“Maybe. If it is, we’ll have to wake the Gauntlet by anointing the first passage with blood.”
“Why is it always blood? Why can’t it ever be jam or blue crayon?”
And if this was the first step in the Gauntlet, what came next? She studied the scribe bent to his work, the hieroglyphs, the oars of the Phoenician ship, the wings of the Babylonian bull, the medieval scholar standing at the center of it all, as if making note of the clutter around him. Was the answer somewhere in all of this stonework? There were too many possibilities, too many symbols to decipher.
Without a word, they passed through the arched entrance and inside. But the interior of the library was even more overwhelming.
“How big is this place?”
“Over four thousand square feet,” said Dawes. “And every inch of it is covered in stonework and stained glass. Each room was themed. Even the lunchroom. There’s a carved bucket and mop above the janitor’s closet. They pulled from everything for the decoration—medieval manuscripts, Aesop’s fables, the Ars Moriendi.” Dawes stopped in the middle of the wide aisle, her smile evaporating.
“What?”
“Ars Moriendi. It … It literally means the art of dying. They were instructions on how to die well.”
“Research, remember?” Alex urged, that guilt washing over her again.
Dawes really was terrified, and Alex knew if she stopped to think hard enough, she might have the sense to be scared too. She craned her neck, looking up at the vaulted ceilings, the repeating patterns of flowers and stone, the lights of the chandeliers like roses themselves. “It really does look like a church.”
“A grand cathedral,” Dawes agreed, a little steadier now. “At the time, there was a lot of controversy over Yale building in such a theatrical style. I pulled some of the articles. They aren’t kind. But the assumption was that Goodhue—the original architect—was continuing in the Gothic tradition set by the rest of the campus.”
Goodhue. Alex remembered his spiral-bound biography on the stack of books in Darlington’s bedroom. Had he sent her up there deliberately?
“But Goodhue died,” Alex said. “Suddenly.” “He
was very young.”
“And he had no connection to the societies.”
“Not that we know of. James Gamble Rogers stepped in, and Sterling’s money paid for all of it. There’s a plaque dedicated to him by the entrance. It was the largest gift ever given to a university at the time. It paid for the Sterling Hall of Medicine, the Sterling Law Building, and the div school.”
Dawes hesitated. “There’s a labyrinth in the courtyard. It’s supposed to encourage meditation, but—”
“But maybe it’s really meant to be a maze?” A puzzle to trap any interested demons.
Dawes nodded. “Sterling didn’t have children. He never married. He lived with a friend for forty years. James Bloss. They shared a room, traveled together. His biographer referred to him as Sterling’s longtime chum, but they were most likely in love, lifelong partners. Sterling’s will called for all his papers and correspondence to be burned at his death. The speculation is he was protecting himself and Bloss, but maybe he had something else he wanted to hide.”
Like a plan to build a gateway to the underworld.
Alex looked back at the entrance. “If the scribe is the start, what’s the next step?”
“Darlington didn’t allude to just any scribe to lead us to Sterling,” Dawes said, waving the Gazette. “He quoted the Egyptian. There are two rooms with stained glass windows referencing the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Thematically…”
But Alex had stopped listening. She was looking down the long nave to the reception desk and the mural above it, the colors clean and bright, at odds with the gloom of the building.
“Dawes,” she said, interrupting, excited but also afraid of making a fool of herself. “What if the next step is right in front of us? That’s Mary, right?
Mother Mary?” Would that I might make thee love books more than thy mother.
Dawes blinked, staring at the mural and the golden-haired, whitegowned woman at its center. “It’s not Mary.”
“Oh.” Alex tried to hide her disappointment.
“It’s called Alma Mater,” said Dawes, her excitement making the words vibrate. “Nourishing mother.”
They took off at a brisk walk. It was hard not to break into a run.
The mural was massive and set into a Gothic arch. It showed a graceful woman with an open book in one hand, an orb in the other. She was framed by a golden window, the towers of some city floating above her. But maybe it wasn’t a window. Maybe it was a doorway.
“She sure looks like Mary,” Alex noted. The mural could have been an altar piece right out of a church. “There’s even a monk next to her.”
There were eight figures gathered around her. Eight figures, eight houses of the Veil? That seemed like a reach.
“Light and Truth are the two women on the left,” said Dawes. “The rest of the figures represent art, religion, literature, and so on.”
“But none of them are holding up a sign to what’s next. I guess we either go left or right.”
“Or up,” Dawes said. “The elevators lead to the stacks and offices.”
“Literature is pointing to the left.”
Dawes nodded. “But Light and Truth are facing right to … the tree.” She grabbed Alex’s arm. “It’s the same as the one in the mural. The Tree of Knowledge.”
Above Alma Mater’s head, amid the arches of a building that might well be a library, were the branches of a tree—perfectly echoed in stone over the archway to their right. Another entrance. Maybe another step in the Gauntlet.
“I know this quote,” Alex said as they approached the archway. “There studious let me sit and hold high converse with the mighty dead. ”
