The trochanter allows the femur to rotate smoothly—much like a wheel—in the hip socket. —Galen’s Anatomy

Chapter 17

“Do you think it’s a clue?” asked Jenny, hopping like Hapless with glee. “It must be another clue on the skeleton map!”

“We don’t know that,” countered Pandora, “because we don’t know if there was a clue in the rosewood. So we won’t know what we might have known unless we find the next clue where we finally know what we didn’t know doesn’t matter.”

“Come again?”

“It might be a clue,” conceded Pandora.

“Because the drawing and the part about the leg is suspicious, right?” asked Jenny.

“Rats normally bite people in the leg.”

“They bite people everywhere. In the foot and the arm and hand . . . ,” noted Jenny.

“That’s true.”

“So what do we do next?” asked Jenny, skipping over the columbines and vaulting through the door of the jail. “Do we go forward or backward? Over the bridge to the Longshank or around the road to Troy again?”

Jenny was chuffed to her toes to see Pandora was starting to pace. Sure, they might be fighting, but at least they were fighting with a common purpose.

“Say that again,” said Pandora.

“Do we go forward . . .”

“The next bit,” demanded Pandora.

“Over the bridge to the Longshank . . .”

“That’s it,” said Pandora, halting in her tracks. “Shank. It means leg, right?”

Jenny groaned. “Oh, lordy, lordy, Pandora! I’m a farmer. I raise livestock. How did I miss that one?”

“Because you’ve been worrying about Kam and his garden,” said Pandora. “But now you’re going to stop worrying and concentrate. We’ve already explored an arm and now we’re going to follow a leg.”

Caught in the whirl of her zeal, Jenny was willing to allow this mention of Kam to slide. Once. “Okay, then we’ll head for the bridge and we’ll think about rats while we walk. C’mon, we’re wasting time.”

See what I mean about gold fever? It’s nigh on impossible to shake. Though she’d been almost frozen and frittered and swallowed by mud, Jenny was eager as ever to go after the treasure. It didn’t matter what Silent Jack had said concerning madness and murder. Her luck was turning; she could feel it.

The day seemed to be conspiring with Jenny’s belief. New grass was sprouting on the lip of the path and new moss was growing on the trunks of the beeches. Heavy rain had granted the earth a blessing. There was hope for beginnings.

After an hour or so, Jenny’s good luck was telling her that they were close to where the Longshank River began. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before they cleared the trees and came within sight of the bridge.

And a solid and substantial bridge it was, too. The citizens of Troy must have been a hardy crew, because they’d managed to fell nigh on fifty logs for the job. There were half logs for the base on the riverbank, whole logs for the length of the span, and saplings bound crosswise to create the road. There was even a strut or two to keep it from bowing in the middle.

It was also pretty clear to see why they had gone to so much care. The head of the Longshank was a rip-roaring torrent, bursting with mischief and malice. You ever see a rabid animal foam at the mouth? Well, picture a pack of ’em crammed into a channel.

Jenny laughed at the sight. With her confidence full to bursting, she decided the bridge could take a team of six and a fully loaded wagon without so much as a squeak.

You may be bemused to hear she was right. As much as I enjoy the relating of hazardous falls and hair-raising escapes, that bridge was as solid as bedrock. The pair of them were safe on the other side in the time it takes to pound a nail.

“I’m guessing that’s an old stamp mill,” said Jenny as they wound their way along the overgrown embankment. She pointed to a rickety building with a lazy waterwheel below the bridge.

“See what someone did there? They’ve diverted the headwaters of the Longshank into a flume.” She swung her finger around to a wooden channel. “The water charges down the flume, comes out the end, and pushes the wheel around. And the leftover water dribbles out the tailrace”—she gestured to another channel buried in the ground at the foot of the wheel—“back into the river.”

“How do you know so much?” asked Pandora, blunt as blunt could be. Now that the sun was higher, Jenny’s best friend was back to sweating and puffing and feeling aggrieved at losing her cheese.

“I asked up about mills. I was trying to interest Dad in running his own business.”

“Your dad would be dead useless at running a business. He can’t even subtract.”

“True enough,” said Jenny thoughtfully. “But I reckoned it was worth a go.”

Pandora paused a moment to ponder this, then nodded. “Anything is worth a go with a dad like Hapless Burns.”

It was a fair comment, and Jenny took it on the chin. Her temperature dropped a degree as she assessed her surroundings.

She had to pay heed—it would be like Doc Magee to plant a skeleton clue in an unlikely place. On the other hand, she was catching up with his tricks. All the markers so far had been found in places that weren’t likely to go anywhere. The hut was sturdy; the stone pillars were stable; the jail walls were tall.

Only, what did he mean with respect to rodents?

“Pandora, does the skeleton map—the bone names, I mean—say anything about rats and legs?”

Pandora stopped, sat, pulled the damp diagram out of her shoe, examined it carefully, folded it, and stuck it back in her sole.

“Nope. ‘Femur’ means thigh bone.”

Jenny grunted. “Maybe it’s a pun.”

“Rats are rats,” noted Pandora.

“It’s not a counting clue, right?” asked Jenny.

“Nope.”

“Shoot.”

Jenny fetched up a copper-colored pebble and sent it skimming across the water. Pandora had picked a good place for loitering. The headstream was widening and stretching as it came downhill, easing itself off into the bulk of the river.

“Three blind mice,” hummed Jenny, sending a second stone after the first. “See how they run. They all ran after the farmer’s wife, who cut off their tails with a carving knife—”

“Tail!”

“For the love of hearing, Pandora, you’ve got to work on making polite conversation.”

“It was all mixed up in my head,” said Pandora. “Then you said three and run and tails, and I realized it was all mixed up!”

“What are you going on about?”

“The letters,” said Pandora, drawing a series in the dirt with a stick.

I A R A T C A N B I T E T H E L E G .

“So?”

“It’s what Mr. Grimsby calls an anagram.”

Under the first string, Pandora wrote another:

B E G I N A T T H E T A I L R A C E.

That darned stamp mill was just sitting there as they sprinted back toward the bridge. If you’ve been around the countryside, you will recognize the type of building I’m describing—a gummy old geezer with fragile boards and puckered skin, heeling to one side and sneering at passersby.

“We’ll have to search the whole of the tailrace,” said Jenny, running along the narrow channel and its wooden sides toward the waterwheel. “Magee’s a crafty so-and-so. He’s probably planted the next clue in a splinter.”

“I like this part of the map,” panted Pandora. “It’s much better than a rosewood box.”

“So now we know what we know?” drawled Jenny.

“Yes,” replied Pandora firmly.

Since you may not be on speaking terms with stamping mills, Jenny asked me to explain that they’re used for battering ore. They’re simple enough arrangements. The wheel drives a rotating shaft that holds a series of rods with massive metal weights—much like the stamps you’d use to press paper. Rock goes in and crushed gray gravel comes out.

Course, the mill that the girls were exploring was well past its glory days, but by the size of it, Jenny was willing to bet there was a mine somewhere around the Longshank. Old Rush areas are full of hidden entrances to the underworld.

Jenny followed the logic of this thought as she rummaged around the base of the waterwheel. A mill meant a mine, a mine meant men, and men tended to get sick. It was likely that Magee had been up and down to Troy a number of times with his doctor’s bag, treating the wounded and sobering the drunks. Those scratches on the wall of the jail were making more sense.

“Do you see anything?”

“No,” said Pandora. “All I’ve got is a foundation stone.”

Jenny examined the stone with a practiced eye. It was a plain piece of schist, with a simple shape carved into the top:

“I’m betting that’s the symbol for the mill,” said Jenny.

“Why?” asked Pandora.

“Dad told me that some of the men in the Rush used a shape instead of the name when they were signing for credit.”

“Why?” repeated Pandora.

“Because they couldn’t read and write.”

From the start at the foundation stone, their search became more serious. On her hands and knees crawled Jenny, scouring each burr and knothole in the wooden walls of the tailrace. Pandora walked beside her, chewing on the butt of her hair and gazing at the running water.

“Pandora, you’re going to see squat from up there.”

“I’m thinking.”

“You don’t have to be standing to think,” replied Jenny.

“It helps.”

“Fine,” said Jenny. “But you’re going to be belly-rubbing it when we start examining the other side.”

“Mum says that lions like to have their bellies rubbed. Something to do with being okay with getting licked.”

“Not interested,” said Jenny.

“I’m only making conversation,” retorted Pandora. “Like you said, I need to practice.”

At the joint where the race met the river, Jenny sat down and grimaced. She hadn’t seen a word or letter on the wall. “Nothing,” she moaned.

“I noticed something while I was walking,” said Pandora.

“What?”

“The bottom of the tailrace has stones in it.”

“We’re in the mountains, Pandora. What were you hoping for? Coconuts?”

“No,” said Pandora. “Coconut trees won’t grow here. It’s too cold.” She sniffed. “Plus the stones are square. So I think someone put them there.”

This caught the ear of her friend. “Is there anything scratched on them?”

“I can’t tell,” said Pandora. “They’re covered in green gunk.”

Isn’t it always the way that the things you covet most are covered in green gunk? Shuffling her stomach over the edge, Jenny peered down into the water.

Pandora hadn’t been kidding—planted in the center of the tailrace was a stone square covered in thick moss. Rolling up her sleeves, Jenny plunged her fists into the stream.

“Holy balms and alms, it’s freezing!”

“Pull it up,” suggested Pandora.

“It’s stuck,” panted Jenny, yanking her hands out of the glacier-fed trench and shaking them hard to bring the blood back to her fingertips.

“Then I guess we’ll have to scrape it off.”

“You do it!” said Jenny, shoving her fists under her armpits.

Pandora paused and examined her surroundings. Picking a few horsetails that were growing near the outflow, she ripped off their heads and retained the stems. Then down into the icy water they went, scouring the gunk off with a quick nip and a scrub of the surface. It took her fewer than five seconds.

“There,” said Pandora. “What does it say?”

Jenny was befuddled. The following shape had been chiseled into the middle:

“Oh,” said Pandora. “That’s not what I was expecting.”

“Maybe it’s a cup?” suggested Jenny. “Or a diamond? Or an arrowhead?” She was clutching at the sharp end of a straw and she knew it. Still, at least the triangle looked vaguely clue-like.

“We need to start with the first stone that’s next to the wheel,” said Pandora. “The message told us to begin at the tailrace.”

Back to the stamp mill they went. Alternating their hands between cleanings, they worked their way down the stream. By the time they had reached their original discovery, Jenny had forgotten what it was like to feel anything beyond her elbows.

But they certainly had a new puzzle. In seven paving stones, they had discovered the following pattern:

“I have decided,” stated Pandora, “that I don’t like people who make up treasure hunts. They should be doing better things with their time.”

“Is it supposed to be some kind of map?” asked Jenny. “Or pictures of mountains and lakes?” She was fervently hoping to be wrong. Digging through the base of a mountain might take forever and a day.

Pandora was stumped. For a good long while she stared. Finally:

“It’s probably a code, like the Decimus paper that we found at the pillars. The second, fifth, and sixth triangles are the same. But I don’t know if it’s letters or words or places or what.”

“Maybe it’s directions!” cried Jenny. “Maybe we begin at the tailrace, go north one pace, then south for two paces . . .”

“But what about the bits that are missing?” queried Pandora.

Jenny sighed and flung herself on the ground. “Oh, lordy, lordy, this nugget is more troublesome than a cat in a bath.”

A rustle from the river prevented any more idle metaphors.

“Then, perchance, Miss Burns, you have need of another mind.”