A Quill Ladder (53 page)

It occurred to Mark then that just a few months earlier, he really
would
have needed a helper to do this, not someone masquerading as his helper. This realization gave him a curious feeling that he couldn
’
t quite identify. He wished he still had the little yellow laminated cards in his pocket, the ones that identified emotions, so he could review them.

It was nevertheless Caleb who knocked firmly and confidently on the door. Kasey answered it, and two orange-striped cats ambled out past him and onto the step. Kasey cocked his head to the side at Caleb, but then Mark pushed his way to the front and donned what he believed was his most friendly smile. Kasey immediately smiled back and stuck out his hand.

“
Oh, it
’
s you. I can
’
t thank you enough for those maps. They were definitely the ones missing from the series. It was quite the find, I have to tell you.
”

Mark stared at the outstretched hand in horror. Did Kasey mean for him to shake his hand? Mark had never shaken hands with anyone. Handshaking was a clear means of picking up germs (he had been very careful not to touch anything in the hospital, not even the railing that led down to the floor that Ms. Beckham was on).

Kasey raised an eyebrow over Mark
’
s shoulder at Abbey and Caleb, then blessedly withdrew his hand.

“
You want to see the other map, I assume?
”

Mark nodded.

“
Well, come on in, then. There was another man at the library just last week looking for it. A doctor from the university. Ford, I think his name was. He
’
s made an appointment to see it this afternoon, but we have a bit of time before he gets here.
”
Kasey turned and made his way into the house.

Mark froze. The very bad man (or was it very very?
—
he couldn
’
t remember) was coming to see the map. Mark sensed the rustle of Abbey and Caleb shifting behind him, and then heard Caleb murmur,
“
He won
’
t be able to get here.
”
Mark relaxed slightly. Caleb was probably right. The Coventry Hill stones were gone.

Kasey
’
s house was decorated in a proliferation of artifacts. Old urns, carpets, and wall hangings festooned every available corner. The result was homey, but a little claustrophobic. Mark wondered what kind of germs, dust mites, and bacteria some of the items might contain. But he nevertheless followed Kasey down the burgundy-walled hall.

*****

Abbey was reviewing the things that Simon had told them and trying to listen to Kasey at the same time.
“
Okay, so be very careful when you touch the map. Don
’
t touch it without the gloves.
”
Kasey administered a stern glance at Caleb, who had not taken a pair of Kasey
’
s gloves.
“
Absolutely no sneezing near or on the map.
”

They sat around a map table in a windowless room illuminated by two beautiful blue and green Tiffany lamps
—
from 1910, Kasey had informed them, designed by Clara Driscoll herself. Mark looked to be sweating in the leather gloves that Kasey had loaned them, and they stretched tight over his large fingers.

With his final admonitions given, Kasey drew aside a landscape painting on the wall behind the lamp, revealing a safe. He dialed the combination and withdrew an ochre map sheet.

Even Abbey, with no sense of appreciation of maps, almost gasped at its beauty when Kasey laid it reverently on the table. Coventry was depicted in almost pictorial fashion, with squares for houses, and some of the key buildings, such as the Dorset Hotel and the Heximer Building, drawn in fine detail. The hills were drawn using odd, side-by-side lines that gave the illusion of depth
—
hachures, Kasey explained, an old-fashioned method of showing relief, which were unusual even at the time. The Stairway Mountains by the Granton Dam looked positively forbidding and stately.

Mark had emitted almost a moan of rapture at seeing the map, and after a few seconds he started to fiddle with the clasp of his satchel, which he was having trouble opening with the gloves on. Abbey bent down to help him. From the level of the table, she was struck by the degree to which the hachures on the map really seemed to show depth, like an optical illusion.

“
You
’
re trying to get out your maps, so you can look at the location of the dots?
”
Kasey said.
“
No need. I
’
ve already plotted them on an exact replica of this map. And I have two copies of the replica, so you can even draw on it if you want. Lightly, with a pencil,
”
he added with a smile, lifting the old map gently off the table and replacing it in the wall safe. He closed the safe and moved the painting back into place. Then he removed a map tube from the top of the map drawer that occupied the back of the room, unfurled a white piece of paper, and placed it on the table.

“
You can see I
’
ve plotted your dots, along with the dots that were already on my map, as well as your cross, and the watermark. Interesting, no? It
’
s still missing some dots in my mind to complete the pattern, but it looks to me, based on the distances between the existing dots, that there could be an inner and an outer circle around the downtown. Of course, as you probably know, Coventry used to be based on a circle plan, with girdle streets forming rings around the downtown core, like Paris. Those roads are gone now, but they were the basis for the train spokes. So maybe the dots mean nothing. They just marked the locations of houses that lined the streets.
”

Mark had pressed his still-gloved hands against the paper, staring at the dots. Then he fumbled with his satchel, opened the clasp this time, and withdrew a pencil. He looked at Kasey.
“
You said it was okay to draw.
”

Kasey nodded.

Abbey watched as Mark started to plot out the locations of the coordinates that had been printed across the bottom of the card that Ian had given them. First the stones on Coventry Hill, then Sylvain
’
s house, the Granton Dam, Salisbury Swamp, and
—
with more difficulty, because there were no landmarks
—
the ones to the northeast. Then he carefully wrote
“
BP
”
at the bottom of the cross.

Kasey watched with great interest.
“
You know something I don
’
t know. Are you saying there
’
s another circle, this one farther out?
”

Mark seemed stymied for an answer.

Abbey stared at the dots.

Five dots. Five lines. Equilateral. The pentagons on the door locks. The one on Ian
’
s lighter.

“
What if
…”
she said,
“
what if they aren
’
t circles? What if they
’
re pentagons?
”

Kasey cocked his head.
“
I guess they could be. I don
’
t see how that makes much difference though.
”

“
Does
‘
BP
’
stand for bottom of the pentagon then?
”
Caleb said.

“
Maybe, except this pentagon is upside down.
”
Abbey pointed at the middle ring of dots. Something about this hypothesis didn
’
t seem quite right though. Abbey stared at the giant M watermark and the cross. Why was the M so big and funny-shaped?

“
You said the mapmaker had a last name of Morrison, right? Did he put this funny watermark on any of his other maps?
”
Abbey said.

Kasey shook his head.
“
I thought maybe it wasn
’
t to represent his name, but rather that these maps are considered to be part of the Messiah series.
”

Messiah: deliverer or savior. That was a strange theme for maps. Abbey stared at the map again.
“
Mark, can you draw the tunnels? The ones that connect the outer dots to the inner dots?
”

“
Tunnels?
”
Kasey said.
“
You mean the old city tunnels. I thought those were an urban myth.
”

“
Perhaps,
”
Abbey said quickly.
“
But we heard some rumors about where they might be, if they
’
re real.
”
She looked at Caleb and Mark, wondering how much they wanted to share with Kasey. Mark had already withdrawn a ruler and protractor from his satchel and was busy drawing the tunnel lines between the dots. Then he pointed at the dot in the southeast quadrant of the map; he had connected it to the Heximer Building.

“
This is Abbott
’
s Apothecary,
”
he said.

Abbott
’
s Apothecary, where they had arrived this afternoon. So it was connected to two tunnels
—
one that lead to Ian
’
s and one that lead to the Heximer building. There was something about the shape of the tunnels
…

“
What if
…
what if
…”
she said again, her words falling over each other.
“
What if it isn
’
t a pentagon? What if it
’
s a pentagram inside a pentagram, inside a pentagram, and the tunnels follow the arms of the inner pentagrams? The golden mean
…”
She shook her hands in the air as she tried to explain.
“
Pentagrams are one of the ultimate illustrations of the golden mean. The lengths of the pentagram sides and the sides of the corresponding outer pentagon are in the golden ratio. And all of the line segments within the pentagram are in the golden ratio to each other. The M isn
’
t a watermark. It
’
s the bottom of the biggest pentagram.
”

Abbey snatched the ruler and pencil from Mark and began drawing the lines of the outer pentagram. Its point was at the very northernmost part of the map, right on top of Sylvain
’
s house.

“
At the top of Top Point Drive,
”
Caleb breathed, before the words could come out of her mouth.

Then Abbey drew the two inner pentagrams, the medium-sized one upside down within the pentagon of the larger pentagram.
“
This tunnel here
”—
she pointed to the one they had taken from the swamp to the apothecary
—“
is this arm of the pentagram. And the cross
—”

“—
is the Greek Cross on the man on the pentagram by Agrippa, to show that the human body also reflects the golden mean,
”
Kasey finished, sinking into a chair at the end of the map table as if it was all too much.