CHAPTER
22
“TEMPLARS?” TOM SAID, AMAZED. “IN London?”
“Why not?” I said. “Their order was everywhere before it was disbanded. Why wouldn’t they be here, too?”
“I’d believe it,” Sally said. “But if it’s the Templars, and they’re trying to help us, why bother with all the riddles? It’s not like we don’t know they still exist. Why don’t they just tell you what they want you to do?”
That’s what I didn’t understand. Though Tom had an idea.
“What if it’s a test?” Suddenly he gasped. “They’re testing us for entry into the order!”
“You mean… they want us to join the Templars?” I said.
“Yes! In Paris, Father Bernard said they needed to get new knights from somewhere.”
“He also said we needed to be older.”
“We are older.”
“I’m pretty sure he meant years, not months.”
Still, it wasn’t the craziest idea. If the puzzles were being sent by the Templars—and it really felt like they were—what other reason would they have for being so obscure? The thought made my blood race a little faster. And scared me a little, too.
I needed to think about it. “Let’s find Master Benedict’s coding device.”
Searching gave me plenty of time to mull it over. Master Benedict had kept a tidy shop, but a cluttered house. Part of that was the ever-growing hoard of books he was forever buying, but there were all sorts of curios, gewgaws, and devices that sparked his interest, too. Once I’d given Simon the poppy, it took us the better part of an hour to find what we were looking for, inside a sack at the bottom of a box of old clothes.
I took the sack and collected the others, including Bridget. Simon, under the poppy’s effect, had already fallen asleep. I left a small pot of the infusion with Henri, and told him he could give the medicine to Simon again only after another six hours had passed. I hoped he’d remember. All he did was grunt.
Tom was confused as to why we were leaving Blackthorn. “I thought you wanted to solve the puzzle.”
“I do,” I said. “Just not here.”
Sally glanced over at Henri, who was picking his teeth behind the shop counter. “Are you worried…?”
“No, nothing like that.” I led them outside, where we huddled in the street near our horses. “I know you’re convinced the Raven’s gone, but I’m not. I want to be sure. He claimed he’d known Master Benedict. So let’s see if we can find more about that. And let’s see what we can discover about the Templars, too.”
“Where on earth are we going to learn about Templars?” Tom asked.
“If you want to find secrets,” I said, “where better than a secret library?”
CHAPTER
23
THE BOOKSHOP WAS TUCKED AWAY in the darker part of Saint Bennet’s Hill, a street near the Thames, just south of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. The shop had no storefront and no windows to look through. There was only a single iron-banded door, squeezed between shipping warehouses. Nailed to the door was a plate, announcing what was inside.
RARE TOMES
PROPRIETOR, ISAAC CHANDLER
ALL WHO SEEK KNOWLEDGE ARE WELCOME
Above it, carved into the stone, was a phrase in Latin: FIAT LUX. Let there be light.
I thumped on the door. Isaac, an old friend of Master Benedict’s, had become a friend of mine after my master’s murder. But I was afraid.
The last time I’d seen him had been during the plague. To ensure his own safety, and more important, the safety of the secret alchemy library beneath his shop, he’d quarantined himself down there, with no plans to return to the surface for six months.
That’s what had me scared. I wasn’t worried about Isaac’s supplies; he’d stocked up on plenty of food, and even had a well for water and a pit for waste in the hideout below. I was afraid because when I’d seen him last, he hadn’t looked so good.
He was older than Master Benedict, well into his seventies. Underground living would have been hard on him. I thumped again, to no response.
“What do we do?” Tom said, worried now, too. “Break the door down?”
The thing was oak. The iron bands wouldn’t help. We’d need a battering ram to crack it.
I stepped back, looked up. There was a chimney in the building; smoke was coming out of it. I couldn’t tell if that came from Isaac’s home, or was part of the neighboring warehouses. “Maybe we can find a place to climb up—”
“Shh!” Sally said. She had her head to the door, listening. “I hear something.”
It was hard to imagine anything could be heard through that door. But then came the clack of a lock, and another, and the door swung open.
It was Isaac. My heart leaped at the sight of him, even as I noticed he looked terrible. His face was haggard, dark circles under his eyes. He’d lost more of his wispy white hair, and he stood hunched, as if mere standing was just about too much for him.
His eyes, a little cloudy, peered out. He adjusted his spectacles and saw Sally first.
“Yes, my dear?” he began.
And then he saw me and Tom.
He slumped in relief, and some of his years melted away. He reached for us, took our hands, and held them. “Boys,” he said, voice thick. “I had feared…”
We hugged him, and it felt like coming home.
Isaac could hardly believe he was seeing us again. “When I ended my quarantine,” he said, “I sent a courier to Blackthorn. He told me it had been abandoned. So I sent him to Tom’s house, and he saw the cross, and… I thought…”
I’d forgotten about that. The red cross of the plague had been painted on Tom’s door. With his family still on the boat, no one had returned to remove it.
“We were spared,” I said. “You didn’t find us because we weren’t in London.”
He was surprised at that. “Where did you go?”
“We should talk inside,” I
