53

Parliament, London

Thundering footsteps pounded outside the door, but Salem’s focus was absolute. She was taping the butcher paper, taken from the cafeteria, to the edges of the painting. Once in place, Charlie handed her the black crayon he’d found in a box left in the lost and found.

Gaea had come through.

No private events had been scheduled in the Robing Room during the twenty years of Rosalind Franklin’s adult life. It was either open to the public or closed for the single day a year the queen required it. In addition, the Robing Room frescoes had remained untouched since their creation, the only exception being in 1956, when the room was closed off so the frescoes could be sprayed with a clear sealant to protect them from the vagaries of time.

If there was a clue to be discovered, it was on the surface, sprayed over the top of the painting by a skilled chemist and X-ray
crystallographer, one familiar with the two-dimensional patterns expanded through the science of fiber diffraction.

Salem stripped the paper from the black crayon, the waxy smell taking her back to kindergarten. She lay it across the upper left corner the long way and rubbed. The method was commonly used on gravestones to lift images. Charcoal or a disc of rubbing wax were the standard media, but she worked with what she had.

The image began appearing almost immediately.

Charlie hollered triumphantly. “Salem Wiley, you are a genius.”

She applied enough force to pick up the delicate fiber pattern Franklin had sprayed over the top but not so much that she would damage it. The upper left quadrant of the paper revealed a rudimentary drawing of a woman, her right hand upraised in supplication, and then her face, emerging like ancient ghosts from a mist. The upper right quadrant revealed a mirror image of that woman, her left hand upraised. The women’s identical heads were framed by the blunt headdress and kohl eyes reminiscent of Egyptian tomb art.

The crayon was growing hot from the rubbing. “Can I have another, please?”

Charlie stripped the paper off a royal blue crayon and handed it to her.

She stretched her fingers, working out a cramp from holding the black one so tight. She started rubbing the lower left quadrant from the bottom edge, working her way upward. The woman’s foot appeared first, flat and pointed to the left. The right foot was the same, but a shape was curling behind it.

Salem brought the crayon upward, rubbing, the smell of warm wax comforting. The woman wore a simple shift, the shape near her feet curling behind her form. Her left hand was outstretched toward something. Salem stayed on the image, expanding it from the center and out.

“It’s a dragon,” Charlie said, his voice tight. “The women are holding hands through the middle of a dragon’s head.”

Salem kept rubbing, though she knew he was right. Mostly. The Egyptian aesthetic had thrown her off, but otherwise, the image was as she’d expected, a Neolithic message sent through time from a people who had no written language.

It was a pictographic map.

Charlie understandably thought the giant, snaking creature between the two women was a dragon, their hands piercing its eyes and meeting at the orb of its brain, its giant mouth drawn down in pain.

But it was no dragon.

The vulnerable tightness of hope squeezed Salem’s throat and chest. Rosalind Franklin had known all along where women’s ideas and inventions had been hidden. The Order or archeologists had sniffed too near this final map, originally hidden under the Flower Rock, so she’d moved it—or this fresco-sprayed replica of it—three stops out, from Brodgar to the Gloup, the Gloup to St. Brigid’s, and St. Brigid’s to here.

The map didn’t show a dragon, a mythical beast that would have been unfamiliar to the Neolithic people. It showed an eel.

Salem knew where the treasure was hidden.

“I have to get this to the Order.” She peeled off the tape and began rolling up the map.

“What?” Charlie’s voice was sharp. “Get what to them?”

She would not tell him. If she did, he might try to talk her out of it, or report the location to their superiors, whose actions may cost Mercy her life. Salem stepped gingerly down from the chair. “I need to go to the Tea Room. Alone.”

He looked ready to argue but swallowed it. “You have the coordinates?”

Salem glanced at the box on the table. She didn’t want to open it again.

“I’ll send you a photo.” He walked briskly to the box and clicked a picture of the paper on top. Her phone buzzed three seconds later. “For the record, I don’t like sending you alone, but I understand why it needs to be that way.”

Her eyes filled. They’d been through a lot. Once she returned to Minnesota, she could process it all, come up with the correct response. She had nothing now. She tucked her chin and walked toward the door.

“Not that one,” Charlie said, laying his hand on her shoulder and steering toward the rear exit. “By the sounds of it, there’s something unpleasant happening out front. We need to get you out the back. And fast. You have less than an hour to reach the room, and the traffic will be awful. You have money?”

“God, no.”

He yanked his wallet out of his back pocket at the same time he opened the door. The hall was relatively clear, only a thin stream of workers using the back area. Charlie handed her a wad of bills. “Follow me.”

Heads down, they walked against the flow. It was mostly caterers and maintenance staff in the back hallway, but the snatches of conversation Salem caught proved Charlie right. Something had happened in Parliament. Someone was hurt.

Dead.

It couldn’t be Agent Stone, could it?

Charlie kept them both moving, no time for questions. He flashed his identification at the guards watching the west rear Parliament exit, and they opened the door briskly. A cab was waiting outside.

“I needn’t tell you how to turn coordinates into an address,” Charlie said, cupping her open window with his good hand after he closed the door behind her. His boyish face was churning with barely contained emotion. He leaned forward. Salem thought he was going to hug her, but he stopped himself.

“Take care of her,” he ordered the cabbie before stepping back.

“Salem!” It was a scream from the crowd being herded away from the rear of Parliament.

Salem craned her head out to see who was shouting for her.

Her heart jumped into her mouth. It was Bel, steering her wheelchair toward the cab, held back by guards. Salem reached for the door handle. It was instinct. Her higher brain shocked her awake before she pulled the door open, though. She didn’t have time to talk to Bel. She had to save Mercy.

Salem fell back into her seat as the Black Cab pulled away.