolen, your secret remains safe.”

  Per peered into the box, and tapped tentatively on the bottom.

  “I haven’t seen one of these in a long time. They’re quite rare and expensive.”

  He pushed against the floor of the box, and it gave a little, and sprung back when he let go. He pushed again, harder this time, and it slid over by a fraction of an inch, and then he tipped the box over. The bottom of the box fell forward, swiveling on a tiny pair of hinges.

  “I never knew that was there,” Darren said. “All these years, and I never knew there was a secret compartment.”

  Inside was a small space, no larger than a playing card, carved into the actual bottom plate of the box.

  Tucked inside was a small piece of folded paper. Per picked it up gently, and opened it while Darren watched over his shoulder. The paper was old and worn, but appeared to be blank. Per turned it over in his hand, and shrugged and set it down on the workbench.

  Otherwise, the box was empty.

  “How can that be?” Darren said. “There has to be something relevant about this.”

  “I don’t know,” Per said. “And I need to eat something before I work on finishing the key.” Per set the box down, with the unfinished key still protruding from the keyhole, picked up his shirt, and walked through the leather curtain and into the living area of the shop.

  They lunched off dried fish, dried fruit, a hunk of bread, and mugs of ale.

  After consuming most of the meal in silence, Per asked, “What did you expect to find when the box was opened?”

  “I’m not sure. Actually, I wondered if it might not be some kind of written message. Maybe a clue from the people I was with when I was in Scotland. You know, something that would link that piece of the puzzle to this one.”

  Per nodded thoughtfully. “It does seem to me that you are making a great many assumptions.”

  “I’m sure,” he said, his tone bitter. “But that’s partly because we’ve got almost no facts to go on.”

  “Indeed,” Per said. “But even considering that, I think that there is still a flaw in your reasoning.”

  “Really?”

  Per took a sip of his ale. “Well, perhaps I have misunderstood. You have told me that this man, Lee, the one who you believe to be the cause of all of this, tried to kill you, and then escaped into the past so as to get away with his crime, and while there interfered with something that then changed history.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see him vanish? After he tried to kill you, did he then disappear before your eyes?”

  “No. As soon as he tried to kill me, everything changed.”

  “Tell me in detail what happened.” Per leaned back in his chair, and laced his hands across his belly.

  How could this ever make sense to a man from the fourteenth century? So much had changed since then. And yet—Per seemed to understand, and accept, what had happened far more easily than he did.

  Maybe that was the downside of the twenty-first century rationalist approach. When something didn’t fit, the modern brain couldn’t handle it. In Per’s time, they didn’t expect things to make sense, or at least not in the same way. It was a different way of looking at the world, far more fundamentally different than had been evident at first. It made them get it wrong sometimes—like Gerda rejecting that the plague was carried by fleas—but it did leave them more open to a lot of things that were outside of their frame of reference, things that someone from the twenty-first century would have rejected out of hand.

  “Well, in my time, we have weapons called guns,” he started, a little tentatively. “They fling a small metal ball, called a bullet, at a very high speed.”

  “Like a sling?” Per asked.

  “Sort of. But far faster. Guns can kill people, if the bullets they fire hit you in the head, or in the heart. Lee fired his gun at my head, from close by, from no farther away than you are from me now.”

  There was that quizzical rise of the eyebrow, about the most emotion that Per ever showed. “Indeed? And you survived?”

  “Without a scratch.”

  “And afterwards, Lee was gone.”

  He shook his head. “No. Afterwards, I was gone. I found Fischer and the other Monitors, and they told me that at the instant the gun was fired, every other human in the world ceased to exist.”

  “Well, then,” Per said, “you see that your explanation cannot be correct, then.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Lee himself was destroyed, is that not so?”

  “Well…” An uneasy sensation rose in the pit of his stomach, as he saw where the argument was leading. “Yes, we think that’s right.”

  “Then if Lee, and everyone else, were destroyed the moment the weapon was fired at you, how can he have escaped into the past and changed anything? He was no longer alive to do so.”

  He stared at Per for a moment. “My god. How can that not have occurred to us?”

  “It is a peculiar situation. When in peculiar situations, it is easy enough to miss the obvious.”

  “But that would mean…” He frowned, concentrating. “That would mean that it was the act of killing me that caused things to change, not something Lee did in the past.”

  “That seems to me to be the only possibility.”

  “But how can that be? I’m not important. In my home, I’m just a shop owner. People die all the time. Hell, people are killed all the time, and this doesn’t happen. Why would his trying to kill me affect everything?”


  Per drained the last of his ale. “I think that when you figure that out, you will be able to explain everything else that has happened without difficulty.”

  • • •

  That afternoon, Darren watched Per work on the decorative shaping of the handle of the key. He didn’t speak up, not until he was sure. He didn’t want to feel afterwards that he had swayed Per, and perhaps induced him to make a key similar to the one that had once hung on a chain around his neck. He would never afterwards have been able to be certain that he was right, that the box and the key were identical to the ones owned by his Grandma Kathy.

  But as the key took shape under Per’s tools, as the twists and loops were cut into the metal, it quickly became obvious there could be no doubt. The key was identical to the one he had worn, the one willed to him by his favorite grandmother, the one mysteriously lost the night Lee had fired his gun and started him on this bizarre adventure.

  As Per finished, gently sanding the rough spots on the key, and then polishing it with a cloth to a high luster, Darren said, “That’s it, Per. It’s the same key.”

  “Is it?” Per said.

  “No question.”

  “It is astonishing that it came to you, down through time. How far in the future is your home?”

  “About six hundred and fifty years.”

  “To think that something I made could live so long,” Per said. “I am glad. Even if none in your time know my name. It is good that something I have done will outlive me.”

  “I suppose that’s all we can hope for.”

  Per nodded. “Darren, it is in my heart to ask something. Perhaps you do not know. Perhaps you know, but it would be unlawful to tell. But I must ask. You have much knowledge of the flow of time, and to my ears, it sounds as if these Monitors you know of, these ones who can control their journey in and out of time, they know a great deal more. I wish to know… my life, what is left of it… will it be long or short? Many have died since the plague struck. Nearly a third of Trondheim is gone, houses and farms empty and silent, cattle and goats and sheep running wild because there are none there to care for them, fields of grain lying rotten and unharvested for want of someone to reap it. What lies ahead for me? Do not fear to tell me if it is to be short. In many ways I would welcome death. Although, I do fear the suffering. I have seen many people die of the plague—my brother and sister, and my father. They suffered greatly, although it was over in barely a day. If this is to be my fate, I could bear it, I think. But I would like to know.”

  He studied Per’s thin, intense face, and felt his stomach clench. He hadn’t realized that Per had lost so many family members to the Black Death. Everyone did. Whole villages ceased to be when the plague swept through. And not all were as philosophical about it as Gerda. People went crazy, blamed Satan, thought it was the End Times. Some found scapegoats in the Jews and the Gypsies, and added to the misery by killing innocent people they thought were the cause of the disease.

  “I wish I could tell you,” he said. “So I could put your worries to rest. But I simply don’t know. I’m not even sure Fischer knows. Especially now that the entire timeline has been altered, there’s no way to know what happened, much less what should have happened.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

  Per looked at him in silence for a moment. “No, you need not apologize. I should not have asked you. It is perhaps best in any case. If we were to know our fate, how many of us would drive ourselves mad trying to change it? Trying to avoid the destiny God has ordained for us? I simply wish faith came more easily to me. I have spoken with Father Sven about it. Perhaps I should speak to him again.” He picked up the key, and rubbed his finger across its polished surface. “In any case, I hope you may accomplish the task for which you were sent here. Whatever others may believe, I believe with all my heart that there is a path set beneath the feet of each man and woman, although we cannot see it. There is a way that we were destined to tread. And this,” he gestured around him, “it is wrong. There is another path that was meant for me. And I believe that one of the reasons you have come here is to set my feet back onto the path where they should have walked.”

  • • •

  That evening, Darren helped Per to close up shop for the night, and was shown how to tend the fire in the smithy, to cover the embers with ashes, so the glowing coals wouldn’t die out at night and relighting the fire in the morning would be easier. Afterwards, he dusted the ash from his hands, leaving black smudges on the pants Fischer had loaned him.

  Oh, well, if Fischer was going to send him to medieval Norway, he should expect that his clothes would come back dirty. He passed the workbench, where the box and the new silver key still sat, and glanced down at the little slip of paper Per had discovered in the secret compartment.

  On its surface, which had once been blank, was now a fine tracery of writing.

  He picked it up, looking at it with a frown. Could it be the same piece of paper? Had he missed the writing at first for some reason? Then he realized there must have been some sort of invisible ink on the paper, and leaving it near the dry heat of the fireplace had somehow caused it to become visible. He remembered making a simple invisible ink out of lemon juice as a child, and marveling at how writing appeared seemingly from nowhere when the paper was passed over a candle flame. He had no doubt that this was something of the same kind.

  He had the same sense now as when he had looked at the sign in front of Per’s shop, that he was looking at writing in a foreign language, but that the letters were rearranging themselves into English in his brain. And so he read:

  Siege of Novgorod failed Magnus taking sea route Stockholm to Trondheim to meet Haakon intercept there Spare none Olaf will have ship waiting Valdemar will meet you in Copenhagen with payment

  He pondered this in silence for a moment, and then called out, “Um, Per? I think you’d better come take a look at this.”

  A moment later, Per pushed aside the curtain into the smithy, and stood there, looking at him questioningly.

  He handed Per the piece of paper. “The heat of the fireplace made writing appear,” he said. “It was evidently written using some sort of ink that is invisible until it’s heated. Read what it says. I think we have a serious problem, here.”

  Per absorbed the contents of the note without his face betraying any emotion.

  “Do you know who the note refers to?” Darren said.

  “Oh, yes,” Per said. “There is no doubt about that. Magnus and Haakon are the king and his son, who co-rule Norway. Magnus has been away on a crusade to Novgorod since last year, attempting to conquer territory east. There is much resentment at this, that the king was away as so many of his people were dying of the plague.”

  “The king couldn’t have prevented that.”

  “No, but still, to have our country’s leader away fighting in a distant place, trying to subdue a land none of us will ever see and few of us care about while the Black Death ravages his own people seemed blameworthy to many. His son, Haakon, has acted as go-between, but has also been away more than he has been in the country.”

  “And Olaf? And Valdemar?”

  “Olaf is a common name, but I believe that this must refer to Olaf, the Archbishop of Trondheim. Valdemar is the king of Denmark, whom some would like to see ruling Norway and Sweden as well.”

  “So that means…”

  “It means,” Per said, “that Lars Jonsson is a traitor, and we have been assisting men who would be regicides.”

  “What do we do?” he asked.

  Per thought for a moment, turning the paper over between his fingers. “Magnus and Haakon mean nothing to me. What does it matter to the common folk who is king? As long as they mind their high affairs of state and leave us alone, it makes no difference.”

  “But if this message is delivered, the king and his son may be assassinated!”

  Per shrugged. “And then we will have a different king, and life will go on the same as it did before.”

&
nbsp; “But Lars Jonsson is a… a… bad guy!” he sputtered. “We can’t help the bad guys!”

  Per looked at him in silence for a moment, then asked “Were they successful?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The men who will try to kill King Magnus and his son. In your time, this would be in the distant past. Surely your wise men remember what happened. People always remember what happens to kings. Were Magnus and Haakon killed? Or did the plot fail?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I studied some history in school, but I wasn’t all that great at it. I failed a test one time because I couldn’t remember two of the eight wives of Henry VI, and it was only after I got home that I realized that the problem was, it was actually the six wives of Henry VIII.” He gave a desperate little giggle.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Per said.

  “Never mind. It hasn’t happened yet.” He swallowed. “Listen, Per, we can’t afford to mess this up. Do we give Lars Jonsson back the note? Or do we destroy it? Or do we tell him that we know what he’s up to?”

  “The latter would be foolhardy,” Per said. “Neither of us seems likely to win a fight with someone of Lars Jonsson’s stature, and I have no doubt he carries a weapon and would not hesitate to use it if he thought that we might interfere with his plans.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Per picked up the piece of paper, and tucked it back in the secret compartment at the bottom of the box. “We put the note back. When Lars Jonsson comes in tomorrow to get the box and the key, we give it back to him. I get paid my twelve silver pennies. And whatever happens to the king and his son, happens.”