In Pantin’s apartment, there weren’t many. In the parlor, there was a group of three little trinket boxes Pantin’s mother had collected as a girl; in the kitchen, there was a box that held the sugar and a box that held comfits and a box that held patent pills. Trigemine barged right into the boy’s parents’ room without so much as a by-your-leave and spent a moment examining a music box that had belonged to Pantin’s grandmother. In Pantin’s own room, there was a small cigar box that had been repurposed to hold treasures. The thief gave that the longest look of all. But at last he set it back on the bedside table and sighed.
“Nothing?” Pantin asked. “Nothing we have is worth anything?”
The thief looked down at him thoughtfully. “You have many valuable things here,” he said at last, “but not the thing I was hoping to find.”
“What were you hoping to find?” Pantin asked.
The thief hesitated. People often make the mistake of telling children too much, with the idea that they won’t understand what they’re being told—not the true meaning or value of it. This man had made that mistake before and paid dearly for the error. On the other hand, he also knew well that children often know more than they seem to. So he weighed the risks carefully, and then he answered, “I am looking for a coffret. It’s a very special sort of box, or casket.”
“Casket?” Pantin repeated. “You mean, like a coffin?”
The thief laughed. “A coffin is a type of casket,” he said, “but not all caskets are coffins. In any case, the sort I’m looking for isn’t here.”
And then he chanced to peer out Pantin’s window, which looked out on the garden grave of the dead hero.
This man was no more an expert in death and gardening than I am, but he, too, was a roamer. He had roamed long and far in both space and time, and he knew more lore than can be accumulated in the span of a single life. In a matter of seconds, he had taken in the crumbling old wall, the nettles that had filled the space inside the perimeter, and the terrible heights to which the prickly plants had grown. And, with Pantin’s question about caskets and coffins fresh in his mind, he understood immediately what he was looking for, and what he was looking at.
Heroes, you see, are rarely buried without tribute of some kind, and treasure—even if it is merely a trove of memories—is rarely put into the ground without a container to hold it.
The thief doffed his hat, thanked Pantin for his time, and left as quickly as he could, the heels of his well-shined boots drumming neatly on the stairs as he left the red house and went in search of digging and prying tools.
He came back to the house once more before nightfall, bringing three bottles of sherbet with him—not the shaved-ice sort, but the drink made with fruit-and-flower arrack—and he delivered a bottle to each home as a thank-you for letting him have a look around, beginning with the one on the top floor. Pantin, however, was not allowed to have any, even after supper, as punishment for having let a stranger into the flat. This is how he happened to be wide awake, talking to his friend the old iron gargoyle and not drugged asleep like everyone else was, when Trigemine returned with his digging tools in the dead of night and began to exhume the hero’s grave that no one had known was there.
Pantin had trouble sleeping in those days. He had been having nightmares about the time a month or so before when he had fallen through a sinkhole into an old abandoned tunnel that had been built for a pneumatic railway. And Maisie, I will tell you that if you ever find yourself suddenly falling into a tunnel anyplace belowground in Nagspeake, the thing to do is in two parts. Firstly, feel the rails to see if a train is coming. Secondly—do this part quickly if you do feel a vibration—say quite loudly, “You once showed a lost boy back to the surface. Would you please help me find my way?” For the iron in the below did once help Pantin when he was very lost in the tunnels, though that, too, is a different tale. Never forget, Maisie: Old iron hears. Old iron pays attention.
Anyhow, Pantin was awake. He sat with his back against the wall below his bedroom window, which he had opened in order to let in his gargoyle friend. Pantin called the gargoyle Troublewit after a sort of bendy folded paper toy for children and magicians, because a troublewit can take any number of forms, and the iron creature reconfigured its own shape so often. That night, Pantin was whispering to Troublewit about the injustice of not being allowed to drink any sherbet. The gargoyle didn’t reply, but it did occasionally move its mouth and flex its iron-taloned feet in sympathy. Suddenly, there was a curse from down below in the garden and a quick flash of light. The thief had begun the process of wading into the nettle sea.
Pantin peered over the windowsill. “That’s Mr. Trigonometry,” he whispered, for he couldn’t remember the thief’s name any better than I could.
He and the gargoyle Troublewit watched as the thief pulled on a pair of gloves, fought his way to the place where the nettles were tallest, took a shovel from his
