The Black Sun Conspiracy

Chapter Fifteen

The first obstacle they encountered was that the chapel was locked. In fact, it was not only locked, but its doors were sealed with a thick metal chain secured with a hefty padlock. Judging by the state of the chain, it had been some time since those doors had been opened.

“Isn’t it still operational?” Nina rattled the padlock, more in hope than expectation. “I thought from some of the things that Axelle said that it was.”

“If it is, they’re certainly not getting in through here,” said Sam. “Is there another door?”

They briskly walked around the chapel. Its walls were covered by dense creepers, so they split up and made a more thorough search, this time checking beneath the clinging vines in case there were hidden doors to be found. All they found was aged stone.

“No windows that we can get through.” Sam scanned the walls, looking for anything that was open or already broken. “Not without attracting attention and getting ourselves in trouble, at least.”

“There may be another way,” said Purdue. “Follow me.” He marched swiftly away from the chapel, back towards the main building. When Nina asked where they were going, he pointed back the way they had just come. “Look at the ground. Do you see all those little grates?”

“You think there’s a tunnel?”

Purdue nodded and led them inside, into the reception area. There was no-one behind the desk, so he lifted the entrance flap and let himself in to the area marked Staff Only. A large board full of keys on hooks hung beside the desk, and at the bottom of the board he found the ones marked Kitchen, Refectory, Library… and Chapel (Rear Entrance). “Now all we have to do is find the door,” he said, taking the key.

“In here!” Sam had joined Purdue behind the desk and was now looking through the window in the door that separated them from the little office behind Reception. “Got the key to this door?”

Sure enough, in the office there was a small, locked door leading to a flight of stairs, going down. The key that Purdue had taken opened it easily, and he took out his resizable tablet and activated the flashlight function as they descended into the darkness.

“Once all of this is over,” Nina muttered, half to herself, “once we’re back home and nobody’s trying to kill us anymore, I swear I’m never going anywhere more enclosed than George Street ever again.”

“Come closer to the light.” Purdue held out a hand to her. “It will help if you can see what’s around you. The tunnel is really quite spacious.”

The tunnel was short, opening out into a small chamber that smelled of dust and was lined with old, leather-bound hymnals and prayer books, and from there they emerged into the cool, weak daylight of the chapel itself. The air was tinged with the scent of incense and the sense that it had not been disturbed for a very, very long time. It was a simple chapel, with no elaborate artwork or statuary, a far cry from the church in which Nina had found herself two days ago. Its most decorative features were a modest altarpiece depicting the Annunciation and a single stained glass window bearing the image of a female saint, whom Sam and Nina presumed must be Saint Agnes.

“This can’t be right.” Purdue was pacing back and forth over by the altar, his footsteps echoing in the chapel’s clear acoustics. He looked truly puzzled, an expression neither Sam nor Nina saw often. “I was so sure… There’s so little here. We’re looking for where the adored Lamb ought to be, which is presumably the window, but… beneath the dozen. I can’t make sense of that, can you? There should be a dozen of… of something.”

He trailed his long fingers over the wall beneath the window, looking for a loose brick, a spring or a catch, anything that might yield the promised reliquary, but there was nothing.

“Wait a minute,” said Nina. “You said this reliquary is beneath the dozen… I think you have the wrong Lamb!” Purdue stopped his search and turned to listen. “It’s a trick. You’re interpreting it as if the whole thing’s a puzzle, but it’s not. You don’t need to translate the name. We should be looking for the Lamb of God. The Adoration of the Lamb, to be exact. It’s the Ghent Altarpiece! It’s a polyptych — a dozen different panels, all depicting different things, and one of them is the Adoration of the Lamb!”

“Nina!” Purdue cried, seizing her hands in joy. “Of course! Why did I not think of that before! With this place on my mind, I couldn’t think of any other possibilities… You’re right, I’m sure of it!” He pulled her towards him and kissed her in a swift, unstoppable outpouring of enthusiasm, then strode back towards the tunnel without so much as looking back to see if Sam and Nina were following.

They were, though neither met the other’s eye. Nina was not sure what to make of the kiss, and was half-convinced that if Sam had been the one to come up with the answer Purdue would have kissed him just as readily. Sam, for his part, felt as though he should be embarrassed to have witnessed a private moment. He wondered whether to tease Nina about it to defuse the tension, but he thought better of it. ‘Sometimes it’s best just to pretend that these things never happened,’ he thought to himself.