Wrapped (27 page)

“There is no other time! We’re about to either save England or hasten its fall to France. Either way, I’ll be dished up for cavorting about with the most marvelous girl I’ve ever known in the garden of the man who aims to marry her,” he said.

Marvelous?

“No one’s seen us,” I insisted.

“But the story will come out. There’s a man in a box back at the museum who’ll be needing explanation. How willing do you think he’ll be to keep mum about who put him there?”

“We’ll think of something,” I said, realizing I was talking about more than just Tanner in that box. I was talking about us. We would think of something, wouldn’t we? But one thing I knew with certainty: I couldn’t marry Showalter. Never.

He studied me, as if he wanted to say more, do more. He lifted my hand and kissed it delicately. “In the event that we don’t,” he said, almost sadly, “at least I’ll have done that.”

I felt the kiss linger there on the back of my hand, felt it travel up my arm and lodge itself in my heart like a promise.

Chapter Twenty-two

I still clutched Caedmon’s hand as we hurried on, the light of surprise intensifying with each step. I strained to listen for sounds of anyone deep in the garden at this early hour. All seemed quiet. The house was nearly invisible; only the three chimneys rose above the taller hedges, where the wilder part of the grounds gave over to the manicured paths and tidy rows of cowslips.

“There!” Caedmon whispered, pointing to the azure gazing ball in the small garden plaza. This time there was no red-coated waiter hiding in the brush.

I watched our distorted reflections in the surface of the ball as we approached; dew still clung like a veil to its surface.

In the daylight, I could see clearly that the gazing ball was a recent addition, affixed to a platform of some sort whose base had been anchored to the surface of the pedestal. I tried to imagine a forty-foot obelisk of granite rising past the treetops in its place.

“The hieroglyphs are oversize in proportion to the stone,” Caedmon said, slipping into scholar mode as he traced the shape of one symbol. “I wonder if the companion base was marked similarly? Or if the obelisks themselves carried the same large characters.”

As much as I loved the sound of his voice and the murmur of his thoughts coming unfiltered into the air, we had no time to waste. “Caedmon, suspend your rehearsal of your speech to the academy for a moment and tell me what to look for!”

He snapped back, “Some way to crack it, I reckon.”

“Have you ever seen one open before?” I asked. He shook his head. “Perhaps it’s like your puzzle box sarcophagus?”

“Then there should be some loose bit of stone,” he said, as he leaned against its surface, both palms flat against the carved stone. I followed his example, pushing and leaning and shifting my way around the upper portions.

Nothing budged. I then ran my fingers along the edges, looking for a grip or handhold.

“There must be some way to open it,” I said.

“Unless we’re wrong,” Caedmon pointed out.

“No. This fits too well. And it’s our only possibility. It
must
be here,” I insisted.

“If we’re right,” Caedmon began carefully, not meeting my eye, “then it’s likely to mean Showalter is somehow involved.”

I straightened. “What?”

Caedmon looked at me. “It’s in
his
garden, Agnes,” he said. “You got the jackal’s head at
his
party . . . you have to credit that it’s a bit too neat to ignore.”

I shook my head. “Impossible,” I said. “We’ve known him for years.”

He hesitated. “You don’t want it to be him.”

I stopped and let my gaze rest on the glyphs. I
didn’t
want it to be him. But not for the reasons Caedmon thought. It was too difficult to think of how I’d deceived him already, how I would soon wound him with my rejection of his affection. I could not think him traitor and add insult to the injury.

But no matter what I thought, it simply wasn’t possible.

“It won’t matter what I want if we don’t find it,” I said. “But you’re wrong. Showalter is many things, yet I know him well enough to say that he is no traitor.”

Caedmon looked for a second as if he might argue. He set his jaw tightly. Sucked in on the inside of one of his cheeks. He breathed out sharply through his nose and sat forward, eyes once again on the pedestal base.

“What did the message say again?” Caedmon asked.

I’d mused on the message so many times it was becoming as familiar to me as an A Lady quote. “‘W’s standard in the Great London Pyramid. This is the key. Emperor advised and awaiting delivery.’”

“Damned puzzle,” Caedmon muttered.

“Wait!” I said quietly, remembering my syntax and translation. “We’ve been assuming that the sender’s hasty reference to the key meant that the standard itself and its location was essential to Napoleon. I supposed they meant it in the causal sense of the word. That ‘key’ meant necessary. But what if I misinterpreted . . .”

“Meaning ‘This is the key’ literally refers to—”

“The jackal’s head!” I finished.

Caedmon couldn’t speak fast enough. “That’s what Tanner said back at the museum—that we had some key he was in want of!” He pulled a long leather cord from around his neck, tugging it out of his shirt. At the end, the jackal’s head emerged with the scrap of linen still gamely hanging on.

“It must actually fit inside one of the glyphs.” My voice had fallen to a whisper. The sun was warm on the back of my neck now. I was suddenly keenly aware that we were losing time.

“
That’s
why they’re sized this way,” Caedmon said.
“Extraordinary.”

We redoubled our efforts, now searching with eyes instead of hands. It didn’t take long.

“Here!” I shouted as I rounded the back.

Caedmon scrambled over to where I crouched. At the corner of the pillar, half-hidden by a geranium planted at the base, sat a perfect carved version of the metalwork bauble that had started this whole affair.

We stared at it a moment longer, seeing now what we were sure must have been the twin of that broken glyph on the upper corner of the Rosetta Stone. Ptolemy, or whoever had hidden the standard, hadn’t meant for it to be lost forever.

Caedmon fumbled with the knot he’d tied to the iron and freed the key from its tether, then hastily unbound it from the scrap containing the message. “Ladies first?”

“I think in the interest of science, you’d be the better choice,” I said. “Besides, it’s likely to try and bite your hand off or something dreadful, and I’d sooner that be you than me.”

Caedmon took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He repositioned his hold on the jackal’s head so that the tips of his fingers barely grasped the edges. His shoulders straightened and his mouth set as he aligned the edges with the carved glyph. “For England,” he said quietly.

“God save the king,” I whispered, the last words drowned as the key disappeared inside the slot and a series of clicks and rumblings began to emanate from deep within the stone. The entire slab hummed like a beehive, the tone reverberating into the earth beneath us, tickling the soles of my feet through my shoes.

Caedmon gaped as a seam appeared in the surface of the rock. It had appeared to be an imperfection before, a faint, shimmering vein of mica like a ribbon of river on a map. But now the shape seemed to take the force of the vibration and tear. With a crack too loud for the quiet morning, the seam split wide, connecting itself to two other seams, forming a crude triangle perhaps a foot long on each side. As soon as the triangle appeared, it broke free from the surrounding granite and dropped inside the pedestal base. The shaking stopped as a cloud of dust rose—a cloud that impossibly carried the scent of sandalwood and earth and oil. The scent of an Egypt from two thousand years ago. I felt light-headed all of a sudden, to think that the last eyes to have seen what we looked at now belonged to those who’d hidden the standard here, knowing that someday, someone would find it.

“This must be what it feels like to be at the opening of a tomb,” I whispered.

Caedmon finally recovered his wits. “I should think this even better. There are many tombs, but that,” he said, pointing through the settling cloud of dust into the pedestal, “is entirely unique.”

The rising sun illuminated the interior of the base. Though the walls were easily three or four inches thick, the inside was hollow, like the trunk of a giant old tree, rotted out by time. The fallen triangle of stone that had been the hidden door now lay against a smaller stone pillar inside.

Atop this pillar sat the standard.

It looked remarkably like the illustration in Deacon’s book. A human figure with a jackal’s head sat on an austere throne. The jackal’s feet and the legs of the throne melted into a narrow base about a foot long. Thin leather cords wrapped over the ends kept it upright on its stone perch.

“Remarkable,” Caedmon whispered. “I really do wish I could write up some proper field notes.”

I stared at him. “The scientific community will be forgiving in light of the circumstances.” I reached out tentatively to retrieve the standard. When nothing roared or sank its fangs into my wrist, I reached a little farther until my fingers closed around it. “Help me with the lashing,” I said.

Caedmon pulled the laces from the ends, and the standard came free in my hand.

Its weight was surprising. I drew it out, angling it through the triangular opening and into the sunshine, where the light glinted faintly off the bronze patina. Caedmon took it carefully from my hands, smiling at it as if it were a lovely toy.

“We did it,” he whispered, looking up to meet my eyes.

“Almost,” I said. “Let’s celebrate after we’ve delivered it to more secure hands.”

Caedmon stood, tucked the standard into the back of his waistband, and pulled me to my feet. I glanced quickly over my shoulder to make sure no one had heard the commotion. It seemed we’d make it after all.

But then the unthinkable happened.

Lord Showalter stepped from the undergrowth beside the path a few yards ahead of us.

“You there! What are you doing on my lands?”

Neither Caedmon nor I spoke. Showalter advanced on us. His boots were wet with the morning dew, his simple white shirt falling open at the collar. I’d never seen him so informally attired, and somehow it made me like him a bit more. I’d never even pictured him in anything but his buttoned-up shirt and vest, coat and hat brushed to perfection. But seeing him this way, as if he’d dressed quickly for a jaunt in the garden, made him more human. And made what I knew I must do later—put an end to his pursuit of me—even more difficult.

“Explain yourselves,” he said, drawing within a few feet of where we stood and stopping abruptly.
“Miss Wilkins?”

I sighed. Nodded. “Lord Showalter.”

“Why are you dressed so?” he demanded of me, sounding almost stricken. Then he shook his head and turned to Caedmon. “Step away from this girl. I don’t know what you are playing at, but I doubt any explanation could satisfy.”

“Wait,” I said. “He’s a friend. And while you are quite correct in assuming that explaining these circumstances would require both a great portion of your morning and also a certain suspension of disbelief, we haven’t the luxury of either at present.”

“I demand to know what’s going on!” he said, and turned to Caedmon again. “Move away from her!”

“Lord Showalter!” I took a step toward him. “We have no time to explain, but please believe me when I tell you that we’ve recovered an object of great importance and must deliver it to my father at once.”

“Object?”

“Please, sir. I cannot tell you more. In truth, neither of us should know anything about this, and I’ll speak to you at length about it sometime soon, but for now—”

“Perhaps you should give it to me,” he said.

I felt Caedmon tense beside me.

“It’s very important that we take it directly to my father.”

“But your presence here must mean you found it in my garden? Surely I’ve a right to know what’s being removed from my lands. And I’ve no reason to trust an apparent rogue who has been sneaking about with an impressionable young woman.”

“I beg you, Lord Showalter. Only let us pass and I will explain all.”

He studied me, face softening, shoulders relaxing slightly. “Agnes, you can trust me. I’ve all but made an offer for you. Are secrets like these any way to begin a courtship? Now be sensible and give me the standard to convey to—”

I staggered a step backward. “What did you say?”

“Agnes,” Caedmon whispered, his hand on my arm.

Showalter didn’t answer, but his eyes narrowed, and his mouth gave a twitch.

Could it be? “I—”

“He awake, Agnes,” Caedmon said. “The only way he could know about the standard—”

“No,” I said, taking another step back. It couldn’t be. My father trusted him. Mother adored him. Rupert envied him, and the entire time he was pretending?

Showalter gave a tired shake of his head. His arm reached to his own waistband.

“Run!” Caedmon hissed, but he didn’t move. Nor did I. It was hypnotic watching Showalter transform before me. The scales fell from my eyes as his expression altered, as if the very air around him had changed into something more malevolent and sinister.