“Sister?” I paused, but my gut was telling me to speak truth to this woman. “You . . . you know who we are, don’t you?”
Phoebe’s sharp elbow jabbed into my back. What are you doing?
“More than fifty years ago, when I was but an eager young novice at the abbey at Saint Evre,” Hectare went on as though I’d not spoken, “I met a woman who had come to view one of our reliquaries.” The nun’s watery blue eyes studied us from behind her veined nose. “I was called to speak to her, as the woman’s accent was difficult to understand and the saints had blessed me with an ear for languages.”
Despite the overheated chamber, a chill skated up and down my spine. I asked in a quaky voice. “Was this reliquary decorated with a great opal, by any chance?”
I heard Phoebe’s sharp intake of breath, but I couldn’t move. Every muscle in my body strained for Hectare’s answer.
“Yes.” She nodded proudly, as if I were her student and I had come up with the correct cipher. “A stone of some repute, if the rumors were true.”
Swallowing, I pressed on. “Do you happen to remember what the woman looked like?”
Hectare’s grin showed her pale pink gums and creased her cheeks into a hundred wrinkles. “How could I forget?” she answered. “Considering I saw the same woman this very night at the feast. Black hair. Eyes that pierce. A haughty manner. And a face that had aged but little in over fifty years.”
“Celia.” Phoebe breathed the name.
“Just so,” the nun nodded. “That was her name then as it is now. She wanted that stone very much. I could see it in her eyes. To be truthful, the woman frightened me. I recommended the sisters not allow her access.”
“Bet she didn’t like that much,” I muttered.
Hectare chuckled. “No, no she did not.”
“Sister,” Phoebe asked, “do you know what happened to the opal? Is it still there?”
A flare of hope fired through me. We thought the opal in the Jews’ dagger was the Nonius Stone, but what if we were wrong? What if it was still safe in a French abbey?
As if she could read my thoughts, Hectare shook her head. “No, child. The stone was sold off many years ago, before I was even called upon to help care for Eleanor and her sister, Petronilla. I’ve tried to keep track of it, however. All these years. There was something . . . odd about it. I—I needed to know where it had gone. I think we both know where it is right now: secure in the king’s counting chamber.”
Phoebe and I sat immobile, stunned. Recently—at least in our own timeline—Celia had traveled back fifty years before this time and tried to buy or steal the Nonius Stone from the nuns. She’d failed, thanks to this amazing little woman before us. I felt an enormous tenderness and grief wash over me. Hectare was fading, and the world would be a sadder place without her.
“Sister.” I choked against the lump in my throat. “Why are you helping us?”
Hectare leaned forward and touched first my face, then Phoebe’s. “The two of you,” she said, “have a light around you that is so bright, I can barely see your features at times. It is a lavender shade that dances and flares from your skin. The black-haired woman also glows with this same light.” The wise, ancient eyes turned to me. She laid a too-cold hand on top of mine. “Like this Celia, you do not belong here.” Hectare’s scratchy voice dropped. “Or am I simply being fanciful in my old age?”
“No,” I whispered. Her dear, homely features blurred. “You’re not being fanciful.”
Hectare let out a deep sigh, and her eyes closed. “Then we must help you to get home.”
Chapter 34
THE SNOW HAD STOPPED DURING THE NIGHT. Outside in the predawn, the London streets glowed oddly bright as a new coating of sugary snow reflected the expanse of stars above. Phoebe’s black horse and my bay slogged through knee-high drifts toward the Tower of London. I couldn’t quit staring up as the horses whuffed clouds of steam into the brittle air.
With no earthly light to compete against, a trillion stars glittered like tiny holes punched into a field of velvet, allowing an unearthly light to filter through.
Twenty-four hours. It’s all we have left. Then the Dim will come. And if we aren’t there . . . poof.
“Okay. My brain was too fashed when we went to bed, so explain it to me again.” Phoebe jounced at my side. “The stuff Rachel’s bringing.”
“Oil of vitriol,” I told her, “is basically sulfuric acid. I had a hunch Aaron might use it. It’s common for apothecaries and blacksmiths during this time to keep a diluted form to clean their tools. We are going to use a full-strength version to melt those iron bars and get Collum the hell out of that cell.”
“Will it really work?”
“It . . . it has to.”
The streets were mostly empty, though we had to duck around a corner when a city guard stomped by, muttering to himself as he pushed through the pristine snow.