A breeze tickled her fingertips. Something was most certainly back there.
With delight, Elizabeth glanced around for something to stand on to unhook the tapestry from the high wall. There was no furniture in sight. She hurried out of the room and down the corridor, peeking into every chamber she passed until she found a tall wooden chair, which she dragged back to the schoolroom, next to the wall hanging.
“With apologies, ancient tapestry, you’re coming down. Try to hold yourself together.”
As carefully as she could, she unfastened the first corner from the wall. The tapestry didn’t fall apart, but it did immediately tumble to the floor in an ignominious, dusty heap.
Revealing a large, light-filled window—and an ancient wooden door.
Elizabeth frowned. An exterior door up on the third story of a castle? She kept a careful distance from the threshold as she gripped the chilly iron handle and gave the old wooden door a tug.
It swung open easily, as if its hinges had been recently oiled. On the other side was a cramped stone protrusion a little wider than she was and about as deep as her arm.
The bottom half was a stone ledge, at the right height for a bench. But rather than a smooth seating surface, the center of the ledge contained a hole large enough to drop a pumpkin through.
“A medieval water closet!” she exclaimed, then wracked her brain for the right term. Back then, it would’ve been called agarderobe, because clothes would have hung here so that the stench of human waste would keep moths from invading and destroying expensive cloth.
“But what does it mean?” she asked in frustration.
The countess’s clue had clearly led to this. Was there some private personal hygiene jest to which only she and her husband would understand the reference? Or was the garderobe irrelevant, and the window was the important part?
Elizabeth stepped away from the medieval toilet and took another look out the window. It was the same view as could be had from any of the adjacent chambers: the forest. On the other side of which Richard Reddington lurked like a snake, coiled in the darkness and ready to pounce.
Perhaps it was not the view but the windowsill itself that held the clue. She retrieved a throwing dagger from its secret compartment in her bodice and used its sharp edge to poke at the mortar between the stones in the hopes of finding a hidden cubby or lever.
Nothing. The construction was solid as… well, solid as a rock.
Elizabeth swung her gaze back to the garderobe. The clue must be in the water closet after all. Heart pounding, she checked every stone from the ceiling to the floor, eager to know where the puzzle had led.
Nothing. Again. Yet another dead end. Unless…
She stared dubiously at the gaping stone hole which for centuries had served as a disposal chute for unknown quantities of human waste. Ugh, better not to think about it. Surely the countess would not have hid the next clue in there.Surely.
“Of course she did,” Elizabeth said grimly. “Iwould have.”
She held her breath, made a pained expression, and plunged her arm inside the stone canal. To her intense relief, her straining fingers did not scrape against anything disgusting. Either this particular garderobe had never been used for its intended purpose… or, like the hinges of its wooden door, the stone chute had been just as meticulously cleaned and prepared for a future intrepid treasure hunter.
What was she meant to find? Elizabeth wasn’t thrilled about the idea of blindly digging around the chute with her dagger. One careless movement, and the blade would fall three stories to the ground below—or be trapped in some medieval waste receptacle, depending on how the disposal system had been constructed.
But before she was forced to make a decision, her fingers touched… nothing at all. A large stone had been removed from the inner chute! She patted inside, walking her fingers around the smooth surface, until her fingernails brushed against something metallic. Odd-shaped and fist-size.
Carefully, she withdrew the object from the stone chute, thenstared at it in wonder. It was a small tin bird, complete with movable wings. Likely almost as old as the castle.
Elizabeth hadn’t the foggiest notion what this object meant, but she’d worry about that later. The important part was that she was finally closer to solving the puzzle.
She ran to show her peculiar find to Stephen, who immediately rang for a basket of food so they could pause for a picnic on the castle roof to celebrate.
As she explained how the search had unfolded, Stephen didn’t seem the least bit missish about digging around inside a garderobe. He was fascinated by the tin bird, with its cunning movable parts.
“You can’t keep it,” she reminded him. “Or use it in one of your machines. I have to decipher its secret message first.”
“Based on the other clues, the bird must symbolize something.” He turned it over, again and again. “Flight? Song? Eggs? Spring? Nesting?” He brightened. “Feather pillows? A love of worms?”
“How about a love of sandwiches?” Elizabeth plucked the tin bird out of his hands and tucked it away safe in her reticule. “I’m hungry.”
Stephen opened the basket. “Help me with the blanket?”
Together, they unfurled the thick woolen square atop the flat castle roof. They placed sturdy rocks at each corner to keep the breeze from whipping the cloth into their faces.
