Together they lowered the lid, unable to avoid another loud boom as it closed. As Jack turned the key again to lock it, he thought he heard the soft chiming of a clock in the distance.
‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘A clock, chiming. It was kind of faint . . .’
‘Nope,’ said Jaide. ‘Come on. I want to talk to the professor.’
The death mask was exactly where they had left him, dozing patiently under the dust sheet. His eyes jerked open with a sneeze when they pulled it off.
‘Ah, it’s you again. The midgets from the future – no, wait, children, you said. You’re looking for a golden card. You’re starting your collection rather young, aren’t you? Perhaps that’s how you do things in this future of yours.’
‘What collection?’ repeated Jack, confused.
‘Of cards. Every Warden has one, but not usually in my time until they were Wardens.’
Even though the death mask only had blank spaces for eyes, Jack and Jaide had the uncomfortable feeling that the professor was looking right into them. ‘Perhaps it is the same in this time, too. Why do you seek this card, exactly? And for whom do you seek it?’
‘Our father asked us to find it,’ said Jaide. She figured she could trust a Warden with the truth, even if he had been dead for hundreds of years.
‘What is this card called?’
‘The Card of Translocation,’ Jack said. ‘Do you know what it’s for?’
‘There are thousands of gold cards. I don’t recall that one in particular. They are, in general, For the Divination of Potential Powers and Safekeeping Thereof. Beyond that, however, I can only speculate. The name is somewhat curious.’
The death mask raised its plaster eyebrows and dropped the left corner of its mouth in something that conveyed the feeling of a shrug.
‘Can you tell us where it might be?’ Jack asked.
‘I can do better than that, if you put me in one of those satchels of yours. That would be a practical solution to my non-ambulatory state – my lack of legs, I mean.’
‘You want to come with us?’ asked Jaide.
‘Of course! I can’t very well help you stuck here on this table, can I?’
She had hoped for directions rather than lugging the death mask around with her, but the professor’s suggestion did make sense. And besides, he had been trapped under a sheet for more years than she could imagine. It seemed only fair that he should have a change of scenery.
She and Jack arranged his pack into a kind of harness around Jack’s neck and shoulders, so it hung down his front. Then they tied the death mask of Professor Olafsson on the front, using the ends of the straps.
‘No’ ’oo ’ight – ah, yes, yes, that’s perfect.’
His grin widened as they approached the door and opened it.
‘What a marvellous opportunity! I imagined I would be forgotten there forever, you know. A terrible fate for a brilliant mind like mine.’
‘Shhh,’ Jack said. ‘We’re not the only people here.’
‘Is someone else looking for the Card of Translocation?’
‘We don’t know for sure,’ said Jaide. ‘Maybe.’
‘We should hear Rodeo Dave coming,’ said Jack. ‘His boots make a lot of noise on the stone.’
‘Well, I will endeavour to speak quietly,’ said the professor, only slightly more quietly than he had spoken before. ‘Tra la la! I see you have a witching rod. Yes, hold it like that – I believe it is the more efficacious of the two methods. Now, if we take the left corridor ahead, that would be our best course.’
‘Why?’ asked Jaide. ‘What’s there?’
‘A very large window,’ said the professor with dignity. ‘I have not seen the sun for many decades. After a brief interval there, I will lead you on our search.’
As quietly as they could, the twins moved off down the corridor, with the death mask of the professor humming something softly to himself, a tune the twins did not know, but long ago had been written in tribute to the glory of the sun.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Hidden Door
THE PROFESSOR WAS COMPLETELY SILENT as Jack stood in the shaft of sunlight that came through the tall window. After a few minutes, when Jack began to fidget, he sighed and said, ‘Enough. Let the hunt begin.’
The twins took turns with the witching rod. It was difficult to hold, and they soon became quite sensitive to its every twitch and tremble – perhaps oversensitive. They spent a lot of time examining empty rooms and unmarked stretches of walls. They opened countless chests, drawers and doors, the skeleton key working every time. Often Jack heard the distant chime of a clock when he turned one of the keys. Eventually, he realised it must be an echo of some old power, and wondered if the keys had been used by Wardens as well as by their grandfather. That would explain why the key apparently was physically drawn to the locks they presented it with, as though it had a mind of its own.
Unfortunately, when the twins got the chests, drawers and doors open, they usually found nothing but dust. There were occasional surprises that under other circumstances would have piqued their curiosity: a brass bell hidden under a sagging bed, four pitted cannonballs in a pyramid in one corner of an otherwise empty attic, several coils of rope that rats had nibbled at, a shield leaning up against the side of an empty barrel, even a moth-eaten jester’s hat in a glass case with a label that had faded into unintelligibility.
They did find lots more whales: in carved flourishes on the banisters, on dinner services and cutlery stacked neatly in the lifeless kitchen, even on a handkerchief someone had dropped long years past behind a sagging wainscot. Jaide supposed the whales made sense, given the family’s fortune had been made through whaling, but it was still a bit grotesque.
They also found the castle’s medieval toilets.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ asked Jack, pointing at a wooden seat with a round hole in it, within a niche in one corner of the castle’s solar.
‘It’s a garderobe,’ said Professor Olafsson. ‘Has the future no need of such things anymore?’
‘We call them toilets, and yes, we still need them,’ said Jaide, looking down the hole. It led to a pit outside the castle walls. A strong draft made her shiver. The air smelled of rain. ‘I wonder if the Rourkes used these? You know, being super-realistic with the history and everything?’
‘There were proper toilets in those bathrooms upstairs,’ said Jack. ‘And next to the library. Besides, wouldn’t they stink?’
‘Not if properly cleansed,’ said the professor. ‘A few buckets of water every time, mixed with a solution of hyssop and rosemary. Or you could lower a small child with a brush—’
‘Okay, okay!’ interrupted Jack. ‘That’s enough about garderobes! Let’s get on with finding the card. We’re running out of time.’
‘I’m not getting any twitches,’ said Jaide, waving the witching rod slowly across the walls and furniture. The solar was one of the few places where the twins had found anything actually made of gold. Here, it was in the form of candelabra and a cufflink case shaped like a fish. Downstairs they had found gold mugs in the dining room, and a gold pen in the study that looked as though it had dropped on the desk decades ago and never been moved.
‘Maybe that’s a good sign,’ said Jack, kicking at the foot of a bed in frustration and provoking a rain of dust. ‘It never seems to point to anything interesting. Could it be faulty, Professor Olafsson?’
‘That is a remote possibility,’ said the death mask. ‘The wire mechanism is simplicity itself. The fault might lie in the operator—’
‘Are you saying I’m doing it wrong?’ asked Jaide, looking under the bed and finding only an ornate chamber-pot. ‘—or in the nature of the card’s hiding place. What if we can’t find this card because it is not truly here?’
‘Huh?’ said Jack.
‘There are more worlds than we can imagine brushing up against this one, realms separated from ours by the
simplest thought, the merest breath. What if the card is in one of those? The witching rod might glimpse it, but we cannot because we lack the key to enter the realm the card occupies.’