Chapter 9: Crypt Tour

Seeking feedback on my work-in-process novel, Jack and the Beanstalk Cafe.

Jack

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“What are you doing here, Al?”

Jack had spent another night on Gillian’s couch and was in her flat working on his project when she walked in and saw Alban sitting next to him.

Jack quickly shuffled the papers he was holding while Alban answered her.

“Gillian, where the hell have you been, loca?” Alban said with a wide grin and Gillian rolled her eyes.

Alban continued, “I’m actually heading out. Jack can show you what we were working on.” He grunted as he rose from the sofa, using his hands on his knees for leverage.

“Now, let’s see what I can do to annoy little Philly today,” Alban said while rubbing his hands together gleefully before disappearing into the hallway.

Jack stifled a laugh, biting back the guilt that followed. The old man was undeniably hilarious but had spent all morning trying– and failing– not to gawk at his oversized, pointy ears, and absurd outfit that seemed plucked from a fantasy novel.

Alban must have been teased a lot as a kid. Poor chap.

Gillian carefully stepped around a pile of books on the floor before she sank down on the couch next to him.

“So, you made progress?” she asked.

“Yeah, we have another couple sentences,” he said and showed her the paper where he’d written out the lines Alban had helped him translate.

The south point brings all.

The west point brings one.

The east point brings none.

The final points break and all is lost.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Gillian said after she studied his scrawl. “The phrases we found yesterday talk about east and west points, too.”

“So?”

“So, your new sentences show different meanings for an east and west point. Which one is correct? How are there more than one of each?”

Jack pondered this for a moment then pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and drew a quick sketch.

“If it’s a square, there are two east and two west points,” he explained.

“What about the north and south points? Wait, I think I got it.” Gillian held out her hand and Jack handed her the pen.

“Maybe it isn’t referring to one set of directions, but two.”

“That makes sense,” Jack said. “But we’re still missing the ending, ‘The final points break and all is lost.’ What could that possibly mean?”

The pair stared at their sketches for a few moments before Jack shrugged and Gillian let out a small laugh.

“Trying to make sense of a few random phrases from hundreds of years ago is never going to work,” she said.

“Maybe not,” Jack said. “But it’s the first clue to understanding a new facet of early England culture no one has ever seen before. If we don’t solve it ourselves, at least we’ve opened the door for the world’s greatest minds to work on.”

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Gillian immediately lost her grin and she stood up without another word.

Weird. She must really want to solve this together…

“I better head back down to the cafe,” she said. “I’ll meet you down there at sunset so we can go to the church together.”

As Jack watched her leave, he wondered about her reaction. Sometimes it felt like she might be flirting with him, but he tried not to read too much into their interactions. Because other times… Well, other times she was downright weird.

He still wasn’t allowed down in the cafe during business hours, and she hadn’t really explained why. And then there was that feeling whenever they touched. He kept telling himself it was just static electricity, but he knew deep down that it wasn’t true. It felt like she was pulling something out of him– out of his skin or bones or soul. Every time they touched, he had this urge to give himself completely over to her.

Jack shook the thought off. He was the one being crazy now.

***

As dusk settled over the city, Gillian and Jack set off from the cafe and took the tube to Tower Hill. It was a short walk along a road busy with Londoners on their evening commute before they arrived at a large stone chapel with a green copper spire piercing the dark gray sky.

The tour guide met them in the narthex, where a small group waited for the tour to begin. The elderly guide introduced himself as a retired history professor and launched into the tour.

“The area we’re standing in was rebuilt in the 1800s but the rest of the church has areas dating back as far as 675 CE. Let’s head in.”

He took them into the main sanctuary. It was a large, echoing room with ragstone and limestone walls, and two aisles leading to the altar. Light from the outside street lamps filtered into the church through the large painted glass window panels, which depicted shields and crests.

“Here is the tomb of Reverend ‘Tubby’ Clayton, who was the vicar of the church starting in 1922,” the guide said, pointing the group toward an effigy of a man near the church pews. “At his feet, you can see even his faithful dog, Chippie, was memorialized.”

Gillian wasn’t paying attention. She looked around the church aimlessly, seemingly lost in thought. But Jack loved little historical facts like this– he grinned and waved her over to the effigy.

“Gill, check this out,” he said, pointing to the sculpted Scottish Terrier sitting by the vicar’s carved metal feet. “Isn’t this little dog cute?”

She blinked at him and walked away without a word, but he swore he saw the faint trace of a smile on her lips.

The guide eventually led them through an archway that was part of the foundation of the original church built in the seventh century.

“This arch was discovered after the church was partially destroyed during the Blitz. Almost a century later, we are still discovering new Anglo-Saxon and Roman relics below the nave,” the guide said.

Gillian and Jack followed the rest of the group down steep spiral stairs cut into the stone walls to the church’s crypt, which held a museum with artifacts from the early years of the property.

Gillian and Jack hung back and let the rest of the tour walk ahead of them.

“Here is a beautifully preserved section of Roman tesselated pavement that…” The guide’s voice faded as the group moved through the undercroft.

Jack began scanning everything thoroughly for any sign of what the cave drawing might have indicated and noticed something behind a metal gate that blocked the path to a large alcove.

“Gill, look at this, I can see something etched into the recess of the wall,” Jack said quietly.

Gillian peered through the metal bars to where Jack was pointing. In the few inches of the edge of a niche that could be seen from their angle, there appeared to be writing on the wall. She looked back toward the group several yards away, then quietly unlatched the metal gate and walked into the small area.

“What are you doing?” Jack hissed. When Gillian ignored him, he looked up to see she was staring at the recess with mouth agape. With a furtive glance at the tour guide, he followed her in to see what had caught her attention.

Once he was in the alcove, his eyes widened as saw an array of brushes and picks laid out next to a stack of cotton gloves and a clipboard. It was an active archaeological investigation.

“Gill, be careful. You’ll disturb the–” It was now Jack’s turn to stare slack-jawed at the niche in the wall.

Etched into the stone, was an image almost identical to the Derbyshire cave drawing they were translating.

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