Chapter 10: Bath Time
Seeking feedback on my work-in-process cozy fantasy novel, Jack and the Beanstalk Cafe.
Gillian
Gillian and Jack were back in her second story flat above the cafe– she sat curled in her armchair with a cup of milky tea and Jack was on the sofa, staring intently at his mobile phone.
“It’s very similar, but it isn’t an exact match,” he finally said, peering up at Gillian behind his spectacles.
At the church crypt, Jack had recovered his composure first and he’d snapped several photos of the wall carving before they caught up with the rest of the tour, easily blending back in with the group. Jack had barely spoken a word the entire way back to the cafe, his focus on the rune.
“The individual hieroglyphics layered in the carving are the same style, and of course the diamond shape is similar,” he continued.
“So, now we have two hundred more symbols to translate?” Gillian bit her lip.
Jack laughed. “Yeah, I guess we do.” His smile slipped. “Well, at least I do. There’s no reason for me to stay here. I can go back to Oxford in the morning.”
Gillian’s chest tightened. “But I want to help. I’m just as invested in this as you are.”
Now that the church had discovered the runes, it was only a matter of time before they announced the finding. If word got out, and the runes fell into the wrong hands, it wouldn’t only be humans in danger.
“I’d like that,” Jack said. “Should we get started now? Coffee?”
“It’s almost midnight, Jack.”
He shrugged and looked at her expectantly.
“No time like the present, I guess,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll put a fresh pot on.”
Gillian drained her tea and headed for the door, almost toppling a pile of books on her way.
***
The next morning, Gillian woke with the sun, her inky black hair spilling over the pillow. They had finally given up on their translation work a few hours after midnight and Jack was still sprawled on the sofa, snoring softly, when Gillian crept from her room.
She glanced down at the work they’d completed on the crypt wall carving– the English translation in Jack’s neat, tight scrawl.
The east of three points.
Three points together the incantation does break. Two points together the incantation does make.
The north point finds. The east point brings death. The west point brings death.
The south point brings all. The west point brings one. The east point brings none. The final points break and all is lost.
They’d accomplished more in those few hours than they had the previous day, once Jack had realized a large portion was identical to the cave drawing rune. Unfortunately, they still weren’t any closer to understanding what it meant.
Gillian sighed and left the flat to get the cafe prepared for the morning rush.
Downstairs, she found Philomena rolling out dough. Gillian pulled an apron down from a hook on the wall, tying it over her navy blue knit sweater.
“We found another set of magic runes,” she said as she settled in across from Philomena and grabbed the round cookie cutter from the work table.
The gnome looked up and blinked at her.
“Did you know there was more than one?” Gillian asked, cutting a circle into the soft dough.
“No, I never actually saw the runes. Alice told me her plans, but she left town before she activated the curse on your father.” Philomena sighed. “There could be dozens of runes out there, for all I know.”
“Maybe this is a good thing. If it takes more than one spell to activate the incantation, we’ll be safe. Right?”
“Possibly. But I have no idea if you need all of them. Maybe one will work fine, or maybe the two you have are enough. We won’t know for sure until you finish translating the spell.”
The pair worked in silence for a few minutes, Gillian punching out circles of thin dough while Philomena lined them on a baking sheet.
“Is Alban coming by today?” Gillian asked, as Philomena loaded a full tray of sugar cookies into the oven.
“Am I his keeper?”
Gillian laughed. “Come on, I know he’d tell you if he had plans to stop in.”
“So what if he does?” She was turned away from Gillian, tinkering with the oven.
“I was thinking he could help Jack with the translation. Jack’s already seen him, and for whatever reason hasn’t said anything about his ears.” Gillian let out a small laugh.
“That boy is either up to no good or… maybe just too polite for his own good,” Philomena said, turning back around to Gillian with a smirk. “But yes, you’re right. Alban told me he’s coming to the cafe this morning.”
Gillian smirked. “Thought so.”
***
Gillian was politely asking a faerie to stop knotting her hair when Alban walked into the cafe and headed to his usual table by the window.
Gillian extricated herself from the little creature and walked over to Alban, while attempting to smooth her tangled locks.
“Hi, Al, what can I get you?”
“Faerie problem, eh? I’ll just have a coffee for now, thanks, Gillian,” he said, pulling out a copy of Carmilla.
Gillian sank into the chair opposite of him and leaned across the table.
“Something on your mind?” he asked with eyebrows raised.
“Could I convince you to take that cup of coffee upstairs and help Jack with some Latin translations?”
***
A few hours later, Gillian walked back up to her flat with a tray of food— toasted sandwiches with Gouda, sliced apples, and bacon jam on sourdough bread, cups of carrot and parsnip soup, and scones with lemon curd and clotted cream.
She found Jack sitting on her floor, a pile of papers spread out across her rug, scribbling furiously on a page. Alban was stretched out on her sofa, holding a sheet of paper to his face and speaking in Latin.
“Lunch?” she asked, when neither man looked up at her arrival.
“Yes, please,” they said simultaneously, then broke into laughter.
Gillian raised her eyebrows and set the tray down on the side table.
“Make any progress?” she asked while the men helped themselves to the food.
“Yergh,” Jack said, after a bite of sandwich. Swallowing, he continued,“sorry— yeah. We did, actually.”
“Mortem si quaeris, ad castellum orientale prope thermas vitam tuam inveniēs,” Alban clarified.
“What he said.” Jack laughed.
“‘If death is what you seek, find your life at the eastern castle near the baths,’” Gillian translated. “Why are these runes always sending us to our death?”
“Runes?” Jack asked, his eyebrows knitting. “Huh. That’s a good word for them, I guess. I’ll have to use that in my dissertation.”
Gillian froze. Gods, I’m an idiot.
Alban cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I’m at a loss with this one. ‘The eastern castle near the baths’ doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Gillian recovered and said, “Well, let’s think about this logically. The cave drawing you found was near other drawings dating to around 25 to 220 AD, right?”
“Good memory.” Jack raised his eyebrows. “You really are interested in my work, aren’t you?”
Gillian looked at him but continued her train of thought. “And the crypt carving was in a part of the church dating back to Roman London, which was—”
“Around during the first to third centuries, too.” Jack finished for her.
“So, we are looking for a castle from around then.” Alban chimed in, between sips of soup.
Gillian nodded, staring at the pile of books by the fireplace, her mind running through ways to narrow down their search. Her gaze drifted to the thickest volume in the stack— The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire— when a thought hit her.
“Romans,” she exclaimed.
“Huh?”
“The Romans are the link. Jack, didn’t you say all these symbols are Roman?”
“Yeah, so?” he asked, then his eyes lit up as he caught onto her train of thought. “Oh. And the cave image referenced the Roman forum in London.”
“It’s Bath time!”
Gillian and Jack both turned to Alban, who sat grinning on the sofa.
“The Roman baths! In Bath,” he explained.
“‘The eastern castle near the baths.’ Of course,” Gillian said, her eyes widening.
Gillian crouched down and pulled a large tome from under her arm chair. “Clear a space,” she requested, and Jack moved the empty tray to the sofa.
Gillian put the large atlas on the side table and flipped through it until she found a full map of England.
“Pen,” she said with her hand out.
“You’re not going to write in your book, are you?” Jack asked in a horrified tone.
“Ok, fine. Hand me paper and a pen.” Gillian rolled her eyes. “Please,” she added belatedly.
She laid the thin paper over the map, then made three marks — one over Derbyshire, one over London, and one over Bath.
Jack and Alban peered over her shoulder as she connected the lines. She stood back triumphantly as the men stared— a perfect triangle.
Jack gasped. “‘The north point finds, the east point brings death, the west point brings death,’” he recited. “The points are a triangle.”
“Fascinating,” Alban said. “But that doesn’t tell us where this eastern castle is.”
Gillian huffed. Apparently, she had to do all the thinking around here. She thrust her sketch of the triangle at Jack and flipped the pages of the atlas until it landed on a detailed view of the city of Bath in south western England.
“Ok, Al, if you’re so wise, where do you think it is?” Gillian said, crossing her arms.
“Gill, he’s just trying to help,” Jack offered.
But Alban only grinned and pointed down at the map.
“There.”
It turned out “there” was actually a randomly selected point in the east end of Bath. It was as good a guess as any, and Gillian left the men to ponder the problem while she headed back down to the cafe.
***
“This is it?” Gillian was standing with one hand on her hip, staring down at the paper Jack had handed to her.
“Do you have any better ideas?” Jack said between bites of bacon gruyere quiche.
The cafe was closed and Jack had come downstairs to eat dinner after he and Alban had spent the afternoon listing out all of the castles and manor houses in the city of Bath.
“The problem is that we’re looking for something built during Roman times, but that’s really just the Roman baths,” he said when Gillian didn’t answer. “The castles were all built much later. The oldest one is Newton Castle, but that was built in the twelfth century.”
“Then, what are we going to do?” She scanned the list to find the castle he had indicated, her finger trailing down the page. “Hold on. This sounds familiar…”
She stared at the name above her finger– Hungerford. Something nagged at the back of her mind.
What was it about this name?
“Gill?”
Gillian’s gaze flew to him. She blinked.
“Stay here,” she said, and took off to the back of the cafe.
She pushed into the kitchen to find Philomena sitting on a tall stool by the work table in the center of the room. Alban took a step back from her as Gillian entered, the ghost of a smile still on his mouth.
“Everything ok?” he asked.
“Phi, what was the name of that Englishman you said Alice knew?”
“What?”
Gillian crossed the room and handed her the list of castles, pointing at the name.
“Hungerford. Is that the name of the man you thought your witch friend knew?”
“Hmm. Yeah. I think you’re right. What is this?” Philomena said, looking up to Gillian.
Alban and Gillian took turns explaining the rune’s clue leading them to Bath.
“But this doesn’t make sense,” Alban said. “We looked up the history of every building on that list. The Hungerford Castle was built in 1370. That’s twenty years after the runes were made.”
“Well, how long does it take to build a castle?” Philomena asked. “Alice kept up a regular correspondence with Sir Hungerford. She might have known of his plans for building.”
“It’s the best idea we’ve got.” Gillian looked at Alban, who shrugged.
“Let’s go tell the boy.”
Alban and Gillian walked into the cafe as Jack was eating the last spoonfuls of his potato leek soup. He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his stomach, and grinned when he saw the pair.
“Jack, we figured it out,” Gillian said.
It took some convincing for Jack to agree that the Hungerford Castle was worth checking out– she couldn’t exactly tell him that they knew who drew the runes.
“Well, it might be a deadend, anyway,” Jack said with a frown, looking down at his mobile phone. “The castle is closed for repairs until next spring. No visitors allowed.”
Gillian exchanged a glance with Alban. Time was running out if the church published their findings of the crypt rune.
There had to be a way to find what they needed.
“Hey Jack?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“How opposed are you to a little breaking and entering?”
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Grrr now that I’m caught up idk what to do😭I tried to pace myself but the story is too good!
Gotta love a *Carmilla* reference! What a fun chapter!