“We can’t go over the Thames, true,” Gavin said, “but I bet we can go under it.”
Since the city had been inhabited for over a thousand years and because it sat on a bed of clay, London was one of the most tunneled cities in the world. Hundreds of tunnels wound under London, as well as carved-out shelters, war rooms, military fortresses, and escape routes from all sorts of places—including, of course, Buckingham Palace. Most of the underground tunnels were completely secret and unknown to the public. Gavin was convinced there had to be a tunnel from St. Paul’s going directly across the Thames, directly to Magnificat. We just had to find it.
“If there is a tunnel from St. Paul’s, it would have to start down here, below ground, in the crypt,” I said.
“The crypt is huge, though,” Gavin mused. “It’s as big as the entire footprint of the cathedral. We can’t just walk around looking for loose stones or secret panels in a place this vast. It would take weeks.”
“We have to narrow it down, then,” I said. “Whose tombs are down here? That might give us a clue.”
“There are over two hundred tombs,” Hunter answered. “Admiral Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Florence Nightingale . . .” Gavin and I stared at her. “I’ve been in here for twenty-four hours,” she reminded us. “I’ve read the guidebook fifty times.”
“Is there one that might lead us out of here?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. There’s the Sullivan guy from Gilbert and Sullivan. There’s a memorial to Winston Churchill, but he’s not really buried here. There’s the architect Sir Christopher Wren,” she rattled off.
“Architect?” I asked. Something familiar was ringing in my brain. “Of what? What did he build?”
“This church,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Why?”
“That’s it! It has to be!” I said. “My mom was a computer analyst—well, that’s what she told me she was, anyway. And in every computer program, the architect always leaves a secret back door for himself so he can get back in if he needs to fix something. Why would this church be any different?”
“So you think the architect’s secret way out starts at his tomb?” Hunter asked.
“It makes perfect sense,” Gavin said. “And we’ve got to start somewhere.”
My pocket vibrated. I was getting a text. I switched on my phone screen, and my stomach dropped.
“What’s happened? Who texted you?” Hunter asked.
“Stuart, a kid from my class,” I answered. “Five of the people who were poisoned at the party died this morning, and Jo is barely hanging on. We have to get to Magnificat, fast.”
The rest of the crypt was not as cheerful as the café. In fact, for an actual tourist destination, it was poorly lit, dusty, and super scary. We passed dozens of giant stone coffins, each decorated more gruesomely than the next. Some had screaming lions carved into them; others were protected by snaking serpent tails or tall fences topped with rows of spears.
The crypt was cavernous and completely empty of people. Our footsteps echoed eerily, bouncing off the dead bodies and returning to us magnified. The farther we walked, the darker it got.
Sir Christopher Wren’s tomb was in the very back of the crypt; we had to walk the entire length of the cathedral again. By the time we got there, I was jumpy, convinced a bony hand was going to slide out from under one of the heavy lids like in a haunted house amusement ride. But this was no theme park. This was real.
Wren’s burial plot was by itself, under an arch that had a small, barred window with a view of the street gutter. So we aren’t all the way underground, I noted. Which meant getting to a tunnel wasn’t going to be as easy as opening a door. We were going to have to descend to somewhere else.
I didn’t know if I could handle a place even creepier than the crypt. I had no problem with heights, but the idea of being trapped underground with rotting corpses was my worst nightmare. Hunter, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable, almost excited. I wondered if I had claustrophobia and was only just discovering it. I definitely had hate-being-underground-with-dead-people-phobia. I took deep breaths and tried to calm my racing heart. I was definitely regretting my forced chutzpah with Gavin, since now I couldn’t let on how freaked out I was or he would send me home.
The architect’s grave was cordoned off by a small wrought iron fence. Unlike the other tombs, which had huge statues and elaborately carved coffins, Wren was laid to rest under a simple, rectangular black marble slab set just six inches above the floor. On the wall above it hung a large stone plaque engraved with a bunch of Latin:
SUBTUS CONDITUR
HUIUS ECCLESI? ET VRBIS CONDITOR
CHRISTOPHORUS WREN,
QUI VIXIT ANNOS ULTRA NONAGINTA,
NON SIBI SED BONO PUBLICO.
LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS,
CIRCUMSPICE.
Obijt XXV. Feb: Ano: MDCCXXIII. ?t.XCI.
Gavin translated: “Underneath lies buried the builder of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond the age of ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you. He died on the twenty-fifth of February, 1723, aged ninety-one.”
A secret tunnel out of St. Paul’s wouldn’t simply be labeled with a sign. We’d have to discover it, and I was certain we’d need to solve a puzzle to do so.
I’d learned that the trick to solving most puzzles—whether they were leisure games or scientific conundrums—was to identify the oddity, like the old Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the others . . .”
As he was reading, I was studying the layout of the words, looking for anything out of the ordinary. The quicker we found something, the quicker we could get out of the crypt.
The inscription had eight lines of Latin, all center spaced, all capital letters. I tried skipping around and reading the first letter of every word, but Latin is so weird—and so full of Qs and Vs—that nothing came of it. I counted the words. Nope. Then I noticed that while each line had multiple words on it, there was one that was conspicuously shorter than the others. In fact, it only contained one word: circumspice.
“What does the one word all by itself mean?” I asked Gavin. “‘Circumspice’?”
“‘Look around you,’” he answered. “Why?”
“It’s the only one all by itself,” I said. “I think that means something: look around you.”
Hunter picked up the phrase and started swiveling her head in all directions. “Look around you. Look around you.” The smooth, white stone walls offered no other clue. She then spun her entire body in slow circles. Still nothing.
“What’s the line above it say again?” I asked.
Gavin reread it. “Lector, si monumentum requiris. Reader, if you seek his monument.”
“Circumspice,” I finished. “Look around you.” I repeated it. “Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.”