Read Chapter 12: The Caretaker's Story

The caretaker’s name was Marcel, and he smelled of rain and old tobacco. He led them across the abbey’s slick flagstones with a lantern held high, his boots echoing off walls that hadn’t seen polish in centuries. Elodie kept her eyes on the interlocking circle carved above the crypt’s entrance—the same symbol from the manuscript margin, the same symbol on the map—and felt a cold certainty settle in her chest. They were close. Closer than she’d allowed herself to hope.

“The library is not open to the public,” Marcel said, his English thick and careful, as if he’d rehearsed it. “But for a donation to the abbey’s restoration fund, I can show you what remains. Very little. The Revolution took most. What they didn’t burn, the damp ate.”

James pulled out his wallet without hesitation. “How much for the library *and* the crypt?”

Marcel’s eyes narrowed, appraising. “The crypt is not part of the tour. It is closed. Structural concerns.”

“How much?” James repeated.

The old man named a sum that made Elodie wince. James didn’t blink. He counted out notes and pressed them into Marcel’s palm. The caretaker pocketed them with the practiced ease of a man who’d done this before, then gestured for them to follow.

The library was a single long room, gutted of its shelves, with only a few display cases pressed against the walls. Dust motes swirled in the lantern light. Elodie ran her fingers along the case glass, reading faded labels: *Missal, 14th century*; *Psalter, attributed to the scriptorium of Blois*; *Charter of the Abbey, 1302*. Her pulse quickened. Nothing that matched the Beaumont manuscript, but the room itself had a feeling—a resonance, like a struck bell fading.

“The legend,” Marcel said, settling onto a wooden stool near the door. “You want it, yes? The tale of the heretic nun.”

Elodie turned. “Marguerite de Beaumont.”

Marcel nodded slowly, as if the name itself weighed something. “She came here in secret, in the winter of 1348. The plague was everywhere. The abbey took her in because she had letters from a bishop—or so the story goes. She said she was fleeing a charge of heresy from her convent near Paris. The abbess believed her. For a time.”

“What happened?” James asked. He’d moved closer, his voice low, and Elodie caught the glint of his watch in the lamplight. He was recording this on his phone, she realized. Of course he was.

“She brought a book with her,” Marcel said. “A small codex. She kept it always. When the abbess asked to see it, Marguerite refused. Said it was not hers to share. That she was protecting it for someone else.”

Elodie’s breath caught. *Henri*. The Beaumont manuscript. The Vexed Folio itself.

“The abbess grew suspicious. Reports spread. Accusations. A delegation came from the bishop—but by the time they arrived, Marguerite was gone. The crypt was searched, the grounds, the river. Nothing. Only the book remained, left on the altar as if abandoned. And a small box, sealed with wax, addressed to no one.”

“What was in the box?” Elodie’s voice came out too sharp. She softened it. “Did anyone open it?”

Marcel shrugged. “The stories do not say. The box disappeared with the abbey’s treasures during the Revolution. The book was sent to the bishop’s library, then to a collector, then—who knows? Such things scatter like seeds.”

Like seeds that had drifted to Oxford, Elodie thought. To the Bodleian. To Henri’s family.

James stepped forward. “The crypt. You said she was buried alive there.”

“Some say.” Marcel’s face went stony. “Others say she escaped, that the tomb was built empty to shame her memory. The abbess ordered a crypt sealed in her name—a heretic’s tomb, with no marker. A warning. But there are those who claim, on certain nights, you can hear scratching from beneath the stones.”

The lantern flickered. Elodie felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.

“Show us,” James said.

Marcel led them through a low door behind the library, down a narrow spiral of stairs that smelled of wet stone and something older—iron, could see scratches on the lid—three interlocking circles, worn but unmistakable. The same symbol.

“It’s not from her time,” Elodie murmured. “The carving—it’s a later addition. Someone wanted this box found.”

“Or wanted it recognized,” James said.

He lifted the box. It was lighter than she expected. He set it on the stone floor between them and sat back on his heels, his eyes meeting hers across the dim space. “Open it.”

Elodie’s hands trembled as she reached for the lid. It wasn’t sealed—only fit tightly, swollen by centuries of damp. She worked her fingernails into the seam, felt it give, and lifted.

Inside: a folded scrap of parchment, yellowed and cracked at the edges. She didn’t touch it yet. Her eyes caught something beneath it—a thin silver bookmark, glinting in the lamplight.

The same pattern as the one she’d seen in the Bodleian’s reading room. The one that had marked the Beaumont manuscript’s missing page.

“James,” she breathed. “Look.”

He leaned closer, and the air between them grew heavy. His shoulder brushed hers. She didn’t pull away.

The bookmark was not identical. Its stem was bent at an angle, and the foliate engraving was inverted—a mirror image, she realized. A twin. A key.

And on the parchment, in a hand she now recognized—the same slanted letters from the manuscript’s margin, the same ink—were ten words:

*If you read this, you have found what I could not protect.*

Her pulse roared in her ears. The crypt felt smaller, the walls closer.

Marcel shifted behind them. “I will wait above,” he said, and his footsteps faded on the stairs.

Elodie stared at the scrap. No signature. No name. But she knew. She knew.

“She wasn’t buried here,” she said. “She *survived*. She left this behind for someone—for us—to find what she couldn’t take with her.”

James’s jaw tightened. “The letter. The Eleanor letter. She hid it.” He picked up the scrap, holding it to the light. “Where?”

The silver bookmark glinted between them, its bent stem pointing, she now saw, not at a letter but at a shape etched faintly on the inside of the box’s lid—a crude rendering of a tower, and beneath it, a single word scratched deep: *Blois*.

Elodie felt the world tilt. The tower. The château. The king’s palace itself.

“It’s not here,” she said. “It’s in the castle.”

James looked up at her, and for a moment, all suspicion, all rivalry, all the careful distance between them dissolved. His eyes were bright, fierce, intent.

“Then tomorrow,” he said, “we find a way in.”

He pocketed the scrap before she could protest.

Elodie opened her mouth to object—that parchment was evidence, it belonged to the archive, to the abbey, to the committee—but the words died in her throat. The bookmark lay cold in her palm. A key. A key to what?

And Henri still hadn’t called back.