The Blackhope Enigma (10 page)

“My dad’s a professor at the university. We came over from Boston last summer.”

“Your mom?”

Blaise stiffened. “She still lives there. They’re divorced.”

“And you’re great pals with Sunni and Dean?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I only just met Dean, and I don’t know Sunni very well.”
I’ve tried to be friendly, but she always steers clear of me for some reason
, he thought,
even though we seem to like the same things
.

“Quite brave of you to come after people you hardly know.” Angus gave him a sidelong glance. “The knight in shining armor rescuing the fair damsel, perhaps?”

“Yep, another day, another damsel.” Blaise flushed with annoyance. Why did adults always have to drag romance into everything? They seemed to get a kick out of embarrassing kids with it. Besides, Sunni was hardly a girl who expected to be rescued. That was one of the things Blaise liked about her.

Angus laughed. “Or perhaps you’re like me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You came into the painting because you want to be part of the Raven’s world, damsel or no damsel.” There was slyness in the painter’s voice. “To be privy to all its secrets.”

“The only secret I’m interested in is how to find the others and get out.”

“Good,” said Angus, as if Blaise had just given the correct answer on a test. “Ah, the enigmatic Raven! Ever since my cousin and I were students, we’ve been gripped by Corvo’s mysteries. We found every scrap of information we could and became convinced that Corvo made magical paintings you could enter. But we never worked out how until you and your friends came along to show us the way.”

“All you knew was that we had disappeared — not how we got in.”

“Well, let’s just say we looked at it from a new angle and got a result.”

“But I asked Mr. Bell about Corvo and the painting after Sunni and Dean had disappeared, and he didn’t tell me anything. Why would he do that?”

“Knowing Lorimer, it was so you wouldn’t get too curious and follow the others into the painting,” Angus said. “He was trying to protect you.”

“From what?” asked Blaise.

“From never getting out again.”

“H
ere is the last chamber.” Hugo led Sunni and Dean into a torch-lit room. “And this one is devoted to Mars, the god of war.”

They had already seen the other six chambers and their murals, named after the sun, the moon, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn. The paintings shimmered with life, as if the gods and their creatures could leap off the wall at any moment.

The mural dominating this chamber showed a muscle-bound man down on one knee, his face contorted in a terrible grin and his black eyes blazing. By his shoulder was a hawk in flight. In his left hand he held an enormous bronze sword with a dragon engraved on the blade. Above this scene, as in the other chambers, were rows of tiny paintings with minuscule labels.

“More weird little pictures,” said Sunni. “There’s a man with no head up there. And two snakes fighting next to a man riding a dragon.” A thrill ran through her, knowing she was seeing Corvo paintings that only a handful of people even knew about.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what each drawing means precisely,” Hugo admitted. “Though il Corvo certainly did.”

“So this is the last of his memory chambers. Isn’t that what you called them?” she asked.

“Yes. This mural contains all the information about the planet Mars’s powers over animals and plants. Each new row of tiny pictures is higher and higher on the wall, closer to the heavens, closer to the angelic powers in their celestial realm. If you were able to remember all the pictures in each room, you would know everything about the seven planets and how to connect with them.”

“I could never remember all this,” said Dean. “I couldn’t be bothered anyway.”

“Good thing no one’s relying on you to do any magic,” said Sunni.

Hugo smiled. “You might be surprised at how much you could recall, Master Dean. It is often easier to remember a picture than words.”

“At least you can’t lose stuff if it’s painted on a wall,” said Dean. “I lose my notebooks all the time.”

“Precisely!” Hugo beamed. “Il Corvo’s knowledge was safer here than anywhere else. A notebook could easily be stolen or misplaced.”

“Do you think Corvo actually came here and painted all this on these walls?” Sunni asked.

“I do not know,” said Hugo. “Perhaps he drew them into this layer of the painting before he conjured Arcadia into being.”

“So Corvo could remember all these pictures and he used the information to bring his paintings to life,” Sunni said, wondering what Blaise would make of all this if she ever got to tell him about it.

Hugo ran his hand over the wall. “Il Corvo could probably even picture himself walking through these seven chambers, remembering each of his murals in detail. He would instantly know which planet to call upon to work his magic.”

“It must have taken him ages to learn all this,” Sunni murmured. “But he probably wished he hadn’t when he ended up hiding out while half of Venice was trying to catch him.”

As they followed Hugo out of the palace toward the lake, Dean whispered to Sunni, “Those murals give me a weird feeling.”

“Everything’s been giving me a weird feeling since I got here.”

“Yeah, but listen,” insisted Dean. “If I drew a beard on that Venus mural, or glasses on Mars, would it screw up the magic? Would this place start falling apart?”

“Don’t even joke about it!” said Sunni. “But I don’t think it works like that. Those murals were just to help Corvo remember all the information he needed to do his spells. Remember, Hugo said he also had to paint with special brushes at the right time of day and everything.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

As the trio wandered, the sun tilted lower in the sky, sending a dappled light through the leaves and across the tinkling streams. Fantastic multicolored birds flew above them and nestled in the branches.

Hugo had been happy throughout the walk, telling stories and asking them about twenty-first-century life. But he stopped abruptly when they reached the end of a garden, and announced it was time to turn back.

“That is enough for today,” he said. “From here on is just the background of the underpainting. Hills and woods as far as the eye can see.”

“What’s that?” asked Dean, pointing at a grove of trees, where a curved stone arch was visible.

“A ruin. No doubt Corvo put it there to add a bit of detail. I can assure you, it looks more fascinating from afar than close up.”

“I’d like to see it,” said Sunni.

“Me too,” said Dean.

“You will be disappointed.” Hugo crossed his arms over his chest. “That arch is of no importance whatsoever.”

Sunni gave Dean a fleeting glance. “You don’t want us to see it?”

“No, I —” Hugo began.

“Why not?” Dean interrupted. “Just for two minutes.”

Hugo could barely hide his irritation. “Very well. If you insist.”

As they entered the dense trees of the grove, the sun vanished, leaving them shivering. There was no breeze and no sound at all. Hugo walked ahead of them, a stony expression on his usually cheerful face. Sunni remembered the dryads and suddenly felt as though a hundred eyes were watching them.

The arch stood in a clearing, a lonely entrance to nowhere. At its top, two faces were carved in profile, looking in opposite directions.

“Janus.” Hugo nodded up at the double-faced head. “God of gates and doorways.”

Dean stepped toward the arch, but Hugo suddenly grabbed his shoulder and steered him away. “It’s time we left.”

Dean twisted out of his grip and said, “OK, OK!”

“What’s wrong?” Sunni whispered.

Hugo stood dead still, as if he heard something the others had not. “We must go,” he urged. “It’s getting dark, and we are not at all safe here.”

He quickly herded them out of the gloomy grove and didn’t slow down until sunlight once again warmed their skin. Everyone was quiet on the walk back to the palace, as if they carried some of that eerie place with them.

“I think we should talk to Inko after Foxy Farratt’s gone to bed. Maybe he can show us the way out,” Dean said when they were back in their bedchamber before supper. “I don’t trust that Foxy one bit.”

“Hugo told me Inko doesn’t know where it is,” answered Sunni. Her mind was still at the archway. She shuddered at the thought of the pitch-dark grove at night.

“He might be lying,” Dean said.

“I know. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to ask Inko, if we can get him alone. But he can’t talk, so we’ll have to ask yes or no questions and maybe get him to draw a map or something.”

Sunni and Dean ate supper politely while Hugo tried to lighten the atmosphere by telling them about his life before he came to Arcadia.

He finished a story and realized he was the only person chuckling at it. “You are both very quiet this evening.”

“Well,” said Dean, “I have a question, but I know you won’t answer it.”

“I have tried to answer all your questions, Master Dean,” said Hugo, “but if you have more, please, go ahead and ask.”

“Why did you stop me from going under the arch?”

“It was becoming dark, and we had no lamp. I told you it was not safe to remain there.”

“No,” said Dean, “it wasn’t just that. There was something about that arch. You almost pulled my arm off to keep me away from it.”

Hugo stood up suddenly, clearly annoyed. “Despite my hospitality, I fear I do not have your confidence. Perhaps in your century it is customary for children to question their elders’ wisdom, but it was not so in mine.”

A smirk played on Dean’s lips. Sunni had seen that infuriating look on his face so often at home, she nearly lost her own temper.

Hugo continued: “You do not realize how lucky you are that I did pull you away from the arch. I wonder now whether I should have allowed you to go through it and left you to fend for yourselves!”

Dean’s smirk evaporated.

Hugo was now pink in the face. “I have said I will help you find the exit. And I will. But you must heed my warnings.”

“Mr. Fox-Farratt,” said Sunni, “we don’t mean to annoy you. It’s just that you haven’t told us what the dangers are.”

Hugo deflated slightly and collapsed back into his chair. “The dangers are mainly in the layers il Corvo painted below this one. Yes — there are more underpaintings. Sir Innes Blackhope claimed to have met many brutes and monsters in his sea travels. He described them to il Corvo, who drew them and brought them to life in the underpaintings.”

“You’ve seen them?” Dean asked.

Hugo nodded. “Heaven help me, yes. They were put there for Sir Innes’s entertainment. He loved to fight and outwit adversaries. The arch is the way into their domain.”

Dean hung his head. “I’m lucky you did stop me, then.”

“Perhaps I should have explained my actions more fully, but I did not want to frighten you.”

“But if the monsters are down there, then what are the dangers in this layer?” Sunni shivered.

Hugo fidgeted with his goblet. “We are not the only humans in Arcadia. When I entered the painting, I found that others were here already.”

“Who?”

“Scoundrels who hunt down fugitives in return for money. Bounty hunters from Spain, Holland, and Italy seeking il Corvo for Soranzo. And, of course, those who had come in search of the lost paintings.”

“And they’re still here?” asked Dean.

“Some have gone, possibly killed off by the creatures below, or perhaps just vanished. Others may still hunt the underpaintings, but I have not seen anyone for some time.” Hugo began counting on his fingers. “One notably greedy and deceitful character is Bashir, a pirate captain from the Barbary Coast who found out about the paintings from one of Soranzo’s spies. Then there is Lady Ishbel Blackhope, Sir Innes’s niece, who came here in 1600, claiming she had inherited Arcadia. She is determined to become its mistress and be rid of all the outsiders.”

“Is that why you stay here rather than hunting for Corvo and his paintings, to keep safe from those people?”

“Yes. I have nearly been killed by all of them.”

Sunni’s eyes widened.

“Luckily, while trying to escape them, I fell into a weak spot between the underpaintings that led me back to this one. The palace was empty, so I have remained here ever since, living as quietly as I can and hoping none of them turns up.” Hugo drained his goblet. “Anyone who comes between them and il Corvo’s lost paintings is fair game.”

“You say that almost as if it’s all right.”

“I do not mean it to sound that way. I am merely telling you what you will face once you leave the palace.”

“Do we have to go into the underpaintings?” Sunni twisted her hands in her lap.

“I have found no exit in this layer, so if you are determined to leave, you will have to search for it there.” Their host wiped a linen handkerchief across his forehead.

“I hope I have satisfied your curiosity,” he said. “I will show you the way back to the archway tomorrow. For all of our protection, I ask only one thing. Do not stray from here without me. You will be leaving the safety of the palace soon enough — and you may wish you never had.”