Episode 3: For the Book, Chapter 2
Cassandra was still musing over the riddle as they walked back, arm in arm, to their hotel. They collected their bags and checked out, Cassandra still lost in thought, and walked back to the door, pausing to look up at the graceful facade, its odd spires vying for the heavens.
"It's from the bible," Cassandra muttered, looking up at the grand church.
"What's that?" Stone paused with his hand on the door handle.
"The riddle," she said, still looking up at the cathedral in thought. "It's from the bible. Part of it anyway. Make a path straight in the wilderness. That bit."
"You're right, it is," Stone nodded. "Old Testament and New. It was one of the prophecies in the Old Testament that the Gospels referred to in the New one. Isaiah from the one and Matthew and Mark from the other, I think. 'And a voice cried in the wilderness: prepare a way for the Lord. Make his paths straight.'"
"Whose was the voice?" Cassandra asked. "Sorry, religion was seen as an interesting psychological phenomenon and proof of memetic evolution in my childhood home. I didn't get to go to Sunday school. Or church."
Jacob regarded her in silence for a while, his hand still on the door handle. He let it fall. "The voice belonged to John the Baptist," he said. "He was the cousin of Jesus, although somewhat removed. Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she found out she was pregnant, went to visit her cousin Elizabeth who, although she was too old to have a child, and her marriage had been childless so far, was six months pregnant. When Elizabeth saw Mary, so the tale goes, the child in her womb leapt for joy and Elizabeth greeted her with what became the second part of the Ave Maria: blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. That child was born, named John, and grew up to become a prophet preaching repentance to the Jews, and whoever else would listen, I guess, out in the wilderness. He would baptise them with water from the river Jordan. In time, Jesus too went to be baptised by him, and John recognised the Messiah and told his followers to follow Jesus instead. The different Gospels tell it different ways but the story is more or less the same."
"So we're looking for John the Baptist then?" Cassandra frowned. "And 'under his gaze' we should find our next clue."
"More accurately, I think we're looking for his head," Stone corrected her. "He was beheaded for prophecy, and pissing off a princess."
"One alliterating Librarian is quite enough, thank you," Cassandra smiled. "So where do we find his head?"
"I dunno," shrugged Stone. "That's what I thought we were going back here to find out."
"You mean you knew it was John the Baptist all the time?" Cassandra rounded on him, her voice rising in pitch. "And you didn't tell me?"
"I just assumed you knew!" Stone raised his hands in surrender. "It seemed kinda obvious to me. I forgot you were the kid who didn't get to believe in anything but particle physics growing up!"
"Well, there were some area of that they thought questionable," she mused, momentarily distracted. "And don't get my father started on the Higgs Boson!"
Something dawned on Cassandra and she looked sheepish.
"Let's go see what we can find out," said Stone, opening the door. "I'm sure there's at least one book in the Library that catalogues the whereabouts of saintly relics."
The library was quiet when they arrived, Colonel Baird sitting behind her desk, reading a file on manticores.
"Where's Flynn?" Cassandra piped up immediately.
"At the dig," replied Baird, looking up. "Said something about rain on its way and dashed off."
"No rain in France," grinned Stone. "Little cool for this time of year, but clear blue skies wherever you look."
"Unless you're in a crypt, of course," Cassandra added.
"Did you find your book?" Baird asked.
"Just another riddle," replied Stone, shaking his head. "We need to find the head of John the Baptist."
"We're just back to see what the card catalogue can tell us, then reset the door," said Cassandra, "Will you be okay resetting it for Flynn?"
Colonel Baird raised an eyebrow. "I'll try not to take offence at that," she said smoothly. "Flynn seems to have his own set of rules for the door anyway. If it's not set when he needs it, he can reset it temporarily from his end."
"Oh," Cassandra's face suddenly brightened. "Like with the dragons."
"Exactly," Baird shrugged. "Anything to prove he doesn't need a Guardian."
"I'm sure he needs you, Colonel Baird," Cassandra consoled awkwardly from the drawers of the card catalogue.
"Oh, he needs me," agreed Baird with a fond smile at thin air. "He doesn't know it, but he needs me."
"He knows," said Stone, smiling at the back of Cassandra's head. "Trust me, he knows."
"Ooh! I've got one!" Cassandra called. "Minutes of the Meetings of the Second Vatican Council. Unedited Version. The contents description says there's a list of known true relics and their whereabouts."
"Planning on throwing that one at me too?" Stone called out to the Library. There was an uneasy shuffling of pages among the books.
"Section N, shelf 2, book 7," Cassandra called.
"I'm on it," he replied and vanished up the stairs.
"How go the wedding plans, if you don't mind me asking," said Cassandra, turning to Colonel Baird again.
"We haven't quite picked a date yet," she replied, putting down the file and smiling up at the redhead. "I get the feeling Flynn would be happy to just drag us all off to the nearest registry or church and get it over and done with."
"But you wouldn't?" Cassandra pressed.
"The first time I got married I was young, impetuous, and we had both just joined the army with no knowing when we might get deployed. That wedding was nearest and dearest in a very geographical sense, and happened two weeks after the engagement in the base chapel. We didn't even bother getting an engagement ring, and we only waited two weeks because my father was in hospital having an operation. We waited so that he could walk me down the aisle." Eve paused and a shadow crossed her face. "At least he got to do that. And Mom got to take photos. They won't be here this time round, but at least they were there then."
"I'm sorry," Cassandra winced. "I didn't mean to bring up sad memories."
"Sad is good," Eve smiled wanly. "Apparently it's happy for deep people."
"Got it!" Stone called down the stairs.
"What took you so long?" Cassandra called back, looking over her shoulder at him.
"The darn book refused to come out of its shelf!" Stone protested.
"Refused?" Baird raised an eyebrow.
"They're having an argument," Cassandra whispered conspiratorially, with more than half a laugh in her voice.
"I thought it stopped throwing things at him once you two got together?" Baird whispered back.
"It did," Cassandra shrugged merrily as her boyfriend descended the last few stairs, "but yesterday morning he offended it."
"All I said was 'a picture's worth a thousand words'," cried Stone in exasperation.
The books shuffled darkly, like drumming fingers on a desk.
"It's a quote!" Stone shouted to the air in general.
Cassandra took the book from his hands and flicked it open to the list in question. She dragged a finger down the list.
"Here it is," she said, tapping the page. "The skull of John the Baptist is in Amiens. In the cathedral there."
"I thought that book was in Italian?" Stone frowned.
A pencil eraser from Jenkins' desk hit him on the back of the head.
"Really?" He rubbed at the spot on his own skull where the projectile had made contact, wincing.
"You might speak more languages than me, but that doesn't mean I can't learn any at all," smirked Cassandra with her nose in the air.
From the shelves behind them came a sound of riffling pages. It reminded Stone of someone blowing a raspberry. He turned and glared at the shelves. A rolled up tape measure hit him on the back of the head this time. Even Baird wasn't sure where that had come from. Stone turned again with a shout. Cassandra took his hand, leading him over to the door.
"Come along, sweetie, stop playing with the Library," she laughed, dragging him through the wormhole.
"I ain't..." The voices vanished with a pop and the doors swung closed.
Eve Baird looked at the doors, then looked at the ceiling. "Behave!"
XXXX
The back door opened out of the rest room of a small cafe. It was a French cafe, judging by the menu and clientele. It led them out onto a busy main street, opposite a park.
"Which way?" Cassandra wondered out loud.
They looked around. There was a crossing at a junction not far away.
"Let's head for the park," suggested Stone, taking her hand. "Move away from the buildings. Maybe we'll get a better idea of our surroundings."
They headed for the crossing and Stone made to walk over, but Cassandra pulled him back.
"What?" He said, turning to look at her. "Pedestrians have priority on crossings."
"I don't think we need to cross the road," she told him, pointing down the side street opposite the junction. "At least not that one."
At the end of the pedestrian only side street, the lovingly carved details of intricate cathedral walls rose. And rose.
"I guess we've found it then," sighed Stone.
"That's not all we've found," said Cassandra, pointing at the city map on the opposite side of a sign explaining the rules for hiring the bicycles from the stand next to it. There were many tourist attractions labelled on it. One of them read "Maison de Jules Verne".
"When this is done, we are so coming back here for that," she said. "Right now, though, let's go find this book, or riddle, before they close up."
"I don't think they run on a normal nine to five, darlin'," Stone called after her, hurrying to catch up.
The cathedral's south transept portal greeted them at the other end of the street. The sheer height of the building should have warned them, but even still they both let out a gasp of appreciation when the true magnitude of the cathedral in its entirety became apparent. They hurried inside and joined the sporadic groups of tourists on their perambulation around the choir. On the far side of the apse, Cassandra felt a tug on her cardigan sleeve. She looked round and followed Stone's gaze. A skull grinned up at them from behind a perspex cover.
"So we just need to follow his gaze," muttered Stone, scanning the top of the choir frieze and the windows beyond, "and we should find it."
"Not necessarily," mused Cassandra. "We know he likes words, and the riddle was quite short. What if it's more literal than we think?"
"How so?" Stone frowned.
"Well, a riddle left out here with all these people taking visiting and pictures and videos, would surely be spotted," she explained. "What if by 'under', he really meant 'under'?"
"You mean below the skull?" Stone turned to stand by her, looking down at the fleshless grimace. "We'd need Jones to get in there without anyone seeing."
"Maybe," she said dreamily. "Maybe not. Give me your phone."
"Why?" Stone asked, handing it over regardless.
"Your camera is much better than mine," she replied, still only half paying attention to him.
"Best there is," he shrugged, then added: "for a phone, of course."
"Hah!" Cassandra straightened up triumphantly, ignoring the shocked, confused, amused and condescending looks she got. She passed the phone back to its owner. "Here. Look."
Stone looked at the photo. It was had been taken on maximum zoom, and the detail was starting to pixelate, but there was definitely something there. As he tilted the phone to get better light, words began to make themselves apparent. Not words, he realised. Numbers.
"One thousand, one hundred and sixty minus one thousand three hundred and forty five," he read from the socket of one sightless eye. He switched eyes. "One hundred and twenty eight divided by three hundred and eighty seven. Even I can see that math don't work."
"Minus one hundred and eighty five," murmured Cassandra, "and zero point three three zero seven four nine, more or less."
"Okay, so it works out," admitted Stone, "but it doesn't work. Those numbers don't mean anything."
"Numbers always mean things," she corrected him. "It just depends on how you look at them."
"What am I missing?" Stone frowned.
"You read 'minus', I read 'to'," she said. "You read 'divided by', I read 'out of'."
Jacob stone blinked and looked at the numbers again. "Eleven sixty to thirteen forty five. They're dates," he realised. "So what's one twenty eight out of three eighty seven?"
"I guess we'll work that our once we know what happened between the years of eleven sixty and thirteen forty five," grinned Cassandra. "One riddle for you, one for me. I wonder what the next one will be like?"