Shadows of Sherwood (24 page)

Secrets in the Cathedral

Robyn struggled against her captor. “
Shh
,” a male voice whispered in her ear. “There's a grid patrol coming.” He drew her back, all the way against the sealed church wall. The corrugated metal sheets thundered behind him. So much for silence.

Then he pulled Robyn straight through the wall. Darkness closed around them. Robyn gasped, as the hand dropped away from her mouth and the guy released her. Robyn spun around.

A young man maybe a few years older stood in front of her with his hands extended like a barrier between them. “I'm not going to hurt you. I swear, I only wanted to help.”

Robyn blinked, her eyes adjusting to the dim light inside the church. “Did you really just pull me through a wall?” she asked, incredulous. They were standing in the church sanctuary. The ceiling swooped into high arches above a cavern of shadowy air. The only light filtered through high,
narrow stained-glass windows. Every regular window was boarded tight.

“There's a loose panel,” the guy said. “You just have to know exactly where to pull. And they were coming up too fast for me to explain.”

“I would have been fine,” Robyn said. “You didn't have to grab me.”

The guy shook his head. “Trust me, there wasn't time. The MPs have the grid-search protocols worked out tight as a drum around here. Two were coming from the other direction, too.”

Robyn's heart trilled.
If that was true . . .

“I saw you from the choir loft.” The guy pointed to a set of stairs at the side of the sanctuary that led to a narrow balcony. “Come up and look,” he said.

Robyn's mood wavered between annoyed and curious. Who did this guy think he was? She followed him. “Who are you?”

“I'm Tucker Branch.” He bounded up the stairs and onto the landing with a flourish. “Denizen of the Nottingham Cathedral.”

Curiosity won. Robyn climbed the stairs after him. “And you decided to save the day. Just for the heck of it?”

Tucker shrugged. “I figure, anyone who's running from the MPs like that is probably a friend of mine.” He led her to one of the boarded-up windows, which had a plank missing. From this vantage point, she could see the MP who had been chasing her standing at the intersection with his hands on his hips. Four MPs approached from opposite directions, searching every inch of the block.

“Are you some kind of criminal?” Robyn asked. Not that she was judging.

Tucker smiled broadly. “Actually, I'm in seminary.” He pointed to a wooden table in the loft with a pile of thick old books resting on it. Several were open along with notes; it looked like he'd been studying.

“You're studying to be a priest?”

“A minister.”

“And in your spare time you take in fugitives?”

“Helping the wayward is pretty much a full-time job,” Tucker said.

Robyn looked down at the searching MPs. “How long until they leave?”

“Less than five minutes to search the block. So I'd give it twenty or so for them to clear the whole area.”

Robyn nodded. So she was stuck here for a little while. “Thanks, by the way.” Tucker had saved her hide. She really hoped Laurel had gotten as lucky, and made it back to the woods.

Tucker leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Forgive me for saying so, but you don't seem like the typical fugitive. What happened?”

Robyn sighed. “Kind of a long story,”

Tucker smiled. “It always is.” He stood, just waiting to see what else she might say.

“To be honest, they started chasing me for no good reason.” Which was actually true. Coming off a fire escape wasn't necessarily a crime. “Although, I may have previously done a few things that are chaseworthy.”

“Or else, why run?” Tucker said.

“I'm Robyn,” she said. Tucker acknowledged the introduction with a slight nod but said nothing further. The strange, old quiet of the cathedral took over. “This is a weird place to study, even for a priest.”

“Minister.” Tucker's expression turned wistful as he gazed out into the dim, dusty cavern. “I grew up going to this church,” he said. “I'm doing my thesis on its history.”

“So you come here to write?”

“Right.”

Robyn felt a stirring inside her, despite the stillness. She smoothed her hand over her pocket, where Dad's map rested safely. She had to take advantage of this unexpected development. “Mind if I look around?”

“Sure,” Tucker said. “I'll show you the place.”

Adjacent to the cavernous sanctuary, through a set of doors on the left-hand wall was the church house. The church house was a three-story building with lots of small offices, meeting spaces, and Sunday-school rooms. They had a dining room and industrial kitchen on the first floor and a smaller house-size kitchen on the second floor, near the office suite.

Everything looked broken down, unused in years, except for the second-floor kitchen, which had some snack items laid out on the counters. Macaroni-and-cheese boxes. Crackers and bread.

“The kitchen still works?” Robyn asked.

“Yeah,” Tucker said. “You want something? Help yourself.”

Robyn didn't need to be told twice. She reached into the cracker box and pulled out a sleeve of round crackers and tore it open. She munched on them as they walked around.

Returning to the sanctuary, it seemed even huger than before. Cobwebs. Dust. Chipped wood furnishings. Cracked stained glass. Plywood. “It's in pretty bad shape,” she commented. “What's going to happen to it?”

“I don't know. It's been a landmark in the Nott City skyline for so long that they're not going to tear it down. But no one cares enough to pay to fix it up, either.”

They walked to the front of the church. Dirty stained-glass windows lined the wall above the altar. It must have been really pretty in its prime, with light streaming through. But where was the light coming from? It couldn't have been an outside wall; the building didn't end there. Around behind the altar was a small fellowship room and a preparation room for the ministers. Narrow stone-walled hallways on either side of the altar led to those back rooms.

There seemed to be a hole in the church. An open cube in its floor plan.

“What's on the other side of this wall?” Robyn asked. She put her hand against the stones. The crevices were sealed with mortar, yet she felt a slight breeze. The whiff of cool air drew her closer to the place.

“Nothing, really,” Tucker said. “It's kind of a hole in the construction. People used to complain about why they put
a wall here. Always having to walk around it. They said they did it to allow light to flow through the stained glass.”

Robyn followed the wall back to the stained glass and peered through. “It's a courtyard,” she said. “There must be a way to get in there.” The gut-tugging feeling grew stronger.

“In theory,” he agreed. “I mean, I found a possible entrance. It's hidden in the choir loft, back where we started.”

“Upstairs?”

“I know that sounds strange, but I think there's a staircase that winds down into the yard. You can kind of see it.” Tucker directed Robyn to peer at an upward angle through a lighter-colored pane of the stained glass. “See those metal-looking dark lines? But the door is locked.”

“Show me,” Robyn said. The insistence in her own voice shocked her. The desire grew strong, though inexplicable.

They climbed back into the choir loft, skirting past Tucker's massive mound of books. Studying to be a minister must be serious business. At the front of the loft, alongside the high stained-glass windows above the altar, was a black-painted door.

“The keyhole has been removed, see?” He pointed at a dark circular indentation about where a doorknob should have been. But there was no doorknob, either. “It must be permanently bolted.”

“No,” Robyn said, though she couldn't explain her certainty. “I think that this
is
the keyhole.” She pushed against it with her thumb. It didn't budge. She took out Dad's
pocketknife—her knife now, she corrected herself—and sliced through the layers of black paint. She peeled back the gummed-up disk of latex, revealing an oblong silver flap.

“I've never seen a keyhole like this.” Tucker's voice came alive with wonder.

The shape was—to Robyn—both unusual and familiar. She pushed back the flap by inserting her thumb into a curved cavern just large enough for it. The keyhole came to a point inside. Two grooves along the outside edges seemed ready-made for a special kind of key.

Robyn glanced up at Tucker. She didn't really know him. He might be what he claimed to be—a friend—but really, he could be anyone.

To succeed in this journey, you will be required to trust
, Eveline had told her. Tucker had saved her from the MPs, after all. He had helped her get this far.

“I-I might have the key,” she told him.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The Moon Shrine

Robyn brought the moon pendant out of her shirt. She bent forward and slid it into the keyhole until it clicked into place. The door swung open, jerking her along by the neck. She found herself standing on a two-foot-square landing atop a staircase of rusted, black-painted metal. It felt even less secure and enclosed than a fire escape, but it was similar.

The key slid back into her palm, and Robyn straightened to survey her surroundings. The courtyard below was about twenty feet wide, along the stained-glass wall, and almost as deep.

“This is amazing,” Tucker exclaimed. “I have to get my notebook!” He dashed off.

Robyn descended into the courtyard alone. The steep stairs rocked with each step. She steadied herself using the narrow handrail on the wall. There was no second rail; just the open courtyard air. Diagonally across the courtyard, a second, dingy beige staircase led up into the opposite wall.

Gravel stones of black, white, and gray covered the ground. Robyn looked up—the space stretched clear to the sky.

What was this place?

At the center of the gravel stood a flat, wall-like monument, built of solid black stones, with a single row of white stones accenting the middle. It was smooth to the touch. Maybe the same kind of stone as the moon necklace? The wall looked old and weathered, with jagged edges like you might see on ancient ruins. The whole thing wasn't more than seven feet tall. A base of the same black stones pushed out about two feet at the bottom. An altar, perhaps.

But an altar to what?

From a stone lip jutting out of the wall's top edge flowed a segmented cloth curtain. It did not look weathered, but fresh and vibrant in the sunlight. Robyn stepped forward and touched it. This, this was the place that had drawn her. She could feel it, pulsing energy at her, strong and warm as the sun itself.

The curtain was segmented into six pieces, none wider than Robyn's palm, though each was thick and heavy as a giant piece of fettuccine. The silky fabric strands felt smooth, but Robyn sensed texture at the same time. Strange.

She pushed the curtain segments aside. A row of small blocks in the black wall were etched with moon silhouettes, from a blank space that represented a new moon to a full circle. Slivers, crescent, half, gibbous, full. The crescent was centered and appeared largest.

Beneath it, on the single row of white stones, was another set of markings: doming curves and circles.

They looked to Robyn like the pattern of the rising and setting sun. Flat line of the horizon to a bright noonday sun and back again. The circles grew rounder and higher and then returned again.

Robyn heard a knock from above. The black door was closed again. She bounded up the stairs to let Tucker in.

“You trying to lock me out?” he said, looking hurt.

“I left it open,” Robyn said, puzzled.

“Well, it didn't stay open.”

Robyn shrugged. “Sorry. I don't know.”

Tucker poked in beside her. It took him about four times as long to get into the courtyard, because he kept stopping to write things down.