And she had wondered, hadn’t she? The way Gwen talked about him, the way all men seemed to be drawn to her…would Simon have stood a chance if Gwen had returned the interest?
‘Maybe…’ Rafael began and then stopped. He cleared his throat. ‘Maybe this was taken before he met you?’
It didn’t look that way. But then Simon had always been youthful, handsome, and Gwen was as beautiful as ever.
Why did Simon have a photo of himself with Gwen Morvan tucked away like that?
‘I don’t know.’ She whispered the words and went back to rooting through the box. ‘Can you read the pages from Fabien’s diary?’
‘No.’ Her bed creaked as he sat on it. ‘It must have been important though. It’s not like the rest of the diary back at the house. He’s encoded everything. There’s a map here too but…well, it might be a map. I don’t know… It’s just lines really. It’s so vague you’d have to know the general location to begin with.’
Fabien had been no fool.
But Simon on the other hand… Perhaps more than she knew.
The caves under Castelmeur. Fabien had been protecting them because the resistance were using them to move supplies and smuggle people in and out. Or that was what everyone assumed. Maybe it was more. He’d mentioned the water path in his diary…
The locations were just a series of numbers, some random lines and squiggles.
She opened Simon’s notebook now, and scanned the pages. One after the other, he had laid out his own cryptic notes. But she could follow them. They had always worked together, so this was not a code to her. Just a mess.
How do you save a lost city?
He’d underlined that several times. It was a good question.
Rafael believed that was how they could break the curse on his family, the curse that killed all the men of his line: by saving Ys. But Ys was gone. Centuries gone.
Water path… Eyes of stone… Dahut’s mask.
Her gaze skimmed over phrases, questions, so many squiggles and Simon’s terrible handwriting.
The numbers caught her eye.48065 4688.She knew those numbers. They were etched into her mind.
Beneath them, she found a date, followed by a transcription. Simon had written the whole thing out. He’d broken the code and copied it from Fabien’s own diary from years ago.
4June, 1943.
Low tide 14.05, Wind south-west, 10 knots. Conditions calm.
Tris and I took the boat out and moored off the point at 48.065, -4.688. Water cold but still and visibility good in between the gates. We swam down to the pathway and followed it, surrendering to her, just as Blanche said. We let the tide take us. Beyond that lay wonders, and a heart of stone. While this area can be used for storage, we will have to find somewhere else for Goldfinch. This cannot be shared. The risk is too great. Sternberg and his thugs must not find it.
‘Ari?’ Rafael’s voice called her back to the present.
‘Who’s Sternberg?’ she asked.
‘The officer from the Ahnenerbe, I think.’
The Nazi archaeologists looking for Ys. That made sense. It all made sense. Which meant…
‘I need to look at… There, that.’ She pulled a large chart out of the pile of ephemera Simon had gathered and spread it out on the carpet. He’d made marks there too, tracing locations. One was not far from where they had found the mask, at the foot of the cliffs. They had been so close.
‘There?’ Rafael asked, leaning over her.
She nodded. ‘It has to be. Simon found the mask but hid it again. I just don’t know why. The mask would have proved he was right.’
‘Would it? The university didn’t believe it was real. And the influence it seems to have on us…’ He shuddered and Ari had to agree with that. She hated the thing. It felt wrong. Dangerous.
‘But why didn’t he tell Jason? Why didn’t he show anyone this?’
