The Lunatic's Curse (28 page)

‘Only a matter of hours,’ said Tibor dreamily. ‘What a sight she will be.’ He noticed how Hildred kept glancing over at the lake.

‘You look worried,’ he said. She didn’t respond but Tibor was used to that. It was an irritating habit but what did it matter? The end was in sight. The reward would be well
worth the wait.

As if sensing his eyes on her, Hildred remarked, ‘The water’s rising very quickly.’ And it was, all the time creeping surreptitiously towards the
Indagator
; it had
already covered the narrow shore on the other side of the lake.

‘All the better for the launch!’ said Tibor. He stood up. ‘Back to work, we cannot let up now!’

At exactly nine o’clock that evening, elated and exhausted, all three were finally able to stand back and gaze at their creation in its glorious entirety:
Indagator
Gurgitis
. And what a magnificent machine she was. There she sat, an enormous gleaming oval-shaped mass of brass and iron and copper. Rex walked around the vessel slowly, as if seeing it for the
first time, though a thousand times in his head he had imagined it, taking in every bolt, every rivet, every welded seam.

Hildred ran her fingers over the gold lettering on the side and placed her hand on the shining surface, delighting in her distorted reflection. At the front and back there was a pair of jointed
legs which slotted neatly into the side of the vessel. Two extendable arms were neatly folded under the front observation glass. It resembled, from certain angles, a giant metal spider or perhaps a
crab. At the summit of the machine, accessed by a small recessed curved ladder, was the entry hatch. The craft had four windows, a large round one at the front, a smaller one on either side, and a
fourth at the back. Each window was rimmed with metal and the glass was eight inches thick.

‘Because of the pressure,’ Rex explained to Hildred. ‘Tibor doesn’t know how deep he will go.’

‘Can we try it out, start the engine at the very least?’ asked Hildred.

Tibor was in a fever of delight. ‘Why not!’

They climbed in, all three, Tibor first and then Rex and Hildred. Tibor sat at the control panel and the other two had just enough room to stand behind him. Over his shoulder they could see a
gleaming array of levers and dials and switches. Tibor pressed buttons and flicked switches in a precise sequence and suddenly the vessel shuddered and from somewhere inside it began to hum.
Hildred placed her hands on the walls and could feel the throbbing.

‘Look out of the window,’ said Tibor, and Rex and Hildred watched in amazement as, by means of a couple of levers, he brought about the extension and retraction of the multi-fingered
arms.

‘I added them to the design,’ said Rex proudly.

‘They will be useful for picking up, er . . . rocks and things from the lake floor,’ said Tibor.

Rocks? wondered Hildred but said nothing.

Then the humming subsided and the vessel became peaceful again. Tibor turned and his face was a picture of triumphant joy. ‘It will be an adventure beyond compare,’ he declared.

‘You will be famous,’ said Rex slowly. ‘Your name will be on everyone’s lips. There is nothing in the world like this machine.’

Tibor was almost beyond words. ‘Yes, yes,’ he stuttered. ‘It is hard to believe, is it not, that a man such as I could create something so . . . incredible. And the
Re-breather, it is working?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Rex, pointing to where he had installed the box into the wall. ‘See, the green light is on. It’s working perfectly.’

Outside the machine once again Rex and Hildred were both struck by the silence in the chamber. For days now it had been echoing with the sounds of hammering and clanging.

As Hildred watched Rex enter the tunnel back to the study she was distinctly uneasy. It wasn’t anything he had said, it was more the way the muscles in his jaw tightened and loosened, the
way his fists clenched and unclenched, and she suddenly felt very frightened.

And she in turn was being watched by an unseen figure on the far side of the lake where the water was now lapping at the entrance to the catacombs.

41

Rex was transfixed by the pale round moon hanging in the night sky. Hildred, at his side, could almost feel his trembling rage but his voice was barely audible.

‘Did you hear him?’ said Rex. ‘Did you hear how he congratulated himself on his design? Not a word of thanks to us. You were right. He is going to take all the credit for an
idea that he stole.’

‘You don’t know that he stole it,’ said Hildred quietly.

‘However he got it,’ said Rex, ‘it’s not his.’

‘You said this wasn’t about money or fame,’ she countered. ‘We have other things to think about now. You’ve been distracted by the
Indagator
for long enough.
Have you forgotten why you came? Your father left something here for you, about Acantha. We must find it. We have so little time left.’

Rex exhaled heavily. ‘Very well,’ he said.

‘Tell me again everything that you know. Everything.’

So, one more time, Rex went through the events of the night of his father’s return and Hildred listened, all the time fixing him with a gaze of such intensity he felt as if he would start
to smoulder. And when he finished he was as confused as ever. Hildred’s face was a picture of pure concentration.

‘Andrew Faye aside, I think the book is the clue,’ she concluded. ‘Your father warned you not to fly too close to the sun, but maybe that was just to lead you to the book.
Maybe the actual answer is in another story. We need to see the book.’

Rex took the book out from under his pillow.

‘You say you know all of these stories,’ said Hildred. ‘What are they about?’

Rex ran a finger down the contents. ‘Daedalus and Icarus, The Persian Wars, The Trusted Slave, The Trojan Horse—’

Hildred stopped him. ‘The Trusted Slave? The slave owned by Histaeus?’

‘Yes. Do you know it?’

‘Mr Ephcott told it to me once. Don’t you remember it?’

‘Of course. I had to try to translate it into Latin. Histaeus tattooed a secret message on his slave’s head. When the hair grew back he sent him to his allies. They shaved his head,
read the message and joined Histaeus in the war against his enemies.’

‘Eureka!’ shouted Hildred, and immediately ran out of the room to return moments later brandishing a pair of scissors. She advanced towards Rex. He looked at her in amazement.
‘What are you doing? Have you gone mad too?’

‘Don’t you see, you fool,’ she said, and her voice was at fever pitch. ‘It wasn’t your father who got a tattoo that night,
it was you
.’

‘Me?’ said Rex, and immediately put his hand to his head. ‘Of course! How stupid I am! That’s why I had the headache after going to Mr Sarpalius. Father said I’d
fallen and cut myself but it must have been the tattoo. He kept saying the less I knew the better, so he didn’t tell me about it. And he was right. If I’d known I would have told Tibor
when I underwent the Lodestone Procedure.’

‘The message must be on your head,’ said Hildred simply, and she took a clump of his hair in one hand and began to cut. ‘Mr Sarpalius must have tattooed you through the
hair,’ she said. ‘It can’t have been easy.’

‘I should have guessed ages ago,’ said Rex. ‘That word, “compunctions”, it’s from
compungere
: to “prick” or “sting”. Oh, I wish
I’d paid more attention to Robert’s lessons!’

Hildred continued to snip away. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she said. ‘There
is
something here. I can’t believe it.’

‘What is it?’

‘It looks like a skull with letters inside it.’

Rex could barely contain himself. ‘Do you remember when Mr Sarpalius asked about my skull? I thought he meant the wound from the stones, but he couldn’t have, that’s what I was
trying to say to you, and then that cart came by. He must have meant this.’

‘I’ll draw it for you.’ Hildred took the book and began to sketch on the endpaper. Rex watched as she drew a rough skull shape with letters inside.

‘What on earth does that mean?’ asked Rex.

Hildred was poring over the tattoo and talking to herself. ‘It’s not just random letters, they must be words, but it’s not English.’

Rex shook his head. ‘Latin I bet. Even Father told me how important it was.’

‘I think it’s written
boustrophedon
,’ said Hildred. ‘I remember Mr Ephcott saying something about this.’

‘
Bous
what?’

‘It’s when you write from left to right and then right to left all the way down the page.’

‘I remember,’shouted Rex excitedly. ‘It’s from the Greek for cow, the way they used to plough fields up and down. So what does it say?’

Hildred took the pencil and rewrote the letters in one line, added three strokes of the pencil and then presented it to Rex.

‘Surely you know enough to translate that?’ asked Hildred. ‘Your father wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t think you could work it out.’

Rex looked again.
‘Seven times the cow must be followed.
What cow?’

Hildred couldn’t help looking very pleased with herself. ‘It’s directions,’ she said.

‘To what?’

‘Presumably whatever your father has hidden.’

‘But it could be anywhere,’ said Rex, and his face fell at the thought.

‘No,’ said Hildred slowly. ‘There’s only one place it’s going to be.’

Rex looked at her and then they both said simultaneously, ‘The maze, he’s hidden something in the maze!’

‘And we find it by walking
boustrophedon,
alternating right and left seven times,’ said Hildred, ecstatic that finally they had solved the puzzle.

‘Hold on a minute,’ said Rex. ‘There are two ways to the maze, through Tibor’s study or through the torture chamber.’

Hildred was already at the door. She turned in that odd way of hers, when it looked as if her body stayed in one place and her head swivelled almost the whole way around. ‘Hmm,’ she
murmured. ‘It’s one or the other, and it’s far more likely your father would have found the entrance down in the torture chamber, so let’s start there.’

Of course, the chamber was locked (with a new padlock) but this was no obstacle to Rex. Soon he and Hildred saw once again the torturer’s arsenal: the branding irons, the
pokers, the poisons and the leeches. Hildred showed Rex the secret keyhole.

‘This explains how Gerulphus was in here that day,’ said Rex. ‘He must have been coming back up from the labyrinth.’

‘Yes, from feeding dead people to that monster,’ said Hildred with a grimace, and she looked as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. She held up the lantern and they stepped through
the hole into the catacombs and the panel closed behind them.

‘So,’ said Hildred, her face ghostly in the yellow light. ‘We’ll go right and left seven times until we find something.’

Inevitably they reached an intersection but Hildred confidently took a right. At the next intersection they took a left, followed by a right, and at the fourth intersection a left. They were
both acutely aware of the empty cavities on either side, where once bodies had rested.

‘You know, I think Gerulphus has been feeding that monster for a while,’ said Hildred. ‘Surely there should be more bodies down here.’