Griffin of Darkwood (12 page)

Chapter Twenty

A Clue in the Dungeon

“Mr. Cherry’s smashed tons
of bricks!” said Emma.

“But he’s given up.” Will scanned the cobwebby dungeon. “He’s taken the tools away. He must be going to look somewhere else.”

“Why?” Emma frowned. “What’s he after?”

“That's what we have to find out.” Will took one last look around and shuddered. It was horrible to imagine the prisoners’ screams and the duke trapped in the hole in the ground.

“Wait a sec,” said Emma. “Shine the light over there in that corner. I think I saw something.”

Will turned the torch.

“What’s this?” Emma bent down and picked up something on top of a pile of broken bricks. “It’s your postcard!”

“What? Let me see.”

Emma passed him a slightly crumpled postcard. He studied it in disbelief. It was the picture of the silver stag. He turned it over and read the inscription on the back.
Stag in the Forest, 1602, Morgan Moonstone, Medieval Tapestry Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

“Mr. Cherry must have dropped it,” he said slowly.

“I don’t get it. How did Mr. Cherry get your postcard?”

“I don’t know.” Will felt sick at the thought of Mr. Cherry poking through his things in the tower. “I’m going back to check.”

When they got back to the tower, Will went straight to the bag from
The Winking Cat
and dumped it out on the bed. Both postcards fell out.

“Mine’s still here,” he said, filled with relief and confusion. “Mr. Cherry must have bought one too. Why would he want a picture of an old tapestry?”

No one could think of an answer. Will stared at the matching postcards. It was an important clue, he was positive, but he had no idea what it meant.

They spent the rest of the morning searching through empty rooms and passageways for the secret passage. Will ran out to the shed and got a hammer, and they tapped on walls and pressed against wood panels. They discovered a library and spent a discouraging hour pulling dusty books with dull titles off the shelves and peeking behind.

Will tried to find his way to the guard’s walk so he could show his friends the long drop off to the river below, but he got hopelessly lost.

“Listen,” said Thom once. “Do you hear someone crying?”

“It sounds like a boy,” said Emma.

“The ghost!” said Will.

They abandoned their hunt for the secret passage and looked for the ghost instead, but every time they opened a door, certain they had found him, the sobbing moved somewhere else.

“It’s no use,” said Will finally. “We can’t find the secret passageway or the ghost!”

They separated outside the castle. Thom set off across the rocky valley in pursuit of grasshoppers and caterpillars for Minnie. Will walked with Emma and Peaches as far as
The Winking Cat
and continued on his own to the bookstore. The
Ex Libris
sign rattled in the wind. He opened the door and went inside. At the jingle of the bell, Favian looked up from his newspaper.

“Hey,” said Will.

“You look like a man on a mission.”

“I am, sort of. I need a book about griffins.”

“Magical creatures would be a good place to start,” said Favian.

“I’m trying to find out about something called the Griffin of Darkwood.”

“Never heard of it. Let’s see. Maybe a book about famous magical creatures in history.”

Favian and Will squeezed up and down the aisles while Favian mused, “Let me see. It’s around here somewhere.”

“Did you see that?” asked Will suddenly.

“What? Perhaps it’s with the –”

“Gandalf! He was just there, but he’s gone now!”

“So Gandalf’s showed up. Good eyes, Will! Ah! Here it is!” Favian pulled out a fat book with a glossy picture of a phoenix on the cover. “Why don’t you look in here first?”

Will sat on the dusty floor and thumbed through the book. There were no pictures, and the type was tiny. An extensive index at the back didn’t even include griffins. For the next hour, he skimmed through the tables of contents and indexes of dozens of books. He found lots of illustrations of griffins. The best was a griffin standing on top of a cliff, its huge wings stretched to the sky.

His eyes drifted over the shelves. A small scrap of paper was tucked between two books. He pulled it out. Someone had written on it in big block letters:

THE GRIFFIN OF DARKWOOD???

Somebody else wanted to know about the Griffin of Darkwood? But who?

Will hurried to the front of the shop.

“D–a–n–d–a. No! It doesn’t work!” Favian looked up from his paper full of scribbled letters. “Find what you were looking for?”

“No."

“Madeleine De Luca’s been looking at books about magical creatures too. She’s been in and out of the shop for a week.”

Madeleine De Luca! Could she have left the paper?

“I need to ask her something,” Will said, “but I don’t know where she lives.”

“Number 40 Silk Alley. She lives in the back of
Carta da Lettere.
It’s a stationery shop.”

“I’ll go right now! See ya later.’

“You bet,” said Favian.

Chapter Twenty-One

Madeleine De Luca

Carta da Lettere was tucked away
at one end of Silk Alley, a narrow street behind the square. The shop window was dark and a sign that said SORRY WE’RE CLOSED hung on the glass door.

Will pressed his face against the glass. A dim pinkish light glowed from a tall Tiffany lamp. A shadow moved across the back of the shop. He knocked on the door. He was sure that someone was standing there, frozen in the darkness. He knocked a second time, harder.

The shadow moved again and the door opened a crack. Madeleine de Luca’s white face and round glasses peered out at him. “Can’t you read? Go away!”

“Please. Just let me in for a minute.”

“My parents aren’t here. I
said
go away.”

“Don’t shut the door!”

Fear flashed across Madeleine’s face.

“The Griffin of Darkwood. Does that mean anything to you?” asked Will.

Madeleine gasped. She opened the door just wide enough for Will to slip in.

“We’ll go in the back,” she whispered. She led Will through the dimly lit shop, past a display of old-fashioned glass ink bottles and quill pens in brass stands. They went into a little room behind the shop. It was stifling hot and crammed with spindly furniture. Madeleine twisted a strand of her long red hair. “What do you want?”

Will took the scrap of paper out of his pocket. “I think you wrote this and left it in the bookstore.”

“What if I did? Is that a crime?”

“Someone gave me a piece of old tapestry. It says ‘The Griffin of Darkwood’ on it. I think it was my grandfather’s.”

Madeleine’s mouth fell open. “Have you got any more pieces of the tapestry?”

“No. If you could tell me anything about the Griffin of Darkwood, it might help.”

“You better come with me.”

Her bedroom had a narrow bed with a black bedspread, black curtains, a round table spread with cards and a poster on the wall of a man dressed in black, riding a black horse.
Seriously spooky
, thought Will.

“It’s in the cards,” said Madeleine.

Will stepped over to the table. Cards were laid out on the table in three rows and other cards were stacked to one side. On the front of each card there was a detailed coloured picture and a title. Will forgot about Madeleine. He was drawn into the cards with their beautiful pictures. He read some of the names out loud, “Nine of Swords, Two of Wands, Queen of Pentacles, The Fool, Wheel of Fortune, the Joker, the Magician, Death.” The picture on the Death card was a silver skull over a shield and a black flag with a strange white flower on it.

“What kind of cards are these?” said Will.

“Tarot cards.” Madeleine chewed on her fingernail. All her nails were bitten to the quick and her cuticles were red. “I got them at
The Winking Cat
.”

“What are they for?”

“Divination. Predicting the future.” She spoke quickly now. “There are seventy-eight of them. They can guide your life. I don’t do anything without checking first with my cards.”

Will was starting to wish he hadn’t come. He had never met anyone like Madeleine before. What did the tarot cards have to do with The Griffin of Darkwood?

“You lay down what’s called a spread,” said Madeleine. “Five or seven cards at a time. You make a pattern. And then you turn them over and read the meaning.”

She grabbed Will’s arm, her fingers digging in sharply. Her words came in short bursts. “A card with The Griffin of Darkwood on it…it kept coming back…I told it to go away but it wouldn’t!"

“I don’t get it.” Will yanked his arm away.

“I put eleven cards on the table. It’s called the Celtic Cross. And when I turned the cards over, it was there. A card with a huge griffin on it and the words
The Griffin of Darkwood!
I’d never seen that card before.”

She’s scared out of her wits,
thought Will.

“The card was so powerful. It engulfed every other card with its force. I thought I was going to faint. You can’t imagine it if you haven’t felt it yourself.”

Will swallowed. “What did you do?”

“I tried again. The griffin card kept coming back. Finally, I tore it up. I lit a candle and burned all the pieces when the moon was shining. Then I buried the ashes. I’m convinced the card was trying to give me a message. I’ve been so worried I haven’t been able to sleep.”

She took a big shuddering breath. “It ruined the cards for me. I didn’t even want to look at them for awhile. But that’s not all. Something else happened.”

“What?”

“On the same night that I burned the card, I asked my Ouija board for help. It spelled out a name. It was your name. Will Poppy. I didn’t know who you were.”

Will went cold with shock.

“Then I saw you at the bookstore, and I asked Favian who you were. Don’t you see? You were fated to come here. The Griffin of Darkwood has a message for you. It tried to tell me through my tarot cards.”

“I don’t know what you mean."

“It’s some kind of prophesy. We could ask the Ouija board. Right now. It won’t take long.”

“Forget it! I’m leaving.”

“Please.”

“No!”

“All right.” Madeleine didn’t say anything as they walked back through the shop to the front door.

“I’m going to keep looking in the books at the bookstore for The Griffin of Darkwood,” said Will. “Someone must know something about it.”

Madeleine shrugged. “I’ve finished reading most of those books. I’ve been going every day. There’s nothing in them about The Griffin of Darkwood. But you can suit yourself.”

With that, she shut the shop door firmly.

Feeling like he had escaped, Will sucked in gulps of the fresh cool air. He hurried back along Silk Alley toward the square
and then up Black Penny Road. Something flew up the street and landed on the windowsill of Thom Fairweather’s flat. It was the tiny elf owl, Minnie, with a spider dangling from her beak.

Thom opened the window and the owl glided inside. He saw Will and shouted, “Bad news! I’ve burnt the cream puffs!” He shut the window and disappeared.

When Will got to the top of the hill, he stopped and stared at the ancient stone castle. The ruins of the huge keep loomed like a silent guard. The Griffin of Darkwood.
It was somewhere close by, Will was convinced.

Chapter Twenty-Two

A Family Tree

In the morning, Will took all his books
back to
Ex Libris
and exchanged them for new ones. Favian was slitting the tape on a huge cardboard box that sat on the floor.

“A new book order?” said Will.

“Old books. Ebenezer Moonstone died last week. He was a hundred and eight! He had a collection of rare books and his grandson has packed them up and sent them to me. You can help me unpack if you like.”

“Moonstone,” said Will. “One of the magic weaver’s descendants?”

“Yes, and a history buff like me. I’ve admired his collection for years.”

Favian peeled back the flaps and a musty smell rose out of the box. They took turns lifting out books, exclaiming over the richly coloured leather covers embossed with gold letters. Soon, they were each absorbed in a book, Will’s about medieval knights and Favian’s a history of local folklore.

It was lunchtime before they stopped reading. Will poked his head deep into the box to make sure they hadn’t missed a book. “There’s something at the bottom.”

He lifted out a sheet of paper. It was covered in a spi
derweb of black lines and names, written in tiny letters. Will spread the paper flat on the desk. “Look! Here’s Vespera’s name!”