Secret Breakers: The Power of Three (19 page)

‘It does!’

His eyebrow twitched.

Brodie made a study of the train carpet. There was a rather nasty Ribena stain below her toes. ‘But if we carry on, the officials from the government, or whoever, will stop us, won’t they? You’ve said that.’

Smithies shook his head. ‘I’ve said they’ll try and stop us. There’s a difference.’

Brodie was getting tired of the way Smithies insisted on precision. She supposed that’s what made him a good code-cracker. She was surprised to find, when she looked up, he’d carried on speaking.

‘Look, Brodie. You’re absolutely right. We should’ve explained “Veritas” was not only a secret from the general public, but from the government itself. We should’ve explained we’d no official backing. That what you were really involved in was a secret inside a secret. But we didn’t. Now you can, as I think you want to, leave the train at the next station and return to the life you left behind, or …’ and here he hesitated for a moment, ‘you can choose to go on and face the consequences. Perhaps we’ll get there first. Perhaps the Ministry officials won’t catch us and we’ll find whatever was hidden by the mark of the Firebird and a truth the government’s scared to let us find. But whatever you decide, know I’m grateful to you.’

‘Grateful?’

‘Before Veritas re-formed, before the work at Station X, I believed the thrill of the code was over. Now I’m in a race to find a manuscript hidden in a palace. I’ve escaped from the cave. The excitement of the code doesn’t get much better than that.’

Brodie looked down at the floor, a lump forming thick in her throat.

Outside the window, trees flashed past in a blur. She closed her eyes and tried to steady herself. There were three more minutes left until the station. Smithies walked slowly back to the carriage.

Friedman sat alone in the Bletchley Park railway station café. Outside it’d just begun to rain. The water ran in rivulets down the windowpane. He looked at his watch. Smithies was late. He slurped a mouthful of tea. The undissolved sugar was gritty on his tongue.

Behind the counter, Gordon reset the telephone receiver on the cradle. He rubbed his head. Working near Bletchley was getting to him. He needed a break. A change of scene. Still, the message had been clear and he knew the man on the end of the telephone line would make good his payment. He was good with tipping too, so it was best to go with the flow. He wiped his hands purposefully down the front of his apron then took an apple cream puff from the chiller cabinet and slipped it on to a plate.

Once Gordon reached him, the seated man looked up, surprise written on his face. Gordon cleared his throat nervously before putting the apple cream puff down on the table. ‘Your friend says to tell you they only serve cakes as good as these at the Prince Regent’s home in Brighton.’

Friedman’s brow creased into lines. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Your friend said to tell you they only serve cakes this good at the Prince Regent’s home in Brighton.’

Gordon wondered, after the man rose from the table and ran from the café, whether it would be entirely inappropriate to replace the apple cream puff in the chiller cabinet. The man, after all, had never even touched it.

‘I think we should go on.’ Brodie stood in the doorway to the carriage, her arms keeping the sliding doors separate.

Smithies made his relief obvious with a sigh.

‘I mean it seems a bit mad to give up now.’

Hunter smiled and then winced as his forehead obviously caused him immense pain. ‘So you’re not worried about the government officials who may be chasing us?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Course I am! We may not be fast enough for them. So we must make sure we are.’

Tusia laughed. ‘Nice one, sister.’

‘We must stay focused and determined and whatever happens we must get to the phoenix before they do.’

Hunter clapped his hands. ‘So we’re back in the race then?’

Brodie nodded. ‘We’re back in the race.’ She pulled the carriage doors closed behind her and looked first to Smithies and then to Miss Tandari, who were both beaming broadly. ‘So who’s going to tell us about the Pavilion?’

Miss Tandari did the explaining. Built by the demand of the Prince, the Pavilion looked like an Indian building from the outside, but once inside the decoration was mainly Chinese. According to Miss Tandari, the Prince had never been to either China or India and neither had his architects or builders, but what they created was a palace by the sea which from outside was topped with minarets and domes, and inside was packed with, as Smithies had already told them, statues, pictures and carvings of mythical beasts. ‘Ideal place for a phoenix,’ added Miss Tandari. ‘We just have to use our wits and the original letter from Van der Essen to find it.’

They ran all the way from Brighton station. The town was bustling with people and it seemed odd to Brodie that so many of them walked past the Royal Pavilion without even giving it a second glance, as if it wasn’t really there.

‘Like the scabbard,’ panted Smithies. ‘People just take the building for granted but if you step back and consider, it’s really a remarkable thing.’

The palace was long and surrounded by gardens but not far from the main road. It was a creamy stone colour with high French windows along the side topped with patterned stone fretwork. An Indian castle dropped into an English town. What struck Brodie most were the domes. One huge central dome was ringed with petal-shaped windows like a belt around its middle, and to either side were smaller domes ornately decorated.

‘Not bad for a seaside retreat?’ Smithies smiled, hurrying them towards the main door. ‘Although you can see why many people thought the place was vulgar and over the top.’

Brodie thought it was simply beautiful.

Smithies gathered the group together just outside the main door. ‘Now remember. We’re on a school visit. Researching the Prince. Don’t draw attention to yourself but don’t miss any details – however small. Think about Van der Essen’s letter. We’re looking for

The phoenix of power

In her cloak of elfin Urim

She who is wrongly considered to

Fly lower than the rightful dragon
.’

Brodie wrinkled her nose and repeated the phrase in her head. Then she followed the others towards the pavilion entrance.

‘You know, I’ve been thinking about part of the code,’ said Tusia shuffling to the front. ‘The whole
flying lower
bit. It’s to do with use of space, right. And it must mean the idea phoenixes fly lower than dragons is wrong, if you know what I mean.’

Brodie chewed this over. ‘I guess that’s what it means.
Wrongly considered to fly lower
and all that. But that’s weird.’

‘Why?’ pressed Hunter.

‘Because in the ancient myths of China there’s a rule,’ she said. ‘I’ve read about it.’

‘What haven’t you read about?’ Hunter jibed before frowning when Smithies glared.

‘In the ancient stories a dragon represents males and the phoenix a female. And in tradition males are more important than females.’

‘Well, it’s hard to argue.’

Now Tusia glared at Hunter and for good measure dug him hard in the ribs. ‘
Ancient tradition
,’ she said, emphasising her words.

‘Anyway, a dragon should always fly higher than a phoenix. That’s the rule of the story.’

Miss Tandari held her hand up and caused them all to halt. ‘You’re probably right, Brodie. I mean about the legend. But the designers of the Pavilion weren’t really clear on all the rules about China and its traditions. None of them had ever been to Asia and there’s rumour they did all sorts of crazy things like copy Chinese phrases from packing-cases down at the docks instead of checking out what they said.’ She laughed. ‘They literally copied things like “this way up” and “handle with care” and then painted them beautifully in Chinese characters on the walls of this place. They’ll have got things wrong, that’s for sure. They might not have known dragons were supposed to fly higher than firebirds. But they certainly tried to make things look good here, for anyone who didn’t know the rules.’

‘Let’s see how good,’ said Smithies, taking charge of the tickets, and stuffing the offered souvenir guidebook into a large brown paper bag. Miss Tandari led the three of them through an octagonal hallway into the main entrance hall.

‘Look,’ gestured Hunter. ‘There really are dragons everywhere.’ On the wall, either side of a gilt-framed mirror, were raised white panels on which dragons coiled protectively, and in small glass windows high above the doorway olive green dragons were framed by the painted golden rays of the sun.

‘The Prince certainly liked his mythical beasts,’ laughed Smithies.

‘And bright colours,’ added Tusia who’d made her way to the front and was heading out into what the signs told them was the ‘long gallery’. ‘My mum would have a field day in here.’

Brodie tried to take it all in. Pink walls painted with pictures of blue bamboo; statues of Chinese court officials; tiny golden bells hanging all along the top of the wall and great skylights painted with pictures. ‘That’s Lei Gong, the Chinese God of Thunder,’ said Brodie, craning her neck to see more clearly the stained glass of the skylight above her. ‘I think I’ve read in Chinese myth he always had two thunder dragons with him. Look.’

Hunter glanced up. ‘Your obsession with stories may come in handy here.’

There were few other visitors, it being quite late in the afternoon. An elderly woman with a folded pink umbrella was giving an over-wordy lecture to a group of bored-looking tourists. They were bunched round a large mantel clock in the form of Cupid driving through clouds in a chariot, being pulled along by butterflies. Smithies led the way quickly past them, hurrying through the gallery as if mere speed alone would help them find what they looked for. When they came to the banqueting room though, his feet slowed to a stop. Brodie had been impressed by the ballroom at Bletchley. The long gallery in the Pavilion was certainly quite stunning.

But the Banqueting Room was something else.

A long table ran down the centre of the room, groaning under the weight of plates and golden cutlery. On the window side, the room was decked with gold and red curtains topped with figurines of golden dragons. Huge pictures of Chinese art framed with burnt gold hung on the walls and the ceiling arced above them. The rest of the walls were covered with patterned golden paper showing dragons and stars and planets. But it was the chandeliers hung from the ceiling that caused Brodie to wobble a little as she looked. Appearing to fly free beneath a canopy of leaves was an enormous silver and gold dragon. In its claws hung a crystal chandelier so large Brodie was sure it’d be possible for a grown man to hide in the falls of crystal and not be seen. Around the light, six more dragons reared upwards. Each held another light in their mouth, shaped like overlapping tongues of flame.

‘Now that’s surely what you call elfin Urim,’ said Tusia. ‘Amazing use of the space in here.’

It was a while before Brodie tore her gaze away from the central light and looked around the rest of the room. It was then she saw them.

Suspended in the four corners of the massive hall were four more spectacular lights, each hanging from a glittering star of crystal and gold. Yet above each star, carrying the light on a silver collar tight around her neck, tail spread in flight and wings wide, was a golden phoenix.

Brodie could barely speak. ‘Look. Look.’ She jabbed at Hunter’s arm and he switched his gaze from the central chandelier to the edge of the room. ‘Do you see?’ she said. ‘A firebird in flight.’

She looked back at the dragon chandelier weighed down by the crystal and the gold. Then back at the firebirds as they flew high towards the ceiling, their outstretched beaks almost touching the painted canopy above them.

Suddenly she was aware of someone twitching excitedly beside her.

‘It’s wrong,’ Tusia yelped. ‘The lights are wrong.’

The others gathered closer. Brodie was just getting herself ready to deflect Tusia’s moaning about the amount of money which had obviously been splashed around to pay for the amazing chandeliers. Surely even Tusia understood princes were allowed to spend money.

‘I mean the position of the light is wrong.’

‘You think there’s a better way to hang chandeliers other than from the ceiling?’ said Hunter quizzically.

‘It’s what I said about “flying lower”. Remember? When we were just coming in and we talked about how the designers might have got things wrong.’