The Traitor's Blade by Kevin Sands (fiction books to read .TXT) 📕

you to bring up? The one with the blue spine?”

She nodded and pulled it from the stack beside her. He motioned to give it to me.

“Look in there,” Isaac said. “You’ll find a few pages tucked inside.”

I flipped through the book. It was an ordinary work on theology, but pressed between several of the pages were leaves of paper. Each one was covered in symbols, Master Benedict’s handwriting beside them, giving definitions.

“This is it,” I said.

Sally looked at Isaac, puzzled. “How did you know Christopher would ask for those?”

“The Templar’s confession.” Isaac finished the last of his coffee. “Do you remember what poor Mr. Egerton said? ‘It is the responsibility of the recipient of the message to know how to decipher the code.’ That’s only possible if the recipient—in this case, Christopher—already knows what he’s looking for.

“The first letter was Vigenère. The second, Alberti’s disk. The books I asked you to collect hold many of the ciphers Benedict taught him.” Still, he looked troubled.

“What’s the matter?” Sally said.

“These Templars,” Isaac said slowly, “seem to know quite a bit about Christopher—and Benedict. In particular, what Christopher has been taught. I’m not sure how that’s possible.”

That made me pause. I hadn’t really thought too hard about the codes themselves. After what happened in Paris, the Templars would have known I could solve ciphers.

And yet they’d only seen me decipher Vigenère. I’d never used Alberti’s disk before, beyond what my master had shown me.

So how did they know I even had the device?

Another question without an answer—and no way of getting one. I forced myself to put it aside for the moment. Instead, I scanned Master Benedict’s notes, looking for a particular symbol that matched one in the message.

“How did you know what to look for?” Tom asked me. “Have you seen these symbols before?”

“Well… the middle glyph does look like an alchemical symbol,” I said. “But the real clue was in the riddle. The swan.”

“ ‘Low the swan flies,’ ” Sally said, reading the first line. “What does it mean?”

“It’s not talking about a bird. ‘Swan’ is a reference to a substance apothecaries use. It’s called that because, just as a cygnet changes into a swan, this substance can change its appearance completely.”

And there it was.

I turned Master Benedict’s notes around so they could read it.

Tom scanned the page until he spotted the right symbol. “ ‘Arsenicum album,’ ” he read. Then he saw the translation next to it. “But that’s…”

I nodded. “White arsenic. This message is a warning. Someone’s about to be poisoned.”

CHAPTER

32

TOM WAS HORRIFIED. “WHO?”

“That’s what I don’t know yet,” I said. “The answer has to be in these other two symbols. Or the riddle.”

“They’re not alchemical?”

“I don’t think so. Alchemical symbols are all lines and swirls. These look like they mean something else.”

Sally leaned over the message, frowning. Then she looked up, surprised. “Berkshire House.”

“What?”

“This.” She pointed to the third symbol. It looked like the outline of a mountain, with three diamonds. “I saw it on a banner at Berkshire House.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. It’s hanging over the mantel, in the parlor.”

“So that means… someone will be poisoned at Berkshire House?” Tom said. “But who?”

Whoever the oak leaf referred to, I would guess. “Oak symbolizes a lot of things,” I said. “Strength. Long life. Faith. Loyalty. The oak is the king of trees—”

Tom gasped.

“The king!” he said, eyes wide. “What if the oak is the king?”

“Why would it be?” Isaac said.

“Because of the oak where His Majesty hid, to avoid Cromwell’s troops. It’s why we have Oak Apple Day.”

It wasn’t surprising that Tom, wearing his hat again, would think of the king first. But there was a certain logic to what he said. What’s more, if the Covenanters were our enemy, then they were definitely after Charles. We’d just have to figure out how they’d get him.

Turns out Sally already knew. “Tom’s right,” she said. “It is the king. They’re going to try to poison him. And they’re going to do it tomorrow.”

“How you do know?” I said.

“The riddle. ‘Slow the song plays, ever slower, dancing, singing overhead.’ What does that sound like?”

“A party,” Tom said.

“Remember what I told you when you came to get me? I’ve been invited to a party. It’s tomorrow—at Berkshire House.” She tapped the last symbol on the letter. “The king’s supposed to attend.”

Tom rose. “We have to call it off!”

“No,” Isaac said suddenly. “Don’t.”

We stared at him, puzzled. “But… the king!”

“Warn him, yes. But look.” With a slight grimace of pain, Isaac leaned forward. “If you cancel the party, you will prevent this poisoning. What about the next one? How will you stop that?

“This message puts you ahead of the Covenanters, do you see? If you say nothing for now, they won’t know their plot has been discovered. They’ll continue on as usual. So if you use the time to flush them out—”

“We might catch them in the act!” I stood and paced the room. We were ahead of the game, for once. If we played this right… we might bring the whole conspiracy down.

“So what’s the easiest way to poison someone at a party?” Sally said.

I knew that answer already. “The wine.”

We hurried back to Berkshire House.

CHAPTER

33

“IMPOSSIBLE,” THE STEWARD SAID.

We’d ridden to Berkshire House as fast as we could. Leaving our mounts at the stable, we’d hurried inside. Sally had stopped us in the doorway, pointing to the banner over the mantel in the entrance.

“Look.”

The third symbol was right there in the heraldry. Confident now that we’d got the riddle right, we’d run straight to the steward, Mr. Dencourt. He was responsible for organizing tomorrow’s party. We’d told him we were worried that someone might poison the king.

At first, he’d threatened us with a thrashing for playing pranks. It had taken all our powers of persuasion to convince him we weren’t joking—and I doubted we’d have succeeded if he hadn’t recognized Sally as the king’s new ward. Now he