In the upper chamber, the dragon had faded, its colors once again translucent against the stone. Sophia sank into a cross-legged seat in the middle of the floor. Friedrich set the wooden chest in front of her, stepped back, and folded his arms.
Sophia ran her fingers over the elaborate carvings, feeling for hinges and openings as she sized up the latch. “Well, the good news is, the chest looks just like it did in the other chamber.” She sniffed her fingers. “And it’s well-oiled, which means someone’s been maintaining it.”
Birdie remembered the leather-bound book she and Ben found in Bruges. It seemed brand new at first, even though it was centuries old. “Do you think you can open it?”
Sophia removed her cap. Her long, dark hair had been twisted in a fancy knot beneath it for the pageant.
She hunched over the chest and got to work, sliding the latch one way, tentatively, and then back into place.
She glanced up at them. “I can open it. I’ve read about this type of latch, but never saw one in real life before. Many, many books detail its inner workings. They usually include sketches or diagrams of the lock itself. Some of the illustrations are works of art. The theory behind the mechanism is—”
“Sophia.” Sam’s voice was gentle. “Just open the chest.” He spread his hands wide. “Please.”
She sighed. “Okay. But the theory behind this mechanism is particularly intriguing.” She slid the latch again and twisted it, slowly, until an audible click signaled that something had shifted into place. “Exactly as I suspected.”
She twisted the latch three more times, then slid it back into its original position. The lid floated open.
“You did it!” Sam knelt beside her. “Amazing!”
Friedrich snatched the chest from the floor and pointed his flashlight inside. “Nein!”
“What’s wrong?” Louisa asked.
He tipped the chest forward. A miniature wooden block broke loose from the fur lining and rattled to the inner edge. “The chess piece is gone.”
Kayla picked up the wooden block, which was twice the size of a die in a board game. She passed it to Ryan.
“What a complete, utter waste of time.” Raina slumped against the wall. “I am so done with all of this. I’m tired. I’m thirsty. And I want out of this stupid leotard. Let’s go back to the storeroom and get some sleep.”
Friedrich dropped the chest in front of Sophia, who scrambled to catch it before it hit the ground.
“What are you doing?” She eased it to the floor. “This chest is beautiful. Even if it is empty. Look at the carvings. I can see why the chess piece was in it – it’s a work of art all on its own.”
“What happened to the other stuff?” Ryan studied the small wooden block. “I wonder if that guard back there took it?”
“Marielle told us there were other items in the dowry trunk,” Louisa said. “Expensive cloth, gold, silver, but who knows what was in this smaller chest, if anything.”
“The chest was locked.” Friedrich didn’t bother to hide his frustration. “The guard was attempting to pry it open when I found him. That’s why I punched him.”
“Whoever took the chess piece knew how to open this chest.” Sophia studied the lock. “But I can’t imagine many people knew how the latch worked. It’s an unusual mechanism. The Chinese had them for a long time, but these locks didn’t become popular in Europe until much later. And I mean much later. In fact, they didn’t take off until settlers in the American frontier started recreating them. They got popular and people in Europe wanted them too. They would put the locks on trick boxes.”
“How does she know all this?” Ryan asked Sam.
“President of the Puzzle Club, remember? I never dreamed it’d come in handy.”
Sophia lowered her eyelids at him. “Very funny.”
Sam looked sheepish. “She’s also amazing at math, so it all makes sense.”
“Anyway, someone must have brought this to the family from China,” Sophia said. “I don’t know why else it would be here.”
“A ship may have bartered with it to pay a toll.” Sam considered the intricate carvings. “A big toll.”
“So, these trick boxes had special locks?” Birdie bent and touched the soft fur that lined the bottom of the chest.
“Yes. They have complicated locks like this one. Sometimes – a lot of times – they also include secret compartments—” Sophia’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, Birdie. That’s it!” She ripped up the edge of the fur lining. It gave way with a small puff of dust. “Look!”
The artist had carved the boxy outline of a dragon into the bottom of the chest.
“That’s the dragon on the aventurine.” Birdie gazed into the chest, then glanced up at the others. “It’s an exact match. This is what we were supposed to find!”
Sophia raised the chest and bent her neck to peer underneath it. “There must be a secret compartment under the dragon.” She shook the chest, but it didn’t make a sound.
“Could the chess piece fit under there?” Birdie asked.
“That’s where I’d hide it.”
“How do you open the secret compartment?” Raina had been drifting toward the next chamber, but now she came back to stand with the others.
Sophia set the chest on the floor and squirmed flat on her belly to study it. “Sometimes, if you push in the right places, a hidden drawer pops open.” She tried a few alternatives, but nothing happened.
“Enough of this!” Friedrich grabbed the chest and lifted it high above his head.
“No!” Rich jumped and rescued it from his hands. “You can’t smash it. Do you have any idea how old this is?”
Friedrich lunged for the chest, but Rich swung it away from him.
“No.” Rich’s jaw tightened. “Knock it off.”
Friedrich gritted his teeth and backed away.
Rich brought the chest back around and scrutinized it. “There’s definitely enough space under the dragon to hide something. Any other ideas, Sophia?”
She tented her fingers against her lips. “Let me think.”
Raina peered inside the chest. “That’s sure one weird dragon. It’s so boxy. The person who carved it wasn’t very good.”
“It is weird, isn’t it?” Rich ran his fingers over the indentation. “The rest of the chest is so intricate. You’d think the same person would have carved both the inside and the outside.”
“Raina’s right,” Friedrich announced.
“What?” Raina jerked her head toward him. “Right about what?”
“We must get back to the storeroom before someone realizes we’re missing.” He stood apart from the others, seething. “It is bad enough we didn’t find the chess piece. I do not want to lose my job too.”
“Hold tight, Fred.” Kayla stared at the rough-hewn dragon. “You know what that dragon reminds me of? Those puzzles you have when you’re a little kid. The big blocky ones with handles on the pieces? They’re super simple and fit into preformed spaces on the puzzle board.”
“A puzzle board?” Sophia jumped up and brushed the dirt from her stable jacket. “That’s it, Kayla. How many pieces would that dragon have if it were a puzzle?”
Kayla studied the outline. “Seven.”
“You just solved it.”
“Want to fill in the rest of us?” Sam looked up at her.
“It’s a tangram. One of the oldest puzzle forms that exist. A tangram always has seven pieces that fit together to make a square and to make one other shape. Here, they fit together into a dragon.”
Birdie stood to stand beside Kayla. They stared at the outline of the dragon.
“The tangram serves as a lock,” Sophia explained. “If we find all seven pieces, I bet they’ll trigger a secret mechanism under the dragon. You can’t open the hidden compartment without them.”
“But where are the rest of the pieces?” Raina asked.
“That’s the million dollar, er, euro, question,” Ryan said.
“My guess is Elisabeth hid them,” Birdie said. “So that even if someone found the chest, they wouldn’t discover the chess piece.”
“She really didn’t want to marry you, Fred,” Kayla said.
“It’s Friedrich,” he snarled.
“If we want to save Marielle, we need to find the pieces,” Rich said. “But they could be anywhere.”
“And the princess hid them five hundred years ago,” Ryan added. “Don’t forget that detail.”
“Why don’t we just give the chest to Elisabeth’s father and be done with it?” Raina suggested. “We hand over the stupid chest, he frees Marielle and her baker boyfriend, and everyone lives happily ever after.”
“Except for Elisabeth,” Kayla corrected. “She’d be forced to marry Fred.”
“She’s a princess.” Raina folded her arms. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Besides, she’s the whole reason we’re in this mess.”
“Technically, it was her father who started the mess by trying to marry her off to him.” Kayla poked her thumb back toward Friedrich.
“You all understand I am not Prince Gunzelin, correct?”
“One problem – we don’t know for sure the chess piece is still inside.” Rich studied the wooden chest. “For all we know, Elisabeth hid that somewhere else too. If we take an empty chest to her father, we’ll all hang.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes, yes, the chess piece is the key.” Friedrich stepped forward. “It is the only reason the prince wanted to marry Louisa at all.”
“Hey!” Louisa smacked his arm.
“Any ideas where we should search?” Rich asked.
Sam circled Rich as he stared at the chest. “If I were Princess Elisabeth, and I had a heavy dowry trunk – and it was way back then – I bet I didn’t have the trunk at all. It was probably in my father’s chambers.”
“True,” Rich agreed.
Sam paced the chamber. “If she wanted the dowry, she’d be forced to steal the trunk from her father’s rooms. Except the trunk was way too heavy to move on her own.”
“Okay. Let’s say that’s true,” Rich said. “Her best bet would have been to remove everything from the trunk, piece by piece, including this chest. But would she have known how to open it?”
“Possibly.” Sophia ran her fingers over the lock. “Her father may have shown her the chess piece at some point and shown off the lock because it’s so unique.”
“Let’s say she gets ahold of the chest,” Rich continued, “smuggles it out of her father’s chambers, and then has to get rid of it somehow.”
“She’s like a prisoner, though.” Louisa shifted closer to Rich. “She’s not permitted to travel anywhere alone outside the keep.”
“Right. She needs help,” Rich agreed. “But no one would wittingly hide anything from the princess’s dowry. That would be certain death.”
Louisa’s eyes lit up. “So she stages a robbery – she removes the cloth and the gold from the trunk and hides them somewhere, probably among her own things.”
“And maybe she takes the puzzle pieces from the chest and gives them to someone to hide for her,” Sophia said. “Someone like Marielle.”
“But how did the chest end up in the cave?” Sam asked.
“I’m not sure.” Sophia thought about it. “Maybe Elisabeth hid it in a handcart that went back and forth to this wine cellar? In a cask or something? She may have been able to manage it without raising too much suspicion.”
“Especially if Marielle accompanied her,” Louisa said.
“But why are the guards so sure Marielle is the thief?” Sam asked.
“Because she had access to the keep,” Rich explained.
“That may not be the only reason,” Sophia said. “Once Elisabeth’s father realized the dowry was missing, he would have told the guards what to look for, including the pieces to the tangram. What if that’s the reason they suspected her? What if they saw her with them?”
“We need to find the pieces to the tangram.” Rich stared down at the dragon.
“We have one.” Ryan held up the small wooden block. “That’s a start.”
“Let me see that again,” Birdie said. Ryan handed her the block, and she turned it over in her hand. “I know where the other ones are.”