The girl began to feel troubled. She still wasn’t entirely sure why she was going along with this or what she was going to see here. She felt defensive and on guard. “Proceed with caution,” she instructed herself.
Cassie walked up the three stairs leading to double front doors. Just as she touched the handle, the doors swung open. A young man in his early twenties with curly brown hair poked his head around the side and came to stand in front of her.
“Come in, please, come in. We’ve been expecting you. My name is Griffin.” He spoke with a British accent. “And you must be Cassie.” He held out his hand and shook hers briefly. “Faye has told me all about you, and may I say how pleased I am to meet you at last!”
Even though his words were cordial, something about the reserved tone of his voice put Cassie a bit further on her guard. Maybe he was just being British, or maybe he felt uneasy in her presence for reasons she couldn’t quite figure out.
There was an awkward pause while they sized up one another for a few seconds. Cassie thought he was kind of good looking if a person could get past his twitchiness. She saw that he was dressed more formally than she was. He wore navy blue trousers, a white shirt, V-neck sweater and a striped tie. She felt as if she ought to be wearing a dress and heels instead of jeans, a sweater, and hiking boots.
“Right then,” Griffin forged ahead. “Please do come in. Maddie was taking an important phone call, or she would have come down to meet you herself. This way, if you will.”
They walked through a small vestibule and on into the main room. The ceiling was about twelve feet high with globe chandeliers suspended from heavy chains. Tall stained-glass windows took up the top half of each side wall. They ought to have given the building a churchlike quality, but the scenes depicted in the windows all came from nature. Bright green forests, azure waterfalls, silver lilies, and golden birds cast prismatic light across the center of the room. Right below the windows were several tiers of what looked like box seats.
“I thought this was an old schoolhouse from the outside,” Cassie said as she took stock of her surroundings.
Griffin bobbed his head in agreement. “Yes, you’re quite right. This was a schoolhouse about a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Kind of big and oddly furnished for an out-of-the-way rural schoolhouse,” the girl observed.
“It doubled as the town hall when there was a town out this way. That’s all vanished now, of course. Railroads took the place of river transportation, and the towns around waterways disappeared. And we’ve done some remodeling as well. The stained glass is new.”
Cassie’s attention turned to the center of the room. She expected to see rows of student desks, but there weren’t any. Instead, she was confronted with a polished round table big enough to seat thirty people. She counted the chairs just to be sure. There were thirty of them.
“You hold Renaissance fairs here?” she asked dryly.
“I beg your pardon?” Griffin looked confused.
“You know, King Arthur, knights of the round table, et cetera.”
“Oh, I see.” He laughed self-consciously. “No, not as such. Actually, Arthur and his knights were not Renaissance figures.” He pronounced “Renaissance” like “ReNAYsonce.”
“They were most probably sixth century, but there is no scholarly consensus on the exact date. In point of fact, King Arthur and the knights of the round table are more closely associated with the Middle Ages than with the Renaissance. Perhaps because Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae was written in the twelfth century and popularized in the courts of Europe at that time. Of course, Welsh and Breton folktales about King Arthur do predate Mallory’s book. And then you have Chretien de Troyes adding the legend of Lancelot and the Holy Grail. Well, as you can see…”
He trailed off when he noticed the glazed expression on Cassie’s face. “Sorry, more information than you could possibly require. I have an unfortunate tendency to provide irrelevant detail. I do beg your pardon.” He checked his verbal torrent and stood looking at her in mute embarrassment.
Cassie turned away to glance around the entire room. “This is it? This is the giant vault Fay was telling me about? An empty schoolhouse with fancy bleachers and a big table?”
“Hardly.” Griffin gave her a thin smile. “Faye thought it best to introduce you to us in stages. Today you’re here to learn about the organization, not the vault. Don’t want to overwhelm you all at once. This way, please.”
Their footsteps made the oak floorboards creak as they crossed the main room to a door at the opposite end. It led to a short corridor that ran widthwise across the back of the building. At either end were exit doors and stairways that led up to the second floor.
Cassie followed her guide upstairs to stand in a short hallway that mirrored the one below. To their left was a corridor that ran the length of the building. As they walked down the hall, Cassie glanced through the open doorways on either side. There were conference rooms and offices with desks, but they were all empty. Nobody else was about, and none of the rooms gave a hint of the kind of business that was conducted here.
Griffin continued walking to an unmarked door at the far end of the corridor. Cassie guessed it must be positioned right above the entry vestibule.
“Just a bit farther,” he said reassuringly. “In here.” He opened the door to reveal a spiral staircase. “We’re
