December (10 page)
Authors: Gabrielle Lord
Dr Brinsley was a tall man with wispy white hair, a deeply furrowed brow and unusual
half-moon
glasses perched on his nose. He inspected the three of us over the top of his glasses with sharp, glittering eyes. We shook hands and his glance fell on the Celtic ring I wore.
‘Ah, it’s nice to see an old classic. The Carrick bend,’ he said, with a light Irish accent, pointing to the angular Celtic pattern woven in the silver band. ‘Sometimes also called the Carrick knot. It’s a popular design in the south-east of the country. So,’ he continued, ‘you’re the infamous young man who’s finally obtained the Ormond Riddle?’
I nodded, not sure how to respond.
‘I must say, as much as I was hoping to meet you, I don’t think I ever really expected to see
you here. It must have been exceptionally
difficult
to make it out of your country.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
‘So you have the Riddle, but not the last two lines, eh?’
‘You said you could help me with those,’ I reminded him as we followed him through some large double doors. I was really hoping I could trust this guy.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, turning and closing the double doors behind us. ‘Follow me, please.’
He led us to the back offices of the library, crowded with shelves that stood far too close to each other, leaving only narrow passages between them. It reminded me of Repro’s old place. Once through this maze we came to another door which he unlocked and ushered us through.
We were standing on a small landing with a railing around it, similar to the dress circle of a theatre, overlooking the main body of the library below. The gallery stretched away for hundreds of metres, completely crammed with brown, leather-clad books, sectioned into alcoves soaring up to the cathedral-like ceiling.
‘Wow,’ said Winter. ‘What a library! I’ve never seen anything like it, except in movies.’
‘Coolest library ever,’ exclaimed Boges,
leaning
over the railing beside me. ‘Look at all
those ancient books! There must be millions in here!’
‘Not quite,’ said Dr Brinsley. ‘We house over two hundred thousand antiquarian volumes, and the Book of Kells is just over there, in the Treasury building.’
I didn’t know what the ‘Book of Kells’ was, but it must have been important.
‘You have a treasure of your own,’ continued Brinsley, ‘which I am most anxious to see. Let’s take a look at it, shall we?’
His eager eyes shone with greedy anticipation as he cleared some space on a nearby desk, piled high with ancient books and papers. The Keeper of Rare Books removed some boxes from a bench and an armchair, and gestured to us to sit down, before sitting behind the desk himself.
What if Brinsley had been waiting for this moment—a moment to seize our ‘treasure’? Any moment now he could draw a weapon and turn on us.
Or would Rathbone suddenly jump out from an alcove, demanding someone ring the Garda and waving extradition papers that would have me on the next flight back home to face arrest?
I couldn’t tell if I was just being paranoid or cautious. With the stakes getting higher now the end was so near, I didn’t want to stuff up.
My friends and I sat down and I carefully drew out the Ormond Riddle. I placed it on the Keeper’s desk, just in front of me, my fingers firmly holding it in place as he leaned over it, fervently.
‘Ah! Here it is at last! The Ormond Riddle,’ he breathed. ‘We all thought it had been lost forever. Can it be true?’ He snatched up a magnifying glass from a drawer and started scanning the medieval script.
Finally he straightened up and his face was shining. His eyes looked watery with elation.
‘All my life, ever since I was a little boy and first heard about the Ormond Singularity, I’ve wished that I could find the truth. My
grandfather
first told me about it. He’d heard about the legend from
his
grandfather. He’d grown up in Kilkenny, where it was rumoured that the huge secret concerning the Ormond family was hidden in one of Black Tom’s castles.’
‘Kilkenny?’ I interrupted, thinking of
Great-uncle
Bartholomew’s property in Mount Helicon. ‘Kilkenny’ must have been an important place for him to name his home after it. I dug out one of Dad’s ruin photos. ‘Is this a castle in Kilkenny? One of Black Tom’s castles?’
Boges and Winter, who’d been keeping pretty quiet, both shot me wary glares.
Dr Brinsley took the photo from me, looked at it and shook his head. ‘That’s certainly not the famous Kilkenny Castle. Kilkenny Castle was saved from ruin, and is open to the public—you should visit it. But this,’ he said, examining the photo, ‘is unfamiliar to me. These sorts of ruins are all over Ireland. It could be anywhere.’
Kilkenny Castle definitely sounded like
something
we should check out, but my shoulders slumped. Finding the location in the photos was going to be much harder than we’d anticipated. I wondered how we could find out whether it was one of Black Tom’s castles—one of the castles that could be hiding the secret of the Ormond Singularity.
He peered closer at the picture, picking up the magnifying glass again. ‘What’s that figure there? Carved in the stones? That’s very unusual for the times.’
I stared hard and tried to make it out. I could almost see a figure cut into the stones of an upper turret, but I couldn’t make out the detail. The angle of the photo made it almost impossible.
Dr Brinsley straightened up, and handed the photo back to me. ‘My grandfather also said that the Ormond Singularity gives passage to unimaginable treasure and wealth,’ he said, as though he were recalling an ancient myth. ‘As
to the treasure trove,’ he continued, ‘you know how these stories grow over the centuries. Who knows what it really means?’
Unimaginable treasure and wealth
. The phrase, so similar to my dad’s, repeated itself in my mind. No wonder everyone was after it. Was that the secret that was hidden?
‘Treasure?’ asked Boges. ‘Do you believe there’s some sort of buried treasure at one of Black Tom’s castles?’
Dr Brinsley shrugged. ‘Possibly. But the Ormond Singularity runs out in a matter of days. On 31 December, at midnight, to be exact. I happen to know that because I’ve been
working
on old titles and legal documents awaiting repeal. We have to find places here to house them all.’
I looked around at the already over-stuffed shelves, desks and floor, and understood his problem.
‘If something valuable—the treasure, so to speak—is found after that time,’ continued Dr Brinsley, ‘it will all revert to the Crown. Which, of course, is where it is rumoured to have
originated
.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re
saying
that the Ormond Singularity began with the Crown? With Queen Elizabeth the First and the
Ormond family?’ I asked him, careful not to let on how much we knew already.
‘It was something Queen Elizabeth granted to the Ormond family. Black Tom—the tenth Earl of Ormond—was her vice-regent here, protecting her interests against his Irish countrymen. He was the first Irishman to be given the Order of the Garter, and he wore it to bed every night.’
‘He wore it
to bed?’
‘That is so.’
Winter nudged me. ‘Sounds like a serious crush to me,’ she whispered.
‘But the Ormond Singularity is something much bigger than some decoration from the Queen,’ I said, thinking of the Ormond Jewel, ‘if you’re talking about something like hidden
treasure
, here in Ireland.’
My brain started turning around at those words.
Treasure
…
in Ireland
. Suddenly
something
made sense.
I turned to my friends. ‘Jennifer Smith said my dad had hurled a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Treasure Island
across the room, frustrated that no-one could understand what he was trying to say. He didn’t want to
read
the book, he was trying to tell us about treasure
in
Ireland!’
‘Your father knew something about this
treasure
trove?’ Brinsley asked, frowning. ‘What else did he tell you?’
Immediately, I realised I’d said too much. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, trying to brush it off. ‘He was so sick at the time, he was probably just hallucinating.’
‘That’s right,’ Boges added, shaking his head. ‘Cal’s dad died from an unknown virus that really messed with his head. He didn’t know what he was saying.’
I could see that Dr Brinsley suspected we knew a great deal more than we were letting on. He turned his attention back to the Riddle on his desk.
‘Sacrilege,’ he said, examining the clean cut across the bottom, ‘cutting off the last two lines.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘So you said you have
information
about the last two lines, and where they could be?’
‘First things first,’ he replied. ‘Do you also have the Ormond Jewel?’
I felt Boges kick my ankle, hard.
‘It’s in a safe,’ said Winter quickly. ‘Maybe we could organise for you to have a look at it.’
‘May I ask how you came by it? My grandfather told me that there was once such a Jewel but that it had been lost generations ago. There had always been some connection between the Ormond
Riddle and the Jewel, he believed. Although what it might have been, exactly, he did not know.’
‘It was recently acquired by my family,’ I said, reluctant to say that Dad had bought it while he was over here.
Dr Brinsley squinted at me, as though willing me to hand over more information. ‘The Ormond Jewel—perhaps you could tell me what it looks like?’
Boges tentatively pulled out some photos of the Jewel, and looked to me for approval to hand them over. I nodded to him.
‘Here,’ he said, placing them in Brinsley’s eager hands. There were four photos of the Jewel; one showing it closed, one showing it opened—
revealing
the portrait of Elizabeth the First inside, one showing the back with the rose and rosebud, while the last was a magnified depiction of the Middle French inscription.
After studying the photos for some time, Dr Brinsley sat back and fanned himself with a wad of papers. ‘I must say,’ he said, ‘this is incredible. The usual explanation for this sort of precious, antiquarian item reappearing in modern day is that it has been held by a family for hundreds of years, so long that its origin and importance has been forgotten or lost, then the piece is sold when a family finds itself in financial difficulties. I’d
say it came on the market fairly recently, was bought up by a dealer who also didn’t know its history, and then was sold for its face value—a jewelled miniature of Queen Elizabeth the First by an unknown artist. It would bring a high price just as it is, but certainly not the price it is actually worth.’
The Keeper’s face was filled with enthusiasm. ‘I think I’m starting to get some idea of what the Ormond Singularity might be. Mind you, it’s only a guess—an educated guess—but there’s something I have at home that I think you should see.’
He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, then leaned over to his desk and unlocked a drawer.