The Crystal Code (18 page)

‘What's a cross usually represent on a map?' Sam said. ‘A hospital?'

‘Seeing as this was probably engraved a few hundred years ago, I don't imagine the health system was that sophisticated,' Ruby said. ‘A church, maybe?'

‘Or,' said Gerald, ‘a graveyard.'

A silence settled over them. The snow continued to tumble past the arched window above their heads. Gerald suddenly remembered how cold he was.

After what seemed an age, Felicity spoke. ‘Can anyone make out this word next to the cross at the bottom?' she said.

Ruby moved her head in close to the paper. ‘I'm not sure,' she said. ‘Is that a D?'

A rough voice sounded from behind them. ‘It's a B.'

Gerald spun around. A man in a black overcoat blocked the doorway.

‘B, as in Brahe,' said Tycho Brahe. A fresh silver nose covered the gash in his face.

Chapter 24

T
hey walked along a windowless corridor, deep in the bowels of the castle. Gerald scuffed his boots and stumbled to the stone floor. Felicity stopped to help him, leaving Ruby to trudge on ahead. Sam was last, the point of Brahe's knife at his back.

‘How much further?' Gerald said, his voice low, defeated.

‘You'll know when you get there,' Brahe growled.

The miserable caravan trekked onwards. The corridor turned and ended at a heavy oak door. Ruby looked over her shoulder and Brahe told her to open it. She needed Felicity's help to push the door in.

They passed through the doorway. The walls were at least two metres thick. There was no use in shouting. Nothing was going to penetrate. Then Sam slammed into Gerald. They both fell to the floor.

‘This was once a torture chamber,' Brahe said. He sheathed his knife. ‘Let's not revisit those times.'

Ruby helped Sam to his feet and shot Brahe a defiant look. ‘Where are our parents?' she said.

‘Again with the question of your parents,' he said. ‘You attach some importance to them?'

‘Of course we do,' Ruby said. ‘Who wouldn't?'

Brahe shrugged. ‘I haven't seen mine for so long, I no longer care.'

‘That's because you're old,' Sam said.

A glint shone in Brahe's eye, a speck of gold in a seam of granite. ‘Older than you can possibly imagine, Mr Valentine.' Brahe pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.

Sam's eyes fell upon it. ‘What's the matter?' he said. ‘Got a runny nose?'

Brahe dabbed the handkerchief across his sweat-drenched forehead. ‘You truly are an annoying child. I don't expect you to understand what is at stake here. That's the problem with the young. You have all the time in the world and do absolutely nothing with it. One day you'll wake up and wonder where it all went.'

Gerald was still on the floor, glowering up at the figure in the doorway. ‘Why was there an open grave with your name on it in that church?' he asked. ‘And a gravestone with your face carved on top?' Gerald tried to contain his anger, but it bubbled over. ‘What is it you want? Money? I can pay.'

‘Ah! The gravestone.' Brahe ran a finger along the scar that divided his face. ‘A good likeness, yes?' He waved Gerald off with an irritated flick of his hand. ‘What I seek, Gerald, can't be bought. It has to be earned. Earned and learned. And that takes time.'

Brahe gathered his overcoat around him like a bat's wings and turned to leave. ‘And I have wasted enough time dealing with you. The castle opens for tourists again in a few days. You'll be found then. There is water here—you may go hungry but you will survive. I regret the inconvenience, but I can't afford any further delays.'

Then he paused. ‘Miss Valentine?' he said.

Ruby looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. ‘What?'

‘I have no idea where your parents are.'

Ruby's mouth fell open. ‘But you kidnapped them!'

Brahe wrapped his hands around a metal ring on the door and pulled. ‘I only took what I needed from Mt Archer. If your mother and father were kidnapped,' he said through the shrinking gap in the doorway, ‘it was not by me.'

The door closed with a dull thud. Sam rushed and heaved on the handle. It wouldn't budge.

Ruby stood forlorn, her expression frozen in place. ‘He doesn't know where they are?' It was barely a whisper.

Gerald gave Sam a concerned look, then he laid an arm across Ruby's shoulders. ‘They'll be okay,' he said.

Ruby's head fell forward.

‘Ruby?' Gerald said.

She didn't respond. Gerald said her name again and jostled her shoulders.

Nothing.

Then a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘I don't think I can do this anymore,' she said.

Gerald put his hand under Ruby's chin and tilted her head back. It was like looking at a department store mannequin. The spark was gone from her eyes. The brightness and the joy, the warmth and the vitality—all the ingredients for a proper Ruby—had disappeared.

‘We'll find them,' Gerald said to her. ‘I promise.'

Ruby closed her eyes.

Gerald was left holding a shell. He was glad when Felicity took her away to sit by the wall.

‘We've got to find a way out of here,' Gerald said to Sam, joining him by a large wooden cabinet further inside the room. ‘Ruby's not doing so well.'

The old torture chamber was becoming lost in shadows. The early winter evening had begun its descent. The only light came from a barred window high in an outer wall and it was half-covered by a snowdrift. Gerald tightened the scarf around his neck.

He was astonished when Sam handed him a torch. ‘Where did you find this?'

Sam pointed to a door in the cabinet. ‘I think this must be part of a museum now,' he said, flicking on his own flashlight. He swung the beam into the shadows. It played across display cases housing dusty suits of armour. There were racks of weapons—swords, flintlock rifles, a small cannon—a pyramid of cannonballs and rows of flasks and mixing bowls.

‘Shame we didn't know this lot was here before,' Gerald said. He picked up a heavy sword. ‘We could have jumped Brahe.'

Sam was inspecting an information board attached to a cabinet of glass bottles. ‘Speaking of Brahe,' he said. ‘Maybe we are chasing a ghost.'

‘What do you mean?' Gerald said.

‘It says here that King Rudolph II appointed a Royal Astronomer in 1599. A guy with a silver nose by the name of Tycho Brahe.'

Gerald beamed his torch onto a line drawing of a man who looked exactly like the one who had just locked them up in a dungeon. ‘This is getting more bizarre by the minute,' he said.

Sam kept reading. ‘Brahe became one of the king's most trusted advisers. When he died, the entire kingdom went into mourning. He was given the highest honour: a grave in the historic Tyn Church in the heart of Prague.'

‘That's where I was yesterday,' Gerald said. ‘And the grave was empty.'

‘So what are we talking about?' Sam asked. ‘Zombies?'

‘Don't talk rubbish,' Felicity said, with a sharp edge to her voice.

Sam winked at Gerald, and shuffled over towards the girls. ‘Now that I think of it,' he said, cupping a hand over Felicity's head. ‘I am a bit hungry.'

‘Sam!'

‘Braaiinnzzz…'

‘SAM!'

Gerald trained his light on the flasks and beakers and scales in the display. ‘It says that Brahe was at the very heart of Rudolph's court and a keeper of the secrets in his alchemy laboratory. He was rumoured to hold the recipe to the universal remedy.'

‘The universal remedy?' Felicity said. ‘Dr Efron mentioned that at the museum.'

Gerald's eyes grew wide. ‘Anyone who possessed the secret of the remedy,' he read, ‘could live for hundreds of years.'

‘Surely you don't think it's the same person,' Felicity said.

‘But it's all connected,' Gerald said. ‘This drawing of Brahe, right down to the fake nose. The missing manuscript with the recipe for the universal remedy. And Brahe's desperation to get the crystal pendant so he can break the code. It all adds up.'

Felicity was at a loss. Then a thought hit her. ‘How do you explain the grave in the church, then?' she said. ‘If he'd been alive all this time, why is there a grave there
at all?'

‘Zombies have to die before they come back,' Sam said.

‘Sam.'

‘Braaiinnzzz…'

‘
SAM!'

‘Wait,' Gerald said. ‘It says that Brahe died in 1601 from—' He paused, then burst out laughing.

‘What?' said Felicity.

Gerald tried to compose himself. ‘It says he died because he held on too long when he needed to pee.'

‘You're joking,' Felicity said.

‘Nope. He was at a royal banquet and everyone was drinking heavily. It was rude to leave the table if the king was still there. So Brahe couldn't get to the toilet.'

‘Even though he was busting?' Sam said.

‘Apparently. He held on, something got kinked and he was dead a week later.'

There was a pained silence.

Sam crossed his legs. ‘It must have really hurt.'

‘Dire,' said Felicity. ‘That would make your eyes water.'

‘Or your nose fall off,' said Sam.

‘That's if it's true,' Gerald said.

‘What do you mean?' Felicity asked.

‘What if Brahe faked his death? What if he cracked the code on the manuscript and brewed up a batch of this miracle juice that cured any illness he ever had?'

‘But surely that's not possible,' Felicity said. ‘A cure to everything?'

‘No more hospitals,' Sam said. ‘No need for doctors. Just a sip of Professor Brahe's magic cure-all potion and you're on your way.'

‘To be able to live for centuries,' Gerald said. ‘How amazing would that be?'

‘You might create a population problem,' Ruby said.

Everybody looked to where Ruby was sitting by the wall, her eyes fixed on the floor between her feet.

‘What do you mean?' Sam asked.

‘If everybody's getting cured and living forever, then no one's dying,' Ruby said. ‘Babies are still being born. It'll be hard to feed all those extra people.'

‘Trust you to put a downer on things,' Sam said.

Ruby rounded on her brother. ‘What's there to be happy about? Mum and Dad are still missing. So are Ox and Alisha. And Gerald's parents. Who cares if Brahe's a zombie or a ghost or a mental case? And believe me, I'm betting on the last option. We're still stuck in here and I want to find Mum.'

Sam's face fell. ‘Sorry,' he mumbled.

‘How do we get out?' Felicity asked.

Sam kicked a desultory boot at the flagstones. ‘It's probably a dumb idea…'

‘What's that?' Gerald said.

‘Those cannon balls back there.'

‘What about them?'

‘It said on the poster that they've still got gunpowder in them.'

Gerald, Felicity and Ruby all stared at Sam.

‘What?' Gerald said.

‘Yeah—still stuffed with gunpowder from when they were made a couple of hundred years ago. Maybe we could blow our way out.'

‘Sam, I wouldn't trust you to blow your nose,' Ruby said.

‘You don't have to be snotty,' Sam said.

‘Do you think we could stop with the nose jokes,' Ruby said, ‘just for a minute?'

‘No need to be so picky either,' Sam said.

‘Enough!'

‘You could blow that door open?' Gerald asked.

‘Oh, sure. It's simple chemistry and a bit of physics. Nothing to it.'

‘Since when are you an expert in chemistry and physics?' Felicity said.

‘Actually,' Ruby said, ‘he's pretty good at that stuff.'

Sam gave Felicity a smug grin.

The four of them manoeuvred the small cannon out of the display and wheeled it across to the doorway. Sam took a cannonball from the top of the pile and lifted it over his head. It took three throws onto the stone floor to bust it open. A pile of black powder spilled out.

‘I guess we pour it in here,' Sam said. He scooped the powder down the barrel of the cannon. Gerald broke open two more balls and they tamped the contents down tight with a wooden plunger.

Sam rolled a cannonball down the barrel and funnelled the last of the gunpowder into a hole on the top of the cannon, near the end.

‘Right,' he said. ‘I light this batch of gunpowder here and that should explode the powder inside the cannon and send the ball straight into the door. Simple.'

‘Don't you think a wick would be a good idea?' Ruby said. “So you don't have to stand so close when it goes off.'

Sam thought for a second. ‘Good idea,' he said. He hunted about and found a cotton rope holding a flag in place. With Felicity's pocketknife he cut a five-centimetre length and frayed the end.

‘How are you going to light it?' Gerald said.

Felicity took the pocketknife back from Sam and slid out a strip of metal the size of a match from the side. ‘This has a flint in it,' she said. ‘The Colonel likes his campfires.'

Felicity struck the metal strip down the side of the knife, sending a shower of sparks onto the wick. Sam coaxed the embers along with light breaths, then carefully placed the burning cord into the pile of gunpowder on top of the cannon. He joined the others a few metres back.

They watched as the wick fizzled and burned.

‘Think we put enough in there?' Gerald asked.

‘Enough what?' Sam said.

‘Gunpowder.'

‘Oh, yes. Heaps and heaps.'

The wick burned on.

‘Probably enough to blow the whole cannon up,' Sam laughed.

‘What?'

Sam looked at the fizzling cord.

‘Maybe we should stand back a bit further,' he said.

‘Good idea,' Gerald said. ‘How far?'

The wick smoked and crackled.

‘Maybe a really long way back.'

Gerald looked at Sam. Felicity looked at Ruby. They all bolted towards the far end of the room and dived behind an old wooden cabinet. A colossal BOOM rocked the rafters.

Gerald opened his eyes to find Sam lying on top of him. A cloud of black smoke wafted around them. ‘Well, the chemistry bit worked,' Sam said, cheerfully. ‘Let's see how the physics went.'

They untangled themselves and looked out from behind what was left of the cabinet.

The cannon had disintegrated. There was a scorched circle on the floor where it had been standing. Sam looked up to the wooden door. It was untouched.

‘You great clot,' Ruby said. ‘Only you could miss a door.'

‘Maybe we used too much powder,' Sam said.

Gerald clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Never mind about that,' he said. ‘Look.' Sam followed the direction of Gerald's pointed finger to the window set high in the wall. The glass had shattered and the iron bars were swinging from a single corner bolt.