The Blackthorn Key

? ? ?

By the time I came downstairs, Tom’s father had already hauled his children back to work. The girls were in the side room doing laundry, splashing their baker’s aprons with soapy water. Cecily, at twelve years old the most senior of the girls, blew suds into my hair as I passed. The rest of them laughed and scooped up their own fistfuls of bubbles. I ran out of there before they covered me in foam.

I found Tom at the back door, scrubbing the steps. He shook his head when he saw what I was wearing. “I should’ve run away.”

“From me or the catapult?” I said.

“You are a catapult,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in the joke. He sighed. “I’m really sorry about Master Benedict. I liked him.”

“You were afraid of him.”

“Yeah. But he was good to you.” Tom scanned my face, then sighed again, more deeply. “All right,” he said.

“All right what?”

“I’ll help.”

“Help with what?”

“Whatever your new scheme is.”

I pulled the ledger page from my pocket and held it up. “We find Master Benedict’s killers.”

? ? ?

Tom stared at the last three lines on the page.

?Δ esid. A: rapf. O set. age Htsn. oil eh. two leb. Ht4: shg. Uh. ←

↓M08→

end.swords

neminidixeris

We’d come inside to read them, smoothing the paper over an empty worktable in the bakery. Though the day’s business was done, the smell of freshly baked dough still filled the air like a cloud.

“It’s a message,” I said. “For me. Master Benedict wrote it when—” My voice caught.

Stop it, I scolded myself. You said you wouldn’t cry. You made a promise.

I cleared my throat. “Master Benedict must have known his killers,” I said. “He wrote this for me when he knew he was going to die.”

Tom’s eyes went wide. “The murderers’ names are in here?”

“I think so. I haven’t worked it out yet. The codes—”

“Wait,” Tom said. “If this says who the killers are, why didn’t you give it to Lord Ashcombe?”

“Master Benedict said not to.”

“He did?”

“In the last line,” I said.

Tom read it. Or tried to. “Nemi . . . uh . . . what? Is this a word?”

“Two words. It’s Latin. It says ‘nemini dixeris.’ Master Benedict didn’t hide this in code so that when I saw it, right away I’d know what to do.”

“Steal this page?”

“Keep it secret. Nemini dixeris means ‘tell no one.’?”

“Why would he want to keep his killers’ names a secret?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if you have any paper, we can find out.”

? ? ?

We started with the first line of the message. It was hidden by one of the first codes Master Benedict had ever taught me.

?Δ esid. A: rapf. O set. age Htsn. oil eh. two leb. Ht4: shg. Uh. ←

“It’s gibberish,” Tom said.

“Actually, it’s English,” I said. “Plain old English.”

He frowned. “I see some words. Set . . . age . . . oil. And two.”

“That’s the trick. It looks like those are words, but they’re only there to throw you off. Same with the dots. The arrow’s the only thing that matters. It tells you what to do.”

He pointed to the left. “Go that way?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t get it.”

“On the line,” I said. “Go that way on the line.”

It dawned on him. “You mean go backward.”

“Right. Get rid of the dots and capitals . . .” I wrote it down.

esidarapfosetagehtsnoilehtwolebht4shguh “. . . and then go backward . . .”

hughs4thbelowthelionsthegatesofparadise “. . . and you’ll get the words,” I said.

Hugh’s 4th below the lions the gates of paradise Tom looked impressed. Then: “That doesn’t mean . . . was it Master Hugh who killed him?”

“What?” I stiffened. “Of course not.”

“But you said Master Benedict would name his killers. Although I did kind of expect more of an ‘Arthur Quackenbush did it, curse his eyes.’?”