History Keepers 1: The Storm Begins (15 page)

A figure in a deep crimson cloak was walking diagonally across the church. Jake lowered his head and turned away a little, but continued watching
the
man, who disappeared into a dark wooden structure by the far wall.

As Jake cautiously crossed the marble floor, a thought suddenly struck him: his parents’ message had stated:
Confess, St Mark’s, Amerigo Vespucci
. That wooden structure was surely a confessional box.

Jake edged around a stone pillar to get a closer look. The confessional was made up of two compartments. On one side there was a booth with a closed door where the priest sat. Next to it was an open booth with a curtain half drawn across. Behind this, Jake could clearly see the man’s crimson robe.

Then it disappeared.

‘What?’ Jake said out loud as he craned his neck round the pillar to get a clearer view. He could see right to the back of the box: it was empty.

‘
Per piacere
.’ A thin voice spoke right into Jake’s ear, making him start. He turned and came face to face with a wrinkled old woman holding out her hand. He saw that one of her eyes was dead white. ‘
Per piacere
,’ she repeated, nudging him with gnarled fingers.

Jake smiled politely. He remembered the pouch that Nathan had given him. He cautiously took it
out
of his pocket, produced a single gold coin and gave it to the old woman.

For a moment she did not react, but disbelief soon turned to joy. Her face cracked into an extraordinary smile. ‘
Dio vi benedica
,’ she whispered as she ran her ancient hand across Jake’s glowing cheeks. Then she bowed, edged away and disappeared into the throng of people.

Jake turned back to the confessional.
There must be a doorway on the other side of the booth
, he thought to himself.
An entrance to somewhere
.

Although the idea terrified him, Jake knew that he must find his way through that doorway and see what lay beyond. His heart thumped: he looked down at the robe and breastplate in his arms. Now was the time to put them on.

The breastplate covered his chest and stomach. It was strong but light, and fitted him well. The long robe hung down to the ground. He lifted the hood over his head.

With a decisive step, Jake approached the confessional, pulled back the curtains and entered the booth. There were no obvious signs of a door. He pushed at the wall, but it wouldn’t budge.

‘
Chi volete vedere
?’ a voice hissed, and Jake’s
blood
ran cold. He could see the faint outline of a face behind the grille.

‘
Chi volete vedere
?’ Strangely, the person was smoking a pipe. The smoke curled through the vent into Jake’s compartment.

Jake had only the slightest grasp of Italian, but he was certain that
chi
meant ‘who’. Then it came to him: the phrase that his parents had written down. The man who had given his name to America.

‘Amerigo Vespucci …?’ he answered in his best Italian accent. There was silence for a moment. Then he heard a faint click and the back wall of the confessional slid open, revealing a passageway beyond. Jake stepped through, and the wall slid across behind him.

13 T
HE
S
HADOW OF
E
VIL

THE PASSAGEWAY THAT
lay ahead of him was gloomy and damp, with walls of thick stone. Jake saw the cloaked figure disappear through an archway at the far end and followed cautiously.

He came through the opening into a large, dark ante-room, circular in shape with a vaulted ceiling. The dim light came from an identical archway on the far side of the chamber. Jake saw a silhouette vanish through it.

He crossed the space, his eyes fixed on the archway. He stumbled over a ledge and heard a trickle of falling stones. He stopped dead, looked down and gasped: below his feet was a gigantic circular borehole that descended, a shadowy abyss, into the ground. An ancient stone staircase spiralled down into the darkness. Inside, it was damp and mossy;
the
sound of dripping echoed up from the depths. Jake calculated that it must extend deep beneath the canals of Venice.

He quickly stepped back and skirted around the edge, still gazing down in awe. He went through the archway and into a large room: a double-height ‘studio’, with barred high windows extending from top to bottom. The cloaked man was crossing the chamber to another passageway beyond.

‘I can’t do this,’ Jake suddenly said to himself, turning on his heel. Then he stopped, thinking.
You have no choice
! he realized. He clenched his fists and went back into the chamber. For a moment he stood there, frozen.

The room looked out onto a narrow canal. Dawn was only just breaking, so it took a moment for Jake to accustom himself to the eerie gloom. There were rows of long trestle tables, each with its own rough oak bench. At intervals hung low chandeliers, none of them lit. To his left was another passageway, but this one was sealed off by a sturdy iron gate.

As Jake approached one of the tables, he stubbed his toe on something metal and saw that a number of iron rings were set into the floor there.

His attention was then caught by a series of large illustrations displayed on the tables, parchments inscribed with complicated diagrams. Next to these lay quills in pots of ink. Jake examined one of the drawings. The heading made him start – a word written in bold gothic type:

‘
Superia
…’ Jake whispered the name to himself. ‘
Find the Summit of Superia
.’ He clearly remembered the message his parents had sent to Point Zero.

Below it was a symbol like the one that was engraved on Jake’s breastplate – a snake twining around a shield. The parchment was covered with intricate plans and elevations, showing a building of awesome proportions. It was as high as any modern skyscraper – at least forty storeys, Jake estimated. Yet the style was ancient, with its succession of arched gothic windows and details of gargoyles. It looked like a dark vision of the future seen through sixteenth-century eyes; it made him feel inexplicably nervous. Jake looked more carefully and noticed that every single window was barred.

At the next table, a drawing showed designs for a
giant
archway, similarly austere and colossal, this one with hundreds of round windows, all barred.

Jake continued along the table, examining the illustrations. Each was headed with same phrase, the same symbol of the snake and shield; each showed plans for magnificent structures. Jake remembered their discovery in the pizza bakery. His parents’ single lead in this business had been the missing architects. It could certainly be no coincidence.

Suddenly he heard footsteps approaching along one of the corridors. He quickly looked around for a hiding place, but there was no time. He sank back into the shadows as six guards, all dressed in the same crimson cloaks, marched into the room. They carried lit tapers and set about lighting the thick candles of the chandeliers.

Jake stopped breathing as one of the guards suddenly turned and approached him.

But the guard did not seem suspicious: Jake, after all, was dressed in the same way. He passed Jake a taper and issued an instruction – strangely, in English – for him to assist the others. As Jake took the torch, he caught sight of the face beneath the crimson hood: it belonged to a tall boy with cropped hair, cold eyes and a manner that was
chillingly
mature. He looked at the others: there were girls as well as boys, but their faces were all the same – tight-lipped, steely, expressionless. They were like robots. He knew instinctively that if he was to escape notice, he had to act in a similar manner.

As Jake started to light the candles, one of the guards took a large bunch of keys from his belt and unlocked the gate that barred the corridor on the left.

‘
Svegliati
! Wake up! To work!’ he ordered.

There was the sound of people stirring, chains clanking and voices murmuring. A few moments later a line of a dozen men, all shackled together by their hands and feet, shuffled into the room. It was a distressing sight. Jake realized that these had once been well-to-do people; their clothes, now in a sorry state, had been fine. They were herded into the room like animals.

In turn, each one was unlocked from the chain, led to his seat at one of the tables and attached to the metal rings on the floor.

Jake was in no doubt that these were the missing architects. His hands now free, one of them tried to pass a piece of bread to the old man who stood
behind
him. His neighbour smiled gratefully as he took it, but in a flash a baton came smashing down on his wrist, the bread dropped to the floor and was kicked into the corner next to Jake.

‘Work now!’ the guard barked.

The old man did as he was told. He went and sat at one of the tables, his thin, shaking hand lifted the quill and he started to draw.

‘Everyone, work!’ The guard brought his baton down hard on the table.

Jake strove to keep his face blank as anxiety raged inside him. He found himself feeling inside his cloak to check that his sword was still there.

As the architects worked, he observed them more closely: their faces were pale, their hollow eyes etched with despair. The old man who had been denied the bread was the most pitiful of all. As he worked, his eyes blinked and his bloodless lips muttered away quietly.

The sight of this poor man filled Jake with anger. Cruelty towards the weak was something he had always hated. Once, outside his school, he’d come across a group of bullies taunting a much younger boy whose leg was encased in a brace. Jake made a brave stand – only to be punched in the stomach.
The
boy in the brace showed no gratitude – he told Jake that he’d only attracted
more
attention from the bullies – but Jake would have done the same again. His family were like that: they stood up for people.

All eyes turned as a door on the other side of the room was unlocked. Without thinking, Jake reached down, picked up the piece of bread and moved forward to drop it into the lap of the old man. He looked up in confusion; Jake responded with a stern look and stood to attention again.

Then a brutish figure strode into the room, followed by a savage-looking mastiff. Jake shivered: this was the scarred man from the quayside, Captain Von Bliecke. The captain picked up a great pitcher of water, took a gulp, and flung the rest over his head to wake himself up. His dog yawned and stretched, then wandered around the room, sniffing. Jake stood rigid as the beast approached him. He could now see the extent of his wounds: as well as his torn ear and scarred head, one of his eyes was half closed, and his flank was bare of fur. He smelled something interesting and pressed his cold wet nose into Jake’s hand. Jake recoiled; then his blood ran cold as the dog’s upper lip curled back and he gave a low growl.

‘Felson!’ Von Bliecke called. Grudgingly the dog turned away from Jake and trotted over to his master, who threw a bone into the corner. Felson pounced on it and started tearing off ribbons of flesh. Jake breathed a sigh of relief. Meanwhile Von Bliecke took a long cut-throat razor from his back pocket and started to shave away the faint growth of dark hair on his head, ignoring the nicks to his scalp.

Jake watched him out of the corner of his eye. He knew that this man could hold the key to the whereabouts not just of Nathan, Topaz and Charlie – if they were still alive – but of his missing parents. Perhaps this monster even knew something of his brother Philip.

After nearly an hour, with one eye on the architects and the other on Von Bliecke – who’d been polishing an array of eye-watering weapons – Jake noticed activity in the canal outside the window. A gondola with a black awning pulled up. Four red-cloaked guards disembarked, secured the craft and stood to attention with their heads bowed. A girl emerged from under the awning and stepped ashore.

Von Bliecke had also seen her arrive; his dark
brow
furrowed as he announced in a quiet voice, ‘Mina Schlitz …’

At the sound of her name, everyone – prisoners and guards alike – froze in terror.

A moment later there was a firm knock at the door.

Felson trotted over and sniffed the base of the door. Suddenly his tail curled under his body and he crawled beneath a table, whimpering. Von Bliecke strode over, unfastened the four great bolts and opened the door.

Mina Schlitz stepped into the room, followed by her retinue. She was a teenager of roughly Jake’s age – chillingly self-contained, with dark eyes and long, straight, raven-black hair. She wore a neat pleated skirt and a tightly fitting doublet. A velvet cap topped her perfect white face, and a single pearl hung from a scarlet thread around her neck. Wrapped about her forearm was a thin, live snake with red markings down its back. It undulated as the girl stroked it softly with her pale fingers.

‘
Guten Tag
, Fräulein Schlitz – a pleasant journey?’ Von Bliecke murmured, with a bow of his head. He was a battle-hardened soldier, double her age, but even he looked timid now.

The girl ignored his question. She held up her serpent and kissed its head, then carefully placed it in a box at her belt. Still no one dared move as her sharp eyes darted around the room.