The Mask of Destiny (12 page)

‘We should be safe from any high tide in here,' Sam said, his voice echoing into the space around them.

‘Won't this just fill up like the other cave?' Ruby asked.

‘I reckon that rock shelf we swam under is a bit like an S-bend in a toilet,' Sam said. ‘The water level will get as high as the other cave, but this one goes higher up into the island, so we can climb above the tide.'

Gerald let out an empty laugh. ‘We're in a toilet? Seems about right for how I feel at the moment.'

He adjusted his headlamp. Their little beach opened up to an enormous cavern. A rocky platform rose gently behind them.

‘Let's see where this goes,' Gerald said, and he clambered up onto the platform.

Ruby swept her torch in a broad arc, catching details of crags and fissures in the walls of the stone cathedral around them. ‘I wonder if anyone has ever been down here,' she said. She glanced across at her brother. ‘Hope there aren't any rats.'

Sam's jaw tightened. ‘There's no need for that,' he said.

‘You're being very brave,' Ruby said. She skipped ahead to catch up with Gerald. ‘I'm very proud of—' This time, Ruby's scream almost ruptured Gerald's right eardrum.

‘What is it?' Sam raced to join them. Ruby was clamped onto Gerald's back like a petrified koala. Three beams of light converged on a point on the ground. They lit a human skeleton.

It lay on a stone tablet where the rock ceiling dipped low, its feet closest to them.

‘It's all right,' Sam said to Ruby, placing a hand on her shaking arm. ‘I think he's dead.'

Ruby unwound herself from Gerald's shoulders. ‘Hardly anyone likes you,' she said to her brother, doing her best to still the quaver in her voice. ‘You know that, don't you?'

Gerald inched closer to the skeleton for a closer look at the nest of bones. The body was lying on its back, with its right arm stretched behind its head, as if pointing to something deeper into the cavern. The dull grey of the bones suggested it had been there a very long time. Then the lamp caught a glint on the extended hand.

‘There's something on one of the fingers,' Gerald said. He dropped to his knees and crawled closer.

‘It's a ring,' he said. ‘A gold ring.'

Then Gerald gasped.

‘What's the matter?' Ruby asked, poking her head out from behind Sam.

‘The ring,' Gerald said. ‘I think it has my family seal on it.'

‘No!' Ruby said. ‘How can that be?'

Sam squeezed in beside Gerald, shining his light onto the hand. ‘Three arms locked in a triangle around a sun,' he said. ‘Looks like it to me.'

Gerald reached out to take the band of gold but it was stuck on the curled finger, clenched and locked in place by a thumb. And it wouldn't budge.

‘Hold on,' he said. ‘This isn't bone. It's more like stone.'

‘Fossilised,' Sam said. ‘All that silt from the bay. All those high tides. A thousand years ago the water must have reached in here and covered him up.' Sam rapped his knuckles on the skull, which emitted a hollow
clonk
. ‘Looks like Ruby's not the only petrified thing down here. This guy's made of stone.'

Gerald tugged hard on the finger and with a final grunt of effort it snapped off, releasing the ring into his hand. He buffed it against his shirt and held it next to the one on his left hand. Under the yellow beam of the headlamp, the rings gleamed in the surrounding dark.

‘Identical,' Gerald said. He slipped the ring onto the little finger of his right hand; it almost clung to his skin. ‘A perfect fit,' he said.

‘I guess this must be Lucius,' Sam said. ‘Maybe the ruby casket is buried nearby.'

‘It's all rock,' Ruby said. ‘Not much hope of burying anything here.' They hunted around the stone platform but there was no sign of any place where a casket could be hidden.

‘Unless he snuck in a jack hammer, I don't think we'll find any buried treasure in this place,' Sam said.

Ruby looked doubtfully back at the pool they'd swum through. ‘Maybe it's at the bottom of that thing,' she said. ‘And I'm not volunteering to go have a look.'

Gerald sat next to his fossilised ancestor and rubbed the cold stone skull. ‘Come on, Lucius,' he said. ‘Give it up. Where did you put the casket?'

‘How do you think he died?' Ruby asked. She had edged a little closer to the skeleton, but was still keeping a careful distance.

‘High cholesterol?' Sam said. ‘What do you think? He was trapped down here, stupid.'

‘Well, if he was trapped here, what makes you think we can get out?' Ruby said. ‘Or hadn't you thought of that?'

Sam's face went blank. ‘We can swim back to the other cave,' he said.

‘And what? Get pounded by the tide twice a day until someone on a relaxing stroll through the quicksand hears our cries for help? Brilliant suggestion.'

Gerald looked at the broken stone finger in his palm. Then at Lucius's outstretched arm. A wrinkle of a thought unfurled in Gerald's brain.

‘What are we going to do, Gerald?' Ruby said.

Gerald didn't respond. Instead, he tried to fix the broken finger back into place.

‘Gerald?'

The fractured knuckle wouldn't stick. Gerald clambered closer, his shoulders up against the low rock ceiling as he tried to wedge the fragment back on.

‘What are you doing?' Ruby asked.

‘Strange way to lie if you're about to cark it, don't you think?' Gerald said, concentrating on repairing the skeleton's hand. ‘If I was starving to death, I'd probably curl up in a ball. There. That's got it.' Gerald nodded with satisfaction. ‘Good as new.'

‘What are you talking about?'

Gerald looked down at his handiwork. ‘It's almost like he's pointing at something.' He then banged the back of his head on the low rock ceiling.

Sparks filled his eyes at the pain stabbing into his brain. Gerald's cursing filled the chamber. But it stopped abruptly when his torch lit the spot where he'd struck his head.

‘Will you look at that,' he said in wonder.

Carved into the surface of the rock, just above Lucius's outstretched hand, was a string of symbols:

‘The number ten, a circle with a line through it, a Y, an arrow and a triangle,' Gerald said. ‘That's what was written on the envelope that Great Aunt Geraldine left for me. Remember? The one that the thin man stole from the house in Chelsea. This is definitely Lucius. And he's left us a note.'

‘But what does it mean?' Ruby said.

Gerald had no idea. But his great aunt had thought it was important enough to write down. He rubbed his hand across the lump that was now bulging out from the back of his skull. The smack against the ceiling wasn't the only thing giving him a headache.

‘Uh, Gerald,' Sam said, his voice floating up from below the stone platform. ‘We have a problem.'

Gerald turned to face Sam. There was something different about him, but Gerald couldn't quite place it.

‘My torch has just gone out,' Sam said.

There was a moment's silence.

‘Did we pack batteries?' Ruby asked, tearing her pack from her shoulders and rifling inside.

‘I don't remember buying any,' Gerald said. He cast the beam from his torch onto his outstretched hand. It was dimming before his eyes.

‘Mine's fading now!' Ruby said. She looked at Gerald, lighting his face in the dying beam. ‘What are we going to do?'

Gerald fished around inside his pack and pulled out a small box on the end of a knotted lace. ‘A flint,' he said. ‘I knew we'd bought one.' He pulled out a metal pin the length of a match and struck it along the side of the box. A spark burst into the air.

‘We can light a fire,' Gerald said. Relief flooded through him. It would be impossible to find a way out without any light.

‘Gerald,' Ruby said. ‘We're in a cave. There's nothing to burn in here.'

In an instant, the relief that had lifted Gerald was gone. Ruby was right. They were in a dank cave that hadn't seen the sun in a million years. He watched as his headlamp faded to nothing.

And the cave was lost to an all-consuming darkness.

Chapter 9

G
erald tried to control his breathing. But in the black cloak of nothingness that had wrapped itself around him, it was almost impossible.

‘Sit down,' he called out to Sam and Ruby. ‘Try not to move around.'

Gerald couldn't see a thing. He pressed his hand to the end of his nose but his eyes couldn't register any movement. The darkness was complete.

He tried the flint but the spark just hurt their eyes, and revealed nothing. Gerald blinked, trying to clear the arcing burn from his retinas.

‘I guess this is how Lucius sat it out.' Sam's voice sounded from somewhere to Gerald's left. ‘In the dark. Like this.'

‘Shut up, Sam.' Ruby was somewhere to Gerald's right. It was probably just as well she wasn't any closer to her brother.

Gerald closed his eyes. He had no idea what to do. Should they risk trying to swim out through the pool? But with no light they'd never find their way under that rock shelf. It was hopeless.

He opened his eyes.

And took a sharp breath. Was his mind playing tricks?

Or was the skull of Lucius Antonius glowing?

‘Can you see that?' Gerald whispered.

‘What?' Ruby asked.

Gerald crawled to the skeleton. He reached out to touch the skull and the back of his hand lit up in a faint blue glow. Gerald stared in wonder, then tilted his head upwards.

‘There's a hole up here,' he said. ‘In the ceiling.' He carefully stood up, keeping his hands above his head to feel for the rocks above him. He tapped his fingers around a square opening that must have been hidden in shadows when they were first examining the cave. ‘I reckon I can climb this. Sam, give me a leg up.'

After a flurry of hand slapping in the dark that almost cost Sam an eye, Gerald was boosted into the tight shaft carved into the stone. ‘There's hand notches cut into the sides,' Gerald said. ‘Someone's made this easy for us.' He stretched out a hand and curled his fingers into a notch.

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.