Obsidian Pebble (23 page)
“Meaning?” Ellie asked
Ruff shrugged. “Anyway, I pulverised cinder into c, i, n, d, e and r. Gave them each a number from their position in the alphabet and added them upâ”
“Comes to fifty-three,” Ellie said, much to Ruff's annoyance.
“Ruff, that's brilliant,” Oz said. “Talk about hidden depths.”
“Yeah, dark and murky,” Ellie muttered.
“Okay. So what does the hourglass mean?” Oz said.
“That, I don't know,” Ruff answered.
Oz went very quiet. “I think I do,” he said in a low, tremulous voice. “Time, commander of all things.”
“You what?” asked Ruff.
“It's my dad's clock,” Oz said. “Come on.”
* * *
The study was just as empty as Oz had left it, but not quite the same. Oz remembered that Tim had been in there bleeding radiators, which explained why the desk was at a funny angle. Oz stood before it and pointed at the clock on the wall behind.
“And?” said Ruff impatiently.
“There, beneath the pendulum, see it?”
Ellie and Ruff walked up close to the clock. There, inlaid in the scrolls of the rosewood case, was a small hourglass with the words
tempus rerum imperator
engraved beneath it.
“Time, commander of all things,” Oz said again.
“Okay, so this clock has an hourglass engraved on it,” said Ruff dubiously. “How does that help?”
“Eldred told me today that my dad had bought this clock from him. We know it was from here originally and my dad went back to get it.”
“But why?” Ruff said. “Doesn't even work.”
“I know,” Oz said, trying to concentrate. “But Dad used to say to us that an old boar figurine might be just a mildly interesting blob of metal heavy enough to weigh down the post, but to whoever owned it a thousand years ago, it meant something else altogether. Something really important, and much more than we could ever imagine. He was always on about things having other meanings.”
“Yeah, but come on, this is a clock,” Ruff said. “Can't be anything else, can it?”
“The hands on this clock have been at a quarter past nine for as long as I can remember,” Oz said. “My dad would never wind it. What do you think would happen if the hands were moved around toâ”
“Five and three,” Ellie said excitedly. “Of course, fifty-three. It makes sense.”
“Does it?” Ruff said, peering even closer. “But what has this clock got to do with what's on the laptop? What's it got to do with the black dor?”
“Ruff, I gave up asking questions a long time ago. Let's just do it,” Ellie pleaded.
Oz fetched a chair. Standing on it, he reached up and pulled open the glass face. Slowly, he moved the hands around so that the hour hand was on three. When the minute hand reached the twelve position, the clock chimed three times. Oz was so shocked he almost fell off the chair. He had never heard it chime before, and it sounded deep and sonorous and oddly ominous.
He waited until it stopped and slowly moved the hand again until it was on the five. As it reached the digit, something gave a mechanical whirr. Ellie and Ruff exchanged glances and Oz saw out of the corner of his eye that there was a lot of doubt in that glance.
“Let's just wait and see,” he said shortly.
The clock continued to whirr, until it finally stopped with a faint, mechanical click. They waited. Nothing happened.
“Maybe ifâ” Ellie began, but Oz cut her off.
“Let's just hang on another minute,” he snarled, more tartly than he'd meant to.
“Yes, butâ”
“Ellie, please.”
“I only wanted to say that it might help if you twisted the hourglass thingy, that's all,” she snapped.
“How can I? It's inlaid⦔ Oz caught his breath. The brass hourglass symbol wasn't inlaid anymore. In fact, it now proudly stood out of the surrounding wooden casing, and was smooth and solid under Oz's finger. He was standing so close that he must not have seen it pop out. Gently, Oz put his thumb and forefinger around the shape and twisted clockwise. There was a mechanical thunk and the bottom section of the clock, beneath the pendulum, moved forward to reveal a small drawer.
“Wow,” Ruff said in wonder.
With trembling fingers, Oz examined the drawer. There was only one thing in itâa folded wodge of very old, battered-looking pieces of paper, which he carefully removed and placed on the desk.
“Better shut the door, Ellie,” Ruff whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
Oz waited until Ellie had closed the study door and then, gently and very carefully, unfolded the papers. There were three yellowed and crinkly sheets. The first was filled with a careful copperplate hand.
“What does it say?” Ellie demanded, pushing her head between the two boys' shoulders.
“Looks sort of official. I recognize that name, âRedmayne,'” Oz said in a whisper.
“He was the bloke who owned the Bunthorpe barn, wasn't he?” Ruff asked.
Oz nodded.
“What does it say?” asked Ellie urgently, pushing her head further forward.
“Okay, okay, we'll have one each,” Oz said, handing them out.
“Mine's a will,” Ruff said, reading down the list of instructions. “Left his son four horses, two goats and three pigs. Oh, and the stable boy got a butter churn and a milking bucket. Lucky gonk.”
“Wow,” Ellie said. “This is from John Shoesmith, the farrier, and it's to his brother-in-law, Redmayne.”
“What does it say?” Ruff asked.
Ellie was frowning in concentration. “It's some sort of apology. Yes, listen to thisâ¦
“It was my firm intention to carry out the instructions of Squire Worthy as delivered through you to me, but, dear Edmund, I confess that I was unable to put one mark of injury on the shell with my hammer, even when delivered with enough force to bend a horseshoe. My furnace left it as cool as marble. What was I to do? The Squire was clear in his purpose. And yet, that moment when by chance I held it to my ear and understood with no shadow of doubt why the injured gelding in the stall before me was lame, left me dumbstruck. I knew instantly that its forelock was bruised and its lameness not due to a nail bind as I had thought. How I knew remains a mystery, yet when the shell was taken from my ear I was as dull and ignorant to the animal's suffering as ever I had been before. To my shame, I confess I kept the shell after assuring you I had destroyed it.
“And yet my conscience has been eased by the success I have brought to our family, and I beg your forgiveness and that of the Squire. Had we known on that day in 1758 when the barn shook so hard and the shell appeared, delivered, it seemed, by some unearthly hand, that it would have brought the Squire such misery, we might have done better to throw it into the river. But now, I must state that such thoughts are far from my mind whenever I use it to ease the suffering of those creatures brought to me⦔
Ellie looked up, her face flushed with excitement.
“So this farrier bloke was supposed to destroy the shell,” Ruff said.
“But he didn't,” Ellie finished Ruff's sentence for him. “He kept it and used it.”
But Oz was only half-listening. He stared at the page he held, which had been written in a different hand.
“This looks like it was written by Redmayne himself. Listen to this.” Oz proceeded to read the letter out loud to a rapt Ellie and Ruff.
“As this letter may be read after my death, it is my will that the truth be told in regard to the burning of Bunthorpe barn in the year 1761. It is my contention that those responsible did set the fire through spitefulness or fear because they were unable to procure those items which appeared that night under so strange and wonderful a circumstance. Said miscreants, intent on robbery, found nothing to steal, as was my intention. Following the bell ringers' fright, I shut and locked the barn, but returned later to feed the animals. There, in one corner, I found four items which I knew to be not mine and of such strange appearance to be not of usual construction nor pertaining to this area of England. The four objects were an obsidian pebble, a carved black dor, a stone ring and a pendant of oblong design.
“I immediately spoke to my brother in law, John Shoesmith, the farrier who had been with me three years before when we experienced a similar occurrence, this time with the appearance of a black shell. As on that night, we agreed to a similar course of action and set out to deliver the items to Squire Worthy, who has knowledge of such things. Although the shell has proven to be a dread blight on the Squire's family, we felt that he might yet find some good use and succour from their appearance. What was certain was that such items as were found should be protected until such time as the Squire, or others chosen by him, understood their purpose. In so doing we proposed to form, with others, an Obex so as to hinder those Puffers whose dealings and lies have become a blight on our land. It is they who would surely wish to use these four artefacts for their greedy purposes. It is they, I am certain, who were the arsonists that night. Their actions cost me dearly, but I am comforted in the knowledge that they were unable to find that which they were seeking. Squire Worthy took the four items for safekeeping and seemed pleased. It is my fervent hope that the dread and tragic consequences of our discovery of the shell are not repeated. Our duty is to the Squire and his family, and yet⦔
Oz turned the page over. There was no more. He examined the roughly torn edges and held them up for the others to see.
“There's a bit missing,” Oz said.
“Great,” Ruff muttered. “Now let's have it in English.”
Oz frowned pensively. “Well, we know what happened in 1761, but something else had already happened three years before, obviously.” “The shell,” Ellie said. “Right, and something happened that made them want to destroy it, but Shoesmith somehow found it helped him be a vet and so he kept it. And then the other artefacts appeared in 1761, and they gave them to Worthy again,” Oz said.
“Clear as mud,” Ruff muttered.
“But Obex and Puffers? What are they?” Ellie asked.
“Nice little research job for you there, Ellie,” Oz said.
“What do you think âdread and tragic consequences' means?” Ellie mused, but no one had an answer.
Ruff had turned the will over and now gasped once more. “Wow, take a look at this.”
On the back of the yellowed paper was a series of numbers, a single row above and columns arranged in groups of four below.
722141158/9229514/181411229267129
1891213/13187922/20152688/9127
228822132422/8122611/8122611/2615614
71813/8122611/59181322/13187922
9127/1891213/8122611/228822132422
“It's another cipher,” Ruff said. “The top line is the code, the bottom columns are probably the message.”
“That's you sorted for the night, then,” Oz said to Ruff.
Ruff didn't laugh. Instead there was a long pause, during which he stared off at the floor intently. Oz could almost see the cogs in his brain whirring. Finally, Ruff said, “There's this site I know for gamersâCypherspace, it's called. Cheats for games, help with decoding secret codes, that sort of stuff. I'll get on to that.”
Ellie threw herself down into a chair. “But what does it all mean?”
Oz stared at his friends, eyes gleaming intently. “It's proof that the artefacts existed, that's what it is. Redmayne confessed to finding them and giving them to Worthy.”
“You don't think your dad knew about the letters?” Ruff said.
Oz shook his head. “He bought the clock back from Eldred because he knew it belonged here, but he was always talking about getting it fixed. He just never got round to it. He wouldn't have said that if he knew it was really a safe, would he?”
“So, Morsman found the letters in the orphanage and had the clock turned into a safe to keep them in,” Ellie suggested.
“But that doesn't help us explain how the symbols got onto your laptop, does it?” Ruff said bluntly.
When Oz thought about that, it made his head hurt. Ruff was right, of course. They'd been led to this place by the laptop message. And the laptop message had something to do with the trinket box, he was sure of it. He shrugged and said, “No, it doesn't.”
“There is, of course, another way to look at this,” Ruff said in a small, quiet voice.
“What?” Ellie asked.
“Redmayne goes on about tragic circumstances after discovering the shell, and Shoesmith said they might have done better to throw it in the river. Morsman went looking and died in strange circumstances. And your dad⦔ He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to, because the others knew exactly what he was thinking. But Oz was having none of it.
“Oh, come on, Ruff,” Oz snapped. “A curse? That's a bit much, isn't it?”
“What, and finding weird laptop messages and long-lost brooch clips isn't? I know how it sounds,” Ruff said, “but have you forgotten what we saw in that park tonight?”
Oz opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. For once, he was stuck for a reply.
* * *
Because Ruff insisted he needed the laptop for his decoding, Oz and Ellie returned to the library once again, looking up the musty old volumes for help on Obex and Puffers.
It didn't take them long to find either. Ellie, searching in an ancient encyclopaedia, let out a groan of distaste as she held up a line drawing of a human brain. “Says here that âobex' describes that part of the brain that joins the spinal cord to the base of the brain.”
“That can't be it,” Oz said. He was thumbing through a dusty dictionary. “Wait a minute; it says here, âcan also mean âto throw in the way of or to hinder.'”
“That makes a lot more sense,” Ellie said, looking up. “If Redmayne wanted to throw the Puffers off the track, hindering them might be exactly what he was doing.”