The Blackthorn Key

The paper trembled in the breeze, then stilled. I straightened in the chair, pressed against it. The oak dug lines in my back.

I wanted to go to sleep, to sleep forever. To see my master again. And I would.

But not yet.

Master Benedict had left me that message in the ledger for a reason. Whatever was on that page was so important that he’d stayed to write it down instead of running for his life.

He needed me. Three years ago, I’d needed him, and he’d saved me, brought me to Blackthorn, gave me my first real home. That life was gone now, stolen along with his. It didn’t matter. He needed me. Even in death.

I wiped my eyes, my heart still burning. I shouted from the flames, so he’d hear me all the way in heaven. I promise you, Master. Whatever you asked of me, I’ll do. I won’t cry. I won’t rest. I won’t fail.

And I’ll find whoever killed you. I’ll make them pay. Before God and all His Saints, I swear it.

There was a knock on the door. Tom’s mother called through it. “Christopher? Is everything all right?”

I looked in the mirror. My reflection spoke back.

“Everything’s fine,” it said.





CHAPTER


12


TOM’S MOTHER ADJUSTED MY COLLAR. “There,” she said. “That’s not so bad.”

Tom had grown so big so quickly, she’d had to go back three years to find something of his that fit me. Now I was kitted in a pair of brown wool and linen breeches and a white linen shirt with a burgundy stain down its sleeve. I remembered the shirt. Tom had been wearing it the day I’d met him.

It was three months after I’d first become an apprentice. Master Benedict had given me a book on ancient warfare to study. After reading about catapults, I became fascinated with the idea of building one. Master Benedict let me use some spare wood from the workshop and a fresh set of maple branches to do it. On Sunday, after service, I’d lugged my miniature siege engine north to Bunhill Fields to test it out, carrying a selection of rotting fruits as ammunition in a burlap sack over my shoulder.

As it turned out, the catapult launched things very well. It just wasn’t especially accurate. I stared with horror as the first thing I fired—a profoundly overripe pomegranate—careened wildly to the left and bonked a rather large boy on the top of his head, squirting juice all over his shirt.

Puzzled, he looked up at the clouds, as if wondering why God was pelting him with pomegranates. Then he spotted my little catapult on the grass. He came toward me holding a very young girl in his arms, who laughed with delight as small, burgundy seeds dripped from the boy’s hair onto his collar.

My first thought was to run as fast as I could possibly go. I’d grown up surrounded by bigger boys in Cripplegate, so I expected a severe pounding. Instead, he spoke rather calmly, especially considering he now smelled like compost.

“Why are you attacking me with fruit?” he said.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, a phrase I’d end up repeating many times over the next three years. “I wasn’t aiming at you, I swear.”

The girl in his arms thrust her tiny fists in the air and cheered. “Do again!” she said.

I pointed at the branch I’d used for the catapult’s launcher. “It’s supposed to go straight. I think I broke it on the way here.”

The boy studied the bent launcher. “Is that maple?”

I nodded. “It’s all I had. I probably should have made it out of yew.”

The boy tilted his head and thought about it. “There’s yew trees by the cemetery,” he said. “Do you have a knife?”

We used the new branch of yew to fix the launcher while the girl, Tom’s youngest sister, Molly, dug her little fingers into the grass. Then we fired off the rest of the fruit, the three of us cheering every shot. Afterward, I ran home to show Master Benedict my catapult, and to tell him about Tom, my new friend.

I remembered Master Benedict listening, smiling gently. “Very good,” he’d said.

I turned away so Tom’s mother wouldn’t see my face.