Episode 3: For the Book, Chapter 1

The roof spiralled away from Cassandra in dizzying heights. The spider web of graceful arcs met at bold, carved capitols. The silver grey stone shone in dazzling technicolour as the sun projected the patterns of the ancient stained glass windows onto them. As she looked out from the heart of the labyrinth, she heard echoing footsteps approach.

"You're supposed to find your way to centre the long way, not walk right over the pattern and lie down in the middle to look up at the ceiling," said a gentle voice by her side.

She turned her head and smiled up at Jacob. "But the angles, the geometry: it's so perfect!"

"I thought you'd like it," he smiled. "Come on: I want to show you something. It ain't perfect geometry, but it's still worth seeing."

He held out a hand and helped her to her feet. The labyrinth, picked out in mosaic detail of black and pale golden stone, lay in the centre of the nave of the cathedral. It was an area cleared of the chairs that, as the nave approached the crossing and transepts, worshippers could sit in to pray, or attend mass, leaving the famous floor open to visitors old and new. Guiding Cassandra off to the side, and the south aisle, Jacob Stone led the way through scatterings of tourists. They crossed the edge of the south transept into the apse, and the part of the cathedral known as the ambulatory: a walkway around the raised choir in the centre of the apse. Jacob pointed up. High above them soared an iridescent blue window, small figures littering the lower portions, below the majestic figure of the Blessed Virgin herself, holding the Christ child in her arms and seated on a throne.

"It's called the Belle Verrière," said Jacob. "It's remarkable for three reasons. First: it's probably the oldest window in here. It dates way back to the twelfth century, when this place was built. There are only three other twelfth century windows still left and they probably were made after this one. She's the patron of the cathedral: she would take pride of place. Second: these windows are all taller and better glazed than any of their counterparts. The flying buttresses on the outside of the building support the taller walls and, therefore, the taller windows. The glass used was all of the same quality, making it darker in colour, but consistent, richer and easier to see, and cathedral windows then were like the graphic novels of the middle ages. They told the bible stories for those who could not read them. Third: they used so much blue! The pigments used to make blue stained glass, and glass of that shade and quality, were so expensive and rare back then that it was a marvel in itself they could produce something so great, so beautiful, so precious, and so blue!"

"It's also the only one in here with such a large central figure," added Cassie, smiling as she watched the man she loved light up talking about one of his passions. "All the rest I've seen are completely split into individual panels. This is the only one that puts those together to make a larger image."

"It is," he nodded. "Maybe there were more originally, but almost all the windows were lost in a devastating fire. Only those four that I mentioned remain. Here's something you'll like, though: the composition of the main picture is a common one for the time. It shows Mary, seated on a throne facing forwards, and holding the child Jesus. Standard compositions like that had names: guess what this one is."

"Not an area of my expertise," said Cassie, pulling a face and shaking her head. "Tell me."

Jacob laughed and leant over to whisper in her ear. "The Seat of Wisdom."

"Oh, oh! The riddle!" Cassandra clapped, filling the demure silence of the sanctuary with joyful sound.

The riddle had appeared in Cassandra's clippings book not long after their return with Eve and Flynn. Ezekiel was ill, and ensconced in the first aid room with Jenkins, who was sternly refusing to allow them to break quarantine. For an entire day, Cassandra had puzzled over the words half-heartedly, unable to concentrate. Then Ezekiel had been released from his Jenkins-enforced incarceration, and she had been too busy waiting on him hand and foot to pay any attention to her boyfriend, let alone her book. Then Eve had told her to stop worrying and, rested and fed, Jenkins had joined them in drawing up a rota for looking after the invalid. She had gone back to her puzzling in her spare time after that, but to no avail. The words just would not make sense for her. Eventually, she had shown them to Stone and the others. That was when Stone admitted he had received a riddle too. They compared their books and found that the two were actually two halves of one verse, each incomprehensible without the other. They had worked out the locations mentioned, more or less, and had an idea about the item they were on the trail of, but had still been reluctant to go. Flynn had encouraged them, assuring them both that he and Eve would stay until Ezekiel was recovered enough to leave his room, barring any emergencies, and that they would call if there were any change. He might check on the dig occasionally, the Librarian admitted, but with the back door running that was around and about the Library equivalent of working in the garden on your day off.

That had been yesterday. They had picked up their travel bags and headed through the door to Chartres, walking out of a door in an alley that led up to the mediaeval gothic style cathedral, its mismatched spires towering over the city. They had arrived in the early hours of the morning, though, and the only details that could be seen were those shown up by the artistic lighting installed on the towers. They had found a small hotel with rooms available, charmed their way into bed and breakfast, then gone upstairs to formulate a plan and reset their body-clocks. Following an early breakfast, they had headed straight for the cathedral, and become completely lost in its enthralling beauty.

"The riddle said 'below the Seat of Wisdom'," mused Cassandra. "I don't see anything that fits the rest of it though, other than where we are, of course."

"Then you might be interested in our next stop," smiled Stone.

He took her hand and led her out of the cathedral, through the intermittent flocks of tourists to a set of stairs that led down below the apse. They descended together, the sudden warmth of the French autumnal sun disappearing again as they were engulfed by the vaulted tunnels and small chapels of the vast eleventh century Chartres cathedral crypt. They reached the crypt with a couple of random cathedral enthusiasts at their back, a father and daughter by the sound of things. The crypt was one of the largest, and most complex, that they had seen, and they excitedly pointed out to each other all the architectural, and spiritual, highlights as they headed down, past the Librarians, to the small underground chapel where mass was often heard by local parishioners. Once there, in the silent, still sanctuary, the father and daughter headed for another figure sitting quietly before a candlelit enclave, presumably the mother. They stayed in prayerful silence for a short while, then returned to the warmth of the bright sunshine, leaving Cassandra and Stone alone in the crypt. He led her forward to the reliquary.

"The fabric in that reliquary," he told her, "is called the Sancta Camisa. It is said to be the tunic worn by the Blessed Virgin when she gave birth to Jesus Christ. This statue," he led her to another part of the crypt and pointed to the carved figure Our Lady and the Child Jesus, seated on a throne, "is what the window, and another carving in the west façade, were based on. It predates them."

"But there's nothing here," said Cassandra. "It's just bare rock and brickwork."

"Look," said Stone, leading her to another, much less obvious, set of stairs. "They go down, not up. There's another crypt below this one, called the Lubinus crypt. It dates back to before the cathedral was ever built. Right back to the ninth century. It was built as a part of the Carolingian church that replace the first Christian religious building on this site, which was destroyed by the Danes in the middle of that century."

"And you think it's there that we'll find the answer to our riddle?" Cassandra asked him.

"It is technically below the statue, and the west façade, and the Belle Verrière," he shrugged.

Cassandra couldn't argue with that. She followed him down the steps, these much narrower and darker than before. They led to a shadowy semicircular room lit only by candles. At one end of the room there was a rough wooden carving of a saint, presumably Saint Lubin for whom the crypt was named. To one side was a large book, resting on a wooden table. Beside it lay an inkwell and pen. It was a book into which the names of those to be prayed for to the saint were written. All the most recent names were written in the same hand, presumably that of the priest or deacon responsible for its upkeep. With the careful hands of one used to handling ancient manuscripts or folios, Stone turned back the pages to the date they had worked out from their riddle.

They found another riddle.

"Really?" Cassandra sighed. "The last one took days!"

"It was written by a former Librarian," Stone reminded her.

"Here," she said, shivering in the dead cold of the candle-warmed crypt. "Let me take a photo, then let's get out of here."

They hurried back to the relative warmth of the upper crypt, and then to the veritable furnace of the air outside.

"I might have to go back inside in a minute," commented Cassandra, fanning herself with her cathedral visitor's brochure. "If I didn't know it'll only take a few more for the body to reverse the negative feedback loop dealing with the cold temperatures down in the crypts to one that deals with the warmer temperatures up here. Goose bumps disappear, shivering stops and blood flow increases to the skin," she finished triumphantly.

"Well, when you're finished warming up Doctor Quinn," quipped Jacob, "we really should get somewhere we can sit down and have a look at this thing. Plus, in case you hadn't noticed, it's afternoon already and we haven't eaten since breakfast."

"Which means you're hungry," Cassie rolled her eyes. "Back to the hotel or find a café?"

"Are you kidding?" Jacob raised his eyebrows at her. "We're in France, we're hungry, and we're alone. I'm taking you to a proper restaurant. No arguments!"

With a demure smile, Cassie took his arm and they walked contentedly through the streets of Chartres until the found a restaurant they liked. The staff were only too pleased to find them a secluded seat, where courting couples could whisper sweet nothings to their hearts' content. The fact that it was also suitable for secret Librarians to whisper over mysterious magical conundra was one they did not need to know.

Under his girlfriend's watchful eye, Jacob ordered for them both in perfect French. His accent had improved with more time spent in the country itself. Their wine arrived first, followed by their entrées. When the main courses arrived, and they knew the waiting staff would allow them more time to themselves, Cassandra pulled out her phone and brought up the picture of the riddle. The handwriting took some deciphering, and translation, but eventually they had scribbled down a neat copy in her notebook. Stone looked at it with furrowed brows.

"There can't be any second half to this one," he said. "We've no other clues on how to find it."

"Then this must be leading us to the book," suggested Cassandra.

"Or another clue," Stone reminded her. "The man liked words and puzzles and travel. It wouldn't surprise me if he laid out a whole treasure hunt of clues for us to track down."

Cassandra groaned. "Please don't let them be as difficult as the first one!"

"That took longer because it took us so long to work out we each had a separate half," Stone consoled her. "Hopefully it should be easier now we're on the trail."

Cassandra looked down at her notepad and read out the translation. "Under the gaze of he who made the path straight in the wilderness, my words shall lead you onward."

"It ain't much but I think I got the translation right," shrugged Stone. "It's languages I'm used to having to decipher, not handwriting."

"It looks like there will be another riddle at the end of it too," Cassandra sighed. "Are we going to need a map?"

"You haven't got one in your head?" Stone asked nonchalantly.

"Several," Cassandra replied dryly. "None of which I find easy to share with my partner."

"Point taken."

"Well?" Cassandra raised an eyebrow at her boyfriend, who was still sitting there as if they had all the time in the world.

He looked round at her, sighed, and signalled the waiter. The now empty main course plates were removed. Cassandra leant over to pick up her purse. Jacob stopped her with a hand on her wrist.

"There is no way you're payin' for this meal, darlin'," he said, raising her hand to his lips. "And we ain't leaving before dessert."